“Oh, please!” she exclaimed, with sudden brightness, like a child offered an orange. And then as though she thought she should not have shown such excitement, she said doubtfully, “But perhaps you would not care to take me?”
“Why not?”
“You are perhaps already meeting someone?”
“No,” I said.
“But you are sure it is all right?”
“What could be the matter?”
“Well . . .” she said.
“Well?”
“I am Japanese. You are sure you won’t get into trouble?”
“Certainly. You’re my teacher. We’re talking Japanese.”
“Then let’s go to bazaar,” she said. “I think that is such a nice word, bazaar. It must be very exciting.”
I called to the driver to go to Chandragupta Road. He pulled on the reins of the horse, and we came to an abrupt standstill. Then we turned round in the middle of the road and fitted into the traffic going in the opposite direction.
“It was really out of your way,” she said.
“A few yards.”
“I am sorry to be trouble.”
“I’m enjoying it—the first time I’ve ridden with a lady in a ghari. It’s a great event.”
“O-seiji . . .” she said.
“I don’t understand Japanese.”
“It means you were speaking compliment.”
“It is true,” I said.
We stopped the ghari at the corner of Chandragupta Road. Facing us as we alighted there was a smooth plaster wall, and on the wall a poster. It was a poster I had seen all over India.
It was the face of a Japanese—a smiling and not unpleasant face. But this face was only a mask. Beneath it, teeth bared but not smiling, eyes narrowed and cruel, was the real face of yellow flesh; and beside it the caption: “Beware the mask of friendship—it may hide Japanese treachery.”
I looked at Miss Wei; she had seen it. Her eyes took it in, and then the lashes hid them and she looked at the ground and turned away towards the bazaar.
“It is difficult for you,” I said.
She was suddenly bright:
“It is also difficult for you.”
“That is different,” I said.
“You don’t mind?”
“Mind?”
“Showing me the bazaar?”
“Yes,” I said, “I am very particular whom I show bazaars to.”
“Oh dear! . . .”
The brightness went, and a pathetic, crestfallen look came into her face; her eyes were large and round, watching me to try to make me out. I brought the joke to an end quickly.
“That was just my idiotic sense of humour.”
“Really?” she said. “Honestry, you don’t mind?” She pronounced the ‘l’ of honestly like an ‘r,’ and there was something charming in this little serious appeal of hers that brought a rush of sentiment into my breast. It amused me, as though it were some quaint thing said by a child.
“Why you laugh?” she said.
“I’m sorry, it was rude.”
We began to walk along through the bazaar. The street was thronged with people, and there were wooden carts drawn by bullocks rumbling over the stones, and a great deal of noise. And as many smells as noises, but chiefly the dry, sharp smell of burning charcoal. It was very dirty. People pushed by us, hardly noticing us. Only the shop-keepers called out in arresting tones, as though we had dropped something.
“Sahib!”
“Look, Sahib!”
“A minute, please!”
“Sahib, very cheap shoes!”
Miss Wei was wide-eyed like a child. She skipped from one side of the street to the other, pointing at things, touching them, like a perfectly unself-conscious child in a toyshop. I was looking at her, fascinated. I began to think she was the prettiest thing I had ever seen; and then I purposely thought of the poster, and after that of ‘the Japanese,’ of what ‘Japanese’ had always signified to me, and of Itsumi San. But I knew it was being an effort for me to think of Miss Wei as ‘Japanese,’ and not simply as a woman.
A dirty grey cow wandered aimlessly and in holy immunity past her.
“Look!” she cried. “Look!” She laid a daring finger on its horn. It swung its head round, brushing her dress with a dry, lazily inquiring nose, and she jumped a foot backwards, withdrawing her hand as if it had been bitten.
She looked at me in surprise.
“Did you see it had whiskers?” she said. “I didn’t know cows had whiskers.”
“Don’t you have cows in Japan?”
“Yes, but I have never touched. I have never been close before. Why do they have cows in bazaar?”
“Nobody dare turn them out.”
“Oh,” she said, thinking it over. And then: “I think bazaar is awfully exciting. I am going to buy.”
“A cow?”
“I will buy anything. It looks fun to buy. Could I have fountainpen?”
We found a store where there were some for sale. The storekeeper was fat and sat cross-legged on the threshold. He reached for some pens and began to hand them to us one by one. His hands were thick and brown, with big, dry nails.
“Is this good?” Miss Wei said.
“I will show you our best. It is this. It is a genuine Blackbird.”
“It is honestry good?”
“You see written—super-fine.”
“How much this?”
“Fifty rupees only.”
“I will take.”
She began searching in her handbag.
“No!” I said.
“Please, I would like to buy.”
“It’s too expensive.”
“But I want good pen.”
“It’s not that good.”
“How much worth?” she said.
“Offer him twenty-five.”
“It is worth more than fifty,” the shop-keeper said.
“It is a super-fine pen. I sell specially cheap for Memsahib. For anyone else it is sixty rupees.”
“Twenty-five,” I said.
“I cannot sell for less than fifty.”
“Twenty-five.”
Miss Wei looked at me beseechingly. I took her arm and started to lead her away.
“Come on,” I said. “We’ll buy the same thing cheaper somewhere else.”
“Forty rupees, Sahib. Special price.”
“Make it thirty,” I said.
“This is genuine super-fine Blackbird.”
“Thirty rupees.”
“Thirty-five, special for Memsahib.”
“Very well,” I said. “Thirty-five. You’re very fortunate that Memsahib is so generous.”
Miss Wei’s face brightened. She pulled the notes quickly out of her bag before anybody changed his mind. She took the pen and tucked it away inside.
“You must never pay all they ask,” I said as we turned away. “They expect you to bargain.”
“But he looked so poor.”
“He was pleased to get thirty-five. Did you see his face?”
“He didn’t think I cheated?”
“No, he thought he could cheat you.”
“Then you have saved for me fifteen rupees. Please let’s spend on something for you.”
“I don’t want anything.”
“Yes,” she said. “It is your fifteen rupees because you saved for me. I shall buy that.”
“I’m afraid I don’t wear braces.”
“Oh dear,” she said plaintively. “It is naughty of you not to tell what you would like. Oh, look!” she said. “There is orchestra!” She pointed down the street to a crowd of Indians, from the midst of which came the monotonous squeaks of some musical instrument.
“Don’t look,�
� I said.
“But it is perhaps charming snakes.”
“No, it is something horrible.”
“Please, I would like to see.”
“It’ll upset you,” I said.
“What is it, please?”
“Some kind of begging.”
“Then why mayn’t I see begging?”
“You can see it if you want—but you won’t like it.”
“You are—squeamish!” she said, delighted with herself for having found such a nice word.
“All right,” I said. “We’ll go and look.”
We pushed our way through the brown, thin-legged pedestrians until we could see the musicians. The leader was an old man with long, black, matted hair hanging about his shoulders. His face was only a little less black than his hair, and his cheeks were swollen as he blew into his gourd-like flute. Behind him were two young boys, almost naked, whose cheeks too were swollen like little brown footballs, and their eyes projecting grotesquely. The stream of sound from their instruments was penetrating and incessant.
“There is nothing bad,” Miss Wei said. “Look, they are blowing so hard . . . Oh!” She stopped suddenly. Her mouth fell open in horror. She stood staring, transfixed with a dreadful fascination. Between the spider legs of the onlookers something had emerged into view that resembled a foetus, with enormous head and useless matchstick limbs drawn up into a shrunken belly. Its ash-smeared body was the size of a child’s; yet there was nothing in the paralysed face to indicate whether it was for five or fifty or five hundred years that this hideously misshapen creature had harboured its tiny spark of life. Only one arm was mobile and with this, inch by suffering inch, it dragged itself along the gutter.
The pain was deeply engraved on Miss Wei’s face; but she did not move.
“Come,” I said.
“Please wait.”
She fumbled in her purse and found some notes. There were twenty or thirty rupees. She handed them to me. I noticed that her eyes were quite dry; but the misery stood out in them like tears.
“Please give,” she said.
“But . . .”
“Please,” she said, and moved away out of the crowd.
I pushed through the row of spectators. The old man with the long hair saw me, and held out one hand without stopping his music, peering over the wooden instrument to see how much I gave. I stuffed the three or four notes into the hand. The monotonous sound seemed to rise for a moment in an unexpected squeak, and then fell back to the old tuneless rhythm. The old man inclined his head slightly, and the eyes of the two boys goggled more than ever. I turned and fought my way out.
“You’re very generous,” I said to Miss Wei. She did not say anything. “Normally he wouldn’t get so much in a month.”
After a while she said, “It is the most terrible thing I have seen.”
“It is terrible,” I said. “It’s difficult to believe, but sometimes they mutilate young children on purpose, so that they can make a livelihood begging.”
“Oh,” she said with a tiny whimper. “That is so wicked.”
“Yes,” I said, and echoing the words of the Brigadier: “There are a lot of wicked things in the world.”
We walked for a time in silence, pretending to look at the things in the bazaar, but we were no longer spontaneously enjoying ourselves. I felt shattered, partly because of the monstrous thing we had seen in the gutter, partly because all the charming gaiety had gone out of Miss Wei, and now she was looking ineffably sad. I made some frivolous remark, but she only looked at me and forced herself to make a sad smile.
When we reached Hornby Road she said good-bye, thanking me as though I had done something very wonderful for her. Then she made two or three little curtsies before getting into her ghari.
“It has been such experience,” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “It has been an experience.”
I called a ghari for myself and gave the name of my hotel.
Chapter Six
(1)
I had a cold shower, and then wrapped a towel round my waist and lit a cigarette. It is a fine thing, a cold shower in India—better than alcohol, or a cup of tea, or a sleep. You can go under it tired and footsore, perspiring, oppressed by worry, and emerge like a new being. Of course, the cigarette is also an important adjunct. Except for the after-breakfast cigarette, it is the best you can have.
I pottered about in bare feet, feeling immensely fit and aware of my body. In England that was a thing that I had seldom been aware of except in so far as satisfying its needs were concerned. Those needs only served to underline its nuisance value. Even exercising for exercising’s sake was an intolerable waste of time.
On the boat out from England it had first been brought home to me how much more conscious people became of their bodies as they neared the equator. There was a Burmese girl on board who was pretty and vivacious and quite intelligent; and clearly the fires of passion could burn hotly within her. An Army doctor, a Captain, became quickly infatuated with her—before we had even got down the Clyde. And by the time we had begun our zigzag course in the Atlantic, an affaire was in progress that could not be entirely clandestine. I began to wonder what would happen, for both of them were married. They even spoke of a double divorce. That idea, however, was hatched in the cold northern climes, when she was still shivering within the folds of a huge fur coat and he within an Army great-coat. When we got down to the equator, nature straightened out the difficulty into which it had pitch-forked them. Basking in the sun, her nut-brown body came to life again; something that had long been dormant was reawakened. As for the Captain—he reluctantly changed into tropical kit, revealing a pair of knobbly knees and a white skin that the sun soon turned to a painful pink. They lay, one in the sun and one in the shade, he beginning to envy and she to despise. North of Ireland they could be lovers—in the tropics their differences were irreconcilable.
So it is that the sun brings out this body-awareness; though for me Burma, and being in hospital, had done the same thing. Rebuilding my body had served to remind me that it belonged to me, that I could neither exchange it for another nor do without it, and that it was something more than a complexity of incon-veniences.
I smoked a second cigarette and read a few pages from a book. Then I dressed in khaki slacks and a loose bush-shirt, and took a ghari to the Yacht Club. Peter had left a note to say that I should find him there.
He was drinking with Mervyn and Mario. I had a whisky, and then we went upstairs to dine. It was a tall, cool room with many big fans. The waiters were smart and dressed in white, and they walked bare-footed on the polished floor. We ordered a bottle of wine to go with the delicious food.
“I am getting to like Bombay,” Peter said.
“That’s the trouble,” said Mervyn. “I’m afraid of liking it too much.”
“What do you mean?”
“Life’s simple when everything revolves round the King’s Road in Chelsea. There’s always a hub to your wheel.”
“It’s nice to find it bearable to live on the rim.”
“I don’t want my wheel to get out of shape.”
“The Quinn wheel is going cock-eyed,” said Mario good-naturedly. “Very soon the hub will be stuck on the end of a spoke.”
I looked at him questioningly.
“Aren’t you making plans here?” he said.
“I don’t understand.”
“Of course he is,” said Peter. “Michael always gets his life organised. The moment he lands in a town he buys a map. He marks places of interest in blue, and local dignitaries in green, and the residences of beautiful women in red.”
“What is all this about?” I said.
“Our spies have told us everything, and we’re very hurt. You get rid of us cleverly, and pretend to go away. Then you come slinking back to your tryst.”
&
nbsp; “Miss Wei?” I said.
“That’s what we’re told.”
“I can assure you it was an accident.”
“Getting into the ghari, too?”
“That was instinctive gallantry,” I said.
“There’s great scope for gallantry when you find yourself with a beautiful woman beneath one of those hoods.”
“You think she’s beautiful?”
“Of course she’s beautiful,” Peter said. “She’s altogether exquisite. I’ve never seen eyes like those in my life before. It’s like looking into one of those bottomless pools you find amongst the rocks on the Cornish coast.”
“It sounds a little bit as though you’re jealous,” I said.
“Certainly I’m jealous. I can’t imagine why I didn’t think of doing this myself.”
“I didn’t think of it—it just happened.”
“You watch your step,” Mervyn said. “Don’t forget she has a yellow skin. These things can get you.”
“Her skin isn’t yellow. It isn’t like Itsumi San’s at all. It’s as pink as yours.”
“The principle is the same. It’s a question of warping your taste. I’m told if you once chew betel-nut you lose all interest in cigarettes.”
“Good heavens,” I said. “I don’t see what all that’s got to do with me. The only reason that I spoke to her was to apologise for Fenwick.” My protestation sounded rather over-vehement and humourless, for something in Mervyn’s words had given me an unpleasant jolt. I was not absolutely sure why I had been affected in this way, and I made a mental note to work it out afterwards. Meanwhile it was better to guide the conversation to a safer topic. “Fenwick quite surpassed himself today, don’t you think?” I said.
“He’s unspeakable!” said Mervyn. “In peacetime you simply wouldn’t have a man like that in your house. You wouldn’t even let him use the service stairs.”
“Some people get taken in by his back-slapping,” Peter said. “They can’t see it’s all part of a plan to better himself.”
“It isn’t even back-slapping. Have you seen him with the Brigadier? Its sycophancy. It’s crawling up the honourable backside.”
The Wind Cannot Read Page 5
