Journey to Ithaca

by Anita Desai

  In Springfield they staggered out of the railway station in search of lodgings. Krishna led them, carrying his walking stick, and the four women followed him, carrying his bag for him along with their own.

  As it grew darker, the women began to falter, hold back, reluctant to go further into the sinister unknown. ‘Look,’ Krishna urged them, pointing with his walking stick, ‘see the light there – that must be the city centre. Come, we will find a hotel.’

  They did: it was Miller’s Family Hotel, A Strictly Temperance House, where the landlady, having served them bread and boiled vegetables at a long table lined with silent boarders, folded her hands to thank the Lord, and added, ‘And may our visitors from the dark lands see the light and give up their pagan ways to follow Thy path, O Lord,’ to which all breathed a husky, ‘Amen.’

  At Holyoke, silk and paper mills along the black and foetid canals, stares from curious passersby and suspicious landladies. The ramshackle wooden house where they boarded was no worse than its equivalent elsewhere, and a kind of resignation settled on them as they moved into it. Laila found herself sharing a room with Vijaya at the end of a narrow passage across from the common lavatory; it had a chipped enamel bowl in the corner to wash in and its single window looked out onto the kitchen window of the house next door so that the torn blind had to be kept lowered for privacy, resulting in an instant and early darkness falling across the brown wallpaper, the yellow linoleum and the fly-flecked poster of a winsome girl advertising a brand of soap.

  They were the only guests at the landlady’s table. Handing out plates of cabbage soup, she told them, ‘Time was when folks lived off the land. Now they’re all in the mills. Ain’t no living to be made off the land any more, eh?’ She handed them bread, dry and hard, and went on gloomily, ‘So farmhands are what I get now, in my own house.’ She seemed to think they were darkies off the cotton fields and there seemed no point in enlightening her.

  It took their appetite away, they hardly ate. When she said grace, it was said grimly as if accusing the Lord rather than thanking him. They retired early so as to rest before the next day’s show at the Victory Theatre.

  The following night Laila told the other dancers that she would not eat dinner and would stay in her room to nurse her headache. When she heard the sound of spoon on plate and glass on wood, she quickly changed from her Indian clothes into a dress she had last worn in Paris and that had been folded at the bottom of her cardboard case, creased and crumpled. Hastily collecting her toilet articles and putting them all in the case, she left the room, leaving the door open rather than click it shut, and went silently down the back stairs into the alley that ran along the tall sooty brick houses. Keeping her head low as she went by the fence, she hurried down the alley past the row of ashcans, and out onto the street where they caught the bus to the theatre every evening. She turned the other way and began to walk towards the railway station.

  She did not know when she would be able to get a train. She did not even have a very good idea of where the railway station was located. Once she turned into a road where the red and blue lights of a diner indicated public habitation, but it only led down to one of the dark canals that oozed through the city. A phrase she had heard for the city in one of the boarding houses – ‘the Venice of the North’ – entered her mind like a sliver of cold iron.

  Eventually she came to a corner store, a pawn shop, a laundry. All were closed but there were people sitting on the stoops of the stone houses across the road, listless in the summer night with nothing to do, and she asked the way to the station. They pointed it out to her, showing no curiosity now that she was no longer in Indian dress, and she hurried along in fear that Krishna might arrive before the train did. Then she reminded herself that he would be preparing for the evening performance, leaving for the theatre so as to be on time with his troupe, and would not be able to search for her till later. She was right and no one came for her as she stood under the railway bridge, looking up and down the dark street, then climbed the iron stairs to the platform where she bought a ticket for New York from a man sitting in a booth and reading a paper in the light of a lamp that spread over his counter like a pool of oil. He stared into her face as he handed it to her and said, ‘That’s the last train tonight.’ She could hear it approach, whistling and grinding its great wheels to a halt.

  ‘You must help me,’ she informed Jal Bhambani, pressing the palms of her hands together in eloquent appeal. ‘Give me work. Find me work.’

  His face had gone waxen with fright. ‘What work can I give you? You are a dancer, an artist.’

  She shook her head violently. ‘No,’ she told him. ‘No dancer, no artist. I am alone. I need work.’

  ‘What work can I let you do?’

  ‘Let me work in your shop,’ she told him. That was why she had come to him in his small office at the back of the store, at his desk amongst the packing cases and crates that smelt of tea and incense.

  He got up and began to pull on his jacket and hat. ‘We’ll go out. We’ll talk outside,’ he told her hurriedly, fearful that she might make a scene here, in front of his father and the shop assistants. Scenes should be kept in the theatre, he thought, flushing at the thought, and stood aside, holding open the door, showing her the way out, then leading her across the street and around the corner to a cafeteria.

  Here he seated her at a marble-topped table in a corner, away from the plate glass window, and ordered tea. When the waitress had brought the tray and left it for them, he leaned across it – pale, tinged with a little yellow even – and explained, ‘You can’t be a shop girl in my father’s store, Lila. I have too much respect for you.’

  She was in tears of disappointment and humiliation, and sat crumpling a paper napkin in her hand, leaving the tea untouched although she had had nothing to eat or drink since she had arrived in New York: Mrs du Best’s secretary, annoyed at her reappearance, had offered her nothing. She said something under her breath about his respect for her being of little help.

  ‘Help, of course I will help,’ he cried, ‘but not – not in that way.’

  ‘What way then?’ she demanded. ‘What way is there for me?’

  As soon as they had exchanged those words, the idea of what the way might be entered their heads simultaneously, and along with it their revulsion from it. He had broken out in beads of perspiration at which he wiped constantly and surreptitiously, and she stood up, pushing her chair aside, and began to make her way out of the cafeteria, urgent in her need to leave. He rose, too, crying, ‘Lila! Listen – wait, Lila!’

  The waitress at the counter who had been moodily staring out over the row of salt and pepper shakers and vinegar cruets into the street outside, turned her gaze upon them. A man reading a newspaper lowered it to glance furtively at this cafeteria drama: the ashen-faced young man in a suit too tight and warm for this hot summer morning, the pale girl in an old-fashioned long black dress trying to push past him, averting her face.

  Jal, choking in order to keep his voice down, repeated, ‘Listen. I will take you to a friend of mine. He may help. He is a painter, he may let you model –’

  She stopped to regard this suggestion, and her expression changed slowly into one of attentiveness. She turned around to question him.

  Jal had returned to their table. He held her chair out for her so she could rejoin him. The waitress and the reader of the newspaper watched to see how it would go. She did return. As she did, he breathed, ‘You are so – beautiful, Lila. Artists will paint you –’

  ‘Will they pay?’ she asked tersely. ‘Will your friend pay?’

  Jal stared down at the table and the untouched tea things. He could not bear to speak of payment, or money, to Laila. He thought of her as the shimmering creature from some tropical forest who had dazzled him on the stage, moving like a sylph to music that he coud still feel playing inside him. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘drink your tea. Then I will take you to see him. Please have something to eat – a cake? An ice cre
am?’

  Laila began to smile. She had not been asked that since she was a child; no one since then had imagined it might be what pleased her. She nodded. ‘Both,’ she said.

  The waitress and the man with the paper saw her nod, smile. They sighed, returned to their familiar occupations, yawning slightly: the drama was over.

  When Jal brought her back to the house on 174th Street, the secretary was in the hall, waiting. ‘He is here,’ he told her, grimly nodding towards the drawing room.

  Krishna was standing against the curtained window. In the subdued light that filtered through, his face looked grey, the shadows under his eyes deep. His head was bowed, and his shoulders drooped. Instead of looking at her, he stared at the floor.

  Seeing him so, Jal detached himself from Laila’s side and began a curious crab-like motion that propelled him away from her, but unobtrusively, towards the door. She did not even notice his departure. After hesitating for a minute, she hurried forwards, faltering, ‘Krishna-ji.’ He still refused to look at her, only sighed. She came close to him, her face and hands contorted with distress, but still he refused to look at her. His eyes remained hooded and his head sank as he told her, ‘The tour is over, Laila.’

  She was agitated, not knowing whether to fall at his feet, or clasp him to her. Then he looked up and she saw in his eyes an unfamiliar emptiness: the glitter, the glint was gone. He said dully, ‘We will go to India, as you wish.’

  Laila did give a sob then, Krishna did relent, and they embraced. Thereupon they both began to talk volubly – he accused her of wrecking the tour and the troupe, she begged his forgiveness and pleaded for understanding. There was all the drama anyone could wish for, although sadly there was no audience, and all that stirred in that dim room were motes of dust circling in the air that they agitated.

  Late that night they emerged from it, Krishna supporting a Laila close to collapse with exhaustion, but he himself erect now, recovered and with a regal stance to his head and shoulders and measured step. When the secretary looked up from his open door to see them pass, Krishna did not let go of his hold upon her waist. He even halted so the secretary would see them thus, and said, ‘Please inform Mrs du Best we will be leaving soon, for India.’

  ‘That,’ said the young man, ‘was what she suggested you do in the telegram I forwarded to Holyoke for you.’

  Laila swayed a bit in Krishna’s grasp, but she was not so exhausted that she did not hear. She tilted her head to regard Krishna. ‘A telegram?’ she questioned.

  ‘Yes, the telegram I forwarded to Holyoke yesterday,’ the secretary replied for him.

  Krishna gave a nod, nonchalantly. ‘Yes, she has very good news. She has been able to get us passage on a ship.’

  ‘Yes, and she suggests you take it since it is free,’ the secretary added, a trifle too loudly. ‘You may not get such an offer later.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Laila, staring, ‘then that is why you came away, Krishna.’

  He had let his hand slip away from her waist and was walking down the hall to his room. Hearing her tone, he turned and said angrily, ‘I came to take you to India. Didn’t you say you wanted to go to India?’

  ‘Yes,’ she found herself crying, ‘yes, Krishna.’

  Mrs du Best did make an appearance, at the very end. She came on board the ship just before they sailed, looking about her from under the brim of her small hat and through its spotted veil at the second-class deck as if she had never seen anything so inferior. ‘I would have brought champagne,’ she said, ‘but since you do not drink, here is my gift,’ and she thrust bunches of red roses at them. Over their extravagant profusion, she stared at Laila, her face so intent that it was pinched, like a rodent’s. ‘So,’ she said, tucking her sharp little chin into the collar of her silk blouse, ‘you are going to India – where I have always meant to go – and have never been.’

  Laila gave her a faint smile and dropped her eyes, not knowing if the words were spoken in envy or resentment.

  Krishna, glowing with pleasure at Mrs du Best’s presence, looking about him to make sure everyone saw and noticed, chuckled, ‘You told me you had not the courage to go to India, Mrs du Best. But you see, Laila has the courage.’

  ‘Courage?’ said the old lady. ‘Is that it? Perhaps it is. But, you know, I felt I already had the India of my books and friends and art treasures. Perhaps I didn’t really care to have another India, the real India.’

  Laila regarded her over the bunch of red roses with curiosity. The India of books and art treasures and the real India – were they not the same? She turned to Krishna for an answer.

  But Krishna was in the high spirits of someone embarking on a journey. He laughed loudly. ‘You were afraid, Mrs du Best, you were afraid. But see Laila – she is not afraid.’

  ‘Hmm,’ she continued to peer at Laila as if uncertain of what she saw. ‘And are you sure you wish to go on this long journey, my dear? Why not go home to your family instead?’

  Krishna smiled upon both of them with magnanimity. ‘But I am taking her home, Mrs du Best. I am taking her home to India.’

  ‘Oh, my dear Krishna-ji, you know it is not that to the poor girl even if it is to you –’

  ‘You are wrong,’ he laughed, ‘India has always been her home. She has never been there, you are right, but it is where her soul was born. Her soul is waiting for her in India!’

  ‘Ah, Krishna,’ Mrs du Best exclaimed, ‘you make India sound like a form of death!’

  Simultaneously with her exclamation, the ship’s horn gave its raw, harsh howl. There was an increased bustle of activity on the decks, and she turned to leave before the gangplank was raised and the sooty, dark vessel turned seawards and thrust into the black waves.

  When she reached the pier and turned to wave at them, she saw them at the railing, Krishna’s face golden and benign with smiles, Laila’s pale and frowning with earnest thought.

  *

  Amtrak turns Sophie out at Springfield where a thin drizzle is falling from a heavy sky; passengers flee, clattering down the stairs into a railway station where a man is punching the coffee machine, a woman with orange hair is waiting for someone with her hands on her hips and a fierce look, and the plastic bucket seats are askew on their rail. She walks down the road and under a low bridge that suggests crime and danger, and then into the bus station. She waits here for the bus to Holyoke, watching a man with grey frizzled hair and a beard talking into a telephone, laughing violently as he does so; it is clear that there is no one at the other end and eventually he hangs up and limps away in shoes without laces.

  She rides the bus to Holyoke and looks about her uneasily as she gets off; it is later than she would like and although the rain has stopped, the light is sooty. She walks past Joe’s Shoe Repair shop, Sunshine Cleaners 24 Hours Service and Nu To U that has a show window filled with faded cloth, broken glass and felt hats. All three are shut and look as if they have been for a long time. The mills had all closed down, or moved south, and the mill workers moved away. Eventually she comes to a place that is open; it advertises, in red letters, Subs. Pizzas. Coffee. Its owner is wiping glasses, talking to a man smoking at a table.

  ‘Railway station?’ he stares at her. ‘Ain’t no railway station. Why, the trains stopped coming here in – hey, where you from? You been in Holyoke before?’

  Shaking her head, she leaves.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE ADDRESS GIVEN Sophie is in a suburb of Bombay and, although it is not far from the sea or the festivities of Juhu beach, it has no relation at all to that holiday world. Instead, it is staunchly, oppressively dour, related to the cotton mills of the area and the life related to the mills. The housing is’drab, in grey blocks of concrete that ooze green slime and are marked by the rust from leaking drainpipes. Although the more substantial flats have balconies attached to them, the balconies are used as adjunct rooms, most often as stores for tin trunks, broken furniture and ruined appliances, but also as laundries with strings and
strings of heavy, sagging washing. In fact, the washing of one flat tends to drip onto the washing of the flat below, so that the sides of the building are curtained with long strips of saris, dhotis and underwear, not colourful and bright but faded and stained with over-use.

  Sophie locates the building she wants and enters a hall painted a murky blue and lit by a single light bulb coated with dust so that the names of the tenants written on a wooden board are hard to decipher. She finds the one she wants, however, and begins to climb the stairs which are ancient and rotten. The higher she goes the stronger the cooking smells grow – pungent, oily, spicy. Different noises issue forth and mingle: music on a radio or a television drama at top volume, children screaming and voices raised in argument. Sometimes a door is flung open and someone comes hurtling out and into her, nearly throwing her down the stairs in the rush to get to the shops, the cinema, the streets, the night shift at the mill. Mostly they look back in curiosity: not many foreigners enter such buildings, not even shabby and tattered ones like Sophie. Some even call back, asking her where she is going. Then they wave her further up and she mounts the stairs slowly, reluctant to touch the banisters because they are black with grease and the dust of years, but beginning to wonder if she can manage without their help. The heat that has accumulated in the centre of the building is as weighty and oppressive as the smells and sounds.

  The door to the flat is no different from the others: it, too, has a smudged and faded pattern of rice powder drawn on its threshold and a string of dried marigolds hangs across the door. Only a small wooden sign indicates it is the end of Sophie’s search: Krishna School of Dance it says.