by Amitav Ghosh
I can still see her as though it had happened today, her eyes bloodshot, threads of phlegm hanging from her lips, while she lies ranting in her bed. And yet, when I look at her, lying crumpled in front of me, her white thinning hair matted with her invalid’s sweat, my heart fills with love for her – love and that other thing, which is not pity but something else, something the English language knows only in its absence – ruth – a tenderness which is not merely pity and not only love. It comes over me so powerfully that even now I can feel the anger that exploded in my head once when I told Ila what she had said, and Ila, drawing on her cigarette, made some offhand remark about warmongering fascists. I remembered how I shouted at her and told her what Tridib had once said: that she was not a fascist, she was only a modern middle-class woman – though not wholly, for she would not permit herself the self-deceptions that make up the fantasy world of that kind of person. All she wanted was a middle-class life in which, like the middle classes the world over, she would thrive believing in the unity of nationhood and territory, of self-respect and national power; that was all she wanted – a modern middle-class life, a small thing, that history had denied her in its fullness and for which she could never forgive it.
Early next morning my grandmother asked that I be sent to her room. When I sat down beside her I saw that her eyes were bloodshot and her face pale and more strained than ever.
Shall I tell you why Ila lives there? she said, propping herself up on her elbow.
I pleaded with her to lie down, to rest, but she cut me short.
Shall I tell you what Ila’s gone there for? she said. She was shivering now, her eyes burning in her face. She’s gone there because she’s greedy; she’s gone there for money.
I couldn’t help smiling then.
Why should she go there for money? I said. Her family has much more money here than they’d ever have over there. She’s the only grandchild in the family and you know how rich they are. If she stayed here she would have more money than she could count in a lifetime. And she would have houses and servants and cars too. She has nothing over there. She lives in a tiny room in a house she has to share with five other students; she has to cook and clean and do all kinds of things that a dozen servants would rush to do for her here …
It’s not just money, my grandmother cried. It’s things: it’s all the things money can buy – fridges like the one Mrs Sen’s son-in-law brought back from America, with two doors and a spout that drops ice-cubes into your glass; colour TVs and cars, calculators and cameras, all those things you can’t get here.
But she doesn’t have things, I retorted, trying to keep my voice in control. You know that. She has to live on pocket money; she doesn’t have the money to buy things like that. Besides, she doesn’t want things. She spends her spare time going on demonstrations and acting in radical plays for Indian immigrants in east London. You know that – when she was here last, you asked me yourself: Has Ila become a communist?
She’s a greedy little slut, my grandmother said, pounding on the bedclothes with a fist she had not the strength to clench properly. I can’t understand why you’re defending her. You tell me then, since you know her so well: why does she live there, if it’s not for the money and the comforts?
By that time I was so angry that I did tell her.
The year before, Ila had come to Calcutta in summer, at almost exactly the same time that Robi and I came back from Delhi for the university’s summer vacations.
Ila’s trip was very sudden. She had made up her mind two days after her college in London closed for the vacations. Then she had rung her father in Bratislava and he had rung his travel agent in London and four days later she was in Calcutta.
It was so sudden that even my parents didn’t know.
When the Kalka Mail from Delhi got in at Howrah Station they were waiting, as they always were, under the old clock that no one had ever seen working, on platform 9: my mother in a sea-green sari, flushed with pleasure at the thought of having me back for the summer; my father bustling, looking after our luggage, organising. We dropped Robi at their house in Ballygunge Place, where he was to spend a few days before going off to visit his parents in Darjeeling.
After I had banished my four-month-old, college-starved hunger with an hour-long meal, my mother, in her usual anxiously circuitous way, was trying to find out what I would like, really like to eat for dinner, when my grandmother declared grimly: You’d better forget about his dinner. You’re not likely to see him this evening.
Why not? my mother cried, turning to her in alarm. But I’ve already made …
Because, my grandmother said, her eyes boring into mine; because Ila is here.
I waited, not daring to believe what she had said.
Ila’s here! said my mother. How do you know?
She rang yesterday, said my grandmother. Queen Victoria had asked her to enquire after my health.
Why didn’t you tell us? my mother said.
Because I thought you’d like to have him here for lunch, my grandmother said.
How is she? I asked her. Did she say?
I’m sure she’s fine, said my grandmother. Perhaps she’s even better than she was when she came here last year – with her hair cut short, like the bristles on a toothbrush, wearing tight trousers like a Free School Street whore.
I wonder why she’s come now, my mother said quickly, changing the subject. Why in this heat?
Because, Ila told me an hour later, when we were sitting in her room in their Elgin Road house; this is when I have my holidays too, you know, and besides I haven’t been back for a year.
Anyway, she laughed, watching me as I mopped my sweating face with a handkerchief, the heat bothers you much more than it does me.
And of course she was right: the heat hadn’t touched her.
She looked younger with her hair cut, boyish in a way, and she was thinner too; her arms were like wands, and the dimple was never quite gone from her cheek. She looked improbably exotic to me, dressed in faded blue jeans and a T-shirt – like no girl I had ever seen before except in pictures in American magazines.
There she is, in the green afternoon darkness of that shuttered, high-ceilinged room, not quite sitting, but draped over a leather armchair, her legs thrown over the back so that the top of her jeans has crept away from her T-shirt and left the hollow of her stomach glowing in the darkness; her body cradled lazily in the seat, her head flung back over the arm, so that her small breasts have thrust the thin cotton of her T-shirt into two gentle points which harden with her breathing, and then swell away again into dark circles, one of them dotted with a tiny black mole. She flops about in the chair, heedless of her body, childlike, and I, bracing the muscles in my thighs to contain the dull, swelling ache in my groin, have to roll over on my stomach and look at a magazine, though that makes the pain much worse, like the throbbing of a tourniquet, as though something were about to burst in my balls. I push myself away from her, along the floor, for I cannot let her see me like this, not for shame, but merely to preserve my friendship with her, for I know that between us there lies a chequerboard of relationships in which I have been given the place of a cousin, a favourite perhaps, but still a cousin and nothing more.
The day before Robi was to leave for Darjeeling, we spent a long sleepy day in their house, lolling about in her room, looking for cool spots on the floor, reading and quarrelling. When the afternoon had dragged itself out and the sun had set, Ila threw open the shutters. The sight of the cars inching along the road below seemed to act on her like a tonic.
Come on, she said, tugging at my hand; let’s go out somewhere. We can’t lie about all day like this. Besides, Robi’s leaving tomorrow. I think we should give him a party.
Robi stirred torpidly on the floor and dropped the book he had been reading. A party, he said. In this heat?
Yes, said Ila. Let’s go somewhere and have fun.
Robi and I exchanged a long, doubtful look.
I haven
’t got enough money, I said.
I’ve got money, she laughed. I’ll give you a treat.
But where can we go? said Robi.
I’ll tell you what, said Ila; let’s go to the Grand Hotel. I’ve heard they have a nightclub there.
What are we going to do in a nightclub? said Robi.
We can drink a few beers, said Ila. And watch the cabaret – that kind of thing.
Drink! cried Robi. In a place like that?
What’s the matter? she said sharply. You do drink don’t you? What about that story you were telling me about the send-off you got from your pals in college? You are a little hypocrite.
Judgements of that kind came very easily to Ila, because to her morality could only be an absolute. She could understand and admire someone who never ate meat on principle, but a person who was a vegetarian only at home was, to her, the worst kind of hypocrite. She knew that Robi was quite happy to risk expulsion occasionally by smuggling bottles of rum into his room and drinking the night away with his friends, and because she could not see that he would do those things in college precisely because there was a certain innocence about those exploits in those circumstances, the kind of monasticism that honours the rules of the order in their breach, she could not understand why Robi would feel himself defiled, drinking in a nightclub, surrounded by paunchy men with dark-pouched eyes. She could not understand the real nature of his prudishness because context had no place in her judgements.
It’s just petit-bourgeois nastiness, Ila had said to me once about Robi. It’s a mystery to me how he’s become such a legend in your college: I thought students were meant to be defiant of narrow-mindedness. But undergraduates respect muscles, I suppose, and he’s got plenty of those.
I had been puzzled too when I first discovered how much deference Robi commanded in college. It was hard to understand, for he did not excel particularly in any of the spheres which were held to confer distinction in that milieu: he was not unusually good at sports, just about good enough to keep a place in the college cricket eleven; he was good at his studies but not brilliant; he was not clever, not well dressed, not talented, nor in any way unlike a dozen others in our college, and yet, without asking for it, barely seeming to notice, he commanded a respect immeasurably greater than the best sportsmen and the most brilliant students.
It took me time to see that this respect was really a tribute to the superhuman simplicity of his view of the world: to the fact that he had no hesitation in making judgements – because there were whole domains of conduct within which he would not admit the possibility of argument – and no fear of defending them, because of his abundant physical courage. Once, for example, there was a great uproar in our college because a student had been expelled for some minor misdemeanour – for asking a girl up to his room for a cup of tea or some such thing. The students’ union was unanimous in calling for a strike. But Robi, alone in the whole college, refused to go along with everyone else: he didn’t argue or make speeches, he merely refused to attend the union meetings. And when some of the union’s leaders threatened to give him a beating, they found to their surprise that he was relieved at the prospect of settling the issue by a straightforward physical contest. Such was his standing in the college that eventually the leaders gave in and the strike was called off.
Later, I asked him: Why wouldn’t you join the strike? Tell me, just as a matter of interest.
He wouldn’t answer, so I asked him again, and then reluctantly he said: Because a rule’s a rule; if you break one you have to be willing to pay the price.
But is it a good rule? I asked. He only smiled, and no matter how hard I tried I could not get him to answer my question.
I understood then that he could not answer: that his authority grew out of that subterranean realm of judgement which we call morality, the condition of whose success is that its rulings be always shrouded from argument. I understood why his opinions always prevailed against his peers’: because while they had to find their way through a fog of ordinary confusions, in every difficult situation Robi had an intuition which led him directly to what he knew he ought to do, even if he did not know why. And they followed him since he, uniquely, was willing to defend those inconvenient, often ridiculous, scruples which they could only too easily be persuaded to forget. That was why they, and I, both admired him and feared him, and that was why his courage, even when it manifested itself physically, was moral in the purest sense.
Come on, enjoy yourself for once, said Ila. You’ll be going away soon anyway, so you can forget all about it afterwards.
But why do you want to go to the Grand Hotel? said Robi.
Because it’s the poshest place in the city, of course, said Ila, tipping her head back. Isn’t that the best possible reason?
I don’t want to go to a place like that, Robi said.
But once Ila had made up her mind she had to have her way. She bent down in front of him and touched her forehead to his feet.
Please, Robi-kaku, she said. Please, just this once. If you don’t like it, we’ll leave. I promise.
So we went: Ila resplendent in a silk blouse and a skirt, Robi and I grimly insistent on not changing out of our usual student uniform of kurta and crumpled trousers.
When we reached the entrance of the Grand Hotel and saw the beturbaned doorman’s dead-fish eyes flicking disdainfully over us, both Robi and I would have kept on walking, all the way down Chowringhee. But Ila was right behind us, and with a rustle of silk she shepherded us through the corridor, into a chandeliered hall. She led us to the reception counter and in the plummiest of her English accents she asked them to show us the way to the nightclub. Suitably awed, they sent a liveried attendant to show us the way. He led us down another corridor to a large, ornate door. He pushed the door open, pocketed Ila’s tip, and stood aside, bowing.
We heard the hum of an electric guitar echoing out of the darkness, somewhere inside the cavernous room.
I’m not going in there, said Robi. He pulled his hand out of Ila’s; he was sweating.
Oh come on, Ila said in exasperation. Come on, Uncle Robi. You’ve made your point: we’re willing to accept that you’re just a poor peasant horrified by the badness of the big city. So now you may as well relax and enjoy yourself.
She took his hand again and he let himself be led in.
It was so dark inside that the waiter had to lead us through the clusters of empty tables with an electric torch. I felt the touch of something moist and strangely furry on my face. Instinctively, my arm rose to fight it off. I felt it again, on my forearm, and jumped backwards, knocking over a chair.
What are those things? I cried, my skin tingling. Something touched me.
It’s only the decorations, sir, said the waiter. He brought us to a halt at an empty table and pulled back a chair for Ila. We sat down, and when our eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, we saw that every available space was covered with nodding palm fronds. There were catamarans painted on the walls and clusters of coconuts were dangling from the roof. Ila pointed at the band, on a platform beside the dance floor; it consisted of four men in dark suits, bow ties and straw hats.
She giggled: I think it’s meant to be a beach.
Clasping her hands she looked at the two of us, smiling. All right, she said, shall we ask for some beer?
I nodded when she turned to me, but Robi said nothing.
Can’t you just pretend that you’re in college? she said. If it makes you feel less of a hypocrite?
Robi raised his hand abruptly and signalled to the waiter. When the waiter came, he said: Get us three beers, please.
He put his hands flat on the table and turned to look at Ila, swivelling his broad, powerful shoulders.
Do your Trotskyite comrades know, he said, how you spend your time when you’re not demonstrating for the revolution?
She smiled, and tapped his cheek with her forefinger. You can’t demonstrate for a revolution stupid, she said. And yes they do know, and
they don’t care because Trotskyists aren’t joyless little clerks like you’re getting to be.
She was angry with herself as soon as she said it.
Oh come on, Robi, she pleaded. It’s your last evening here. Let’s not quarrel.
That made Robi angrier still, but as always, when he was really angry, he could not think of anything to say. Then our bottles of beer arrived, and he busied himself pouring them out. When our glasses were full, he raised his and drained half of it in one long swallow. Then he leant back, wiping his mouth, breathing hard, and stared into it.
To my relief, there was a loud roll on the drums and the leader of the band announced into the microphone: Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, we have Miss Jennifer here, to sing for you. Please give her a hand.
Miss Jennifer swam out of the darkness, bowing and bobbing, a paper-pale, matronly woman, in a skin-tight crimson sheath covered with silver spangles.
Hi folks! she trilled in a thin, high voice, full of professional gaiety. Hi there! Come on now then, get yourself ready, you all, for a whole bagful of fun.
The spotlights spun, her spangles erupted into flashes of colour and she strutted down to the table next to us.
Now then, she said huskily into the microphone. Who have we got here?
The two middle-aged businessmen who were sitting at the table wriggled in shy delight. She patted their cheeks, but when they stretched their hands out to touch her, she slapped them away and danced out of reach, noisily clicking her tongue.
My, my, she said, looking at them through her eyelashes. Aren’t we naughty today?
If she comes here, Robi said into his glass, I’m going to knock her teeth in.
