The Complete Stories

by Anita Desai

  The next signal Mao gave was an audible one: a strange, unexpected, long drawn-out wail in the night that woke Moyna and made her shoot out of bed, ready to leap to the door. Mao himself was nowhere to be seen; he generally slipped in and out of the window which had a missing pane that Mr Bhalla had never thought to replace and now proved a convenience. Looking through it, Moyna saw, as in a dream, a feline bacchanalia in full swing on the rooftop. How had all these female felines found their way to the barsati – and to Mao? Moyna rushed out in her nightgown to make sure the door was locked. It was. Was there a drainpipe they might have climbed? There couldn’t be or Mao would have discovered it long ago. As she stood wondering, the cats crept into a corner discreetly screened by a box or two, and as she watched, the pipal tree gave a shiver. The pipal tree – of course! She stared at its massive trunk, pale in the moonlight, and the sinuous branches and twigs silvery and ashiver, and spied another insomniac – her neighbour, a few feet away, his moony face cupped in his hands as he leant upon the ledge and gazed yearningly at her. He was close enough to speak to her but, instead, he first sighed and then began to hum. It sounded like the tune of a disgusting song to Moyna’s ears, a lewd, suggestive song, an outrageous affront of a song:

  ‘O, a girl is like a flame,

  O, a girl can start a fire—’

  Moyna darted back into her room and slammed the door. Its echoes rang out and for a while there was a shocked silence. But, a little later, the cats crept out to caterwaul again and all Moyna could do was wrap a pillow round her head and moan.

  Although she did her best to avoid the Bhallas next morning – and usually when she left for work they were in the dining room, from which tantalizing whiffs of fried dough, curried eggs and creamy tea floated out – today Mrs Bhalla was lying in wait, having her scalp massaged at that very hour. She looked up from under the tent of greying hair spread out on her shoulders and fixed her eye on the rapidly fleeing Moyna. ‘Come here!’ she cried. ‘I’m late!’ shouted Moyna from the gate. ‘What is that animal on your roof?’ shrieked Mrs Bhalla, throwing off the ministering fingers of the old crone she had engaged for the service. ‘Animal?’ called Moyna from the other side of the gate, ‘What animal?’ and jumped across the ditch to the dusty road where Gurmail Singh waited for her, his autorickshaw put-putting reassuringly.

  Catastrophe struck from an unexpected quarter. Returning from work the same day, Moyna climbed slowly up the stairs with a bag of fish she had stopped to buy, unlocked the door to the rooftop and went in, sighing with relief at having gained the open barsati, at seeing the pipal tree dark against the mauve and pink evening sky, wondering if there was enough water in the bucket for a wash. She let herself into her room and set about putting away her sling bag, her market bag, slipping out of her slippers, shedding the day like a worn garment, sweaty and dusty. Mao was not around but he rarely was now that he had discovered the route of the pipal tree: there was nothing she could do but hope Candy would not be waiting at the foot of it. She decided to switch on some music instead, reached out – and saw the blank space beside her bed where she kept her radio and tape recorder. It was not there.

  Her first foolish reaction was to blame Mao. Could he have taken it? Then she whirled around, thinking she might have placed it elsewhere last night, or this morning, and forgotten. It was not on the kitchen table, and there was no other surface where it could be. Looking around for some corner where it might have hidden itself, she began to notice other objects were missing: her alarm clock, the little box containing the tapes, even the tin-framed mirror she had hung on the wall. What else? Flinging open the cupboard that would not lock, she began to cry as she groped on the shelves, trying to count her saris. Wiping her face with her hand, she banged it shut and ran down the stairs to the Bhallas.

  They were all seated crosslegged on the bed, chins cupped in their hands, deeply absorbed in the latest episode of their favourite American soap opera (the mythological epics were aired only on Sundays, to guarantee maximum viewership). Sweetie and Pinky refused to turn their attention away from I Love Lucy but the elder Bhallas sensed Moyna’s hysteria, turned off the TV, listened to her tearful outburst, then burst themselves, with fulsome indignation. What was she insinuating? Was she accusing them? Did she think they would go up to her barsati and haul away her miserable goods – they, with all these goods of their own around them …

  Now Moyna had to deny their accusation, assure them she had never harboured such an idea, only wanted to know if they had any idea who it could be. Who? they thundered, how would they know who? What with Moyna’s unsavoury circle of friends coming and going at all hours of the day and night, how could they tell which one had found his way to her barsati? Had they seen anyone? she begged. Seen anyone? Seen who? they roared. At this point, she wailed, ‘Please call the police!’ which incensed them further. They nearly exploded – even Candy, Sweetie and Pinky shrank back. Police? On their property? What was Moyna suggesting? Was she out of her mind? If the police visited their house, their immaculate, impeccable house of decency, purity and family values, what would their neighbours think, or say? Never had such a thing happened in their home, their locality, their community – till she had come along and brought into their midst this evil, this sin …

  Moyna retreated. She shut the door upon the Bhallas, who were standing at the foot of the stairs and shaking their fists and shouting loud enough for all the neighbours to hear. Then she sat down on a chair under the tree, feeling as if all her strength were gone; she could not even stand. Mao reappeared, wrapping himself around and around her legs, finally leaping onto her lap and kneading it with his paws, loudly purring. She held him, sure he was telling her something, saying comforting, consoling things, and sat there till it was dark, listening to him and the pipal tree that shivered and rustled, the birds subsiding into its branches, eventually falling silent. More than any other sensation, it was homesickness she felt: she was trying to suppress the most childish urge to run and hide her head in her mother’s lap, feel her mother stroking her hair. She was also suppressing the urge to write a long letter home, describing everything as it really was. She told herself it would be unforgivable to cause her parents concern. As it was, they had never felt comfortable about her living alone in the big city; every letter from them voiced their anxiety, begging her to keep her doors securely locked, never go out after dark and take good care of her health. She also knew she was trying to hold onto her pride, as she sat there, stroking and stroking Mao.

  Still, Moyna knew she had to do something, and planned to tell Tara immediately. But next morning Tara had arranged to hold a ‘conference’, as she liked to call such a gathering, with their usual cast of reviewers. Most of them were Ritwick’s friends and colleagues from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, with a sprinkling of ‘outsiders’ from Delhi University and the lesser colleges. This was not a regular meeting but somehow, by some kind of natural osmosis that no one quite understood, the hard core of their critics who reviewed regularly for Books happened to have a free morning and came to meet Tara and Moyna at the Coffee House in Connaught Place where they took up a long table in one corner. This was the occasion, greatly enjoyed by all, when the young lecturers and readers pleaded for the books they were desperate to have, the latest academic treatises published by the university presses at Oxford and Cambridge, Harvard and Yale, at impossible prices, and Tara and Moyna magnanimously dispensed them with the understanding that the reviewers could expect little reward other than the prized books themselves. In return, the eager young men in their hand-spun shirts, shaggy beards and dusty sandals plied them with small earthen mugs of coffee and all the delicacies the Coffee House had to offer – dosa, idli, vada, whatever they liked – and which harried waiters flapping dishcloths and tin trays around brought to them in regular relays. There were also some professional critics, usually older men, some really quite old, worn and grey from years of piecing together a living by writing, who looked over the books w
ith a more practised and cynical eye and quickly reached for whatever would take the least time to read and fetch the most at the second-hand bookshops on the pavement outside.

  But the customary bonhomie of the occasion which recalled their carefree student days – O careless youth! – was unexpectedly disrupted that morning by Moyna’s state of agitation which she could not conceal, leading to an open confession under questioning from Tara. Theft, landlords, police – all were appalled and looked at Moyna in horror.

  ‘Bloody lumpen proletariat!’ raged the young man who always contrived to sit directly across from Moyna in order to gaze at her when he was not looking out for a book he could attack and demolish. ‘Should be taught a lesson. Think they rule the world, huh? Have to be shown—’

  ‘By whom? The polizia? Those stooges—’

  This enraged the young gallant. ‘If not, I’ll make them. Come on, Moyna, I’ll go to the police if the landlord won’t—’

  Moyna grew alarmed. She had here all the reaction she could have asked for but was not at all sure if she wanted to go any further, that is, go to the police about it. She had come to the office that morning hoping Tara or Raj Kumar or Mohan might offer to go with her, or at least offer sympathy and advice. Then she had found Tara bustling about, arranging to leave the office to Raj Kumar and go to the Coffee House with Moyna and a pile of books, while Raj Kumar settled down to telephone all his friends and Mohan was poring over a postcard from his sisters about a prospective bride they had found for him. She had had to hold back the matter till it had burst from her when someone merely asked, ‘How’s life, Moyna?’ which in turn had led to this show of outrage and gallantry.

  A few minutes later Ritwick dropped in on the conference, hoping to pick up a book on medieval trade routes through the Arabian Sea that Tara had promised to keep for him. On hearing of Moyna’s calamity, he insisted on accompanying her and Karan to the police station. ‘Is there a justice system or is there not?’ he demanded, glaring at all around the table with its coffee cups, its trays and plates of greasy fried food. ‘I need to know!’

  At the police station, the officer in charge sat at his desk looking uncomfortable in a khaki uniform that did not fit and had to be nudged, tugged and scratched into place constantly. Several lesser officials stood around with their nightsticks, and stared at Moyna with open mouths while the two men did all the talking. Moyna was glad not to have to speak but she did have to sign the yellow charge sheet that the officer filled out with slow deliberation, then handed to her. When she had done that, he rose from his chair and commanded his underlings to follow him to the Bhalla household.

  At the gate, Moyna’s courage failed. She looked around wildly in the hope of seeing Gurmail Singh with his autorickshaw ready to put-put her away from the scene, but of course he was not there and Ritwick and Karan between them silently compelled her to open the gate and lead the party in.

  Only Mrs Bhalla was at home at that hour; the servant boy vanished from sight as soon as the police made their appearance. Nevertheless, the scene was awful. Or so it seemed to Moyna although, in retrospect, perhaps not as awful as it might have been. It was true that Mrs Bhalla stood at the foot of the stairs, screaming imprecations against tenants who made false accusations and brought disgrace to the homes that sheltered them, but the police merely marched past her and up the stairs, stalked around the barsati, twisting their moustaches like comic-book or cartoon cops, pointing out the sights to each other with an amused, even bemused air – Mao stretched out on the bed, blinking lazily at the intruders, the neighbours peering over the walls and ledges with open curiosity, Moyna’s toilet goods arranged on the windowsill – and examined the full height and length of the pipal tree, then climbed down the stairs, and vanished. ‘Complaint has been filed,’ they told the indignant Ritwick and Karan. ‘Investigation has been completed.’

  When Moyna queued up at the Mother Dairy with her milk can next morning, she found herself standing next to a young woman she had often noticed there but never spoken to: she seemed to be a foreigner, with light brown hair pulled back and tied in a long pigtail down her back, wearing the cheapest of cotton saris and rubber slippers. Now the young woman spoke to her, unexpectedly. ‘I have heard,’ she said haltingly, ‘you have had – theft?’ Moyna nodded, and hardly dared reply, knowing everyone in the line was listening. Many did turn around at the word ‘theft’. ‘I too,’ said the young woman sympathetically. ‘I see you on roof. I, too,’ she said, and after they had had their milk cans filled, they walked back together along the dusty verge of the road, and Simona told Moyna how she had employed a boy who had regularly burgled her barsati of anything she bought for it. ‘But didn’t you dismiss him?’ Moyna asked, thinking that even she would have had the wits to do that. ‘Of course,’ Simona replied, ‘after first time! But he had key for my barsati, came back and thieved again, and again. Now I have nothing left, nothing,’ she added, with a joyful smile. ‘And the police—?’ ‘Oh, they caught him – again, and again. But always they had to let him go because he said he was twelve years old! Too young for gaol.’ Simona shrugged. ‘Still he is twelve. He does not grow any older. So he can be thief for longer.’

  This gave Moyna so much food for thought that she walked along in silence, and almost forgot to ask Simona her name or address. When she did, it turned out that Simona was one of her neighbours, only too discreet to hang over her ledge and spy on Moyna like the others. Now she promised to wave and call when she saw Moyna out on her rooftop. ‘You have most beautiful tree,’ she said on parting, and Moyna glowed till it struck her it could be the reason why she stayed on with the Bhallas, and if that would not be considered foolishness by anyone but Simona.

  The next day Tara and Ritwick came to visit. They stalked around the rooftop, peering through every possible loophole through which the burglar might re-enter. The trouble was that he probably had a key to the door and could let himself in whenever Moyna left: it was unlikely he risked climbing the great tree in the backyard.

  ‘This place is just not secure, Moyna. You’ve got to ask your landlord to make it secure. Fence in the entire outer wall—’

  ‘Ask Mr Bhalla?’ Moyna croaked.

  Lately whenever Moyna passed through the Bhalla home she felt she needed protective clothing. Mr Bhalla’s jowls seemed set in a permanent scowl like a thunder cloud (the fact that he rarely shaved and his jaws were always blue added to the illusion) while Mrs Bhalla would plant herself in a central location, her eyes following Moyna down to the gate or up the stairs as if she suspected Moyna herself of the theft. Her mutterings implied as much – ‘These girls, these days, think they can go to work, live alone – huh! Can’t even take care of their own belongings!’ Did she actually say these words, or was Moyna imagining them? She felt them creep over her back, across her neck, like spiders settling there.

  As for their servant boy, after her conversation with Simona, Moyna was certain she sensed an extra insouciance to his manner. He had always watched her with open, unconcealed curiosity, but now she felt he gave his hips an insulting swing, twitched his filthy kitchen duster over his shoulder with a flick, and pursed his lips to whistle a bar from some Bombay film tune although that was surely not fitting in a servant boy, even if employed in a household like the Bhallas’. When she passed the open kitchen door one day and he cocked an eyebrow at her and sang:

  ‘With blouse cut low, with hair cut short,

  This memsahib so fine—’

  she decided to complain to the Bhallas, but discovered she had chosen a bad moment: that very morning, while she was at work, Mao had slithered down the tree trunk to the Bhallas’ compound and been pounced upon by Candy, with Sweetie and Pinky in hot pursuit. Mao had somehow escaped from all three, but Moyna’s secret of owning what the Bhallas insultingly called a ‘billa’, a tom, had been uncovered. Rising to her feet, Mrs Bhalla launched into a tirade about lying tenants who neglected to inform their landlords of their pets that would never have
been permitted into their own pristine homes. Moyna, already incensed by the servant boy’s behaviour and now by his employers’, stood her ground stoutly and replied, ‘Then do you want me to leave?’ half hoping the reply would free her of them. But Mrs Bhalla retreated promptly – she knew to a whisker’s breadth how far she could go as a landlady – claiming she could hear the telephone ringing. That evening she sent Pinky and Sweetie upstairs to ask if Moyna would like to come down and watch a rerun of the old film classic Awaara with them. Moyna told them she had a cold.

  It was not untrue. The change of season had affected Moyna as it had practically every other citizen of Delhi. Still listless from the heat during the day, at night she found herself shivering under her cotton quilt in the barsati: the windowpane had never been replaced and allowed a chill blast of wintry air in.