Journey to Ithaca

by Anita Desai

  Sophie walks slowly back to the Campo San Barnabas to catch the last of the evening light before returning to the hotel which will be, she knows, dark and damp and unwelcoming. Here the flat white façade of the church still catches the light and shines, and in the campo a priest in his black frock kicks a football lustily into a cluster of boys who, with yells, scatter to pursue it and kick it back. Sophie presses against the sunlit wall, feeling the warmth of the sun, watching the game as it disappears towards the far end of the campo.

  Her bags are packed, she is waiting for the bellboy to carry them down into the lobby. As she stands smoking a last cigarette, looking out onto a narrow strip of a canal below her window where a cat is delicately performing its toilette in the bow of a gently rocking gondola, it occurs to her that there is still time to telephone the children once more before she leaves, and she turns to the telephone, begins to dial.

  She had visited them briefly, between her visits to Paris and Venice, to reassure herself, and them. Had she been reassured? Certainly they had been as well and happy in that house on the lake as she could have hoped. But it had troubled her to see the degree to which it had become their home, as if they had no other. It was to their grandparents they talked of their day at school or their play in the garden and although they had been patient and polite in their response to Sophie’s fumbling questions and caresses, it had been clear they no longer needed her. This should have been a relief to her, but it also hurt.

  Now their voices seemed to travel across a great distance to reach her. They have been called in from the garden and there is still some rough play going on between them that she can hear in their giggles, in their panting. ‘I will be back soon and we will go rowing together,’ she tries to tell them but they are not listening. She winds up with a forlorn admonishment: ‘Now be good. Listen to Nonna and Nonno. Don’t give them any trouble –’ and puts the phone down and stands listening to the silence that follows with a great sense of desolation falling upon her like the fine mist of Venice.

  It comes to her that in her search for the Mother she is abandoning them much as Matteo has abandoned her in his search, and that in following her she is entering an area of the chill, bleak bitterness of renunciation. Matteo has his belief, but she has – nothing. She feels fear beginning to creep over her and when the bellboy enters the room with his trolley and his hearty, ‘Buon giorno,’ he finds her standing with her arms wrapped around herself and a stricken look on her face.

  Sophie picks her way through dog turds and litter on the pavement, looking up at the brownstones on either side of the street that block out the sunlight and cast everything into shadow. The number she searches for is at the end of the street, almost obscured by tall laurels and a heavy iron lantern. There is no signboard. She climbs the steps and puts her finger on the bell. She can hear it ring inside the closed, silent mansion. No one replies, and she is left shifting from one foot to the other, and peering in through the window. No one appears.

  *

  If in Venice there had been a surfeit of sights and scenes and textures and colours, then here in New York their world seemed stripped of them or, at least, concealed from the troupe of Indian dancers that entered Mrs du Best’s mansion. Everything was covered with dust sheets that were themselves the colour of dust; the carpets had been rolled up against the walls; the chandeliers hung in bags and could not be lit. Their slippered feet made dispirited, lamenting sounds in the big, bare rooms as they followed Mrs du Best’s secretary through them and down the hall, glancing covetously into the rooms they passed in the hope of finding some glimpse of comfort and hospitality.

  At the very end of the hall some smaller rooms were found for them which the secretary informed them would be put in order; the manner in which he gave them this information made it clear that he was most reluctant to perform this service and would have preferred not to; he was not to be persuaded that this would have been Mrs du Best’s wish.

  Once more an incredulous Krishna said to him, ‘And she did not tell you? She did not say anything about our coming?’

  He had asked too often; the young man’s very pale eyes flashed behind his spectacles and his ‘No!’ was explosive under the small bristle of a ginger moustache. ‘Mrs du Best has many, many things on her hands at this moment, many new projects that she has. If you did not have her letter to show me, sir, I would not have admitted you at all.’

  Krishna, seeing that the letter was the one card he could play, opened it once more under the young man’s nose, rustling the sheet of paper as loudly as he could. ‘Yes, you have read it now. You can see we are invited, and are expected. She promised us –’

  The young man tried to brush it away. ‘I can say nothing about that till I have spoken to her.’

  ‘You will be speaking to her? When?’

  ‘I shall be telephoning her regarding your arrival, of course.’

  ‘Then let me have a word also,’ Krishna said at once, and followed him back down the hall, clutching the letter.

  The others stayed back, hoping the telephone call would correct the mistake and turn back the clock and allow them to re-enter the house in the manner they had expected.

  However, that was not so: Krishna was cryptic in his report on the telephone call when he returned; it had clearly not gone as well as they had hoped. ‘Now she is telling me her husband’s business is in trouble because of Prohibition,’ he informed them, clearly flustered. ‘She is with him in Pittsburgh, or somewhere where they had their breweries. She has to stay there and cannot come.’

  ‘Then?’ asked the women fearfully, huddling together in one of the small rooms.

  ‘Then? Then what? We will stay here and practise and prepare our performance so when she comes back she can book a hall for us and arrange the publicity as she promised.’

  ‘Ah!’ they exclaimed with some relief; then added, ‘When?’

  ‘When? I can’t tell you when, she did not say when,’ he grumbled and, picking up his bag, went in search of a room of the kind to which he had become accustomed. There was martyrdom in his posture – his stooping back and handling of the heavy bag without their help which he insisted on waving away.

  One of the maids appeared, however, sent by the secretary, it seemed, and taking the bag out of his hands said crisply, ‘Follow me, sir.’

  From then on they were in the hands of the staff. It had been invisible and, for a large part of the time, remained so. Clearly, the cavernous mansion had a subterranean region in which it was housed, but its presence was sternly disciplinary and could not be ignored. There was no possibility of going into the kitchen and cooking for themselves the familiar things they longed for; meals were served on the dot of time, at a glass-topped table under one of the bundled-up chandeliers, to be eaten by the etiolated light of the bulbs fixed to the dark green walls, and the meals were what the staff chose to present regardless of whether the guests found them edible or not. Krishna pleaded in vain for rice and vegetables and curds, and for the removal of offending pieces of meat, but the secretary shrugged his shoulders and said it was not a matter he dealt with and therefore he could make no change. ‘Mrs du Best gives the orders,’ he said.

  ‘Mrs du Best can never give such orders!’ Krishna retorted, but this made the secretary turn quite pale with anger, and his voice rose as he replied, ‘Are you suggesting, sir, that I am guilty of an untruth?’

  Even the small narrow rooms they had been assigned remained cheerless, in an area of the house devoid of carpets or curtains and clearly deemed second-rate by the owner and the decorators. Even if they threw their shawls and sandals about, these were instantly picked up and cleared out of sight so the rooms would continue to look, as far as possible, unoccupied.

  The women huddled on the dust-cover-laid sofas in the grey living room; the musicians stood at the windows and stared through the long oblongs of glass at worlds of grey – grey concrete, grey stone, grey streets, a lead-coloured sky. In the leaden light that en
tered the room the dancers in their coloured silks, drooping on the dust-shrouded furniture, might have been trapped insects, doomed and despairing.

  The first to venture out was Laila. Murmuring something about needing a cake of soap or some other essential article, she slipped past the secretary’s room which stood open beside the front entrance, and shut the door as quietly as possible behind her.

  Then she made the discovery that at the end of their own lifeless street was an avenue so crowded, so busy, so raucous that she was at once overpowered by the contrast as well as its similarity to something she had known in an earlier existence – the streets of Alexandria and Cairo. The discordant yelling of the vendors, the barrows of food spoiling in the sun, the smell of rotten fruit and vegetables lying in the gutters, the dusty window displays, the garish signboards, a wide leer here, a sly gesture there, the sense of hurry, of crowding, of overtaking and invasion – the memory of them overwhelmed her in a great wave and then receded, leaving her shaken and wondering where it was that she had arrived. Nevertheless, she was determined to set out and explore, determined not to return to the tomb-like house and its atmosphere of funereal despondency.

  Here summer had not halted life. Bakers were delivering racks of bread, coalmen dumping sacks of coal down chutes on the sidewalks, butchers heaving great sides of stiff white meat out of carts and onto their backs to deliver, and when a water wagon went by, spraying the street, the odours of horse dung and gasoline stirred up out of the mud. Children were jumping in the spray from a water hydrant, pushing at each other and screaming with the joy of it.

  Laila looked up at the window cleaners dizzyingly at work in the sunlit spheres above and then down into the shop windows to study arrangements of coloured candy in one, fish lying on slabs of ice in another, and brushed past the suits and flowered frocks hanging from racks and awning bars.

  By evening she was in Central Park with its trampled grass and drooping trees in full summer leaf, slow horse carriages drawn by great blinkered horses, people on benches, slumped forwards or tipped backwards. As dusk fell a band struck up – she could hear the cornets and tubas and drums pounding and bleating somewhere. Her feet turned in their direction, drawn to the expectation of music and dance, but she became aware of darkness falling and the need to return.

  As she walked back – and by now her feet were swollen, red and burning – electric lights were coming on all along Broadway with a profligacy she had never imagined, lighted headlines running around the Times building in Times Square, the theatres all lit up, advertising The Best Show in Town, The Dancin’ Devils, Black and White Minstrel Show, Worth’s Family Theatre, Vaudeville Show Tonight, The Casino Roof Theatre – against a sky that flickered and filled with these ranting screams for attention.

  Although the dance troupe had been beside itself with anxiety during her absence, and explosive in their reprimands when she returned, her daring did have an effect upon the fear and disappointment into which they had retreated and in which they had been living. The truth was that they were admiring of her, even envious, and now some of them determined to emulate her. The musicians, in particular, began to find excuses to go out, and stayed away for longer and longer periods. The strict discipline and sense of corporate endeavour they had maintained till now threatened to come apart in the lazy dissipated atmosphere of high summer.

  As if aware that if he allowed this to go on he would be left without a troupe or a tour, Krishna announced he would set out himself in search of a promoter, see the managers of some theatres where they might perform, discuss the arrangements for their performances. If Mrs du Best was not there to do this for them, he would. The women all looked at him dubiously; they smiled and nodded but their eyes were hooded and they glanced at each other. That spurred him into making even grander promises to arrange a season of performances here in New York to be followed by a tour in the autumn.

  ‘Do you know anyone in New York?’ Laila ventured to ask. ‘Managers, agents?’

  He took it for insolence. How could she have doubts about his abilities? ‘No, I don’t know any,’ he replied heatedly, ‘but they know me. Have I not performed here before? Before you joined our group? Sonali, Vijaya – they know, they were with me. I have reviews, press cuttings, from American papers, I can show them –’

  Laila began to play with the end of her pigtail. It was the most innocuous gesture she could make. The rest were silent.

  They had forgotten, in this period of discouragement and uncertainty, that Krishna had indeed performed in America previously, although not in New York – and they were unaware that made a difference. He had performed as a boy in San Francisco and Los Angeles in 1910 when people still remembered the figure of Swami Vivekananda in his orange robes and stately turban, lecturing at the Congress of Religions, and the thrill of his voice ‘resounding out of the distant caves of the East’, as one reporter had written. In any case, on that coast there was a large Oriental population and a climate in which mysticism and the exotic could thrive. The San Francisco papers had carried columns of advertisements placed by clairvoyants and spiritualists, and the variety theatres presented Greek dances, Mexican dances, Chinese gymnasts and acrobats – anything foreign and from far away. And in that heady atmosphere the sublime Pavlova herself had proclaimed an interest in Indian dance and chosen their compatriot Uday Shankar to partner her on a tour sponsored by the great Sol Hurok which was even now having a glittering success.

  Did they know that? Krishna demanded of them. And Uday Shankar was not the only Indian dancer to perform in the West. Here he flourished the programmes of the troupe with which he had performed the dances of Shiva and Parvati, of Radha and Krishna, with the very young Sonali as leading dancer – billed as Sonali Devi. ‘Exquisite, charming, mysterious,’ the reviews read – he pointed out the line with a threatening finger – ‘A living world of indescribable grace’, ‘Eastern magic’, ‘Entertainment extraordinary . . .’

  The dancers were chastened and became respectful. Only Mrs du Best, when reached by telephone, voiced scepticism. ‘Krishna, a tour of the kind you plan is a costly thing. And I have explained how my husband’s business is ruined by Prohibition. We are trying to start all over again and it’s not easy.’

  Taking up his big folder of cuttings, he slammed out of the house with more determination than ever.

  To their astonishment, he did eventually secure an engagement (he told no one the number of managers’ offices he had visited – even forced his way into – clutching the pink folder, or how many rebuffs and even hoots of derision he had met with). Modestly – he could afford to be modest now – he admitted, ‘We will not be putting on a performance by ourselves – Mr Herbert Moody says no one in America will listen to Indian music or watch Indian dance one whole evening, but we will be able to perform two, three dances in between other performances –’

  ‘What performances?’ they asked, bewildered.

  He was evasive. ‘Other Oriental dances and music. Some from China, some from Japan, Egypt . . . an Oriental evening, that is Mr Moody’s idea.’ He refused to be more specific, pleading ignorance. Also, the lack of time and the urgency to prepare.

  In spite of the secretary’s furious protests, he insisted on rolling the furniture in the drawing room into corners and against the walls, clearing space on the parquet floor for their rehearsals. As in Venice, they woke up before dawn now to make their salutations to the sun, and perform yogic exercises that he insisted on as a necessary discipline, and then begin, to the sound of drums and cymbals, to practise the dances he intended to present. Using American ignorance and impatience as a reason, he cut down the lengthy ballet he had choreographed in Signora Durante’s hospitable salon, to brief five- and ten-minute sketches. No longer did he speak of the artistic purity of dance, or the spiritual quality at its heart; instead, he added to the dance of Radha and Krishna a sketch called ‘Hindu Wedding’ that showed Laila as a coy bride, and another called ‘Eastern Bazaar’ in which
Chandra and Shanta were transformed into flower girls. Even the musicians were to join in the last by abandoning their instruments – no need for strings, percussion alone was necessary and that was provided by a grim Vijaya – and tying coloured turbans around their heads and rising to their feet to stamp and swirl alternately. ‘This is America,’ Krishna reminded them. ‘We too must become children like them. Play, please, play,’ he begged as they stood around uncertainly and awkwardly. When Laila was taught how to undulate her arms and imitate the rippling motion of a snake, Shanta and Chandra exploded into giggles and old Vijaya’s lips plunged downwards in harsh disapproval. Laila became stiff with self-consciousness, understanding that this dance had nothing to do with any religious belief or spiritual exercise, Indian or otherwise. But he, perspiring profusely in the sweltering heat of a summer morning, wiped his brow and wheedled, cajoled, and manoeuvred till they did his bidding.

  Now it was time to design the costumes and props. Here was no kindly Signora Durante to undertake these tasks for them – much of what she had sent with them proved useless now, and in any case new stuff was required, but on the telephone Mrs du Best only hummed her long hmms and cautioned Krishna, ‘Please, no extravagance, my friend. You know how Prohibition has ruined everything –’

  ‘Prohibition? What has Prohibition to do with our dance? People will forget everything when they see our dance,’ he replied, leading her into another doubting, ‘Hmmm. You are very lucky, you know, to get an engagement at short notice in the summer – hardly the season.’

  Exasperated, he decided to go ahead without her, and by riffling through the telephone book, made a glorious find – the Asia Bazaar on Fifth Avenue, whose owners, a wealthy family from Bombay, not only opened up to them a virtual treasure-house of silks and brocades, shawls and trinkets, and all the brassware and incense they required, but proved magnanimous in their patronage, claiming to be proud to be of service and offering not only discounts and special rates but more help than even Krishna had counted on mobilising. The joy of it went to his head: he took the women shopping in the aisles of the Asia Bazaar, delightedly drawing off the shelves treasures to make their eyes, and his, gleam.