The Inheritance Of Loss Part 10

"Oh shut up," said Lola.

"It's too hot and stuffy," Lola said then, by way of apology to her sister. The monsoon must be on its way.

It was just two months after Gyan had arrived to teach Sai, and Sai had at first confused the tension in the air with his presence.

But now everyone was complaining. Uncle Potty sat limply. "It's building. Early this year. Better get me rum in, dolly, before the old boy is maroooooned."

Lola sipped a Disprin that fizzed and hopped in the water.

When the papers, too, reported the approach of storm clouds, she became quite merry: "I told told you. I can always you. I can always tell. tell. I've always been very sensitive. You know how I am-the princess and the pea-my dear, what can I say-the princess and the pea." I've always been very sensitive. You know how I am-the princess and the pea-my dear, what can I say-the princess and the pea."

At Cho Oyu, the judge and Sai sat out on the lawn. Mutt, catching sight of the shadow of her own tail, leapt and caught it, began to whizz around and around, confused as to whose tail it was. She would not let go, but her eyes expressed confusion and beseeching-how could she stop? what should she do?-she had caught a strange beast and didn't know it was herself. She went skittering helplessly about the garden.

"Silly girl," said Sai.

"Little pearl," said the judge when Sai left, in case Mutt's feelings had been bruised.

Then, in a flash, it was upon them. An anxious sound came from the banana trees as they began to flap their great ears for they were always the first to sound the alarm. The masts of bamboo were flung together and rang with the sound of an ancient martial art.

In the kitchen, the cook's calendar of G.o.ds began to kick on the wall as if it were alive, a plethora of arms, legs, demonic heads, blazing eyes.

The cook clamped everything shut, doors and windows, but then Sai opened the door just as he was sifting the flour to get rid of the weevils, and up the flour gusted and covered them both.

"Ooof ho. Look what you've done." Little burrowing insects ran free and overexcitedly on the floor and walls. Looking at each other covered with white, they began to laugh.

"Angrez ke tarah. Like the English." Like the English."

"Angrez ke tarah. Angrez jaise."

Sai put her head out. "Look," she said, feeling jolly, "just like English people."

The judge began to cough as an acrid mix of smoke and chili spread into the drawing room. "Stupid fool," he said to his granddaughter. "Shut the door!"

But the door shut itself along with all the doors in the house. Bang bang bang. The sky gaped, lit by flame; blue fire ensnared the pine tree that sizzled to an instant death leaving a charcoal stump, a singed smell, a Crosshatch of branches over the lawn. An unending rain broke on them and Mutt turned into a primitive life form, an amoebic creature, slithering about the floor.

A lightning conductor atop Cho Oyu ran a wire into an underground pit of salt, which would save them, but Mutt couldn't understand. With renewed thunder and a blast upon the tin roof, she sought refuge behind the curtains, under the beds. But either her behind was left vulnerable, or her nose, and she was frightened by the wind making ghost sounds in the empty soda bottles: whoo hoooo hooo. whoo hoooo hooo.

"Don't be scared, puppy dog, little frog, little duck, duckie dog. It's just rain."

She tried to smile, but her tail kept folding under and her eyes were those of a soldier in war, finished with caring for silly myths of courage. Her ears strained beyond the horizon, antic.i.p.ating what didn't fail to arrive, yet another wave of bombardment, the sound of civilization crumbling-she had never known it was so big-cities and monuments fell-and she fled again.

This aqueous season would last three months, four, maybe five. In Cho Oyu, a leak dripping into the toilet played a honky-tonk, until it was interrupted by Sai, who held an umbrella over herself when she went inside the bathroom. Condensation fogged the gla.s.s of clocks, and clothes hanging to dry in the attic remained wet for a week. A white scurf sifted down from the beams, a fungus spun a s.h.a.ggy age over everything. Bits of color, though, defined this m.u.f.fled scene: insects flew in carnival gear; bread, in a day, turned green as gra.s.s; Sai, pulling open her underwear drawer, found a bright pink jelly scalloping the layers of dreary cotton; and the bound volumes of National Geographic National Geographic fell open to pages bruised with flamboyant disease, purple-yellow molds rivaling the bower birds of Papua New Guinea, the residents of New Orleans, and the advertis.e.m.e.nts-"It's better in the Bahamas!"-that it showcased. fell open to pages bruised with flamboyant disease, purple-yellow molds rivaling the bower birds of Papua New Guinea, the residents of New Orleans, and the advertis.e.m.e.nts-"It's better in the Bahamas!"-that it showcased.

Sai had always been calm and cheerful during these months, the only time when her life in Kalimpong was granted perfect sense and she could experience the peace of knowing that communication with anyone was near impossible. She sat on the veranda, riding the moods of the season, thinking how intelligent it was to succ.u.mb as all over Kalimpong modernity began to fail. Phones emitted a death rattle, televisions tuned into yet another view of the downpour. And in this wet diarrheal season floated the feeling, loose and light, of life being a moving, dissipating thing, chilly and solitary-not anything you could grasp. The world vanished, the gate opened onto nothing-no Gyan around the bend of the mountain-and that terrible feeling of waiting released its stranglehold. Even Uncle Potty was impossible to visit for the jhora jhora had overflowed its banks and carried the bridge downstream. had overflowed its banks and carried the bridge downstream.

At Mon Ami, Lola, fiddling the k.n.o.b of the radio, had to relinquish proof that her daughter Pixie still prevailed in a dry place amid news of bursting rivers, cholera, crocodile attacks, and Banglades.h.i.+s up in their trees again. "Oh well," Lola sighed, "perhaps it will wash out the hooligans in the bazaar."

Recently a series of strikes and processions had indicated growing political discontent. And now a three-day strike and a raasta roko raasta roko roadblock endeavor were postponed because of the weather. What was the point of preventing rations from getting through if they weren't getting through anyway? How to force offices to close when they were going to remain closed? How to shut down streets when the streets had gone? Even the main road into Kalimpong from Teesta Bazaar had simply slipped off the incline and lay in pieces down in the gorge below. roadblock endeavor were postponed because of the weather. What was the point of preventing rations from getting through if they weren't getting through anyway? How to force offices to close when they were going to remain closed? How to shut down streets when the streets had gone? Even the main road into Kalimpong from Teesta Bazaar had simply slipped off the incline and lay in pieces down in the gorge below.

Between storms, a grub-white sun appeared and everything began to sour and steam as people rushed to market.

Gyan, though, walked in the other direction, to Cho Oyu.

He was worried about the tuition and worried his payment might be denied him, that he and Sai had fallen far behind in the syllabus. So he told himself, slipping about the slopes, clutching onto plants.

Really, though, he walked in this direction because the rain's pause had brought forth, once again, that unbearable feeling of antic.i.p.ation, and under its influence he couldn't sit still. He found Sai among the newspapers that had arrived on the Siliguri bus, two weeks' worth bunched together. Each leaf had been ironed dry separately by the cook. Several species of ferns were bushy about the veranda, frilled with drops; elephant ears held trembling clutches of rain sp.a.w.n; and all the hundreds of invisible spiderwebs in the bushes around the house had become visible, lined in silver, caught with trailing tissues of cloud. Sai was wearing her kimono, a present from Uncle Potty, who had found it in a chest of his mother's, a souvenir of her voyage to j.a.pan to see the cherry blossoms. It was made of scarlet silk, gilded with dragons, and thus Sai sat, mysterious and highlighted in gold, an empress of a wild kingdom, glowing against its lush scene.

The country, Sai noted, was coming apart at the seams: police unearthing militants in a.s.sam, Nagaland, and Mizoram; Punjab on fire with Indira Gandhi dead and gone in October of last year; and those Sikhs with their Kanga, Kachha, etc., still wis.h.i.+ng to add a sixth K, K, Khalistan, their own country in which to live with the other five Khalistan, their own country in which to live with the other five Ks. Ks.

In Delhi the government had unveiled its new financial plan after much secrecy and debate. It had seen fit to reduce taxes on condensed milk and ladies' undergarments, and raise them on wheat, rice, and kerosene.

"Our darling Piu," an obituary outlined in black had a photo of a smiling child-"Seven years have pa.s.sed since you left for your heavenly abode, and the pain has not gone. Why were you so cruelly s.n.a.t.c.hed away before your time? Mummy keeps crying to think of your sweet smile. We cannot make sense of our lives. Anxiously awaiting your reincarnation."

"Good afternoon," said Gyan.

She looked up and he felt a deep pang.

Back at the dining table, the mathematics books between them, tortured by graphs, by decimal points of perfect measurement, Gyan was conscious of the fact that a being so splendid should not be seated before a shabby textbook; it was wrong of him to have forced this ordinariness upon her-the bisection and rebisection of the bisection of an angle. Then, as if to reiterate the fact that he should have remained at home, it began to pour again and he was forced to shout over the sound of rain on the tin roof, which imparted an epic quality to geometry that was clearly ridiculous.

An hour later, it was still hammering down. "I had better go," he said desperately.

"Don't," she squeaked, "you might get killed by lightning."

It began to hail.

"I really must," he said.

"Don't," warned the cook, "In my village a man stuck his head out of the door in a hailstorm, a big goli goli fell on him and he died right away." fell on him and he died right away."

The storm's grip intensified, then weakened as night fell, but it was far too dark by this time for Gyan to pick his way home through a hillside of ice eggs.

The judge looked irritably across the chops at Gyan. His presence, he felt, was an insolence, a liberty driven if not by intent then certainly by foolishness. "What made you come out in such weather, Charlie?" he said. "You might be adept at mathematics, but common sense appears to have eluded you."

No answer. Gyan seemed ensnared by his own thoughts.

The judge studied him.

He detected an obvious lack of familiarity, a hesitance with the cutlery and the food, yet he sensed Gyan was someone with plans. He carried an unmistakable whiff of journey, of ambition-and an old emotion came back to the judge, a recognition of weakness that was not merely a feeling, but also a taste, like fever. He could tell Gyan had never eaten such food in such a manner. Bitterness flooded the judge's mouth.

"So," he said, slicing the meat expertly off the bone, "so, what poets are you reading these days, young man?" He felt a sinister urge to catch the boy off guard.

"He is a science student," said Sai.

"So what of that? Scientists are not barred from poetry, or are they?

"Whatever happened to the well-rounded education?" he said into the continuing silence.

Gyan racked his brains. He never read any poets. "Tagore?" he answered uncertainly, sure that was safe and respectable.

"Tagore!" The judge speared a bit of meat with his fork, dunked it in the gravy, piled on a bit of potato and mashed on a few peas, put the whole thing into his mouth with the fork held in his left hand.

"Overrated," he said after he had chewed well and swallowed, but despite this dismissal, he gestured an order with his knife: "Recite us something, won't you?"

"Where the head is held high, Where knowledge is free, Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls.... Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let me and my country awake." Every schoolchild in India knew at least this.

The judge began to laugh in a cheerless and horrible manner.

How he hated this dingy season. It angered him for reasons beyond Mutt's unhappiness; it made a mockery of him, his ideals. When he looked about he saw he was not in charge: mold in his toothbrush, snakes slithering unafraid right over the patio, furniture gaining weight, and Cho Oyu also soaking up water, crumbling like a mealy loaf. With each storm's bas.h.i.+ng, less of it was habitable.

The judge felt old, very old, and as the house crumbled about him, his mind, too, seemed to be giving way, doors he had kept firmly closed between one thought and the next, dissolving. It was now forty years since he had been a student of poetry.

The library had never been open long enough.

He arrived as it opened, departed when it closed, for it was the rescuer of foreign students, proffered privacy and a lack of thugs.

He read a book ent.i.tled Expedition to Goozerat: Expedition to Goozerat: "The Malabar coast undulates in the shape of a wave up the western flank of India, and then, in a graceful motion, gestures toward the Arabian sea. This is Goozerat. At the river deltas and along the malarial coasts lie towns configured for trade...." "The Malabar coast undulates in the shape of a wave up the western flank of India, and then, in a graceful motion, gestures toward the Arabian sea. This is Goozerat. At the river deltas and along the malarial coasts lie towns configured for trade...."

What on earth was all of this? It had nothing to do with what he remembered of his home, of the Patels and their life in the Patel warren, and yet, when he unfolded the map, he found Piphit. There it was-a mosquito speck by the side of a sulky river.

With amazement, he read on, of scurvied sailors arriving, the British, the French, the Dutch, the Portuguese. In their care the tomato traveled to India, and also the cashew nut. He read that the East India Company had rented Bombay at ten pounds a year from Charles II who came by it, a jujube in his dowry bag upon his wedding to Catherine of Braganza, and by the middle of the nineteenth century, he learned that mock turtle soup was being trawled on s.h.i.+ps through the Suez to feed those who might be pining for it in rice and dal country. An Englishman might sit against a tropical background, yellow yolk of sun, s.h.i.+ne spun into the palms, and consume a Yarmouth herring, a Breton oyster. This was all news to him and he felt greedy for a country that was already his.

Mid morning he rose from his books, went to the lavatory for the daily trial of his digestion, where he sat straining upon the pot with pained and prolonged effort. As he heard others shuffling outside, waiting for their turn, he stuck a finger up the hole and excavated within, allowing a backed up load of scropulated goat pellets to rattle down loudly. Had they heard him outside? He tried to catch them before they bulleted the water. His finger emerged covered in excrement and blood, and he washed his hands repeatedly, but the smell persisted, faintly trailing him through his studies. As time went on, Jemubhai worked harder. He measured out a reading calendar, listed each book, each chapter in a complex chart. Topham's Law of Property, Law of Property, Aristotle, Aristotle, Indian Criminal Procedure, Indian Criminal Procedure, the the Penal Code Penal Code and the and the Evidence Act. Evidence Act.

He worked late into the night back in his rented room, still tailed by the persistent smell of s.h.i.+t, falling from his chair directly into bed, rising in terror a few hours later, and rolling up onto the chair again. He worked eighteen hours a day, over a hundred hours a week, sometimes stopping to feed his landlady's dog when she begged for a share of pork pie dinner, drooling damp patches onto his lap, raking an insistent paw across his knees and wrecking the pleat of his corduroys. This was his first friends.h.i.+p with an animal, for in Piphit the personalities of dogs were not investigated or encouraged. Three nights before the Probation Finals, he did not sleep at all, but read aloud to himself, rocking back and forth to the rhythm, repeating, repeating.

A journey once begun, has no end. The memory of his ocean trip shone between the words. Below and beyond, the monsters of his unconscious prowled, awaiting the time when they would rise and be proven real and he wondered if he'd dreamt of the drowning power of the sea before his first sight of it.

His landlady brought his dinner tray right to his door. A treat: a quadruplet of handsome oily sausages, confident, gleaming, whizzing with life. Ready already for the age when food would sing on television to advertise itself.

"Don't work too hard."

"One must, Mrs. Rice."

He had learned to take refuge in the third person and to keep everyone at bay, to keep even himself away from himself like the Queen.

Open Compet.i.tive Examination, June 1942 He sat before a row of twelve examiners and the first question was put to him by a professor of London University-Could he tell them how a steam train worked?

Jemubhai's mind drew a blank.

"Not interested in trains?" The man looked personally disappointed.

"A fascinating field, sir, but one's been too busy studying the recommended subjects."

"No idea of how a train works?"

Jemu stretched his brain as far as he could-what powered what?- but he had never seen the inside of a railway engine.

"No, sir."

Could he describe then, the burial customs of the ancient Chinese.

He was from the same part of the country as Gandhi. What of the noncooperation movement? What was his opinion of the Congress?

The room was silent. BUY BRITISH-Jemubahi had seen the posters the day of his arrival in England, and it had struck him that if he'd yelled BUY INDIAN in the streets of India, he would be clapped into jail. And all the way back in 1930, when Jemubhai was still a child, Gandhi had marched from Sabarmati ashram to Dandi where, at the ocean's maw, he had performed the subversive activity of harvesting salt.

"-Where will that get him? Phtool His heart may be in the right place but his brain has fallen out of his head"-Jemu's father had said although the jails were full of Gandhi's supporters. On the SS Strathnaver, Strathnaver, the sea spray had come flying at Jemubhai and dried in taunting dots of salt upon his face and arms.... It the sea spray had come flying at Jemubhai and dried in taunting dots of salt upon his face and arms.... It did did seem ridiculous to tax it.... seem ridiculous to tax it....

"If one was not committed to the current administration, sir, there would be no question of appearing here today."

Lastly, who was his favorite writer?

A bit nervously for he had none, he replied that one was fond of Sir Walter Scott.

"What have you read?"

"All the printed works, sir."

"Can you recite one of your favorite poems for us?" asked a professor of social anthropology.

Oh! Young Lochinvar is come out of the west, Through all the wide Border his steed was the best By the time they stood for the ICS, most of the candidates had crisp-ironed their speech, but Jemubhai had barely opened his mouth for whole years and his English still had the rhythm and the form of Gujerati.

But ere he alighted at Netherby gate The bride had consented, the gallant came late: For a laggard in love and a dastard in war Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar....

When he looked up, he saw they were all chuckling.

While her mother did fret, and her father did fume, And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume....