Diamond Dust

by Anita Desai

  'Oh, a cleaner, I guess,' their mother said when they told her of this exchange. 'She must have hired a cleaner. High time, too. Never thought she'd do it.'

  'D'you think she heard us? She'd have to be a witch!'

  But their father only said, 'Good, place getting cleaned up at last,' with as much satisfaction as if it were his own achievement.

  Instead, a shocking event took place that did not result in cleanliness at all. School had reopened by then, and the children had forgotten such trivial moments of their summer. Tom was launched on his project of getting into the swimming team but finding it far from easy, and Polly was struggling to maintain her identity as an artist (she had taken her roll of paintings to show the school art teacher who had looked at them down her nose and said, 'Yes, well, we're going to be doing pencil sketches and still lifes this term'). The routine of catching the school bus, going off every morning, bringing back homework, was settling into its usual monotony. It was early fall, the leaves grey and tinged with yellow, like the beard of an old man, when one morning Miss Mabel Dodd arrived at their back door and stood, in her heavy boots, her battered jacket, her hands in her pockets, and her chin sunk into her collar, addressing their father. Their mother, when summoned, went at once to see what it was about. So did the children, at risk of missing the school bus, and there in the drive stood the tenant's car, at which she was gesturing. It was scrawled all over with what was obviously excrement, since it stank, and in excrement someone had written the word PIG across the front and rear window. Some of it had been smeared over the hood, and over the trunk. When they tore their eyes away from this mound of desecration, they went out, walked around the lilacs and saw the cabin with bags of garbage strewn all around it, across the steps and over the porch. Miss Mabel Dodd stood with them, huddled into her jacket—worn, they saw, over a pair of faded flannel pyjamas—surveying it with them. Here finally was something she wished to share.

  After a moment, the mother, audibly gulping, said, 'I'll call the police,' and fled.

  It was a great pity, but the children missed the police visit—the parents would not, absolutely would not, allow them to miss school. And when they returned, the police had come and gone. The car was gone, too. Nothing to console them but their mother's explanation—as if it could.

  'They thought it might be the boy she hired as a cleaner in the summer. Maybe she didn't pay him enough. Maybe she said something bad to him, something mean.'

  'But who was he? Will they catch him? Will they put him in gaol?'

  'Oh, I don't think he can get away—he was one of the boys she taught—in that school for delinquents, in Holyoke.'

  'She taught—?'

  They might have known—mathematics, spelling, history, all those rigours took over teachers like terminal illnesses; it was what made them so dried-up, so impervious to life. They should have known all along. Only the word 'delinquent' added a novel element to that grim pattern—and Holyoke, the gutted red-brick tenements, the emptied streets, the boarded-up shops, the groups huddled in corners of playgrounds where no one ever played, that they passed by on their way to Hartford, to Springfield and beyond...

  'Yes,' said their mother, cutting bread for peanut butter sandwiches without missing a stroke. The slices fell into pairs, like the leaves of books, on the wooden board, then were thickly smeared with the oily paste, rising to a mound in the centre, thinning at the peripheries, before she slapped the leaves together, two by two, and drew a knife through each pair, pressing down, then releasing each triangle to puff up and rise, ready for sets of teeth to bite into, as luxuriously as sinking into soft beds of warmth and sweetness. 'She's taught art there for twenty years, the police told me. Those kids, they must be real hard to deal with—most of them from broken homes, or orphanages, and some of them with spells in prison. Imagine teaching them art Imagine her teaching them art! Poor kids,' she said, laying out the sandwiches in a plate in a layered, fanned pattern before them. 'Can you imagine?'

  Polly's mouth opened to form a protest. Her lips formed the letter 'O' or else 'NO'. She wanted to protest, she was not sure against what, but against something that had been presented to her, interposed between her and what she wanted and believed in—something objectionable, inadmissable, an imperfection. How was she to protest, to deny? Her lips stretched to form the word 'How?' but then she broke down and what burst from her was a surprising, 'Oh, Ma-ma.'

  Her mother looked at her, questioningly. What was she protesting? Polly had no idea. All she knew was disillusion. It made her stretch out and grab a sandwich, then bury her teeth into it, despairingly.

  Five Hours to Simla or Faisla

  THEN, miraculously, out of the pelt of yellow fur that was the dust growing across the great northern Indian plain, a wavering grey line emerged. It might have been a cloud bank looming, but it was not—the sun blazed, the earth shrivelled, the heat burned away every trace of such beneficence. Yet the grey darkened, turned bluish, took on substance.

  'Look—mountains!'

  'Where?'

  'No! I can't see any mountains.'

  'Are you blind? Look, look up—not down, fool!'

  A scuffle broke out between the boys on the sticky grime of the Rexine-covered front seat and was quietened by a tap on their heads from their mother at the back. 'Yes, yes, mountains. The Himalayas. We'll be there soon.'

  'Hunh.' A sceptical grunt from the driver of the tired, dust-coated grey Ambassador car. 'At least five more hours to Simla.' He ran his hand over the back of his neck where all the dirt of the road seemed to have found its way under the wilting cotton collar.

  'Sim-la! Sim-la!' the boys set up a chant, their knees jouncing up and down in unison.

  Smack, the driver's left hand landed on the closest pair, bringing out an instant flush of red and sudden, sullen silence.

  'Be quiet!' the mother hissed from the back seat, unnecessarily.

  The Ambassador gave a sudden lurch, throwing everyone forwards. The baby, whose mouth had been glued to the nipple of a rubber bottle like a fly to syrup, came unstuck and let out a wail of indignation. Even the mother let out a small involuntary cry. Her daughter, who had been asleep on the back seat, her legs across her mother's lap, crowding the baby and its bottle, now stirred.

  'Accident!' howled the small boy who had been smacked, triumphantly.

  But no, it was not. His father had stopped, with the usual infuriating control exercised by robotic adults, just short of the bicycle rickshaw ahead. The bicycle rickshaw had, equally robotically, avoided riding forwards into the bullock cart carrying a party of farmers' families to market. Then there was a bus, loaded with baggage and spilling over with passengers, and that too had shuddered to a halt with a grinding of brakes. Ahead of it was a truck, wrapped and folded in canvas sheets that blocked all else from sight. The mountains had disappeared and so had the road.

  Also the first cacophony of screeching brakes and grinding gears. There followed the comparatively static hum of engines, and drivers waited in exasperation for the next lurch forwards. For the moment there was a lull, unusual on that highway. Then the waiting very quickly began to fray at the edges. The sun was beating on the metal of the vehicles and the road lay flattened across the parched plain without a tree to screen them from the sun or dust. First one car horn began to honk, then a bicycle rickshaw began to clang its bell, then a truck blared its musical horn maddeningly, and then the lesser ones began to go pom-pom, pom-pom, almost in harmony, and suddenly, out of the centre of all that noise, a long piercing wail emerged, almost from under their feet or out of their own mouths.

  The two boys, the girl, the baby, all sat up, shocked, more so when they saw it was their father who was the perpetrator of this outrage. Clenching the wheel with both hands, his head was lowered onto it and the blare of the horn seemed to issue out of his fury.

  The mother exclaimed.

  He raised his head and banged on the wheel, struck it. 'How will we get to Simla before dark?'
he howled.

  The mother exclaimed again, shocked, 'But we'll be moving again, in a minute.'

  As if to contradict her, the driver of the mountainous truck stalled at- the top of the line swung himself out of the cabin into the road. He'd turned off his engine and stood in the deeply rutted dust, fumbling in his shirt pocket for cigarettes.

  Other drivers got out of and off their vehicles—the bullock cart driver lowered himself from the creaking cart, the bicycle rickshaw driver descended, the bus driver got out and stalked, in his sweat-drenched khakis, towards the truck driver standing at the head of the line, and they all demanded, 'What's going on? Breakdown?'

  The truck driver watched them approach but he was lighting his cigarette and didn't answer till it was lit and between his fingers. Then he waved an arm—and his movements were leisurely, elegant, quite unlike what his driving had been, on the highway in front of them, maniacal—and said, 'Stone throw. Somebody threw a stone. Hit my windshield. Cracked it.'

  The father in the Ambassador had also joined them in the road. Hand on his hips, he demanded, 'So?'

  'So?' said the truck driver, narrowing his eyes. They were grey in a tanned face, heavily outlined and elongated with kohl, and his hair was tied up in a bandana with a long loose end that dangled upon his shoulder. 'So we won't be moving again till the person who did it is caught and brought to a faisla.'

  Immediately a babble broke out. All the drivers flung out their hands and arms in angry, demanding gestures, their voices rose in questioning, in cajoling, in argument. The truck driver stood looking at them, watching them, his face expressionless. Now and then he lifted the cigarette to his mouth and drew a deep puff. Then abruptly he swung around, clambered back into the cabin of his truck and started the engine with a roar, at which the others fell back, their attitudes slackening in relief. But then he wheeled it around and parked it squarely across the highway so no traffic could get past in either direction. The highway at that point had narrowed to a small culvert across a dry stream-bed full of stones. Now he clambered out again, then up the bank of the culvert on which he sat himself down, his legs wide apart in their loose and not too clean pyjamas, and sat there regarding the traffic piling up in both directions as though he might be regarding sheep filing into a pen.

  The knot of drivers in the road began to grow, joined by many of the passengers demanding to know the cause of this impasse.

  'Dadd-ee! Dadd-ee!' the small boys yelled, hanging out of the door their father had left open and all but falling out into the dust. 'What's happened, Dadd-ee?'

  'Shut the door!' their mother ordered sharply, but too late. A yellow pai dog came crawling out of the shallow ditch that ran alongside the road and, spying an open door, came slinking up to it, thin hairless tail between its legs, eyes showing their whites, hoping for bread but quite prepared for a blow instead.

  The boys drew back on seeing its exploring snout, the upper lip lifted back from the teeth in readiness for a taste of bread. 'Mad dog!' shouted one. 'Mad dog!' bellowed the other.

  'Shh!' hissed their mother.

  Since no one in the car dared drive away a creature so dangerous, someone else did: a stone struck its ribs and with a yelp it ducked under the car and crept there to hide. But already the next beggar was at the door, throwing himself in with much the same mixture of leering enquiry and cringing readiness to withdraw. In place of one of his legs was a crutch worn down to almost a peg. 'Bread,' he whined, stretching out a bandaged hand. 'Paisa, paisa. Mother, mother,' he pleaded, seeing the mother cower back in her seat with the baby. The children cowered back too.

  They knew that if they remained thus for long enough, and made no move towards purse or coin, he would leave: he couldn't afford to waste too much time on them when there were so many potential donors lined so conveniently up and down the highway. The mother stared glassily ahead through the windscreen at the heat beating off the metal bonnet. The children could not tear their eyes away from the beggar—his sores, his bandages, his crippled leg, the flies gathering...

  When he moved on, the mother raised a corner of her sari to her mouth and nose. From behind it she hissed again, 'Shut-the-door!'

  Unsticking their damp legs from the moistly adhesive seat, the boys scrambled to do so. As they leant out to grab the door, however, and the good feel of the blazing sun and the open air struck at their faces and arms, they turned around to plead, 'Can we get out? Can we go and see what's happening?'

  So ardent was their need that they were about to fall out of the open door when they saw their father detaching himself from the knot of passengers and drivers standing in the road and making his way back to them. The boys hastily edged back, and he stood leaning in at the door. The family studied his face for signs; they were all adept at this, practising it daily over the breakfast table at home, and again when he came back from work. But this situation was a new one, a baffling one: they could not read it, or his position on it.

  'What's happening?' the mother asked at last, faintly.

  'Damn truck driver,' he swore through dark lips. 'Some boy threw a rock at it—probably some goatherd in the field—and cracked the windscreen. He's parked the truck across the road, won't let anyone pass. Says he won't move till the police come and and get him compensation. Stupid damn fool—what compensation is a goatherd going to pay even if they find him?'

  The mother leaned her head back. What had reason to do with men's tempers? she might have asked. Instead she sighed. 'Is there a policeman?'

  'What—here? In this forsaken desert?' her husband retorted. Withdrawing his head, he stood taking in harsh breaths of overheated, dust-laden air as if he were drawing in all the stupidity around him. He could see passengers climbing down from the bus and the bullock cart, clambering across the ditch into the fields, and fanning out—some to lower their trousers, others to lift their saris in the inadequate shelter provided by thorn bushes. If the glare was not playing tricks with his eyes, he thought he saw a puff of dust in the distance that might be raised by goats' hooves.

  'Take me to see, Dadd-ee, take me to see,' the boys had begun to clamour, and to their astonishment he stood aside and let them climb out and even led them back to the truck that stood stalled imperviously across the culvert.

  The mother opened and shut her mouth silently. Her daughter stood up and hung over the front seat to watch their disappearing figures. In despair, she cried, 'They're gone!'

  'Sit down! Where can they go?'

  'I want to go too, Mumm-ee, I want to go too-oo.'

  'Be quiet. There's nowhere to go.'

  The girl began to wail. It was usually a good strategy in a family with loud voices but this time her sense of aggrievement was genuine: her head ached from the long sleep in the car, from the heat beating on its metal top, from the lack of air, from the glare and from hunger. 'I'm hung-ree,' she wept.

  'We were going to eat when we reached Solan,' her mother reminded her. 'There's such a nice-nice restaurant at the railway station in Solan. Such nice-nice omelettes they make there.'

  'I want an omelette!' wailed the child.

  'Wait till we get to Solan.'

  'When will we reach it? When?'

  'Oh, I don't know. Late. Sit down and open that basket at the back. You'll find something to eat there.'

  But now that omelettes at Solan had been mentioned the basket packed at home with Gluco biscuits and potato chips held no attraction for the girl. She stopped wailing but sulked instead, sucking her thumb, a habit she was supposed to have given up but which resurfaced for comfort when necessary.

  She did not need to draw upon her thumb juices for long. The news of the traffic jam on the highway had spread like ripples from a stone thrown. From somewhere, it seemed from nowhere for there was no village bazaar, marketplace or stalls visible in that dusty dereliction, wooden barrows came trundling along towards the waiting traffic, bearing freshly cut lengths of sugarcane and a machine to extract their juice into thick dirty grey gla
sses; bananas already more black than yellow from the sun that baked them, peanuts in their shells roasting in pans set on embers. Men, women and children were climbing over the ditch like phantoms, materialising out of the dust, with baskets on their heads filled not only with sustenance but with amusement as well—a trayload of paper toys painted indigo blue and violent pink. Small bamboo pipes that released rude noises and a dyed feather on a spool, both together. Kites, puppets, clay carts, wooden toys and tin whistles. The vendors milled around the buses, cars and rickshaws, and were soon standing at their car window, both vocally and manually proferring goods for sale.

  The baby let drop the narcotic rubber nipple, delighted. His eyes grew big and shone at the flowering outside. The little girl was perplexed, wondering what to take from so much abundance till the perfect choice presented itself in a rainbow of colour: green, pink and violet, her favourites. It was a barrow of soft drinks, and nothing on this day of gritty dust, yellow sun and frustrating delay could be more enticing than those bottles filled with syrups in dazzling floral colours. She set up a scream of desire.

  'Are you mad?' her mother said promptly. 'You think I'll let you drink a bottle full of typhoid and cholera germs?'

  The girl gasped with disbelief at being denied. Her mouth opened wide to issue a protest but her mother went on, 'After you have your typhoid-and-cholera injection, you may. You want a nice big typhoid-and-cholera injection first?'

  The child's mouth was still open in contemplation of the impossible choice when her brothers came plodding back through the dust, each carrying a pith and bamboo toy—a clown that bounced up and down on a stick and a bird that whirled upon a pin. Behind them the father slouched morosely. He had his hands deep in his pockets and his face was lined with a frown deeply embedded with dust.

  'We'll be here for hours,' he informed his wife through the car window. 'A rickshaw driver has gone off to the nearest thana to find a policeman who can put sense into that damn truck driver's thick head.' Despondently he threw himself into the driver's seat and sprawled there. 'Must be a hundred and twenty degrees,' he sighed.