Baumgartner's Bombay (26 page)

The freedom movement certainly had stirred something in his soft, pendulous breast under the crisp white cotton
kurta
, even if he had made much of his money by supporting the British war effort and supplying the British army. He told Baumgartner with pride that both Gandhi and Sardar Patel came from Gujarat, that he had heard Patel speak, when he was a young man, in his village, before he came to Bombay to run the family’s jewellery business. And now the business had grown so much – jewellery was only one of his interests, timber another, but he also traded in leather, in bauxite, in iron ore, chemicals, aluminium, paper, spices – a whole empire of business, it seemed, and of course he could accommodate Baumgartner, quite easily.

He began, that blistering afternoon with the light coming off the sea like metal that had melted in it and was being drawn off in shivering silver sheets, by taking Baumgartner to a house, Hira Niwas, a tall stucco four-storeyed building in a dark lane behind the grandiose pile of the Taj Hotel, which was owned by a relation of his – he could have been merely a friend, but Chimanlal called every man ‘brother’. He arranged for Baumgartner to rent a small flat in it for a price that was reasonable considering its location (he seemed to feel that as a foreigner Baumgartner could live nowhere but in the vicinity of the Taj). When Baumgartner had deposited his bag there, checked to see if water ran from the taps in the sink, if the shutters in the window opened and shut and if the door locked, he took him back again to his office which was in the more noisy and bustling quarter of Kalbadevi, near the huge Eros cinema and the Gothic walls of St Xavier’s College, the
Parsi
fire temple and the Parsi shops for little black caps, white vests and sticks of sandalwood, the Parsi dairy and sweet and confectionery shops, tattered secondhand bookshops, crowded tea stalls with glittering mirrors. Here he had a single office room, scarcely bigger than a cubicle, off a staircase in a seedy building that housed an Irani restaurant at street level, a tailoring establishment above it, a school for typing and shorthand, a dentist, a polyclinic and a dozen other small business establishments like his own.

He lowered himself on to a low divan spread with spotless white sheets, lounged aginst a white bolster under a lithograph of his patron goddess, freshly garlanded with marigolds and wreathed in spirals of richly sweet smoke from perfumed joss sticks. Perhaps she was the reason, Baumgartner thought, for Chimanlal’s bland, imperturbable optimism and confidence and the good humour that he exuded like glistening perspiration (the office had no cooling arrangement other than the old and decrepit electric ceiling fan). Several times in the course of their talk he bowed to the oleograph on the wall, clasped his hands in prayer and murmured, ‘If Lakshmi wills it, it will succeed. Everything is in Lakshmi’s hands.’

Baumgartner found it disquieting to begin with – he had never left anything in the hands of the gods, and would not have known which ones to chose from the plethora available in India – or which of their many hands for that matter – but he found that if he were to work for Chimanlal, he would have to humour Chimanlal’s beliefs and ways. Chimanlal showed him the ways in which he could be of use to him and how he could earn a reasonable commission, and he came and went with his orders and transactions, always doubtful if Lakshmi would guide him as well while he conducted Chimanlal’s latest ventures – transporting bauxite down Goa’s rivers to its ports on the Arabian Sea, setting up a factory for aluminium pots and pans in the hinterland of Gujarat – and was surprised to find he could secure orders and get business done so satisfactorily as to make Chimanlal smile broadly and turn
around
and bow to his garlanded goddess in thanksgiving so profound, so humble that it made Baumgartner look away in embarrassment.

On one of these business trips, Baumgartner found he had to change trains at a small junction out in the flat, red-soiled barren country where he would have to waste nearly a whole day. The train from Bombay deposited him there on a blazing morning with the sun pouring on to the corrugated iron roof like smelt from a foundry, then drew away, leaving him on a wooden bench, mopping his neck with a handkerchief that grew quickly soiled and grubby, and idly watching a miserable pair of rhesus monkeys in a small pipal tree that they had stripped of leaves, grooming each other with dissatisfied expressions on their small pinched faces. Other travellers lay on mats or bedrolls spread out on the station platform, only once in a while raising a hand to brush away flies or languidly wave a palm leaf fan. Coolies in their red shirts sat on their haunches smoking
bidis
and waiting for the next train to arrive. A station-master in a white uniform badly in need of washing, ironing and mending, came out of his office to advise Baumgartner to eat. ‘It is not good to sit for so long without food,’ he reprimanded Baumgartner who was surprised: surely the station-master ought to know his timetable and understand the reason why Baumgartner had such a long wait. To placate the man – perhaps he was preventing him from going off to enjoy his own lunch – he got up and went to a food barrow where a vendor served him with some potato fritters in a leaf cup. Afraid that the station-master might be watching, Baumgartner tried to eat them but the chillies defeated him and he let them drop under the bench. Instantly a stray dog dashed up and snatched it as though a whole horde were after it, and some crows did soon alight to try and get a share. Baumgartner took a cup of sweet milky tea from the vendor and drank that although it made him mop his face even more frequently. The afternoon slowly dragged itself over the breadth of the corrugated iron roof, then finally began to fall
westwards.
There were still some hours to wait – Baumgartner’s train did not arrive till late in the evening. Why had no one warned him? He felt anger at being sent off uninformed and unprepared but, as usual, the anger rebounded on him, its ultimate cause.

It made him get to his feet and walk down the length of the platform and out of the station. Behind the station sheds and yards there was a township of a sort – some stucco houses with doors painted green and blue and pink, several shacks of tin and rag and cardboard. Open gutters ran outside them along which children squatted, women washed and dogs lapped. They looked up in suspicious amazement to see him pass but he tried not to meet their eyes, to walk on. The vendors of cigarettes and soft drinks called to him from their barrows but he wanted neither. There were grain and oil stores, the usual workshop with lathes and sparkling welding machines. String cots were dragged out into the dust of lanes, and cooking fires lit. When he had walked past and left behind these habitations, he came upon some cattle foraging for fodder in the dry, friable soil of the barren land, a herdsboy sitting on a stone, whistling. He walked on, leaving them behind too.

The road petered out into the stony dirt. There was no sign of fields, of agriculture, or irrigation or habitation. There was the red sandy dust, and the black volcanic rocks. The dumb unrelenting flatness of the iron earth at last gave way to a slight swell. Baumgartner, unable to face the walk back through the township again, decided to climb that low hill, if such a name could be given it. Who knows, he sighed, perhaps on the
other
side there was something to see – golden valley, flowering grove or still pool. He had to laugh at his own stupidity. No, of course, there would be nothing but this red dust, this black stone, sun and barren space. But perhaps the hilltop offered something – at least there was a tumble of rocks to be seen on it, crouching like a beast for protection from heights, views, space. He would go up and sit there for a while. The dust crept into his shoes, lay in a red film on his socks and trouser cuffs, and the stones stubbed against his toes. Still, a little movement
could
be felt in the air – not exactly a breeze, but at least a stir, and it gave him the energy to complete that climb.

Yes, there were rocks piled there on the bony spine of the hill. Baumgartner surmised that they had been placed together to form a kind of cave. It was clearly no temple of famed carvings and fabulous idols such as heaped the rest of the country with their artistic splendour – no, it was Baumgartner’s luck to have come to a part of the country that had been left out of such abundance – but he felt it must be something ancient and primitive anyway.

He stood for a while on that mean summit, while a pair of kites wheeled in the colourless, featureless sky as if they had sighted him and were wondering if he was worthy prey before they swooped. Baumgartner remembered stories he had heard of eagles who were fed at a temple, who flew free and ranged everywhere but returned every evening to be fed by the temple priest. Where was that temple? Not this one, of course. No one could have heard of this one, there was nothing to say about it and it was probably nameless. He was, in fact, not quite certain that it was a temple at all. True, now that he had paused and looked about him, he could see that there was a path of sorts leading from the small town across the flat land to this hillock – he saw its grey trail through the rusty earth from this height. So it was used, people came here, to see – what?

Finally he lowered himself to fit the crack that made an entrance into the rocks, and found that if he overcame his squeamishness about dark places, it was possible to enter. He edged his large bulk into the small space bravely and for a moment struggled with a vision of having his face clawed by escaping birds or – worse – bats. He could smell them, that rank urinary odour that one could expect in such dark caves. But he heard no squeak of bat voices or flap of bat wings; they had left only their odour here. Or was it that? Could it perhaps belong to something else – like an idol?

Although his eyes were growing accustomed to the dark, he still could make out nothing in that inner chamber. There was no vent or shaft for light or air. Although it was so well sealed
from
the heat of the sun, it was not cool either; on the contrary, the heat seemed to thicken and congeal here, like spilt blood, into a dark clot.

Very cautiously Baumgartner moved forwards, his feet feeling the uneven surface of the stone flooring. When he thought he was in the centre of the chamber, he stopped. Actually, it was something that stopped him, but he could not tell what. Neither his feet nor his outstretched hands struck anything. He had heard nothing. But he was certain there was an object there. Trying to stand still and breathe calmly, he told himself it could be an idol. What kind of idol? Could it be that black, engorged penis he had seen in roadside shrines, or an oxen hump, placid and bovine, some swollen udder of blood? He strained his eyes to see but his eyes had never met with such total blackness. The darkness itself was a presence. Abandoned the temple might be but he could swear it was not empty. Something was blocking the chamber, emanating a stench, and watching
him
, with an uncanny stealth, not betraying itself by the slightest sound or motion. The silence thundered in his ears. After listening to its beat for a long time, he finally lowered his head – he could hear the small bones of his neck grate against each other – and down by his foot he made out a flat slab of black stone and upon it a rounded projection, also of black stone. The reason he could make it out in that thick darkness was that someone had smeared it with red powder, or paste, which reflected some small trickle of light that came through the slit of the entrance. Something fragile and dry lay curved around it – perhaps a marigold garland, dried up. Perhaps a snake skin, or even a snake. What did this black stone profess to be that it was so honoured? Baumgartner would have liked to know. The chamber seemed to hold a secret. If Baumgartner could find out that secret –

He swivelled his head slowly, listening to the bones creak. But there was no one to tell him – no priest, no pilgrim. No voice, no song, not even a dim inscription scratched into the black fur that coated the stones.

He was certain now that there was nothing here but what he could dimly make out. Then what was it that was so stealthily watching him, breathing so malignly down his neck, raising the small hairs on his back as if he were faced with danger, with death? It had to be something, even if only a deadly spider, or scorpion. But it was not that kind of fear and Baumgartner knew it was not a spider or a scorpion. It was just a stone. A black blob, spat out by some disdainful god, to land at his feet and then solidify, blocking his way.

Definitely he had a sense of being stopped. He was to go no further. He had arrived at the final barrier. And what was that – death? Was this temple occupied by death? Was it the scene of some hideous human sacrifice? One read of them, from time to time, in the papers. Even of cannibalistic rites, tantric magic. Had some drugged creature, animal or human, been dragged up here to be decapitated, to spill the crimson stuff out of its unstoppered self and water this immutable black blob of god-spit, god-sputum? Perhaps it was death that lay there in a heap, a heap of death piled up, as casually as dog’s turds, saying to Baumgartner – the end, no more.

But Baumgartner would not have its no. He turned and scrambled out of the narrow exit with such speed that he scratched his arms against the stone, hurt his knee against its rib, and fell out on to the hillside as if ejected by whatever possessed or inhabited that temple. Indigestible, inedible Baumgartner. The god had spat him out.
Raus
, Baumgartner, out. Not fit for consumption, German or Hindu, human or divine.

Half-way down the track, laughing in humiliation and mortification as he rubbed his scratched elbows, Baumgartner knew he had been expelled from some royal presence. Go, Baumgartner. Out. He had not been found fit. Shabby, dirty white man,
firanghi
, unwanted.
Raus
, Baumgartner,
raus
.

When freedom came, Baumgartner was again on the fringe, looking on the Independence Day celebrations from a distance, finding himself smiling at the flags, the balloons, the
slippers
flung up in the air in rejoicing, and then wondering why he smiled. When communal riots rent the new nation, making Bombay bulge with the refugees who streamed in from over the border, he skirted their shelters, avoided the sights. He was glad when Bombay settled back into its familiar activities of trade and commerce, committing itself again to the possibilities, the opportunities, the sanguine nature of a port.