by Amitav Ghosh
I don’t know, Alu said.
She took the book from him and turned it over in her hands. Then she gave it back to him.
Maybe we could give it a funeral, too? she said.
She left him staring at it in silence. After a long while he raised it high in both his hands and placed it reverently on the pyre.
Dr Mishra decided to play his last card soon after his wife and Miss Krishnaswamy had arrived in Mrs Verma’s house to help with the arrangements for the cremation.
All right, Mrs Verma, he said. You’ve managed all right till now. But there’s one thing you seem to have forgotten.
She sensed the elation simmering beneath his smooth tone and was on her guard at once. What thing?
The ghee, he said. What about the ghee?
Mrs Verma stared at him blankly: The ghee?
Yes, the ghee. You have to have ghee for a cremation. You have to pour it over the wood so that it catches fire. You can’t very well use kerosene, you know.
Frowning with concentration, Mrs Verma whispered: If only I had some butter, it would be so easy to make ghee. But we finished all our butter last week.
Then, eagerly, she cried: But what about that nice soya-bean oil I bought in Algiers?
Soya-bean oil? Dr Mishra said faintly.
It was very expensive.
Mrs Verma, he said, you’re cremating her, not pickling her.
Mrs Verma’s head sank on to her hands: Where can I get ghee now?
So that’s that, then, Dr Mishra said, rising jubilantly to his feet. We can call it off now. I’ll go and tell Mr Bose.
Wait! Mrs Verma reached out for Mrs Mishra’s hand. Manda … Mandodari-bahen, she appealed, don’t you have any butter?
Like a frightened bird, Mrs Mishra cocked her head at her husband. Mrs Verma brushed her hand angrily across her swimming eyes. For God’s sake, Mandodari, she said, surely you won’t let him tell you what to do in a situation like this? Can’t you see how important it is?
Mrs Mishra swallowed and then, with another frightened glance at her frowning husband, she said: Yes, I can give you two kilograms of butter. I stored them away last month.
Mrs Verma clasped her hand between her own and kissed her on her greying hair. So Mishra-sahb, she said. What do you have to say now?
So you’re really going ahead with this? he said. You’re going to broil her on rotten wood and baste her with rancid butter? It’s shameful. It’s a travesty. Can’t you see that?
The times are like that, Mrs Verma said sadly. Nothing’s whole any more. If we wait for everything to be right again, we’ll wait for ever while the world falls apart. The only hope is to make do with what we’ve got.
There’s only one small thing left now, Mrs Verma told Alu. And that is you have to bathe and shave your head. I’ll heat some water for you if you like. And I’ve told my husband to shave your head. He has an old razor; he can do it easily. Of course Miss K. could probably do it much better, but I thought you would prefer—
But, said Alu, why do I have to do all this?
Of course you have to; you’re her husband. You have to perform the last rites – the kapalakriya, lighting the pyre and all that. Who can do it but you? Your son’s hardly the right age. And to do it you have to shave your head.
I can’t do it, he said, a sudden fear knotting his stomach. I won’t be able to.
You have to, Mrs Verma said firmly. Even Dr Mishra says so. It’s not really very much, Mr Bose; having your head shaved isn’t at all painful, you know.
No, no, he said. You don’t understand. Of course I’ll shave my head. But I can’t light the pyre. I simply can’t.
Why not? said Mrs Verma.
It’s because … The words seared his throat like a gush of bile: It’s because of my hands, my thumbs.
Is something wrong with your thumbs?
Alu caught his breath, shut his eyes and thrust his hands in front of her. Look, he said.
Yes? said Mrs Verma mildly. What’s the matter?
Look, he repeated. I can’t do it. I can’t move my thumbs.
She laughed: But you just did.
He opened his eyes and stared blankly at his hands.
There’s a little muscular atrophy, Mrs Verma said, but nothing serious. Look, you’ve already chopped all that wood. Your thumbs are all right, Mr Bose. Really. You can do whatever you like as long as you want to.
Zindi hardly recognized Alu when she first saw him with his head shaven. He was changed, diminished. It was as though the clouds had lifted from some perpetually misted mountain; without his hair his head looked plain, ordinary, even smooth.
You’re another man today, she said. I’ve never seen you before.
But he was thinking of something else. I’m afraid, Zindi, he said, kneading his hands. I have to light the fire, and I don’t know whether I’ll be able to do it.
They left just before dawn when the dunes were glowing with the first amber streaks of the eastern sky. Zindi stood in the veranda with Boss in her arms and watched them drive away. Though Miss Krishnaswamy and Mrs Mishra had stayed behind and only five of them had gone, they had still had to take two land-rovers, because of the wood.
When she couldn’t hear the land-rover any more Zindi went back to her room and began throwing her things into her small suitcase. Hours and hours seemed to pass before she heard them driving back. She snapped her suitcase shut and hurried out to the veranda.
The moment she saw Alu jump out of the land-rover and walk towards her she knew it had gone well. She didn’t need to ask; she could see it in his step.
It was he who said: I did it, Zindi. Then he held up a sealed brass box.
What is it?
It’s a bit of her ashes.
Zindi backed away hastily. Don’t bring it close to me, she said. We don’t believe in cheating the Day of Judgement by burning our bodies like that. You can keep it for yourself. What are you going to do with it?
Alu turned the box around slowly, looking at its aged joins. He said: Mrs Verma gave it to me to take back. She said it would give me a good reason to go home.
Dr Mishra adjusted his spectacles, explored his pockets, shuffled his feet and, because he had still found nothing to say, he coughed.
Mrs Verma studied her watch. It’s very late, she said, looking meaningfully at her husband. She was thinking of everything she had to get done before they left for the hospital. But Dr Mishra was still standing in front of her, wriggling a little, as though he had something to say but didn’t know how.
Everything went off very well, she said brightly, to help him. Don’t you think so, Dr Mishra? Now we can just forget about it.
He kicked a pebble and followed its trajectory intently till it vanished into a bougainvillaea bush.
Mrs Verma raised her voice: I wonder what the time is?
Well, Verma, Dr Mishra said at last, still looking at the bougainvillaea bush. It looks as though your Chitrangada is not going to get very far now.
No, Mrs Verma said, prompting her husband. That’s all finished with now. We can just have what we had last year.
But this year is not last year, is it, Verma?
What do you mean, Dr Mishra? she said. Her husband stared sadly at a cactus.
Dr Mishra turned to her: This year you’ll have to make the speech.
Why me?
Dr Mishra tried to smile, but instead his mouth twisted awkwardly sideways. Because you’ve won, Mrs Verma, he said. You’ve beaten old Murali Charan Mishra at last.
Alu looked from Zindi’s locked suitcase to his own bag lying in a corner with clothes spilling out of it.
What’s the matter, Zindi? he asked in surprise. Why … ?
Zindi, rocking Boss in her arms, didn’t answer.
Zindi? he said again.
Zindi hid her face in Boss’s hair. I don’t know, ya Alu, she said. We’ve travelled so far together. It seems just the other day that we were in Mariamma with me worrying about Karthamma and B
oss … And you sitting there with all those boils, catching fish … Who would have thought … ?
He knew then what the packed suitcase meant. But still he wanted to be sure, so he sat down beside her and took her hand in his: What is it, Zindi?
She would not look at him. I’m old, Alu, she said, and every day I get older and older. I won’t last much longer; I’ve only got a few years left now. And today, when you people took Kulfi’s body – God have mercy on her – away, I wondered; I wondered what would happen to me if I died in a desert in a foreign land, without a house or friends to help me. I don’t think I would find a Mrs Verma, Alu – not everyone is as lucky as Kulfi – and what would become of me then?
Like a pebble sliding down a mined mountainside, a tear ran down the deep ridges of her cheek. I can’t go on any longer, Alu, she said. I’m too old and Boss is too young.
Alu nodded slowly: So what do you want to do now, Zindi?
You’re all right now, Alu, she went on. You’ll manage. You’ll look after yourself somehow. You don’t need me any more, so you’ll forgive me soon enough. Boss is all right, too, now. So there’s no reason to wait any longer here.
What is it, Zindi? he cried. Tell me.
He felt the warmth of her hand on his shaven, shrunken head. She said: Boss and I are going back home, Alu. Boss is going to build me a house some day.
Standing apart, Jyoti Das watched as Alu carried Zindi’s suitcase and his own bag to the veranda. He listened as Zindi poured profuse, tearful thanks on Mrs Verma, as Alu mumbled his gratitude, as Mrs Verma (looking at her watch, for she was already very, very late) bade them goodbye.
He caught up with them when they reached the gate. Where are you going? he asked Alu.
We’re going home, Alu said.
How?
By ship. So we have to get to Tangier first.
Tangier? Jyoti Das rolled the name around his tongue. With Gibraltar on the other side?
Alu nodded.
Jyoti Das looked up at the sky and said: It’ll be autumn there now!
He looked past them at the great silent dunes and suddenly he saw a sky alive with Cory’s shearwaters and honey buzzards, white storks and steppe eagles, Montagu’s harriers and sparrowhawks circling on the thermals; all of them funnelled, like clouds driven to a mountain pass, into that point where only one narrow strip of water lies between Europe and Africa, like a drawn sword.
My God! he said. The whole sky will be migrating over Tangier now.
He saw Zindi’s face cloud over with suspicion, so then he said: I’m migrating myself – to Düsseldorf. I’ve got nowhere else to go. Can I come with you, too?
Chapter Twenty-Two
Tamám-shud
There is little left to tell.
Travelling slowly, because of Boss, it took them nine days to reach Tangier. They found a cheap pension in the rue des Postes and took two rooms on the second floor from which they could, if they craned out of the window, glimpse the winding tumult of the Petit Socco. Next day Jyoti Das rang his uncle in Düsseldorf and later he bought a ticket for the ferry to Algeciras in Spain.
Next morning they went down the Avenue d’Espagne and, while Jyoti Das watched the flocks of swift-flying birds in the sky, Alu and Zindi gazed across the sparkling blue water at the hint of Spain shimmering in the distance. When the time came, they walked with Jyoti Das till he had to turn off into the quays. As he walked away, they waved and waved at his back and the single airline bag slung across it.
When he was through the gate and walking away, he seemed to remember something. He spun round suddenly and ran back.
Alu, he shouted through the bars.
What? Alu shouted back.
He cupped his hands around his mouth: Don’t worry about the sewing machine; they make them better at home now.
He laughed. Alu waved, and he waved back. Jyoti Das’s face was radiant, luminous, as though a light were shining through him. He waved again and walked jauntily away.
By the time the sleek Spanish ferry drew away, churning up the harbour, Jyoti Das was already on deck, waving. He was sure he could see them among the trees of the Avenue d’Espagne, so he kept waving as the lovely white town cradled in its nest of hills shrank away. Then he looked down and saw a humped back caracoling through the water. Then he saw another and another and suddenly there was a whole school of dolphins racing along with the ferry, leaping, dancing, standing on their tails. He looked up at the tranquil sky and gloried in the soaring birds, the sunlight, the sharpness of the clean sea breeze and the sight of the huge rock growing in the distance.
It was very beautiful and he was at peace.
When the ferry entered a bay and turned away from the rock of Gibraltar towards the shiny oil-tanks of Algeciras, Jyoti Das turned back to wave for one last time. But all he saw there was a mocking grey smudge hanging on the horizon, pointing to continents of defeat – defeat at home, defeat in the world – and he shut his eyes, for he had looked on it for too many years and he could not bear to look on it any longer.
And so he turned to face the land before him, now grown so real, and dizzy with exultation he prepared to step into a new world.
Alu and Zindi, with Boss in her arms, walked up through the steep, narrow streets of the Medina to the high battlements of the Kasbah. From there they could see the ferry clearly, cutting swiftly across the Straits, towards the Mediterranean. But Boss was looking the other way, towards the Atlantic, and soon they were looking there, too, scanning the waters. They saw nothing except sleepy, crawling oil-tankers. So, drowsily warmed by the clear sunlight, they settled down to wait for Virat Singh and the ship that was to carry them home.
Hope is the beginning.