by Amitav Ghosh
Now listen to that, said Queen Victoria, looking at me fondly. What a sweet little man. Do you hear that, Ila? He asks about you every day.
Ila smiled and turned her head away with a tiny shrug.
I knew then, for certain, that she had not asked about me as I had about her.
At that moment I hated my mother. For the first time in my life she had betrayed me. She had given me away, she had made public, then and for ever, the inequality of our needs; she had given Ila the knowledge of her power and she had left me defenceless, naked in the face of that unthinkable, adult truth: that need is not transitive, that one may need without oneself being needed.
To stop them saying any more I ran over to the car and jumped in.
You can sit in front, Ila said; with Tridib-kaku and Nityananda. I’m going to sleep.
We drove away soon. I sat between Nityananda and Tridib in the front seat, while Ila, her mother and Lizzie-missy dozed at the back. It took us much longer than usual to drive through the city: cars have no privilege on the roads at that time of the year; the streets are overwhelmed by the festivities. We had to inch forward near Gariahat, with Nityananda and Tridib hanging out of the windows, begging shoppers to make way. Near Sealdah it took us almost half an hour to skirt around a pandal that was jutting out from the pavement, right into the middle of the street. The car got hotter and hotter and Tridib began to shout curses at everything that crossed our path, his wire-rimmed glasses glinting in the sunlight, dwarfing his waspish, angular face. The traffic came to a virtual standstill again near Dakshineshwar. We crawled along till we reached the bridge, and then looked down in awe, from our height, at the vast crowds circulating in the courtyard of the temple below, like floodwaters sweeping through a garden. But once we had crossed the bridge the traffic grew thinner, and soon we were speeding along the Grand Trunk Road. Then Tridib relaxed a little and leant back, smelling as he always did of fresh cigarette smoke and soap. I asked him a few questions but he seemed abstracted and wouldn’t say much, so soon I dozed off too.
When I woke up, Nityananda was shaking my arm excitedly, crying: Wake up, wake up, there it is, there’s the house, look, look.
It appeared suddenly on the edge of the windscreen: a bright yellow patch on a gentle knoll, rising like a cake out of that table-like plain. In a few minutes we reached an arched gateway that had outhouses on either side of it. The cars slowed down a little, and as we were overtaken by the cloud of dust that had been following us, children swarmed out of the outhouses and ran along with the car, waving and shouting. The house had vanished behind a forest that stretched all the way up the knoll, the trees growing so thick and close together that they hid the house like a curtain. Tridib, grinning, told me to take a good look, for I wouldn’t see trees like those again for a long time: his grandfather had wanted to live in a tropical rain-forest so he’d imported those trees from Brazil and the Congo.
Then Nityananda nudged me, pointing to the left, and turning I saw a troop of monkeys hanging on the vines, staring down at us, somersaulting in alarm. The car turned a corner, still climbing steeply, and suddenly the house was in front of us: newly whitewashed and plastered, shining golden in the mid-morning sunlight, a festoon of flapping saris hanging wetly from the roof, a row of columns stretching across the portico in a broad, gap-toothed smile.
The paved terrace in front of the house was already buzzing when the cars drew up. The durwans who looked after the house had lit two fires from which thin feathers of smoke were now rising into the sky. Their wives had settled down in the shade of the portico, surrounded by mounds of vegetables. In readiness for Nityananda, huge brass pots had been set out on the terrace.
We were surrounded as soon as we got out of the car. Ila vanished into a knot of people, all eager to examine and exclaim over the only grandchild of the house. She let them fuss over her for a while, then suddenly she broke free of them, snatched at my hand and dragged me across the paved terrace. Come on, she whispered urgently, let’s hide.
I shot a glance back, over my shoulder. They’re running after us, I shouted. What’ll we do now?
Just follow me, she panted, vaulting up the plinth of the portico. We dodged through the columns into a vast, musty hall. Stumbling into it, blinded by the gloom, we bumped into each other, and then tripped and fell on a flight of cold marble stairs. Narrowing my eyes, I tried to see where they led. But I could only see a few feet ahead, and beyond that the stairs vanished into darkness. I could hear the durwans and the children racing across the courtyard now, shouting to each other.
It’s too dark up there, I whispered to Ila. Where shall we hide? They’re almost here.
She gestured at me impatiently to be quiet. She was looking around the hall, hesitating as though she had forgotten her way around the house. I pushed her, urging her on, my belly churning with a breathless hide-and-seek excitement.
Shut up, she snapped, pushing me back. And just when I was about to make a dash for a dim, high door on the far side of the hall, she cried: Come on, I remember now! and began to feel her way around the staircase. I followed her until we came to a low wooden door, hidden away behind the stairs. She found a knob and gave it a tug. The door creaked but showed no sign of coming open.
Come on, pull, she said to me breathlessly. Aren’t you good for anything?
I could hear feet thudding on the portico now. I caught hold of the knob and we pulled together, as hard as we could. The door creaked and a gust of musty air blew into our faces. We pulled harder still and the door opened, no more than a few inches wide, but enough for us to squeeze through. We slipped in and managed to push the door shut. A moment later we heard them pouring into the hall.
We tumbled down a couple of steps to a stone floor and lay there panting. We could hear them scattering in the hall now, some running up the staircase, some looking in the corners, shouting excitedly to each other. Ila smiled gleefully and squeezed my hand.
You watch, she said, none of them will think of looking in here.
For a while all I could see was a pale green glow filtering in through a window, set so high up in the wall that it seemed like a skylight. Its small rectangle of glass was mildewed over on the outside by grass and moss.
Look! I said to Ila. There’s grass growing on that window.
Yes, she said. The window’s on the ground. If you want to look in here you have to lie flat on your stomach.
But then, I said in amazement, this room must be under the ground.
Yes, of course, she said. You fool: couldn’t you tell?
I shivered. I had never been underground before: as far as I knew only the underworld lay below the ground. I looked around and the cavernous room seemed suddenly full of indistinct shapes, murky green in that strangely aquatic light, like the looming heads of rock in a picture that Tridib had once shown me, of the cave of a moray eel.
What are these things in here? I said. Why does this place smell like this?
We could hear Lizzie-missy shouting for Ila in the hall.
Let’s go back, I said. We’ve been here long enough.
Ila clapped a hand over my mouth. Shut up, she whispered angrily; you can’t go, now that I’ve brought you here.
Queen Victoria was shouting too, scolding Lizzie-missy: Why you let her running-running? Tridib was arguing with her: Let them be, they’re just playing somewhere … Their voices drew away slowly and we knew that they had gone outside, back to the terrace.
I don’t like this place, I whispered to Ila. I don’t want to stay here.
Coward, she said. Aren’t you meant to be a boy? Look at me: I’m not scared. It’s just some old furniture covered up with sheets. That’s all.
But what are we going to do in here? I said. It’s so dark …
I know what we can do, she said, clapping her hands together. We can play a game.
A game! I cried, peering at the grey-green shapes rising out of the darkness. What kind of game can we play in a place like this?
I’ll show you, she said. It’s a nice game, many boys like it.
But there’s no room in here, I protested. And I can’t see very far.
She sprang up. I know where we can play, she said. I just hope it’s still there.
I followed her as she picked her way through the looming shrouded shapes, stumbling in the darkness, raising little storms of dust. She led me to the far end of the room where it was so dark I could hardly tell where she was.
Yes, she cried in triumph, pointing at a vast, sheet-covered mound. It is still here. Help me pull off the sheet, come on.
I caught hold of one end of the sheet and she of another. We tugged, but instead of coming off, the sheet seemed to atomise in our hands, and for a moment everything vanished into a cyclone of dust.
I can still see it, taking shape slowly within that cloud of dust.
Like a magician’s rabbit, laughed Ila.
Nothing as simple as that, said Robi wryly. No, at least a castle on a misty mountain top.
But in my memory I see it emerging out of that storm of dust like a plateau in a desert.
It was a table, the largest I had ever seen; it seemed to stretch on and on. I used to wonder later whether this was merely a legacy of a child’s foreshortened vision: an effect of that difference in perspective which causes all objects recalled from childhood to undergo an illusory enlargement of scale. But three years later, when I took May, a fully grown 24-year-old adult, into that room and showed her the table, even she gasped.
Heavens! she said. It’s huge: what could it possibly have been used for?
Tridib once told me all about it. My grandfather bought it on his first visit to London, he said, some time in the 1890s. He saw it at an exhibition in the Crystal Palace and couldn’t resist it. He had it shipped to Calcutta in sections, but when it arrived he didn’t know what to do with it so he had it put away here. And so it was forgotten until you rediscovered it.
May walked around it, frowning. I wonder how much he paid for it, she said, running her thumb along the grain of the dark, heavy wood.
I wonder how much it cost to have it shipped here, she said loudly, her voice echoing in the shadows of the room. I wonder how many proper roofs that money would have bought for those huts we saw on our way here.
The indignation in her voice stabbed accusingly at me. I don’t know, I said, lowering my head.
She tapped on the wood with her knuckles. Why did he bring this back, for God’s sake? she cried. Why this worthless bit of England; why something so utterly useless?
She was biting her lip in bewilderment now, shaking her head.
I could think of no answer to give her: it seemed impossible to me to think of that table as an object like any other, with a price and a provenance, for I had seen it taking shape with my own eyes, within a cloud of dust, in that very room.
All right, said Ila, let’s go under it.
Under it? Aghast, I tugged at the back of her smock and asked her what kind of game we could possibly play under it.
Come, she said; she was already on her knees crawling through the dust. Come on, I’ll show you. It’s the game I play with Nick.
Nick? I said, suddenly alert. Who’s Nick?
Don’t you know Nick? she said, and turning to look back at me, over her shoulder, she said: Nick’s Mrs Price’s son, May’s brother. We live in their house in London. He and I walk to school together in the morning and come back together in the afternoon, and then afterwards, every evening, we go down together to play in the cellar.
She reached for my hand and tried to pull me down. Come on, she said. I’ll show you: it’s a game called Houses.
No, I said, shaking my head, confused by the questions that were now stirring in my head.
This Nick, I found myself asking her. How big is he?
Oh he’s big, she said, perching on the footrest. He’s very big. Much bigger than you: much stronger, too. He’s twelve, three years older than us.
I squatted beside her on the dusty floor, thinking.
What does he look like? I asked presently.
She screwed up her face and thought hard. He has yellow hair, she said after a while. It always falls over his eyes.
Why? I said. Doesn’t he comb it?
He does comb it, she said. But it still falls over his eyes.
It must be long like a girl’s.
No, it’s not a bit like a girl’s.
Then why is it so long?
It is not so long, she said. It’s just very straight, and when he runs or something it falls over his eyes. He can even touch it with his tongue sometimes.
I spat on the floor in disgust. We watched the spit turning into a tiny pool of foaming mud.
He must be filthy, I said. Eating his own hair.
You’re just jealous, Ila said grinning, because your own hair is so short. Nick looks sweet when his hair falls over his eyes: everyone says so.
After that day Nick Price, whom I had never seen, and would, as far as I knew, never see, became a spectral presence beside me in my looking glass; growing with me, but always bigger and better, and in some ways more desirable – I did not know what, except that it was so in Ila’s eyes and therefore true. I would look into the glass and there he would be, growing, always faster, always a head taller than me, with hair on his arms and chest and crotch while mine were still pitifully bare. And yet if I tried to look into the face of that ghostly presence, to see its nose, its teeth, its ears, there was never anything there, it had no features, no form; I would shut my eyes and try to see its face, but all I would see was a shock of yellow hair tumbling over a pair of bright blue eyes. And as for what he did, what he said, what he thought about, in the three years between the moment when Ila first told me about him and that day when I took May down to that underground room, I knew nothing at all about him except one little snippet of a story that my father told me about him once, soon after returning from a trip to England.
My father had telephoned Mrs Price soon after he arrived in London, just in case Ila and Queen Victoria were still there. It turned out that they had left long ago, but Mrs Price insisted that he come to tea with her anyway. He went, and when Mrs Price led him into her drawing room, he found Nick there too, dressed in his school uniform but with his tie hanging loose around his neck. He shook hands with my father and sat down quietly in an armchair in a corner. My father could not help being impressed: he had never seen such a definite air of self-possession in a child of thirteen.
For a while my father and Mrs Price chatted about Mayadebi and the Shaheb (who were in Romania and had invited her to visit them there), about May, who was away at the festival in Bayreuth, and Tridib. Mrs Price remembered, laughing, that Tridib had once decided that he wanted to be an air-raid warden when he grew up. So then my father turned to Nick, for he hadn’t said a word yet, and asked him whether he knew what he wanted to be when he grew up.
Nick tipped back his head, with a little smile, as though he were surprised that anyone should ask, and said, yes, of course he knew, he’d known for years; he wanted to be like his grandfather, grandfather Tresawsen, whose picture was hanging over there, above the mantelpiece.
To my intense disappointment, my father could tell me nothing about Nick’s grandfather, except that in the picture he had had a square face, white hair and a walrus moustache.
So, as always, it fell to Tridib to tell me, sitting on the grass in the Gole Park roundabout one evening, how Mrs Price’s father, Lionel Tresawsen, had left the farm where he’d been born – in a village called Mabe, in southern Cornwall – and gone off to a nearby town to work in a tin mine; how he’d gone on from there – for no matter that he had very little education, he had deft hands, a quick mind and a great deal of ambition – to become the overseer of a tin mine in Malaysia; and then further and further on, all around the world – Fiji, Bolivia, the Guinea Coast, Ceylon – working in mines or warehouses or plantations or whatever came his way; how finall
y he had surfaced in Calcutta, making his living by working as an agent in a company which dealt in steel tubes, and then, later, gone on to make, if not exactly a fortune, certainly a respectable sum of money, by starting a small factory of his own, in Barrackpore. It was then, prosperous at last, in his middle age, that he married. His wife was the widow of a Welsh missionary doctor, and she bore him two children, Elisabeth and Alan. When Elisabeth was twelve and Alan ten, she made her husband sell his factory and move back to England: she was determined that her children would have all the advantages of a proper education, university and all. And so they went back and settled in the bucolic tranquillity of a small Buckinghamshire village.
But in fact there was much more to Lionel Tresawsen than money, steel tubes and children. In his youth, for example, he had been a prolific inventor. After he died, his wife discovered that in the period of five years when he was living in Malaysia he had taken out no less than twenty-five patents – for gadgets ranging from mechanical shoe-horns to stirrup-pumps for draining water out of flooded mines.
He had given up inventing in disgust when manufacturers had proved strangely indifferent to his inventions. And then there was the Lionel Tresawsen of middle-age, who had tried to set up a homeopathic hospital in a village near Calcutta; and the almost-old Lionel, who had developed an interest in spiritualism and begun to attend the meetings of the Theosophical Society in Calcutta, where he met and earned the trust and friendship of a number of leading nationalists. This had, of course, estranged him and his wife from most circles of British society in the city and led to innumerable colourful slights and insults at clubs and tea parties, but that had made very little difference to Lionel Tresawsen, since those people had never been particularly pleasant to him anyway. He had also begun to attend seances conducted by a Russian medium, a large lady who had married an Italian who ran a restaurant in Chowringhee. It was at those offices that he met Tridib’s grandfather, Mr Justice Chandrashekhar Datta-Chaudhuri, who liked indulging in matters spiritual when the High Court was not in session: their friendship was sealed across innumerable planchette tables while waiting for the large lady to summon her favourite spirit, the all-seeing astral body of Ivan the Terrible.
