If Savitha did live here, it occurred to Poornima, crouched against the side of the building, why would she be here during the day? She would be cleaning houses during the day.
That night, when she returned, the warehouse was even darker and quieter than it had been during the day. She knocked on the door, waiting for a light to go on. She walked around the building, slamming her fists against the sides. She tried to break open the heavy lock, and then the glass of the door, but it was reinforced, and neither the plastic flashlight nor the weight of her body did any good. Where was she? Where was she? Poornima stared at the door, gave it one last kick, said to the dark, unbreakable glass, “Not here,” and left.
*
On the bus ride home, after midnight, she looked down at her bruised arms, her gashed elbows and hands, her broken flashlight, and realized the thing she had known all along: Mohan was her only hope.
*
She bought a bottle of whiskey—the most expensive she could find at the corner store—and then she spent the afternoon making rice and dal and eggplant curry (the fattest eggplants she had ever seen, and which cooked nothing like the ones in India) and potato cutlets, though the hot oil frightened her so much that she made just enough for Mohan and turned off the stove. But even with the scents of the food and the bottle of whiskey set out on the counter Mohan refused to stay for dinner. He left without a word, before she could think of anything more to convince him.
Poornima grew desperate.
She paced the small room, looking out of the window, up and down the street, every minute or so. She remembered, back on her street in Vijayawada, the man who’d been ironing the child’s frock, and the sleeping rickshaw wallah, and the cows and the dogs poking among the small garbage heaps, and the vendors calling through the streets, and she was struck by a sudden and violent homesickness. She nearly bent over with it, but straightened her back at once. For what, she admonished herself, angry with herself for even this slight moment of weakness. For brothels and charkhas and men and mothers-in-law? Is that what you’re homesick for? She smoothed down her blouse and jeans, unused to wearing them, and which, again, she’d bought in Vijayawada specifically for her trip to America, and took a deep breath: she recalled suddenly the one thing that had made his eyes flicker, the only thing, in the two weeks that she had known him, that had given him pause.
She left the whiskey on the counter, and when he arrived the next night, she said, “I won’t drink it. You might as well take it with you.”
He looked at the bottle and hesitated, and when he did, she said, “Who is Lazarus?”
“What?”
“Lazarus. From that poem. The one you like. Puffrock said something about being Lazarus.”
His face softened. Or maybe it was only his lips that seemed to lose something of their severity, their density. “You remember that?”
“I’ve been wondering.”
“He’s from the Bible. Jesus brought him back to life, after he died. After four days, I think.”
“Was he being tested? Like Sita?”
“No, I think it was Jesus who was being tested. Or maybe his believers. But not Lazarus.”
Poornima looked at him. “Why do you like it? Because you think Puffrock is like you and me?”
“Proofrock. And yes, and because it’s such a lonely poem.”
“You should open it,” she said, nodding toward the whiskey.
This time, there was no hesitation. He poured himself a half glass of whiskey, the gold-brown liquid sending up the strong scent of deep forests and woodsmoke and something Poornima couldn’t name, but recalled, maybe that thunderstorm, she thought, the one that had caught her on the Krishna. He settled under the window and placed the glass in front of him. He took a sip.
Poornima watched him. She thought he might leave after finishing the first glass, but he poured himself another. She said to herself, Wait till he finishes this one. Wait till the end.
When he did, she said, “Your days must be long.”
His head was leaned back against the wall. He seemed to nod, or maybe she only imagined it.
“Are there other shepherds? What do you do after leaving here?”
“Homework.”
“Homework?”
He avoided her gaze. “I take classes. At the university.” He raised the bottle again and studied the label. “Where did you get this? I thought I told you not to leave the apartment?”
“For what? What are you studying?”
He laughed, poured another glass. “That Puffrock poem. Other poems, too.”
“But—”
This he drank in one great gulp. “You can tell a lot about a parent from what makes them laugh. When I told him, middle of high school, that I wanted to study literature, he laughed for three days, and then he said, ‘Engineering or medicine. You pick.’ That’s the best part of being an Indian kid,” he said. “We get to pick.” Then he looked at her sternly. “He doesn’t know about the classes. No one does.”
They sat in silence then, he against the window, she against the wall by the kitchen. Nothing stirred, not inside, not outside. Poornima shut her eyes. She could sense him watching her.
“These,” he said into the dark, “these are my favorite lines from the poem: ‘And indeed there will be time / To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” / Time to turn back and descend the stair’.”
He went on to explain each of the lines, each of the words in meticulous detail, and about when the poem was written, and about how the time it was written related to the forces of fear and boredom and modernity, just before World War I, and he even told her about the author himself, and how he had been an immigrant, too, except to England, and Poornima wanted to ask about Michelangelo and Hamlet, but instead, she said, “What else made him laugh?”
There was silence again, and she thought he might be annoyed by her question, but when she opened her eyes, Mohan was asleep, the glass still clasped in his hand.
*
She had one week left.
Savitha
1
The bus was in the mountains when Savitha opened her eyes. She had been dreaming of Mohan. Nothing in particular, nothing she could name, not even in the moments after she woke up, but she had a sense that he’d drifted through her dreams, without touching them, like a ghost, or a scent. But then she was jolted from half sleep, and she looked around her frantically, seeing clearly the road, the mountains, the strange faces. The flight. Had there been footsteps behind her? She hadn’t looked. She’d run wildly from bus stop to bus stop, hailing buses just as they’d pulled away; the third local bus that passed her opened its doors; Savitha said, breathless, “New York?” and the driver had laughed and said, “Not quite. You want the Greyhound. I’m going past the station, though. Get on!” At the bus station in downtown Seattle, she’d stood and stared at a map of the United States. She’d found Seattle, knowing there was only water to its west, and then she’d looked for New York. Her gaze had traveled east and east and east. Where could it be? She thought she’d missed it and started again. This time she didn’t stop, and there it was, on the other side, with only water to its east. She’d said to the man at the ticket counter, “How much New York?”
He’d said, “Lady, first you gotta go to Spokane, and then you gotta get on another bus to New York.” And then he’d said, “Thirty dollars.”
She hadn’t understood the first part of what he’d said, but she’d understood that the ticket to New York was thirty dollars. All that way for only thirty dollars!