Baumgartner's Bombay (30 page)

He never could make out why the builders had attached these ledge-like balconies to the walls of Hira Niwas. Other tenants used them to hang out their endless washing, but Baumgartner never had any washing to hang. Like the others, he stored his junk on them, old boxes and tins and empty bottles – and of course the sand trays for his cats. It made a playground for them when they felt active, and the way they climbed on to the boxes, or wound their way in and out of the iron balustrade made him protest. ‘Now what if you fall, eh?’ and bent down to hold them away from such danger, at which they mocked.

It was absolutely dark in the lane, the single lamppost having had no bulb for at least a year. People from the street sometimes came to urinate against the wall and rubbish drifted in and accumulated undisturbed. At the end of the lane, where it opened on to the street, Baumgartner could see streetlights shining on the family that lived on the pavement. They were unusually, probably only momentarily, quiet. He could see dark shapes crawling in and out of the low shack, and hear voices and the sounds of cooking and eating. Baumgartner could hear the hiss and splatter of oil, the eternal clinking of pots and pans in the flowing water of the gutter. In the darkness, so little illuminated by the dim lamp, it made a scene both melancholy and comforting. It was a scene that was linked for Baumgartner with the one he had observed through the barbed wire fencing of the camp – of women going to their cowpat heap to fetch dry pats for fuel, Annemarie hanging up the washing, and further back in time – his mother putting steaming dishes on the table, preparing him for bed . . .

Yet only five minutes walk would bring one to the Taj Hotel, lit up and swinging with the life of money, business, trade, success; the stretch of Arthur Bunder Road and
the
waves of the sea battering the stone wall, the floodlit Gateway of India, the evening crowds strolling, eating spicy snacks at pavement stalls, sitting on the parapet and looking out at the lighted ships in the bay, waiting for night to bring a little cool with the sea breeze. The life of Bombay which had been Baumgartner’s life for thirty years now – or, rather, the setting for his life; he had never actually entered it, never quite captured it; damply, odorously, cacophonously palpable as it was, it had been elusive still.

If he had earlier been grateful, now he was depressed. Fatigued, probably. Picking up Teufel under his arm, he went back into the room and shut the door. He looked at the clock on the shelf amongst all the tarnished trophies and saw it was late, very late. How long should he stay up and wait for the boy? Would he return at all? His rucksack lay on the floor beside the divan and so Baumgartner presumed he would return for it, but it could be tomorrow, or the day after. A boy like that, such a wild fellow, he could not be expected to bother about his belongings.

Baumgartner sighed, and went down on his knees with a great groan to put the scattered belongings back into the rucksack and put it out of the way so that no one should stumble on it in the dark. He tried to pick up objects and shove them in without looking but if the objects were as extraordinary as syringes and phials then he could scarcely ignore them. His round, fat face looked furrowed as he handled the slim, sharp objects of glass and metal: they looked dangerous, they felt dangerous, he wished he did not have to touch them. Nervously he looked up to see if the boy would not burst in and accuse Baumgartner of – of what? What could old Baumgartner do with these things? They belonged to the young, they were a part of another generation’s existence, not his. He pushed them into the rucksack and buckled down the straps so they would not fall out again. Then he lifted the bag and leant it against the wall by the divan. Immediately Teufel, the most curious of the cats, slid across to it and began to
examine
it delicately, sniffing with his fine nostrils and shaking his whiskers at the peculiar, unaccustomed odours, then suddenly pouncing at it as though it was an interloper, a beast, digging his claws through the canvas ferociously, then falling away.

Baumgartner laughed at his antics. ‘
Ganz meshuggeh, du
,’ he smiled, feeling much better, and went into the bathroom to change into his pyjamas.

Coming out, he looked sadly towards the divan on which he always slept. Could he not go to sleep now that he was so tired and it was so late? Would the boy come tonight and demand to sleep here? Surely not. Baumgartner sat down and pressed his hand against his eyes which grew blurred and watered when he was tired. ‘
Ach
, Mieschen,’ he sighed to the soft grey one who came and rubbed her cold nose on his wrist, willing him to lie down so she could curl up on his chest, ‘we are not used to entertaining guests, eh? Not made for guests over here, eh?’ He rubbed the flat head between the two sharp ears, and she pushed hard against his hand in an ecstasy, purring in a way that acted as a soporific on Baumgartner.

Finally he lay down on the divan – just for a little while, he told himself, and to keep himself awake he reached out for the packet of cards on the low table that he often read at odd hours of the night when he could not sleep. They were very old now, these cards, the paper brown and flecked and very brittle, but somehow the ink had lasted and he could still trace the writing on them with its cryptic messages:
Do not worry, my rabbit, I am well. Are you well? Keep well, my mouse, and do not worry – I am well
– and then they stopped. There were not many of them. Once again he had come to the end of the small collection. There were no more. After that –
Nacht und Nebel
. Night and Fog. Baumgartner put them carefully back on the low table, in a small pile where they always lay. Switching off the lamp, he lay with his arm over his eyes and in the dark could still see the script, spidery and fine. Gradually the words ran into each other, became garbled. They made no sense. Nothing made
sense.
Germany there, India here – India there, Gemany here. Impossible to capture, to hold, to read them, make sense of them. They all fell away from him, into an abyss. He saw them falling now, white shapes turning and turning, then going grey as the distance widened between them and him. He stood watching as they fell and floated, floated and fell, till they drifted out of sight, silently, and he was left on the edge, clutching his pyjamas, straining to look. But there was nothing to look at, it was all gone, and he shut his eyes, to receive the darkness that flooded in, poured in and filled the vacuum with the thick black ink of oblivion, of
Nacht und Nebel
.

Kurt returned many hours later. The family on the pavement was asleep, lying wrapped in sheets that the darkness made white – all except for the drunkard Jagu himself who still had something in his bottle to finish and sat with it between his legs, his back against the lamppost. Kurt, seeing its glint, stopped. The man looked up at him, at the strange face, distinctly white, foreign. The shorts, the bracelet, the dishevelled hair marked him out as a type that had become known on the streets of the city. Hip-py they were called, the two syllables separated to make the scorn heavier.

The two men regarded each other in the dark, the only two awake and alert at that hour. Kurt finally spoke, not expecting to be understood but knowing that there were certain words that everyone knew who belonged to the city, any city. ‘Ganja? Hashish?’ he asked, in a low and rasping tone because his throat was sore from wanting. ‘Grass? Brown sugar?’ He put out his hand to emphasise his want.

The drunkard jerked into action. Lurching to his feet, he began to swear at Kurt, clutching his bottle and guarding the last drop fiercely from this hungry-looking
firanghi
.

Kurt shook his head and spread out his hands to try and calm him. ‘No want, no want,’ he growled ‘Ganja? Grass? LSD?’ He made jabbing motions of one hand at the other.

Jagu gesticulated more angrily, righteously even. The woman stirred in her shroud and muttered some angry words, trying to silence him. The man swung around to abuse her for interfering. Kurt left them to it and walked on.

He went up the stairs into the hall of the brown stairs and the bright odours. The watchman was not on his stool; he had gone off either to relieve himself in the street or play a hand of cards with the other watchmen. The single unshaded bulb hanging by a dirt-encrusted cord shone with a wicked brilliance. Kurt went up the stairs heavily, grasping the sticky banisters to help him mount them, his legs having the curious sensation of giving way under him, his feet of slipping in different directions. He panted laboriously, his breath coming with difficulty as he mounted the first, second and then the third flight of the old rotten wooden stairs. On every landing, a closed door, a steamy silence. It was very late.

On the third landing there was no light, the bulb having fused and not been replaced, but some light from the hall below filtered up and Kurt peered at the small handwritten label pasted on the door.
H. Baumgartner
. The name made his mouth twist with sarcasm, with ferocity. To come half-way across the world and meet H. Baumgartner, what an irony. Then he bunched his lips together and paused as he got a small penknife out of his pocket and inserted it into the keyhole. Sven, in Kathmandu, had taught him the trick – if the knife had a sharp enough point, and was pressed and turned in a certain way, it could open almost any lock, but it had to be sharp and fine enough to enter the lock at a certain point: was it? Kurt tried to control his large hands that seemed clumsy tonight, as difficult to bring under control as his legs and feet – like them, his hands seemed colossal, weighty and with a will of their own. But he managed – it was a trick he had used so often after all; he gave a snort of laughter, thinking of Sven, of Kathmandu, of Freak Street, of ganja, the smell of it, the dry, leafy, clinging smoke and sweetness. He put his tongue out between his teeth as he tasted it, and tested the lock. With
scarcely
any effort, just a wish, it sprang open. There was a click and Kurt heard a sound in the flat responding to that click, but only a very soft sound, very light, quickly fading. Baumgartner’s cursed cats of course, he thought, and swore. Pressing the door open a slit, he peered in. After the shadowiness of the landing, it did not seem impenetrably dark – some light from the street came through the open window. In that light he saw the sliding, slinking shapes of the felines as they raised themselves or lowered themselves to examine the visitor. He restrained his impulse to lash out at them with his bare feet.

He stood for a while in the doorway, staring into the darkness and the dusky shapes, the moving ones and the immobile ones, familiarising himself with it all before he took his next step. His rucksack was gone from the rug, he saw, and also made out Baumgartner’s thick, lumpy shape on the divan, limp with deep sleep. He turned his head very slowly and made sure that the silver prizes on the shelf were still there. There was little light to see by, but he could make out their sizes, their shapes, their number. He slid his penknife back in his pocket and shut the door behind him, so silently that the shape on the divan did not stir.

He walked silently across the floor to the kitchen table. The cats sprang out of his way, like furred moths flying up at a touch. He saw the table-top was blank, cleared away as might be expected from a fussy old bachelor. But what he looked for lay there as if at his request – the long thin kitchen knife with which he had seen Baumgartner cut up the disgusting putrid flesh for his damned cats. The memory of that repulsive meal and of the stupid slow warty old man fussing over the caterwauling beasts made him lift his lips off his teeth as he reached out for the knife and picked it up with silent fingers. He stood holding it still for so long as to make the cats stop pacing around him, worrying at these unfamiliar movements. Then he turned and glided over the floor towards the divan, ready at any moment to stop and freeze or else leap into frenzied action.

There was no movement. Baumgartner slept on, his hands clutching each other under his chin as he lay, curled on his left side. His right arm had sunk down over his chest to meet the left arm, leaving his ribs as well as a triangle of chest exposed, the flesh soft and yellow, like tallow, where the pyjama top was open. His mouth was open, too, and his breath came and went, the lips moving faintly as cats’ whiskers move, but without their sensitivity to what was happening near him. Baumgartner slept, in ignorance. Ignorance was, after all, his element. Ignorance was what he had made his own. It was his country, the one he lived in with familiarity and resignation and relief.

Kurt steadied himself, drawing his feet together, straightening his legs, both to ensure his balance and give him a position of strength. He brought his hands together so that both clasped the hasp of the knife and it seemed to take long moments before he could get his grip right, place his fingers in correct alignment, summoning up all his faculties so that they gathered in that one shaft. Then, with great speed, he raised the knife, then bent, and plunged it in, deep into that soft tallow so that it shuddered and let out a kind of whimper, or just a gasp, but some kind of flutter. It had to cease, it had to be made to cease. Withdrawing the knife, he plunged it in again, and again, and again. With increasing slowness, and increasing weakness, till all movement came to a halt – the rocking, the quivering, the flutter, the gasp, all ended.

Then the silence and the concentration and the control all broke together. The cats were leaping like black flames around his feet, yowling maniacally. Jumping over them, he hurried to the shelf, sweeping off all the tarnished silver trophies with ringing sounds of metal on metal, clanging and clanking, one against the other, as he filled his arms with them, carried them to where he had seen his rucksack leaning against the wall and, falling down on to his knees, shoved and pressed and pushed them all in. In that kneeling position, he swept his hands over the small table – Baumgartner might have left his watch
there,
or his wallet. Whatever there was, he scooped up and crammed in, throwing aside bits of paper, cards, letters that he certainly did not want. When he got up, he found a black fluid running down his knees to his feet. Trying to wipe it off, he stared at the body on the divan – yes, that pale mound of yellow tallow was oozing with something dark, liquid. It was not like blood, it was like a diarrhoea of blood. God, why didn’t he stop that? Kurt felt a bubble rise in his throat that he had to choke back. Then he bent to swing his rucksack on to his back. He was breathing hard as he buckled it back into place, fumbling with the straps, getting it all wrong. Hell, he cursed, and hurled aside some furry body that had come too close, and bumbled his way to the door. He spent a minute struggling with the lock, lurching past the doorposts, suddenly clumsy again, out of control again. His feet no longer floated; now they were like stones and fell from one stair to another, thundering on them like an avalanche descending. Surely everyone would wake, fling open their doors, look out and see –