The Village by the Sea

by Anita Desai

  It was night when he at last found the building he was looking for, but it was not really dark: all the lights along the streets and the hundreds of lights that shone out of the windows of every building made it as light as day, almost. He had never seen so many lights in all his life. It was not like any night he had known and he wished it were darker so that he could hide and not be seen as he walked into the entrance hall of the tall white building called Seabird.

  He had of course thought that the family he knew lived in it alone but it was as crowded with strangers as a bus depot or a wharf. A man stood at an inner door letting people in and then shutting it so that they disappeared abruptly. Then, as suddenly, the door was flung open again and quite a different crowd poured out. Hari could not understand it but when he asked the man if the family he knew lived there, the man said, ‘Get in – tenth floor,’ and he was pushed into a tiny cell along with a dozen other people. The door was shut on them, the man pressed a button in the wall and the little wooden cell shot upwards with a sickening lurch. Before Hari could get over the shock, it had come to a stop, the door was flung open and the man waved him out. ‘Number one hundred and two,’ he said, shut the door and disappeared.

  Now Hari was in the heart of the building. He looked about him and saw nothing but shut doors. He went up close to them to study the numbers and finally found one that had 102 on it in brass letters. He banged and hammered on it for quite a while before it was opened by a tall man in white trousers and a high-collared white coat. ‘Why are you banging, idiot – don’t you see the bell?’ he shouted.

  Hari looked up to see if there were a bell hanging from the lintel but there was nothing there. ‘No,’ he said in a low voice, ‘where is it?’

  ‘Here, fool,’ said the man angrily and, putting his finger on a white button beside the door frame, made it scream suddenly and shrilly. ‘Who are you and what do you want?’

  ‘I want to meet the Sahib,’ Hari whispered, staring past the man into the brightly lit room with its carpeted floor, large pieces of furniture and bright pictures and mirrors and flowers. He became conscious of his dirty feet in their dusty sandals and wondered how he could ever step into that room in such a condition.

  The man at the door had no intention of letting him do so. ‘The Sahib? Who sent you to meet him? Have you a letter?’

  Hari felt in his pocket for the bit of paper. ‘Here, I have his name and address.’

  ‘Who gave it to you?’

  ‘He gave it to me.’

  ‘Don’t tell lies.’

  ‘It is true. When he came to Thul, I washed and cleaned his car for him, and he told me to come and see him when I came to Bombay.’

  ‘Thul?’ The man frowned: the name seemed to mean something to him. Hari watched his face hopefully but what he said was another blow.

  ‘The Sahib is not here. He has gone to Thul, where you come from – he left this morning. They have all gone – for their summer vacation. When they come back, the Sahib will go abroad. He is a big businessman, don’t you know? He has business in England, in America. He will not come back for another month.’ He studied Hari closely. ‘So you come from Thul, do you? The cook and ayah have told me about it – a jungly place, they say. What are you doing here?’

  ‘I am looking for work,’ Hari whispered. ‘I wish to stay.’

  This seemed to annoy the man, even frighten him. ‘Go, go away,’ he shouted. ‘There is no work for you here – the Sahib has plenty of servants already. He doesn’t need another one – not a boy from Thul certainly. Go – there is no work and nowhere for you to stay,’ he repeated harshly and, stepping back, shut the door firmly.

  There was nothing Hari could do. He would certainly not press the button and make that loud ringing sound, nor did he dare to bang on the door again. He stood staring at it wretchedly, wondering what to do next and where to spend the night, when the man who had brought him here in the small wooden box that flew, suddenly flung open the door, shouted, ‘Coming down? Anyone coming down?’ and Hari turned and rushed into the box that dropped at rocketing speed and landed him in the crowded, brightly-lit hall again.

  Here he stood, wondering where he could go next, and asking himself why he had ever come to this frightening, friendless place when a man who sat on a high stool by the entrance called him, saying, ‘What do you want? Who have you come to see?’

  ‘They are not here,’ Hari said, shaking his head. ‘They have gone – the family at 102.’

  The man paid him no more attention, he was busy talking to people who came and went and shouting at some small boys who were playing marbles on the stairs where everyone bumped into them and tripped on the marbles. The man shouted at them to go and play elsewhere but he had a friendly gleam in his eyes and they laughed at him. Much later, when the hall was emptier, he turned and saw Hari still standing in the corner and walked across to him.

  ‘Haven’t you got anywhere to go?’ he asked.

  Hari shook his head without speaking – he was too tired, too hungry, too weak and frightened to move or speak.

  ‘Hmm,’ said the man and stared at him ruminatively. Then, ‘Tell you what,’ he said with unexpected friendliness. ‘I go off duty in half an hour when the night watchman takes over from me. I’m going down to Gowalia Tank where I live. I’ll take you along to a friend of mine who will give you a meal. You’re hungry, aren’t you?’

  Hari gazed at him, hardly daring to believe that someone could be kind or helpful. The man put his hand out and patted him on the shoulder. ‘Wait a bit,’ he said.

  His name was Hira Lal and he had been watchman of Seabird for twelve years, he told Hari as they walked downhill late that night, finding their way across the roads and through the traffic and past the big shops and restaurants till they came to the foot of the hill. Here, in a row of small, mean shops, there was a cheap restaurant run by Hira Lal’s friend, Jagu. Jagu was to give him a cheap meal and let him sleep there at night. ‘I come past this way every night and I will look in on you tomorrow,’ he told Hari and walked off with a wave of his hand.

  Jagu, who was serving his customers with bread and a watery curry of lentils on tin plates, glanced at Hari and handed him a plate of food without a word. He did not look as pleasant as the well-dressed, good-natured watchman of Seabird – in fact, he was hardly dressed at all and had nothing on but a dirty lungi wrapped around his waist, while his chest and back were bare and sweating – but Hari could see that he was a generous man and he sat down with his plate and bent his head over it to eat quickly and hungrily his first meal of that long, exhausting day. When he had finished wiping up the plate with bits of bread, Jagu came and tossed him another chapati and Hari ate that, too: he was so hungry. He was not used to very much better food at home, after all, and he had never been so hungry in his life, or so tired.

  When Jagu waved his hand and indicated that he should lie down on one of the long wooden benches to sleep after the last customers had left, Hari did so at once and although the bench was hard and the noise and the light from the street came streaming in, he slept at once, and soundly.

  8

  Hari had been so tired and weak and anxious that first night that he had not really been aware of the place in which he found himself. He only saw it for the first time when he woke next morning.

  The Sri Krishna Eating House was the meanest and shabbiest restaurant Hari had ever seen: even in Thul and along the Alibagh–Rewas highway there were cafés that were pleasanter; usually wooden shacks built in the shade of a mango or frangipani tree with a handful of marigolds and hibiscus crammed into an old ink bottle for a vase, coloured cigarette packets and bottles of aerated drinks attractively arranged on the shelves, and possibly a bright picture of a god or goddess on the wall with a tinsel garland around the frame and heavily scented joss sticks burning before it.

  But the Sri Krishna Eating House of Gowalia Tank, Bombay, did not have even so much as a coloured picture of Krishna cut out of a magazine and
glued to the wall. Or perhaps there had been one and it had disappeared under the layers and layers of grime and soot with which the walls were coated. The ceiling was thick with cobwebs that trapped the soot and made a kind of furry blanket over one’s head. The floor and the wooden tables were all black, too, since they all got an even share of soot from the open stoves in the back room where the lentils were cooked all day in a huge aluminium pan and the chapatis were rolled by hand and baked.

  It was certainly the cheapest restaurant anyone could possibly find in Bombay – even a beggar could afford to buy himself a meal here, and the usual customers were beggars and coolies who had stopped in between carrying their loads – sacks of coal and cylinders of gas – and cart-pullers who dragged goods through the city on long wooden hand-drawn carts. These people seemed to have no fixed working hours – before daylight there were some waiting for a meal who were given the leftovers of the night before, and the last came in after midnight when the whole city seemed to collapse into exhausted, disturbed sleep. So of course the owner had no time to sweep or clean his restaurant or the money to decorate it with pictures and flowers.

  He worked hard himself all day and had two boys to help him knead the dough in huge pans, roll out the chapatis and bake them over open fires which they kept lit day and night.

  When Hari said next morning – after being handed a tumbler of tea and a rolled up chapati without his asking for anything – ‘I have no money to pay for all this food you are giving me. Will you let me work in your kitchen instead?’ the man considered for only a moment, frowning as he thought. Then he said, ‘Yes, I can do with another boy in the kitchen. Start by washing these pots. Then you can knead the dough and help roll out the chapatis. If you like, you can stay here and work for your meals and – uh – one rupee a day, like the other boys.’

  So Hari went to work in the small kitchen at the back of the eating house. He saw there was nothing to scour the pots with except some blackened coconut husks and the ash from the fires, and he did the best he could with them although Lila would certainly not have considered the results good enough. Later he helped the two boys knead great hills of dough in their pans and this was hard work and made them grunt and sweat. They did not speak to each other as they worked. When the boys finally did say something to each other, Hari realized it was in Tamil, a language he did not know. Nor did they seem to know any Hindi or Marathi, the two languages he knew, so there was silence between them. They were in any case neither friendly nor inquisitive about him, or else they were simply too tired and too sad to speak. They built up the fires and then while one rolled out the chapatis, the other baked them over the fire with a pair of long tongs, and Hari was given the task of carrying them out to the customers eating at the long tables in the front room. There was so much work and such heat in that small place that no one ever seemed to have the strength or the time to talk. Hari, too, fell silent.

  He would have had to remain silent if the man in the shop next door had not proved friendlier. It was a watch repair shop with its name painted on a signboard over the door: Ding Dong Watchworks, and when Hari came out to empty a pail of garbage into one of the big concrete disposal units built on the roadside, the man who stood at the counter, wearing a small black cap and with an eyepiece fixed to his eye, working at a minute watch that he held in the cup of his hand, looked at him and smiled. Hari smiled back. The old man looked so much like Sayyid Ali, the man who had spoken so well at the meeting by the Black Horse, that Hari instantly felt here was another fine and impressive man whom he could trust and who would understand him and try to help him.

  ‘So, a new boy at the Sri Krishna Eating House,’ called the old gentleman, then went back to his examination of the tiny watch, but continued to talk to Hari who stood on the pavement, staring open-mouthed at all the clocks that hung tick-tocking on the walls and the watches that glittered in the show cases. ‘New to the city?’ he asked in a high-pitched, rather cracked and reedy voice.

  Hari nodded yes.

  ‘Where do you come from? Jagu’s village?’

  ‘Oh no, I don’t know Jagu at all. I come from Thul which is near Alibagh,’ Hari said eagerly, finding the words rushing out like the small waves of the sea, brightly and happily. He felt proud of that address. Sayyid Ali of the Black Horse would have understood why but it was obvious this gentleman knew nothing of Alibagh; he looked puzzled and curious. ‘It was the watchman of a big building on a hill who brought me here to eat – and I have stayed, to work.’

  ‘Other people have come to Jagu for help.’ The old man nodded, poking about the watch’s mechanism with a long fine needle. ‘He is a silent man, never speaks to anyone – but he has been good to many. Like those two boys who work for him: their parents were killed in a railway accident; they were all living on a railway platform as many do who come to the city to find work, and one day a train ran over the parents as they were crossing the line to fetch water from a pump. There’s the station where it happened,’ he waved his fine, yellow hand with the long needle in it down the street and then continued: ‘That’s when Jagu found the boys as he was coming to work in the morning, and he brought them here straight away and gave them food and shelter and work, too.’

  Hari was shocked by the story but he did not like to be thought of as another orphan in Jagu’s care. He did have parents after all – even if one was a drunkard and the other an invalid – and a home, a proper home, not just a place on a railway platform. Thinking of them, he suddenly said, ‘Sir, can you tell me where the post office is? I wish to buy a postcard.’

  ‘Ah-ha,’ laughed the old watchmaker, winking at him from behind the eyepiece. ‘Suddenly remembered you had someone to write to, did you? Yes, you must write. Of course you must write. Go straight up the road and on your left, next to the electric substation, there is a post office. Have you money for a post card or can I lend you some?’

  Hari gratefully took the coin from him, promising to return it as soon as Jagu paid him his salary, and then hurried off to the post office. Having bought the card, he had to have a pen to write with and for this he returned to the watchmaker who seemed more likely to have one than the owner of the eating house. This was in the middle of the sweltering afternoon when there was no one in the shop, and even the two orphans had fallen asleep under the table, from heat and exhaustion. Hari sat on the steps of the Ding Dong Watchworks and carefully wrote with a ballpoint pen that the old watchmaker lent him:

  Dear Mother,

  I am in Bombay. I have a job. I will bring you my earnings. I hope you are well. I am well. Remember me to my sisters.

  Then he wrote his name in large letters to fill up the space, but not his address, and went off to post it, feeling both happy to have done what he knew he should do and frightened because this meant he would be staying on in Bombay, not going home.

  Bela and Kamal came running out to stand beside Lila and watch the de Silvas piling out of their car. The cook was already walking towards the hut, calling from the other end of the log that lay across the creek, startling the old grey heron that stood hunched on a stone and making it flap away into the grove of casuarinas and pandanus.

  ‘Where is that brother of yours?’ called the cook. ‘Tell him to come and help carry the luggage into the house.’

  ‘He’s not here,’ Lila started to say, then stopped herself, gave Bela and Kamal a little push, whispering, ‘Go and help. Carry in their bags – tell them I’m just coming.’ She went back to the hut to see if her mother needed anything and to give her a drink of water, then tucked her sari in at the waist and went across the creek to the house to help. Quickly giving up her plan to go to Alibagh for help that morning, she decided she might get more help from the de Silvas – who were rich, and had a car, and could help – and she would try and get it.

  After sweeping the house for them, cleaning away the spiderwebs from the corners and fetching water from the well for the kitchen, she asked the old cook who stood watching her a
nd grumpily supervising, ‘How long are they going to stay here?’

  ‘A whole fortnight, they say,’ he grumbled. ‘It is their holiday season – the schools are closed – and instead of going abroad, they want to spend a fortnight here first. I don’t know how we’ll manage in this wilderness. Where are the shops? I asked them. Your brother used to do the shopping for us – now you tell me he isn’t here. Where will we get bread and fresh eggs and vegetables from? I don’t know how I’m supposed to manage – but manage I must while they enjoy themselves.’ He glanced at the family who were carrying cane chairs and cushions out under the coconut trees while the children ran about with toy buckets and spades and rubber balls.

  Lila sat back on her heels and stared at the cook. ‘My sisters and I will help. We can go to the bazaar and fetch anything you need. We get almost everything in Thul but sometimes your sahib can drive to Alibagh in the car and buy what you can’t get here.’

  ‘Yes, that is how it will have to be done,’ he grumbled. ‘Here are the vegetables for lunch – start washing and peeling them. In the evening will you go and get some fish? And what about bread for tomorrow’s breakfast?’

  ‘I will get you fresh fish on the beach when the fishing fleet comes in,’ Lila promised. ‘There is some bread here in our bazaar but if you want factory-made city bread, perhaps your sahib can drive to Alibagh to buy some.’

  ‘He will have to – I’ll just go and tell him,’ said the cook.

  But Mr de Silva did not feel like getting back into the car and driving to the next town when he had only just arrived and was relaxing after the long, dusty drive. He had already stripped to his bathing trunks and was setting off down the beach for a swim. The rest of the family, in their bathing clothes, were already jumping in the waves that splashed over them and screaming and laughing. Their beautiful golden dog raced up and down the beach, barking and throwing up sand and racing away from the waves as they came foaming towards him.