Джумпа Лахири - Whereabouts [calibre]

I sit in front of a woman, rarely the same one. The beauticians also sit in a row, like the clients, behind a long narrow counter. There’s a mirror, just as long, that doubles the whole scene and all the work that takes place. I wonder how dull it is for them, while we clients relax. All the women come from the same country, and while they diligently see to our needs they talk continuously in their language. I always wonder what they’re talking about.

Lately there’s a stunning young woman among them. The others look tired, most of them are heavyset, round-faced, their lips misshapen. But this one’s a beauty: elegant, her dark hair drawn back and parted down the middle, her cheekbones prominent. The cotton apron that the rest of them wear looks like a dress sewn to fit her body. I feel more like the others, disheveled. I glance over at her now and then, her beauty distracts me, her features are so perfect. After I look at her I look at myself in the mirror, and yet again I resign myself to the fact that my face has always disappointed me. Every look in the mirror dismays me, that’s the reason I tend to avoid them.

Today I’m in a rush, I walk in without an appointment. I just need the polish taken off. The week before, feeling blue, I chose a dark vampy shade, but two days later it already started to chip.

“Hello, signora. Would you like a manicure?” the manager of the salon asks me.

“I don’t have time today, how much is it to remove the color?”

“Oh there’s no charge for that. Not for you. Just a tip for the girl.”

So I sit down in front of the beautiful one. She’s serious, she welcomes me without smiling, and she starts to study my nails immediately, as if they were her own.

She’s not hasty like the others. I give her my hands, she takes them into her own, and for a while she and I are connected. She smiles and speaks to the other women seated beside her without ever raising her head. She enjoys herself, all the while focused on her task. She takes off the polish, I’m sorry she’s already finished.

“Listen, I’ve changed my mind. Can you put some new color on, please?”

“Of course.”

She proceeds to work on my nails. She delicately eliminates the skin that grows around them. I see the little pile that accumulates, lifeless shards of myself. Satisfied, she applies a thick white cream and wraps my hands in a hot steaming towel. I don’t look at myself in the mirror while she perfects this one part of my body. I don’t want to spoil the moment, or this contact between us. I’d like to appreciate her attention and nothing else, so I try to focus exclusively on her, acknowledging that though we’re united we’re two separate people. For about twenty minutes this woman sitting between me and the mirror protects me from my reflection, from the image that haunts me, and as a result, at least this time, I feel beautiful, too.

She has a deep voice, and that language, coming from her throat, doesn’t sound harsh to my ears. At one point she stops to admire one of my rings.

“Husband?”

“I’m not married.”

She laughs. She doesn’t say anything else. She has nice white teeth. Why did she laugh? I don’t trust that laugh, it disconcerts me. The last thing she does is apply a pink polish, nearly transparent. My nails look good, but hers, untouched, uncolored, are lovelier still.

In the Hotel

I need to spend three nights out of town for a convention. The hotel is full, besieged by my colleagues. I dread this annual event: the same convention, the same crowd. The only thing that changes is the city in which it’s held, and therefore, the hotel.

This year, as soon as I set foot inside, I’m compelled to turn around and leave. The entrance, with its massive lobby, swallows me up. I’m nothing beneath that high ceiling. It’s an ugly hotel, noisy and cavernous. The space looks like a parking garage designed for human beings instead of cars, with curved balconies that rise up and up. They’re all built around an atrium, a chasm with places to drink and buy expensive scarves, shoes, and bags.

There are other groups all around, mostly men dressed in gray, herds of them, all of them laughing too loudly, too often. Their laughter reverberates and fills up the chasm, ringing out again and again.

My room, thank goodness, doesn’t face this collective chasm. The staff person tells me that in order to reach it I need to walk quite a ways, then proceed down a long hallway that leads to an elevator. It takes me five minutes just to get there.

The room is crammed with objects: drinking glasses, bottles of water, a kettle, mugs, tea bags, ugly leather folders, magazines, information about the hotel and about the city written on various pieces of folded paper. There’s not an empty surface, no place to set anything down. I can’t locate my own things in this confusion. At least the closet, apart from the iron and the white bathrobe, is empty. I open my suitcase and hang up a few dresses.

I just want to get to the other side of these three days, these three awful nights. During the days I’ll be busy, in some conference room or another listening to speeches and panels. I’ll just follow the schedule. At night, on the other hand, I already know that I’m not going to get any sleep in this room they’ve stuck me in. It’s the kind of room that makes me hate the world. I’d toss all this stuff out the window, if I could. I might even toss myself out. I’m on the twelfth floor. But these windows don’t open.

The only consolation during the next few days is a gentleman who occupies the room next door. He’s a scholar of some sort: circumspect, detached from his surroundings, absorbed by something else. He’s thin with a head full of curly white hair. He strikes me as a man at peace with himself but at odds with the world, the type that dwells on things too much. But his large eyes are tender, tinged with sadness.

When he sees me he smiles instead of saying hello. He looks at me kindly, never crossing the line, while we wait for the elevator and wait to face the day together. But his watchful gaze seems to say, Signora, I know you’re having a hard time. He doesn’t try to cheer me up, he just conveys a certain understanding.

I’m curious about him, enough to leaf through the conference brochure to learn his name. He’s a well-known philosopher who has written several books, a refugee from a country whose brutal regime persecuted him many years ago. I wish I could have gone to his event but I can’t get out of attending my own. Something tells me that the quiet philosopher is really a lively soul, and that hidden beneath that shy exterior is a man who appreciates a good joke.

What does he think of me? A middle-aged woman, slightly on edge, annoyed to find herself at an academic conference?

In the evenings we ride up together in the elevator and he says good night, always courteously but sincerely, always looking me in the eye and then saluting me with a nod of his head before opening the door to his room. I hear his footsteps while he gets undressed and relaxes after a hectic day, while he brushes his teeth. I picture him as he throws himself onto a bed identical to mine, in a room just as hideous. It’s only at this time of night that he reveals another aspect of himself: he has long talks on the telephone, speaking rapidly and heatedly in another language. With whom? His wife? A friend? His publisher? His company reassures me though he doesn’t interest me sexually, it’s not about that. I think of the melancholy in his eyes, that wanting look. Eyes, bright but distant, that are about to close for six or seven hours.

The next day we open our doors and exit at the same time, riding down in the elevator together before going our separate ways. Without planning to, we wait for each other every morning and every evening, and for three days our tacit bond puts me obscurely at peace with the world.