Breakfast with the Nikolides

by Rumer Godden

  ‘Noise. Always, always noise. Never for one moment is it quiet.’ The handkerchief twisted and jerked. ‘It never stops. It goes on all day; it is worse at night. It’s driving me mad. I have nothing to do but listen to the noise.’

  ‘It isn’t a bad one to be listening to as noises go just now,’ said Charles quietly. ‘Don’t forget that, Louise.’ But Charles knew himself how the noise came into every corner of the house. He knew how the high vaults of the ceilings gave back every drumbeat as they gave back the piano notes, with an empty mocking echo. Every room had its grey lizard with an incessant tck tck in its throat, and just outside the window on the cork tree woodpeckers and cockatoos hammered and squawked all day and at night a cricket scraped in a Chinese whisper. ‘That cricket has sent me nearly mad quite often,’ said Charles gently. ‘Come and sit down and I will get you a drink.’

  ‘That’s your cure for everything, not mine,’ Louise lashed suddenly at him. ‘You know it isn’t only the noise … Charles, let me go away. It isn’t any use my staying. I hate it, I loathe it. I can’t bear it any longer. You don’t know what it is doing to me, I don’t know what is happening to me, and I’m afraid. Sometimes I think it is I who am going mad. I’m always alone – always. You don’t know …’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I know?’ asked Charles. ‘I was alone for eight years. Quite alone.’ He did not sound in the least sorry or bitter about it. ‘There is one thing I can promise, to comfort you: it gets better after about three years. The longer you stay, the better it gets. In the end you may decide to stay for ever.’

  ‘I would die first.’

  ‘You would have to,’ said Charles pleasantly. ‘It happens quite naturally. When you are alone, you grow – you alter completely. You are changing, Louise.’

  That was true. Something of Louise was struggling to live but giving itself up slowly to die. She was angry. She was being killed by them all, by Charles and Emily and the remembrance of Don, by the silence and the noise of the place, by the heaviness of the sky and the stretch of water and the empty dusty plain, by the nearness and the cruelty and noise and stench of the bazaar … Who would not die? cried Louise. No one could be herself here. No one could exist here and remain herself. I am dying, dying, dying, cried Louise, and I do not want to die.

  Charles watched the struggle in her face, the tense nervousness of the way she stood, with set shoulders and quick fingers, plucking at her handkerchief; and he said, ‘Why don’t you give in, Louise?’

  ‘To Emily?’

  ‘I was not talking of Emily.’

  She turned suddenly and dramatically appealing, her eyes dark with tears. ‘Let me go away, Charles—’

  Charles waited a moment before he answered, watching her, ‘You can go, but – I shall keep the children.’

  ‘Keep the children!’ That had not for one moment occurred to her. ‘But you can’t. They can’t stay here with you.’

  ‘Why not? All these years I have worked honestly for them, faithful to them – and to you; and I think that is more than you can say – isn’t it, Louise?’

  ‘I … It doesn’t matter to you what I do. That is nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Isn’t it? It most certainly is. I am very particular and fastidious about my children and – Emily is getting older.’

  Slowly Louise’s face was stained with a sudden deep painful red.

  ‘That matters, doesn’t it?’ said Charles.

  He wondered why she always wore these soft falling-away colours that he hardly noticed at the time and could not forget afterwards. He wondered why her hair shone so deeply in the light that it had all the shades of gold in it, ending with the brilliance of dark wallflower gold in its knot. He wondered why he still could not keep himself from the thought of touching her hair – and her skin; he could not forget the touch of her skin, he could not be satisfied until he touched it again. But she was talking of Emily.

  ‘Emily!’ she cried. ‘You are obsessed with Emily.’

  ‘I would be if I had any sense,’ said Charles.

  ‘Why are you helping Emily against me?’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Charles. ‘She doesn’t need me. She doesn’t need help. She is fighting a large-sized battle, not only against you – and I should like to see her win. I hope she doesn’t hurt herself too badly in the course of it, but I can’t help her. I think she will win,’ said Charles; ‘she is remarkably full of power, poor brat.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘She is a very tenacious person,’ he said. His lips twitched; he was thinking of Emily’s attack that morning …

  (‘Charles, what diseases do people get besides whooping cough and measles, mumps, scarlet fever, dysentery, malaria, and chicken pox and smallpox and plague?’)

  (‘Quite a lot more,’ said Charles.)

  (‘Tell me some.’)

  (‘Here in India – tuberculosis.’)

  (‘Do dogs get tuberculosis?’)

  (‘I believe they can, but it’s not common.’)

  (‘Is it terribly dangerous and catching?’)

  (‘It can be dangerous and it can be caught, but not all in a minute like that.’)

  (‘Oh! Have you heard of people getting distemper? Or worms? They don’t get tick-fever, do they?’)

  (Emily!)

  ‘She is only a child,’ said Louise.

  ‘That is no reason why her powers of tenacity should be smaller than mine – or even yours. She is fighting you, Louise—’

  ‘I know. That is what I can’t understand. How can she keep this up – for so long against me – as if she hated me?’

  ‘Perhaps she does,’ said Charles.

  ‘She couldn’t, Charles.’

  ‘It’s against all tradition, isn’t it?’ And he asked, ‘What are you going to do about it?’

  ‘What can I do? What can I do? I try to ignore it, but after a time – it’s ridiculous to say it – but it’s becoming – eerie.’

  Charles said nothing and in the pause the cricket’s scrape seemed to rise a notch higher. Above the drums the dog still yapped.

  ‘Charles – the servants don’t like it.’

  ‘No, they don’t.’

  ‘Things are happening. That is the odd part. Things that Emily could not possibly have thought of. Have you heard – about the footmarks at the washing ghat, for instance?’

  At the northern end of the College tank, the washerman had his ghat. The College was walled on all sides, its gates kept shut, the washerman told this story, and it spread quickly through the College servants to the bazaar:

  ‘The only dogs in the place are the small cat-dogs of Pool Memsahib and cat-dogs have paws with little pads that print small shapes when they run. It was not the cat-dogs. Well, we carry the clothes from the boiling and they are dipped and beaten and then spread on the grass for bleaching, but now – if we leave them to turn our heads or go inside – all over them are lines of footprints, a dog’s footprints – too small to be confused with anything else, a leopard or a cow – too large to be the cat-dogs’ – footprints the exact size of the black dog that used to run on them before, the black dog who is dead, the black dog that the Missy Sahib says is still alive.

  ‘It could not be the black dog. The black dog is dead. Well, who has seen another dog? What other dog is there? How could a dog come into the College grounds? No one has seen it, no one has heard it, but the prints are there.’

  Only the washerman’s wife, sitting by the clothes at the verge of the tank and eating what her husband left for her in the pot, had heard the English children calling and whispering in the garden next door and felt something go by her like a clap of wind that sent coldness into her stomach so that she retched and the food fell out of her mouth.

  After this it was alleged that Kokil had caused the body to be tied to a brick and thrown into the tank and that anyone who chose to come there at night would see the bhût, the ghost, rise from the water and drag the brick across to a certain tree. Now nobody swept le
aves up under that tree and a little lime was put on the trunk and a few rags tied along the branches; and everyone was very careful not to look at Emily, the familiar of the ghost, if they should chance to meet her.

  She noticed a curious falling away from her wherever she went. ‘They don’t seem to like me any more,’ said Emily; ‘but you don’t mind me, do you, Shah?’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ said Shah amiably. ‘I had an uncle possessed of a devil myself.’

  That shook Emily. It was flattering but it was frightening. Frightening … When she saw the paw marks on the sheets, her eyes went bright with fear.

  ‘Do you know anything about this?’ Louise was peremptory.

  Silence.

  ‘Answer my question.’

  At that moment Emily could not answer the question, her throat and her tongue were dry.

  ‘Emily. Answer me.’

  She licked her lips. ‘It’s Don.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd.’

  ‘It’s just like Don,’ she argued. ‘He was always doing it.’

  ‘You did this yourself.’

  ‘I? How could I?’

  ‘That is what I want to know.’

  ‘I couldn’t do that. Could I? Could I?’ Even Louise caught the appeal, and the perplexity and doubt in her voice.

  ‘She has started something that she can’t stop,’ said Louise, and suddenly she cried, ‘Why doesn’t that dog stop its yapping?’

  ‘Now you are being ridiculous.’

  ‘I know I am. Do you think I don’t know that? I know I am – and I can’t stop it! I can’t help it. It’s this house and this place – and all of you. All of you!’

  ‘That is a pai-dog tied up on the other side of the bazaar,’ said Charles; ‘and a pai must get in and run over the washing too. You know that, Louise.’

  She answered slowly, ‘I think – I’m beginning to be haunted. Everything is worse since this started. Something dreadful is going to come from it; it will fall on someone, somewhere. I know it will. I’m haunted by it. Why? I think, I truly think that Don was mad.’

  ‘And you wanted to get away, didn’t you?’ said Charles.

  ‘You mean I used Don—’

  ‘I mean Don was convenient.’

  ‘That is an abominable thing to say.’ Charles shrugged. ‘You will see,’ she cried, ‘you will see. I shall prove to be right in the end.’

  ‘I expect you will,’ said Charles wearily. ‘It doesn’t matter much. In the end there must be such a small difference between being right and being wrong—’

  ‘And what of the risks?’ asked Louise.

  ‘I am not denying the risks.’

  ‘What would you have done then?’

  ‘I should have recognized the risks,’ said Charles slowly. ‘I should have pointed them out, particularly to Emily. We should have treated them with the dignity they deserved, because they are grave risks. We should have given Don every possible chance; and then we should have carried him to his appointed end. It would have been appointed then, you know,’ said Charles.

  ‘You are even beginning to think like an Indian.’

  ‘That is no bad thing in a way,’ said Charles, and he asked, ‘Why don’t you give in? Tell Emily, Louise.’

  ‘That is what she wants me to do. What she is trying to make me say.’

  ‘Well, why not? It is true.’

  ‘No. You must speak to her,’ said Louise. ‘I shall not give in to her. She must learn she is not her own master. She would listen to you.’ She tried to speak lightly but there was anger in her voice. ‘She has always been fickle, perhaps because her feelings are not very deep, and she forms these – these attachments for people – the Nikolides for instance; I remember at Bellevue she was ridiculously fond of Félix, the cook, for a little while.’

  ‘And now she has a ridiculous attachment for me,’ said Charles drily. ‘Well, as it happens, I rather value that and I won’t do anything to harm it. You can speak to her yourself.’

  ‘I can’t—’ and she cried, ‘I seem to have lost her since I came here.’

  ‘What makes you think you ever had her?’ asked Charles.

  Louise was stung. ‘If you had seen her in Paris—’

  ‘I did not see her in Paris. Nor did you,’ said Charles. ‘You have never seen Emily in your life, not Emily as she is. Come to that, you have never seen anything as it is in your life. I am warning you, Louise, you are doing something unforgivable. One day you will do more than you mean – some serious damage. If you don’t take care. If you don’t take care, Louise …’

  VIII

  It was easier for Narayan to wish to forget than to forget. To begin with, every morning the Pool car drew up at the gate and Kokil came in with the Pekingese. They delighted and interested Shila very much.

  ‘What kind of dogs are those?’ she asked, ‘or are they cats?’

  ‘Of course they are not cats. They are poodles,’ said Narayan. ‘Moreover, they are very valuable.’

  Shila knew that already. They were sent in a car. Tarala for instance had never been in a car; they were having injections, costly ones from Calcutta as if they were humans; Tarala had asked Kokil how they were fed – they were fed on mutton and chicken and fish; and they had come in a steamer from England.

  ‘And meanwhile there is starvation and famine and war on every side,’ said Narayan.

  The injections given these rare and valuable dogs that had never been heard of in Amorra gave him a certain prestige, but at the same time it offended him. Again he felt as if he were interfering … But if I go on like this, I shall have to give up practice, he said. If I am interfering with fate by giving an anti-rabic injection, I interfere by giving a drench to a horse or a cow. Pool is interfering with fate by teaching the people to fertilize their lands. That is not sense … And it seemed to him in that depressed moment that it was unspiritual to have any sense at all. He said this aloud to Shila simply because he had to say it aloud.

  She offered timidly, ‘Perhaps you are fate, you and Mr Pool.’

  That salved him for a moment but his conscience was so tender that anything that reminded him of the morning at the Pools made him wince. Yet all the time he was trying to remember … what? Why should he need to remember when he wished, so much, to forget? What could have happened in this affair that he ought to remember? He could not think of it. He gave the Pekingese injections each morning as soon as the serum arrived from the Pasteur Institute. With it came a yellow paper that he had seen before.

  Under no circumstances, said the paper, should the dog be destroyed – for by doing so one of the most important signs of rabies, viz. the short duration of life, is lost and proof cannot be obtained … You see, you see, the thought that was haunting him burst out, there is no proof. I am sure, now I am sure, he was not mad … And he longed, would have given anything, for a proof – a proof. If one of the Pekingese died of hydrophobia, that would be tantamount to proof, but as he looked at them – even for that relief – he could not wish death on them. So he continued gloomily to give them injections.

  ‘I don’t know if it is necessary,’ said Charles, ‘I don’t suppose it is, but my wife wants them to be done.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You have no objection to doing them?’

  ‘No, no. I shall be glad.’ He did not sound at all glad.

  Charles looked at him and paused. ‘Das – I know my wife is – nervous. You had no doubt, had you – in your own mind – that the dog was mad?’

  That was the question Narayan had been dreading, but while he was still wincing he answered, ‘None whatever.’

  No bites or scratches were found on Sun and Picotee. He gave them seven injections each.

  Sun stood without a sound, his forelegs braced, his head turned thrown back and his face drawn into lines of acute silent suffering, every hair stiff; Picotee’s tail dropped between her legs in a hopeless trailing, and she would not stand up. She lay limp and abandoned to her fate on the t
able and every morning she gave a piercing cry as the needle went in. All the same Narayan would rather have injected her than Sun. Sun’s silence was unnerving, but after it was over every day they both went into rhapsodies of relief and joy, leaping and dancing and barking.

  ‘They are nearly human,’ cried Shila in delight, but Narayan found this study in character disturbing; character in a Pekingese, character worth respecting, like Sun’s? He was glad when the injections came to an end and they need come no more.

  ‘Send me the bill,’ said Charles. Narayan did not want to send it, but Charles insisted.

  ‘But – what shall I charge you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Charge by the visit.’

  He wrote out the bill:

  To seven visits from Mrs Pool’s poodle dog Rs 7.

  To seven visits from Mrs Pool’s poodle slut Rs 7.

  He did not charge for Don.

  The money came by return and with it, in Charles’s writing, a postscript Attending a dog at my house, Rs 4. It lay on the desk untouched. Narayan kept looking at it all day.

  He would have liked to confide in Anil. No, he could not possibly have confided in Anil, and anyway Anil was curiously elusive at the moment … I have not seen him for days. He does not come near me, grumbled Narayan. Soon it will be the end of term … He recalled himself sharply, he had forgotten the Examination … Of course I have not seen Anil. How could I? He is working every moment … but his vision of the end of term refused to be of Anil sitting in the Examination Hall, pinned to his papers; it was of Anil going home for the Durga puja holidays, where all the ritual of the puja fortnight would be prepared.