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In Custody

Page 19

by Anita Desai


  Deven and Pintu stared at each other in silence loaded with hostility and disapproval.

  They sat together on the bus, the carton of tapes and the gadgetry to play them at their feet, under the seat. Pintu wore a new shirt of white nylon with green vines printed on it and a single pink rose over the breast pocket that also bore the words Love Story, the tide of a recent film; it appeared to have started up an itch on the back of his neck for he kept scratching it while he stared out of the window, his mouth hanging open as if with incomprehension, trying to make out the shapes of smokestacks, brick kilns, bicycle shops and mango groves through the stinging yellow dust. Deven leant his head against the seat, closed his eyes and remained absolutely silent.

  At the bus terminus they staggered off and hailed a cycle rickshaw to carry them and their luggage to Deven’s house. It stood sadly empty, the green lattice doors of the veranda sagging but still shut, and the convolvulus creeper that grew over it dead from long dehydration. When they went in, Deven found the floors and furniture furred with dust, as though they had been silently growing pelts in their summer solitude. The heat inside the closed house was almost at boiling point. Deven went around throwing open windows with savagery. Sarla had neglected to empty the dustbin in the kitchen before she left: its contents had turned putrid, and stank.

  Still neither of them spoke to the other. Deven could not bring himself to speak to the boy who looked even more imbecilic than Chiku. He merely gestured, pointing out his son’s cot to him, ordering him to put his boxes in a corner, telling him to wait for a cup of tea. He found the boy’s presence in his house almost impossible to bear; it took all of his self-control to refrain from turning him out and sending him back to Delhi. If he had been alone, he would have howled, one long animal howl after the other, struck his head against the wall, beaten upon it with his fists, and wept.

  Instead he went into his room, stood staring at the cots with their bedding rolled up at the ends, and at the empty corner from which Sarla had taken away the tin trunks of her belongings. Eventually he collected the things he wanted and went across the courtyard to the bathroom for a bath. Then he beckoned to the watching, waiting boy and informed him he could bathe, too. It had cheered him that the taps still functioned, warm water trickled into the bucket and provided some refreshment to his wilting soul. He went into the kitchen to see if he could make tea. But of course there was nothing there. It was not like Sarla to leave behind largesse in any shape. The state of dereliction here was only a reflection of the dereliction of their marriage, perhaps even of themselves. He would have to take the boy to the bazaar to eat.

  The next day a letter arrived:

  Since we last met many problems have arisen and made my life unbearable. My eyes have suffered great damage from strain during the recording. The doctor has told me rest is not sufficient remedy and that cataract operation is urgently required. No funds available for same. Please arrange to have me admitted to Government Hospital for Eye, Ear, Nose Diseases and request your college authorities to collect bills for operation. Otherwise I may lose my sight and my profession. Work is at a standstill –

  The college seemed as abandoned as his home. He wandered up and down the corridors looking for a watchman to open the staff room. He had arranged with his colleagues to leave the examination papers there for him to correct. Only a few weeks were left before the marks sheet was to be sent in, and the office opened for admissions to the new academic year. In those few weeks, Deven had to make some effort to catch up with his long neglected and almost forgotten duties as well as to put those disastrous, chaotic tapes in order. With Pintu’s help. With Siddiqui’s help.

  Having arranged with the watchman to keep the staff room open in the mornings for him to work in, he fetched Siddiqui in a cycle rickshaw to come and help him and Pintu with the tapes which now lay on the table in the centre of the bleak room where the lecturers usually sat with their tea, cigarettes and books. Now it was scattered all over with the paraphernalia of the recording, with the examination papers shoved to one end, out of the way. Siddiqui watched quizzically while Deven and Pintu struggled to set up the recorder and play the tapes. Now Pintu displayed the extent of his knowledge; as Deven had suspected, it was nugatory. Siddiqui, smiling wanly, made a pretence of helping but really knew nothing about mechanical matters. He did not seem very curious to hear the results of Deven’s long labour in Delhi but had become strangely abstracted. It worried Deven that he showed no reaction to the obvious failure of the project. It became clear to Deven that he stood isolated, that no one was going to come forward with help or with a solution, that he would have to correct matters himself or be thrown out of college for false pretences, misappropriation of funds, fraud, cheating and incompetence.

  Help came – why did it come, only to revive him and guide him deeper into disaster? – in the shape of a moon rising at the grey-filmed window of the staff room. It was the curious face of one of his students, a boy who had been hanging around the college to see when the marks sheet would be put up; seeing Deven going in and out of the staff room daily, he had hopes of finding out his marks in advance. Deven had been too preoccupied to notice him but now the boy ventured to look in at the window and next to sidle in at the door and finally to come and stand by the table and take in the scene. It happened to be very much to his taste: Dhanu had a gift for mechanics, studied radio technology by correspondence course. He watched the incompetent and inefficient proceedings with a brightness Deven had not suspected in him, and seemed to take in all it was about without being told. ‘Sir, we must get another tape recorder. I have one at home, I can bring it if you like. Then we must record all the pieces you want to retain on to a master tape and cut out all this – this –’ he waved a dismissive hand, then rolled up his sleeves and set about helping Pintu. What was more, he had a group of student friends who shared his interests. With Deven’s permission he sent for them. They had all been bored and idle, college still shut, and came readily in the hope of some distraction and entertainment. Siddiqui, observing this with some relief, faded away with a faint, apologetic smile and did not reappear; it was obvious he preferred to wash his hands of an affair in which he regretted having played a catalytic role. Pintu also retired, to the canteen, having first taken money from Deven for cold drinks and cigarettes.

  Deven remained in the sepulchral staff room, watching the boys with growing amazement and a gratitude that was almost painful and that he had to hold and nurse quietly while he watched.

  He was not allowed to remain entirely passive. It was still his responsibility to buy a master tape for the boys and to do so he had to visit his bank and take out his last savings, hoping Sarla would not immediately discover the withdrawal. Even with this in hand, there was not very much the boys could do to improve matters: they were mechanics and not miracle workers. Although they had some success with cutting out the surface noise, the crackling and rustling in the background that so often drowned out the voice in the foreground, it still did not mean that Deven was left with a tape of Nur’s recitation, or memoirs, that could be of scholarly or even of general interest. Connoisseurs of poetry like Siddiqui might be sufficiently interested to crouch by the amplifier with their ears cocked and straining to catch the badly recorded voice that wandered distractedly down the lanes and by-lanes of a weak and failing memory, and find something of interest in his quotations from Keats and Shelley and his opinions of contemporary Urdu poets or reminiscences about the bazaars around Jama Masjid, but it was hardly a performance to be presented to students of Urdu literature. The patchwork that the boys made of the tapes, recording an excerpt from one tape and putting it together with an entirely incongruous bit from another, quite arbitrarily and fantastically, made a bizarre pastiche of it all, completely useless from a scholarly point of view.

  Finally it was considered fit to be presented and Siddiqui was invited to come and hear the finished tape – the bottomless box of tapes at last reduced to just one – on
the day before the college opened for admissions. He seemed entirely disinclined to come but Deven sent Dhanu in a rickshaw to fetch him. ‘Tell him I am waiting in the staff room. Tell him I have ordered tea for him – for all of us.’

  He was fetched and set upon a sofa against the wall, a teacup on his knee, looking a little bored, smiling quizzically at the boys who were fooling around, laughing, clapping each other on their backs, well pleased with their effort. Deven, sitting across from him on an upright chair next to the amplifier, watched his expression for reactions.

  ‘What do you think, sir?’ Dhanu asked when the tape came to an end and began to spin around soundlessly, because Deven seemed to be struck dumb. ‘What do you think of the recording?’

  ‘Charming,’ said Siddiqui, smiling and rising from the sofa. ‘Charming,’ he repeated, and spun around on his heel and went quickly out of the room. Caught by the agitated Deven in the corridor outside, he said in a low voice, ‘Deven, is that alt?’

  Deven bit his lip. ‘All that is left,’ he admitted, ‘after the cutting and the editing.’

  Seeing the disappointed look on Siddiqui’s face, he added, ‘Of course, I am writing something also – I am putting together my notes – enough for an article, or perhaps a monograph. Yes, I think it will be a monograph – the college printing press might like to print it, the Urdu department might –’

  ‘Deven, they released the funds for a tape, not a mono-graph,’ Siddiqui reminded him with some severity, and Deven fell silent and stood to attention at the reprimand. Siddiqui had lost his remote air and begun to look quite agitated himself. It occurred to Deven that he probably held himself responsible. He seemed to be having some difficulty in finding the right words to express his feelings, and walked off down the corridor with his head sunk low. ‘Hmm,’ was all that Deven heard him say, ‘hmm, it will be difficult. The board will be meeting the day before college opens. If they ask to hear it, what will they think?’

  Deven was still standing at the top of the stairs, watching him cross the blank playing field in the white heat of the sun, when Pintu appeared at his elbow, rolling down the sleeves of the white nylon shirt with the pink rose and the green vines that he had worn every day in Mirpore.

  ‘I want my pay,’ he muttered at Deven with a warning flash of his yellowish eyes. ‘I want my bus fare back to Delhi. My work is done.’

  Deven took out what change he had left in his pocket to give him, then went back to the staff room to lock the tape and the equipment into the cupboard. As he tidied up, dazed and mechanical in his movements, he heard someone come in and turned to see that it was the boys who had helped him, Dhanu and his friends. He looked at them inquiringly, too strained and tired to smile.

  They smiled at him broadly nevertheless. They stood in a row against the door, as if blocking off escape. ‘Sir,’ said one of them at last, ‘Sir, they are saying that the marks sheet will be put up tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Sir, you are marking our Hindi papers, sir. What are our marks, sir?’ they chorused, giggling slightly and jostling against each other.

  Deven backed against the cupboard defensively. He looked from one to the other and felt some spittle collecting at the corners of his tightly closed lips. ‘You will see them tomorrow,’ he said.

  ‘Please, sir, you must give us all first division marks, sir,’ they cried.

  ‘Yes, sir, extra marks for fixing your tapes, sir!’ one shouted boldly.

  ‘No one else in Mirpore could have done this work for you, sir,’ said the fat boy who had done the least work but smoked the most cigarettes and drunk the most bottles of aerated drinks. ‘We are the only trained technicians here.’

  ‘How did you get your training?’ asked Deven through parched lips, ‘when you are supposed to be attending classes here? Your attendance has not been very good. Have you been going to classes elsewhere?’

  ‘Sir, please, sir,’ they shouted, ‘why should we waste our time learning Hindi when we can pick up some useful skills that will help us find employment?’ They seemed to be mimicking some illiterate advertisement in the newspapers, or else someone they had heard on the subject; he was certain they were not all that concerned about employment. But one of them added rudely, ‘Hindi does not help get you employment.’

  ‘Then why did you take it up?’ Deven asked.

  ‘For a degree. We must have degrees, sir,’ they told him plainly.

  ‘You must give us a first division, sir. Tomorrow we are coming to see the marks sheet. You must put our names at the top of the list, sir.’

  They did not say ‘please’, they did not plead; the words were spoken with an undertone of threat. But, unexpectedly, they shuffled out of the room after speaking them, and went rolling down the corridor, hooting with laughter as they went. Deven was not sure if he really heard, or if he only imagined the fat boy saying, above the hubbub, ‘We will make him pay. How can he not?’

  On returning home, he found another letter:

  No reply to my request for medical allowance is hastening my early death. Family very anxious. My son will be left fatherless. His mother serious. It is necessary to arrange the future of the boy before I depart for my heavenly abode. The Mirpore College should endow the child with free education in recognition of work I have done for them. This is the minimum payment I request for recording and recitation of poetries. Please arrange to extend all facilities to sole male issue of the poet –

  He sat up all night, a wet towel wrapped around his head, correcting the papers. It was as still as death, the tree in the courtyard appeared lifeless. Only a cricket shrilled incessantly in the kitchen, shrilled and shrilled. He worked, grateful to be alone in the house, Pintu gone and Sarla not back. He was relieved to have Nur’s tapes out of the way, too, where he did not need to see them or, just tonight, think about them. He had not yet found the strength to deal with them. When he got up to go to bed, he staggered. He lay there wishing he could lead the rest of his life in this near-unconscious state. He hoped his former life of non-events, non-happenings, would be resumed, empty and hopeless, safe and endurable. That was the only life he was made for, although life was not perhaps the right term. He needed one that was more grey, more neutral, more shadowy. He sifted through alternatives like torn pieces of grey paper, letting them fall to the floor of his mind with a whisper and bury him in sleep.

  In the morning he carried the marks sheet across to the college. There were many students hanging around the gates: they were not being allowed in, they were to wait for the results till two o’clock in the afternoon. Deven avoided looking into their faces but as he pressed past them he heard someone hiss, ‘Psst, Sharma Sahib, have you done it?’

  ‘Meeting in the staff room,’ the watchman told Deven and opened the gate to let him through.

  The meeting was already underway. Deven went and perched on a chair at the back, holding his marks sheet on his knee, listening to the ticking of the electric fan over his head, not to the droning voices. He knew they were only saying what they said every year – how standards were deteriorating, how they must not be allowed to deteriorate any further, how every effort was to be made next term to improve the students’ attendance, how laxity in the matter of attendance was leading to poor performance in examinations, what the staff could do about it, should do and must do …

  Afterwards, he handed the marks sheet over to be pinned on the notice board. Then he stood wondering what to do next. He had to do something to avoid going to the cupboard and confronting the tape. As he looked around for rescue, his colleague Jayadev strolled up and asked him to come to the canteen for a cup of tea. Deven accepted and found himself sitting across the tin-topped table from Jayadev whom he did not like at all: he was a slim and restless fellow with narrow hips and shoulders that made reptilian movements as though he was insinuating himself through cracks.

  Jayadev did not seem to sense Deven’s hostility or unease. He flashed him a broad smile; one of his front
teeth was gold-capped, and gleamed.

  ‘Why are you looking so ill, Deven-bhai? Haven’t you had a good holiday?’ he asked, offering a cigarette.

  Deven accepted the cigarette but shook his head. ‘No, I’ve worked right through.’

  ‘Why do that? What good does that do? Has it got you a promotion?’

  Deven gave a bitter laugh. ‘Promotion,’ he said. ‘I am going to get a dismissal. For my hard work – a dismissal.’

  Jayadev clicked his tongue reassuringly against his gold cap. ‘Don’t talk like that. Dismissal? No, no, you are too good, hard-working, conscientious –’

  ‘But my hard work leads nowhere, to nothing. Nothing.’

  ‘No, no, bhai, don’t say that. Look what I got in the post,’ said Jayadev, fishing a postcard out of his shirt pocket and passing it to Deven who studied it with a puzzled frown. The card bore a coloured picture of a Mickey Mouse figure selling popcorn in a candy-striped booth, pink-cheeked children in lettered T-shirts stood around him, eating popcorn out of mammoth bags; a ferris wheel loomed above them in an amusement park at the back. Handing it back to Jayadev, Deven asked, ‘What is it?’

  ‘A postcard, bhai, from my friend in America. Did you know a fellow called Vijay Sud who used to be in Mirpore two years ago? He went to Indiana, he is teaching in a state college, he is earning a big salary, having a big house, doing well. See what he writes –’ Jayadev turned over the card and read the cheering message on the other side.

  Deven stopped him with a curt gesture. It did not interest him to hear what car the man had bought, or the states he had driven it through on his holiday. ‘What is he teaching there?’

 

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