Bharati Mukherjee - The Middleman and Other Stories

Poltoo is Mrs. Chatterji’s favorite nephew. She looks as though it is her fault that the Sunday has turned unpleasant. She stacks the empty platters methodically. To Maya she says, “It is the goddess who pulls the strings. We are puppets. I know the goddess will fix it. Poltoo will not marry that African woman.” Then she goes to the coat closet in the hall and staggers back with a harmonium, the kind sold in music stores in Calcutta, and sets it down on the carpeted floor. “We’re nothing but puppets,” she says again. She sits at Maya’s feet, her pudgy hands on the harmonium’s shiny, black bellows. She sings, beautifully, in a virgin’s high voice, “Come, goddess, come, muse, come to us hapless peoples’ rescue.”

Maya is astonished. She has taken singing lessons at Dakshini Academy in Calcutta. She plays the sitar and the tanpur, well enough to please Bengalis, to astonish Americans. But stout Mrs. Chatterji is a devotee, talking to God.

A little after eight, Dr. Chatterji drops her off. It’s been an odd evening and they are both subdued.

“I want to say one thing,” he says. He stops her from undoing her seat belt. The plastic sacks of pruned branches are still at the corner.

“You don’t have to get out,” she says.

“Please. Give me one more minute of your time.”

“Sure.”

“Maya is my favorite name.”

She says nothing. She turns away from him without making her embarrassment obvious.

“Truly speaking, it is my favorite. You are sometimes lonely, no? But you are lucky. Divorced women can date, they can go to bars and discos. They can see mens, many mens. But inside marriage there is so much loneliness.” A groan, low, horrible, comes out of him.

She turns back toward him, to unlatch the seat belt and run out of the car. She sees that Dr. Chatterji’s pants are unzipped. One hand works hard under his Jockey shorts; the other rests, limp, penitential, on the steering wheel.

“Dr. Chatterji— really!” she cries.

The next day, Monday, instead of getting a ride home with Fran — Fran says she likes to give rides, she needs the chance to talk, and she won’t share gas expenses, absolutely not — Maya goes to the periodicals room of the library. There are newspapers from everywhere, even from Madagascar and New Caledonia. She thinks of the periodicals room as an asylum for homesick aliens. There are two aliens already in the room, both Orientals, both absorbed in the politics and gossip of their far off homes.

She goes straight to the newspapers from India. She bunches her raincoat like a bolster to make herself more comfortable. There’s so much to catch up on. A village headman, a known Congress-Indira party worker, has been shot at by scooterriding snipers. An Indian pugilist has won an international medal — in Nepal. A child drawing well water — the reporter calls the child “a neo-Buddhist, a convert from the now-outlawed untouchable caste”—has been stoned. An editorial explains that the story about stoning is not a story about caste but about failed idealism; a story about promises of green fields and clean, potable water broken, a story about bribes paid and wells not dug. But no, thinks Maya, it’s about caste.

Out here, in the heartland of the new world, the India of serious newspapers unsettles. Maya longs again to feel what she had felt in the Chatterjis’ living room: virtues made physical. It is a familiar feeling, a longing. Had a suitable man presented himself in the reading room at that instant, she would have seduced him. She goes on to the stack of India Abroads , reads through matrimonial columns, and steals an issue to take home.

Indian men want Indian brides. Married Indian men want Indian mistresses. All over America, “handsome, tall, fair” engineers, doctors, data processors — the new pioneers — cry their eerie love calls.

Maya runs a finger down the first column; her fingertip, dark with newsprint, stops at random.

Hello! Hi! Yes, you are the one I’m looking for. You are the new emancipated Indo-American woman. You have a zest for life. You are at ease in USA and yet your ethics are rooted in Indian tradition. The man of your dreams has come. Yours truly is handsome, ear-nose-throat specialist, well-settled in Connecticut. Age is 41 but never married, physically fit, sportsmanly, and strong. I adore idealism, poetry, beauty. I abhor smugness, passivity, caste system. Write with recent photo. Better still, call!!!

Maya calls. Hullo, hullo, hullo! She hears immigrant lovers cry in crowded shopping malls. Yes, you who are at ease in both worlds, you are the one. She feels she has a fair chance.

A man answers. “Ashoke Mehta speaking.”

She speaks quickly into the bright-red mouthpiece of her telephone. He will be in Chicago, in transit, passing through O’Hare. United counter, Saturday, two p.m. As easy as that.

“Good,” Ashoke Mehta says. “For these encounters I, too, prefer a neutral zone.”

On Saturday at exactly two o’clock the man of Maya’s dreams floats toward her as lovers used to in shampoo commercials. The United counter is a loud, harassed place but passengers and piled-up luggage fall away from him. Full-cheeked and fleshy-lipped, he is handsome. He hasn’t lied. He is serene, assured, a Hindu god touching down in Illinois.

She can’t move. She feels ugly and unworthy. Her adult life no longer seems miraculously rebellious; it is grim, it is perverse. She has accomplished nothing. She has changed her citizenship but she hasn’t broken through into the light, the vigor, the hustle of the New World. She is stuck in dead space.

“Hullo, hullo!” Their fingers touch.

Oh, the excitement! Ashoke Mehta’s palm feels so right in the small of her back. Hullo, hullo, hullo. He pushes her out of the reach of anti-Khomeini Iranians, Hare Krishnas, American Fascists, men with fierce wants, and guides her to an empty gate. They have less than an hour.

“What would you like, Maya?”

She knows he can read her mind, she knows her thoughts are open to him. You , she’s almost giddy with the thought, with simple desire. “From the snack bar,” he says, as though to clarify. “I’m afraid I’m starved.”

Below them, where the light is strong and hurtful, a Boeing is being serviced. “Nothing,” she says.

He leans forward. She can feel the nap of his scarf — she recognizes the Cambridge colors — she can smell the wool of his Icelandic sweater. She runs her hand along the scarf, then against the flesh of his neck. “Only the impulsive ones call,” he says.

The immigrant courtship proceeds. It’s easy, he’s good with facts. He knows how to come across to a stranger who may end up a lover, a spouse. He makes over a hundred thousand. He owns a house in Hartford, and two income properties in Newark. He plays the market but he’s cautious. He’s good at badminton but plays handball to keep in shape. He watches all the sports on television. Last August he visited Copenhagen, Helsinki and Leningrad. Once upon a time he collected stamps but now he doesn’t have hobbies, except for reading. He counts himself an intellectual, he spends too much on books. Ludlum, Forsyth, Maclnnes; other names she doesn’t catch. She suppresses a smile, she’s told him only she’s a graduate student. He’s not without his vices. He’s a spender, not a saver. He’s a sensualist: good food — all foods, but easy on the Indian — good wine. Some temptations he doesn’t try to resist.

And I, she wants to ask, do I tempt?

“Now tell me about yourself, Maya.” He makes it easy for her. “Have you ever been in love?”

“No.”

“But many have loved you, I can see that.” He says it not unkindly. It is the fate of women like her, and men like him. Their karmic duty, to be loved. It is expected, not judged. She feels he can see them all, the sad parade of need and demand. This isn’t the time to reveal all.