Authors: Bharati Mukherjee
"Any other numbers?" Mr. GG asked.
"Put in my father's," she said, and gave him the familiar Gauripur number. A sudden image of the heavy black phone, on a stool in the living room, its thick, dust-clogged cord gnawed by mice, appeared in her mind's eye. That number and the house must now belong to a stranger.
"And Usha Desai," she said, then recited the number, which she'd memorized. "And this one"; she read the number from Moni's torn-off slip of paper. "Call it ML."
"That's not a lot of numbers for a popular young lady," Mr. GG said.
"Put in Peter," she said, and gave him the number. She wished she had memorized Rabi's California number. That would have impressed Mr. GG.
"And how are things at Bagehot House?" he asked when he had inputted the numbers.
"The building's still standing."
"I meant the old lady. How's she holding up?"
"Surviving. But her mind is failing."
"Appearances can be deceiving," he said, smiling. "I trust in only the durability of the virtual universe."
Her bargain with Mr. GG went unspoken; in exchange for a few smiles and bright comments, she'd get a lift back to Bagehot House. He bowed to her: "Your Daewoo is waiting, Miss Bose."
The starving, bedraggled, overwhelmed Anjali, the one who, weeks ago, almost had to be carried into the Daewoo, had plumped into a "pert and glowing"—Mr. GG's words—cell-phone-owning
HotBook
cover girl.
Once again, she was walking to the Daewoo.
Mr. GG held the door open, always the gentleman. Vacation brochures were scattered on the front seat. "You asked about Djakarta," he said, "but we wrapped that up three days ago. Right now"—he put a brochure into her hands—"I'm working
here,
on a very cool condominium development in Puerto Vallarta."
"A pristine desert lapped by sparkling seas," she read.
"Mexico," he said, obviously amused. Anjali could see that he enjoyed imparting to her his wider knowledge. "Those seas won't be sparkling or lapping for very long without some high-level intervention. The good thing is, we've done oversight in Qatar and Dubai so we know something about heat and sandstorms and what they do to swimming pools and golf courses and yacht basins and how huge the power and sewage and refrigeration problems can be. It's a fun project. It's like building a small country."
A fun project?
In her English class, Peter Champion used to warn Anjali about this: "You'll hear
fun
used as an adjective. Resist it. Fun is a noun, not an adjective." Not to be outdone, or overwhelmed by Mr. GG's worldliness or the strange languages and place names he invoked, she said, "One of the girls in Bagehot House went to an American school in the Gulf." The news seemed to silence him.
A moment later, he completed her thought. "I know. The famous Husseina Shiraz. I think she's no longer in residence—am I right?"
How would he know that?
"Some big changes on the way," he said. "All we can do is stay one step ahead." The city traffic was thinner than it had been that morning, when Rajoo's chauffeur had, cursing and honking, dropped her off at the TOS tower; they were moving along well, too well. She didn't want the ride to be over.
Mr. GG must have noted her reluctance. "I want to show you something new," he said.
Cubbon Park, she hoped. Moni had mentioned Cubbon Park. She was a woman with a phone and a glow from being in love with love.
"We'll stop at my place on the way."
"Where is that?" She knew Kent Town and Indira Nagar; she knew of Dollar Colony because Parvati Banerji lived there and Rabi crashed with the Banerjis when in Bangalore. Mr. GG had to live in an upscale area, something like Dollar Colony. She imagined him pulling up with her in front of a gate guarded by two watchmen; she would walk on a graveled driveway that sliced a flowering garden in two; she would beam at his white-haired parents as they greeted her warmly. Did he have living parents? "I'd love to meet your relatives," she heard herself say.
"I said
my
place." He had two addresses, he explained, a family residence beyond Kent Town, where he lived with parents, the widowed sister-in-law, and an older brother and his wife and infant nephew—and a private office, with a kitchen and sleeping accommodations close to Vistronics.
Every day is today!
The morning had served her well, and now she was ready for whatever the late afternoon might bring.
THE OFFICE-APARTMENT
occupied a corner on the top floor of a modern six-story building overlooking the winding paths and gardens of Cubbon Park. Only a few tall, old trees obstructed the hazy view of the city. Those treetops sprawled beneath Anjali like a wild, tufted lawn.
"Tea?" Mr. GG asked. A small kitchen and pantry lay just off the dining area. The familiar splash of water in a kettle, the snapping on of the gas stove: calming, reassuring Indian sounds. She wasn't sure why he had brought her here. A virtual voyage to Puerto Vallarta? To Djakarta? As long as it wasn't Gauripur, Anjali Bose had no fear of him.
This was, after all, her second time in a man's bedroom. This one, unlike Peter Champion's, was orderly, well-appointed, its walls hung with cartoonlike paintings, architecture magazines spread in an arc, like a lady's fan, on the table. She liked what she saw, liked what she saw very much, and she realized she wasn't safe at all. A pleasant itch coursed up her arms, just as it had when Moni Lahiri had snapped her photo for his
HotBook.
After all, she could tell herself, it's not as though she'd awakened that morning, then coldly decided to visit her personal Barista on MG Road, and then gone over to Mr. GG, rousing him from his work with the intention of seducing him or letting him think he was seducing her. She was incapable of such plotting. Therefore, she was not guilty of planning it or even wishing it.
She could not be held responsible for anything that happened in her life because she was not an initiator of actions. Angie the bold one, the initiator, was beyond blame, or shame. Anjali just watched and let things happen. Things like this: accepting tea from a man standing behind her as she watched the weaving lanes of traffic and the usual mix of strollers and exercisers in the park under the canopy of trees. The man behind her put his hands on her hips, then under her kameez, and began peeling it upward over her bra. She set the teacup on the windowsill and allowed him to continue.
Now he whispered in her ear, nibbling it ever so slightly before he spoke. "What sort of precautions have you taken?"
"What precautions do you mean?"
Heavens,
she thought,
if I took precautions, I wouldn't be here in your apartment, would I?
"You know,
devices.
The pill?"
She smiled at him shyly. Subodh Mitra hadn't bothered to ask. Things move slowly, like glaciers, until they erupt like tsunamis.
Torn silver foil fluttered through the air. She heard a zipper, and the thud of heavy trousers falling to the floor. Mr. GG's fingers soothed her itch. "I've been thinking of you since we first met," he said.
It seemed that all the strollers in the park and on the footpaths had stopped and were looking up and pointing in her direction. Everyone in Cubbon Park saw the naked girl in the window. The naked girl in the window looked down on Bangalore. She moved from the window, turned, and faced Mr. GG, who was hopping on one foot to free himself from his trousers. His shoes were still on. Coins were dropping from the pockets and rolling across the floor.
"Please to sit down, Mr. GG," she ordered, and he did. For the briefest moment she thought,
If I want to get out, this is the time.
He reached down to unlace his shoes. "I will do that. Please sit back." As she bent forward, he groped for her bra strap.
Not
her
bra strap, exactly. It had been Husseina's black silk lift-and-thrust.
"Please," she insisted, this time louder, and he retreated. She made a lightning calculation:
If I'm to give myself away, it might as well be to a well-established man who saved me and performed favors and kindnesses. A well-connected man who would owe me.
A girl in a fancy black bra and half-discarded salwar, kneeling before a man on a sofa, pulling off his shoes: she's in control.
She remembered a Gauripur ritual, her own father coming home from the office at the same minute every day. Tea would be waiting, he would sit at a chair by the door and hold his feet out, and her mother would kneel and pull his shoes off—dusty or muddy shoes, depending on the season—and Anjali would bring him his indoor chappals and kurta-pajama. He would unbutton his shirt and slip on the kurta, then unbuckle his trousers and cover his shorts with the pajama. Every night of her life she had performed the same little task, as had her mother and her grandmother and probably her sister too. If all those generations could see her now! Except this time, she was on her knees and nearly naked, and the man was, essentially, a stranger. And she remembered the lines of women in Nizambagh crawling over the trucks, ghost women, spidery thin, fighting each other for access to the drivers, and she hated the price of being a woman, and India, and every man she'd ever known.
"Let's see that famous smile," said Mr. GG. And so she smiled.
She got his shoes off, and the socks—such small, soft feet, such hairy toes—then tugged his trousers by the cuffs and draped them over the back of a dining chair. He was a plump, hairy little man in bulging boxer shorts. He probably had not dressed that morning with the thought of being undressed by a lady before lunch. He made himself busy throwing cushions off his sofa, then pulling out a folding bed.
"What are you looking at?" he asked. She flashed a shy smile, which seemed to satisfy his vanity, but in truth she was fascinated by a couch converting into a bed by one pull from a near-naked man with a hairy back. Nor had she ever stood completely naked and alone, even in her own bedroom or bathroom. Back home she had bathed as older women did, in a sari. The important thing was to be able to tell herself that she'd accepted a ride from a friend, thinking she was going to meet his family, and that she'd been abducted and seduced. She'd be able to tell anybody who asked: in Bangalore be careful of friendly men who say they just want to help.
"It happens very quickly, doesn't it?" she said.
"Were you expecting roses?"
She'd meant it as a compliment. She meant how quickly one changes identities.
Half an hour ago, I was just trying to get a ride in your car. I was someone entirely different, and now I'll never be that person again.
Mr. GG was lying on his bed, pulling off his shorts, and his long, tawny whatsit looked just short of menacing. He rolled the condom over it, just like a villager with a banana in a birth-control film. His arms were open. The springy, curly mat on his chest was waiting for her.
She stepped out of her remaining clothes. She remembered swimming instructions: just jump in, it will feel cold, and you'll think you're going to drown, but you'll get used to it. No shilly-shallying. She was about to learn what every other woman knew, what Tookie and Sonali-di knew, and Mr. GG certainly seemed a more accomplished teacher than Subodh Mitra. All caution flew out the window; the years of good counsel about virtue and modesty, flirting but playing hard to get. She'd never questioned her self-image as a modest, well-brought-up, small-town, middle-class probasi Bengali girl. In a place like Bangalore, where no one was rewarded for being good in quite that way, "good" took on a different meaning. She was grateful for Mr. GG's attention. He'd offered an easy way to pay back his favors and maybe even for Anjali to gain the upper hand.
Just as he said, it was over very quickly. She felt she shouldn't compliment him on the quickness. She shouldn't say a thing, but just smile. Somehow, in the twisting and turning, she'd ended up looking down on him, with his eyes closed. Whatever he'd done had stung a little, but at least the itching was gone.
After catching his breath, he said, "I'd call you a very cool customer, Miss Anjali Bose. Continually surprising, but still sweetly innocent."
She'd expected something like a grade for her efforts, a "best ever" or "a smart, fun girl" or at least "cool," but no matter: she'd passed the test, and Mr. GG had fallen back into drowsy silence. And she'd reduced that ropy, menacing, invincible whatsit to a floppy flap of skin under a sagging condom. After a few minutes he mumbled, "Expect some excitement later today. Maybe tonight."
"How much more excitement can a girl take, Mr. GG?"
He reached out for her hair and let it flow between his fingers. "You're a funny young lady, Miss Bose." After a few more minutes he got up and slipped on his boxer shorts and the same white shirt. Maybe all the men in white shirts she passed on the streets had been doing the same thing a few minutes earlier. Maybe the women too. He shuffled into the cooking alcove, put on the tea water, and punched two slices of bread into the toaster. She took it as her cue and got back into her underwear, then the salwar and kameez. He asked, his voice low and casual, "Miss Shiraz, was she your friend?"
"I'd like to think so."
"Ms. Shiraz's picture made the BBC website," he said.
"Husseina's a celebrity?"
"She wasn't named, but I recognized the face."
"A Bagehot Girl!" Anjali was thrilled. "One of us! Girish, you make Bangalore sound like the center of the world."
"All I'm saying is changes are imminent."
"Now you sound like Minnie Bagehot. 'Evil forces are gathering,' that's her new mantra."
"Well, I don't think I need to worry about you, Miss Bose. You're steps ahead of everyone. May I call you, now that you have your own phone?"
On the drive back, Mr. GG told her what he'd been reading on the BBC website when she interrupted him at Barista. A plot to blow up Heathrow had been disrupted. She had to ask, "What is a heath row?"
"An airport," he said. She knew some names, like Netaji Subhas Bose in Kolkata and Indira Gandhi in New Delhi, and there was Sahar in Mumbai, but she'd never been on an airplane or even in an airport.