Ultraviolet Page 2

  “How now, Miss Kathryn?”

  “Fine, thank you.”

  “That’s the stuff. Let’s have a look at those arms.”

  He puts on the spectacles from his pocket and looks closely at the red, scaly welts snaking up each one.

  “Much itching?”

  “Yes.” Kathryn makes a face.

  “I haven’t noticed quite as much, I don’t think,” Elsie interjects. “When she thinks about it and gets going, yes. But there are long stretches when she seems able to ignore it.”

  “Let’s stick with this salve, then.”

  “It’s smelly,” Kathryn says.

  “That it is,” Dr. Withers agrees mildly. “But we do what we need to, to get well. Ready for the special goggles?”

  Kathryn likes this part, Elsie knows. She puts on the smoked goggles Dr. Withers hands her and grins, her ears protruding under the elastic band that flattens her bob. She does look like a strange explorer in them, or like that female flier, Miss Earhart. Elsie puts on the pair the doctor hands her. He puts on a pair of his own as well.

  “Aren’t we a strange bunch, then?” the doctor asks. And surely they are.

  Dr. Withers tinkers with the settings and directs Kathryn where to lay her arms.

  “No looking directly at the light, remember,” he says, “even with the goggles.”

  Then the room lights up with a bright glow that indirectly illuminates Kathryn’s face, which is tilted toward the tiger. Elsie knows there is no pain involved, but she can’t forget that the beams have a malicious power as well as a curative one. If they looked directly at the source, how damaged would their sight be? It feels like a sinful temptation, to look at what might hurt you. There is nothing to see but obliterating whiteness, but still it tempts.

  As he dresses her arms with fresh salve and gauze, Dr. Withers asks Kathryn if she will be starting school at Woodstock this year, now that she’s eight.

  She nods silently, so that he has to look up to catch the answer.

  “And won’t that be fine, to be one of the big children?”

  “I’d rather learn at home with Mamma, as I have been. I can already read fourth-form books. And I write stories in my notebooks.”

  “That’s fine! But you’ll learn even better at such a fine school.”

  Kathryn purses her lips and does not answer, and Elsie knows she is quitting her side of the discussion, seeing nothing to be gained.

  “There we go,” Dr. Withers says, patting her arm after the last neat twist and tuck. His professional competence puts Elsie’s efforts to shame. White, clean arms like a cloth doll. Kathryn is her only daughter, her baby, and Elsie can’t help holding her closer in certain respects. Russell is already in college back in America; Paul is having a career of his own at Woodstock—captain of this, president of that—and barely seems to need her. Elsie doesn’t know if she is making KK more fragile by holding her close, or if she instinctively holds her closer because she was more fragile from the start. She is a chatterbox and cheerful when she’s around those who are familiar, but slow to leave her mother’s side when they are someplace new.

  “How about we get rid of those bandages by fall, Kathryn? What do you say you go to school without them?”

  Kathryn looks up, surprised. Elsie is surprised, too. By now she thinks of the bandages as part of her daughter.

  “Really?” she asks, because Kathryn is silent. “You think so?”

  “I see improvement. I think the light treatments are working. If you keep up the salve at home, we stand a good chance. And we’ll see you back here in two weeks. Let’s hope for the best.”

  Two weeks: J.N. will have joined them by then; they’ll all go together. J.N. loves to drive, will find someone’s car to borrow, and will make up a list of supplies he’ll want to secure in Dehradun for his various tinkering projects. Or it might be more books, never enough for him.

  They pay their bill and make the next appointment with the clerk at Reception. Outside, the sun feels at first like warm hands, a benediction. Then Elsie’s body begins to sweat inside her clothes; a whiff of the sick smell rising up, despite her efforts to clean the dress.

  The car isn’t there. Sun spangles off the white hospital and the white, low, crowded buildings across the street. In front of the buildings, a vendor, sitting cross-legged, stares. He is selling fruit from a basket, his knobby ankles and long bare feet protruding darkly from the ends of his white pajama. Down the street a bony white cow is immobile, head lowered, lost in whatever thought it has. Lost to the white light.

  “Can we have our lunch now, Mamma?”

  “Yes, of course. When the driver comes back with our hamper.” It is twelve thirty. She thinks of their jam sandwiches, thermoses of tea, tin of biscuits. Asha tucked in a bag of jamun, ripe from the tree.

  But the car is not there. And after another minute it still isn’t. Kathryn does an improvised hopscotch beside her, without the chalked lines. Like a bird with one leg folded up, she hops then bends down, balancing, and snatches a pebble. She hums to herself.

  Elsie wonders if when she said “one hour” and held up one finger, the driver thought she meant “one o’clock.” Very possible; she’s learned to calculate that every communication between herself and a native has a fifty percent chance of going wrong. They should get themselves out of the heat and go sit in Reception again. She casts one final look up and down the street—surely he understood correctly and will arrive any second. But there is only the unmoving cow, the staring fruit wallah. What will they do if he never comes? No telephone back at the Landour villa. They’ll have to use the phone at the hospital to call the office at Woodstock to send a runner to inform Manoj—and then what? When she works herself into this kind of state, J.N. reminds her that if she asks for God’s assistance, He will provide it in all ways great and small.

  I will lift up mine eyes to the hills; from whence cometh my help.

  She does lift her eyes then, even turns her head so she is looking directly at the green hills, the direction of their trip home, their shaded villa, and Manoj and Asha, who will do what needs to be done, speak to the incomprehensible people in the language they can comprehend.

  When she returns her gaze to the bleached light of street level, she sees the black car, approaching slowly, then coming to a dignified stop in front of them. Everything the Sikh does is slow and controlled. He unfolds himself from the driver’s seat, stands erect as he holds open the door.

  In her relief, Elsie gives free rein to her irritation. They were exposed to sun and strangers; he should have been waiting for them in advance of the time. She struggles to govern her feelings, put them away as J.N. always instructs her to. Anger is bad for her blood pressure. But her anger doesn’t want to be put away; it spills to her husband, too. He knows she dislikes taking charge of excursions like this. Why isn’t he here seeing to things? Why is his work always more important than his family?

  “Where did you go?” Kathryn asks the driver. Elsie is taken aback then, as she often is, by Kathryn’s matter-of-factness. India, Indians, the slowness, the heat, the mysteries—they are all she has ever known. She is, in fact, a native herself, born in Nainital. It occurs to her that Kathryn has not been at all afraid the driver would not come back for them. She sees the Sikh look down at her daughter, a flicker of a smile.

  “Gurudwara,” he says.

  Elsie is instantly ashamed. His place of worship. They had passed one coming into town, the distinctive tall thin flagpoles, red against the pale stone of the building. J.N. is right about her quick blood, her jumping to conclusions. As she usually does several times during any given day, she asks God to make her better, more patient, less focused on her selfish needs.

  It is probably a mistake to try to eat while bumping along on the road. Their tea will spill, their stomachs will be unsettled. If it were Rahul, he would ask her if she preferred to stop; he would know where, some place that was shady, a pa
rk here in town, perhaps. But the Sikh simply climbs back behind the wheel and begins driving this way and that through the streets of town, routing them back to the main road. She could speak up; she could insist. But something in the way he is calmly enclosed in his self, seemingly forgetful of them in the backseat, makes it too hard. In his presence she feels silenced. She has always been quite sure that she doesn’t like being mistress to a house of servants, but she is also sure that she doesn’t like this: being at the mercy of someone supposedly in her employ who shows utter indifference to her. Who even—she doesn’t know how she knows it, for he has not been outwardly rude—clearly wishes she were not here, in his country. He radiates dismissal.

  She opens the hamper, pours a half-cup of tea for Kathryn, and says in a brisk and cheerful voice, “We’ll just eat as we go, that will be much easier. We’ll get back to Landour sooner and you can play with your friends.” Kathryn doesn’t seem to think anything is amiss in this arrangement. She accepts her tea and tests the temperature. It will have cooled just to the point of warm by now. She drinks the half-cup down, not spilling any. Thirsty girl, Elsie thinks, taking the cup back and pouring her another. She is conscious of her own thirst now, but will help Kathryn through her food and drink first, for the sake of neatness.

  “Mamma, do you think the doctor was just saying it to make me feel better?”

  “Saying what, about the bandages coming off by fall?”

  “Yes. How can he know?”

  “Well, he can’t, of course. But he’s hopeful.”

  Kathryn considers this, taking the tea and half of a sandwich, placed on a napkin on her lap while she drinks with two hands.

  “I wouldn’t want them to come off if there are scars. I’d rather have the bandages.”

  Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, Elsie almost says to her, but doesn’t. She wouldn’t like to see Kathryn have to go to school with scars, either.

  “We’ll just have to see,” she says. “Scars fade, you know. Maybe there won’t be any if you don’t scratch. And anyway, in the cool weather you’ll have sleeves.”

  “Oh, yes,” Kathryn says, her voice brightening. “I forgot about the sleeves.”

  Elsie takes pleasure in having said the comforting thing, rather than the Scripture. Which, she knows, is meant to comfort, but doesn’t always. When her babies were laid in her arms, all she was conscious of was the overwhelming desire to be their refuge. Her mother had died when she was twelve, leaving her as the oldest child with a father who drank up any few dollars that came his way. After her mother’s death, Elsie and the other children never had true security until she marched them in the cold, when they hadn’t eaten for two days, to the Mennonite Home Mission on the south side of Chicago. I am here with my sisters and brother, Elsie told the woman with spectacles and a plain blue dress and net cap over her bun, because God has led us here, having no one in this world to turn to.

  The woman nodded. You’ll want a hot supper before anything else. There’s a table for you by the stove.

  The Mennonites became her family. Later, she made a new family with J.N., who could make her feel small sometimes, but always made her feel safe.

  Elsie offers Kathryn another half-sandwich, but she shakes her head. She does take a biscuit. When she’s all finished, Elsie packs away Kathryn’s thermos and napkin, and thinks she has just time to nibble something before the car leaves these gentler curves and begins the serious business of climbing. She remembers the morning; she’ll eat only enough to keep body and soul together until they arrive.

  She has unscrewed her thermos and begun to pour when the car gives a sudden lurch, then pulls left to a patch of gravel at the lip of the embankment and stops. A warm stain of milky tea spreads across her lap. She leans forward.

  “What is it?” she asks.

  He shrugs.

  Kathryn pipes up. “Is something wrong with the car?”

  He tilts his head. Maybe yes.

  But Elsie didn’t feel the thump of a flat tire, didn’t hear the flapping of a broken belt, or see a billow of steam from the radiator.

  The Sikh turns his head only ten degrees in their direction. “One minute,” he says in English.

  He leaves the car and strides several yards ahead to a tea stall perched on the edge of the road. In front of the stall are three cane chairs and a low wood table. The proprietor must be inside, shadowed from Elsie’s view. From here she can’t tell if they exchange words.

  “What’s he doing, Mamma?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he is asking about something.” She keeps her voice relaxed for the sake of her child. If J.N. were here he would be out of the car and following the fellow, talking to him in English or Hindi, or even the few words of Punjabi he’s managed to acquire. If there were something to find out, he’d want to know it, too. If there were something to fix, he’d want to watch and learn it, so he could do it himself the next time. But Elsie knows there is nothing to fix. And that if J.N. were here the Sikh would not have stopped without asking first.

  She leans forward to get a breath of fresh air from the open windows and to hear whatever there might be to be heard. At the moment, a hush. Then, as if to answer the silence, the shrill ascending notes of the brain-fever bird, coming again and then again.

  The Sikh turns his head in the direction of the sound. Walks across the road and waits. In a moment, a young boy scrambles down the hillside from a copse of trees, a Sikh child with a small twist of maroon turban. Elsie realizes that the notes were not from the bird; they were from the boy.

  If he needed to stop, he should have asked her, or at least told her the purpose. She feels ashamed in an odd, oblique way for being taken advantage of in front of her child, for being treated as a person of no power or import.

  Perhaps the driver is conferring over a family matter; maybe that is his nephew or even his son. Or it is a business transaction, and the boy is merely a courier. He is looking up, nodding intently, as if taking instructions. The Sikh is writing something down on a pad. This is not his son, not his kin, Elsie feels. The boy is to carry a note to someone—but to whom? She tries to quell the helplessness, and the fear—who else is up on the hillside, waiting to scramble down?—but gives in to a wave of homesickness, wanting to be free from all that is strange, from all she does not understand even after twenty years in India. She longs for her sisters, Lena and Emma, the kitchens of their farmhouses in Illinois, the communal rhythms of meals and chores and crops. How she loves to be there on their missionary furloughs—the last one five years ago—rolling out piecrusts for the combined families and multiple field hands, beating the cake batter until it is velvet. Whenever she’s afraid, she still clings to her sisters in her mind, ghosts from the time when they shared one bed and had no mother.

  “What are they doing, Mamma?”

  “I’m not sure, Kathryn. They seem to have some business, but the driver will be back in a minute.”

  “Can I get out?”

  “No, you may not.” Her voice sounds fluty and wrong. There is no other sound save the dry scraping of insects. They rest at the edge of nowhere—green terraced hills climbing above them and dropping beneath, hills that offer no outlet unless you know your way on foot.

  What she has written in letters to America: the good that they do, the children they save, the eyes that they open. But India keeps reducing her to a person who knows nothing. The vast impassivity of it; its endlessness always poised to swallow up their carefully laid bricks and pews. Will they ever be allowed to stop building? And go home?

  At long last—or maybe it was only a matter of five minutes—the driver returns, bows his head slightly to them, as if he can only now, his arrangements tended to, acknowledge the importunity.

  Without a word of explanation, he starts the engine and sets off. The car begins winding up the hills again. The mystery of the Sikh’s business is a thing they carry with them. Even Kathryn doesn’t ask. Elsie has for
gotten to eat, but her appetite is gone now so she packs up the hamper and stows it on the floor. Kathryn scoots over to lean into her side. Such a small weight a child is, but solid and real. It is only a few minutes before the afternoon heat and the rocking of the car cause her daughter to doze off, Elsie’s arm around her.

  With Kathryn sleeping, there is a new privacy between the Sikh and herself. Her mind keeps returning to the indignity of the stop, of not being informed. The man moves with so much dignity himself; what right has he to rob her of hers? All he had to do was ask and she would have said, We don’t mind at all. Perhaps we’ll even stretch our legs.

  It’s odd to bring it up this many minutes later, but it is odder still to let it hover in the air. If she doesn’t speak, she knows it will remain painful evidence that she doesn’t count; and if she doesn’t count, except to her children, of course, what is she doing here?

  “Was that your son back there?” she asks. She detests the slight tremolo in her voice. Perhaps he doesn’t have enough English to understand the question.

  He looks at her in the mirror, and does not seem startled to be spoken to.

  “No. I have no son.”

  He adjusts his gaze back to the road, the hypnotic curves. The back of his neck is a warm brown. His dark blue turban is tightly, precisely wound; Elsie thinks of the doctor’s professional wrap of Kathryn’s linen bandages. She can just see the line of his black hair where it is swept up and under the turban. The sight of his hair uncoiled would seem unbearably personal after growing used to the turban—just as she would never remove her net cap and undo her own coiled bun outside of the house. Even her own children don’t often see her with her hair down.

  “I wondered why you stopped,” she says. Her heart knocks wildly against her ribs at her own audacity, but after a few hard thumps it quiets again. She did wonder; it is an ordinary question. Although, she realizes, she didn’t technically ask a question. He could leave it dangling.

  He looks back again, his eyes somehow not so cold. He has, she realizes, expressive eyes, not like a statue at all.