Clear Light of Day

by Anita Desai

  ‘You’re making fun of me now,’ said Bim, finding her way back to her aunt-self, her aunt-persona. ‘Come along, come out to the veranda—I want some light—I want my tea. Have you seen Badshah? Have you seen my jet black cat?’

  It was with Baba that the nieces chiefly spent their time. They would slip into his room and sit cross-legged on his bed, listening to the old records that they had listened to on all their previous visits to the house, playing with his gramophone as if it were the most novel toy of the year. They squabbled so much for turns at winding it up that Bim and Tara would have to go in and see that they were fair about taking turns. Baba, sitting in the canvas chair by the bed with his knees looming up under his chin, watched them, chuckling.

  Then they found the old bagatelle board and insisted he play with them, noisy games that led them all to shriek and roar with laughter and howl with rage as they watched the metal balls roll inexorably into the traps and channels set for them. Once Bim and Tara even heard Baba calling out excitedly on winning five hundred points and turned to each other in disbelief.

  When Bakul enquired ‘When will you take them shopping? You said they needed saris for the wedding. Shall I send for the car?’ Tara shook her head fiercely, refusing to break up Baba’s party.

  They were to leave early in the morning. There was just time for Bim to give them tea out on the veranda. Still sleepy, they were all subdued. The girls sat side by side on the divan, petting the cat that lay stretched out like a black string between them and drawing it out longer and longer with their caressing fingers till Bim begged them to stop.

  The pigeons strutted up and down on their spidery pink claws, dipping their beaks into their breasts and drawing out from them those chiding, gossiping sounds as if they were long thick worms.

  Out on the lawn Badshah was following a suspicious scent laid invisibly in the night. His paws made saucers of colour on the pale dew drawn across the grass like a gauzy sheen.

  Teacups clinked on the saucers, tinnily.

  The sunlight spread like warm oil, slowly oozing and staining the tiles.

  Of course it was Bakul who spoke then, as Bim knew he would. Placing his empty cup in the centre of an empty saucer, he said, blowing his words through his lips like bubbles through a pipe, ‘Our last day in Delhi. The last day of this family gathering. Tomorrow, another one in Hyderabad.’ The bubbles sailed over their heads, bloated and slow, then sank to earth with their weight.

  ‘Oh it will be more than just a family gathering,’ said Tara, worriedly tightening the belt around her kimono. ‘A wedding always means such crowds—Benazir has relations coming all the way from Pakistan—there’ll be such confusion—we won’t have time to sit about our tea like this.’

  One of the girls let out a little shriek as the cat suddenly swatted at her with its quick paw. Laughing, they both began to tickle her belly, making her kick.

  ‘But, Bim, we’ll soon be back,’ said Tara, lifting her voice above their giggles. ‘You’ll have me and the girls back after the wedding. That’s what I’m really looking forward to—a few quiet weeks while Bakul does all the travelling. The girls will love it.’

  The cat sprang up in protest and fled. The girls rocked with laughter.

  ‘Do they love quiet times?’ Bim asked, whacking one of them on her knee.

  ‘They will,’ Tara was certain. ‘But perhaps not all that quiet—they do have fun with Baba, don’t they? Did you hear them playing bagatelle? The way they squabble over his gramophone! Did you hear Baba laughing?’

  Bim nodded. She kept her hand on Mala’s knee. It seemed to her its round shape was the size and consistency of a ripe apple.

  ‘They must do something besides sit and listen to Baba’s records,’ Bakul said fussily, getting up and pacing up and down the veranda. ‘D’you hear, you two? You are to visit all the relatives. They want to meet you. They want to introduce you to young people in New Delhi . . .’

  ‘And marry you off as soon as they can arrange it,’ Bim interrupted, giving the little knee a shake.

  The girls went pink and looked and winked at each other, but Tara protested, ‘No, no. What makes you think so? They’re still studying, Bim.’

  ‘That won’t stand in your way,’ said Bim. ‘If you can find two eligible young men -you wouldn’t insist on their going back to college.’

  ‘No,’ Tara agreed, ‘but they might,’ and the girls gazed into her face, a bit warily. ‘Mightn’t you?’ Tara asked them gently. They seemed not quite out of their cocoons yet, they were somehow still fuzzy and moist, their eyes half-open, like kittens’.

  ‘Now that’ said Bim, standing up to collect the tea-tray, ‘is good news. You must give me a little time with my nieces and give me a licence to influence them—an aunt has that prerogative, surely.’

  ‘You can have all the time you want with them,’ Tara said graciously, helping to hand over the empty cups, ‘and influence them as much as you like. In our family, aunts have that prerogative. Like Mira-masi had.’

  Bim gave a little start, scattering sugar, and her hand jerked to one side. The others looked at her. She was staring at the ranks of flowerpots on the steps and the dusty shrubbery outside as if she saw something there. Then ‘Hmm,’ she said, settling her chin into her neck, and lifted the tray and went off down the veranda and heard Tara say ‘Mala! Maya! Why don’t you get up? Why don’t you help your aunt? You should, girls.’

  ‘They must go and dress,’ Bakul boomed. ‘Why is everyone sitting around here? Hurry!’

  When they had all disappeared into their rooms, Bim came out of the kitchen slowly and went down the steps into the garden. She was tired, had not slept well, there was a mist before her eyes that bothered her. The bright light of day cut into her temples, leaving a wake of pain. She wanted shade, quiet. She went down to the rose walk to be by herself for a bit.

  As summer advanced, any pretence the garden made during milder seasons shrivelled up and disappeared. The stretches of arid yellow dust extended and the strips of green shrank. Now there was really nothing left but these two long beds of roses, the grey-green domes of the mulberry and eucalyptus trees at the far end, and the water tap that trickled into a puddle of green mud. A party of parched mynahs stood around it, drinking and bathing. As they saw Bim and Badshah shuffling up the path, they rose and twittered with loud indignation from the tree tops. Drops of water flew, bright and sharp as nails, from their agitated wings.

  Bim trailed up the path, looking at her toes, not at the hedges where white things might slip ghost-like in the blaze of day, or even at the crimson roses, all edged with black now in this scorching heat. She thought how Aunt Mira would have trembled if told to influence her nieces, how her hands would have shaken when she lifted the tumbler that concealed her brandy, how it would have rattled against her nervous teeth as she drank, and then the long hands would have shaken even more . . .

  ‘Bim!’ called Tara, quickly crossing the frizzling lawn to the shade of the rose walk, her hand shielding her eyes from the sun.

  Bim watched her come with tired resignation. She would have liked to wave Tara away, to be alone to mutter to herself, make gestures, groan aloud and behave like the solitary old woman she was, not as a sister or an aunt. ‘Haven’t you to pack?’ she asked, a bit coldly. Perhaps that was what Aunt Mira had needed, she felt, and missed—they had never allowed her to be alone, never stopped pursuing her and surrounding her for a minute. They had not realized and she had not told. Nor could she tell Tara.

  ‘All done,’ Tara called back. ‘Bakul and the girls are getting ready.’

  ‘And you?’

  Tara came up to her and for a fleeting moment Bim thought she was going to take her by the arm. They had never held hands, not even as children. How would she do it? She stood with her arms hanging stiffly by her sides. But Tara only brushed against her faintly and then, side by side, they strolled up the path, the dog leading the way, his tail rising into the air like a plume as he pran
ced to annoy the mynahs, giving them just a glint of his eye as a warning.

  Then when Bim thought the danger over and relaxed, Tara’s hand did suddenly creep up and her fingers closed on Bim’s arm with sudden urgency. She pulled at Bim’s elbow, urging her to stop, to listen. They stumbled on the hems of their long dresses and came to a stop, clumsily. Hurriedly, Tara said in a rush that made Bim realize that she had kept these words bottled up till they burst: ‘Bim, I always wanted to say—I can’t go away without saying—I’m sorry—I can never forgive myself—or forget—’

  ‘Oh Tara,’ Bim groaned. ‘Not those bloody bees again!’

  ‘No, no, Bim, much worse, Bim,’ Tara hurried on, clutching her kimono at the knees, ‘much worse. When I married—and left—and didn’t even come back and help you nurse Mira-masi, Bim—whenever I think of that—how could I?’

  ‘What! You’d only just married and gone. You couldn’t have come back here immediately after you’d gone. It wasn’t as if you were in New Delhi—you had gone all the way to Ceylon.’

  ‘I could have come—I should have come,’ Tara cried, and bit her lip. She tried to tell Bim what was even worse, still worse—that, taken up with her husband, her new home and her new life, she had not even thought of Aunt Mira, had not once worried about her. Not till after her death. And of that she heard only after the funeral. ‘I didn’t even come to the funeral,’ she wailed.

  Bim’s feet kicked impatiently into the hem of her nightdress. She must stop this. She must bring all this to a stop. To Tara’s visit, to this summer, all those summers before. Looking desperately about her, she shaded her eyes against the sun, and said ‘There’s Bakul—on the veranda—calling you.’

  ‘Tara! Tara!’ Bakul called, and Bim felt well-disposed to him for the first time that summer. ‘Go, Tara,’ she said.

  But Tara clung to her arm, her face puffy and angry. She wanted something of Bim—a punishment or at least a reprimand with which she could finally plaster the episode, medicate it. ‘I never even came to the funeral,’ she repeated, as if Bim might not have heard.

  ‘I didn’t ask you to it,’ Bim said roughly. ‘You didn’t need to. Don’t be so silly, Tara—it was all so long ago.’

  ‘Yes, but’ cried Tara desperately, turning towards the house now, and Bakul, as if against her will ‘but it’s never over. Nothing’s over, ever.’

  ‘No,’ Bim agreed, growing gentler. She saw in Tara’s desperation a reflection of her own despairs. They were not so unalike. They were more alike than any other two people could be. They had to be, their hands were so deep in the same water, their faces reflected it together. ‘Nothing’s over,’ she agreed. ‘Ever,’ she accepted.

  Tara seemed comforted to have Bim’s corroboration. When Bim repeated ‘Go, Tara,’ she went. At least they had agreed to a continuation.

  Bim’s agitation rose humming out of her depths as the family got ready to depart. Bakul’s uncle’s car had arrived to take them to the station. It was standing in the drive. The gardener had come to help the driver load it with their smart American suitcases. The girls, in their travelling jeans and T-shirts, hopped about, crying with alarm every time a suitcase tilted or bulged or threatened to fall. Bakul was handing out tips to the servants who had gathered on the veranda steps as if posing for an old-fashioned photograph of family retainers: they even smirked uncharacteristically ingratiating smirks as they stretched out their palms and salaamed. Bakul looked in his element, his lower lip moistly pouting with fulfilment. Tara darted back into the house, remembering something. Baba’s gramophone was churning out ‘The Donkey Serenade’ like a jolly concrete-mixer. The gardener and driver were lashing a rope around the bags, strapping them to the carrier. Bakul shouted orders to them. Then he turned to Bim and shouted, having forgotten to lower his voice in turning from one to the other, ‘Where’s that sister of yours gone now?’

  ‘Tara, Tara,’ Bim shouted, as tense and impatient as Bakul. She stood staring at the shuttered door in fear that Tara might bring Baba out with her, or that Baba might follow Tara and get into the car with her to go to Hyderabad. Had she not ordered him to go, asked him to go? At any moment, at any second, Baba might come out and leave with them. ‘You’ll be late,’ she fretted aloud, shifting from one foot to the other as if it were she who was to travel.

  ‘I know,’ he fumed. ‘Tara!’

  Then Tara darted out. Alone. Bim felt herself go limp, her tension recede. ‘Hurry, hurry,’ she said, brushing aside Tara’s last affectionate squeeze and trying to propel her towards the open door of the car. But Tara put out her hand to block the door and would not go in. She stood stiffly, stubbornly, beside the car, refusing to let everyone’s impatience budge her. She was frowning with the distress of unfulfilment.

  ‘Baba won’t come out,’ she murmured to Bim who still tried to bundle her physically into the car.

  ‘Let him be,’ Bim said, relief blowing her words into large light bubbles that rolled off her tongue and floated effervescently into the orange air. ‘He feels frightened by all this—this coming and going. You know he’s not used to it.’

  Tara nodded sadly. But this was not all that was on her mind. There was another block, halting her. She tried to force her voice past that block. ‘Shall I tell Raja—?’

  ‘Yes,’ Bim urged, her voice flying, buoyant. ‘Tell him how we’re not used to it—Baba and I. Tell him we never travel any more. Tell him we couldn’t come—but he should come. Bring him back with you, Tara—or tell him to come in the winter. All of them. And he can see Sharma about the firm—and settle things. And see to Hyder Ali’s old house—and repair it. Tell him I’m—I’m waiting for him—I want him to come—I want to see him.’

  As if frightened by this breakdown in Bim’s innermost self, this crumbling of a great block of stone and concrete, a dam, to release a flood of roaring water, Tara unexpectedly let go Bim’s hand and fell forwards into the car. At once, the driver, who had been waiting with his foot on the accelerator, released the brake so that the car gave a sudden jolt, then stalled, throwing them all backwards. The girls laughed, Tara squealed. The driver started the engine again. Bakul sank back with a groan of relief. The suitcases on the carrier wobbled. Tara and the girls began to wave their hands at Bim and the servants lined on the steps, as the car glided forwards, at first slowly in first gear, then accelerating with a spurt, making the gravel fly from under the wheels and Tara sink back so that her face was wiped out from the window with a brisk suddenness. It reappeared at the rear window now, and again her hand rose, to wave. Bim waved back, laughing, doubled over as if she were gasping for breath, heaving with laughter helplessly. Badshah sprang after the car barkine It turned out of the gate The bougainvillea closed upon it.

  It had grown too long, it needed trimming.

  ‘Chandu,’ Bim said, straightening up and turning soberly towards the servants who were watching with her, ‘that bougainvillea needs to be trimmed.’

  But now they had all lost their ingratiating smiles. They looked sullen again. The tips had been moderate ones, nothing lavish. Chandu nodded noncommittally and sidled off. When they had all gone, Bim went up the steps and sank down into one of the cane chairs with the slow movements of an old woman who feels she is no longer watched and need no longer make a pretence. Her black cat came to her and climbed into her lap.

  Then the terribly familiar rattling and churning of Baba’s record slowed down and came to a stop. The bamboo screen lifted and Baba came out. For a moment he stood blinking as if he could not quite believe that the veranda was so empty, so quiet.

  ‘They’ve left,’ Bim assured him.

  He came and sat down beside her. It was very still. Lifting her black cat’s chin on one finger, Bim said, staring directly into her green glass eyes, ‘Would you have liked to go with them, Baba—to the wedding, I mean?’ With the cat’s chin still balanced on her finger, she looked at his face from under heavy, tired lids.

  Baba, gazing at the cat, too, shoo
k his head quietly. Then the cat grew irritated and jumped off Bim’s lap and twitched the tip of her tail angrily.

  They sat in silence then, the three of them, for now there seemed no need to say another word. Everything had been said at last, cleared out of the way finally. There was nothing left in the way of a barrier or a shadow, only the clear light pouring down from the sun. They might be floating in the light—it was as vast as the ocean, but clear, without colour or substance or form. It was the lightest and most pervasive of all elements and they floated in it. They found the courage, after all, to float in it and bathe in it and allow it to pour onto them, illuminating them wholly, without allowing them a single shadow to shelter in.

  They were sitting—wordlessly and expressionlessly—inside this great bubble of light when a black smudge beetle-like entered it at its circumference and came crawling up the drive, in the shade of a white cotton sari, for it was only Jaya. They waited, almost without breathing, for her to come within screeching distance.

  ‘What, just sitting about?’ she screeched. ‘Oh, and I’m so busy-so busy—but I had to come myself to tell you. Of course, Tara’s left, hasn’t she? Is that why you are sitting like that?’ She came up the steps, her slippers striking each one emphatically. ‘But I have so much to do. You know, Mulk is going to sing. It is Mulk’s guru’s birthday and Papa has given him permission to celebrate it. He is to come on a visit and sing for us, and Mulk will sing, too.’ She sat down on a creaking chair and began to fan herself with the end of her sari. ‘So many people are to come—Mulk has invited everybody—and you must come too—it will be a big affair—out in the garden—just like old times again—Sarla and I are to make all the arrangements—I’m so busy—so little time left—will you help, Bim? And you must come, with Baba—’