Tania James - Atlas of Unknowns

Growing impatient, Linno asks what she has been wondering for days — how exactly the school came to know of the fraud itself.

Miss Schimpf hesitates. “Her classmate. A friend.”

“This classmate. What did Anju tell her?”

“It’s a he. Sheldon Fischer. Anju confided in him.” Miss Schimpf recounts the way in which she overheard Sheldon Fischer telling Anju’s story to another student. Miss Schimpf appears to take Linno’s silence as rage, adding gently: “I should tell you that he’s absolutely torn up by all of this. He never meant for things to escalate as they did.”

What Miss Schimpf mistook for rage is bewilderment. Anju was never particularly talented at dealing with boys. There was her minor dalliance with that waif Sri Ram, but after him, no more. Who is this boy, and how did Anju become so intimate with him? Shell Dun Fisher. Linno repeats the name twice, as if correct pronunciation might lead her to the answer.

After hanging up with Miss Schimpf, Linno tries to imagine her sister making or even admitting to such a confession. Highly unlikely, considering Anju’s tendency to talk her way out of any trouble.

Except a tangle of vines.

Dread climbing her stomach, Linno recalls the corner of her painting, where she had so artfully planted her name. There were times when she thought about mentioning this to Anju, but she had no interest in speaking to her sister over the phone. Now her failure to do so seems intentional. One betrayal for another.

Absently, she worries a thread along the edge of her knotted sleeve until the thread comes loose. She pulls at the end, winding it around her finger, a tiny strangulation, though still she feels nothing.

IN TOWN, people are starting to look at Linno as though an unpleasant rash has appeared on her face, and they are mustering every ounce of self-containment to leave it unmentioned. She goes to the Chantha where Valan fishermen have spread the dawn’s catch on the ground, piles of smelt, sardines, catfish, and the local favorite, karimeen . A thousand sequin eyes stare up at her, the metallic scales of the fish caught by morning light, the air laced with a briny smell. When she tries to bargain with one of the fishermen, he seems to assent to her price out of pity, he who makes barely enough to sustain his family for a few days, he whose collarbone protrudes as though his whole, hungry skeleton is threatening to escape his skin.

So Linno is not entirely surprised when she arrives home to find an article in a local newspaper, one of the strange side pieces that appear beside other curiosities, like the story of a woman betrothed to a tree or a boy who performed a Cesarean section on a disgraced village girl.

SCHOLARSHIP WINNER

STRIPPED OF HONORS; FLEES

New York City — A Kerala exchange student who was being sponsored by a Manhattan private school fled her host family more than three months after she arrived in the United States. The whereabouts of Anju Melvin, seventeen, are unknown.

In May of 2003, Melvin received a full scholarship from the Sitwell School in New York, which sponsored her entry from Kumarakom. Several months later, school officials found that Melvin had won the scholarship on false pretenses. When confronted with the matter, Melvin confessed, and disappeared a day later. She left behind a note explaining her intention to run away.

Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, the United States government has toughened the student visa process. Three of the September 11 hijackers had entered U.S. on a student visa.

As in the old days, Linno reads the article aloud while Ammachi and Melvin listen. The words “Melvin” and “false” and “hijackers” are stones that settle in their stomachs.

Unlike after Linno’s other newspaper readings, Ammachi rebukes no one. She sits with an air of fragile stillness.

“Melvin? Just Melvin?” Melvin snaps. “They couldn’t write ‘Miss Melvin’?”

“Not when you’ve done something bad,” Ammachi says. “Only when you’ve done something good do they call you Miss and Mister.”

AT THE END OF THE WEEK, Linno phones an immigration lawyer whose number she copied from a commercial, Srikant Ramakrishnan. His silvery beard and noble bearing gave her the impression that his head and shoulders belonged inside an ornate frame. “I will not take a single paisa,” he had said, “until I win your case.”

Linno schedules a free thirty-minute consultation in the hopes of finding a U.S. visa that is compatible with her intentions, some sort of two-week Relative Recovery Visa. She will do anything. She will wear a homing device around her neck that beeps with every step if U.S. Homeland Security thinks it necessary. Mr. Ramakrishnan has only to point her in the right direction.

In person, Mr. Ramakrishnan seems to have aged past his televised self. His hair has surpassed its silver and begun to yellow, and his nose is as pocked and rutted as a peach pit. Linno has to repeat herself several times to explain the full story, and when she is finished, Mr. Ramakrishnan does not turn to the many tomes and texts behind him but instead scratches his nostrils, his fingers coming dangerously close to an excavation. After a sigh, he gives his prognosis with more sympathy than he might usually dole out for the free consultation.

“You can apply for the tourist visa,” Mr. Ramakrishnan says. “But with your sister’s situation, they would let in a flock of Iraqis before they even read your name.”

On that basis, he declines to take her case, citing his overwhelming workload, a convenient loophole for avoiding the “not one paisa” promise.

WITH OR WITHOUT Mr. Ramakrishnan, Linno plans to apply with what money she has left from the Sweet Sixteen invitation cards. To this sum, Alice adds twenty-five thousand rupees.

“How will I pay you back?” Linno asks.

“It’s called a bonus,” Alice says. “No payback necessary.”

Linno accepts the check in silence. Once in a while, Alice displays a subtle mothering quality, as when she went out to lunch and returned with a new umbrella for Bhanu because his had broken that morning. And now this check, from which Linno will not look up for fear that doing so might bring her to tears.

Alice squeezes Linno’s arm. “But think of what the lawyer said. Putting your money in this is like dropping your coins into a wishing well. It may help with your own peace of mind, but it won’t do any good for your sister’s.”

Linno turns away, briskly folds the check in half. What Alice does not understand is that peace of mind will come only when Anju is returned. Before that, any relief is simply a temporary shelter, a roof that will cave.

“I just mean that we should find another way,” Alice adds gently. “The best way.”

“From where? How?”

“My brother.”

“Kuku?”

“I only have one,” Alice says, almost apologetically. “But believe me, he has friends in high places. Ministries even.”

· · ·

LINNO HARDLY SLEEPS during these first two weeks. Time, with its viscous consistency, both stretches and shrinks, thins and thickens, hurtling through one week or dragging across the eternity of a minute. During the day, she works on invitations, as each new order that Alice brings is a mercy to her wandering mind. She used to glower at strangers, blaming them for the troubles they seemingly lacked, but now she harbors no envy for those celebrating a golden anniversary gala or a Mughal-themed baby shower. Instead she sees the money in each invitation, a growing sum that will somehow bring her sister back, as soon as Kuku comes up with the right strategy. Her fingers are flecked with paper cuts and smudges, but she works with a steady, fevered focus until Alice draws the window shade and sends her home.