Odysseus Abroad (15 page)

Once inside, the chocolate mousse in the freezer caught his fancy. He took it home along with the salt and milk. In the bedsit, Ananda, in his impatience, prised open the lid holding the container upside down, letting its contents fall intact on to the rug—which was, despite Ananda's father's efforts, dark with dust. The dessert was irretrievable.

Given this bedsit was where Ananda's parents had lived prior to his birth, the room had the air of belonging to a story. The fact that he'd heard the story several times didn't make the bedsit better-known to him. For it was very real, and difficult to make your way around in without colliding into something. Also, the neglect it had absorbed in the twelve years since his parents had gone to India gave it a touch of the unexpectedness associated with the
mamar baadi
, the “maternal uncle's house,” a place traditionally lacking in restrictions for the nephew.

By the time of that holiday in 1973, Ananda's uncle's world-conquering glory had dimmed; he was bored of it too. Radhesh had proved he was capable of great conventional professional success; but it looked like he wasn't
interested
in great conventional professional success. What he was interested in was company and family: as if responding to this in a corrective way, he lived alone and in
the proximity of people who until recently were strangers. On the first floor, he had two neighbours: Abbas, and Pinku Chaudhury, a phlegmatic East Bengali who worked for British Rail and who possessed an idiot box. Radhesh made infrequent visits to Pinku Chaudhury's bedsit to watch wildlife programmes, to admire, over an hour, the tiger's stride and gathering pace, and to bemoan the gazelle's spry but fatal ingenuousness. As if in reciprocity, Pinku Chaudhury's cat habitually invaded Radhesh's bedsit, pushing its way in through the heavy door, which was often kept ajar, and jumping on to the armchair: an indolent feline with a thick brandy-cream coat and a lingering air of entitlement. He was called Vodka, and Ananda would find him politely prowling the bedsit that summer. He saw him again in 1979, but not after. When Council work began on the first floor, Pinku Chaudhury moved to Chalk Farm. Only Shah and Ananda's uncle relocated to new rooms in the basement.

Rangamama would encourage Ananda to sing as they went for walks that August. He'd contribute snatches in his baritone. Cliff Richard was on his uncle's mind—“He has a lovely voice,” he said, and, appropriately for the season, sang the opening lines of “Summer Holiday” as all four of them proceeded on the pavement. Satish had bought his son
Best of the Bee Gees
, with its mustard-yellow cover and figures in Mount Rushmore–like array. Ananda already knew “Holiday,” and he approximated Robin Gibb's plaintive, melodious, nasal cry. His uncle answered with “Bachelor Boy,” humming, “Happy to be a bachelor boy until my dying day,” without Ananda sensing the irony that made his uncle's voice float unsteadily before going silent. Nor did he get the irony when his uncle ebulliently urged him to do a repeat of “I'm going to marry in the morning, ding dong the bells will chime” as they walked up Belsize Avenue
to Haverstock Hill—Ananda's falsetto standing in for the scoundrel Dolittle's guttural announcement.

That was the happiest he'd seen his uncle—though Rangamama had told Ananda that he'd never known happiness unmixed with disappointment. By then Rangamama was already developing his most abiding obsession—the nature of the afterlife; how and why souls come to the world, and what they do when they leave. Its main sign were the several volumes he had of the
Pan Book of Horror Stories
series. The tales in these books underlined the fact that life played savage tricks on you, that there were people out there who were suffering for no reason, and others whose sole function was to make people suffer. This, according to the
Pan Book of Horror Stories
, was what existence was, before the blank panacea of death came, and it was a world view that was then—and even today—imbibed nightly by Ananda's uncle in his bed.

He began to spend more time at Philipp Bros than at home. He did other people's work: specifically that of two juniors in his department, Paul Middleton and Freddy Gamble. His heart went out to Freddy Gamble, a timorous man, thin as his tie, who failed miserably at what he did, was newly married, and on the verge of losing his job. When Ananda and his parents saw Radhesh in 1979, Freddy Gamble was on his lips, like a backward but beloved child. In those years, Ananda's uncle returned to Belsize Park well after midnight. It was during these depressed and solitary journeys that he gradually became aware of ghosts and spirits. Once, stepping into the lift at 3 a.m. after hours of work, he felt a draught within. But where could the draught come from? He knew from his reading that a momentary drop in temperature meant a spirit was near. When it happened another night, he asked an employee
in the building about it. He learned from him that there had been a death in the building on the fourth floor, seven years ago. At 2 a.m. one night, making his way back from the office (he'd walked from Moorgate to Swiss Cottage), he noticed, climbing the incline between Finchley Road and Belsize Avenue, a man approaching from the distance. Which
sane
person would be out at this hour? As the strange man came closer, Radhesh, terrified, said: “Would you like a light?” “Believe you me,” said his uncle to Ananda, “that man was not alive. His face was a death-mask. He had no idea of my existence. And do you know what happened next?” Ananda knew it well, since his uncle repeated the story every week, but his uncle wasn't waiting for his response. “I walked a bit further, thinking,
Thank you, dear God, I live to see another day!
—when (I was curious) I glanced over my shoulder. Do you know what I saw?
The man had stopped and was looking straight at me
. Yes, I should have run (though what use is flight from such a being?) but was paralysed and couldn't move. The man began to make large strides towards me. I watched him, agog.
Certain death
, I thought…When he was face to face with me he turned sharply to his right and stared at a rusty stain on the wall. He stood like that for half a minute and then very decisively pressed his handkerchief against the stain. Then he turned around as if it were no longer of any interest to him and went back in the direction he was earlier headed.” “Finchley Road?” “Finchley Road—or maybe Swiss Cottage.” It was a terribly boring ghost story, made enervating by repeated rhapsodic recitations and also the fact that there was no proven ghost in it. But for his uncle it was his one episode involving what he took to be a given: the posthumous and the undead. The man was dead, the man was dead, the man was dead. It had happened, it had happened, it had happened—once. For Ananda, the tale embodied his uncle's final years at Philipp Bros: a time alternating between self-inflicted
assignments undertaken on behalf of Freddy Gamble and Paul Middleton, and late-night or early-morning visions and homecomings. He was imprisoned by his job, and these three—Middleton, Gamble, and his uncle—were reduced to a kind of insentience: achieving not very much over six years, only his uncle aware how time was passing to no end. Then Mrs. Thatcher took charge, the economy improved, and all three were made redundant. For his uncle, at least, the spell was lifted, and he was himself again.

Having shaken off Shah, they emerged from the left-hand passage of 24 Belsize Park. It was 4:20 p.m. Through the chestnut trees fell shadow-spots. “Shah is an old soul,” observed Ananda's uncle as they progressed to the rise towards Haverstock Hill. “Old and tired.” “Old soul?” said Ananda. “Yes, born into the world again and again and again. Most Indians and Pakistanis are ‘old souls.' They've been born so many times that they're tired, they've returned to reality so often they take it for granted. If you ask Shah, ‘I gave you ten pounds yesterday for some cigarettes—what happened to the change?' he'll look astonished, and say, Arrey Nandy, I gave it back to you in the afternoon, because he thinks he did. He's been around for a very, very long time. Small inaccuracies escape him, and minor discrepancies don't matter. Similarly, if you ask an Indian on the street, ‘Bhai, which way to Camden Town?' he'll give you directions even if he's never heard of Camden Town. Old soul. Tired from having come back repeatedly. No longer mindful of detail, just living out, yet again, the duties and obligations.”

They were out of breath, going up the slope. The Town Hall was coming up on the right, the petrol pump on the left. “The new souls?” asked Ananda. “Oh, they're all around us,” said his uncle. “There's a great impatience to be born.” Ananda felt a rustling, a single-minded urgency in the air. Dappled. “The new souls are competing to be born and experience sensuous pleasures—bars, sex, cars, big homes. They want all that—soon.”

They reached the top, the head of the T, and turned left. They had, as yet, no plan. They appeared to be heading for Hampstead. It was hard to know who was following whose lead; neither wanted to consciously take the upper hand, although Ananda's uncle came up with impromptu suggestions: “Let's cross, there's more shade on the other side,” and “Don't step on that, be careful. The English let their dogs defecate anywhere.” His uncle muttered imprecatory caveats if they approached a dog's stool. They went past the Trust House Forte hotel, and across the zebra crossing before a posh pub and the new KFC, coming to the church whose name they didn't know. Here they slowed down, catching their breath, but also in deference to the building. They couldn't recall having ever spotted activity around it. They presumed (without saying this aloud) it must be abandoned. In spite of the rest of the road being sunlit, the green around the church had a stubble of shadow darkening it, as if there were a cloud hanging over it. It was a ghostly edifice. “It is possible to see the badger here,” said his uncle, waving grandiosely, though Ananda wasn't sure what he meant by “here.” “Really?” He was mildly curious and a bit disbelieving—he had no idea what a badger looked like. But his uncle claimed to be a great observer of flora and fauna, hoarding their names and characteristics. “Yes, there are all kinds of animals around,” he said, as (again,
without consciously deciding to) they descended the path on the right—down which hunched tramps could be seen advancing—to the Royal Free Hospital. “Like foxes. I saw a fox here once.” As they emerged into Pond Street, there was a widening, and, in response, his uncle, glancing at a pub as if it were a royal residence, said: “You run into all kinds of actors and politicians here. I bumped into Glenda Jackson a few years ago. She smiled at me.” He was a snob, secretly proud to belong to these parts; so that, when people asked him where he lived, he admitted (Ananda had overheard him) modestly, reluctantly: “Hampstead.” The successful man of the world. Director at Philipp Bros, a man with a family and a grand home. Hampstead indeed!

They sat down at last at the base of the hill, in a homely-looking tea shop. Ananda's uncle tapped his sneakers. “These are very comfortable. No matter how much you walk, your feet will never hurt in these.” They were grey and ugly. He eyed Ananda's brown leather shoes. “You should change those,” he advised. “You'll be much happier.” Picking up the menu, he protested: “No rum baba!” Then read: “Strudel, merring, fruit tart—
dhur
, the English have become too fancy of late.” There was a new internationalism afoot in London, and he bristled against it. “You don't get treacle tart any more,” he said contemptuously. “There are only a few pubs in London where you can get treacle tart.” His baritone was filling up the space by the window where they sat. A woman two tables away glanced swiftly back. After reflecting further on the fact that there seemed to be a recent recoil in the nation from extremities of sweetness, they ordered tea and a muffin. Ananda, by now, realised that his uncle was going to make no enquiry about how he was or what frame of mind he was in (despite knowing his nephew was unremittingly,
even tediously, unhappy in Warren Street). He wasn't going to ask after his parents either.

So Ananda said anyway: “Those people upstairs are always making a racket. They start at midnight. Telling them not to hasn't worked.” He stared at the cubes of sugar. “Today's Friday, they'll be up later than usual.”

His uncle wasn't listening. Instead, he said to Ananda: “Pupu, have you heard this song?”

Bhalobeshe jadi shukho nahi

Tabe keno eto bhalobasha?

If loving gives no happiness

Why do we love so much?

He'd begun to hum the lines, one elbow on the table. His eyes were droopy; semi-ecstatic. The woman at the nearby table was pretending not to hear. It was one of Tagore's limpest compositions. But if he said so, there might be a build-up to a scene. They had several of those over Tagore, or Ananda's mother, or this or that relation—the scenes had their cathartic uses, but were best averted. His uncle could become warlike about Tagore; so best to be peaceable. If Ananda answered with, “No, I haven't heard it,” his uncle would say: “
What?
Your repertoire of songs is rather small.” Instead, Ananda said:

“I
have
heard it—from you. If you recall, you've been singing it each time we've met this month.”

Every time. His uncle must be in love. Either from a transient thrill of recognition, smiles exchanged between him and a shop girl, or unrequited devotions. Unrequited was not the appropriate word. For love not to be reciprocated, the object of the emotion
must know they're loved. There was no knowledge here. It was in his uncle's head—as a tumultuous event. Shortly before he'd retired, his uncle had fallen in love with Gilberta, who used to help her mother with the odd janitorly chore at Philipp Bros. The office janitress was a Portuguese woman called Rosa. Gilberta was a sixteen-year-old: a picture of innocence evidently—when his uncle wasn't tackling Freddy Gamble and Paul Middleton's leftover work, he studied her as she scrubbed the floor. He was stricken with melancholy; because he loved her, and believed that—if he'd had the courage, the temerity—she would have loved him.