Journey to Ithaca

by Anita Desai

  Then he moved his troupe into the theatre for rehearsals. The time allotted them was between three and five in the afternoons when, unfortunately, in their Indian way, they were most overcome by heat and lassitude and barely able to stay awake. But he himself was galvanised into activity; gone was his magisterial dignity, his godlike aloofness, as he rushed about the stage, directing them, exhorting them, in a kind of frenzy of will and energy. It was his first experience of stage organisation, of having to play not only director but producer and agent as well: the New World imposed its tricks on him, and dire need created the impulse to accept them.

  Returning from their exhausting rehearsals, when the others retired to their rooms to rest, Laila withdrew onto a fire escape she found leading out of the bedroom into a small square fenced backyard, nothing more than a square of gravel and rubble over which neighbourhood cats prowled amongst the cans and bottles tossed in by residents. The sky was still brassy with afternoon light, and she sat with her arms about her knees, her head hanging low as she pondered this phase in the journey, one which she had not expected or prepared for or wanted.

  At night she sat at the foot of his bed, looking out of the open window at the street now lit by lamps that peered in intrusively. The headlights of cars flickered over the walls and travelled across the floor and the bed, lighting them up and keeping her awake.

  ‘Go to sleep, Laila,’ he muttered on waking and seeing her, then turned over to indicate his own intention to sleep, but she continued to sit there, would not even lie down. So much was unsaid in her mind that clamoured by night when others were silent, so much rose up in the dark that would not subside. Like the lights of New York, that was when they blazed most fiercely.

  When he was breathing evenly in his sleep, even snoring a little, she said in a low, level voice, ‘This is wrong. It is not right, Krishna. I will not do it. I will leave you. I promise.’

  If he had woken then, he would have seen the expression on her face in that nocturnal light, and paid attention.

  Nevertheless Herbert Moody’s show, Oriental Nights, opened on a steamy summer night as advertised, and the curtains parted on a pyramid of cages filled with lions over which a moustachioed gentleman in scarlet tights, and whose name, according to the programme, was Signor Furioso, cracked his whip in an effort to draw roars out of the somnolent beasts. All they emitted was the stench of sick animal flesh that filled the backstage dressing rooms with its heavy, nauseating presence. The dancers went barefoot down the narrow passage, past open toilets and fiercely lit cells where other performers desperately painted their faces pink and purple, teased their hair into forests of tinsel or caps of brilliantine, and either donned or tore off footwear of a dozen ethnic origins.

  Their turn was billed Hindu Temple Dances from East India, and prominent beside Krishna’s name was that of the leading dancer Lila Devi. (It was the first official appearance of the name Lila, the one Laila assumed and retained thereafter.) Krishna had devised a cardboard construct of a South Indian temple; the incense that drifted out of two tall burners on either side and the shadows cast by the flickering light of a lamp in one corner where the musicians were seated, turned it into sand and stone for the audience. Vijaya had set up her brass statue of the Nataraja, the Dancing Shiva, and although no marigolds were to be had, or the chrysanthemums that might have imitated them, a handful of sunflowers had been found and thrust into a brass vase before it while the Bhambanis of Asia Bazaar had arranged for a garland of roses.

  This Laila held in her hands as she appeared out of the portals of the temple (the audience did not question why Radha the Shepherdess should emerge from a South Indian temple rather than a grove upon a northern river bank). The flute piped up its sweet lament and to its tune the Divine Lover appeared from the shadows, garbed in blue body paint, gold jewellery and peacock feathers and only a brief saffron loincloth. He performed his dance, Radha garlanded him, and the themes of love and worship blended into each other without anyone noticing.

  In some confusion, the audience stirred and clapped, yawned and sighed, then sat up for the next item, the livelier spectacle of a Turkish dervish dance. A great many waiters had been rounded up from around the city, as well as sailors from ships at the docks that were held up for one reason or another; now they were dressed in white robes, topped with tarbooshes and set whirling in giddy circles. Laila appeared once more, and, to everyone’s relief, not in a sepulchral temple courtyard but in the gaiety and colour of an eastern bazaar. For this Krishna’s good friend and patron, Jal Bhambani, had been entirely responsible: the carpets strewn about so lavishly, the baskets heaped with bananas and oranges, even watermelons split into halves and quarters upon brass trays, garlands of paper flowers drenched in rose and jasmine water, and a multitude of brass pots and vessels everywhere. Shanta and Chandra wandered through this maze of merchandise, baskets of fruit and flowers held on their heads or at their waists, and Krishna had transformed some of the clerks from Asia Bazaar by dressing them in gold vests and bright turbans into rich customers who engaged them in banter. Krishna himself was seated centre stage, dressed in rustic rags of ochre and russet, a disreputable turban askew on his head, bending and swaying vigorously as he played his pipe above a flat basket before him. He leant forward to remove the lid from the basket, and the rings on his fingers with huge green glass jewels soldered onto them gave a sinister glitter. It was at this point that Laila sidled onto the stage in a flesh-coloured body suit striped here and there with black. Her eyes had been painted with kohl into long, large spheres, and her hands covered by Vijaya with intricate henna patterns, making them positively like snake skin. She lifted her arms and began to ripple them with a sinuous, boneless motion, then wrapped them around herself, her fingers too beginning to ripple, while her feet slithered over the floor as she mimed a dancing cobra. The itinerant hawkers and customers stopped to watch, Krishna’s pipe played and played till at last it arrived at a long hiss and Laila, as cobra, subsided to the ground and vanished beneath the ochre shawl that he flung over her as a lid.

  The audience had gasped to begin with; some had even whistled, but after the rippling and slithering had gone on for a while, a certain restlessness set in, and in subsequent performances Krishna elaborated the minimal roles of Chandra and Shanta to add to the movement on the stage, much to their delight.

  ‘They will not detract any attention from your central role,’ he assured Laila who replied in a low voice, ‘If you ask me to leave the stage altogether, I shall not mind a bit.’

  There was no question of that and after an Egyptian belly dancer had displayed her delectably roly-poly skills, and a Japanese dance that confused Madame Butterfly with a dancing insect rather than the tragic heroine of an opera, Laila returned to the stage for the final dance concocted by Krishna to woo the New York audience: a Hindu wedding for which she was dressed in a sari of scarlet sprinkled with gold spangles and edged with tiny bells. She played the modest, the shy, the flirtatious and eventually ecstatic bride, to begin with seated and her sari drawn veil-like over her face, then, in response to Krishna’s questing look and pleading gestures, raising it to reveal herself and meet his eyes, finally rising to dance with him while Shanta and Chandra showered them with rose petals and Vijaya, clashing her cymbals, sang full-throatedly of love’s sweet madness.

  Dripping and exhausted, Laila was assisted off the stage by a Krishna whose solicitude lasted only till they were out of sight of the audience, and then there was a rush to disrobe and to pack their belongings and move out to make way for a Cambodian dance duo and the Chinese acrobats who were already whirling cups and plates in the air and drawing paper umbrellas out of ice cream cones.

  Out in the foyer of the theatre, decorated kiosks had been set up to serve Oriental food instead of the usual cigarettes and ice cream. The Indian kiosk, installed by the Bhambanis, served spicy sweet tea and vegetable fritters; their shop clerks, now dressed as waiters, grand turbans on their heads, went around o
ffering glasses and platefuls on brass trays. They had even been induced to salaam the audience that was streaming out at the interval and was reduced to giggles by this unusual experience. Everyone sweated in that enclosed heat and many were heard to exclaim, ‘It could be India!’

  ‘Sixth Avenue Darkies in Bells and Turbans bring India to Broadway!’

  ‘Temple Rituals by Hindu Dancers Mystify!’

  ‘Southern Tribe of American Indians in Gold Paint and Mosquito Netting!’

  ‘Lila is one of the most lyrical dancers on the stage, posing and floating in her golden veils.’

  ‘Krishna is an Indian magician who produces dancers like snakes out of a snake charmer’s basket and makes the audience swoon.’

  Mr Herbert Moody was more plainspoken and less flowery in his reaction. ‘That music you folks play – it just drives everyone right out of the theatre,’ he said flatly. ‘Sounds like every one of your instruments is out of tune. I’m just telling you what everyone says. No one’s going to put up with that, or pay good money for it. Do something about it.’

  ‘About the music of my country? You are asking me to create a music for American ears instead? To throw away my own heritage?’

  ‘Yeah, at least while you’re dancing for us,’ Mr Moody said, without a bit of sympathy.

  Krishna’s brow lowered and darkened like a thundercloud but Mr Moody had already turned to the Japanese dancer and was saying, ‘Speed it up a bit, will ya? It’s just too damn slow for New Yorkers. This ain’t corn country, you know, where folks are willing to sit and watch the corn grow –’

  He paid no more attention to Krishna. The problem was something he would have to work out with the musicians. To his amazement, they were not nearly as perturbed or offended as he had feared. In fact, it turned out they had their own plans and did not intend to go on tour with Oriental Nights at all: they had been offered jobs in an Indian restaurant, the Taj Palace, where they were to prepare the vegetarian curries.

  ‘You will work as cooks?’ Krishna was incredulous, and the women speechless with dismay.

  The musicians, however, seemed to feel no such compunction – they had been offered better pay, and intended to enjoy New York. They packed their belongings cheerfully and moved into lodgings on Lexington Avenue, near the restaurant. Krishna was left with the problem of devising music for his dances. A frantic appeal was telephoned to the absent patron, and Mrs du Best was begged for advice. She generously got in touch with the Progressive Stage Society and located an Orientalist who came over to the house with an armful of records and information regarding the music of Debussy and Delibes that they might use. The opera Lakmé yielded exactly what was needed for the bazaar scene.

  Another decision forced upon Krishna by the outspoken Mr Moody was to cut down the number of nuptials celebrated on stage: the duet of Radha and Krishna was exchanged for Laila’s peacock dance which proved, luckily, a spectacular success.

  ‘Indian ballerina – Bird or Reptile?’ screamed the newspapers.

  The young Jal Bhambani who had bought a seat in the front row for the opening night was so enthralled that he bought one for every other night of the show, and the night on which Laila first performed as a peacock in her glittering lamé skirt with an aquamarine light illuminating her jewelled train, he stood waiting at the stage door for the dance troupe and urged them to allow him to drive them home in his car. They were not enthusiastic – tired as they were, they looked forward to walking back so they could stop at the food barrows and buy nuts and fruit and bread since Mrs du Best’s staff claimed they had no instructions to offer food to guests who came home later than six o’clock in the evening – but found it hard not to give in to Jal’s importuning. However, Krishna turned down very firmly his invitation to dinner at a restaurant: none could be trusted, in New York, to offer them vegetarian fare untainted by meat.

  The newspapers reported the exotic, outlandish adventures of the Oriental dancers in their midst:

  ‘Court Musicians of India Leave to Cook Curry on Lexington Avenue!’

  ‘Nautch Dancers Seen Leaving Theatre in Black Chevy – Whose?’

  ‘Peacock Finds Perch in New York!’

  Krishna, studying the headlines, seemed not to know whether to be pleased by the attention or dismayed by the content; his face was a study in conflicting emotions.

  The stage and the nightly performance gave Laila a raging headache, making it impossible for her to sleep, exhausted as she was. She remained upright on a sofa, while her colleagues brought her wet cloths to lay on her forehead and occasionally stayed to massage her neck or her feet in an effort to ease her distress. Tears sometimes ran down her cheeks because the pain was so acute, and she cried to them, ‘No, no, you can’t help me. No one can help me –’ in a way that made them stand back and shake their heads in gloomy foreboding. Jal Bhambani was beside himself with concern and brought her all kinds of goods from his father’s store that he thought might ease her pain – giant bottles of eau-de-Cologne and rose water, salves and ointments – but none did. Krishna would toss them aside, saying with grim satisfaction, ‘I knew they would not.’

  He himself was brusque when he addressed her in the presence of others, and seemed least concerned about her agony, anxious only that she be well by morning for practice sessions and rehearsals. She usually managed to be, although pale and strained after the night’s ordeal. He would always smile with relief and gratitude when she appeared for the morning session, and once, after she had run through all the exercises without a word of protest or complaint, drew her to him when the others had left and told her, with his old tenderness and warmth, ‘When we go to India, I will take you to my old hakim; he has cures no one in the West has even heard of – he will cure you.’ She looked at him, large-eyed with hope, and he said, in a low murmur, ‘Don’t worry, I will take you to India.’

  The contract, however, had to be fulfilled: the theatre had been booked for three weeks; that had seemed short to Krishna when he had been offered it, but proved long to live through. The summer heat was rising, and the audience dwindled, clearly preferring to stroll in the park and listen to the band to buying tickets to be crowded into an airless theatre. In the second week the numbers dropped from five hundred to one hundred or so, and the decline continued.

  Mr Moody devised other plans: he pared down the acts, allowing each of the Oriental troupes one turn on stage, no more, and hired reliable and durable American entertainers to fill the gaps between them – a trained poodle, a ventriloquist, an ‘aerial ballet’ performed by dancers on pulleys bathed in coloured lights, a ‘danseuse gymnastique’ in Greek robes, a ‘kaleidoscopic bicycle dance’ and a sword swallower (dressed in a Chinese hat and curled slippers to indicate Oriental connections for the sake of the title) – and booked them on a tour of the eastern states, through small towns that could do, he said, with some entertainment in the summer months.

  It was not the kind of tour Krishna had been on previously when his patrons had been not hard-headed theatre managers and avaricious businessmen but artistic and wealthy ladies like Mrs du Best. Nonetheless, he urged his troupe, reduced as it was by the defection of the musicians, to pack their belongings and prepare for the tour.

  New Jersey Advocate: ‘Sensational Dances by Barefoot Dancers from Himalayas in New Jersey.’

  Hartford Courier: ‘Eastern Bazaar on Connecticut Stage.’

  New Haven Independent: ‘Fiery Curry of Eastern Dances Sets Stage on Fire.’

  Springfield Bulletin: ‘Snakes and Peacocks from East Arrive.’

  Whenever Laila came near Krishna, sometimes at the centre of the stage, bathed by the rosy or the azure lights of the cyclorama, miming a bee and a lotus, or a hunter and a deer, and sometimes when they passed each other in the dim-lit hall of a boarding house, she said to him in a low voice no one else could overhear, ‘Krishna, I will leave. I will not go on.’ He had a particular expression he assumed at these moments, even under his stage make-up: it was ind
ulgent, it was benign, but at the corner of his mouth there was a tightening to be seen as he answered, also under his breath, ‘A little longer. Then we leave – together – for India.’ He also told her, when not constrained by public view, to colour her pale cheeks and white lips. ‘You are looking ill,’ he said with disapproval. ‘People are saying to me, this dancer seems ill. You must try to look healthy.’

  ‘But I am ill,’ Laila replied. ‘Ill, ill, ill.’

  He looked both shocked and disbelieving. ‘What is wrong?’ he asked, coldly and cautiously.

  ‘You know the thing that is wrong. These headaches – I cannot sleep.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, his voice lightening with relief. ‘That will get all right.’

  When he saw one of the Chinese acrobats pass her a little tin and watched her dip her finger into it and apply the contents to her temples, he came over to snatch it from her. ‘What is this? Tiger balm? It is rubbish. These things won’t help.’

  Laila flushed, the Chinese acrobat took his tin back and left, and she said to Krishna with a sharpness not heard before in her voice, ‘Only one thing will help. That I stop performing. That I stop this tour.’

  He stood before her and took her hands in his, casting his eyes down sadly. ‘Laila,’ he said, ‘if you do this, you will ruin your Krishna who has given his word to Mr Moody to complete the tour and must make enough money so that you, and Vijaya, and Shanta and Chandra, can eat. Will you do that to me, your Krishna?’

  On that day, in the middle of her dance, dressed in her peacock costume, she came to a standstill on the stage, her hands clasped to her face, and began to cry. At first the audience was not aware that this was not part of the dance she was performing, but they soon became uneasy, and Krishna hissed from behind the curtains, ‘Laila, dance! Dance, Laila!’ Slowly her hands resumed their pose, she began to sway again and later it was said that the lovelorn peacock’s dance had never been so poignantly danced as on that night.