Chitra Divakaruni - One Amazing Thing

I’m not sure when our friendship metamorphosed into love. Neither of us had intended it. Latika considered the husband of another woman out of bounds. When she figured out what was happening, she tried to push me away in distress. But what had blossomed between us was too strong to resist. Still, our relationship never became physical-Latika insisted on that. We understood the necessity of secrecy. At work we pretended we were no more than colleagues. But each day after work, for one precious hour, we went to movie theaters, that old refuge of sweethearts in crowded Indian cities. We chose buildings with small screens and poor air-conditioning because they would not be as crowded. We went to a different one each day and sat in the back of a darkened hall, holding hands and whispering. As the months passed, we dared to dream of a future together in a city far from this one, a future that would include my parents and her brother.

I went to my boss and, in confidence, requested a transfer to a smaller branch in the south of the country-for family reasons, I told him. He advised against it, warning me that it was a huge step back from which my career would never recover. I didn’t care. My ambition, once a conflagration, had become a mild hearth fire. The day my transfer was approved, I asked Naina for a divorce. I pointed out that we were incompatible. She loved parties and shopping, holidays in expensive locales, and running the high-end boutique she had opened recently. The things I cared for-my job, my friends, my books, my family-she found dreary. Why not admit we had both made a youthful mistake and go our own ways?

Naina stared at me, eyes wide with shock. For a moment I thought she looked stricken. Then she stalked into her bedroom and slammed the door. In a few seconds I could hear her voice, low and furious, on her phone-probably bad-mouthing me to one of her girlfriends. I didn’t care. I felt a great lightness at having taken this step toward my freedom. I went to my own room-we had started using separate bedrooms some months back, and though we still had physical relations, those times were rare. Using my personal line, I called Latika and told her what had transpired. She was a bit scared but mostly excited-she already knew about my transfer. We decided we would talk more after work.

The next morning I was in my office, fine-tuning details for the visit of a Ghanaian minister, when I heard a commotion. Stepping out, I saw four policemen hurrying Latika down the corridor. Her hair was disheveled and there were streaks of dried tears on her cheeks. She shot me a wounded, accusing look as she passed me. My heart began pounding. I grasped the arm of a policeman and asked him what the problem was; he shook me off, saying he was not at liberty to discuss details. The corridor was filled with employees who stared and whispered, enjoying this bit of drama. I wanted to run after her, but the presence of those staring eyes stopped me. I went back into my office, where I summoned my office boy. From him I discovered that early that morning the police had arrived with a warrant for Latika. Apparently, a large sum of money was missing from accounts that Latika managed, and she was suspected of having embezzled it. She was being taken to the central police station for questioning.

I grabbed my briefcase and started for the stairs. I intended to rush to the police station and do what I could to help Latika. I was certain she was innocent; this mistake could be cleared up soon. But on the way, my boss’s secretary, an older woman who had been with the company for many years and was privy to high-level secrets, stopped me. My boss wanted to see me. Immediately.

I told her I needed to leave right away on a personal emergency, and that I would see him as soon as I got back.

She shook her head. “If you don’t see him now, you may not have a job when you get back.”

Her tone stopped me. I followed her into my boss’s office. He didn’t waste time with niceties. “I got a letter from high-up this morning,” he told me, “stating that your transfer has been revoked.” He did not explain. Instead, he suggested that I return to my room and focus my energies on the Ghanaian minister.

When I stepped out, I had to hold on to the secretary’s desk. My head was whirling. In less than an hour, my world had fallen to pieces. What was going on?

The secretary looked at me with wry sympathy. “Looks like you’ve made someone powerful very angry. If I were you, I’d make amends fast. And I’d stay away from Latika.”

Understanding flashed through me. Naina hadn’t called a friend last night. She had called her father, and he had struck with the immediate intelligence of a hawk that knows how best to mortally wound its prey.

I left my briefcase on the floor of the secretary’s office and drove like a maniac to Latika’s hostel. I bribed the gardener and learned that an hour before, the superintendent had received a phone call. When she hung up, she was very agitated and had Miss Latika’s belongings packed and brought to the gate. She instructed the gatekeeper to give them to Miss Latika but not let her into the hostel. Soon afterward, Miss Latika had shown up in a police van. She had picked up her things and told him she was leaving the city. One of the policemen had stopped her from saying more. She had given the gardener a ten-rupee note as baksheesh when she left. Folded into the note was a letter for a gentleman named Mangalam.

More money changed hands. I got the letter. It consisted of only one sentence: For both our sakes, don’t look for me. When I crushed it into a ball, it seemed as though I were crushing my dreams. And not only dreams but also the part of me that was tender and moral. Latika had called it up. Without her, it could not survive.

Standing outside the dilapidated building, I was forced to admit that I had brought upon Latika trouble so deep that she might never recover from it. And this: though Naina didn’t want me for herself, the thought of my being happy with another woman stung her like poison ivy. She would fight to keep me tied to her for life, and in that battle her father would be her ally.

That evening Naina and I dined together as though nothing amiss had occurred. As I watched her compliment the cook on the Chicken Makhani, rage flowed through my veins like exhilaration. Liberated from the scruples that Latika had lovingly woven around me, I felt a plan taking shape. I would begin by flirting with Naina’s closest friends, women too well connected for her to ignore or harm. I would use my charms to embroil these women in affairs, and flaunt these affairs so all of Delhi’s rich and famous gossiped about them. If in the process I broke a few hearts, it didn’t matter, as long as Naina became the laughingstock of high society. I would shame her and her father until in desperation they would do one of two things, and at this point I didn’t care which. They would either hire a thug to kill me, or they would make sure I went somewhere far away. In this way, I would gain my freedom.

CAMERON HEARD THE END OF MANGALAM’S STORY, BUT IT WAS also a kind of not-hearing. In his head he had drifted into another place, in another dimension. Tall yellow flowers grow wild around the crumbly brick of the walls, all the way up to the locked iron gates. Cameron has no trouble recognizing the gates. Hasn’t he been looking at their photo for years? The road leading to the gates-no more than a gravel path-is mud-red. Cameron’s feet slip-slide on it as he walks. He wishes there were something to hold on to, a rail, a bush, another person’s arm. The wish surprises him. It is so un-Cameron-like. For years now he’s prided himself on doing without support, on being the one others come to for help. But his backpack is so heavy. He wants to drop it, but he can’t. The backpack is filled with gifts. Without the backpack, Seva might not like him. He hoists it higher onto his shoulders, though that makes it harder to draw breath. Around his heart, there’s a sharp, hot squeezing, like scorpion pincers. He’s encountered scorpions before, on desert missions. He hopes there aren’t any here in the foothills, because beyond the gates the children in their patched blue uniforms are playing barefoot.