by Sara Banerji
Rosie seemed to understand, however, for she smiled wistfully. ‘It didn’t work out, Mrs Crombie. So after I lost my Muslim husband, I married a Hindu after all. To try to get my parents’ good will back. But it made no difference. They wouldn’t see me anyway, and also he was the wrong sort of Hindu. A very nasty piece of work actually, and not from a good family as he would have had me believe. But of course, I being an innocent and well-brought-up girl, had no means of judging men. So then I thought of you and Mr Crombie, and how you were good people and my parents liked you, and that you were Christians. I thought I would marry one of those. So I did.’ As she spoke she was drawing Hermione into her home, summoning the servant to bring iced nimbu pani, calling out to a boy to run for milk sweets. ‘And take Madam’s suitcase up to my guestroom. Make sure the soap is there, Amini, you fool … But anyway this Christian husband was the worst of the lot really. So in the end I am, as you see me now… Amini, jaldi, jaldi, what are you waiting for? Really these modern servants are too bad. Do you remember the service we used to have in the good old days, Mrs Crombie? They would be standing out in the cold all night to protect us, and they would run swiftly at the smallest summons. Now see …’
Rosie was becoming breathless with excitement at a faint idea that had begun to dawn on her: via Mrs Crombie’s influence she might be able to regain her place in society, and even become accepted by her family once more.
‘So there was I, thrice widowed, and with no income, no prospects, nothing. A gentleman friend helped me to get this clinic started, paid the first month’s rent, lent money for the equipment, you know. After that I was all right. Off on my own. Never looked back. Ten years later I have become a well-to-do lady. I can buy what I like. I have a car. Servants. Good house. I have seven people working for me, masseurs, aerobic teachers, I can afford these UK doctors even,’ The mention swept away her joyful mood and replaced it with panic.
To remedy what she saw as a threat to her new hopes she said, ‘If I had known, if I had only known dear Unity was Mrs Crombie’s daughter … well…’
Then she became concerned that Hermione would find out about the ‘carrying’. If that happened, she felt sure all hope of being taken back into society was lost.
‘Such a very volatile lady, Unity,’ she said quickly. ‘There was a to-do on Tuesday. But fortunately no harm done. All the clients came back, having found my clinic to be best.’
‘Is there no way of contacting my daughter?’ asked Hermione later that evening, bathed and rested. ‘I really would like very much to be with her as soon as possible.’
‘In the morning. In the morning,’ said Rosie. ‘I believe I can guess where she’s gone after all. I will travel with you. We will go in my car.’ She would find some way of speaking to Eshak before Hermione did. Find some way to alarm him into silence.
‘Really, that is too kind but I couldn’t impose on you so,’ said Hermione. ‘If I could just ring her …?’
‘No imposition at all,’ Rosie felt that she would even sacrifice the new frisson for the sake of becoming a member of the Calcutta Club and being invited to parties at Tollygunge and Allipore. ‘The telephone lines are all down just at the moment and I enjoy a little trip to the country now and again,’ she lied. ‘And after all, even I must get a little rest sometimes.’
She gave a sort of gagging moan to indicate a week filled with strenuous labour, and repeated ‘Even I’ sighingly, like an echo.
She would speak to her driver. Get him to delay Hermione while she went into the village clinic and found Eshak. Threaten to accuse him of having assaulted her if he breathed a word. That’s it.
‘Your husband carry me?’ she would say if Unity brought up the subject. ‘Ah, yes. It must have been the moment I sprained my poor little ankle. Doctor Eshak kindly carried me to my bed as I could not walk. Subsequently he attended to the injury.’
She would have to get a bandage on as quickly as possible and wear it all the way to the village even though the weather was so hot. The old lady would have been too tired and travel-strained to have noticed the previous absence of such a bandage, Rosie felt sure.
The journey to the village was not a success.
Rosie had said she would be ready at six in the morning so that they could travel in the cool hours; but though Hermione was ready and waiting, her hostess did not appear till after nine by which time the interior of the car, forced to crawl through seemingly endless traffic jams, became stifling hot.
Hermione’s discomfort was made worse by being pressed between the door and Rosie’s massive yielding flank, so that at times she felt she was becoming asphyxiated and wished heartily that she had gone by train.
Then after they had stopped at the post office to collect Hermione’s mail, Rosie began nagging at her to open it.
‘Oh, letters from England, Hermione! My sister in the Bayswater Road often writes to me from there, you know. Do show me, Hermione. I so long for news of home.’
The first letter Hermione opened was from Gerald, and out fell a photo of Slug posed coyly against a background of mustard-coloured bushes.
Rosie had got hold of it before Hermione could stop her.
‘Oh my God, Hermione!’ Rosie shrieked, staring at the photo, smacking her huge soft breasts. ‘I hope that is not your grandchild! And those hideous yellow bushes… !’
Tears of fury, nostalgia and even affection stung Hermione’s eyes as she managed to snatch her picture back and look at it herself.
Rosie gave a running commentary, ‘If that is what England has become I am glad I made the choice not to settle there after all. I could, as you are probably aware, have gone to live with my sister in the Bayswater Road at any time.’
Hermione thrust the photo into her handbag and snapped it shut.
‘But who is he, if not a grandson?’ pressed Rosie.
‘He is my gardener,’ said Hermione coldly and for the rest of the journey had to endure the sound of Rosie’s sudden cackles, ‘They must be short of servants in England if you have to make do with a thing like that.’
Only Hermione’s furiously snapped out, ‘I’m fond of him,’ finally closed the subject.
Hermione had subconsciously known the name of the village in which Unity and Eshak had their clinic. The reason she felt shocked at seeing ‘Ampukur’ written on the signboard was because she had not allowed the knowledge to penetrate her conscious mind.
She did not want it to be this house, did not want to recognize the acid green light of the banana trees, wished she could not hear the parrots screaming, or feel the heavy slop of the black river.
Now she understood why she had been reluctant to come and see Unity and her family. Her heart had known all along that they were living in Yudhishthira’s house and her heart had not been able to bear it.
‘Ampukur? You didn’t know?’ said Rosie. ‘It’s some old friend of yours who used to own it, Unity told me. His cousin has it now and has lent it to them to use as a clinic for the village poor.’ She was successful in stifling the sound of contempt out of her tone.
‘I see,’ said Hermione through dry lips, and suddenly felt too weak to get out of the car and walk on to the verandah where once Yudhishthira had told her that the gods nourish themselves on the thoughts of people.
Through the sounds of roaring in her ears she listened for the voices of her daughter and the grandchildren, but the car’s arrival seemed to have been so far unnoticed.
‘You wait there, Hermione, and I’ll go and see,’ said Rosie.
This had been the strategy by which Rosie had hoped to see Eshak alone, but now as she stumbled towards the tall thin house she knew that it was empty.
‘Gone, gone,’ said the watchman, opening one eye and looking up blearily from his prostrate position on a mat on the verandah.
‘Stand up when you talk to me,’ spat Rosie, and asked, as the man crawled wearily to his feet, ‘Where have they gone?’
With maddening slowness the watchman wrapp
ed his scarf round his head, hitched his lungi, and shrugged. ‘They said Africa.’
‘They can’t just go to Africa! Not just like that,’ screamed Rosie in her bad Bengali.
The watchman gave another shrug, said, ‘Why ask me then,’ and, picking up his mat, retreated to the rear of the house to find some peace.
Hermione, waiting in the stifling car, had known long ago that they were gone. She leant back, closed her eyes, and reflected with bitterness on the irony of Rosie Ramsay, out of all the old contacts in India, being the only person she now knew in India. Misery and despair so overwhelmed her that she felt incapable of movement.
‘We’ll have to stay the night, that’s what,’ said Rosie, angry.
‘The doctor who owns this house is going to live here when he comes back from the airport,’ the watchman explained later as he served them a supper of chicken curry and rice. ‘He has taken the two UK doctors and their children to catch the plane for Africa, but when he returns he will look after the sick people here instead of them.’
‘Dr Das is a very cultured man, Hermione, so why he should wish to live in this dirty village I can’t understand. He would be quite an asset in Calcutta society.’ The idea was already formulating in Rosie’s mind that at parties to which Hermione gave her entrée, Dr Das might become her escort.
The living quarters above the clinic consisted of four rooms in a row, each leading on to the next, three being bedrooms and the fourth and last, the bathroom.
It was an inconvenient design requiring all except the person in the room adjoining the bathroom to pass through other bedrooms to get to it.
Rosie arranged for Hermione to have this one, and gave herself the middle one. The remaining room had, according to the watchman, already been prepared for the imminent arrival of Dr Das.
Hermione did not sleep well that night, constantly troubled by the noise of animals. Jackals would wail suddenly, cicadas thrilled ceaselessly, for hours on end it sounded as though all the dogs of the village howled at once, and while it was still dark, she was woken by the sound of temple bells. But worst of all was Rosie Ramsay. To Hermione it seemed that every hour of the night the vast figure in a transparent nightdress would groaningly pass through Hermione’s room on her way to the lavatory.
In the early hours of the morning Hermione was disturbed by a sensation of fear and the sound of thudding. She sat up, and imagined the river banging bodies against its banks. She felt sure the Jummna had not been so loud all those years ago, but then she supposed that river banks, like human bodies, changed with age.
She must have slept after that, for then it was day and there was a sound of shouting, and women’s voices crying, as though there had been some disaster.
Hermione got up and went to the small barred window. The sky had turned a strange purplish colour, and on the horizon there was wild movement in a columnic formation of clouds. Then she saw that the river had dramatically swollen, that fingers of water were already creeping across the land towards the house, and that people were running, crying, carrying bundles of possessions on their heads.
Gradually she understood that there was a cyclone up-river and that several villages must already have been flooded.
Rosie woke and began to let out high shrieks of horror. ‘My God, my God, we will be trapped here for ever if we don’t make a move at once!’
For ten minutes she beat about her bedroom as she dressed and packed, at intervals yelling instructions to Hermione. ‘I hope you are getting ready, we have to leave instantly. I know all about these cyclones. Everything will be down in an instant when it arrives. Trees, railways, roads, everything.’
Before Hermione even had time to complete her packing, Rosie was down in the yard making for her car, yelling for her driver, hurrying Hermione, ‘Come on, quick quick, quick or we won’t be able to get out for weeks. We might even be washed away ourselves. Jaldi, jaldi, quick, quick!’ Her clothes had been thrown on anyhow and she moved across the yard with the waddle of a very fat person in a hurry, as though she was already wading through mud-thick water.
Numbly Hermione followed her into the car, vowing that if she ever made a journey with Rosie again, which please God she would not have to, she would tell her there was a cyclone coming. For without one, yesterday, it had taken her three hours to get ready.
The watchman put Hermione’s suitcase in the boot just as another car arrived in the yard.
Rosie wound down her window and shouted, ‘Dr Das, please turn your car and head back to Calcutta for there is a cyclone on the way.’
The doctor, who was so far a shadowy figure at the steering wheel, either did not hear or did not understand. He brought his vehicle to a halt and leapt out. He then came over to where Hermione sat by Rosie.
He was an old man, white haired, dark skinned, very thin.
He bent, looked at Hermione through the window she had wound down, and said, ‘It has been a very long time, Hermione.’
Hermione leant forward, grasped the edge of the window with whitening knuckles, and stared into the face of Yudhishthira.
‘We can’t wait a moment, I am sorry to say, Dr Das,’ Rosie was shouting, and then to her driver who was having trouble with getting the car started, ‘Jaldi, jaldi, fool! Oh, my God, these people!’
Yudhishthira softly opened the car door and beckoned Hermione out.
The sky had become very dark, and the river water was running swiftly over the ground in all directions.
‘Where are you going, Hermione?’ yelled Rosie. ‘You can’t get out now. We are going at once!’
Yudhishthira, holding Hermione’s hand, led her over the rivuleted ground and up the steps on to the verandah, where he offered her a chair.
She did not look at him, but sat down stiffly, as though walking in her sleep.
‘I think we should talk in private, don’t you?’ he said softly. ‘Luckily Mrs Ramsay’s present hysterical state will probably not allow her to join us.’
Hermione did not answer.
She looked down at her trembling hands, for she dared look nowhere else, least of all at Yudhishthira.
She felt him watching her, knew he saw an old woman with a scribbled skin and shaky nerves.
Her hands had not only the map of India scrawled upon them in brown, but also words. Not Slug’s words: ‘Never grow old.’ Hermione’s: ‘It is too late. You have grown old already.’
Of course it wasn’t really Yudhishthira.
For a moment, as he had softly smiled at her, she had thought it was him. That was all. Yudhishthira had been young. His hair had been glossy black. He had worn the floating silken clothes of the seeker after God. The doctor looked like Yudhishthira. His voice sounded like Yudhishthira’s. But he wore a grey suit and was old.
The doctor was saying something but she did not listen. Her legs began to shake as though she was suffering from some violent illness that had drained her body of its strength.
‘Why don’t you talk to me?’ Yudhishthira asked.
But there is no talking with ghosts, thought the toppling Hermione, and she clutched the chair’s arms to steady herself, while dimly she heard the sound of Rosie’s car engine choking hopefully.
She was, of course, hallucinating. Her mind that had mourned Hugh, craved to save Lalia, experienced the death of a son, travelled so far and failed to see Unity, had lost its moorings and seized on a mirage. She had succumbed to the disease of her family. Senility had overcome her. She could help nobody now.
Something wet fell on to her hands and for a moment she thought it must be rain and looked up. But it was tears from her own eyes. That is a sure sign, she thought. When you think your eyes are the sky you have really gone gaga. The ghost and the gaga. The idea made a laugh burst from her, the giggle that would from now on greet all news of suffering and disaster.
‘You are angry with me?’ asked Yudhishthira. ‘I had to lie to you, Hermione, or you would have gone on looking for me for ever, and destroyed your li
fe.’
‘Oh, I am not at all angry,’ said Hermione chirpily, sitting on the edge of her seat and straightening her straw hat.
That morning, recognizing that her Indian episode had come to an end, she had put on the clothes she had begun it in: her cherry tracksuit and flopping hat. Because, she had decided dottily, you must end up as you have begun, like a mandala. Yudhishthira had told her what that was once and even now, in the foggy recesses of what mind remained, she remembered a pattern that went round for ever with as its centre an infinite dot that took you beyond thought and into Bliss.
If being gaga was being always blissful, thought Hermione, then it won’t be too bad. All around her others would cry and suffer and she would be happy. She would become a mumbling hag who giggled when told her son was dead and her daughter-in-law was dying of cancer. She would smile vaguely when she remembered her lover was already dead. It wasn’t quite there yet. A little pain still leaked through as she sat on Yudhishthira’s verandah and listened to a voice that sounded so much like his, while Rosie screamed her terror, and the waters rose.
Before her there were panicked people running, losing everything they owned and perhaps their lives as well, and Hermione felt only a slight disaffection. She wondered if she had gone past being capable of compassion.
‘I had thought … I have been foolish. I can see now that your feelings for me must have changed long, long ago,’ said Yudhishthira.
Hermione thought she heard a tiny shiver of sorrow in the mirage’s tone but ignoring it she said politely, ‘I think I should hurry. The water seems to be rising fast, and Mrs Ramsay is growing most impatient.’
‘Have you nothing to say to me after all these years, Hermione?’ asked Yudhishthira. ‘Nothing?’ A cold sadness lingered after his words like a saturation that would remain after the floods subsided.
‘What should I say?’ she asked at last.