Baumgartner's Bombay

by Anita Desai

  Definitely he had a sense of being stopped. He was to go no further. He had arrived at the final barrier. And what was that – death? Was this temple occupied by death? Was it the scene of some hideous human sacrifice? One read of them, from time to time, in the papers. Even of cannibalistic rites, tantric magic. Had some drugged creature, animal or human, been dragged up here to be decapitated, to spill the crimson stuff out of its unstoppered self and water this immutable black blob of god-spit, god-sputum? Perhaps it was death that lay there in a heap, a heap of death piled up, as casually as dog’s turds, saying to Baumgartner – the end, no more.

  But Baumgartner would not have its no. He turned and scrambled out of the narrow exit with such speed that he scratched his arms against the stone, hurt his knee against its rib, and fell out on to the hillside as if ejected by whatever possessed or inhabited that temple. Indigestible, inedible Baumgartner. The god had spat him out. Raus, Baumgartner, out. Not fit for consumption, German or Hindu, human or divine.

  Half-way down the track, laughing in humiliation and mortification as he rubbed his scratched elbows, Baumgartner knew he had been expelled from some royal presence. Go, Baumgartner. Out. He had not been found fit. Shabby, dirty white man, firanghi, unwanted. Raus, Baumgartner, raus.

  When freedom came, Baumgartner was again on the fringe, looking on the Independence Day celebrations from a distance, finding himself smiling at the flags, the balloons, the slippers flung up in the air in rejoicing, and then wondering why he smiled. When communal riots rent the new nation, making Bombay bulge with the refugees who streamed in from over the border, he skirted their shelters, avoided the sights. He was glad when Bombay settled back into its familiar activities of trade and commerce, committing itself again to the possibilities, the opportunities, the sanguine nature of a port.

  It was that aspect of the city that Chimanlal exemplified. Deciding that he would never fathom Chimanlal’s motives, that under all that bland guilelessness there was an unfathomable guile, Baumgartner simply accepted when Chimanlal, coming down the stairs from his office, found him lunching in the Irani restaurant below off a piece of bright yellow cake and a glass of tea and insisted he leave that and come home for lunch. It was the first of many invitations, many visits which allowed Baumgartner to see another reason for his rocklike complacence, his confident calm.

  In a small flat at Teen Batti that firmly turned its unlovely back to the view of the bay and preferred to face the raucous street instead, in a room painted green and blue and lit with strips of neon lighting, the two men sat together on a swing with a shiny red plastic seat and with small coloured bells attached to strings wound around its metal stand, till the women – Chimanlal’s wife and daughters – came out of the kitchen where they had been cooking, filling the apartment with the odours of asafoetida, garlic and hot oil, and placed steel trays of food on the table for them. Even after many visits Baumgartner never felt at ease, either on the swing or at the table. To begin with, he was too aware of the immense amount of labour and preparation that had gone on in the kitchen in his honour, and then of the unfamiliar food itself, alarming in its complexity. Himself used to eating pieces of bread or bananas when he was overtaken by hunger, unable to understand the need to combine ingredients and flavours and set them afloat in oil in little stainless steel dishes on a tray, he fumbled, ate with a clumsiness at which the women curled their lips in sarcasm not untinged with distaste that he saw before they had twitched their saris over their diamond-studded ears down to their diamond-studded nostrils and gone back to the kitchen for the second helpings that Chimanlal called for with an affectionate authoritarianism as of a genial tyrant who cannot conceive of not being loved and honoured.

  It was with his only son, the youngest child, that Chimanlal became entirely human in Baumgartner’s eyes – by which he meant vulnerable. He would have the boy woken up and brought out to meet Baumgartner, clinging to his mother’s or his sister’s hip, rubbing his eyes and whimpering with unspent sleep while Chimanlal chuckled and clucked and made a series of bird or animal-like sounds, almost unable to summon up ordinary speech to deal with a being so extraordinary, in his eyes close to celestial, his only son and heir. Seeing what the boy meant to Chimanlal, on Independence Day Baumgartner bought the child a paper flag of the new Indian tricolour and also a present. It was a tin motor car, the kind that could be wound up with a key and sent clacking and rocking across the terrazzo floor, and Baumgartner bought it for a few annas on the pavement where hawkers were doing brisk business that day, but it succeeded phenomenally – not only did the spoilt baby stop wailing and play with intense concentration for an unprecedented ten minutes, but Chimanlal, throwing himself back into the swing-seat and then forwards across his knees with joy and hilarity, looked at Baumgartner, wiping tears from his eyes, with unconcealed love. ‘Hugo bhai’, he called him thereafter, ‘Hugo brother’, and invited him to join him in his one weakness, his sole vice, making Baumgartner feel as if he were peeling off layer after layer of a large and shining onion to arrive at its sweet yellow heart.

  Standing beside Chimanlal in the members’ enclosure – a Chimanlal transformed by the fineness of his white Sunday kurta and dhoti, the touches of gold about his body – Baumgartner could not help exploding with a laugh of delight when the starting gun was fired and the horses released like pellets from their barrels. With that gun, with that shot, the memory came to him of how he had lain face down on the polished parquet floor of the Berlin flat. Hammering his heels and howling in outrage because his father, so elegant in his light suit and cravat, refused indignantly to take him along to the races. Mü had set him, when he was worn out by kicking and screaming, on her lap by the window, wiped the last traces of his tears with her tiny lace handkerchief that smelt of eud-de-Cologne, and jumped him up and down on her knee in an attempt to amuse him with a game of:

  ‘Hoppe, hoppe, Reiter,

  Wenn er fällt, dann schreit er,

  Fällt er in die Hecken

  Fressen ihn die Schnecken,

  Fällt er in den Klee,

  Schreit er gleich: O weh’,

  and then he had struck out at her, at her breast, in fury at being thought so small and easily bought over. To have lost a day at the races, the real races, and for her to imagine a baby game would do instead, had been intolerable. She had put her hand to her breast where he had hurt her, her face shocked at his violence. That was how he remembered the scene now, and also remembered his body rolled into a ball at the bottom of his dark, damp bed, while he clutched his right foot and his right hand with his left, and muttered like a wizard, ‘Mick-muck-mo, make it so –’

  Thirty years the wizard had taken, but he had waved the wand at last, and now here he was at the races. Papa, he wanted to shout, Papa, what do you think? He wanted to lift his arms and wave – and he did, exuberantly – Papa, do you see me here, at the races? And what would his father have made of the Mahaluxmi racecourse by the Arabian Sea, the dome and the towers of the Haji Ali mosque a purple silhouette against the orange sky of the west, the stands that milled with the silk saris and gold and diamond jewellery of the Indian ladies, and the dark, hysterical men who trampled the beds of flowering cannas and pressed against the white fence to see the horses flying by on the circular track that began in Berlin and ended here in Bombay which became, by magic, the Berlin of thirty years ago?

  They went together, every Sunday afternoon during the season – Chimanlal delighted to have a companion for he could not have brought his Indian associates – he would not have wanted them to know that he had a gambling streak, it would have laid him open and made him vulnerable – and Baumgartner, constantly rollicked by delight at having arrived at the scene where he had wanted to be as a small, obstreperous boy. Slow, slow as a snail, slow as a turtle, Hugo, he told himself, but with quivers of laughter and pleasure. And the horses, the splendid horses, they swept up and they swept by, with the speed that is most affecting of all to the slow. When at last he
ventured, after several visits, to help Chimanlal lay his bets, he found he had a gift – he who had never imagined he had a gift of any kind – for picking the winners. Again and again the two of them went up to collect their winnings, divided them, left rich. Chimanlal could not understand it, for Baumgartner swore he had no method at all, did it entirely by intuition that could fail at any moment. On the last race of the season, the big one, they won such an overwhelming amount that they did something that would have seemed incredible to both of them at the start of the season – they bought a horse. After two years of training in Poona, it went on to win several races in subsequent seasons. Again and again, Chimanlal was called to lead the horse, mounted by his jockey, a wizened monkey in pink and lilac satin, to receive the silver trophy. Swamped by gratitude, Chimanlal pressed these trophies into Baumgartner’s arms, insisted he take them to his flat. ‘I will come and visit you, I will have a drink in your house, we will drink to our horse and our luck,’ Chimanlal said. He did not understand Baumgartner’s reluctance to carry the shining objects down the street to his flat, stared at by all the goggling onlookers on the pavement, and he did not want them in his own house. Baumgartner was not sure if his womenfolk knew of his weakness – probably not.

  Yet he never failed to share his luck with them. Whenever he won, he would stop the taxi that was carrying them back from the races, at Crawford Market, and in the small, mirror-backed stalls across the street, he would buy large bags of salted pistachio nuts, almonds and raisins from Kabul, walnuts from Kashmir, chilgozas from Ladakh, and chuckle, ‘This is for my son. Today I must give my son a present. You buy also, Hugo bhai, buy,’ but Baumgartner stood on the pavement, his hands behind his back, watching him make these extravagant purchases, and merely shook his head. There was no one for whom he could buy such gifts, and why should he take large bags of dried fruit back to his empty flat in Hira Niwas?

  But it was when he was thoughtfully walking back from one of these Sunday expeditions – extraordinary how low his spirits fell after having been raised so high by the sight of those horses and the memory they called forth each time – having insisted on Chimanlal letting him get out of the taxi and walk across the Oval, past the cricketers and footballers and peanut-chewing strollers, to Colaba Causeway and from there to Hira Niwas, that he saw a cruelly maimed cat dragging its broken leg and halved tail along a gutter and, instead of averting his eyes from a sight so repugnant, followed it anxiously to make sure no dog was attracted to such easy sport, and no boys stoned it to death. Why should it not die? Surely death would be preferable to life in the Indian streets, he argued, and yet – when it came to the main road where traffic raced at it murderously – he bent and lifted the beast, holding it to his breast even though it twisted and turned in his hands and sank its teeth into his wrist. It was too weak to do much damage, its mouth hung open and drooled uncontrollably, and its eyes already had a warning glaze of white drawn over them. The watchman at Hira Niwas and the children of the building who were playing their eternal games of bat, ball and stones on the pavement, all stood and stared as he stumbled past them apologetically, but he kept the cat carefully wrapped in his arms and carried it up the stairs to his flat where it stretched out on the newspaper Baumgartner spread for it, and died.

  After that, he searched the streets for a replacement for the first cat in his life. They were not so easy to find. Even if they were everywhere, especially in the vicinity of the cafés and restaurants where he had his meals and cups of tea, they were by no means inclined to respond to his polite blandishments and enticing calls; they glared at him suspiciously and sprang aside if he came too near. He was abashed to find he was less attractive to them than a life in the harsh streets, but told himself they could not possibly know what comfort, what care waited for them in his little room.

  In the end, shamefacedly, he was reduced to capturing kittens, separated from their parents, crying indignantly in the dustbins where there was so little sustenance. The first pair that he caught spat and hissed and scratched his arms up to his elbows, but he found their fury enchanting, contained as it was in such small – and in spite of the filth and the fleas – elegant bodies. Also, they were easy to win over when he had found them scraps of fish from the kitchens of the Taj and the smaller hotels and restaurants around. After that, there was no stop to the cat family that grew and multiplied under his roof.

  Now there was a reason, even a need, to hurry back to the flat. The more crowded and messy it grew, the more comfortable Baumgartner felt in it, but he had to admit that his visitors did not. Poor Chimanlal held a handkerchief to his nose when he came to have a drink with him after a good Sunday at the races.

  ‘Next Sunday you have a drink with me at the Turf Club,’ Chimanlal said on the landing as he left, and Baumgartner had to agree, knowing how the fastidious vegetarian had suffered.

  It was on the Turf Club lawns, amongst the members in their hats and saris that floated in the evening breeze lifting off the Arabian Sea and drifting across the racecourse, now emptied of the crowds and given up to the walking and dog-owning fraternity of Malabar and Cumballa Hills, that Baumgartner was startled to see a familiar figure – a head taller than anyone else present.

  It was Julius – an elegant, evidently affluent Julius, garbed in a fine suit of silk and linen, a poppy-red handkerchief in the pocket of his cream-coloured tropical suit, a panama hat in his hand, but it was unmistakably Julius, and Baumgartner broke away from Chimanlal’s side and hurried to him; it was so long now since he had hoped and wanted to meet someone from the internment camp days, but suddenly that old wish woke and washed over him.

  He remembered that long mane of light flowing hair Julius had had in camp with its spun-silver fairness. Now it was almost all gone, leaving his scalp showing through in pink nakedness, all except for one strand that remained, just above his right ear. Julius had made the most of this remnant, and grown it to shoulder length so that he could comb it right over down to his left ear. It was like a somewhat slippery and precariously balanced boater of new straw that had to be constantly adjusted by his long nervous fingers. Its silveriness had greyed a bit, or dulled; it looked dusty now.

  But, ‘Julius,’ Baumgartner exclaimed, putting out his hand, and Julius stared at him with those nervously blinking, pinkish eyes of his for a whole minute or two before he recognised Baumgartner and from his expression Baumgartner could see that he was noting his shabby clothing, his dusty shoes, his increasingly slack and lumpish figure and faded eyes. After that initial shock and hesitation was over, Julius gave a cry of welcome, more high-pitched than ever.

  On hearing it, his companion who had kept her hand lightly on his arm but had been turning her head to scan the crowds, searching for the known and the celebrated, stopped and tilted her straw cartwheel hat in order to smile at her companion’s acquaintance with a cool politeness. Baumgartner saw – as disbelievingly as if it were on stage, in a theatre – that it was no other than Gisi, Gisela, Lily of Prince’s, Lily of the cabaret, Lily of the Lola-and-Lily duo. He also saw that in spite of his scruffiness and early middle age, she had recognised him by the way her glassy grey eyes not only widened but turned briefly upwards into the painted silver lids before rolling down again and regarding him levelly, hostilely. She had allowed the brassy blonde of the cabaret girl’s hair to fade to a refined mouse-grey shaded with silver; her eyes were still extravagantly rimmed with kohl, as dramatically as when she had been a dancer, but her lips were no longer painted such a vivid scarlet; instead there was a pearly lustre like a paste spread over them. Her dress looked cool, expensive, silken and elegant. She smoothed down the full skirt that billowed in the sea breeze with a gloved hand and turned her head from side to side, smiling a society smile that focused on no one and was directed at nothing and everything, signifying a well-bred tolerance under evident boredom. She was not going to recognise Baumgartner.

  ‘Hugo, old man! If it isn’t Hugo! My old companion from those unspeakab
le days –’

  ‘Ach, Julius,’ Baumgartner murmured, shaking hands that were sweating with discomfort and dismay, ‘they were not such bad days –’

  ‘Not such bad days!’ Julius’s high-pitched voice rang out, scandalised, making several heads turn their way and Lily frown as lightly as a pencil sketch, so well bred had she become. ‘To be virtually in a prison for six years – and he calls that “not bad”! If that isn’t just like you, Hugo – to you even prison is all right and nothing is really bad, eh? But Gala, my dear, he helped me survive, you know – he was someone to talk to in the wilderness. And we must talk of so many things, Hugo,’ he babbled. ‘Did you know that the man who escaped, that fellow Hüber, he wrote a book about the whole experience? But, Hugo, it must be read – a man we knew, shared the camp with, he goes and writes a book about it – is it not fantastic?’ His companion’s hand on his arm evidently began to exert more pressure than normal. Breaking off, he looked down at her taut face worriedly and what he saw made him trail off. ‘Gala, my dear, let us have Hugo over to the house – we can have a proper talk then, can’t we?’ She turned her face to him bluntly, closed her eyes and nodded as if under torture. ‘Tonight, eh? At tonight’s party? We have a few friends coming – it will be delightful – my dear man, here is my card. You see, I run a little art gallery now. And you? Your address, your telephone number?’ and Baumgartner, hastily pulling out one of his business cards from his pocket, pressed it into his hand, mumbled goodbye, and fled.

  After drinking a celebratory beer with Chimanlal and returning to his flat, he found that the telephone that so seldom rang was ringing and ringing when he opened the door. Apologetically pushing past the cats that came to greet him with scolding cries, he picked it up and held it to his ear. Lily’s icy tones came over to him like steel needles entering his ear.