Read Online The Meagre Tarmac by Clark Blaise - Free Book Online Page B

zamindar if you will, like my ancestors in pre-Partition East Bengal, of property, preserver of virtue and expeller of evil.
    It is America, contrary to received opinion, which resists cataclysmic self-reinvention. In my two-week absence, my dear wife had engaged an architect to transform a boarded-over, five-shop strip mall in East Palo Alto into plans for the New Athens Academy, the Agora of Learning. Where weeds now push through the broken slabs of concrete, there will be fountains and elaborate gardens. Each class will plant flowers and vegetables in February and harvest in May. Classes will circulate through the plots. I can picture togaclad teachers. New Athens will incorporate the best of East and West, Tagore’s Shantiniketan and Montessori’s Rome, Confucius and Dewey, sports and science, classics and computers, all fueled by Silicon Valley resources. She’d started enrolling children for two years hence.
    And then I had to inform her — that outpost of Vesuvius — that my one-crore bonus cheques now rested in the account of one Atulya Ghosh, the very cool, twenty-year-old grandson of Bicycle Ghosh, nephew of old Landlord Ghosh, the presumably late owner.
    One of the Ghoshes, it might have been Atulya’s grandfather, had been the rumored lover of a pishi of mine who’d been forced to leave the house in disgrace. She killed herself, in fact. Young Ray- Bans Ghosh was a Toronto-based greaser, decked out in filmi-filmi Bollywood sunglasses and a stylish scarf, forked over a throbbing motorcycle — all I could ask for as an on-site enforcer. He took my money and promised there’d be no problems: he had friends. Rina, Gautam, and Rina’s mother deserved to share the pokey company flat bordering a paddy field on the outskirts of Cossipore.
    Sonali wailed, she broke down in tears, sobbing, “New Athens, New Athens!” she cried. “My Agora, my Agora! All my dreams, all my training!” What had I been thinking? And the answer was, amazingly, she was right. I hadn’t thought about her or the school, at all.
    â€œYou don’t care about me. You’re always complaining about our boys’ education, you think I’m lazy, you only care about your goddamn family in goddamn Calcutta ...”
    â€œI should return home,” said Chhoto kaku .
    â€œOh, no,” she cried. “I should return home! And I’m going to!”
    She stood at the base of the stairway — I could rhapsodize over the marble, the recessed lighting under the handrail, the paintings and photographs lining the stairwell, but that is from a lifetime ago. And her beauty, I am easily inflamed. I admit it, and I will never see a more beautiful woman than Sonali, even as she threw plates at my head. “Boys! Pramod, Vikram! Pack your bags immediately. We’re leaving for San Diego!”
    Chhoto kaku began to cry. I held him. Sonali went upstairs to organize the late-night getaway. The boys struggled to pack their video games and computers. The ever-enticing, ever-dangerous phenomenon of the HAP, the Hindu-American Princess, had been described to me by friends who’d urged me not to marry here, but to go back to India. Do not take on risky adventures with the second- generation daughters of American entitlement. Did I listen? Did she love me for my money, had she ever loved me? Was this all a dream? I sat on the bottom step, hiding my tears, cradling my eyes and forehead against my bent arm, while Chhoto kaku ran his fingers through my hair and sang to me, very low and soft, a prayer I recognized from a lifetime ago.
    Well, enough of that. Justice is swift and mercy unavailing. The property split left Sonali and the boys in the big house and my uncle and me in this tiny rental. Last Christmas there was no bonus. My boss, Nitin Mehta, called me aside and said, “bad times are coming, Abhi. We have to stay ahead of the wave. I want you to cut twenty percent of your tech