Tania James - Atlas of Unknowns

This morning she dragged herself onto her feet, dizzy, knees flaccid as the blood rushed to her extremities, to the very tips of her fingers. She awoke with the knowledge that life comes in circles of cause and effect, of fault and consequence, that her own accident and her mother’s accident are connected in some indissoluble pattern, that her mother’s death was the first in a series of mounting failures, a tumble of dominos to which Linno gave the first push, and in punishment, five years later, she lost her hand. How easily she pretended to forget all this, what with her designs and her cards, her face in a magazine. But now, as then, she is being punished for a crime for which she never atoned, and she will continue to be punished until she does. She has clung to action rather than prayer, presuming that there is no use in turning her gaze inward rather than outward. Inside is a world of regret so vast and deep that to linger there feels as impossible as skipping around the ledge of a well. But no more impossible than giving up her sister, and that she will not do, not until she has visited every lawyer and consulate, every priest, guru, imam, and astrologer, anyone who might bring hope.

AFTER AN HOUR of wandering, Linno feels very far from her home and her mission. She walks past an empty bus stop, its bars leprous with peeling paint, past a mulberry tree soaking the air with its sweet ferment. A wall borders the road, postered with political faces, sickled stars, slogans of India Shining . Now that elections are over and votes are being tallied, new posters will cover these, perhaps a fair, moon-faced actress from the latest Tamil movie. As a child, Linno used to watch the poster man carefully plaster each quarter of the mural until he stood back, the entire wall filled with a beautiful, unspoiled face. Then he would pull up a corner and rip a long scar through the cheek, which he would press back down, an ingenious solution to the pilfering of local boys who might want to mural their walls at home. They could not do so without destroying her; nothing came without cost.

Linno continues past the posters. Crammed with schoolchildren, an auto-rickshaw waddles past her, in the opposite direction of a man driving his butter-colored cow with a stick. The cow is as malnourished as its owner, its ribs raised like the bones in an old pair of hands. She feels as doleful as the cow, and slow, filled with its haylike smell and its sadness. Is this what it means, then, to be depressed? To watch the steady unraveling of her life and have no impulse to take up the thread? To be more absorbed by a stain on the mirror than by her own reflection? She shakes herself free of these thoughts, thinks only of her meeting with Anthony Achen.

And now, in the distance, she can see the triad of steeples awaiting her, each with its pale, petaled cross. It is not far, the church at the top of the hill. A lorry noisily hobbles past, kicking up dust from its bumper where someone has painted in yellow letters distance creates love. She imagines herself running after the lorry and hopping onto the bumper and riding and riding until an immeasurable distance grows between her and Anthony Achen, who will soon be sitting across from her, his knuckles whitening with every word until he banishes her from his presence. The ground begins to move beneath her, the road ripples and buckles like water. There is nowhere to look that is not moving. She takes hold of the wall which seems to go on and on, a ribbon without end, a question without answer, an apology without pardon. She closes her eyes and presses her forehead to the back of her hand. In her ears is the trill of a bicycle bell, the thick whispers of windblown leaves and then, simply, her breath.

IF LINNO KNEW that the only person at church today would be the Kapyar, she might have changed her mind about confession. In fact the Kapyar spends more time in the church than anyone else by his account. Not that anyone would ask or care that the House of God does not clean Itself. The Kapyar is the one to rinse the lip prints from the chalice and wipe the carved wood stations of the cross that hang along the walls. He pauses before the picture of Jesus with Veronica and raises his fingertip to the gaunt profile of Christ, feels the knifelike line of His cheekbone not unlike his own.

The Kapyar would have liked to be a priest, but his father had refused the calling, responding instead to a call from a sizable dowry. Being employed by the church, the Kapyar thinks, is the next best thing. And he fulfills his duties with utter gravity, fully aware of the children who call him the Crab. Once, he twisted the ear of one boy particularly hard, a multiple offender who had bullishly snorted loud enough to provoke a hesitation from Anthony Achen. After Mass, the Kapyar heard the boy say to his cohorts: “That Kapyar, that son of a veshya.”

The words embedded themselves in the Kapyar’s chest, caused his mind to stagger back into a moment of childhood, when he came into the house to find his mother fastening the last hook of her sari blouse as the landlord put a roll of rupees on the table. At the time, he thought: But she should be paying him .

One boy’s curse is another man’s truth. The Kapyar used to tell himself that he was not (he thought) the son of a whore, but now that the words have been thrown down before him, the Kapyar is reminded of that slender, crippling maybe . No, he is not that: he is the Kapyar who tugs the Sunday bells; who collects the weekly moneys, watching to make sure that the same hand that deposits fifty paise into the basket does not withdraw a rupee; who travels four miles on foot from a small hut by the side of the road, built atop the matchbox shack where he and his mother and father once lived in a careful semblance of oblivion.

AFTER THE KAPYAR lowers the bolts on the two front doors, he can sit on the stone steps outside and open his thermos of tea in peace. A peace that dissolves when he sees a young woman in the distance, making her way up the road to church. He puts the cap back on his tea and rises, shielding his eyes against the sun. It is Melvin Vallara’s daughter, the elder girl who messed with firecrackers, who, by the Kapyar’s mental records, recently abandoned church altogether. But now there is something strange about her, something wounded in her eye and dazed in her gait. The closer she comes, the wearier she looks, and by the time she reaches the Kapyar, she looks as though she might collapse, as if the only thing holding her up are the words she is trying to expel between gasps.

“Anthony Achen?” She swallows in a way that seems painful. “Where is he?”

“Anthony Achen isn’t here,” the Kapyar says.

“But …” She looks around. “But I came for confession. When will he be back?”

“Not today. He doesn’t live here.”

She stares up at the steeple, her arms hanging by her side. A slight wind could knock her over.

By this time, it seems that this Vallara is benignly crazy. But do crazy women carry handbags? She is parchment pale, on the verge of fainting, so the Kapyar braces her elbows and guides her into a sitting position on the steps. “Have you eaten?” he asks.

“Not today.”

The Kapyar unscrews his thermos and pours a cup for her. “I only drank from this side—” the Kapyar begins to say, but she seems not to care as she drinks.

She holds the cup in her lap and stares at the dregs for a time. It seems to the Kapyar that the young woman is regaining some color, that she seems almost able to rise and return home. He is about to encourage her to do so when the woman turns to him.

“I still need to confess,” she says.

“To whom? I am the only one here.”

“Then you.”

He argues against this, but she will not listen. “Don’t you understand? I am the Kapyar, not priest. Not even deacon.”