A Life Apart

by Neel Mukherjee

  It was mayhem from that point. Miss Gilby and Miss Shepherd properly looked away and fixed their gazes on the Indian contingent, pretending that this was an everyday occurrence that did not merit even the briefest of pauses in the conversation. Miss Gilby continued with the introductions but didn’t progress beyond two or three more words because the Indian women had broken into uncontrollable laughter, accompanied by hoots and shrieks. A young girl stood up and ran out, laughing hysterically, the thin music of her jangling chains and bangles chasing after her. Another girl stood up and tried to make loud noises of disgust, shaking her hands as though she was trying to rid them of excess water, but was overwhelmed by mirth and subsided helplessly into the arms of another hysterical woman. Over this cacophony of raucous and uninhibited laughter, the Maharani was trying to summon a seriousness, which was clearly eluding her. Her face was oddly poised between laughter at one moment, disapproving frowns the next. The interpreter had meanwhile moved into everyone’s field of vision and was bowing to Her Highness, clearly awaiting instructions from her.

  Jane had been stunned into silence but Iris kept repeating her question ‘Was that a peacock? Was that a peacock?’ over and over again but no one bothered to give her an answer. Miss Gilby suddenly noticed that the tittering and the whispering in the Indian camp hadn’t stopped. In between unbridled laughter, the gossipy conversations continued; all the women were now staring, whispering and laughing with such concerted yet easeful candour that Miss Gilby was in no doubt they were laughing at their visitors, so differently attired, so different looking they could be other creatures altogether.

  The Maharani at last managed to bark out a rapid string of imperious words. The interpreter bowed low and departed from the room. A woman, presumably an ayah, walked in with a boy of about seven or eight, dressed in impeccable white silk and a gold-bordered, feathered pink turban. He halted in his tracks when he saw the foreigners and turned around to hide his face in the voluminous folds of his ayah’s clothes. A wave of commotion arose from the Indian women at the sight of this little boy, so reluctant to advance to the centre of the room. There were calls, shouts, cheers and in Miss Gilby’s utter inability to understand a single word or read a single exclamation, they could equally well have been cheering the boy on, voicing blandishments, issuing orders or coaxing him.

  The interpreter returned with two servant girls who set about cleaning up the mess the peacock had made. He bowed in the direction of the boy, to the gaggle of queens and princesses and disappeared into the shadows again. One of the women said something loudly. After a few seconds’ pause the interpreter said, ‘Are the honourable English ladies giving birth to any children? Are they having husbands?’

  It took a considerable while for the questions and their possible meanings to sink in. During that interim, the Indian women didn’t take their eagerly anticipating eyes off their guests. Miss Gilby frowned, she hoped disapprovingly. Jane Fearfield started giggling again, while Miss Shepherd opened and shut her mouth, at regular intervals, like a landed fish.

  Miss Gilby cleared her throat and answered, ‘If I understand you correctly, only Jane Fearfield here is married. I am the sister of James Gilby, the District Collector of Madras, and Miss Iris Shepherd has just arrived from England.’

  The interpreter passed this through the opaque glass of his Indian language; Miss Gilby was certain the reflection was a very distorted version of reality. Another voice, another set of orders, silence from the interpreter, then the slow, gently goading movements of the ayah trying to move her charge to the centre of the room. The boy stood with his back to the Indian contingent, facing the English visitors. Someone from the Indian side spoke out – she could have been his mother – and the boy was repositioned to turn ninety degrees, with one group to his left, another to his right and the shadows at the far end of the room in front of him.

  The interpreter announced, ‘His Highness Prince Krishna Wadiar will now sing an English song in honour of the English guests.’

  Another round of whispering and tittering broke out in the Indian camp. It didn’t seem to be doing the prince, clearly very nervous and inhibited, any good. The English ladies, their curiosity piqued by the surprise announcement, leaned forward. What song was it going to be? How come the little prince spoke English? Who tutored him in the language? Why wasn’t that tutor acting as interpreter today?

  A thin, high voice started up, so weak in the cavernous spaces of the room, it could barely be heard. An Indian woman shouted out one word repeatedly. The boy stopped and started again but there was no appreciable difference to the volume. Miss Gilby strained to hear the words of the song to identify it – the tune was practically non-existent – but couldn’t make out even one intelligible word. Suddenly the words ‘Robin Redbreast’ leaped out and it almost made sense: the young prince was singing ‘When the snow is on the ground’. But it was obvious the prince didn’t know the language; he had learned the song by rote and was eliding and dissecting the words randomly, running three or four words, even a fraction of a word, together, stopping in the middle of one word and joining the rest with the next few ones. It was all dictated by his own aural world; it had no resemblance to English whatsoever.

  ‘Vendas no nisonda gound, littttil robinwedbest gives / Fornobe ris canbefound, anondatis therenolivs,’ the prince sang in his private language. Miss Gilby looked out of the corner of her eyes and saw Iris looking fixedly at a rose petal near her feet and Jane crumpling a handkerchief in front of her quivering mouth.

  She needn’t have bothered because two of the younger girls on the Indian side, just a few years older than the performing boy, erupted into rude, loud giggling while the brave boy carried on to the end of the song – ‘andenhilliv tilda snowisgon.’ Then he gave a dainty bow and ran into the arms of his ayah who had been waiting behind a fluted pillar, away from the sight of the foreigners.

  Once again, there was a minor hullaballoo: some of the Indian women started clapping, the English women followed suit, a bit too enthusiastically, while the giggling girls were reprimanded loudly. There seemed to be calls for the prince to come on again. Seemed. For Miss Gilby, that was the central word around which everything during this visit was arranging itself. She felt she had been catapulted onto stage in a play whose characters, design, plot, language were all utterly unknown to her, but she had to remain on stage and play her part, whatever it was, trying to pick out tenuous clues by watching everyone carefully and mimicking their actions. But this was proving treacherous too.

  The prince had somehow found his way on to the laps of the queens and was now being cuddled, patted and stroked by three of them while the two giggling girls stood apart, looking on. There was a whole chorus of discordant chattering in progress. Before long, the boy had been convinced to take his former place again. The Maharani shushed loudly for silence, then appeared to speak harsh words to no one in particular in her camp, followed by words directed at Prince Krishna.

  The boy began singing again, Jane Fearfield tried to hide her snorting by pretending to sniff into her handkerchief in the most unbecoming manner, while Miss Gilby gave up all attempts to decipher which English song it was this time. Iris Shepherd leaned sideways and rudely whispered, ‘Little Star, Little Star’.

  Yes, so it was. At the line ‘In the pretty sky so blue’, which the prince managed to leave relatively unmangled, Miss Gilby realized the truth of Iris Shepherd’s recognition. The boy reached the ascendant – ‘Little Star! O tell me, pray / Where you hide yourself all day’, Miss Gilby giving the words their proper enunciation in her head – when he stopped, gulped, repeated ‘O tell me, pray’ three times, stopped again, cast around pathetic glances, looked at the floor, took a deep breath and started the song from the beginning again.

  He had forgotten the rest of the song.

  This time, he reached ‘In the pretty sky so blue’ and slipped; he was progressively forgetting more and more of the song. His voice had a tremor in it somewhere and
the harder he tried to swallow it the more it defeated him. Then Miss Gilby noticed his lower lip quivering, his chin wobbling: the inevitable was about to happen. The boy rushed away, wrapped himself around his ayah’s legs and started sobbing. Then, to the courteous minds of the English, the inconceivable happened: a roar of derisive laughter went up in the Indian camp accompanied by what appeared to be the native version of booing and catcalls. Miss Gilby was shocked by this naked display of cruelty. Iris Shepherd stood up in outrage and was evidently composing herself to say something and protest at this bad behaviour. Miss Gilby stood up too. The two girls who had been tittering and giggling earlier were now unimpeded in their laughing triumph.

  But before either Miss Gilby or Iris Shepherd could bring themselves to voice their concern, the Maharani and two older women decided to take things in hand: they chided the girls, shouted at the mocking women, demanded silence, even compassion and understanding for the hapless boy, and eventually imposed some semblance of order.

  Miss Gilby spoke out. ‘We are delighted at the prince’s performance. And surprised, too. Well done, young man. It was very . . . brave.’ She started applauding. Iris Shepherd and Jane Fearfield joined in with such vigour that after an embarrassing lag some of the Indian women joined in too, drowning out the translation the interpreter was trotting out. There was entreaty for the boy to be brought to them. The ayah pushed him in their direction but the prince clung to her legs. She bent down, whisperedafew wordsinhis ear,even pointedto the English ladies and pushed him again. This time he ran across, his head held firmly down, ran straight into the Maharani’s gold- and jewel-encrusted bosom, buried his head there and refused to budge. The Maharani kissed and coddled him, spoke words in his ear, and passed him around to the other women who all did the same.

  At a sharpish rasp of words from one of the queens, the ayah too went up to the royal enclosure, gathered up the now puzzled prince and departed, keeping to the shadows at the edge of the room.

  Another long silence ensued.

  One of the girls said something out loud at which most of the other women tittered and laughed.

  The interpreter’s voice droned, ‘They ask why you have arms which are being so white they look uncooked and what are the funny things on your head.’

  In the silence after his words something beyond language passed like an invisible electric current between the three points of contact. Both Indian and British camps realized that the interpreter had translated words that were meant to be private and each was waiting for the other side to react.

  The seconds ticked away, each one seemed of far longer duration than normal. Then Miss Gilby held her head up, laughed, and said, ‘These are hats.’

  TWO

  Gavin tries to be dismissive every time Ritwik tells him about his life in Calcutta. Ritwik supposes it is posturing on his part, an attempt to appear cool and unfazed by what he hears. Perhaps that is as it should be. Besides, Ritwik doesn’t really tell him everything, only bits here and there; there are a lot of things he elides, mostly out of a sense of shame and embarrassment. He hopes Gavin isn’t going to ask him searching questions which would lead to all those things he passes over in silence. Sometimes he is not so lucky.

  ‘Why did they send you to that Catholic school?’ he asks one day, after Ritwik tells him about the time Shivaji Jana was beaten up so badly by Miss Lewis, in junior school, that he had a ‘dislocated kidney’. Ritwik heard that Shivaji’s father had been in to see the Principal, not to complain or rage, but just to say that his son wouldn’t be attending that school any more. Ashoke’s mother had seen him come out of Father Paul’s office. He had gone up to her and suddenly started sobbing like a little child. ‘My only son, he’s in hospital, Mrs Biswas,’ he had said between sobs, and shuffled out.

  ‘It had a great reputation,’ Ritwik answers.

  Gavin snorts. ‘For general buggery and torture! Jeee-sus!’ Ritwik notices he says ‘Sheeesus.’

  ‘No, no, it was a good school. English-medium, as we call it in India. That alone raises it to the first bracket. The education was top quality. These things run solely on reputation, you know. By the time the negative things start making a general mark on public consciousness, the school will have done twenty more years of brisk business.’

  Gavin rolls his eyes, as if it were Ritwik’s fault somehow that he went to Don Bosco School in Park Circus, Calcutta. ‘Did no one complain?’ he asks, starting to roll a joint.

  ‘You couldn’t. They were too powerful. Anyone whose parents complained would be victimized by the teachers. He would eventually have to leave. Anyway, for every complaint, there would be fifty endorsements from the brown-nose lobby of parents. Or plain scared parents. They didn’t want to risk their boys’ well-being or even their place in a school of such repute by supporting complaints.’ He suddenly feels a wave of fury at this remembered powerlessness.

  ‘God, the Catholics,’ Gavin says, with another of his exasperated looks. ‘They are the bloody same everywhere. They are a disease.’

  ‘Also, there were sons of police commissioners, businessmen, ministers in the school,’ Ritwik continues. ‘Those powerful men would have protected the school from any slur.’

  The joint is ready. They stand near the window of Gavin’s shoebox room and exhale outside. At least Ritwik’s room looks out onto gardens and a giant horse chestnut. Gavin’s fronts a square of brutalist student blocks built in the sixties. There isn’t a thread of green anywhere in sight.

  For a few minutes, they are quiet. Gavin instinctively understands this culture of microcorruption and vested interests. ‘It’s the same in my country,’ he says.

  ‘They were a subset of Catholics,’ Ritwik tells Gavin. ‘Salesians.’

  ‘You mean like Jesuits?’ Gavin asks.

  ‘Followers of Francis de la Sale. The school’s foundation wisdom was “Give me a boy and I’ll give you a man.”’

  ‘It could be the name of a gay porn film,’ Gavin sniggers. They both giggle for a while.

  As the dope kicks in, Ritwik invariably wonders whether he really fancies Gavin or whether it’s just his generalized hunger for white men. Anyway, Gavin is as straight as they come with a line in Tamil and Sri Lankan women. When he is single, as he is now, he looks at Pakistani and Indian women and goes, ‘Oh, sheees, look at her, just look at her.’ And if the woman is with another guy, especially one who he thinks is English, he always adds, ‘What a bloody waste.’ Gavin tries to live up to the cliché of the sexually rampant Latino man. With his balding head, goatee and white skin – his mother is from Brazil but his late father was Scottish – he doesn’t quite fulfill the image of the dusky South American stud.

  As if in some backhand acknowledgement of this, Ritwik asks him to play that Brazilian song he loves, the one about sexual success. Gavin obliges, laughingly. As the song comes on, Ritwik asks him to translate, although he knows the lines, in Gavin’s translation, by heart. He likes to watch Gavin laugh affectionately with his countrymen, or even at their stereotyping.

  ‘What use do I have of money, friends, fame,’ Gavin laughs and translates, ‘if I do not have sexual success?’

  They practically roll around laughing. Ritwik loves the sound of those Brazilian words: Para quê que eu quero grana, Para quê que eu quero fama sem sucesso sexual. He likes the rhythm and the cockstrutting masculinity of the song as well. It would be considered ironic here but he is certain it’s dead serious in Brazil.

  ‘My country is mad,’ says Gavin. But there is no doubt, either in his mind or in Ritwik’s, that he loves Brazil, loves it with the indulgent love of a parent for a slightly wayward but basically good child. He belongs to some militant Maoist group in São Paulo and wants to go back there to join in grassroots activism before the next general election. He is convinced they will win and the thought of imminent election fills him with excitement: he raises his arms and says things like ‘Long live the Revolution’ and wears Castro and Che Guevara T-shirts. He is
a great acolyte of Trotsky and he designed an exhibition poster for the Ruskin School’s annual degree show – a reproduction of his lithograph of Trotsky in his open grave. It borders on the abstract; the various shades of grey and black just about give the impression of an awkwardly curledup figure – like some sleeping Pompeiian – lying on the ground, with a stick, or something of that sort, beside it. Gavin explains it’s the ice pick, which was driven into his head by the assassin employed by Stalin to hound him out, even in furthest Mexico. Apparently, he died saying, ‘Stalin did it.’ Ritwik asks him for a copy of the poster and Blu Tacks it to his wall.

  Gavin is a clever art student. He makes things which have such a novelty value for Ritwik that he likes them instantly and thinks they’re the Next Great Thing. This is not difficult, for Ritwik’s knowledge of twentieth-century art stretches up to Matisse and Picasso, Rothko at a pinch. It is centred exclusively on paintings as well; other forms of representation to him are jarringly modern. But there is this one nifty thing that Gavin does with empty plastic bottles which extends Ritwik’s horizons in a silent way. He puts photocopies of photographs of people inside empty plastic or glass bottles, along with bits of rubber band, cloth, miscellaneous found objects, and then covers up the mouth of the bottles with cloth and string. He extends this principle to boxes and tins with windows cut out in them, shoeboxes with slits that make them look like barred windows. The effect is one of not only looking in, but also of these objects inside – puppets, statues, photographs – looking out from their confinement on to the free viewer.

  Gavin makes one for him with an empty 330 ml bottle of Evian and a picture of a woman’s face. He later explains that the woman is one of many whose sons went missing while Pinochet was in power. Ritwik keeps it on his mantelpiece, secretly hoping that one day he can sell it for a huge sum when Gavin becomes a big name. He is confident Gavin is going to become a big name, like the ones Gavin himself thinks are great – Paula Rego, Andrzes Klimowski, and a few others whose names Ritwik doesn’t remember. He hasn’t heard of any of them, his idea of a contemporary big name is the only name he knows of in the art scene – David Hockney. He doesn’t know anything about Hockney, he has just picked up the name from Jonti, another art student to whom Gavin introduced him some months ago. Jonti and Ritwik get on well and sometimes the three of them get stoned in Jonti’s room where he talks about David Bowie and Hockney and charges them £2 at the end of the evening for sharing his dope with them. Gavin always says, ‘God, the English really are a nation of shopkeepers,’ when he comes out of Jonti’s room.