Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri [81]
"Oh dear, madame."
"I fell off the bench."
"I am so sorry, madame."
"It was the middle of the night! Do you know what I did, boy?"
I shook my head.
"I called the police!"
She stared up at the ceiling and grinned sedately, exposing a crowded row of long grey teeth. Not one was missing. "What do you say to that, boy?" As stunned as I was, I knew what I had to say. With no hesitation at all, I cried out, "Splendid!"
Mala laughed then. Her voice was full of kindness,
her eyes bright with amusement. I had never heard her
laugh before, and it was loud enough that Mrs. Croft had heard, too. She turned to Mala and glared. "Who is she, boy?"
"She is my wife, madame."
Mrs. Croft pressed her had at an angle against the cushion to get a better look. "Can you play the piano?" "No, madame," Mala replied.
"Then stand up!"
Mala rose to her feet, adjusting the end of her sari over her head, and holding it to her chest, and, for the first time since her arrival, I felt sympathy. I remembered my first days in London, learning how to take the Tube to Russell Square, riding an escalator for the first time, being unable to understand that when the man cried "piper" it meant "paper," being unable to decipher, for a whole year, that the conductor said "mind the gap" as the train pulled away from each station. Like me, Mala had traveled far from home, not knowing where she was going, or what she would find, for no reason other than to be my wife. As strange as it seemed, I knew in my heart that one day her death would affect me, and stranger still, that mine would affect her. I wanted somehow to explain this to Mrs. Croft, who was still scrutinizing Mala from top to toe with what seemed to be placid disdain. I wondered if Mrs. Croft had ever seen a woman in a sari, with a dot painted on her forehead and bracelets stacked on her wrists. I wondered what she would object to. I wondered if she could see the red dye still vivid on Mala's feet, all but obscured by the bottom edge of her sari. At last Mrs. Croft declared, with the equal measures of disbelief and delight I knew well:
"She is a perfect lady!"
Now it was I who laughed. I did so quietly, and Mrs. Croft did not hear me. But Mala had heard, and, for the first time, we looked at each other and smiled. I like to think of that moment in Mrs. Croft's parlor as the moment when the distance between Mala and me began to lessen. Although we were not yet fully in love, I like to think of the months that followed as a honeymoon of sorts. Together we explored the city and met other Bengalis, some of whom are still friends today.
We discovered that a man named Bill sold fresh fish on Prospect Street, and that a shop in Harvard square called Cardullo's sold bay leaves and cloves. In the evenings we walked to the Charles River to watch sailboats drift across the water, or had ice cream cones in Harvard Yard. We bought an instamatic camera with which to document our life together, and I took pictures of her posing in front of the Prudential building, so that she could send them to her parents. At night we kissed, shy at first but quickly bold, and discovered pleasure and solace in each other's arms. I told her about my voyage on SS Roma, and about Finsbury Park and YMCA, and my evenings on the bench with Mrs. Croft. When I told her stories about my mother, she wept. It was Mala who consoled me when, reading the Globe one evening, I came across Mrs. Croft's obituary. I had not thought of her in several months -by then those six weeks of the summer were already a remote interlude in my past-but when I learned of her death I was stricken, so much so that when Mala looked up from her knitting she found me staring at the wall, the newspaper neglected in my lap, unable to speak. Mrs. Croft's was the first death I mourned in America,, for hers was the first life I had admired; she had left this world at last, ancient and alone, never to return.
As for me, I have not strayed much farther. Mala and I live in a town about twenty miles