Amelia Dee and the Peacock Lamp

by Odo Hirsch

  The only problem, thought Amelia, was that Mr Vishwanath had too much time to sit there. He had very few students. Once or twice a week an old lady would arrive in a large, cream-coloured car, driven by a man in a uniform who would wait outside while the lady was in Mr Vishwanath’s studio. Everyone knew about her, because you could hardly miss her grand arrival or the sight of the driver waiting for her, although there were suspicions about whether she was there for yoga or for some other reason connected with Mr Vishwanath’s supposedly mysterious activities. From time to time someone else would ring the bell beside the door on the ground floor, but not very often. And if there were other students, Amelia didn’t know about them. It never once occurred to Amelia that this lack of students was because Mr Vishwanath wasn’t a good teacher. Anyone who could do the poses he performed in the back garden must be a true master of yoga. But how were people supposed to know what he could do, with only one tiny sign on the window of his studio and only Mr Vishwanath’s name on the sign?

  Anyone could see that Mr Vishwanath wasn’t rich. In fact, Amelia suspected he was quite poor. And yet she was sure he was an excellent teacher, and could have made a lot of money, if only people knew about him.

  ‘You should advertise, Mr Vishwanath,’ she said to him. ‘People just don’t know what you do.’

  It wasn’t the first time Amelia had said that. Mr Vishwanath turned to look at her, and didn’t reply.

  ‘It’s just a suggestion,’ said Amelia.

  Mr Vishwanath continued to look at her, as if considering the idea. Then he gazed at the garden again.

  ‘I could write the advertisement for you, if you like,’ said Amelia. ‘You could put it in the newspaper. And I’ll make you a sign, for your shop. A big sign, saying YOGA.’

  Amelia watched Mr Vishwanath’s face. A slight frown came over it at mention of the big sign saying YOGA, and then it was gone.

  She could just imagine the sign she would make. She would write YOGA in big gold letters, and underneath it she would draw a picture of Mr Vishwanath in one of his poses, maybe the one where he stood on one leg with his other foot hooked around his neck. Amelia wasn’t sure she could draw a really good picture of Mr Vishwanath, but she thought that if she waited until he came out into the back garden, and then sketched him when he was standing there with his eyes closed, she might get it right. On the other hand, she could have asked her mother for help, but Amelia didn’t want to do that, because her mother would take over the whole thing and turn it into one of her artistic projects and poor old Mr Vishwanath would end up with some huge artistic painting in his window. Besides, Amelia didn’t really think her mother could draw people very well. The eyes in her pictures were never quite level, or the ears were too high, or there was something else that wasn’t right about the faces she painted, although her father praised every picture she did as if it was the next Mona Lisa. He was always asking people who came to the house what they thought of the pictures, which hung all over the walls. There was always a minute or two when they stammered and frowned while they thought of something to say.

  No, Mr Vishwanath needed a nice, simple sign. Below the picture of him doing his one-legged pose, she would write LK Vishwanath, and under that she would write Yoga Master, or maybe Yoga Maestro, which sounded more important. And under that she would write New Students Wanted. Or maybe New Students Welcome, which sounded less desperate.

  Amelia nodded to herself, staring at the garden. She could see the sign in her mind’s eye. In fact, perhaps she’d just go ahead and make it for Mr Vishwanath. When he saw it, he’d realise how much better it would be if he had the sign in his window.

  ‘Amelia, this is not the way.’

  Amelia looked around. Mr Vishwanath had a deep, quiet voice, like a purr, and when he first started talking sometimes you weren’t certain whether the sound was coming from him or from inside your own head.

  ‘What’s not the way, Mr Vishwanath?’ asked Amelia.

  ‘This is not the way for students to come to yoga. They must come because they are drawn. They must come because they have the need.’

  ‘But they may not realise they have the need. If you put up a nice big sign, they’ll realise.’

  ‘No,’ said Mr Vishwanath. ‘This is not the way.’

  ‘Then what is the way?’ asked Amelia.

  ‘The way is the way it is now,’ replied Mr Vishwanath.

  The way it is now, thought Amelia. One little sign that was so small you couldn’t even see it from the other side of the street, and with so little information that you wouldn’t know what it meant even if you did see it. Amelia crossed her arms in frustration. ‘You’re just saying that because you don’t like anything to change, Mr Vishwanath. You only like the old ways.’

  Mr Vishwanath didn’t reply.

  ‘You don’t want to try anything new.’

  Mr Vishwanath shook his head. ‘Not so, Amelia. In my youth I was a great enthusiast for things that were new. There was nothing that I did not try.’

  Amelia looked at Mr Vishwanath doubtfully. It was hard to imagine Mr Vishwanath being young, let alone being a great enthusiast for things that were new. Whatever that was supposed to mean.

  ‘In some cases, ways that are new may be good. But in other cases, the ways that are old are better.’

  ‘Well, if you ask me, Mr Vishwanath, in this case, the old way doesn’t seem to be working.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ replied Mr Vishwanath. ‘It is working perfectly.’ He turned his gaze at the garden again.

  On the contrary? Amelia shook her head. Mr Vishwanath had a funny way of measuring whether something was working!

  There was silence.

  ‘I would rather have one true student than a hundred followers,’ said Mr Vishwanath quietly.

  Amelia frowned. She had heard Mr Vishwanath say that before. But he’d change his mind if he saw the sign she had in mind. She looked at him. No, she thought, he wouldn’t.

  Amelia gazed at the garden as well. It was full of sculptures, her mother’s latest, which Amelia’s father had lowered from the window of the sculpture room with a special winch he had invented. They were all white sculptures, about a metre tall, and very narrow, and they were supposed to represent long thin faces on long thin necks. This was because Amelia’s mother was going through a Linear Phase, according to Amelia’s father. Prior to her Linear Phase, Amelia’s mother had spent a year making dark, squat, rounded sculptures, like foaming bubbles of mud. That meant she had been in a Globular Phase. Now the bubble sculptures were all piled down the very back of the garden, together with the sculptures from all the earlier phases Amelia’s mother had been through. When one of her phases was over, Amelia’s mother couldn’t bear to look at the sculptures again, and Amelia’s father would stack them at the end of the garden, out of view, and replace them with the pieces Amelia’s mother produced when she went into a new phase. Amelia’s mother went through phases in her paintings as well. There had been the Blue Phase, when everything was painted in shades of blue, and the Red Phase, and the Yellow Phase. Her latest phase was a Multicoloured Phase, with numerous colours jostling loudly in every painting. Some of those paintings had so many colours they made you feel quite ill.

  Amelia stared at the white, thin sculptures that poked up out of the long grass. The only place her mother would allow her sculptures to be placed was inside the four high walls of the garden. Once, when her father had suggested she should have an exhibition, she hadn’t talked to him for a week.

  Amelia couldn’t see the point of all the work that went into the sculptures if they were just going to be put in the garden. Whenever her father had finished positioning a new sculpture there, he always said it didn’t matter whether anyone saw it, all that mattered was that her mother had expressed herself. But Amelia wasn’t so sure. She didn’t really believe that could be all that mattered, even for her mother. Amelia didn’t think her mother was very brave, hiding her sculptures in the garden where no on
e would see them.

  ‘Why do you think she keeps making them?’ murmured Amelia, as much to herself as Mr Vishwanath.

  Mr Vishwanath glanced at Amelia with an expression that wasn’t quite a smile. Or perhaps it was. ‘Don’t you know?’ he said.

  Amelia shook her head. Mr Vishwanath watched her for a moment longer, and then gazed at the sculptures again.

  CHAPTER 3

  Amelia’s best friend was Eugenie Edelstein, and her other best friend was Kevin Chan. Eugenie was a lot harder on Mr Vishwanath than Kevin.

  ‘It’s his own fault if he won’t advertise,’ said Eugenie. ‘How many students does he have?’

  ‘A few,’ said Amelia, feeling as if she had to defend Mr Vishwanath.

  ‘A few? There’s the old lady who comes with the driver in the big car, that’s the only one I can think of, and who knows what she really does there?’

  There were all kinds of rumours about what the lady really did when she went into Mr Vishwanath’s studio. Few people believed she could possibly be going there simply to do yoga. Kids who thought the place was some kind of a front, and Mr Vishwanath must be a spy master or a crime boss, thought the mysterious woman’s appearance was proof of their theory. She must be someone who carried messages for Mr Vishwanath, or brought him instructions, or delivered money, or something else, and her driver was some kind of bodyguard. Others objected that she was too old to be a crime messenger or a money deliverer. Exactly, said the kids who thought she was. That was the whole point. Who would suspect an old lady like that? She was perfect for the job, whatever it actually was.

  Amelia murmured something about other students coming, lots of other students.

  ‘Well, if he really wants more students, and he won’t even put up a sign,’ declared Eugenie, ‘he has no one to blame but himself.’

  ‘Is he blaming anyone?’ asked Kevin.

  Amelia shook her head.

  ‘I was speaking figuratively,’ said Eugenie, in a rather pompous tone. Eugenie had a tendency to pomposity. Her mother, who had a tendency to pomposity as well, and loved everything French, had named her after some long-dead French empress, and told Eugenie that she should never forget it. Whatever that was supposed to mean. Eugenie’s outbursts of pomposity made Amelia and Kevin laugh. When they laughed, Eugenie just became even more pompous.

  They laughed.

  Eugenie put her nose in the air. ‘If one can’t speak figuratively, I hardly know why one bothers,’ she muttered to herself.

  Amelia and Kevin glanced at each other and grinned.

  Eugenie walked along with her nose even further in the air. One day, thought Amelia, she’d be walking along like that and she’d trip over something.

  ‘I don’t think advertising is Mr Vishwanath’s problem,’ said Kevin. ‘In fact, I’ve heard he knocks students back.’ Kevin looked at Amelia meaningfully, as if to remind her again of the rumours that Mr Vishwanath wasn’t running a yoga studio at all behind the sheet in his window, but something altogether more mysterious and sinister, and that the old lady was somehow involved in it.

  ‘So have I,’ said Eugenie, lowering her nose and looking at Amelia in exactly the same insinuating way.

  Amelia stopped. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Everyone knows,’ replied Eugenie. ‘My mother has a friend whose sister’s niece had a second cousin who wanted to learn yoga from Mr Vishwanath, and when she went—’ ‘Wait a minute,’ said Kevin, ‘can you just run through that again to make sure we’ve got it? Your mother’s friend’s sister . . .’

  ‘When she went to Mr Vishwanath,’ said Eugenie sternly, throwing a disapproving glance at Kevin, ‘he told her to go to the Fitness Fanatics gym and learn yoga there.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Amelia.

  ‘I have no idea,’ replied Eugenie. ‘She was quite insulted.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  ‘She went to Fitness Fanatics. She said she can learn just as much at Fitness Fanatics. The people are nicer, and they don’t tell her to go away. She said she doesn’t need any old Mr Vishwanath to tell her what to do.’

  Kevin laughed.

  ‘What’s funny about that?’ demanded Eugenie.

  ‘Well, she said she didn’t need Mr Vishwanath to tell her what to do, and then she did exactly what Mr Vishwanath told her . . .’ Kevin stopped. There wasn’t the slightest sign on Eugenie’s face that she saw the irony. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he murmured.

  Eugenie turned back to Amelia. ‘In her opinion, Mr Vishwanath is too big for his boots.’

  Amelia had never seen Mr Vishwanath in boots. He wore slippers when he sat in his chair under the back verandah, and sandals if he left the house to go shopping, whatever the weather. And he didn’t wear any kind of shoes when he stood on one foot amongst the sculptures in the back garden and put his other foot behind his neck.

  They went into the Sticky Sunday ice-cream shop. Kevin got a double scoop of Starfruit and Pistachio. Amelia got Blueberry Ripple and Peaches ’n’ Cream. Eugenie spent ten minutes examining every flavour and then got a small serve of plain frozen yoghurt. They sat down on the stools along the wall.

  ‘That’s very peculiar,’ murmured Amelia, as she licked the Blueberry Ripple.

  ‘No it’s not,’ snapped Eugenie. ‘I can have frozen yoghurt if I like.’

  ‘No,’ said Amelia. ‘I mean what you were saying about Mr Vishwanath. She glanced at Kevin. ‘You’re saying you’ve heard he knocks people back as well?’

  Kevin nodded.

  Amelia frowned. She turned her ice-cream cone and thoughtfully licked the Peaches ’n’ Cream. This was the first she had heard of Mr Vishwanath sending people away. It didn’t sound like something he would do. He never sent her away when she came down to sit with him under the verandah, and she wasn’t even a yoga student. Yet according to both Eugenie and Kevin, that was what he did, and everyone knew it. And he wouldn’t advertise. This was no good. Amelia turned the cone again, still thinking. This was no good at all.

  Mr Vishwanath chuckled when Amelia told him what Eugenie had said about the lady who came to learn yoga. He chuckled even more when Amelia told him she had gone to Fitness Fanatics.

  ‘She says she can learn just as much there as she could learn from you, Mr Vishwanath!’

  Mr Vishwanath didn’t reply.

  ‘The people are nicer, and they don’t tell her to go away.’

  ‘I didn’t tell her to go away,’ said Mr Vishwanath.

  ‘What did you tell her?’

  Mr Vishwanath sighed. ‘I told her she might be happier at Fitness Fanatics.’

  ‘It’s the same thing, isn’t it?’ said Amelia.

  Mr Vishwanath shook his head. ‘No, Amelia. It isn’t the same thing at all.’

  Amelia frowned. It was almost the same thing. And even if it wasn’t, it certainly wasn’t a way of making the lady feel welcome.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Mr Vishwanath. ‘She’s happy at Fitness Fanatics, isn’t she?’

  Amelia shrugged. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Well?’ said Mr Vishwanath, and he looked at Amelia for a moment longer, then turned to gaze at the thin white sculptures in the garden.

  Amelia stole a glance at him. The expression on Mr Vishwanath’s face was perfectly calm, as if he wasn’t disturbed by anything, and least of all by the lady who had gone to Fitness Fanatics. But he was never going to get any more students if he kept doing things like that. He’d have only that one old lady who turned up in her cream-coloured car, presuming she really was a yoga student and not something else altogether.

  ‘Eugenie Edelstein says you send lots of people away,’ said Amelia.

  Mr Vishwanath didn’t reply.

  ‘Kevin Chan said so as well. They can’t both be wrong.’

  Amelia waited for Mr Vishwanath to say something. ‘Is that true, Mr Vishwanath?’ she asked eventually. There was silence.

  ‘I would rather have one true student than a hundred followers,’ said Mr Vishwanath s
oftly.

  ‘What does that mean, Mr Vishwanath?’ said Amelia.

  Mr Vishwanath didn’t reply.

  Amelia jumped up in frustration. She felt like kicking over all the sculptures in the garden with their thin white faces and their thin white necks.

  Instead, she went inside. In the kitchen, Mrs Ellis was mixing something in a bowl. Amelia went straight past her and up the stairs.

  CHAPTER 4

  Amelia had been fascinated by the lamp at the top of the stairs from the moment she had been old enough to be fascinated by anything. From the bottom of the stairwell, four storeys below, the lamp didn’t look so big, and it was only when you were at the top that you realised how large it really was. It hung from the ceiling by three chains. The middle of the lamp had six sides, in each of which was clasped a glass panel, and the cone-shaped top and bottom were fashioned entirely out of bronze. The metalwork flowed with intricate patterns and there were hundreds of tiny spaces out of which the light filtered in a wonderful, stippled, hazy glow. Even when she was small, Amelia would stare at the lamp, certain there must be something to find in the apparently endless, swirling patterns of bronze. But it was only when she realised there was a way to get closer to the lamp that she discovered what it was.

  The way Amelia found to get closer was to get up on the banister, just at the point where it ended at the wall, holding onto the door frame of her room with one hand to steady herself. From here, she could see the lamp a lot better, and even reach out and touch it. She was quite small when she worked out how to do this, but not so small that she didn’t know that if her parents saw her standing on the banister, reaching out and turning the lamp, they’d think she was going to fall over the edge. So she never did it when they could see her. But she did it.