As the taxi dropped them in a dark side-street in La Linea by a shop full of cigarette lighters, Sir Hasan looked questioningly at the tall, silent figure of his guide, and searched his soft, dark, shifty eyes. Sammy gave him his arm even as he rang the bell of the house and assured him, again that he was in safe hands...
As Sir Hasan came to from the sleepy stupor which seemed to have descended on him in the arms of a houri in heaven, he found himself very much on earth. He was lying outside the door of that house in the side-street where he fancied he had entered. A wave of nausea passed through his stomach as he felt for his wallet in the pocket of his trousers and found that it wasn’t there. He beat his head and burst out weeping. But his fez cap protected his head. Suddenly he thought of searching for the wallet in his jacket. He found that he only had his waistcoat on; the jacket of the Ranken & Co’s suit was missing. He pushed his eager, trembling hands into the waistcoat pockets, but they were empty.
He gave one piercing groan and with wide open mouth poised for shouting, raised himself up from the threshold and struck the doors with empty hands. The hard wooden door only thudded back with a hard answer.
In the layers of anguish beneath the bottomless misery in his soul he remembered Sam; and the assurance that the traitor had given him at this very spot. Without a doubt he was the pimp of the place because, when he had rung the bell, a little aperture had opened within the great door and a face had poked out.
Sir Hasan rang the bell and waited, but there was the same hard answer: the thudding wood echoing a dull thud.
He looked round. There was no one in the street. Only the glass of the cigarette lighter shop reflected back the radiance of the sky on the corner.
A motor car rushed past in the main street a hundred yards away. Sir Hasan called aloud ‘taxi’ and ran towards it, only to find himself in an empty street.
Suddenly the thought struck him: the ship. What time was it? His hands automatically reached for the gold chain adjusted to the Hunter watch in his waistcoat pocket. Neither the chain nor the watch was there.
Blind with rage and hot tears he ran towards a street which looked out to sea — but half way he realised that the harbour may not be visible from there, and that, anyhow, it was morning while the boat was supposed to have left the previous night.
His heart sank and he ran back to the main street in a panic almost as he had done when he had got lost in Mori Ganj as a child. But the heavy buttocks of his respectable body refused to go forward at such speed.
He wiped the sweat off his face and recited a few verses of the Koran, suitable for frightening off jinns in the dark. Then he paced along, his eyes bulging out to catch sight of a human being.
A man with an apron tied round his middle was throwing some bones to a dog by a shop where a few men were seated under an awning, apparently a cafe.
Sir Hasan walked towards the cafe. But, even as he advanced, the fear assailed him that he didn’t know the language of the place, or any European language except English, and might not be able to make himself understood. His fears were justified, for as he said aloud, ‘Ship! They take my wall! Coat! Watch chain!’ with copious gestures of his arms, the proprietor-waiter waved him to a chair in the most perfunctory manner and only asked: ‘Cafe au lait?’
Sir Hasan was desperate and turned to the two or three men who were eating rolls and drinking coffee. They turned their heads and merely whispered to each other: ‘Negro.’
When the proprietor brought a cup of coffee and put it on a table and said, ‘Something, something, Monsieur?’ to Sir Hasan, the Knight Commander of the Star of India walked away in disgust, followed by the curses and contemptuous jeers of the whole cafe.
He recalled he had seen a police guard at the gateway to La Linea as he travelled in the taxi last night with that wretch Sammy Ragavacharia. He began to walk back towards it. His feet dragged almost as if he had on the old native style shoes which he used to wear in the days before he became a public figure; his legs behaved as if they were loose in a tehmet; his body sweated as though he had set off canvassing in the market one early morning, in the manner of the days when he was his own firm’s traveller... What had happened, he asked himself? The air, the sky, the earth today were the same as yesterday, but he felt other than the assured traveller, the ambassador on his way to England. What had happened?
Everything had happened. ‘I have been betrayed,’ the answer came back from the surviving sense of dignity in his being. ‘Cheated and robbed and insulted,’ he protested. ‘My wallet gone and —’
But he didn’t dare to look at himself, he didn’t have the courage to ask himself what had happened. Only, he was eager to repair the damage. And he hurried to the frontier, feeling desolate and forsaken, utterly lost and exhausted.
The Spanish gendarme passed him on to the British sergeant, after giving Sir Hasan a contemptuous look, and the Tommy, who was lighting a cigarette, said: ‘ Now, mate, what is the trouble?’
Sir Hasan began to tell him his story with all the pent-up passion of futility.
‘Now, don’t get excited,’ said the Englishman. ‘I am not taken in by people like you. If you want to go and sell your bloody carpets in Gibraltar you’d better go and get a proper passport from the Spanish authorities and I’ll let you across the frontier...’
Sir Hasan protested vociferously that he was not a carpet seller, and lost his temper. The Punjabi passions in him welled up at the insult to his izzat and he stormed and raved at the sergeant like a lunatic.
‘Orders,’ was all the Sergeant would say, shrugging his shoulders. And when he couldn’t make his excuse heard above the loud and filthy abuse which Sir Hasan was casting on him, he suddenly thumped his rifle on its butt end and stood menacingly.
If he had had any chance of proving who he was to the stupid sentry, Sir Hasan had now altogether lost it by his violent abuse of the man. And, frightened, broken and in a rage that could call Allah to open up the earth and engulf him in the fires of hell, he turned back.
But on a word from the British sentry, the Spanish gendarme caught Sir Hasan by the nape of his neck and shouted at him: ‘Passport.’
As Sir Hasan wrung his hands in vain, the gendarme took him towards a dungeon and threw him into a black hell worse even than any cellar in the basement of his own home in Mori Ganj, Amritsar, where he used to consign his erring servants now and then.
On the afternoon of that day an inquiry came through from Headquarters in Gibraltar, which incidentally revealed the identity of Sir Hasan Ali to the Sergeant of the guard at the frontier of La Linea. And, needless to say, the Englishman secured the release of the great man from the Spanish police after some difficulties and apologised profusely to the dignitary himself.
Was he mad? Sir Hasan asked himself as the car swung across the rock to the house of the Governor of Gibraltar. Or had he really been changed by the shock of this incident into the undignified person he had once been in his early life... But then he became aware of the difficulties he would have in conducting himself with dignity at the house of the Governor without his jacket and in trousers which had been creased by the ill usage he had suffered the previous night. His small, humble soul shrank at the prospect of having to keep up appearances again...
Boots
Dedicated to Denys Val Baker
Looking through the haze of early sunshine, stabbed by the rays that probed every corner of her dark soul, scorched by the fire of heaven, the pinpoints of moisture trailing on the tip of her snub nose, she sat tying the last knot on the bundle of her personal belongings with hands that quivered like birds who sense the hunter’s approach.
There was as yet no sound in the gulley outside as she applied her ears to listen and she hurried, hoping to make a clean getaway before the creditors arrived. But the lower knot of the sheet in which she had bound her c
lothes was too thick to allow a similar knot on top. And in the emptiness of the courtyard beyond her, she could hear a low rumbling — was it the drumming of the elements? She could see the undulations of fluorescent screens of many tinted clouds cavorting like demons of destruction — could it be the jinns dancing round her husband’s spirit? She could feel caverns, deep chasms, between her hands — may be the jaws of Death opening up to receive her...?
Alone.
A whole aeon of sorrow stretched between her and the nebulous distances where he had travelled, earth and sea and snow and mud, all a grey nothingness, only swinging to the lilt of the tune:
‘Where have you gone, O my exile!’
Her eyes fell on the boots which she had carefully put on one side. They were too big to be packed into the bundle and too sacred to be left behind — those boots of the lord and master which she had put by the mandala where her brass idols stood, those boots which more than the gods had connected her to Jai Singh and which had thus become the incarnation of the Supreme God in her queer universe.
‘What a slender thread holds us together!’
It is a song or a pair of boots that makes the curve of remembrance on the taut emptiness of the lonely heart. And the wise concede wood and stones to all those who cannot see afar.
The whole of Gobindi’s life hung by the shoe laces of those artillery boots which Jai Singh had left behind in a fit of absent-mindedness on his embarkation leave. And she assembled them together and laid them on the top of the bundle so that they dangled on each side. Then she got up to see how the land lay and what chance there was of her getting away.
Like a shy gazelle she darted across the courtyard and stood behind the tattered length of jute cloth which curtained her off from the world. The thunderous drumming, which was her thumping heart, spread its wings on the air, and she gasped for breath. She recalled that that was what she had always felt like when she had come, a newly-wed bride, to his house and when evading her mother-in-law’s eyes, she used to go and wait at the door to hear if her husband was approaching. For, though she could not outrage the convention which said that a woman must never show affection, in secret she had harboured a wantonness in her bosom that was always bursting to embrace Jai Singh. He had been equally shy before his mother’s glare, but he used to steal back in the afternoons when the old woman was having her siesta and smiling, silent but light-hearted, he would take her in his arms and lay her down in the verandah... When the old woman had died he was already away fighting in the war, and they had never been able to give themselves to each other in the fullness of passion. Secret, like the scent of roses which he had brought her from Amritsar, was his love for her, but it lashed her body like a forest fire... Secret, like the failing breath of her body, was her love for him, but it had wrapped his soul so that he overstayed every leave. Secret, secret were the scars he had left on her soul in parting...
‘Where have you gone, O my exile!’
The tune haunted her until she felt faint.
But she lifted the jute cloth aside ever so gently and peered into the alley way. ‘No one... but...’ She retraced her head with a jerk. The old weaver woman, Phuphi, sat like a warden of the marches on the threshold of her house up the lane, drinking a saucerful of tea. The concentration in the dilated dark eyes of Phuphi had always frightened Gobindi, for she knew that the old woman was a confidante of her hard, narrow mother-in-law and it always seemed as if the latter had breathed her soul’s grim secrets into the ears of the weaver woman before her death. Phuphi had always talked of ‘rescuing her’ from the sinful glances of the menfolk. And the vigilant little shrivelled neck of the old woman, craning into the lane above the saucer of tea, was eloquent.
Gobindi stepped back into the courtyard, her head inclined to a side in order to listen.
A cock crowed in the yard of the old woman’s home. And she could hear Phuphi cursing.
The sudden realisation came to her that her plan to escape to her mother’s village was shattered. She scampered back to the verandah nevertheless, hoping against hope and lifted her bundle. But just then there was the sound of footsteps walking up the lane towards her house and she knew she was done for.
The boots rolled off the bundle and fell with a thud through her crumbling hands.
As she bent to pick them up, Seth Milap Chand was already at the door rattling the door latch and calling.
‘The wife of Jai Singh! Little one! May we come in?’
Gobindi sat down in a huddle and demurely pulling her head cloth over her eyes, answered: ‘Han Sethji, aao, come in.’
‘We wanted to avoid undue noise and talk and gossip by getting all this business over before many people are about,’ began Seth Milap Chand to cover his embarrassment. His thick-set form, was covered with sweat and his eyes were averted over his huge nose, surveying the property at the same time. ‘I have brought the gentleman who will buy the whole house, Dr Sain Das...’
Gobindi did not answer, but sat getting hotter and hotter on her bundle.
‘Come forward, Dr. Sahib,’ Milap Chand said.
Gobindi peered through the aperture of her head cloth and saw a black giant with glasses on his small eyes, a veritable elephant in an English suit, advancing with his arms on his hips. The old woman Phuphi came trailing, bent-back, behind them and some noisy children crowded in at the door.
‘If the back wall is pulled down, Dr. Sahib, the house faces the bazaar... I suggest you have a door put in there and let the male patients come in that way and keep the back door in the gulley for the purdah patients... It will do fine for your purposes, especially as the house next door will soon...’ He coughed and then nodding, continued: ‘By and by you can extend the practice...’
‘Hun!’ the elephant of a Doctor nodded. ‘Not much of a place, it will have to be rebuilt entirely later.’
‘But it is alright for the while, isn’t it?’ said Seth Milap Chand to clinch the bargain.
‘Hun, well it will have to do,’ the Doctor said.
‘So we will have a hospital here!’ said Phuphi. ‘Oh how my back aches. Perhaps Dr. Sahib can give me a poultice or something.’
‘Never you mind, old woman,’ said Milap Chand to shake her off.
‘What about the bedstead and the pots and pans?’ asked the Doctor. ‘They are with the house, I hope!’
‘Oh, I hadn’t thought of that, but we can discuss that later. I would like to go and have a bath at the well in the fields.’
‘To wash off your sins, I suppose,’ said the old woman. ‘Not ashamed to possess the property acquired through Gobindi’s prostitution!’
‘Phuphi mai!’ protested Gobindi between her tears.
‘Don’t bark, you two!’ shouted Milap Chand. ‘I have spared you all the humiliation of an auction. I specially brought over Dr. Sahib at great inconvenience to him early in the morning. And you —’
‘Leave them alone,’ said Dr. Sain Das, who did not want a row between the money lender and the old woman.
‘Achha, then, Dr. Sahib, let us go...’
At that instant his eyes fell on the bundle of goods and the boots which stood by Gobindi. So he lunged forward,shouting:
‘Thief! the daughter of a bitch! What were you stealing from here! Open that bundle. And those boots — my son Gulzari Lal wants those!’
The words stabbed Gobindi’s soul and she fluttered under the headcloth like a wounded bird, uttering hiccupping cries and sobbing even as she fell on her bundle.
‘Open it, bitch!’
‘Don’t be hard on her,’ old Phuphi rallied to the girl’s aid. ‘She had meant to give those boots to my son, as a last gift from Jai Singh. After all, the boys were friends.’
‘Open the bundle and let us see what you are taking away,’ said Dr. Sain Das authoritatively. ‘Old woman, ask her t
o open it.’
‘Come, my daughter, let these evil faces see what is in the bundle and I’ll see that they don’t deprive you of your personal things — those boots especially which you meant to give to my son, anyhow.’
A shock of horror went through Gobindi’s soul as the old woman came towards her. She left the bundle but clutched the boots.
‘Open that bundle!’ Milap Chand ordered.
Old Phuphi began to undo the knots on the bundle while the money lender and the Doctor came forward to see what was in it.
‘And give me those boots for Gulzari,’ said the money lender, pushing Gobindi away from where she clutched the memory of Jai Singh.
The whole of Gobindi’s life seemed to lie in the remembrances of that hold she had on the boots, and she felt her spirit rising and falling as the hope of saving the relic rose and fell.
‘There is nothing very much except her knick-knacks in the bundle,’ said Dr. Sain Das, gingerly exploring the clothes. ‘Those boots are the only worthwhile thing. I could do with them if I have to trudge through the countryside.’
‘Gulzari —’ began Milap Chand.
‘Eaters of your masters, they are already given away as a gift to my son,’ said the old woman, trying to wrest the pair from Gobindi.
Gobindi struggled with all the grim strength of her young body for a while, her headcloth falling away and revealing a face convulsed with suppressed sobs. But old Phuphi scratched with her claws and Seth Milap Chand thrust her aside with both hands while the Doctor kicked her as though she were a dog.
Lament on the Death of a Master of Arts… and Other Stories Page 7
