Miss New India - Bharati Mukherjee [77]
Fortunately Peter backed off. "I am happy to be corrected." He glanced at his watch, which prompted Asoke to ask, "Taxi, sahib?" On the rare occasion that a Bagehot House boarder required a taxi, Asoke had a squatter flag one down from an intersection three blocks away. It meant a tip for the squatter, and probably a cut of that tip for Asoke.
"Auto-rickshaw. I'll tell you when." Peter rose from the table. "Asoke, two teas in my room. Do you mind, Angie?"
Asoke was aghast. "This papaya not tasty, sahib?"
"Sahib?" Elegant Husseina let out a scornful snort. "Did this pathetic old man really use that word?"
"Lost my appetite, that's all." Peter helped Anjali out of her chair.
Eager to hear more about Mr. GG, Anjali scrambled out of the dining room ahead of Peter.
"Do you WRITE regularly to your sister?"
It was the first thing Peter said after Asoke had served them tea and left them alone in the cavernous, underfurnished guest bedroom, pulling the heavy door closed behind him. Just banal chatter to put himself at ease, Anjali decided. They sat, Anjali in the only armchair and Peter on the bed, with a low, wide table between them. Peter had stripped the mattress of sheets as though cleaning up was his job and not Asoke's. No need to bristle at him for asking after Sonali-di and accidentally reviving the raw pain of her final night in Patna. She would guide Peter back to the subject of Mr. GG. She needed to make efficient use of the fifteen or twenty minutes Peter had reserved to say goodbye to her in private. "I used to," she said. "I visited her the day I left," she said, turning on her practiced smile. "We are back-ing and forth-ing quite a bit by letter."
"Angie, Angie, don't lie to me."
What was the point of exchanging letters if the sisters couldn't get beyond polite, perfunctory formalities? "All right. If you want to know the truth, she thinks I'm selfish. She doesn't approve of my having left home."
Peter's packed duffel bag and bulging book tote lay on the floor just inside the door, ready for him to carry out to the auto-rickshaw. His multipocketed, handloom cotton vest, convenient for stowing airline tickets and wallet, was laid out at the foot of the bare mattress. She wouldn't allow flashbacks of her quarrel with Sonali-di to beat back fantasies of her future with Mr. GG. She wanted to gush to Peter about love, not family. "How is Ali?" He would want to talk about Ali just as much as she wanted to speak of Mr. GG. She checked his face for an automatic softening. But he stared at her as though she had punched him. She lowered her gaze to his lips, which pursed and parted a couple of times. He seemed on the verge of a profound confession or a disturbing confidence.
"I have very sad, very important news for you," he said. He reached for his vest, extracted a newspaper clipping from the breastpocket sewn into the lining to safeguard cash, and held it out to her. "This is the reason I came.
She recognized a smudged face in the tiny photo in the clipping from The Gauripur Standard: Baba's studio matrimonial portrait. A beadyeyed, mustached young man doing his best to project confidence and purpose. She had seen the original in the family album, which was stored, swaddled in a woolen shawl, in Ma's dowry trunk. Ma was proud of that photo. Anjali and Sonali had caught her taking the album out of the trunk and surreptitiously flipping it open to Baba's studio portrait on several Sunday afternoons while Baba slept off the heavy Sunday lunch of mutton curry. Ma, Anjali realized, was in love with the man she had conjured from that photo, but not with the obsequious Indian Railways bureaucrat her parents had forced her to marry. Ma had nagged Baba constantly. In Gauripur, Anjali had dismissed that nagging as white noise and paid no attention to Ma's words. The Ma who had brought her up must have been a bitter woman. Anjali tried to visualize Ma as a dreamy teenage bride-to-be, swooning over the youthful face in Baba's posed studio