The Best Australian Stories 2011 Read online

  ‘Yes,’ she says.

  ‘And you are a doctor?’

  ‘Yes.’ She squints across the top of her glasses to the card on the dash that gives him a number but no name. Her own name, she realises, is clearly displayed on the staff card swinging from her neck. Dr Sanghmitra Jethani. Her husband’s name.

  ‘Your father must be very proud,’ he says. ‘A daughter who is a doctor must be a great relief.’

  Pride is not a thing she associates with her father. Her success may have provided some consolation for her absence in the years before he died, but she doubts she offered him relief.

  ‘I have two daughters,’ he continues. ‘Perhaps there is hope.’

  ‘Hope?’ she says.

  ‘That they will be happy. That they will water their father’s ground. Do you have daughters, doctor?’

  She clears a patch of glass with the back of her hand and makes out the smudged remains of the old gasworks and the vast expanse of containers waiting to be shipped. Beyond them, beyond the scope of her failing vision, the city towers would be shrouded in low cloud like distant peaks. His question is well meant.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘I have a son.’

  ‘Ah. Your father is doubly blessed.’

  *

  When her father died, her husband had already made his plans for her.

  ‘You have a brother,’ he said. ‘It is his responsibility now. Your mother is fortunate to have a son.’

  But fortune had nothing to do with Kaamil. For all the privilege he’d been afforded – his education, the debts of gratitude owed to his father in business and bestowed in kind on the son – he’d done nothing but gamble and dream.

  ‘Kaamil can’t help,’ she’d said. ‘He owes more than he owns; you know that, Rajit. He is a liability.’

  ‘He is your mother’s son,’ Rajit had replied. ‘And I am your husband.’

  She’d thought about defying him and staying with her mother after the funeral. She could practise in Kota. Her mother could sell the store, though there was little value in it. The department stores had stolen their custom long ago. They sold lights cheaper than her father could buy them. Any fool could plug them in.

  ‘Light used to be like magic,’ he said before he’d died. ‘It could kill you like that.’ He touched two fingers together like electric wires. ‘Now … phhht.’

  He took to stocking batteries for mobile phones, butane, plastic watchbands. The radio whispered all day at the back of the shop, its valves glowing softly as they delivered the world to him in barely audible waves.

  When she’d married Rajit, her parents had given his family the last of the great chandeliers that had hung like a jewel from the ceiling of the shop. They’d also given two washing machines, a television and a sum of money that neither family revealed to her.

  ‘They have these things already,’ she’d said. ‘Mother still washes by hand.’

  ‘We are very fortunate, Sanghmitra,’ her father had said. ‘The Jethanis are a good family. They are well connected. His father once dined with Jinnah, do you know?’

  She knew the cost of staying with her mother against Rajit’s wishes. She may have been Udai’s mother, but he was Rajit Jethani’s son.

  ‘You will go to Australia,’ Rajit had said. ‘It is all arranged. Udai will go too.’

  It was her one consolation.

  ‘You will have an Australian qualification. Udai will have an education.’

  His own qualification had come from England, like his father’s. His parents had paid the fees and he’d spent two years in London perfecting his accent and learning the intricacies of tax minimisation.

  ‘Business is what you learn on the streets of Karol Bagh,’ he’d said. ‘A qualification is something else. Believe me, Sanghmitra, it is for the best.’

  ‘I have a qualification, Rajit,’ she said. ‘There are women here who will not be seeing a doctor if I go.’

  ‘Then think of our son, Sanghmitra. Think of my father’s grandson.’

  *

  The week after she left, Kaamil sold the freehold on his father’s shop to settle his debts. He would hold the lease and carry on as his father had done, buying cheap and selling at a small profit. But by the time Udai was enrolled in his Australian school and Sanghmitra had finished her first rotation five hours drive away from him, he had missed three payments and Sun Lighting & Electrical was gone.

  Sanghmitra’s salary paid Udai’s fees. A small remittance went to her mother each month. Rajit directed most of what was left to his business ventures. He owned three clinics in Jammu and a string of private rooms that Sanghmitra no longer discussed with him.

  ‘They are opportunities,’ he’d said.

  His father had told him that a successful man didn’t work for money. The clinics served women whose families transferred funds to a company in Delhi that made no reference to the Jethani name.

  ‘It’s a service, Sanghmitra, like any other,’ he’d said. ‘If they wish, they can go to the Sacred Heart. They can go to the midwives in Market Lane. They can go to you.’

  ‘You know they can’t, Rajit. We are bound.’

  ‘You say it yourself. It is a service. We offer them information. They should not be denied what can be offered.’

  ‘You know as well as I, Rajit, it’s not the information but what they do with it.’

  ‘We are not responsible for their actions,’ he’d said. ‘They will do the same if it comes from the market women or the temples or the interpreters of dreams. What right do we have to withhold this knowledge?’

  ‘There are times, Rajit, when it’s better they didn’t know.’

  *

  Mrs Al-Garni was waiting in outpatients for more than an hour before they found her. She’d arrived early and had sat like a shadow in the end row, waiting to be called.

  ‘It’s a routine procedure, Sanghmitra,’ Dr McNee had said. ‘Mrs Al-Garni will be anxious. It’s her first. But you. There’s no advantage.’

  ‘Yes, doctor,’ she’d said.

  ‘In fact, you have a responsibility to be calm. It’s not about you, Sanghmitra. Forget you are even being assessed.’

  How could she forget she was being assessed? It was not possible. When she’d left Udai in Perth and travelled to Melbourne, she’d assumed her assessment would be over on the same day.

  ‘When I come back,’ she’d told him, ‘we’ll take a flat by the river and watch the boats. We’ll imagine it is the Jumna. Is that possible, Udai, that the Jumna should be so clean? What a beautiful misfortune to be so far from home.’ She’d held him and felt his thickening shoulders soft beneath her hands. ‘And you will study hard and we’ll return home together, to your father.’

  But two years later, she was still not finished with her assessment and Udai was barely a boy anymore. Rajit had visited once. She carried her book of failings with her from one hospital appointment to the next while Udai stayed where he was in school. And each time she left him, something tore inside her. She couldn’t credit the physicality of it. His absence was a hollow ache.

  ‘So, you are signed off on surgical skills,’ Dr McNee said.

  ‘Yes, doctor.’

  ‘And communications.’

  ‘Yes, communications also.’

  ‘And the ultrasound. How many previous attempts?’

  He knew the answer. How could he not know? It was there in front of him in the book, with the dates and the notes written in his own hand, and the assessment scheduled for later today with Mrs Al-Garni.

  ‘Two, doctor. Two previous attempts.’ She had already cleared the exams. There was nothing else but this.

  ‘And at home, in your own country, did you have exposure to ultrasound?’

  How could she answer such a question? He as
sumed they had nothing. Knew nothing. She had told him over and over.

  ‘A little,’ she said. ‘It’s not routine as it is here, doctor.’

  ‘Quite,’ he said.

  Her own first trimester scan had occurred in Rajit’s mobile clinic the same year she’d passed her exams. He had invested in three machines and three Toyotas from the government auctions. ‘It’s like a gift, Sanghmitra,’ Rajit had said. ‘This will change our lives. It can change the whole of India.’ Despite his fastidious attention to detail – the white curtains, the sterilised plastic sheets, the methylated swabs – the van still smelt of diesel and dust.

  There were no restrictions then. Anyone with money or a line of credit could purchase a machine and practise. He covered the whole of Uttar Pradesh, bringing the magic of sound and light to women whose husbands and fathers were desperate to know their futures. The machines were cheap and well used. They had articulated arms and screens that were so small she could barely see the shadowed images they displayed.

  ‘There,’ the sonographer had said. ‘Just there, do you see?’

  It was like peering through scratched glass into an ocean. Things moved as clouds or schools of fish move. Dark shapes loomed like shallows then faded into light.

  This was his magic, then. This was what Rajit meant: her own self, echoing like something already lost. And there, for the briefest of moments, all arms and legs like a Hindu god surfacing from the deep. She gasped at the sight of it.

  ‘Shhh!’ the sonographer said. ‘Your babies are developing well, Mrs Jethani. There, you can see. Just there, just there.’ She isolated a detail that Sanghmitra could barely see. ‘You will be having a daughter.’

  She held her breath. Rajit let go of her hand and turned his attention to the machine. He scanned the dial across the frequencies. The screen flared and dimmed. The arm rattled as it swung across her.

  ‘Still,’ he told her. ‘Lie still.’

  ‘It is for no purpose, sir,’ the sonographer said. ‘The second is in the other’s shadow. Both your children are well, sir. That is all that can be determined today.’

  All Sanghmitra could see was shadow and noise. She tried to decipher something – anything – from the screen, but her eyes continued to fail her. And each time after that, each day until Rajit could rest assured, it was the same: like the scratched flickerings of a magic lantern show withholding the thing she most longed to see.

  *

  After the Act, Rajit serviced Jammu and the parts of Kashmir where his mobile clinics broke no law. His vans gradually gave way to leased premises, then to two-roomed freeholds with street addresses and basic furnishings. When Sanghmitra gained her qualification, he registered her with the Central Supervisory Board and ordered new machines from Russia.

  ‘Leave it,’ he’d said to her. ‘You are doing nothing wrong, Sanghmitra. You are registered for diagnostic purposes.’

  ‘But Rajit.’

  ‘You must appreciate this, of all people. How can you not? You are a doctor now, and soon to be a mother. How can this be wrong, Sanghy?’

  It wasn’t her place to argue. She saw the results passed to the mothers on blue or pink sheets, the relief or resignation that accompanied them.

  ‘Please, Rajit. I am not a fool.’

  ‘Then you will see that what I say is right.’

  When Udai was born the Jethanis regarded her with new respect. A doctor was one thing but the mother of a son was something of a different order altogether. It was as though she had been reborn herself. Even her father, who had regarded her studies as a clever interest that would pass, viewed her now with respectful admiration, as though what she had done might somehow compensate for the failures of his own son.

  ‘You have brought the light, Sanghmitra,’ he said. ‘And it shines on you. This is your calling.’

  Nobody mentioned her loss.

  The birth was difficult. And when her ordeal was over, the Jethanis made their arrangements and showered her with gifts. Her first responsibility was to her son.

  ‘You are a mother now,’ Rajit had said, and he’d stroked Udai’s cheek with such gentle affection she felt she might be complete after all, despite the emptiness she felt. ‘We must look to our blessing.’

  But Sanghmitra felt her loss as keenly as her gain. The nurses consoled her with talk of viability and things being for the best, but nothing could dislodge the shadowed image of her absent daughter.

  ‘I can feel her,’ she told them. ‘When I watch him, I can feel her.’

  And as Udai grew, she was always there: mirroring his milestones and achievements with unspoken regret, and pulling against her happiness like a phantom limb. And whatever joy she drew from Udai was tempered by the fear of losing him too. How swiftly sunshine cast its shadow.

  *

  Daliya Al-Garni’s husband worked in the mines five weeks out of six. He was entitled to flights home, but if he worked six straight there were bonuses. In Tunisia, a lifetime ago now, he was an engineer.

  Daliya had seen him three times in the past six months. Each visit was like his first, when he’d come timidly to her family’s home in Tunis. He was still a boy, even now. And each time he left, she longed for his return.

  ‘It’s her first,’ Dr McNee said. ‘She will be anxious. The husband is fly-in, fly-out. She’ll be on her own today.’

  ‘She isn’t here,’ Sanghmitra said. ‘There are two waiting but there’s no sign.’

  Dr McNee checked his watch and put the blank assessment sheets aside. ‘You’ll be assessed as an independent operator,’ he said. ‘Patient interactions. Technical competence. I’m here to observe.’

  ‘Yes Doctor, it’s the same as …’

  ‘Last time. Yes. Ten minutes.’

  He stepped out and left her alone in the darkened room with the soft glow of the machine.

  *

  She’d seen Daliya Al-Garni once before for a routine antenatal. She was like a young bird blown from its nest. Each time Sanghmitra had tried to engage her she had withdrawn further into herself. There was a wide-eyed vulnerability to her that invited sympathy, but Sanghmitra had sensed a quiet resilience too behind her startled features. Daliya reminded her of women she’d helped birth at home, women who had delivered their children with stoic diligence as though they were fulfilling a duty.

  At the end of her consultation, Daliya had asked whether she would know her baby’s gender.

  ‘That will be possible,’ she’d said. ‘Though not always certain. Some families wish to know this.’

  Daliya held her gaze.

  ‘Is this something you would like to know?’ Sanghmitra asked.

  ‘I have only brothers,’ she said. ‘My sister has only sons. But my husband doesn’t wish to know before the birth. He will love a son or daughter as is God’s wish.’

  ‘And you?’ Sanghmitra asked. ‘Do you want this information?’

  Daliya dropped her gaze.

  ‘I will respect my husband’s wish. A daughter will choose her own time.’ And she’d smiled for the first time as though they now shared some secret between them.

  *

  There was the possibility that Daliya Al-Garni had decided not to come. The screening was not compulsory. Her husband may have ruled against it. Her absence was palpable in the half-dark of the suite and Sanghmitra willed her to appear, as though she could be conjured from the shadows by simply turning on the machine. There were two appointments waiting. Dr McNee had not returned.

  Her own assessment seemed less important now than the missed appointment. She thought of Daliya Al-Garni at home alone, nursing her ill-formed secret. There were tests and screenings that should be done, apart from the information that her husband wished withheld. So, when Daliya was ushered into the room like a recalcitrant child by the orderly w
ho’d found her waiting quietly in outpatients, Sanghmitra felt a mixture of relief and satisfaction that she was there before her.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘It’s good to see you.’

  ‘Your hospital is very large, doctor.’

  Sanghmitra smoothed the sheet on the bed and guided Daliya to it.

  ‘Dr McNee will be attending also,’ Sanghmitra said. ‘But I will be your consulting doctor.’

  ‘Two doctors for a simple visit?’

  ‘I am your doctor today,’ she said. ‘Dr McNee will be observing me.’

  She stepped Daliya through the procedure and entered her details into the machine, calibrating the settings and depth of field while Dr McNee retrieved the assessment sheets from the counter and introduced himself.

  The equipment was nothing like that at home, even the machines Rajit had purchased for his clinics in the cities. The images were clear and sharp. She could adjust the scope and contrast, make it brighter if she wished. But even so, her eyes could fail her as they’d done before. Light could meld into shadow. Shapes could shift. Dr McNee said nothing but scratched his notes as she worked her way methodically through the screening.

  Daliya Al-Garni’s child displayed no abnormalities. She measured the sac and pole, recorded the heart rate and amniotic volume. Everything was as expected: clear and unambiguously miraculous as she slid the probe smoothly across Daliya’s distended abdomen. She made her records and explained what the images revealed.

  ‘There,’ she said. ‘You can see your baby’s hand and shoulder. There.’

  She zoomed the focus and as she did, the baby turned to reveal its unmistakeable female features. Even to the untrained eye it must be clear. She said nothing as the image filled the screen. It was a luminous echo that transfixed her to the moment. And when she moved the probe, she felt the soft touch of Daliya’s hand against her own holding it still against her skin.

  *

  Later, she would explain the findings and write her report. Dr McNee would sign the forms. Tomorrow, she would submit them for approval. There had been no complications. She knew this. She would inform Rajit that she was done and he would make his plans for her. Already he was looking at investment opportunities in fertility labs and selective engineering.