Tania James - Atlas of Unknowns

Unfortunately, it seems, the man will have to create even more room for Lord Balaji. He is dismissed from the prescreening line because his identification photos are not of an appropriate size. Linno feels a pang for the person whose movements she mimicked in the security line, where the guards patted them down and thumbed through their folders for electronic devices. The officer directs him to the nearby market where a new photo can be taken. When the man turns, Linno glimpses his face, sallow and sedate, like a zoo animal tired of shrieking against the bars of his cage.

BY THE TIME Linno reaches the personal interview line, it is three hours past her scheduled appointment. One after another, the hopefuls go to one window to give their fingerprints, then to another window to meet their decisions, good and bad. It seems that there are many rejections, which usually require more time as those applicants try to make sense of their fate. One of the more desperate rejects crouches so as to speak into the small microphone in front of the glass partition, rendering him a wretched hunchback. But everyone is courteous with the official administering the news so as not to upset him, low though he might be on the totem pole. Those who fail today will likely try again, and who can afford an enemy behind the glass?

Rumors have been traveling down the line, most of them worrisome. It is said that the interview officers obey their own individual strands of logic, some just, some cruel, some mathematical, like the one who accepts only every fifth applicant that stands before him. One of the officers is a China, and of course everyone knows what Chinas think of Indians. But maybe he is a Japan? A Japan would be better. Japans hate Chinas, don’t they? So by extension, a Japan might like an Indian.

At last, for better or worse, Linno finds herself face-to-face with the China/Japan. “Hello,” he says with an American accent.

“Good morning.” It is long past morning, but she is reluctant to stray from her rehearsed greeting.

He is young, but to Linno’s mind, all Asians look five years younger than they are. She once met a newlywed Chinese woman in the waiting room of a beauty salon, where her Malayali mother-in-law had brought her. Unabashed, the Chinese woman stuttered a few garbled sentences of Malayalam to Linno, which could have meant either It is difficult for me or I want to sing . To which the mother-in-law gave a silvery laugh of pride. As soon as the Chinese woman disappeared into the back, the smile on her mother-in-law’s face fell away. To Linno, she said: “I sent my son to Hong Kong for studies. You see what he brought back? Kando?”

Linno hopes that her interviewer looks more favorably upon her than the mother-in-law upon her Chinese daughter. He takes her folder and thumbs through her papers. “Why do you want to go to the United States?” he asks.

She answers with automated ease. “I wish to represent my company, East West Invites, at a wedding convention sponsored by American company called Duniya, Incorporated. Duniya has history of bringing foreign businesspeople for their convention.” As she continues to answer questions about her employment, all these words mean little more to her now than I am sophisticated, I am worthy, I am sophisticated, I am worthy . She attempts the posture of a politician’s wife, shoulders held back, dignified yet modest. She recalls one of the suggestions on an immigration website that Prince found for her: “Dress up nicely and keep smiling! Give a good impression of the Indian people!”

“How long have you been working for this company?” he asks.

“Six months.”

“That’s not very long. What if you find a better job in the United States?”

“I will be staying here itself. I am head designer of East West Invites.”

Across the counter, she passes a letter of financial support from Alice and a letter from Duniya, Inc. Along with these, two salary slips and a bank statement recently inflated by a loan from Jilu Auntie. The interviewer breezes through the papers and turns to his computer. He types for a moment, then stares at the screen, his chin in his hand.

“Do you have any family in the States?” he asks finally.

Her throat tightens. “Yes.”

“Who?”

“My younger sister, Anju. She is there on student visa.”

He is nodding slowly, still looking at the screen. She feels a small hatred for the computer and its potential to tattle on her circumstances. What does it know? Is the screen telling him all the things that she has not?

Taking a breath and maintaining her smile, she plunges into her closing argument. “As you can see from the evidence, I show a desire to abandon U.S. I have strong family ties, work responsibility, and permanent residence in my home country …” Her voice fades as she tries to remember what comes next, but the interviewer steps in.

“I’m sorry, but we cannot make a decision at this time. This application is pending investigation.”

His decree is as a pin to a balloon. She stares at him for a moment before realizing that her smile is no longer necessary.

“You’ll have to keep checking in for the status of your application,” the officer continues. He is apologetic, to a degree.

“What they are investigating?” she asks.

He shakes his head. “I can’t really say.”

His face is an impenetrable mask reserved for the hundreds of Indians that press their questions against the glass each day, searching for any place to hang a hope on that mercilessly smooth pane.

Does he know about Anju? Does he think Linno will not abandon the States? She wants to shout, bang against the glass. Except for her, no one wants to abandon the States! Look at the man in the next booth, dancing his way out of the room with “yes” all over his face. Look at the couple clutching their file folders, both retired, both miraculously walking out of here with a ten-year visitor visa so as to end their days in their son’s Florida condo. Who among them does not want to nest in the U.S.? What game is this of smoke and mirrors? She is the only one with an exit strategy in mind, the only one who does not want to stay.

Her eyes go to the clock behind him, and it seems, for a moment, that she can hear every tick of the second hand. “If they reject me, how long until I can again apply?”

“As soon as you want.” The official peers around her to see how many others are in the waiting room. “But you’ll have to make another appointment.”

ONSOLATION DOES NOT COME EASILY to Melvin. He never knew how to touch his wife on those days when he came home from work to find her biting her fingernails or lost in her tea. When she fell into such moods, he employed an isolationist strategy of keeping to his own quarters, which was difficult in a two-room flat peopled by three females of varying sizes and tempers. He sensed that he was to blame. Wasn’t he always? Even when her complaint was lodged against a neighbor (someone stealing her underskirt from the laundry line, for example), Melvin sensed his complicity. In America, there were no laundry lines! There were water machines and underskirts galore! Oh, he knew his wife, he did, enough to carry on the whole fight in his head, taking the liberty to add a reconciliatory love scene at the end, though not a word had passed between them.

And now, by instinct, he avoids Linno as well. They arrived home that morning, rumpled and ill-rested from another overnight train, and she immediately went to her room, refusing breakfast. Ammachi hovered at the edge of the bed, Linno’s cup of chai going cool in her hands.