He was the first to mention splitting up. He told her in a cowardly way: “Maybe just spend a little time apart.” But she could see he meant divorce, because the same thought was lurking in her own mind. She’d said, “My mother will be so angry. She said I wouldn’t be able to do it—that I was too selfish.”
Maureen began to cry, and for the first time, with acute pain, Dwight saw how vulnerable she was. He held her tenderly, he felt protective, he said, “We’ll figure something out,” and he despaired, because it was turning out to be so much harder than he had imagined. Showing her weakness for the first time, the fear that she had expected the marriage to fail, made the breakup a nightmare. Losing her as a wife was painful, but he guessed he’d get over it; losing her as a friend—someone he had pushed overboard when the storm broke over them—that seemed unbearable and something she would never forgive.
Not much remained to divide. They sold the apartment and split the proceeds.
“Short marriages,” Sheely said, “pretty common. Like a chess move. I know three people, not counting you. Couple of months and they’re gonzo. Better now than later. Probably a book on the subject.”
In the melancholy months afterward they still saw each other. They didn’t know anyone else, and their feelings were so raw they didn’t want to make new friends.
Maureen had been depressed by the men she’d met. She had no one else to tell, so she told Dwight. “The first drink is fine. On the second drink I hear about their marriage. How it ended. What a bitch she was. How she took him to the cleaners.”
So, as friends, they dated each other for some months, even recognizing that it was a failure and that they were too timid to enter the wider world and contemplate romance again. Dwight was amazed that after that anyone would take the same risk twice, going through that shredder.
Eventually they disengaged. He was surprised, because at that point he had become comfortable, seeing her on weekends and going to movies. She asked how he was doing. With his new frankness—the divorce had made him blunt—he told her, “This is good. I’m happy.” Maureen said, “It’s not good. I can’t stand this anymore. I don’t want to see you. I’m starting to really dislike you.”
Was it because he was happy again? If so, she succeeded in making him miserable by saying this. That was his reason for saying, “I’m going to India,” in the look-what-you’re-making-me-do tone of voice.
At last he saw his divorce as a triumph. No one else did, which was another reason he was happy to be in India. Perhaps failure was the severest kind of truth. His work was a punishment and a wrecking balclass="underline" he took manufacturing away from American companies and brought it to India. The American manufacturers hated him—and they failed; the Indian companies were cynical, knowing that if they could not produce goods cheaply enough, they would be rejected. Every success meant someone’s failure. He could not take any pride in that process: he was part of it.
The old woman pimping the children to passersby: he recognized himself in her. And in Indru too. Her stories were painful, but the experiences had damaged her so badly, her endearments were meaningless. Yet he belonged with her, not in the Elephanta Suite but in the oddly bare room, a stinky alley outside the window. In that human smell like the odor of sorrow he saw his connection to India.
He stopped blaming Maureen, and he could hardly blame Indru for anything. Human frailty implied human strength. Most of the world is poor and weak, beset by the strong.
A young man with an unpronounceable name began visiting Indru’s apartment; one evening he seemed reluctant to leave. He was from the countryside, he said. Willage. Then he visited more often. But he looked more confident and better dressed than a villager, and he frowned at Indru in a proprietary way. He was sometimes impatient to leave the place with Indru (“Let we go marketing”). He nagged her in their own language, which wasn’t Hindi—Dwight had asked. Indru sometimes replied in English, sulking and saying, “Not chivvy me” or “I fed up!”
“My brother,” she said. She left Dwight in the apartment and went out. He looked out the window and saw them—not holding hands but walking close together, touching shoulders, a kind of intimacy. He was rueful, but it was better to know, and he’d been so hurt by his shattered marriage he had kept from committing himself to her. Giving her money when she said “Ring money gone” was his way of possessing her, since it had more value to her than to him. The Indian deals were making him wealthy.
Dwight was startled one evening when he went to the flat and, before he could turn the key in the lock, the door was opened by a small pretty girl, also in the sort of white dress Indru wore. Why?
“I am work at hair and nail salon.”
Another one, younger than Indru—sixteen? seventeen? who could tell?—who said she was from Indru’s village. Her name was Padmini. She did menial jobs in the two-room apartment in return for a place to sleep. Dwight believed the salon story because her nails were lovely—polished and pointed—and she wore fresh makeup and a hairstyle that always interested him, because unlike most Indian girls, her hair was cut short, boyishly. Dwight remarked on it.
“I bob it,” Padmini said, plumping her lips prettily.
Dwight said, “Is that her brother?”
Padmini joined him at the window, standing close, as Indru and the young man with the unpronounceable name turned the corner toward Chowpatty.
“I am not know, sir.”
She was frightened. “Not know” meant she knew, and that the answer was yes, or else she would have said no, because as a villager, she too was a relative.
Dwight smiled. She was slow to smile back, yet she did so. He gave her to understand that they were conspirators, both being manipulated by Indru. He thought of kissing her, as a test, but didn’t—they seemed to resist that. Was it his breath? But she let him hold her loosely, allowing him to grope. His touching Padmini quieted her; with his hands on her, she stayed still and seemed to purr, like a cat being belly-scratched.
He knew that, had he wished, he could have gone further—and Indru must have guessed at the situation she had created by inviting Padmini to stay, by leaving Dwight and the girl alone in the place. Indru was worldlier than she let on—they all were; they had to be to survive.
And he had become reckless. More than that, he was debauched—the word that had seemed like hyperbole before was appropriate now. He had never known such sexual freedom, had not realized that it was in him to behave like this. It was India, he told himself; he would not have lived like this back in the States. All he had to do was leave India and he would be returned to the person he’d been before—forty-something, oblique in business deals, cautious with women, cynical of their motives, not looking for a wife, still smarting from his divorce, even a bit shy, and, like many shy men, prone to laughing too loudly and making sudden gauche remarks, of which “You bet your sweet ass” was one.
His sexual experiences in India had opened his eyes and given him insights. The world looked different to him. That business about “my brother” had not fooled him, nor had it discouraged him. It gave him another opportunity, for the next time the brother appeared and took Indru away on some obscure errand, Dwight beckoned to Padmini and drew her down to the charpoy.
“No,” she said, and when he began to tug at her clothes—the white dress she wore for work at the nail salon—she resisted, turned away, and covered her face.
“Okay,” he said. He sat up and swung around, putting his feet on the floor.
No meant no. He would not use force on a woman—had never done so in his life. Any suggestion of intimidation killed his desire. But when he got up from the charpoy Padmini rolled over onto her back and smiled at him in confusion.