Miss Richardson came to see him twice or thrice and tried to give him faith. But he seemed inconsolable. Having lingered, for some months, with failing powers of physique, he passed away one afternoon at almost the time he used to go to the Reading Room, mumbling to himself the while:
‘I am the son of the Sun,
I am the Sun,
The Sun...’
The Lady and the Pedlar
Dedicated to Julian Maclaren Ross
Even as Topsy caught the handle of the door of that compartment she regretted it, for she had seen the strange hulk of Shiv Singh’s turban over the bulk of his form in the corner. But she had been in such a hurry. And she felt foolish to be frightened. So she braved it and entered, her attache case in front of her.
Shiv Singh who sat huddled in his overcoat raised his eyes towards her for a moment. Then, conscious from past experience that his stare usually frightened the English ladies and generally drove them away to another compartment, he assumed a casual air and lowering his bearded face into the folds of his colourful muffler, luxuriated in the warmth of his own breath.
Topsy smoothed her coat under her and sat down in the corner seat by the door, her attache case by her. She looked straight before her and tried to calm herself, as she felt her cheeks burning with the blood that had rushed up to her face through hurrying up the platform and the confusion of seeing a foreigner in the compartment which she had entered. There were the tiniest beads of perspiration on the tip of her well-shaped nose and the smooth skin of her almost masculine face. She breathed deeply for a moment, looked vigilantly at the stranger from the corner of her eyes and then opened her bag to get a cigarette.
As she lit the fag and exhaled a mouthful of smoke in an effort to calm her nerves, Shiv Singh turned and stared at her. His gaze was half full of wonder at her beauty, which was like that of a wax image in a hair-dresser’s shop and at the same time possessed the strange armour-like hardness of steel and half disapproving because of the instinctive taboo of the Sikh in him against tobacco fumes.
She felt her heart thudding with danger as she sensed that he was looking at her. She would have got up and cleared out to another compartment but there was a whistle and the train began to move. Then, ashamed of her panic, she tried to settle down and shake off the queer glistening fibre of dread that shimmered before her eyes, to cool the thick diaphanous stream of blood that turned to sweat under her armpits, to jam the echoes of memories that struck her spine between the shoulder blades and formed a vague, spheroidal ball of fire in her belly...
Now that the railgari had started there was no danger of her going away out of sheer fright and Shiv Singh felt his pulse beat rise at the warmth of her presence. It always made him happy to be with a pretty girl, specially if she took him for granted and trusted him, and, although in the soft layers under his crustacean brown skin he knew that this one was self-conscious and had no pity for him but only fear, he thought that in a little while she would get used to his strangeness.
In fact he felt he must do something to put her at her ease, for the English never took the initiative in these things — certainly travelling here was not like journeying in Indian trains where everyone told his life-story even before the moving thing had begun to move. So he thought of some way of breaking the ice. For a moment he felt the subtle radiance of dread overwhelm his brain and he could imagine her pulling the chord if he accosted her. Then, beneath the heavy crest of his forehead, the warm sun of his good sense shone forth, infusing into him an assurance which was the reflex of his innocence and lit his Punjabi heart with warmth. During these many years, after the chill of his first arrival, he had gone through the streets and lanes of this country, the towns as well as the most outlying villages and, though aware of the handicap of his black body, in the tang of the sun on his face and the smell of his bushy beard, he had built up a wall of bluff in his strong sinews to protect his child’s heart which he could, however, remove at will to release the warmth of his humanity as soon as he came into contact with people. And he had learnt to turn the tap on at the right time through long practice as a pedlar, for you had to make a beginning if you wanted to sell your wares. But how was he to begin now?
He stared at the girl knowing that the gentle liquid in his eyes would communicate his real intent. But Topsy was staring through the hard points of her grey-green eye balls, straight in front of her, her face cast in a rigid mould, even as it was flushed a vivid pink against the ivory of her neck. She looked like the effigy of death itself. And Shiv Singh was flustered.
Glancing at her attache case and fancying it did not give her enough space to sit on comfortably, he said: ‘Miss, I put your box on the luggage rack — there?’
There was the rustling of tussore silk in the curve of his voice where the words were being cut with sharp, high pitched scissors in his throat.
‘No, thank you,’ she said turning with a deliberate kindness towards him. Instantly she felt her congealed blood melting into a more copious sweat, though her startled nerves relaxed into ellipses below ellipses of memory and undulated towards the planets behind her breasts and in her belly.
And, for a while, both the passengers settled down, each to each, separate yet inured to the decency of being and letting be.
But it is not long before the process of becoming will come breaking in upon the moments of being.
Glancing with the eye of the professional hawker at her form, the pedlar caught sight of the edge of her pink crepe de chine petticoat, erring beyond the tweed skirt. Glossy and soft it was by the ruddy knees of the lady — even as the Benares silk of the shalwar his wife had worn when she emerged out of the palanquin into the barn of his home in Nurpur after his marriage: only it transgressed across the bare inviting legs of this girl like a big rose petal falling from a ripe flower. In the spring-time of bygone days, the orchards of the landlord by the black river had smelt of wild herbs and juicy fruit, and he would be bursting with desire, warm like a swoon and dizzy with the confusion and disorder of life reaching out to unattainable bliss. ...But now he was getting old and the stirring of desire in his bones was chilled by the distance from women and the coldness of these northern climes in which he sojourned to make a living. And yet in the dim-lit corners of his soul he felt the expansion of a warm glow to see the erring robe... He wished he hadn’t sold out his entire stock of underwear, for then he could have presented the girl a piece of lingerie just out of the gladness of his heart... He stole another look at the suggestive garment and then sat disturbed, tempestuous.
Retreating from the three dimensional picture of hills and plains in the frame above the seats, retracing the pupils of her eyes inwards from the cigarette smoke which filled the atmosphere now, she could see the colours of the spectrum as she had seen them when she closed her eyes on the terrace of her mother’s home in Johannesburg. Nothing else was clear and certain, only the multi-coloured stars of heat, spreading like flowers in a kaleidoscope before her as she followed the negro gardener who watered the hanging plants. And then, suddenly, across the long corridors, there was the echo of a rich voice. That was her mother calling, a fragrant voice but also full of coldness as she knew that she, Topsy, had been following Charlie about, and was reprimanding her with don’ts. ...Was it the fiery heat of Africa that made her, even now, break out in deadly sweats? She had been brought away to school in England so long ago that she did not remember much about the big house in Johannesburg where she had been born and bred. And yet in the vegetable-animal kingdom of her nerves she came across the most extraordinary sensations, which her sudden blushes and flushes proclaimed to the world. ...She had been very fond of Charlie, and her mother was kind to the servants in spite of what she said. Why then did she always get hot and cold whenever she met a coloured man? And why did she feel a faint nausea in her belly every time she came face to face with a man? Why the wild confusion?
The train was running now as if it were racing towards the end of the world and outside the ups and downs of Cheshire hills made a bewitchingly impermanent pattern, like the past dissolving into the thin cold air of winter.
The two passengers waited, after their thoughts had wandered to and fro, to assess each other again, and yet as they surveyed the shadows of each other’s presence they were struck blind by the impenetrability of the barriers which the cluster of memories and desires had put between them.
Someone brushed past the window along the corridor and the fear that the intruder might come into the compartment forced the disturbing clusters in each of them to offer a common response of uneasy taciturnity towards the stranger. But the danger passed and they were lost in their own fancies.
Before long, however, the desire to make contact with the girl began to overpower Shiv Singh, for he was going to alight at the next station and felt he should have liked to prove to her that he was no murderer. Why shouldn’t he be able to speak to her? He did not mean any harm. So why not? ...And the fact that he could not do as he wished became a challenge to him, to his sense of chivalry and manhood. ‘Can I dare? Can I?’ The question arose from underneath the callow, abject soul that had never been able to overthrow the many fears that the white skin had instilled into him, except when he was openly defiant... And he sought to deceive himself by intoning a Hindustani verse, lamenting the inevitability of separation from the beloved. And, a little later, he was carried beyond the torments of the poetic lover to the cynicism of the frustrated Majnu and tried to remember another conceit in which he had heard expressed the faithlessness of woman, the hollowness of her heart, the changes and shifts of her manner, the faked smiles, the easy tears and all the other blandishments.
The girl was much more at ease now, though she still pursed her lips tight and averted her empty steel glare to the window beyond which the landscape was changing. She could not help reacting to the pressure of his will which kept caressing her face through surreptitious glances, and yet she was determined to resist the intrusion of his pathetic, dog-like eyes with the bones of her high cheeks and her strong chin. Never, never to yield, to keep the distance between herself and them — that was the feeling which held her together. (‘Give them an inch and they would take a yard my dear!’) And, anyhow, it was too late to surrender after her first hesitation at the door, after her persistent refusal to face him, and after he had stripped her naked with his exploring eyes (‘they see right through you, my dear!’).
The train passed through a dark tunnel and Topsy’s heart nearly sank into the pit of her stomach. But Shiv Singh had not moved and the shadow was brief. And then, they passed by a graveyard and the backs of some houses and over a bridge and the pedlar stirred and reached out for his suitcase.
The atmosphere in the compartment eased with his movement. And Topsy even stole a glance at the contemptible creature out of sheer curiosity, as though she was wondering what kind of an ape he was.
Shiv Singh got up and, assembling his belongings, stood looking about him.
Now that she had surveyed his tall athletic form the girl was fascinated by him and stared at him hard and yet constantly...
And the miracle happened which she had tried to avoid: their eyes met for the briefest instant.
Because his eyes had met hers when she was completely unawares and there had been no hatred in her glance but only a faint look of wonder, Shiv Singh was emboldened to establish the connection he had longed for, even though it was only for a moment, before he alighted from the train.
Impulsively he dug his hand into the pocket of his coat and took out an egg.
‘Miss, take this,’ he said offering it to her on his palm.
‘Very rare nowadays.’
The fascination of wonder had in that one instant been overtaken by the compulsion of a faint greed and fainter gratitude.
‘Oh, thank you,’ she said and smiling, dipped her eyes coyly before him.
Shiv Singh had now turned his back, so overcome was he by his sense of conquest and so anxious that not the slightest trace of contempt in her eyes should spoil his happiness. And the generous, puffed-up Punjabi in him bore him down the corridor and out to the platform of the station where the train had come to a standstill after the last jerk.
Topsy carefully packed the egg in a paper bag and put it in her attache case. She marvelled at her own indiscretion in taking a gift from a stranger, a black man, but an egg was an egg these days.
When she got home she boiled the egg, thinking it would be nice to have it for supper. As she took it out of the saucepan, because she saw the shell splitting, she found that it was already a hard-boiled egg, which had now become doubly hard-boiled!
•••
Glossary
Acha/Achha
Expression for ‘well! all right’ used in the Indian sub-continent.
Adab arz
Urdu word for salutation or greeting.
Allah-ho-Akbar
God is great.
Allah-Mian
Another respectful name for Allah.
Amla
Hindi for Indian Gooseberry.
Angrezi
English language, and/or anything associated with England.
Babuji
A respectful title or form of address for a man, especially an educated one.
Bachu
A friendly expression for the person being addressed.
Badshah
King.
Bahin chod Angrez log
Sister fucker. In the story it is used as an obscenity to denounce the British.
Bazaar
A market place.
Bhut/Bhoot
Literally, demon, ghost or an evil spirit.
Churel
Witch or a hag.
Dagdar
Distortion of English word ‘Doctor’.
Dur, Dur
To shoo away.
Fakir
A Muslim religious ascetic who lives on alms.
Gentermana
North Indian rural distortion of the word ‘Gentleman’.
Gulley/Gali/Gully
An alley.
Hai-hai
Alas! Alas!
Han/Haan
Yes.
Harami
Bastard.
Hun
A grunt indicating assent.
Izzat
Honour, reputation.
Jinns
Evil spirit capable of appearing in human and animal forms and possess humans.
Kikar
A small tree found mainly in dry regions of the Indian sub-continent also called Babool.
Lalla/Lala
A respectful designation especially for a trader or businessman.
Lat Sahib
Hindi/Urdu distortion of the English word ‘Lord’.
Mullah
A Muslim learned in Islamic theology and sacred law.
Munshi
A North Indian expression for a clerk usually the one who writes books of accounts.
Ohe
Hey you.
Parathas
A flat, thick piece of unleavened bread fried on a griddle.
Phuphi mai
Paternal aunt (father’s sister).
Pice
The smallest unit of Indian currency till the mid-twentieth century. Pice was a quarter of an anna in value.
Pir/Peer
A Muslim saint or a holy man.
Purdah
The practice among women in certain Muslim societies of dressing in all enveloping clothes, in order to stay out of sight of men or strangers.
Railgari
Train
Raj
Rule
Rajah
Lament on the Death of a Master of Arts… and Other Stories Page 9