Tania James - Atlas of Unknowns

“Is it Yeksho?” Melvin asks. “I heard Yeksho is very good.”

“Yeksho? Is that the name of a brandy?”

Melvin nods, his conviction wilting. “From France?”

Abraham brightens. “Oh! You mean this!” He pulls the bottle from the bag and points at the gold label that reads xo.

Heat rises to Melvin’s cheeks, spreading around his collar.

“Honest mistake,” says Abraham.

Disgusted with himself, Melvin almost fails to hear Abraham explain that the bottle is for a man with a fine taste in foreign liquors. “Poor Kuku. He hardly gets out of the house. Blind, you know.”

Melvin focuses on the auto-rickshaw in front of him, which is presently attempting to forge its own lane in the gutter of space between two lorries. “Kuku? Kuku George?”

“Do you know him?”

Melvin glances at Abraham, who looks surprised. “I do …,” Melvin says, wanting to adhere to the general policy of secrecy where matters of marriage are concerned. He did not even tell Berchmans the day before, after the third beer had loosened his tongue. “I don’t know him personally….”

As Abraham directs, Melvin pulls up to the wrought-iron gate of the house, flung open so that he can ascend the steep driveway. Instead, he stalls at the gate.

“What is it?” Abraham asks. “Why aren’t we moving?”

“If you don’t mind too much,” Melvin says carefully, “could you walk up the driveway and I wait down here?”

Abraham laughs. “But if I wanted to walk, I wouldn’t have hired you.”

Melvin wraps his fingers around the steering wheel; doing so steadies his voice. “I would prefer that Kuku George and his family not see me like this. As a driver. He has shown interest in my daughter — in Linno — and the families have not yet met. We are to meet next week. I am sure he already knows that I’m a driver, but this would be … a bad first impression.”

“Kuku?” Abraham sits forward. “Kuku showed interest in your family?”

“In Linno, my eldest.” Now Melvin’s throat feels warm with shame. He knows very well how improbable the match must seem, as odd as a bottle of XO in a driver’s hands. He neglected to consider such things when he married Gracie, whose family was also wealthier than his own. And he would come to regret it.

Abraham sits back, gazing out the window with a loose smile around his lips. “Well, that is wonderful news. You couldn’t ask for a better family than Kuku’s.”

“I’m hoping it will work out….”

“Why wouldn’t it? Melvin, this is a chance you should not pass up. Their family is very God-fearing, very well off. I’m sure you know that.” Melvin looks at the distant door frame of the house, which is all that is visible from this vantage. Passersby can see little of the property, hemmed in as it is by the gate and the pale stone wall.

Melvin relaxes a bit. He had assumed that confiding such a thing in Abraham would have led to laughter or disdain. “I know that the Georges are of a certain class, but if Linno likes him and he likes Linno … She can be stubborn, though.”

“Oh, stubborn nothing. Every woman can be convinced by a big house.” Abraham gets out of the car. “I’ll be back in ten minutes. And I’ll say I came by taxi.”

KUKU AND ALICE receive Melvin and Linno on a sinister evening, a low flotilla of clouds beneath the full moon. Linno peers from under the roof of the auto-rickshaw as they go rattling up the driveway. The house stands noble and old, its cream stone faintly stained with moss. Its height surpasses the surrounding trees, a size that seems less than a blessing from this close, all those unlit rooms a reminder of the absent children and grandchildren, the generations who are not there to fill them.

Kuku and Alice are waiting on the front step. Linno notices Alice first, the way she stands like a man in her bland brown sari, feet apart, hands clasped behind her back. Her smile has a relaxing effect on Linno, who is then returned to a state of vague anxiety upon noting Kuku’s hairstyle, a small and sturdy pompadour. His hair does not reflect well on either him or Alice, as she might have been the one to style it.

On the porch, names are passed around:

“Melvin? Kuku.”

“Alice? Linno.”

“Linno. Kuku.”

With his eyes fixed somewhere on Linno’s forehead, Kuku extends his hand for a handshake, a gesture that Linno rarely receives. She takes Kuku’s right hand with her left and their hands go up and down twice, gently and awkwardly. If he is nervous, she cannot tell. At home, in a last-minute spasm of anxiety, she spent most of the morning trying to decide upon the flirtier of two salwars (the scalloped neckline versus the high, lacy collar) before remembering that her suitor would probably not be swayed by either.

LEAVING THEIR SHOES at the door, they sit around a slick table of blood red wood, a color that somehow amplifies the gravity of their meeting. A small forest of such trees must have been plundered to supply the matching sofas and armchairs, coffee table and side tables, where fake snapdragons are gathered into crystal vases. In keeping with tradition, the perennial framed portrait of Jesus hangs over the front doorway, flanked by pictures of Alice and Kuku’s parents, immortalized in black and white before their hair had begun to gray.

Alice serves chai in fine china cups ribboned in gold, along with a tray of buttery biscuits arranged like lines of fallen dominos. Linno smooths the napkin on her knee, a fine, firm linen. She imagines that this is her table, and suddenly realizes that she has never owned anything that she could not lift herself.

At first, everyone takes turns tentatively sipping chai, never more than two sippers at once. She is drawn to the meticulous nature of Kuku’s movements, how his hand passes over the cup before grasping the handle, perhaps to feel the heat in his palm. His ways speak to a quiet sensitivity, an inner Zen.

A Zen that does not last. Galvanized by the tea, Kuku turns into an avid conversationalist, though the only topic that seems to interest him is the U.S. visa process. He has heard of Anju from the Malayala Manorama , he says, and he possesses a wealth of knowledge about the route to U.S. citizenship.

“What kind of visa does she have now?” Kuku asks. When Melvin says a student visa, Kuku nods. “F-i or J-i? There is a difference. You know that, don’t you?”

His questions remind Linno of a typewriter’s noise, clattering on and on until the end of the question, punctuated by a last inquisitive eking .

Alice, meanwhile, appears slightly uncomfortable, her smile taut as she continually urges everyone to eat more biscuits or take more tea. If this is an intersibling signal for Kuku to tone down his investigation, he seems not to notice.

“You must declare no intent to reside permanently,” Kuku continues, “but the trick is to keep renewing. It is all very fascinating, this process, allay? ”

Beneath the table, Linno slides a pen from her purse and, as quietly as possible, clicks the tip. It all makes sense now, the reason behind Kuku’s interest to move the alliance along: Linno could be his one-way ticket to the States. A union of nations after all. Of course, Linno’s intentions to marry Kuku were no less material. She begins doodling on the napkin, politely looking up from time to time.

“Anju told us she is going to contact a lawyer,” Melvin says. “An immigration attorney.”

“There are lawyers,” Kuku says definitively, “who will not take their fees without winning the case.”

Alice turns to Linno. “So are you studying still? Or are you working?”

In a fit of self-sabotage, Linno is about to explain her stunted academic career when Melvin steps in. “She is a painter.”