by Tim Parks
Now she laughed bitterly. ‘Kulwant says the first thing most men do when they’re diagnosed is grab a new woman. To prove they’re still alive. For some men it actually jump-starts a stalled libido.’
‘How interesting. So maybe he did that and felt guilty.’
‘Albert never felt guilty, because he never did anything. If anything, it was that that tormented him. Not doing anything.’ She faltered. ‘He became more and more tormented towards the end. His work sort of broke up into a dozen odd projects. He rushed off to ashrams and came back frustrated and angry. There were all kinds of ailments. There were nights and nights when he didn’t sleep, always in the bathroom, days he wandered about aimlessly.’
Paul was perplexed. ‘What did he say when you asked him about it? The sex. Lack of.’
‘I didn’t ask him. At first, I wondered if it wasn’t some kind of experiment, to see how I’d react. Albert was capable of that.’
‘So how did you react?’
‘I waited. I concentrated on my work. I tried to read what he was writing, hoping to understand. But he had almost stopped writing these last years. Aside from notes in other people’s books. Once he said that to complete a whole sentence from initial capital to final full stop seemed a form of violence, a trap to catch flies.’
‘Where would that leave Proust?’ Paul joked.
She shook her head. ‘God knows how he was supposed to teach in school if he didn’t believe in writing whole sentences.’
‘Could it be, like Gandhi, he’d started thinking celibacy was necessary, for his task?’
‘Albert hated Gandhi, he hated the idea of the crusade, of being good for a purpose.’
After a while Paul tried: ‘Perhaps he’d got wind of these betrayals you mentioned.’
‘But he’d always known!’ She shook her head back and forth as if to fight off an unpleasant idea, then said: ‘I told him. Maybe I even did it to excite him. Partly.’
‘Out of my repertoire, I’m afraid,’ Paul acknowledged. ‘I thought I was coming here to write about a genius anthropologist and his angel, aid-worker partner.’
‘Don’t be an idiot!’ Helen said sharply. Then she went on: ‘Albert wanted me to be larger than life. He said since I was around death all day, it was understandable I had lovers.’
‘Kulwant was one of them?’
‘Now and then. But Albert knew. He knew it was nothing. God, he knew Kulwant was an idiot. You can see that for yourself. A nice idiot, but an idiot.’ Helen banged her head back lightly against the wall. ‘I wondered if it could be to do with the trial. It began right after that. It stopped, I mean. Sex. We should have been celebrating. He was acquitted, his reputation was saved. For what that’s worth. We were travelling again. Albert loved travelling. Oh why?’ Helen suddenly raised her voice and shouted the word. ‘Why? Why did he do that to me? Why?’
Paul said nothing.
‘I defended him to the hilt in Chicago.’
‘Perhaps he didn’t want help.’
‘No, he was grateful. I could see he was.’
‘Perhaps he wished he had fucked the girl.’
‘You would say that. But he would never have done it.’
‘You had lovers. He might have …’
‘Other people did things,’ she said sharply, ‘but not Albert. He lived to be near me living.’
‘Admiring and mocking your busy life.’
‘That’s right.’ She nodded, paused. ‘In a way he sucked blood from me.’
‘And you got upset when he stopped.’
Helen was shaking her head slowly from side to side. In a low voice, she murmured: ‘Albert took himself away from me. In his mind. I don’t know where. The last six months were awful. Just at the very end he came back, and I was happy. He had been so tormented. I think it was his sense of failure. His father had been such a success, with work, with women, with family; his brother had had the courage to slash his wrists. That’s how Albert saw it. He was capable of seeing suicide as a positive thing, a victory, a ceremony. He was obsessed by ceremony. At the very end, he began to talk of love again, of being fused together. Us two. Our marriage was his masterpiece, his destiny. It was art, a story, a trajectory. And I was so happy he’d turned back to me.’
Helen groaned. ‘He died in my arms. Our faces were together. I could feel his breath on my face. In the end, I lay all night beside him. I remember the exact moment when the breath stopped coming, when his arms went limp. I felt him go. I saw it. I saw it. Like someone leaving the room. I got up and laid him out. If I could, I would have cremated him right here with our own furniture, I would. I would have done it. I would have gone with him if I could. Believe me. Like some stupid suttee. Sometimes I wish I had. God, I wish I had.’
‘Helen.’ Paul opened his mouth to say more, but she fell sideways onto him and across him. She deliberately lay across him. All at once he found his face pressed against her stomach. ‘Bite me,’ she was saying. ‘Bite me till I bleed. Please.’
Paul recognised the same wildness as when she had tossed the flowers over him the previous evening, the same falseness. Obediently, he opened his mouth and felt her skin sink into his mouth.
At the same moment there was a ring at the door.
PART FIVE
THE STORM
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
OLD DELHI FLEW apart. Its sandstone walls had dissolved and were howling their release. Vision came and went with every breath, with every gust. A minaret a phone shop a tea kiosk swirled away in torments of dust and litter. John’s gut had dissolved too. He ached. Jasmeet had him by the hand, or he her. And his mind whirled. Thoughts appeared careered disappeared with debris in the murky air. His eyes were screwed to slits. He fought the wind, the sour air in his throat, on his tongue. Grit, leaves, petals: again and again the world made up and swept away. On the first corner they reached, a telegraph pole was down in a tangle of wire. The dusty wind seethed around a goat trapped and bleating in the broken cables.
‘We must go back to the hotel,’ the girl begged.
In the midst of the tumult John was intensely alert. Sirens shrilled. Crossing the road, he pressed his arm against his mouth to block the dust, breathing his skin. Start and end with breathing, he remembered. The other hand grasped Jasmeet’s. Why had Dad written that? Why do I keep remembering it? They were bent low. Then a curtain of dust dissolved to reveal half a dozen black and yellow autorickshaws sheltering between a low wall and acacia trees. He pulled the girl that way and she limped and hopped after. There were quite large objects in the air: a newspaper, a Coke can. This is the opposite of my laboratory; the idea blew through John’s mind, the opposite of my teamwork and controlled conditions. He felt elated. How volatile my emotions are. Surviving the toilet experience had done it. Or I’m in the centrifuge myself. He smiled. Over their heads, the acacia branches waved frantically. He didn’t feel afraid. This was Father’s world, he suddenly thought. All phenomena stormed about his senses. Yes, this was it. He honestly didn’t care if he ran out of money. Let them do what they wanted. Stumbling, John pulled aside a tarpaulin to get in the first rick. The small vehicle rocked as they slid across the seat.
‘Where’s the driver?’
‘The drivers are waiting for the wind to stop,’ Jasmeet said. She was clutching her knee. ‘No one is driving now. The motors will choke in the dust.’
John wanted to see his mother this minute, in this moment of clarity, of volatility. Now he would know the right thing to say; or rather, what he said would become the right thing. He wouldn’t be inhibited, he wouldn’t let his embarrassment get the better of him, or her severity. I will stay in Delhi with you, he would tell her. Why not? He might say anything. Communication would be immediate and total. He would tell her about Dad and Jasmeet. Yes. That was necessary. But it had suddenly come to him: perhaps Father had been onto something. Being here in India, in this storm. Onto, as it were, everything.
John’s mind took a sudden jolt: Father
deliberately lost control, submerged himself in everything. Was that the experiment? It was ridiculous. As a scientist, Dad was ridiculous. He’d have done better to write plays like his brother, the way he always mimicked people. I will stay in India and continue Father’s work, he could tell Mother. But how could such an idea come into his head? That is the opposite of you, the opposite of what you want to say!
John wanted to take his mother back to London. He must check, he thought, what had been left on Dad’s computer. An explanation somewhere. It had been a waste of time reading those emails. Who cared about Dad’s feelings for this girl? Perhaps he was right to fuck her. Perhaps that too was an experiment. Jasmeet was beautiful. Perhaps I will fuck her myself. At the same time he knew his mind might switch back any moment to where it had been only seconds before. It was disgraceful. It was absurd. You love Elaine. He fretted. He wouldn’t know what he felt or who he was until he opened his mouth to speak to Mother.
‘When will the driver come?’ he demanded. ‘Where is he?’
‘We must wait, Mr John. You should be patient. They won’t drive in such a storm. They will stay in shelter.’
He tried to sit still but he wanted to be moving along with his thoughts, moving fast. ‘What are those?’ he asked. From twisted threads of red and gold an assortment of painted trinkets hung from above the steering bar. The garish things swayed when the rickshaw trembled in the gale. Jasmeet looked up from her knee. ‘Religious knick-knacks,’ she said. She wasn’t interested. ‘All the drivers have them.’ Her knee was obviously causing pain.
John leaned forward. A tiny red and gold figure had snakes round his neck. The face smiled inanely. He reached out and took the next one in his hand. A miniature Ganesh was riding a rat. It was lacquered wood. The colours were bright. ‘It’s a miracle the guy can see through all this rubbish to drive,’ John remarked. ‘Everybody has trinkets,’ Jasmeet said again. ‘To bring good luck.’ John examined a female figure sitting on … what? An owl? How did they think of these combinations? Here was a woman with too many arms riding on a tiger’s back! How could that bring good luck? But it was a stupid distraction. ‘I’ll go and find the driver,’ he told her.
As he spoke the autorickshaw shuddered in a wild gust and the girl reached her arms round his waist to hold him. ‘Don’t go.’ She pressed her head against him. ‘You mustn’t tell your mum about me. She will think the worst things. My father will kill me. Seriously. He will kill me. He gets too angry. Remember, your mum and my dad are friends. They are close friends.’
When John didn’t reply, the girl pleaded. ‘Please take me to London.’ And then almost angrily: ‘You will never find anyone better than me, you know that, Mr John? Where will you find someone like Jasmeet?’
John didn’t answer. Lifting the rick’s tarpaulin on the scene outside, he saw a world so fragile it could be swept away in an instant; it would dissolve like a dream that seizes your mind one moment and is gone the next. A wind like this must brush away a million cobwebs, John thought. The girl held him tight.
‘I’ve got to go,’ he said.
‘Your father and I never had real sex,’ Jasmeet whispered. ‘I hope you were not thinking that, Mr John.’
He could have throttled her. Just because he was set on going to Mother, she was backtracking. First she boasted, she showed him his Dad’s love letters, then she denied. Still, John let her hold him and even cuddle against him as they sat waiting for the rick driver. His body was tense and numb. He did not know what would happen when he saw his mother. He did not know what he might say, who he would become, how she would react. It would be decisive. She would be upset. He would shout perhaps. He would go down on his knees. Jasmeet pressed her softness and smell against him. He was aware of her smell now, the sweet tang of her skin, but it had no power over him. His head was locked up elsewhere.
‘Albert said he could not make love to me because he thought of me as his daughter, or his son’s girlfriend.’
‘What?’
There was a sound of glass crashing.
‘He kept saying it was like a dream, him and me. It was real and it wasn’t real. At the same time.’
She’s lying, John thought. She’s inventing. He was hardly paying attention.
‘He said he thought of me as your girl, Mr John. He liked to think of me like that. So he couldn’t make love to me. It started when we were playing the story of his brother, John. Sudeep was too jealous! Albert mimicked him really well. He wanted to help me the way a father helps his children, taking me to England.’
‘Dad never helped me at all!’ John snapped. Again he pulled back the rick’s tarpaulin and saw the wind had blown a rag against the pole of a signpost and was simply holding it there, flapping.
After a few moments’ silence, Jasmeet said, ‘I like you, John. I like you a lot.’
He felt the violence intensifying.
‘Let me stay in the hotel tonight,’ she whispered. ‘I can sleep on the floor, then we can go to London.’ She lifted her smock and showed a pouch fixed to her belt. It was a glossy plastic red against the flat smoothness of her belly. She unzipped it and pulled out a passport. He saw a wad of notes. ‘We only have to buy the ticket,’ she said.
They sat on. There was no sign of a lull, no sign of a driver. Occasionally there were horns, sirens, cries. John imagines a man lifting the tarpaulin. ‘Lodhi Gardens,’ he tells him. The man climbs in and the rick begins to trundle through the flying dust. But he had only imagined it. The rick was only shuddering in the wind. He sees the tarpaulin lift again. A brown face appears, a man with stained lips, crooked teeth, a dead eye. It is his rick driver the day he went to meet Ananya. ‘Lodhi Gardens,’ he says. ‘Quick!’
‘What?’ Jasmeet asked. The girl had her arm round him, her face against his chest. She had been speaking. She was still saying things about herself and his father. About Sudeep, about going to England. ‘Maybe I will marry you, like he imagined.’ John hadn’t been listening. ‘Before it is too late, your dad said.’ ‘To Lodhi Gardens,’ John muttered. The brown face was grinning through the tarpaulin.
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ he said.
John grinned, embarrassed. He knew there was no one there. The girl held him. The rick’s tarpaulin has turned purple; it is the curtain in the crematorium. John stared at it, waiting for the Indian’s face to appear again. Or his dad’s face. He remembers the undertaker with the yellow woolly hat. I should have asked him to open the coffin. Instead, he had sat still in the back of the car with Mother. ‘I kept up decorum,’ John mutters. He remembers very powerfully his mother’s elegant detachment behind her black veil. Immediate and intense, the memory passes over him in a wave. ‘I am not here,’ he announces. He remembers the strangely brooding, theatrical atmosphere of the cemetery with its Victorian angels, its hooded figures lying on the tombstones. ‘Perhaps I could live in the graveyard,’ he murmurs. ‘With the other destitutes.’
‘John!’ Jasmeet cried. ‘What is it?’
He had squeezed her tightly. Had he? He is vaguely aware of having squeezed the girl rather fiercely. The wind rocked the rickshaw. He was conscious of an ominous uneasiness in his head. His headache is a weather front. The storm edges closer. His thoughts are tangling in the acacia branches. They are thoughts the wind lifts from the dusty earth as the rain approaches. It wraps them round a pole and pins them flapping. He felt sick with expectation. The wind blows away the mind’s cobwebs, he thought. He must take shelter.
‘Where, where can we shelter?’
‘What’s the matter?’ the girl asked.
‘I was remembering his funeral,’ John shook his head. His voice is distant and mechanical. His jaw feels stiff. He mustn’t let her understand.
‘Whose funeral?’
Now he recalled the schoolgirls. Their little feet trooped past him. Green and gold uniforms. He was reliving the funeral. What pretty young girls. What pretty yellow petals they sprinkled on his coffin. Why is there
so much yellow in India? he wondered. He saw faces painted saffron. ‘Why are you wearing a yellow scarf?’ he demanded. Jasmeet looked up and smiled. ‘I like yellow. I always wear yellow.’
The flowers meant something, John is sure. He knew now he should have kissed the coffin. At the very least. That was the solution. If he had kissed it, it would have ceased to plague him. If I had kissed the polished wood it wouldn’t have festered in the basement with the sewage and the stagnant water. The water was in his mind. Can’t the girl smell it? And even better if I had seen the body. Why had his mother prevented him? ‘Albert was all my life,’ she had said. She deliberately prevented him seeing his father’s body. ‘And I his.’ John is nothing, she meant. Instead of seeing his father, John can go and see the Sufi tombs, John can go to the Taj Mahal with its jawab and its mosque. John can see other graves, not his father’s. His father has been dispersed in the river. Disappeared. Dad has escaped forever, into water. My parents’ perfect marriage excluded me, John thought. The more they excluded him the more impossible it was to leave them alone. He shivered, though the air was warm, the wind was warm, the dust is warm and sour. He shivered uncontrollably.
‘Mr John!’ Jasmeet cried. She had been calling him for some moments. She was sitting up now and shaking him. John tried to focus on the driver’s trinkets swaying in front of the rick. Why does that tiny woman have so many arms? She is a spider on an owl.
‘John! Mr John!’
It went against the grain, but John made a massive effort to be himself, to get back into himself. ‘Jasmeet,’ he said. His voice was forced. ‘I can’t go back to England with you.’ It made him tired to speak. He breathed deeply. ‘I have a girlfriend in England. We are going to get married. My mother is coming to England for our wedding.’
‘Let’s go back to the hotel,’ Jasmeet said. ‘Please.’
Then it came to John quite suddenly that his mother would be at her clinic, not at home. Why do I keep thinking of Mum at home when Mum was never at home? She was always away with the sick and dying. Cunningly, he asked, ‘Jasmeet? Where is the clinic where my mother works?’
