The Konkans Read online

  My uncles gathered together forty-five dollars in cash, and following Javier’s directions, drove downtown to Maxwell Street the Saturday morning before the feast. The sky was gray and overcast, heavy like a low sheet of slate, and the city was becoming cold again in that unbelievable way it had been when they’d first arrived. Sam drove, as was their way, and all down Lake Shore Drive, the traffic was light and pleasant and Sam and Les smoked Pall Mall cigarettes and listened to the DePaul game on the radio. They didn’t know the ins and outs of basketball yet, and their love of cricket made this fast game hard for them to follow. Who could appreciate a point when a point was scored every instant? But too, this was America, and it was good to follow American sports now, and though they found basketball strange, they liked the energy of it, the nonstop running, the leaping bodies, which is what America was to them.

  Their plan was to get a pig, put it in the trunk, bring it home to the basement, and slaughter it in the laundry room, next to the washing machine, where the drain in the floor would let the blood run out. They would play music a bit louder than usual to cover the sound from Babu, who they knew would not like it. But never mind, Babu would like it once he smelled the rich flavor of the simmering curry. Never mind, too, that neither of them had ever slaughtered anything. They had made it to America and had jobs and lives here. If they had been able to manage that, then they could manage to kill a pig. Also, Sam had seen the low-caste Konkan butcher slaughter many pigs when he’d been sent on errands by their father through the streets of Chikmagalur to buy parcels of meat for their Sunday meals.

  “Samuel, I don’t think that Babu likes it that we are here,” Les said to Sam as they drove. “At first I could understand it because we did not know anything. But now we know many things about living here and still Babu seems embarrassed.”

  “Babu is Babu, Lesley. Who can know what goes through his mind? He is very busy with his work and his family. The pressures he feels are different from ours.”

  “But Samuel, I feel that Babu doesn’t like us personally, that he never liked us. When we were boys, he was always away, and when he would come home, I could see that he was angry. He did not like it when we would touch his clothes, don’t you remember? Many times I felt that he did not even know my name.”

  “Who knows the name of the third-born son, isn’t it, Lesley? So what? Who knows the name of the second? Life is different here. Babu wants to make his own life in his own house without worrying about the flies that land in the chutney.”

  “That is it, Samuel. Babu makes me feel like a fly. But what is life if there aren’t flies?”

  “There aren’t flies in America, Lesley, haven’t you seen?”

  “I ask myself, ‘Would I be the same about it if I was Babu?’”

  “We can’t think that way. When we have white wives and houses of our own, then we can say if what Babu does or doesn’t do is or isn’t right. Until then, he can only be our Babu.”

  “Even family is different here.”

  My uncle Sam nodded, looked out the window at the gray expanse of the lake, didn’t say anything.

  My uncle Les went on. “Family here is just one man and his wife. No brothers, no cousins, no uncles and aunties and uncles’ aunties and aunties’ uncles. A place without uncles, can you imagine? Life is lonely here, Samuel. We would be happier if we were at home, isn’t it?”

  “Who knows what it is to be happy? Were you happy there with no job, with no room of your own? Were you happy with one pair of shoes? Were you happy to be married to some third Noronha daughter with one glass bangle and a lazy eye? Anyway, it is not now for a long time. For now we are at Babu’s. We must do our best. Babu will be Babu, and we will be Les and Sam. We can make and save money, and then we can decide. Who is to say that next year we won’t be in Chikmagalur, opening a sweetmeats shop together? For now let us learn this thing basketball and all the other things so that when it comes time to decide, we will know what is good for us and what is not.”

  They quieted and let the game fill the car, and the announcer spoke quickly with words they did not know, and raised his voice in a babble of syllables they could not follow except to know that something definitive and important had happened in the game, and they cheered, Sam unfurling his fingers on the steering wheel, and Les tapping the dashboard with his hands like beating a drum, and the announcer was silent so they could only hear the murmuring of the crowd, and then the announcer said in a new voice, “That’s it, folks. The finale. What’s surely the last nail in the hometown coffin.”

  Maxwell Street at that time was an open-air bazaar of secondhand electronics, knockoff designer shoes, food stalls, junk, and trinkets to rival any great market in the Third World, and the vendors and shoppers came from every corner of it. It was a carnival of simple commerce, people haggling over single pairs of socks in eleven languages. There were blues musicians and scat singers, a clown selling helium balloons. And then there was the food: chitterlings and collard greens, corn on the cob and Polish sausages. Latkes, pierogis, tamales, churros. Pickles and pickled pigs’ feet, pickled beets and eggs. Halfway down was Walter Johnson’s barbecue stand, the man in a big white cowboy hat, a red feather tucked in the band, his pockmarked face, his height and muscled arms. Around his waist was an apron streaked with soot and sauce, and before him at the wide and steaming grills, boys in sneakers hopped and blinked at the smoke, sweated, struggled to keep up with the long line of customers: blacks, Mexicans, Asians, whites, all the working-class people of Chicago, a heated battle to trade dollar bills for rib sandwiches wrapped in foil. Walter Johnson lifted racks of sizzling baby backs with tongs from the long grill choked with them, briskly hammering the cleaver through bone as if chopping onions, all the while urging on his troops with occasional clipped commands. The new Sears Tower rose up over everything, an obsidian obelisk to the city’s achievements.

  Sam and Les waited in line with cigarettes tucked behind their ears, trying to seem more comfortable in this place than they really were. They were two thin young men with limbs and waists so slender, their denim jackets and jeans billowed around them like bags. Of course they didn’t see themselves that way. When they got to the head of the line, the boy taking orders with his pad and pencil said to them, “Rack or rib? Spicy or reg?”

  My uncles furrowed their brows. It was hard enough understanding the Americans, but they could hardly make out the blacks at all. “We want to speak to Mr. Johnson,” my uncle Sam said and folded his arms, and Les stepped in close and folded his arms, too. “He is waiting for us. Expecting us even. Javier called him about the purchase of a pig.”

  The boy looked at them a moment, furrowed his brow back. “What did you say to me?”

  “A pig,” my uncle said.

  “A what?”

  “We want to buy a pig!”

  The boy pointed his finger beyond them, looked past them. He said, “Next in line! Rack or rib? Spicy or reg? Hey Walter, these two belong to you.”

  “Back here,” the big man bellowed, and waved them over with his cleaver. Then he whacked it quickly through a rack, gathered the pieces with a swipe of the blade, tossed them in a pan. He did this all the time he spoke to them. “You the guys who want a pig? Javier’s friends? Javier warned me you wouldn’t be your everyday beaners. You boys ever tried these ribs?” When my uncles shook their heads, he whacked the tips off the end of a rack, drowned the meat with dark sauce from a squeeze bottle, pushed it toward them. “Put that in your mouths,” he said, and they did. Being people who knew something of spicy food, they rolled their eyes, nodded their heads in surprise and pleasure.

  “You like the spicy, hey?” the man said and smiled.

  “We like the spicy very much,” my uncles told him.

  “You know that’s pig meat, hey? It ain’t dirty for you?”

  “We eat pig,” my uncles said.

  “Then you can’t be Pakistanis. Isn’t that right? Pakistanis are Muslims and can’t eat pig. So you have t
o be something else. Indians? Now I know that Indians don’t eat cow. But you’re telling me they’ll eat pig?”

  “No, the Hindus will never eat pig or cow. We are another kind of Indian. We eat cow and pig. But first we eat pig, and then we eat cow. We are not Hindus or Muslims. We are Catholics. We are Catholics from India.”

  Walter Johnson shook his head as he blinked his eyes from the smoke. “Thank god somebody over there eats pig. Tell all your cousins to come over here and buy my ribs.”

  “The Catholics of India are unfortunately very few.”

  “A few from here, a few from there. That’s all we need to get by. Come back after things have calmed down and I’ll fix you up with a pig.”

  My uncles ate rib sandwiches and walked about Maxwell Street looking at the young women pushing strollers as they shopped, at the men on the corner playing jugs and spoons, and my uncle Les said to my uncle Sam under his breath, “With the first one, all that I could think was that he looked like a monkey,” and my uncle Sam said back, “Naka, Lesley. That is not a good way to think. You won’t think that any longer once you begin to see them. But where you work, you do not get to see them.”

  “You get to see them at your work, Samuel?”

  “One delivers parts to the store. I see others. But they don’t go into the suburbs.”

  “They are not allowed, is it?”

  “They are allowed. But I listen to how the people talk. Technically, they are allowed by the law. But the whites do not give them jobs in the suburbs.”

  When the lunch rush was over and the boys were scraping off the grills, Walter Johnson took off his apron, adjusted his hat, came to my uncles, and they could see his alligator-skin boots. There was a place they had to go, he told them. My uncles led him to their car.

  All along the Dan Ryan south, he asked them questions about India and what they were doing here. Wasn’t there any work in India? There wasn’t. Did they bring women with them? They hadn’t. So what did they do for women? They dated Hispanic women. Would their father be happy if they married Hispanic women? Probably not.

  Walter Johnson said, “At one time, there was nothing in Chicago but blacks and Jews and Italians and Irish. But now there are all these new breeds. All those Jews and micks and Italians and Polacks aren’t anything anymore but just white. Sure, they all still talk all their individual talk. But those days are done and gone. Because now we got beaners and Chinks and Nips and gooks and I don’t even know what to call you boys. Ever been to the Southside before? It’s all chocolate down here. All the way to Indiana. You got your Louisianans and Mississippians and Alabamans and holy rollers and Nation of Islam, but as soon as a white guy comes walking down the street, that’s the end of it. Then we’re all black. Pig-eating Indians, hey? We’ve got to think up a good name for you. A nice nasty name so you can fit in.”

  Soon enough they were at Seventy-seventh Street, and Walter Johnson guided them to a line of brownstones a few blocks from the expressway. It was all black people here, young men walking in groups, mothers leading children by the hand, and people crossed the street every which way, it seemed, except at the corners. The buildings were neglected and broken, some of the cars on the curbs had flat tires. They turned down an alley and a gang of stray dogs looked up at them from sniffing something and ran away. Walter Johnson told them to stop, led them around the garage, through a chain-link gate, and into a muddy yard. In the back of the yard and built against the fence were a few slated stalls lined with chicken wire. Pigs grunted in the shadows of the stalls.

  “You have raised these pigs here,” my uncle Sam said as he picked his way on the boards through the mud of the yard. He saw children watching him from a back window of the house, and when the children caught him looking, the curtain furled into place.

  “This is just where I hold them. I’ve got a guy on a farm near Normal who brings them up to me. I hold them here a few days, then kill them in the garage. What kind of pig are you looking for? A shoat? A hog?”

  My uncles looked at each other, didn’t know what those things were.

  “A big pig or a little pig?”

  “A big pig. A pig for forty-five dollars.”

  Walter Johnson whistled. He said, “That’s a pretty big pig. You sure you want a forty-five-dollar pig?”

  My uncles Sam and Les looked at each other. They had come all this way. They had even come to the Southside when Babu had told them never to because of the danger. If they were going to do all of this, then why not do it big? Big like coming to America. Big like life here was. They looked back at Walter Johnson. My uncle Sam said, “We want the big pig.”

  Walter took off his cowboy hat, hung it on a nail on the side of the stall, shucked off his leather jacket and folded it on the top. Then he rolled up his shirtsleeves and picked up some lengths of rope that had been lying in the mud. “Last chance,” he said and looked at them over his shoulder, and my uncles folded their arms and nodded. Then he unlatched the stall door and ducked into it. For some long moments there was squealing, curses from the man, and then there was one loud squeal, and it was quiet. Walter came back out of the stall clapping his hands together to clean them, and he spit to clean his mouth. He took the forty-five dollars from my uncle Sam’s hand and put it in his pocket. Then he put on his jacket and hat again. He said to them, “Go on in and get your pig.”

  The pig was big and angry, bristles raised on its back in a ridge, glaring at them with an angry eye. It huffed through the cheeks of its tied-off mouth, its muscles flexed under its skin. The legs were trussed together in a bunch at the hooves, and even despite that, the pig kicked, turning itself on its side in the dirt. Some smaller pigs squealed in the far corner. It took the both of them to drag that pig out of the stall and into the afternoon, and Walter gave them a metal pipe to run between the pig’s legs. Then they lifted the pig on the pipe to their shoulders, their jaws clenching from the weight. The pig bucked as it swung in the air, the pipe ground into their bones. Then Walter led them out the way they’d come, and they dumped and locked the pig in the trunk.

  “It is truly big,” my uncle Sam said as he clapped his hands clean, his face drained of color from the labor.

  “I like to satisfy my customers,” Walter Johnson winked and said.

  “The ropes will stay tight?”

  “They’re wet. The more that hog struggles, the more they’ll bite. You’re nervous now, ain’t you? You’re the one who asked for that pig.”

  “I am not nervous. It is only that the pig is big.”

  “Big angry pig. But big or small, they all die the same. Stick him. He’ll be dead. But he’ll also still be big.”

  As a last thing after my uncles got back in the car, Walter leaned in the driver’s side window, smiled, and said to both of them, “Go home and butcher your pig. We’ll settle the rest of the business the next time I see you.”

  “The rest of the business?” my uncle Sam said.

  “The rest of the business. When you’re done eating that pig, come down and have a rib sandwich. Then I’ll tell you your nasty name.”

  The sun broke through the clouds enough on the ride back that my uncles were able to crack the windows, and the downtown buildings gleamed in the new sun with all their glass and steel. There were many things to like about America, my uncle Sam admitted to himself as he smoked. There were jobs here, yes, and money to be made, but also America was open and fresh and new in a way that India could never be. There was space to move and breathe, even in the city, and too, despite the sense of loneliness he, like Les, felt at times, it was good to be away from the stifling rules of family. In America, each one could be whoever they were. His older brother Babu could put on his suit and go to work, his friend Javier could wear his tattoos and drink Mexican beer on his porch. Walter Johnson could wear his hat and boots and keep pigs in his yard. And as for him, the possibilities were opening as much as the sky was. He was happy and knew it. My uncle Sam understood then that he had left India fo
r good.

  Les said, “What if they could see us now, hey, Samuel? Papa, all of our friends? In our own car? Driving so fast? All these other cars? A pig in the trunk? Such riches here, hey? It is good what has happened to us, isn’t it, brother?”

  “It is good,” my uncle Sam said and tapped ashes out the window.

  “That man was a very nice man. So what if at home they call them monkeys? What have they ever seen at home?”

  “If they call them monkeys at home, it is only because they don’t think that they might also be called something.”

  “Today was good. Now we have our pig! But it was a bad day, too. Now I am thinking that Babu is right. We have learned many things. But also, maybe not much. Maybe we should listen to Babu more, Samuel. Maybe we should be more quiet.”

  “Babu knows much more than we do. From now on we will listen to him until we know exactly what will be our way.”

  My uncles had indeed managed to get their pig, but in their exuberance to achieve that most important thing, they had forgotten to plan for all the other little things that went into the making of a proper dukrajemas pork curry. For one, they needed vegetables to accompany the meat. And for two, they needed special spices for the flavor. First they drove all the way up to Devon Avenue, and Les spent some time in one of the new Indian spice shops, coming out with packets of curry powder, cardamom, and cloves. Then they turned south again, to shop at the Jewel supermarket on Western, which was the one on their way home.

  They parked the car. Sam patted the trunk to calm the pig—which wasn’t making any noise—through the time that they would be inside. Both Sam and Les liked going to the supermarket because they knew they could count on seeing young women there. They loaded their handbaskets with onions, garlic, potatoes, cauliflower. They followed one bouncy-bottomed girl in yellow track pants up the liquor aisle, and after winking at each other about it when she turned the corner, Les took down a gallon jug of Gallo Chablis, carried it by the ring. Then they pretended to be looking at rigatoni as a girl in sunglasses came down the pasta aisle, nudging each other in the ribs once she’d passed because of the size and sway of her breasts. They also didn’t put any pasta in their basket, because it wasn’t a food that they yet ate.