by Amitav Ghosh
She added another large square to the left.
That’s the drawing room, she said. It looks out into the garden, through the big windows, like this, and you can go through this door, into the dining room, and through that again into the kitchen, right back over there. And then there’s the kitchen garden out at the back.
While I was staring at this dusty chequerboard of lines, she crawled around me, to my right, and drew another room, a smaller one this time.
That’s the bedroom where Ma and I live, she said. It’s right next to the hall.
She added a couple of lines to it and said: That’s the cellar, and that’s the staircase. That’s where Nick and I play Houses sometimes.
Why do you play down there? I said. Why don’t you play under a table, like this?
It’s the same thing, she said. This table is like a cellar anyway.
Doesn’t anybody know you go down there? I said. Don’t they stop you?
Of course they know, she said. Why should they tell us not to? They know we’re just playing.
Why don’t you play here in the drawing room, or there in the garden, or out there where they play cricket?
You can’t play Houses out in the garden, she said. It has to be somewhere dark and secret …
She crawled around me again, through the hall and into the drawing room. Then she squatted and drew a thin rectangle next to the drawing room wall.
That’s the staircase, she said. You have to climb up it and then you come to the bedrooms.
She drew another set of lines, right next to the staircase. That’s Aunty Elisabeth’s bedroom, she said. It’s right above the drawing room. If you look out of these windows you can see the cricket field.
I shook my head violently; something about those lines had begun to disturb me.
You’re lying, I shouted at her. That can’t be a staircase because it’s flat, and staircases go up, they aren’t flat. And that can’t be upstairs because upstairs has to be above and that isn’t above; that’s right beside the drawing room.
I dropped to my knees and began to scrabble around in the dust, rubbing out the lines, shouting: You’re lying, you’re mad, this can’t be a house …
She put her hands against my chest and pushed. She wasn’t very strong, but she managed to push me back on my heels.
You’re stupid, she said. Don’t you understand? I’ve just rearranged things a little. If we pretend it’s a house, it’ll be a house. We can choose to build a house wherever we like.
No! I cried. It won’t be a real house. It can’t be.
Why? she asked, smiling.
Frowning, I puzzled over the pattern in the dust.
It can’t be a real house, I said at last, because it doesn’t have a veranda.
Veranda? she said in amazement, rolling the word slowly around her mouth as though she had forgotten its taste. What shall we do with a veranda?
She was uncertain now, biting her nails, unable to find a place for verandas in the world of her invention. And, I, sensing her confusion, felt a sudden, predatory thrill of triumph.
I gave her a shove. Of course we must have a veranda, I said. Otherwise how will we know what’s going on outside?
There was much more to say, I knew, but I could not think of how to say it: a nice house had to have a veranda; why, even our small flat had a veranda. To me the necessity of verandas was no more accountable than the need for doors and walls.
I fell on my knees and, leaning over her house, I rubbed away a line and drew another in its place.
Look, I said. There’s our veranda.
She stared at me aghast, rubbing her knuckles against her teeth. I could tell from the brightness of her eyes that she was close to tears.
You can’t do that, she said. You can’t put it there.
I rocked back on my haunches, hugging my knees: Why not?
Because, she said, that’s going to be Magda’s room.
Magda? I said. But Magda isn’t here.
Magda was Ila’s doll. I had seen it once. It was a huge doll, almost as big as Ila, with pink cheeks and snow-white arms, bright gold hair, and blue eyes that opened on their own every time it was picked up. The eyes had intrigued me; I’d wanted to see whether they were real. But when I had put out my hand to touch them, Ila had slapped my fingers away and shouted: You can’t touch Magda.
And anyway, I said warily to Ila, why should a doll need a room?
Not Magda the doll, Ila cried. This is the real Magda – our baby. A house has to have a baby.
What does Magda look like?
She has nice golden hair, said Ila frowning, trying to remember.
She has blue eyes and she goes to school every day.
Kindergarten? I said.
No, of course not. She goes to a proper school.
But then, I interrupted triumphantly, she can’t be a baby. She has to be as old as us.
Stupid, Ila said. We’re grown-ups now; it doesn’t matter how old she is.
She yawned, stretched, and rubbed her eyes.
First, she said, we have to wake up, get out of bed and change. And then you have to go to work. I’ll take Magda to school after you’ve gone.
She reached for the hem of her dress, slipped it over her head and draped it over her shoulder.
There, she said, grinning, hugging her chest. Look, I’m changing.
She was bare-chested now, naked, but for her blue, frilled underwear. She looked very thin and fragile, her dark body a wispy shadow in the gloom. Her shoulders were pointed, the bones forming sharp-edged ridges under the skin. I was puzzled by her stick-like bones. I stretched out my hand and ran my fingers over the china-thin ribs, up to the ridges of her shoulder and along the curve of her arm, down the sharp angle of her elbow, and up again, to the nutlike wrist she had dug into her chest. There was a spot above her nipple, a tiny, black bump.
What’s that? I said, rubbing it with my thumb.
Stop that, she said giggling.
I thought I could feel the bump rolling under her skin, like a tiny pea or a mustard seed, embedded inside. I pinched it, wondering whether it would burst. She shivered, and I shivered too, taking myself by surprise.
Stop that, she said sharply. But I couldn’t stop – I was curious about her bump, intrigued by its velvety hardness; I wondered whether it had a taste, I wanted to feel it with my tongue.
But she slapped my head away and pushed me back.
Stop it, she said. You have to go to work now. We’ll pretend you’ve already changed.
I peered apprehensively around the murky room. Where do I have to go to work? I asked.
There, she said, pointing at a crazily tilted chest of drawers. That’s your office. Go on now. You can’t come back until I tell you and you can’t look back at the house to see what I’m doing.
I darted out, ran to the chest of drawers, and stood there with my eyes shut, counting loudly, as we did when we played hide-and-seek. An age seemed to pass, though it was probably no more than five minutes, for I’d only counted twice to one hundred. Then Ila called out: All right, you can come back now. Magda’s back home from school.
She was waiting for me in the garden. Leaning against the cherry tree. Before I reached the wicket gate that opened out into Lymington Road, she shouted out: Do you know what happened to Magda today?
What? I said, following her into the house. What happened to Magda?
Before she would tell me, she took me into the drawing room and made me sit down.
The children in Magda’s new school had never seen anyone like her. It was terrible for her on her first day at school. They stared and stared until Mrs Tolland had to tell them not to. But even then, though they were scared of Mrs Tolland, they’d still pretend to drop their books and pencils just so they could turn around to look at Magda. They were still staring at her now, after she’d been there two whole weeks.
The reason they stared like that, all of them, girls, boys, even the teachers, was that
they’d never seen anyone as beautiful as Magda. They had never seen hair that shone like hers – like a bright, golden light. They had never seen such deep blue eyes, nor cheeks as pink and healthy and smiling as hers. And they hadn’t seen clothes like hers either: so clean and so beautifully ironed that they looked more like the dresses you see in shop windows in Oxford Street than a school uniform. Even the bag she took to school was so much nicer than theirs: a beautiful leather bag her father had bought for her in Florence, not a bit like the ugly satchels they brought with them.
You couldn’t blame them for staring: they’d never seen anyone as beautiful as Magda. And they liked her too: they all wanted to be friends with her – girls, boys, teachers, all of them. On the playground they would sometimes come up to her and whisper in her ear: I want to be your best friend.
But there was one girl who hated Magda from the very first day. Her name was Denise.
Now Denise was ugly. She had dirty red hair which hung down from her head like greasy quills. She didn’t have a mother to wash her hair for her; her mother had left her and run away to Australia. And her skin, her skin was like dirty ice-cream – pale and grainy and peppered with blackheads. Even the teacher shuddered every time she looked at Denise.
But Denise was very big, bigger than the biggest boy in the class. And she was very strong too: she had once knocked out a boy’s teeth with a punch.
So everyone was nice to Denise because everyone was afraid of her. It was Denise who decided who could be friends with whom and if Denise didn’t like someone, well, that was it, she made sure no one spoke to her.
But once Magda arrived Denise could see that she wasn’t going to have it all her own way any more. She saw how the other children looked at Magda; she could see they wanted to be her friends. And even though she tried to stop them she knew they talked to Magda whenever she, Denise, was out of their sight.
As the days went by the more Denise hated Magda.
Then today it happened.
Mrs Tolland asked Denise to write a sentence on the blackboard. Denise went to the blackboard, and when she’d finished the class saw that what she’d written was: John cot the ball.
The whole class burst into laughter.
Then Mrs Tolland asked Magda to write the sentence. And of course Magda knew, so she wrote: John caught the ball, in her beautiful round handwriting.
Good girl, Mrs Tolland said to her, and then she turned to Denise and said: Well, Denise, perhaps you ought to take English lessons from her, even though it’s your own language, not hers.
Everyone turned to look at Denise and laughed and laughed. Denise had to sit there and listen.
When Magda was going back to her desk, she heard Denise say: See you outside, little wog. She saw how Denise had gone red in the face and she was scared.
So today, after school, she decided not to come back the way she usually does. Most days she walks through the park near Hillfield Road, but today she didn’t. She thought she would hurry past the park and take the other road instead.
After school, that was what she meant to do. But when she turned the corner near the park, keeping her head down so that nobody would notice her, she heard someone shout: Little wog, nig-nog!
She didn’t turn to look, but she knew it was Denise; she could tell from the voice. She began to walk faster.
But the voice followed her, shouting: Don’t run, little wog, nig-nog.
Now Magda began to run. She ran across the road without stopping to look right or left, as she’d been told to. She was very scared now. She dropped her bag, and though she knew Baba would be furious with her if she lost it, she didn’t dare stop. She was running as fast as she could, in a straight line. She could hear them running too, three or four of them, right behind her, catching up. But she was running fast now, faster than she ever had before, and she could tell that some of them were giving up. Now there was only one pair of feet running after her. She could hear them clearly, thudding on the pavement behind her.
Something hit her between her shoulders, and she fell sprawling on the pavement. When she looked up, Denise was scowling down at her, panting: Bloody wog, nig-nog.
An open hand came slashing down and struck Magda on the face. Magda’s cheek hit the pavement. She could see her blood spattering in the dust.
Denise was crouching over her. Her face was so close that Magda could smell the Mars bars on her breath.
Nig-nog, she said, filthy little nig-nog, and she stuck her fist into Magda’s mouth. Then she swung her hand back again. Magda shut her eyes, covered her face and waited. There was nothing else she could do; Denise was too strong for her.
And then there was a little yelp of pain and she heard Denise being pulled off her. She didn’t dare look at first.
When she opened her eyes, there he was, with his hands on his hips, standing over her.
Go on, Nick Price said to Denise. Go on, get out of here.
Denise made a face and scrabbled to her feet.
When she was gone, Nick Price knelt down beside Magda and wiped her face with the sleeve of his shirt. He helped her to her feet and put a sweet in her mouth and, taking her hand in his, he said: Come on, I’ll take you home now.
That was how Nick Price had looked to me, under that table: a boy in shorts, like me, but much bigger, his head a blaze of yellow, rescuing a little girl from her tormentor.
But then, unaccountably, Ila had burst into tears.
When I had finished telling May this story, in that very room, three years later, she’d put a hand on my shoulder and said: Come on, let’s go out, it’s terribly dark in here.
I led her out into the brilliant sunlight of the portico, and she flopped down on one of the stairs that led down into the paved courtyard. Reaching for my hand, she pulled me down beside her.
That wasn’t quite what happened, she said gently. You do know that, don’t you?
I shook my head.
I happened to be at home that day, she said. And I know that Nick didn’t stop to help Ila. He ran all the way back. He used to run back home from school early those days.
Why?
May plucked out a peepul leaf that was growing out of the brick staircase and fanned herself with it.
I’m not sure, she said. But I think Nick didn’t want to be seen with Ila. Ila didn’t have any friends in school, you see. Perhaps it was just that she was shy. But after she began going to school Nick used to come home much earlier than he used to. Then that day something happened in Ila’s class, and I think Nick got to hear of it. He ran back even earlier than usual and went straight up to his room. Mummy asked him what the matter was but he wouldn’t tell her. An hour or so later, just when we were beginning to worry about Ila, a policeman brought her back. She was a bit bruised, but otherwise all right. She never told us what happened but she didn’t go back to school after that. And then, soon after, they left.
I tried then to think of Ila walking back from school alone through the lanes of West Hampstead. I could see her swinging her schoolbag in time with her footsteps, faster and faster, until she was almost running, laughing out loud, so that people turned to smile after her; Ila walking, smiling to herself as I had sometimes seen her, her dimple rippling on her cheek. Ila walking alone in a drizzle under that cold grey sky: Ila who in Calcutta was surrounded by so many relatives and cars and servants that she would never have had to walk so much as the length of the street – and as for alone, why there we were, all of us, I, her relatives, her friends, all waiting to walk with Ila, Ila the sophisticate, who could tell us stories about smart girls and rich boys in far-away countries whose names we had learnt from maps. Ila walking alone because Nick Price was ashamed to be seen by his friends, walking home with an Indian.
You shouldn’t think too badly of him, May said. She was pleading with me now. He was very young, and at that age children want everyone to be alike.
Many years later, when my grandmother had been lying in bed for months with what was to
prove to be her final illness, one evening, while I was sitting by her bedside, I found myself telling her the story Ila had told me and about the odd little ending that May had added.
That evening, although she was surrounded by oxygen cylinders, bottles of glucose, disposable syringes and all the other paraphernalia of her sickness, she seemed more cheerful than she had been in a long time. When she had heard me out she said: I don’t blame the boy. It was Ila’s fault. It was her own fault, and Maya’s fault and the fault of that half-witted mother of hers. It was bound to happen: anyone can see that. She has no right to be there. She doesn’t belong there.
She buried her head in a towel and began to cough. In the two weeks that had passed since I came back from Delhi for my college’s summer holidays I had been kept up every night by that hollow, echoing cough. After a quarter of an hour the fit left her and she fell back panting, on her pillows. She turned to look at me, with a handkerchief clamped over her mouth. I knew then, from the brightness of her eyes, that she was about to go into one of her sudden rages. I rose guiltily from my chair, angry with myself for having told her the story, and tried to calm her.
It doesn’t matter, Tha’mma, I said, pulling her shawl over her thin, trembling shoulders. It doesn’t matter. Lie down now and rest.
Ila shouldn’t be there, she said, stammering hoarsely. She doesn’t belong there. What’s she doing in that country?
She’s just studying there for a while, Tha’mma, I said gently. At that time Ila was at University College in London, doing a BA in history.
But she shouldn’t be there, my grandmother cried, pushing my hands feebly away.
I leant back in my chair looking helplessly at her. Over the last few months the flesh had wasted slowly away from her face so that the skin on her cheeks hung down now, like dry, brittle leather.
Ila has no right to live there, she said hoarsely. She doesn’t belong there. It took those people a long time to build that country; hundreds of years, years and years of war and bloodshed. Everyone who lives there has earned his right to be there with blood: with their brother’s blood and their father’s blood and their son’s blood. They know they’re a nation because they’ve drawn their borders with blood. Hasn’t Maya told you how regimental flags hang in all their cathedrals and how all their churches are lined with memorials to men who died in wars, all around the world? War is their religion. That’s what it takes to make a country. Once that happens people forget they were born this or that, Muslim or Hindu, Bengali or Punjabi: they become a family born of the same pool of blood. That is what you have to achieve for India, don’t you see?
