A New World: A Novel (Vintage International) (14 page)

But the lift had arrived; a woman emerged, holding a pomeranian by a leash. Bespectacled, she was about to pass Jayojit when she glanced at him and stopped.

“Mr. Chatterjee, isn’t it?” she asked sharply.

“Yes,” said Jayojit; he’d recognized her with an odd feeling of ambivalence. “How are you, Mrs. Gupta?”

“Quite well,” she replied, smiling as if she’d let slip a white lie. “Not too bad. Back again from England?”

The pomeranian strained at the leash, and traced part of a circle; its paws made a glassy sound. Bonny gazed at the dog; he didn’t like pomeranians, they were too perfect and toy-like.

“America, actually,” Jayojit said, apologetic; storing her words for future use in an anecdote.

“Oh! of course—(actually it’s all the same to us here)!” she confided without embarrassment. “But I much prefer the English accent, don’t you? My God, I don’t understand the American one at all!”

“No.” He added, “It’s strange to our ears,” speaking like one who hadn’t been to that country himself, but also being truthful.

“And how long have you been here?” she asked brightly.

“A month and a half . . .” Time seemed to have passed more quickly in the last week than during the first half of the stay.

“One and a half months—in this weather! Really, what endurance you have, Mr. Chatterjee! Go back to America, go back to America!” She broke into a piercing laugh that seemed to have nothing to do with what she’d just said. Then, solicitously, “My niece in Cambridge is getting married,” she informed him.

The niece. Jayojit had never met her—he hardly knew Mrs. Gupta—but ever since she’d heard that he taught economics, she’d told him that she had a niece at Cambridge— and last time, with her husband looking on, had said, “But
you
have a Cambridge in Massachusetts, don’t you?,” as if briefly noting, and then choosing to give no importance to, a slightly compromising fact—and then felt obliged to provide him with auntly bulletins of her progress in England whenever she met him, which, as it happened, was two or three times a year; the niece, to his chagrin, had become a spirit who inhabited their conversations.

“That’s very good! Congratulations!” Then, wondering why it should be the aunt who should be congratulated: “When?”

“January,” she said.

“Cold time of the year—if it’s in England.”

“Oh yes! I plan to go for the wedding.” The way she said this made it seem that the wedding was going to take place around the corner. “I’ll eat a lot and keep warm.” Then, as if she’d saved the most interesting nugget for the last, “She’s marrying an Englishman,” a little romantically. “Anyway,” she sang, “I must go now.” The leash in her hand became straight and taut. “Mimi’s urging me to go! I hope to see you again! Come on, Mimi,” she added in English, as if it were a language that came naturally with the pomeranian. She had altogether ignored his son, standing next to him.

When Jayojit had come to visit his parents a few years ago it was her husband, a man who’d been reduced by a stroke to shouting out his sentences, she’d been walking. A tall man in trousers and a bush shirt; part of the face had been paralysed, but it was the part that moved and spoke that looked disfigured. Although agitated, he took care to show that the agitation was directed at no one but himself, and, lifting his eyes, would manage to convey a smile. Mrs. Gupta had gone about with him, her refusal to display any outward sign of discomfiture so marked that it was that that became noticeable. On the three days of Puja celebration, the man moved about with a light in his eyes, in a bush shirt he must have struggled to put on himself; and Mrs. Gupta flitted between the sound of the drums and the children in new clothes. On Jayojit’s last visit, soon after he’d arrived, alone, he’d learnt, in an aside during the first serious discussions they’d had about his divorce, that the gentleman had died; he’d had no time to register the fact; but when he’d seen Mrs. Gupta again a few days later, she’d somehow seemed bereft without the hobbling man next to her.

“WHAT A COMMOTION!” said Dr. Sen, shaking his head.

Two men were repairing a pipe.

Jayojit said: “I hope this doesn’t mean that there won’t be any water! We had a whole morning without water a few days ago.”

“Oh, no no,” the doctor said. “I think this is a leakage. It’s one of the things we discuss on Saturday.”

One of the men jumped back at a gush of water.

“Yes. The monthly meeting of the committee,” said Dr. Sen. He said, like one reporting a scandal, “The plumbing’s old. It hasn’t been looked into properly even once. They just ignore the problem, as if that’ll make it go away.” Jayojit hadn’t seen him so excited before; the doctor didn’t explain who “they” were.

Jayojit wasn’t to know that Dr. Sen was assertive before every meeting, but that during the meetings he kept quiet.

“But that’s what he does!” protested the Admiral. “I’ve seen him do it several times!” He looked glum but triumphant, like one who was to be vindicated yet again.

On Saturday, maidservants loitered downstairs; but by ten o’clock chairs had been arranged. Not that all the chairs would be needed, but they liked a sense of numbers, of largeness.

Dr. Sen was among the early; he situated himself randomly, but near a fan. Heat was an unattributed participant in the debates; those nearer the fan’s temperate zone were more reasonable. The people on the chairs increased, but no one seemed to know when or how the meeting would begin. Dr. Sen acknowledged an acquaintance with a nod, and glanced once more at his watch.

Some of those attending had reappeared after a longish interval; a widower, Bhattacharya, spent half the year with one of his two daughters in Texas and had had open heart surgery; here he was, recently bathed, slightly darker, looking as if he’d never travelled beyond Sealdah or Kharagpur.

“When did you come back, Mr. Bhattacharya?” said Dr. Sen, with disproportionate friendliness, since they’d spoken not more than twice before.

“Day before yesterday.”

Just like that. The flat he’d left empty and locked must have needed clearing up.

There were others whom the doctor didn’t recognize and who’d come to the meeting for the first time probably; they had the expectant, aimless air of people sitting on a park bench. Sengupta, who didn’t get along with anyone, was by himself just as everyone else was, but he exuded this inability to belong.

“What time was it supposed to start, Mr. Lahiri?”

Upstairs, the Admiral was inhaling as he combed his hair: “I suppose I’ll be late.”

“I don’t see why you have to go,” said his wife; he looked at her, surprised.

“I have a responsibility too, you know, living in this building.”

After a moment he conceded: “Sarkar’s not bad. More educated than the rest, though he still looks like a menial . . .” He paused aggressively after this, as if some ghost from the past might reprimand him. “Then there’s that fellow Ray, retired from Ahmedabad . . .” he put down the comb, “doesn’t speak much though. But he’s impressive-looking, always calm.” The Admiral was an admirer of the dignified mien. “Subramanian’s president this year. Not a bad sort. He talks too slowly.”

As he walked towards a door he said:

“Settled here for generations. Speaks Bengali like you and me.”

Mrs. Chatterjee was only half-listening.

“Hasn’t he ever greeted you during the Pujas? You won’t be able to tell him apart from the rest.”

“I can’t remember who he is. Maybe he
has
greeted me during the Pujas.”

Subramanian and Sarkar sat facing them. Whenever Subramanian began to speak the Admiral looked up.

About twenty people. There were factions; for instance, there was Sengupta, who’d brought disrepute upon himself and the committee during his presidentship last year. The Admiral looked at the back of his head, and the scattering of faces. He could see that Sengupta was feeling left out, that he was preparing for a confrontation, but wouldn’t initiate it.

Dr. Sen was daydreaming. The Admiral had a premonition that he’d spend the meeting staring at the wall when, to his surprise, the doctor said: “Why should we give contracts to two different parties for—uh, for maintenance of pipes and cleaning the waterworks? I don’t understand.”

“Is that on the agenda for this meeting?” asked Sarkar, in the manner of one speaking of things pre-determined and transcending personal control.

“B-but it’s a question of reducing costs”; sounding like the first, tentative notes on an instrument.

They spoke for the next twenty minutes of someone who, in spite of repeated reminders, failed to pay his “out-goings” for the last three months. They referred to him, throughout, by his flat number. Now, reluctantly, they were planning to penalize 10C by cutting off his electricity supply; there was no choice in the matter.

A man in the third row was raising his arm; it was Sengupta; there was something tense about him, as if he were in the grip of a compulsion.

“Yes, Mr. Sengupta?” said Subramanian, refusing to acknowledge a threat.

Without standing up, Sengupta said, “Last year’s budget has already been exceeded, Mr. Subramanian.”

Subramanian moved his head to get a clearer view of Sengupta. Someone must have been in the first stages of catching a cold, or recovering from one, because he coughed repeatedly; Mrs. Gupta looked distracted, as if life had turned out to be in some way a minor, uninteresting affair.

“We’ve gone into this before,” said Subramanian, not ready to give up his control of the proceedings, but seeking to swerve delicately from a debate.

“That is not the answer I was looking for,” said Sengupta. This was evidently for the benefit of others. The Admiral was both bored and revived; he had stopped participating in these meetings, in rehearsing these platitudes about this fifteen-year-old building none of these people very much cared for; he knew that if he began to speak he would sputter and speak the truth. This was a different phase in his life, its significance, if it had any, not yet clear to himself; he no longer resisted the shape it took.

The matter was not resolved, and Sengupta’s bull-like charge ended in nothing. In the next few moments the conversation actually drifted away from the question without anyone making it do so. The truth was that Sengupta could only make brief and histrionic stands but couldn’t take up pursuit because he was vulnerable to questioning himself.

Half an hour later, the meeting was over.

“Is it more humid than last year?” the Admiral said to Dr. Sen, standing in front of the fan.

But Dr. Sen was taken with another matter.

“You see those post-boxes. I th-think they’re being vandalized. Two or three of them are broken—I d-don’t know why: deliberately, or to steal mail.”

The row of deaf postboxes stared back at them.

“You never stay till September,” said Jayojit’s mother, her smile private and ironical. “You always go before.”

“God’s sake, that’s what the year’s like,” said Jayojit; his mother seemed hurt, though she decided not to show it, at the outburst. He read her face; he was sorry. There was an anger in him, a frustration; whenever there was reason to be angry, he cut himself off. Instead, he reacted with impatience at some innocent remark, some item in the news; he’d come to a junction in his life where, over-alert, he was no more confident of being understood or of understanding others; but with his mother, especially during this visit, he had successfully held himself in check.

“You’ll miss the Pujas,” she said. Last year they’d sat at home and listened to the drums beating downstairs and in the distance. They didn’t visit anyone; instead, they spoke to Jayojit on the telephone.

“What are you doing, Joy?” his mother had asked. It was nine o’clock in the evening; a flurry of drums could be heard in the background, and the light that illuminated the balcony moved and had a tinge of colour to it.

“Nothing,” said Jayojit, sounding slightly at a loss. “Of course, there’s no holiday here, but I didn’t have any lectures today. I’ve been at home.”

“Rana phoned today,” she said.

There was a small pause as those words travelled across continents.

“Really? What did he say?”

“He said they had guests and Anita made payesh.”

“Really, made payesh? Rana’s a lucky fellow.”

When he was married, Amala and he’d go to Detroit (either Detroit or Cleveland; but they preferred Detroit; they knew more people there) for the Pujas. Last time, the Detroit Puja Committee had hired two school buildings for the festival; and he’d bowed before the pratima with her large eyes, placed at one end of the hall near the portraits of the school founders. How fervent Amala used to be during the anjali! He used to wonder what she was praying for. She’d open her eyes after the anjali with a startled look, like a swimmer who’s come up from underwater.

He didn’t believe—belief did not come into it, as he’d explored the hall, cradling Bonny in one arm, or pausing clumsily to put him to sleep. (Half-asleep in that din, he’d grown heavier in his arms.) But, over the last few years, he’d begun to believe in the efficacy of prayer; of aloneness, which is what prayer was. That, to him, in the centre of the noise, had been a discovery.

“But this is what they do after it rains a little,” grumbled Jayojit’s mother. She didn’t explain who “they” were. “It’s a good excuse.” Maya hadn’t come.