Miss New India Read online

  "Look at me when I'm talking!" he commanded. "I asked around. I know about you and your so-called professor."

  "You're crazy. Take me home immediately, Mr. Mitra."

  "I did my research. We still have ninety minutes, and we've got some negotiating to do first."

  "Don't even think—"

  She started to speak, but with a flick of his hand, he slapped her. Not hard, but not an idle tap, either. He unhooked the bra and assessed her breasts. She tried again to cover herself, but he pulled her arms down. "Not much there," he said.

  She began to cry, but tears wouldn't come. She knew his hands were on her breasts, pulling hard, then weighing them, like small guavas, and she thought of all the girls she'd envied, the mango-breasted, the melon-breasted, and suddenly the stench of decaying mango penetrated the closed windows, and she could see the husks of fallen mangoes all about the abandoned huts and around the car.

  A voice that seemed to issue from deep in the forest commanded, "Do me!" and when she came back to her senses, there was Mr. Mitra with his trousers unzipped, and a pale, tapered thing standing up like a candle in his hand, a thing she knew of but had never seen, a long, tan, vaguely reptilian creature with a tiny mouth where its head should be. In her panic she felt a brief wave of compassion for him; this couldn't be the real Mr. Mitra, but the result of some unfortunate invasion; he'd been possessed by a demon—but before she could study it further, Mr. Mitra's spare hand brought her head crashing down upon it, and she could hear him command, "Open that big mouth of yours..." He pulled her head up when she gagged, then down by the hair, pumping her head until she was able to do it herself, and his voice died out into a hum and she had to catch her breath, had to find a way to stop the gagging and the roaring in her ears. When his hand loosened from the back of her head, she was able to roll off and to see what she had done, the mess that was spewing over his pants and her sari, and he grabbed a handful of her sari to wipe himself and the steering wheel, even the window, cursing her all the time for leaving him at just the instant, humiliating him in such a way, ruining his suit, his borrowed car, even her sari. "You bitch, you bitch," he said, along with Bangla words she didn't know.

  She stared down at the bra and sari pooled in her lap and tried to cover her breasts. She asked, almost in a whisper, as though to ask was to plant the notion, "Are you going to kill me?" He was still using the ends of her sari to clean himself. She remembered a hugely advertised Hindi movie from years back, Jism, and when she'd asked some boys in class what the word meant—she, the top girl in English, and they the simpleton sons of clerks and shopkeepers—they said they'd be happy to demonstrate.

  "Don't be stupid. I'm going to marry you," he said. "Your father almost begged me."

  If there had been any way of cleaning her mouth, she would have done it. If she'd had a can of bug spray, she would have swallowed it. When she conjured the image of what she'd done, all she could do was vomit, and she did so in her lap.

  "Now," he said. "You know what you have to do." Wordlessly, looking through the steamed-up window at the twisted metal spikes, he pulled her panties down.

  BACK AT THE house she had to run from the car, through the parlor, directly to the bathroom.

  She could hear Subodh in the front room. "It must have been something we ate at the coffee shop. It came over her suddenly."

  Her father said, "Please don't worry. She is a healthy girl. We're not hiding any medical history."

  Her mother added quickly, "On both sides of the family, extreme good health. No sick leave, ever. As for Anjali, except for the usual jaundice, measles, and typhoid, she is in the pink of health."

  Anjali returned, in T-shirt and jeans, her gesture of defiance, but she kept her head bowed. She wouldn't look at the monster or at her parents. She would not collaborate.

  Mr. and Mrs. Bose begged him to stay for dinner. Even in remote Bihar, where the big river carp were harder to come by, Bengalis knew how to cook the traditional fish curry. Mrs. Bose had gone to the Bengali market especially for fat, fresh rui, and Mr. Bose had ranged beyond the usual sweet shops featuring ersatz rasmalai for something authentically Bengali.

  Still looking down at her lap, Anjali said, "Mr. Mitra said he has to get back to Asansol tonight. Eight hours—he should be making his move."

  "Your daughter is correct, as usual," he said. "I should be going. You'll be hearing from my father, I'm sure."

  Anjali's parents didn't know how to interpret her interjection. Was it tender concern for the boy's feelings? A desire to get rid of him? She admitted to more stomach distress and a need to sleep in the dark in the back room, and left the parting formalities to her parents.

  5

  From the back room she could overhear the front-room language of marital negotiation: "Of course, it is all subject to your father's approval ... But you and she got along beautifully, anyone can see that..." And her mother breaking in: "Poor girl, you got her so excited she can't keep her food down..." And the laughter, between her father and Subodh—whose very voice brought out murderous thoughts—joking over dowry claims: "My father's a really sharp businessman, so don't let him demand too much. I want this marriage to go through smoothly," met with laughter. "We do too!" her father said. He suggested that maybe a Japanese watch and a computer would close the deal. "Yeah, maybe he'll go for the gold watch—Swiss, not Japanese—a set of matched golf clubs and an American computer and an imported laptop for me—a PC, Toshiba or Dell—and a selection of games and movies," and her father laughed. "We'll have to see about that."

  Lying in the dark after Subodh had left, staring at the slowly revolving ceiling fan, timing her inhale and exhale to the thumpa-thumpa of its wobbling orbit around the oily, dust-webbed post, she remembered the echoes of an earlier melodrama. "I will call —thumpa—astrologer. I will call —thumpa—printer. I will write —thumpa—boy's father." And in this room five years earlier, behind this door, in this very bed, she remembered Sonali's screaming, "Just give me the knife!" until she'd submitted, then apologized.

  Her mother slept in the same room, on the same bed. Anjali, eyes closed, feigning sleep or exhaustion, waited for an opportunity to break the silence. She would have spilled the beans on Mr. Mitra, but her mother had simply collapsed on her bed and fallen asleep. Apparently, there was nothing of interest to discuss, not even a giddy welcome to the world of soon-to-be-married women—no "Hello, Mrs. Mitra! He's so handsome! You'll be so happy!" In the front room, just minutes after closing the door on Mr. Mitra and wishing him (if she heard correctly) "Godspeed" back to Asansol, her father dropped his trousers and began rattling the shutters with his snores. Just as though the world had not stopped.

  She had expected to be assaulted by dreams. Alone in the bedroom, she'd been afraid to close her eyes until her mother came to bed, but when the rustling of the dress-sari and sleeping-sari was over, and the snoring began, she opened her eyes again. In her childhood, she'd felt the presence of ghosts. She'd often felt their weight on her bed. She and Sonali, lying side by side, had imagined ghostly faces beyond the lone high, unopened bedroom window. They'd filled the long nights with made-up names and the reasons for their reappearance. Any deceased relative could pop up unexpectedly. Family ghosts were always on a mission of vengeance. Their grievances—and she knew all of them, all the stories of rivalry and cheating, the bitterness and unkept promises, the favoritism, the thievery, the poverty, all the infidelities, the dead babies, the deserted wives, the cruel mothers-in-law—could transcend a single lifetime. Fifty years was too brief to avenge all of the indignities of a lifetime. They had to keep coming back. That was her father's excuse: his fate was cursed. A fortuneteller had once warned him he had a jealous uncle, long-long dead, who had blocked every male Bose's path to wealth and happiness. That was her mother's excuse: I must have the same name as a distant auntie; I must be paying for her misdeeds.

  And now she knew the old stories were true. There were monsters, and innocent children were t
heir victims, and no one, especially not her parents, could save her from them.

  She slipped off the bed and walked through the house, staring down at her parents in their oblivious helplessness. She wandered like a ghost. She dropped her stained sari in a corner of the bathroom. Let her mother discover the traces of her glorious jamai. Nothing had changed in her house, but the world was different. She took Sonali's old red Samsonite from the cupboard and threw her two best saris and all her T-shirts and jeans into it. She stuffed her backpack with underwear and toiletries. She could have turned on the lights, banged shut the lid of the suitcase, dragged it across the stone floor, and neither of her snoring, dreaming parents would have noticed.

  She took out her old Vasco da Gama exercise book, flipped through the dozens of pages of perfect schoolgirl handwriting, the meticulous notes she'd taken— all useless, useless! —and tore out two clean pages. On her last day in Gauripur, she went to the little table on the cramped balcony where she'd always done her assignments and read her books, and began writing. By the wan streetlight she composed a note and left it in her mother's "just in case" lentils jar.

  Dearest Ma and Baba:

  I will not marry any boy selected by anyone but myself, especially not this one. If this leads to a barren life, so be it. As you should plainly see, the boy you selected has dishonored me. He should be sent straightway to jail.

  I am leaving this morning for Patna to see my sister, whose name you are reluctant to utter.

  When I am settled again, I will write. The process may take many months. I am ready to take my place in the world. I beg you not to try to find me.

  Your loving daughter, A.

  She was Anjali. She could look down and see poor little Angie whimpering on her bed.

  The dark alleys of Gauripur by night were unknown to her. The night air was even warmer than the stillness of the bedroom, and filled with groans and coughs and sharp words and the occasional horn—but many sounds were simply unplaceable, maybe the wings of bats, maybe just the creaking of the earth resting from the day's abuse, the brushing of thick leaves against one another, the urgent business in the bushes of dogs and men, rats and mongooses, the endless grinding of a million small claws and the hot breezes against tree limbs and rocks and movie posters nailed to every lamppost, and she thought then, as she often did, that ghosts explained it all, just as the stars at night or the face on the moon had told stories to our ancestors. Men sleeping on the broken footpath, a cast of nighttime characters invisible by day, playing cards under the streetlamp and making animal noises, calling to her to come for a drink (the last thing they expected to see, a determined young lady pulling a noisy suitcase over the paving stones down the middle of the street). The distance between her house and Nehru Park had never seemed so vast, and the park never so dark and full of trees and tall grass, the town itself never so small, disheveled, and evil smelling.

  It was five o'clock, an hour and a half before dawn, as she reckoned it. A few lights were already on, servants perhaps, starting their masters' day. Her mother would rise at dawn and perhaps not even notice the empty bed until she returned a few minutes later, with tea. Then she would see the sari. She would pick it up and hold it to her face, and she would sense what had happened. She would do all this before waking her husband. Maybe she'd even find the letter before waking him. Would she be screaming, or crying, or would she coldly accuse her husband—"You see what you've done? No jamais, and now no daughters!" What would her mother do, what would she say? Anjali couldn't predict.

  She stood on the footpath outside Peter's apartment. Five-fifteen. Five-twenty. Along LBS Road, the early risers were on the march: clusters of young men laughing and jostling; a troop of haughty langurs after a night of garden plunder, their tails high and curled, sauntering back to the safety of Nehru Park and a day of mugging for photos and begging for ground nuts; older men in khaki uniforms, on bicycles, pulling carts of empty, rattling milk pails; bedraggled rag-and-paper pickers bent under enormous burlap bundles; and men lifting a corner of their dhoti or setting down a briefcase and unbuttoning their suit pants to relieve themselves against the public walls. Municipal workers dumped cartloads of trash along the gutters, swarmed by dogs and pigs and curious cows and a row of squawking crows perched atop the public walls: the predawn stretching and coughing and nostril clearing of a small Indian city.

  In an hour—the hour at which she was normally awake to begin her school day—the roadways would be jammed with all manner of vehicles, the noise level so high she'd abandon all hope of conversation, the sun already high and hot. She, who'd aroused such unwelcome interest an hour earlier, was invisible to everyone now. At five-thirty the lights went on in Peter's apartment. She waited another five minutes; then, leaving her Samsonite on the bottom stair, she picked her way to the landing between new rows of terra-cotta flowerpots. She rapped twice on the blue door.

  When Ali opened it, she greeted him with a smile and by name, not as a servant but as just another boy of nearly her own age. "I have to see Peter," she said. Peter, not your master, not Mr. Champion. He let her in and then went down the stairs to retrieve her bag.

  Peter was standing by the two-burner gas stove, sipping his morning tea. He wore pajama bottoms, and a knotted shawl covered his chest. For just an instant he stared, and she wanted to say "It's me, Angie. I know it's early, I know this is shocking," but he refocused his eyes and smiled. He took a step toward her, arms out, and she took a step forward, then another, and found herself in his arms—he, who'd barely ever touched her, had never even shaken her hand.

  Ali came back with the red suitcase. For a moment he seemed confused, then scampered to the almirah and took out an ironed shirt. He lifted Peter's shawl, folded it, then helped Peter into the shirt. He buttoned it. The action was, to Anjali, tender, even erotic. Ali's fingernails were long and red. Then he took down a mug and poured tea for her.

  "Ginger cookie?" Peter asked, and Ali lifted a cloth off a platter. "Please," he said. "Things must have taken a bad turn."

  "Very bad," she said. "I should have seen it coming."

  "As I remember your last visit, we didn't part on the best of terms. There was that question of a marriage portrait. After you left, I thought to write you an apology—"

  "I was so confused. I went straightway to the college and asked poor Nirmal Gupta to post that portrait on the biggest wedding site he could find. You said that picture would only cause trouble, but I thought that it would change everything. And just look what it did. I still don't know anything except that I was vain, and I caused that boy's death, and for a while, I thought maybe mine too. The boy my parents want me to marry attacked me. I had to leave."

  PETER SICNALED TO Ali and pointed to the almirah. Ali came back with a round cookie tin. Inside were stapled stacks of hundred-rupee notes. He began counting them; each stack a hundred notes, ten thousand rupees. Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty thousand rupees, half a lakh, more money than she'd ever seen, ever handled.

  "This may seem like a lot of money," Peter said, "and for a girl in Gauripur, it may be. But you can make this in a couple of months in Bangalore." He slipped the entire tin into her backpack.

  "You have the two names and addresses I gave you?"

  "Yes," she said. She pointed to the Samsonite. "Everything I have is in that." She sipped her tea and nibbled on a proffered ginger cookie. "Two saris, two salwar-kameezes, three pairs of jeans, and my T-shirts." She patted the closing flap of her backpack. "And addresses of your two friends in Bangalore."

  "Don't lose those addresses, Angie. I'll write them so they expect you. And guard the money just short of your life. The train to Bangalore leaves at nine o' clock. Ali will walk you to the station."

  "I didn't reserve," she said. "How could I reserve a train ticket with my father sitting in the railway office? He would have heard of it." She had imagined his furor over and over again: "Bose-babu, quick, quick! Daughter is buying one-way ticket to Bangalore!"

&
nbsp; "Anyway, I thought there'd be a wedding."

  "Or you counted on a magic solution?"

  "I want to go to Patna and visit my sister there. Then she can buy a train ticket for me."

  "Then the intercity bus is your only option." Peter seemed to be contemplating a gargantuan task. "Lord," he sighed. "I did it thirty years ago. We had to close the windows against dacoits and tribals with bows and arrows. The price you pay for procrastinating."

  She recognized the word but had never used it.

  "Putting things off—you've got to work on that."

  "I will."

  "When? Tomorrow?" But he asked the questions with a smile, gathered up the remaining cookies in the cloth, and knotted the ends. "Who knows when you'll get to eat next?"

  "Thank you for the ginger biscuits," she murmured to Ali.

  Ali went to the pantry and came back with a bottle of water and two bruised apples. In elaborate Urdu she could barely follow, he asked Peter for directions to the bus station. Peter instructed Ali to take enough money with him to buy the bus ticket to Patna for her, so she wouldn't have to take out her cookie tin in the crowded station.