The Artist of Disappearance

by Anita Desai

  The clerical creature folded his hands and asked me not to bother. 'I am deeply sorry to disturb your rest,' he said in a voice just slightly above the whine of a mosquito, perhaps closer to the sound of a small cricket.

  I found my habitual annoyance beginning to creep back and said abruptly, 'What can I do for you?'

  'Sir, I have come from the Mukherjee estate thirty-five miles from here,' the poor man brought out as if embarrassed to make a statement that might sound boastful. Why should it? I wondered, and waited. 'I have served the family for fifty years,' he went on, barely above a whisper, and kept touching, nervously, his small white beard like a goat's—a goatee.

  'I don't know the place,' I told him.

  'Sir, it was once the largest estate in the district,' he said imploringly, seeing that I needed to be persuaded. 'The family owned fields of jute and rice and even tea and cinchona in the north. Also coal mines. Many properties in the district belonged to them. They were rented out. It was my duty to keep account of it all. In those days I had many assistants, it was too much for me to handle alone. My father had served before me and I was employed by the family when I was still a boy. They trusted my family and they put it all in my hands.'

  This was going to be a long story, I realised, if I was to allow him to unfold it at this pace. We might need to travel backwards to generations now long gone, pallid ghosts disappearing one after the other into the dark night of the past. When would we arrive in the daylight of the present? I wondered, sitting up with a jerk to accept a glass of water from the chowkidar and hoping by my brisk action to indicate that my time was valuable and it was running out.

  But, like a mosquito that has got under one's net and can't be driven out, the ancient gnome went on murmuring, and the tale he had to tell was exactly the one I had feared: the usual saga of a descent from riches to rags, the property fragmenting as the sons of one generation quarrelled and insisted on ill-judged divisions, the gradual crumbling of wealth as tenant farmers failed to pay rent, and litigation that never led to solutions, only protracted the death throes. Then the house itself, the one the family had occupied while it multiplied, falling down piecemeal, the cost of repair and maintenance making its eventual disintegration inevitable.

  The familiar story of the fabled zamindars of old. I could have recited any number of them to this poor, whispering ancient who seemed to think his was the only such story to be told.

  But at some point—perhaps I had dozed off briefly, then woken—I began to hear what he was saying. It was the word 'museum' that had the effect of a mosquito bite after a long spell of droning.

  'The museum at our house was started by Srimati Sarita Mukherjee who was married to my master in the year 19—when she was thirteen and he sixty years of age. She was the second wife of Sri Bhupen Mukherjee who inherited the property from his father Debabrata Mukherjee in 19—. He had no issue from his first marriage. Srimati Sarita Devi was of the Sinha family that resides in Serampore. The family was wealthy and accordingly she brought with her a substantial dowry. It was not so large in property as in gold and gems. The family was known for its love of art and literature and she had grown up in the company of educated men and women and had some education herself.

  'It was not easy for her to adjust to the life on our estate, which is not only a great distance from her home but far from any other estate in our district. Sri Bhupen Mukherjee, being an only son, had no brothers or sisters-in-law who might have provided her with some company. Naturally she had many lonely years as the only lady in the house. Then, when she was nineteen years of age, a son was born to her. Sri Jiban Mukherjee gave us all joy as he was the natural heir and we had great hopes he would keep the estate intact and make it prosper. Sadly, Sri Bhupen Mukherjee did not live much longer and could take pride in his heir for only a few short years before he expired. So my duty became very clear to me: I had to make sure that the inheritance that came to the young boy would be substantial and he and his mother would lack for nothing.'

  At this point I found my knee beginning to jog involuntarily up and down. I am sure it was because I was growing impatient to learn: did she create a museum? Did it exist?

  'Then we had a number of bad years in a row when the rains did not come and the crops were ruined and our coal mines suffered one disaster after another and had to be abandoned. For several years the estate had no income at all, only losses. There was no money available for repairs and maintenance. We were forced to take loans simply to keep the place running and we fell into debt.

  'Times did improve but whatever income there was had to be spent on paying off debts. It was sad to see Srimati Sarita Devi's face so careworn and her hair turn grey before her time. She was burdened with worry not only with regard to finances but also to her son Sri Jiban's upbringing and education of which she had sole responsibility after the death of his father.'

  At this point the narrator paused. He seemed crushed by the sadness of what he had to relate. I found I had become involved with it in spite of myself and so had to allow him to unfold the tale at his own pace which was slow but persistent. Having run out of books to read, even so slight and familiar a story as I was hearing now had enough interest to keep me from seeing off this unwelcome insect of a visitor.

  'I am sorry to say she had to sell her gold and jewellery bit by bit to pay for his education as the estate itself could not bear the expense. She saw to it that he was sent to the best school in Calcutta, one run by the Jesuit fathers, and thereafter to university in England as his father would have wished. We had great hopes that on his return with a degree in law, he would set up a successful practice as a barrister so that he could support his mother in the manner to which she was born.'

  His voice had grown so low that it seemed to mimic the dusk into which the circuit house, its veranda and the surrounding wilderness had sunk, leaving us in darkness, and for a while I could barely hear him at all, but perhaps that was because the chowkidar had arrived with a mosquito coil which he lit to drive away the mosquitoes now beginning to swarm, then went indoors to pump a Flit gun vigorously for the same purpose, and finally turned on the lights. He also coughed repeatedly, in a blatantly false manner, to signal it was time for my visitor to leave so he could serve me my dinner, then retire. I could interpret all these signs after my protracted stay in the circuit house but my visitor ignored him and after a few long sighs resumed his narrative.

  'Unfortunately, Sri Jiban, having lived abroad for several years, could not adjust to life on our estate or even to Calcutta. He had no interest in the affairs of the estate and left it all to his mother to take care of as before. We waited to see what his plans were for the future. Naturally he did not confide in me but one day I saw him packing his bags and heard him send for a tonga to take him to the nearest railway station. His mother wept as she saw him drive away and when I attempted to console her by saying he would surely return soon, she replied she did not think he would because he was planning a long sea voyage to countries in the East. I was astounded by this information because I did not see how he could fund such an ambitious voyage; nor could I see its purpose. I then learned she had sold the last of her jewellery to finance his desire.'

  I was now beginning to wonder why I was being made privy to the family's secrets. I would have risen to my feet to indicate the time I had given him was now up, but something about his posture, so crushed, his hands held tightly together as if in agony, and the way his old white head trembled on its thin stalk of a neck stopped me. Also, frankly, I wanted to know where the story would go.

  To my surprise, he now lifted his head so I could see his expression more clearly by the light that fell on us from the lighted rooms within, and I saw that he looked quite serene, almost joyful.

  'Then the boxes began to arrive. They came from Burma, from Thailand, from Indonesia, from Malaya, Cambodia, the Philippines and even China and Japan, containing such objects as had never been seen in our part of the world! People would com
e from their villages miles away to our gates to watch the bullock carts they had seen hauling these boxes to our door, and there was much talk about what they might contain.' He actually laughed at this point, a dry rustling in his throat like that made by a bird or insect in a bush, a kind of cackle you might call it. 'Our people are simple folk. They have no knowledge of the world and the countries our young master had visited but, seeing the size of the containers, they thought he was involved in trade and that he had made a fortune so he could send his mother treasures in the form of silks and jewels and other valuable goods.' He shook his head now at their foolishness and gullibility. 'They believed the young master would return a wealthy man and restore our estate,' and here his laugh ended in a small hiccup. 'We opened the containers as they came and were astonished by what we found. He had sent us few letters or messages and we could only conjecture where he had been and where he had found or purchased the goods revealed to us.'

  'And—?'

  'One room after the other was filled with these objects. We brought in carpenters to build glass cases and put up shelves to display them. Each container provided the contents for a different room, the rooms that had been empty for so long—we had been selling items of furniture and other belongings ever since we fell upon hard times—and now they were filled again. Visitors came to the house and were astonished by what they saw. One even wished to make a catalogue of these objects and publish it to make the collection known. Srimati Sarita Devi could not tell them anything about the objects or where her son had obtained them, but they gave her great solace because they allowed her to accompany him on his voyage. Only I was perturbed: I did not see the use of such things. They were objects of beauty and interest, but what was the use of collecting them? I could not see, but Srimati Sarita Devi did. She told me, "Bijan, we are creating a great museum. My son's collection is forming a museum that people will hear about all over our land and will come from far to see."'

  Ah, so there was a museum! I found myself growing excited to learn this had not been merely a rumour or a folk tale but actually existed. I even asked him if I could come and visit it.

  At this he first closed his eyes as if in weariness, then opened them wide with a radiant gaze, and cried out, 'Sir, this is my dearest wish! Come, please come and visit us, advise me what to do! I am old now, as you see, and I do not know what will become of it once I am gone. Already people—visitors, perhaps even members of our own staff who have learned there are no guards, no security—have been removing some small objects. I have myself seen these things appearing in markets here and there. The only way open to me to keep it intact is to request the government, the sarkar, take it over and maintain it. If you come and see it for yourself, you will see how great the need is for security and support. Without it—' He broke off, as if the alternative was unthinkable, and mopped his face with a cloth he withdrew from his pocket.

  But was there no alternative? Did the errant son not return to his ancestral property? What of Srimati Sarita Devi, his mother? What were her wishes in the matter? I tried to probe tactfully.

  'Sir,' the unhappy man confessed, 'she left us with no instructions.'

  This seemed vague to me. Had she died and 'left for her heavenly abode' as they say in the classified columns of our newspapers? Or moved out of the museum/mausoleum and left it to him? He seemed strangely unwilling to say. He had come to the end of his narrative and had, he seemed to indicate, no more to say. 'The collection' was all that was left at the end of it.

  My own enthusiasm came to an abrupt halt as if it had met with an obstruction, a speed break. I began to see only too well the tangle of legal problems ahead. Not at all what I had imagined, although I should have done so. I felt let down by the realisation that it all came down to practicalities, legal and administrative. Just as if I hadn't had my fill of these. While others dreamt dreams and lived lives of imagination and adventure, my role was only to take care of the mess left by them.

  My curiosity about the museum and my desire to see it were quickly evaporating. But, if they afforded me a break from the daily routine of office and courtroom in this oppressively limited outpost, why not accept? I told him I would have my driver bring me, asked for directions, and found a suitable date. His gratitude made him practically bow before me—a display of obsequiousness that was more than I could bear. I turned my head and went in to my dinner, leaving him to find his own way out.

  I should have known better than to expect some miraculous Xanadu. As my jeep bumped and bounced its way along the mudbank that passed for a road between flattened fields of stubble with only an occasional coconut tree or grove of bananas beside a stagnant pond to break the monotony of a landscape bleached of colour, my expectations dwindled and sobered. The last stretch ended at what no doubt had been an imposing gateway, but now consisted of two pillars of brick with parasitic trees growing out of the cracks, and only some rusty hinges left to show where the wrought-iron gates had hung.

  Ahead of us lay what had probably been the driveway but was now a grassy field in which a few skeletal cows grazed, watched over by a cowherd with a staff. He stood with one foot resting against the knee of the other leg like a flamingo blackened by the sun. His face did register some astonishment at seeing a motor vehicle make its way over the hummocky grass, but other than that he made no acknowledgement of our intrusion. And the cows merely switched their tails and flicked their ears at our passing and a few cattle egrets took off from their flanks with lazy flaps of their wings.

  Having traversed the length of the field we came to what had to be 'the palace' I had come to see. What did I expect? There was a broad flight of stairs with grass growing between the flagstones, and beyond it the mournful remains of what I had been assured was once the most substantial house in the district. At first sight I could make out no architectural features in the blackened, crumbling ruin.

  Only time, and dissolution.

  But here came my acquaintance, the clerk/caretaker, tumbling recklessly down the irregular stairs while adjusting the cap on his head and the buttons of his long black cloth coat as if these gave him his identity and status. Yet his manner on greeting me was gracious and courtly in a way that could only be called 'cultured' or even 'aristocratic', and I felt a twinge of shame at recalling how brusquely I had dismissed him. Although, when he launched into a flowery speech of gratitude at my coming, his joy at seeing me, the honour it accorded him and the house he served, I could not help cutting him short and being curt once again. I suggested we set about doing our tour.

  He insisted, however, that I first rest a little and take some refreshment. On the broad veranda spread around the rooms like a lap on which they had settled, a table had been set with an embroidered cloth and a tarnished silver tray on which was a jug, covered with a square of net edged with beads, and some tall metal tumblers. A servant boy emerged from somewhere— a coal-hole, I conjectured—to pour out some coloured sherbet drink that I was not able to refuse.

  'Bring the keys,' my host the clerk commanded, assuming the posture of one whose right it was to give orders. Before my eyes he became stiffly upright—still small of course but upright nevertheless—his mouth set in a firm line, his eyes sharp and watchful, his bearing almost arrogant. Here was a person, I saw, who was much more capable of commanding than I was. I observed him and the air with which he accepted the ring of keys from the servant boy as though they were the keys to a castle, his castle. Then, to my surprise, he held them behind his back with one hand, and with the other gestured to me to precede him through an open door. Were the keys only some part of a charade?

  We entered the hall of the palace of the past between two marble—or highly polished ceramic—slave figures holding up lamps filled with dust and dead moths; they had onyx for eyes that bulged grotesquely out of their heads.

  The room itself was empty except for a small marble-topped table on ornate legs, carved like dragons. Under it was what looked like a china chamber pot—but could tha
t be? Perhaps I have imagined or misinterpreted it, and other details. On the faded, mottled walls portraits hung from long ropes and huge nails, tilting forward as if to peer down at us. They were photographs in the main but tinted by hand to look like paintings, a strange technique by which one art was imposed on another, leaving the surface oddly ambiguous. One was of a small man in a large turban who stood in front of a dead tiger with its mouth propped open in a snarl; another of a large man with whiskers that bristled like the tiger's, seated upon a gilt chair. Yet another image of perhaps the same man standing, his foot on a recently murdered elephant, a gun in his hand and a row of barely clad servants—beaters?—on either side.

  And then one of a woman, scarcely more than a child, slender, her cheeks tinted pink and with strands of pearls around her neck from which hung one large gem tinted green. She wore an old-fashioned blouse with long puffed sleeves that ended in lace at the wrists, and a sari that fell in sculpted folds from her shoulders to her slippered feet, its silver trim draped over her head where her hair was parted in two wings over wide-set eyes. This was the only female portrait, and as we passed it, I heard the clerk sigh, 'Srimati Sarita Devi.' Or perhaps I imagined that because I wished it to be her, the child bride. Since he had not said 'The late Srimati' I still did not know if she was alive, somewhere in the recesses of this faded mansion, and if I would be taken to meet her, or if she was the late, departed Srimati S. My escort remained silent on the matter.

  He was already showing me into an adjoining hall where the beasts slaughtered by this family had been embalmed and stuffed to look lifelike or had had their pelts removed and stretched out upon the walls under a forest of antlers and the mounted heads of glass-eyed stags. I tried to avoid looking up at them: I did not enjoy the sensation of being watched, accusingly I thought. 'The men in the family were great hunters,' my guide said, as if explanation were needed, and I could detect neither apology nor pride in his voice because he kept it as low as if we were in a mausoleum. I decided it was merely respectful so I too tried to look respectful but must have failed: my father had also been a hunter in his days and I had not liked to look on his trophies or hear about his exploits which sounded boastful and made my mother cringe. I probably looked merely blank as I stared at the scalloped and scaly skin of a crocodile or of a python, mottled and moth-like, one resembling broken rubble, the other faded netting. I turned to the clerk, who had his hands behind his back and his head uplifted to these specimens he was set here to guard, and indicated I wished to hurry on. But, before leaving this chamber of death, I had to pass a large, pot-like object by the door. From its folds and wrinkles and the massive flattened toenails, I discerned it to be the foot of an elephant. In case I missed the point of this dismemberment, some umbrellas had been placed in it, their cloth covering frayed and their tin ribs exposed.