Tania James - Atlas of Unknowns

She realizes that her hands are in fists. This is all a kind of thievery, the business of steering someone’s life. Happy or sad or unforeseen, her ending is hers.

ANJU EMERGES FROM the wrong subway stop but decides to walk the rest of the way. She used to like the dark glitter of the neighborhood at night, the clatter of important heels on cement, the slick black windows of bars manned by dour bouncers, watching taxis prowl past. While climbing into a cab, a girl has her finger in one ear and her cell phone against the other, yelling: “We’re going to Orchard and Stan-ton! … ORCHARD AND STANTON!”

Anju walks in a direction that someone told her was west, and someone else, with equal conviction, called east. She continues. Forward, not back, every block same as the last until finally she reaches the Monarch, a pale and spired Goliath among the surrounding brick and stone. She stares up at the spires with a clarity of mission that will send her, slingshot, over her doubts. But even biblical heroes must have suffered their butterflies.

IT IS HALF PAST NINE when Anju strides through the glass doors of the Monarch as if she never left. All is the same, as enchanting as it always was — the cloudy marble, the fountains, the red carpet so soft it seems to melt underfoot. She hardly remembers the version of herself that passed beneath the expansive brass arms of the chandelier on that dizzying day in December.

The doorman must be new, a young man who seems apologetic for mistakes he has yet to make. She gives him her name, hoping that the Solankis are there when he dials them.

“Anju Melvin,” he says into the phone. He looks up at her, his eyebrows raised, and mouths, Right? She nods. “Anju Melvin. Yes, yes I’m sure … Mhm … Yes.”

THE ELEVATOR RISES. In the corner is the tiny television screen tuned to the news. A weatherman warns of an approaching cold front from the east: “Bundle up out there, if you’re not already!” The ground presses into the soles of her feet.

As the doors slide open, Anju sees Mrs. Solanki waiting in the door frame, her arms hanging by her sides. She is wearing her pale pink pajamas.

“Hello,” Anju says.

“You’re here.”

Mrs. Solanki wears a strange expression, hovering somewhere between bewilderment and anger. Only now does Anju fully understand what she has done to this woman, and more of these realizations are yet to come. But before Anju can apologize, Mrs. Solanki catches her in a hug. Not the flimsy embrace of acquaintances, but simple and strong and fortifying.

T IS MAY OF A YEAR that still feels new to Melvin. The sky shares his sense of promise in its cloudless blue, the same shade as the oceans in an atlas. Today is Sunday, and tomorrow Melvin will accompany Linno by train to the Chennai consulate. The consulate people have had a month to review her B-i visa application, and now, after a personal interview, they will decide if she should be crowned with a visa. Melvin made this trip before, with Anju, and has decided to wear his second-best shirt, as he did the previous time, for luck.

When they first received notice of the interview, Melvin phoned Abraham to take four days off from work. He felt anxious calling, then irritated that calling a man two years his junior would make him feel anxious.

“You’ll be gone all week?” Abraham asked.

“Yes, I’m going to Chennai.” Abraham waited for Melvin to continue. “The Consulate Building. I have business there.”

“Is everything all right? I only ask because this is short notice. We have a wedding in Ernakulam that week….”

“Linno has a visa interview.” There was a certain pleasure to be had in hearing himself say these words.

“Linno?” Abraham asked. “Your Linno?”

“My Linno.”

“That’s wonderful news!” Melvin was taken aback by the earnest excitement of this response. “So she is going to America too?”

“I hope so,” Melvin said. “It’s not for certain.”

“What a blessing, your daughters.” Abraham grew serious. “And what of the younger one? Have you heard from her?”

“No, but I think we will. Very soon.”

“Of course. She’s probably getting her green card as we speak. Ambitious, your children. Wish they could talk some sense into mine.”

Melvin gave a tense laugh, but Abraham’s tone seemed genuine. Here was a man who had every reason to dislike Melvin, who had saved Melvin from a long drought of unemployment. It was a strange thing now, to feel pity for Abraham and impatience for his sons, who listened to their father no more than they listened to the old songs. Melvin wished that he could do something for Abraham, and though he was in no position to do so now, he allowed himself to imagine that maybe someday he would be.

THE MAYHEM OF the upcoming election — rallies, speeches, slogans, signs — has barely slowed Linno’s pace. Days and nights she and Alice have worked to put together the seminars for the Duniya Expo, designing new invitations and business cards, making phone calls, and exchanging emails with potential partners who can hawk their wares in Chicago, Philadelphia, Miami, and other hotbeds of the South Asian populace. For Linno, most of these activities are for the benefit of the Chennai consulate, to prove her business credibility.

Where Anju is concerned, Linno will answer only what is asked, but nothing more. With Georgie’s help, she has researched dozens of immigration websites that make the process sound swift enough that she may escape specific scrutiny. Usually, the questions concern business alone without delving into personal matters. She has also been researching several tourist books on New York, preparing a method to comb the city, block by block, in order to find Anju. Her brain is a map of boroughs, with multicolor rivers of subways. She will visit police stations and post signs for Anju’s whereabouts. She will speak to every person with whom Anju shared a single conversation, a list that includes Anju’s host family, her teachers, Shell Dun Fisher, and with all the meticulous logic of a detective, Linno will bring Anju back.

Linno will not disclose to the Chennai consulate that for the past three days, she has fallen asleep at the kitchen table with her head in her arms, thus accounting for the shadows that rim her eyes. What keeps her awake is not her work but that inevitable moment of paralysis when she will step off the plane and all the maps and routes will flee her mind. The city that she thought she understood will rise before her, beclouding the tourist books that sought to reduce it to a digestible size. For the time being, a map allows her to pretend at some sort of control over a roiling city, allows her to forget, tentatively, this world of unknowns in which she is so very small, so powerless.

· · ·

LINNO AND MELVIN take a two-hour train ride from Kottayam to Ernakulam, where they buy tickets for the express train that will take them to Chennai. The platform in Ernakulam smells of sweat and smoke; it is swarming with passengers and wiry coolies whose heads are turbanned in towels so as to balance luggage that surpasses them in weight.

As soon as Linno and Melvin join the currents of boarders, two coolies appear and offer to tote their bags onto the train, a job that requires only one coolie since Melvin can carry his own. One of the coolies hoists Linno’s suitcase onto his head while the other hustles alongside his partner, against Melvin’s wishes. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” the noncarrying coolie says. “We’re cousins.”

Halfway down the platform, the coolie puts the suitcase down and extends a hand toward Melvin.