Teranesia

If the Nazis had triumphed, Amita explained, they would eventually have run out of distracting false targets, and started feeding their true enemy – German women – into the gas chambers. ‘Forget all those Riefenstahl Rhine maidens; the real core of Nazi propaganda films was always a celebration of male strength, male beauty. In the Thousand-Year Reich, women would have been retained only for breeding, and only for as long as it took to supplant them with a technological alternative. Once their last essential role was gone, they too would have vanished into the ovens.

‘I was invited here to address you today because of the colour of my skin, and the country of my birth, and it’s true that these things make me a target. But we all know that there’s more violence directed against Canadian women than there is against every ethnic minority combined. So I stand here before you and say: as a woman I too was in Belsen, as a woman I too was in Dachau, as a woman I too was in Auschwitz!’

Prabir waited anxiously for a riot to start, or at least for someone to shout her down. Surely there were children or grandchildren of Holocaust survivors in the crowd? And even if there weren’t, there had to be someone with the courage to cry ‘Thief!’

But the crowd applauded. People stood up and cheered.

Amita rejoined them on the grass, lifting Madhusree into her arms. Prabir watched her with a curious sense of detachment, wondering if he finally understood why she’d agreed to shelter them. She’d made it clear what her idea of compassion was: to denounce violence, and to show real generosity towards its victims, but then to cash it all in for a cry of ‘Me, too!’ like an infant competing for sympathy. That was what the death of six million strangers meant to her: not a matter of grief, or horror, but of envy.

She smiled down at him, jiggling Madhusree. ‘What did you think, Prabir?’

‘Will you show me your tattoo?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Your number from the camp.’

Amita’s smile vanished. ‘That’s a very childish form of humour. Taking everything literally.’

‘Maybe you should take a few more things literally yourself.’

Keith said sharply, ‘You can apologise now.’

Amita turned to him. ‘Would you stay out of this, please?’

Keith balled his fists and glared down at Prabir. ‘We’re not going to make allowances for you forever. There are plenty of institutions that’d take you; it wouldn’t be hard to arrange.’ Before Amita could respond he turned and walked away, cupping his hands over his ears, blocking out everything but his sample mantra.

Amita said, ‘I’d never do that, Prabir. Just ignore him.’

Prabir looked past her face, into the dreamy blue sky. The fear racing through his veins was welcome. The whole problem was, he’d let himself feel safe. He’d let himself pretend that he’d arrived somewhere. He’d never forget where he stood, now.

Nowhere at all.

He said softly, ‘I’m sorry, Amita. I’m sorry.’

‘Do you want to know where Ma and Baba went?’

Prabir stood beside Madhusree’s bed in the dark. He’d waited there silently for almost an hour, until by chance she’d stirred and the sight of him had brought her fully awake.

‘Yes.’

He reached down and stroked her hair. In the camp he’d evaded the question, telling her useless half-truths – ‘They can’t be here now’, ‘They’d want me to look after you’ – until she’d finally given up asking. The social workers had told him, ‘Say nothing. She’s young enough to forget.’

He said, ‘They’ve gone into your mind. They’ve gone into your memories.’

Madhusree gave him her most sceptical look, but she seemed to be considering the claim.

Then she said decisively, ‘They have not.’

Prabir wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand. He said, ‘All right, smart-arse. They’ve gone into mine.’

Madhusree looked annoyed. She pushed his hand away. ‘I want them too.’

Prabir was growing cold. He lifted her out from under the covers and carried her to his bed. ‘Don’t tell Amita.’ Madhusree scowled at him disdainfully, as if he was an idiot even to raise the possibility.

He said, ‘Do you know what Ma’s name was, before you were born?’

‘No.’

‘She was called Radha. And Baba was called Rajendra. They lived in a huge, crowded, noisy city called Calcutta.’ Prabir repeated himself in Bengali.

He turned his bedside lamp on low, then took his notepad from his desk and summoned up a picture of his mother. It was the shot taken at the IRA parade, the only image he had of her, rescued from the net workspace where he’d placed it before deciding not to mail it to Eleanor.

Madhusree’s eyes lit up in amazement.