Teranesia

Keith and Amita’s acquaintances were drawn from almost every profession, but remarkably they all had one thing in common. Arun was a lecturer, writer, editor, social commentator, and poet. Bernice was a sculptor, performance artist, political activist, and poet. Denys was a multimedia consultant, advertising copywriter, film producer… and poet. Prabir flipped through all the cards one night, to be sure he hadn’t left someone out, but there were no exceptions. Dentist, and poet. Actor, and poet. Architect, and poet. Accountant, and poet.

Thankfully, none of these visitors ever raised the subject of the war with him, but that left them with little choice but to ask about school. To Prabir’s dismay, confessing that his best subjects were science and mathematics almost invariably triggered a baffling stream of non sequiturs comparing him with the famous Indian mathematician Ramanujan. Could they really not tell that he was too old for this kind of growup-to- be-an-astronaut flattery? And why did they always invoke Ramanujan? Why not Bose or Chandrasekhar, why not Salam or Ashtekar, why not even (perish the thought) someone Chinese or European or American? Prabir eventually discovered the reason: an Oliver Stone biopic that had been released in 2010. Amita rented it for him. The story was punctuated with sitar-drenched hallucinatory visits from Hindu deities, dispensing cheat notes to the struggling young mathematician. In the end, Ramanujan steps from his deathbed into a desert strewn with snakes, all biting their tails to form the symbol for infinity.

There were worse things in the world than being patronised by the And Poets. Prabir knew that he was a thousand times better off than most of the war’s orphans—and if this fact had ever slipped his mind, the TV was full of harrowing footage from Aceh and Irian Jaya to rub his face in it. The fighting was over, the leaders of the coup had been overthrown, and five provinces had gained independence, but ten million people were starving across the archipelago. He’d been deprived of nothing—save the one thing that no one could restore. Amita not only fed, clothed and sheltered them, she bestowed endless physical affection on Madhusree, and she would have done the same for him if he hadn’t recoiled from her touch.

Prabir found himself growing almost ashamed of his lack of respect for her, and he began to wonder if his fears for Madhusree were unfounded. Amita hadn’t tried to brainwash him with her bizarre theories; maybe Madhusree would be left to make up her own mind.

Maybe Amita really was harmless.

In the summer of 2014, Amita asked Prabir if he’d come to a rally, organised in response to a recent spate of racially motivated bashings, at which she’d been invited to speak. Prabir said yes, happily surprised to learn that Amita wasn’t as detached from reality as he’d imagined, locked away in the university battling colonialism with Nostromo comics and undermining the patriarchy by pointlessly flipping computer bits. At last, here she was doing something of which he could be unequivocally proud.

The rally took place on a Sunday; they marched through the streets beneath a cloudless sky. Prabir liked summer in Toronto; the sun only climbed two-thirds of the way to the zenith, but it made the trip last. Keith seemed to think that thirty-two degrees was sweltering; when they reached the park and sat down on the grass, he opened the picnic hamper they’d brought and consumed several cans of beer.

In front of two thousand people, Amita took her place at the lectern. Prabir pointed her out to Madhusree. ‘Look! There’s Amita! She’s famous!’

Amita began, ‘We’re gathered here today to deplore and denounce racism, and that’s all well and good, but I believe the time is long overdue for a more sophisticated analysis of this phenomenon to reach the public sphere. My research has shown that antipathy towards people of other cultures is in fact nothing but a redirection of a far more basic form of oppression. A careful study of the language used in Germany in the 1930s to describe the Jews reveals something quite striking, and yet, to me, deeply unsurprising: every term of racial abuse that was employed was also a form of feminisation. To be weak, to be shiftless, to be untrustworthy—to be the Other at all, under patriarchy—what else can this possibly mean, but to be female?’

If the Nazis had triumphed, Amita explained, they would eventually have run out of distracting false targets, and started feeding their true enemy—German women—into the gas chambers. ‘Forget all those Riefenstahl Rhine maidens; the real core of Nazi propaganda films was always a celebration of male strength, male beauty. In the Thousand-Year Reich, women would have been retained only for breeding, and only for as long as it took to supplant them with a technological alternative. Once their last essential role was gone, they too would have vanished into the ovens.

‘I was invited here to address you today because of the colour of my skin, and the country of my birth, and it’s true that these things make me a target. But we all know that there’s more violence directed against Canadian women than there is against every ethnic minority combined. So I stand here before you and say: as a woman I too was in Belsen, as a woman I too was in Dachau, as a woman I too was in Auschwitz!’

Prabir waited anxiously for a riot to start, or at least for someone to shout her down. Surely there were children or grandchildren of Holocaust survivors in the crowd? And even if there weren’t, there had to be someone with the courage to cry ‘Thief!’

But the crowd applauded. People stood up and cheered.

Amita rejoined them on the grass, lifting Madhusree into her arms. Prabir watched her with a curious sense of detachment, wondering if he finally understood why she’d agreed to shelter them. She’d made it clear what her idea of compassion was: to denounce violence, and to show real generosity towards its victims, but then to cash it all in for a cry of ‘Me, too!’ like an infant competing for sympathy. That was what the death of six million strangers meant to her: not a matter of grief, or horror, but of envy.

She smiled down at him, jiggling Madhusree. ‘What did you think, Prabir?’

‘Will you show me your tattoo?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Your number from the camp.’

Amita’s smile vanished. ‘That’s a very childish form of humour. Taking everything literally.’

‘Maybe you should take a few more things literally yourself.’

Keith said sharply, ‘You can apologise now.’

Amita turned to him. ‘Would you stay out of this, please?’

Keith balled his fists and glared down at Prabir. ‘We’re not going to make allowances for you forever. There are plenty of institutions that’d take you; it wouldn’t be hard to arrange.’ Before Amita could respond he turned and walked away, cupping his hands over his ears, blocking out everything but his sample mantra.

Amita said, ‘I’d never do that, Prabir. Just ignore him.’

Prabir looked past her face, into the dreamy blue sky. The fear racing through his veins was welcome. The whole problem was, he’d let himself feel safe. He’d let himself pretend that he’d arrived somewhere. He’d never forget where he stood, now.

Nowhere at all.

He said softly, ‘I’m sorry, Amita. I’m sorry.’

‘Do you want to know where Ma and Baba went?’

Prabir stood beside Madhusree’s bed in the dark. He’d waited there silently for almost an hour, until by chance she’d stirred and the sight of him had brought her fully awake.

‘Yes.’

He reached down and stroked her hair. In the camp he’d evaded the question, telling her useless half- truths—‘They can’t be here now’, ‘They’d want me to look after you’—until she’d finally given up asking. The social workers had told him, ‘Say nothing. She’s young enough to forget.’

He said, ‘They’ve gone into your mind. They’ve gone into your memories.’

Madhusree gave him her most sceptical look, but she seemed to be considering the claim.

Then she said decisively, ‘They have not.’

Prabir wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand. He said, ‘All right, smart-arse. They’ve gone into mine.’

Madhusree looked annoyed. She pushed his hand away. ‘I want them too.’

Prabir was growing cold. He lifted her out from under the covers and carried her to his bed. ‘Don’t tell Amita.’ Madhusree scowled at him disdainfully, as if he was an idiot even to raise the possibility.

He said, ‘Do you know what Ma’s name was, before you were born?’

‘No.’