‘I heard this is where you sleep,’ he said. ‘I was waiting for you. I’m warning you—from tomorrow you’d better not invite anybody to sit on Connie’s lap, or there’ll be trouble.’
I couldn’t follow him. Was the man completely drunk? Without waiting for my reply, he went on, ‘All Calcuttans are animals. None of your fathers or mothers or grandfathers or grandmothers was a human being, they were all animals.’ He started dancing in his characteristic style, singing, ‘Everyone in this world is an animal. If you don’t believe me, come with me to a brothel, or at least to a hotel.’
I was almost falling asleep on my feet and here was this lunatic raving and ranting! ‘It’s very late, Mr Lambreta,’ I began.
He started abusing me. ‘So what if it’s late? As if this is the holiest of holy hotels, where every man falls asleep at nine o’ clock.’
‘Mr Lambreta, I’m very tired from the day’s work,’ I pleaded.
Jumping on to the bed and dancing on it, he retorted, ‘You don’t feel tired when sitting on Connie’s lap, do you?’
‘Why are you saying all this to me? I didn’t sit on Connie’s lap.’
‘No, why should you? You people are the people of Rome, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the direct descendants of Lord Buddha, you citizens of Calcutta don’t even know Connie has a lap.’
Lambreta looked all set to start breaking things in my room. Left with no alternative, I went looking for Gurberia. He was sleeping, but he woke up with a start and said, ‘What is it, is the god creating trouble?’
God indeed! Gurberia was convinced that the dwarf was an incarnation of the creator himself, in his vaman avatar!
‘Never mind your god,’ I told him, ‘tell me how to get that drunkard out of my room.’
Gurberia didn’t give a damn about me—his job didn’t depend on keeping me happy. Besides, the damage had almost been done—Parabashia was about to finalize his daughter’s marriage with someone else. I realized I had no choice but to send for Connie.
‘Where’s Connie?’ I asked Gurberia.
‘Downstairs,’ he replied.
I was forced to telephone her. She answered on the first ring though she couldn’t possibly have expected anyone to phone her at this hour. ‘Who is it? What’s the matter?’ she asked.
I explained the problem to her as briefly as possible, apologizing all the while. ‘I shouldn’t be disturbing you at this hour, but Lambreta has left me no choice.’
Connie seemed quite upset; I could make out the shock in her voice as she said, ‘I’m coming upstairs right away.’
Hearing that Connie was coming up, Gurberia jumped to his feet. ‘Why does the naked lady have to come up to the terrace so late in the night?’
A few moments passed before the door to the terrace opened. The person who stood there, her body wrapped in a nightgown, her head in a silk bonnet, was the same person who had been entertaining Calcutta’s crème de la crème a few hours earlier. Then she had been sensuous, wild. But in the darkness, the woman before me was someone else—whoever she might have been, she was not Connie the Woman. There was no fire in this Connie. It may sound rather clichéd, but her face had the radiance of the moon.
‘Where is he?’ she asked. ‘Did he attack you?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘but he refuses to leave my room. And he’s spilled whiskey on my bed.’
Acutely embarrassed, Connie whispered, ‘I am so sorry.’ Going into my room, she called out in an undertone, ‘Harry!’
It hadn’t occurred to me that Lambreta could have had another name. Hearing his name, he looked at the door in surprise. As soon as he saw Connie, he held his bottle close to himself, as though that was what Connie had come for. Then, realizing what she was there for, he summoned up enough courage to protest. ‘I won’t go, I simply won’t. I’ll squash these animals to death like insects—what business is it of yours, and what business is it of this chubby-cheeked balloon-face?’
Through clenched teeth Connie said, ‘Harry, it’s very late. You’ve ruined this poor gentleman’s bed.’
‘I’m sorry about that, I didn’t do it on purpose, the bottle slipped while I was trying to squash some bugs. But what harm has it done him—I’m the one who’s suffered the loss.’
‘Harry!’ she said in a soft but sharp voice.
Lambreta exploded. ‘I’ll do as I please, what business is it of yours? I’m going to get a mug of beer and wet this fellow’s pillow. I’ll launder my jacket in two bottles of rum, what’s it to you?’
Connie probably wasn’t prepared for such a turn of events; Lambreta had clearly gone berserk. Embarrassed and humiliated, she stepped forward, about to do something, but stopped short—she suddenly seemed to remember I was also in the room. She turned to me and said, ‘If you could please wait outside for a moment.’
I left immediately without a word, but I didn’t have to remain outside for long. Connie had worked her magic in less than a minute and Lambreta had miraculously returned to his senses. Connie poked her head out of my room and said, ‘You can come in now.’
I saw that Lambreta had cooled down completely. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘I realize my mistake. I’m really sorry.’
‘No more,’ she admonished, ‘I’ve had enough.’
He almost burst into tears. ‘I’ll go to my room and go to bed right away.’
‘Yes, do that, at once,’ she said.
He suddenly looked at me. Pouting like a hurt child, he said, ‘You only blame me, but what about the time they called me a chimpanzee? You didn’t say anything then!’ Sobbing like a child, he went to his room. She followed him to say something, but he slammed the door on her.
She stood outside like a statue. I hadn’t been prepared for such an uncomfortable situation either. She went slowly to a corner of the terrace. I noticed she was crying. Connie the Woman was wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her nightgown. Softly she said to me, ‘Brutes. The people of this world are brutes. A man came up from the bar and asked me in front of Harry: Is this clown of yours a man or a trained chimpanzee?’
‘I am sorry to have bothered you. If he only drank in his own room, I wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble of calling you up. But he left me no choice.’
‘No, that’s all right,’ she said. ‘You’ve been working hard all day, and Harry upset you.’
‘He didn’t do it on purpose. You can’t blame someone when he’s drunk.’
‘I’ll go and have another look at him,’ she said, and tiptoed into his room.
I knew I wouldn’t get any sleep that night. I asked Gurberia to get me a glass of water and stood at my door. But what had happened to Connie? There was no sign of her coming out of Lambreta’s room. I couldn’t even make out if the light was on for she had shut the door. Were they talking? Didn’t look like it. Even if they were whispering, one would have heard them through the wooden partition.
My throat was parched. I drained the glass of water Gurberia gave me in one gulp. Gurberia sensed trouble—he alone was responsible for the rooms on the terrace at night, and if something went wrong he would be the first to lose his job.
‘Has the naked lady gone downstairs?’ he whispered.
I shook my head.
‘What! She hasn’t?’
I pointed to Lambreta’s room.
‘As far as I can make out, the light is out, isn’t it, sir?’
‘So it seems,’ I replied.
Gurberia went towards Lambreta’s room and peeped through a crack in the wood to satisfy himself that the light was indeed out. I kept standing there like a fool. He came back scratching his head and stood before me.
‘Disaster, sir, the blue light is on.’
‘What’s the problem with that?’ I asked.
‘What are you saying, sir! I wouldn’t have been so scared if the room had been completely dark. Parabashia told me the very first day, if the light is on there’s nothing to fear...even if it’s out, it’s all right. But the blue light is danger.’ He was
almost in tears. Wiping his eyes, he said, ‘The devil’s got his eye on me, I’m going to lose my job.’
Tearfully he explained, ‘I have orders to keep a strict watch on the naked ladies. They’re not allowed to enter the bar, men are not allowed to enter their rooms, and they’re not allowed to enter men’s rooms, either. Even if they do, they have to keep the door wide open. I’ll lose my job tonight, sir.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I reassured him. ‘Who’s going to come up to the terrace at this hour?’
‘You never know—there’s no telling when Markapala sahib will show up in his rubber shoes. He won’t listen—he’ll throw me out immediately, just as he threw out Karim—the naked lady had asked him to let a gentleman through at night, and he did it, too. For five rupees he lost it all.’
He was about to go and knock on the door. I stopped him, saying, ‘All these tired people are asleep after a hard day’s work, Gurberia, don’t disturb them now.’
Who knows what Gurberia read in my words? I thought he suspected that I had a hand in Connie going into that room and switching on the blue light. He was about to say something, but the grim expression on my face deterred him from speaking his mind.
The night sky seemed rather depressing to me, as though whatever joys there had been in the storehouse of creation had been squandered away by the spendthrift people of this world. There were only sorrows left. There was no peace to be found.
At last the door to Lambreta’s room opened. The blue light was no longer shining inside. Connie emerged from the darkness within and shut the door softly behind her. As she walked towards the stairs, lost in thought, she saw me. Perhaps she hadn’t expected me to be standing there; she ignored me and walked away.
10
‘I can smell it! I can smell it clearly, it’s very difficult to fool Nityahari Bhattacharya’s nose,’ Nityahari screamed as soon as he entered my room. The darkness hadn’t lifted yet when he had left his room to come up to the terrace. He couldn’t sleep at night; he had come up to my room for a chat. Seeing the state of my mattress and bedclothes he said, ‘That’s the way it is—as they say, when in Rome...’
I told him what had happened.
He made a face. ‘Oh yes, even I told my father once that I had been kidnapped.’ His words showed just how implicitly he believed me. ‘I made up that story about being kidnapped,’ he said. ‘My father was a simple man, he believed me. But the one up there saw everything. There’s no way to fool Him, He’s always ready to make us pay for all our mistakes. Why else should a high-born person like me have to work as a laundryman, rummaging through the sins of the world? Why else should I have to clean up the transgressions of the night in every corner of this hotel, the sins that permeate every pillow and mattress and bed sheet?’
Then, as if to warn me, he continued, ‘Things needn’t have turned out this way. I’m a Brahmin’s son. I could have been well educated and taken up a professorship like my father in Bangabashi or Ripon College. The blood of professors runs in my veins.’ He stopped suddenly, and then in utter despair continued, ‘There’s not a drop of that blood left in me, it turned to water long ago. If you cut my veins now all you will get is soapsuds and soda. I went to the dogs when in school, you know. One night I got drunk, then joined a bunch of good-for-nothings and even visited a brothel. But my father was an innocent soul—he knew nothing outside of books—and so was my mother. The next morning they asked, “What happened? Why didn’t you come home last night?” I lied, saying we’d gone for a stroll on the maidan, but on my way back a gang kidnapped me and that they let me go because I had been crying all night. I was stinking of liquor, yet my mother thought it was because I had to spend the night with those criminals. And now you tell me the dwarf messed your bed up—better be careful.’
I smiled weakly.
‘The government doesn’t keep track of the many young men that are ruined thus in hotels, restaurants and other places. But why blame the poor government, when even their own fathers can’t or don’t keep track—they all think their sons are being kidnapped,’ he said. By then he had rolled up my bedspread. ‘I’d better change the mattress too. Try to avoid sin.’
‘Would you like to wash your hands?’ I asked him.
‘How many times should I wash them,’ he shouted. ‘The skin’s peeling off from so much washing. I’d find peace only if this entire hotel were immersed in a huge tub of Dettol.’ His mood didn’t encourage me to say anything else. But he hadn’t finished. ‘What you did isn’t right. You were the shorthand man, fine; then you became the welcome-please-take-a-seat fellow at the counter—even that’s acceptable. But why does the country bumpkin want to become a gentleman? What did you have to go to that dance for?’
‘You think I had a choice?’ I said. ‘I have to hold on to my job, don’t I?’
It was like cold water being poured on the flames of his wrath. The fiery Nityahari went out without a flicker.
‘That’s true,’ he said softly, ‘there’s so much we have to do to keep this damned stomach full! If it hadn’t been for that, Nityahari wouldn’t have been killing himself over the world’s dirty linen.’
‘Yes, and if it hadn’t been for the stomach Connie wouldn’t have had to dance around the world without a stitch on.’
Nityahari became grim. ‘There’s something else besides the stomach there, and that’s habit. I don’t like this lady of yours.’
For a moment I thought he had learnt of the previous night’s incident, but he was referring to something else. Straightening the spectacles on his nose, he said, ‘Yes sir, I’ve been supplying pillows all my life. If you want a couple of extra ones I can understand. But no, of all people she has to pick on me! All I went there for was to enquire whether she wanted extra pillows. Instead of giving me a straight answer, the lady in the cold room gets red hot with anger and says that her assistant must also be given an air-conditioned room next to her. My eyes popped out.
‘I told her I was in charge of pillows, not rooms. And that though Shahjahan had given her an air-conditioned room, it wouldn’t give one to her assistant. “Where will he stay, then?” she asked. “Where every other employee stays,” I replied, “on the terrace.”
‘The lady seemed distressed. There have been so many dancing girls in Shahjahan, month after month, but I’ve never seen any of them worry about their assistants. All they ask about is their own rooms, whether there are proper locks on the door, whether the beds are soft, and whether there are enough pillows.’
‘And so?’ I asked.
‘And so?’ he said, slapping his forehead, ‘Oh lord! Hasn’t God given you an ounce of brain? Can’t you see for yourself? Such a lovely lady, pretty as a picture, and that dwarf! But as they say, circumstances make strange bedfellows. On the one hand you have the famous dancer, for whom our gentlemen are ready to spend thousands of rupees, and on the other you have her hanger-on dwarf, who’s irrelevant to the show. But what a nerve shorty has! He tells her, you can stay here, Connie, I’m off. And the woman’s face falls and she says, please don’t be angry, I’m doing what I can. The dwarf knows he’s got her under his thumb, so he loses his temper some more and says, you can stay here and dance and get people to clap, I don’t need all this. And do you know what Connie says to that? I could hardly believe my own ears. She asks me, “Can’t you get me a room on the terrace as well?”
‘I’ve been killing myself over the dirty linen of Shahjahan Hotel all these years—I can see through everything. A room next to his, no doubt, I said to myself. To her I said, “I don’t know. I’ll call Jimmy.” I don’t know what Jimmy did, but I saw Lambreta go upstairs, and the lady stay on in her air-conditioned room. Elephants fight, and the poor ant gets squashed. I only went to ask whether she needed extra pillows for the night. She doesn’t answer, instead flies into a rage, and then she asks like a hypocrite, “Pillows? There are two pillows already. What am I going to do with more pillows in a single room? Roast them and eat them?” Kali! Kali!’
Nityahari rose at last. ‘I’d better go, my staff must be idling away, having a smoke.’
He picked up my bedspread and pillows himself. I tried to stop him, saying, ‘Let the bearer take them, or else send one of your people, why should you...’
Instantly his demeanour changed, possibly without his even realizing it. His eyes blazed for a second as he said, ‘Just because I don’t have children you think God hasn’t granted me kindness either? How could you say this to me? Do you know how much older than you my son would have been?’ And on that note he hurried out.
Gurberia hadn’t been prepared for such melodrama so early in the morning. ‘Your tea’s getting cold, sir,’ he said.
Finishing my cup of tea, I went out to find Connnie on the terrace, dressed in the briefest of outfits. She was trying to attract the attention of the sun atop Shahjahan Hotel. The early morning rays were supposed to contain secret elements that made lovely women even more beautiful. Maybe—who knows? Connie didn’t seem bothered that this public worship of the sun at dawn could cause minor problems to other creatures present.
A well-dressed Rosie emerged from her room. Marco Polo normally dictated some letters at this hour. She looked daggers at me.’
‘Good morning,’ I said.
She didn’t return my greeting, and chewed on her nails instead. I teased her, ‘Even Mr Marco Polo told you the other day that you should use a blade.’
Maybe I shouldn’t have said that, but I couldn’t resist the urge to needle her every time I saw her. She turned a flaming red. ‘I’m going with Jimmy to Marco Polo right away. I’ll take Bose along too, if necessary.’
Now I was really scared. Jimmy wasn’t exactly enamoured of me. I needn’t have gone out of my way to provoke Rosie unnecessarily first thing in the morning. But it had happened, and she was not going to let it pass easily. If she got half a chance to get rid of me she wouldn’t let it go.
‘What will you tell Marco Polo?’ I asked.
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