1977 (4 page)

Beyond that I simply don’t know. I suppose we must wait and see.”

He expected her to say, “Surely you could have told us old
mali
had gone?” But she didn’t,

and on second thoughts he realized he hadn’t expected it. Sahib and Memsahib were

extremely interesting examples to him of the almost total self-absorption that overtook old

people such as them. Both lived, really, in worlds of their own. If either had bothered to ask

him what had
happened
to old
mali
he might have told them. But all Sahib had done was

grumble that the
mali
hadn’t turned up, and all Memsahib had done was listen with half-an-

ear until the moment when it struck her that it was bad for Sahib to grumble so much.

It wasn’t of course true that old
mali
had resigned. He had been sacked, unofficially as part

of the process of what Mrs Bhoolabhoy called retrenchment, officially because she had

decided that he was selling part of the produce of the kitchen garden to the bazaar from

where at times of inexplicable shortage Mr Bhoolabhoy had been unwittingly buying it back.

This was not proven against old
mali
but Mrs Bhoolabhoy was convinced of the fact and

when Mrs Bhoolabhoy was convinced of a fact one had to assume that a fact was what it

was. There was no appeal against her judgment. All old
mali
had actually ever done, though,

was appropriate his fair share of what he had hoed and sweated to grow. The kitchen garden

had occupied most of his time, what was left over, Mrs Bhoolabhoy complained, had for

years been lazily spent cutting the grass at The Lodge. The
mali’s
departure for the Shiraz left

the Hotel with only the assistant
mali
, a youth with a lame left leg and a blind right eye who

just about managed to cope with the weeds in the Smith’s flower-beds of which, between

stony paths, there were now but vestigial traces. It was believed that Mrs Bhoolabhoy was

only awaiting an opportunity to sack this wretched fellow too. It was typical of her, Ibrahim

thought, that she should have told Lucy-Mem that old
mali
had resigned.

Old
mali
was sacked on the day Tusker Sahib was taken ill, which was the day after his

friend and drinking companion, Mr Bhoolabhoy, went down to Ranpur ostensibly to execute

commissions for Mrs Bhoolabhoy : a rare enough event for the servants to wonder whether

in fact he had been sacked too; or had left her at last for another woman.

For instance, the nautch-girl, Hot Chichanya, who sang at the Go-Go-Inn in Ranpur and

was said to be the daughter of a Russian mother and an Afghan father. The head bearer at

Smith’s had seen a clipping of a newspaper photograph of Hot Chichanya pinned to the

inside of Mr Bhoolabhoy’s almirah door and one by one all the male servants had entered

the manager’s room during his absence to get an eyeful.

Mr Bhoolabhoy’s interest in Hot Chichanya dated from the time she came up to Pankot to

sing in the first cabaret produced in the Shiraz’s Mountain View Room (of which it was

reported she complained that there was hardly any room, less view and no god-dammed

mountain). The servants at the Shiraz said she had a voice like a frog but breasts like melons.

In the clipping these showed to advantage in spite of the poor newsprint.

The staff at the Shiraz had also reported to the staff at Smith’s that Hot Chichanya was

insatiable and kept by her bedside an illustrated edition of the Kama Sutra printed in Hong

Kong, to inspire her lovers if they showed signs of flagging at 3 a.m. when the sound of her

raucous voice and stamping bootshod feet and the cracking of the red leather whip she used

in a number called Koshak-dance had more than once disturbed and brought complaints

from other guests, particularly parents visiting the boys who were getting a sound English-

style public school education at the Chakravarti College which was housed in the old

Summer Residence.

The complaints had no effect. Hot Chichanya was in the protection of two young men,

both thin, who were nephews of a senior member of the consortium of owners. All her

lovers, rumour had it, were thin. The scrawnier the better, and age no object. Mr

Bhoolabhoy could not be ruled out as a candidate. He had attended the cabaret twice. Now

he was in Ranpur, where Hot Chichanya performed nightly.

“Poor Bhoolabhoy Sahib,” the Smith Hotel cook said when it dawned on them what the

manager might be doing. “Has he the strength?”

When he got back from the plains three weeks later, although silent he looked content; like

a man, cook said, whose objective had been achieved. It was noted too that on the first

Sunday following his return he did not go to St John’s Church, of which he was a pillar.

Francis (Frank) Bhoolabhoy was a cradle Christian. What Mrs Bhoolabhoy was no one

knew. She had been married so many times that her original family name seemed lost in

antiquity. She showed no interest in any religion, in any kind of hereafter, only in the here

and now and in how this might be arranged to her advantage.

On the morning of his return Mr Bhoolabhoy spent two hours in Mrs Bhoolabhoy’s room

but the persistent sound of chat suggested conversation of a business not an amorous and

certainly not a confessional nature. Emerging, he went about his normal routine with his

usual air of muffled energy, the difference being that when he sat over his typewriter or

whispered a rebuke to someone who had dropped a plate his eyes were on neither.

“He has been having his end away,” the aged head bearer said, using one of Ibrahim’s

expressions. “God be thanked, there is hope for all of us.”

Removing the soiled socks, shirts and underwear which Mr Bhoolabhoy had brought back

from his trip, the dhobi’s boy spent a moment or two on each garment, testing for new

scent, conclusive evidence of a wild Khurdish night with the cabaret artist. He had learned

from his father that dhobis were expected to maintain a tradition of being the first to detect

the smell of adultery in any household. But only once did he discover an aroma not

comprised of Mr Bhoolabhoy’s natural body odour and the familiar smell of the Hamam

soap Mr Bhoolabhoy favoured. He got, just, a whiff of something uncharacteristic when

checking a pair of smart y-fronted underpants, but the smell was quickly traced to the fact

that the pants were new, still full of dressing, obviously bought in Ranpur and not washed

before use. Was the purchase of new underpants significant in itself?

It wasn’t until the evening of this day that Mr Bhoolabhoy gave silent notice of the fact that

his wife must have told him both about the
mali’s
dismissal and Tusker Sahib’s illness. No

member of the staff had mentioned either to him. They preferred him to find things out for

himself. At five o’clock he strolled into the rear compound, inspected the kitchen-garden,

then as if going to visit the invalid went to the gap in the wall which gave access to and a

view of the compound of The Lodge, and stood for a while, hands behind back, observing

the uncut grass, like a man looking at the scene of a recent disaster which he’d heard tell of,

was inquisitive about but not responsible for.

Ibrahim, stationed where he could see but not be seen watched Mr Bhoolabhoy. He had

known from early morning that Mr Bhoolabhoy was back but had said nothing to the

Smalleys because it was one of those days on which for no clear reason none of them was

speaking to the others unless it couldn’t be helped. Such days occurred less frequently than

the days on which it was simply the sahib and memsahib not speaking to one another except

through him or one of them not speaking to him except through the other; but there was no

real accounting for these days of mutual tripartite silence. They simply happened.

So he hadn’t reported Mr Bhoolabhoy’s return but had expected and looked forward to the

visit the manager would presumably pay his old friend on hearing he was still not properly

on his feet after a serious illness. He kept watch too, because he did not want to miss the

row there was bound to be about the garden. His disappointment when Mr Bhoolabhoy

turned away from the gap in the wall and went back to the hotel was profound. “Chicken,”

he thought.

He got up. Memsahib hadn’t yet emerged from her siesta. Sahib was on the verandah,

asleep over the papers he’d taken out of the scratched black deed box which for the past few

days had been the cause of so much fuss and bother.

“It’s in the Lease!” Tusker had cried on the day he’d been transferred from bedroom to

verandah and saw the full extent of nearly three weeks of neglect. “Bring me the box.”

“In the Lease or not in the Lease, dear,” Memsahib replied, smoothing his balding head

between spoonfuls of broth, “you’re not to worry. Wait until Billy-Boy gets back. When he

hears
mali
has resigned I’m sure he will quickly hire another. What is the point of worrying

about the garden if it stops you getting well enough to enjoy it when you’re better and

something’s been done about it?”

“You talk like a perfect fool. Always have done.”

“Yes, I know, Tusker. It’s my own funny little way of making sense.”

“Are you going to bring me the bloody box or not?”

“Broth first. Bloody box later. But not today. If we eat up all our broth and then sleep like a

good boy, who knows we might have a nice arrowroot biscuit with our afternoon tea,

mightn’t we, Ibrahim?”

“No arroot, Memsahib. Only Giyeftiff.”

“Then a nice digestive, Tusker dear.”

“It appals me.”

“What does?”

“A woman of nearly seventy talking like a kid of seven.”

Later that day, after taking tea and a plate of digestive biscuits into the bedroom where

Tusker had retired in a fit of pique after lunch, Ibrahim carried Lucy-Mem’s tea on to the

verandah and found her sitting, gazing at the long grass, her ankles neatly crossed, her hands

folded neatly on her lap.

“Thank you, Ibrahim,” she said without looking at him.

There was a run in one of her stockings. Her shoes had as good a polish on them as he

could work up considering how long she had had them. She had a faraway look in her eyes

as if looking back into places she’d walked in her long-ago shoes.

The day after being accused of talking like a child she helped Ibrahim settle Tusker on the

verandah, then went indoors, came out again and gave her husband the deed box and the

key and left him to it to go shopping in the cantonment bazaar.

“You reeker!” Sahib shouted ten minutes later. Ibrahim had never fully understood the

significance of this exclamation but liked the sound of it.

“Sahib wants?” he inquired, going out to where Tusker sat, well wrapped up, in the worm-

eaten cane lounging chair. February, in Pankot, although warm and sunny, brought morning

chills.

“Wants? Wants nothing. Has found.
Found
.” Flourishing a document. “Now we’ll see.

Won’t we just see. I’ll sue the bitch from arsehole to Christmas.”

Ibrahim nodded approvingly. It was some weeks since Tusker Sahib had threatened anyone

with anything from arsehole to Christmas. The threat was never carried out. Ibrahim had

been metaphorically booted from one to the other many times but never physically even

over a shorter distance. The thing was, Sahib was on the mend. Passion had revived in his

body. Poor frail body. Not a patch on what it once was, judging by the photographs in the

living-room which showed a rather portly upright man, smartly uniformed, and earlier a

younger man of medium height arm in arm with his little memsahib. In all the photographs

the face looked well-fleshed, inclined to chubbiness and (Ibrahim imagined) a reddish

complexion, the expression stern, certainly unsmiling. Now, although Tusker Sahib

sometimes laughed loud and long, frequently burst out with that explosive derogatory Ha!

and could often be discovered alone, smiling to himself and cracking his knuckles, the face

was pale, the skin slack. Brown spots blotched his hands and arms. The English, once they

began falling physically apart, did so with all their customary attention to detail, as if fitting

themselves in advance for their own corpses to make sure they were going to be comfortable

in them. A waste of time, really, since nowadays they all got cremated, a fashion that filled

what was left of Ibrahim’s Islamic soul with horror, and for which he blamed the Hindus

among whom the English had lived too long for their eternal good. Let alone short-term

good. “What has become of the world,” Ibrahim wanted to know, “when a fat money-