by Rumer Godden
It was the first time any of them had seen him without it; they had always looked at the glass in his eye, never at his face. Now, suddenly, he emerged before them, a Charles they had never seen. He looked at them with tired naked eyes, and they felt his look pitiful and stern as if he had something to tell them that was grim and sad.
The front ranks had stopped and stood waiting perfectly silent, but those at the back, who were not near enough to see him, booed and called and whistled. ‘Pits! Pits! Pits!’ they cried. ‘Where is your beastly daughter, Charlie?’ And rising into a clamour, ‘We want – Anil Banerjee. We – want – Anil.’
They pushed themselves against that immovable front line until it could hold no longer and broke and was swept forward against Charles. Legs and thighs and stomachs were bruised and crushed against the railings; some were trodden upon, some thrown over; there were screams and shrieks of pain; and tumult broke, those in front trying to push back and those at the back pushing insanely on, still with their shout, ‘We – want – Anil – Banerjee. Anil – Banerjee!’
Charles’s head and shoulders were still above the crowd; he could still be seen, the figurehead of the turmoil, with a space behind him; the railings had not given – yet; and suddenly, he filled his lungs and with all the measure of his enormous voice he bellowed ‘Hush!’
They were quiet from sheer surprise. It was an extraordinary word to use to a mob, an extraordinary word to bellow in that shattering voice – a child’s word in a tumult – but it was right. There was an instant stillness as if even the wind had been put out; they waited and into that hush climbed not Charles, not authority, but the young veterinary surgeon, Dr Narayan Das.
He was Anil’s friend, and the sight of him brought more silence and surprise. He climbed up on the railings, hiding Charlie Chang who was supporting him, and there was a look on his face of such woe that a murmur broke out again. ‘Speak to them. Speak to them quickly – Indro,’ said Charles.
Narayan’s lips trembled; the whole of his body, his feet balanced on the thin rail, his hands on Charles’s shoulder, trembled; he quivered from head to foot. He saw the crowd as Sir Monmatha Ghose had seen it: the young black heads, the faces, hundreds it seemed to him, on white shoulders, turned to him; only he was not much above them, he was close to them; close; and his lips suddenly opened, and his heart, with all his grief, and his reproach, and his anger and his love; and what did he say?
His voice sounded very large to him; the whole of him was in it, it seemed to break the sky and come back to him, but it sounded very little to the students after Charles’s – little but very clear. It reached even to their outskirts. They all heard it. ‘You – must – be – quiet,’ said the little voice, ‘Anil – is – dead.’
XIII
The holidays were over, the queer exotic puja fortnight was gone, with the things of which it held so many in its span. It was like Emily’s room, everything was in it, but now it was gone; only, washed up by the river on the banks and round the ghats, were small fragmentary remains, the straw inside body of the Goddess when the clay had washed away, pieces of coloured paper, flowers like a farewell garland on the water.
The strange light nights were over, when villagers, who went to bed soon after the sun, stayed up and visited from village to village, when their songs could be heard going home across the fields in the dawn; the bazaar had sunk back into its customary clamour: there were no more processions of students or of pujas in its streets.
The College was shut and Sir Monmatha Ghose spent his mornings and his evenings on his roof. In the College life a seal had been quite firmly and immediately pressed on the break in it where Anil had been; ‘There can be no break in the continuity of our lives,’ said Sir Monmatha Ghose, ‘we must not make it so.’ The students had gone into the Examination Hall next day. There had been no demonstrations.
Anil’s brother and the family priest had come on the train. They had taken his body to the river for burning, bound on a narrow litter that was decorated with cloth and green leaves and flowers. He lay with a white cloth up to his chin, his face turned sideways into this necklace of flowers, the red mark of sandalwood, which he had worn so often in life, on his forehead; and presently his friends came and carried him away.
Narayan was not asked to be present at the funeral rites, neither the brother nor the priest would have allowed his presence there, but after they had gone Narayan asked permission to go to Anil’s room and it was opened for him.
‘I think I can do that for you,’ said the Superintendent. ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘there is nothing of value there.’
Narayan found the poems in an old exercise book among the papers on the table. He took them and hid them under his coat. He was ready to go when he turned and looked round the small room. It was just as Anil had left it, no servant had been in to clean and tidy it; the bed was still creased where Anil had lain and tossed, his lota was still half full of water, on the floor lay a dirty crumpled shirt. With suddenly blinded eyes Narayan bent down to pick it up.
Something rustled in the pocket as he turned it right side out; he pulled out a piece of paper, dirty but carefully smoothed and covered with a few distinct lines. It was another poem.
It was more than another poem. As Narayan read it, Anil was not on his pyre by the river; it did not matter where he was, he had not died. After a while Narayan folded it and carried it away with the others.
‘The brother would not have known what they were,’ he said to Charles. He copied them carefully and sent them to Sir Monmatha Ghose … He had come, this evening, to hear his opinion. Like Charles, he was shown up on the roof.
There was one more feast that had not come into the large pujas – the Kali puja, Diwali, the Feast of Lights. Already, as Narayan bicycled through the streets, there were signs of it in the town; now, as he waited anxiously for the Principal’s verdict, first one light, then another, came out like pinpricks, and a fire work sizzled into the blue.
‘You are as high as the rockets here. It is barely dusk and they are out already.’
‘They are a little previous – like these poems,’ said Sir Monmatha.
‘You mean they are no good?’ Narayan was stung with bitter disappointment.
‘On the contrary, they are very good indeed. What a pity he could not have waited longer! But there is one—’
‘I found that in his pocket, after he was dead,’ said Narayan. ‘It seemed very much alive.’
‘It is,’ said Sir Monmatha, and he promised to see that they were published, in a book after Anil’s heart, printed and published in India on Indian paper, bound in khuddar, with a hand-made Indian design. ‘Naturally, if his father permits,’ said Sir Monmatha.
Narayan had written to Anil’s father already but he had had no answer. At first he had been offended, then grieved, then glad; Anil’s death belonged to that period of violence in which he had been caught, that he perhaps had caused. He and Charles had not left Anil, and the horror and the helplessness of those struggles would be on him all his life; but it was over. Anil’s father had receded into a little figure away over countless fields and peasant huts and to sunset skies. Now something much more interesting was to happen; something that would not stop for grief; that would, in its mysterious fashion, balance grief. He could not at present think too much about Anil. At the moment he was thinking of a row of houses, far too tall and close together, in a street of noise and garbage smells; and he looked down from Sir Monmatha Ghose’s roof, and far away, over the lights, he could see his little house set down beside the river; and as he looked he saw a line of lights, tiny as beads, break out there too, along his wall.
‘I must go home,’ he said.
‘How is your wife? She keeps well, I hope.’
‘Very well.’
‘Are you so modern that you will be disappointed if it is a son?’
Narayan had nowadays a quick friendly smile. ‘I shall not be disappointed,’ said Narayan.
On the way home, in the Farm road, he met the Pools; winter work had started on the Farm, ploughing and planting for sugarcane and wheat, the pulses and mustard were planted already, and the rice was growing high. Charles was out early and late, and here he was, walking down the road with Mrs Pool. Narayan heard their voices before he saw them in the dusk and he stiffened; he still could not forgive Mrs Pool. His guilt went beyond him into her and he could not wipe this last trace of violence from his mind … That is the meaning of religion now to me – non-violence – to be completely without violence to any … Still he could not accomplish it with Mrs Pool. He passed them without stopping, with a bow of his head that was too quick and clumsy and came only from his neck.
Charles smiled at him and Mrs Pool opened her lips; they just parted and closed again, it was not even a smile, and she tilted her chin … She is not altogether changed either, said Narayan, and that cheered him and gave him an affinity with Louise that he had not dreamed of. He looked back at her; yes, she had the same ridiculous elegance, for walking on the deserted Farm road: a light full-skirted dress, a parasol; she was leaning on Charles’s arm and before them Binnie danced backwards, speaking to them and walking at the same time. Charles lifted his hand in salutation. They and Narayan passed on down the road.
Where was Emily? Emily was in the deserted College garden by the tank, and she had a small decorated table on which was laid a saucer-light burning in butter, some rice, a collar of flowers, and a paper ball.
She had made it of paper because she did not want anything of her puja to be discovered. This was her last secret; and her table was the lid of a cardboard box and she had decided to put it on the water where presently the cardboard would soften and sink and carry everything away; if the flowers floated they would not be noticed. There was puja in the air.
Now, in the last light, she placed her table on the water and pushed it out from the steps. With its little flame reflected in the dark water, it eddied round and round, gently blowing across to the shades beyond; but however hard Emily looked there was nothing there.
The student boy had said that. And if you offer for one you offer for all… I wonder what has happened to him, said Emily; but of course all the students have gone home.
A rocket leapt into the sky close beside the wall and curved over her head into blue and red stars. There would be nearly as many lights on earth tonight as there were in the sky.
Emily’s burned steadily as it floated away.
A Biography of Rumer Godden
Rumer Godden was the prolific author of over sixty works of fiction and nonfiction for both adults and children, including international bestsellers Black Narcissus and In This House of Brede.
Margaret Rumer Godden, also known as Peggy, was born on December 10, 1907, in Sussex, England. Six months after her birth, her family moved to India, where her father worked for the Brahmaputra Steam Navigation Company. Godden spent most of her childhood in a large house along the river in Narayanganj, a trading town in Bengal with her sisters Rose, Nancy, and Winsome, also known as Jon. She fell in love with India, and went on to use it as a colorful backdrop for many of her successful novels, including The Peacock Spring and The River. In 1966, she and her sister Jon, cowrote a memoir about their childhood, Two Under the Indian Sun.
In 1920, at the age of thirteen, her parents sent her and Jon to boarding school in England. The girls struggled to leave their home in India behind, changing schools five times in two years. Godden eventually parted ways with Jon and attended school in Eastbourne, England, where she studied literature and dance. Due to a chronic spinal injury, she could not pursue a career as a professional ballerina and instead trained in London as a dance teacher. When she was eighteen, she opened a dance studio in Calcutta, the Peggie Godden School of Dance, and there she taught both Indian and Eurasian students, a practice that was considered controversial at the time. At twenty-seven, she married Laurence Sinclair Foster, with whom she had two daughters, Jane and Paula. Upon the birth of her children, she briefly returned to Britain, where she published Black Narcissus, a commercial and critical success.
At the start of World War II, Godden took her daughters to Kashmir and parted from her husband, who left her with many debts. She rented a small house by the Dal Lake with no electricity or running water, wrote endlessly, and cultivated an herb farm. At this home, one of her servant’s tried to poison her and her children by putting ground glass, opium, and marijuana in their food, inspiring a scene in her book Kingfishers Catch Fire. At forty, she returned to England again, and truly emerged on the British and American literary scenes. She remarried and lived in England for the rest of her life with the exception of a few visits to India. Godden felt at home in both Britain and India, and wrote, “When I am in one country I am homesick for the other.”
Godden studied many religions of the world and she struck up a friendship with a scholarly Benedictine nun, Dame Felicitas Corrigan. Her studies inspired one of her best-known novels, In This House of Brede, a story about an Englishwoman who leaves her life in London behind to join an order of Benedictine nuns. Godden lived near Stanbrook Abbey for three years, researching the book. She officially converted to Catholicism in the early 1960s.
Many of her books were made into classic films, including Black Narcissus, The River, The Greengage Summer, and The Battle of the Villa Fiorita. She collaborated with filmmaker Jean Renoir on The River, and they traveled to Calcutta while working on the movie. In addition to her novels written for adult audiences, she also wrote several children’s books—the most famous being The Doll’s House—and nonfiction books, including a biography of Hans Christian Andersen. In 1972, she won the Whitbread Award for children’s literature, and in 1993 she was named an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. At the age of eighty-six, she visited India—for the final time—with her daughter to shoot a BBC documentary.
She published her last book, Cromartie vs. the God Shiva, in 1997, just a year before she passed away.
The Godden family house at Narayanganj in Bengal in the early 1900s.
Godden in Bengal in 1915 with her parents, Norah and Arthur; her sisters, Rose, Nancy, and Jon; and their dogs, Cherub and Chinky.
Godden at her desk in Dove House in Dal Lake, Kashmir, 1943.
Godden in her garden at Dove House in the 1940s.
Godden on the set of Black Narcissus at Pinewood Studios with Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, and Deborah Kerr.
Godden in Buckinghamshire in the 1950s.
Godden with her daughter Jane in the woods in Buckinghamshire in the 1950s.
Godden at a book launch in New York with Jean Primrose in the 1960s.
Godden with her grandchildren Mark and Elizabeth in Rye, 1962.
Godden’s home, Lamb House, in Rye.
Godden and her cat, Simkin, in Scotland in the 1990s.
Godden in India in 1995 while filming BBC’s Bookmark.
Godden while filming Bookmark in 1995.
(All photographs courtesy of the Rumer Godden Literary Trust.)
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1942 by the Rumer Godden Literary Trust
Cover design by Drew Padrutt
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4204-8
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
180 Maiden Lane
New York, NY 10038
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