by Brian Aldiss
The crowd surged into the waiting-room, all fighting to lend a hand with the stretcher. It was oppressively hot in the small room; the fan on the ceiling merely caused the heat to circulate. As more and more men surged into the room, Jane stood up and said loudly, 'Will you all please get out, except for Dr. Chand-hari and his secretary!'
The doctor was very pleased by this, seeing that it implied her acceptance of him. He set his secretary to clearing the room, or at least arguing with the crowd that still flocked in. Bending a yet more perfect smile upon her, he said, 'My young intelligent daughter Amma is fortunately at home at this present moment, dear Miss Pentecouth, so you will have some pleasant company just while your father is recovering his health with us.'
She smiled back, thinking to herself that the very next day, when her father had rested, they would return to Calcutta and proper medical care. On that she was determined.
She was impressed by the Chandhari household despite herself.
It was an ugly modernistic building, all cracked concrete outside - bought off a film star who had committed suicide, Amma cheerfully told her. All rooms, including the garage under the house, were air-conditioned. There was a heart-shaped swimming pool at the back, although it was empty of water and the sides were cracked. High white walls guarded the property. From her bedroom, Jane looked over the top of the wall at a dusty road sheltered by palm trees and the picturesque squalor of a dozen hovels, where the small children stood naked in doorways and dogs rooted and snarled in piles of rubbish.
'There is such contrast between rich and poor here,' Jane said, surveying the scene. It was the morning after her arrival here.
'What a very European remark!' said Amma. 'The poor people expect that the doctor should live to a proper standard, or he has no reputation.'
Amma was only twenty, perhaps half Jane's age. An attractive girl, with delicate gestures that made Jane feel clumsy. As she herself explained, she was modern and enlightened, and did not intend to marry until she was older.
'What do you do all day, Amma?' Jane asked.
'I am in the government, of course, but now I am taking a holiday. It is rather boring here, but still I don't mind it for a change. Next week, I will go away from here. What do you do all day, Jane?'
'My father is one of the directors of the new EGNP Trust. I just look after him. He is making a brief tour of India, Pakistan, and Ceylon, to see how the Trust will be administered. I'm afraid the heat and travel have over-taxed him. His breathing has been bad for several days.'
'He is old. They should have sent a younger man.' Seeing the look on Jane's face, she said, 'Please do not take offence! I am meaning only that it is unfair to send a man of his age to our hot climate. What is this trust you are speaking of?'
'The European Gross National Product Trust. Eleven leading European nations contribute 1 per cent of their gross national product to assist development in this part of the world.'
'I see. More help for the poor over-populated Indians, is that so?' The two women looked at each other. Finally, Amma said, 'I will take you out with me this afternoon, and you shall see the sort of people to whom this money of yours will be going, if they live sufficiently long enough.'
'I shall be taking my father back to Calcutta this afternoon.'
'You know my father will not allow that, and he is the doctor. Your father will die if you are foolish enough to move him. You must remain and enjoy our simple hospitality and try not to be too bored.'
'Thank you, I am not bored!' Her life was such that she had had ample training in not being bored. More even than not being in command of the situation, she hated failing to understand the attitude of these people. With what grace she could muster, she told the younger woman, 'If Dr. Chandhari advises that my father should not be moved, then I will be pleased to accompany you this afternoon.'
After the light midday meal, Jane was ready for the outing at two o'clock. But Amma and the car were not ready until almost five o'clock, when the sun was moving towards the west.
Robert Pentecouth lay breathing heavily, large in a small white bed. He was recognizable again, looked younger. Jane did not love him; but she would do anything to preserve his life. That was her considered verdict as she looked down on him. He had gulped down a lot of life in his time.
Something in the room smelt unpleasant. Perhaps it was her father. By his bedside squatted an old woman in a dull red-and-maroon sari, wrinkled of face, with a jewel like a dried scab screwed in one nostril. She spoke no English. Jane was uneasy with her, not certain whether she was not Chandhari's wife. You heard funny things about Indian wives.
The ceiling was a maze of cracks. It would be the first thing he would see when he opened his eyes. She touched his head and left the room.
Amma drove. A big new car that took the rutted tracks uneasily. There was little to Naipur Road. The ornate and crumbling houses of the main street turned slightly uphill, became mere shacks. The sunlight buzzed. Over the brow of the slope, the village lost heart entirely and died by a huge banyan tree, beneath which an old man sat on a bicycle.
Beyond, cauterized land, a coastal plain lying rumpled, scarred by man's long and weary occupation.
'Only ten miles,' Amma said. 'It gets more pretty later. It's not so far from the ocean, you know. We are going to see an old nurse of mine who is sick.'
'Is there plague in these parts?'
'Orissa has escaped so far. A few cases down in Cuttack. And of course in Calcutta. Calcutta is the home town of the plague. But we are quite safe - my nurse is dying only of a malnutri-tional disease.'
Jane said nothing.
They had to drive slowly as the track deteriorated. Everything had slowed. People by the tattered roadside stood silently, silently were encompassed by the car's cloud of dust. A battered truck slowly approached, slowly passed. Under the annealing sun, even time had a wound.
Among low hills, little more than undulations of the ground, they crossed a bridge over a dying river and Amma stopped the car in the shade of some deodars. As the women climbed out, a beggar sitting at the base of a tree called out to them for baksheesh, but Amma ignored him. Gesturing courteously to Jane, she said, 'Let us walk under the trees to where the old nurse's family lives. It perhaps would be better if you did not enter the house with me, but I shall not be long. You can look round the village. There is a pleasant temple to see.'
Only a few yards farther on, nodding and smiling, she turned aside and, ducking her head, entered a small house with mud walls.
It was a long blank village, ruled by the sun. Jane felt her isolation as soon as Amma disappeared.
A group of small children with big eyes was following Jane. They whispered to each other but did not approach too closely. A peasant farmer, passing with a thin-ribbed cow, called out to the children. Jane walked slowly, fanning the flies from her face.
She knew this was one of the more favoured regions of India. For all that, the poverty - the stone age poverty - afflicted her. She was glad her father was not with her, in case he felt as she did, that this land could soak up EGNP money as easily, as tracelessly, as it did the monsoon.
Walking under the trees, she saw a band of monkeys sitting or pacing by some more distant huts, and moved nearer to look at them. The huts stood alone, surrounded by attempts at agriculture. A dog nosed by the rubbish heaps, keeping an eye on the monkeys.
Stones were set beneath the big tree where the monkeys paced. Some were painted or stained, and branches of the tree had been painted white. Offerings of flowers lay in a tiny shrine attached to the main trunk; a garland withered on a low branch above a monkey's head. The monkey, Jane saw, suckled a baby at its narrow dugs.
A man stepped from behind the tree and approached Jane.
He made a sign of greeting and said, 'Lady, you want buy somet'ing?'
She looked at him. Something unpleasant was happening to one of his eyes, and flies surrounded it. But he was a well-built man,
thin, of course, but not as old as she had at first thought. His head was shaven; he wore only a white dhoti. He appeared to have nothing to sell.
'No, thank you,' she said.
He came closer.
'Lady, you are English lady? You buy small souvenir, some one very nice thing of value for to take with you back to England ! Look, I show - you are please to wait here one minute.'
He turned and ducked into the most dilapidated of the huts. She looked about, wondering whether to stay. In a moment, the man emerged again into the sun, carrying a vase. The children gathered and stared silently; only the monkeys were restless.
'This is very lovely Indian vase, lady, bought in Jamshedpur, very fine hand manufacture. Perceive beautiful artistry work, lady!'
She hesitated before taking the poor brass vase in her hands. He turned and called sharply into the hut, and then redoubled his sales talk. He had been a worker in a shoe factory in Jamshedpur, he told her, but the factory had burned down and he could find no other work. He had brought his wife and children here, to live with his brother.
'I'm afraid I'm not interested in buying the vase,' she said.
'Lady, please, you give only ten rupees! Ten rupees only!' He broke off.
His wife had emerged from the hut, to stand without motion by his side. In her arms, she carried a child.
The child looked solemnly at Jane from its giant dark eyes. It was naked except for a piece of rag, over which a great belly sagged. Its body, and especially the face and skull, were covered in pustules, from some of which a liquid seeped. Its head had been smeared with ash, The baby did not move or cry; what its age was, Jane could not estimate.
- Its father had fallen silent for a moment. Now he said, 'My child is having to die, lady, look see! You give me ten rupees.'
Now she shrank from the proffered vase. Inside the hut, there were other children stirring in the shadows. The sick child looked outwards with an expression of great wisdom and beauty - or so Jane interpreted it - as if it understood and forgave all things. Its very silence frightened her, and the stillness of the mother. She backed away, feeling chilled.
'No, no, I don't want the vase! I must go —'
Muttering her excuses, she turned away and hurried, almost ran, back towards the car. She could hear the man calling to her.
She climbed into the car. The man came and stood outside, not touching the car, apologetic, explaining, offering the vase for only eight rupees, talking, talking. Seven-and-a-half rupees. Jane hid her face.
When Amma emerged, the man backed away, said something meekly; Amma replied sharply. He turned, clutching the vase, and the children watched. She climbed into the driving seat and started the car.
'He tried to sell me something. A vase. It was the only thing he had to sell, I suppose,' Jane said. 'He wasn't rude.' She felt the silent gears of their relationship change; she could no longer pretend to superiority, since she had been virtually rescued. After a moment, she asked. 'What was the matter with his child? Did he tell you?'
'He is a man of the scheduled classes. His child is dying of the smallpox. There is always smallpox in the villages.'
'I imagined it was the plague....'
'I told you, we do not have the plague in Orissa yet.'
The drive home was a silent one, voiceless in the corroded land. The people moving slowly home had long shadows now. When they arrived at the gates of the Chandhari house, a porter was ready to open the gate, and a distracted servant stood there; she ran fluttering beside the car, calling to Amma.
Amma turned and said, 'Jane, I am sorry to tell you that your father has had another heart attack just now.'
The attack was already over. Robert Pentecouth lay unconscious on the bed, breathing raspingly. Doctor Chandhari stood looking down at him and sipping an iced lime-juice. He nodded tenderly at Jane as she moved to the bedside.
'I have of course administered an anti-coagulant, but your father is very ill, Miss Pentecouth,' he said. 'There is severe cardiac infarction, together with weakness in the mitral valve, which is situated at the entrance of the left ventricle. This has caused congestion of the lungs, which means the trouble of breathlessness, very much accentuated by the hot atmosphere of the Indian sub-continent. I have done my level best for him.'
'I must get him home, doctor.'
Chandhari shook his head. 'The air journey will be severely taxing on him. I tell you frankly I do not imagine for a single moment that he will survive it.'
'What should I do, doctor? I'm so frightened!'
'Your father's heart is badly scarred and damaged, dear lady. He needs a new heart, or he will give up the ghost.'
Jane sat down on the chair by the bedside and said, 'We are in your hands.'
He was delighted to hear it. 'There are no safer hands, dear Miss Pentecouth.' He gazed at them with some awe as he said, 'Let me outline a little plan of campaign for you. Tomorrow we put your father on the express to Calcutta. I can phone to Naipur Road station to have it stop. Do not be alarmed! I will accompany you on the express. At the Radakhrishna General Hospital in Howrah in Calcutta is that excellent man, K. V. Menon, who comes from Trivandrum, as does my own family -a very civilized and clever man of the Nair caste. K. V. Menon. His name is widely renowned and he will perform the operation.'
'Operation, doctor?'
'Certainly, certainly! He will give a new heart. K. V. Menon has performed many many successful heart-transplants. The operation is as commonplace in Calcutta as in California. Do not worry! And I will personally stand by you all the while. Perhaps Amma shall come too because I see you are firm friends already. Good, good, don't worry!'
In his excitement, he took her by the arm and made her rise to her feet. She stood there, solid but undecided, staring at him.
'Come!' he said. 'Let us go and telephone all the arrangements ! We will make some commotion around these parts, eh? Your father is okay here with the old nurse-woman to watch. In a few days, he will wake up with a new heart and be well' again.'
Jane sent a cable explaining the situation to the Indian headquarters of EGNP in Delhi (the city which ancient colonialist promptings had perhaps encouraged the authorities to choose). Then she stood back while the commotion spread.
It spread first to the household. More people were living in the Chandhari house than Jane had imagined. She met the doctor's wife, an elegant sari-clad woman who spoke good English and who apparently lived in her own set of rooms, together with her servants. The latter came and went, enlivened by the excitement. Messengers were despatched to the bazaar for various little extra requirements.
The commotion rapidly spread farther afield. People came to inquire the health of the white sahib, to learn the worst for themselves. The representative of the local newspaper called. Another doctor arrived, and was taken by Dr. Chandhari, a little proudly, to inspect the patient.
If anything, the commotion grew after darkness fell.
Jane went to sit by her father. He was still unconscious. Once, he spoke coherently, evidently imagining himself back in England; although she answered him, he gave no sign that he heard. Amma came in to say good-night on her way to bed.
'We shall be leaving early in the morning,' Jane said. 'My father and I have brought you only trouble. Please don't come to Calcutta with us. It isn't necessary.'
'Of course not. I will come only to Naipur Road station. I'm glad if we could help at all. And with a new heart, your father will be really hale and hearty again. Menon is a great expert in heart-transplantation.'
'Yes. I have heard his name, I think. You never told me, Amma - how did you find your old nurse this afternoon?'
'You did not ask me. Unhappily, she died during last night.'
'Oh! I'm so sorry!'
'Yes, it is hard for her family. Already they are much in debt to the moneylender.'
She left the room; shortly after, Jane also retired. But she could not sleep. After an hour or two of fitful sleep, she got dr
essed again and went downstairs, obsessed with a mental picture of the glass of fresh lime-juice she had seen the doctor drinking. She could hear unseen people moving about in rooms she had never entered. In the garden, too, flickering tongues of light moved. A heart-transplant was still a strange event in Naipur Road, as it had once been in Europe and America; perhaps it would have even more superstition attached to it here than it had there.
When a servant appeared, she made her request. After long delay, he brought the glass on a tray, gripping it so that it would not slip, and lured her out on to the veranda with it. She sat in a wicker chair and sipped it. A face appeared in the garden, a hand reached in supplication up to her.
'Please! Miss Lady!'
Startled, she recognized the man with the dying child to whom she had spoken the previous afternoon.
The next morning, Jane was roused by one of the doctor's servants. Dazed after too little sleep, she dressed and went down to drink tea. She could find nothing to say; her brain had not woken yet. Amma and her father talked continuously in English to each other.
The big family car was waiting outside. Pentecouth was gently loaded in, and the luggage piled round him. It was still little more than dawn; as Jane, Amma, and Chandhari climbed in and the car rolled forward, wraithlike figures were moving already. A cheerful little fire burned here and there inside a house. A tractor rumbled towards the fields. People stood at the sides of the road, numb, to let the car pass. The air was chilly; but, in the eastern sky, the banners of the day's warmth were already violently flying.
They were almost at the railway station when Jane turned to Amma. 'That man with the child dying of smallpox walked all the way to the house to speak to me. He said he came as soon as he heard of my father's illness.'
'The servants had no business to let him through the gate. That is how diseases spread,' Amma said.
'He had something else to sell me last night. Not a vase. He wanted to sell his heart!'
Amma laughed. 'The vase would be a better bargain, Jane!'