Baumgartner's Bombay (11 page)

Baumgartner watched her slosh more drink, more ice into her glass, tried to remember the nondescript figure of the Marwari businessman from Calcutta. Dry as a twist of
tobacco,
shrivelled inside the elaborate folds of his white dhoti and coloured turban, the smell of snuff buried inside them, while from his mouth, full of discoloured teeth, the scent of the silver-coated betel nuts he liked to chew made one reel back – it was like a perfumery – how had Lotte stood it? Even then, when they were both young – when they were all young – he had wondered how Lotte stood it.

She extended her arm to him in a royal, languid gesture, her movements slowed by the gin. ‘See, each bangle here is from Kanti. Solid gold, twenty-two carats like Indian women wear – no European would believe, heh?’ She jingled them on her wrist in a melancholy way, like bells in the wind. ‘Now I’m afraid these thieves will murder me for it – like that drunkard Ramu downstairs, or those – those –’ she jabbed with her finger at the ceiling, not able to bring herself to speak the unspeakable name of the neighbours in that region – ‘but I can’t take them off and put them in the bank. It is like taking off your wedding-ring. Hindu women do it when they become widows but I won’t – they are
not
a wedding-ring, after all, only presents. Presents from Kanti.’ She turned the bangles round and round on her wrist, making that jangling sound that jarred Baumgartner. This Hindu widow act, couldn’t she stop it?

‘That ulcer,’ she was brooding aloud, ‘I told him don’t drink, Kanti – just have the soda, no whisky, but he would lie in my bed, his teeth in a glass on the table – and he would say, “What did I come to Bombay for then? You, and a drink, that is my life, that is what I live for. Give me more whisky,” and I knew how he felt, I also would feel the same, would you not, Hugo?’ She glared at him sharply till he nodded in assent, not at all agreeing. ‘So drink, drink, drink – then one day – phut! The ulcer went, like the doctors said. In Calcutta. I was not even there to hold his hand. His family was already fighting over the property – no one even to hold his hand, there in the hospital. Dogs die like that, in the street. This is how we go, Hugo,’ she wagged her head. ‘In the end – alone.’

‘Oh, Lotte,’ Baumgartner protested, but did not elaborate because he could not.

‘And then the court cases begin. The long, long court cases. How many years that has taken, and all my savings, all Kanti’s gifts. It has ruined my health, Hugo.’

‘Yes, yes,’ he nodded cynically, ‘I see how your health is ruined,’ and ogled her fat arms, her solid thighs, her round belly.

‘It
is
ruined,’ she insisted, ‘only this –’ waving her glass at him – ‘only this keeps me going. Like Kanti.’

‘Be careful,’ he warned, suddenly worried. ‘Perhaps we should eat, Lotte. A sandwich maybe.’

‘Oh, I never eat
Mittagessen
.’ She made a face at the suggestion, and lit a cigarette instead. ‘No breakfast, no lunch. At night, perhaps, a little, if I can force myself to go and shop –’ she walked her fingers across the table – ‘downstairs.’

Baumgartner became alarmed. That was not how he lived, and his stomach was demanding what it was used to, quite vociferously. ‘Just some bread and cheese, Lotte,’ he pleaded, for his own sake more than hers.

‘Bread and cheese?’ she screamed. ‘He thinks he is in
Deutschland
, hah? Or in
der Schweiz?
Choice between Roquefort, Camembert, and Brie perhaps? And bread –
Weissbrot, Schwarzbrot, Pumpernickel
maybe?’ She became red in the face with indignation.

Baumgartner withdrew, ashamed. ‘I only thought – it is so late – too much gin is not good, Lotte. Why not beer instead – in the daytime?’

‘Hah!’ she snorted. ‘Better than the beer in
this
country. Beer only gives the germs food to grow. You need something strong to kill them – like gin.’

‘Ach,
Lottchen
, you have lived here fifty years and no germ has got you yet. Just think how many germs – and mosquitoes, and bugs and lice
you
have murdered in this time, hah?’

‘You remember that family that lived in Napoli, at the top of the house? How they used to send me, sometimes, a tray
with
food when they had a special puja for a grandchild or a wedding or whatever it was? I always gave it to Raju, I knew it was full of germs. Funny,’ she added in an afterthought, ‘that they sent it to me, no? They must have thought – they must have thought Kanti and I – that it was all right. But when he died, all that stopped. Then they sided with his sons, then they too said I was not married, could not keep the flat. So what could I do, Hugo, but give up my beautiful flat in Napoli? They offered to settle out of court – quite a lot of money it seemed to me – so I took it. After all, I had this place; it used to be my shop, my little factory –’

Baumgartner stared at her as if he suspected her of having gone soft in the head with all that gin. What was she talking about now?

Seeing his disbelief she grew shrill. ‘You don’t remember? My hat business that Kanti set up for me? Just after the war? You don’t remember he bought this room for me – for making hats?’ She reached out to give him a push with her hand, forcing him back into his cane bucket. ‘Hugo,
du bist ja so dumm
, so silly – can’t remember Mother Braganza and the two daughters, they used to sit here and make the hats I would design – just after the war?’

He swung his head slowly in a way that could mean yes or no – whatever she wanted of him; a tactic which had often proved useful in his long life with its complicated demands. Staring down at Lotte’s feet which were surprisingly pale and narrow on the stained and discoloured floor, he was seeing again his mother’s cheek white under the black netting of the veil and the fresh violets pinned to her little black cape for a Sunday morning walk on the Kurfürstendamm. He could not say this to Lotte who was unlikely to have come across such an apparition in her life on the stage or in a circus tent, and so for a moment they stared at each other in angry incomprehension.

Then Lotte decided to spell it all out for her poor, fuddled, senile old friend. Swinging one leg over the other so as to give her loose flesh a more closely packed arrangement, bulging with maturity, with experience, she drew on her foul-smelling
cigarette
and reminded Baumgartner, ‘I had told Kanti I wanted to do something – to be busy, not to be always waiting for him in the flat – and that I could make a business out of hats, European hats. So he bought me these magazines – European magazines, I
loved
them, looking at all those elegant clothes, like one sees in Europe –’

Baumgartner gave a small snort, wanting to ask her if she expected him to believe that she came from a world of
haute couture
, from Paris, but Lotte refused to listen, or to be stopped.

‘And I found Mother Braganza and her two daughters. I found they could copy very well. I would show them a hat with feathers, a hat with beads, a hat with a veil. Once I had them make a little one like a Chinese coolie hat, and under it this veil, black net, and on that little-little beads, Hugo –
ach
, it was
élégante
.’

She uncrossed her thighs and her eyes looked glassy, either with gin or the glare from a crack between the coloured curtains at the window. ‘But what was the use of all that fashion here?’ she cried, throwing down her cigarette. ‘I had forgotten I was living in India!’ she laughed. ‘India – the land of the sari – of veiled women – what did they know about
hats?
Such an idiot I was, I really thought they would wear my hats. Hats – on top of a sari?’ she spluttered. ‘And all the time Mother Braganza was telling me, “Madam, no one wear this kind hat. No make this hat, madam. Make for church, for wedding, confirmation, funeral, then you sell. Make with orange blossom, white net, paper flower, my girls will make, Cecilia and Rosalie will make.” But did I listen? Of course not! I, make little girls’ veils to wear at confirmation?’ She shook with laughter, splashing gin and water all over her lap as she refilled her glass, quite ignoring Baumgartner who held out his towards her. ‘How could I do that, coming from a Europe where people knew about fashion and elegance? I couldn’t make church outfits for the Braganzas and the Lobos and the Lopezes of Bombay, it was too much. And so I kept on with feathers and beads – and all those hats just lay there in this
room,
rotting. You know how this climate rots everything – the damp, the dust, the insects. When I moved out of Napoli and came here to live, no more the
memsahib
, no more the designer, just poor old woman, me, I had to sweep out all the feathers and the dead moths and the silverfish. So much rubbish.
Ach
, it made me sad,’ she ended with a scream of laughter, and actually let Baumgartner have a bit of gin in his glass. ‘And Mother Braganza put her daughters on the street. From making hats, they became prostitutes,’ Lotte sighed, plucking at the tattered lace on her slip. ‘And now they and their clients and their children – all living up on the roof – they abuse me. They throw rotten fish at me. They call the police – the police –’ Lotte’s lip began to shake.

‘Not a good idea, the hats,’ Baumgartner summed up, sinking back with his glass.

‘No,’ she agreed, ‘much better to stay in bed, drink gin and forget all this – this banging, this shouting, this madhouse –’ she pressed her hand to her head because down in the courtyard the mechanics were guiding a lorry down the lane on to their premises, bellowing orders and racing the engine as they did so. ‘At least I had this place to come to – when they took Napoli away from me, Kanti’s sons. Those boys – I knew them when they were little. If they were sick, I made them porridge. At night I sat holding ice to their foreheads. I kept away the priest, called the doctor. Not even a thermometer they had in the house till I went and got one. If they wanted to dress smart, I went and chose their clothes. But when Kanti was dead, then they said, “Who is this woman? We don’t know this woman. Throw her out.” Gave me my money and put me out on the street.
Ja
, Hugo, that’s how it was.’

She leaned forward, tilting out of her chair at the table, her tangled hair falling on her freckled shoulders that were cut by the dirty satin straps of her slip. For a while she brooded, then poured out some more gin, lit another cigarette and threw herself back, facing the silent man in the cane bucket chair. ‘
Ja
,’ she said in her brassiest voice, ‘that is the sad story of Lola of Prince’s, eh, Hugo,
mein Liebchen?
’ She gave him a wink,
remembering
that shared experience – surely he remembered
that?
‘You remember the old Lola, don’t you, Hugo?’ To refresh his failing memory, she stretched out her leg, pointing her toes, trying to flex the calf muscle and tighten it into an elegant line. ‘Lola, sweet Lola, of Prince’s, ah-ha,’ she sang.

Baumgartner found himself smiling too. That was a period of Lotte’s multicoloured history that he had known more intimately than her later incarnation as a
memsahib
. Nor was he averse to being reminded of Calcutta, of Prince’s, his own youth, the days of cabaret and Scotch, of Tommies and GIs, profiteering and wealth, the guns of war at a safe distance and yet close enough to edge the scene with a certain hysteria, the unforgettable hysteria like a drunkenness, a fever bordering on delirium.

‘And can Lola still do the can-can?’ he teased her.

She stretched out her leg again and jabbed him with her toe. ‘To which era you think I belong, eh? To your grandmother’s?’ Banging down her glass, she heaved herself to her feet. ‘Can you remember nothing?’ Putting out her arm, she bent her back and swung around with an unexpected agility. ‘Can’t you remember Gisela and I in our blue satin gowns with red bows – like this?’ She pranced about in her slip, holding up one tattered corner of it as she did so, the other hand on her hip, humming:

‘Tea for two and two for tea,

Me for you and you for me . . .’

Baumgartner leant back in his chair, clapping. ‘Bravo!
Ja
, I remember it, Lotte. And Gisela with her hair just out of those curlers – she always had a shampoo before a performance – and then each of you did a piece separately – what was it?’

Lotte pulled away the chair from the table, lifted one leg and rested her foot on it. One hand on her hip, with the other she held an imaginary cigarette to her lips. Then, flinging her hair out of her eyes with an equine gesture, she sang out of the corner of her mouth, down-turned:

‘Underneath the lantern by the barrack gate,

Darling, I remember the way you used to wait . . .’

‘“Lilli Marlene”,’ shouted Baumgartner, clapping his hands. ‘Bravo, “Lilli Marlene”!’

She bowed with a great grandeur of manner but it made her lose her balance and with it her flair for impersonation. Throwing herself on to the chair, she planted her hands on her knees, looking both pleased and ruffled. ‘But that Gisela,’ she said when she got back her breath, ‘that Gisela, she went to that fat little manager – Om Sahni, you remember him, Hugo – and told him, “I come from Russia. I am from the Ballet Russe. I was prima ballerina. I danced Odette, Odile, Giselle . . .” What was she not star of, that Gisela? Never
corps de ballet
, always from birth prima ballerina! And Om Sahni who had been making soda water and bottling it in the shed behind the hotel before he became manager, he believed every word she said. How could a
memsahib
, a blonde lady with a white skin, tell a lie? And he would put on a shiny satiny suit and wear a tie made of sofa material, you know, and sit very close to the dance floor and watch her leaping around in satin slippers with chicken feathers coming down over her ears with tears in his eyes.
Ach
, if Pavlova could have seen Gisela dance the Dying Swan in the Grand Hotel in Calcutta, she would have risen out of her grave and hit her on the head with hammer and sickle, I think – a Bolshevist it would have made of her.’

‘Show how Gisela did the Dying Swan, Lotte,’ Baumgartner encouraged her but Lotte would not. It was not that Lotte admitted to any limitations of her own but it was now the stifling peak of noon, she had already drunk enough gin to feel waterlogged, and talking made for less perspiration than dancing.