The Five Dollar Smile: And Other Stories Read online

  Joseph turned to him in gratitude. He had hoped his desperation would become apparent and attract assistance. It had worked.

  “Thank you,” he managed to say. “I didn’t know how to open it.”

  “It’s quite easy,” his neighbor said.

  The first copies of the photographs arrived at the HELP Center a few weeks after the photographer had left. Joseph had almost forgotten the incident, even the caning, though the frustration of the papadam-less gruel remained. One of the nuns called him to Sister Eva’s office excitedly.

  “Look, Joseph—these are the pictures the nice man took, the day you were so bad,” Sister Celine told him. “This is you.”

  Joseph looked at the black-and-white image without curiosity. He would rather not have seen it, rather not have been reminded of their perverse cruelty to him that day. He stared at the picture, made no comment, and looked away.

  “It’s going to be used in a worldwide appeal,” Sister said. “Your picture will be in every important magazine in the world. Helping us get money to help other children. Doesn’t that make you happy, Joseph?”

  He had learned to be dutiful. “Yes, Sister,” he said.

  The man in the seat next to him turned the polyethylene packet around, slipped out a flap, and deftly extricated a fork and a knife. He handed them to Joseph with a cordial smile.

  “There—you see, easy.”

  “Thank you.” Joseph, taking the implements from the man, felt his ears burning with shame. So there had been no need to try and tear open the packet after all. There was a flap. He turned single-mindedly to the food, wanting to shut the rest of the world, witness to his humiliation, out of his sight and hearing.

  The first MAKE THIS CHILD SMILE AGAIN poster was put up in the HELP office just behind Sister Eva’s desk, so those who came in would be struck by it as soon as they entered and looked for her. It was put up without any fuss or ceremony, and Joseph only knew it was there because the door to Sister Eva’s office had been open when he and a group of boys had been walking down the corridor to their daily classes. It was one of the other boys who had noticed it first and drawn everyone else’s attention to it.

  The slogan soon became a joke. “Smile, Joseph, smile,” his friends would tease him. And if he was in a particularly angry mood, one of the boys would ask with mock gravity, “Has anyone got five dollars?” Sometimes Joseph would only get angrier, but sometimes he would be provoked to smile at them. They used to call it the five-dollar smile.

  The food was terrible. It was totally unfamiliar to Joseph’s taste buds, anyway, and he did not enjoy it. There was, however, a bowl of fruit salad on the tray that contained little diced apples. He ate those, spilling some on the seat and the floor. He did not know whether to be happy about the pieces he had eaten or sad about the ones he had lost. He looked around to see if anyone was watching him. No one was. He tried to pick up a little piece of apple from the floor, but the tray was in his way and he couldn’t reach down far enough. It was frustrating. On balance, he felt miserable.

  The stewardess swished by to collect his tray. Would he like some tea? Joseph said, “Yes.” Actually he wanted coffee, but he was scared that if he said “no” to the tea he might not be offered any coffee either. Why couldn’t they have offered him coffee first? he thought, as the pale, brown liquid filled his cup. It was so unfair.

  He was, not surprisingly, the first child to be “adopted.” Other people who responded to the campaign had sent in their five dollars for the first month, and their pledges for a year or two years or a decade or a lifetime, for any child HELP wanted to rescue. But three couples insisted their money go to one specific child—the child in the photograph. They had seen his sad, little face, and they wanted to make him smile again. No one else. Their five dollars were for Joseph Kumaran’s tiny little fingers to come out of his hungry little mouth. And they insisted on being allowed to adopt him alone.

  The nuns had sighed when those letters came in. “Oh, what a nuisance some people are,” Sister Eva said. “I have half a mind to return their money to them. It’s none of their business to tell us where their money should go.” But Sister Eva had kept the money and the pledges anyway—from all three couples. Joseph Kumaran’s five-dollar smile was actually netting HELP fifteen dollars a month.

  So every month Joseph would have to sit down and, in his neat, strained little hand, write a letter to each of his foster parents, thousands of miles away, telling them how good and grateful he was. “Today we had catechism, and I learned the story of how Lot’s wife turned into a banana tree,” he would write to one couple. (Salt was an expensive commodity in those parts, and the nuns didn’t want the children to derive the wrong lessons from the Bible.) Then he would copy the same line out neatly onto the other two letters. As he grew older, Sister Celine would no longer dictate the letters, but let him write them himself and correct them before they were mailed. “Sister Angela has told me about America,” he wrote once. “Is it true that everyone is rich there and always has plenty to eat?” Sister Celine did not like that, scored it out, and was later seen speaking sternly to Sister Angela.

  The steward was coming down the aisle selling headphones. Joseph had seen him doing that as the flight began, and though he did not know what headphones were, he had discovered that they cost money and that people put them into their ears. He shook his head vigorously when asked whether he wanted one. But his anxious eyes rolled in curiosity as his neighbor, who had also declined the first time, looked at the approbation, produced green notes and silver coins, and was rewarded with a polyethylene packet. From this emerged a contraption even stranger at close quarters than it had seemed from a distance.

  The curtains were being drawn across the airplane windows; a screen was lowered at the head of the cabin; images flickered on the whiteness ahead. Joseph stared, transfixed, rapt. His neighbor had plugged in his headset and was obviously listening to something Joseph could not hear. Titles began to appear on the screen.

  Joseph desperately wanted to hear the movie, too.

  He would get letters in reply from his foster parents. Initially, they were as frequent as his monthly letters to them, but later their interest seemed to flag and he would get only occasional replies. One couple seemed the nicest—they would always apologize profusely whenever their letters were too late, and they would always ask about him, his schoolwork, his games. At Christmas they would send little gifts that Sister Celine would let him open but which he would have to share with the other children. Joseph liked their colored notepaper, the lady’s handwriting, which was so easy to read, and the lingering smell of perfume that still clung to each sheet of stationery. Frequently he would hold it up to his face, smothering his nose in it, smelling America.

  One day, after several letters to this couple, he became bolder. “It is very hot here at this time of year,” he had written in the version approved by Sister Celine “I suppose it is cooler in America.” But while copying the corrected draft out neatly on to an aerogram, he added: “I think I would enjoy America very much.” He told no one about the addition, sealed the aerogram, and waited excitedly for a reply.

  When it came, there was no reference to what he had written. But Joseph did not give up. “I often wonder whether America has trees like the ones in my drawing,” he hinted while enclosing a precocious crayon sketch. And in the next letter, “If I came to America, do you think I might like it?” He was so enamored of this approach that he copied that line into each of his three letters and sent them away.

  It worked. His favorite “parents,” the ones who sent him Christmas presents, wrote to Sister Celine to say that they’d often wanted to see the little boy they’d “adopted” but they’d never been able to manage a trip to India. Would it not be possible for young Joseph to be sent to America instead? As soon as they heard from Sister Celine, they would be happy to enclose a plane ticket for the little boy. Of course, they were not suggesting that he should stay with them always. Obvi
ously, his place was among “his people” in India, and “with you all at HELP.” They would send him back, but they did so want to see him, just once.

  Sister Celine seemed a little taken aback by the letter. It was not customary for foster parents to evince such an interest in their protégés. When they were old enough the children were simply taught an elementary trade and packed off to earn their keep. Foreign trips, for however short a duration, were highly unusual.

  Sister Celine showed Joseph the letter and asked, “You haven’t been up to anything, have you?” To his excited protestations she merely responded, “We’ll see.” And then she went to talk to Sister Eva.

  Joseph had only seen one movie before. That was a documentary about HELP’s activities among orphan children in the wilds of Bihar, and it had been shown one evening after dinner by the man who made it, so that the nuns could all see what the outside world was being told about their work. Sister Eva, in a spirit of generosity, had suggested that the boys, at least those over five, be permitted to sit on the ground and watch it too. It might teach them a few things, she told the other nuns, make them realize how much we do for them, maybe instill some gratitude in them. Joseph had fallen asleep halfway through that movie. He didn’t want to see starving Adivasi children and warm-hearted nuns; he saw them every day. The black-and-white images, the monotonous, superimposed voice of the commentator, blurred in his mind; the nuns danced tiptoe through the crevices of his brain, and the pictures pulsed and faded in his eyes. Firm but gentle hands were rousing him.

  “Get up—it’s time to go to bed.”

  In the background, Sister Eva’s high-pitched voice rang through the clear night: “Look at them! Give them a special treat like this and half of them go off to sleep! Don’t ever let me catch any of you asking to see a movie again. I mean it!”

  But what a movie this was. Bright, vivid colors, pretty, white women in short dresses, fast cars racing down broad, foreign streets. It was like nothing he had ever seen before. And he wanted to hear it; hear the loud roar of the car engines, the soft, tinkling laughter of the women, the shouts and the screams and all the sounds of bullets and people and whizzing airplanes.

  “Sir.” The steward who had dispensed the headphones was standing at the end of the aisle, just behind Joseph, watching the movie too.

  “Yes?”

  “May I have some headphones too?”

  “Of course.” The steward disappeared behind the partition and emerged with a polyethylene packet. He handed it to Joseph.

  Joseph reached out to take it with an ineffable feeling of awe, wonder, and achievement. He pushed aside the flap, put in his hand, and touched the cold plastic. The sensation was indescribably thrilling.

  “Two dollars and fifty cents, please.”

  “But . . . but . . . I don’t have any money,” Joseph said miserably. His eyes pleaded with the steward. “Please?”

  The steward had a why-are-you-wasting-my-time-you-dumb-child look on his face. “I’m sorry,” he said, taking the packet out of Joseph’s hands, “IATA regulations.”

  And then he was gone, having invoked an authority higher than Joseph’s longings, more powerful than philanthropy. When he reemerged from the partition it was on the other side, on the aisle away from Joseph’s.

  Sister Eva had taken some time to decide. It was not that she minded in principle, she told Sister Celine, but this could set a dangerous precedent. The other children would be wanting to go too, and how many had rich American foster parents who would be willing to mail them plane tickets?

  In the end, however, to Joseph’s great relief, she agreed. She would write personally to the American couple making it clear Joseph was not to be spoiled. And that he was to be back within a month, before he could become entirely corrupted by American ways, to resume his place among those as unfortunate as he was. Unless they wanted to keep him in America for good, which they showed no intention of doing.

  The next few weeks passed in a frenzy of preparation. The ticket had to arrive, a flight had to be booked, a passport had to be issued to Joseph, a visa obtained. He was given a little suitcase for his clothes, and he swelled with pride at his tangible evidence of possessions. He had things, he was somebody. With a passport, a suitcase, a ticket, he was not just a little brown face in a crowd around the gruel bowl; he was Master Joseph Kumaran, and he was going somewhere.

  And finally, wearing the tight blazer he had been given on the morning of his departure, its pocket stuffed with the news-magazine clipping he had hoarded since it had been shown to him by Sister Celine four years ago, his passport nestling next to a glossy color photo of his hosts sent to him so that he would recognize them at the airport, Joseph was put on board the plane. Sister Celine was there to see him off; she smiled at him through misty glasses, and Joseph felt the wetness on her cheeks when she hugged him at the departure gate. But he could not cry in return; he was a little scared, but more excited than upset, and he certainly was not sad.

  The man sitting next to him did not seem to care particularly for the movie after all. Twice, Joseph caught him dozing off, his eyes closing and his chin sinking slowly to his chest; twice, with equal suddenness, his neighbor’s head would jerk awake, prompted no doubt by some startling sound on the headphones. The third time this happened, the man pulled off his headphones in disgust and strode off, clambering over Joseph, in quest of a sink.

  Joseph could not resist this opportunity. It was too good to be true: headphones plugged in, next to him, unused. He eased himself out of his seatbelt and sat in his neighbor’s chair. Then, tentatively, looking around him to make sure no one had noticed him, he raised the tips to his ears. Almost immediately he was assaulted by the sounds of the movie: brakes screeched as a car drew to a halt; a man dashed down some stairs with a gun in his hand; there was some panting dialogue; the gun went off, the bullet’s report a deafening symphony in Joseph’s ear; a woman screamed. And his neighbor returned from the toilet.

  Joseph looked up, almost in agony. His pleasure had been so brief.

  The man smiled down at him from the aisle. “Mine, sonny,” he beamed.

  Joseph had been well brought up. “Excuse me,” he said, gently removing the headphones and placing them on the seat. He slid into his place again, his neighbor returned to his chair, the ear-plugs went back on, and Joseph found he could not see the screen through his tears.

  Hoping his neighbor would not notice, he dabbed at his eyes with the clean, white handkerchief Sister Angela had pressed into his hand that morning. That morning—it seemed so long ago. He returned the handkerchief to his pocket, feeling once again the magazine clipping that, four years ago, had started him on this journey. Resolutely, he refrained from pulling it out. That was not him: he had another identity now. He took out his passport, and his eyes caressed each detail on the inside page, from the fictional birthdate (“it’s easier than going through the entire ‘birthdate unknown’ business,” Sister Eva had declared) to the inventory of his characteristics (“Hair: black; eyes: black; skin: brown”) to the new, awkward photograph, Joseph staring glassy-eyed into the studio camera. And then, returning the passport at long last to his inside pocket, he touched the other photo, the glossy, color portrait of his new, albeit temporary, parents. After some hesitation, he took it out: these were the people whose house he would call home for the next month.

  But would he really? He stared at their forms in the photograph. They had sent Joseph their picture so he would recognize them, but they had not asked for his. “We’re sure we’ll spot him as soon as he gets off the plane,” the wife had written to Sister Celine. “We feel we’ve known him all our lives.” Joseph had felt flattered then, deeply touched. Then one day, in a fit of temper, Sister Eva had threatened to replace Joseph with another little dark-skinned boy from the orphanage. “Do you think they’d be able to tell the difference?” she had demanded.

  In silent, desperate misery, Joseph had not known what to say.

  Lookin
g at the photograph, Joseph tried to think of the magic of America, of things there he had heard about and dreamed of—movies, parties, delicious food of infinite variety, outings to the beach and to Disneyland. But his eyes dilated and the photograph blurred. He did not know why he felt suffused with a loneliness more intense, more bewildering in its sadness than he had ever experienced in the gruel crowds of HELP. He was alone, lost somewhere between a crumpled magazine clipping and the glossy brightness of a color photograph.

  On the seat next to him, his neighbor snored peacefully, chin resting in surrender on his chest, headphones embedded into his ears. On the screen, the magic images flickered, cascaded, and danced on.

  1978

  The Boutique

  The elevator attendant swung open the door of the elevator and looked at Amma and me with an appraisingly critical eye.

  From his manner it was clear he wasn’t very impressed: Amma in her plain cotton sari with her slightly greying hair done up in a traditional way at the back, clutching the invitation card as if for security and looking very plain and rather proletarian; me in my loose kurta that fell awkwardly from bony shoulders, in narrow trousers that went out of fashion five years back, sporting an unshaven underchin, looking more unkempt than dashing.

  He elevated an eyebrow ever so slightly and moved infinitesimally to the left, as though making way for appearance’s sake. I waved Amma into the elevator as she stepped in awkwardly, unsure of herself, and followed, trying to look confident and extroverted. The attendant didn’t move; he waited for further passengers—there was no one in sight—while we fidgeted uneasily, then turned his face a fraction towards me. “Where to?” he asked.

  “The new boutique opening,” Amma answered for me, trying to assert herself. “In the . . . er . . .”—she looked at the card—” Plaza Lounge. Which floor is that?”

  The attendant looked at her incredulously, then contemptuously. He nodded in sage understanding and made to shut the elevator door. In the distant entrance to the hotel foyer, a fat lady in a dress of some expensive material waddled through and the attendant paused in his act for her to make her way to the elevator. He could have left us at the first floor and come back for her in that time; but he waited, and so did we. I suddenly felt like rushing out of the elevator, the hotel, the area. This wasn’t our place. We didn’t belong here.