He didn’t even believe in charities. What people needed was justice, not handouts. He’d been raised by Leftists, he knew all that. But death was catching up with the lepers before India had enough free health care. Nothing could stop death, but coins could be thrown back at him to slow him down.
In Rudy’s club days as a teenager, he’d dated a girl who loved to come out of some venue at five in the morning, all spangled and sweaty and disheveled, and leave a twenty-dollar bill on the ground, for anyone on the street at that hour to find. It was something she liked to do before she went home, she thought it was lucky. Rudy, whose mother was starting to get sicker at this time, thought the girl didn’t know a fucking thing about luck, but then he started leaving bits of money too. He’d tuck it in a subway grating or a sidewalk crack, a five or a ten, and hear himself think to it, Please.
A modern NGO did not beg for donations by claiming they would bring luck, though all over the world people left offerings around statues for luck. He’d heard Deedee talk about “blessings,” but surely she knew not to say that to Liliane. It would not be good to get Liliane laughing in the wrong way.
Rudy had been thinking of Coney Island for their outing — funky, colorful, not too dangerous anymore — and was looking up its attractions on the computer at his desk at HH when Veena buzzed to tell him that Liliane was here — right here, now — in the office. This was a very good sign. Donors liked to think they owned the place, that it was theirs to pop in on.
But she was apologizing even as Veena showed her in. “You will think I am terrible,” she said. She was canceling their outing, to go instead to some country house upstate with her friend Barbara.
Surely she would stay for a minute and have a nice cool glass of iced tea?
Well, she might just do that.
“That’s so good, I need a break,” he said. “I’m getting grief from one of the centers about their roof that never gets fixed.”
“Yes, well, a roof.”
“I’d love to see the place fixed because a couple is going to get married there soon. Bamala and Pandi. They were engaged as children but then Bamala was thrown out of the village when she came down with leprosy. Years later they met again, by chance. It’s a great story.”
Didn’t he used to be better at this?
“It’s like a story out of a Bollywood movie,” he said. “Love lost and found.”
He showed her their pictures on the computer. Pandi had a mustache and wore a white short-sleeved shirt over a wrapped plaid dhoti, and both he and Bamala, in her flowered cotton sari, were glowering into the camera.
“What is the church behind them?” Liliane asked.
“This center is run by a Congregationalist mission. They’re a very dedicated bunch, very hardworking. People can do the right thing for whatever reasons they want. That’s what I think. You know what I mean?”
She appeared not to. Veena brought in the tea then — what the hell had taken her so long? — and Rudy was grateful for a pause, while he figured out another route.
He was getting nowhere fast. The last time he had felt this bungling was in India, where he got things wrong all the time. What did he know about money? How had he managed to pick jobs where he had to count it and watch it? Maybe his idiocy was not to adore it enough. Maybe he had to be punished for lack of devotion to the force that ran the world.
Liliane hated the iced tea, full of sugar and ice cubes.
“Did you ever go to Morocco, with your husband?” Rudy said. “Is that where you were married?”
“We had a very splendid wedding,” Liliane said. “I was carried into the room sitting on a cushioned table. Gold jewelry all around the face and, you know, henna designs on the hands and feet. My husband was on the shoulders of his friends. And wonderful music, long trumpets and much drums.”
One of his cousins had had a wedding like that. She’d seen the videos at his sister’s. Could anyone imagine her in a getup like that?
“Bamala and Pandi would be happy to just have a roof that didn’t leak.”
“Yes, of course.”
“We lost a few of our donors last year because they’d had money invested with Madoff.”
“What a liar he was,” Liliane said. “A grand liar. Maybe he enjoyed to lie.”
“I’d love to see someone give a gift in a spouse’s memory, like the Shah Jahan gave the Taj Mahal for his Mumtaz. It would be an act of love.”
What does he know about love? Liliane thought, in secret fury. He has no idea whatsoever.
She was thinking of the two times she had suffered most for love. One was when Emile was two weeks old. He would not let her sleep, not for a single second, and she was alone and broke and helpless in a hideous new way. The man who’d fathered him had run off with a girl from Frankfurt before Liliane had even known she was pregnant. A friend who showed up with some nice hot food thought Liliane should maybe think of giving the baby up to the care of the state, and Liliane had spit at her. Quick as that: a sudden spewed froth of saliva that hit her in the cheek. What a dramatic thing to do, and it lost her that useful friend. An act of love.
The other time had to do with Ahmed. Once, when they were first living together, she was sure he was still seeing another woman. Someone left over from before, a woman who sang sometimes at the club. He would come home in the early hours of the morning, he would decide he had to shower before he settled into bed, he would fix her a very lovely lunch the next day. She was afraid if she raged at him he would feel compelled to leave, and so she kept silent, she said nothing — she lived in a hell of patience, unlike anything she’d known, until he gave the woman up.
She could still remember his body in bed damp from the shower, his wet head on the pillow. Her silence was a sign (to her: there was no one else to see) that she was humbled, by this time, from the hard years. She could have found another man but not another Ahmed.
He used to bring home leftover food from the club to stretch their budget. Emile was a big eater. When had he started to have money? Not then. But he’d never been stingy. He’d had the club owner’s love of grand gestures, buying champagne when the musicians’ wives showed up, sending cribs and strollers to their new babies. Anyone could get a handout from him.
But he had hoarded those real estate properties, salted away his hidden riches. He must have loved to think of those assets growing in the dark, buried like bulbs till their season. When did he ever plan to tell her? Now she was rich because of him, which she sometimes forgot, thinking like a rich person that she had what she had from being worthy.
In her poorer days she’d been wily when she had to be. With nothing to eat in the house, she used to walk through elegant neighborhoods with her good haircut and good coat, and some perfectly decent men bought her meals. She was young and took chances. But she never sat down with anyone dangerous, she always knew how to judge, she had never been stupid or reckless.
“And older donors sometimes leave bequests in their wills,” Rudy said. “That’s another beautiful gesture.”
What? She could hardly believe he’d decided to say this to her. How fast did he think she was on her way to dying?
“When people come to visit the Taj,” Liliane said, ”they don’t want to see the poor people?”
He looked confused.
“In France I give to the homeless.”
“On the street. Me too.”