Tania James - Atlas of Unknowns

“Go shoot some b-roll,” Petra tells him. “But be discreet. And no more slow zooms, okay? I wasn’t impressed by those.”

Rohit walks away, rubbing his cheek and smiling sheepishly, as if Petra has just nuzzled him.

Mrs. Solanki and Anju sit on a bench while Petra talks to the sound guy, Billy, a lanky, friendly man with headphones perpetually collaring his neck. He carries the boom microphone like a hockey stick, down by his side, and tells anecdotes about his children whenever possible. “I named my daughter Daytona,” he told Anju. “After the beach where she was conceived.” The last member of the crew is Roy, the producer. His age is ambiguous due to the white blondness of his hair, and his shirt is open two buttons too far, revealing a turquoise stone on a hemp necklace. Caffeinated and rigid and fidgety, Roy is the one to explain to Mrs. Solanki what will be shot and how. He spreads his discomfort, like flu, to whomever he speaks.

For the most part, Anju keeps her distance. While waiting to board the plane, she sips on a beverage that she had thought would be coffee, but looks instead like a tall cousin of the sundae, all weightless cream laced with chocolate powder. When Mrs. Solanki sits next to her, Anju asks: “You are sure we should not call my family to inform them? What if no one is home?”

“If no one is home, then we’ll wait,” Mrs. Solanki says between sips of espresso.

Anju brings a spoonful of sweet froth to her mouth, then drops the froth back into the cup. “My stomach is tossing and turning.”

“Mine too.” Mrs. Solanki’s eyes are bright and espressoed. “This is going to be tremendous.”

BUSINESS CLASS, Anju learns, is all about space — the space to stretch and sprawl, armrests aplenty, to receive champagne in a glass, to wash one’s face with a warm wet towel handled by silver tongs, to stare out the window or into a book as the economy passengers file past.

Never has Anju been more ill at ease.

Early in the journey, Mrs. Solanki goes to the bathroom while Petra positions herself near Anju. “So,” Petra says, angling the camera at Anju, “will you miss it here?”

Nodding seems like the right answer, but instead Anju says: “I am not sure.”

Petra waits. It is a comfort, Anju thinks, her patience, the way she lets a person’s thoughts take shape.

“There is one woman. I was calling her like a big sister or auntie, because she was family to me almost. She was helping me very much.” Anju looks at her hands. “I will miss her.”

These stilted sentences do little justice to Bird, whom Anju worked up the nerve to visit four days before. She arrived to find Bird in her flannel robe, civil but leaden, smelling of Gwen’s tea rose lotion. An abandoned cheese slice sat on the arm of the couch, both still in their plastic sheaths. Bird and Anju stepped awkwardly around each other, as if a camera were in the room, forcing them to monitor their words and movements. Anju packed her clothes into Mrs. Solanki’s rolling suitcase, and intermittently, Bird brought a few extra pairs of shoes into the room, egg-white sandals and gray flats that Anju thought dowdy and Bird called “sensible.”

“Thank you,” Anju said.

But Bird did not move, simply stood in the doorway, staring at the sandals in her hands as if they had asked her a question.

“Your mother …,” she said finally.

It seemed to require a great effort to expel the rest of the sentence, which Anju predicted to be the opening lines of a gentle, genuine moment, something like Your mother would be proud of you .

Bird met her eyes. “Your mother and I were friends.”

Anju waited for something else until she realized that this was all Bird wanted to share. “Okay,” Anju said.

Bird nodded and straightened up, somehow restored by her own words. “Keep an eye on the shoes, especially at church.” She went to the suitcase, where she fit the sandals next to the flats.

On her way out, Anju glanced at the blue vase, the dried flowers, the plastic-covered couch. And though she had seen the couch so many times before, she had never noticed how forlorn it appeared. It seemed as though Bird would never remove the plastic covering, as if she would continue to preserve the fabric beneath for a cherished guest, one that would never arrive.

AN HOUR LATER, the entire crew (including Rohit, who has seated himself next to Petra) is snoozing away, having taken the sedatives they brought with them. These are people who swallow pills like candy. Mrs. Solanki offers Anju some of her Ambien, but Anju refuses, afraid of the side effects. She has heard of people who sleepwalk on such pills and others whose pulses stutter to a stop, though her own will not allow her to rest anyway. There are times when her mind conjures up images of Linno and Ammachi and Melvin, and no sleeping pill or sedative could keep her heart from leaping to greet them.

LONG WITH THE SMUDGY SUNRISE, there comes the feeling that today Linno must go to church. She tries to defeat the feeling by going to work, where by ten a.m. she is useless, answering phones in automated tones and ruining three invitations in a row simply by cutting where she should have folded. Easy mistakes, but none that she would usually make.

Alice looks at her with tender worry, a look not unfamiliar to Linno in these last few days, since she returned from Chennai. Each day seems a repetition of the last, the same “on-hold” music when calling the consulate number, the same sense of limbo provided by the official who informs her that the application is still “pending investigation.” Yesterday Alice suggested hiring a lawyer to speed things along, but today she sends Linno home early. “Get some sleep,” Alice says. “We’ll see about the lawyer tomorrow.”

Linno takes the bus home, but traffic is slow today due to a frenzy all along the river, people gathering around the banks. The passengers squint at the water, where fish can be seen moving and bobbing just beneath the surface. “Karimeen pongi!” says a passenger. “They’ve risen!”

“Are they dead?” someone asks.

“If they were dead, they’d be on their sides …”

“But karimeen always stay deep down in the water.”

“Why are they moving so slowly?”

“Pesticides. What else? It’ll be in the newspapers tomorrow.”

Linno exits at the next stop, unable to stand the slow haul of traffic. With every bus that arrives, a herd of people push their way out, wading into the water for Kumarakom’s most famous fish. Some of the men remove their mundus to use as nets, splashing around in tiny shorts. Usually, only nets and rods can trap the swift-swimming karimeen , but now they wander into bare hands, bodies that barely possess the energy to resist, numbed by whatever fresh chemical has stunned them. Years ago, Linno witnessed a whole plague of fish floating along the river after an overdose of pesticides from the paddy fields, eyes staring up at the sky. But this picture is stranger, grotesque, nauseating: the sight of so many men, yelling, scrambling like fish themselves around a dangerous bait.

LINNO MAKES HER WAY across the nearby bridge where lorries tremble past, billowing veils of fumes behind them. The humid heat feels skintight, but she keeps walking, waiting to be struck by the sight of the church she has visited for most of her life.

For years, Linno has been attending Mass without a proper confession, and in this quiet fashion, she has received the host into a mouth still full of an untold sin, pretending a piety that she cannot claim. Today she will sit opposite Anthony Achen and form the words in a cleansing rush, and he will assign her a recitation of prayers, and in some slow, divine way, everything will be absolved and the world she knew will return to her. Maybe this is the missing part of her visa application — the stamp of the divine.