A Shared Theme in "Tumble Home" and Interpreter of Maladies

Amy Hempel's narrator, after she's vowed to put her cards on the table at the start of "Tumble Home," writes that: "This is easier, I think, when your life has been tipped over and poured out. Things matter less; there is the joy of being less polite, and of being less-not more-careful. We can say everything." The characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies stories understand this, thus Shukumar's confession to Shoba of their unborn baby's sex after she's decided to leave him in "A Temporary Matter" and Mrs. Das' declaration of adultery to Mr. Kapasi in the short story that shares the book's title. There's a sense of pieces of information, "cards," being used as tools-not only by Lahiri as plot devices, surprises for the reader, but by the characters as weapons, either put to use or hid as secrets. The subjects in Lahiri's collection are not above using misinformation as well to punish or persuade. Boori Ma is met with false accusations that she assisted robbers and is run out of the apartment complex she attends to in "A Real Durwan." "The Treatment of Bibi Haldar" chronicles the story of an ailing woman, whose illness others use as an excuse to ignore her. "She [her cousin's wife] says I'm contagious, like the pox. She says I'll spoil the baby," Bibi weeps (167). Over and over again in these stories, we see strength summoned up in the face of adversity, not so much by what is said (for sometimes it is untrue) but by the act of saying, by dispensing knowledge. Boori Ma is a likely scapegoat for the residents whose washbasin had been taken; anything that will keep Bibi, who has "caused enough worry", away seems fair to say.

It is interesting that Hempel assigns this honesty (or dishonesty) as something belonging to the "western tradition," because many of Lahiri's stories take the integration of the Eastern and Western as a theme. What this integration causes in her tales are moments of disconnect, where Mr. Pirzada can only watch the TV to find out the status of the family's he's left behind in Dacca, or where the narrator in "The Third and Final Continent" has the same conversation with his elderly landlady every night. Useful information is hard to come by; there are barriers, or shields. This knowledge Lahiri's character cannot seem to grasp isn't mystery, that is enigmatic. It's manipulated by others or by themselves for senses of safety.

The systematic withholding of knowledge from others is as empowering as the employing of it. When Lilia uses the library to research Dacca instead of the assigned surrender of Yorktown, her teacher catches her:

"Is this book a part of your report, Lilia?"
"No, Mrs. Kenyon."
"Then I see no reason to consult it," she said, replacing it in the slim gap on the shelf. "Do you?" (33)

And we find out what happens when these barriers are breached and safety is compromised: "She [Shoba] came back to the table and sat down, and after a moment Shukumar joined her. They wept together for the things they now knew" (22). Come to think of it, there's lots of crying in these stories: Mr. Pirzada after war breaks out, or Miranda imagining her breaking up Dev's family.

Hempel's narrator, although after a vow of truthfulness, manipulates, withholds and skews information so often that the reader is not even sure of her situation. The format of the piece-a letter from the narrator to, for all intents and purposes, a stranger-puts us at the mercy of the author, who challenges our expectations of the conventional letter the way Chatty plays with the conventionality of Scrabble words or Warren with common idioms. "You know how most of us don't say things in a memorable way?" she asks the letter recipient. There is no doubt of Hempel's intention to make the narrator appear a bit crazy, or, in the least, very eccentric (she's a six on the nurse's strange scale, of course). But I think that within the confines of the story, we see a fascination from the narrator with not repeating. She tells us that she "only ever wore one thing that was" her mother's. "Sometimes it feels as though I won't be able to live until I can sleep in a position of my own..." she writes at one point, and I think the idea is that not only does she require some sort of closure with her mom, but she also needs a sense of self-an individualism that speaks in the peculiarity of the letter. The letter's receiver, a famous artist who she once had lunch with, clues us in on how the narrator views her work: as art that strives to impress. At one point she quotes Arthur Brookmyer as saying: "'Drawing is a racing yacht cutting through the ocean,' he said. 'Painting is the ocean itself.'" Hempel's goal is to be the painter, to make the broad strokes that still emit emotion and demand reaction, while bottling up the drawer whose detailed marks would tell a straighter, more personal story. Brookmyer's description reminds us of an earlier passage:

"Tumble home....It's the place on a ship that is, if I understand him, the widest part of the bow before it narrows to cut through water...To me, the tumble home is the place where nothing can touch you."

For the narrator, a self-constructed barrier and the omission of necessary knowledge is essential to her sanity. "Who said sanity is free?" she asks "That is the answer to Karen's complaint about having to do two jobs." For the narrator, these two jobs are simultaneously talking and not talking. When she asks, "Would it make you uneasy to know that I have seen the inside of your house?" it is almost as if she's confessing to her own unease over people pinning her down, the use of knowledge against her. "Am I out of my mind?-putting my cards on the table! A woman should conceal, not reveal." Yet she still challenges us to examine her without the depth of information, quoting Shakespeare: "'There's no art / To find the mind's construction in the face.'"
There's always the chance that this constraint for safety's sake will lead to a failure of transmission, the way Mr. Kapasi's note slips out after it's stashed away secretly in Mrs. Das' purse. Both Lahiri and Hempel are interested in these breakdowns and why they occur; the reasons we choose to tell or to not tell someone something, and the power that is gained from that decision. Maybe most importantly, they observe the moments when pieces of information escape, seals between communicators are broken, and responses like that of Warren, remarking on his sudden realization of Karen's breast size, are given: "That was a well-kept secret."

Works Cited
Hempel, Amy. "Tumble Home". Tumble Home: A Novella and Short Stories.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. Interpreter of Maladies.