Tyrannia by Alan Deniro Read Free Book Online Page B

their vendor-conglomerate’s handbook was called the Strategic Reorganization of the Americas. She was in marketing services for a Bengali pharmaceutical company. She was shy but was finding her career voice over the last few years after birthing the two children, traveling all over India and Africa to meet her production teams. She was a team leader in a way that Amar could never be. People thought he sounded like a woman on the phone!
    “I really need to . . . sorry,” he said. “Sorry.” He looked toward the Bay, the spires of old Visakhapatnam out in the water. “Where’s Puneet?”
    “I thought he was getting rasgulla?” His wife looked back at the beach-house, the snack bar, the Ferris wheel.
    “No, no—he was with you in the water?”
    “I wasn’t in the water.”
    “He’s swimming!” his younger son said. “Way out, near the towers.”
    “Puneet!” his wife shouted, running out to the water. Amar struggled to get his watch off, but the strap was caught on a hook. As he was fumbling, his mind drifted backward, into an undertow of time, and he kept thinking: Why am I panicking? Is it because of her? Why is she panicking?
    Back in the van—Amar was actually relieved that the trip to the beach was cut short by an imaginary emergency—Puneet was reluctantly explaining how he was swimming out to the tower crowns to impress a girl. Who wasn’t even Buddhist—his wife assumed, thinking out loud, working through the implications, because if this girl was Buddhist, he wouldn’t have had need to impress her, on the breakwalls and ruins of the old port, because of their mutual understanding of their dual nonbeing.
    Puneet said nothing as they drove farther up into the hills, trees ripe with mango hybrids overhanging the road. Amar didn’t dare venture into this emotional territory—he really couldn’t care—of course, he was glad his son was safe, but he had no real doubts on this score in the first place. His wife also drifted into silence. But she had larger issues, which soon became clear after Amar glanced at his watch while driving. “I wish you wouldn’t work with devils!” she said, looking straight ahead.
    “Father works with devils?” his youngest said. “What are they like?”
    “They’re not devils.”
    “According to Nichiren they are,” his wife said.
    Amar sighed and clenched the wheel of the van tighter. They had met at sangha within the technical college, chanting together. The sanghas were subsidized by the companies; after the Japanese diaspora, Nichiren Buddhism had found a home within the corporations of India. He found it as a way to get ahead, but she fell into Nichiren’s teachings, more and more every year.
    “We’re not going to talk about that now,” Amar said.
    “America is a poisoned land!”
    “I’ve never met them, my beautiful wife,” he said between clenched teeth. “They’re only contracts I have with them. Now let me drive.”
    That night, after his children and wife were asleep, he locked himself in his office with the novel. He had managed to survive the sullen hours after they returned from the beach—helping with dinner, chanting together for world peace, doing laundry while his wife helped Prius with his Mandarin homework. Sand was everywhere. Children on motorcycles sped by on their street, which his wife tut-tutted as she was getting ready for bed. Didn’t their parents know this was a good Buddhist neighborhood?
    “I can’t sleep,” he said, sitting up after ten minutes.
    “Amar, I love you.”
    “I know.” He kissed her forehead. The night sky was still. She was asleep when she said this. She would only say these words with such fierceness and warmth when she was dreaming.
    He poured a Scotch—bottle kept in a secret drawer—and started downloading the scans from his watch. He had to enter the writer’s world, and this usually wasn’t an enjoyable process. It was never clear what an American writer was ever trying to say.