by Braham Singh
‘No autopsy,’ Tobi Basar said, surrendering in her Assamese, Convent-English. ‘They’re not doing that to my boy. We’ll take the body. Call it accident, whatever you want.’
‘Not to worry,’ Gomes assured her. He was looking towards the third concrete slab. ‘No need to cut open your dear boy. Sahib had kindly agreed after much persuasion. He will declare the death an accident and all this isn’t necessary. By the way, there’s no need to pay for this courtesy. I am here for you.’
Now that they were all friends, Assistant Coroner Sahib came over to introduce himself as the Civil Surgeon at Sion Hospital.
‘As well as Assistant Coroner. Dual role, double work, single salary.’ He looked at Ernst to see if the heart bled. Chit-chatting after a hard day’s work, the Assistant Coroner explained he had already done as required under Section 9 of said Act.
No one asked what Act, or this or that.
‘Ruled accidental.’ He was magnanimous. They were free to take the body.
Gomes smiled at Ernst. ‘See? I told you!’
Gomes transferred a wad of notes, very thick, without commentary into the Assistant Coroner’s white coat. With an expression that unequivocally conveyed his authority in spite of what you might think, the Additional Coroner left. Accompanying him was the woman in white sari, leaving behind the sweeper for any final sutures before handing over the slum dweller’s body.
Next, official-looking forms materialised again out of nowhere. ‘Sign here, please,’ Gomes said. ‘I have to ensure your dear boy is carried outside on a trolley.’
Tobi Basar was staring at the shrouded body on the third slab and ready to renege. ‘How can this be right, when we know it wasn’t an accident?’
Gomes repeated, ‘Sign here, please.’
Tufan took the sheave from Gomes’ hand and sidled his sister away from her son’s murderer, who had just offered to wheel his victim up from the morgue. But first, Sign here, please . Ernst had to wonder what Tufan and Salim Ali would say if they knew, he knew. That he didn’t tell them about the scissors. That, the scissors belonged to Gomes. That Gomes belonged to Chhote Bhai. That everyone, including Chhote Bhai and Gomes and Ernst, belonged to the Seth. He started feeling backed-up again.
‘This accidental death business,’ he said to Gomes. ‘You can see how the family may have a problem with that.’
‘What about you, Mr. Ernest? You have a problem too?’
Ernst felt for Gomes. Clearly, half of him wanted to continue being the caring, hospital orderly. The other half wanted to kill someone.
There was a tug to his sleeve. Salim Ali. Not the reinforcements one hoped. The field only evened up when Dr. Waller joined them and Gomes reverted to ward boy status under the Anglo-Indian’s withering look.
‘Gomes! You bhenchod,’ Waller said. ‘Still up to your no good, I see.’ He then snapped his very shaky fingers and a sea of white, medical college uniforms clambered down the stairs, pushing past people to converge around Arjun’s shrouded body on the third slab. In spite of the bravado, they appeared somewhat wary of Gomes.
Waller wasn’t. ‘Bugger this fellow, and move the body to the college section for a proper autopsy. I’ll sign for it. The family has donated it to science. Get it out of this porki place.’
As Gomes stood down and the Medical College squad went to work, Salim Ali took the opportunity to spell out the moral of the story.
‘I just went asked Dr. Waller for help. It’s simple, really. All one has to do is something, instead of nothing.’
Gomes in the meantime had stiffened into a single block of muscle. He looked ready to do something too, and Waller be damned. There was only so much a gorilla could take. Salim Ali, however, appeared unaware of the Henry Gomes factor. Ernst was willing to do anything to keep it that way. The best way, of course, was to do nothing.
~
‘Maybe, you should do something,’ Dr. Waller said, pointing at the mole on Ernst’s face as they climbed out from Hades. The mole throbbed in agreement. Moments ago, he wanted to thank Waller for saving him from the gorilla. Now, not so much .
‘Thought you said it was nothing.’
‘Could be something. What’s the harm in playing safe?’
It was past seven and dark outside. In the courtyard, the jhopadpatti family was paying the sweeper-surgeon for a tarp to carry the body.
‘It never ends,’ Waller said, watching the family deal with their kismet. At least, he had Pethidine to help deal with his.
‘We’re going to the medical college,’ Tufan called out. ‘Arjun’s already there.’
Looking back at Ernst, Dr. Waller said, ‘Come along,’ and touched his left cheek. ‘Won’t take a minute.’
They watched him walk away—a superannuated army surgeon. He appeared to have left a mark on Tsering Tufan.
‘Saw the way he intervened for Arjun? An extraordinary Dean.’
‘De facto Dean,’ Ernst corrected.
Salim Ali though, was more impressed at how Gomes was staring their way from the morgue entrance with his tiny gorilla eyes. ‘Why is he looking like that?’
Ernst played innocent. ‘Who?’
‘Who else? Your medical ape. Look at the useless fellow stare. As if he wants to kill us.’
‘What do you mean, us? I’m not the one holding on to stolen property.’
~
Sion Hospital started life as a fifty-bed Military hospital installed across Sion’s ramshackle army barracks in a snake-infested locality. It grew to its current size but the snake colonies remained, along with ex-army surgeons like Dicky Waller, many of whom became enthusiastic Pethidine addicts after the war.
In time, the post-Independence hospital administration realised they weren’t the only ones robbing the place blind, and large stocks of missing pharmaceuticals were traced to Waller. There were demands for his head but they couldn’t fire him just like that, not just because he knew how to deal with snakes. More importantly, being Anglo-Indian, he was considered neutral in a hospital administration drawn strictly along caste lines. He had absolutely no political ambitions and absolutely no desire to mingle. Most importantly, he disliked all Indians equally, irrespective of caste or creed. So they made him the de facto Dean of the new medical college and continued fighting over who would eventually become the actual Dean, and from which caste.
This worked superbly for all concerned. Waller spent most of his time searching for frightened snakes hiding in the shrubbery and in-between roof tiles. The rest of the time was spent searching for collapsed veins hiding in his arms. He kept live snakes in his surgery to mess with people and he encouraged the rumour he had a couple of Russell’s Vipers on the loose in there. Ernst was convinced that was a lie. An unnecessary one, because just seeing snakes lined up in glass vitrines was enough to drive urban Indians insane with fear. Freed from patients on becoming the de facto Dean, Waller nevertheless kept himself available for Ernst, who found him either drowsy or dangerously revved, and should have known better. But then, Waller didn’t charge, and there was never any need for an appointment.
Seated up high on an operating table in Waller’s surgery, live snakes staring at him through glass jars, Ernst kept an eye open for any loose ones around. He refrained from commenting on Waller’s change of mind regarding the mole.
‘What’s the harm?’ Waller repeated, before lopping off an anesthetised slice with a medically steadied hand. He signalled a Mallu nurse to apply a big, square of sticky plaster he held out, but she refused to enter his surgery. Ernst stepped outside with the sticky plaster for her while holding an alcohol swab to where Waller had applied the scalpel to his cheek.
~
Supine, the dead Arjun appeared at peace amidst medical students his age. His glasses were gone, but the rest of him held on to the kind of equanimity his uncle displayed, looking down from the observer’s gallery. The mother may have declined to watch her porcelain doll being cut up, but there was a complete calm on Tufan’s visage.
>
‘There is no reason for you to be present either,’ Ernst had said to Tufan, seeing Waller’s unnecessary relish wielding the scalpel in the theatre, down below .
‘But I must,’ Tufan replied, because there was no further trust left in him, it looked like, for any third-party information and best he confirmed with his own eyes what he knew happened. Trust issues aside, he could pass off as a Buddhist monk. Then there was Salim Ali.
Tufan held him tight to control his sobbing. Down below, the medical world carried on as detached as Tufan, but with none of his Buddhist empathy. The room smelled of formaldehyde and professional competence. Even Dr. Waller having a go at a medical student, appeared as de facto as the dean.
‘You’re working the wrong orifice, you bugger,’ Waller said to his student victim, the humour delightfully Anglo-Indian. ‘For a change, no need to finger the arsehole. Try checking the puncture on the left thigh instead. If you locate it, try advising us on cause of death.’
After humiliating the student some more for fun, Dr. Waller slashed downwards with a flick of the wrist, holding a pair of pointed surgical scissors to demonstrate how it went down. When it came to theory, the man was supreme. And when it was over with, there was all around agreement amongst the student body that a great amount of strength would be needed to thrust a pair of scissors with such precision into the thigh, and then tear open the femoral artery. That too, while in motion. Also, some amount of medical knowledge would be absolutely necessary.
‘Medical knowledge?’ Salim Ali asked of Ernst with a face all crunched up. ‘That goon of yours, that Gomes. You said he had medical knowledge. What’s the meaning of this?’
Now right through Waller’s re-enactment and the subsequent autopsy, Ernst had failed to pay attention at how Salim Ali’s eyes widened to take over his small, black face. He also didn’t think too much of it when Salim Ali went into a huddle with Tufan. But now Salim Ali was looking his way once again in a manner that did not portend well. Then Tufan goes declines a lift home in the one-eyed Fiat, preferring to go pillion instead on Salim Ali’s totally-blind Vespa. The two of them tore off into the night without as much as a bye-bye.
‘I know everything now!’ Ernst heard Salim Ali yell into the wind. ‘Bhenchods! All of you!’
19
Darkies
After winter, must come spring,
After forty, no such thing.
—Jehangir Merchant
The nuance around what killed his mother hit Ernst again a few days later, after news spread Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had died of a stroke. As with his mother, turns out the real reason the PM keeled over, was guilt. In the PM’s case, because of how his Chinese friends shamed a fellow-socialist by coming over uninvited. They didn’t knock, just barged in and slapped the army around, showed India who was what, and left.
Whereas, while Ernst’s mother sank under all that guilt over all those Jews and silently vanished, Prime Minister Nehru’s death became a JFK moment. Those going about their business would remember forever where they were when the news broke. To help them never forget, AIR looped the Lata Mangeshkar song over radio; yes, the same one she had sung to shore up a befuddled army after China’s Himalayan waltz. The death of their very first prime minister was bad enough, and now the song was being played and re-played. All of India cried and took the rest of the week off. No fans of the socialist Nehru, Europeans refused to follow suit and were seen spending even more time at the Golf Club during working hours .
The wood-panelled walls and columns in the Golf Club’s permit-room were a fair imitation of an English pub. A good try. It was May, but the green tinsel along the walls was from last Christmas. Someone would have to get a ladder one day and take it down, unless Christmas came first.
The vibrating Voltas had the room in its grip, shaking it as sweat dried off Ernst’s back sending a chill up the spine. He squinted to adjust to the complete absence of natural light. It wasn’t large, the permit-room, and could barely hold its quota of European gentry. One wondered what would happen should desi members venture in some day to sit alongside and drink openly. Willie Lansdowne foresaw permit-rooms wilting into dingy, sad haunts for alcoholics once the Indians took over. It was depressing enough already, with Willie’s wife sitting there alone at the teak bar in breach of club decorum. The Goan bartender looked guilty seeing Ernst walk in, as if the drunken memsahib was his fault.
‘Hello, D’Souza,’ Ernst greeted, ‘a Bloody Mary please, and how are you?’
‘So-so, Sir. Chacha Nehru is dead. Broken heart for sure. The Chinese betrayed him, you see.’
‘For goodness sake.’
Daisy Lansdowne was awake.
‘They’re behaving as if Churchill died.’ She peered into her gin and tonic and swirled it around with a paper straw. A shaded bulb swung above Daisy with the sole purpose of basking her filigreed blonde hair with a radiant halo. Ernst thought: so that’s how hammered goddesses look. She was taller than him, and stacked on the bar stool her torso cut a dark silhouette in contrast to the flushed, radiant face hogging the light. It would be horsy English if not for the pointed nose, making it more bird-like than equine. The eyes were all mare though, big and limpid, but it was the golden hair that drew the crowds. Becoming and all, though Ernst knew without the corset holding her together under the floral summer dress, she’d splay like her feet, minus those open-toed pumps.
Unlike his wife. With Bombay Ingrid, it had always been too much perfection. Perfect feet, perfect sex, perfect disdain. Perfect departure .
‘I’m positive D’Souza can’t blow you any better than I did,’ Daisy said. ‘So why no hello-hello for me?’
~
Daisy Lansdowne happened without Ernst thinking it through. Before he knew, she was on all fours on his bed, her bum staring him in the face. She happened, because she didn’t dwell on his shortcomings, did not comment on any fashion faux pas, didn’t nitpick or touch on his money situation, and all in all, was nothing like Bombay Ingrid. Truth be told, after his wife was done with him, Ernst Steiger could only feel confident around someone like Daisy. Except that these days, not even that. He felt lost in his flapping clothes, being slapped around by a pair of bloodshot eyes. Ernst patted the precious strands still vying for air from his bald spot. Also, there was a plaster pasted on the left side of his face where Waller had dug in. He realised he was in a limbo awaiting results from Sion Medical College. The thought made him ill.
‘It’s been more than two weeks, Ernst. One would think you’d have the decency to call.’
‘Hello, Daisy,’ Ernst said, as he trod through the minefield to a bar stool near her.
Daisy stood up with the extreme caution of the very drunk. Standing upright, she looked like a crane—an attractive crane—with a blonde wig on. She stumbled and Ernst reached out.
‘No need,’ Daisy said, veering away with admirable control. ‘I’m sure you didn’t come here looking for me.’
‘It’s nice to see you anyway.’
‘Is it?’ she asked, with a smile that invited him to step on a landmine. She looked him up and down, peering with interest at the handiwork on his left cheek. She then went back to balancing the tottering structure. ‘You look bloody awful,’ she said. The iron grip slipped and she slurred. ‘You think Willie knows about us?’
Ernst glanced towards D’Souza. The Goan had his back to them, busy capturing rainbows in a whiskey glass he held up to the light.
‘I doubt it,’ Ernst said, ‘though now D’Souza does. ’
A look of genuine surprise flashed across her face, as if that mattered. Daisy Lansdowne then turned to go, putting her arse on display. Ernst recalled his surprise at its strength in spite of a jelly-like consistency. The sway to her hip, even in this state, suggested that women like her and Bombay Ingrid, and those others with that special something, had all attended the same course in mocking men with undulating backsides while remaining aloof. Even when compromised.
Espec
ially when compromised. That other night, while emerging from the greens with Chhote Bhai, the girl had registered alarm, covering her face with the hem of her sari. Then something happened and straightening up, she had taken back control to sway past him just like Daisy Lansdowne; or how Bombay Ingrid had walked up the ship’s plank when she left India forever. Daisy struggled with the heavy teak door and edged out before Ernst realised he should have gotten up to help.
‘Another Bloody Mary, D’Souza, and my chit please,’ Ernst said. ‘I’ll take the drink outside, if you don’t mind.’
D’Souza placed little squares of carbon between the first three white, light blue, and yellow pages of the chit book and handed it to Ernst along with a pencil stub. Club chits were Britain’s greatest gift to mankind. Ernst signed off without looking. He then removed the celery stick from the Bloody Mary, toyed around with it, and took a sip after placing the celery on a napkin.
‘D’Souza…’
‘Sir?’
‘Fuck that bhenchod, Churchill. Don’t mind what she said. He should’ve died instead of Nehru.’
~
Ernst’s eyes readjusted to settle on the American couple on the verandah. The glistening Texan looked sweaty, having just returned from his morning sortie into India.
Worlds would collide when Jack Hanson stepped out from the Golf Club mornings to exercise charity, something he did more and more these days. Why, what the hell for, who knew? American guilt, Christian love, some Texan thing, whatever it was, he would come out swinging with pockets full of anna coins and Parle Glucose biscuits. Murli Chowkidar would stagger behind with his bamboo lathi under an armpit, arms piled high with textbooks.
Aroused at the sight of a white man, the huddled masses would turn into a mob. Unfazed, Hanson showered them with anna coins, handed out Parle Glucose biscuits, and ruffled their heads the way he did that day with Arjun. He would soon run out of goodies, at which point Murli Chowkidar would try placating extended hands with textbooks no one wanted. When all done and the crowd still clamouring for more, Murli Chowkidar would use his bamboo lathi to cane the herd fearlessly, while the Texan retreated with phoren awkwardness into the mysterious, dark cool of the Golf Club. Sindhi Camp gutters would choke up with textbooks in their wake, and late evenings saw David Copperfield and the Baburnama being used as fuel in the jhopadpatti. Come next morning, and America’s glutton for punishment would be out there again.
