Tania James - Atlas of Unknowns

“Of course, I don’t know how your mother felt, do I? Who knows another person’s mind? I’m sorry. Just it is hard to believe …” Bird removes a handkerchief from her pocket and blows her nose, which clearly does not need blowing. And then, in a belated attempt at providing comfort: “Very sad, your mother’s story. Very, very sad.”

INTERVIEW . One of Rohit’s more intimidating terms. When he says that he wants to interview her, she thinks of a bare, white room, her hands fidgeting under a spindly table, the camera in the corner like a cop. She thinks of a confession.

According to Rohit’s instructions, she goes to his Ex’s apartment for the interview, wearing a blue shirt rather than her best blouse and skirt, whose floral pattern Rohit has deemed “too busy.” His Ex resides in Little Italy, between streets whose titles sound like jams, Mott and Mulberry, near a butcher shop that seems ill at ease among its svelte young passersby. Signs announce its presence in the windows: THIS BUTCHER SHOP WAS IN MARTIN SCORSESE’S 1ST FEATURE FILM, WHO’S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR? AND IS THE LAST REMAINING “OLD TIME” FAMILY BUTCHER SHOP IN LITTLE ITALY. BEST VEAL, MEATS, AND POULTRY, CHOICE BEEF. Anju enters a neighboring brick building and climbs four flights of misshapen stairs, seemingly molded by generations of heavy-footed people. By the time she arrives at the door, she finds that the Ex has left.

“Where is your Ex?” Anju asks. “She is living here, no?”

“Yeah, yeah, she just wanted to give us some privacy,” Rohit says. He nervously scribbles something in his black Moleskine notebook, the same kind, he once told her, that Hemingway carried. She did not think it appropriate to ask who Hemingway was. “This interview is going to be pretty personal, and it’s important that you’re totally comfortable.”

Anju surveys the large studio apartment, a bed coyly hidden behind a great span of bookshelves where the books have been arranged according to the color of their spines, a spectrum of literature. It is the only orderly thing about this habitat. A cereal bowl sits on the coffee table, a green flake petrified to the bottom. A small, unplugged television faces a wall, as if being punished for its ineptitude, and on top of this, a tall burgundy boot with a lethal heel.

Rohit has uncluttered an island of space for the interview. Anju sits at a round table by the window, whose shade Rohit keeps opening and closing, deeply bothered by the view of the fire escape. He puts an ashtray full of pennies on the tabletop, then takes away the ashtray and replaces it with a fat vanilla candle. Stepping back, he stares at the candle meaningfully, chin in hand.

“All right.” He stands by his camera, which he has set up on a tripod. “I think we’re ready. Don’t look directly into the camera, okay? Just meet my eyes, like we’re having a conversation.”

Throughout the shoot, his eyes dart up and down between his camera and her gaze, and she senses that his mind is thusly divided, his interest in her words only partial. He nods emphatically, even when she has said nothing of import. He seems to hope that his nodding will inspire her to offer up some precocious gem of wisdom, some well-phrased message that deserves to be hugged by quotation marks in his Moleskine book. Part of her worries about the state of her hair, which she forgot to check before taping began, but maybe mussed-up hair is appropriate for the Starting-from-Zero look.

Q: What did you hope to accomplish by coming to the States?

A: My family is not a poor poor family, but we were having bad luck, and I thought I will change our luck by coming to U.S. I was having high marks in school and my teachers were saying I will do great things, so I was believing this too. And then when you believe something should happen, you will make it happen, whichever way. Even if the way is maybe little bit crooked, still it is going in up direction. Like that fire escape.

Q: Well, fire escapes go up or down. But okay, so speaking of downward spirals, are you referring to your sister and the scholarship?

A: Yes.

Q: Are you sorry about that?

A: Of course I am sorry. I went from number one in my class to pulling hairs in a beauty salon.

Q: Can you say “I am sorry for faking my scholarship application”? It’ll just make more sense in the editing.

A: I am sorry for faking the scholarship application.

Q: If you could go back, would you not do what you did?

A: Now you are trying to make me be little.

Q. What?

A. You are being belittling to me.

Q: I’m sorry, I take it back, then. Why don’t you tell me about your sister?

A: Linno. My sister’s name is Linno. She is older to me by four years. She had an accident when she was small from playing with this mala padakkam , how do you say … fireworks. The doctor took away her hand. Cut it off, I mean.

Q: That must have been a traumatic experience.

A: What is the meaning?

Q: Traumatic, like when you’re traumatized by something. It haunts you. It messes with your head, makes you upset or angry or sad.

A: I don’t know. We do not talk on these things. After the accident, Linno always was cutting her sleeve to tie her wrist, so that no one will see it. One time — I was younger then — I cut the sleeve of my best Christmas dress and tied mine also. I remember Linno saw me walk around like this and she was very traumatize with me. She ran into the bedroom. My grandmother thought I was making fun at Linno — I was not — but she beat me for that and for cutting my dress. My grandmother, she shorted the sleeves. Still it did not look right.

Q: Hmmm … (nodding)

A: There is no more to that story.

By the end, the interview has whetted Rohit’s appetite. He badgers Anju to let him film Bird as well. “We need some interaction with your roommate. With Bird, I mean. Don’t you think she’s a key figure in your story?”

“Key to what?”

“No, I mean that she’s important. She’s the one who took you down that road with Tandon in the first place. And now she’s become your benefactor, in a way.”

“She does not like movie people,” Anju warns.

“Trust me, I’ve heard it all. I’m in documentary. We’re the least loved of the bunch.”

Rohit pushes eject on the camera. With a tiny growl of gears, a panel on the camera’s side juts open and offers up the tape. Rohit writes on a sticky label — ANJU FILM INTERVIEW 1—which he presses to the tape with pride.

“My mom would love to get her hands on this footage,” he says. “To be honest, I kind of got the idea for this film from her.”

“Mrs. Solanki?”

“She was trying to get this episode together for her crapass show Four Corners . She even called your sister about it, I think.”

Anju’s breath catches in her throat. “Linno, she called Linno? What did Linno say?”

“I don’t know. The idea tanked, I think.”

“Oh.” Disappointed, Anju wriggles her fingers into Bird’s waterproof gloves, which are as large as oven mitts. “I did not know your mother is making documentary film also.”

Rohit throws off a dismissive laugh, almost a snort. “If what she does is documentary, then I’m Errol-fucking-Morris. She does talk show segments, you know? They’re, like, short and packaged and slick, like MTV. There’s no real depth, no complexity to what she does.”

Anju nods. Whenever he speaks of his film aesthetic, she feels comforted by his confidence, his panache, cut to this and fade to that . She also feels a vague pity for him. Piece by piece, he nestles the camera parts into the cushioned niches of the bag while she watches him in silence, thinking how safe and sad it is to put the bulk of one’s love in an inanimate thing.