Travelers (2 page)

Asha felt disgusted. It
was
disgusting, the way Tara Bai carried on; at her age. But then, what could you expect from someone like Tara Bai, a film actress, and everyone of course knew what to expect from film actresses. What were they but glorified prostitutes? In some cases, Asha thought, turning down her mouth corners, not even glorified. Asha's family were quite right when they told her not to take up with such people. They
weren't worthy of her. She went back to the mirror and looked at herself again with pride; and now it was pride not only in her looks but in her birth too, for whereas Tara Bai sprang from an unrelieved line of prostitutes, Asha had royal blood in her. She was a princess and that still counted for something.

Gopi Comes to Tea

“Is it imported?”

Gopi asked this question several times and was each time disappointed. Raymond had brought nothing with him but had furnished his flat with local handicrafts. Nevertheless there was a foreign atmosphere which simultaneously thrilled and intimidated Gopi. He sat stiffly with his arms pressed to his sides and his eyes lowered.

Instead of relieving his guest's discomfort, Raymond aggravated it by a certain tea-table formality that came instinctively to him. He loved teatime, especially he loved guests at teatime, and he loved to have everything just so. He poured the tea and heard himself say in the rather fluting voice his mother adopted on such occasions, “Milk? Sugar? How's that for you?” Raymond had always lived with his mother and an aunt, and both these ladies had enjoyed having other ladies and elderly bachelor gentlemen to tea.

Shyam, the servant, was being uncooperative. He made it clear that he was not used to serving people like Gopi. Gopi felt this and resented it and sometimes he raised his modest eyes and resentment flashed out of them. At the same time, he was as afraid of being seen to do something wrong by Shyam as by Raymond. He was usually a graceful boy but his fear made him clumsy. He crushed the delicate bread and butter in his hand and dropped a spoon and finally even, in setting his cup and saucer on the table with an unsteady hand, spilled tea on the tablecloth. Shyam stood and sneered.

At last the tea ceremony was over and Raymond could relax
and attempt to make his guest relax too. But the first question he asked him, which was about the college Gopi attended, was not a welcome one. Gopi's college was not very good—in fact it was distinctly third-rate; it was run by private enterprise in some outlying suburb for boys like Gopi who had not scored high enough marks to get admission into a better place. Gopi was ashamed of going there and he replied to Raymond in an indistinct mutter.

“Oh, yes?” said Raymond with encouragement. He waited for Gopi to say more, and when he didn't, continued. “And what course are you doing?”

Gopi muttered again. Raymond remained bright, smiling, and encouraging, but he did not succeed in making Gopi easy. He was saddened to see his guest sitting there, opposite him, hunched up in the tall canework chair with his gaze obstinately lowered. He was also saddened by the way Gopi had dressed himself up so carefully for the occasion, thereby almost obscuring his good looks. He wore a transparent shirt of some thick synthetic material, and overtight trousers, and his hair was smothered in oil.

Shyam was clearing away the tea things. He did it with maddening slowness. When he came to removing the tablecloth, he bent over the stain caused by Gopi's spilled tea; he shook his head over it, then pointed his finger at it.

“It won't come out,” he prophesied.

“Never mind,” Raymond said.

“Our new cloth.”

“Never
mind
.”

Raymond was a friendly and indulgent employer but he could be sharp. Shyam saw it was time to remove himself and he did so, though with a superior air.

Gopi raised his eyes and looked after him with the same smoldering glance as before. But then, instead of concentrating on the floor again, he looked for the first time directly at Raymond
and his eyes were still smoldering. He said, “You have a very bad servant.”

“Oh, I don't know,” Raymond said. Actually, he didn't feel like defending Shyam, who
had
behaved badly, but he didn't want to drop the subject either because at last here was Gopi showing some spirit. “Shyam's not such a bad chap really. He just has moods.”

“No,” said Gopi, “he is a bad chap. We would not keep such a person in our home.”

He was still looking at Raymond. Gopi's eyes were full and dark and at this time they were burning with a splendid fire. There was a cake crumb on his upper lip, and Raymond wished he knew him well enough to point this out and perhaps even wipe it away for him with his handkerchief.

“He is only a servant,” Gopi said. “He should not be allowed to behave in any way he pleases.”

Raymond began to protest, but in the mildest manner possible. Perhaps it was this mildness that inflamed Gopi—at any rate, his anger mounted, he said many things. He said that Shyam was of a very low caste, that such people could never get employment in a Hindu family, and that was the reason they fastened themselves on to foreigners whom they fleeced mercilessly and behaved with them in the shabbiest manner and insulted their guests. . . .

“Well, I'm sorry,” Raymond said in the middle of this. Gopi was brought up short: he stared at Raymond in surprise.

“Why?” Gopi asked. He laughed. “Why are
you
sorry?”

He laughed more: in surprise but also not unflattered to be apologized to by this Englishman who was so much older than he was—Raymond was at least thirty—and well educated and cultured and probably rich. Suddenly he relaxed. Still laughing, he bounded up from the chair into which he had been hunched ever since he came, and sat on the floor. He began to ease himself out of his shoes. Evidently they were hurting him and had been doing so all this time; they were ugly, tight, black
shoes. His socks followed and he wriggled his toes and breathed “Ah” in relief. Raymond watched with pleasure. Gopi's feet were narrow and had delicate bones.

“You see, I'm quite at home,” he said, smiling up at Raymond who said, “Good,” and then added, “Lovely,” he was so pleased. Gopi patted the floor so that Raymond slid off his chair and sat beside him. Gopi nodded in approval. “It's our Indian way,” he said. “We don't care for chairs—all this furniture, what use is it when we can be most comfortable on the floor itself?”

“Quite,” agreed Raymond though he did not look comfortable. His joints were not as flexible as Gopi's, and his knees stuck up into the air.

“You didn't bring any with you?”

“What?”

“Furniture from England.”

Raymond explained how he had brought nothing because he wanted to be quite free and also he didn't know how long he was going to stay, though he hoped it would be for some time. Gopi was a little disappointed that Raymond didn't belong to an embassy or some international organization, but he was intrigued by Raymond's reasons for coming at all. He didn't quite believe him and felt there was something more which Raymond was hiding.

Raymond was already used to this reaction but with Gopi he took more trouble than usual to explain himself. He said, “My family has always had connections with India. One of them was in Delhi in 1835, the year when William Fraser was murdered here. He was a friend of Fraser's and wrote long letters home about the case. We still have them. And there's a great-uncle buried somewhere near Meerut, he was killed while he was out pig-sticking. . . .”

Raymond saw that Gopi's attention was beginning to wander and guessed at once that he would be more interested in practical matters; so he told him how he had taken a year's leave from
his job—which was in a publishing firm owned by his uncle—and that he intended to spend that time living in India.

“And money?” Gopi asked, with a shrewd, inquiring gesture of rubbing two fingers together.

“Well . . . there was this little legacy my aunt left me—”

“How much?”

Raymond was taken aback for a moment and then said, rather cautiously, “Not all that much. . . . But enough for me to take some time off and experiment.”

“With what?”

“Myself.”

Raymond smiled in embarrassment. He heard himself sounding pompous. But in any case Gopi's eyes had again begun to wander around the room. Raymond watched him and after a while he said, “There's something on your lip.” He took out his handkerchief and said, “No, here,” and wiped it skillfully away.

After a pause Gopi said, “You don't look like other English people. No, you don't,” he insisted. “Your face is not red.”

Raymond was as a matter of fact unnaturally pale. His hair had a reddish tint in it and he blushed very easily.

Now Gopi was tired of sitting on the floor and making conversation. He bounded up again and began to walk around the room, picking things up here and there. He also went into the bedroom. He didn't much like the bedcover, he said. It was not very bright. He said he liked very very bright things. “Are there any more rooms? Only these two?” He added, “There is only one bed.” He asked, “You're not married?”

When Raymond laughed, he said, not without reproach, “In India you would have been married long ago. . . . Will you have friends to stay with you?”

“I hope so.”

“Do you like friends to stay with you?”

“Some friends, yes,” Raymond said. He added, “Very much.”

But Gopi had already moved over to the wardrobe and opened it and was critically studying Raymond's clothes. Although
they were not very bright, Gopi liked some of them. He fingered the material, with approval and desire.

Lee Among Hindus and Christians

Lee had no fixed itinerary. She got on a train and got off when she felt like it. Usually she met people on the train who urged her to come and stay with them, or gave her the address of relatives who would put her up. She had begun to take such hospitality for granted. She was also beginning to find her way around the small towns where she so often landed up. They were always the same. There was a bazaar down the center and, branching off it, a network of lanes which got narrower and narrower the deeper one penetrated into them. But Lee no longer got lost among them, and she had no hesitation in making her way through the most intricate alleys or disappearing inside the darkest doorways.

But once something went wrong. She found the address but the place was in commotion. Women were screaming inside and outside the house while a crowd stood and watched. Lee couldn't get through and had to crane her neck to see what was going on. Some men were arguing and giving each other contrary instructions, and after a time several bent down to heave something up and place it on the shoulders of several others. Then the women redoubled their cries. Lee saw that what they were carrying was a body on a plank. It was wound in a red cloth and secured to the plank with ropes; the face was uncovered and was that of a young woman. All the men fell behind the pallbearers and they walked away in procession. Lee joined them. They walked for quite a way, chanting as they went. In between chanting they carried on fairly normal conversation with each other. Lee was asked who she was and where she had come from and what she was doing in the town. She explained how she had been given this address to stay at. One of the men said that now that would no longer be possible because of the
death in the family and so she had better come home with him. Lee said all right. They got to the river and there the body was placed on the pyre and a priest said prayers and the fire was lit and the body began to burn. Lee's new host said that it would take a long time to burn, and that they had better leave now and go home for their evening meal.

This new house was, like the other, in a lane off the bazaar. It was reached through a dank brick passage that opened out into a spacious courtyard. Here Lee sat crosslegged on a string cot to be served with food. She was hungry and ate a lot. Meanwhile people kept coming into the courtyard, and there was an air of excitement, of turmoil even. They were discussing and arguing with passion. Lee couldn't follow what they were saying, and when she asked, they wouldn't tell her. But the excited talk continued, and she began to realize that it was something to do with the death. She asked, “What did she die of?”

At first no one would answer. She understood it was something mysterious and frightening and looked from face to face.

At last they said, “They say she was poisoned.”

Lee recalled the young woman's dead face; also the pallbearers and the chanting and the women wailing. Then she recalled the flames that had been lit and had crackled and begun to rise above the body; by this time the body would have been mostly consumed. “And the inquest?” Lee asked. “The police?”

She was agitated but her hosts remained calm. They shrugged. “What can be done? It's too late.” They shook their heads in sorrow. It was such a pity. She was young, she had only been married seven months. But her dowry had not been very big; her father had not been as generous to the son-in-law as he might have been.

Lee asked, “Is that why they poisoned her?”

They said, “Such things happen”; they added, “Who knows what goes on?”

When she left that small town, Lee went to Delhi to stay in a Christian mission run by an English missionary lady called
Miss Charlotte. Lee was very glad to be there. She stayed in a room with whitewashed walls which were bare except for a small icon of Christ on the cross. Another girl shared the room with her; she was called Margaret and was also traveling around India on her own. Meals were included in the price of the room and they had them in the dining room together with Miss Charlotte. There was a very old Christian bearer to serve them and the moment one meal was finished he laid the table for the next. He set out three crockery plates on the oilcloth, turning them upside down so that they wouldn't catch the dust. When it was time for a meal, he rang a gong and Miss Charlotte came bustling in and stood behind her chair and briskly said grace. The old bearer shouted “Amen” the loudest, and when Miss Charlotte and the two girls had sat down and turned their plates the right way up, he went round the table serving them.