The Indian Bride Read Online Free PDF Page B

just been looking for her.
    "No," he confessed. "Only people. Very beautiful people," he added.
    Then she blushed and stared at the floor. It looked to him as if she was waiting for something more. She lingered by the table a little longer. Gunder felt brave. He was constrained by the lack of time, impelled by the resulting urgency; he was also a long way from home. The overpowering heat, the feeling of unreality. And his actual purpose. He looked into her black eyes and said, "I came to find a wife."
    She did not laugh. She only nodded, slowly, as if she understood everything. The fact that he kept coming back. To this very place. To her. She had felt his gaze, and thought about him after work, this mountain of a man with blue eyes. The calm that surrounded him. The dignity. So exotic and so different.
She had wondered what he wanted. Obviously he was a tourist and yet he was something other.
    "I show you the city?" she said cautiously. She was not smiling now, and there was no sign of her protruding teeth.
    "Yes. Please! I wait here," he said, slapping the tabletop. "You work. I wait here."
    She nodded, but stayed a while longer. The room was very quiet. Only a low hum from the other tables.
    "
Mira nam Poona he
" she said.
    "What?" Gunder said.
    "Poona. My name is Poona Bai."
    She held out a brown hand.
    "Gunder," he said. "Gunder Jomann."
    "Welcome to Bollywood," she laughed.
    He did not understand what she meant, but he heard his own heart beat softly and hopefully. Then he bowed to her and at last she collected herself and disappeared into the kitchen.
    That evening he called Marie. He sounded excited.
    "Did you know that they call this city Bollywood?" he laughed through to the other end; she could almost hear how hot he was. "They are the world's biggest film producers. I've learned a little Indian, by the way.
Tan je vad,
it means thank you. There are more than a billion people living in India, Marie, imagine."
    "Yes," she said. "Soon there'll be so many of us on this planet that we'll eat one another."
    Gunder chuckled at the other end of the line.
    "Have you met someone?" she asked, unbearably curious.
    Yes, of course he had met people, how could she suppose otherwise, one billion, you couldn't walk down the streets without all the time bumping into people. "There's air-conditioning in the hotel," he went on. "When I go out of the door, the heat hits me. That's the worst time."
    "Are you taking care of your tummy?" she said.
    Oh yes, he was taking care of his tummy, he took his tablets and felt fine, but the heat meant that everything had to happen in slow motion. Marie visualized a slow Gunder, walking down the streets of Mumbai in slow motion.
    "I expect you're looking forward to coming back?" she said, because that was what she wanted to hear. She did not like it that her slow brother had all of a sudden become a well-traveled man, and she did not like his superior tone.
    "It'll be great to come home," he reassured her. "And I've bought you a present. Something really Indian."
    "What is it?" she wanted to know.
    "No, no. It's a secret."
    "I cut the grass today. There's a lot of moss. Did you know that?"
    Gunder laughed. "We'll get rid of that," he said. "We can't have moss in the lawn."
    We? He seemed strangely elated. Marie hardly recognized her brother. She clutched the phone and felt that she wanted him to come back. She could not take care of him when he was so far away.
    "It's hot here too," she said importantly. "It was eighty-five degrees in Nesbyen yesterday."
    "Well, well, eighty-five degrees? Here it's one hundred and seven, Marie. Yesterday it was hotter still. And when I ask the Indians if they're used to it—after all, they've lived with it for years—they say no, it is just as bad for us. Strange, don't you think?"
    "Yes. If they came over here to our minus four degrees they would probably turn into ice," she said impatiently.
    "I don't think so," Gunder told her. "The Indians work hard, and