Read Online The Unknown Errors of Our Lives by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni - Free Book Online Page B

they wish each other good night, she touches Leela’s arm. “Thank you,” she says, her eyes deep as a forest.
    They have come to a riverbed. There isn’t much water, but the boulders on which they step are slippery with moss. It’s starting to rain, and the guide eyes the sky nervously. He pulls at the balking mule, which stumbles. Mrs. Das gives a harsh, crowlike cry and flings out her hand. Leela grasps it and holds on until they reach the other side.
    “Thank you,” says Mrs. Das. It is the first time she has smiled, and Leela sees that her eyes are, indeed, deep as a forest.
    “BUT, MADAM!” THE proprietor at the Nataraja inn cries to Leela in an English made shaky by distress. “You people are not to be coming back for two more days! Already I am giving your rooms to other pilgrim party. Whole hotel is full. This is middle of pilgrim season—other hotels are also being full.” He gives Leela and Mrs. Das, who are shivering in their wet clothes, an accusing look. “How is it you two are returned so soon?”
    The guide, who has brought in the bedrolls, says something in a rapid Pahari dialect that Leela cannot follow. The clerk pulls back his head in a swift, turtlelike motion and gives Mrs. Das a glance full of misgiving.
    “Please,” Leela says. “We’re very tired, and it’s raining. Can’t you find us something?”
    “Sorry, madams. Maybe Mughal Gardens in marketplace is having space. . . .”
    Leela can feel Mrs. Das’s placid eyes on her. It is obvious that she trusts the younger woman to handle the situation. Leela sighs. Being a savior in real life has drawbacks she never imagined in her rooftop fantasy. Recalling something Aunt Seema said earlier, she digs in the waistband of her sari and comes up with a handful of rupee notes which she lays on the counter.
    The clerk rocks back on his heels, torn between avarice and superstition. Then his hand darts out and covers the notes. “We are having a small-small storeroom on top of hotel. Big enough for one person only.” He parts his lips in an ingenuous smile. “Maybe older madam can try Mughal Gardens?”
    Leela gives him a reprimanding look. “We’ll manage,” she says.
    THE CLERK HAS not exaggerated. The room, filled with discarded furniture, is about as big as Leela’s queen-size bed in America. Even after the sweeper carries all the junk out into the corridor, there isn’t enough space to open the two bedrolls without their edges overlapping. Leela tries to hide her dismay. It strikes her that since she arrived in India, she has not been alone even once. With sudden homesickness, she longs for her wide, flat bedroom, its uncomplicated vanilla walls, its window from which she had looked out on to nothing more demanding than a clump of geraniums.
    “I’ve caused you a lot of inconvenience.”
    Mrs. Das’s voice is small but not apologetic. (Leela rather likes this.) “You shouldn’t have come back with me,” she adds matter-of-factly. “What if I
am
bad luck, like people believe?”
    “Do you believe that?” Leela asks. She strains to hear Mrs. Das’s answer above the crash of thunder.
    “Belief, disbelief.” Mrs. Das shrugs. “So many things I believed to be one way turned out otherwise. I believed my son’s marriage wouldn’t change things between us. I believed I would get to Shiva’s shrine, and all my problems would disappear. Last night on the mountain I believed the best thing for me would be to fall into a crevasse and die.” She smiles with unexpected sweetness as she says this. “But now—here we are together.”
    Together
. When Mrs. Das says it in Bengali,
eksangay
, the word opens inside Leela with a faint, ringing sound, like a distant temple bell.
    “I have something I want to give you,” Mrs. Das says.
    “No, no,” says Leela, embarrassed. “Please, I’d rather you didn’t.”
    “He who gives,” says Mrs. Das, “must be prepared to receive.” Is this an ancient Indian saying, or one that she