by Anita Desai
In the hotel on Middleton Row, the manager sitting behind the desk in the lobby was a stranger. Unlike the friendly, talkative man Baumgartner had known before the war, this one sat completely idle, his hands resting on his knees as if he were a dummy. He even looked somewhat dusty. Baumgartner coughed to attract his attention. ‘Hmm, can I see Mr Lobo, pliss?’
‘You are wanting a room?’ the man asked in a sepulchral voice, reciting the words as if they were all he had been taught.
Baumgartner had made no plans and could make none till he had seen his business partner and learnt the state of the business. He feared from all the dire signs around that it could not be excellent. This would have to be tackled but for the moment he wished only to find Mr Lobo, to see if there were any mail for him and find out why it had never been forwarded nor his letters answered. Putting his fists, tightly rolled, on top of the desk, he said, ‘I came to see if there were any letters for me – I am Hugo Baumgartner and I asked Mr Lobo to send me my letters. Mr Lobo is not here?’
The man looked down at the desk; he seemed to be thinking things over deeply. Finally he sighed, ‘Mr Lobo gone away. He join Air Force. Gone.’
‘When?’ Baumgartner heard his voice crack, and he gripped the edge of the desk tightly; perhaps this was the explanation of that long silence during his years in the camp, too banal to have occurred to him.
‘Long, long ago,’ the man sighed tiredly. ‘No come back, Mr Lobo.’
‘But I gave him all my things to keep. He kept them? They are here?’
Against all his expectations, the man came to life. ‘Mr Bommgarter – you are Bommgarter?’ he mumbled and something seemed to stir behind his chalky forehead. He got to his feet and walked waveringly away to a cupboard at the end of the hall. There he stood, his knees painfully bent, searching along the dusty shelves, while Baumgartner waited in suspense. Finally he turned around and came back not only with the small valise into which Baumgartner had hastily thrust a few belongings before leaving, but also a packet of letters which he handed over with a look of much suffering. ‘Mr Lobo tell me – keep everything for Mr Bommgarter. So I keep. What if Mr Lobo come back and say, “Did you keep?” Yes, I keep everything – for so long,’ he complained, as though it had cost him an immense effort.
‘Thank you, thank you . . . it was very kind, very, very kind.’ Baumgartner stammered, but he was already leafing through the postcards, all written in a familiar handwriting. ‘Pliss, allow me,’ he murmured and, not noticing the man’s outstretched palm on the desk, retreated to sink down into one of the brown leather chairs that stood about like empty bags in the lobby, and read the letters that had never reached him in the camp.
Strange. They were all postcards, and his mother had never been in the habit of writing on postcards: before the war, she had written to him on very fine azure blue paper with her old pen that obeyed the idiosyncrasies of her writing through long habit, splaying to breadth and squareness when she wished to emphasise something, then turning to a narrow edge for the fine flourishes.
He searched the dates for clues. There was one for every month from October 1939 onwards, for a year. Each bore a stamped message that read, ‘Rückantwort nur an Postkarten in deutscher Sprache.’ What officialdom had they passed through, giving them this chilling aspect? ‘Answers on postcards only, in German.’ Only the endearments were familiar: ‘Meine kleine Maus’, ‘Mein Häschen’, and the signature: ‘Mutti’, ‘Muttilein’, ‘Mü’. Apart from them, the messages were strangely empty, repetitive and cryptic. ‘Keep well, my rabbit. Do not worry. I am well. Where are you, my mouse? Are you well? I am well. Do not worry. I have enough. Have you enough? Mutti. Mü.’ Nothing more.
There was none dated later than February 1941.
He had to find a place fit for the cards. He could not live comfortably and luxuriously in the hotel, it would have tortured him to lie down in comfort, to eat and drink, when the cards were stacked in a corner, on a table, the numbers turned up for him to see whenever he looked that way or passed by inadvertently.
As he left, the manager regarded him gloomily from under the weak light, saying, ‘Everybody leaving, everybody going. English soldier. American soldier, all gone. No more business – what to do?’ Mournfully he watched Baumgartner pick up his bag and leave.
He found a room in a great decayed house off Free School Street, at the end of a narrow passage that had an overflowing gutter in it – ‘In Calcutta a street gets flooded if a dog lifts a hind leg,’ they said. There was nothing in it or around it that was not broken or decayed or stained – the high wall was crumbling, the palm trees were lopped, the portico was falling down, the light-bulbs were smashed, the banisters and stairs broken. The landlord, proud to have a foreigner for a tenant, sent him a string cot to sleep on – although he would have preferred to lie on the floor: it would have been more in keeping with his mourning for his mother. He kept his clothes folded at one end of it. There was an earthen jar for water, and a metal tumbler. He would sit on the edge of the cot – even the internment camp had not taught his German knees to fold up, so he could not sit on the floor – and look at his feet so he would not see the cards on the table. Their sparseness, their bleakness, their finality. He thought now that if he had been brought up as an orthodox Jew, he could have mourned her with ceremony; he would have followed the ancient customs, recited the ancient words of solace, and perhaps they would have helped to still the agony. But he was ignorant, and therefore helpless, held in the grip of an unexpressed sorrow. He had to allow the mournful blowing of conch shells and the chanting of Sanskrit prayers that drifted in through the windows at twilight suffice as a funeral ceremony for his mother.
He made no attempt to find and return to the Calcutta life of before the war. He kept away from Park Street, from Chowringhee, from Flury’s and the Grand Hotel and Prince’s and the 300. The Calcutta he lived in now – the Calcutta that had seen the famine of 1943, that had prepared for a Japanese attack, that had been used and drained by the war and war profiteers and now prepared for the great partition – was the proper setting for his mourning. The Calcutta of the black back streets, the steaming rubbish tips, the scarred tenements, its hunger, its squalor, its desolation. The hopelessness of it seemed right to Baumgartner; this was how the world ended, there was no other ending.
But time had to be filled, and the pocket too. This dreary belief – and the sheer habit of living – drove him through the debris of the streets to his former business partner’s office. The street was like a tunnel, it was dark, the rickshaw could scarcely make its way through the crowds: everyone seemed to be on the streets; were the houses all bombed out? Baumgartner peered to see but nothing was visible through the thick, choking smoke except the mottled walls, the gaping windows and darkened doorways in which beggars slept. Habibullah’s modest signboard still hung over one of them, although more askew than ever. As Baumgartner felt his way up the stairs in the dark – the light-bulb was either broken or stolen – he had a gradually decreasing hope of finding the office, still less Habibullah.
The latter loomed up from behind his desk like a ghost for all the vivid carmine dye of his tongue and lips, exposed in a welcoming smile, and the purple handkerchief that he tucked away so he could greet Baumgartner with both arms. He sent for tea, screaming at the ubiquitous urchin to hurry. ‘And sweets,’ he added, ‘two plates of sweets from Ghani Ram’s, don’t forget.’
Then Baumgartner found himself the target for so many and such explosive questions that it was some time before he could calm Habibullah down and assure him of his survival, his safety, his well-being and the embarrassingly dull and secure years in the camp. Habibullah himself had stayed on in Calcutta through the threats of a Japanese attack that had made thousands flee the city and watched helplessly the disruption of life and its ordinary business. Naturally he had not received any of the letters Baumgartner had sent him. Now the war was over, Baumgartner gently suggested, moving the inkwells and the gluepo
ts around on the desk delicately, he hoped to get back to his former business.
At the word ‘business’ Habibullah’s attitude underwent a drastic change. The word was like a bullet that had shot him dead: he slumped over the desk, theatrically. When he finally raised his head to meet Baumgartner’s eye, it was with sorrow and regret written all over his dark face. Baumgartner noticed now how lined and pouched it had become, all the old sleekness gone with Calcutta’s bright lights.
‘What business, sahib, what business?’ Habibullah sighed, drawing out his purple handkerchief and toying with it nervously. ‘Everything finished, gone.’
Baumgartner felt himself growing tense, his muscles, hands and knees all bunching together in a knot as if he were on the edge of an abyss and about to leap. The timber business was his livelihood, he had to have it. It was what he had returned to – it could not be gone. He had realised, while still in the camp, that a return to Germany was out of the question. Germany when it flourished had not wanted him and Germany destroyed would have no need of him either. If he were to remain in India he had to have the means to live in it (even if alone). He thought of the beggars in the doorway over whom he had stepped in order to climb up to the office, and the shrivelled, shrunken ghosts of people who roamed in the streets or slumped across the pavements, scarcely able to move out of the way of the rickshaws, trams and motor-cars. It began to seem as if the hopelessness of Calcutta was to become a part of his own experience now.
‘But the war must have been good for your business, Habibullah,’ he protested. ‘Armies need timber. So many ships, and crates, and paper, and housing – they must have bought so much from you.’
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ Habibullah nodded from over the purple handkerchief, ‘but all over, all finished.’ He crumpled up the handkerchief . . . ‘Now – nothing.’
‘The business will – will go on, Habibullah,’ Baumgartner tried to persuade him, and himself. ‘How not?’
‘Not for me, sahib, not for my family. For us – India is finished. Don’t you know, every night they come and threaten us in our house? Every night they set some Muslim house on fire, stab some Muslim in the street, rob him too. Don’t you know, sahib, they are driving us out?’
‘Who?’ asked Baumgartner, puzzled. In the camp, they listened only to the overseas news, they followed the war. Few had shown any interest in or awareness of what was happening in India. The freedom movement, the famine, the political revolution – no one had discussed that.
‘These – these Congress-wallahs, sahib, the Hindus,’ Habibullah hissed, clutching the handkerchief to him. ‘They say they will kick out the British. Even the British are saying they will leave. And this man Jinnah, and his party – they are wanting partition, they are also wanting to leave. All Muslims should leave, they say. But – how? I have so much – my family, my home, my business – what will happen to it all, sahib?’ he cried, nearly in tears.
Baumgartner said to Habibullah, simply and sadly, ‘Tell me.’
It seemed that Habibullah was preparing to flee. He was negotiating with a Marwari businessman and planned to sell him his business while he left with his family for Dacca and what would become East Pakistan where there would be safety in numbers for Muslims. What worried him was whether he could take the proceeds from the sale of the business with him. In the midst of these worries, he groped for some light. Stretching his hand across the desk, he pleaded, ‘Why not you buy from me, sahib? I sell to you, I reduce price for you, because I trust you, you pay in full – not like Marwari. You buy?’
Baumgartner unfolded his hands on his knees. They were damp with sweat. ‘How can I, Habibullah?’ he murmured. ‘I have only my savings from before the war – and they will not be enough.’
Habibullah’s harrowed face underwent a series of changes as it adjusted itself – from anxiety and tension to contrition and concern. ‘My dear friend,’ he said, in a low emotional voice, ‘I am thinking only of self, not of other man’s problems. Very bad, very bad.’ He shook his head and went on to question Baumgartner and advise him with something of his authority if not his old serenity. His chief, reiterated advice was, ‘Leave this city. It is no good. The Japanese have bombed it. In the famine thousands and thousands have died. The streets have been full of dead bodies, rotting. People had no rice to eat and rich men drinking whisky, sahib, that is how it was. It is still stinking of death, sahib, this city. And there will be more death, more death. I know it, I know it. I am leaving. You leave also, sahib. Go to Bombay. In Bombay you can do business and not be stabbed in the back when you are going home at night. Bombay had no war, no famine. Bombay is good city, sahib, very good city for you.’
‘And what can I do in Bombay?’ Baumgartner asked tiredly, the very thought of having to move exhausting him. ‘How to start there?’ He wanted to explain to Habibullah that their situation was not very different – and equally hopeless.
But Habibullah did not think so. From somewhere, he had retrieved hope, retrieved confidence. He spoke very firmly and precisely. ‘Go to Chimanlal, sahib. He sent you to me. He is good man. A Bombay man, knows all Bombay business. He will give you business. He will help.’
‘How?’ asked Baumgartner.
‘How? Are you not English, European sahib? Have you no European connections? You can help him with export business –’
‘Europe has had a war, Habibullah,’ Baumgartner reminded him. ‘My country is – finished. What business can I do?’
But Habibullah had no more conception of Baumgartner’s war, of Europe’s war than Baumgartner had of affairs in Bengal, in India. Tapping his fingers on his desk authoritatively, he promised to write out a letter to Chimanlal about Baumgartner that would take care of everything.
‘And in Bombay is your friend, Mr Bommgarter!’ he suddenly added with a yelp of exuberance. ‘You will meet old friend again.’
‘Friend?’ Baumgartner was mystified. ‘Who?’
‘Lola!’ Habibullah exploded. ‘My God, you are not knowing? Madam Lola is married and living in Bombay. To who? To who? To Kantilal Sethia, Mr Bommgarter. Yes, yes, married, those two. When police came to tell Madam Lola she must go to camp like you, Kantilal did say, no, he will marry Madam Lola, make Indian lady of her, then no camp.’
Baumgartner found himself blinking, laughing with amazement and disbelief. ‘Lola married – to Kantilal? Lola has become Indian lady?’
‘No, no, no, sahib. So clever is that Kantilal, so cunning – he had secret marriage with Madam Lola, which is meaning not real marriage, only fake, jhoota. Fake priest, fake ceremony. All the time it is happening, sahib, all the time. These Hindu men not supposed to marry again, so what they do? They have fake marriage instead of real one. And you know what Kantilal do? He take Madam Lola to his house – yes, he take her to his own house – and tell his wife, this is governess for our sons, English governess. And poor lady, she cry and shout and scream, but what can she do? Madam Lola already standing there in the house, with bag and clothing and everything. Madame Lola has to pretend she English governess and give lessons to Kantilal’s son. What lessons? I don’t know, Mr Bommgarter, you must ask her. Singing lessons? Dancing lessons? I don’t know. But already fighting is taking place. Mrs Sethia, she very very angry. Mrs Sethia is making faces and putting chilli powder in all the food and showing to Madam Lola the – what you call? – tongs, kitchen tongs? And Madam Lola getting frightened and running out of house, and all the neighbours looking and seeing. So poor Kantilal, he think better take Madam Lola away. Mrs Sethia he cannot send away, Mrs Sethia staying. So he take Madam Lola to Bombay, buy her nice flat. She say she have no money. He tell her give lessons, be teacher, but she say no, she will not be governess again. So Kantilal buy her shop – yes, yes, yes, I have heard this myself – he buy a shop for Madam Lola. In Bombay.’
Baumgartner found himself smiling. He found himself cheered, at least for the moment. Deciding to leave Habibullah in these good spirits, he got up and went, promising to th
ink over the matter of Bombay.
Instead, he made his way to the old, crowded, slum-like house off Free School Street, in the lane too narrow for traffic but wide enough for people, pigs, stray dogs, even a few intrepid rickshaws. It was a complete contrast to the European quarter he had known before the war with its air of an eastern colonial port, its great houses with deep verandas and green shutters, high walls and tall palms, and the European life of Park Street with its hotels, confectionaries, bars and shops.
To enter this lane, Baumgartner had first to walk through the Anglo-Indian quarter that separated the European from the Bengali. Here the tailors’ shops were hung not with the little blouses Hindu women wore with their saris but with the cheap frocks, skirts and blouses the Anglo-Indian clerks and secretaries wore to work. Even the butchers’ shops were different and Baumgartner wondered why they made him so queasy, a German used to the sight since childhood. It was after a considerable time that he realised he had grown used to the sight of the Hindu butchers’ shops with their goat carcasses and was now shocked by the huge carcasses of cows and buffaloes that hung in this Anglo-Indian, therefore Christian quarter. Even the dogs, he noticed, skirting one fierce gang that snarled and fought over a gigantic bone flung down by the Muslim butcher, were bigger, sturdier and more aggressive than he had seen elsewhere.
Baumgartner found no joy in the streets where he walked aimlessly, compulsively, in order to put off going back to his room. The congestion of the streets and the odours in the heat were overpowering; debris was piled everywhere – banana peels, coconut husks, ashes and cinders from the fires the householders lit in their small brick-stoves with cakes of cowdung soaked in kerosene, a lethal substance that let out billows of choking yellow smoke. In the evenings, the smoke rose to meet the mists that descended from the river and the swamps and mingled to form an impenetrable quilt that made one gasp for breath and cough.
