by Jon Stock
“Actually, I was looking for someone called Martin Macaulay,” I called out, getting up from my seat. I had managed to sound almost as uninterested as he had.
“Uh huh,” he said, still looking at his own screen. It was definitely Macaulay.
I approached his desk, keen to end the charade.
“I’m sorry, I should have introduced myself first,” I continued, sliding my card across the counter. I was conscious of the polio boy standing in the shadows, glancing from me to my screen and back again. “I’m a doctor from the High Commission medical centre in Delhi. I was told that Mr Macaulay was unwell.”
I looked at the boy and managed to return his smile. Macaulay tapped on the keyboard with a final flurry and then swivelled round on his chair to face me. He had pale, watery eyes and the skin on his face was rippled with tiny broken blood vessels.
“If I wanted a desi Indian doctor I could have got one around here,” he snapped, ignoring my card. I noticed one of the Westerners at a keyboard to my right glance round and then return to his screen, smirking to himself.
“I’m not Indian,” I said, struggling with the words, which suddenly felt heavy in my mouth. “I was born in Edinburgh.”
“It gets worse,” he said, looking at a pile of letters lying on the counter. I noticed the top one, which was addressed to “Dutchie Reason, c/o The Cardamom Café, Fort Cochin, Kerala, SOUTH INDIA”. He gathered the letters up – had he seen me looking at them? – and tucked them away under the counter. There can’t have been many Dutchies travelling around India. I tried to think back to the clinic, the man’s mumbled words, Jamie’s eagerness to get him out of the country.
“Well I’m Macaulay,” he said, holding out his hand to shake. Without warning his demeanour had changed, as if the storm inside him had blown itself out. Perhaps he had made a mistake and now realised that I was someone else. “I wish I could say your presence makes me feel better, but it doesn’t,” he said. “You’ve come a long way, which means I must be closer to death’s door than I thought.”
“I was just passing through,” I replied, trying to making light of my visit. “I got a message that you had requested a doctor so I thought I would drop by.”
“You must be Foreign Office, then,” he said, glancing at my card. “Many Asians working there these days?”
“Not many,” I said, wondering if he was about to revert to his previous tone.
“But plenty of you in the health service, I gather,” he added. The Westerner to my right looked round again. I glanced over at him and he turned back to his screen, shaking his head in what appeared to be disbelief.
“A few. Why?” I said, turning back to Macaulay.
“Just curious. It’s easy to lose touch. PC still means a computer around here. You’d better come through,” he said, gesturing towards a door beside the counter. I followed him into a surprisingly spacious, high-ceilinged room, thanking the boy who kept the door open for us.
There was a single bed in the corner, with a wooden frame and a mosquito net, and a small table with a laptop computer on it. I noticed he was limping, something that hadn’t been evident in the sprightly way he had leapt off his bike. Spread out across a narrow sideboard were a gas cooking stove, a Sumit mixer, some papayas, mangos and a few fresh coconuts, together with a box of Taj Mahal teabags and a foil packet of coffee beans.
A planter’s chair with extendable armrests had been positioned under the fan in the middle of the room, a few old copies of the Spectator scattered across its cream canvas seat. On the wall next to the bed there were two black-and-white photos showing a group of men standing in front of a slain tiger, and a small shiny picture, almost like a hologram, of a Hindu deity, the identity of whom I couldn’t be certain.
Macaulay gathered up the copies of the Spectator and gestured for me to sit on the planter’s chair, while he turned on the fan and sat down on the corner of the bed.
“Edinburgh, you say,” he began, snapping shut the laptop.
“My father moved there in the Sixties,” I replied, sitting back much further than I thought in the chair. I looked more relaxed than I felt. “He was a doctor as well.”
“Was he from Kerala?” Macaulay asked. “Nair’s a very common name around here.”
“Yes, he was. A place called Perunna, I think. It’s near Changanacherry?”
“I know it well.”
“You do?” The words sounded so alien to me, a feeling made stronger by Macaulay’s apparent familiarity with them.
“Of course. I’ve been there many times. Have you?”
“No. This is my first visit to India.”
“A sort of homecoming,” he said, grinning.
I hadn’t expected our conversation to take this turn. Without realising it, he was asking the questions, drawing up his own diagnosis.
“I don’t have any family here,” I said. “They all left years ago.”
“Really? What’s your father’s name?”
“Ramachandran,” I said. “Ram, he’s known as Ram back home.”
“Back home,” he said, smirking, but not in an unpleasant way.
“What’s funny?” I asked.
“I suppose Kerala’s become my home. And there’s your father calling Scotland his.” He paused. “Ram Nair, it could almost be Scottish – Ramsay Nair. You know, he probably had another name, the name of his house. Most Nairs do.”
“I didn’t know,” I said.
There was a natural break in the conversation and he popped his head round the door to talk with the boy. I looked round the room again, and then I noticed something on the mantelpiece, hidden behind a stack of paperbacks. It looked like a human head, only shrunken, its eyes and lips neatly stitched together. Macaulay was now facing me again. I tried not to look over at the mantelpiece but he caught me and followed my glance.
“It’s not a real one,” he said, smiling at my uneasiness. “You can tell by the nasal hair – there isn’t any. And the ears are a dead giveaway. It’s very difficult to duplicate a shrunken human ear.”
“What is it, then? A monkey’s?” I asked, watching as he moved it forward to the front of the mantelpiece, blowing some dust off and straightening it fondly, as if he were adjusting a relative’s photo.
“Yes. Unfortunately. It would be worth a lot more if it was genuine. My grandfather bought it, thinking it was an authentic head trophy. But the Jivaro used very coarse stitching. Sadly, this is a counterfeit, the work of a very accomplished London taxidermist.”
Macaulay sat down again, just as the boy came limping into the room, clutching a fax. He gave it to Macaulay, caught my eye and shuffled out again.
“That boy, he’s not well is he?” I said, glad of the interruption.
“Paul? I took him on to make me feel better.”
“Madras mentioned you’ve got problems with your health,” I said, relieved at last to be steering the conversation. “It’s only to be expected, you know, as the body gets older, matures.”
Half an hour later I regretted having raised the subject. Macaulay believed he was suffering from at least fifty ailments including malaria, migraines, a suspected ruptured hernia, septic verrucas, mouth ulcers, excessive wind, incontinence, penile dysfunction (hilarious) and, most degenerative of all, a virulent and increasingly rare strain of racism that left me marvelling that he had not been lynched by the Keralites he had chosen to live amongst.
His initial hostility to me failed, oddly, to resurface in our discussion. In fact, it seemed to have been replaced by warmth and a genuine interest in my job, background and family that made me think schizophrenia should have been added to his list of complaints. I listened patiently as he described the agony of urinating with a gall stone the size of a golf ball in his bladder, and the graphic details of his recent prostate operation. “They sliced right up, right up the side,” he said, slashing at his crotch. “These Malayali doctors, they don’t muck about, you know.” But my concentration wavered every time I thought a
bout the letter to Dutchie, the head on the mantelpiece.
Macaulay sensed he had lost his audience. He rose slowly from his bed, went over to the sideboard and pulled out a rusty chopping knife he kept in a drawer. For a brief, disturbing moment, I wasn’t sure what he was about to do next. Then he picked up two fresh coconuts, scalped them with the knife, passed one to me, and we drank their milk through straws, sucking in silence. After we had finished, he cut the coconuts open, each one with a single, sickening chop, the halves rolling apart on the sideboard. I watched him scoop out the jellied flesh with a spoon cut from the outer husk, but declined to join him, feeling increasingly queasy.
After he had finished, Macaulay invited me to dinner at his home in the evening. I made my excuses, saying I had to look up an old friend, but he insisted, telling me to bring my friend along. He gave me a number to call if I was coming. His house, he said, was on an island in the middle of Cochin harbour and he would need to send someone he called “fatman row-row” in a boat to fetch me from the Dutch Palace jetty in Mattancherry. As I left the café, passing through rows of flickering computer terminals, I knew that I would take up his offer. I just had to persuade Priyanka to come, too.
11
The absurdity of asking Priyanka to dinner with a stranger on an island became increasingly apparent as I walked down the road away from the café. I turned a corner and headed across the Parade Ground, an English village green complete with its own church and cricket pitch. A group of children were sitting in the shade of a vast rain tree, known locally as a cow tamarind, some slumped between its webbed roots, others leaning on the handlebars of their bikes. I strolled past them towards the church, taking in the scene. I could almost have been in Shamley Green or Abinger Hammer, had it not been for the brown Brahminy kites circling above.
I wanted to get as far away from Macaulay as possible before I rang Priyanka. I carried on walking, past the old Customs House and on round to the fishing nets. Macaulay had touched something deep inside. The sudden switch in manner had left me feeling particularly uneasy. It wasn’t just the glimpses of an unreconstructed racist that disturbed me – that was almost to be expected in ageing expats – more the sense of a hidden agenda, a burying of differences for the sake of another plan. He had asked too many questions.
I watched the fishermen operate their cantilevered nets for a while, rolling their shoulders as they pulled on ropes weighed down with small boulders. The crows stole what few fish were caught and it soon became clear that the fishermen were too drunk to care. It was time to ring Priyanka. There was an ISD/STD phone booth just beyond the nets, next to the ticket office for the Vypeen car ferry. I waited for the line to connect, watching the ferry head out across the harbour, absurdly angled against the strong incoming tide. The phone rang, once, twice, three times. I could feel my pulse across the top half of my body.
“Hello,” a female voice said. It was not Priyanka’s.
“Can I speak to Priyanka, please?” I said, wondering if I was talking to a sister. The tone sounded similar but her accent was stronger.
“Who is calling?” she said, her voice more hesitant, suspicious.
“My name’s Raj. I’m calling from the British High Commission,” I said. For the first time it dawned on me how selfish I was being by ringing her. Of course she would be angry, accusing me of not respecting her family, their customs. I contemplated hanging up but decided to hold on. I could hear muffled voices in the background and then a man came on the line.
“Can I help?” he said. It was an older voice, probably her father’s. I felt like a teenager trying to secure parental permission for a date. I managed to suppress a nervous laugh. Part of me wanted to weep, too, as I knew her reluctance to come to the phone meant only one thing.
“I just wanted to have a word with Priyanka, if that’s okay,” I continued, businesslike. “I’m calling from the British High Commission. I’ve got some medical data she wanted for a magazine story she’s writing. About foreigners and the illnesses they get in India.”
I paused, taken aback by my own improvised persistence. Should I go on? “You know, Delhi belly, bubonic plague, the routine sort of thing,” I added, allowing a small laugh, wondering whether I should add hilarious sexual problems.
“Would you hold on for a moment?” the man interrupted, ignoring everything that I had said.
I heard some more talking in the background, and then Priyanka came to the phone.
“Raj, is that you?” Her voice was strained, unnatural.
“I’m sorry for ringing you. I’m in Cochin,” I said.
“I thought you were…” Her voice tailed off. “We can’t talk Raj, not now,” she said, almost whispering. I could hear the sound of her hand shielding the receiver, as if she were turning Around, checking to see if anyone was listening. “Please, remember what I said.”
“I’m here for a couple of days,” I continued, trying not to believe that she had already found a husband. “I wondered if we could meet. If, that is, you’re not…”
“I am.”
“Already?”
“Next month – the article’s due out next month,” she added, covering herself. And then, more formally, she said, “What information have you got for me? My father said you have some data on sick foreigners.”
I could hear someone in the background, possibly her sister again.
“Yes,” I said, equally formally, digesting her news. She was getting married next month. I suddenly felt protective of her, worried that our conversation, its breach of family protocol, would place her in danger. But I also desperately wanted to see her.
“I’m meeting someone for dinner tonight,” I continued. “A patient of mine. He’s British, has lived in Cochin for over forty years.”
“Is that sort of information relevant to the article?” she asked.
“He’s called Macaulay,” I continued, going through the motions. It was an increasingly lost cause. “He has a house on an island in the harbour. I think he would make a great article.”
“I know all about him,” she said, her voice gaining in enthusiasm. Almost by chance I had appealed to the journalist in her. “Seven Days has been trying to interview him for years but he refuses to talk to anyone. You know the state government have accused him of spying?”
“Really?” I asked, wondering why I hadn’t been told, praying that Macaulay would be a big enough draw.
“Do you have any other information?” she asked.
“I think he would give you an interview,” I said, entering the realms of fantasy. “He’s asked me to bring someone along tonight for dinner. Can you come?”
There was a long pause. Go on, I thought. Forget all about me, think of the story, the glory.
“Can you come?” I repeated. “We have to be at the Dutch Palace jetty at seven. Someone will pick us up from there.”
“I’ll need to talk to the office,” she said.
“I’ll see you at seven, then, on the jetty. Dutch Palace.”
I hung up, wondering what I had done. Her father sounded so straight, decent, his suspicion so unnatural. I had never even asked her what he did for a living, how many sisters and brothers she had. We knew so little about each other. For a moment I thought about walking away, pretending that we had never met in Delhi. But I knew something had happened the night when we first saw each other at Frank’s house, something so unforced and natural that I felt I had been carrying the memory of her around with me all my life. And that hug when I had dropped her off after our awkward meal at the restaurant. It had been too long for a goodbye, hadn’t it?
But it all counted for nothing now. She was getting married. My only comfort was her professional interest in Macaulay, her journalistic ambition. At least that might lure her out, allow us to meet one more time. There was something else, though, that kept me going. I didn’t know who Priyanka was engaged to, but I did know that everyone should be allowed one chance in life to get out of the water. And if I c
ould just see Priyanka, even for five minutes, I would understand from those honest, pellucid eyes of hers whether she was swimming or if the tide was carrying her out to sea.
*
I had a few hours to kill before I needed to be at the jetty so I decided to take an auto rickshaw down to Mattancherry and look around the old spice warehouses that I had admired from across the water. Most of them were antiques shops now, crammed to the ceiling with dusty rosewood fourposter beds, faded court fans, teak temple pillars, colonial clocks, Belgian glass lanterns and splintered statues of the Virgin Mary. The smell of ginger and cardamom was still strong, though, particularly in the narrow lanes around the noisy Pepper Exchange. And I discovered one or two old clay jars, vast, swollen urns inscribed with dragons, that had once brought cooking oils from China and returned laden with spices.
There was an ancient Jewish synagogue here, too, where a dwindling community of white Jews still worshipped. According to one local shop owner, the synagogue was lucky to be standing. Another one, in a suburb outside Ernakulam, had been secretly dismantled and exported stone by stone to Israel, despite numerous rules drawn up by the Archaeological Survey of India to prevent such cultural pillage. The scam had only been unearthed when an astute Kerala minister, on holiday in Israel, thought that the synagogue looked vaguely familiar.
I reached the jetty a little early. There was nobody around who fitted the description of “fatman row-row”, just a few people sleeping on the ground with handkerchiefs covering their faces, shielding them from the sun. I had convinced myself that Priyanka would show up, and when a small boat came into view, rowed by a man with an overhanging stomach, I looked up the street towards the Dutch Palace, expecting her to appear. When nobody came, I strolled over to a stall selling panama hats and checked the street down towards the Pepper Exchange. There was still no sign of her. It was only after the rowing boat had arrived that I conceded, for the first time, that I might have exaggerated our brief encounter in Delhi. My conversation with her earlier in the day suddenly seemed embarrassing, childish.