Read A Lovesong for India Online
Authors: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
A Lovesong for India (30 page)
Well, he was not young, and neither was I, and I should have thought nothing of it. And actually, when I did lie down, there was no awkwardness. Like him, I looked up into the roof of leaves; though thick, it had holes in it to let in what from here didn’t look like a heat-exhausted sky but stretches of pure cool silver. And the birds were not restless but glad to have our company, and one of them began to sing before being reminded that it was still far from dawn. Dr Chacko and I lay side by side, both of us gazing upwards with the innocent pleasure of children or even angels – he seemed to think more of the latter, for he said, ‘Yes, this is my evening paradise.’ When he added, ‘Especially after a day like we’ve had,’ I realised that this didn’t refer to mine in my air conditioned house but to his in the cottage where there wasn’t even a fan.
I didn’t stay long under the tree but went home to search out a table fan for him. At first I thought of returning to give it to him, but I felt shy or embarrassed to do so, in case my return might be misinterpreted. (By whom? By him? Or, more likely, by myself.) Instead I waited for the next day and for the girls to take it to him. They thanked me so profusely that I realised that it was less for the fan than for what they took as a hopeful sign of my increased admiration for him.
So far they hadn’t succeeded in placing his manuscript, and they had now decided that the only way was to publish it themselves. They had brought me a copy of it, together with a flyer they had put together to send to people who might be able to afford the book; and since there weren’t many of these in their own acquaintance, they had come to ask me for a list of possible subscribers. This request made, the girls left to deliver their little cooked dishes to him before they grew cold. I took out my old address book with all the names I had thought never to contact or need again. And now when I saw those names – and thought of the life I had spent for so many years, the fundraiser banquets in hotel ballrooms, the catered dinners and the ladies’ lunches – and then looked at the handbill designed on Maeve’s computer with a passport-like photograph of him, I was struck by the incompatibility of that past with this present. At the same time, I couldn’t help being amused by the idea of the recipients of the flyer, or their social secretaries, who would be discarding it in the waste basket along with other crazy mail. And if they were to read the text, what would they make of it? No more than I could. Here I stopped transcribing names to leaf through the manuscript itself, which the girls had left with me. I looked through it in the hope of some glimmer of understanding. There was none; it remained turgid and incomprehensible and in no way reflected the man I had seen lying indolently under a tree.
I put the list in an envelope with a note to say I hoped this would be useful to him. I knocked on his door and, receiving no answer, pushed it open. The cottage was empty, not only of him but of any presence whatsoever. There was nothing except the few pieces of my abandoned furniture and the fan I had given him – no photographs, no pictures, nothing personal. I put the envelope on the table and left quickly, as though I had done something I didn’t wish to be detected.
My instinct turned out to be correct. Next day Betty came to see me, looking grave and holding the list in her hand. ‘Where’s Maeve?’ I asked, for it was unusual for one to come without the other. Betty smiled at me, though sadly: ‘Maeve is as grateful to you as I am, for the list. But she’s hurt . . . She so loves to do things for him. Sometimes at night she makes me drive her here, only so she can leave a little gift for him.’
I said, ‘And now she’s hurt because the gift of the list is mine and not hers?’
‘Poor Maeve, her heart’s too full of love. She’s an orphan, you know, she was found on the steps of one of the Sister Marie-Jo Homes. She has no idea who left her there. And after the orphanage, foster homes; I won’t tell you about those, why should you hear such things . . . Maeve has these strong feelings, maybe they’re wrong, probably they are. What she’s always loved best is to leave anonymous gifts for him, it was the sweetest thought for her that he wouldn’t know – ’
‘That you’re helping him with the manuscript?’
‘But now he does know. He’s seen your list so he knows we’re looking for subscribers.’
She appeared to accept my apology, but it was from that time that something changed between me and the two girls. This was true principally of Maeve, who seemed no longer quite to trust me – or was it trust me with him? It was on the evening of that same day that I entered into a new relationship with Dr Chacko. For the first time, he came to the porch where I sat with my evening drink. When I invited him to join me, he did so at once. He settled into a porch chair, and when I offered him a lemonade, he indicated my silver cocktail shaker. When I told him what was in it, he said he’d have that. It was quite a potent martini but seemed nothing new to him. And I was again surprised when he thanked me for the list I had compiled.
‘I thought you didn’t know about the subscription,’ I said. ‘
They
think you don’t know.’
They
think you don’t know.’
‘Like those chocolate bars they leave? . . . But it’s different with the manuscript.’
‘Won’t you like having it published?’ He made a vague gesture – of an indifference that seemed to express something of his personality. I asked, ‘Don’t you think it ought to be published?’
‘What do
you
think?’
you
think?’
He had turned fully towards me. If he was, as I had been told, part Indian and part Russian, I couldn’t see anything to suggest either. He was too dark to be Anglo-Saxon, and his teeth were not Anglo-Saxon, they were very strong and very white, the most alive thing in his lean face. He spoke English fluently – more than fluently. Under the layers acquired through much moving around in the world, there remained – like a canal still alive in the oldest part of a city – the flat accent of the English Midlands. I had only noticed this at his lecture in the workshop where he had deliberately stressed it – as though its homely and provincial sound would bring his message closer to the earth.
When he felt he had waited long enough for my opinion of his manuscript, he interpreted my silence as unfavourable. He admitted that it was hard labour for him to write, like birth pangs – ‘Thoughts trying to get themselves born – except I don’t have many thoughts.’
He laughed with those magnificent teeth, at himself and at me, as if I might not believe him. But I did believe him. I’d seen him at his workshop, where he seemed to operate not by thoughts or words or ideas but just by being as he was.
For the rest of that summer, he joined me several times more for drinks on the porch. When the season changed, we sat by the fireplace in my living room, and we carried on this practice throughout that year and the beginning of the next. But it wasn’t until the second summer that he joined me for a meal. Unlike the girls and probably many others I had seen in the workshop, he wasn’t a vegetarian but thoroughly enjoyed a veal cutlet and the wine to drink with it; also the candles in my silver candelabra and their reflection on the mahogany table.
Even on the days when he ate with me, I saw the girls going to the cottage with their covered dishes. At the end of one of our meals, I asked him what he did with the food they had cooked for him. He said he got up at night and ate it. ‘If I didn’t,’ he explained, ‘they’d discover it next day when they come to bring more. It’s their kind nature. There’s nothing I can do about it.’
One evening, finding the cottage empty, they came up to the house to see if I knew where he was. They stood silent in the doorway, holding their covered dishes. At first we didn’t notice them, and as soon as we did, he took charge like a good host. He drew out chairs for them, he gestured towards the table. ‘There are some wicked things here that you won’t want, but what if – ’ he turned to me – ‘two more plates, would it be possible?’ And it was he who uncovered their dishes and served them on the plates I had brought. ‘What delicious smells, and may I?’ He dipped in a fork and, tasting, confirmed that it was indeed delicious. With all this, he didn’t quite succeed in overcoming my embarrassment and whatever were their much stronger feelings. After a while, I managed to contribute some small talk, and so did Betty, both of us half-heartedly. As for Maeve, she remained looking down at her plate, maybe trying to hide the tears trickling into her untouched food.
Later in that second summer, Betty told me that my list of potential subscribers had proved useless. Now she had a new suggestion, which was that I should underwrite the publication of the manuscript. She made it sound like a good business proposition, pointing out that in no time royalties would be coming in, whereupon I would be the first person to be reimbursed. Maeve didn’t say anything; she only traced her toe over the floor, looking down at it so as not to look at my face or let me look at hers. Ever since that evening meal, this had been Maeve’s way with me; and it continued on subsequent visits when Betty went over the details of the publication. Maeve was always with her, but she wandered off outside by herself, making it clear that she wanted no part in any discussion with me.
During these summer months my evening walk sometimes took me as far as the waterfall at the edge of my property. The precipitous climb to the rock from which it fell was no longer easy for me; but I enjoyed the solitude here, the moss-covered stones, the trees bending towards the arc of the water. One day I saw a figure within that arc, sheathed in its iridescence and turning in its spray: it was Dr Chacko, naked and singing as he soaped himself. His towel and a pair of rubber flip-flops lay on a rocky ledge far enough not to get wet. Before I could leave, he emerged, still singing and naked; if he saw me, he gave no sign until he reached his towel to wrap around himself.
Nimbly, on naked feet, carrying his shoes, he climbed the rocky ledge that separated us. He sat beside me, drops still sparkling on his thighs and his chest. As far as I could make out over the roar of the water, he was telling me how much he enjoyed coming here for his shower – though of course he didn’t feel the same in the winter. I wondered then was he intending to spend another winter with us, or were we only his refuge from the summer heat of the city? When I thought ‘we’, I meant those of us who were united in our care for him – except now apparently I stood accused of having taken more than my fair share of him. It was so ridiculous! And, seemingly prompted by the same thought, he said the same word – ‘Ridiculous’ – as we got up to walk together towards the house. ‘But it’s always happening,’ he went on, ‘and it’s always my fault. I should have told them, why wouldn’t I have told them? There’s nothing wrong in it.’
‘You mean in eating meat?’
‘And your being my friend. Careful.’ He lifted a prickly branch nodding over our narrow path. I hadn’t mentioned Maeve, but in that way he had of taking up one’s unspoken thoughts, he continued, ‘It’s sad that she’s an orphan, but there are some orphans who grow up quite happy and carefree. When I was younger, very young, I used to look in the mirror: “Who is this?” I didn’t even know my name – Chacko were the parents who adopted me for a while. They were Indian, but they lived in the UK, in a very dull town, and at seventeen I made my way elsewhere. I’d been reading the old Russian authors, and I thought all Russians were saints or else gamblers and swindlers; but when I went there, I found no one like that; so I worked my way to Baku, and from there further east . . . A long story; a long odyssey.’ He didn’t tell me any more of it that day (or any other day, now I come to think of it). Instead he plucked one of his melodies out of the air, some strange tune from far away.
He did stay through the winter, and through the spring, and then another year had passed and it was summer again. In the meantime Betty had seen his book through production and had made it into a very handsome volume. She watched me examining it, while Maeve stood by, gazing at her own toe circling the carpet. That evening I sat down seriously with the book, but I still understood very little; actually nothing.
Carrying the book, I went to see him next morning. He was sitting on the threshold of the cottage, carving a piece of wood. He invited me to sit next to him, and when I did, I had again that feeling of intimacy I’d had lying next to him under the tree. An innocent intimacy, enhanced by the way he was carving, like a boy whittling a stick. He showed it to me, a simple little figure that could have been a man or woman or, most likely, a symbol. But he said it was a piece of wood he found that looked good for carving. Woodwork was just a hobby for him now, but once it had been useful when he had fixed shelves and done minor repairs. It was his only skill, he said, since he hadn’t had much education. Then I did ask about the book, pointing at the title page where his name was printed – with ‘Ph.D.’ attached to it.
‘I bought it,’ he said. ‘Not actually I, but a lady who liked to hear me talk. There’s a small college in India that sells Ph.Ds. BA and MA too, if that’s all you want . . . It never earned me a living, for that I had to do other things – when I really needed money, for a wife and kids.’ He was silent for a while and so was I. Then he went on, ‘Three of them, all grown up now. I miss them, but they’re doing all right. Some of them are married, they may even have children of their own. I miss my wife too, occasionally. She’s with someone else now. I liked her, I still do, though she never understood a word of anything I said or wrote . . . Do you?’ he asked me, but I didn’t have to answer, for he had opened the book, was leafing through it, reading a sentence here and there as if he had never seen it before. Then he shook his head and laughed. He had a rather whinnying laugh, like a horse; I liked his singing better. ‘Probably only God knows what it’s all about . . . But there are others – others,’ he said, for just then the girls’ car drew up, ‘others who think it’s me who understands, and so I must be God.’ He whinnied again and waved at them and Betty waved back. But Maeve was looking at me, where I sat close beside him on the narrow doorstep; and from that day her hostility to me entered a new phase.
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