Breakfast with the Nikolides

by Rumer Godden

  ‘Perhaps you will not if you take your time off to go fishing.’ And Narayan put his arm across Anil’s shoulders. ‘Seriously, you shouldn’t do that now. You must not only pass. You must pass with honours.’

  ‘And why?’

  ‘I am ambitious for you.’

  ‘Thank you. But why? Why for me?’

  ‘You are your father’s son,’ said Narayan. He said that but he did not mean to say it in the least.

  ‘Indro, why do you have this notion of my father?’

  Narayan did not answer at once, but the evening was flawed; into the light bantering smile on his face came a remembrance – Anil did not know what else to call it – and a look of worry, almost fear. He said suddenly, ‘Anil, your father would not kill – any form of life.’

  It was a statement, not a question. Anil was quick. ‘Ho! Who have you murdered now? I thought you were a veterinary, not a doctor.’

  Narayan did not laugh. He said again, ‘No. He would not take life, I think.’

  ‘You know he would not.’

  ‘But why?’ cried Narayan. ‘Why? What is his reason? There must be a reason.’

  Anil did not know the reason but he answered in the oblique way of which he was so fond, ‘Perhaps, because each time you kill, you kill yourself.’ He said it at random but it struck a look of dread in Narayan.

  ‘Supposing – death would occur in any case.’

  ‘Then why interfere? If it is fate let it be fate. You need not upset it. You should not upset it. There is poetry in fate. I like fate very much. It is cruel but the world would not balance without it. I heartily agree with it.’

  ‘Even when – it is yourself who are caught in its workings?’

  ‘What could I then do?’ Anil barely hid a small yawn. ‘So very British, my dear Indro, this mania for interference.’ Even that did not draw Narayan, and Anil went further. ‘If you interfere you are a cog. Yes, a cog in a wheel. Have you been a cog, Indro? I believe you have.’

  ‘I am not a cog.’ Narayan’s face and voice were fiercer than the words and Anil looked at him in surprise.

  ‘You are not angry? I was only bantering.’

  ‘Formerly—’ said Narayan, and his lips trembled. He broke off and then said as if he were justifying himself, ‘I work. I only do my work.’ He tried to speak more lightly. ‘I am – not a cog. I am like oil in the wheels. Anyone who truly works is that.’ He could not help a little spite in the last words.

  ‘The oil of life?’ Anil countered it.

  ‘Are you not thinking of the salt?’ But under his apparent easiness Narayan was still troubled. Later he said, ‘You do not strictly follow your father, Anil. Is it against your principles to kill? I myself belong to the world today—’

  ‘But all the same you do not like to kill,’ said Anil shrewdly. ‘What is this, Narayan? Before you had no interest in principles.’

  ‘I had no time,’ said Narayan slowly. ‘I was not you – I had to work.’ And as always when he talked of the difference between them, his voice grew disagreeable. ‘Everything I did I had to do. There was no time for anything else. That is the difference between us. You quibble – Shall I pass my Final? Shall I not pass? – it doesn’t matter to you, I dare say, but to me it was death, and it was life. There was always too much, too much to be done.’

  ‘There is always too much to be done,’ agreed Anil, and another yawn came up to his throat. He did not think he could talk of Narayan and his principles any more. ‘Always too much. That is why I am not sure that I have time to pass the Examination.’ To his surprise, instead of pouncing on him Narayan said slowly, ‘That might perhaps be so.’

  ‘You were cross at me just now for wasting time. I was benefited by that waste,’ said Anil, and he said prettily, ‘I spent the day with a kingfisher, Indro,’ but even this did not produce the little shock, or the smile, for which he was waiting.

  Narayan only nodded. ‘Once – do you remember?’ he said – ‘we went for a walk. I did not want to walk but you said it would be jolly. We went off the road down into the fields …’ But Anil was bored. He went to the window and now it was dark and there was the night mail steamer passing upstream, her jewel red light showing, her searchlight stretching out before her, another yellow light in her nose, and below the garden came the sound of her wash breaking in a wave along the bank …

  We went off the road down into the fields … There had been no path; the little rutted fields were hard as clay, dried with rotting weeds, but among them were patches of mustard. They came near a village where a path of beaten mud sprang up and led through a mustard field and Narayan, walking behind Anil, picked a head of mustard. Naturally, Anil was talking and Narayan listening, and as he listened he began idly to examine the flowers he had picked. He had seen the mustard fields in flower only as a whole, deep spreading yellow, in fact he did not remember ever really looking at a flower in his life. Now he looked at the mustard flowers; they were a dozen on a spray, spread in a shape like a parachute, each flower with five flat yellow petals, and in its centre a green seeded heart; each flower was perfectly mounted on its stem and as he held it nearer his eyes, it blotted out its own whole field, in fact it blotted out the earth; behind the flowers he could see only a glimpse of sky …

  And I had too much to do, said Narayan, ever to look at a flower before. What a shocking thing! And I have been so busy that I have not looked at one since – unless you can count the oleander that Shila brought … And beginning with the oleander, his thoughts went away on a small trail of peace. He jerked himself back. ‘It is shocking. It is disgraceful,’ he said aloud.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Not to have time to live.’

  ‘It’s your own fault.’

  … Well, who has the wisdom to save his own soul? Hardly anyone. It is not sense. Is it sense to retire as Anil’s father had done, to give up business and politics and friends and opportunity and go apart to a lonely country village? No it is not sense, but it is more divinely wise. Since there is nothing divine in me I shall do nothing of the sort. I shall get a better job, as I have said before. I shall buy myself in, and reimburse myself, I shall batten on the others and they on me, I shall go on until I reach the top; and then what shall I have gained? Nothing. Nothing at all. But that will not stop me doing it … And silently he cried: I do not want to be divine. I want nothing divine in me. And still in front of him came that tiresome picture of Anil’s father, sitting in his shawl; and he felt suddenly and extremely tired … I can’t help it, said Narayan wearily, there is God in the flower, and in the folds of the shawl, and in me – in all things, animate – inanimate – whether I like it or not. I cannot help it!… And aloud he cried: ‘I shall give it all up and go away.’

  The steamer had passed, the waves were dying down along the bank. ‘What did you say?’ asked Anil.

  ‘I shall give it all up and go away.’ But, said a second time, it merely sounded peevish.

  ‘Now what has upset you?’ said Anil, more interested. ‘Are you really in trouble? What have you done?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘All this talk of life and killing – you must have done something.’ Shila came in carrying a tray with betel leaves she had prepared on it, and Anil spoke to her. ‘Indro has committed a crime and will not tell us what it is.’

  Narayan flamed. ‘Will you be quiet?’ he shouted. ‘You are driving me mad. Leave me alone!’ And he cried, ‘I wish never – never – to be reminded of this again.’ And as he said it, there was a reminder knocking in his brain. Something – something in this affair which he ought to remember – something he knew but could not think of. Impatiently he put it out of his mind.

  VI

  ‘Don! Don! Don! Don!’

  Emily’s voice floated in from the garden, shrill and persistent. ‘Don. Don. Don!’ And Binnie’s dutifully echoed behind it, ‘Hullo, Don. Hullo!’

  Louise went on writing, but her pen bit a little deeper on the paper than before
, wavered, jerked, made a blot, and stopped; she threw it down and it rolled with a shower of blots across her letter, spoiling it. Furious, she went out on the verandah to chasten the children, but the quick words did not leave her lips; Emily was coming across the grass with Don’s lead in her hand and it swung heavily, at just above the level that a small spaniel’s neck might be. It danced up and down as she walked.

  ‘Don’t jump up, Don. Bad dog! Down. Down. Down!’

  ‘Hullo! Hullo, Don.’

  It was silly, babyish, stupid, clumsy, but it was ghostly. Even in the bright sunlight it was macabre and a little indecent. Louise held the verandah rail and the warmth of it creeping up her arms told her that she was cold. ‘How ridiculous and absurd!’ she cried indignantly … But – but – Why did Emily do it? Why did she keep it up? How could she keep it up? It had been going on for three weeks now, persistently, never stopping, never resting. It was not the game or the trick that Emily was playing that upset Louise – that was merely childish, absurd; it was the way she persisted – and that was neither childish, nor absurd; it was beginning to be diabolical … I mean that, cried Louise, it is diabolical, devilish in the way she has thought it all out … It was much too pat to be accidental.

  Last Sunday …

  (‘Read about Noah’s Ark, Mother.’)

  (‘… And they went in unto Noah in the ark, two and two, of all flesh wherein is the breath of life.’)

  (‘Charles says that is God,’ Emily had interrupted.)

  (‘What is?’)

  (The Breath of Life.’)

  (‘I suppose it is – in a way.’)

  (‘Charles says it is. Charles says, God is in me – see?’ She blew on the palm of her hand. ‘That’s my breath of life. God is in me, in everyone. Professor Dutt says if we kill anything, we kill God. You could kill God in me and in Binnie and in you and in Delilah and—’ Her eyes, unblinking, fixed themselves on Louise’s face. ‘And – in Don.’)

  Unwillingly Louise had to speak of it to Charles. Charles looked at her and said, ‘I know nothing about children.’

  ‘Charles. Please.’

  ‘Nor do you. Nor does anyone. They are unfathomable.’ And he added, ‘If you are wise you will ignore it.’

  That was easy to say. It was impossible to ignore it. It was even beginning to disturb the servants. They were adopting an exceedingly respectful, propitiating way of speaking to Emily baba.

  Why did she do it? Why?

  Emily herself did not know. At the beginning it had been done too quickly for her to realize it, and for a day or two she had kept it up blindly, covering her hurt; then gradually, as that hurt began to be felt harder and deeper, she had grown angry; and this was not rage or temper, it was angry, adequate, revengeful reason; it was even more than that, it was an inspired campaign. Very clearly and persistently Emily seemed to know what she should do next … I am not like a child now, thought Emily, I am grown up … And she remembered the tales she had heard of people whose hair had turned white in a night … I have turned old, said Emily … and the drama in that helped to bolster her up; her sense of drama was completely as strong as Louise’s.

  I have turned old … It was true, she felt infinitely removed from the Emily who had gone out to breakfast with the Nikolides … Something left off being in me then. I put on my clean clothes – and she remembered them, her spotted sundress, her sun-hat and sandals – and I went out to breakfast. Mother was clever. She knew how I felt about the Nikolides, she knew I would forget everything for them … And it seemed to Emily sheer treachery that Louise should have used them against her. One thing – said Emily – I shall never go blind like that again. I shall never be blind … And even to so young a girl as Emily there was something pitiable in the loss of that heedlessness. Breakfast with the Nikolides was always to be the last hour of her childhood.

  In the first few days, in spite of the way she clung to his name, she almost succeeded in shutting Don out of her mind … I will not believe it, she said, I will not believe it. I will not have trouble here. Don shall not be dead … Slowly, from that, began the second stage: If Don is dead, and – Oh! he is beginning to be dead – it is somebody’s fault. I put my hand out on him in the night and he was there and he was beating, quite alive. What did they do to him? They did something. I know he did not die in this – untruthful way. (That is what Louise would say to me: ‘Emily, why do you have to answer me in this untruthful way? You are telling me a lie.’) Now that is what I say to you, Louise. You are telling me a lie. He did not die in this untruthful way. Somebody had a hand in it, and I think it was you, Louise.

  You had no right to do it!

  Don is mine. Mine. Even if he is dead – if he is dead, still he is mine. You cannot take him from me like this. You do it because you think I am a child. I shall keep him alive until I choose to agree he is dead. I asked for him. I wanted him, even if he were dead, to hold in my arms, but you said he had been taken away. Where? You would not tell me. I ought to know, he is mine. He disappeared while we were out … You sent me out of the way, you used the Nikolides as a – a – Emily could not think of the word, and then it came – as a decoy. You have spoilt them. You have changed them from a private lovely thing to a decoy, and I shall never forgive you for that; and I will not accept it that he has disappeared and I shall not let Binnie accept it either. I shall go on and on and on until I have found out the truth; I shall not give up and I shall not forget. However difficult it is I promise I shall not forget, and Binnie shall help me whether she likes it or not. She says it frightens her; let it frighten her. I shall say to myself in the day and in the night, ‘Pay attention, Emily,’ and I have taken a book to my private place in the tomato bed where I shall write everything down in truthful writing …

  Emily sat in the tomato bed with an exercise book and a concentrated expression on her face; this made her look very ugly, her face was quite tied into knots with thinking, her hair was stuck to her forehead, which shone sticky and white in the heat, her sun-hat was pushed back and its billiard-green lining sent a sickly reflection down to her chin. She knelt, her dress above her knees, and with one hand she wrote and with the other she picked at the earth, picking it up in lumps, crumbling it and letting it run away between her fingers. The tomato plants made a malodorous forest round and above her, with their yellow five-pointed flowers and balls of unripe fruit hanging down; the ripe ones, poppy red, shone between; some had burst and lay rotting on the ground.

  Her knees hurt pressed into the lumpy earth, her back ached, but she would not move. She longed to stretch out and lie flat in the sun, making the whole of her warm. For days she had had this curious coldness all over her body, in her legs and arms, even in her breath, a cold uncertain feeling that made her partly sick and partly tired … The sun makes me feel better. I feel the sun through my clothes and my bare legs and behind my eyes and after a time in the sun I cannot think of anything, I can only feel sleepy; I like the sun but I am going to stay out of it, I am going to stay here until I have written this all down in my book, in truthful writing.

  The most difficult part is to pay attention; the sicker I feel the less attention I pay. Well, they always told me I was bad at paying attention, now I am tasting that for myself. The first thing I shall write in my book is: Pay attention, Emily. Pay attention, Emily … It was difficult to write. She was feeling so sick … Huh, that’s nothing. Think what happened to me after the Nikolides!… But thinking of that she immediately threatened to be sick again.

  It was better to think of things from the outside; better really not to think, but only to see, to put the pictures on one after the other, like pictures in magic lantern slides. There was a magic lantern in the College with slides. There was a magic lantern in the College with slides of insect pests and … Pay attention, Emily. See, here we are coming back from the Nikolides’: Binnie and I came back from the Nikolides’ – in time for lunch. It was hot … I remember I thought what a pity it was that we had lunch a
t one o’clock and the Nikolides only finished breakfast at eleven … That was trying a stomach more than it could bear, and a plate of soup had kept reappearing to Emily all the way home, the soup they had had instead of mulligatawny: a kind of sausage of spiced mince in a soup of dark thick gravy, with strings of macaroni, ham and onion. The feeling of it stayed in her mouth.

  ‘You are not going to be sick, are you?’ said Binnie.

  Silence.

  ‘If you are, Mother will never let us go again.’

  Emily did not answer. The launch went buoyantly along bouncing her gently in her chair; she had thought that delightful on the way out. The sun on the water sent blinding diamond sparks into her eyes and from the engine and the Lascars’ galley came whiffs of hot oil and curry smells and garlic.

  ‘You’re sure you’re not going to be sick?’

  ‘If I am I can manage.’

  ‘You had better,’ said Binnie. She was not really severe, but so many things had gone from their lives because of Emily, because of her bilious attacks and her head and stomach aches; as she grew older Emily had become magnificent in concealing them. ‘If you can only not look too yellow,’ sighed Binnie. ‘I thought you would be sick. When I saw that soup, I thought you would be.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘I brought one of Charles’s handkerchiefs,’ said Binnie.

  She offered it. It had holes in it, and it had been starched almost stiff, but Binnie had dosed it with eau de cologne and Emily held it to her face. Immediately a wind rose from offshore and blew coolness across her and the launch turned to the jetty so that the deck was in shade. She was better, and they were jubilant as they walked home. Inside the gate the Pekingese came tumbling and barking to meet them, and it was then – then – that …

  The pencil stopped. Emily’s thumb dug into a hard lump of earth, pounding it, breaking it, spoiling her nail; she blinked her eyes; the lids were smarting, and she had to press her lips firmly together before she could go on.