Clear Light of Day

by Anita Desai

  Unfortunately, just as she stood up and said that, Mrs Biswas had relented and agreed, in Bengali, to fetch her harmonium and sing. Bim had of course not understood. Now here was Bim saying she would not stay, she would go. It was very unfortunate. Very rude and impolite and intolerable.

  Setting her lips together, Mrs Biswas said, after a moment of silence, ‘Of course you must go. It is getting dark.’

  Dr Biswas, on his feet, swaying a bit as if struck with disaster, had no alternative now that she had been dismissed but to see her out. Then, casting a look over his shoulder at his mother as she shuffled about the small, drab room, collecting the scattered cups and plates and looking over all the uneaten goodies, he hurried down the stairs after Bim.

  ‘I’ll go back alone,’ she said, her voice rising too high. ‘Really, I want to, I’d like to.’

  ‘You don’t know what you are saying. It’s not safe, these days, after dark, for a woman, alone.’

  ‘Of course it’s safe,’ she said scornfully. ‘Anyway, quite safe for a woman like me.’

  He hunched his shoulders, taking the blow in silence, but would not give up and came clattering down the many flights of stairs after her onto the street. ‘I would feel ashamed of myself,’ he mumbled, as he caught up with her by the park railing across the road from his block of flats. ‘I would never forgive myself,’ he went on, hurrying past a cripple who sat propped up against the railings, holding out a begging bowl silently, and walked at her side.

  She gave her shoulders an impatient twitch and walked on very fast past a drycleaner’s shop, a tea shop and a stationery shop to the main street and the bus stop. How much his mother’s son he was, she said to herself: he had inherited her gift for loading the weight of his self-sacrifices onto others.

  The main street of Darya Ganj did look strangely empty and rather menacing in the early winter dusk, she had to admit. The few people they passed hurried by, unnaturally engrossed, and some shopkeepers were pulling down their shutters although it was surely still too early to be closing. Only around one tea shop was there a group of people and the sound of a news broadcast on the radio turned up above the babble.

  ‘What do you think . . .’ she began to ask when she nearly stumbled over a cobbler who had chosen to sit in a dark corner with his tool box and broken sandals spread before him. The man was saying almost as if to himself: ‘Gandhi-ji is dead. Murdered, they say. Who would murder a good man, a saint?’ He was shaking his head and swaying as he repeated the words in a monotone and Bim and Dr Biswas walked past him, barely taking note of his mutter when the words struck them and they stopped short to stare at each other and then at the cobbler.

  ‘What—’ cried Dr Biswas, ‘what did you say?’

  His voice was so high-pitched, so hysterical, that the cobbler stopped mumbling to himself and looked up at them. Then he waved his hand towards the group of people around the tea-shop, listening to the radio. ‘Go and hear for yourself,’ he said. ‘Gandhi-ji is dead. Murdered, they say . . .’ and he began to sway from side to side in ritual mourning again.

  Dr Biswas tore away towards the tea shop, Bim flying along behind him when she saw her bus come lumbering up and in a panic veered away from Dr Biswas and leapt onto the bus instead.

  Hearing the bus screech to a halt by the curb, Dr Biswas too stopped and looked around wildly. ‘Bimla,’ he shouted, ‘Bimla,’ and waved to her to stop. She leant out from the crowd on the step, waving back, and saw him abandoned, scraps of paper blowing about his feet, the lamplight striking onto and ricocheting off the bald spot on his head. Then she disappeared into the bus and forgot him completely: she thought only of rushing to Raja with the news.

  She heard him coughing as she rushed into his room. He was lying in bed under his thick winter quilt with Begum at his feet as limp as a rug. Both stiffened to hear her race in.

  ‘Raja,’ she shouted, ‘Mahatma Gandhi’s been killed. Murdered. He’s dead.’

  Raja gave a violent jerk and shot out of bed, the heavy quilt sliding to one side and falling to the floor, rolled up like a corpse. Raja’s hair stood on end. Begum’s began to bristle, too. ‘You must be mad,’ he shouted at her. ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘I tell you—everyone in the city knows—everybody in the bus was talking—where’s the radio? Turn it on—let’s listen.’

  Raja hurried to the radio on his bookshelf and fiddled with the knobs in a kind of desperation. ‘Bim,’ he said, almost sobbing, ‘there’ll be more riots—killing—they’ll slaughter every Muslim they can find—anywhere.’

  ‘God no, not again, not again,’ whispered Bim, but then the crackling of the radio sorted itself out and resolved into formal music, wailing miserably. A woman’s voice was singing the Ram Dhun mournfully. Raja and Bim stood by, cracking their knuckles, waiting for a news announcement. When it came, they sank onto Raja’s bed with relief to hear it was not a Muslim but a Hindu who had killed the Mahatma.

  ‘Thank God,’ Raja cried out, pulling up the quilt off the floor and hugging it to him almost violently. ‘Thank God. I thought of the Hyder Alis—what they would have to go through—’

  Bim glanced at him and his expression made her look away in embarrassment. It was as if the skin had been drawn off his face, leaving it peeled and bare. ‘What do you think will happen now?’ she murmured, turning to pat Begum who was calmed by her low voice and came to lay her muzzle on her lap, looking for reassurance.

  ‘I think now perhaps Indians will forget Pakistan for a bit. Perhaps they will turn to their own problems at last. I don’t know—at a time like this—it must be all chaos, Bim, chaos.’

  They spent the evening listening to the news broadcasts, heard Nehru weep, were reduced to silence and shivering, then to irritation by the mournful dirges that were being sung continuously, sat together worried and relieved, shocked and thoughtful.

  At last Raja said ‘And your tea-party, Bim? How was it? Has Mrs Biswas approved of you as her daughter-in-law?’

  That made Bim leap to her feet, switch on the light and start bustling about as if electrified. ‘Daughter-in-law?’ she spluttered. ‘Dr Biswas’s mother—just don’t talk to me about her—about them—I hope I never have to see Dr Biswas again—he gives me the creeps—he’s—he’s just—’

  ‘Oh Bim, don’t be so hard on him—poor violinist, poor musician. So Mozart—ach so Mozart,’ sang Raja, laughing, clasping his hands under his chin and making a sad clown face to make Bim laugh. And Bim laughed.

  She always told herself that was the last time she saw him, the day that Mahatma Gandhi was shot. But it was not true—there was one more time, one that she never admitted and tried never to remember.

  It had been at the end of spring. Raja had not needed the doctor since the winter—he was so much better, his temperature down to normal, getting stronger, puffing out with a thick padding of fat, as he sat in the sun, nibbling at nuts, tossing the shells to the squirrels that stole out of the trees and crept across the lawn to his feet to pick them up and scuttle back amongst the leaves. But as the weather grew warmer, the air seemed swollen with heat again, the garden was filled with drying, flying leaves, sand sprang out of the dunes by the river and blew all day long through the house and the garden, covering every leaf and every table and book and paper with grey grit, and Raja grew restless. He put away his verses, his books of poetry that he had found sufficient all winter, and paced up and down the long veranda, complaining about the heat and the dust, and ‘Why isn’t the drive ever swept up? Look at the leaves and the papers flying about. Can’t you do something about this house, Bim? It grows dirtier and shabbier every day—like the house of the dead. Are we all dead? Don’t you care any more? Don’t you care about anything?’ and he paced up and down, glowering, and Bim refused to pay attention to such petty complaints. But she knew it was not the dust or the untidiness of the place that was upsetting Raja, she knew he had begun to think beyond his illness, beyond his body’ to the outer world and was restless to
set out into it.

  On a day late in spring, the koel began to call in the trees and went on and on ringing its obstreperous bell through that day of flying leaves and dust and summer heat that thrummed and vibrated like an electric line coiled around them. Bim was preparing for an exam—she sat before her books with her elbows glued to the sticky desk-top, trying to ignore Raja who paced up and down, interrupting and annoying her by mocking at the absurdity of her ambitions and putting forth ridiculous schemes for his own future that she could not bring herself to take seriously or encourage. She knew he was on the boil with impatience, longing to burst out, reach out to life and friends and movement, and that was at the bottom of all his grousing and grumbling, his unfair attacks on her and baiting of her, like a fire smouldering under a pot. Still, it was hard to tolerate.

  ‘Oh Raja,’ she sighed finally, bitterly, ‘go back to bed, will you?’

  This made him furious. His face bloated with temper as with angry gas and he stopped to lean on a chair-back with such pressure that the wood flinched and squeaked. ‘I will not go to bed,’ he hissed, spit flying. ‘I will go—go to—to Hyderabad. Hyder Ali Sahib has asked me to come. He has plenty of work—I will work for him. I—I will—go today—today I will catch the train—I won’t stop here, with you, another day. It’s enough—enough—’ and he let go of the chair and spread out his arms as if to push everything out of his way.

  Bim tried to stay calm. She merely tapped her pencil against her teeth and found it better not to look at his face—she had not suspected it capable of such ugliness. She looked critically at the sand accumulating on the desk, on her books, flying in and settling in grey, gritty flecks on the white surfaces.

  Raja left the room but was not quiet. He could be heard striding about in his room, dragging out boxes and trunks, throwing things into them with all his strength so that there was a rumbling and shaking of danger. Danger. That roused Bim and made her go to his door and try to pacify him and bring him back to normalcy. Hearing them, a distraught Aunt Mira crawled out of her room and watched Raja pack with appalled eyes, pressing her trembling fingers to her lips. Bim tried to persuade her to go back to her room. She wept. In exasperation, Raja gave up packing and flung himself down onto his bed. To tell the truth, he was exhausted and could feel his temperature rising. It was heavy as lead but it rose, as inexorably as the mercury in a thermometer. The heat enclosed the house and all of them in it, sulphur-yellow in colour and tinged, like an egg-yolk, with blood. Aunt Mira locked herself into her room. Raja slept—or smouldered, and Bim watched, watched.

  At three o’clock when the heat of the day had risen to its violent, brick-red peak above the house, threatening it, a door slid open—audaciously, dangerously—and out darted a naked white figure, screeching and prancing, streaked through the room, out onto the veranda and then fled pell-mell down the steps into the sun.

  Bim, who had spent the afternoon stretched out on a sofa in the hall in between her brother’s and her aunt’s room, not quite certain what to expect from either, gave a violent start when she saw what she took to be a noontime ghost slipping through the room, then sprang to her feet and rushed after her.

  Aunt Mira was naked, whipping herself around and around in the driveway, screeching as she whipped and spun till she fell into the gravel and rolled there in agony, crying ‘Oh God—the rats, the rats! Rats, lizards, snakes—they are eating me—oh, they are eating me—’ and her frantic hands tore the creatures from her throat, dragged them out of her hair. Then she doubled up and rolled and howled. When Bim flung herself at her and held her down with her arm, weeping and crying for Raja and Baba and Janaki to come, it was old Bhakta who heard and came running with knees bent. The aunt raged and bit their wrists and thrashed her legs, crying ‘They’re eating—eating—eating my hands,’ and tried to fling off her fingers. Finally someone fetched a blanket and threw it on top of her and Bim rolled her up in it, picking up the shreds and soft blobs of grey flesh that leaked from the spindly body, the little empty balloons of skin and flesh, smelling and mouldy with age, from off the gravel and sand, that clung on in bits and shards, rolled them up into the blanket and carried her in like a corpse.

  Then Dr Biswas came: that was all that Raja had been able to do from his bed—he had telephoned the doctor. Just one injection and the old woman lay still, slipping neatly as a little tube into heavy, sad sleep, not stirring when Bim lifted and turned and dressed her. The doctor helped. Together they tucked her out of sight—the little sad wisp of grey pubic hair like a bedraggled rat’s tail, the empty slack pouches of her ancient breasts, the bits and scraps of her—then sat on either side of her bed, each holding one bird-boned wrist, the doctor to confirm the pulse, Bim to plead for forgiveness for the indignity of it all and for a return to her old, comforting self. Finally he spoke. ‘I’ll give you a bottle, Bimla, of brandy. When she wakes up, give her this much,’ and he got up stiffly, brought out a bottle from his bag and poured some into a tumbler. Bim gasped at the amount and began to protest but he said ‘She must have it. Or she’ll go mad. Every three hours, give her some. After some time, you can water it. Water it more and more. Make it a long, watery drink that she can sip slowly by the hour. You will have to do this yourself—keep the bottle with you—or you will have to put her into hospital for some very drastic treatment that will kill her.’ Bim hung her head and would not speak. So he got up to pack his bag and leave sayine ‘I’ll just go and see Raja for a few minutes.’ At the door he paused for a moment, looked back at Bim mournfully. ‘Now I understand everything,’ he said with a deep sigh.

  ‘What?’ asked Bim, not very interested. She was more conscious of her aunt’s pulse beating like a bird’s under her finger—less than a bird, beating like the pulse of an embryo in a fine-shelled egg—only the merest flutter that she had to strain to feel and keep between her thumb and finger, safe.

  ‘Now I understand why you do not wish to marry. You have dedicated your life to others—to your sick brother and your aged aunt and your little brother who will be dependent on you all his life. You have sacrificed your own life for them.’

  Bim’s mouth fell open with astonishment at this horrendous speech so solemnly, so leadenly spoken as if engraved on steel for posterity. Then, to her relief, Dr Biswas left and she was alone with her aunt. Looking down, she found she had dropped the thin wrist from her hand in shock, and now she pressed her hands together as if she wished to break, to wreck something. She even hissed slightly in her rage and frustration—at being so misunderstood, so totally misread, then gulped a little with laughter at such grotesque misunderstanding, and her tangled emotions twisted her face and shook her, shook the thought of Biswas out of her. Later, she never acknowledged, even to herself, that this ridiculous scene had ever taken place.

  That was the beginning of the aunt’s death for no one really expected her to recover. It was the long slow journey begun in earnest, and Bim sat reading, reading. She read the Thodol Bardol which she found, to her surprise, amongst her aunt’s few books, and she read Lawrence’s Ship of Death, moving her lips to silent words, wishing she dared speak them aloud:

  Now launch the small ship, now as the body dies

  and life departs, launch out, the fragile soul

  in the fragile ship of courage, the ark of faith

  with its store of food and little cooking pans

  and change of clothes,

  upon the flood’s black waste

  upon the waters of the end

  upon the sea of death, where still we sail

  darkly, for we cannot steer, and have no port.

  and wished, almost, that she could herself lower herself into that dark tunnel and slip along behind the passage made for her by the older, the dying woman.

  Have you built your ship of death, O have you?

  O build your ship of death, for you will need it,

  she murmured, almost aloud, but Aunt Mira did not hear. She lay quite still now, shrinking and shriv
elling, till she almost ceased to be human, became bird instead, an old bird with its feathers plucked, its bones jutting out from under the blue-tinged skin, too antique, too crushed to move. Now Bim kept the brandy bottle in the cupboard and measured out the drink for her. She became a baby, crying and whimpering for the bottle if it was not there, her lips making little sucking sounds in hungry anticipation. Sometimes she trembled so much she could not drink from the glass, only spilt it all, and then Bim had to spoon it into her mouth and she would suck and suck the spoon as if it were a teat, blissfully, her little buried eyes shining with joy. She began to foul the bed. Bim engaged the gardener’s wife to help her clean and wash. The woman was strong and lifted and washed and turned with vigour, but liked to talk. She would even try to force the aunt to eat a little of the rice and dal Janaki sent for her, but it seemed to hurt her to eat. She did it so unwillingly and pathetically that Bim, out of pity, sent the woman away with the dishes and gave her to drink instead.

  Only on one night did she rouse herself out of the stupor that Bim had thought permanent, and then she tore at her clothes as if they were a net, tore at invisible things that seemed attached to her throat and fingers and hair, even screamed ‘Let me go—let me jump into the well—let me!’ She screamed that intermittently all through the night, like an owl, or a nightjar starting out of the silence, waking Bim. She seemed obsessed by the idea of the well—the hidden, scummy pool in which the bride-like cow they had once had, had drowned, and to which she seemed drawn. Bim held her wrists all night, wondering why of all things in this house and garden it was the well she wanted, to drown in that green scum that had never shown a ripple in its blackened crust since the cow’s death. Even as children they had not gone very close to it ever: they had dared each other to throw pebbles in it but only Raja had accepted the dare, even Bim had lied and pretended but not actually gone. Now it seemed to encroach on the aunt’s enclosing darkness like a dark flood and she seemed helpless to resist it—on the contrary, hopelessly attracted by it.