The Cosmopolitans (27 page)

Pratik embraced his family. “Good stuff,” his father said.

“In America,” Stalina said, placing a hand on Mr. Rehman’s
arm, “we say, ‘good evening,’ not ‘good stuff.’”

Yana cast her eyes down, perhaps in keeping with some other
custom she’d read about, perhaps to get a preliminary look at the
Rehmans’ feet, shuffled forward, and introduced herself.

Pratik said, “Yana is very interested in Bangladeshi cooking.”

“Is that so?” his father said, smiling.

“Yes, she made some egg —”

“Haloa,” Yana said.

Katya leaned forward. “Yeah, for me and my, my friend Roman,
and he said it was the best dessert he’d ever had, Russian, Georgian,
American, any kind.” She was acting as if Roman were some King
Solomon of food. Worry fluttered in Osip’s stomach.

The grandmother began to speak and point at the stairs. The
other Rehmans frowned.

“What does she say?” Osip said.

“It’s nothing.” Mr. Rehman sat next to her. She spoke again.

“Come on,” Osip said.

“She is merely asking how many floors your house possesses.”

“Oh, oh,” Stalina said, positioning herself in front of the
grandmother. “Our house has three floors” — she held up three
fingers — “many houses in America very
tall
” — and she stood on
her tiptoes.

The grandmother spread the fingers of one hand and said
something else. The dentist cousins smiled at each other.

“Does she has other questions about house?” Stalina said.

“No,” Mr. Rehman said.

“What, then?”

He looked at the rug. “I’m not certain why she says this, but she
wishes that I tell you she has five floors in her house, in Dhaka.”

“That’s right,” Yana said.

“Speaking of houses,” Osip said, “Maybe the Rehmans want to
see rooms where they will stay.”

“But —” one of the cousins, the prettier girl, began to say.

“They’re not staying here, Mom,” Yana said.

Stalina said, “What, a hotel? Stamford Marriott is very crude.”

“I sent you an email,” Yana said.

Stalina leaned closer to the Rehmans. “Yana and her emails.
One day — save homeless, next day, globe is too warm. I say, it is
good for homeless to be warm.”

Yana sighed through her nose. “I wrote ‘major’ in the subject
heading.”

“They’re staying with us, actually,” the male cousin said.

Stalina stared at her handkerchief, as she often did in times of
difficulty. “But, you know, Russia has a rich and sweet tradition of
gosti
— hospitality —”

Osip put his arm around Stalina. “Our house is not tall enough
for grandmother.” Stalina gave a false laugh. Why had he said that?
After the Rehmans left, she’d wonder, aloud, for hours, whether the
insufficient grandeur of their house was to blame.

“Speaking of culture,” Yana said, dropped to her knees before
the couch, and tried to take hold of Mrs. Rehman’s brown-sandaled
feet. Mrs. Rehman scurried her feet away in alarm, but Yana was
faster, overtaking them as they sought refuge beneath the couch. The
cousins stepped forward.

“It’s a contact lens,” Pratik said, in a voice quiet with despair.

“Oh, terrible luck,” Mr. Rehman said, and quickly translated.

Yana released Mrs. Rehman’s feet.

“I’ll help you.” Pratik knelt beside Yana, his shoulder touching
hers. Because they needed it, Osip silently gave his blessing.

Roman

When he let himself in, Aunt Alla was sitting at the kitchen table
with a glass of iced water. He knew the lie she was about to tell. He
didn’t need to sit down.

“
She — a little too much, and went to a nameday and drank…
”
At least — in her sleep
,” Alla waited for him to say . . . what?

Alla took his sleeve. “
I’m remembering her in her bathing suit
with the flowers, that summer before we left. Do you remember? In
Feodosiya? Try to think of her like that, not —
”

Outside, he had some trouble seeing but learned not to look up.
People got out of his way. He found himself at Caldor. Of course.
A necklace made of two gold ropes wound around one another. He
wouldn’t wear it, he would sell it. He should have stolen jewelry
from the beginning. He tried on the necklace. Oh, he was a real
baller now, all right.

At the exit stood two officers, one white and fat and one black
and thin. They told their walkie-talkies they had him. They took him
to a small room in a Gulag movie and demanded his papers. The
necklace fell to the table.

Like any Russian coward, Roman carried his passport and visa
everywhere, wrapped in a handkerchief. He put the handkerchief on
the table. It sprawled open. “All right, then,” they said. It was one
of his mother’s handkerchiefs, cotton with some yellow embroidery.
She’d bought it off an old woman on the street, who’d said “
Please,
matyushki, so I can go home
.”

“You a student?” The black one looked like Tupac Shakur, who
understood about mothers, and who was dead.

“Talk.”

“Hello?”

“Maybe we better call Homeland. Maybe he wanted to sell the
necklace for a bomb.”

“Kid. We’re just playing.”

A door in the room opened onto the street. They lifted him
outside. “Don’t show your ass.” The door closed into the stucco
wall.

Yana

Just like a Bangladeshi girl, Yana put on all the jewelry she’d
ever been given: a fake puzzle ring her parents had bought for her
twelfth birthday, Navajo feather earrings, an amber necklace, a
mood ring, gold bangles from Pratik’s parents, friendship bracelets
from camp.

She stood in front of the mirror and wrapped her sari, just like
she had practiced, and it wasn’t perfect, because before, her hands
hadn’t held these electrical surges, but she thought Pratik might
already be downstairs, and she ran to meet him.

Instead, she almost crashed into Leonid, who stood at the bottom
with one arm resting on the banister.

“Where’s the dead man walking? Just kidding.”

“The bride and groom are forbidden from seeing each other,”
Yana said, quoting directly from a website, and turned, and waded
through the Russians, who pinched at her sari and made remarks,
and the Bangladeshis, who inched away and stared, until she finally
caught a glimpse of Pratik squeezed between cousins on the couch.
The cousins faded into the party before Yana could say “
Kamon
Acho.”

Why hadn’t they stayed? It must be a cultural tradition, she told
herself. She cast her eyes down, as per custom, and said, “Shouldn’t
they be carrying us in on pillows or something?”
“Elephants.”

“Monkeys.” Yana took out her mirror (the bride and groom were
not supposed to look at one another, except through a mirror; nor
were they expected to speak, but she couldn’t do everything). One
of Pratik’s eyebrows seemed to have found a home at his hairline.
“You look crazed.”
He squeezed her hand, which she’d had henna-ed in Queens.

“Do you like the pattern?” she said.

“Why not?” That was not a satisfying answer. She took another
glance through the mirror. Why hadn’t he brought a mirror of his
own? Hadn’t he wanted to see her?

Yana heard, inside her head, the voice of an actress who’d played
Sojourner Truth in a movie she’d shown her class: “What you think
you’re getting up to now?” Women of genius said marriage was
slavery. And yet, she had stuffed herself into silk. She had been a
high school freshman only ten years ago. “You still think this a good
idea, right?” Yana said.

“You cannot run in a sari.” Pratik gave a laugh resembling that
of Yana’s borderline-autistic student. She had never before heard
him laugh like that.

Stalina bore down on them. “Hello, young people. Pratik, it
is an interesting smell your grandmother makes in kitchen. Yana,
remove.” She pointed at her ear.

“The tradition is — ” Her mother held out her hand and Yana
dumped the feathers into it.

Pratik’s grandmother stepped out of the kitchen, carrying a large
bowl of yellow paste. His mother, Moutushi, followed a few paces
behind. “It’s holud,” Yana said, and the cousins by the dozens turned
to stare. “It is, isn’t it?”

Pratik’s grandmother said something. He said, “Yes, it’s her
special recipe.”

So, despite everything, they were going to do that amazingly
tender ceremony (as it had been described online), whereby women
applied a skin-softening turmeric paste to the bride’s skin.

“The groom’s not allowed to be present,” she said.

“All right, all right.” Pratik wandered outside.

The silk scratched against the gold lamé as Yana sat on the
couch. She said, “This just means so much.”

Moutushi handed her a Macy’s shopping bag. Yana looked inside:
a fish stared back. She closed the bag and smiled and nodded.

Stalina peered in. “Is this funny joke time?”

“It’s a traditional gift.
God
.” Yana whispered.

“Did traditional God gift go six hours from Pennsylvania in a
car?” Stalina took the bag to the kitchen.

Moutushi dipped her finger in the holud and gently spread it
around Yana’s eyebrows. It felt invigorating, like the acne remedies
she had tried in vain all through high school. Well, a little more
invigorating than that.