Tania James - Atlas of Unknowns

“No?” She can see the dark shadow of Rappai’s mother inside the house, lying down on her mat, lifting onto an elbow to hear.

With her finger to her lips, Linno makes a hissing noise. Finding this attractive, Rappai’s rooster swells its chest and shrieks while flapping its wings. She claps it away.

Through the space between Rappai’s house and an adjacent banana tree, she can see another ola roof and another farther back, all of these and more homes making up Kumarakom, a village at the delta of the Meenachil River, a dot not even mapped on a globe, unlike New York, which seems almost a nation unto itself. The whole family was assuming that Anju would win the award and go traipsing off to that glittering place like Raj Kapoor, whistling with her stick and bundle as she sang her way into the Technicolor hills. Linno even allowed herself to fantasize that she might follow, one or two years from now. But true life, hers in particular, will require far less color, very little imagination.

She wonders sometimes, not often, what it would be like to be married to a man like Rappai, someone whose matinal nose blowing can be heard from the next house over. Maybe after a while, the wife’s subtle disgust settles to the bottom of her being, like a sediment, allowing her to wash his underwear, hang his sheddi on the line, and spread Tiger Balm across the shallow basin of his chest without dread, without any feeling at all. It seems quite probable that were Linno ever to marry, her husband would have to be someone poor or ugly or both. Even then, she would have to supply a substantial dowry, though less than what would be required for someone not so poor and not so ugly.

Who has the stomach for this kind of math, when the result — a vaguely repulsive housemate — amounts to so little?

Three days before, Rappai’s mother hobbled over to Ammachi, who was hanging damp bedsheets on a laundry line. From the kitchen, Linno listened as Rappai’s mother said that she had suggested Linno to a woman whose brother was looking for a wife.

“Is the brother old?” Ammachi asked, already used to and suspicious of these rare inquiries.

“No,” said Rappai’s mother. “He is from a good family, very upright. A church man. Only thing — he is blind. Pagathi , not fully. He can see colors and shapes but someone has to help him with stairs.”

“Hm,” Ammachi said, her lips tight.

All this time, Rappai has been lingering in his doorway, arms crossed beneath his chest, gravely waiting for news. At last, he goes back inside, and his rooster, eyeing her for a moment, also loses interest and struts away.

That Ammachi has not mentioned the blind man indicates that she has not dismissed the possibility.

As it did that day, panic flaps in Linno’s chest.

LINNO RETURNS to the kitchen to find that Ammachi has taken up the forbidden post by the doorway. Ammachi’s eyes are closed, head bowed as she listens through the curtain, gleaning what she can.

“What’s happening?” Linno asks.

Ammachi whirls around, caught but triumphant. “You were wrong. Something good has happened.”

“How do you know?”

“I can tell. Lots of ooooh and aaaah.”

And though Ammachi flutters her hands to shoo Linno away, Linno spies through the space between the curtain and the door frame.

The two cups of Tang have been abandoned on the table, still sweaty with condensation. Miss Schimpf is now standing in the middle of the room with her back to the kitchen. She is looking down at something cradled in her arms, speaking in a low murmur while Anju nods like a desperate, loyal child. Before Linno can make out their words, Ammachi pulls her from the curtain and forces her to sit at the kitchen table, beyond hearing, lest Miss Schimpf suspect them of being unmannered.

WHEN THEY GATHER on the front steps to bid Miss Schimpf goodbye, Linno finds it strange that Anju is sweating so much. Dark splotches have appeared under the armpits of her white blouse, which will turn yellow if Linno does not wash it tonight. She nudges a handkerchief into Anju’s palm.

Wiping her brow, Anju looks ahead without seeming to see the leaves, the moat, the bridge, or Miss Schimpf. Nothing at all. It is Linno who rushes over to help Miss Schimpf across the twin trunks of the bridge, her eyes on the water not two feet below her, trembling as though she were several stories higher. On the pretense of hospitality, Rappai and his mother come to watch as Linno leads her safely to the other bank, where a driver is leaning out of his auto-rickshaw.

Before Miss Schimpf climbs into her seat, she embraces Linno and says, “Your sister truly has a gift.”

TWO WEEKS LATER, the Malayala Manorama publishes a photograph of Anju receiving a plaque the size of a small window, with her name yet to be engraved. The article explains how she will be given the opportunity to study in New York City for the fall and spring semesters, at the Sitwell School, all expenses paid.

In the picture, Miss Schimpf and Anju are underexposed, their faces smudgy with gray smiles, joined by the plaque between them. The paper quotes Miss Schimpf: “Anju is a true Renaissance woman: an excellent student, a leader, and a brilliant artist. I am especially thrilled about displaying her artwork during the Student Art Exhibition.”

OVER THE NEXT TWO MONTHS, friends and acquaintances ask Linno about every detail of Anju’s itinerary, and jot down phone numbers of their second cousins’ neighbor’s niece who lives in New York and would be happy to help her. No trouble at all, they say, patting Linno on the back, quick to claim their New York connection. Anju is not the only one, ha ha .

“We hear your sister is an artist now!” they say, smiling.

“Of course,” Linno says, attempting an equal measure of joy, as though she were the one awarded. “You never know with her. She can do anything she wants to do.”

Except draw.

But there is hardly time to speak to Anju about such things. She is never at home, rushing around to obtain a student visa, a letter from this school to that embassy, transcripts of school records. Just yesterday, she and Melvin arrived home from an overnight trip to the U.S. Consulate in Chennai, another city that Linno has never visited. And even when Anju is home, she isn’t. She casts her eyes around the walls and ceilings, grazing over every possible object before fleetingly meeting Linno’s gaze.

And Anju is not the only one. Even Melvin takes care not to mention the scholarship in Linno’s presence, except for one evening, when he returns home late from a celebratory night with his friends at the toddy shop. He sits in the good chair, eyes closed, as Linno puts a bowl of banana chips on the coffee table, something to soak up the liquor pooling in his empty stomach. The first drink always goes slowly, harmlessly, but Melvin downs every one after that until he begins to squint, as if caught in his own mental fog, which means that he has long lost count. He squints at the chips, dreamily surprised by their existence, then slowly his gaze swims up to her.

“Abraham Saar says congratulations.”

“Why?” she says sharply. “I didn’t do anything.”

“To all of us.” He stares at the table, then abruptly straightens up. “There is good and there is bad, Linno. And then there is bad for good’s sake.”

Linno encourages her father to eat some chips.

Melvin selects a single chip and examines it before placing it between his molars. He crunches with concentration. “Your mother, she always wanted to go to New York. It was the one thing I couldn’t give her. That and a happy marriage.”

“Did you have dinner?” Linno asks.

Melvin looks at her. “She is doing this for you too.”