by Tim Parks
Regretting he had joined in, Paul recalled how seriously Indians took their political debates and how many aperitifs they could put away before getting to table. The Sikh man, however, was smiling beneath heavy eyelids.
‘I’m afraid I forgot your name,’ Paul told him.
‘Kulwant Singh.’ He reached across to offer a large hand. His voice was pleasantly deep, his small eyes playful.
‘And how is your daughter, Kulwant?’ Helen stepped in. The ice in her drink tinkled as she sat on the sofa. ‘The poor girl hurt her leg in a road accident,’ she explained to Paul, simply talking over the drone of the Gandhi woman, who was thus obliged to address herself more directly to the Englishman and his Chinese girl.
‘I’m afraid the marriage is off,’ Kulwant said. He grimaced. ‘Not because of the groom’s family in the end, but because Jasmeet was so upset that they had hummed and ha’d when she was needing surgery. She says she will not marry somebody for whom she is no more than goods and chattels. She wants equality.’
‘Good for her!’ Helen clapped, and added with a wink: ‘Kulwant’s daughter sometimes helped Albert with his research.’
‘How interesting, in what way?’ Paul asked.
Kulwant shrugged his shoulders. ‘Don’t ask me! But actually’ – he turned back to Helen – ‘it was very stupid of Jasmeet to object because of this hesitation on the groom’s side. Nobody would want to marry their boy to a girl with one leg, would they? If it had come to that, which praise God it didn’t. To my thinking, his family was in the right to wait.’ Teasingly, he said: ‘Would Albert have married you in the end, if you had had only one leg?’
Paul was surprised at the indelicacy of the question given the man’s recent death, but Helen seemed amused.
‘I’m sure he would, yes,’ she said. ‘But perhaps legs were not Albert’s main concern.’
The Sikh man burst into crude laughter, as though privy to some information that made the remark hilarious. He spluttered and pulled out a handkerchief.
‘Bless you,’ Helen smiled, and went on: ‘What about you, though, Paul? Would you marry your little Boston beauty – forgive me, I forgot her name – if she lost one of her slinky legs?’ To the Sikh she expanded: ‘Our Mr Roberts is about to marry for the third time.’
‘Oh, my warmest congratulations, sir,’ Kulwant bowed his turban. There was something mischievous about the way his moist lips moved in the dark beard. ‘You Americans are so enterprising! I’m afraid in the Sikh religion marriage is forever, as my dear wife never ceases to remind me.’
‘Would you marry her,’ Helen repeated, ‘if the girl had some accident?’
‘I wasn’t actually planning to marry next week,’ Paul stalled. He noticed that Helen James was forever putting him on trial, as if he wasn’t quite serious. ‘Thinking about it, though,’ he said, ‘no, I wouldn’t. You are right,’ he told Kulwant, ‘a man likes to marry a girl with two good pins.’
‘Something to be wrapping round his backside!’ the Sikh laughed too loudly.
‘What are you people talking about now?’ enquired Mrs Verma.
Helen smoothed the dress on her lap: ‘Our American friend here has just said that if his young girlfriend loses her leg, he will not after all make her the third Mrs Roberts.’
‘Oh dear, is she ill?’ asked the Chinese girl.
Paul laughed. ‘It’s a purely hypothetical situation. I was being provoked into saying something politically incorrect.’
‘And how much younger is she, may I ask?’ enquired Aradhna Verma.
‘Seventeen years.’
‘But that is so sad!’ The Gandhi woman clapped her hands in shock. ‘So sad!’ The silvery material of her sari slithered. ‘I mean, what kind of company can a grown man have with a little chit like that? And what can she see in you, poor thing, when she should be wriggling her tiny bottom in the discotheque?’
‘No doubt she sees about thirty pounds too many in me,’ Paul admitted. ‘But I can assure you we get on marvellously.’
‘Like a house on fire,’ the Sikh laughed and had to wipe his nose again.
The women pretended to protest.
Paul added: ‘Actually, of all his teaching, you know, I always thought Gandhi’s position on celibacy was the one that made least sense. Did he really have to be celibate?’
‘Celibacy is the hallmark of the saint,’ Aradhna Verma responded severely. ‘The renunciation of sexual matters can have a very great influence on your disciples. It is the guarantee of purity.’ But now she too broke into a smile. ‘Still, I don’t suppose any of us would be very pleased if our husbands forced it on us, like the Mahatma did with Kasturbai. Can you imagine? Listen, Wife, no more sex!’
‘The problem is not celibacy with one’s wife,’ Kulwant observed, ‘but elsewhere!’
‘That’s for sure,’ Helen said. She jumped to her feet and hurried off to the kitchen.
More guests arrived. More drinks were passed around. Keeping out of an argument between the mild Englishman and the Gandhi woman as to whether the British Raj had deliberately exacerbated caste divisions, Paul was finally able to look around. At once it was clear that the apartment was smaller than he had imagined and shabbier. The sofa was threadbare, probably second-hand when bought, or perhaps the place was rented furnished. The floor cushions were no more than dusty old pillows and not at all the lavishly coloured fabrics that Indian families loved to sport. The air conditioning was noisy and gave the room a sour, damp smell. There were no ornaments of any kind, nor any pictures on the wall, which was strange surely. No photographs, Paul realised, of Albert and Helen, or even of their son. They would be in the bedroom, perhaps. His book would need photos.
Meantime, angular and brisk as ever, Helen seemed to be in an uncertain mood. She joined the group round the sofa, was witty and worldly, but remained somehow fragile, unsettled. The party atmosphere actually underlined a brittleness about her, as when she had hurried off to the kitchen just as the Gandhi woman at last loosened up. Watching her begin another round of introductions – ‘Hakim Azad,’ she was saying, ‘yes the prize-winning director’ – Paul had the impression his hostess was going through the motions. Her mind was elsewhere.
‘Ladies and gentleman,’ Helen announced with a touch of irony when finally they took their places at table, ‘as you’ve probably guessed, this is the first dinner party I have organised for a very long time.’ She laughed. ‘Normally I’m in bed by nine, I admit. Albert loved parties, but only, alas, in other people’s houses. So I suppose if there is any meagre advantage in being alone, it is that I can now return your generosity over the last five years. It is a wonderful thing to see this miserable old flat so full.’
It was a rather odd allusion, Paul thought, to Albert’s departure and for a moment there was silence. Then with much head-wobbling the elderly couple began to congratulate Helen on a lovely evening and remembered how there used to be many more pleasant dinner parties twenty years ago. Now partying seemed to be the exclusive reserve of the affluent young computer folk. ‘I just felt that without Albert I was in danger of falling into a black hole,’ Helen confided more privately to the Chinese girl as they settled down on their chairs. But she had allowed Paul to overhear, deliberately, he thought. And she had sat him beside her. She must be planning to tell him what she thought of the pages he had sent. Why else would he have been invited?
At table the Gandhi woman monopolised the conversation. She had no qualms about speaking with her mouth full. Next to her, wearing a long white kurta, the handsome Hakim Azad complained that environmental causes were being starved of funds. He directed wildlife documentaries. He spoke about tigers in Madhya Pradesh. Paul ate and listened. What kind of relationship had Albert James had with these people? The only concessions to the environment, Aradhna Verma said, were the ones made at the expense of the poor, when they were told that they mustn’t use a certain pesticide or cultivate some bit of land where a rare snake lived.
Sudden
ly Helen protested: ‘Aradhna, what matters is not tackling the media or blaming the rich but just doing the right things ourselves and then shutting up about it. If I began to list all the outrages I see every day, it would be endless. Find a small problem and solve it.’
The head of the Gandhi Society was not put out. ‘Helen, dear, it is a question of how best we are impacting on the world, isn’t it? If you save a life at the clinic, that is very positive, but if I persuade a hundred or a thousand others to save lives, that is more so. That is what the Mahatma did.’
Helen turned to Paul. ‘Our American guest has written a book on Gandhi and has just begun a biography of Albert. Yes,’ she responded to the expressions of surprise, ‘he wants to write up Albert’s life. So what’s your line on this, Paul?’
There were a dozen people round the table now, eating with their fingers, served by the silent young Indian girl and an elderly lady who had been presiding over pots and pans in the kitchen. Scattered across the table were dishes and sauces and spices of every kind. Upon Helen’s unexpected announcement, the guests all turned their eyes to the thickset American in his maroon shirt and linen suit.
Paul demurred. ‘There’s nothing I can tell an Indian audience about the Mahatma.’
‘Try,’ Aradhna Verma said threateningly.
‘Do you see any similarities in Albert?’ someone asked. ‘I mean, they were both men of extraordinary ideas. And of peace too.’
Paul set down his fork. He looked round at his audience. Helen was putting him on the spot again.
‘It’s evident,’ he said carefully, ‘that the Mahatma was a very remarkable strategist and propagandist. He saw life as a moral task and believed in the absolute value of personal intervention in public affairs. What’s more, he believed that you could act decisively and still remain pure through passive disobedience.’
He paused. ‘Albert on the other hand … gee …’ Paul pushed a hand across his bristling hairline. ‘I guess I started this project without really understanding why. Albert didn’t believe you could act and stay pure. Or maybe purity wasn’t the issue for him. Maybe he didn’t believe in purposeful action at all. He …’
Paul stopped. There was a certain embarrassment around the table. Even the serving girl stood still by the table, the tray hanging from her slim arm, listening, watching. When Paul raised his eyes she dropped hers. He was struck by a curious submission in her posture. She was very attractive.
Limp and polite, the Englishman said, ‘I’m afraid I have to confess I know very little about Albert’s work. We only met when he dropped by the council to suggest some project or other. I’m afraid his ideas never really fitted with what London was after. Perhaps you could tell me what I should read first.’
‘Graham runs Delhi’s British Council,’ Helen explained.
‘The main titles are obvious enough,’ Paul said. He mentioned two or three and drank from his wine. ‘They had a huge influence on me,’ he added.
‘In what way?’ the film director enquired.
Paul couldn’t understand if they were genuinely ignorant of James’s work or if there was some kind of conspiracy of silence.
‘Anyhow, it’s Albert’s story I’m interested in,’ he ducked the question. ‘Not just his thinking. It’s a different kind of story. A harder one to tell, maybe.’
The serving girl was still motionless by the table. Her hair was fiercely parted in the centre like a schoolgirl’s, the scalp almost white. A heavy black tress gleamed behind her head.
‘Please, do go on,’ Hakim Azad insisted. ‘What every artist dreams of is influencing people’s lives.’
‘Albert was a scientist surely,’ the lady of the elderly couple objected. ‘Not an artist.’
‘There is art in all presentation,’ her husband remarked.
‘Okay.’ Paul dipped a stick of celery in some red sauce and looked around the table. ‘Let’s summarise like this: believing in action, Gandhi set himself at the centre of one of the century’s most extraordinary stories, Indian independence, and sacrificed everything to it, appetite, wealth, sex, he …’
‘Not exactly sacrifice, and not exactly to independence,’ Mrs Verma objected. ‘Gandhi’s point was—’
‘Please!’ Helen said sharply.
‘Let the man say his say,’ the elderly lady chipped in. ‘Albert was such a charming fellow, wasn’t he,’ she said warmly.
‘That was Gandhi,’ Paul said. ‘But Albert stayed outside every story, or he got into them briefly, but only to dissolve them, or complicate them. You always come away from his work feeling …’
‘Yes?’ Every face was watching him.
‘Well, I think the underlying idea was, embarrassing as it may sound …’ But now he stopped again. He leaned back, grinned: ‘Why not just wait for the book, folks? A man’s influence isn’t over the day we bury him. Maybe one day I’ll be sitting at dinner with the president of the Delhi James Society.’
The film director laughed. ‘Well said,’ he announced. ‘We will all be on the very edge of our chairs until your book is published.’
Amid a general sense of relief that the difficult moment was over, Helen remarked: ‘Albert wouldn’t have wanted that, though.’
‘What?’
‘A society, or even a biography.’ She frowned. ‘You know,’ she hesitated. She seemed undecided whether to speak. ‘Actually …’ but again she wavered a moment. She drew a deep breath: ‘Albert’s greatest ambition was to be a ghost.’
‘A ghost?’ Kulwant raised an eyebrow.
‘How do you mean?’
Helen now made a determined effort to smile. ‘Albert wanted to be present and not present. Like a ghost. Or like the guy who holds the camera for the movie.’
‘Interesting,’ said Hakim. ‘It would certainly be easier to film tigers if I was a ghost.’
‘Perhaps he’s here now then,’ the Chinese girl offered. ‘I am sure we all see the dead from time to time. My mother saw my father’s ghost many times.’ She stopped. ‘How do you know, for example, when there’s a big crowd, that some of the people are not dead?’
The serving girl turned on her heel and hurried away, banging her tray on the door frame.
A few minutes later, when he went to the bathroom, Paul was convinced he could hear crying somewhere. Looking in the mirror as he dried his hands, he saw a shelf on the wall behind and, turning, pulled down an annual report of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Every margin was crammed to bursting with tiny, slanted, spidery writing. Paul had to turn the book round and hold it right under the light: ‘It may prove,’ he read, ‘that what I have spent my life seeking to map out is nothing more than a vast tautology: If P, then P.’
They ate sweets and drank lassis. The Gandhi woman had once again taken over the evening. Despite Helen’s apparent endorsement of his role as biographer, Paul found himself unsettled. He must talk to her directly and bluntly and then tomorrow he would book a ticket home. Otherwise he would lose touch. He would lose Amy, if he hadn’t already.
‘Twenty years ago,’ Mrs Verma was saying, ‘people talked a great deal about socialism and equality of opportunity, but not any more. Today we are all resigned to the slums and the child beggars and the traffic of organs. All we talk about is Bollywood and statues of Ganesh accepting milk from devotees.’
‘Oh, I read that story,’ the British Council man remarked.
At this point the elderly lady reminded everybody that toward the end of the last monsoon season, people north of Bombay had started drinking the seawater because they said that Ganesh had performed a miracle making it turn sweet, ‘when obviously it was just the monsoon rain washing fresh water into the ocean!’
‘You see, even we are digressing now!’ the Gandhi woman complained.
‘The poor you have always with you,’ Paul threw in provocatively. He would be the last guest to leave, he decided. He would have it out with Helen.
But the American had reckoned without Kulwant Singh. H
er food barely finished, the Gandhi lady remembered another appointment. The Englishman wiped his mouth and stood up with his girlfriend: he had to be at the office early tomorrow. The director of documentary films became concerned about drinking too much before driving. The elderly couple, who it turned out were neighbours from the flat above, protested tiredness. All these people made their excuses and left before midnight, thanking Helen profusely. The serving girl too and the elderly maid had washed the dishes and gone. But the Sikh hung on. A bottle of whisky had been found and the man was drinking hard. Helen too began to drink. She seemed excited.
The Sikh started to tell scabrous tales about the hospital where he worked. A young fellow doctor, another Sikh, had got himself invited to the States by an elderly American patient who had paid him for sex. ‘Yes, it was a man,’ Kulwant confirmed, ‘he wanted to be buggered by this young doctor. He asked just like that. Will you bugger me!’ Kulwant savoured the word. ‘What a rascal! So the colleague went, with his wife and family, and is now settling down in Los Angeles. The American is even giving him a house. For being buggered! This is the sort of globalisation that will save India perhaps.’
Helen smiled. Paul was struck that she had no problems with such talk.
‘Kulwant works in a private hospital offering high-quality minor surgery to foreigners,’ she explained. ‘All paid for in dollars, euros or pounds. Then he does a few hours at our clinic to save his soul.’
The Sikh banged his glass on the table. ‘It is because I would rather work free for the poor people than go to the temple and pray. I say to my wife, Guru Nanak will forgive me for not going to temple because I am charitable to the poor people. My wife is in the temple every day all the day.’ He poured another drink. ‘Drink and be happy, Mr American! When you are happy, God is happy! We are all happy.’
It was one o’clock and the man wouldn’t go. Helen had fallen into a meditative mood. Like many who usually go to bed early, once she had abandoned her routine she seemed to lose all sense of time.