Tania James - Atlas of Unknowns

If Anju met a friend who is helping her, that friend would be living somewhere in New York. Unless she ran off with a lover who whisked her away to another state, as far and as hazy as Montana perhaps. Linno has read stories about abducted young women, bodies turning up days later, tragedies of misguided trust. But Anju would not stray so far; she has the stomach for only so much danger. As a little girl, she once wrapped all the kitchen glasses in newspaper because she had heard of an earthquake that was predicted to hit Pakistan a week later. Anju was a practical girl, Linno thinks before quickly correcting herself. Anju is a practical girl. And she does not, nor will she ever, belong solely to the past.

IT IS THE FIRST SUNDAY of February, and Judy Lambert’s invitations are finally finished. Alone at the office, Linno examines each card before nestling it into a white box filled with red tissue paper. On her way home, she delivers the box to Alice’s house for a final review.

A servant girl shows Linno into the living room, where Kuku is seated in a plush brown chair, his face canted upward, receiving the bland murmur of the evening news. He turns the television off and apologizes for Alice, who is upstairs bathing. Linno would have been happy to leave the box of invitations on the coffee table, but Kuku invites her to have lemon water with him on what he calls the patio. Before Linno responds, Kuku says to the servant girl: “Janaki — lemon water on the patio.” Janaki hurries away on her mission.

Linno follows him outside, through the veranda that wraps all the way around the house in the old, wealthy style, like a moat of white-gray marble. The tip of his cane taps with every two steps. The patio turns out to be a wider part of the veranda set up with rattan chairs and a wealth of sprawling houseplants — ferns, aloes, spider plants, baby banana trees, birds of paradise in orange pots. Janaki sets a pitcher and two glasses on a small table with intricately carved legs. Linno settles into a chair while Janaki fills each glass, then guides one into Kuku’s raised hand.

“So you are finished with the Madhamma’s cards,” Kuku says. “May I see one?”

“How?” Linno says too soon. She bites her lower lip. “I am sorry. I mean …” She clears her throat, trying to think of a better phrasing for “How?”

Kuku seems unfazed. “I’m not fully blind. I can see some colors, light and dark. I can see only what is ahead of me but nothing from the corners of my eyes. I can see most colors, except red. So many important things are red,” he says sadly. “I would gladly trade yellow for red.”

“Oh.” She gazes into her chilled glass, at the residue of lemon and sugar on the bottom. She tries to imagine his vision, the watery depths and luminous obscurities. “And you were always this way?”

Kuku nods. “When I was a baby, my eyes were rolling around in my head. My mother thought I was possessed. But my uncle was a doctor, and he found a name for my problem. Optic nerve hypoplasia.” Kuku takes a casual sip. “It’s a mild form, compared to most.”

It is strange and slightly welcoming to speak of his disease in terms of fact and detail, rather than curse and misfortune.

He motions to her. “Show me an invitation.”

Opening the box, she removes the top invitation from the stack, the best one, and fits it into his hands.

“Red,” she says.

“I see,” he sighs. “And what is this? A ribbon?” Linno unties the card for him and guides his fingers up the right side of the triangular roof.

“This is the pagoda,” she says.

Their fingers drift down the left side of the roof. And in a maneuver that she hardly noticed, it is now his fingers guiding hers down the wall of the pagoda and across the two steps.

“Steps,” he says.

She disentangles her fingers and closes the card. “We don’t want to touch too much. Because of the oils, you know. From our fingers.”

As she returns the invitation to the box, Kuku seems energized by the mention of oils. “Do you know what the pagoda represents? It is a place of aesthetic beauty, of spiritual shelter.”

No, Linno says, she did not know that. She does know, however, the gist of what Kuku is continuing to say. It is like watching a person trip, in slow motion, and being too far away to break his tumble.

“I have always thought of you,” he says, “as my pagoda.”

A moment passes before she finds her voice. “I think your wife should serve that purpose.”

“Well, she has the shape of a pagoda, that much I can tell.” Kuku’s frown is almost a pout. “I may not be able to see, but I am not stupid. All she wants is my money. All she wants is this house. And all my uncles want is to see me married so that they can believe that my parents are resting in peace. You think she likes me? Every minute she spends with me, she must be in the company of five, ten aunts.”

“You are a grown man. If you don’t want to marry her, then don’t.”

“Oh, Linno, please.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, as if being harrassed by a child. “People like you and me cannot venture into the world without so much as a backup plan. I am going to marry her and that is that, unless you are somewhat interested in giving your hand to me.” He hesitates with a shake of his head. “You know what I mean.”

She crosses her arms over her chest, a defensive stance that she has not taken in a while, not that she forgot how different she is from everyone else, but having forgotten that everyone else notices. “Did I ever give you any reason to think that I would want to marry you?”

“Most women would jump from a bridge before they dropped a hint of interest. So prudish, people here. But you were bold enough to draw me a picture at our very first meeting. Alice described it to me.”

“That wasn’t for you. That was because I was bored.”

Kuku begins to say something, but falters. She watches his face transform from confidence to confusion, then finally and unpleasantly, to shame. “That I did not realize.”

He leans forward and places his glass of lemon water on the table. She puts hers next to his and, rising, says: “Thank you for the lemon water.”

“What if you took some time to think?” he blurts. “A day or two?”

Looking up at her, Kuku appears shrunken in his chair. There is a piece of lint on his shoulder, and she wishes she could brush it away. But he would probably misunderstand the gesture just as he has misunderstood everything else, so she remains where she is and says as gently as she can, “I am sorry, Kuku, but I will never be your pagoda.”

THAT SAME MONTH, Kuku and Jincy are married.

Jincy wears a puff-sleeved white sari, her throat choked with gold. Kuku wears Ray-Ban shades, a sleek gray suit, and a smile as plastic as Jincy’s diamond tiara. All throughout the Mass, Linno tugs at her salwar, wary of the sweat pond at the small of her back. Ammachi wears an expression of wistful sorrow that gradually melts into a frown, her singing not unlike a hoarse lament.

Before Anju’s absence, Ammachi used to thrive on social minglings, deriving some maternal power from the ever-widening circle of her acquaintance. There is tall, two-faced Sally Markose, who will hug you with one hand and cut off your braid with the other. Across the aisle from her is Oommen George, whose cancer last year whisked away his lush head of hair, ushering in a series of ladylike wigs in its wake. In front of him is Abraham Saar, straight and imposing as a pillar. His hands are clasped behind his back, causing his chest to lift, his chin raised to receive the sermon. Here is the kind of man that Linno would marry were he twenty-five years younger, a man who held the respect of a whole room with his quiet self-possession. Linno rarely spoke to him directly, harboring a deep deference for the man who had swooped into her family’s life and, by giving Melvin a job, saved them from uncertainty.