The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai [46]
“More tribes, more tribes. I wake up, go to the window, and there—MORE TRIBES. Every time I look—ANOTHER TRIBE. Everybody saying,’Oh, no visas anymore, they are getting very strict, it so hard,’ and in the meantime everybody who apply, EVERYBODY is getting a visa. Why they do this to me? That American Embassy in Dar—WHY??!! Nobody would give that Dooli a visa. Nobody. One look and you would say OK, something wrong here—but they give it to him!”
Saeed cooked cow peas and kingfish from the Price Chopper to cheer himself up, and plantains in sugar and coconut milk. This goo mixture smelling of hope so ripe he slathered on French bread and offered to the others.
______
The sweetest fruit in all of Stone Town grew in the graveyard, and the finest bananas grew from the grandfather’s grave of that same wayward Dooli whom the American Embassy in Dar es Salaam had so severely misjudged as to give him a visa—so Saeed was telling them when he glanced out of the window—
And in a second he was under the counter.
“Oh myeeee God!” Whispering. “Tribes, man, it’s the tribes. Please God. Tell them I don’t work here. How they get this address! My mother! I told her, ‘No more!’ Please! Omar, Go! Go! Go tell them to leave.”
Outside the bakery stood a group of men, looking weary as if they’d been traveling several lifetimes, scratching their heads and staring at the Queen of Tarts.
“Why do you help?” asked Omar. “I stopped helping and now they all know I won’t help and nobody comes to me.”
“This is not the time to give a lecture.”
Omar went out. “Who? Saaeed? No, no. What name? Soyad? No, no one of that name. Just me, Kavafya, and Biju.”
“But he work here. His mother tell us.”
“No. No. You all get moving. Nobody here who you want to see and if you make trouble WE get into trouble so now I ask you nicely, GO.”
______
“Very good,” said Saeed, “thank you. They have gone?”
“No.”
“What are they doing?”
“They are still standing and looking,” said Biju feeling brave and excited by someone else’s misfortune. He was almost hopping.
The men were shaking their heads unwilling to believe what they’d heard.
Biju went out and came back in. “They say they will try your home address now.” He felt a measure of pride in delivering this vital news. Realized he missed playing this sort of role that was common in India. One’s involvement in other peoples’ lives gave one numerous small opportunities for importance.
“They will come back. I know them. They will try many more times, or one will stay and the others will go. Close the door, close the window….”
“We can’t close the shop. Too hot, can’t close the window.”
“Close it!”
“No. What if Mr. Bocher visit us?” He was the owner who dropped by at odd moments hoping to surprise them doing something against the rules.
“No sweati, bossi,” Saeed would tell him. “We do everything you tell us just like you tell us….”
But now….
“It’s my life we’re talking about, man, not little hot here and little hot there, boss or no boss….”
They closed the window and the door, and from the floor he telephoned his apartment. “Hey Ahmed, don’t answer the phone, man, that Dooli and all them boys have come from the airport! Lock up, stay down, don’t stand, and don’t go near the window.”
“Hah! Why they give them a visa? How they buy the ticket!” They could hear the voice at the other end. Then it vanished into Swahili in a potent dungform, a rich, steaming animal evacuation.
______
The phone rang in the bakery.
“Don’t answer,” he said to Biju who was reaching for it.
When the answering machine came on, it went off.
“The tribes! They always scared of the answering machine!”
It rang again and then again. Tring tring tring tring. Answering machine. Phone down.
Again: tring tring.
“Saeed, you have to talk to them.” Biju’s heart was suddenly pulsing with the anguish of the ringing. It could