Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? (13 page)

Her grey eyes ranged around the drawing-cum-dining area, which, she realized, was stuffed with furniture. There were four bookshelves and two huge sofas—one the colour of mud with orange roses all over it, the other blue with white checks. Accompanying these large pieces were three coffee tables—one with a vase of fresh tulips—and a television on a stand.

“Bibi-ji, our landlady, sent these flowers to say welcome to all of you,” Balu said. “From her own garden.”

“And all this furniture?” The dining area was even more crowded—with a table that had a wad of newspaper stuffed under one of its legs, and five mismatched chairs, a towering glass-fronted showcase which was empty except for a few books on the bottom shelf, a pot
stand with a ragged-looking fern and another small table that didn’t seem to have any particular reason for being there.

“My friend Dr. Majumdar gave some of it, and the rest came with the house.”

“Why can’t we buy our own furniture?” Leela wanted to know.

“Do you know how expensive it will be to get new? And if someone is giving us something for free, why spend money?” Balu replied.

Leela was silent. What had happened to Balu? Where was his pride? Had they become a charity case? Did he not mind that people were giving him things because they thought he couldn’t afford them himself, just like she used to give away their old clothes to the servants in Bangalore?

When the Bhats had finished unloading the car, Leela shut the dark blue door behind them. Preethi went down a flight of stairs and discovered the basement. She came running back up. “There is another house downstairs!” she exclaimed breathlessly.

Leela was pleased. This house wasn’t so bad after all—it had a ground floor, a first floor
and
an underground floor. She composed more of the letter that she would write tomorrow to her mother-in-law and to Vimala.
We have a three-storey house which is a relief because it is good for each of the children to have a floor to themselves.

She busied herself in the kitchen, setting up her gods in the space that Balu had arranged for them, allowing a pan of milk to boil over in a ritual meant to ensure that there
would be no dearth of food in this household, and that luck, happiness and good health would overflow like the milk frothing over the stove. A few incense sticks and a small prayer to ask the gods to make true all that the boiling milk symbolized, and the formality of entering a new home was done. Leela climbed the stairs to the first floor to begin unpacking.

From the window in the landing she could see the road outside their new home, straight and long, running in both directions past houses that seemed to be about the same size as hers, except for a large white one at the end of the road. A fine drizzle had started and the grey sky poured over the city, dripped down the roof and veiled the tops of a tall fir tree in the front yard so that it loomed like a long-robed old wizard.

How far away were the shops she had noticed while driving home from the airport, she wondered? She climbed the remaining stairs and entered the bedroom claimed by the children. Preethi was stuffing her things haphazardly into a white dresser while Arjun was lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. Leela wandered over to the window that overlooked the backyard. In the time that it had taken her to get to this window, the rain had halted and the sun shimmered like a dream behind a haze of cloud. A twisted old tree bearing acid-green leaves grew in the far corner of the backyard, and on the lawn an exotic black bird with a white streak down its chest pulled a worm out of the earth. There was a profusion of flowers in one bed, a circle of rose bushes in the centre and a low hedge separating their property from the neighbours on either side. The yard to the
right had a swing hanging from a large tree and a child’s bicycle lying on its side. The lawn was worn in patches, showing bare earth. The yard to the left of hers, though, was as beautifully maintained as her own. From where she stood, Leela could see a wedge of her neighbour’s lawn; purple and yellow flowers lined it like embroidery. A woman with white hair kneeled in the grass at the edge of the flower bed, digging into the rich black soil. Beyond her, in another yard, Leela spotted a line of clothes, swelling with wind for a few moments before flattening out breathless. The ordinariness of the scene, so like that in her own yard in Bangalore, reassured her.

Then Balu entered the room and said, “Okay Leela, I have to go. I will be back around six or seven o’clock.”

“Go? Where are you going?” Leela was hurt. “Can’t you take today off?”

“I can’t miss my class. I am not permanent at the college yet. If I cut work they might not get a very good impression of me, no? But tomorrow—Saturday—I am not teaching, so we can go out together and see Vancouver if you want. Maybe have lunch at The Delhi Junction. You’ll meet my friends there.”

She followed him down the stairs and to the front door, watching as he backed out of the driveway, waved and drove off. Beside the door was a thick new telephone directory. She bent down to pick it up. Just as she was turning to go in, she caught sight of the white-haired woman from next door whom she had seen earlier tending her flowers in the backyard. The woman raised a hand in greeting and smiled. Leela returned the smile, vaguely surprised by the
friendly gesture. She had heard that white people were very private and kept to themselves, that they did not make friends easily. She must have been misinformed. Or perhaps this woman was an exception. She wondered whether she should go over to the fence and introduce herself. But what would she say?
I am Leela Bhat, of the famous family of Kunjoor Bhats?
Would it mean anything here?

She went back into the house carrying the directory and set it down on the kitchen counter. It was so big—were there really so many people in this city? She had seen hardly anybody on their drive from the airport.

She opened the book at random pages. How strange it was to have a telephone directory that possessed not even one name she knew. How lonely it made her feel! She checked the Bs to see if Bhat was listed and was idiotically gratified to see their name. She held the phone book as if it were a gift. Then, setting it down again, she leafed through it to see if she could find another name she recognized. And there it was, even though she had not met him yet— Alok Majumdar—Balu’s friend, the one who had given them the dining table that had to be kept steady with a wad of newspaper folded into a small square. She left the directory on the counter and opened another suitcase. It contained more clothes and a couple of photo albums, which she took to the living room. She placed them on one of the coffee tables wondering drily who had donated that particular piece of furniture to the Bhat charity.

She continued unpacking steadily for the next few hours, exhausted from her journey but too keyed up to sleep. She was busy emptying packets of spices into bottles
when the doorbell rang. Leela paused, startled. Could Balu have returned already? What time was it? She went to the door and peered through the spyhole. A tall woman stood there with her finger on the doorbell. Beside her was a smaller, youngish man in a black suit carrying several bags in his hands.

Leela slipped the safety latch into position and opened the door a crack. “Yes?” she said suspiciously. “What do you want?”

“Hooh! Thank the Ooper-Wallah that you have arrived!” exclaimed the woman in a posh BBC accent bizarrely at odds with her flamboyant, heavily made-up, Hindi film star looks. “I knocked a few times on the back door, but no one answered. I was becoming worried, you know! Were you asleep? Can we come in?”

“But who are you?” Leela asked, ready to slam the door shut if necessary.

“Sorry, no introductions, what must you think of me …” The woman smiled at her. “I am Bibi-ji, your landlady. And this is our Lalloo, almost like a son to Pa-ji and me. I brought him along to help with all these heavy bags.”

“Oh?” Leela said, still suspicious. She wasn’t sure she liked the look of the young man, who had the most bizarre sideburns—long and cut sharply at an angle just below his cheekbones, making him look vaguely like Dracula.

“Balu did not tell you? I said I would come over and say hello. Ah, these men are very forgetful creatures. No sense either. Now, are you going to let me in or what?”

“Yes, of course, come in.” Leela stepped aside to let her visitors into the house.

Bibi-ji handed a bag to Leela.

“What is all this?” Leela asked. “You really shouldn’t have …”

“I have brought thirty parathas.” Bibi-ji ignored Leela’s protests and waved her hands at the plastic-covered cornucopia that Lalloo had deposited on the kitchen counter. “That should last for two days at least. Balu told us that you have children. They eat all the time, so you will need the lot.” She glanced around. “Where are they, anyway?”

“Upstairs, asleep, I think. We’ve crossed so many time zones …”

Bibi-ji nodded. “Yes of course, I’d forgotten how it feels. It’s what, three o’clock in the morning India time now?” She settled with a deep sigh on the blue-and-white-checked sofa and passed a critical eye over the rest of the furniture. “You like the furniture? No? Yes? If you wish, we can bring other pieces.”

Leela shook her head vehemently, but Bibi-ji was off before she could say anything.

“No, no, don’t be formal, don’t be shy,” the older woman urged. “We have many kinds of sofas, neh Lalloo? Ask him, he knows everything about our house. Lalloo, putthar, tell our Leela how many sofas Pa-ji has put in the Taj Mahal?”

Taj Mahal? Was that the name of the restaurant this Bibi-ji owned? “Would you like some tea?” she asked politely.

“Lalloo can make it. You sit here and tell me how your journey was.” Bibi-ji patted a spot beside herself on the sofa.

“No, Lalloo can sit with you,” Leela said firmly, trying to regain control. “I will make the tea.”

When Leela returned bearing a tray with teacups and biscuits, she found Bibi-ji and Lalloo browsing through one of the photo albums. Bibi-ji smiled at Leela. “Your family?” she asked, tapping the album.

“Yes, mostly Balu’s relatives. They like taking photographs, his family.”

“And these people? Who are they?” Bibi-ji pointed with her plump manicured finger at a black-and-white photograph of Hari Shastri and Rosa Schweers carrying an infant Leela.

Leela’s heart clenched painfully. “My parents,” she said. It was the only picture she had of herself with them.

“But this woman looks like a gori,” Bibi-ji said, bringing the album close to her face and frowning at it. “Your mother is a white woman?”

Leela bit her lip and thought, why should it matter here in this country where I know nobody other than Balu, and now this strange pair in my living room, and nobody knows me? “Yes,” she said. “Yes, she was. She died when I was very young.”

“Oh, I am sorry to hear that,” Bibi-ji said. She stared at the photograph for a bit longer. “I wondered about your eyes, now I see where you got them from.” She closed the album and accepted a cup of tea from Leela. “You will fit in without a problem, then, eh Leela? With eyes that see just the way the goras do?”

Leela nodded briskly and tried to steer the talk away
from herself. “And you, Bibi-ji? What about your family? Are they here? Or in India?”

“My mother died soon after I came here, and my father went away when I was six or seven years old.” Bibi-ji sipped her tea. “And your father? Is he alive?”

“No,” Leela replied. She busied herself with the tea things, rattling the spoon in her cup with more vigour than necessary. She racked her brains for a way to change the topic of conversation.

“How did your mother die? She must have been young, na? Was she sick?” persisted Bibi-ji.

“You could say that,” Leela nodded. “Biscuit?”

“They call it cookie here,” Bibi-ji said. “You will find many things like that which they say differently. But you will learn. I did, and I was just from a small village.” She laughed, displaying perfect white teeth, and not for the first time Leela thought that she was a remarkably handsome woman.

“Do you go home often, then?” Leela asked. “Do you have sisters or brothers or other relatives back there still?”

“My home is here now. Down the road, to be precise! I came before Partition. My village disappeared during that time. It was right on the new border, but God knows where its people are now.” Bibi-ji fell into a brooding silence. “I had a sister, but she too … I have looked all these years for her and her family, but no luck.”

“I am sorry,” Leela murmured.

Bibi-ji picked up one of the framed photos Leela had piled haphazardly on the coffee table. “Are those your children?” she asked.

“Yes, that is Preethi, our daughter, and that is Arjun, our son. Do you have any children?”

“No,” said Bibi-ji. She did not elaborate. “Lalloo will help you with school admissions and all that sort of thing. I will take you to the shops.”

“No, no,” Leela replied. “I don’t want to bother you.”

“No bother. If we desis do not help each other, who will?” She peered at the photographs of the children again. “So sweet, so young. How old is this little girl?”