Baumgartner's Bombay (10 page)

He did so wrongly and found himself in the Rialto with its sudden flurry of sound and activity, crates of oranges standing about, stallholders shouting, women screaming, money ringing, and all around a profusion of design, of arabesques in stone and colour, and for a moment or two he was fooled into believing that his wrong turning had led him straight into the East, into an eastern market, and he stood there, as entranced as he was alarmed. Venice
was
the East, and yet it was Europe too; it was that magic boundary where the two met and blended, and for those seven days Hugo had been a part of their union. He realised it only now: that during his constant wandering, his ceaseless walking, he had been drawing closer and closer to this discovery of that bewitched point where they became one land of which he felt himself the natural citizen.

It made him forget the Jewish woman, the painter, and when it grew dark, he got on to a vaporetto with a crowd of other home-goers. He found himself standing-place and let
himself
be carried up the canal, believing himself to be on the sea, to be on his way. He had not found the Jewish quarter or the Jewish girl but he had seen another world; perhaps it was where Jewry was located but to him it was the East, and he was both in it and travelling to it, at a distance and yet one with it.

On returning to his lodging-house, he was handed a letter from the shipping company – the boat had arrived, and passengers were requested to embark before midnight.

Packing his valise, he ran out into the moist dark.

CHAPTER THREE
G APPAA.ORG

BUT THE LIGHT
was different here.

His eyes streaming from the glare, Baumgartner stopped to wipe them with his large handkerchief – one of those squares of checked cotton one bought for fifty paise on the pavement – and noticed how far down Colaba Causeway he had come, missing all the cafés and Irani restaurants where he normally stopped for scraps for his
Familie
at home. No tasty Parsi fish in mint sauce, no slops of custard or bits of mutton cutlets for them today. How foolish, how forgetful. How old he was today. Letting out a groan, he was brought up short by the kit and tools of a bicycle repair shop and realised he had only to go down a narrow lane between two buildings and he would be in the courtyard overlooked by Lotte’s room. Why not drop in on Lotte and so retrieve something of the day? She was the only one he could tell about the odd encounter with the fair-haired boy, about the flood of memories of old Berlin it had let loose. Not that Lotte knew
his
Berlin. He grinned at the absurdity of the thought, using the handkerchief to mop his neck. It was unthinkable that Lotte had occupied the same Berlin he had, that she could ever have been in the company of his mother, of her friends the Friedmanns, or even the Gentleman from Hamburg. He nearly laughed when he wondered what they would have made of her – disgraceful Lotte with her fat legs that always contrived to show so much of themselves under her skirts, her hair that she dyed a livid,
foxy
red with henna, her gin-drinking, her dancing, all her disreputable ways. Could she ever have lived in Berlin as she claimed when she was feeling particularly intimate with Baumgartner? Of course at other times she claimed to have been a gypsy who had followed her artiste parents all over the globe. Baumgartner had wondered if they had been circus artistes but there was nothing in Lotte’s physique or skills to suggest such an athletic background. She liked to claim that her mother had been a singer of light opera (‘I was in her belly, up there on the stage, when she was singing Madame Butterfly – hasn’t it had an effect on my eyes?’ she would leer, pulling up their corners with her painted nails). But what did it matter – she spoke German, had his language,
nicht wahr
? Putting his handkerchief away in his pocket, he walked up the lane, straddling the drain in which unsightly objects blocked the flow of the soapy slush, causing it to smell unbelievably on this hot morning; he felt drawn to the idea of spending a litle time with Lotte, perhaps drinking a cup of coffee with her, listening to a little German, however foul her accent, coarse her expressions and jarring her voice – yes, it had to do with that boy, that boy.

He stopped in the courtyard and looked up to see if her window was open (she always locked it when she went out because ‘Everyone is a thief here; we are living in a thieves’ den, Hugo, we are surrounded –’) and saw that the shutters were, but the curtains were drawn, pink and red and blue flowers stamped all over them. Lotte slept late – he knew that – a habit from her days in cabaret, but it was late enough, and how could she not be awake now when in the garage below her room a mechanic was beating upon the steel rim of a tyre with his hammer – clang, clang,
CLANG
? And in another room that opened on to the courtyard a man had hung his transistor radio on a nail in the doorway where he sat on a stool, nursing callused feet drawn out of rubber-thonged slippers, a cigarette hanging from his lip – Ramu the bootlegger; Baumgartner recognised him – he supplied Lotte with liquor, country liquor probably brewed from kerosene or
insecticide
that would one day surely kill her, he had warned her. Suddenly the mechanic flung his hammer into a steel drum and shouted to his assistant for a spanner. An invisible but always audible parrot – perhaps it lived in the room that had a row of money plants growing out of a row of beer bottles on a window-sill – screeched its harsh note over and over again. In the lane, a woman selling bananas tried to raise her voice above that of a woman vending fish with equal ferocity. ‘
Pomfret, pomfret – jheenga, jheenga!
’ screamed the fish-vendor, only to have the banana-seller triumph with the long-drawn screech, ‘
Ke
–
laah!
’ And out on Colaba Causeway, the traffic poured relentlessly on, an all-devouring monster on the move.

No, no one could sleep in this hell of noise and glare, Baumgartner decided, not even a drink-sodden Lotte, and began to climb the stairs to the floor above the garage. At the door – he remembered when the paint had been fresh, a fresh fire-engine red, now flaking, peeling brown – he knocked and knocked. The air was suffocating with cooking smells on the closed landing, and he felt the children of the family upstairs staring at him through the banisters, silent except for their noses that ran with clogged, choking sounds; they were the children, he knew, who had thrown fish scales and prawn tails on Lotte’s head when she returned drunk one night, setting off fifteen minutes of such hysteria that even the garage hands were impressed and sent for the police; two hours of Konkani and Yiddish abuse later, they had left in helpless defeat. Baumgartner too began to feel defeated and was about to turn and go down the stairs, coffeeless, when he heard Lotte lurching past the furniture inside, then rattling at the chains she had had fixed to her door after Ramu the bootlegger had followed her and attempted to knife her for an unpaid bill. He knew she was staring at him through a spyhole and it made him smile because through the spyhole everyone looked like a burglar, a murderer. He tried to reassure her by winking and thumbing his nose at her.

Finally she opened the door a cautious crack and looked out,
suspiciously
pinching together her lips, nose and eyes in a tight lock of denial. Then, ‘
Ach, du lieber Gott
, Hugo,’ she said disgustedly, and dropped her hands to her hips, letting the door swing open. The slack flesh hung from her arms like two legs of mutton veined with blue. She was dressed in a slip and stood barefoot.

‘Now, Lotte, do you receive guests in this costume?’ he chided her, walking in past her, letting his side bump into and press against her as he did so – such clumsiness being permitted the old, surely. If she did not bump back at him, she did not press away from him either.

‘Guests are all I need after a night like the last one,’ she groaned, following him after locking and bolting the door securely although not before the children on the landing above had screamed several of their names for her, all filthy.

‘What kind of night was it then? Up dancing in the Café de Paris till dawn, eh?’ he teased, lowering himself on to his favourite chair, a bucket of cane that had over the years sagged to fit his shape. Besides, it had a small flat cushion covered in the same bright material as the curtains. He eased it up against his back, grateful for its support.

Lotte flung herself on to the kitchen chair at the table, spreading out her legs to make a generous meaty triangle, and then flinging up her arms to repeat the attitude over her head on which her hair stood in a reddish frazzle. ‘Dancing he talks about,’ she groaned. ‘In this bloody heat and in this bloody graveyard? What a joke.’

‘Come, Lotte, there is enough life in it, you know.’

‘Life, what life? Mosquito life, yes, I know – millions and millions of bloody mosquitoes, all coming to nest in my hair, I think –’ she ran her fingers through it so that it stood up like orange grass – ‘they think I am Mama Mosquito and drink my blood like milk. All night at my ears, crying and crying for more. See how I’ve scratched myself everywhere –’ she leant towards him, exposing the scratches, relishing the harsh gashes she had drawn through her raw skin.

Baumgartner drew back, flinching. One could have too much of Lotte. ‘A little coffee may help,’ he suggested.

‘What, on the skin? Are you
meshuggeh?
’

‘Down the throat, Lotte, down the throat,’ he waggled a finger, raising and opening his lips to it like a fish on a hook.

But she scowled, clapping her hand to her head and groaning, ‘With the sun so hot, it fries you like an egg in a pan? Coffee is not for this land. Better you have a drink with me,’ and she gave him a look that was close to a wink, then got to her feet and padded around the table to the kitchen end of her single room.

It was not what Baumgartner wanted at all – he did not care for gin in the morning and with Lotte one could not even be sure it would be that and not the local brew Ramu brought her, a poison called
feni
that stank. He felt despondent as he watched her take a bottle from behind a row of tins in which she kept her rice and sugar, and pick out glasses from the basin in which dirty dishes were heaped. ‘So, you want?’ she called aggressively and he gave a reluctant, resigned nod, then watched her rinse the glasses perfunctorily under the brass tap that ran into a plastic bucket. ‘Ramu brought it up last night,’ she told him as she poured out the colourless fluid. ‘Real stuff – from the consulates – not that stuff they make of cashew-nuts in the courtyard.’

‘Ach, Lotte, how can you trust Ramu?’ he sighed, trying to reconcile himself to the fiery drink he did not want. ‘You will be lucky if it is cashew-nut. Not so many cashew-nuts in the courtyard – but many dog turds in the drain.’

She splashed some gin on the table, she had set down the bottle so violently. ‘
Nein, was ist das?
What’s that?’ she spat at him. ‘You need the soap to wash out the mouth. Don’t talk dirty about the food – or drink – in my house,
hörst du?
Good food – good drink – don’t spit on it, Hugo,
sei dankbar
.’ She splashed some water into the glasses from another bottle, then limped across to the small grey refrigerator that stood shuddering and rattling irately in a corner and got out a tray of ice.

Seeing the ice-cubes slither out of it on to a plate, Baumgartner began to feel refreshed, and mopped his neck with his handkerchief, preparing to feel cooler and to rest. ‘Of course is good, Lotte,’ he pacified her, ‘but not Grand Hotel, hah, not Prince’s exactly.’

‘Prince’s!’ she snorted, picking up a handful of ice-cubes and throwing them into a glass. ‘Grand Hotel!’ She tossed some into the other glass. ‘So that is what
mein Hugolein
has come to talk about.’ She brought his glass across to him, curtseying before him and managing to splash a little on to his knee.

‘Careful, careful with the Herr Consul’s gin, Lotte,’ he warned. ‘Too early in the morning for falling down.’

‘Early in the morning I know it is,’ she snapped, sinking back on the kitchen chair with her glass of gin. ‘The crack of dawn, like the English say.’

‘And how is it you are being so English today? Some new friend? Last night’s party?’ Baumgartner laughed, having taken a sip and found the drink both cold and fiery in a pleasurable way he had not anticipated.

‘Party, party,’ she groaned, wiping her mouth after a long drink. ‘Only party I know was going on downstairs in that madman’s flat. I tell you, Hugo, is driving me
meshuggeh
, this place. Downstairs, party. Upstairs, puja – priests, bells, hymns all night. Is a madhouse.’ She pulled down the corners of her mouth, two deep gashes formed in the soft floury cheeks on each side, and she looked as worn as she claimed to be.

‘I told her not to move,’ Baumgartner reminded her. ‘Such a nice flat she had, that one in Napoli. Free gift, given for life. Some don’t know when they are lucky. Just for money, she gave it up.’ He shook his head, again regretting the loss of that little flat in which Lotte had once lived, incredibly enough, looking out at the steeple of the Afghan Church and with the smell of fresh fish from the Sassoon docks sweeping in through the window when the catch came in. ‘Nice doorman to keep place safe, sweeper to keep all clean, and breeze at the window – but you wanted money.’

‘Don’t you?’ she exploded. ‘Without money, one can live?’ She slammed down her glass and refilled it immediately. ‘You can’t be
memsahib
without money. I did try, Hugo, but no, without money, I was only poor old Lotte, not grand
memsahib
.’ Unexpectedly she began to laugh, her face turning maroon with each splutter. ‘You remember your Lotte in those
memsahib
days, Hugo?’ Without waiting for his corroboration, she went on: ‘That was when my Kanti was living. Everything had to be nice then – silver dishes for the nuts on the table, plastic lace curtains in the windows, plastic lace for tablecloths – he liked that. And the servant he engaged for me, that useless boy Raju. Raju understood everything. When I was alone, I never saw him – he would sit outside on the landing, playing cards with all the servants in Napoli. So many people lived there, so many servants they had, and all played cards all day on the landings. But once a month we could be sure the telegram would come from Calcutta, a pink telegram with white paper stuck on it – that meant
Sahib
was coming. Then we would both jump – Raju and I,’ she laughed to remember, smacking both hands together to denote action. ‘Quick, quick, I would shampoo my hair, dress, go out and buy something nice – a piece of pretty cloth – then run to the
durzee
– I had such a clever man then – he could copy from the magazines, so nicely. And I would find shoes to match – or sandals anyway because stockings there were not. And I would get Raju to leave the cards and come away from his friends. He knew when
Sahib
came he had to behave – they all knew that. I would make him clean the whole kitchen, scrub it all with Vim, catch and kill every cockroach. Yes, Hugo, you do it once a month and you can be free of them – even you, in that dump of yours. And I would order soda and put it in the fridge, and beer. Buy stores. Raju would put on a clean shirt. Then he would cook – all Kanti’s favourite food he knew how to make. Not mine: never did he learn to make
Kartoffelpuffer
or
Leberknödel
, however much I tried to teach him. But
dal, sabzi, khichri, roti
, all that, Raju could do just the way Kanti liked. And then I would become
memsahib
in his eyes. Perhaps
because
I went out in a taxi to fetch Kanti from the station. For that, I would put on a dress,’ she snickered at Baumgartner, not at all unaware of how his eyes watched her knees, her thighs. ‘All those nice dresses fitted me then.
Ja
, Hugo, I had a green silk one, and that yellow print – and my hair was still blonde then – I really must have looked a
memsahib
in the taxi going to the station, going to meet his train. Then he told me not to because sometimes he might travel with his relations, or with other businessmen from Calcutta, and he did not want them to see me.’ Her face was still maroon but her eyes and lips had begun to lose their animation and droop so that her voice slurred. ‘So after that I stayed in the flat and waited. Not the same thing. Made me sloppy, like this –’ she tugged at the frayed strap of her slip. ‘But I had the beer cold, the soda and ice ready, and when he came I could give him a little party. He loved it, that old Kanti. Made me sing all my old songs, and tell jokes – he just laughed and laughed. I suppose no one ever sang or laughed in his home, no one made him laugh there. He had daughters, made them take singing lessons like all the daughters in Calcutta take, but he really couldn’t stand their singing. “Graveyard music”, he called those songs they all sing in Bengal. He liked mine – with a bit of leg, hee hee. Told me that. Old men like it, don’t they, Hugo?’ She gave him a wink, but with some difficulty; she could not quite control her eyelids. ‘Then he became too sick to laugh. It hurt him to laugh. He wanted to go straight to bed and have his drink there. That was all right, I could understand, but he wouldn’t get out. Whole weekend spent lying in bed. That was not fun, after all it was what I did all week. Raju would bring a whisky and soda to the bedroom. Always made a face as if he smelt something. Rude boy. Made me so angry, I wanted to kick him, but Kanti would stop me, say I must not shout at Raju, he was looking after me.
He
, looking after me?
Who
looked after me?
Nobody
. Except Kanti.’