Tania James - Atlas of Unknowns

The bar swelters with the alluvial heat and musk of its male patrons, the ceiling fan slowly whisking the air to no great effect. At this hour most men are at work, so only one customer sits at the counter, chatting with Berchmans. Melvin takes a stool farther down and orders a peg of brandy, neat, something to send a gentle kick to his brain. Outside, a jeep passes with a bullhorn perched on its roof, through which a voice bellows: The twenty-first century will be the Indian century! The country’s future is in your hands!

Melvin takes his drink and grimaces, the liquid razing a path down his throat. He calls out to Berchmans. “This stuff gives you a headache before you even swallow.” Melvin drops the glass onto the counter. “Don’t you serve anything other than battery fluid?”

Berchmans saunters over, studying Melvin’s anger from a distance. “Not for what you’re paying, I don’t.”

“So if I were rich, you would give me the good brandy?”

“Of course.”

“If I were someone like Abraham Chandy? Is that it?”

“Melvin, what is this? How could you be Abraham Chandy?”

“I’m not saying I’m him! I am saying I deserve better, I deserve the same—”

Melvin stops himself; his voice has begun to tremble. Berchmans is staring, as is the other customer, his brow furrowed behind a bottle. Melvin cannot lift his eyes from the counter. Carefully, quietly, he adds, “I deserve a nice thing. Once in a while.”

He presses his hands to his eyes, which have grown suddenly full. Now, finally, he acknowledges his failures, the loss of his job, his wife, his daughter, and all the ways in which he is to blame. Now, when he feels smaller than he ever felt before, now he is a man.

After a moment, he hears the unscrewing of a cap, the clink of glass against glass, the pouring of liquid. He feels a hand brush his shoulder. When he opens his eyes, his glass is brimming with gold.

Melvin thanks him.

Berchmans nods and moves away to clean some glasses. Berchmans is good in this way; he senses who wants to speak further and who does not. Even if Melvin wanted to talk, he would have no idea where to begin or how to utter the word “servant” as Abraham did, a word that had flown in long ago, unnoticed, and made its nest. Melvin knows he was never a servant, but to be perceived as such beyond his knowing is even more shameful to him than being one.

When Melvin was a child, his family could afford to employ a part-time servant, an old man so committed to social custom that he refused to answer to his first name, Kelan, and would respond only to the full name that included his Untouchable caste: Kelan Pulayan. Back then, Ammachi told Melvin of the way life used to be, when Paravans and Pulayans would even walk backward in the streets if an upper-caste person were coming their way, according to rules that ran old and deep as rivers. But when Kelan Pulayan’s son, Kochu Kelan, came of age, he rebelled and converted to Islam. Kochu Kelan showed up one day in the backyard, growing the beginnings of a beard and wearing the white cap of his new religion.

“The temple doesn’t want us,” Kochu Kelan said. “Only before Allah can we show our face.”

“Then go.” Kelan Pulayan’s decision was quiet, as he had never once raised his voice while in Ammachi’s employ. “But don’t ever show your face to me.”

From the doorway, Melvin watched Kochu Kelan tromping back the way he came, his hand steadying his topi. Kelan Pulayan’s back was to Melvin, still and straight as a tombstone as he watched his son. And then he returned to chopping wood in calm, even strokes.

Though years have passed since Melvin first met Gracie, what pains him most from that time was his ignorance, his neglecting to understand that he lived in the same world as Kelan Pulayan. The customs that decided where Kelan Pulayan would worship and to what name he would answer, these were the rules that put Melvin beneath Gracie and Abraham above them all. This is the web that time has built, of which they are all a part. This is what Abraham will not let Melvin forget a second time.

N THE THIRD DAY of Anju’s stay with Mrs. Solanki, Rohit phones with a voice full of brash adolescence. Anju is sitting at the kitchen counter across from Mrs. Solanki. When Anju hears his voice over the speakerphone, she stops swiveling on her stool and holds the counter with both hands. “I called the woman that Anju was staying with, Mom. She said you guys have had Anju for days.”

The phrasing sounds plucked from a hostage-and-ransom movie, causing Anju to shrink into her chair. But Mrs. Solanki looks nonplussed. “Ah, Rohit, I was wondering when you would call, beta . I would’ve told you if you had called but you never call. Let this be a lesson—”

“Is Anju there with you? Let me talk to her.”

“She told us about the film you are trying to make.”

“Not trying , Mom. I am making it. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I didn’t want you getting involved.”

“After all my crying and searching. All you did was film me without saying a word.” With a huff, Mrs. Solanki puts a closed fist on her hip though her eyes possess the playfulness of a person at advantage. “Sometimes, Rohit, I think you can be very insensitive.”

“Look, are you going to let me talk to her or do I have to come over there?”

Mrs. Solanki raises her eyebrows at Anju, who shakes her head.

“She is in the shower. But let’s have dinner at La Tache this evening. Can you come? I will make reservations.”

“But they probably won’t let me film at La Tache.”

“Exactly, beta.”

This phone call goes much more smoothly than the one Anju made on her first night back with the Solankis. Bird answered with fear in her greeting, a fear that soon turned furious. “Where are you? How could you run off like this?”

But when Anju, with measured words, explained that she was not coming back to the apartment, that Mrs. Solanki had agreed to send her to Kumarakom, Bird grew quiet. She did not pose a question or interrupt with a word.

“Please don’t tell Rohit,” Anju said carefully. “If he calls for me.”

“Come back. You should come back. We should talk about this, Anju Mol. Have you talked to your father recently?”

“My father knows nothing about all this.” Anju took a breath. “I never told my family about you. I have not spoken to them since December. When I ran away from the Solankis.”

To this, Bird responded with stark silence.

“I never told anyone about you,” Anju said. “Not the Solankis, not the school. I lied to you. I thought it was the only way to convince you to let me stay.”

When finally Bird spoke, her voice was dry as if from disuse. “But you said your father was sending you letters….”

“He wasn’t. And I never wrote.”

For a time, there was only the sound of Bird’s breathing.

“I’m sorry,” Anju whispered.

“I don’t understand. This is not the way you say good-bye. As if I am no one to you.”

“Chachy, are you crying?”

“No,” Bird snapped. “I’m laughing.”

Then: click of the phone hanging up. A good-bye as abrupt and wounding as Anju’s own.

LA TACHE IS THE TYPE of restaurant that makes Anju want to serve the waiters herself, so elegant and calm they are, like soon-to-be starlets fully aware of their upcoming discovery. From memory, they recite the specials like sonnets and bring them on trays balanced on single hands, orbiting around one another without touching, part of a grander firmament of gold and crushed velvet and wood the color of semisweet chocolate.