Baumgartner's Bombay

by Anita Desai

  Here he met with the first smile of the day, but so slight and sardonic and well concealed behind a bush of tobacco-coloured moustache, that he did not see it. Nor did the café proprietor’s eyes reflect it; they were the bottomless pits of a cynic and a melancholic and so the smile was no more than a grimace. Baumgartner did not mind; he did not see, being still dazzled by the light of the streets, that explosion of light that his weak eyes could hardly tolerate. Groping for a chair, he lowered himself on to its comfortless tin seat by a marble-topped table, placing his hands on it for coolness and grateful for the green murk of the Café de Paris: Farrokh wasted little money on electricity.

  ‘Tea, sahib? Coffee?’ he asked as he came across since the waiter was still in the kitchen, noisily preparing the cutlery and the crockery for the day’s custom. He leaned over the table, placing his raw, meaty hands on its edge and frowning at a smear of grease on the marble that he wiped with the napkin he carried on his shoulder.

  ‘Och, Farrokh, so good. Yes, tea, pliss, tea is nice,’ sighed Baumgartner, feeling the perspiration trickle down his neck and back, almost audibly. ‘And something for the pussy-cats, yes? You have something from last night, Farrokh?’ he coaxed, edging the plastic bag across the table at him.

  Farrokh gave another of his dour smiles that failed to light his eyes. He took the bag from Baumgartner resignedly and went to the kitchen door with it, handing it to one of the boys who worked there in striped underpants and tattered vests and with towels flung over their shoulders. Then he called back to Baumgartner, ‘I’ll have it ready for you later, I told them keep fish curry for you. It’s hot. Your cats like masala, spice, chilli, turmeric, jeera, bay leaf?’

  Baumgartner had no option but to smile and nod. He was in debt to Farrokh and the other restaurateurs who filled his bag for him with the remains of the food cooked the night before. Without their help he could not feed the cats that flocked to him in the alleys, knowing him to be the Madman of the Cats, the Billéwallah Pagal, or the sick and maimed ones he picked up from the streets and carried home to nurse, telling them they would have to leave when they were cured but never finding the heart to turn them out.

  In return, he gave them his custom. He could not really afford to patronise cafés, however third-rate their quality and competitive their rates, but it was necessary to remain a customer, not to slip down to being a beggar. Baumgartner was not as unconscious as one might think of the dividing line. Planting himself heavily at the table and grasping the glass of thick, milky tea that had been set before him by the waiter’s wet and dripping hand, he made himself play the role of customer. It would not do to smile and thank the waiter, he had to remember he was paying for what he got, remind them also that he would pay. In that comfortable knowledge he could raise his head after the first gulp and look across to the counter where, behind glass cases containing livid yellow queen cakes with pink icing and plates of fried salted savouries, Farrokh stood swatting flies. Over his head the tinsel garland he had hung around the tinted portrait of his god Zoroaster stirred and twinkled like a ring of bluebottles in the shadows. It was almost impossible to read the faded sign he had hung beneath it: TRUST IN GOD, or the handwritten label attached to the sign: Terms Strictly Cash.

  ‘Mmm.’ Baumgartner tried to show his appreciation of the hot, the thick, the suffocatingly sweet tea. He tried to think of some repartee he might have with the dour Farrokh. There was a time when he had enjoyed every opportunity to talk, even to strangers, particularly to strangers since all acquaintance with them, however quick, however warm, had to be fleeting, leaving him to go on alone. Now the habits of a hermit were growing upon him like some crustaceous effluent; it required an effort, an almost physical effort, to crack it, to break through to the liquidity and flow and shift and kinesis of language. Crustaceous – crab – ungainly turtle: that was how he thought of himself, that was how he saw himself – an old turtle trudging through dusty Indian soil.

  On this morning he was still struggling to find some item of news that he might discuss with Farrokh – for Farrokh read a Gujarati newspaper spread on the counter before him with ferocious attention and could always be roused by mentioning the name of a politician or referring to any political situation, being at heart a suppressed and thwarted leader of men like every other Indian he had ever met – when Farrokh folded up the grease-yellowed paper, leant across with his elbows on it, between the case with the sponge cakes and the case with the fried samosas, and jerked his unshaven chin gloomily in the direction of the far end of the room. ‘D’you see that one there?’ he asked conspiratorially. ‘He was here last night, we had to turn him out when we closed, then found him in the doorway when we opened up this morning. Back he is here, and I don’t know what to do with him – throw him out?’ He made the appropriate gestures with his powerful arms and no one could have mistaken his intention.

  Baumgartner could not twist his neck any longer; it had long ago become set; he had to turn himself right around on the small swivel of the tin chair and look into the dark corner at which Farrokh so balefully glared. There he could make out nothing at first but what seemed like a bag of pale fur on the table; it might have been a cat. He found himself giving an involuntary twitch that started in his neck and ran down his shoulder and through his arm, making his hand turn over on the table in a flutter of excitement: could Farrokh have found him a cat, a homeless one? In his amazement he opened his small, watery eyes wide to take in its condition, and made out two solid baked brick-red arms of human flesh that lay on either side of it, protectively. It was only another human being, another – but here Baumgartner pulled himself together: it was too easy to use the coarse language everyone else used these days, to be uncharitable. And it might be a fellow countryman, although of another generation, for the head, covered with such a mass of blond curls, surely was youthful. Nordic possibly, it was so pale – if not Teutonic. It lay helplessly on the table-top, like something carelessly left behind, the arms that sprawled about it sunburnt to a raw, meaty red on which the bracelets he wore seemed incongruous in their delicacy, their femininity. Angel-child, raw meaty man, helpless lass – he was all three. That was how young men were now, Baumgartner knew – they saw no difference between what was considered masculine or feminine, and, as for Baumgartner himself, he was too old for it to matter.

  Having taken in all the details he could gather, and failed to add them together into a known quantity, he turned back to Farrokh for further information. To his surprise, Farrokh abandoned the familiar weapon of the newspaper and the safe barrier of the counter and came out from behind it, tying up his pyjama strings under the long loose white vest he wore, and sat down on a chair at Baumgartner’s table, a rare act of confidence. Clearly he was under some pressure that made him behave so uncharacteristically since Farrokh, for all his squalor and sourness, was also a dignified man who made much of wearing the sacred thread, of reading the scriptures and remaining aloof from all those of an inferior race, to him a mass of mleccha. For all the kindness shown him, Baumgartner had always felt he belonged to the latter.

  Today he chose to display a different persona to the bemused Baumgartner. Touching him on the shoulder with an unaccustomed familiarity, pressing his thick white fingertips into Baumgartner’s unresisting shoulder, he lisped, ‘You – you and I, we are of a different age. Not that one’s –’ letting go of Baumgartner’s shoulder, he flipped his hand in the direction of the slumped young man with the utmost derision. ‘He, he belongs to this new race – men who remain children, like pygmies, dwarfs. Yes, I know they are very tall – I know they are growing bigger and bigger, these jungly heathens of today. Eat and sleep and lie about in the sun all day, they grow like turnips you leave in the ground – too big.’ He made a ferocious noise through the many hairs in his nostrils. ‘But what is there inside all that big, strong flesh and bones? Hanh?’ he queried threateningly. ‘Anything there? No? You are right. Nothing. Empty. Hollow. Hah!’

  His enormou
s, thick, white hand plucked another gesture out of the air above Baumgartner’s head. It commanded the waiter in the kitchen door to bring more tea for Baumgartner, for all that Baumgartner weakly protested, uneasy at the thought of paying for more tea than he wanted. ‘To you – I am ready to give more tea,’ Farrokh assured him, plucking at the vest on his chest as if offering that as well, with all its holes and stains, magnanimously. ‘But for that one – why should I bend my back, dirty my hands? Hah? What for? For a kick from his boot – the boot in which he climbed Himalaya, I suppose. Already he has kicked his parents in the face, I think – rich parents, giving their son motor bike, motor car, watch, money, ticket to India, everything. Then what do they get? Boot in the face, goodbye and get off. Hah? That is how they come – to Afghanistan, to Nepal, to India. Tell their parents they don’t want job, they don’t want work. Tell them big big lies about Hindu gods, say they love Buddha, say they want to visit temples, live in ashrams. Yes, they visit temples and live in ashrams alright,’ Farrokh sneered, ‘but do they look at Buddha – or at Rama, or Krishna or any other god? I know what they do. You know what they do, Bommgarter sahib? Get drugs in these ashrams, drugs from those pundits and other people like them. That is why they come to India, and Nepal, and Afghanistan. I say let them take drugs – let them kill themselves – why not? I care? I just call police and tell them remove them, throw them into gaol, into city morgue. But what I don’t like, Bommgarter sahib, is how they come to India, spoil Bombay, spoil Goa, spoil holy temples, spoil my restaurant. Why for? Have we invited them? No! Then why they come? And what do they give in return, hah? Do they pay my bill? No. When Rashid goes to them with the bill, then they pull out pockets, show the big holes, say, “No money, no pay.” Just like that.’ Farrokh slapped the table with his hand, making Baumgartner draw back. ‘Just like that. And what you can do? Call police because boy has not paid bill for two rupees? No, you have to forget. Then they go to shop – I have seen them myself, picking up bread, picking up bananas, saying, “I am hungry, no money, my mummy-daddy no send money, please give me,” and you know what kind of people we are in India, Bommgarter sahib, can we refuse food to anybody?’ Baumgartner obediently shook his head, thinking of his plastic bag with shame, with a pang. But Farrokh was not referring to him at all, he was going along in the full flood of his indignant rhetoric. ‘All the time we are giving, giving – to bull walking in the street like a lord every morning, to the beggar, to the leper, to the fakir who comes to my restaurant with tin can and marigold garland and snake round his neck so I give, give him money to go away and not trouble my customers. To all – give, give. My religion says: give, give. Yes, but that is enough. Why must I give to rich, bad children from England, from America? Is it we who must give them or their own people, their mummies and daddies, rich-rich uncle-aunties in foren?’

  Farrokh was so incensed that his hand kept slapping the marble table-top again and again, smacking it as he might smack the cheek of an offender. Bubbles of spit grew on his moist red underlip and were caught in the bush of his moustache from which they fell in drops. Baumgartner looked from them to the hand on the table, slapping and slapping, till his own cheek felt worn and numbed.

  ‘Kick them all out, kick them over the sea, I say – hanh? But how? They have no money for ticket, they say. They come here very grand – tickets, rucksacks, trekking boots, everything. Then everything goes – in Afghanistan, in Nepal already it starts to go, so they can buy hashish, buy ganja, all those powders they have to take like babies take milk. So when they come here nothing is left – rucksack empty, feet bare. What to do? Bommgarter sahib, what to do?’

  As requested, Baumgartner shook his head silently.

  ‘Go to Goa, that is what,’ Farrokh bawled violently, leaning forward as if to throw Baumgartner backwards. Forced to raise his hand and wipe his face of flying spit bubbles, Baumgartner pretended to be smoothing down his hair instead, politely. ‘Goa they all hear about, you can be sure. Golden sand, palm trees, cheap feni to drink, music on the beach, dancing naked – you know what goes on there?’

  No, Baumgartner indicated.

  ‘No, I also not. Such things were not in my day. I only knew school, shop, work, wife, children – that is my life. But these – these baby-men who come now from America, from England, they know another kind of life, Bommgarter sahib, they have other life. Music they have to have, hashish they have to have, women they have to have – not wife, not like my wife, but women. And all in Goa they can get, under coconut tree, under moon and star. So there they go. Pay fisherman ten rupees to build hut with coconut palm leaf. Crawl in with woman, with hashish, not come out for two day, three day, five day even.’ A note of envy had entered Farrokh’s voice. It slowed, came to a standstill, exhausting itself in a sigh. His chin sank down into the mat of black hair on his chest. ‘Such a life,’ he sighed, and Baumgartner felt that regret had overtaken the censure in his tone. Perhaps he could now excuse himself and slip away?

  But Farrokh clenched his hands, knitted together the fingers on which small hairs grew in tufts, and roared, ‘How long it go on, hanh? How long? Soon they need money. Go to post office. Has letter come from my dear mummy, my darling daddy? No? Must have, please look, look again, they must send! No, no letter, no money. Then they begin to scream – shout filthy language, abuse – begin to cry, sit in post office and howl like babies. Friends come, take them away, give them hashish. Next day, again post office, again: My money come? No? Look again, you pig, you swine, you Indian ass, they shout, my money must come, my daddy will send, he love me, my mummy love me. But no letter – Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, no letter. So then they go to Anjuna beach, sell rucksack, sell watch, sell everything. Just like fisherwomen,’ Farrokh laughed with contempt, ‘fisherwomen selling prawn, pomfret, in basket, on head. Then they have little money, buy ticket for Bombay, come here, say they will buy ticket and go home. But how? How to get money in Bombay, Bommgarter sahib? You know?’

  Baumgartner licked his lips, trying to smile, wishing Farrokh’s diatribe did not have these personal references.

  ‘You don’t know,’ Farrokh said, with satisfaction, as if he had always suspected Baumgartner of such basic ignorance. ‘No, and he also not know. Then – then,’ he went on, his voice picking up power, ‘they begin stealing. Yes, pickpocket in cinema house, pickpocket in market. Burglary in old people’s home. In shops. Even killing, even murdering. Police tell me – I know many police – they tell me how much murder is going on in Bombay. No longer black man killing white man for money, Bommgarter sahib, it is now white man killing and robbing black man. And white man killing white man too.’ He glared into Baumgartner’s face with ugly triumph, defying him to challenge his claim.

  Baumgartner could not look into his face any more. He looked down at his feet, shuffled them uneasily. He had no intention of standing up for the white man’s reputation here in Farrokh’s café while he had his morning tea and his cats got their food, none whatsoever. It embarrassed him that anyone should think he ought to or would try to protect the white man.

  Farrokh’s voice dropped to the level of reasonableness. ‘So when they come here, to my Café de Paris, do you think I will say welcome, welcome, sahib, lord, master, come and do me the honour of eating in my café? Let me give you tea, cake, omelette, what you want. Not Farrokh Cama,’ he shook his head and beamed at the strength of his moral stand, his ability to withstand moral rot. ‘I, Farrokh Cama, go tell my waiters, tell Rashid and Domingo, no cake, no tea, no omelette. Push them out. Out, into the gutter. Tell them, go and beg in the market-place, go live like lepers in the street, but not come to Café de Paris please.’

  Having turned out the foreign scum, at least verbally, at least in his imagination, Farrokh sat in silence for a while, seemingly satisfied. But then he began to drum those flat, thickened fingertips on the table in impatience, with the sound of large flies drumming on a windowpane. ‘Not always listening to me, Domingo and Rashid,’ he sighed. ‘So when I
come in this morning – little bit late, last night big party for my sister’s grandson, big Navjote party in Parsee gymkhana, so little bit late today – I find Café de Paris already open, Rashid and Domingo cleaning, sweeping, washing – and that fellow sitting there.’ He glared over Baumgartner’s shoulder into the far dark corner. ‘Just sitting, sleeping. I think, let him rest, I will do my accounts, have my cake and omelette, read my paper. But still the boy is sleeping. No waking. What is matter? Is he sick? No. I know what is matter, Bommgarter sahib. He – is – DRUG – ADDICT!’ Farrokh hissed into Baumgartner’s ear, rolling up his fists as if to crush the life out of such a worm.

  An involuntary sound came from Baumgartner’s mouth – of anger, of alarm, of commiseration – he allowed Farrokh to interpret it as he liked. He felt nothing for either Farrokh’s dilemma or the boy’s, only that he was pressed between the two, against his will, miserably.

  At that moment another customer came in. Fortunately a known, old one, and a Parsi as well. As Baumgartner hoped, Farrokh rose to his feet, pulled up the loose pyjamas and shuffled towards his friend to whom he could unburden himself in the ease and expansiveness of his own language.

  ‘Kem cho, Farrokhbhai?’ ‘Kem cho, Pesi, Kem cho?’ Baumgartner heard the delighted greetings under cover of which he could at last rise and flee. He stopped long enough to place some coins beside his glass, glance into the murky corner at the pile of flesh and fur still carelessly spread in a crumpled heap – a furred carcass before it disintegrated – and then made his escape.

  Escape – a funny word to use of the Colaba streets, he smiled to himself, rubbing one ear as if Farrokh’s talk had made it sore. How did one escape, caught in the traffic like a fish in a net teeming with a million other fish? So much naked skin, oiled and slithering with perspiration, the piscine bulge and stare of so many eyes – he made his way, thinking tiredly how familiar it all was, how he scarcely noticed any of it, merely glanced to see if everything was as it had always been: the juice-wallah at the corner, down the pavement from Farrokh’s café, dressed in a piece of checked cotton round his waist and a white singlet, feeding sweet limes into a mincing machine and pouring into a red glass jug the frothing liquid in which seeds rose like bubbles, then scraping up and throwing handfuls of pith and peel into the plastic bucket at his feet, all his movements co-ordinated and regular for all their casual carelessness; then the shops on the Causeway, most of them hung with bolts of cascading cloth, nylon and silk and georgette and cotton that smelt of mills, of chemicals, of everything man-made; the cheap, ready-made garments spread on the pavements for display, just out of reach of the feet that shuffled past hurriedly; the shoe and sandal stalls, desultorily flicked at with dusters by gloomy salesmen, the fruit stalls and the snack stalls decorated with red chillies, yellow lemons and lilac onion-rings. There was the bird-man who always positioned his cages of rose-ringed parakeets, Himalayan talking mynahs and dotted munia birds that had been cunningly brightened up in buckets of scarlet dye outside the jewellery stores that were frequented by Arabs, for they loved birds too, and Baumgartner had often stood beside him, watching a man in a burnoose or a woman in a chador choosing from amongst the twittering cages while the bird-man sweated profusely in anticipation of gold bars and lavish cheques. There was a goldfish man too but the fish that floated in his globes of water were of paper and only desired by spoilt children. Also the fortune-teller who hoped someone would have the time of day to stop for a consultation but erred in coming out so early, at a time when people were still hurrying to go to work and had not yet been thrown out of the government offices or the courts or banks to find solace and hope at the soothsayer’s who spread his amulets, his ‘lucky gems’, his playing cards and other tools of his trade on a soiled red rag in the dust, waiting to welcome them; Baumgartner had never stopped and the man always had a malevolent look for him as he passed. Beggars hopped with agility in and out of the crowds, spotting the likeliest benefactors with their brilliant, darting eyes, stretching out a fingerless hand for a coin here and raising a ravaged face to the window of a stalled taxi there. How oriental, how exotic, Baumgartner used to think, smiling the abashed smile of one who did not belong, but today he felt only their weight upon him, the pressure of their bodies, their needs, demands, greed and hunger which left so little space for him, so narrow a passage through which to shoulder his way.