by Anita Desai
Still, the resources of the kitchen were not limitless. Beth found they had soon run through them, and the hours dragged for her, in the company of the two mothers. There were just so many times she could ask Doris to come over and relieve her, and just so many times she could invent errands that would allow them all to escape from the house so crowded with their hopes, expectations, confusion and disappointments. She knew Rakesh disappointed them. She watched them trying to re-create what he had always described to her as his most warmly close and intimate relationship, and invariably failing. The only way they knew to do this was to cook him the foods of his childhood—as best they could reproduce these in this strange land—or retail the gossip of the village, not realising he had forgotten the people they spoke of, had not the slightest interest in who had married whom, or sold land or bought cattle. He would give embarassed laughs, glance at Beth in appeal, and find reasons to stay late at work. She was exasperated by his failure but also secretly relieved to see how completely he had transformed himself into a husband, a Canadian, and, guiltily, she too dragged out her increasingly frequent escapes—spending the afternoon at her mother's house, describing to a fascinated Doris the village ways of these foreign mothers, or meeting girlfriends for coffee, going to the library to read child-rearing manuals—then returning in a rush of concern for the two imprisoned women at home.
She had spent one afternoon at the library, deep in an old stuffed chair in an undisturbed corner she knew, reading—something she found she could not do at home where the two mothers would watch her as she read, intently, as if waiting to see where it would take her and when she would be done—when she became aware of the light fading, darkness filling the tall window under which she sat. When she looked up, she was startled to see flakes of snow drifting through the dark, minute as tiny bees flying in excited hordes. They flew faster and faster as she watched, and in no time they would grow larger, she knew. She closed the magazine hastily, replaced it on the rack, put on her beret and gloves, picked up her bag and went out to the car outside. She opened the door and got in clumsily; she was so large now it was difficult to fit behind the steering wheel.
The streets were very full, everyone hurrying home before the snowfall became heavier. Her windscreen wiper going furiously, Beth drove home carefully. The first snowfall generally had its element of surprise; something childish in her responded with excitement. But this time she could only think of how surprised the two mothers would be, how much more intense their confinement.
When she let herself into the house with her key, she could look straight down the hall to the kitchen, and there she saw them standing, at the window, looking out to see the snow collect on the twigs and branches of the bare cherry tree and the tiles of the garden shed and the top of the wooden fence outside. Their white cotton saris were wrapped about them like shawls, their two heads leaned against each other as they peered out, speechlessly.
They did not hear her, they were so absorbed in the falling of the snow and the whitening of the stark scene on the other side of the glass pane. She shut the door silently, slipped into her bedroom and fetched the camera from where it lay on the closet shelf. Then she came out into the hall again and, standing there, took a photograph.
Later, when it was developed—together with the first pictures of the baby—she showed the mothers the print, and they put their hands to their mouths in astonishment. 'Why didn't you tell us?' they said. 'We didn't know—our backs were turned.' Beth wanted to to tell them it didn't matter, it was their postures that expressed everything, but then they would have wanted to know what 'everything' was, and she found she did not want to explain, she did not want words to break the silent completeness of that small, still scene. It was as complete, and as fragile, after all, as a snow crystal.
The birth of the baby broke through it, of course. The sisters revived as if he were a reincarnation of Rakesh. They wanted to hold him, flat on the palms of their hands, or sit crosslegged on the sofa and rock him by pumping one knee up and down, and could not at all understand why Beth insisted they place him in his cot in a darkened bedroom instead. 'He has to learn to go to sleep by himself,' she told them when he cried and cried in protest and she refused to give them permission to snatch him up to their flat bosoms and console him.
They could not understand the rituals of baby care that Beth imposed—the regular feeding and sleeping times, the boiling and sterilising of bottles and teats, the cans of formula and the use of disposable diapers. The first euphoria and excitement soon led to little nervous dissensions and explosions, then to dejection. Beth was too absorbed in her child to care.
The winter proved too hard, too long for the visitors. They began to fall ill, to grow listless, to show signs of depression and restlessness. Rakesh either did not notice or pretended not to, so that when Beth spoke of it one night in their bedroom, he asked if she were not 'over-reacting', one of his favourite terms. 'Ask them, just ask them,' she retorted. 'How can I?' he replied. 'Can I say to them "D'you want to go home?" They'll think I want them to.' She flung her arms over her head in exasperation. 'Why can't you just talk to each other?' she asked.
She was restless too, eager to bring to an end a visit that had gone on too long. The two little old women were in her way, underfoot, as she hurried between cot and kitchen. She tried to throw them sympathetic smiles but knew they were more like grimaces. She often thought about the inexplicable relationship of these two women, how Masi, small, mousy Masi, had borne Rakesh and then given him over to Ma, her sister. What could have made her do that? How could she have? Thinking of her own baby, the way he filled her arms and fitted against her breast, Beth could not help but direct a piercing, perplexed stare at them. She knew she would not give up her baby for anything, anyone, certainly not to her sister Susan who was hardly capable of bringing up her own, and yet these two had lived their lives ruled by that one impulse, totally unnatural to her. They looked back at her, questioningly, sensing her hostility.
And eventually they asked Rakesh—very hesitantly, delicately, but clearly after having discussed the matter between themselves and having come to a joint decision. They wanted to go home. The baby had arrived safely, and Beth was on her feet again, very much so. And it was too much for her, they said, a strain. No, no, she had not said a thing, of course not, nothing like that, and nor had he, even inadvertently. They were happy—they had been happy—but now—and they coughed and coughed, in embarrassment as much as on account of the cold. And out of pity he cut short their fumbling explanations, and agreed to book their seats on a flight home. Yes, he and Beth would come and visit them, with the baby, as soon as he was old enough to travel.
This was the right thing to say. Their creased faces lifted up to him in gratitude. He might have spilt some water on wilting plants: they revived; they smiled; they began to shop for presents for everyone at home. They began to think of those at home, laugh in anticipation of seeing home again.
At the farewell in the airport—he took them there while Beth stayed at home with the baby, who had a cold—they cast their tender, grateful looks upon him again, then turned to wheel their trolley with its boxes and trunks away, full of gifts for family and neighbours. He watched as their shoulders, swathed in their white chunnis, and their bent white heads, turned away from him and disappeared. He lifted a fist to his eyes in an automatic gesture, then sighed with relief and headed for his car waiting in the grey snow.
At home Beth had put the baby to sleep in his cot. She had cooked dinner, and on hearing Rakesh enter, she lit candles on the table, as though it were a celebration. He looked at her questioningly but she only smiled. She had cooked his favourite pasta. He sat at the table and lifted his fork, trying to eat. Why, what was she celebrating? He found a small, annoying knot of resentment fastened onto the fork at her evident pleasure at being alone with him and her baby again. He kept the fork suspended to look at her, to demand if this were so, and then saw, over her shoulder, the refrigerat
or with its array of the photographs and memos she liked to tape to its white enamel surface. What caught his eye was the photograph she had newly taped to it—with the view of the white window, and the two widows in white, and the whirling snow.
He put down his forkful of pasta. 'Rakesh? Rakesh?' Beth asked a few times, then turned to look herself. Together they stared at the winterscape.
'Why?' he asked.
Beth shrugged. 'Let it be,' she said.
Diamond Dust
A Tragedy
'THAT dog will kill me, kill me one day!' Mrs Das moaned, her hand pressed to her large, soft, deep bosom when Diamond leapt at the chop she had cooked and set on the table for Mr Das; or when Diamond dashed past her, bumping against her knees and making her collapse against the door when she was going to receive a parcel from the postman who stood there, shaking, as he fended off the black lightning hurled at him. 'Diamond! Why did you call him Diamond? He is Satan, a shaitan, a devil. Call him Devil instead,' Mrs Das cried as she washed and bandaged the ankle of a grandchild who had only run after a ball and had that shaitan snap his teeth over his small foot.
But to Mr Das he was Diamond, and had been Diamond ever since he had bought him, as a puppy of an indecipherable breed, blunt-faced, with his wet nose gleaming and paws flailing for action. Mr Das could not explain how he had come upon that name. Feebly, he would laugh when questioned by friends he met in the park at five o'clock in the morning when he took Diamond for a walk before leaving for the office, and say, 'Yes, yes, black diamond, you see, black diamond.' But when C. P. Biswas, baring his terribly stained yellow teeth in an unpleasant laugh, said, 'Ah, coal—then call him that, my dear fellow, coal, koyla—and we would all understand.'
Never. Never would Mr Das do such a thing to his Diamond. If his family and friends only knew what names he thought up for the puppy, for the dog, in secret, in private—he did not exactly blush but he did laugh to himself, a little sheepishly. And yet his eyes shone when he saw how Diamond's coat gleamed as he streaked across the park after a chipmunk, or when he greeted the dog on his return from work before greeting Mrs Das, his grandchildren, or anyone at all, with the joyful cry, 'Diamond, my friend!'
Mrs Das had had a premonition—had she not known Mr Das since she had been a fourteen-year-old bride, he a nineteen-year-old bridegroom?—when she saw him bring that puppy home, cuddling it in his old brown jumper, lowering his voice to a whisper and his step to a tiptoe, as if afraid of alarming the sleeping creature. 'Get some warm milk—don't heat it too much—just warm it a little—and get some cotton wool.' She had stared at him. 'Not even about our own children, not even your first-born son, or your grandchildren, have you made so, much of as of that dog,' she had told him then.
She repeated it, not once, or twice, or thrice, but at regular intervals throughout that shining stretch of Mr Das's life when Diamond evolved from a round, glossy cocoon into a trembling, faltering fat puppy that bent its weak legs and left puddles all over Mrs Das's clean, fresh floors, and then into an awkwardly—so lovably awkwardly—lumbering young dog that Mr Das led around on a leash across the dusty maidan of Bharti Nagar, delighting in the children who came up to admire the creature but politely fearful of those who begged, 'Uncle, let me hold him! Let me take him for a walk, Uncle!' Only in the Lodi Gardens did he dare slip Diamond off his leash for the joy of seeing him race across that lawn after chipmunks that scurried up trees, furiously chattering and whisking their tails in indignation while Diamond sat at the foot of the tree, whining, his eyes lustrous with desire. 'Diamond, Diamond,' Mr Das would call, and lumbering up to him, would fondle his head, his ears and murmur words of love to entice him away from the scolding creatures in the leaves.
But there were times when Mr Das went beyond that, times that his friends and colleagues whom he met daily on their morning walks were astounded, if not scandalised, to witness, so much so that they could hardly speak of it to each other. Mr Das had so clearly taken leave of his senses, and it made them worry: how could a reputable government servant, a colleague, fall so low? They had caught him, as portly and stiff as any of them, romping ridiculously in a rose garden enclosed by crumbling, half-ruined walls that he had imagined hid him from view, chasing or letting himself be chased around the rose beds by a wild-with-excitement dog whose barks rent the peace of the morning park. They hardly knew how to tell him he was making a fool of himself. Instead, settling down on a bench in the shade of a neem tree and with a view of the Lodi tombs, watching parrots emerge from the alcoves and shoot up into the brilliant summer air, they discussed it between themselves gravely, and with distaste, as became their age and station—the decent, elderly civil servants with a life of service and sobriety behind them.
'There was that time Raman Kutty's grandchild was visiting him from Madras, and he would bring her to the park. He would even push the pram, like an ayah. During that visit, he couldn't speak of anything, or say anything but "Look, she has a new tooth," or "See her sucking her toe, so sweet." And that child, with its crossed eyes—'
'Tch, tch,' another reproved him for his ill-mannered outburst.
But the outburst was really occasioned by Mr Das, and the sight they had all had of him kicking up his heels like a frolicking goat in the rose garden, oblivious of the gardeners who sat on their haunches in the shade, smoking and keeping a vigilant eye on their rose beds.
'Look, here he comes with that wretched beast,' C. P. Biswas cried out. He was never in very good humour in the mornings; they all knew it had to do with his digestive system and its discomforts: they had often come upon him seated in the waiting room of the homeopath's clinic which was open to the marketplace and in full view of those who shopped there for their eggs and vegetables. 'I think he should be told. What do you say, should we tell him?'
'Tell him what, C. P.?' asked the mild-mannered A. P. Bose.
'That such behaviour is not at all becoming!' exclaimed C. P. Biswas. 'After all, a civil servant—serving in the Department of Mines and Minerals—what will people say?'
'Who?'
'Who? Look, there is the Under Secretary walking over there with his wife. What if he sees? Or the retired Joint Secretary who is doing his yoga exercises over there by the tank. You think they don't know him? He has to be told—we are here to remind him.'
Unfortunately Mr Das chose not to join them that morning. He walked smartly past them, hanging onto Diamond's leash and allowing Diamond to drag him forward at a pace more suited to a youth of twenty, and an athletic one at that. He merely waved at his friends, seeing them arranged in a row on the bench, and, clearly not intending to join their sedate company, disappeared behind a magnificent grove of bamboos that twittered madly with mynah birds.
C. P. Biswas was beginning to rumble and threaten to explode but A. P. Bose drew out the morning newspaper from his briefcase, unclasped the pen from his pocket, and tactfully asked for help in completing the day's crossword puzzle.
Of course their disapproval was as nothing compared to that of Mrs Das who did not merely observe Mr Das's passion from a distance but was obliged to live with it. It was she who had to mop up the puddles from her gleaming floors when Diamond was a puppy, she who had to put up with the reek of dog in a home that had so far been aired and cleaned and sunned and swept and dusted till one could actually see the walls and floors thinning from the treatment to which they had been subjected. Her groans and exclamations as she swept up (or, rather, had the little servant girl sweep up) tufts of dog's hair from her rugs—and sometimes even her sofas and armchairs—were loud and rang with lament. Of course she refused to go to the butcher's shop for buffalo meat for the dog—she would not go near that stinking hellhole on the outskirts of the marketplace, and Mr Das had to brave its bloody, reeking, fly-coated territory himself, clutching a striped plastic bag close to him with one hand and pressing a thickly folded handkerchief to his nose with the other—but, still, she had to sacrifice one of her cooking pots to it, and tolerate the bubbling a
nd frothing of the meat stew on the back burner of her stove. During the hour that it took, she would retreat to the veranda and sit there in a wicker chair, fanning herself with melodramatic flair.
'But do you want the dog to starve? Do you think a dog such as Diamond can be brought up on bread and milk?' Mr Das pleaded. 'How would he grow? How would he live?'
'Why not? I have heard even of tigers being fed on milk. It is true. Absolutely. Don't give me those looks, D. P. There was a yogi in Jubbulpore when I was a girl, he lived in a cave outside the city, with a pet tiger, and it was said he fed it only on milk. He brought it to town on festival days, I saw it with my own eyes. It was healthy, that milk-fed tiger, and as harmless as a kitten.'
'But I am not a yogi and Diamond is not a yogi's pet. What about that cat you had? Did it not kill sparrows and eat fish?'
'My cat was the cleanest creature this earth has ever known!' Mrs Das cried, holding the fan to her breast for a moment, in tribute to the deceased pet. 'Yes, she enjoyed a little fish from my plate—but she ate so neatly, so cleanly—' 'But fish, wasn't it? And sparrows? You see, an animal's nature cannot be changed simply because it is domesticated, Sheila. That tiger you speak of, it is quite possible that one day it turned upon the yogi and made a meal of him—'
'What are you saying?' Mrs Das cried, and began to flutter her fan again. 'That yogi lived to be a hundred years old!' And Mr Das went off, muttering disbelievingly, to dish out the meat stew for Diamond in an earthenware bowl in the courtyard and then carefully shut the kitchen door behind him so Diamond could not drag one of the bones into the house to chew on a rug as he very much liked to do and would do if not prevented.
The children of the neighbourhood were more appreciative, and properly admiring, than his wife, Mr Das felt as he walked Diamond past the small stucco villas set in their gardens of mango trees and oleander hedges, attracting flocks of them as he went. But he was not so besotted or blinded as to ignore the need always to have Diamond firmly secured on his leash when children were around. He was not unaware that once he had turned his back, or if they had come upon Diamond when he was not around, they were quite capable of arousing the dog to a frenzy by teasing him. 'We were only playing, Uncle!' they would cry reproachfully after Diamond had broken loose and chased them until they fell sprawling in the dust, or even nipped at their heels as they ran. 'That is not how to play with a dog,' he reproved them severely. 'You must not wave a stick at him. You must not pick up a stone. You must not run—'
