Tamarind Mem (14 page)

“There’s somebody in the billiards room. Come and see, quick.”

Gulbachan sighed, “I know, I know, there is a ghost who moans and groans. Come on, sir, you think I am a fool or what?” He winked at the boy. “Lots of oonh-aanh going on there, eh?”

“No, not that, you moron,” said the boy, regaining some of his confidence now that there was an adult around, even if it was only the nitwit librarian. “Come here and see for yourself. I don’t want to go in there alone.”

Gulbachan emerged from the library and glared at us. “You
badmaash
girls, don’t go into the library till I am back. I will know if any books are missing.” He trailed after Rajiv.
“Arrey baba”
he said nervously, “don’t get me into any trouble. I promise I will keep that new book for you. Harold Robbins or something, and so much naughty stuff, oh my god, you will love it. Whatall these foreigners do! I will reserve that book for you, eh?”

“Shut up, idiot,” said the Civil Engineer’s son, shoving Gulbachan into the billiards room. “Switch on the bloody lights.”

The lights flared dimly, concentrated over the tables.

“Ooee ma! What a stink!” exclaimed Gulbachan. I pinched my nose between my fingers, imitating him.

“What is it?” whispered Rani.

“I don’t want to see,” said Shabnam, holding her hands over her eyes and peering through the gaps between her fingers.

“There’s somebody hanging from the ceiling,” I remarked, looking curiously at the limp legs. In the dim light, I thought that the collapsed face seemed oddly familiar.

“Hey Ram, hey Ram,” moaned the librarian, backing out of the room nervously. “Who is it? One of the sahib boys or what?”

“What do we do now?” demanded Rajiv.

“How do I know? Do I see dead people every day? Phone General Manager sahib maybe?” He glanced impatiently at us, huddled near the door. “And you brats, stay out of there or I will tell your mummies.”

“I’ll get my father,” decided the boy, looking once more at the body. “You stay here and see that nobody else goes in, I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Gulbachan shooed us out into the corridor and smiled weakly. “Just like Hindi movie, no?”

“You are scared,” said Rani, staring at the fidgeting librarian. “Because you know that person in there.” She nudged me.

“You’re going to be in trouble,” I said. Gulbachan was the easiest person in the world to provoke.

“Yes, and you also left the library door wide open. All the books will be stolen, you are in double-trouble,” giggled Shabnam. She had lost her fear by now and was dying to peep into the billiards room again to see the hanging body.

“Rubbish! The victim is unbeknown to myself,” said Gulbachan, leaning down and pushing his face close to Shabnam’s. “And I will tell your daddy that you have two rupees in fines,
then
we will see who is in trouble!” There were footsteps approaching and he straightened quickly.
The boy was back with a whole horde of people, the GM in the lead like an agitated Pied Piper.

“Good evening, Sir!” said the librarian. “I regret that I had to leave my post in the library for four-five minutes. But I assure you my one eye was fixed on that door so that no mischief-maker could enter in my absence. I was engaged in work when this young gentleman begged me to accompany him to the billiards room. I don’t know anything else, sir, god-promise.”

The crowd surged forward, sweeping Gulbachan and his explanations aside.

“Switch on more lights,” said someone.

A voice in the crowd said, “Who
is
the fellow?”

I waited for a reply and when none was forthcoming, said in my best poetry elocution voice, “That is Paul the car mechanic.”

I might have added a few more details about how Mrs. Simoes had told Ma that he was an arrogant bastard, but I could hear Linda Ayah’s voice somewhere in the back of the crowd saying in a stern voice, “Kamini baby, come back here now-now!”

I had managed to give her the slip for a glorious half hour but here she was again, the tail of a woman, glass-eyed witch. Perhaps if I refused to reply Linda would think that I wasn’t here and go away. I wanted to see what they did with the car mechanic’s body. How were they going to bring it down? Would they have to call the ambulance? Perhaps they would cover it with one of the tablecloths that Mathew the bearer brought out on special occasions. And flowers—they needed flowers didn’t they? I wanted to know everything.

“Baby, did you hear me?” called Linda again, her voice
loud, with an edge of anxiety. I could hide somewhere. But then Linda would go and tell Ma and I would surely get into trouble, for Ma was stretched as tight as a clothes-line these days.

I heard her asking somebody, “You saw that Kamini child, in a green frock?” I didn’t move, staring up at stinky old Paul da Costa.

Linda pushed through the pressing, murmuring crowd, spotted me and grabbed my arm. “What you doing in here, naughty? Some dead person, not good for a little girl’s eyes! The spirit from the fellow might still be flying about in the dark billiards room looking for a warm body to occupy. Serves you right then!”

“I want to stay,” I grumbled, fed up with Linda’s constant hovering.

“Wait, I will tell your Ma. You don’t listen to Linda Ayah, not one word. Wretched child, staring at a dead what-not person,
chhee!”
Linda’s voice sharpened, and she pulled me along behind her, glaring at anybody who objected to our rough passage out of the room. “Your Ma will say, ‘no more club, no more anything.’ Then Madame Kamini baby will have to sit at home with Linda Ayah and play Ludo.”

I made a face behind Linda’s back but kept quiet. I didn’t like playing with Linda, she won every game.

“Now open your ears and listen. Don’t you tell your Ma about this dead person,” continued Linda, marching through the club, nodding briskly at other
ayahs
dragging their charges home, their footsteps echoing off the worn wooden floors. Soon we were out on the gravel path, a dull, red line across wet grass. “What will she think when she hears what you saw, hanh? She will get angry, very
angry. So you keep quiet and let Linda tell her everything nicely. Kamini baby will brush her teeth and go to sleep like a good girl.”

I did not listen, concentrating instead on the elusive cry of a koyal bird darting from tree to tree, its voice exquisitely sweet as it hung in the warm night air. Linda Ayah said that the koyal was actually the lost voice of a princess, not a bird that could be seen by human eyes.

“Ayah, lots of people have seen the bird,” I argued. “My teacher said it is a tiny, black creature, very timid.”

“Ah, she said that to make you think she is clever. Just like the story of the emperor who wore no clothes and thought he did.”

“Which emperor?”

“Another time, if you are good, I will tell you that story,” said Linda.

Linda and her tales, I thought, keeping an eye open for the koyal. I was nine years old, almost ten, and she thought that I was still a silly baby who believed in Santa Claus and
jadoo-mantan
True, some of her demon tales frightened me, I did not want to test if they were real or not. That did not mean I believed every single thing she ever said. But I was not going to let her know that. It was one way to dodge the old
kannadi-face
—so tiresome having her around every minute.

The billiards room suicide provided the Railway colony with a fresh source of gossip that lasted for weeks. The identity of the body did not interest most people. It was the gruesome idea of a death, an actual death, in the club of all places, that moved them. And the indignation that a mere workshop mechanic, an Anglo too, had broken the
rules of membership to hang himself in the Officers’ Club!

Ma had learned the unspoken rules of the Railway colony very quickly, for she had Linda Ayah and Ganesh Peon guiding her from the day she came to this life as Dadda’s bride. Ma knew, for instance that although the Inspector of Works was much lower than an officer, he wielded greater power, for he was in charge of maintenance. All the electricians, plumbers, gardeners and masons were at his command. So Ma never forgot to send Diwali sweets to his house. She might have a leaky faucet or a problem with the wiring and the IOW would send his men immediately. Ma hadn’t known how to make cutlets, or what to do with whisky and sherry and all that stuff in bottles, when she married Dadda. As a Railway wife, she was supposed to know, for instance, that you couldn’t serve whisky with dinner and wine was never, never to be poured into a pretty glass jug and kept in the fridge. These things Ganesh Peon taught her on those long days when Dadda was out on line and he was sitting in the back yard polishing Dadda’s office shoes. He had a definite order of polishing. First he would carefully wipe away all traces of dirt from the shoes with a soft rag blackened with weeks of polish.

“This is a necessary step,” he told me and Roopa as we squatted close to him, watching with fascination the old hands flick deftly across the shoe. “Lots of
peons
I know miss this step and that is very, very bad for the shoe. VERY BAD. When you do something you must do it
pukka-perfect.
Otherwise what is the use, tell me? It is like plucking only half the feathers of a chicken before cooking it. You can put as much of the finest
masala
on it, but all you will hear are curses.”

After wiping one shoe clean, it was time to apply dots of black polish from a tin of Cherryblossom. “Now which little girl wants to help an old man open this tin?” he would ask, glancing from one face to another.

We bounced up and down, still on our haunches, screaming, “Memememe!”

Then Peon pulled a ten-paise coin from his
kurta
pocket and tossed it in the air. “The face is for big baby and the number for
chhoti
baby,” he yelled before snapping the coin in his palms as it dropped down. Somehow he managed it so that if I opened the tin one day, Roopa had a turn the next.

There was a special trick to opening a Cherryblossom tin. A tiny arrow on the lid pointed down to a slight depression. We had to press our thumbs really hard in that shallow curve and the tin snapped open magically.

Ganesh Peon beamed with pleasure when that happened and said, “Escallent baby, escallent!” Since he was the person I learned the word from, I could not say “excellent” for the longest time.

I dreamed of snow climbing higher and higher against the house, muffling the entrance to my underground dwelling. I dreamed that there was an awful blizzard bringing down the electric lines so that I could not even phone for help. I was buried alive in my burrow dying slowly from the cold.

And into this lonely, freezing dream came Ma. “So much drama-shama is necessary or what? If you sit on your hands and do nothing what else will happen to you, you silly girl?” Her voice was reassuringly strident. “Have you even tried opening that front door, or are you simply waiting for your imagination to
kill you? Go and see if there really is snow there or if you are dreaming only!”

I jerked out of uneasy sleep gasping and sweaty, relieved that, even from thousands of miles away, my mother could reach out and pull me away from the nebulous terrors of a nightmare. The rustle of paper being thrust through the slot in my front door woke me completely. From my bed, I could see the entire apartment, the tiny kitchen-cum-living-cum-dining-room, the short flight of steps leading to the front door, the scattered mail. And almost as if my dream had summoned it up, another of Ma’s weekly postcards, bringing with it the warmth, the smells, the sounds of another country oceans away from Canada.

“On the train to Lucknow,” wrote my mother, “I met a magician. He insisted on showing the rest of us in the compartment all his tricks. He said that the success of his tricks lay in the movement of our eyes. But we must have moved our eyes wrong or something, for the poor man made a mess of it all. Finally he gathered up his cards and flung them out of the window. Then he turned to us and said, ‘Everything in this country is poor quality, whattodo? And for the rest of the trip, he refused to speak to anybody. Such a strange person. I could not sleep all night worrying about what he might do to us, his audience who failed him. I am sure that he thought that it was all our fault!”