The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai [87]
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The man with the hubshi story of murder—he was sent to the window of the hubshi. Hubshi hubshi bandar bandar, trying to do some quick thinking—oh no, normal Indian prejudice would not work here, distaste and rudeness—story falling to pieces in his head.
“Mexican, say Mexican,” hissed someone else.
“Mexican?”
He arrived at the window, retreating under threat, to his best behavior. “Good morning, ma’am.” (Better not make that hubshi angry, yaar—so much he wished to immigrate to the U.S. of A., he could even be polite to black people.) “Yes ma’am, something like this, Mexican-Texican, I don’t know exactly,” he said to the woman who pinned him with a lepi-dopterist’s gaze. (Mexican-Texican??) “I don’t know, madam,” squirming, “something or the other like this my brother was saying, but he is so upset, you know, don’t want to ask all the details.”
“No, we cannot give you a visa.”
“Why ma’am, please ma’am, I already have bought the ticket ma’am….”
And those who waited for visas who had spacious homes, ease-filled lives, jeans, English, driver-driven cars waiting outside to convey them back to shady streets, and cooks missing their naps to wait late with lunch (something light—cheese macaroni…), all this time they had been trying to separate themselves from the vast shabby crowd. By their manner, dress, and accent, they tried to convey to the officials that they were a pre-selected, numerically restricted, perfect-for-foreign-travel group, skilled in the use of knife and fork, no loud burping, no getting up on the toilet seat to squat as many of the village women were doing at just this moment never having seen the sight of such a toilet before, pouring water from on high to clean their bottoms and flooding the floor with bits of soggy shit.
“I have been abroad before and I have always returned. You can see from my passport.” England. Switzerland. America. Even New Zealand. Looking forward, when in New York, to the latest movie, to pizza, to Californian wine, also Chilean—very good, you know, and reasonably priced. If you were lucky already you would be lucky again.
Biju approached his assigned window that framed a clean young man with glasses. White people looked clean because they were whiter; the darker you were, Biju thought, the dirtier you looked.
“Why are you going?”
“I would like to go as a tourist.”
“How do we know you will come back?”
“My family, wife, and son are here. And my shop.”
“What shop?”
“Camera shop.” Could the man really believe this?
“Where are you going to stay?”
“With my friend in New York. Nandu is his name and here is his address if you would like to see.”
“How long?”
“Two weeks, if that is suitable to you.” (Oh, please, just a day, a day. That will be enough to serve my purpose….)
“Do you have funds to cover your trip?”
He showed a fake bank statement procured by the cook from a corrupt state bank clerk in exchange for two bottles of Black Label.
“Pay at the window around the corner and you can collect your visa after five P.M.”
How could this be?
A man he had spoken to, still in the line behind him, called out in a piercing tone:
“Were you successful, Biju? Biju, were you successful? Biju? Biju!”In that passionate peacock cry, Biju felt this man was willing to die for him, but his desperation was for himself, of course.
“Yes, I was successful.”
“You are the luckiest boy in the whole world,” the man said.
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The luckiest boy in the whole world. He walked through a park to luxuriate in the news alone. Raw sewage was being used to water a patch of grass that was lush and stinking, grinning brilliantly in the dusk. Out of the sewage Biju chased a line of pigs with black watermarks across their bellies, ran after them in jubilation. “Hup hup,” he shouted. The crows that had been sitting on the pigs’ backs scrambled into indignant flight, having to start up backward.