Now he reaches across the counter to put his hand over mine. In his changed breathing I feel it coming, dense and frightening-bright, the core of the story, the reason why.
“But lately I’ve been dreaming it again. Clearer each time. The raven too. It circles the sky there. When I wake I have a warm feeling, as though that clean sunshine is inside my chest, growing. As though I have a chance at last to find it, live it, discover who I really am.
“You know when the dreams started?”
“No.” The word is a whisper in my throat. But I know what I want the answer to be.
“Yes,” he says, Raven who reads my heart. “When someone told me, There’s a woman down in Oakland, go see her. She isn’t what she seems. She can do things. After the mushrooms, I couldn’t allow myself to believe. But on a whim I came to the store on a Friday evening. And met you.
“In the last few dreams you’ve been there with me, you and I, in that perfect place. Only, you look different, the way I know you are, under this skin.”
He runs a fingernail, like fire, up my arm.
I allow his words to wrap me in their shimmer. Why not, I say stubbornly to myself. Why should it be impossible.
“I want to try it once more, this time with a companion who sees clearer than I ever can.” His eyes are deep and pleading, but also in them a dare. “Will you come with me, Tilo? Will you help me find the earthly paradise?”
I am still thinking my answer, what I want to say what I should, when the bell at the door tinkles. I look up and they are there, three bougainvillea girls, the prettiest and youngest yet, all fizzy laughter and flutter lashes. In miniskirts their legs are long and tan, cocoabutter smooth. Their lips are dark and pouting. They toss back their crinkle-cut hair and glance around and laugh again as though they can’t believe they are actually here, that they are doing this.
They look like they’ve never cooked a meal—certainly not an Indian meal—in their lives.
One of them detaches herself from her friends and comes forward. She wears a thin silk blouse through which I catch the hint of a lacy bra. Beige eyeshadow that sparkles. Scent of roses. Tiny gold and diamond heart earrings, a matching pendant that rises and falls in the hollow of her throat.
The effect is charming, even I must admit this. From the look in his eyes, Raven seems to agree.
“Excuse me, you understand English? Our office, they’re having a potluck, we’re each supposed to bring something ethnic, you know, from our culture, make it ourselves. We didn’t have a clue.” She smiles an ingenuous smile. “Maybe you can help us?”
That word help. I cannot steel myself against it. I put aside my annoyance to think. It’s a challenge, to find a party dish simple enough so they couldn’t ruin it in fixing.
“Maybe you can do vegetable
pulao”
I say at last. I tell her how it’s cooked, the water measured and boiled, the Basmati soaked just the right amount of time, the
kesar
sprinkled in, the peas, the roasted cashews and fried onions for garnish. I list the spices: clove, cardamom, cinnamon, a pinch of sugar. Ghee. Maybe a dusting of black pepper.
She looks a little doubtful but she is game. She takes copious notes in a little gold-edged pad with a matching pencil. Her friends smother giggles as they look over her shoulder.
I tell them where to find the ingredients. Watch them wander toward the back of the store, all sway and undulation. Raven too is watching. Appreciatively, I think. There is a pricking like pins in the center of my chest.
“Quite amazing,” he says, “how women can balance themselves on heels no thicker than pencil points.”
“Not all women,” I say wryly.
He smiles, squeezes my hand. “Hey. You can do things these girls couldn’t in a hundred years.” The pinpricks begin to fade.
“You’re authentic in a way they’ll never be,” he adds.
Authentic. A
curious word to use. “What do you mean, authentic?” I ask.
“You know, real. Real Indian.”
I know he means it as a compliment. Still, it bothers me. Raven, despite their fizzy laughter, their lipstick and lace, the bougainvillea girls are in their way as Indian as I. And who is to say which of us is more real.
I am about to tell him this when one of them calls, “Help, we can’t find the cardamom.”
“That’s because we don’t know what it looks like,” says another. They laugh at the delicious humor of it, that such arcane knowledge should be expected of them.
I am about to go back there but “Let me get it,” says Raven. He disappears behind the shelves—for a long time, it seems. More laughter flits through the store, flocks of swallows. I gouge the countertop with a thumbnail, force myself not to follow.
Finally they are back, Raven carrying packets and sacks. Cans. They have bought enough to feed the entire office ten times over.
“You were
so
helpful,” one says. She looks up at Raven from under her lashes. “The crispy
papads
and mango nectar will go great with the
pulao
.”
“Yeah, and it was a great idea to buy enough so we could practice at home before the party,” says another, training a brilliant smile on him.
The third bougainvillea girl, the one in the silk blouse, puts a hand on his arm. Bright as a blackbird’s, her eyes take in his high cheekbones, his trim waist, the firm muscles of arm and thigh, “I know what,” she says, “you can come and be our taster. Tell us if we did it right.”
“No, no.” But he is grinning, quite at ease with all this
attention. In his manner I see how many beautiful women have invited him thus, and perhaps how many he has accepted.
Unaware of the blister of heat building inside my skull, he nods at me. “She’s the expert, she’s the one you should be calling.”
She of the lacy bra dismisses his suggestion with a flicker of lashes. “Here’s my card,” she smiles, scribbling something on the back and putting it into his hand. I see her fingers brush his, lazy, deliberate. “Call me if you change your mind.”
The heat blister bursts. When the swirl of steam has settled I see clearly what I will do.
He helps them out with their sack of purchases. Closes the car door solicitously, gives a last friendly wave.
Raven you are no different from other men, pulled by the high arch of a foot, the curve of a hip, the way a diamond shines moistly against a woman’s silkskin throat.
He is leaning over the counter now as though there had been no interruption, reaching for my hands again. “Tilo, dear one, what do you say?”
I draw my hands back out of his reach. Busy them with busywork, folding tidying dusting clean.
“Tilo, answer me.”
“Come back tomorrow night,” I say. “After the shop closes. I will give you your answer then.”
I watch him all the way to the door. Smooth spring of step, soft glint of hair, under his clothing the glide of his goldriver body. There is a wrenching in my heart.
O my American, if youth and beauty is what you want, the joy of what you can see what you can touch, I will give you your
fill. I will draw on the powers of the spices to fulfill your deepest fantasies about my land.
And then I will leave you.
When I look down at my gnarled hands I find I have torn to bits the card the girl gave to Raven. Which he chose (but why) to leave behind.
On its own shelf in the inner room sits
makaradwaj
, king among spices. Has sat all this time, certain in the knowledge that I will one day come. Sooner, later. Days months years. It does not matter to
makaradwaj
who is the conqueror of time.
I take the long thin vial in my hand, hold it till it grows warm.
Makaradwaj
I am here as once you predicted, I Tilo for whom time is running out. I Tilo ready to break the final, most sacred rule of all.
What
, asks
makaradwaj
.
Makaradwaj
who knows my answer, why must you make me say it.
But the spice waits in silence until.
Make me beautiful,
makaradwaj
, such beauty as on this earth never was. Beauty a hundred times more than he can imagine. For one night so that his skin will dazzle, his fingertips be branded with it for always. So that never again will he be with another woman without remembrance and regret.
The laughter of the spice is low and deep, but not unkind.
Ah Tilo
.
I know I am wrong to ask this for myself. I will not pretend repentance, I will not act shame. I will say to you with my head high that this is my desire, give or withhold it as you may.
Do you desire it more than you desired us on the island, that day when you would have thrown yourself off the granite cliffs had the First Mother said no
.
Spices why must you always compare. Each desire in the world is different, as is each love. You who were born in the world’s dawning know this far better than I.
Answer
.
Weigh it yourself: To him I will give one night, to you the rest of my life, whatever you choose it to be, one hundred years on the island or a single moment, conflagration and consuming, in Shampati’s fire.
As I speak the last of my doubts fall away, the last of my hopes. I see my future distinct in the vial’s glow. What I cannot have. And I accept.
Tilo it was never for you, the ordinary human love, the ordinary human life.
My answer has satisified. The spice speaks no more. The vial is hot now in my hands, its contents melting. I raise it to my lips.
And hear the Old One’s long-ago voice:
“Makaradwaj
most potent of the changing spices must be handled with most respect. To do otherwise can bring madness, or death. Whatever a person weighs, measure out one thousandth of it, mix in milk and
amla
fruit. It must be sipped slow, one spoon an hour, over three nights and days.”
I drink it all at once, I who in three nights and days will be gone who knows where.
The jolt of it hits me first in the throat, like a bullet, a burning such as I have never felt before. My neck is exploding, my gullet, all the way to my stomach. And my head, expanding, a giant balloon, then shrinking to a nugget of iron. I am lying on the floor. The nausea pulses out of me like blood from a torn artery. My fingers are stiff and splayed, my body bends and buckles beyond my will’s controlling.
Tilo too confident, who thought you could absorb the poison like Shiva of the blue throat, who have risked all for nothing, die now.
For
nothing
. That thought is the hardest to take.
But wait, the pain is less now, enough that I can breathe in gasps. Through it I feel a different sensation, deep in the body, a shifting, a tightening. A reknitting of bones.
Makaradwaj
doing its work.
And a voice:
By tomorrow night Tilo, you will be at beauty’s summit. Enjoy well. For by next morning it will be gone
.
Ah spices, why should I worry about the next morning. By then will I too not be gone.
And will you be happy going, or will you come to us with your heart stained with the colors of regret
.
For myself I have no regrets, I say. And almost believe my words.
But, I add. There are two left in my care whom I have not helped. I cannot go in peace unless I know the end of their story.
Ah, the boy, the woman. But their story has only begun. It is yours that is ending
.
I understand. But though I have no right to request this, I want to see them one last time.
More wishes, Tilo? Have you not already asked your final desire?
Please.
We shall see
, say the spices, their voice indulgent, knowing they have won.