Fire On the Mountain

by Anita Desai

By the time Ila Das had come to the university campus as a lecturer in Home Science, at Nanda Kaul’s suggestion and Mr Kaul’s invitation, those flowery, tinkling years were already over. Her mother lay rotting in bed with a broken hip that would not mend, and her father was dead of a stroke. The family fortune, divided amongst three drunken, dissolute sons as in a story, and not a penny of it to either of the two clever, thrifty, hard-working daughters, Ila and Rima, was then quickly becoming a thing of the past, no longer retrievable, barely believable. The sons had been sent to foreign universities – to Heidelberg, Cambridge, Harvard – and wherever they were, each had contrived not to attend a single lecture, to drink themselves ill, to find the nearest racecourse and squander their allowances on horses that never won. To begin with, their father had paid their debts, then begun to sell his own horses, his carriage, his house, his land. When he died, not one of them came to the funeral. They knew there was nothing left for them to inherit. They pestered their mother and two sisters then, for the last of the jewellery, and soon had them driven out into rented rooms and boarding-houses, finally to whatever roof charity would hold over them. Eventually, blessedly, they died. Or disappeared.

  Then Nanda Kaul had watched those two horrifically ugly, hideously handicapped girls show the worth of their upbringing, their character. She had watched as they shingled their hair, queued up for buses and went to work. Rima, whose piano playing was of a different class from her sister’s, had given piano lessons, going from house to house and then coming home to nurse the mother with the rotten hip. As for Ila, there was nothing for it but for Nanda Kaul to suggest to her husband, the Vice-Chancellor, that he create a job for her in the Home Science College. He had been gracious and kindly about it, and it was to this comparatively blessed period of her life, secure for a while as a lecturer, sure of her meals and a bed in the hostel, that Ila Das’s jolly talk of badminton doubles and lawn parties belonged.

  ‘I wish,’ she sighed now, ‘I wish I had stayed there, Nanda. How often I go back to that time and think it over again, and I know now – I know now – I should not have been so hotheaded. Ooh, in my position, a little humility would have been much, much better . . .’ and she twisted about to fish the handkerchief out of her bag and sniffle in its folds.

  ‘There was no call for humility,’ said Nanda Kaul crisply. ‘Everybody knew that your experience called for your being made the Principal when Mrs Chatterji retired. Everybody knew the reason you weren’t was that the Vice-Chancellor who had appointed you was dead and there was a new Vice-Chancellor to go against his ways and show his strength. How could you stand for that?’

  ‘I didn’t, I didn’t,’ Ila Das cried. ‘That was why I resigned, Nanda – it was the only honourable thing to do, wasn’t it? But ooh, the flesh is weak, and you know how things have gone for me since then, Nanda. You know how I’ve had to go from pillar to post, trying to earn fifty rupees here and fifty rupees there, with not a room to call my own most of the time, and it’s grown worse and worse . . .’

  Nanda Kaul nodded. She knew. She had watched that degrading, hopeless search, for Ila Das was already then close to the official age for retirement and no matter how low she pitched her demands, there were always bright, carefree young girls to be employed for even less. As for qualifications, Ila Das’s were of the genteel sort that are not put on paper and rubber-stamped, and she was turned away by the employment bureau and any employer that she nerved herself to face.

  For a while her sister had kept her, literally dividing each piece of bread in two between them – fortunately the mother died before she starved – and then Nanda Kaul had heard of the course in social service which, if Ila was willing to take it, would definitely lead to a Government job and with it would go the usual emoluments of pension, provident fund and medical aid that now seemed like pieces of gold to her. She had taken the course, triumphantly collected the rubber-stamped document qualifying her to be a social worker, and arrived in the Himalayan foothills to do her duty amongst the peasants, wood-cutters, road labour and goatherds.

  Once again she had strayed into Nanda Kaul’s domain – only to find that Nanda Kaul did not rule here; Nanda Kaul had retired.

  Chapter 7

  SHE CAME OUT of retirement to ask, in a low voice, ‘Are you managing, Ila? Can you make ends meet?’

  For a while Ila Das snuffled into her handkerchief. Then she folded it up into smaller and ever smaller squares. When it could not be folded any further, she held it tightly in her hand and said ‘Not since Rima’s troubles grew so bad. You know how it is – young people don’t play the piano any more, even in Christian families they go in for the guitar, for pop music – all a closed book to darling Rima, of course. She’s lost pupil after pupil, Nanda, and now this cataract of hers makes her totally helpless. I asked Mrs Wright to help her – you remember Mrs Wright, she was – oh, not a governess but a nanny in our house at one time – and has a little flat in Calcutta. Well, she’s given Rima her spare bed in a corner of it. I’ve been sending a tiny sum for her board and lodging – the barest minimum, but oh,’ she began to giggle with little spurting, jerking sounds, ‘the barest minimum was all I had.’

  ‘But what are you doing about it, Ila? How do you manage?’

  ‘I’m trying, I’m trying,’ sang Ila Das, nodding her head so that the top-knot slipped and sank.

  Watching from behind the hydrangea bushes, Raka thought of that ball she had seen in the club one night, of the grotesque figures that had jerked and pranced there. It seemed to her that Ila Das was another such puppet, making her own mad music to jerk and prance to. Nibbling at a brown petal, Raka watched through lowered lashes.

  Ila Das began to bounce again, as she piped optimistically, ‘I’ve been writing around to magazines and journals. I thought if one of them were interested in a column on home science, I could write one every month – or every week – and perhaps earn twenty or thirty rupees above my salary. Thirty rupees –’ her eyes boggled behind the bifocal lenses – ‘thirty rupees would cover the cost of feeding me. It would be a fortune!’ she exploded in a spray of happy spit, and swung her little legs back and forth.

  ‘Isn’t it absurd,’ she rattled on, ‘how helpless our upbringing made us, Nanda. We thought we were being equipped with the very best – French lessons, piano lessons, English governesses – my, all that only to find it left us helpless, positively handicapped.’ She cracked with laughter like an old egg. ‘Now if I were one of the peasants in my village, perhaps I’d manage quite well. Grow a pumpkin vine, keep a goat, pick up kindling in the forest for fire – and perhaps I could cut down those thirty rupees I need to twenty-five, to twenty – but not, I think, less.’ Almost crying, she turned to Nanda Kaul. ‘Do you think I could do with less?’

  Dumbly, Nanda Kaul shook her head. She held the arm of her chair very tightly in an effort to speak, to say ‘Come and stay with me, Ila,’ and then clutched it tighter still to keep herself from saying what would ruin her existence here at Carignano. She simply shook her head.

  Chapter 8

  ‘OH, I DO feel ashamed of myself,’ shrieked Ila Das. ‘Ooh, I do, when I think how much better off I am than the poor, poor people around me. Why, you wouldn’t believe the things I see, Nanda. It isn’t just that I have this little bit of security, this tiny bit of status –’ she gave a shout of laughter at herself – ‘you know, as a welfare officer employed by the Government, while they simply starve if their cow dries up or the weevils destroy their potato crop – but the horrible, horrible degradation in which they live – ooh, Nanda,’ her voice plunged down, down into the deepest gloom, ‘why then, I do see the worth of our kind of upbringing after all. At least one is saved that degradation.

  ‘You know, Nanda, I’ve been brought up a Christian, and to see these poor, ignorant people grovel in the dust before their wretched little oil-smeared, tinsel-decked idols, gives me a turn. Ooh, I’ll say it does. And that oily, oily priest-man we have slinking about our village – I c
an tell he’s up to no good. I hate him!’ she suddenly spat out from between her dentures.

  Raka, now ambling in the long grass under the apricot trees, stopped and stared at the sound of that fierce spitting.

  ‘Oh, how I hate him! He’s responsible for that lovely Maya-devi’s little son dying. Did I tell you, Nanda? The little boy was playing barefoot in the lane as these children do, and cut his foot on a rusty nail. I told Maya-devi to take him to the clinic straightaway for an anti-tetanus, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Or, rather, the priest-man wouldn’t hear of it. Nooo, he said, Nooo, injections were the work of the devil and Maya-devi was not to take the child to the clinic. Well,’ she went on, ‘that little boy died, of course, and you know what it is to die of tetanus. Now Maya-devi knows.’

  She was a dramatic raconteur: it took nerve to listen to her relate the hair-raising stories of her experiences as a welfare officer, and Nanda Kaul sat straighter and stiffer than ever, as if horror were slowly paralysing her.

  ‘And, Nanda, if you only saw the havoc played amongst the children by conjunctivitis and trachoma, how many of them are doomed to blindness! But will they believe me when I tell them they need to go to the clinic for treatment? No. My dear, a handful of red chilli powder is considered treatment enough, or a pack of cowdung, or – or – oh, I shan’t harrow you with details. I do believe the women would listen to me if it weren’t for that impossible priest. It’s so much harder to teach a man anything, Nanda – the women are willing, poor dears, to try and change their dreadful lives by an effort, but do you think their men will let them? Nooo, not one bit.

  ‘Now I’ve run into all this trouble over trying to stop child marriage. That is one of the laws of the land, isn’t it, and aren’t I there to enforce the law? Isn’t that what I’m paid for by the Government? Well, so I go along my way, trying to do my duty, going from house to house and especially wherever I hear there’s a child marriage in the offing, and threaten them and tell them how they can go to prison for committing a social offence. I do think the women would listen to me – if anyone knows what it is for a girl to be married and bear children at the age of twelve, it’s them, isn’t it? But wherever I go, the priest follows me, and undoes what I do. He hates me, Nanda – ooh, he hates me.’

  ‘Ila,’ said Nanda Kaul, stirring uneasily, ‘Ila, do be careful.’

  Ila Das cackled with laughter, swung her legs and thwacked her hands together. ‘Careful? You don’t think he frightens me, do you? That old goat? No, nooo, not in the least. But he’s wicked, wicked. He sets the young men in the village against me, too. And how can I get my work done if even the young men don’t take my side and help? In the end, the women listen to them – if not to the priest, then definitely to their husbands.

  ‘Now I’ve just heard about a family living in my own village – they’re planning to marry their little girl, who is only just seven, to an old man in the next village because he owns a quarter of an acre of land and two goats. He’s a widower and has six children but, for a bit of land and two goats, they’re willing to sacrifice their little girl, Nanda, can you believe it? I’ve argued and argued with her mother, and I even tackled the father, Preet Singh, in the potato fields the other day. But he’s a sullen lout, I could see I wasn’t making any headway with him.

  ‘Ooh, dear, so it goes,’ she wound up, silenced by despondency and by Ram Lal’s appearance on the scene.

  Chapter 9

  HE HAD BEEN lighting the hamam to heat Raka’s bath water and had not bothered to come earlier. Now he busied himself, taking off the fly-specked nets, piling the crockery on a wooden tray, shaking out the folds of the aged tablecloth that cracked with stiffness, while the two ladies discussed the weather in his presence, as they had been taught to do, wondering aloud when the hot spell would end and the monsoon come.

  ‘It’s so dry, so dry, I hardly dare light a match for fear it will all go up in flames,’ said Ila Das, getting up and looking for her bag. ‘A forest fire is more than even a Government welfare officer can tackle,’ she laughed, and searched for her umbrella.

  In the midst of this no one noticed Raka. Raka had scrambled up to the top of the knoll, grasping at weeds and slipping on the dry pine-needles, till she had drawn herself up to the rocks under the pine trees. For a while she sat there, chin on her knees, looking out on the hills that flowed, wave on wave, to the horizon, and listened to the wind that blew up and crashed into the pines, then receded and went murmuring away like the sea. She narrowed her eyes and the greys and blues of the scene melted together, till waves and hills, sea and wind were all one. She was in a boat, rocking, alone.

  Then there was a little movement in front of the house. There were Ila Das and Nanda Kaul coming down the steps from the veranda, from under the apricot trees, and strolling down the flagged path to the gate – Nanda Kaul rigidly straight, her movements silken and silver, while little Ila Das bobbed up and down beside her, swinging her cloth bag, waving her umbrella and making her top-knot dance.

  Crouching under the pines, Raka watched them progress unevenly down to the gate. Then, sliding her legs out from under her, she glanced back at the veranda and saw that Ram Lal was still there, busily sweeping up crumbs, swatting flies and stacking plates. With a sudden spring, she rose and went flying down the knoll, the bright sparks at the ends of her dry hair flying like flames in the wind, dashed round the hamam and dived into the kitchen.

  There she paused, letting her eyes get used to the thick, smoky darkness. When they could see, she put out her hand and snatched up the box of matches from the table and dropped it into her pocket.

  She emerged casually, hands behind her back, a little stiff. She glanced again to see if Ram Lal were coming, then to see if the ladies had parted. No, they were still at the gate, flattering. One quick dart and, lizard-like, she was over the fence and had dropped down the lip of the ravine and vanished. She could only be heard leaping and sliding down amongst the rolling pebbles and gravel, but there was no one to hear.

  Chapter 10

  ‘SO, ILA,’ SAID Nanda Kaul, placing one hand on the gate and pressing gently, unobtrusively at it. ‘How nice of you to have spared time and come . . .’

  ‘Nanda, Nanda,’ Ila interrupted with a cry and caught Nanda Kaul’s hand and clung to it. ‘Spared you time? My dear, you can’t imagine, you have no idea what it has meant to me to have you here at Carignano, to come and see you today. Why, it’s been a little bit of the past come alive. As if the past still existed here and I could simply come and visit it and have a cup of tea with it when I was tired of the present!’

  Nanda Kaul’s fine lips made a faint grimace at this that Ila Das noticed but could not interpret. So she wrung her admired friend’s hands, crunching two large rings together with a grinding sound as she did so, and went on ‘And to meet your great-grandchild – my, that was a pleasure!’ Screwing up her little button eyes, she added ‘Funny little thing, isn’t she? I couldn’t make her out – she’s as secretive as a little wild bird, or an insect that hides, isn’t she?’

  ‘A little shy,’ Nanda Kaul murmured. ‘But she’s been ill – with typhoid – and now it is her mother who is ill.’

  ‘Dear, dear, I am sorry, I am sorry.’ One more gigantic sigh exploded from Ila Das. ‘Isn’t the world full of troubles wherever you look? In my village, out of my village – it’s the same everywhere.’ Dropping Nanda Kaul’s hand, she fixed her cloth bag firmly to her shoulder, gave her umbrella a decisive little swing and said ‘Well, we must do the best we can about it. That’s it, isn’t it? We must simply shoulder our responsibilities and do what we can. Well, Nanda. Well, my dear,’ and raising herself on tiptoe, she pecked Nanda Kaul’s cheek swiftly, then went down the hill, crying ‘Thank you, thank you, my dear, so much. Bye-bye, bye-bye,’ she went on calling, like a late cuckoo, all the way down to the chestnut trees on the Mall.

  Nanda Kaul leant with both hands on the gate, watching her clumsy, floundering descent. She stood there with
a rigidity in her posture, an intensity, almost quivering with the horrors of that afternoon as she watched them retreat. Yes, Ila Das brought horror with her and horror it was that hovered about her as she went off, as jerky and crazy as an old puppet, with her ancient umbrella and tattered bag. There had never been anyone more doomed, more menaced than she, thought Nanda Kaul, and how she survived at all – just by the barest skin of her teeth, by the weakest thread – was beyond her understanding. Her rackety existence looked so precarious, she felt that one stone thrown, one stick tipped would be enough to end it.

  So she leaned upon the gate and watched over her with a kind of fierceness. She, well and strong and upright, she ought to protect her. She ought to fight some of her battles. She looked slowly up and down the length of the Mall to see if the way were safe for Ila Das, and if one derisive urchin had appeared then, or if one alarming langur had let itself down from the trees and made for Ila Das then, Nanda Kaul would have swooped to attack and demolish him. She would have attacked any mocking urchin, any vicious langur, if it had meant tearing through the dust, tearing her sari or even making a fool of herself.

  But the road was deserted. Except for a friendly red-haired dog with a graceful plume for a tail that ran sniffing along the side of the road, there was not a soul on the Mall just then. Ila Das was plodding along, past the club, her figure growing more and more absurdly tiny and puppet-like by the minute, till she reached the giant deodar by the red letter-box and then vanished.

  Nanda Kaul relaxed and her hands released the gate which whined complainingly into place. She felt danger pass for the third time that afternoon. There had been the moment when Ila Das babbled maniacally about mixed doubles at the Vice-Chancellor’s badminton party – that had passed. Then there had been the moment when she felt she must invite Ila Das to stay – and that had passed. Now this final danger was over, too – a mere cloud sailing over the hills, followed by its little chill shadow, indigo on azure.