by Tim Parks
Returned to the cell after questioning, John was not unhappy. The suffocating heat in the narrow cement space didn’t concern him. Nor the powerfully unpleasant smells. He didn’t feel it was a scandal that they were holding him. He didn’t yearn for company. He lay on a bunk. The flies are free to settle on my face, he thought, on my lips and hair. They don’t bother me. He felt safe here, removed from danger, released, above all, from any obligation to think. I will not think, he decided. I don’t care.
Instead he listened to the other men who were brought in and out. He kept his eyes closed, as if sleeping. He lay still on his back on the thin mattress with his hands joined on his stomach. There were bunks for six. At one point there were eleven men in the room. The beds creaked. A key turned the lock with a clank. Prisoners came and went, protesting. It was pleasant not to understand a word they said. They chattered and farted and argued and sucked up catarrh. My stomach feels good, John noticed. The dysentery had gone. The worst possible thing has happened, he thought, and is past. At a certain point he remembered with a jolt that there was a letter in his back pocket, a letter that wasn’t addressed to him. Dear Paul … Who was this person? His mind clouded. He felt anxiety rising. What if they took his clothes away? So far they had only frisked him for weapons. Anyway, he would not take that letter out or think about it at all. I will drift, he decided.
Breathing softly in the suffocating afternoon on the hard bed, and then through the long night that followed, John began to feel that his body was not on a solid bed at all, but floating on air or water. He had the impression he was turning this way and that, propelled, as if following a current or swinging with a tide. During the night he became aware that his hands, joined on his belly, had sunk deep into his body; they were one with his gut and organs. His hands were inside his belly. And his feet and calves and knees and thighs had fused together. I am a cocoon, he whispered. His entire body had liquefied and was becoming one warm cosy fluid.
John James was held in the police station for forty-eight hours then released without charge after an autopsy had established the time and cause of his mother’s death. Various powerful blows had been delivered to the woman’s body, the examining doctor reported, but this had occurred some hours after her decease. In a brief morning meeting, two senior officers decided that the Delhi police had better things to do than to pursue such an obscure misdemeanour. The boy was disturbed. Both the victims were foreign nationals. No relatives were demanding justice.
Led to the entrance of the police station toward 11 a.m., John was amazed to find Elaine waiting for him. I’m sick again, he thought.
Elaine was demanding to know if he was okay. ‘John! Oh John!’ She was smiling and crying and hugging and kissing. Her quick little mouth pressed against his cheek, his nose. ‘It’s so great to see you.’
Overwhelmed and wooden, John couldn’t understand how his girlfriend had arrived so soon. Who had told her? Her name formed on his lips but he couldn’t speak it.
‘Hi, I’m Paul Roberts,’ the man beside her introduced himself. He stood for a moment offering a hand that John didn’t take. ‘You don’t know me but I was planning to write a biography of your father. I’ve been staying at your mother’s apartment these last couple of weeks.’
Finally, John found his voice. ‘Can we go, please?’ he asked.
In the taxi, sitting between the others, he was on his guard.
‘John,’ Elaine repeated. ‘God, I’m so glad they’ve let you out. I was so worried.’
But now John had remembered the Govind. ‘Take me to Bhavbhuti Marg,’ he leaned forward to explain to the driver where it was. ‘Now please.’
When they arrived, he insisted on going up alone. He just had to get his things, he said, and pay his bill. There was no reason for anyone else to come. He asked if either of them could lend him 2,000 rupees. Paul immediately pulled a wallet from his pocket and counted the notes.
Climbing the stairs to the hotel, John became concerned that Jasmeet might still be in his room. He had treated her badly and she had nowhere to go. She would make demands. She would talk about air tickets. She would run out and confront Elaine.
He stopped at a dusty landing where a small Ganesh had been fixed to an old brown door. The god smiled his inane elephant smile. Behind the door someone laughed. John distinctly heard laughter, and music too. He stared at the stupid image with its jumbo trunk and chubby grin. Why had he lashed out at Jasmeet? It wasn’t her fault. And how could you be so cheerful when your father cut off your head and replaced it with something grotesque? Three elephants, sir! He heard the hawker’s chirpy voice. Happy family, sir. A son he must have known was not his, his mother had written. Inside John’s thinking, right at the liquid core where ideas bubble up, a dull ache set in. ‘Cement,’ he found himself muttering. And then unexpectedly: ‘Carry on regardless, John.’
‘What lady?’ the woman in reception asked coolly.
‘You remember, the girl who waited for me. She spent one night in reception.’
The receptionist busied herself with some papers. ‘The lady left the hotel a few hours after you, as far as I can remember.’
‘She didn’t leave a message? She hasn’t been back?’
‘No, sir.’
At once John was disappointed. He now felt he needed to see Jasmeet quite urgently. He couldn’t remember why, but there was a reason. Had he really hit and kicked his mother as the policeman said? How could he have kicked anyone with those stupid hospital slippers on? The ache flowered in his mind. It had a purplish colour, like a flower opening on water, blocking reflection, clogging the flow. There was no question of giving the letter to the American.
‘I must settle my bill,’ John announced calmly.
‘Very good, Mr James.’
The woman opened a folder and produced a paper with various scribblings: his breakfasts, the dysentery pills they had bought for him, bananas. She tapped in figures on a little calculator. Her fingernails were green, her sari a soft peach against the milk brown of her wrists. As always the bowl of water with the trembling petals was on the counter by her elbow. Even when they were different, John thought, the coloured patterns were always the same. Waiting while the hotelier counted the banknotes, he stared at the pointillist geometry hovering on the transparent skin of the water. What was the logic of it? What if the petals hid something ugly beneath?
Putting his money in a drawer, the hotelier smiled. She must have expected the worst when he disappeared. Now she was in a generous mood. ‘Your room has been cleared for another customer, Mr James,’ she said. Her plump face was warm and motherly. The generous lips pursed and smiled. ‘Everything has been packed in your bag. You will check it please before you go. You must say if something is missing.’ She lifted the phone and spoke briskly in Hindi.
John felt he would have liked very much to stop and talk to the woman. He had always been attracted to her he realised now. Polite and businesslike in her sari and elaborate bracelets, her very discretion was a form of intimacy, as though, precisely by not mentioning the troubled nature of his stay, she were gently suggesting her awareness of it, her readiness to help. John watched her jotting down a last note, brushing strands of fine hair from her nose – how pretty the bright jewel sunk in the dark skin – but in the end he said nothing and now an elderly man had appeared from the corridor bringing his bag. John gave him twenty rupees. ‘Please check everything now, sir,’ the hotelier warned. ‘I would not like to hear something is missing.’
John sat on the reception’s low sofa and opened his bag. His clothes, though unwashed, had been folded. His washing kit had been gathered together and zipped into its pouch. Perhaps now would be the moment to mention the computer, he thought, and the phone and the pashmina shawl. He didn’t. Glancing distractedly through his few things, he realised that he had actually been looking forward to going to the room and sorting it out himself, or maybe just lying down a few minutes on the bed.
Then, opening t
he bag’s side pocket, John came across the laundry-order paper with the drawing of his father’s face. So it hadn’t been taken! He looked at the rough little sketch. He had forgotten that he had put his father in his coffin; he had even sunk him under snaky lines of water. I didn’t see the body but I drew it. I buried it. Disturbed, John quickly folded the paper and pushed it in his back pocket together with his mother’s letter. He zipped the bag shut and got to his feet.
‘Thanks for packing my clothes,’ he told the hotelier. ‘That was very kind.’
‘You are welcome, sir,’ she said.
At his mother’s apartment John simply waited for the American to go. He wanted him out. Paul had mentioned moving into a hotel. ‘I don’t want to be in you young folks’ way, but I’m right around the corner if you need help.’ His mobile and hotel numbers, he said, were on the pad by the phone.
‘John, I can imagine how upsetting this all is,’ Paul added quietly, standing at the door about to go, ‘but there’s the question of funeral arrangements. You mother’s body is being released this morning. I told them to send it to a funeral parlour. Let me give you their number as well.’
John didn’t reply. He was standing at the table, looking across the room at the shelves of books and videos. How dusty it all was. As if attracted to it, his fingers found the dent where he had banged down the stone elephant. Mum and Dad both escaped me, he thought.
Meantime the elderly maid was carrying in tea on an English tea tray. John had forgotten her name. She set mats and cups and the big white pot on the table.
‘So, would it be okay?’ Paul asked with gentle practicality, ‘if I arranged the same sort of ceremony that she arranged for your father? At the Christian crematorium? You have to do things quickly here you know. It will be for tomorrow. At most the day after.’
John must have nodded. The American said something in a quiet voice to Elaine, then left.
They finished their tea. After a few moments’ silence, Elaine started to explain how she had abandoned the play she was working on and decided to come out to Delhi to find him. ‘It was a premonition maybe,’ she said. ‘I suddenly realised how important you were.’
John was staring around the shelves, at the weight of his father’s books, the strange bareness of his parents’ world. They were both gone.
‘You don’t want to talk?’
The doorbell rang. It was a sharp old-fashioned buzz. Lochana’s daughter and granddaughter had arrived. The elderly maid opened the door for them. Vimala went to shake John’s hand, then Elaine’s. The girl seemed anxious to speak, but then simply sat down at the table, opening and shutting her knees in pink trousers, while her mother tried to talk to John about Lochana.
‘You will return to England now, I think.’ The woman spoke brusquely in a low urgent voice. ‘And what will become of my mother, sir? She is working for Mrs James for five years now. It will not be easy for her to find another place at her age.’
‘I’ve really no idea,’ John said. He had sat down again. ‘I have no money and my parents left nothing at all.’ He opened his hands in a gesture of destitution. He was secretly pleased that Mum had made no arrangements for her maid.
Standing to leave, Vimala asked in a low voice. ‘Can I take a book, Mr John? To remember your father. You know I helped him also in his research.’
‘Take what you like.’
Without hesitating, the girl walked to the far wall and stooped to the bottom shelf. She had a natural liquid grace. A slim hand moved rapidly across the book spines, then she sighed and pulled out a copy of Through the Looking-Glass. ‘That is so kind of you,’ she said, standing up. ‘Thank you, Mr John.’
When the Indians had gone, John told Elaine he needed to rest. He stood up and went to the small bedroom, the guest room. For perhaps an hour Elaine sat alone on the sofa. She read a message on her mobile but didn’t reply. She moved to the window and looked out at the sullen heat. Apartment buildings were scattered at random across dark scrub and unmarked roads. The sky was low and still, the landscape an empty reddish brown.
Elaine turned back to the room’s shelves and looked for something to read, anything. Homus Hierarchicus, she found, Louis Dumont. She sat down again, leafing through the pages, unable to concentrate. The index pointed her to a section entitled ‘Conjugal Unions’. She tried to read the opening lines: ‘Let us recall that neither premarital sexual relations nor adultery is tolerated.’ She twisted the page round to follow a scrawl in the margin. There was a spooky constrained urgency to the slanted handwriting: ‘To live is to punish.’ Elaine frowned. John’s father was weird. She put the book down and, without knocking, went into the bedroom.
‘Why did you come to India, John? You haven’t told me anything.’
She kept her voice as calm as she could. ‘Why didn’t you answer my messages? Why didn’t you go to see your mum till yesterday? What have you been doing all this time?’
John was on his back, his hands behind his head. He pulled himself up a little and opened his mouth, then closed it again.
‘You know she had no idea you were here. Your mum. I saw her. Maybe you didn’t realise. I arrived thinking you would be here. I saw her just before she went to the hospital. The last day she was alive. It makes me shiver. I know I’d never met her before, but she seemed completely normal to me. What happened John? Why did she do it?’
Her boyfriend stared at her, but in such a way that their eyes couldn’t meet. He was looking at her neck, at her waist, at someone who had pushed in through the door.
‘John! I know it’s terrible, I know you must be so shocked, but, please, let’s talk a bit. Please look at me, I’m going crazy.’
He sighed, still hesitated, then at last glanced into her eyes and said: ‘I want to pack all Dad’s books and tapes. I want them all put in boxes and sent back to London. We’ll have to find some boxes, or maybe call a freight company. We can do it this afternoon.’
Elaine was still standing at the door. The small room was quite unfurnished aside from bed and heavy home-made bookshelves.
‘Don’t you want to give the stuff to Paul?’ she asked. ‘At least for the moment. In case he writes his biography maybe. It would be easier to let him handle them.’
John shook his head. ‘Mum didn’t want him to write a book. And nor do I.’
‘Oh.’ Elaine was surprised. ‘I thought you said it was a good idea.’
‘No.’
‘But where on earth will you put them?’ She really didn’t want him to send those books to England.
‘Somewhere. I’ll store them somewhere. Maybe at my grandmother’s. She has a big house.’
The girl came and sat on the corner of the bed. She spoke practically. ‘Listen John. I have to decide whether to go back soon, in the next day or two, and do my play. I said I’d resigned but they’re insisting I do it. They’re sending messages. I’ve got to make up my mind.’
John didn’t reply. She put a hand on his where it lay on the blanket.
Then he sat up abruptly. ‘I have to pack those books. I have to contact the owner of the flat here and cancel the rent contract. We have to check when the funeral can be held and make sure we get the first flight afterwards. And we have to find someone to pay for it and to pay to put the books on it.’ He looked at her. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Helen James was by far the most remarkable woman I have had the honour to meet,’ Paul said from the podium at the funeral the following morning. John noticed Jasmeet sitting beside her father to his right. From time to time the girl turned a dazzling smile his way, as if this were a happy event, as if there were a special complicity between them. She was wearing a pale yellow sari with a blue blouse. Kulwant looked distraught and frequently put his arm round his daughter’s shoulders. Sharmistha and Heinrich were side by side behind.
‘I came to Delhi, as you probably know, to study the work of Helen’s husband, the anthropologist Albert James, but more and more I was forced to realise that Albert
could not be talked about separately from Helen. Their different, sometimes contradictory vocations had to be seen as stems twisting around and supporting each other. I know that more than once I felt a deep envy for the wonderful marriage they had, a partnership that took them all over the world and held them together through so many difficult situations. We can all imagine, I think, how hard it must have been for Helen after Albert’s death.’
It was the first time Paul had addressed anything similar to a church congregation. He felt quite at home, even rather moved by his own words.
‘Still, I cannot believe that her untimely departure was planned. On the very day she died Helen was telling me of her plans to go out to Bihar and work in a small hospital there. She even made a considerable effort to persuade me that it would be right and exciting if I were to give some of my time to help there too. I have no doubt that she was serious about the project and that whatever happened on the night of her death must have been the result of a moment’s despair.’ Paul hesitated. ‘As a tribute to Helen, I have pledged that I will do as she proposed and spend at least a year in Bihar. Obviously I cannot be the help she would have been. But I will do my best.’
‘Crap,’ John whispered to Elaine. He didn’t join in the small clatter of applause as Paul stepped down.
‘Aren’t you going to speak?’ Elaine asked. The American was the third to have been to the podium. The girl seemed anxious about the form of the ceremony in exactly the way John had been at his father’s funeral six months before.
‘No.’
‘Don’t you think people will see it badly?’
John shrugged his shoulders.
Now Dr Coomaraswamy was saying that when two great spirits lived together on earth they tended to become different in order to complement and complete each other. When one died there was imbalance and yearning on both sides of the great divide, on the earth below and in the ether above.
‘Crap,’ John whispered again.
‘No, it was a beautiful thing to say.’
‘With regard to the strange nature of her departure,’ Coomaraswamy concluded and he lowered his head to look at the small gathering over his rimless glasses, ‘I am not sure that this was an act of desperation. I am not sure we need regret it. Theosophy teaches us that the Masters guide our actions and are attentive to our most profound needs.’ He paused. ‘Now this river too has flowed to the sea.’
