Breakfast with the Nikolides

by Rumer Godden

  This garden was beginning to be adjusted to her eyes. She saw it as a small sunbaked spot, bright with green and a few brilliant heads of marigold against the white sandy soil; and in front of it was the river, a shimmering width of brightness. She liked it. She liked the way the garden was shut in on three sides and open to the river on the fourth, she liked to stand there hidden, not tall enough to see over the walls, and see the sweep of the river and the plain and the huge domed shape of sky … It matches me; the hot sun matches me, and the water running past. I am hot and I am strong and I can see a great way. I see what I could not see before. I shall call you names, Mother, I shall call you a cheat because you cheated me and a liar because you lied and a coward because you were afraid to tell me the truth, and I shall call you a murderess because you murdered Don. You killed him. You, not Dr Das. I know how you made him do it. I know only too well. I hate Dr Das but I do not blame him, Mother, I blame you. I don’t care who takes your part. I shall never have anything to do with you again. You can take Charles and you can take Binnie. I prefer to be by myself … And all at once there was a crack in her anger and desolation seeped through. Hastily she closed it again … Don’t let my anger go. Emily, stay as angry as this till you get home. Stay as angry as this.

  Don was once alive. He felt the sun on his back; his legs, if he sat down for a moment, were up at once to run again. He liked gardens and sun and grass and sticks and leaves; he used to play with them; now all these things are still because he is not here. He loved other things too – cool floors to lie on, his own bed; best of all, food; second best, toys. I don’t know which were his balls because the Pekingese have taken them; I let them take them, a ball is a silly thing alone. I shall not cry; I only feel like crying because I have been tired. Now I am not tired any longer. It is nearly over and I am coming, Mother. I am coming now. I shall come straight to you and I shall say, ‘Mother, I know all about it now. Liar. Cheat. Coward. Murderer.’ That is what I shall say, ‘Liar. Cheat. Coward. Murderer.’ Now, whenever I need to say Mother I shall say one of these …

  She was turning to go when she looked in at a door near her. She had been standing near the doorway of a room built into the house, and in spite of her hurry, once she had looked in Emily stayed there. There was nothing in the room but a young Indian woman making a little image on a stand. It was like the clay images Emily saw nowadays at the bazaar, of a goddess with a crown and ten arms, but this particular goddess had four.

  Emily had seen this phenomenon too often to be very astounded. From her own bed at night she could hear the sound of four religions, the bell from the Mission Church, the muezzin called from the mosque, the gongs that were rung by the nomad Buddhist priests, and the tom-tom and cymbals and bell from the temple. Charles said, from the Gita, ‘Howsoever men approach me, so do I accept them; for on all sides the path they choose leads them to me.’ Emily liked that. It made God sound big.

  Shila had finished the figure; it was both delicate and firm and she was pleased; now she had made the rest of her rice-flour more liquid and was decorating the stand with patterns. With nothing to guide it the pattern came quickly and Emily watched her fascinated; neither of them heard Anil’s scream. Emily’s eyes followed Shila’s hand and, as if there were something soothing in those even loops and circles, she grew quieter. She was more comfortably angry. She leaned against the door post and asked, ‘How does your hand know where to go?’

  Shila did nothing so jerky as to start; she pressed her fingers together so that the flow of liquid stopped and looked up with surprise in her eyes. To look from the dark room to the garden was a little dazzling and she could see only the black outline of Emily, but like Anil she knew from her voice that she was English and she answered in English though Emily had attempted the vernacular, ‘What did you say?’

  Now Emily was surprised. Shila’s English was not clipped like Anil’s or Narayan’s, she gave her words a musical lilt. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘How do you know the pattern?’

  ‘I know it. My mother knew it and her mother. Even my mother’s mother’s mother,’ and she knelt up a little. Emily saw at once that she was going to have a baby.

  ‘If you have a daughter she will know them too,’ said Emily.

  ‘One day I shall have a daughter. First I shall have a son,’ said Shila quite positively and she ended her pattern. Then her eyes came back to Emily. ‘How did you come here?’

  ‘I am sorry. Do you mind?’

  ‘Not at all, but how did it happen?’

  Emily evaded that. ‘My father is talking to Dr Das.’

  ‘My husband?’

  ‘Is he your husband?’ Emily saw Narayan in his European coat and trousers, with his desk, his bookcases and his charts, and then this empty room and Shila on the floor, in her single cotton sari that left her arms and part of her back bare. At her face, Shila laughed. ‘You have come to the back of the house, you see. Here we are domestic in the Indian way. Won’t you come in?’

  Emily asked again, ‘Oughtn’t I to take off my shoes? Your husband said he did not mind, but—’

  ‘You are nice,’ Shila said softly, ‘but you need not. Often my husband comes in, even into the kitchen, with his shoes.’

  ‘But you would like him to take them off,’ said the shrewd Emily.

  ‘In this part of the house, yes.’

  ‘I will stay here,’ said Emily, and then she remembered. ‘At least, I have to go.’ Still she stayed. ‘What are you making her for?’

  ‘It is our Sree. It means grace, and as that is an attribute of our Goddess Lakshmi, we make an emblem of her. We will offer her flowers, and fruit and rice, all through our holy days.’ She smiled at Emily. ‘She is the Goddess of Good Fortune.’

  ‘I am glad I have seen her,’ said Emily gravely, ‘I am glad I have seen how you do it,’ and she hesitated and asked, ‘Do you think – an English girl could make a puja?’

  ‘Anyone can – if they believe in it.’

  ‘I should believe,’ said Emily, ‘but there is something I have to do first.’ And she said goodbye and turned to go home.

  The procession had been round the town. It went to the Principal’s house to make a demonstration, but when it arrived there was no one to see it; the Principal had left for the College in his car and Lady Ghose was in Darjeeling. Someone suggested they should throw stones, but it was no part of their programme to be undignified and the procession returned through the bazaar. Here among the lanes and side-roads it was forced to split up and many little processions went wandering off by themselves and remained lost for the rest of the day.

  The staff and Sir Monmatha Ghose were in conference in the College Hall, where all was prepared for the examination of the B. Ag. candidates. There was something reproachful in the rows of small tables, each with its pile of foolscap, a piece of pink blotting paper, a clean pen and inkwell and an empty chair; along the aisles between them, where the monitor should have paced with a watchful eye, messengers scurried up and down; outside the windows the students were singing.

  They had been singing for a long time; the conference had been in session for a long time. No one knew what to do next. There was a hitch.

  ‘We will return to work if you reinstate Anil Krishna Banerjee.’

  ‘But he has never been dispossessed.’

  ‘Has he not? Has he not? He is imprisoned at this moment.’

  ‘You have hidden him yourselves.’

  ‘That is a lie – a lie to cover your actions.’

  ‘Listen to me—’

  ‘Until you release him we shall listen to no one – to nothing.’

  ‘I tell you, we have not got him.’

  ‘And neither have we – where then is he? Is he thin air?’

  It was quite a long way from the Das house to the College and Emily wanted to get in before Charles, and Charles was riding; she had seen Delilah held by a boy in the road. It was very hot, even though the road was planted all the way with
trees, and the people she passed turned round to look at her curiously. She began rather to wish she had not come out alone.

  Charles was a long time talking to Dr Das; Emily was certain she had made slow progress though she hurried; every moment she expected to hear Delilah on the road behind her; but there was no sign of Charles as she came within sight of the College.

  Then she gave a little hiss of dismay and annoyance. She had come up with the tail end of a procession that was filing in through the College gates, completely blocking the road. She could see a press of people – students, she thought from their white-clad shoulders – and she could hear a hubbub and shouts and the beating of a tom-tom, and far ahead she could see a figure, a stuffed doll on a pole swinging above the heads of the crowd … What are they doing now? groaned Emily. She tried to edge her way through. It was impossible. The people were passing against the gate, trying to push their way through.

  Here in the vanguard, Emily was among the beggars who had clustered round the College gates; they hopped on sticks or were dragged in wooden boxes on wooden wheels, or pulled themselves along on one another’s shoulders; there were armless ones, and legless ones, one with no nose, one with his teeth growing through his cheek; they ran with sores, and from their rags came a putrid old dead smell; and Emily, shuddering and sick, hurled herself away from them into the crowd.

  Now she was forced to go with it: step by step, she found herself walking in her own procession though she had no idea whose effigy it was that swung from the pole ahead. The crowd were shouting on all sides of her but she had no idea what they said. She walked, trying to move sideways as she advanced, to reach the farther edges of the crowd by her own gate; she was banged and pushed, flung sideways, in the press of taller people; they could not see her face, hidden by her sun-hat, or realize her difference. The crowd smelled almost as badly as the beggars; a stale smell of sweat, another almost lavatory smell, and mixed with it a sweetness that was like flowers and scented oil; she was astonished that she did not mind it more though the heat was unbearable. She pushed and pushed until the people thinned and she reached the farther side.

  She knocked against a woman who carried a water-jar on her hip and the water spilled over and the woman turned to look. She looked at Emily’s face, and for a moment she did not take it in, then she shrieked a stream of vernacular and caught Emily by the arm. She was immediately ringed with people, but before they could touch her Shah was there.

  He had no more authority than his uniform and a pair of boots could give him, but the ring broke. Shah seized Emily and dragged her to the gate. The moment his back was turned his temporary prestige was over and he had just time to pull Emily inside and shut the gate, on which excited hands began to batter and pound.

  Emily did not in the least understand what had happened. She smoothed herself down. ‘Why did you touch me? What made you do a thing like that?’ she said severely. ‘It was only a procession. I shall report you to the Sahib.’ Deeply affronted, she walked up the drive to find Louise.

  The crowd began to pelt the gate with stones. Someone threw a brick. Then a police sergeant swept round the corner on a motor bicycle and there was immediately a miraculously cleared space along the road. Shah opened the gate.

  ‘Have you a lathi?’ the sergeant asked. ‘You can use it if necessary.’

  Shah smiled and spat on his hands.

  Louise was not in her room; she was in the drawing-room, sitting at the piano, but she was not playing. She was pressing the notes thoughtfully down with one finger and letting them spring up again. Binnie was looking from the window at the massed students in the College grounds.

  Louise did not appear to hear them, or Binnie who was reporting everything they did; she just touched the notes softly and let them spring up again, and there was a small new smile at the corners of her lips.

  It was extraordinary how loud those quiet notes sounded after the hubbub and the heat that Emily had been through; they came winging across the room to her and each one was like a very clear, round full-stop.

  Emily stood outside and looked into the room; Louise looked up and saw her and she stayed, her finger holding down a note, and while the sound of the note went on nobody moved. Emily stood outside; she saw the room, she saw Louise, and it was a clear completed picture. Everything was in it; the sky was in it, reflected on the walls of the room, held in light between the windows; the shadows of trees fell across them in clear green patches, moving and fretting; there was noise in it, sustained with the vibration of the note – distant shouts and cries and singing; there was dust rising in the light of a sunbeam; simplicity in the exposed backs of Binnie’s thighs as she stood on tiptoe to see; there was sleep in the sleeping shapes of the Pekingese, curled head to tail on the rug, and business in the wings of a bee searching with her honey-bags in the flowers; the honey was food and drink; and there were colours wherever Emily’s eyes rested. All the colours, and thoughts and shapes and sizes – everything was in the room; and what had happened to Louise?

  Louise was suddenly quite small.

  Even when she let the note go and stood up, she did not seem so large to Emily, and as Emily went across the room to her Louise said, ‘Emily, how tall you are! How tall you are getting.’ She stepped back from Emily against the piano.

  ‘Did you go out with Charles?’ sang Binnie without turning her head. ‘When we woke up both of you were gone. What is happening, Emily? Is it what they call a riot?’

  Louise did not ask any questions. She seemed to accept the fact that she and Emily were now and henceforth different. She said, ‘Emily, I shouldn’t have hit you last night.’ She said it in an unaccustomed way, stiffly and politely, but with a quietude that Emily had not heard before. Louise was new. ‘I am sorry,’ said Louise.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Emily. It did not matter. She had touched extremity in the night. Charles had shut the door and she was left alone. Now she was Emily – Emily alone – Emily walking by herself. No, decidedly it did not matter now. She said quite softly, ‘I know – what you did to Don.’

  For a long time Louise did not answer. Then, ‘He is dead,’ said Louise. ‘It’s no good wishing.’

  ‘He is dead,’ agreed Emily.

  ‘Will you kiss me, Emily?’

  … Kiss you or not kiss you, it does not matter now. I am Emily who walks by herself … For a moment she had a sense of being cheated; it was her victory and it had flagged, it had brought her nothing – only Emily who was to be alone. As she said that, she was conscious of a new feeling – like stretching, as if she had the power to stretch herself out and touch, with her finger-tips, the sides of a new world. There was no limit to this power – what was it? It was freedom; and though it was a little giddy, headlong in its possibilities of loneliness, there was strength and satisfaction in it … I was right to have fought, said Emily, I was right … A sigh that she could not escape from rose to her lips, but even as she sighed she was saying I am free, and she kissed Louise.

  ‘It isn’t finished yet,’ cried Binnie from the window. ‘They are all shouting. Listen. They are starting again.’

  It was past noon when a rumour began to circulate that Anil was not in jail, not captive in the Principal’s house, not hidden in the Police Quarters or in the Hostel: he was in hospital. Before this had time to grow or change it was confirmed.

  Sir Monmatha Ghose came out on the balcony of the hall and asked the students to disperse as Anil Krishna Banerjee was ill. There was a momentary effect, they were stilled, hundreds of dark faces and heads turned up on a sea of white towards the balcony; but before he could go on, one cried, ‘How – ill?’ – another, more boldly, ‘He was not ill!’ – and a babel broke out, ‘What have you done to him? What have you done?’

  Sir Monmatha held up his hand, he shouted, and his words were tossed back to him on whistles and cat-calls. He went inside. ‘Sir, why not send for the Police?’

  ‘I shall not have the Police in my College,’
he said. ‘Presently they will hear reason.’

  They showed no sign of it. The insane ugly noise went on. Then there was an ebb. Another rumour was filtering through the crowd, more than agitating it; a pall of perplexity and doubt hung over it … Anil was not ill. Not ill? No. He had been stricken dumb.

  It came from an orderly in the Hospital itself, who had seen Anil. Small inside hairs of superstition lifted in every student’s head. Dumb! It spread through the bazaar, gaining heat as it ran; but another came to meet it, and this came from Tarala, who also had seen Anil; Tarala said that he was visited, speaking in every extraordinary tongue with demons’ voices. The two rumours became tangled and for ever, in Amorra, there persisted a tale of a dumb boy who in trances spoke with the voice of God.

  The students poured out of the College to the Hospital. The little hospital at Amorra stood in waste ground, railed off with net railings on a knoll and shaded with trees. It looked innocent and unprotected as they marched down on it, and there at the railings was Charles Pool.

  There was a minute of intense stillness and then a shout of anger went up from everyone; some could not remember now what exactly Charlie Chang had to do with this, but they shouted with the rest. Their cries rolled forward as they surged towards the Hospital. ‘We – want – Banerjee. We – want – Anil – Banerjee – Where – is – Banerjee? We – want – Anil.’

  Charles stood perfectly still behind the railings, two small spick-and-span white ones that reached to his waist; and because of the knoll and his height, he seemed very high to the oncoming students; the sun struck flashes of light from his monocle into their eyes as if, now that Anil was smitten dumb, he would smite them blind. They were moving, he was still; they were shouting, he was quiet; but the power had changed from them to him. He took out his monocle and the students in front stopped as if their feet had gone into the ground.