Collected Short Fiction (28 page)

How can one tell of the workings of the human heart? How can one speak of the urge to evil – an urge of which Christians more than anyone else are so aware – and of the countervailing urge to good? You must remember that this is the season of goodwill. And goodwill it was. For goodwill was what I was feeling towards all. At every carol my heart melted. Whenever a child rushed towards me and cried, ‘Headmaster!’ I was tormented by grief. For the sight of the unwashed creatures, deprived, so many of them, of schooling, which matters so much in those early years, and the absence of which ever afterwards makes itself felt, condemning a human being to an animal-like existence, the sight of these creatures, grateful towards me who had on so many evenings gone among them propagating the creed with what energy I could, unmanned me. They were proud of their new school. They were even prouder of their association with the man who had built it.

Everywhere I felt rejected. I went to church as often as I could, but even there I found rejection. And as the time drew nearer the enormity of what I proposed grew clearer to me. It was useless to tell myself that what I was proposing had been often done. The carols, the religious services, the talk of birth and life, they all unmanned me.

I walked among the children as one who had it in his power to provide or withhold blessing, and I thought of that other Walker, who said of those among whom I walked that they were blessed, and that theirs was the kingdom of heaven. And as I walked it seemed that at last I had seized the true essence of the religion I had adopted, and whose worldly success I had with such energy promoted. So that it seemed that these trials I was undergoing had been reserved to the end of my days, so that only then I could have a taste of the ecstasy about which I had so far only read. With this ecstasy I walked. It was Christmas Eve. It was Christmas Eve. My head felt drawn out of my body. I had difficulty in assessing the size and distance of objects. I felt myself tall. I felt myself part of the earth and yet removed.

And: ‘No!’ I said to my wife at teatime. ‘No, I will not disgrace
myself by this action of cowardice. Rather, I will proclaim my failure to the world and ask for my due punishment.’

She behaved as I expected. She had been busy putting up all sorts of Christmas decorations, expensive ones from the United States, which are all the rage now, so unlike the simple decorations I used to see in the homes of our early missionaries before the war. But how changed is the house to which we moved! How far has simplicity vanished and been replaced by show! And I gloried in it!

She begged me to change my mind. She summoned Winston to her help. They both wept and implored me to go through with our plan. But I was firm. I do believe that if the schools inspector were alive, he would also have been summoned to plead with me. But he, fortunate man, passed away some three weeks ago, entrusting his daughter and grandson to my care; and this alone is my fear, that by gaining glory for myself I might be injuring them. But I was firm. And then there started another of those scenes with which I had become only too familiar, and the house which that morning was filled with the enthusiasm of Winston was changed into one of mourning. Winston sobbed, tears running down his plump cheeks and down his well-shaped nose to his firm top lip, pleading with me to burn the school down, and generally behaving as though I had deprived him of a bonfire. And then a number of things were destroyed by his mother, and she left the house with Winston, vowing never to see me again, never to be involved in the disgrace which was sure to come.

And so here I sit, waiting not for Christmas, but in this house where the autographed photograph of one of our earliest missionaries gazes down at me through his rich beard and luxuriant eyebrows, and where the walls carry so many reminders of my past life of endeavour and hardship and struggle and triumph and also, alas, final failure, I wait for the day after Boxing Day, after the races to which we were to have gone, for the visit of the inspectors of the Audit Department. The house is lonely and dark. The radios play the Christmas songs. I am very lonely. But I am strong. And here I lay down my pen. My hand tires; the beautiful letters we were taught to fashion at the mission school have begun to weaken and to straggle untidily over the ruled paper; and someone is knocking.

*    *    *

December 27. How can one speak of the ways of the world, how can one speak of the tribulations that come one’s way? Even expiation is denied me. For even as I wrote the last sentence of the above account, there came a knocking at my door, and I went to open unto him who knocked. And lo, there was a boy, bearing tidings. And behold, towards the west the sky had reddened. The boy informed me that the school was ablaze. What could I do? My world fell about my ears. Even final expiation, final triumph, it seemed, was denied me. Certain things are not for me. In this moment of anguish and despair my first thought was for my wife. Where had she gone? I went out to seek her. When I returned, after a fruitless errand, I discovered that she and Winston had come back to seek me. Smiling through our tears, we embraced. So it was Christmas after all for us. And, with lightened heart, made heavy only by my wrestling with the Lord, we went to the races on Boxing Day, yesterday. We did not gamble. It is against our principles. The inspectors from the Audit Department sent word today that they would not, after all, come.

1962

I WALKED
up the back stairs into the veranda, white in the afternoon sun. I could never bring myself to enter that house by the front stairs. We were poor relations; we had been taught to respect the house and the family.

On the right of the veranda was the kitchen, tiled and spruce and with every modern gadget. An ugly Indian girl with a pockmarked face and slack breasts was washing some dishes. She wore a dirty red print frock.

When she saw me she said, ‘Hello, Romesh.’ She had opened brightly but ended on a subdued tone that was more suitable.

‘Hello,’ I said softly. ‘Is she there?’ I jerked my thumb towards the drawing-room that lay straight ahead.

‘Yes. Boy, she cries all day. And the baby was so cute too.’ The servant girl was adapting herself to the language of the house.

‘Can I go in now?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered. Drying her hands on her frock, she led the way. Her kitchen was clean and pure, but all the impurities seemed to have stuck on her. She tiptoed to the jalousied door, opened it an inch or two, peered in deferentially and said in a louder voice, ‘Romesh here, Miss Sheila.’

There was a sigh inside. The girl opened the door and shut it behind me. The curtains had been drawn all around. The room was full of a hot darkness smelling of ammonia and oil. Through the ventilation slits some light came into the room, enough to make Sheila distinct. She was in a loose lemon housecoat; she half sat, half reclined on a pink sofa.

I walked across the polished floor as slowly and silently as I could. I shifted my eyes from Sheila to the table next to the sofa. I didn’t know how to begin.

It was Sheila who broke the silence. She looked me up and down in the half-light and said, ‘My, Romesh, you are growing up.’ She smiled with tears in her eyes. ‘How are you? And your mother?’

Sheila didn’t like my mother. ‘They’re all well – all at home are well,’ I said. ‘And how are you?’

She managed a little laugh. ‘Still
living
. Pull up a chair. No, no – not yet. Let me look at you. My, you are getting to be a handsome young man.’

I pulled up a chair and sat down. I sat with my legs wide apart at first. But this struck me as being irreverent and too casual. So I put my knees together and let my hands rest loosely on them. I sat upright. Then I looked at Sheila. She smiled.

Then she began to cry. She reached for the damp handkerchief on the table. I got up and asked whether she would like the smelling salts or the bay rum. Jerking with sobs, she shook her head and told me, in words truncated by tears, to sit down.

I sat still, not knowing what to do.

With the handkerchief she wiped her eyes, pulled out a larger handkerchief from her housecoat and blew her nose. Then she smiled. ‘You must forgive me for breaking down like this,’ she said.

I was going to say, ‘That’s all right,’ but the words felt too free. So I opened my mouth and made an unintelligible noise.

‘You never knew my son, Romesh?’

‘I only saw him once,’ I lied; and instantly regretted the lie. Suppose she asked me where I had seen him or when I had seen him. In fact, I never knew that Sheila’s baby was a boy until he died and the news spread.

But she wasn’t going to examine me. ‘I have some pictures of him.’ She called in a gentle, strained voice: ‘Soomintra.’

The servant girl opened the door. ‘You want something, Miss Sheila?’

‘Yes, Soomin,’ Sheila said (and I noticed that she had shortened the girl’s name, a thing that was ordinarily not done). ‘Yes, I want the snapshots of Ravi.’ At the name she almost burst into tears, but flung her head back at the last moment and smiled.

When Soomintra left the room I looked at the walls. In the dim light I could make out an engraving of the Princes in the Tower, a print of a stream lazing bluely beautiful through banks cushioned with flowers. I was looking at the walls to escape looking at Sheila. But her eyes followed mine and rested on the Princes in the Tower.

‘You know the story?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

Look at them. They’re going to be killed, you know. It’s only in the past two days I’ve really got to understand that picture, you
know. The boys. So sad. And look at the dog. Not understanding a thing. Just wanting to get out.’

‘It is a sad picture.’

She brushed a tear from her eye and smiled once more. ‘But tell me, Romesh, how are you getting on with your studies?’

‘As usual.’

‘Are you going away?’

‘If I do well in the exams.’

‘But you’re bound to do well. After all, your father is no fool.’

It seemed overbearingly selfish to continue listening. I said, ‘You needn’t talk, if you don’t want to.’

Soomintra brought the snapshot album. It was an expensive album, covered in leather. Ravi had been constantly photographed from the time he had been allowed into the open air to the month before his death. There were pictures of him in bathing costume, digging sand on the east coast, the north coast and the south coast; pictures of Ravi dressed up for Carnival, dressed up for tea parties; Ravi on tricycles, Ravi in motor cars, real ones and toy ones; Ravi in the company of scores of people I didn’t know. I turned the At last we exhausted the snapshots. Sheila had grown silent towards the end. I felt she had been through the album many times in the past two days.

I tapped my hands on my knees. I looked at the clock on the wall and the Princes in the Tower. Sheila came to the rescue. ‘I am sure you are hungry.’

I shook my head faintly.

‘Soomin will fix something for you.’

Soomintra did prepare something for me, and I ate in the kitchen – their food was always good. I prepared to face the farewell tears and smiles. But just then the Doctor came. He was Sheila’s husband and everyone knew him as ‘The Doctor’. He was tall with a pale handsome face that now looked drawn and tired.

‘Hello, Romesh.’

‘Hello, Doctor.’

‘How is she?’

‘Not very happy.’

‘She’ll be all right in a couple of days. The shock, you know. And she’s a very delicate girl.’

‘I hope she gets over it soon.’

He smiled and patted me on the shoulder. He pulled the blinds to shut out the sun from the veranda, and made me sit down.

‘You knew my son?’

‘Only slightly.’

‘He was a fine child. We wanted – or rather, I wanted – to enter him in the Cow and Gate Baby Contest. But Sheila didn’t care for the idea.’

I could find nothing to say.

‘When he was four he used to sing, you know. All sorts of songs. In English and Hindi. You know that song –
I’ll Be Seeing You
?’

I nodded.

‘He used to sing that through and through. He had picked up all the words. Where from I don’t know, but he’d picked them up. And even now I don’t know half the words myself. He was like that. Quick. And do you know the last words he said to me were “I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places”? When Sheila heard that he was dead she looked at me and began to cry. “I’ll be seeing you,” she said.’

I didn’t look at him.

‘It makes you think, doesn’t it? Makes you think about life. Here today. Gone tomorrow. It makes you think about life and death, doesn’t it? But here I go, philosophizing again. Why don’t you start giving lessons to children?’ he asked me abruptly. ‘You could make tons of money that way. I know a boy who’s making fifty dollars a month by giving lessons one afternoon a week.’

‘I am busy with my exams.’

He paid no attention. ‘Tell me, have you seen the pictures we took of Ravi last Carnival?’

I hadn’t the heart to say yes.

‘Soomin,’ he called, ‘bring the photograph album.’

1950

November 21
. 10.30 p.m. C. A. Cavander takes over duty at C – Hotel all corrected.
Cesar Alwyn Cavander

7 a.m. C. A. Cavander hand over duty to Mr Vignales at C – Hotel no report.
Cesar Alwyn Cavander

November 22
. 10.30 p.m. C. A. Cavander take over duty at C – Hotel no report.
Cesar Alwyn Cavander

7 a.m. C. A. Cavander hand over duty to Mr Vignales at C – Hotel all corrected.
Cesar Alwyn Cavander