Notes of a Mediocre Man Read online

  “Well, I guess I’ll see you inside.”

  No answer.

  “Enjoy the evening.”

  No answer.

  I knew when I was beaten. (Or did I?) I continued on my way. One step and then the next. One step and then the next. I made my way inside.

  ***

  I walked past the man at the door. He stopped me as I went past, gently holding my wrist. Realizing what he wanted, I turned over my hand so he could see the stamp on top of it.

  I continued walking. The hall was much more crowded now. It was ten-thirty and many more people had come in. A few were outside trying to get fresh air. “They must do good business here,” I thought. But was it really a “business”? Who organized it? Parents Without Partners (PWP). Who kept the money? Perhaps they did. But they had the hall to rent, the refreshments to buy, the music to pay for. It did not look easy.

  A new dance was going on. People were in line—a couple at a time—dancing together. It was the El Paso Line Dance again. Some of the dancers were good, some not so good. But they tried. The line dance ended, a new dance began.

  The time passed. I saw a few people, I talked to them. I saw a few people, I asked them to dance. Most said no, one finally said yes. But the song ended less than a minute after we began. There was no second dance.

  People danced, I leaned against the wall and watched them. There was an empty seat; I rushed to the seat. Taken. More minutes passed, I saw another seat. I rushed to it, even faster this time. The seat was all mine.

  A man was sitting next to me. “You like this place?” he said.

  “My first time.”

  “You like to dance?”

  “I’m not very good.”

  I had had the conversation before—of course I had. But some things repeat themselves. They repeat themselves again and again.

  The time passed. Slowly it passed. Later that evening some of the people went to a diner to get something to eat. How, I do not know, I was asked to go along as well. Perhaps the others liked me. Perhaps they had seen me sitting by myself and felt sorry for me.

  At the diner we sat at a long Formica table. One man—the same tall pale man I had met first at the dance—was again drinking soup. He had brought it in his thermos.

  Also at the table was the man from outside with the cigarette. It turned out that he was an engineer—a mechanical engineer of some kind. How different he sounded now, a completely changed person. He sat at the middle of the table, perhaps the head of the group. He spoke about the search for energy throughout the country. For the car engine that gives one hundred miles to a gallon; for free energy; for the perpetual energy machine. Some said that these things had already been invented but that the government, or rich people in industry, were not letting them get to the public. Too much money, the loss of too much money, was at stake.

  Others said that this was just nonsense, that there were always these conspiracy theories floating around. Others said that they were just not sure.

  The conversation turned to dance. The engineer was also a good dancer, in fact a dance teacher. He spoke about different dances, about the different ways of doing the same dance. He spoke about the Lindy: “Too athletic,” he said. “Not subtle like the waltz.” He spoke about the Sway, the El Paso.

  The others at the table listened to him, deferred to him. He was the leader. He certainly thought of himself as the leader. And perhaps they were in accord as well.

  There was another man who worked with computers. He said he was tired of his job and he wanted to work with people.

  “People?” someone said.

  “More people,” he said, “and preferably women. At least sixty percent—seventy percent—women.”

  There was always a cigarette between his lips. He puffed on his cigarette and watched the black smoke rise in the air.

  He said that he had thought about working on a cruise. As a waiter perhaps or as a bartender—“at a poolside with a Tiki bar.” He had also thought about working at a store in the mall—maybe even a Victoria’s Secret.

  “Are you serious?” I said.

  “Sure,” he said. “The pay may not be much but the women will be there. Many of them young. And I will be with people—mostly women.”

  I did not know if he was being serious or if he was pulling my leg. But his demands, his expectations, seemed perfectly reasonable. Who was I to disagree?

  There was another man there. He was tall and slim with blond hair, not bad-looking. He spoke to two girls. They ignored him. He spoke to another girl. “Not right now,” she said. He left us for a few minutes, came back with some things in a bag. Vegetables. Apparently he had gone to the grocery store and bought them to take to some other girl’s place. The girl had a juicer at home that she had bought recently; he would try the vegetables in the juicer equipment.

  He walked away to use his cell phone, called the girl. When he came back, the people at the table asked him what the girl had said.

  “She says it is late in the evening, not a good time for me to come over.”

  He sat in his chair at the end of the table for a few minutes. But he did not look happy. He sulked and looked as if it caused him pain to sit there. After a few minutes he rose; he took the vegetables and left for the girl’s place anyway.

  When he was gone the others talked about him.

  “He is desperate,” they said.

  “He is lonely,” they said.

  “Sometimes he embarrasses himself—makes a fool of himself. You try to stop him, but what can you do? People are people. What can you do?”

  ***

  The hours passed, it was time to go home. I had forgotten my keys at the fire station—I had my car keys but not the second set, the one for home. I said goodbye to the others at the diner. They were polite to me, but formal. After all, we hardly knew each other.

  I drove again to the fire station. They were cleaning up now. Someone had turned in the keys and they were lying at the edge of a table. I was still safe—safe for another day.

  They were cleaning up the lobby, beginning to put things away. They took the table from the lobby to the back room. They were beginning to fold the collapsible chairs. I saw Edna, the woman who had organized it all. I wanted to say something. What did I want to say? “Thank you”? “Thank you for all the hard work”? “Thank you for putting this together”?

  I approached Edna and stood about four feet from her. She turned her head slightly and saw me from the corner of her eye. But she looked vacantly. Did she look through me? I had insulted her when I had come in. Perhaps I was not important. Perhaps she did not wish to have anything to do with me.

  “We still have room in the back,” she called out over her head to one of her helpers. “I think we can get some more chairs there. Seven or eight chairs. Maybe even ten.”

  “Yes yes,” the other answered back. “Maybe even ten.”

  Edna was busy with the chairs. The others were busy with the chairs. It was time for me to get out of the way. To leave. To go home.

  Home: what was this home? Where was this home? But they were big questions, why even think of them? The evening was over now. Done, fini. I had had a good time. I had learned so much about America. The world. It was time to go home.

  Krishna

  A short dark woman stood behind the grilled window. She wore a red sari, there was a black dot on her forehead. The people in line approached her window.

  “Hey hey, where is my passport?”

  “Five-year visa, how much?”

  “Ten-year visa, how much?”

  “My money, you did not give me my money back.”

  And then, again out loud so she could clearly hear them: “These people, they are so incompetent. Third World country. Just like a Third World country.”

  It was the Indian consulate in one of the major American cities. Some of the people there were Westerners, most of them were of Indian origin. They had come to get their Indian passports or their visas for the
ir trips to India.

  They clamored around the woman’s window. It was a window with an iron grille, a small arc-shaped opening at the bottom.

  The woman attended to them, tried to stay polite. They were not impressed. She tried to be professional, tried not to lose her temper. They were not impressed.

  One man came, said that he wanted to see Mister Saxena.

  “He is not available,” she said.

  “I talked to him on the phone. I have five passports—my wife and I, three children. We are leaving tomorrow. I need them today.”

  “Mister Saxena is a busy man.”

  “Busy man! I spoke to him on the phone. He will see me.”

  A second man came to the window.

  “Mister Saxena is an important man,” the Indian woman said.

  “Important man! Only one man is important. And that man is Allah!”

  A third man came. “Look,” said the Indian woman. “Mister Saxena is a busy man, an officer. You cannot just go in, see him like that.”

  “You go and see Mister Saxena. You tell him I am here. I am waiting.”

  “Mister Saxena is an important man, an officer. He has assistants working for him. You want to see him—you talk to one of his assistants; they will help you.”

  The people in line heard her, thought that she was a funny woman. Or, worse, a silly woman. She had a silly, and small, view of the world.

  “Mister Saxena is an officer,” they said, making a face and copying her singsong voice.

  “He has assistants working for him.”

  “You have a problem—you see the assistants. You see the assistants first!”

  Perhaps she was a silly woman in some ways. Perhaps she did have a small view of the world. But must they mock her so openly?

  She was a good woman. She was only doing her job. But did they care?

  This was America, yes. But was it the America the woman had dreamed about? When she had received the news about her three-year posting to America, her parents had broken down and cried. They had told her how proud they were of her. Her friends had come to the house and said the same thing. And then they had said that they were envious of her as well. She was going to America—all the way to America. “America is a great country,” they all said. “The best country in the world.”

  But this is the America she saw. She came to the Consulate and stood behind the iron-grilled window. (No one gave her a chair to sit on.) She gave people their visa and passport applications. She collected their money. And she listened to them talk. She listened to them make fun of the Consulate. She listened to them make fun of India, of her. Sometimes her dark face burned from the anger (or was it the shame?).

  ***

  The morning work was over and the window was closed. The lunch break was one hour—from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. Then she would spend the next three hours processing all the applications they had received. At four o’clock in the afternoon the window would be open again. And she would be back again attending to all the customers.

  As she came to the back room for lunch, her friend Sheila greeted her.

  “How was the morning?” she said.

  “The same.”

  “The customers are rude?”

  “Maybe they have a good reason.”

  She walked to the refrigerator and took out the blue lunch box. Two curried vegetables, some rice. On the side, half an orange, cut and wrapped in aluminum foil.

  There was a mid-sized lunch table with six chairs cramped together. She went and sat in the chair at the corner.

  Sheila, who had collected her own lunch, came and joined her.

  “But heat the vegetables first,” Sheila said, looking at Krishna already beginning to dig into the food. “Don’t tell me you are going to eat them cold.”

  “I’m too tired to heat them.”

  “Here, let me heat them for you. The microwave, such a great invention. Two minutes …”

  Krishna protested but Sheila was in no mood to listen.

  “If a friend cannot heat for a friend …”

  “But I’m fine, I tell you.”

  “Listen, Krishna, you do not take care of yourself. You are losing weight: five pounds, ten pounds …”

  And thus they went, back and forth, back and forth. As others approached the lunch table, they lowered their voices.

  “Oh ho, what is the argument?” said Mister Rastogi, a genial man of about fifty who worked in the Supply wing of the Consulate.

  “Krishna,” said Sheila simply, holding out her palm and pointing in her friend’s direction.

  The one gesture seemed to be enough. “I understand,” said Mister Rastogi. “The girl works, she works. But she doesn’t take care of herself. Ask her to take care of herself—do you think she listens?”

  And then there was more conversation—this time between Mister Rastogi and Sheila—on Krishna’s behavior.

  Sheila brought the food, now heated, for her friend. Krishna sat there with a small stainless steel spoon, eating quietly. Between bites, she looked up, nodded.

  They lectured to her and told her to take better care of herself.

  “I will,” she said.

  “Look how thin she is.” This was Sheila now (or perhaps Mister Rastogi)—after a while their voices were interchangeable to Krishna’s ears.

  “She has lost five pounds, ten.”

  “We need to find her a husband. When she is settled—when she has a purpose in life …”

  And thus they went, on and on. Krishna nibbled at her food. She thought of India, far away. (Her mother, her father, her one younger brother.) She thought of all the applications that waited. (Review this, stamp that.) She thought of the grilled window—the one that reopened at four o’clock. And all the people—restless? angry? rude?—who would be waiting there.

  ***

  Her name was Krishna Dayanand. She was from Chennai—or really from a small town some seventy miles from Chennai. In some ways it was not even a small town, but more like a village.

  The place was near the Godavari River. Sometimes, as a child, she had walked to the river in her sandals. Sometimes she had walked in her bare feet, carrying the sandals in her hands. Sometimes she had walked all the way into the river till the water was knee-, or even thigh-deep.

  But those were the old days, so far away. Why even think of them? This was America. A busy place, an official place. A place where you worked and worked.

  There were palm and coconut trees near the Godavari River that swayed in the breeze. But that was all so far away as well. Why even think of such things?

  At four o’clock in the afternoon, Krishna returned to her place behind the window. There was a line of ten or eleven people, the punctual people who showed up promptly at four when the office reopened. Then things would slow down a bit and would be steady for the rest of the hour. At five o’clock the window would be closed again. Then the last-minute cleaning: the filing away of the passports and applications that had not been picked up; the cleaning of the work area; the preparation for the next day’s work.

  It was demanding work—some would call it tedious work. But Krishna did it without complaint. This was America, the best posting in the world. Who was she to complain about the best posting in the world?

  ***

  One day a man came with a lump on his neck, two children trailing behind him. One day a single man came—he said he was going to India for the Christmas holidays. One day a middle-aged woman came in a business suit, obviously a successful woman. She wore a Cambridge-grey jacket, the same color slacks. She was a little stout but attractive as well. Krishna looked at the woman for a long time. Krishna was especially fascinated by her hair—long, flowing, silky.

  Krishna thought of her own hair: short and dry, sometimes with a barrette on top, sometimes in a bun. She thought of her dress: a simple lime-green cotton sari. Her mother had bought it for her as a present before she left for the U.S. She had been proud of the sari then—a new sari, a pres
ent—but in the face of this other woman, this successful woman, Krishna felt small. She took a quick peek at her sari and felt her shoulders droop.

  One Saturday morning Krishna and Sheila went for a walk to the mall area. There were all these buildings there, all the museums. They went inside two or three museums but soon came out. Things, things, all these things. What exactly was one supposed to do with these things?

  Outside at least the world made more sense. The sky was there—the nice blue October sky. Birds were there: pigeons, crows. Benches were there—they could sit on benches and look at the people. All these white people, pretty people. Some wore tennis shoes, some wore casual loafers. But how confidently they all walked.

  Krishna sat silently, looking at the people.

  “What are you thinking about?” said Sheila.

  “Nothing.”

  “You must be thinking about something.”

  “Nothing.” And then: “America is such a strange place. So big, so big. And yet …”

  “And yet what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “It is such a big place and yet so strange. I don’t know anyone in this place.”

  “You know me.”

  Krishna smiled a small smile, from the corner of the lips. But the smile soon faded and she looked down at the ground.

  “It is a big place: pretty, clean. All this grass, all this neatness. But to what does it all add up? What does it mean?”

  Sheila was a perceptive woman. Perhaps she understood her friend. Perhaps she felt the same way herself.

  “You are homesick?”

  Krishna did not say anything.

  “You miss India?”

  Krishna did not say anything. And then: “Don’t you? Don’t you miss India as well?”

  Sheila was silent for a long time. Perhaps it meant that she was thinking about it. Perhaps it meant that she agreed. Perhaps it meant that the answer was obvious. And when the answer is obvious—understood—what need is there to open your mouth and waste words?

  Both women in the ill-fitting blue jeans sat on the bench in the October sun and looked at the America around them. They sat thus for a long time.