yo Manhattan Music Black Water 71 you know that? Docked right by the Intrepid where they take the schogp | a.week ater she stands on the subway platform at Union Square, by children to teach them history. : sbage dump. “Eves there for her flesh, Her sweet, stirring blessedness. © ghostly flesh of my black mothers, crying in me I stuck the bit from that book in my dress. At the abortion clinic | fey. up the dress, [took i off. hung iton a hook [A andhya, so thin and gaunt, walking by the pier, her face in shadow. 1G Who was she with? Her cousin Chandu? I kept apart, hugging my Pep ays later [visited Mama in Gingee, Saw the wasting flesh caught up ashe checked robe Alma had sent. What passed through Mama's head no vould tell. She didn’t know my name anymore, the name she had cho- vn for me, Papa had confided in a fierce moment. = she wanted you to be named after the woman in the story your grand: er told her about. The one who had five husbands and triumphed er so many ills: Draupadi. She survived a battlefield too.” ON pe paused, my papa, his sense of history shot through with the terrors ‘ofa time before his own imagination sprang into being, "Draupadi loosed her hairto the wind, did you know? Divine winds that the Mongol fleet as they tried to attack Japan. Blew them right out of the water, destroyed them. The ‘kamikaze winds’ they called them.” He spoke as if Kurukshetra were everywhere “You thought kamikaze had to do with suicide fighter pilots in World Wor?” nodded, proud of the knowledge he had packed into hishead, carting “he remains of the day from Dinkins’ Soda Shop, his Japanese-American tage, ashe put itso proudly, via the pineapple fields of Hawaii, the in rament camps of Arizona, something he was not willing to let go of. To have America atthe heart, that is what he did, my papa, the red and white blue of it, banners spangled with stars, blown into his head. | Thad thought of Papa that hot afternoon when I stood facing Rinaldo. fe were in my room, Rinaldo was naked, arms crossed. The taut energy bf his body after making love vitalized my sight. I simmered in the after uth of his arms and thought, yes, this is what I need to carry back into “he street, into the street across which the garbage lies piled up. At that, a hought of Papa crept into me “Teannot bear it,” I whispered. Rinaldohhad to move closer to me, to hear. | "What it, Dotti” | Ido notremember anymore what I said. Afterall, [had notsaid Papa's ‘Amor, amor, she cried, and all that. Swallowing her sobs. felt nothing. I swear I felt nothing. Let our bodies be our playgrounds, You said that to me, two weeks bef T could tell you about our child. You chucked me under my chin. [, you said, ‘A child needs a home, Dotti. Ihave no home for you.” I hung my dress with the bitof paper in iton a hookin the changing room Wanted to hold the paper in my hand, No, dearie, no, they said. No, no. Saw the metal bucket at the foot of the bed. Metal lined with plastic the color of a cloud over the Hudson, R, can you hear? I felt nothing. ‘They tied my legs. Parted my sweet soft center. Slide, down, slide down, dearie. Lower, lower. Put out his hands with the rubber gloves, slid them in, You'll fll asleep. I promise. Slid the skin-thin gloves, up, up as the barbiturates strummed, Of course, it was my choice. Later I recovered my dress Hove you, you said, long distance from Sao Paulo, Dotti darling, poor Draupadi Your Draupadi beats her head in the metal chamber of the new subwi cat imported from Japan. Against the shining metal she beats her hes over and over again, A stick-thin figure racing from the exit signs. She claps her face against the sign that says: EMERGENCY EVACUATION (CEDURES. LAS VIAS DEL. TREN SON PELIGROSAS.2 Manhattan Music name to him, nor mentioned what passed through my head. But ‘ment remained. Rinaldo’s nakedness by the window, a flag flying pier outside for some festival or another, and my father’s face up clg he told me about the kamikaze winds, his mouth trembling, handgiy with the bits of paper torn up, yellow ribbons, torn-up streame Lupos had scattered by the tll in the Soda Shop. A gesture of disdain 4 ‘winds of Gingee picked up those scraps and blew them gently into, ther’s face. Years later I found out about Draupadi's revenge. How she ba the blood of the man who dis od her court of, Her long black hair scratched the ice of the Himalayas. Draupadi o Duryodhana’s chest with her nails, washing her hair in his tib ca looks down from the sun, wept for her, the roots of Draupadi’shairlet blackness drain out of them, little drops of darkness staining the soi, pling the tongues of the tiger lilies that grew in the Vindhya mountai Overnighther hair turned white, pure white hair against her dark, drawing men from far regions, men who had heard the cries of a de woman in their dreams: “When he threw me down, like a pawn, right had he? Was he slave, or was he free?” “And Duryodhana, what i had you to strip me?” These cries she set to music, songs of her exile. she turned away from them all, her five husbands, too. It's hard to know what to do with the aftermath of anger, Did the winds from the mountains blow her hair, making it rise Ii wild blossom, each petal trapping sunlight, a bristling remembran Or, as others say, did blood flow from the tips of her hair into, water for forty days? Was she born again, a girl-child, and did parrots the Vindhya mountains flock to her arms, perch in her soft hair? Mi heart started to beat hard. A double beat, as if there were us there, inside me, all over again, And one of us so shadowy. it Mama and me? Or that little shadow, still inside? I was glad, 50 gl when Jay came by. I spoke about Mama, her heavy breathing, [told Hl about the abortion. Had he guessed already? ] “Lthink you'd better let go of Rinaldo,” he said. “Why?” "You have to live your own life, Draupadi, breathe again. Aren't the gal who was into the performance thing?” Black Water 33 wea wry smile as [ got up nervously. I picked up the coil of rope ‘for an installation and setit away. | wondered what had come ‘Couldn't he tell how hard things were for me? y night Ihad a dream. Rinaldo and | were near Café Lalo, its wooden Mesticking out of the red brick. He had his overcoat open and an old flapped around the neck, He raced roward me, then dissolved a the ‘of sunshine. mepothes dream there was a gull in the air between us, poised by the ce to the Children’s Museum. And above the gull, a shadow tower: Ido was older, less hair on his head, overcoat so shabby. ling made a vertigo of lips, arms, thighs. Over again, as if there ife only in repetition, we raced to each other. Rinaldo was so thin Tcould see his bones. How quiet I kept. ido, Tam holding you inside me, trembling as I stare into dark river | What I see close to the bridge is water in which my namesake hed her face, her hands, her bloodied hair. After her exile. Ido, it comes to me how we stood together in a room, you behind Froldiing white cloth across me, a shirt or undershirt, something white ex was covered, I stood in front, my body shielding chest where the gray had started to sprout. I turned and we looked other's eyes as if for the first time. -wasa lull in the traffic outside, Manhattan, placid for once. Then xt who has an office across from your bedroom dropped his files sd for his assistant and that alien voice, querulous, broke in as we ‘aware suddenly of nakedness. Two morsels of flesh, born of such snt mothers, yet held now in the space of a heartbeat. How could | lf from you? Wve walked down Sixth Avenue and I told you I was leaving, It was ly quiet, a few elms swaying, a few trucks and buses, a movie theater ving a Buster Keaton movie with piano music drifing out to the We walked as if we were glued to each other, wobbling a little like te faced comic, his hat askew. Coming on a triangular wedge of land ‘wider than the two of us, I stopped short. brick wall in front of us, chin-high: the second cemetery of the th and Portuguese Synagogue. Lack of space moved them, those fy Jevis in the new world, to another allotment for the dead. Your mother might have been among them, that old lady you never saw, fotions rimmed in black lace in your memory, her pain fantailed in14 Manhattan Music your mother’s Genoese heart. As we stood awkwardly side by side, thought I saw her laid out on the stunted stones that marked out the spaces for the dead. [felt my flesh flowing into hers. Saw you standing there, in the sudden, light from the stiff grass by the yew tree. I was tiny, hard, I had a body, Wings blossomed on my gray body. I was a pigeon from Genoa, Gangot, Jerusalem, perched on your arm. I was a pigeon hung in the window, a¢ ‘we stood naked facing the glass. Iwas sheer delight, lift of thigh, liquid sweetness of an armpit raised for the lover's lips, freed from gravity that tamps in the gravestones, pours light onto the stone wall of the cemetery. I was freed of time that makes you twenty-odd years older than me, gives you a thickening belly, chest sptin. kkled with gray hair, balding head, makes you lever me down, down into my own exiled territories. Wanting it all. Is this what love is? ‘You did not have your wedding ring on your finger. I felt the bareness on your finger, no gold there. We both knew you could never leave her. You knew what I could nor, the certitude of sorrow, the burden of at tachment. All could hear in my head was the boatman crying “Cross, cross the black river, before the water rises.” ‘The body forces itself into a metal-bottomed boat and eyes stare out at the bushes packed with birds and wild beasts all silent. You stood next to me, thigh pressed to shoulder, our bodies packed against the wooden gate behind which the gravestones lay. The sunlight had dissolved. [do not know where your voice came from in that grayness: “You want to be a wife.” “Yes.” “Sorrow, my sorrow,” you whispered [felt your breath on my rib cage as you bent. There was something in your face I could not decipher, a taut argentine light, as if one of those bushes in the underworld were leaking into your flesh, transforming your flesh and bone into metallic substance. Later I felt asif you were looking into the face of your dead mother. That looking at me you were gazing into the eyes of our unborn child. How sofily the leaves turned, on the elms at the edge of the second Spanish-Portuguese cemetery. R inaldo, I am in my old posture now. My belly empty, tight. I have stopped nibbling at the mound of peanuts I bought the other day. I am standing with my back to my half-finished installation. Black Water 95 You come out of the bathroom in your black-and-white robe. ‘fichnic cleansing,” you say, raising your coffee mug. Your hair is wet against your head. “Dotti, where will people like us be cleansed to?” The great Hudson River,” I reply. “It is my river now, darling, you now that. [can always throw myself into it.” ‘After you leave, I pick up torn threads from Mama's silk dress and wind hem around my litte fingers. I run my fingers through my dresser drawer jand the silkcatches on the hooks of my bra, on the sharp bits on my silver ppangles, on the teeth of the tortoiseshell comb Elly gave me in school in _ Gingee. all those years ago. “You want to be a wife,” you said before you left. “Why? Why? “after all, Pocahontas martied too. Dofia Marina did the best she could.” "Sorrow, my sorrow,” you whispered in my head. Later I said to myself: Elegy doesn’t become you, gal. You should have hustled him out, set out the three black barrows they need for the perfor- mance at the South Street Seaport, where you shall become the ancient ‘Draupadi in the midst of the new world Columbus sought. You will trun- dle the black barrows crying: “Ahoy. Nifia, Santa Maria, Pinta, three ships avsailing,” ‘The three barrows are propped up against the wall as well as the black scarf I'll toss over my own head as I push them. I shall push them through South Street Seaport for the Diwali celebrations. Marry the two earths. Make myself whole,Tuning 7 sith hole for an entrance. She would have curled there in the dark with per father's body. ‘When Sandhya called home a whole day later, her mother told her that una had refused to go to the funeral, shutting herself up in her room, Jpriting poems she said crows were dictating to her, ‘Then she read me something from the Bible,” Sosa told her oldest javghter, “and ina way it comforted me. satin the armchair your father "sed to Stn, listening to her.” “what was it?” “apparently she gor it from some magazine she received, But it was a _piblical line. ‘And in her soft, mellifluous voice, Sosa intoned the lines Nunu had © read out “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the _ ft eath were passed away.” “shh,” Sandhya sat up very straight. “Nunu read that?” | “She had it by heart, you know, and there’s another line too: And there suas no more sea. And the sea shall cease.”” “Oh Amma,” Sandhya said, “if only there were no sea. I would pick up ‘Dora in ny arms and come right over to you. | ‘That night she dreamed that she was in the garden of her childhood. Rashid was an angel, he was flying to her. And she knew he would come © pefore itall ended. She could feel his wings brushing her face. “The sea shall cease,” he whispered in her ear soflly as he crouched by “her. Andshe, hearing her father callin the distance, sat quietly inthe shade of the gooseberry tree. Ever so lightly she passed her hands over Rashid’s black hair. His hair was moist. “All chavs left of the sea,” she murmured, “is your damp hair.” And in the dream she felt the sweat of her palm fuse her flesh to his. Turning Varki died quite peacefully in his sleep, Sosa told her daughter over the phone y He asked for you at evening before he slept. "Wonder how our Sandhya is doing,” he said.” And Sosa’s voice trembled. ‘No, my dear, no need to come forthe funeral. I’sall prepared. We live § ina hot country, you know. We'll take the road by the river. Your father loved that road. We'll get to the churchyard from the back ‘The calm in her mother’s voice worked into her. She moved about the kitchen, hands poised over bread and butter and new potatoes, over the coriander she had bought in the open market. She must cook, she thought, what else could she do? Later, much later, she would call up Jay and Sakhi as she had promised her mother. Now she would stand there, musing on that road by the river where they would carry him. ‘The phone rang again, shattering her thoughts. She was tempted not to pick it up, but forced herself to touch the receiver: It was Nunu. Sandhya sat hard on the metal stool, listening, On and on her sister's voice flowed, a full complaint. They had already dug a hole in the chusch- yard for their father. Bhaskaran had told her, And did Sandhya know that there was another eruption of black snails, all over the orchids? Then = Nunu started weeping, and it was the most that Sandhya could do to hold tight to the telephone and not hang up. Why not give their father into het arms to hold forever, Nunu cried. “The body will stink,” Ayah said. People who die stink.” “Oh Nunu,” Sandhya whispered, but her sister wasn't listening, She would have taken their father in her arms, Nunu swore, if they hadn't stopped her. Dug.a pit next to the chicken coop, A mound of earth OK June stood in her grandfather's study, her face pressed against the bars of the window. Through the mass of mango leaf and twig § flickering in twilight she saw the barbed wire fence and then the road, On the road dogs were barking, She heard the sharp whistle of the F tain that came over Ashtamudi Lake where the accident happened, an | entire train fallen in. No one knew why. The bridge was damaged and ‘could not be used for many months. Whole carriages lay rusting in water “ill they were finaly fished out. Nunu imagined herself underwater, swim- Thing into a carriage, hooking her fingers into the metal bars. Someone98 Manhattan Music Taming 99 again, it was lost finally in the earth. Nunu felr che wind tugging atthe ee nd let it blow free SFyat evening when the sun made a red glow behind the haystack and dogs started their highpitched barking, Nunu held up a piece of “_ She unfolded it carefully and noted the reddish glow it took on in sit, There was enough light for her to sit under the mango tree and ed che note from her new friend, Dr. Pirabhakaran, "Read Revelations,” Br nseledthe reverend. “A book that tells of a new heaven and earth ought be the favorite book of any self-respecting Christian.” ‘The phrase “fa- apie book” had a nice ring. It was the sort of phrase Nun had heard in Sc convent of Jesus and Mary in the Nilgiris, She could have stayed on prever wit the breakfasts and lunches and dinners all laid out at the tin- gof a ell, life harnessed to birdcalls. Oh, the cries of calling birds that filed ber eats, then as now, and left her little else to do. Just listen to those bes, write it all down, in a language no one else can understand, The lan- guage of the new world. © Only her father on his sickbed had smiled at her, so gently, when she showed bim the poems she had written about birdcalls. And now he too should fish her out, she thought, drag her if necessary, out of this into which she had fallen, This house made her helpless. She touched cheeks to the metal bars on the window, leaned her elbow on the 4 dowsill. She was a child again, racing through the compound, feet cut with brambles by the mango tree. Tall as the window ledge in her grang thers study, she could see all the way in. The room was empty excepe the pile of books on the shelves against the wall, the rosewood desk papers. She turned suddenly, on tiptoes, and caught sight of two oj crouched by the granary, examining themselves, Sandhya had her skirt pulled up high over her knees, Nimmi was thinner, taller, with braids pinned back over her broad forehead. The child Nunu squatted the mulberry tree and stared hard. Nimmi had her hand under Sandhyge skirt, Nunu pushed a mulberry leaf off her eyelid, Her sister Sand eyes were shut. There was sunlight on her face, though the rest of he body was in the shade. She seemed to be smiling alittle, The bodies of two girls were folded into each other. Nunu tore off the top of a mulbes leaf She rolled it between her fingers. She kept very quiet. Later when she saw her sister and Nimmi going to the river, Nunu fe into a storm no one could save her from, She raced into the chicken coop, picked up pellets of mud and chicken droppings, flung them at the house She made low, growly noises in her throat that scared the hens, then ra around, lapping her thin arms like a make-believe rooster. yeas gone. © She clutched the paper from the Reverend Doctor. Right at the top was crawled his favorite passage from Revelations: “and I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away. *Whatdid that mean?” Nunu did not know. Nor did she know who she might ask, She picked p the book that lay on the floor. She did not know who had sent it to her. lert on Red, it said, on the cover in white letters, surrounded by spiky Black signs. The book told of dangers that faced the world. Men who were angerous: Saddam Hussein, Nunu read the name out loud. There was ‘nothing much Nunu could tell about him except that he was president of rag. She didn’t know anyone from Iraq, but it was not too far from India. “Nun, Nunu!” her mother cried in alarm, but Nunu did nor stop. So she had seen Sandhya there, with another girl touching her flesh. Nunu pressed her face tighter against the bars. She should have to the river all those years ago with her sister. Splashed around in the cad water with her. Chased the golden fishes through the spray: But Sandhya had never paid heed to her. Now all she did was send postcands with pi tures of the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty. The backs of the cards were filled with silly little details of what Dora was doing, ‘Nunu had burned two or three of the postcards in a wood heap at the 1 back of the kitchen. She scooped up the mess of ash from the American [sad war would come, the very last | Otherstoo, in hiding, smaller devils, itsaid, making bombs. Men come om Sudan and Egypt making up bombs with fertilizer, rat poison, a real into the roots of the plant, picked it up and shook it free. Dull red with itches’ brew. Men hiding the canisters in little holes in the ground, get- igready to blow up America, All Christians must check themselves, be been used to wipe up chicken droppings or fish blood. Washed out agaili [on the alert. When Nunu had tried to explain all this to her big sister,$0 Manhattan Music Turning 388 Fi confound the viewer, to make one stop and think how hardit sto ®jnen the brush has no place on the dresser, the string of beads will fain the small wooden box, the apple lying inthe comer will not be iijup and rinsed. And she who inhabited that room, glimpsed as a . in the painting, weakened beyond belief, turning toward the Hee to let the dailiness of things stream into her, the black pot she had ped and set aside a whole week ago, the sink, the white metal table, SF yedow of her husband, laughing, tossing back his handsome blond 3 pis arm around her shoulders, their child in his arms, Later that af Bon, watching Stephen with the child, Sandhya felt relief, enormous, i flood her. It was asif a burden of ugly parakeets borne on her shoul: ‘each bird crying out its gabble, had dropped off i was a shock then that night to feel she needed to hear Rashid’s voice fel her body folding itself to a hand that caressed, gently, her pu Mpa the rough spot on her inner thigh, She rolled over, away from Spheo, imagining what it would be like if Rashid were with her, laying Sandhya had run away, all the way down the road to the Mission iy where their father lay on a bed. Why? Why didn’t Sandhya ever ister ‘Nuno felt her eyelids close with exhaustion. She would have to ag ‘yy lived in New York, he knew the Empire State Building. Once he sent her a postcard with a picture of a tall building with a red, white blue spire pointing high into the darkness of the sky. That one she j saved. Softly, she started crying, She wished Jay would come soon, bef itall ended. She could almost feel his wings knotted with leather st smelling of dead flesh, Abit like the smell of the cloth she had found um the mulberry roots. She shook her hair offher mouth. If only Jay come soon, She would sit by him brushing the doll’s hair. Berget, blonde one, he had sent from Berlin, She could feel the brown wrappi ‘under her fingers as the postman handed over the package. She was side in the garden when she ripped off the paper and stared astound the brilliant mess of Berget’s hair, white blonde like she had never se fore. What would itbe like if each strand of hair were set on fre? I cam to her with a slight jarring sensation: “A new heaven and earth!” Berg could help her reach the new heaven, the fiery new earth the reverend spoken of fbocy on hers so that the rolling lilt of flesh made itself felt ina pressure sebuilt up to a delicious concordance, a burden that thrust her lungs flat ye was forced to hold her breath and finally cry, “Off, off with you, fat g;” And rolling over he would laugh, dip his head between her breasts. shut her eyes, nuzzled against the gentleness of Stephen's arm, and lay ting for the light to break on the street, for the lamppost to clarify its bite light dissolving into the greater radiance of the sun. "At times she puzzled over why Rashid’s hands, his thighs, should pull pr away from Stephen. “Be absolute for love.” She had read that some- there. Why could she not love two men? The story of Draupadi of the fhabharata, who had five husbands and loved them all, came back to her, Sandhya could not hold on to the image. The Pandavas seemed too , too clumsy in their ancient lineaments to come any closer, the here was he now? It hurt her head even to think. Time and, Sandhya picked up the phone, only to let it drop with a when she reached the answering machine. Where was he? Finally, late o morning, someone picked up. Butit was a woman's voice at the other Draupadi?” Sandhya asked, almost not daring to breathe. 4 It’s Zeinab,” the voice said clearly, "I'm Rashid’s cousin. Can 1h you? ‘Then came days when Sandhya lay on her bed hardly daring to mov and Stephen, kindly to the last, took care of the child and brought his oatmeal in bed, with cinnamon on top according to his grandmoth a recipe. Sandhya took a few steps, sat on a chair in the li er rel feelings had been, confronted with all five of them? Perhaps the looked out at the blue awnings of the restaurant where in better tin ghis they afforded her and demands they made were too distinct, too pet. | When she was a child, her father had told her a story: Draupadi turn: to Bhima, the club-wielding husband, begging him for a flower that ted her: fall into her life, as light into a room so disorderly that the coordinates “Even when I walked the burning coals, the fragrance of that flower the brownstone where [ay lived. She wished jay could be by her, filling with news of Tiruvella, Poonthera, Ayodhya, the world he was caught182 Manhattan Muse grance bright as the sky high above the Nilgiis.” Slow listening ty father’s imagined voice, haunted by a mythic Draupadi, heroine off many worlds, Sandhya fell asleep. | Bur as the days went by, her confusion intensified and she found qs was having a hard time breathing, When the phone rang she started. g's it was never Rashid who called. The sound of the keys inthe lock ma her tremble, When half-asleep she put out her arm to Stephen, to to, the coolness of his skin, it was as if an iron hook prevented her fingers poised over his naked neck, clenched, and withdrew, Ie wasnot the memory of Rashid that did it his ips on her breasts, way he parted her thighs with his hands. His hands in her dreams small, tender. It was something behind the sensual memory. Her toy licked steel. If she resisted—and she knew she never would—somethy would surely pull her back, hold her down as surely as the sandsto blocks at the mouth of the pyramid of Giza held down the earth, tamp itin Tr was not memory, but rather a force that sprang out of it and took root in her flesh, an absolute property, bare, anonymous, that seemed tg say: 4 “Look, this is all there is, this clasp, this iron hold. And you cannot es. cape even if you leap into the mouth of the cooking pot, drop through the eye of the needle.” She put out her hand to Stephen's neck, but the fragile happiness that seemed within her reach grew brittle, turned into a metallic thing that wove water out of rocks and made it taste of burnt blood. Next morning she felt as if carcasses of animals lay in the acres of sorghum she knew from her childhood. And all of Broadway seemed deathly still. Az wind was blowing through Jay's hair, even his skin seemed | caught up in the wind. He had no words left. His uncle was dead and Sandhya seemed to be taking it so calmly, no storms of teats, no scenes, Pethaps it was all spent in her. And her affair with Rashid? ‘The two men had a drink at the West End Café and Rashid confessed to Jay that he felt quite out of his depth. Yes, Hloved her,” he said, his fingers tightening over the beer glass. The drops of moisture clung to his skin. Jay noticed that the past tense slipped 0 easily out of Rashid’s mouth. So it was over, was it? Or was Sandhya getting too clingy in her need? Jay felt hot in his sudden confusion. How self: Turning 183 he possibly mediate between those two? In any ease, there was Mon aed the smal chil Fu know about her father’s death?” Jay asked softly you told me. I did try to cal.” Se Sot emed ata loss for words. He fumbled in his shir pocket and pasa cny black doll its feet bound with crimson thread, M fe brought me this,” he sid, “the las time we saw each other. * ared at the doll, propped against the wine liston their table. ts eyes _ gan shining bits of black painted on wit the tip of a brush, He no: the strands of hai, made of thread, hastily stuck on by the looks of se whole thing had a crude air about it Jay sensed it was one of the Ave bad seen on Sandhya’s fridge that afternoon he visited her and ched ito the tale of Uncle Ity. What had come over him, making up oe prvative? Rashid was staring athim, and Jay needed to say something, apes she's a sensitive soul,” he murmured, looking away from Rashid. | iis friend stared back at jay. "She gave me the doll. She said she wanted ive with me. Be with me.” ui Fs yoice was harsher han e meant bat iewasa shock to hs system to hear this, An affair was one thing, but to go that far? What cd yousay | coulén't doit. [told her Rashid sank back on his seat and mopped his face. | “Tsimply cant, I said to her. She was puzzled, mad. t's because I'm. artied, im't it” And then I shook my head.” Me aysatin silence, stening, Obviously Rashid wanted to unburden him- ‘with anyone just now: "Ttold her no. Not just that, I don’t want to live with any Rashid leaned his chin on his elbow, picked up the doll, and placed it gently back in his shirt pocket. Looked straight at Jay: “You know some- © thing, old chap? I don’t think she believed me.” “Probably not,” Jay responded. iui he kos His cousin Sandhya Rosenblum had her back to the wal. What would she do now? There was no way she could turn back the clock, return to Hyderabad. Would she even want that? How hhappy she had seemed those first weeks with Rosenblum. What had gone ron his way back to his brownstone, the wind rose. Jay stepped over a pile of leaves the wind had blown to the side of the bus shelter. Old mem-84 Manhattan Music Turning 185 spt an upper-class Muslim, perhaps even a member of the extended Gy ofthe nawab, The young mal as dragged out by his hair and sed repeatedly. The rickshaw walla escaped to tell the tale bripen they troupes ou from the palace with car ‘and burial gown, they Vt ghe body lying on a pile of broken bricks, at the edge of the em: ine xhmed's head ung, grazing the surface of water. They lifted Sp. and sunlight reflected off his open ees His face was still beauti- Be feemingly untouched by blows that had disfigured the back of his vad, crushed the muscles of the throat, ai fase when he heard of Ahmed's death, it was difficult for Jay 10 Houch the mess of rage inside him, He felt as if his own bones were smol bt ngin te terible light that shone out of ‘Ahmed's dead eyes. A servant joid him the story’ saab, when we lifted him out ‘the old man had shut his own ey saab, two suns burning. ories stirred in him. Gautam’s eyes, his face, and another face distinct, He thought he saw Ahmed’s eyes, but shook off ae