The Complete Stories

by Anita Desai

  She was sniffling over her desk at the office one morning with her head in her hands, trying to correct proofs, only half-listening to Tara complain of her mother-in-law’s unreasonable and ungenerous reaction to Tara and Ritwick’s staying out at the cinema late last night, when a visitor appeared at the door, demanding to see the editor. Tara’s tirade was cut short, she hastily tossed her nail file into a drawer, pulled a page of proofs from Moyna’s desk, and lifted an editorial expression to a man whose face appeared to be made entirely out of bristling hair and gleaming teeth, although he did wear thick, black-framed glasses and a silk scarf as well, tucked into the v-neck of a purple sweater.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ Tara had barely asked when she began to regret it.

  The visitor was the author of a collection of short stories in Hindi that had been reviewed by Karan in the last issue. He had a copy of it rolled up in his hand. He spread it out before them, asking if they, as editors, had paid attention to what they were printing in a journal that at one time had had a distinguished reputation but now was nothing but a rag in the filthy hands of reviewers like the one who signed himself KK. Did they know who he was talking about?

  Moyna got up and came across to glance at the review together with Tara, out of a sense of loyalty to her and an awareness of threat, as the author of the short stories jabbed his finger at one line, then another – ‘so devoid of imagination that Sri Awasthi has had to borrow from sources such as The Sound of Music and—’ ‘in language that would get a sixth-standard student in trouble with his teacher—’ ‘situations so absurd that he can hardly expect his readers to take them any more seriously than the nightly soap opera on TV—’ ‘characters cut out of cardboard and pasted onto the page with Sri Awasthi’s stunning lack of subtlety—’

  Tara recovered her poise before Moyna could. Snatching the journal out of the visitor’s hands, she held it out of his reach. ‘We choose our reviewers for their standing in the academic world. Every one of them is an authority on—’

  ‘Authority? What authority? This dog – he claims he is an authority on Hindi literature?’ ranted the man, snatching the journal back from Tara. ‘It is a scandal – such a standard of reviewing is a scandal. It must not go unnoticed – or unpunished. Where is this man? I would like to see him. I should like to know—’

  ‘If you have any complaint, you can make it in writing,’ Tara told him. She was, Moyna could see, as good a fighter as she had always claimed.

  ‘Make it in writing? If I make it, will you publish it? If I put in writing what I think of your journal, your name will be—’

  ‘Mr Awasthi,’ Tara said, using his name as if she remembered it with difficulty, and managing to mispronounce it, ‘there is no need to be so insulting.’

  ‘If that is so, then why have I been insulted? I am a member of Sahitya Akademi. I am author of forty volumes of short stories, one of autobiography, seven books of travel, and also of essays. I am award-winning. I am invited by universities in foreign countries. My name is known in all Hindi-speaking areas—’

  Mohan suddenly strode in; he had been standing in the doorway with Raj Kumar but now entered the room to stand beside Tara and Moyna. He was enjoying this; it was the first drama to take place in the office. Plucking the journal out of Mr Awasthi’s hands, he tossed it on the desk with a contemptuous gesture. ‘The editor is not responsible for the reviewer’s views,’ he announced, which it had not occurred to the two women to say.

  This was not very original but Mr Awasthi’s face turned a dangerously purple colour, not unlike the sweater he wore. But now Mohan had him by the elbow and was guiding him out of the door. Tara and Moyna fell back into their chairs, pushing their hair away from their flushed faces. Tara, lighting a cigarette with shaking hands, said, ‘Did you hear Mohan? Did you see how he got him out?’

  That visit proved to be a prelude to an entire winter in which the battle raged. Mr Awasthi’s rebuttal was printed in the next issue, followed by Karan’s still more scurrilous response – he worked in an attack on the Hindi-speaking ‘cow belt’ which proved a starting point for a whole new series of entertaining insults – and their days at the office were enlivened by visits from either one or other, each intent on getting the ‘editor’s ear’ (in the case of Karan, it was mostly the Assistant Editor’s ear he tried to get). Even Bose Sahib wrote from Calcutta and implored Tara to close the correspondence on the matter (he thought mention of the ‘cow belt’ particularly deplorable and unparliamentary). He added some disquieting remarks that Tara relayed to Moyna gloomily. ‘He says the journal is still in the red, and he may not be able to go on publishing it if it fails to make money. Never thought Bose Sahib would consider Books as if it were a commercial enterprise. Ritwick says it is clear capitalism has killed Marxism in Calcutta if even Bose Sahib talks like an industrialist.’

  ‘Oh Tara,’ Moyna said in dismay. It was not just that Bose Sahib was something of an icon in their circle but it also shook her confidence in her ability to be a career woman in Delhi. What would happen if she lost her job? What if she did not find another employer? Would she lose her barsati? And return to her parents’ home? Back where she started from? She began to sniffle.

  Her cold, which had been growing worse for weeks, burgeoned into full-scale flu. After going downstairs to send Gurmail Singh away in his autorickshaw, she went back to bed, pulling the quilt over her ears. Mao, sympathetic or, perhaps, delighted at this development, crept in beside her. She drifted in and out of sleep, and her sleep was always crowded with thoughts of office life. Behind closed lids, she continued to see the journal’s columns before her, requiring her to proofread:

  Sir—Sri Ritwick Misra has reviewed Sri Nirad Chaudhuri’s biography of Max Müller without proving his credentials for doing so. Has Sri Misra any knowledge of Max Müller’s native tongue? Has Sri Chaudhuri? If not, can we believe all the necessary documents have been studied without which no scholar can trust, etc., Yrs truly, B. Chattopadhyay, Asansol, W. Bengal.

  Sir—May I compliment you on your discovery of a true genius, i.e Srimati Devika Bijlinai, whose poem, Lover, lover, is a work of poetic excellence. I hope you will continue to publish the work of this lovable poetess. Kindly convey my humble respects to her. Also publish photograph of same in next issue. Yrs truly, A. Reddy, Begumpet, Hyderabad, A.P.

  It was in this state that Raj Kumar found her when he came in with a message from Tara saying, ‘Why won’t you get yourself a phone, Moyna, and tell us when you’re not coming to work? Just when the new issue is ready to go to press—’ and ending ‘Shall I bring over a doctor this evening?’

  Moyna was not sure what to do with Raj Kumar but was grateful for his obvious concern and felt she could not send him straight back to the office. ‘Can I make you a cup of tea, Raj Kumar?’ she asked hoarsely. ‘I’ll have some, too.’

  Raj Kumar perched on the edge of her straight-backed chair. He planted his hands on his knees, and studied every object in the room with the same deep interest while Moyna boiled water in a pan and got out the earthen mugs to make tea.

  ‘No TV?’ he asked finally.

  She shook her head and put a few biscuits on a plate to offer him. He ate one with great solemnity, as if considering its qualities, then asked, ‘Who is doing the cooking?’ She admitted she did her own, wondering who he imagined would perform such chores for her. ‘Ah, that is why you are never bringing lunch from home,’ he said, with pity. She agreed it was. He of course had a wife to fill a tiffin container’s three or four compartments to bursting with freshly cooked, still warm food. He asked for more details of her domestic existence. As Moyna told him of her regimen of rising to store water at five, then queueing for milk at six, and the shopping she did at the market on her way home with the essential stop at the fish shop for Mao’s diet, Raj Kumar’s eyes widened. He was too polite to say anything but when he had finished his tea and biscuits and rose to go, he said in a voice of true concern, ‘Please lock door safel
y. Not safe to live alone like this.’ She assured him she would.

  At the door he turned to say, ‘Also, you should purchase TV set,’ with great earnestness. ‘TV set is good company,’ he explained, ‘like friend.’

  Going back to bed after shutting and locking the door behind him, she did feel friendless – but not convinced that she wanted a TV in place of one. And no sooner had she closed her eyes than the lines of print began to unroll again:

  Sir—It is a great disappointment that you continue to harbour a reviewer such as KK who has a clear bias against one of the great languages of our motherland. Because he is reviewing for an English-language journal in the capital, does he think he has the right to spurn the literature composed in the vernacular? This attitude is as despicable as the sight of seeing mother’s milk rejected for sake of foreign liquor. Yrs truly, C. Bhanot, Pataliputra Colony, Bihar.

  Sir—The monthly arrival of Books is greatly looked forward to by my immediate family. I regret that you choose to include in it such filth as Srimati Devika Bijliani’s poem, Lover, lover. This is not what we expect to find in decent family magazine. Kindly refrain from publishing offensive matter of sexual nature and return to former family status. Yrs truly, D. Ramanathan, Trivandrum, Kerala.

  Simona, not having seen Moyna in the milk queue for days, came to visit. She brought with her a gift that touched Moyna deeply – fish tails and heads wrapped in newspaper for Mao’s dinner. Simona explained, ‘I saw you are not getting milk so I know that cat is not getting fish.’ She sat crosslegged on Moyna’s bed, tucking her cotton sari around her shoulders, and told Moyna that she herself had been sick – ‘for many, many days. Months, perhaps. Hep-a-ti-tis. You have hep-a-titis?’ ‘Oh no,’ Moyna denied it vigorously, ‘only flu,’ and was afraid to think now that she might lie alone in the barsati for so long, sick, away from home. ‘And you are so far from home,’ she said to Simona with sudden sympathy, and wondered what could keep the young woman here, ageing before her eyes into a pale, drawn invalid. But Simona put on her rapt expression, one that often overtook her even in the most inconvenient places – passing the garbage heap behind the marketplace, for instance, or seeing a beggar approach – and told Moyna joyfully, ‘This is my home. It is where my guru lives, you see.’ Moyna cowered under her quilt: she did not feel strong enough for such revelations. ‘Please make yourself tea,’ she croaked, and broke into a paroxysm of coughs.

  Having received a letter in which Moyna mentioned that she had flu, Moyna’s mother arrived. Moyna was actually on her way to recovery by then and many of the remedies her mother brought with her, the special teas and balms and syrups, were no longer needed, but evidently much else was. Putting her hand into the containers on Moyna’s kitchen shelf, her mother was shocked to find less than a handful of rice, of lentils. ‘You are starving!’ she exclaimed, as horrified at herself as her daughter, ‘and we did not know!’ ‘Do I look as if I’m starving?’ Moyna asked, but she could not stop her mother from shopping and cooking and storing food in a storm of energy and activity in the barsati, which was now bathed in mild sunlight and at its most livable in Delhi’s pleasant winter.

  Mrs Bhalla downstairs roused herself too, and began to cook and send treats upstairs, either with the servant boy or with Pinky or Sweetie, little jars of pickles she had put up, or metal trays with sweets she had made, dissolving in pools of oil and reeking of rose water, or covered pots containing specialities known only to Mrs Bhalla and the village that was once her home.

  ‘How kind she is,’ Moyna’s mother exclaimed, accepting these gifts. ‘How lucky you are to have found such a landlady, Moyna.’

  Nothing Moyna told her could completely alter her mother’s impression. ‘She’s just trying to fool you,’ she cried. ‘She wants you to think she’s a nice person.’

  She glowered at Mrs Bhalla whenever she passed her on the veranda, but Mrs Bhalla now called out to her with great sweetness, ‘How is your mother, Moyna? Please ask her to come and visit me.’

  ‘I don’t know why you both like each other so much,’ Moyna said darkly, on conveying this message.

  ‘We are both mothers, that is why,’ her mother replied with what Moyna now found an indigestible sweetness. It was this motherliness she had missed and longed for but now she found it superfluous. Her barsati no longer looked as it had in the days of penury, austerity and minimalism. Her mother had bought curtains, cushions, filled every available space with kitchen gadgets, foods, whatever comfort she could think of. Now Moyna found she was no longer used to comfort, that it annoyed and irritated her. Picking up Mao and a book, she would retreat to the rooftop while her mother bustled about in the crowded room, clattering and humming and enjoying herself. She leant over the ledge and stared moodily into the quaking leaves of the pipal tree and the hazy winter light that filtered through. Downstairs, in the Bhallas’ brightly lit kitchen, she could see the Bhallas’ servant boy, rolling out chapatis for their dinner. He had music on to entertain him while he worked, and Moyna listened too. She was enjoying its somewhat melancholy and dirge-like tone when she started in recognition: was that not Joan Baez singing? And was it not one of her own tapes? She stiffened and bent over the ledge, trying to look past the pipal leaves to get a clearer picture of what was on the kitchen counter below. But she did not really need to look, she could hear clearly enough, and it made her roll her hands into fists and pound on the ledge with frustration.

  While her instinct was to run and tell her mother, then run down and inform Mrs Bhalla and demand her belongings back, she found herself silent. Letting her mother pile a spinach curry and lentils on her plate at dinner, she kept quiet: she knew it would be unwise to tell her mother that she lived amongst thieves. How then could she declare to her that she intended to remain here with them, not return to family and home, comfort and care?

  ‘What are you thinking, Moyna?’ her mother asked impatiently. ‘Why don’t you eat?’

  Fortunately, her mother could not stay long. Unfortunately, when Moyna returned with relief to her own routine, she found Tara at the office consumed by the same housemaking fervour. This was not at all customary where Tara was concerned. Tara had taken the job at Books to escape from housewifeliness, as her mother-in-law so cannily suspected – and now she confounded Moyna by talking incessantly of real estate, bank loans, co-ops … true, not housekeeping matters exactly, but just as boring to Moyna who had plunged into the next issue which had yet another blistering attack by Karan on the Hindi author’s newest offering. Tara was hardly around to see to it; she was either on the telephone, earnestly discussing finances with Ritwick, or, with her handbag slung over her shoulder and her dark glasses on, was off to visit yet another co-op.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ Moyna protested. ‘You have a nice house to live in. I mean,’ she added hastily, seeing Tara’s expression, ‘I know it’s the Dragon Lady’s, but still, it is nice and you don’t pay for it—’ She refrained from mentioning the free babysitting service it provided.

  ‘You don’t understand. You’re too young. At our age, we need our own place,’ Tara explained loftily.

  In her concern for this nest for the future, Tara seemed strangely unaffected by the letter they received from Bose Sahib, announcing his decision to close the magazine. He was planning to start another, he added, this time about development projects in rural areas – were Tara and Moyna interested in working for it? Tara would not even consider it: she was settling into this nest she had found, she was not going to go touring the hinterland, she would turn down the offer. Moyna was pale with dismay and disbelief; she begged Tara not to speak so loudly, to come down to the sweet shop below where they could discuss it over a cup of tea without Mohan and Raj Kumar overhearing. ‘It will be such a shock to them,’ she explained to Tara. But Tara did not see any cause for shock: ‘Mohan is looking for a job in hotels anyway, or a travel agency,’ she said. ‘What?’ asked Moyna. Why had she not been told the world of Books was coming unravelled ar
ound her? Had she been so immersed in the wretched business of barsati living to ignore far more important matters? What about all the book reviewers and their supply of foreign books being cut short? She sat at the small tin-topped table with Tara, not able to swallow her tea, and pleaded with her to reconsider. ‘But why?’ Tara asked, her eyes looking into the distance where her dream house waited for her like a mirage in the desert outside Delhi. ‘I’m not married to Books, or to Bose Sahib. Let them go to hell. I’m not going to go around looking at weaving centres and dairy farms for Bose Sahib!’

  Moyna bit her lip. It was certainly not what she had come to Delhi for, nor was it what she had expected to do with her life. But she had grown used to the two-roomed office with its bamboo shutters, Raj Kumar sitting in a corner and tying up book parcels, Mohan enjoying his bun omelette and samosas at his desk. She had even grown used, if that was what resignation could be called, to the barsati, although when the year’s lease was up, she would be free to rent another: there were almost as many barsatis in Delhi as there were top-floor flats. She turned the teaspoon over and over in her hands, considering all the possibilities, weighing the pros and cons, till Tara snatched it out of her hand. ‘Stop fidgeting, Moyna. Just decide,’ she snapped, tossing back her hair with all the authority of someone who had done just that.

  It was too difficult, too weighty a decision to be made in a moment, over a cup of tea. Moyna went back and forth between the office and the barsati, sick with anxiety. Only occasionally and momentarily could she forget the problem: when Gurmail Singh told her with pride that his daughter had passed the entrance test to the Loreto Convent, ensuring a fine future for her and leaving him only to worry about his less promising son; or when she received an invitation to a film show at the British Council to be followed by a reception, placing her on a rung above those who went there only for the air conditioning and the newspapers. Then she would fall to brooding again and sit crosslegged on her bed, stroking Mao and turning the matter over in her mind.