by Anita Desai
'If we don't run, he'll bite, Uncle! See, he bit Ranu on her heel—'
'Nonsense,' he retorted, 'that's only a scratch,' and Mr Das walked quickly away, Diamond held closely, protectively, at his side.
That was in the days of Diamond's innocent youth. Diamond was only in training then for what was to come—his career as a full-fledged badmash, the terror of the neighbourhood. There followed a period when Diamond became the subject of scandal: the postman made a complaint. We had only to appear and Diamond would rear up on his hind legs, bellowing for blood. Nor was it just an empty threat, that bellowing: he had chased the poor man right across the maidan, making him drop his bag filled with mail as he raced for shelter from Diamond's slavering jaws and snapping teeth. The dog had actually torn a strip off his trouser leg, the trousers the postal service had given him for a uniform. How was he to explain it? Who was going to replace it? he demanded furiously, standing on the Das's veranda and displaying the tattered garment as proof.
Mr Das paid up. But even so, their mail was no longer inserted in the mailbox nailed to the door but flung into their hedge from afar. 'The dog is locked up, what harm can he do you through the door?' Mr Das pleaded after Mrs Das complained that she had found a letter from her daughter lying in the road outside, and only by luck had her eye caught Chini's handwriting. It was the letter that informed them of their son-in-law's recent promotion and transfer, too; what if it had been lost? 'That dog of yours,' said the postman, 'his voice heard through the door alone is enough to finish off a man,' and continued to use the hedge as a mailbox. Who knew how many more of Chini's delightful and comforting letters to her mother were lost and abandoned because of this? 'Is he a man or a mouse?' Mr Das fumed.
It was not only the postman Diamond detested and chased off his territory: it was anyone at all in uniform—officials of the board of electricity come to check the meter, telephone lines repairmen come to restore the line after a dust storm had disrupted it; even the garbage could not be collected from the Das's compound because it drove Diamond absolutely insane with rage to see the men in their khaki uniforms leap down from the truck and reach through the back gate for the garbage can to carry its contents off to their truck; he behaved as if the men were bandits, as if the family treasure was being looted. Charging at the gate, he would hurl himself against it, then rear up on his hind legs so he could look over it and bark at them with such hysteria that the noise rang through the entire neighbourhood. It was small comfort that 'No thief dare approach our house,' as Mr Das said proudly when anyone remarked on his dog's temper; they looked at him as if to say, 'Why talk of thieves, why not of innocent people doing their jobs who are being threatened by that beast?' Of course Mrs Das did say it.
Later, disgracefully, Diamond's phobia went so far as to cause him to chase children in their neat grey shorts and white shirts, their white frocks and red ties and white gym shoes as they made their way to school. That was the worst of all for Mr Das—the parents who climbed the steps to the Das's veranda, quivering with indignation, to report Diamond's attacks upon their young and tender offspring, so traumatised now by the dog that they feared to cross the maidan to the school bus stop without adult protection, and even had to be fetched from there in the afternoon when they returned.
'One day, Das, you will find the police following up on our complaints if you fail to pay attention to them. And then who can tell what they will do to your pet?' That was the large and intemperate Mr Singh, who could not tolerate even a mosquito to approach his curly-headed and darling baba.
Mr Das mopped his brow and sweated copiously in fear and shame. 'That will not happen,' he insisted. 'I can promise you Diamond will do nothing you can report to the police—'
'If he tears my child limb from limb, you think the police will not act, Das?' flared up the parent in a voice of doom.
The neighbours stopped short of actually making a report. It was—had been—a friendly, peaceful neighbourhood, after all, built for government officials of a certain cadre: all the men had their work in common, many were colleagues in the same ministries, and it would not do to have any enmity or public airing of personal quarrels. It was quite bad enough when their wives quarrelled or children or servants carried gossip from one household to another, but such things could not be allowed to get out of control. Propriety, decorum, standards of behaviour: these had to be maintained. If they failed, what would become of Bharti Nagar, of society?
Also, some of them were moved to a kind of pity. It was clear to them—as to Mr Das's friends in the Lodi Gardens—that he had taken leave of his senses where Diamond was concerned. When Diamond, in chase of a bitch in heat in the neighbouring locality, disappeared for five days one dreadful summer, and Mr Das was observed walking the dusty streets in the livid heat of June, hatless, abject, crying, 'Diamond! Diamond! Diamond!' over garden walls and down empty alleys, in the filthy outskirts of the marketplace, and even along the reeking canal where disease lurked and no sensible person strayed, they could only feel sorry for him. Even the children who had earlier taken up against Diamond—for very good reason, it should be added—came up to Mr Das as he stumbled along on his search mission, and offered, 'We'll help you, Uncle. We'll search for Diamond too, Uncle.' Unfortunately, when this band of juvenile detectives caught up with Diamond in the alley behind the Ambassador Hotel, they caught him in flagrante delicto and witnessed Mr Das's strenuous exertions to separate his pet from its partner, a poor, pale, pathetic creature who bore all the sorry marks of a rape victim. The children went home and reported it all to their families, in graphic detail. The parents' disapproval was so thick, and so stormy, it was weeks before the air cleared over Bharti Nagar. But it was nothing compared to the drama of Mrs Das's reaction: sari corner held over her nose, hand over her mouth, she stood up holding a rolled newspaper in her hand as weapon and refused to let the beast into the house till Mr Das had taken him around to the tap in the courtyard at the back, and washed, soaped, shampooed, rinsed, powdered, groomed and combed the creature into a semblance of a domestic pet.
Mr Das bought stronger chains and collars for Diamond, took greater care to tie him up in the courtyard and lock every door, but when the season came—and only Diamond could sniff it in the air, no one else could predict it—there was no holding him back. His strength was as the strength of a demon, and he broke free, ripping off his collar, wrenching his chain, leaping over walls, and disappeared. In a way, the neighbours were relieved—no longer was the night air rent by that hideous howling as of wolves on the trail of their prey, and also there was the secret hope that this time the brute would not be found and not return. They hardened their hearts against the pitiful sight of Mr Das limping through the dust in search of his diamond, like some forlorn lover whose beloved has scorned him and departed with another, but who has not abandoned his bitter, desperate hope.
The Lodi Gardens clique, at the end of their brisk early morning walks round the park, seated themselves in a row on—the bench in the shade of the big neem tree, and discussed Mr Das's disintegration.
'The other day I had occasion to visit him at his office. I intended to invite him to a meeting of the Bharti Nagar Durga Puja Association—and found him talking on the phone, and it was clear he was apologising, whether for the lateness of some work done, or for mistakes made, I could not make out, but it was a nasty scene,' said C. P. Biswas.
'His superior is that nasty fellow, Krishnaswamy, and he is nasty to everyone in the department.'
'Maybe so, but when I questioned Das about it, he only held his head—and did not even answer my questions. He kept saying "Diamond is missing, I can't find Diamond." Now I did not say it, but the words that came to my mouth were: "Good riddance, Das, my congratulations.'"
The apologist for Das clucked reprovingly, and commiseratingly, 'Tch, tch.'
But one day, at dawn, Mr Das reappeared, holding a thinner, sorrier Diamond at the end of a leash while his own face beamed as ruddily as the sun risin
g above the dome of the Lodi tomb. He waved at his colleagues sitting in the shade. Diamond slouched at his heels: his last escapade had clearly left him exhausted, even jaded.
'Ha!' remarked C. P. Biswas, crossing his arms over his chest. 'The prodigal has returned, I see. And is he repenting his misbehaviour?'
'Oh, he is so sorry, so sorry—he is making up for it in his own sweet way.' Mr Das beamed, bending to fondle the dog's drooping head. 'He cannot help himself, you know, but afterwards he feels so sorry, and then he is so good!'
'Yes, I see that,' C. P. Biswas said out of the corner of his mouth, 'and how long is that to last?'
But Mr Das preferred not to hear, instead busying himself by making the collar more comfortable around Diamond's neck. 'Now I must take him back and give him his bath before I go to work.'
'Good idea,' said C. P. Biswas, tucking his lips tightly over his yellow teeth.
Diamond, who had been badly bitten and probably thrashed or stoned in the course of his latest affair, seemed to have quietened down a bit; at least there was a fairly long spell of obedience, lethargy, comparitive meekness.' Mr Das felt somewhat concerned about his health, but seeing him slip vitamin pills down the dog's throat, Mrs Das grimaced. 'Now what? He is too quiet for you? You need to give him. strength to go back to his badmashi?'
That, sadly, was what happened. By the time the cool evenings and the early dark of November came around, Diamond was clearly champing at the bit: his howls echoed through sleepy Bharti Nagar, and neighbours pulled their quilts over their heads and huddled into their pillows, trying to block out the abominable noise. Mrs Das complained of the way he rattled his chain as he paced up and down the enclosed courtyard, and once again the garbage collectors, the postmen, the electric and telephone linesmen were menaced and threatened. Only Mr Das worried, 'He's gone off his food. Look, he's left his dinner uneaten again.'
Inevitably the day came when he returned from work and was faced by an angrily triumphant Mrs Das bursting to tell him the news. 'Didn't I tell you that dog was planning badmashi again? When the gate was opened to let the gas man bring in the cylinder, your beloved pet knocked him down, jumped over his head and vanished!'
The nights were chilly. With a woollen cap pulled down over his ears, and his tight short jacket buttoned up, Mr Das did his rounds in the dark, calling hoarsely till his throat rasped. He felt he was coming down with the flu, but he would not give up, he would not leave Diamond to the dire fate Mrs Das daily prophesied for him. A kind of mist enveloped the city streets—whether it was due to the dust, the exhaust of tired, snarled traffic or the cold, one could not tell, but the trees and hedges loomed like phantoms, the street-lamps were hazy, he imagined he saw Diamond when there was no dog there, and he was filled with a foreboding he would not confess to Mrs Das who waited for him at home with cough mixture, hot water and another muffler. 'Give him up,' she counselled grimly. 'Give him up before this search kills you.'
But when tragedy struck, it did so in broad daylight, in the bright sunshine of a winter Sunday, and so there were many witnesses, many who saw the horrific event clearly, so clearly it could not be brushed aside as a nightmare. Mr Das was on the road back from Khan Market where he had gone to buy vegetables for Mrs Das, when the dog-catcher's van passed down the road with its howling, yelping catch of hounds peering out through the barred window. Of course Mr Das's head jerked back, his chin trembled with alertness, with apprehension, his eyes snapped with rage when he saw his pet enclosed there, wailing as he was being carried to his doom.
'Diamond! They will kill my Diamond!' passersby heard him shriek in a voice unrecognisably high and sharp, and they saw the small man in his tight brown coat, his woollen cap and muffler, dash down his market bag into the dust, and chase the van with a speed no one would have thought possible. He sprang at its retreating back, hanging there from the bars for a horrid moment, and, as the van first braked, then jerked forward again, fell, fell backwards, onto his back, so that his head struck the stones in the street, and he lay there, entirely still, making no sound or movement at all.
Behind the bars of the window receding into the distance, Diamond glittered like a dead coal, or a black star, in daylight's blaze.
Underground
IN that small town, clustered around and above the bay, every third house was a boarding house, while hotels were strung out along the promenade, stolidly gloomy all through the year except in summer when wet bathing suits hung out over every windowsill and sunburnt children raced screaming across the strip of melting asphalt and onto the shining sands, magnetised by the glittering, slithering metal of summer seas. Sand dunes, dune grass, shells, streams trickling across the beach, creating gulleys, valleys and estuaries in exquisite miniature and shades of purple, sienna and puce. Boat sails, surf boards, waves, foam, debris and light. Fish and chips, ice-cream cones, bouncy castles, spades, striped windbreakers. 'Where can I pee-pee? I have to pee-pee!' 'Spot, come away! Come away, Spot!' 'I've cut my foot! Ooh, look, boo-ooh!' And a hinterland of blackberry bushes, rabbit warrens, golf links, hedged meadows, whitewashed, slate-roofed farmhouses—and the motorway flowing all summer with a droning, steady stream of holidaymakers baking in their beetle-backed cars.
The White House Hotel alone appeared to take no part in this summer bacchanal. Summer and winter, spring and autumn, it remained the same: an immaculate whitewashed cottage built of Cornish stone, with a slate roof, red geraniums in green windowboxes, and wrought-iron gates shut to the road. Not exactly the kind of place you hoped to find when you came to the seaside—it was not far from the sea, true, but had no view of it. Instead, it looked out onto the long, low hills, their green downs speckled with the white fluffballs of grazing sheep, in their hollows the kind of woods that sheltered streams, bluebells, yellow flags and dragonflies. Pretty enough, but not providing that sense of being at the seaside which was what you came to this little town for, a hellish drive in August.
Jack Higgins turned to his wife who had fallen silent and begun to take on a somewhat overbaked look. They had been imprisoned for far too long in that small, overheated car. 'What d'you think, Meg? Will it do?'
She shrugged her roasted shoulders under the thin straps of her yellow checked sun dress (it had looked very much crisper that morning when he had slipped his hands under those straps, heard them snap against her skin). 'It'll have to, won't it. There's no room anywhere else.'
That was true: they had already tried the hotels along the promenade, the houses clustered around the bay with their B & B signs. Every one had turned them away with the message: No Vacancy. It had taken them an hour to explore the possibilities and accept the inevitable.
'Can't we stop for a drink?' she had asked at regular intervals, like a querulous child, and as time wound on, it had turned to 'What about supper then? If we stopped for a bite, we could go further—'
But he had had enough of driving for the day. They had come a long way: it had been the hottest day of summer so far, and he would not tolerate another hour in that roasting oven of a car if he could help it. What he wanted was not a drink or a bite but a cool, shadowed room, a wash, a change and a rest. He knew that was what she needed too, even if she would not admit it.
So he compromised. He had pulled up outside a shop in town, hung about with rubber balls, flip-flops, spades and pails, and went in to enquire: in a town as small as this, surely everyone would know where there might still be a vacancy.
He was right: the woman selling fudge and postcards at the counter, once she had finished with the family demanding her attention and sent them off happily licking their lollies (four different flavours for four different children), asked, 'And what can I do for you, sir?' then launched into a description of every boarding house, bed-and-breakfast establishment and hotel in the vicinity. Jack could not see the point of so much information since every one, she assured him, was full. 'On a Sunday in August as hot as this, you get trippers by the millions' she boasted, and watched him wilt a
nd mop his neck with smiling satisfaction.
'So there's nothing? D'you think we might do better down the coast?' he queried bleakly, and found himself eyeing, with envy, a ginger-haired boy who materialised at his side, licking a lime-green ice.
Quite unexpectedly, and also eyeing the ginger-haired child and his dripping ice, though not with envy, she said, 'You might try the White House up the road that way. That's usually empty.'
'How far—?'
'Just round the corner, up from here, five minutes,' she said, and wiped her counter clean, defying the boy to touch it. He turned away but his place was taken by a group of young girls in tight, revealing jeans and doll-sized T-shirts. She gave them a testy look, her head waggling.
He wanted to ask her why she had not told him earlier of the one place that might be vacant, and how it was that a hotel so close to the coast could have a vacancy, but after opening his mouth he closed it again—two young girls with painted mouths and eyes were combing through a case containing lipsticks, and the woman loomed across to guard it.