The Impressionist (8 page)

Pran wakes up, frozen and disoriented, into a grey morning. Over him looms a series of irregular brown shapes, which resolve themselves into a line of scrawny buttocks. By his head a row of rickshaw-wallahs and stall-owners are squatting over the gutter, spitting, gossiping, cleaning teeth and moving their bowels. He jerks his head away to a safe distance and remembers with a wave of horror where he is.

The beggar is still asleep, a speculative fly crawling over one eyelid. Pran shuffles over, his arms clasped over his quivering chest, and prods him with a toe.

‘Wake up. It’s morning.’

The beggar does not move. Pran digs him again. Nothing. He reaches down and shakes his arm. It is cold and stiff. He steps back, realizing with a dull shock what has happened. The influenza can come very quickly.

Like the rest of the world, he has no time to mourn, because at that moment a tonga pulls up to the blue door of the Razdan mansion. A man steps out, dressed formally in an achkan and an embroidered cap. His beard is neatly trimmed. A pair of wire-framed spectacles perch on his distinguished nose. Pran Nath rushes over to him, his whole being suffused with joy.

‘Uncle! Uncle!’

Pandit Bhaskar Nath Razdan, younger brother of the dead lawyer, looks round with an expression of disgust.

‘Get away from me, you vile creature!’

Pran Nath stops dead in his tracks. His uncle looks extremely agitated, clutching a silk handkerchief over his face. ‘Chowkidar?’ he calls. ‘Chowkidar, where are you?’

The chowkidar appears in the doorway, brandishing his lathi. His grey moustaches quiver with indignation.

‘Chowkidar,’ orders the pandit, ‘get this vermin out of my sight. I don’t want him hanging round the doorstep, giving the family a bad name. Make sure he doesn’t come back.’

‘Yes, sir!’ says the chowkidar, standing to old-soldierly attention. Pran Nath does not wait to be beaten again. He flees, his eyes full of tears. Now he knows it is true. He is alone in the world.

Mumbling and sobbing like a deranged person, he makes his way into the narrow alleys of the sabzi mandi. Assuming he is ill, people avoid him, clearing out of his path as he stumbles towards them. He stops to watch a foodwallah making jalebi, piping coils of sugary dough into a huge skillet of bubbling oil. The fried squiggles are lifted with a ladle, dipped into caramelized coating and fried again. Dip and fry, dip and fry. They look good. Desperate, Pran makes a sudden run for the sweets, snatching up a handful and running off down the street. Behind him he can hear the man swearing, but he tears on, sprinting as fast as he can. Soon the shouts of rage die away. Success. Pran crams down the jalebi in a secluded back street, sucking the juice off his fingers, not caring about the grime and filth that come with it. The sugar gives him a tiny rush of intoxication.

Fortified by this, he feels confident enough to present himself at the address the dead beggar recommended. The house is located at the end of a particularly narrow and foul-smelling alley, pocked by piles of rubbish and puddles of nameless liquids. The door itself is strong, banded with iron and studded with thick square nails; the kind of door it would be very difficult to break down. Pran knocks. There is the sound of shuffling footsteps, and an eye appears on the other side of a peephole.

‘We’re closed,’ says a phlegmy voice.

‘I’m hungry,’ says Pran.

‘So?’ says the voice. ‘Why should that get you in out of hours?’

‘I was told if I came here and did what you said, you would feed me.’

A pause.

‘By who?’

It occurs to Pran, uncomfortably, that he never asked the beggar’s name.

‘I don’t know.’

The voice seems to consider this for a moment. There is the sound of coughing, then a jangle of keys and the rasp of a bolt being drawn. The door swings open to reveal a man the size of a bull, dressed only in a chequered loincloth. He has obviously just finished his morning ablutions, and his body shines with oil. His thick hair glistens with it, as does the luxurious black moustache which extends in fantastical war-like curls on either side of his face. The man’s oiled stomach juts ponderously towards Pran. He leans on the door lintel and twirls a moustache tip between thumb and forefinger.

‘Let’s have a look at you, then,’ he says, and breaks off in a fit of coughing.

Pran looks back at him. The man’s gaze darkens.

‘Turn around, you little idiot! Show me what you’ve got!’

Self-consciously, Pran turns to face the other way.

‘Pull them down!’ shouts the man, violently enough to dislodge another chunk of lung-lining. It is only after great effort that this is finally expectorated at Pran’s feet.

Pran fiddles with the string of his trousers, then lets them fall to display an inch or two of bruised buttock.

‘More!’ growls the man. Pran reluctantly complies. The man stands and wheezes and coughs for a while, then makes a grunting noise which sounds more or less positive.

‘Not bad. You’d better come in.’

Pran follows him into a courtyard full of women. There are women washing clothes, women cleaning rice, women chopping vegetables and throwing the waste into a pile. A balcony runs around the upper storey, and it sags with the weight of yet more women, running in and out of rooms and chatting to each other in doorways. A couple of young girls lean over the balustrade and a third hangs huge silk sari squares on a line which stretches from one side of the house to the other. The enormous man picks his way through this termite mound of females with the bored but lordly air of a bullock in a field of heifers.

Pran has never seen so many women in one place. They all seem young and uncommonly beautiful, and several are in states of undress. Perhaps he is light-headed from lack of food, but this place already seems far better than the street. He decides that if nothing better comes up, he will stay here for a while.

He realizes the girls are talking about him. A group on the balcony shouts something uncomplimentary about the size of his procreative organ, and all round the ground floor of the house a general riot of Pran-appraisal is taking place. He blushes furiously and hurries to keep up with the large man, who is heading into a passageway off to one side of the courtyard. Oblivious to the abuse raining down from all angles, the man strides out of view. With a quick glance back at the courtyard, Pran scuttles after him.

To his joy, Pran is placed in a room in front of a thali of rice and dal. While he pushes food rapidly into his mouth, the room’s other occupants discuss him. The conversation takes place in a whispered undertone which, were he less hungry, he would make an effort to overhear. The large man, now dressed in a freshly laundered kurta-pyjama, has been joined by a woman who might be his opposite. Where he is imposing and solid, she is more skeleton than flesh. Her face is all jaw and eyesockets, her arms brittle and twig-like, darting to and fro burdened by a dangerously heavy weight of gold-ringed fingers. A thick red tikka line marks her hair-parting, and her mouth is stained crimson with betel-juice. The overall effect would not be out of place on a dissecting table. Once or twice she reaches forward to pinch and rub the flesh of Pran’s arm, judging its texture as one might a bolt of cloth at a tailor’s. Pran is too busy eating to care.

Neither the man nor the woman has a demeanour calculated to inspire trust. An objective observer (here, as is so often the case, sadly lacking) might note the sparkle in their eyes as they watch Pran eat. Under his layer of street-filth Pran’s extraordinary good-looks are still apparent. The man and woman seem immensely pleased by him, and when he finishes his meal with a resounding burp, they beam as if he has just told a joke.

‘Call me Ma-ji,’ says the woman.

‘And I am Balraj the wrestler,’ says the man.

Pran tells them his name and, at Ma-ji’s request, narrates the story of how he came to be out on the street, and how the kind beggar told him where to find them.

‘And so you’re quite alone?’ asks Ma-ji. Pran nods sadly and admits that unless his family has a change of heart, he is indeed quite alone.

‘The beggar said nothing of what work we do here?’ asks Balraj.

‘No, nothing at all. What is it you do?’ Pran is eager to know why so many attractive young women live under their roof.

‘It’s a sort of charitable organization,’ explains Ma-ji. ‘We give a home to these poor girls and in return they do some basic chores and, you know, light work of other kinds.’ She waggles her head to emphasize the token nature of this employment.

‘Normally we don’t take in boys,’ notes Balraj. ‘But in your case we can make an exception. Obviously you will have to do as you are told, and ride the rough with the smooth.’

Pran promises he will do his best. Already he is picturing a life of kiss-chase and other stimulating games, interspersed with a little fetching and carrying, or some guard duty on the days when Balraj does not feel up to the mark. It certainly sounds much better than being tutored, or wandering around town on his own. It looks as if he has fallen on his feet.

‘Have some of my special lassi,’ says Ma-ji, chucking Pran’s cheek and handing him a metal beaker. ‘It’s very good.’

Pran drains the yoghurty drink in one go, and is met by two enormous grins. Ma-ji and Balraj have things to do, but suggest he might like to rest for a while before starting work later in the day. They get up, shut the door and leave him alone. Soon Pran begins to feel extremely, irresistibly tired, and, curling himself up on a charpai, falls fast asleep.

Pran dreams of a land made of stacked chapatis and curds, populated by vegetable girls with okra fingers and aubergine breasts and saucy looks in their green-pea eyes. Their relations with Pran are confused but delicious, and course after course goes by in prandial harmony until the beggar who is dead starts running around, grabbing at bits of Pran’s partners and stuffing them into his red mouth, which is annoying although Pran supposes there is enough to go round and is honestly prepared to share until the beggar starts plucking at Pran’s own arms and legs which is really too much – and then finally turns into Ma-ji, who with the help of a little servant girl seems to be fitting Pran into some sort of silky costume.

His head aches and he has no idea of the time. He supposes it is evening since he can barely see the room around him. The only illumination comes from a couple of candles and a red lamp which throbs alarmingly in one corner. Pran feels peculiar, as if he is seeing the world through several layers of padding. His limbs are now made of a watery substance, which will not respond to the frantic commands sent by his brain. His disorientation is not lessened when he spots himself in a mirror and sees he is being slipped into a gauzy pink silk robe with some kind of flower design on it.

‘Hold your head still,’ snaps Ma-ji, and Pran finds his jaw clamped between vice-like fingers while something, no, it couldn’t be, yes –
rouge,
is applied to his cheeks and lines of black kohl are drawn round his eyes. Pran tries to wriggle away but finds he is held fast. When he winces and shrinks back from the make-up stick he is immediately slapped. Ma-ji calls out for Balraj, who arrives coughing like a sick elephant and grasps Pran in a rigid armlock. When Pran protests, Balraj does something excruciating to his neck and Ma-ji hisses, in a tone shockingly unlike the gentle voice she used earlier,
Keep quiet you little fool.

Pran begins to suspect the beggar was having another of his little jokes.

Soon he is released, temporarily, to stare at himself in the mirror. With his flimsy clothes and his wide eyes, their pupils dilated by drops of belladonna, he looks completely unlike the filthy boy who arrived at the alleyway door. Another beaker of special lassi is thrust under his nose. He shakes his head no, but Balraj forces his mouth open and Ma-ji pours the whole lot down his throat. They leave, locking the door behind them, and Pran finds himself alone in the room.

He tries to think. During his cogitations, which keep collapsing or getting sidetracked or turning back on themselves, he concludes that Ma-ji and Balraj have designs which are not honourable. What these are, his brain is too fuzzy to calculate. If he tries, he will start getting scared. He must escape.