But Myrna was distracted by the ayah. “You can go, Ayah,” she said. “Enough, enough. Bones old. Hurting you know. Bones old like yours, and such hard pressing not good, not good. Bas! Enough!”
“Good enough, good enough, bas bas bas,” repeated Jack.
The ayah malevolently applied a final pressure of the thumbs to her mistress’s ankle. Myrna cried out and lashed at her with a tremulous palm. The smack sounded resoundingly on the ayah’s shaven sari-covered head. She jerked back, her sari fell off her head and trailed on the floor, exposing the stubble on her head and dark brown nipples dangling below her short blouse. The glass-powder bowl spun across the floor and shattered as it struck the wall. The sweet scent of talcum powder increased and tears streamed down the ayah’s cheeks.
“Go!” Myrna cried half in shock. “Out! Get out!”
The ayah tottered up and out, muttering to herself and weeping.
Jack usually ignored such outbursts, but today a spark of anger was ignited. “You shouldn’t have slapped her, Myrna! Why did you have to slap her like that?”
Myrna cried, softly keening and Jack was instantly contrite. He stroked her and soothed her. “I’m sorry, Myrna. I said I was sorry. Ayah was in tears too, and you must have hurt her.”
Myrna mumbled, sounding remarkably like the ayah and Jack swallowed the lump in his throat.
Abdul came in and without looking at his master and mistress, shakily swept up the shattered glass fragments and powder with a brush and dustpan leaving some behind.
“Cheerio my darling!” said Jack, after Myrna had become quiet. He put her glass into her hands, holding up his own, and clinking it gently with hers. “Here’s to the future!”
“Future indeed!” Myrna snorted, her tears forgotten.
Jack put his glass down carefully and leaned across. Taking Myrna’s glass and setting it down, he held both her hands in his. “Listen. I’ve been thinking of something, something important, and the time has come to talk about it. Are you listening to me, Myrna?”
“Of course I am.”
“We have to make a pact, a covenant with each other. Do you understand?”
“What are you on about?”
“It’s to set your mind at rest. Do you follow? I want to set your mind at rest, my darling!” Jack took a deep breath. “Tell me. What do you worry about most these days? What were you talking about a short while ago?”
“I was talking about getting senile,” said Myrna promptly. “Getting senile, forgetful, incontinent, all those things. And I said I wouldn’t like to live if that happened. If I were to get senile.”
“And . . . ?” Jack prompted, hope surging back at her coherent reply.
“And what?”
“You said something else as well . . . ”
“I, I don’t remember! Oh my god, it’s started . . . Jack! It’s started!” Myrna’s voice was dry, hands up at her throat.
“There’s no sign of it at all,” said Jack, taking her hands and clasping them again. “Your mind, at the moment, is as clear as a bell.” He willed himself to sound confident.
“Then what was it I said? What was it?”
“Just this, my darling. You said, “What if I become senile and don’t realize it.” That’s what you said . . . ”
“Yes. I remember,” Myrna whispered. “I remember. But that’s true, isn’t it? It’s true. If I become senile I’ll never know, will I?”
“And I? Have you thought about me in the same predicament?” Jack added gently.
“Of course I have. I don’t know if I’ll have the strength to look after you. I’m not so strong, you know that! You know I have angina . . . ”
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll tell you exactly what, Myrna.” Jack’s voice became thinner, the tremor in it increasing. “Look. It’s hardly likely that we’ll both go down the hill at the same time, is it? Tell me,” he urged, “is that likely?”
“I suppose not, no, I suppose not.”
“Well. In that case, the answer’s clear.” His grip on her arthritic hands became painful. Myrna snatched them away.
“I’ll make the arrangements, and I’ll show you what I plan.” Pausing. “We’ll have to promise, solemnly and honestly, to help each other, Myrna.” Pause. “And the one who remains normal, in control, will have to promise to help out, by, by . . . ” He came to a standstill.
“By what? What are you going on about, Jack Strachey?”
“By helping the other to end it all!” blurted out Jack.
“To what?”
“To, end it all!”
“You don’t mean . . . ”
Myrna’s mouth had fallen open, her face was contorted. “But that’s murder!” Her voice was thin and tremulous too, like Jack’s. “How do I know you won’t murder me? You, you evil man! I’m going home before you murder me. I don’t care if you stay on here. I’m going to, to Martin! Oh you evil man . . . ”
The ghosts were equally distraught. “Oh what is to happen?” they muttered.
Jack tried to embrace her again but Myrna pushed him off in an extravagant gesture of panic, dislodging the delicate arrangement of her hairnet. Her hair fluffed out exposing bare pink patches. She struggled to get up but fell back heavily. She talked on, demented, incoherent, continuing to struggle on her seat. Jack stared at her aghast, and swallowed fearfully. A refrain went through his head, “Murder evil, murder evil.” Listening to her and looking at her, his face slowly suffused with blood. “But where is she trying to go? Where can she go?”
The light from the veranda haloed Myrna’s white, blow-away hair. It was yet another languishing day. Myrna sat in a chair with the television on in front of her, talking, incessantly. Jack sat next to her, paying attention to the TV and responding with practiced fluency. Today, instead of saying anything abrasive or accusing she was reminiscing, recollecting the early days of style and splendor. Jack gave up watching the TV to listen to her.
“Who would have thought men could be so manly with jewelry and perfume and kohl! He was so handsome, Jack, wasn’t he? Wasn’t he handsome?” Her reference was to an ex-lover, the Maharajah of R.
“Why don’t I have such memories?” thought Jack. “Don’t I have an erotic side? All I can remember is Abdal out on the lawn, washing the ice with soap . . . That’s all I remember . . . Silly old Abdal out on the lawn, washing the ice with soap . . . ”
“Do you remember Abdal, washing the ice with soap,” said Jack out loud yet again. “In the garden . . . Remember?”
“Oh yes! Wasn’t that funny! And shaving you in bed, every morning.”
“Before his hand started shaking . . . And talking of luxuries, there was “Lady” Myrna, reclining in bed with ayahs massaging her from all ends!”
And then Myrna laughed, a natural, easy laugh, putting him into a state of painful suspense, suspense that her mood must soon return to normal. “No, not ‘normal’,” he corrected himself, “‘usual’.”
The distinction seemed clear for the moment to Jack, whose mind broke up in confusion over two things: Myrna and his failed career. The latter lurked hidden, bursting out sometimes like a monster from a cave. Myrna overpowered most of his waking moments with her vexation and her emotion. When she screamed at the servants, he forced himself to remember her innate kindness. Servants were by definition imperfect and for compensation, perfect whipping boys. But Myrna had always looked after them, hadn’t she? Clothing and feeding them, spending freely on them. Martin, a native born “Anglo-Indian,” understood. Poor boy. How he had loved his India, Calcutta in particular. But . . . back he’d gone, and rightly . . . Is that what they should have done? Gone back?
“Oh but yes, yes,” said the swadeshi ghost, gently for once. “You would have been so much better off!”
At the bottom of Jack’s decision to stay on was the fear of an uncared for old age, accessible to Martin but neglected because of a strong daughter-in-law’s dissent. Was it the right decision? Here they were, with an inaccessible M
artin, plumb at the end of that old age. Was that better than the neighborhood neglect he had feared from his son? Who was here to care for them? The servants? Did he feel secure? Would he feel secure anywhere? Wasn’t old age the ultimate insecurity, the end without solution? Did he subconsciously hope that by staying on he could take on the enviable attributes of an Indian extended family, loving care till the very end? What of Myrna’s mental state? What about all the cajoling for her to just step out of the apartment, through a stream of invective, complaints about the heat, about the cold, about a weak heart, the stairs ... ? But Jack was glad of the stairs. He took a sadistic pleasure in hauling himself up. It proved him still active and able, didn’t it? Even if obscured by stopping often for Myrna, which gave him a rest too, a rest to prolong the anticipation of reentering their last refuge, their apartment.
Summer, winter, monsoon, the apartment was perfectly attuned after decades of organization. In summer, the khas khas tatties replaced the veranda chiks, with the breezes carrying in the zest of the wet reed. The dust scent settling under the first rains became a pleasant cliché for Jack, and if he had known, he would have bought the attars sold on street corners promising the bottled essences of khas and rain dust. The potted lilies prepared to bud and flower white against the dark of the chiks. Solutions were endlessly attempted against one of the few faults of the Rajmahal, the low plinth of the lobby floor that led to flooding. During early days, the Sardar Bahadur, always elegant, had shallow ducts carved to drain into the fountains. But rainwater during a Calcutta monsoon is jealous of elegant solutions and it had never worked. The Rajmahal tenants would be almost immobilized till the end of the rains. The house knew this disregard of old age underscored its decline as it shuddered and picked up its metaphorical hem. When the waters receded, a clayey lining was uncovered with little colonies of tadpoles and other slimy creatures of the wet. The Rajmahal suffered the clinging staleness of mildew and mold, straining to evict any organic remains after the post-monsoon cleansing.
But the monsoon was a season Jack loved, and the outer veranda had always given him just the exposure he needed. He would venture out and peer around the chiks to enjoy the thunder and spray of the heavenly Niagara. Then the rains would come to an end. “Perfect,” he would sigh as the weather turned dry and fine, and fans and air conditioners were stopped. The renovation season would come around, and the “little men” appear. The polishing wallah to sandpaper and re-polish the teak and rosewood furniture and floors, the pleasant smells of spirit polish and beeswax spreading their fragrances. The masons to scrape and repaint the damp patches on the walls, sometimes to redecorate a whole room. The tailor to stitch up new curtains. The upholstery wallah to re-cover the chairs, Myrna overseeing their rearrangement with renewed pictures, lamps, and polished silver. The newness would inspire vases full of flowers, early roses and chrysanthemums.
But the movement of time came barging in, disrupting the harmony. The little men vanished, shifting away from traditional avocations. Water no longer flowed on demand from taps. Power breakdowns meant the installation of noisy generators. The khas khas tatties vanished. The tolerance to heat diminished with air conditioners. The floor waxing was short circuited after Myrna slipped and fractured her ankle, and the sparkle of seasonal adjustments all but disappeared. With them disappeared a civic feature unique to Calcutta, the washing down of roads with high pressure hoses by superhuman little men, deftly up and downing their water jets to avoid cars and passersby.
The human contents of the Rajmahal, Jack’s companions over the decades, were fading like the building. Sightings of Mohini Mojumdar were rare as she took to her bed. Then there was Petrov across the landing, turning peculiar, and Proshanto Mojumdar, dozing off in the middle of his scatty chatter. The landlord hardly came down though he and his wife waved sometimes from their landing. And Jack would reproach himself when he was occasionally asked to help an aging co-tenant. “Of course,” he would say guiltily. “Certainly. It’s the least I can do. I’ve been so . . . ” And he would add, his conscience heavy, “I didn’t realize . . . ”
One of the all-year-round activities involved the war against malaria-bearing mosquitoes. This was romanticized by Jack through the mosquito net which swirled down every night from the ceiling. Jack retreated to his bed, pulled at the strings tied by his side, and shut his eyes as the soft netting encircled him and Myrna, holding them in its protective embrace. That cloudy world gave Jack a feeling of intimate safety, like the net spread below trapeze artists, cocooning them in their aerial spaces. His worst moments came when the fan, still the crazily impractical fan with the wooden blades, tore the mosquito curtains when the delicate balance was upset. Each time, he saw to it that the netting was immediately replaced. The very worst was the day of the Bad News, when Myrna had lunged at the netting, tearing it from its moorings. Jack had felt as if he, a trapeze artist, had fallen from the high swings through a hole in the safety net, ever dreading the fatal impact to follow.
He felt the same dread again, though the net was as secure as it had ever been.
Petrov, the Russian tenant, kept a diary in which he made philosophical observations, which he shared only with Surjeet Shona, his eager acolyte: What are the Stracheys doing here in this crazy, filthy, smoggy, out-of-control city? Do they really need this apartment, this Rajmahal, these ancient toothless servants, just for the sake of a view of the crowded maidan, access to a few shabby clubs, an idea that their Raj is still here? How do they face the sly hints about the greed of the British during the Raj, their savage revenge after native uprisings? I have heard them being taunted about the famine. Have they forgotten how they went skipping across starving bodies on their way into Firpo’s? What about all the writing on this British indifference, the writing which reviles it? What about Jack Strachey’s own true background? (I know what this means, after all, though I was so young when I left Russia. Jack Strachey was a full adult when he left his country.) A “true” background means a wholeness which can never exist in another country, in spite of a long life’s association. It means knowing people of your own family, your region, your background . . . It means recognizing who you are and what you are, your true level . . . Ah! There I may have hit on something. Perhaps Jack Strachey’s level in England is the problem . . .
Small differences with the Indians on which Jack and Myrna had commented and laughed over the years were now like monster barriers.
“It’s rude to tell the truth, but not to yawn, spit, and burp.”
“And fart too.”
“ W hat about nose picking?”
“Have more, na, please, but you must . . . ”
“No thank you . . . ”
“Are you sure . . . ?”
“Of course I am, I said so didn’t I!”
Exasperating. Maddening. As if one doesn’t know one’s own mind.
“Look at him Jack, piling my plate, it’s monstrous!”
“Shshsh. Just eat as much as you can . . . ”
“Myrna, give Mr. Ghosh another helping . . . ”
“I just asked him, he said ‘no’!”
“Myrna! Insist, go on! Or you’ll offend him . . . ”
But Jack knew the Indian experience would deny him simple solutions, that, in the end he could not have re-adjusted his personality and status-consciousness in Britain. Here his level was intact and understood. It was himself now and till the end.
Myrna’s familiar quack quacking penetrated.
“What dear?’ he said mildly.
“How do I look?” Myrna said in that anxious tone close to hysteria. “How do I look, Jack? You’re not listening!”
How did she look indeed? Jack realized he hadn’t looked at her recently, because of her incessant natter, because of his incessant concern for her. “ You . . . ” automatically, knowing his best strategy. “Darling, you . . . look . . . just fine . . . ”
“Don’t lie! I don’t believe you meant a word of that!”
“What
dear?”
“I used to be so sexy.” Myrna’s voice took on a mewling tone.
“Don’t I know it!” Jack dutifully lunged at a heavily corseted breast.
Myrna slapped him away. “Stop it!” She started crying, turning Jack’s heart and lowering his resistance so painfully that he groaned out loud.
“Oh Jack, I don’t know how I should do my hair, and what I should wear . . . It’s so hard . . . ”
“Hush.” Jack’s voice trembled. “Hush . . . ”
“I can’t decide! Should I dye my hair? And look at these stays, they hardly make a difference. It’s too awful of Martin to forget the new ones . . . And, and, should I dye my hair? It’s awful.” Desperate. “You aren’t saying anything. Should I dye my hair, Jack Strachey, should I dye it, so they’ll look at me again... ”
“I love you.” Jack was saying under his breath, all this while, like a mantra. “I love you. Hush, hush.” He held Myrna in his arms. “I love you,” he said, repeatedly, while Myrna sobbed her soft, pretty little sobs.
Sitting apart again, Jack stroked his wife and held the usual evening panacea, a weak whiskey, out to her.
“They say it’s good for the heart.”
“The same words she repeats every evening, every single evening without fail!” thought Jack.
“I do look forward to it, I really do. It’s just the thing for my angina.”
“But you don’t have angina, dear. The doctor just said . . . ” Jack realized too late he had set Myrna off yet again. He consoled himself that most things said, or not said, would set her off . . .
“You’ll believe how bad it is when I’m gone.” Myrna swallowed the pretty little sobs. “The doctor said I had angina, he said it just last week. It’s serious, angina, and it’s so painful. I could go just like that, in a second . . . ”
Jack breathed hard to hide the deep distress he always felt when Myrna talked of death. He took his whiskey glass with him and walked over to the balcony. He leaned over, not seeing the pale orange sunset, not seeing the smoke hovering in its evening pall. “Why does her death bother me so much?” he thought. And then, while listening to Myrna’s complaints, his heart thudded loud and fast. He had remembered the pact suggested by him not so long ago. Jack shivered from the descending cool. Was he afraid of dying, of death, for himself? He remembered incidents of violence in this city, when he was the victim.
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