“I left that sort of thing to others,” said his uncle as, looking right and left, they walked past Belsize Avenue. “It’s possible to take shortcuts writing poetry in English. There are no shortcuts to writing Bengali poetry.”
So not only was he claiming to be different from deluded friends (including Ananda’s father) who had, seized by the poetry bug, fooled themselves into thinking they were poets: he was having a go at Ananda and the new species he belonged to, of aberrants who’d elected to write, ridiculously, in English. Shortcuts! Was he saying that it was easier to be a fraudulent poet in English than in Bengali?
“Of course Chhorda began by writing some remarkable poems.” This was the older brother in Shillong. That he’d grown partly dependent on his younger brother since retiring from the state civil service led Radhesh to feel a vicious recoil against a man he’d once worshipped for his refinement and even been intimidated by. “He asks me for money now; he used to treat me like an errand boy then!” A couple of times in Warren Street he’d even called Chhorda sneeringly by his pet name—Manu. Which had provoked Ananda’s mother to heartfelt protest and remonstrance. Which had led to his uncle tugging her by the hair in rage and Ananda giving him a push that sent him flying back. They came to the steps of the Hampstead Town Hall, his uncle adding proudly: “What a sensation it was when Desh published one of his poems when he was sixteen!” It was a big deal to have a poem out in Desh in those days, whether you were from Calcutta or Sylhet, sixteen or sixty.
“Was it good? The poem?” Ananda was well aware that his uncle had it by heart.
“It was beautiful—yes.” He made the inevitable qualification: “Naturally, it bore the imprint of Tagore’s diction and cadence. Very hard to escape that.” English poets couldn’t match Tagore for his finesse. European poets largely didn’t exist. And no Bengali poet, whether it was his older brother or the great Jibanananda Das, could avoid visiting a tone and terrain that was already Tagore’s. Better, then, for the Bengali not to write poetry at all, and just read Tagore; his uncle had demonstrated the wisdom of this in the decision he’d long ago taken: to abstain.
“Also, that first flush—when Chhorda saw the world in a peculiar vibrant glow, in a colour close to purple—that faded. He told me he could never see that vivid colour after seventeen. Then he stopped writing poems.” And became a minor addition to the Assam Civil Service.
—
They paused before the Screen on the Hill. There was nothing to draw them immediately. Mostly the Screen on the Hill catered to the delicate art-house audience that lived in this environment. Contrary, lonely English people who were at once deeply, visibly English and gently Francophile. Hardly any of the movies that he and his uncle liked to watch together—James Bond played by Sean Connery. Tonight at 7 p.m. it was Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.
—
Ananda’s uncle’s older brother’s poem. From Desh. He’d recited it during one of their strolls round the area, as if it were a canonical event, something that had subtly changed the world—at least his world. It was a strange poem for a sixteen-year-old to write—neither idealistic nor excessively emotional, but one that quietly observed a small but decisive transition in the young poet’s life. At first, Ananda thought it was addressed, as is the norm, to a woman—perhaps real, but probably imaginary. Then he heard from his uncle that these were lines written by his brother to their late father. Like “Surprised by Joy,” which records the realisation, in the midst of the poet’s natural elation, of the fact of his dead daughter’s absence, his uncle’s poem—the uncle who lived in Shillong—acknowledged the memory (breaking the day’s everyday, forgetful rhythm) that his father was gone; yet not quite gone. Written years ago. What did it mean to grow up without a father? Ananda knew that his grandfather was an engineer, and that his death in the riding accident had left his wife and children struggling. They’d never recovered. Ananda’s mother had been two when her father died; Rangamama three and a half. He’d maybe taken it worse than the others—it gave him an exaggerated sense of what he might have been. The older siblings had rallied, but for a while dabbled in the planchette to establish their father’s whereabouts. Then they’d set aside that nonsense in favour of marrying and having children, for the relief of letting their own childhood go.
—
“I wasn’t cut out for writing poems. Didn’t have the time for that kind of thing,” said his uncle with manly pride. “I had to be there—have to be there—for my family. I chose that role for myself.”
The black sheep, ordered to run errands. Used-car salesman. Now living in the cave in 24 Belsize Park, issuing cheques to a list of petitioners—close as well as obscure relations (relations’ relations) whom Ananda had never heard of—in corners of Bengal and Assam. The solitary, faraway pillar of a family scattered and dispersed: that’s how his uncle saw himself.
They were near the Belsize Bookshop. Its half-forgotten cocoon always a temptation to encroach on. To his uncle he said:
“You don’t have to write poems. There are people who make their life a poetic work. You may be one of them.”
Rangamama didn’t so much accompany his nephew as skulk slightly behind. Sometimes, when they were shoulder to shoulder, they collided sideways. His uncle nodded. He seemed intrigued. Certainly, the analysis was in tune with his own self-mythologising. (Having absorbed Ananda’s words, he would probably quote them back to him three days later, imagining he’d thought them up himself.) Once, in the course of a heated dialogue in which his uncle’s greatness was clearly not being adequately addressed, he’d snapped: “Do you realise I’m God?” Instead of pointing him to a psychiatrist, Ananda had controlled himself and replied that maybe all men, in some capacity, were God, and they’d both had the good sense to leave it at that. Another time, when they were discussing Ananda’s father’s many attractive qualities, his composure and general sanity, his uncle had said competitively: “There are many planes of existence. The people on the lower don’t see the ones on the higher. For example, there are beings around us now we can’t see. Your father can’t really see me. I’m on a different plane—invisible to him, like a ghost.” Ananda had forgotten to throttle him because he was mesmerised. Another time: “Do you know Jagannath?” The Lord of the Universe; yes, of course. “Do you know why he’s so ugly?” The likenesses of Jagannath were aboriginal, autochthonic: two stumps for arms; orbs for eyes—owl-like. “As Jagannath created the universe, he gave more and more of himself, denuding his form—until he became what you see today: incredibly ugly; a misshapen stub.” Narrated with melodramatic quietude. When he searched for this version of the myth in books, he found it nowhere—till he concluded it was his uncle’s invention, an allegorical account of himself. In this story, he saw himself giving and giving to a family that no longer cared for how he lived, that sucked him dry as he continued indefinitely in 24 Belsize Park, leaving him in the physical state he was now in: in the old three-piece suit, the incisor missing, the broad and full (and vibrant, Ananda thought) nose somehow highlighted by the hair cropped to pinpricks by the barber.
—
“Hello.”
“Hello.”
Inside the Belsize Bookshop. The general air—as they entered—was not quite what greeted Ananda when he sneaked into one of the porn shops near Wardour Street: studied indifference. Here, the eye-contact was normal, unhesitating. The man seemed vaguely charmed by Ananda’s uncle—and why not, given the broad toothless smile he’d thrown him as they walked in?
On the table with other new arrivals was, displayed frontally, Geoffrey Hill’s Collected Poems, a paperback, with the lapidary KING PENGUIN on the top. Strange picture on the jacket, bright but oddly forbidding, of what looked like an angel wrestling with a man. Ananda turned the book over and noted the painting was by Gauguin—obviously not one of his Tahiti scenes. Nestor Davidson admired Hill—could he be slightly in awe of him, like the rest? No, Mr. Davidson wasn’t one to submit in that way; but he’d rec
ommended even the later, difficult poems. Strange creature, Hill. Was he more English or European? Antique or contemporary? Ananda opened the book gingerly, read with pleasure the first dour line of biography on the first page: “…son of a police constable.” The epic begins in the ordinary; “There is no bloodless myth will hold,” Hill himself had sternly written. Ananda had read and been drawn to the early poetry; he turned page after page of stately verse, jealously compressed, and full of icy hauteur, till he lighted on “Ovid in the Reich.” It was tiny; he knew it. He’d first noticed it in an anthology. He read it now in one gulp, then slowly reread the second, final, perplexing stanza:
I have learned one thing: not to look down
So much upon the damned. They, in their sphere,
Harmonize strangely with the divine
Love. I, in mine, celebrate the love-choir.
A customer rustled by. “Excuse me,” said Ananda, moving to his right. You were often blocking people’s paths in this country. You were meant to. If you hadn’t come between someone and their destination at least once in the day, you must find a means of doing so. Slowing others down—as with a car stationary at a zebra crossing—affirmed sociableness. He returned to the page. Was this Ovid speaking in the poem? He’d been banished, hadn’t he, for an obscure misdemeanour? By some Emperor? Was it Augustus? No, it couldn’t be—Augustus was the guy after whom August was named. Would Ovid have been able to be so equanimous about the Nazis? Perhaps, in Tomis, on his sequestered estate, he wouldn’t have heard too much about Auschwitz, except as rumour. Who were the “damned” here? (Hindu theology had no concept of damnation—this could be why Ananda was fascinated by it.) Were they the wretched in the concentration camps? Or the functionaries and commanders who directed their fate? If the latter, then it was probably okay to make that ironical, faux mystical remark about them “harmonizing strangely” with “the divine love.” But if it was the former, then wasn’t such a statement inadmissible, even revolting? He reconsidered the lines. For some reason, he found he’d been reading them each time as “I have learned one thing: not to look down / Too much upon the damned”; rather than “so much,” as in the poem. He’d grown attached to the misreading. He smiled. It brought to the voice a senatorial wryness, the private sense of humour of a marginalised man. “So much” gave Ovid an aloofness he couldn’t possibly have had any more in Tomis.
Ananda put the Collected Poems where it had been, half leaning, half standing. He walked over to the Crime/Horror section, where his uncle stood with his back to him, fussily poring over some pages as if they contained a legal correspondence. To see him doing anything silently was exemplary; he spoke incessantly, so that silence changed him, like those aliens he’d sometimes describe—those who are near us, deceptively normal.
“Which one?” Ananda asked, and his uncle blinked, smiling with genial remoteness.
It was Skeleton Crew—the new collection by Stephen King.
“Any good?” Ananda asked the question academically, without seriousness.
“It is good,” said his uncle. “His stories are usually engrossing—about uncanny occurrences that change people’s lives.” Approbation for a writer was unexpected, except where Tagore was concerned—out of tune with his personality.
The taste for Stephen King had evolved quite recently though, and swiftly. Ananda was still getting accustomed to it—to the unrelenting onward stride, after more than a decade defined by the Pan Book of Horror Stories.
“Maybe I should buy it,” said his uncle, narrowing his eyes. “I’ve gone through all the books in the library.” By “all” he meant horror, the supernatural, life after death—that queasy, uneasy addendum to literature; even so, it was unlikely he could have actually exhausted the lot. “One of the staff said they’re closing the library next year,” he added. Ananda was a bit taken aback. He’d never seen this library—never needed to—but hadn’t thought it would just vanish. He read about such developments in the papers only with the faintest attention, events on the hazy outskirts of the endless, ugly debate about the National Health Service. Opera house closures. Local authorities. Public money. What would his uncle do now?
“Should I get it?” he said with agonised self-absorption. The question wasn’t meant for Ananda; he was asking it of himself, aloud.
Ananda, eavesdropping, volunteered: “If you need it, take it.” Horror, murder, like poetry, were addictions; they were meant to numb and enchant simultaneously—to insidiously engender the desire they satisfied. It depended on how much you could get by with—or without—in a day.
“I have one I’m midway through,” said his uncle, visibly doing some mental arithmetic. “It should last me three—no, maybe four—days.” He was looking for reassurance about his chances of survival.
“Then you’ll be fine,” said Ananda, trying desperately to extricate Skeleton Crew from his uncle’s grip. “You’re in no desperate rush to get it.”
5
Heading for Town
They were pointed to the city. Not the City, where his uncle used to work. No, towards London. Of course, King’s Cross was on the very verge of the capital-see City; but it was its utter opposite. No money seemed to reach it.
—
They had, in October, embarked on the 168 from Belsize Park, reaching Euston—from there, his uncle holding forth, walked till they were in York Way. Here, they woke to sunlit industrial blankness. This was neither Belsize Park nor Oxford Street. What then? They hit upon a notion—they were in “Dickens’s London.” “You can feel it’s still there,” Ananda observed tersely.
—
They now came to the abattoir-like entrance of Belsize Park tube station. The rush of souls was swelling, given it was Friday. But there were still fewer people going in the direction they were compared to the first lot of homecomers. The revellers headed for Leicester Square and Oxford Circus would increase in an hour.
Ananda plunged his hand into his pocket to take out the travel card valid till midnight. His uncle carried, in a flap in his wallet, his pensioner’s travel pass, which gave him infinite freedom to avail himself of both spheres of London public transport—underworld and overground.
The shorn head on the pass was strangely futuristic.
“Never get your photo taken in a booth,” said his uncle. “You’ll look darker than you really are. It’s because the booth cameras are adjusted to make white skin look normal.”
On descending, they were greeted by “Morden via King’s Cross 5 mins”: a relief. On the tube, his uncle pointed out, “Pupu—we could have seen a film.” But they had—last week. Ananda’s mother had flown away, and they, returning from Heathrow to a London that seemed dream-like, had gone to the cinema. In the Leicester Square Odeon, their bodies clenching with each explosion and blow, they watched A View to a Kill. It was an irony that they both adored Sean Connery but had never watched him in a cinema in unison. The first Bond film they’d seen together—also Ananda’s first Bond movie ever—was a Roger Moore, Live and Let Die. They’d caught it in Swiss Cottage in 1973. Last week, witnessing again with concern Roger Moore get into all sorts of scrapes but surviving them to brush the dust off his jacket and straighten his tie, Ananda’s uncle had leaned towards him and murmured: “Pupu, what would we do in such a situation? We’d be hopeless!” Despite Ananda’s uncle setting up a somewhat presumptuous equivalence between them, it was true. They weren’t designed for action. Actually, neither was good with even ordinary mechanical things. Ananda was sure this was why his uncle shunned the debit card. The most complex operation Ananda himself had completed was changing a light bulb (in his studio flat, but also for Mandy). Ananda wasn’t sure if his uncle’s ineptitude had anything to do with Saturn. “Shani”—Saturn—“rules my life,” his uncle had told him, to account for the lack of momentum in his professional career. Ananda had read that people governed by Saturn were, besides being ditherers, great fumblers.
King’s Cross was a paradoxical place at 6 p.m.
: swarming with commuters, and lonely. Ignoring the rush, a bunch of people seemed to stand outside the station just waiting, smoking, kissing, or staring at the Pentonville Road.
“What are we doing here?” asked Ananda, raising his eyebrows.
“But it was very interesting when we came last!”
That was in the autumn, when the Durga Pujas were exiled from Hampstead to the Camden Town Hall—which was just out of sight of King’s Cross Station. Harrumphing Bengalis with their slow-footed wives had suddenly appeared. They too—Ananda’s mother, his uncle, he—had come, having heard of the move. They’d crossed at the traffic lights, not certain where, in the by-lanes, the venue was. His mother wasn’t capable of long walks. It was Saptami, which, despite its meaning—“the seventh day”—was the start of festivities.
—
“Hello love, how are you?” A tall ungainly woman in a top revealing round white shoulders had been passing up and down, preoccupied, a cigarette in her cupped palm. Suddenly friendly with his uncle. Who seemed neither interested nor harried; he whispered to Ananda in that candid baritone: “Be careful, there are many of them here.” Ananda felt affronted she hadn’t addressed him. She’d looked through Ananda. What made his uncle worthy of the approach? He wondered what the rate was.
Difficult, this evening (it was getting on to half past six) to feel that Puja magic or, for that matter, the atmosphere of “Dickens’s London.” Turning into York Way, they found it hard to proceed. The pavement was thick with office workers waiting for buses.
Odysseus Abroad Page 14
