by Brian Aldiss
'Ah, but should you find them embarrassing? Should there not be fewer barriers between people? Perhaps the old saying is true that Englishmen are reserved and want only to live within themselves.'
Slightly irritated, Frazer said, 'Actually, I am not English at all. I am Swiss. It just happens I've lived in England most of my life, and my wife is English.'
Mafatlal put his head on one side inquiringly. 'I see! Well, I would not say that that invalidates my thesis. You may have picked up the habit of shutting yourself away from your fellow men and so you can perhaps talk only to women, isn't it?'
Frazer got up and poured himself another whisky. Disturbed by it though he was, he could not help seeing the funny side of this interview, if you are a good boy I will take you on a little expedition tomorrow.
'Kisari, I know you have a degree in psychoanalysis. Why not turn it against yourself? You really want to talk to me about Sushila, don't you? You're just eaten up with jealousy because you think I'm lying with her every day, aren't you?'
'Any man might envy you the body of Sushila Nayyer, Tancred, indeed, yes! - Though I have other fish to cook with my lady loves of the hospital nursing staff. But I know why you feel so guilty about your enjoyment of Sushila.'
'Guilty! I do not feel guilty! It's not a question - look, as I've said before, I find these personal discussions very unpleasant indeed. If you have finished your drink, perhaps you wouldn't mind leaving me in peace, damn it!'
Mafatlal set down his glass and gestured sadly. 'May I say may I say that you ease your conscience by confessing to your that you would be better perhaps if you also took the sugar lump in your whisky? Totally no offence, of course. Life is sour enough for all of us....'
He stood up, for once leaving a sentence unfinished. Nodding, he walked out of Frazer's temporary apartment, through the office, and out into the road. Very dignified, Frazer thought. Very dignified, if a pain in the neck. He did not feel guilty the habit of shutting yourself away from your fellow men and about Sushila. Well, not in the way Mafatlal meant. But it might have been worth hearing what the long-winded little blighter had to say on the subject. Mafatlal was no fool; Sushila thought highly of him.
He sat down and drained his glass, suddenly miserable. Dusk was sweeping in. Once more rain was not coming to Chan-danagar this evening. No doubt it was plastering down on Bhagapur instead. He genuinely sorrowed for the wretched famine victims; at the same time, the sight of all that malnutrition, all those starving children, filled him with so much unease that he could hardly tolerate the possibility of any more refugees. Often it seemed to be their voices that he heard in his head. Anxiously he thought, it's a deep spiritual sickness from which I suffer. My stomach chums all the time. And the air-conditioning plant growled at him. a lover and his beloved came together in the evening when
As the night gathered, he went out to collect Sushila from the hospital. A family was admitted through the main gate just before it closed for the night. The man stalked in front, white-haired, hollow-eyed, carrying a child; his wife walked behind him, an iron cooking pot on her head and two boys tagging beside her. An older girl followed them; she also carried a child. All the children seemed near death; the boys mere walking skeletons, every rib showing; the girl like a little old woman. Their skins were furry with dust. An orderly, a plump Bihari girl with a diamond glinting at one nostril, led them down towards the kitchens.
Frazer followed the group slowly. Now, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, most of the world was eating factory-made foods, and enjoying them. In India, people refused to touch them, just as they still refused fish. During the nineteen-eighties, events had taken a progressive turn, and a contraceptive pill had at last gone some way towards being accepted; then had come the big Bombay Chemicals scandal, when over two thousand women had died from a wrongly made-up consignment of the pills. Adverse publicity had set everything back once more. There had followed a religiously-inspired revolt against the Climate-Control Board which, while it always had to rob Peter to pay Paul, had at least gone some way to eliminate droughts. Now the sub-continent was sliding back to the perilous political and economic situation that had beset it back in the fifties and sixties. Currently, the standard of living was higher in the equatorial belt of Mars than it was in Uttar Pradesh.
All about the hospital, where the disgraced bivouacs clustered and the daffodils were almost over by the end of the first week in the failing light, spirals of smoke drifted up from glowing sigris and oil lamps gleamed here and there. No breeze stirred now. Again the monsoon had turned its back on this section of the pitiless plain. On this further night, the orgy of the living and the dying could take place undisturbed by hope.
that's it rub it against me darling your fabulous briney juices
Frazer spent next morning industriously touring and inspecting the camp. All was in order, as far as order went. Nobody was dying; everyone was getting a statistically-decided minimum quota of calories. If there was no real famine in camp, equally there was no infectious disease. What there was was suffering, the long attrition of semi-starvation which brought stupidity and indifference and welcomed in any number of physical defects. Frazer believed in the body; it was one of the few things you could trust; he hated to see this large-scale wastage of it. Especially he hated to see cadaverous women bringing forth babies and nestling them to dry dugs. It was a travesty of the life process.
Beyond the camp perimeter stretched baked land with patches of scrub standing out vaguely, like the discoloured patches on the skin of a tertiary syphilitic. Here and there, he could see cattle tottering about the maidan', some had followed trails to Chandanagar, hoping for water. The beasts were hollow and rotten. One fell over sideways even as Frazer looked. The vultures who sat about the camp moved over to its carcass, walking slowly across the ground like shabby Calcutta clerks with their hands behind their backs. They never flew in the Chandanagar area unless you ran up and tried to kick them, as the stinking bastards pull the guts out of the ass first of all and Frazer sometimes did; death could be tackled at walking-pace in Uttar Pradesh. Delhi has had enough sir Delhi is tired of other people's misery.
'I've had enough of this place,' Frazer said to Sushila over lunch. He was eating in the cool hospital-staff dining-room, taking a fresh lime juice and gin with his artificial rump steak. 'Can't we get out of here and drive into Faizabad for the evening? Young just radioed that they're going to be away all week, as far as he can see.'
'Whom will you leave in charge?'
'Kisari Mafatlal, of course. He's senior to me. You're eaten up with jealousy because you think I'm lying.’
With her magnetic eyes fixed on his, she said, 'The people will be very distressed to see you go; you know that, don't you, Tancred?'
'Oh, what nonsense!' But he was conscious of a slight feeling and from the love we've built let's go out and love and help of guilt. 'They care nothing about me. They're too busy with their own preoccupations, to be interested in anything I do.'
'That is not so. However, if you are happy....' Her beautiful voice, long remembered in cool rooms.
'I am happy. The bright lights and madding crowds of Faiza-bad, then?'
'Darling, you forget I told you yesterday I have a little expedition to take you on.'
'No. Oh, yes, of course! Have I been a good boy? Where do we go?' He felt the sickness again as she began her explanation. He wanted to get out of camp; but when the chance came to go, he could think only of the heat and the death waiting outside.
There was no trouble about their commandeering a truck. As Frazer walked over to the offices, wretched groups of refugees still waited where the cool air gushed out on them, the labouring women still moved in a dream-time up and down their scaffolding. He left word with a chuprassi to tell Mafatlal where he was going, a very pleasant fellow at heart but his heart responds to action
Sushila was wearing a short stiff skirt which contrasted piquantly with a white blouse button
ing high on her neck; it lent her a misleading air of primness. She took the seat beside Frazer, gave him directions as they rolled out of the main gate and leaned back to light a cigar when he switched the truck on to automatic.
'I'm taking you to see my parents' house, Tancred. I thought that would be very pleasant for you. There are some clothes I wish to collect. I have nothing to wear in camp.'
'I thought you had quarrelled with your father.'
'My father is not at home. He has moved to the hills where there is no drought. There is only an old family chokidar guarding the house. He has been instructed not to admit me, but he will because he loves me.'
'Shabash! Sounds like a great homecoming!'
'Anyhow, it's a lovely afternoon for a drive, darling.'
'Oh, yes, bloody great! Lovely scenery, too!'
'You will be fond of it when you grow used to it.'
He felt uneasy and irritable. An emotion was coming from her which he could not analyse; of recent months, he had become so confident of interpreting what other people were feeling that to be baffled worried him unduly.
They were now entering the land of the dead, where the only colour was the colour of cow dung. The camp had fallen behind and was swallowed into heat haze. The rutted track they followed led from nowhere into nowhere under the gilt dome of sky, never deviating even when they passed through villages, from another century this enormous lugubrious hotel deserted The villages stood petrifying, without motion, moribund, as if and I only an old cup of clay that fills only with the bitter heat time had turned to jelly in the wrath of the sun. Occasionally, a how can you be starved for sex I give you all I've got don't I in paper-thin cow stood arrested in a doorway, occasionally a mangy dog ran from the truck, occasionally an old man or woman died at their leisure in a patch of shade. The beaks of you've always been sheltered what do you know of suffering or well-arms pointed up to the sky. Desolation seemed less tyran-privileged idle life shut away from knowledge of the real nous outside the villages.
Gradually, habitation grew more frequent. The road became increasingly broken, turning downhill in uneasy rushes. It emerged on a river bank.
This was one of the many streams of the Ganges. Distantly, water could be seen, bracketed between miles of sand and dried mud. Dirty shacks had been built on the mud flats, life had been contrived; suddenly one evening would come the foaming floods and sweep that pitiful contrivance away - it could be tonight.
They drove along the track that followed the river bank. Flies buzzed in the cab with them. A few coarse trees grew here, desiccated and grey; only palm trees flourished in the drought. Vultures and kite hawks sat in cindery bushes, meditative. A scarecrow stalked along the road, burdened under a dripping water-skin. He walked on for several minutes before Frazer's hooting dislodged him from the crown of the road.
'Silly old sod! Where is this house of yours, anyway? How much further do we have to go through this god-blasted desert?'
She pointed ahead. 'Behind those trees there.' Leaning forward eagerly, she threw her cigar butt out of the window.
The Nayyer family house was walled round with white walls and guarded with huge wooden gates. Through cracks in the timber, they spied an aged Sikh, snoozing on a charpoy in the shade of a wizened mango tree. By dint of much calling and whistling, he was roused and eventually let them through the gate, grumbling to himself at the nuisance of it all.
The house was large, girt with verandas and balconies, smothered with dying vine. It had been pretty in better days. To one side, overlooked by giant pines, lay a cracked brown area where a pleasant pool had once lain. A chokidar in a faded green tunic appeared, making salaam to Sushila.
He let them in a side door, an old grey unshaven man in slippers, chewing betel. All doors and shutters in the house were tightly closed. A scent hung in the corridors which seemed compounded of the world's nostalgia, flowers and dust and where forgotten things belong you keep coming back like a wood smoke and the dross of human lives, the daffodils will be out when you return and we'll still be the
She left him to wander round as she went up to her old room. The chokidar brought a warm bottled grapefruit juice for Frazer to drink; he walked about, sipping at the tumbler, curious to see everything. The furniture was heavy and dark; secrets were wardrobed into every shadowy room; the house waited. Frazer experienced a strong sense of intrusion, and of excitement. Suddenly, he wanted Sushila and hurried up the wide stone stairs to find her.
Sushila was in her bedroom; she had opened one shutter, so that an angle of sun burned into the room by the window, lighting everything by reflection. She was bending over a trunk, pulling out lengths of sari. When Frazer entered she turned, her you dirty swine you're at her all the time aren't you won't face lit from below, seeing instantly what he wanted.
She twiddled fingers on a level with her ear, in a gesture of disapproval. Who else could frown and smile at the same time?
'No, Tancred, no sex! We ought to get back. Now that we're here, I'm anxious to get back to the camp, in case there is trouble there.' She slammed down the trunk lid.
'To hell with camp! I want you here in your own surroundings, not in a concentration camp!' He grasped her fiercely, thrusting one hand round her shoulders and the other between her legs, pulling her, fighting with her to get her on to the bed, the rosy glow of summer is on thy dimpled cheek awhile in thy She always responded to violence, wonderful girl, strong as a while in thy heart the winter is lying cold and bleak es liegt der panther considering how fragile she was, spirited, savage, the savage always there ready to wake again....
They fell on to the bed, raising a cloud of dust. She was slapping him about the neck, cursing him.
'Oh, you sod, you dirty Swiss sod, you lecherous dirty Swiss sod!'
'Let us, you bitch, dekko chute !'
On the white counterpane under the drapes of muslin mosquito net, they struggled, he dragging and tearing at her clothes until, bit by bit, her body was revealed. She was still struggling - with him now, not against. Now walk the angels on the walls of heaven as sentinels to
It was quick and brutal for him, soon over.
Afterwards, she was furious again. She marched up and down the room as he lay on the bed, grabbing up her torn clothes and cursing him, damning him for ruining her possessions.
'Go back to camp in a sari, then! You've got a mass of them here!'
'You bloody Europeans, you're all the same! You're just a spoiler, spoil this, spoil that, spoil everything, don't care! Oh, I warn you, honestly, Tancred, I hate you, I hate you so stinking much, you rapist swine, I just can't tell you possibly! You have no standards!'
He had already heard her say it all in his head. He was sick with precognition, ashamed of himself, disgusted with her.
Suddenly, she flung a brass vase at Frazer. It struck the wall above him and bounced away. He jumped off the bed and grabbed her wrist, squeezing it until she sank to the floor, gasping with pain.
'Don't you fling things at me, you little wild cat! Put a sari on, and let's be getting back to camp! Jaldhi jao!' stocks of grain and remember to keep the guards up to their
She selected a magnificent twelve-yard sari, all copper and brown and crimson, and wound it slowly about her body, saying, 'I will never lie with you again; I prefer fat Kisari Mafatlal to you. You are so common! You have a wife at home, you common man! Wouldn't you be ashamed if she knew you were going with a coloured woman?'
He put his shoes on and went over to the balcony, looking out over the dying garden. A parakeet with red head and green wings swooped down on to a lower veranda. It landed almost at the feet of an old woman standing actionless at the veranda rail, only to dart off again immediately. Perhaps the old woman was the chokidar's wife. Frazer was happy to think that she probably did not understand English. When she looked up at him, he retired into the bedroom. Sushila was arranging her hair, her brows heavy, all full of honey, superb, so shall the flower die and the seed
and some flowers shall
'You're beautiful, Sushila. I know I'm a bastard but I love you!'
'You do not love me! And I know why you want me, because Mafatlal told me.'
'Never mind Mafatlal. Let's get on! The sky's clouding up. If the monsoon struck now, we'd be stuck here.'
Her hand flew to her mouth. 'Oh, my confounded Christ! Then there'd be real trouble! Us marooned here and Young coming back to Chandanagar and finding you'd cleared off and stolen his best lady doctor and left his flock unguarded.'
Her words made him angrier. The bitch was getting at him! He marched downstairs and into the garden, revving the truck impatiently as she stayed on the terrace to talk to the chokidar, who was now joined by the old woman Frazer had seen from the window. This old woman carried Sushila's suitcaseful of belongings and placed it reverently in the back of the truck. Sush-while in my heart the winter is lying cold and bleak and the ila waved to the old couple as the truck began to roll.
As they drove along by the shrunken river's bank, he sang an old song of Heine's which his mother had taught him long ago, back in the Lauterbrunnen days: 'Es liegt der heisse Sommer', keeping it going as they roared through the fossilized villages.
His head ached. Finally he said, 'I'm giving up, Sushila. India's not for me. I'm going back home as soon as possible. I'm no good out here - I haven't the dedication the job requires.'
She was still angry and said nothing. To draw her out, to flatter her, he said, 'Your country is too harsh for me, Sushila. You survive in it, fragile as a flower, but it's killing me. I've felt ill ever since I came to Chandanagar. Perhaps you're right and I'm a common man.' you are so common wouldn't you be ashamed if she knew you
Adamant, she said, 'You're a spoiler, Tancred, like all your race. You make me feel dirty. That's all I have to say to you.'
'That's all, eh? No deep Indian wisdom to give to the disappearing white man! There's a myth in Switzerland - and in England too - that India is a land of ancient wisdom, where eventually a man will come face to face with the knowledge of himself. Have you nothing like that to offer, eh, instead of catty remarks?'