by Jeffrey Meyers
I woke in a dark room from a troubled dream and didn’t at first know where I was. Then I remembered that I was in a cheap hotel. The furnishings were stark and ugly—your basic room. I opened the curtains and the sun glinted off the waters in the swimming pool. I had a new teaching job, had just arrived in this college town and was looking for a place to live before the term started. I’d just had an antagonistic divorce. My wife was unfaithful but had the better lawyer. I lost the court case and most of what I owned. I was licking my wounds and trying to start a new life.
I couldn’t work the coffee-maker in the room and there were no instructions about how to use it. I walked into the corridor and called the maid, but she ignored me, went into a nearby room and closed the door behind her. Slightly puzzled, I knocked on the door and she opened it. She pointed to her ear and mumbled something with hollow-sounding words that I didn’t understand. On a pad that hung from her waist she scribbled, “I’m deaf.” I wrote, “ayúdame con café” (help me with coffee), made a drinking motion with my hand and pointed to my door. Warned no doubt by the other maid and with some bad experiences, she was frightened and extremely reluctant to enter my room.
Finally, as I put my hands together in a praying gesture, she slipped into the room and quickly made the coffee in the tight corner. She didn’t explain how the machine worked and I couldn’t see what she did. Afraid that I would try to harm her, she rushed away as fast as possible. A minute later she surprised me by knocking on the door, showed her pad that said “keys” and retrieved the items she’d left behind in her haste to escape. The next morning she was less anxious. She seemed to trust me and knocked on the door to make the coffee before I called her.
Suri (her name tag said) was a young, attractive East Indian. Short and pleasantly round, she had a smooth light-brown complexion and glossy black hair. The clear whites of her eyes made the irises seem darker. She could read my lips if I faced her and spoke slowly and could read the notes I wrote on her pad. It was hard at first to understand her hollow speech and we missed many words with smiles of incomprehension. To make matters even more confusing, she wiggled her head from side to side as if to say “no” while she said “Achha” to mean “yes.”
She said, “everyone–even you–thinks I’m Mexican,” and told me something of her life. She was born in India, where her parents still lived, and had come to America three years ago, when she was sixteen, left school and old enough to work. She stayed with her older brother and sister-in-law and their two small children. Following the occupation of his caste in India, her brother drove a taxi. He scared her with vivid and disgusting stories of violence and vomit, furtive and frantic sex in the back seat of his cab, and of passengers who ran away and stiffed him for their fares. He carried a baseball bat under his seat for hard cases who tried to rob him. Her family lived in a cramped trailer. She knew he had a lover. He drove the woman in his taxi to secluded spots.
–I come back from cleaning so tired. But have to make dinner and take care of children when parents go out. Nothing to do but ring my Mummy every week.
Suri put flowers in my room when I was having a solitary dinner. The following morning, before I woke up, she slipped into the room and brought me coffee and donuts in bed. Sitting on a plastic chair, she watched me devour my breakfast. I gently asked her why she was deaf.
–I fell off bike when I was little. Banged my head. No helping, no curing. Mummy most distressed. Very hard to arranging my marriage.
–Why don’t you have a hearing aid?
–I cannot afford buying one. I am not even knowing if it helps.
–I could lend you some money for a test.
–I could never pay back and won’t taking money from you.
She seemed vulnerable and insecure and began to cry. It didn’t seem fair. I suffered with her when I saw her suffer.
We had drinks when she got off work that night. The Tonga bar had a tacky South Seas décor: carved coconut heads, plastic palm trees and tropical fish swirling in an aquarium. After emptying a bottle of white wine, she said, “now red one.” Interested in her life, so different from my own, I continued to question her. The wine loosened her tongue and she revealed her sexual feelings.
–I’m still a virgin.
–Do you want to be one?
–No. I don’t want.
–What would tempt you to go to bed with a man?
I expected a simple answer but she was surprisingly thoughtful.
–I go because I love him. Because he want me. Because I want to know about it. Or maybe just be like other girls and have done with it.
Moving her hand down the middle of her body from neck to waist, she said,
–I feel I’m only half a woman without husband and children.
–What about your boyfriends? What do you do with them?
–Boobies only. Nothing below.
–What about your navel? Isn’t that allowed?
–No-go zone. Too close to frontier.
Intelligent but poorly educated, she giggled a little, did not seem to read anything and had no skills. She could care for little children, but couldn’t hear them or be a nanny. Helpless, lonely and desperate, she naively thought I could rescue her from endless drudgery and the cramped trailer. She dramatically declared, with her usual hollow speech:
–Take me with you. I’ll follow you anywhere.
–But I’m not going anywhere. I just got here.
–I slave here. Nothing but bloody beds and filthy toilets. If vacuum breaks, he tell me, “pick up with your hands.”
The owner keep bothering me. He call me to his office and it so hard to get away from him. If I complain, he be giving me the sack. Much better if you let me take care of you.
–I can take care of myself. I don’t need a servant.
She may have had a green card through her brother, but to avoid complications I didn’t ask her about it.
We sneaked into my room that night and she was sweet, gentle and obliging. She let me unbutton her blouse, remove her bra and touch her breasts. They stood straight out, with nipples awakened, as if pointing the way forward. As I undressed her, her long hair fell to her waist. She remained passive and nervously looked up at the ceiling as if to maintain her innocence and keep an emotional distance between us. We then undressed, entered the narrow shower and pressed pleasantly together. I saw that her pubic hair was silky and thick—mature growth. Suddenly, she came alive, moaned when I stroked her body and playfully hung her washcloth on my extended member. I was a qualified sexual candidate: she thought she loved me, I wanted her and she was curious. But I held back from taking her to bed. I valued my freedom and was wary of any new entanglement. She suddenly exclaimed:
–I shame you. You don’t want deaf woman.
The weather was summery and warm. The next day, when she was off work, we took a walk and had a picnic by the slow-flowing river. She wore her best clothes: an emerald-green blouse, pink silk sari and gold earrings. She had a jewel in her nose (was it real?) and sweet-smelling jasmine in her hair.
–What’s the red dot on your forehead?
–It’s a third, all-seeing eye.
–It looks like a bullet hole.
I offered to buy the food, but she insisted on bringing some gooey Indian dishes and sweetmeats for “tiffin.” Not at all suitable for the outdoor occasion. Instead of serving me, she reversed traditional roles by asking me to wait on her, pour the tea and wash the clattering tins in the river. I did this to please her.
I was obsessed by eighteenth-century literature; wrote about Gulliver’s Travels and The Rape of the Lock. But we had no common subjects and our talk was one-sided. She had no interest in my past—only her own immediate present and possible future. I questioned her and she answered. She repeated her complaints about cleaning filthy rooms in the hotel, how she wanted better work but had no training. We soon fell silent. After showing me the photographs on her cellphone, she was content to sit quietly and watch the ducks fluttering in the water. Something swam swiftly through the river. I wondered,
–Was it an otter or an eel?
–No. Just a rat.
–If you don’t behave properly you could be reincarnated as a rat.
–(with a shudder) Horrible! Me? Never be rat!
I then told her, “I have a surprise for you,” and gave her a silver and turquoise pin shaped like a deer. She was very pleased, said “I like to have pretty things” and placed her head on my lap. I put my arms around her and she gazed up at the passing clouds. This was a blissful moment. But I couldn’t imagine either a personal life or a professional career with her at my side. She’d be overwhelmed by the noise and puzzled by the conversation at faculty parties with the stuffy colleagues who’d interviewed me at the college.
That night I was tormented by contradictory feelings. I was sorry for her and, after several celibate months, strongly attracted to her. I wanted to help her and seduce her, felt sympathy and anguish, lust and shame. I knew if I slept with her I could never break away without causing great pain. I also wondered if she were as innocent as she seemed. Was she really a virgin? Or was surrendering her virginity just a cunning ruse, her sexual temptation a weapon to entrap me? There was only one way to find out and I would never know.
Her whining about her troubles and wheedling to ensnare me were both pathetic and irritating. Though eager to please, she was also manipulative. She saw me as her means of escape and her precious salvation. Finally, I felt so sorry about her deafness that I couldn’t sleep with her. It seemed too cruel to take advantage of Suri. My pity for her sad condition was both poignant and destructive. It drained away my desire and my sexual feelings vanished. I also felt sad and sought a way to escape.
The downtown was dreary: army recruiters, pawn shops and tattoo parlors.
Near the campus I found a furnished flat on the top floor and with a view of the distant hills. I arranged a hearing test for Suri. The doctor said she’d qualify for Medicaid and her speech would improve. I told her we couldn’t meet anymore and gently said goodbye. My sweet darling took it badly and was disappointed, hurt and angry. She said I’d deceived her and her brute of a brother would come after me with his baseball bat.
Jeffrey Meyers, a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, has recently published books on Thomas Mann, Robert Lowell and the realist painter Alex Colville.