Though not exactly as his father had in mind.
What would Dada have thought about Vimal’s desire to abandon the world of cutting diamonds and become a sculptor? He had a sense that Grandfather wouldn’t have minded very much. After all, the man had taken a chance—the extraordinary leap of bringing his whole family to a new and possibly hostile country.
Vimal’s mother’s ancestry was less well documented, not because Papa wasn’t inclined to retain a woman’s history (well, not entirely) but because she was sixth-generation American, and the ancestors had come from New Delhi—the forty-million-plus National Capital Region, a very, very different place from Kashmir. Mother was thoroughly Westernized. Her ancestry was potluck, a bit of this, a bit of that. Her family’s roots included mixed marriages, divorces, a gay union or two. All this added up, within her, to an appreciation of—rather than devotion to—Hindu culture, and the assumption of a quiet, though not fundamentally subservient, role in her marriage.
Vimal now turned on his work lamp over the bench. He closely studied the piece he’d been working on. It was simple, carved from a rich piece of off-white marble from Venezuela: a wave of water at its apogee about to crest and fall down upon itself. He’d grown fascinated recently with the idea of representing the texture and motion of non-stone in stone: wood, steam, hair, and—as with this piece—water. He wanted to do water because Michelangelo had skimped on the waves when he’d carved his reclining Poseidon. Vimal hoped to one-up the master.
Wasn’t that an example of a mortal’s hubris, which brought the wrath of the gods down upon him?
Come on, he thought, looking up at the ceiling. Let’s get this over with. His heart was pounding and his knee bobbed from nerves. He found himself playing with his bracelet and then felt stunned he was still wearing it. Had Father seen? He pulled it off and put it in his pocket.
Now he was hearing the footsteps on the stairs and knew it was time to “have words,” as Dada used to say. A delicate euphemism for an argument. The look that passed between his father and himself upstairs made clear that, while a man-to-man talk wasn’t possible, a man-to-son talk was…and it was long overdue.
His father appeared in the studio. He sat on a stool. Vimal set the hammer down.
Papa wasted no time. “You wanted to say something.”
“We dance around the subject.”
Because you lose your temper and can’t stand anyone disagreeing with you. Which, of course, he did not verbalize.
“Subject?”
“Yes, Papa. But we need to address it.”
“What does this mean ‘address’?”
His father had come to America when he was two. He read two American newspapers a day, cover to cover, and got his news from Public Broadcasting, in addition to Indian sources. He knew what the word meant.
Waving a tremoring hand, Papa said, “Tell me. It’s late. I will be helping your brother with his homework. Tell me what you mean.”
The man’s intentional obliqueness angered Vimal. So he said quickly, “All right. Here: I don’t want to spend my life cutting pieces of carbon that bounce around between women’s boobs.”
He regretted the blunt word immediately and feared a fierce reprisal.
But his father just smiled, surprising him. “No? Why not?”
“It doesn’t thrill me, move me.”
Papa jutted out his lower lip. “Your parallelogram cut. It wasn’t like anything Nouri had ever seen. Or me. He sent me a picture of the stone.”
Why had I agreed to the cut?
The worst betrayal today had not been Bassam’s selling him out; it was Vimal’s own lapse. By agreeing to the cut for the money—his thirty pieces of silver—he had bolstered his father’s argument that he was a unique and brilliant diamantaire.
I’m my own Judas. His jaw was clenched. See, diamonds ruin everything.
Papa persisted, “Didn’t that move you?”
“It was technically challenging. I enjoyed the cut, yes. For that reason. I wasn’t, I don’t know, passionate about the cutting.”
“I think you were, son.”
“Whatever you want, Papa, I don’t want to devote my life to jewelry. It’s as simple as that.” This was the most defiant Vimal had ever been.
His father’s eyes went to yet another sculpture. The work was a series of geometric shapes, one morphing into another. He called it Telephone, after the game in which players whisper a phrase to the person beside them and so on, during the course of which the words become something entirely different. The marble piece had won first prize in a competition at the Field Gallery in SoHo. Vimal couldn’t help but reflect that while everyone complimented him on it, no one was interested in buying. It was priced at a thousand dollars, a third of what he’d been paid for the diamond cut today.
Papa continued, “I don’t understand, son.” A nod at The Wave. “You’re an artist. Obviously, you’re talented. You understand stone. Not many people do. That’s so very rare. But why not be an artist who makes—”
“Money?” Vimal surprised himself by actually interrupting.
“—a difference in the world of jewelry.”
Vimal said, “There is no difference to make in that world. It’s the world of cosmetics. Nothing more.”
He’d just insulted his father and grandfather and many blood relations in the Lahori family. But Papa didn’t give any reaction.
“This…plan of yours. Running off. What were you going to do?”
Vimal’s steam was up. He didn’t evade, as he usually did. “Go to California. Get an MFA.” He’d started college at seventeen and graduated early. Learning, like sculpting, came easily to him.
“California? Where?”
“UCLA. San Francisco State.”
“Why there?”
They both knew the answer to that. Twenty-five hundred miles’ distance. But Vimal said, “Fine arts. Good sculpting programs.”
“You’d have to work. It’s expensive there.”
“I intend to work. I’ll find something. Pay for my tuition.”
His father examined the work-in-progress again.
“It’s good.”
Did he mean this? Vimal couldn’t tell from his eyes. He might. But then it might be the way a customer would look over a ring or pendant. The husband or boyfriend’s face would shine in admiration. But the lady with him, the recipient? Her mouth would smile and she would whisper, “Oh, my, lovely.” But her eyes said something different. She’d been expecting more. Flashier. More spectacular.
Or usually what she meant was: bigger.
“Listen to me, son. I can see you’ve thought about this for a long time.” He sighed. “And I see too that I haven’t really listened to you. This terrible crime with Mr. Patel, it’s made me look at things differently. I want to understand it. Will you stay here for a few days—let the police catch that man. Then, well, we can talk. I want to hear more about what you want to do. We can work something out. Really. I promise we can.”
Vimal had never heard his father sound so reasonable; so he too had been shaken, fundamentally, by the crime. Vimal felt that tears might swell. He fought the urge. He embraced his father. “Sure, Papa.”
The older man nodded again at The Wave. “It really does look like water. I don’t know how you’ve done that.” He left, closing the door behind him.
Vimal looked over his sculpture. He pulled on gloves and goggles, powered up the grinder and continued the heavenly task of turning stone to water.
Chapter 27
The Henri Avelon was perfect.
Beautiful. No, breathtaking.