by Amitav Ghosh
In the beginning Alison responded to these remarks with undisguised fury, slamming her hands on the polished table, and repeating several times over: ‘Matthew is not coming back . . .’ At the time nothing seemed more important than that he should make proper acknowledgement of what had happened. In this she envisaged, if not a lessening of her own grief, then at least a sharing of its burden. But he would smile through her outbursts, and at the end he would carry on where she had interrupted him: ‘. . . and when they come back . . .’
It seemed somehow indecent, even obscene—a profanation of parenthood—that he should respond so blandly to so great a loss. But she saw that her insistence and her banging of tables made no difference: that short of hitting him, she had no means of forcing a rupture in the protective blanket of confusion that he had drawn around himself. She forced herself to gain control of her anger, but this came at the cost of acknowledging a further loss—that of her grandfather. She and her Baba, as she called him, had always been very close. Now it was as though she were being forced to accept that he was no longer a sentient presence in her life; that the comforts of the companionship they had shared had ceased for ever; that he who had always been an unfailing source of support had now, in the hour of her greatest need, chosen to become a burden. Of all the betrayals he could have perpetrated, this seemed the most terrible—that he should become a child in this moment of her utter abandonment. She could never have imagined it.
These weeks would have been unendurable, but for a single fortuitous circumstance. Some years before, acting on a whim, Saya John had adopted one of the plantation workers’ children—‘that boy who’s always hanging around the house’— Ilongo. The boy had continued to live with his mother, but Saya John had paid for his schooling in the nearby town of Sungei Pattani. Later he had sent him to a technical institution in Penang and Ilongo had qualified as an electrician.
Ilongo was now twenty, a dark, curly-haired youth, slow-moving and soft-spoken, but of imposing height and build. On finishing his electrician’s course, Ilongo had returned to the vicinity of Morningside—his mother now lived in a small, tin-roofed house on the outskirts of the estate.
In the aftermath of the accident, Ilongo came often to see Saya John at Morningside House. Gradually, and without an unduly intrusive display of concern, he took over many of the daily functions of caring for the old man. His was an unobtrusive yet quietly reliable presence, and Alison soon found herself looking to him for help in running the plantation’s offices. Ilongo had grown up on Morningside and knew every worker on the estate. They in turn accorded him an authority unlike that of anyone else on the plantation. He had come of age on the estate, but he’d also stepped outside its boundaries, learnt to speak Malay and English, acquired an education. He had no need to raise his voice or utter threats in order to gain respect: they trusted him as one of their own.
Saya John too found reassurance in his company. Every Sunday Ilongo would borrow a truck from the estate and drive him down to the Church of Christ the King, in Sungei Pattani. On the way they would stop at the shaded arcades of the red-tiled shophouses that lined the town’s main street. Saya John would go into a small restaurant and ask for the proprietor, Ah Fatt, a large man with bright gold incisors. Ah Fatt had political connections in southern China, and Saya John had been a generous contributor ever since Japan’s invasion of Manchuria. Each week he would hand Ah Fatt a sum of money, in an envelope, to be sent on.
On those days when he was at Morningside House, it was Ilongo who answered the telephone. One day he came cycling down from the house to see Alison at the estate office.
‘There was a call . . .’
‘From whom?’
‘Mr Dinu Raha.’
‘What?’ Alison was sitting at her desk. She looked up with a frown. ‘Dinu? Are you sure?’
‘Yes. He was calling from Penang. He’s just arrived from Rangoon. He’s coming to Sungei Pattani by train.’
‘Oh?’ Alison thought back to the letters that Dolly had written her in the weeks after her parents’ deaths: she recalled a reference to an impending visit—but the letter had said that it would be Neel who’d be coming, not Dinu.
‘Are you sure it was Dinu?’ she asked Ilongo again.
‘Yes.’
She glanced at her watch. ‘Perhaps I’ll go to the station to meet him.’
‘He said there was no need: he’d find a taxi.’
‘Oh? Well, I’ll see. There’s still time.’ Ilongo left and she sat back in her chair, turning to face a window that looked out over the plantation, towards the distant blue of the Andaman Sea. It was a long time since she’d last had a visitor. Immediately after her parents’ death, the house had been full. Friends and relatives had come from Penang, Malacca, Singapore—there had been piles of telegrams. Timmy had come all the way from New York, flying across the Pacific on PanAm’s China Clipper. In the overwhelming bewilderment of that time, Alison had found herself praying that Morningside would be filled for ever with people: it was inconceivable that she should have to face, on her own, those rooms and corridors—the stairway where every join in the wood was a reminder of her mother. But a week or two had gone by and then the house had emptied just as suddenly as it had filled up. Timmy had left to go back to New York. He had his own business now and couldn’t be too long away. In departing he had as good as handed Morningside over to her—to sell or run as she chose. In time, her sense of abandonment had yielded to the understanding that she could not look to the past to fill the gaps in her present; that she could not hope for the lingering traces of her parents’ lives to serve as a buffer between herself and the aching isolation of Morningside—the crushing monotony, the solitude that resulted from being always surrounded by the same faces, the same orderly rows of trees, the inescapable sight of the same clouds hanging upon the same mountain.
And now here was Dinu, on his way to Morningside— strange old Dinu—so incorrigibly serious, so awkward and unsure of himself. She looked at her watch and at the window. Far in the distance, she could see a train making its way across the plain. She reached for her handbag and found the keys to the Daytona roadster. It would be a relief to get away, even if just for a couple of hours.
twenty-seven
It was because of the war that Dinu’s arrival at Morningside was so long delayed. The threat of submarine activity in the Bay of Bengal had forced steamship companies to cease publishing their schedules. Departures were now announced only hours before the time of sailing. This meant, in effect, that a constant vigil had to be maintained at the companies’ offices. Dinu had considered himself lucky to get a berth at all and had not given any thought to wiring ahead.
The station at Sungei Pattani was as pretty as a toy: there was a single platform shaded by a low red-tiled awning. Dinu spotted Alison as the train was drawing in: she was standing in the shade of the tin awning, wearing sunglasses and a long, black dress. She looked thin, limp, wilted—a candlewick on whom grief burnt like a flame.
The sight of her induced a momentary rush of panic. Emotion of any kind inspired fear in him, but none so much as grief: for several minutes after the train pulled in he was literally unable to rise from his seat. It was not till the station master brandished his green flag that he started for the door.
Stepping out of the train, Dinu tried to recall the phrases of condolence he had rehearsed in preparation for this moment. But now, with Alison approaching across the platform, the idea of consolation seemed like an impossible impertinence. It would be kinder, surely, to behave as though nothing had happened?
‘You shouldn’t have come,’ he said gruffly, dropping his eyes. ‘I would have found a taxi.’
‘I was glad to come,’ she said. ‘It’s nice to have a break from Morningside.’
‘Still.’ Hefting his leather camera cases on his shoulders, he handed his suitcase to a porter.
She smiled. ‘Is your father better?’
‘Yes,’ Dinu said stiffly. ‘He
’s fine now . . . and Manju and Neel are expecting a baby.’
‘That’s good news.’ She gave him a smile and a nod.
They stepped out of the station into a compound that was shaded by an immense, dome-like tree. Dinu stopped to look up. From the tree’s moss-wrapped branches there hung a colourful array of creepers and wildflowers.
‘Why,’ said Dinu, ‘isn’t that a padauk tree?’
‘We call them angsana trees here,’ Alison said. ‘My father planted this one the year I was born.’ She paused. ‘The year we were born I should have said.’
‘Why yes . . . of course . . . we were born the same year.’ Dinu smiled, hesitantly, surprised both by the fact that she’d remembered and that she’d chosen to comment on it.
The Daytona was parked nearby, with its hood pulled up. Alison slipped into the driver’s seat, while Dinu saw to the loading of his luggage in the back. They drove out of the station and past the main marketplace with its long arcades of tiled shophouses. On the outskirts of town they passed a field that was ringed with barbed-wire fencing. At the centre of the field there stood several orderly rows of attap huts, roofed with sheets of corrugated iron.
‘What’s this?’ Dinu asked. ‘I don’t remember any of this . . .’
‘It’s our new military base,’ said Alison. ‘Sungei Pattani has a big army presence now, because of the war. There’s an airstrip in there and it’s guarded by Indian soldiers.’
The road began to climb and Gunung Jerai reared up ahead, its peak obscured by the usual daytime heat haze. Dinu sank back in his seat, framing the mountain in an imaginary lens. Alison’s voice took him by surprise.
‘Do you know what the hard part is?’
‘No—what is it?’
‘Nothing has any shape.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s something you don’t see until it’s gone—the shapes that things have and the ways in which the people around you mould those shapes. I don’t mean the big things—just the little ones. What you do when you get up in the morning— the hundreds of thoughts that run through your head while you’re brushing your teeth: “I have to tell Mummy about the new flowerbed”—that sort of thing. Over the last few years I’d started to take over a lot of the little things that Daddy and Mummy used to do at Morningside. Now, when I wake up in the morning those things still come back to me in just that way—I have to do this or that, for Mummy or for Daddy. Then I remember, No, I don’t have to do any of those things; there’s no reason to. And in an odd way, what you feel at those moments is not exactly sadness but a kind of disappointment. And that’s awful too, for you say to yourself— is this the best I can do? No: this isn’t good enough. I should cry—everyone says it’s good to cry. But the feeling inside doesn’t have an easy name: it’s not exactly pain or sorrow—not right then. It feels more like the sensation you have when you sit down very heavily in a chair: the breath rushes out of your body and you find yourself gagging. It’s hard to make sense of it—any of it. You want the pain to be simple, straightforward—you don’t want it to ambush you in these roundabout ways, each morning, when you’re getting up to do something else—brush your teeth or eat your breakfast . . .’
The car veered suddenly towards the side of the road. Dinu snatched at the wheel to steady it. ‘Alison! Slow down— careful.’
She ran the car on to the grassy verge that flanked the road and stopped under a tree. Raising her hands, she touched her cheeks in a gesture of disbelief. ‘Look,’ she said. I’m crying.’
‘Alison.’ He wanted to reach for her, touch her shoulder, but it was not like him to be demonstrative. She lowered her forehead to the wheel, sobbing, and then suddenly his hesitations evaporated.
‘Alison.’ He drew her head to his shoulder, and felt the warmth of her tears dampening the thin cotton of his shirt. Her hair was silky against his cheek and smelt faintly of grapes. ‘Alison, it’s all right . . .’
He was struck by a deep astonishment at what he had done. It was as though someone had reminded him that gestures of this kind did not come naturally to him. The arm that was holding her cradled against his shoulder grew heavy and wooden and he found himself mumbling awkwardly: ‘Alison . . . I know it’s been hard . . .’
He was cut short by the roar of a fifteen-hundredweight truck, rolling down the road. Alison pulled quickly away and sat upright. Dinu turned as the truck rumbled by. A squad of Indian soldiers was squatting in the back of the truck, dressed in turbans and khaki shorts.
The sound of the truck faded away and the moment passed. Alison wiped her face and cleared her throat. ‘Time to go home,’ she said, turning the ignition key. ‘You must be tired.’
It was mid-February when the long-awaited mobilisation orders finally arrived. Hardy was one of the first to know and he came running to Arjun’s room.
‘Yaar—have you heard?
It was early evening and Hardy didn’t bother to knock. He pushed the door open and looked in: ‘Arjun, where are you?’
Arjun was inside the curtained dressing room that separated his bathroom from the living area. He had just finished washing off the dirt of a football match and his mud-caked shoes and shorts lay heaped on the floor. It was a Thursday—a night when, by tradition, dinner jackets were worn at the mess, this being the day of the week when the news of Queen Victoria’s death had been received in India. Kishan Singh was at work in Arjun’s bedroom, laying out his clothes for the evening— dinner jacket, dress trousers, silk cummerbund.
Hardy crossed the room quickly: ‘Arjun? Did you hear? We’ve got the orders.’
Arjun pulled back the curtain, with a towel fastened around his waist.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes. Heard from Adjutant-sah’b.’
They looked at each other without knowing what else to say. Hardy seated himself on the edge of the bed and began to crack his knuckles. Arjun started to button his starched dress shirt, flexing his knees, so that he could see himself in the mirror. He caught a glimpse of Hardy behind him, staring morosely at the floor. Trying to sound jocular, he said: ‘At least we’ll get to see if those damned mobilisation plans that we drew up are any good or not . . .’
Hardy made no answer, and Arjun glanced over his shoulder. ‘Aren’t you glad the waiting’s over? Hardy?’
Hardy’s hands were clasped between his knees. He looked up suddenly. ‘I keep thinking . . .’
‘Of what?’
‘Do you remember Chetwode Hall? At the Military Academy in Dehra Dun?’
‘Of course.’
‘There was an inscription which said: The safety, honour and welfare of your country come first, always and every time. The honour, welfare and comfort of the men you command come next . . .’
‘. . . And your own ease, comfort and safety come last, always and every time.’ Arjun laughed as he finished the quotation for Hardy. ‘Of course I remember. It was inscribed on the podium—stared us in the face every time we entered Chetwode Hall.’
‘Didn’t it ever puzzle you—that inscription?’
‘No. Why should it?’
‘Well, didn’t you ever think: this country whose safety, honour and welfare are to come first, always and every time— what is it? Where is this country? The fact is that you and I don’t have a country—so where is this place whose safety, honour and welfare are to come first, always and every time? And why was it that when we took our oath it wasn’t to a country but to the King Emperor—to defend the Empire?’
Arjun turned to face him. ‘Hardy, what are you trying to get at?’
‘Just this.’ said Hardy. ‘Yaar, if my country really comes first, why am I being sent abroad? There’s no threat to my country right now—and if there were, it would be my duty to stay here and defend it.’
‘Hardy,’ Arjun said lightly, ‘staying here wouldn’t do much for your career . . .’
‘Career, career.’ Hardy clicked his tongue, in disgust. ‘Yaar, don’t you ever think of anyt
hing else?’
‘Hardy.’ Arjun gave him a look of warning, to remind him of Kishan Singh’s presence.
Hardy shrugged and looked at his watch. ‘All right, I’ll shut up,’ he said, standing up to go. ‘I’d better change too. We’ll talk later.’
Hardy left and Kishan Singh carried Arjun’s trousers into the dressing room. Kneeling on the floor, he held them open, by the waistband. Arjun stepped into them gingerly, taking care not to shatter the fragile sharpness of their glassy creases. Rising to his feet, Kishan Singh began to circle around Arjun, tucking his shirt-tails into his trousers.
Kishan Singh’s hand brushed against the small of Arjun’s back and he stiffened: he was on the verge of snapping at his batman to hurry up, when he stopped himself. It annoyed him to think that after two years as a commissioned officer he had still not succeeded in training himself to be at ease with the enforced intimacies of military life. This was one of the many things, he knew, that set him apart from the real faujis, the born-and-bred army-wallahs like Hardy. He’d once watched Hardy going through this very process of dressing for Guest Night with his batman’s help: he was oblivious of the man’s presence in a way that he, Arjun, never was of Kishan Singh’s.
Suddenly Kishan Singh spoke up, taking Arjun by surprise. ‘Sah’b,’ he said, ‘do you know where the battalion is going?’
‘No. Nobody does. We won’t know till we’re on the ship.’
Kishan Singh started wrapping Arjun’s cummerbund around his waist. ‘Sah’b,’ he said, ‘the NCOs have been saying that we’ll be going east . . .’
‘Why?’
‘At first we were training for the desert and everyone said we would be going to North Africa. But the equipment we were sent recently was clearly meant for the rain . . .’
