Tulip Season Read online

  She'd do it. She'd fly to Kolkata. She'd stay as long as necessary to make contact with Kareena and warn her of the prickly path ahead. Even if Mitra's finances didn't justify the trip, she would take it.

  Breathing deeply, she contemplated her arrival. Kolkata—noise and dust, twisty alleys, impossible traffic, and still with scenic beauty and friendliness. Would Kareena gasp in amazement when she saw Mitra in the midst of such chaos and beauty? Would she want to empty out the contents of her heart and say, “Let's go sit and catch up?” With warmth and only the tiniest touch of chiding, Mitra would convey her concerns: How could you leave your best friend imagining the worst for so many weeks? Don't ever go missing on me again.

  She phoned Detective Yoshihama to commiserate.

  His voice heavy, he answered. “All the ‘should haves’ I've been thinking about the last few hours. I should have stayed more in touch with Robert.”

  “I'm still wondering about the message Robert left me this morning. Something about the lead I gave him.” A sense of fear set in Mitra's body. It felt as though her heart had been drained of vital fluids. “What if he hadn't committed suicide? God, what if someone tried to shut him up for good, made it seem like a suicide? He was a former crime reporter, after all.”

  “There'll be an investigation. We're waiting for the coroner's report.” He paused. “Would you like to have coffee with me early next week? We can talk about it.”

  “Sorry, I can't.” She filled him in about her plan to take a trip to Kolkata. “Robert's death has done it for me. I don't want to lose another friend.”

  For a nanosecond the detective stayed silent. “At least you're doing something positive.” He wished her a bon voyage, adding, “Record any conversation with Ms. Sinha, will you?”

  Mitra got off the phone. Belatedly, remembering Grandmother's invitation, she picked up her car keys. Within fifteen minutes, she arrived at Grandmother's house. Grandmother opened the door and said brightly, “Hello, dear. Come in.”

  Grandmother's composed, beatific expression calmed Mitra, at least temporarily. She mumbled a greeting, as she stepped in and followed Grandmother to the living room. They sat on either end of a suede sectional couch. Mitra's gaze fell on a shadowy corner where a baby spider plant rested.

  “Are you all right?” Grandmother asked.

  Grief gnawed at Mitra's stomach as she brought Grandmother up to speed on the news of Robert's suicide.

  “I'm so sorry, Mitra.”

  Mitra reminisced about Robert, all the ups-and-downs she'd experienced with him in the early days, and how they were getting closer. She finished by saying, “How do you know when to take better care of your friends and when to leave them alone?”

  “Well, your friends do what they want to do.” The nasal quality in Grandmother's voice was more pronounced, a sure sign she was drifting into a melancholy mood. “It's their life, after all. We're just bystanders.”

  “My work's cut out for me. I can't be a by-stander anymore. I must fly to Kolkata.”

  Grandmother leaned across. “Kolkata? But why?”

  “Robert's friends, including myself, didn't reach him,” Mitra said. “I want to reach Kareena before it's too late.”

  Grandmother fell back on the couch. “Doesn't she have relatives in Kolkata?”

  “No, she has no family there.”

  “What about that actor you were telling me about?”

  “I get conflicting stories on him. I won't tell Kareena how to run her life or anything like that. I want to be there in case she needs someone to confide in. Who better than me? And, to tell you the truth, there could still be a chance of foul play. Not everything is making sense. Maybe her actor-lover kidnapped her. Maybe it's the Stockholm syndrome—she's joined her kidnapper. I don't want to see her being victimized.”

  Without hesitating even for a fraction of a second Grandmother said, “Let me buy your ticket.”

  “Oh, no, I can't let you do that.”

  “Listen, you've spent many more hours in my garden than you've billed me for. Don't think I haven't noticed it. And you've told me yourself that lately you've taken on far fewer clients than you did in the past. Let me do this for you.”

  She kept insisting. Mitra finally agreed.

  “I'll be happy to mow your lawn,” Grandmother said. “I'll get your mail, water your plants, whatever else you might need done around the house.”

  Mitra promised to write down instructions on how to take care of her plant babies and explain them to Grandmother before leaving for Kolkata.

  Grandmother put an extra color in her voice as she said, “Let's have dinner.”

  They both retreated to the dining room. On the table, Grandmother spread white carryout cartons with red dragon images and spilling with soba noodles. A mélange of smells and rich appetizing colors surrounded Mitra. She felt hunger pangs. Grandmother arranged tiny plastic take-out cups of sauces—soy, chili, vinegar, and rice wine—well aware that Mitra liked to season her meal in her own particular way. They progressed through the layers of scallions, carrots, celery, and noodles, talking about this and that. At times, Mitra went silent, grief overtaking her. Soon their plates were bare. They lingered in the companionable stillness.

  As Mitra helped collect the dishes, she peered into grandmother's garden now deep into the shadows beyond the circle of light cast by the floodlight above the deck.

  The evening had set in. There was no color anywhere.

  Returning home, Mitra had barely stepped on the porch when her gaze fell on the bunch of wisteria that sprayed out of a vase placed near the door. Oh, Ulrich had stopped by. How terrible; she'd missed him. He'd left a sweet note on a post-it stuck to the door, saying, “Mit, my darling, call me when you can.”

  Glancing at the white purity of the flowers and placing the vase on the coffee table in the living room, Mitra forgave him for his mini-absence. She called, but no one picked up the phone. She recorded a message on his voice-mail about Robert's suicide and her sudden decision to travel to India. “Come over soon. I want to see you before I leave. And thanks for the flowers.”

  Surely, he would return her call, probe further about her trip, challenge her impulsiveness, and try to slow her down. He called her “Hurry Meister.”

  Tonight she could use cheer, slowness, and the warm cocoon of his arms.

  THIRTY-ONE

  OUTSIDE MITRA'S WINDOW, the sky resembled an unlit charcoal oven. The drizzle continued. “Gray as Granny's picture album,” intoned the weatherman on the television news hour. “And it's getting just as old,” he added, referring to the long stretch of overcast weather, dismal enough to dampen even the sunniest mood. Around here, Mitra reminded herself, the weather-induced malady wasn't called by its full name, Seasonal Affective Disorder. Rather, it was appropriately called SAD.

  The India trip was coming up in a matter of days. The message Mitra had left on Ulrich's voice mail about the trip had gone unanswered. She wouldn't press him, however. Since Robert's death, she'd decided to go easy on her loved ones.

  It was late enough for her to give dinner some thought, though she didn't relish the prospect of preparing a meal. She peeked inside the refrigerator only to find a useless assortment of ingredients: stale potato bread, a jar of stinky old garlic pickle, and a bottle of celery juice.

  Through the sound of rain on the roof, she heard the doorbell screeching. Ulrich stood at the door, one eye swollen, with a blue-black smudge under it.

  It was as though someone had squeezed all the comfort out of Mitra. “Uli, what happened?”

  Unshaven and uncombed, his face damp from the drizzle and scruffy in a worn crew-neck pullover, he stood in silence. He looked nothing like the man she'd gotten close to, and that knowledge came like a blow. He bent and touched his lips to hers. The taste—a musky sweetness—was pure Ulrich.

  She pulled him inside, wrapped her arms around his neck, leaned her head against his chest, smelling the drenched alpaca of his sweater and lis
tening to the discontent beating of his heart. Noticing scrapes on his knuckles—swollen purple mounds—she winced.

  She stepped back and appraised his face more carefully. “What happened to your eye?”

  “I had a disagreement with a colleague.”

  Didn't Nobuo say something about Ulrich being arrested? Was this incident something similar? Her gaze fell on a tear at the neck of his sweater. He seemed self-absorbed, not noticing her reactions. They walked through the entryway into the living room where he claimed his favorite end of the couch and she took the other end.

  Staring at his face, she asked, “A disagreement? Is that how you got that injury?”

  “Ja. One thing led to another, and we got into a fight.” The injured eye threw off the symmetry of his features. “It's okay between us now. I'm stronger than that bastard, even though he's bigger. I did more damage.”

  She shivered. “How badly did he get hurt?”

  “He'll be okay.”

  “Did the police—?”

  “Don't mention the police to me. I despise them.”

  Perhaps noting the freaked-out expression on her face, he made an effort to smile through his dry cracked lips. “All that's over now, Mit. I understand that you don't care for fights, but sometimes a man has to defend himself.”

  Something in his tone of voice made her cringe. She might as well be direct with him. “Where have you been the last several days?”

  “Do you know that house up in Ballard?” he asked and she nodded. He'd boasted about the “redemption” of the 1905 single-family dwelling with which he'd been entrusted, Mitra recalled. “I took it apart, with the help of a few other workers, and put it back together. You should see it. We're almost finished. The windows, siding, floors, and plumbing have all been redone. We're painting now. This past week has been extremely busy. I'll have to show you one of these days what I did.”

  She nodded her assent, her watchful gaze on him. There must be more to his story and she'd somehow get to it.

  Silence darkened between them until he finally said, “I got your message. What is this thing about you going to India?”

  She related to him her findings in Kareena's house and all that had transpired since.

  “Your friend abandoned her husband and took off? She had a lover, you said? You've found some stories about him on the Net? ” He laughed, if such a contemptuous sound could be classified as a laugh. “She didn't even tell you where she was going. Don't put a guilt-trip on yourself and try to find her.”

  Mitra had already chewed that matter to pieces. Still, his attitude slashed through her. “I want to make sure she's safe. I'm not sure if Adi ever physically abused her, but that actor—”

  “If she's the kind of woman who abandons her mate, she's asking for it. Any husband or lover would be tempted to hit her.”

  Hit her? Mitra choked on those two words and was able only to say, “What?”

  He caught himself and drew in a pleasant expression. “Oh, no, I'd never hit a woman.” He shifted forward and slipped her a tiny kiss, but she didn't feel the usual swoon. “Who would help you in Kolkata?”

  “I can count on a few people over there, like my mother.” Actually, she wasn't sure about her mother, who might be ill.

  He touched his black eye, as though it hurt.

  “Have you been in fights before?” she asked.

  He took a long pause. Looking away from her, he mumbled, “I haven't told you everything.”

  The crack in his voice disturbed her. “I need to hear it all.”

  “You remember my friend Klaus I told you about?”

  She examined Ulrich's face, focusing her gaze on his good eye. “Oh yes, the bully, all the way through school, wasn't he? Later, you became friends.”

  “There's no such person. I'm Klaus. Everything I told you about Klaus happened to me. I changed my name when I came here.”

  Mitra looked down and smoothed the sleeve of her ribbed knit top. She'd been guarding her own secret involving a half-sister, but that seemed trivial compared to this. How much else about this man was a lie? Might he been hiding instances of emotional disorder? What had landed him in jail, if only briefly?

  “I didn't want to use the name my parents gave me,” he said. “Let me go back to the beginning. My father was a government official in Germany. We lived almost too well for the salary he made. Even as a child I picked up on that. I wondered how we could afford a fancy BMW, Rosenthal china, wine receptions for large groups. And still my parents acted angry, crazy, depressed. You know about the collective German guilt about the Second World War, don't you?”

  She nodded uncomfortably.

  “They took pleasure trips to Milan and Paris to forget their unhappiness. They'd leave me alone in the big house with a servant, like I didn't matter to them. My head would pound. I'd cry until my voice was choked.” He paused. “It came out a year later that the money for our extravagant life came from embezzled public funds. Father was found guilty and sent to prison. We lost our house, our social position, my childhood.”

  “How old were you then?”

  “Seven. Even a seven-year-old knows when something terrible is happening. After my father went to prison, my mother was devastated. Her tongue got sharper. She called my father names—when she was talking to me. I began to think that since I was his son, I must be damaged, too. The ehrfurcht—honor and fear—I felt for them, especially the honor part, went away. I got in trouble in school, bringing shame on my family. I wanted to study medicine, but my grades weren't good enough, and that was yet more shame.”

  “You managed an elevator business in Germany, didn't you?” she asked, nurturing hope that he hadn't lied about that, too.

  “Ja, but I lost that job when I punched a salesman in the mouth. The dummkopf didn't follow orders.” He described the scene: two angry bodies bump into each other, punching and clawing, blood and sweat mixing, crashing into furniture. Eventually one prevails and the other one lies on the ground moaning.

  Why did he have to describe the scene in so much detail? With an edge of frustration in her voice, “Did you try therapy?”

  He swiped a hand over his blond curls. “You name the therapy, I tried it. Finally, my counselor suggested working with plants. He found me the position of a field hand with a commercial farmer in Holland. I moved there to plant bulbs.”

  “You planted bulbs?”

  A wistful quality edged into his voice. “Ja, I was a tulip apprentice.” In recounting the episode, he described a place where the sky was smoky gray and hazy, where daylight had a thin watery consistency, and the wind punished. He turned the heavy soil, smelled the fresh earth, tuned in to nature's rhythm and became still, like a poet with the beginning of a couplet. The owner, a farmer lady, had a sweet freckled face peeking out from under a head scarf. Her hands were large and sturdy. Shortly after planting the last bulb, he left Holland. He wasn't making enough money. He promised to the farmer lady he'd be back for the next planting season. In his dreams, he revisited the field where silky blossoms in red, yellow, and purple flirted with the spring breeze.

  His fingers drifted across Mitra's hand in a cool touch as he continued. “The first time I met you, I noticed your hands—rough, dry, working hands. Immediately, I thought of that farmer lady. I remembered standing in that field, earth on my boots.

  “That evening, you talked about your small business and your plants. I could see how lovely and unspoiled you were. These days, everything is rotten inside and covered up to look good. Just being around you these last few weeks, Mit, has made a huge difference in my disposition.” He gazed brightly at her. “You said your tulips had died. Perhaps we'll plant new bulbs together this fall?”

  Digging in the rich earth and basking in the company of greenery might soothe Ulrich's grief about his past and his family troubles. Wistfully, she nodded and pictured their planting session. This was how it'd go: trowel in hand, he'd move about her yard, his face and mood brightened by th
e natural light, dark impulses tempered by the touch of the gentle soil underfoot. She'd open a box of bulbs. But the scene vanished.

  “Why did you decide to emigrate to the U.S?” she asked.

  “To go back to my studies. To get a silly degree. But being in a classroom makes me want to jump out the window.”

  “It's okay not to go to college.”

  “It's not okay! Working in construction is not high status work. It makes me angry to think that's only the job I can get.”

  She saw the despair, the self-pity that surfaced on the wrinkles of his forehead. “Uli, Uli …”

  “I want to beat my head against my apartment's chintzy wall. And, no matter how hard it gets, you can't admit you're suffering. We Germans bury so much inside.”

  “You've left that life behind. This is America. Here you can get help. Here you can have a fresh start.”

  “Every morning, I wake up in Germany. I want to hear the language, see and smell German things. God knows, I miss real German bread. Schwarzbrot. And I'd never have believed this, but I miss ordnung, everyone knowing their place and what to expect from others.”

  He sank back onto the couch, like someone exhausted after a brawl. “Sorry, didn't mean to unload so much on you. I'm not—what do you call it—as belligerent as I used to be, as Klaus used to be.”

  She didn't hear the rain any more. The Ulrich she cared about was so different from Klaus, his doppelganger. That man was a completer stranger to her.

  “Do your parents know about your new life?” she asked. “Have you tried to reconcile?”

  His eyes darkened with hatred. “No. They're pathetic old people, drunk most nights, waiting for a slow death. I'd just as soon they were gone from this planet.”

  His fingers drifted across her hand in a leisurely touch. She snatched her hand away.