The Wind Cannot Read

by Richard Mason

  “Darling, I don’t like hotel. I should be unhappy after beautiful hills. Could we please have a house together for a little?”

  “We should have to keep it a secret.”

  “We can keep secret,” Sabby said.

  “It isn’t easy to find a house in Bombay.”

  “We have been so lucky always. Do you think bad luck will begin?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve got a sort of dread. Bombay in the rain. School desks and Fenwick.”

  “Darling, there will still be Sabby. Do you still love Sabby?”

  “Yes, darling.”

  “As much as before?”

  “Yes, and differently.”

  “Would you like to go back to old times?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Sometimes I think I’d like to go back to the time when you were the new schoolmistress coming into the classroom for the first time.”

  “What did you think of me? Did you think I was horrid woman?”

  “I thought you were a beautiful woman. I believe that part of me must have known then that we were going to have a month together in the Himalayas.”

  “You are inventing. At first you did not like me at all.”

  “That’s not true,” I said. “I may even have known before. I may have known when I saw your ship come into the harbour. I had a feeling about it.”

  “What sort of feeling?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I would like to go back to the beginning again to find out. It must have been very exciting, only I was telling myself all the time not to be a fool.”

  “Were you a fool?”

  “That is fishing, darling.”

  “Yes, it is fishing. I like to go fishing. Please will you tell me what you thought the first time I came into classroom?”

  “I wondered what it would be like to kiss you. I’d never seen a Japanese woman before.”

  “Did you think you would try to kiss Japanese woman?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Then why did you not kiss when you were with her in the ghari with the driver who had red teeth?”

  “Because she would have snubbed me or slapped me, and that would have been the end. I’m always very sulky when I’m slapped, and I don’t try again.”

  “She would have perhaps done nothing of the kind, because you see she was not respectable woman. She would have done what she wanted instead of what she ought.”

  “It might have been any of her pupils.”

  “Oh no, she knew it was special pupil.”

  “You didn’t know,” I said. “But I was telling the truth. I really wanted to kiss you when I saw you. I also thought you looked sabishii and wanted to protect you.”

  “Darling, I am also telling truth.”

  “You didn’t know who I was in the street.”

  “Yes, I did. I knew you were Mr. Quinn, and when Mr. Fenwick was unkind to me you gave me a nice look.”

  “You were too embarrassed to notice.”

  “No, it is exactly what you notice when you are embarrassed, the nice looks. It was the nicest of everybody.”

  “You didn’t see Mario.”

  “He looked handsome. He is a lot more handsome than you, darling, but yours was the nicest look, and that is why I fell in love with you.”

  “You’re imagining it now.”

  “But I have diary. In my diary it is all written. I will let you see little bits.”

  “Will you let me see the bit you were writing when I came back that night from Mr. Scaife’s?”

  “Yes, you may see that, too.”

  “Tell me what you’d written.”

  “I had written that Sabby was so unhappy because her Michael had not come back to her, that if she had got courage she would commit suicide. But that because she did not have courage, all she could do was lie and weep. I was very noisy when I was weeping; and then I had to stop to write diary, and then you came in and I did not know what to do.”

  “I was afraid you hadn’t written anything about me at all, but about Mr. Scaife,” I said.

  “No, darling, there was nothing about Mr. Scaife, except perhaps that I was afraid if he found out about us he would try to spoil our happiness. You don’t think he would still do that, do you?”

  “No,” I said. “We wouldn’t let him now.”

  “Then that is all right. Anyway, we are not going to let anyone spoil our happiness, are we? Everything is going to be lovely. We are going to have beautiful house in Bombay and not mind the rain. There is nothing else to worry about.”

  “There is one more thing,” I said. “Only it isn’t a worry. It’s exactly the opposite.”

  “What is that?”

  “Now we’ve had our honeymoon,” I said, “will you marry me?”

  There was a long silence, and I did not look at Sabby, because I only wanted to hear her answer. And then I realised that she was crying gently.

  “I have told you, darling, you will never have to marry me. Please do not ask me again. I want you to promise. Will you please promise, darling?”

  (3)

  A few days before we left Jali Tal, Margaret and Jennifer fell out over Sabby. The arrival of their father—a sun-dried Calcutta business man—had done nothing to distract them from their worshipful attachment. But so far their jealousy had been united against me; now they directed it at one another. Margaret had bought a little carved box of native handiwork from the bazaar and made a present of it to Sabby without telling Jennifer. The younger girl had been hurt. She was angry with herself that a similar idea had not occurred to her first; and she went to the bazaar and bought a present that was bigger and more expensive. It was Margaret’s turn to be upset then, and for a day they ceased to speak to one another, and they were no more than polite to Sabby. They were both ashamed of what they had done, and did not want to appear to be making up to her. Then all of a sudden there were tears, and they were talking and they were united again. They had come to the mutual conclusion that neither of them had any claim upon Sabby, and that their own affection must be magnanimously subordinated to mine. They put their last annas together and bought a present for me, and asked humbly if they might be permitted to call me Uncle Michael and to write letters to me. On the last day the four of us were wonderful friends.

  There were tears in Sabby’s eyes when she had to say good-bye. She kissed the two children and Mrs. Mather kissed Sabby, and Mr. Mather shook us both vaguely by the hand as though he had never discovered exactly who we were. We got into the car, Bahadur in front with the driver and Sabby and I behind. The girls had decorated the car with strips of coloured paper so that it looked like part of a carnival procession. We waved and kept saying good-bye, and blew kisses and promised to write; and at last there was a grating noise as the gear was engaged and we started off with a jerk. We all waved our hands. Then we heard a clattering noise from behind and we motioned to the driver. But the children were shouting excitedly, “Go on, go on!” so we did not stop. Sabby and I leant over the back, and we saw that on the end of a rope there was a tin can and an old shoe bouncing up and down on the road.

  Chapter Six

  (1)

  When we got to Delhi there was the inevitable misunderstanding over our train reservations, and we found ourselves stranded for two days.

  After Jali Tal, eight thousand feet up in the mountains, it was like living by the open doors of a furnace. In the daytime the temperature was a hundred and twenty degrees, and at night no less than a hundred. The inside walls of our room were like radiators, throwing out heat, and even the wind came as a scorching blast. In the grounds of the hotel where we stayed there was a swimming­ pool, and we spent most of the time in and out of it. But to get into the air-conditioned railway carriage at last was a splendid relief.

  In Bombay the monsoon was in full s
wing. Some of the streets were rivers, and inside everything was moist; and although it was cooler than Delhi, the humidity made it quite as exhausting.

  We decided not to return to the school together. I went the following morning, and Sabby took another day’s holiday, because people might have drawn conclusions from our late arrival had it been simultaneous.

  The first class I had was with Itsumi San. He had already tested the others on the first day of the new term, and now he turned to me immediately to put me through my paces. He asked me where I had been for my holidays, and what I had done, and why I was late, and because I had talked about all these things endlessly with Sabby I answered without any difficulty. I used a lot of words that we had not learned in class but which Sabby had taught me; but I could not help this, because I could not remember now which was which. Itsumi San was surprised, though his face did not show it. He tried out some unusual words himself. He said:

  “Did you see any glaciers?”

  “Yes,” I said, “in the distance.”

  He was not convinced that I had understood the word. “What were they made of?”

  “Ice, of course,” I said. I had talked about glaciers with Sabby.

  “Did you go mountain climbing?” he asked, using the special word for this.

  “No, but I bathed, and rode ponies, and ate big meals.”

  “What did you eat?”

  “All kinds of things. And sometimes there was garlic.” I remembered the word for garlic.

  He looked at his register for a long time, and then he said with some gratification:

  “You have worked with might and main during the holidays.”

  “I have worked quite hard,” I said.

  “You are the best in the class.”

  I did not realise, until I heard the others speak and remembered that I had been worse than many of them, how much I had im-proved by listening and talking to Sabby. Just as I remembered things easily that Sabby said to me in English, I remembered them in Japanese. I could remember all her pet phrases and the twist she gave to her sentences. And of course I began to copy her, and in the month we were together my own speech had become more idiomatic besides more fluent. And all the time I had been progressing the others had been slipping slightly back, because they were not using the language or working on their books. Only Fenwick had worked hard. He had stayed in Bombay, and I heard that for a few hours each day he had come back regularly to the school, where the atmosphere of the classroom ‘disciplined’ his mind to study. He had learnt all the rare forms of verbs, and a great deal of other stuff out of the grammar book, but it did not sound like a Japanese talking his language. Itsumi San said:

  “It is very good Japanese. You have studied assiduously. But if you speak in this way people will laugh at you.” Itsumi San was sensitive about being laughed at, and so was Fenwick.

  “Are you suggesting the book is wrong?” he said.

  “It is not colloquial.”

  “It says it’s colloquial,” Fenwick said.

  “It is not. Have you ever heard me speak in this way?”

  “You’re not the only person in the world who speaks Japanese.”

  “What do you mean?” said Itsumi San.

  “I mean it’s possible there may be people who speak in that way even if you don’t.”

  It amused everybody to see a quarrel brewing between Fenwick and Itsumi San. We sat back and waited. Itsumi San looked at the desk for a long time, considering. He had lost face and was wondering what to do about it. Fenwick leant back, tilting the chair on its two back legs, and trying to look as though he was master of the situation.

  “You need not stay in my class if you do not wish,” Itsumi San said at last.

  “That is not the point.”

  “Do you wish to remain in my class?”

  “Why not?”

  “If you do not consider I can teach Japanese, I would prefer you to leave now.”

  “That’s just like a Jap,” Fenwick said. “You confuse the whole issue.”

  Itsumi San’s yellow skin turned a sullen grey. His eyes narrowed, but their expression did not change.

  “You are an officer,” he said, “and I am therefore unable to speak to you as I would like.” He got up, closed his register methodically and screwed the cap on his pen. There was still half an hour of the class to go. We all waited in silence. He rubbed the board, hung up the duster and straightened his chair. Then he put his books under his arm and went out without looking at any of us, as though the offence had come from us all.

  “That’s the trouble with these fellows,” Fenwick said, trying to sweep us all into his own fold. “They can’t stand criticism.”

  I went out to lunch with Peter. After the holiday we had a lot to say to each other, and we thought we would say it in the Taj. It was a good thing I had Peter, because I had to tell someone about my wonderful time with Sabby, and I could rely on him to be discreet. He was not discreet about what he knew of other people, however, and now he brought out all the stories that he had been collecting for a month. His best story was about Mervyn. He said the story about Mervyn justified a bottle of hock, and it was partly on account of the hock that it seemed an immensely funny story. It seemed Mervyn had devoted his leave to trying to get out of India. On the first day he went to the medical officer and beat his brow and wept and said he was unable to go on. “Come, come now,” the M.O said, “you’re letting circumstances get on top of you; you’re an officer, and you must pull yourself together.” Mervyn said for months he had been pulling himself together. But this was the end. He was defeated. They could do what they liked with him now. They could shoot him if they liked. But he thought himself the best thing would be if they could put him on the boat. . . . Well, of course, the M.O. said, that was obviously the thing. Only first there was a little formality, and he would have to bear with them. A few days only in hospital . . . under observation. He would arrange at once for the journey.

  They came to collect him on the following day. There were two medical orderlies. They arranged the ghari for him, and they knew all about the trains and they already had the tickets. On the station he bought himself a Penguin book, and he asked the orderlies if they would care for something to read as well. They picked out one or two cheap paper-backed publications, and they stocked up with oranges and were all set for Ahmalabad. It was only a two-hour journey and then they were at the hospital, and there was something in the orderlies’ instructions about Mervyn having to report at Section H9. They took him down long corridors to a single room. There was nothing in it except a bed, but since he would soon be on a liner and a little bit later in Sloane Square, what did furnishings matter? Then two more orderlies came and began to unpack his bags. They went over everything carefully. They took out the pamphlets that the first orderlies had chosen, and then they removed everything from the room. After a while he needed his handkerchief. He went to the door and found that it was locked. He knocked for a while, and then kicked, until someone came and opened a small peep-hole in the door, and said in a soothing voice that everything was going to be all right, and there was nothing to worry about, nothing at all. He said he wanted his handkerchief. There was a whispered consultation outside, and then he was told that he must wait a little while, and then perhaps it would be arranged for him to have his handkerchief. Afterwards something was brought in for him to eat. He found there was only a wooden spoon, so he kicked on the door again and asked for a knife and fork. They were awfully sorry, they said, but there were no knives and forks, and would he mind just this once putting up with a wooden spoon. When the shutter closed again, he listened for a while at the door, and he heard someone say, “Why doesn’t someone tell the poor blighter that he’s in H9.” He did not have to wait long after the meal before he was taken back down the corridors, to a room where there were two or three doctors sitting about with cigarette
s stuck in their mouths with studied nonchalance, as though they were bent on inspiring confidence. They offered Mervyn a cigarette. On a desk there were two pamphlets. They were the pamphlets that he had bought for the orderlies and that had been left in his luggage. One was called Spanking Stories and the other Curiosa Erotiken. One of the doctors flicked over the pages, and said, “Excuse me for giving these the once-over. Jolly good yarns, what?” Mervyn said his orderlies ought to know whether they were or not, and would they please give him a knife and fork and his handkerchief, and stop this damn nonsense of locking the door, and send him back to England, pronto. The doctor said, “Jolly good joke, what. Wooden spoon? All a mistake, dear fellow. Now what was the matter? Just make yourself comfortable on the couch and think back, back, back . . . no, the other two weren’t listening, they were just waiting for someone. That’s right. Now had he ever been ill-treated by a maid when he was a youngster? What? Only had a butler . . .?”

  Of course all this was Peter’s story. Somehow Mervyn had got a telegram despatched, and Peter had gone down post-haste, think-ing it was a death-rattle setting in. He was let in through the locked door after a preliminary briefing, and Mervyn seized him by both arms and said, “For God’s sake, man, you’ve got to get me out. You’ve got to get me out! This place is driving me mad!” Peter went in to see the doctors, and they all smoked cigarettes, and according to him they looked at him from all angles like Cecil Beaton taking a photograph, and it was only by the grace of God and the absence of Curiosa Erotiken protruding from his pocket that he eventually escaped back to the station without a lock clicking to bar his way. Meanwhile Mervyn’s immurement continued. . . .

  “But this story is nothing compared with my own news,” Peter said. “I’ve finished my book.”