The Complete Stories

by Anita Desai

  Relenting, Mrs Fernandez whispered, under cover of the sonorous prayer led by the grey padre in faded purple, ‘Nearly over now, Victor. In a little while we’ll be going to tea – pineapple cake for you.’

  Victor hadn’t much faith in his mother’s promises. They had a way of getting postponed or cancelled on account of some small accidental lapse on his part. He might tear a hole in his sleeve – no pocket money. Or stare a minute too long at Uncle Arthur who was down on a visit from Goa and had a wen on the back of his bald head – no caramel custard for pudding. So he would not exchange looks with her but stared stolidly down at his polished shoes, licked his dry lips and wondered if there would be Fanta or Coca-Cola at tea.

  Then the ceremony came to an end. How or why, he could not tell, sunk so far below eye-level in that lake of breathless witnesses to the marriage of Carmen Maria Braganza of Goa and George de Mello of Byculla, Bombay. He had seen nothing of it, only followed, disconsolately and confusedly, the smells and sounds of it, like some underground creature, an infant mole, trying to make out what went on outside its burrow, and whether it was alarming or enticing. Now it was over and his mother was digging him in the ribs, shoving him out, hurrying him by running into his heels, and now they were streaming out with the tide. At the door he made out the purple of the padre’s robes, he was handed a pink paper flower by a little girl who held a silver basket full of them and whose face gleamed with fanatic self-importance, and then he was swept down the stairs, held onto by his elbow and, once on ground level, his mother was making a din about finding a vehicle to take them to the reception at Green’s. ‘The tea will be at Green’s, you know,’ she had been saying several times a day for weeks now. ‘Those de Mellos must have money – they can’t be so badly off – tea at Green’s, after all.’

  It was no easy matter, she found, to be taken care of, for although there was a whole line of cabs at the kerb, they all belonged to the more important members of the de Mello and Braganza families. When Mrs Fernandez realized this, she set her lips together and looked dangerously wrathful, and the party atmosphere began quickly to dissolve in the acid of bad temper and the threat to her dignity. Victor stupidly began a fantasy of slipping out of her hold and breaking into a toy shop for skates and speeding ahead of the whole caravan on a magic pair, to arrive at Green’s before the bride, losing his mother on the way … But she found two seats, in the nick of time, in a taxi that already contained a short, broad woman in a purple net frock and a long thin man with an Adam’s apple that struggled to rise above his polka-dotted bow tie and then slipped down again with an audible croak. The four of them sat squeezed together and the women made little remarks about how beautiful Carmen Maria had looked and how the de Mellos couldn’t be badly off, tea at Green’s, after all. ‘Green’s,’ the woman in the purple net frock yelled into the taxi driver’s ear and gave her bottom an important shake that knocked Victor against the door. He felt that he was being shoved out, he was not wanted, he had no place here. This must have made him look piqued for his mother squeezed his hand and whispered, ‘You’ve been a good boy – pineapple cake for you.’ Victor sat still, not breathing. The man with the Adam’s apple stretched his neck longer and longer, swivelled his head about on the top of it and said nothing, but the frog in his throat gurgled to itself.

  Let out of the taxi, Victor looked about him at the wonders of Bombay harbour while the elders tried to be polite and yet not pay the taxi. Had his father brought him here on a Sunday outing, with a ferry boat ride and a fresh coconut drink for treats, he would have enjoyed the Arab dhows with their muddy sails, the ships and tankers and seagulls and the Gateway of India like a coloured version of the photograph in his history book, but it was too unexpected. He had been promised pineapple cake at Green’s, sufficiently overwhelming in itself – he hadn’t the where-withal to cope with the Gateway of India as well.

  Instinctively he put out his hand to find his mother’s and received another shock – she had slipped on a pair of gloves, dreadfully new ones of crackling nylon lace, like fresh bandages on her purple hands. She squeezed his hand, saying, ‘If you want to do soo-soo, tell me, I’ll find the toilet. Don’t you go and wet your pants, man.’ Horrified, he pulled away but she caught him by the collar and led him into the hotel and up the stairs to the tea room where refreshments were to be served in celebration of Carmen Maria’s and George de Mello’s wedding. The band was still playing ‘Here Comes the Bride’ when Victor and his mother entered.

  Here there was a repetition of the scene over the taxi: this time it was seats at a suitable table that Mrs Fernandez demanded, could not find, then spotted, was turned away from and, finally, led to two others by a slippery-smooth waiter used to such scenes. The tables had been arranged in the form of the letter E, and covered with white cloths. Little vases marched up the centres of the tables, sprouting stiff zinnias and limp periwinkles. The guests, chief and otherwise, seemed flustered by the arrangements, rustled about, making adjustments and readjustments, but the staff showed no such hesitations over protocol. They seated the party masterfully, had the tables laid out impeccably and, when the band swung into the ‘Do Re Mi’ song from The Sound of Music, brought in the wedding cake. Everyone craned to see Carmen Maria cut it, and Victor’s mother gave him a pinch that made him half-rise from his chair, whispering, ‘Stand up if you can’t see, man, stand up to see Carmen Maria cut the cake.’ There was a burst of laughter, applause and raucous congratulation with an undertone of ribaldry that unnerved Victor and made him sink down on his chair, already a bit sick.

  The band was playing a lively version of ‘I am Sixteen, Going on Seventeen’ when Victor heard a curious sound, as of a choked drain being forced. Others heard it too for suddenly chairs were being scraped back, people were standing up, some of them stepped backwards and nearly fell on top of Victor who hastily got off his chair. The mother of the bride, in her pink and silver gauzes, ran up, crying ‘Oh no, oh no, no, no!’

  Two seats down sat the man with the long, thin neck in which an Adam’s apple rose and fell so lugubriously. Only he was no longer sitting. He was sprawled over his chair, his head hanging over the back in a curiously unhinged way, as though dangling at the end of a rope. The woman in the purple net dress was leaning over him and screaming, ‘Aub, Aub, my darling Aubrey! Help my darling Aubrey!’ Victor gave a shiver and stepped back and back till someone caught and held him.

  Someone ran past – perhaps one of those confident young waiters who knew all there was to know – shouting ‘Phone for a doctor, quick! Call Dr Patel,’ and then there was a long, ripping groan all the way down the tables which seemed to come from the woman in the purple net dress or perhaps from the bride’s mother, Victor could not tell – ‘Oh, why did it have to happen today? Couldn’t he have gone into another day?’ Carmen Maria, the bride, began to sob frightenedly. After that someone grasped the long-necked old man by his knees and armpits and carried him away, his head and his shoes dangling like stuffed paper bags. The knot of guests around him loosened and came apart to make way for what was obviously a corpse.

  Dimly, Victor realized this. The screams and sobs of the party-dressed women underlined it. So did the slow, stunned way in which people rose from the table, scraped back their chairs and retreated to the balcony, shaking their heads and muttering, ‘An omen, I tell you, it must be an omen.’ Victor made a hesitant move towards the balcony – perhaps he would see the hearse arrive.

  But Victor’s mother was holding him by the arm and she gave it an excited tug. ‘Sit down, man,’ she whispered furtively, ‘here comes the pineapple cake,’ and, to his amazement, a plate of pastries was actually on the table now – iced, coloured and gay. ‘Take it, take the pineapple cake,’ she urged him, pushing him towards the plate, and when the boy didn’t move but stared down at the pastry dish as though it were the corpse on the red Rexine sofa, her mouth gave an impatient twitch and she reached out to fork the pineapple cake onto her own plate. She ate it qu
ickly. Wiping her mouth primly, she said, ‘I think we’d better go now.’

  The Accompanist

  It was only on the night of the concert, when we assembled onstage behind drawn curtains, that he gave me the notes to be played. I always hoped he would bring himself to do this earlier and I hovered around him all evening, tuning his sitar and preparing his betel leaves, but he would not speak to me at all. There were always many others around him – his hosts and the organizers of the concert, his friends and well-wishers and disciples – and he spoke and laughed with all of them, but always turned his head away when I came near. I was not hurt: this was his way with me, I was used to it. Only I wished he would tell me what he planned to play before the concert began so that I could prepare myself. I found it difficult to plunge immediately, like lightning, without pause or preparation, into the music, as he did. But I had to learn how to make myself do this, and did. In everything, he led me, I followed.

  For fifteen years now, this has been our way of life. It began the day when I was fifteen years old and took a new tanpura, made by my father who was a maker of musical instruments and also played several of them with talent and distinction, to a concert hall where Ustad Rahim Khan was to play that night. He had ordered a new tanpura from my father who was known to all musicians for the fine quality of the instruments he made for them, with love as well as a deep knowledge of music. When I arrived at the hall, I looked around for someone to give the tanpura to but the hall was in darkness as the management would not allow the musicians to use the lights before the show and only onstage was a single bulb lit, lighting up the little knot of musicians and surrounding them with elongated, restless and, somehow, ominous shadows. The Ustad was tuning his sitar, pausing to laugh and talk to his companions every now and then. They were all talking and no one saw me. I stood for a long time in the doorway, gazing at the famous Ustad of whom my father had spoken with such reverence. ‘Do not mention the matter of payment,’ he had warned me. ‘He is doing us an honour by ordering a tanpura from us.’ This had impressed me and, as I gazed at him, I knew my father had been truthful about him. He was only tuning his sitar, casually and haphazardly, but his fingers were the fingers of a god, absolutely in control of his instrument and I knew nothing but perfection could come of such a relationship between a musician and his instrument.

  So I slowly walked up the aisle, bearing the new tanpura in my arms and all the time gazing at the man in the centre of that restless, chattering group, himself absolutely in repose, controlled and purposeful. As I came closer to the stage, I could see his face beneath the long locks of hair, and the face, too, was that of a god: it was large, perhaps heavy about the jaws, but balanced by a wide forehead and with blazing black eyes that were widely spaced. His nostrils and his mouth, too, were large, royal, but intelligent, controlled. And as I looked into his face, telling myself of all the impressive points it contained, he looked down at me. I do not know what he saw, what he could see in the darkness and shadows of the unlit hall, but he smiled with sweet gentleness and beckoned to me. ‘What do you have there?’ he called.

  Then I had the courage to run up the steps at the side of the stage and straight to him. I did not look at anyone else. I did not even notice the others or care for their reaction to me. I went straight to him who was the centre of the gathering, of the stage and thereafter of my entire life, and presented the tanpura to him.

  ‘Ah, the new tanpura. From Mishraji in the music lane? You have come from Mishraji?’

  ‘He is my father,’ I whispered, kneeling before him and still looking into his face, unable to look away from it, it drew me so to him, close to him.

  ‘Mishraji’s son?’ he said, with a deep, friendly laugh. After running his fingers over the tanpura strings, he put it down on the carpet and suddenly stretched out his hand so that the fine white muslin sleeve of his kurta fell back and bared his arm, strong and muscular as an athlete’s, with veins finely marked upon the taut skin, and fondled my chin. ‘Do you play?’ he asked. ‘My tanpura player has not arrived. Where is he?’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Why isn’t he here?’

  All his friends and followers began to babble. Some said he was ill, in the hotel, some that he had met friends and gone with them. No one really knew. The Ustad shook his head thoughtfully, then said, ‘He is probably in his cups again, the old drunkard. I won’t have him play for me any more. Let the child play,’ and immediately he picked up his sitar and began to play, bowing his head over the instrument, a kind of veil of thoughtfulness and concentration falling across his face so that I knew I could not interrupt with the questions I wished to ask. He glanced at me, once, briefly, and beckoned to me to pick up the tanpura and play. ‘“Raga Dipak,”’ he said, and told me the notes to be played in such a quick undertone that I would not have heard him had I not been so acutely attentive to him. And I sat down behind him, on the bare floor, picked up the new tanpura my father had made, and began to play the three notes he gave me – the central one, its octave and quintet – over and over again, creating the discreet background web of sound upon which he improvized and embroidered his raga.

  And so I became the tanpura player for Ustad Rahim Khan’s group. I have played for him since then, for no one else. I have done nothing else. It is my entire life. I am thirty years old now and my Ustad has begun to turn grey, and often he interrupts a concert with that hacking cough that troubles him, and he takes more opium than he should to quieten it – I give it to him myself for he always asks me to prepare it. We have travelled all over India and played in every city, at every season. It is his life, and mine. We share this life, this music, this following. What else can there possibly be for me in this world? Some have tried to tempt me from his side, but I have stayed with him, not wishing for anything else, anything more.

  Ours is a world formed and defined and enclosed not so much by music, however, as by a human relationship on solid ground level – the relationship of love. Not an abstract quality, like music, or an intellectual one, like art, but a common human quality lived on an everyday level of reality – the quality of love. So I believe. What else is it that weaves us together as we play, so that I know every movement he will make before he himself does, and he can count on me to be always where he wants me? We never diverge: we leave and we arrive together. Is this not love? No marriage was closer.

  When I was a boy many other things existed on earth for me. Of course music was always important, the chief household deity of a family musical by tradition. The central hall of our house was given over to the making of musical instruments for which my father and his father before him were famous. From it rose sounds not only of the craft involved – the knocking, tapping, planing and tuning – but also of music. Music vibrated there constantly, sometimes harmoniously and sometimes discordantly, a quality of the very air of our house: dense, shaped by infinite variation, and never still. I was only a child, perhaps four years old, when my father began waking me at four o’clock every morning to go down to the hall with him and take lessons from him on the tanpura, the harmonium, the sitar and even the tabla. He could play them all and wished to see for which I had an aptitude. Music being literally the air we breathed in that tall, narrow house in the lane that had belonged for generations to the makers of musical instruments in that city, that I would display an aptitude was never in question. I sat crosslegged on the mat before him and played, gradually stirring to life as I did so, and finally sleep would lift from me like a covering, a smothering that had belonged to the night, till the inner core of my being stood forth and my father could see it clearly – I was a musician, not a maker, but a performer of music, that is what he saw. He taught me all the ragas, the raginis, and tested my knowledge with rapid, persistent questioning in his unmusical, grating voice. He was unlike my Ustad in every way, for he spat betel juice all down his ragged white beard, he seemed to be aware of everything I did and frequently his hand shot out to grab my ears and pull till I yelped. From such l
essons I had a need to escape and, being a small, wily boy, managed this several times a day, slipping through my elders’ fingers and hurtling down the steep stairs into the lane where I played gulli danda and kho and marbles with the luckier, more idle and less supervized boys of the mohalla.

  There was a time when I cared more passionately for marbles than for music, particularly a dark crimson, almost black one in which white lines writhed like weeds, or roots, that helped me to win every match I played till the pockets of my kurta bulged and tore with the weight of the marbles I won.