Darshan (59 page)
Authors: Amrit Chima
Tags: #Contemporary Fiction, #India, #Literary Fiction, #Sagas, #General Fiction, #Fiction - Historical
Shouting incoherently into the roar of the inferno, trying to make his voice heard above the deafening noise, face lit by flaring reds and oranges and moistened by heat, Darshan plucked a coconut from the palm tuft. Staring into the flames that now engulfed the whole island, with all the might of his skinny boyhood frame, he heaved the coconut into the fire where he knew it was needed.
~ ~ ~
Darshan’s palm burned as he held his mug of coffee. The morning was brisk, the heat only just kicked on. He stood at the window, gazing at the large hill swelling behind the house, at the triangle of ocean view to his left. Sonya would be awake soon and this made him nervous. In the kitchen, Elizabeth added a sizzle of onions to a pan of heated butter, preparing eggs. The aroma thawed his hurt.
“Dad,” his children had long ago asked at Howard Street, pulling at Darshan’s trousers with little hands. “Did you build this place?”
“No, kids. It was here when I bought it.”
Disappointed, both of them mulled over the truth of those words, then frowned, conflicted. Anand had spoken first. “But you replaced pieces of it.”
Darshan considered this. “Yes, I suppose so.”
“Then those parts are yours. You built them,” Sonya told him. “And one day you will build the whole thing.”
They had always been such clever children.
A ringing interrupted his thoughts. Setting his coffee down on the windowsill, he went in search of his phone. Passing the stairwell, he heard Sonya moving about downstairs, the bathroom door closed, the shower spout opened, water through the pipes. She would be upstairs and ready soon. He wondered if he should say something to her.
He found his phone in the living room between the sofa cushions, held it up, squinting without his glasses. After such prolonged and hushed strain, centuries of withheld sentiments, Darshan regarded Anand’s name lighting up the screen. His whole life and future before him, tangled with his children’s, he raised the phone to his ear, murmuring the same words, over and over.
Do not speak.
Listen.
Darshan rubbed the soft skin of his head in the bald center where even wisps no longer grew. The light seemed like morning light, pale yet warm. He glanced around his bedroom, searching for something. Betrayed by his memory, however, he could not recall what. The curtains for the sliding glass door had been pulled aside. He smiled contentedly at the sunlight streaming through the double panes. The light settled onto the deck beyond the glass in a morning shimmer. The mattress beneath him embraced the contours of his body as he spread his arms wide, reaching for this light.
His hand fell against the other side of the bed. A surge of confusion made him sit upright. Elizabeth was not beside him. Her pillow had been fluffed, her side of the comforter smoothed. Her nightstand was in its usual disarray, objects on it filmy with dusty residue. He listened carefully for the sound of her in the house, the creak of a floorboard, the smell of coffee. Nothing.
Sighing, he swung his thin legs out from under the covers to go and find her. He slid his pallid and icy feet into his house slippers, reached for his cane, and shakily rose. “Honey,” he called out.
In the hallway, at the foot of the staircase, he paused, waiting for her response. “Elizabeth,” he called again.
He had forgotten to put on his robe. A chill sparked a flash of goose pimples across his skin.
“Anand! Sonya!”
He cocked his head. From upstairs he heard a flock of birds walking across the rooftop’s wooden shingles.
The heels of his feet were exposed at the back of his slippers, his pajama bottoms hiked too high, a draft skulking up the cuffs. He returned to his warm blankets.
In bed, he again contemplated the light on the deck, how it rested in and around the grooves of the wooden slats, the caramel brown color it produced, so different from the color in shade: a desolate, drab gray.
Allowing his eyes to soften, the unfocused sunlight expanded in his vision, becoming more and more brilliant. His eyelids weakened, and he let them fall shut.
Sweat soaked the sheets under his body. He shivered, taking great pains to breathe.
“I am happy to see you awake again,” Baba Singh said, holding a coconut in his open palm. He regarded it for a time without saying more, consuming the details of it, the hairy shell, the warped ovular shape. Finally, he spoke: “A very good friend of mine once told me that this is life. It is everything any one man needs to survive.”
Nodding gravely, Darshan said, “Yes.”
“It seemed to me that you should know this.” Baba Singh noted the sack of toy tools hugged close to Darshan’s side as he placed the coconut under his grandson’s free arm.
“Were you ever able to open it?” Darshan asked.
Baba Singh sighed, turning away. After a time, he asked, “Where is Manmohan?”
“With Mohan. I suppose they need to discuss matters.”
“I loved them. My sons, my grandsons,” the old man said with remorse. “But it was too hard. I needed to be forgiven for something. A very bad thing.”
Darshan squeezed Baba Singh’s hand and shivered again, tightening his jaw against the combination of cold and hot fevering his body.
“I built a two-story house in my village,” his grandfather continued. “I thought it would make things easier.”
“I built something, too,” Darshan told him. “It was like yours, a place for me to go for a while, to be by myself.”
“Yes,” the old man replied in sudden awe. “I remember. I saw it. I was there.”
“You helped me to build it.”
Baba Singh shook his head. “I never helped anyone in my life.”
Darshan curled his arm around the coconut. “There were others who also helped. I had to let them.”
Baba Singh released his grandson’s hand and leaned back in his chair.
“Dadaji?” Darshan asked, now holding his cotton sack over the side of the mattress, letting it hang on the edge of his fingertips, allowing it to slowly slip until it fell from his hand.
“Hmm?”
“Why the same name? Did the name matter so much?”
“It was yours.” The old man shrugged. “It was always your name.”
My mother Margaret Mary (Peggy) Barr Chima for knowing who I was before I did, yet nonetheless allowed me to sort it out on my own.
My father Harjindar Singh Chima for being my muse.
My husband Daniel Horvath who readily accepted that I would always follow my own path, and that perhaps this might sometimes mean he would be the sole provider of our little family unit.
Maria Sicola for the rare and invaluable gift of time.
Diane DeCorso and Pat Mandel for their unrelenting and zealous support of this book.
Rob Rogers and Josie Garcia for their insights, critiques, and numerous questions.
Ann Lam and Titanilla Fiáth for their positivity and encouragement during the last draft.
Table of Contents
A Coconut & a Sword: 1911–1914
The Mighty Champion Splash Maker: 1915–1919
Colonial Police Batons & Pistols: 1920–1922
Heaven Bound in Brown Leather: 1932
LPs on the Gramophone & a Cabinet Radio: 1949–1952
Pasteurized & Homogenized: 1957
Still Swallowed Whole: 1970–1972
The Hindu Pundit of Amritsar: 1974–1975
A Baptism & a Kirtan: 1976–1978
Sacramento’s Greyhound Bus Depot: 1985
The Return of the Moneylender: 2000