Tania James - Atlas of Unknowns

Silence.

“Okay, Linno Mol, I give up. Come out. You win.”

Three times Linno sees her mother’s chappals passing back and forth across the narrow sliver of her vision, and each time, her mother’s feet pick up speed. “Eddi! Come out, I said!” An irritated quiet. Then, the fading slaps of footsteps.

Beneath the rock, Linno discovers how a game of hide-and-seek can make her mother love her better: a person is more important in her absence than in her presence. The longer Linno keeps herself hidden, the more frantic her mother will become, realizing finally that this is her family, whom she loves so greatly that there will be no more taunting or fighting, no more thoughts of running away to the States.

Linno meanders down other lanes of thought, of chocolate ice cream, of stupid boys and their exclusive forts, before she remembers her mother. Only then does Linno realize how her mother’s voice has vanished, though she cannot remember when exactly it did so. She wiggles out from under the rock, startled by the gusts of wind that tug at the hem of her skirt, the needles of straight, gray rain.

LINNO CIRCLES, trying to spot the rose of her mother’s sari. There is no one in the distance. She climbs over rocks and scrapes her knee on her way to the water. A spot of blood stains the white piping of her skirt. Her mother will be furious, not only about this but about Linno’s ruthless, stupid dedication to hide-and-seek. The wind squeals in her ears.

When Linno reaches the shoreline, she removes her chappals. The sand is wet and supple beneath her feet, squelching between her toes, but she keeps her chappals looped in her fingers. Ruining her dress as well as losing her chappals would double the beating she is sure to receive. But a beating would be better than this. There is nothing unexpected about a beating; the fear of the branch is a familiar one.

Over and over she cries out Amma , then Ma , then nothing.

FAR IN THE DISTANCE: a pink petal on the water. Linno squints, barely breathing. A splotch of pink and black. Faintly, Linno can hear her mother shrieking her name.

Linno screams for her mother.

The pink petal turns. It has a face. The face is Linno’s own. Terrified, wet and windswept, her braid a drenched rope around her throat. Her mother has walked right into the water, submerged up to her chest, her arms spread to keep herself balanced among the rowdy tides.

Relief and joy spread through Linno’s body. She goes splashing into the water, but her mother waves her arms in the air, as if telling Linno to stop. Linno stops. The water laps at her ankles as she watches her mother stumble, thrown off balance by her waving.

It happens in an instant. Her mother slides under the waves.

LINNO STANDS WATCHING for a very long time. She waits for her mother to bob up again, gasping, waving. But the water, having no memory, moves on.

It is almost as if her mother is playing a trick, about to strike out of the water like a dolphin, glistening and laughing. Was that even her mother at all? Or one of those buoys warning swimmers to keep to their limits?

The air turns colder, and Linno’s body seems to go numb. Her mind as well. Was it her mother? Was it a vision? Was it just a pink petal? If any of these things, it could not be her mother, it could not be that they would dredge her up from the waters tomorrow morning, with blue lips and blue fingernails. It could not be that they would find Linno in a few hours and ask her questions to which she would respond by staring into thin air, mute. For now she hurries back to the rocks and scoots into her old hiding place. She presses her cheek to the sand. She has only to wait.

THE WOMAN SEEMS FINISHED with her story. She stares off into the distance as if her mind has replaced the open road with the ocean of her telling.

The Kapyar realizes that it is his time to speak. What would Anthony Achen say? Is there a prayer to absolve such things? Surely the Kapyar is not the one to administer it.

“I am sorry,” he says.

The woman seems not to hear or care.

“But I cannot forgive you. I am only the Kapyar.”

“I know,” she says finally. “I thought it would feel better to tell it.”

“Does it?”

She shakes her head.

The Kapyar nods, convinced. He has never seen someone leave the confessional with a smile.

They sink into silence. He can imagine explaining this to his wife, how a young woman stumbled to church and spilled her story into his lap. Strange, his wife would say, though it would be strange only in retrospect. For now, it is all rather quiet and ordinary, two people on a step, a thermos of tea between them.

“So what happened then?” the Kapyar asks.

The woman looks at him. “I told you. They found my mother. Dead.”

“And then what?”

“The funeral.”

“And then?”

“What do you mean? That’s the end.”

Now it is the Kapyar’s turn to gaze at the road. At moments like these, he feels his age. He says to her, “Nothing is the end.”

WHEN THE WOMAN finishes the tea, the Kapyar helps her to rise. She is shaky on her feet but seems better than before. “Thank you,” she says.

The Kapyar makes a noise to mean, It’s okay .

Probably they will not cross paths again, or if they do, maybe the woman will not remember him. Or pretend not to remember. This is life, tides moving the sand into unpredictable whorls and chance configurations, the gentle collisions of strangers. For a long time, he watches her go down the road, to make sure she is safe, because he is the Kapyar and this is his job.

HE VAN PASSES a bridge that runs over a slender section of the river, where a woman has waded knee-deep into the water to lash her laundry against a rock. Another woman, perhaps her daughter, wads up a soapy garment and kneads it like a ball of dough. Usually Anju loves this sound, the crush and crunch of milky bubbles against stone, but she feels the sudden urge to vomit.

“We’re close, aren’t we?” Mrs. Solanki asks her.

“I feel nausea,” Anju says.

“I know, dear.” Mrs. Solanki smiles, remembering Anju’s previous use of the word.

The driver pedals the brake as he navigates a curvy, rutted road. The passengers jostle about, holding on to their seats and their equipment. Every bump in the road is a belated lurch in Anju’s stomach; she can feel her lunch beginning to stir. It would be ironic and frankly humiliating if, out of all the foreigners in this vehicle, it would be she whose constitution could not handle the masala dosa they ate two hours ago, from a roadside tea shop.

Anju turns her face to the window. The curving wall is painted with advertisements. Here, a glassy-eyed woman in bridal jewelry, her hand against her face, beside the words ALAPPAT JEWELLERY. She recognizes that sign, her mental halfway mark between home and church. Beneath the Alappat sign, there used to be a Bata chappal advertisement, and beneath that, an old Mohanlal movie poster. She takes pride in the fact that she knows the sedimentary history of this wall. Soon after the Alappat ad, they pass a woman in a brown salwar kameez walking in the opposite direction.

Later, Anju will remember this moment above all others, how unremarkable it is, how delicate and small, this wrinkle in her day.

Immediately her body is filled with a frantic electricity as she whips around in her seat, almost cracking her neck. It is too late. The woman slips out of view as they are coming out of the turn. Anju’s hand fumbles for the door lock. Mrs. Solanki is asking her a question. Anju can feel a seething in her chest, her voice clawing its way from the depths. They have not gone far from the curve before she cries out to stop the car, stop the car.