Of Marriageable Age (61 page)

For it was Ma, unmistakably, though her face was turned away and only visible in profile, while her hands reached out to snip a rose from its bush, tenderly and with much love as Ma would do it, and she was going to place it gently in the basket hanging over her arm with the other roses. Ma, standing in the garden at Waterloo Street, behind her the house with its tower, not the black skeleton the house had been when Saroj had last seen it but whole and white the way it should be. Ma wore a pink sari with an intricate border, drawn up to cover her head the way she did when the sun glared down. Ma in her element. For though her face was turned away, such power and grace emanated from the painting that tears came to Saroj's eyes, and she turned to Trixie, who had crept up beside her. Saroj took Trixie's hand, letting go of Ganesh's, and placed her arms around her.

'Oh, Trix!'

'You like it?' There was pleasure and shy pride in her voice, pride in a job well done, and done with love.

'It's called The Wedding Garland,' she added. 'First I wanted to paint a portrait of her and I tried, but I haven't got a photo and I couldn't do justice to her eyes, so I've left that for when I have more experience. So this is what I painted for Ganesh, as a wedding present.'

She giggled then, as nervously as ever, and Saroj hugged her, and then she gestured to the walls. 'Take a look!' she said. Saroj walked slowly around, now and then picking up a smaller painting to inspect it closely under a skylight, now and then kneeling down to look at a larger one.

If the painting of Ma was Trixie's masterpiece, Saroj thought, it was only because it was in a class of its own. It was the simplest of all. It was the only painting with only one person in it, for instance, and it emanated something tender and subtle, which was the essence of Ma, that imperceptible radiance that didn't hit you in the eye, that you had to lean into and feel to perceive, and therein lay its brilliance.

But all Trixie's paintings were brilliant, at least all those she had chosen to grace her walls. They pulsated with life, a vibrant, exhilarating life that hit Saroj in the face, that knocked her over and left her breathless. The scenes they depicted invited you to step inside; no, they drew you into themselves. Two fat black women at the Stabroek Market squabbling over a stall piled high with pineapples, oranges and soursops, a little child cowering at the skirts of the customer, curious onlookers gathered around: you could see the beads of sweat on the market-lady's forehead and hear her shouting from the painting, and feel her anger at the customer's presumption, and you drew back for fear she would cuss you, and maybe hit you over the head with the bamboo cane in her hand with which she chased away the monkey-like urchins; and yet you laughed because, well, you were home again and could hear and smell that dear familiar market day, and fill your basket with mangoes and tangerines and a full ripe bursting pineapple, if that lady let you! You could just hear the next-door lady calling out, 'Soursop, mistress, I got a lo-ve-ly soursop today,' dwelling on the stretched out word lovely, almost singing it out as if she really did
love
that soursop.

'Come, leave those, I'll show you my favourite,' said Trixie impatiently, and led Saroj across the room to another easel in the corner.

'This is The Pork-knockers. D’you like it?'

Saroj threw her a disdainful glance for her modesty and inspected the painting.

The Pork-knockers showed a group of pork-knockers standing in a shallow riverbed, the transparent water washing white and silver over rounded mottled pebbles. One of them, a stalwart shiny black man with rippling muscles, wearing only a torn pair of khaki shorts almost falling from his hips, and belted with a frayed piece of rope, stood on a flat rock, leaning back and laughing, one hand on a hip, the other with a small flat bottle of XM Rum in his hand, holding it up to show the others. Any minute he'd place the bottle to his lips and empty it. Meanwhile two others in the riverbed, similarly half-dressed, looked up at him and shared in his laughter, one of them holding the flat round pan of pebbles in which there might or might not be a tiny gold nugget, holding it against his hip and beating the heel of his other hand against his high glistening brow. The third man, squatting, leaned forward as he laughed, about to thrust his pan into the riverbed for a load of pebbles. The fourth man was barely a youth, and he sat on a big round rock with his legs sprawled open, leaning forward and waving his forefinger. He was the one telling the joke at which they were laughing, and it was a very bawdy joke, that made you want to laugh too, while the fifth man just grinned as he rested against that same rock, his eyes covered by the rim of a wide, floppy-brimmed straw hat pulled forward against the sunshine. He grinned in his rest, as if he couldn't resist the joke, and his white teeth glistened in sharp contrast to the purple-black skin of his face.

'D'you like it?' said Trixie again, almost anxiously.

'Oh, Trix! You silly!' Saroj hugged her again. 'You must know it's brilliant! They're all brilliant! Every one of them! You really are an artist.'

'That's what I keep telling her,' called Ganesh from the kitchen. 'She refuses to believe me.'

'Miss Abrams saw it first. Remember, Trixie? "Patricia Macintosh, you should put your talent to some constructive use." '

'Yes. Well. I suppose that's what I did,' said Trixie, and turned away. 'So how about some food?' She gestured towards the dining table.

It's as if Nat never existed, thought Saroj as she walked over to the table and drew out a chair. As if he'd never entered my life and tried to upset all I've worked for. Trixie and I are friends again, and now we've got something else to talk about besides Nat. She lined up the questions she'd ask Trixie about her art and her future plans and…

The telephone shrilled. Trixie answered it, handed it to Ganesh, who listened, spoke a few words, and then turned to Saroj with an ashen face.

'That was James,' he said. 'Baba has had another heart attack.'

60

CHAPTER SIXTY

SAROJ

London, 1971

H
OW COULD
you hate a defenceless bundle of humanity? On a table next to Deodat the electrocardiograph ticked away his heartbeats. Ticked away his life. It was steady now, the immediate danger over, but life was a fragile thing and could snap at any given moment.

A week had passed since the second heart attack, and the doctors described his condition as stable. Though Baba had not yet spoken a word, it was only too obvious what had triggered this second heart attack. After he had been raced to the hospital, Ganesh, dropping by the deserted bedsit to pack some clothes and toilet articles, had found the newsletter folded back to the offending article, and put two and two together. So Ganesh himself was keeping his distance. Time enough for explanations when Baba was on his feet again. If ever.

This was Saroj's first visit. She had not seen him for almost two years, the last time at a cousin's wedding.

After the heart attack she had at first refused to visit him. She had been prepared to let Baba go, if go he must, to let him leave this world without the releasing benefit of reconciliation.
Who is he to me?
she had said to herself.
No relation. He is not my father, I am not his daughter.
She had enjoyed her power to hurt him, knowing as she did that Baba needed her absolution to go in peace.

She had relished her power to grant or deny absolution, had clung to it for a while, and then, over the week, let herself be persuaded, had made the decision to go, finally, to grant that absolution. 'Very well,' she had said to Gan, haughty as a grande dame, 'But I'll go alone.'

She had arrived here half an hour ago, prepared to look down on Baba in disdain and forgive him.

She had not reckoned with this.

Baba had always been thin, but now he was just skin and bones. He looked like an overstretched child, his features relaxed in an innocence so tangible it brought out in high relief Saroj's own guilt. Hers was the guilt of neglect, nourished and cultivated by a childish hatred. Baba had been wrong, from the very beginning. Wrong to hate, wrong to strike her. But that wrong itself was born of nothing more lethal than his own utter impotence. He had made himself mighty but it had been an image, a myth held in place by the willingness of others to believe in that power and cower before it, as she herself had done. She had believed; and thus was overpowered. Where was that power now? Where was hatred, where was all the past? Evaporated.

Never was Saroj so aware of her own frailty, of Baba's inherent frailty, of all human frailty. So absolute. What worth success, in the light of one's utmost inability to direct and ward off illness, and this single inevitability, death? For no man, no woman, could command death, and all power was finite and feeble except the power of death over life. What humans called power was nothing but a shadow shaking its fist at the sun. If Deodat were to slip away, now, in an hour, tonight, tomorrow, there was not a thing she could do to stop it, and this helplessness filled her with fear and with awe and with deep contrition. Between her and Baba was nothing but the moment, and that moment was filled with compassion, and her only wish, right now, was to somehow let him know, before it was too late. She willed him to open his eyes. He refused. Helplessness swallowed her once angry pride and devoured it.

His hand, now, was in both of hers. She didn't know when she had taken it; it had happened involuntarily, like the tears that now pricked her eyes and threatened to gather and roll down her cheeks.

Once more, she willed him to open his eyes. He remained stubborn as ever, locked away from her in the drugged refuge of sleep. Gently she squeezed his hand, to reinforce her will; gingerly, for she feared to break it, so thin, so brittle was that hand in hers. Tender as a new-born bird.

Just let him live; just let him live long enough for me to say everything's all right. Oh please.

The Jamaican nurse on duty for this shift bustled in, her white clogs clattering, and with a broad smile said, 'I'm sorry, you got to leave now. Doctor coming in a minute.'

'Can I speak to the doctor?' asked Saroj, tenderly letting go of Baba's hand and placing it gently on the white-shrouded mound of his thigh.

'Well, you can wait outside and try your best,' she said in a hearty sing-song, her voice raising on the last word 'best'.

Saroj stood up to leave.

A tall lanky figure, standing in the doorway and watching, slipped backwards and melted into the corridor.

S
AROJ RETURNED THE NEXT DAY
, but this time it was she who stopped in the doorway, to watch in silence, for Baba already had a visitor. She could only see his back but she knew it was Nat. She knew, because of the racing of her heart and the sudden panic that gripped her. She wanted to turn and flee, but could not. As if transfixed, she could only stand and watch, and listen.

Baba's was the bed nearest the door. Beyond his were two other beds, the middle one empty, the last one occupied by a man of indeterminate age. Yesterday this man had had a visitor, probably his wife; now he slept. It was as if Nat and Baba were alone in the room. Nat was speaking. He was reading aloud.

Arjuna leaped forward, swarthy as a rain-cloud, shining like a rainbow lit up by lightning, his bow and quiver trembling, his armour glinting in the sunlight.

The spectators let out a roar that lifted to heaven and seemed not to stop. Musical instruments burst into sound, the hollow blare of conch mingled with the jangling clash of cymbal and the rattle of the kettle-drums. When the commotion died down Arjuna displayed his magnificence.

With the fire-god Agni's weapon he created fire, with the ocean-god Varuna's weapon water filled the arena, with the Parjanya weapon rain descended. With the Bhauma weapon he entered earth, with the Parvata he brought forth mountains; and with the next the universe vanished. In an instant Arjuna stood tall on earth or hovered above it; he was running; on his chariot; leaping to the earth; still as a rock; swift as lightning. The Terrifier shot his gleaming silver darts through moving targets and tiny ones, and his arrows swept through the arena with the stinging flash of a thousand firebolts. Drona exulted, Bhishma swelled with pride, Kunti grew faint with joy.

Saroj knew the Mahabharata story, of course; it had been told her by Ma so often as a child that the words — or rather, not the words themselves, since Ma told the story in her own words; she had not read aloud as Nat now did — and the exhilaration, the very spirit of Arjuna, seemed to come alive within her now as if she were, once again, sitting cross-legged before Ma in the half-lit puja room, Ganesh leaning against Ma as he always did, she leaning forward in thrall, dreamy-eyed Indrani resting her chin on drawn-up knees.

She started; for Nat no longer read aloud. He was speaking to Baba in his everyday voice, and with a tinge of jealousy Saroj realised, for the first time, that Baba was awake, and had been listening just as she listened.

'So,
Pitaji,
that's all for today. Tomorrow I'll come back and continue the story.'

Pitaji,
Nat called him! Father, in Hindi; a term of highest respect combined with deep affection. Deodat looked as if he was melting, almost purring with contentment. No-one had ever called him that before. But his voice was as petulant as that of a child's.

'You always stop at the most exciting parts,' he complained.

Nat laughed. 'Well, isn't that how the storyteller keeps his audience coming back for more? It's an ancient trick, you see; those people who make the soap operas didn't invent it!'

'Yes, but now Karna will enter the arena and the rivalry between Arjuna and Karna will begin. It would be better if you just continue till Karna puts in his appearance. Just two more pages and then I will be satisfied.'