Daniel Alarcon - War by Candlelight - Stories

Fathers are worse, Reena had said. They’re rock, unmovable stone, bulwarks of tradition. Fathers are more protective of daughters, less understanding, have more invested in the idea of good marriages. Mothers want sons so they can browbeat their daughters-in-law one day, the way they themselves were tormented by their mothers-in-law years before. In fact, everyone wants sons. Daughters: they should marry well and early, avoiding the Western problems of dating, boyfriends, and sex. Prospective husbands: caste matters less than profession. Doctors, engineers, lawyers, in that order. Reena claimed not to know which caste her parents were from. She said it exactly that way, with those words— my parents are from —because she didn’t belong to any caste at all. She was American. A Desi , but still American. I’m both, she said. I was raised this way. They would find her a husband. It wasn’t foreign or strange. It simply was.

“But,” she said to David once, “you could almost pass, you know? You’re vaguely something .”

Ideas were being kicked around, ways to circumvent the context . David raised an eyebrow. “Pass as?”

“They’re your color in the north. With green eyes. Kashmiri. I’ve seen it.” Reena smiled mischievously. “Time to learn you some Punjabi, babe. Teach you to dance Bhangra.”

“And become an engineer.”

“Yep. Social work won’t do.”

“And I gotta rock more gold.”

“And we should clean that Spanish off you.”

They’d been dating for four and a half months when she announced she would try her mother. It surprised him. And it might have surprised her to know that, though he was touched, the first question that crossed his mind was, What will this require of me? He asked her carefully, not wanting to dissuade her, and not at all sure what any of it meant. “Why me?” he said.

“Because I love you,” she answered.

Her father he had a picture of: not well, grumpy in the face of prolonged illness, furrowed brow, deep-set eyes. Probably hated white people more than he hated blacks. At best, indifferent to Spanish folks. Dissatisfied. Nostalgic. David’s first, unspoken question grew specifically out of Reena’s description of her father. The rust-red color of his angry face. How he would disown her. Curse her. Die. Disruptions to the tranquility of the context were described in terms of international crisis areas, civil wars. A family torn asunder, a daughter abandoned, an unsuspecting boyfriend wondering what the hell happened.

Mrs. Shah was his ally against Reena’s father. She was reason, and reason would prevail. Mrs. Shah would recognize that he loved her daughter. She would be his foot in the door. That Reena would risk telling her mother anything at all touched David. It was Reena’s leap of faith.

“I like a boy,” she told her mother.

And this is what Mrs. Shah said, according to Reena: “No, you don’t. Your father is sick. It’s your last semester. You’re going to have to find a job. How can you think about a boy?”

Reena laughed when she told him, recounting the whole incident with an amused smile. Cluelessness. Foreignness. Her poor mother. David felt disappointment and relief in equal parts. He bristled at the notion of being called a “boy” by both his girlfriend and her mother. Reena was something less than a woman if she had to ask permission to see him. On the other hand, it was a war that she probably only wanted to fight once: was he worth it? Reena wouldn’t want to fight alone. War implied all kinds of commitments.

In any case, it was done. There would be no going public. The context would not be disturbed. And so they forgot it when they could, let themselves fall in love, and found those amnesiac moments to be their best.

“Leave,” Reena said. “Please.”

It was February. December had passed, and January, and Reena had stayed sick. The doctors said she’d be better by spring. They told her optimistically that she’d be dancing again in no time at all. Now her mother was coming. Had called twenty minutes before, was on her way. David should have left already. His usual seat at La Floridita was waiting for him, and the curly-haired waitress who would bring him coffee and a Lotto ticket and a stubby yellow pencil. The slick city sidewalks. The rumble of a passing train. All the routines of disappearance were waiting for him out in the streets. But he felt something heavy in him, something leaden and stiff. Something arthritic. Cataleptic. David sat at the desk. The red walls sometimes unnerved him, but today he felt their heat.

“It’s cold out,” he offered.

“David.”

“What?” he said blankly.

“You’re stressing me out,” Reena said. “Go get a cup of coffee. Do you need money? Here, take some money.” She offered him a few rumpled bills.

“You don’t have a job.”

Scowling, she let the money slip from fingers. “What are you trying to do? Are you trying to make this difficult?”

“No.”

“Then? Are you going to wait until she buzzes? Till she knocks?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“I’m sick, goddamn it, I’m sick!”

The picture he’d left had made no impact. Reena’s mother hadn’t asked who took it. Or why it was in black-and-white. David had stalked his girlfriend and her parents at Union Square, taking black-and-white pictures that were not quite beautiful. Reena hadn’t even noticed it on the desk. Mrs. Shah had said only how handsome Reena’s father had looked that day.

It was subtle. But falling on his ass in front of Mrs. Shah? Nothing. Reena’s mother had commented on it and forgotten. Found it funny. Tik . That was all. A week after he’d tumbled to the frozen sidewalk, Mrs. Shah had walked right by him without so much as a glance.

Since then, he’d learned two new words that he hadn’t yet had the chance to say:

Namaste. Hello.

Amah. Mother.

If he still wanted to be found, he’d have to stop her on the street. Catch her on the stairs walking up to the apartment. Look into her brown eyes and speak in complete Hindi sentences:

Hello, mother. I am a wealthy Punjabi engineer looking for an American-born Desi to warm my bed. For marriage and dowry, and perhaps for love. My mother will not mistreat your daughter after the wedding. I promise you this, Mrs. Shah.

Would that be enough?

Mrs. Shah, I am David. My parents are Peruvian. I work in the projects. Your daughter and I, we live together. We used to make love on the fire escape. I have cleaned up her vomit. I have watched her get sick. Sometimes, I think I still love her, but I’m tired.

His jacket landed on his lap, followed by his scarf, and then his gloves. He looked up at Reena, tired and sad against the red walls. She sat on the edge of the bed. “You want your sweatshirt too?”

“Yeah,” David said.

She tossed him his hoodie. “We can’t talk about this now,” Reena said.

“I know.”

“Later?”

“Sure,” he said, nodding.

Her face disappeared into her hands. She was taking a dozen pills a day. Each Friday, the doctors gave her a shot in the thigh with a long needle. He put on his sweatshirt, and then his jacket. He took his key off the hook by the door, his knit cap from on top of the dresser. It was cold out. He put on his gloves, left hand first. The room was bright and warm and red.

There were ten of us and we shared a single name: compañero. Except me. They called me Pintor. Together we formed an uncertain circle around a dead dog, under the dim lights just off the plaza. Everything was cloaked in fog. Our first revolutionary act, announcing ourselves to the nation. We strung up dogs from all the street lamps, covered them with terse and angry slogans, Die Capitalist Dogs and such; leaving the beasts there for the people to see how fanatical we could be. It is clear now that we didn’t scare anyone so much as we disturbed them and convinced them of our peculiar mania, our worship of frivolous violence. Fear would come later. Killing street dogs in the bleak gray hours before sunrise, the morning of Independence Day, July 28, 1979. Decent people slept, but we made war, fashioned it with our hands, our knives, and our sweat. Everything was going well until we ran out of black dogs.