A New World: A Novel (Vintage International) (9 page)

“You can always go to the American Centre,” said his father. “I don’t know if they’ll have the—what did you say it was?—the
New Republic
, though.”

Last time he’d been to the American Centre, sceptically, guarding his emigrant status like an undisclosed secret; he was seized not so much by nostalgia as by confusion, and even the Chowringhee outside the glass looked like a photograph. People were turning the pages of newspapers, browsing through videos;
of course
they didn’t have the
New
Republic. He’d gone to the toilet; and coming out, had encountered a strange picture comprising three colours, white, yellow, and green, which he hadn’t been able to understand. He grew impatient. His mind had been formed by his teachers at school and his father’s world, which in turn had been shaped by the late-colonial world (although his father had been against Empire, and was among the ratings who’d sympathized with the three accused of the INA and brought the Empire down by throwing down their arms). It was a mind that had little tolerance for ambiguity; each time it looked at things, it also looked into the mirror of certainties that had shaped it. Yet when the time had come for Jayojit to choose between Britain and America, he’d chosen the latter; though he never felt it was quite good enough for him. Even the other day, when he’d caught his parents returning from their walk early in the morning, he’d said: “How quaint of you two!” Explaining, he’d continued, “You know, in the States, no one walks any more. They drive; and once a week, when they want exercise, they go to the gym.”

“What if they need—need some matches—or milk?” asked his mother, smiling in puzzlement.

Worked up like the boy he once used to be, he said: “Oh, they phone! Home delivery! And then they go for a ‘workout’ and walk for hours on a treadmill.”

“But why?” asked the Admiral, trying to piece the jigsaw together.

Jayojit laughed and said: “They don’t want to be alone.”

He headed for the lift in the afternoon; he’d woken from a nap; he couldn’t see Bonny anywhere.

There was much less light in that corridor that went straight to the other end of this block; at the end of it was framed, as in a painting, a door with a lock on it. There was a staircase going up and down this way, and another staircase rising at the other end of the long corridor; a window at the staircase landing, and one at the other side, and it was light from these that filled the corridor. On both sides of the corridor there were three flats; from here, behind the doors, he’d heard the sound of videos and, once, of a music lesson in progress.

He might have come out to smoke a cigarette, but the anti-smoking campaign had got through to him, not so much because of fear but a belated sense of morality; he did not smoke—he had given it up ten years ago.

Most of the residents of these flats—these ones before him—weren’t Bengali. They’d tried to make a cheerful go of it, the way settlers bring with them the sense of space that belongs to another culture, two potted plants like insignia outside one of the doors, with lavish leaves; hard to know how they, the plants, made do with so little light. Another door had collapsible gates before it, which meant that, ordinary-looking though the flat might be from the outside, its occupant was far more well-to-do than the Admiral, and possibly had undeclared cash inside; or probably it was ancestral jewellery. The smell of Rajasthani cooking, intimate to strangers, hovered in the corridor here. Another door, at this end of the corridor, had been left inadvertently open, as if suggesting that passers-by were welcome—and in all possibility guests kept coming in all day, and children too kept the door open as they rushed out into the corridor; but the next flat, with a dining table, like the skeleton of some maritime vessel, at the centre, and a tricycle Jayojit could see abandoned by the door, which too had been left open, was barred by an iron gate.

The lift hadn’t arrived yet. And there was that humidity that made life difficult just before the monsoons. As Jayojit stood there indecisively, the edges of his spectacles already beginning to steam over, not certain if he should go back, he glimpsed, at the other end of the corridor, a movement he thought he recognized. It was someone he’d come to know from previous visits, the man who looked at his father occasionally, Dr. Sen. He’d just arrived on the landing of the fourth storey. He lived in this building, on the eighth floor. Last time had been a time not only of emotional upheaval but of minor illnesses—Jayojit had had a stomach infection, and the Admiral had had high blood pressure. Jayojit’s mother had the hardest time of all, because she’d been in perfect health. At that time, Dr. Sen had come to the flat a few times, refusing to take, to Jayojit’s disbelief, more than fifty rupees per visit—these days, when it was rumoured that doctors in Calcutta charged two hundred rupees for making calls at home!

He had once lived in London in “digs” when studying for his M.R.C.P. exams: but this whole matter of being a doctor he’d come to take in a disinterested spirit. He was never surprised by an illness, and even when writing out a prescription would be quick to go on to talk about other things—the present Marxist government was one of the “other things” that kept cropping up—at whose expense he made some tentative but effective jokes. Jayojit saw him as something of a Bengali gentleman, the
bhadralok
and healer personified. He had said:

“I didn’t know there were any Bengalis left in the building!”

“You know Bengalis,” the doctor had said in his shy, lambent diction, “they only come out during the Pujas. Then you’ll see them—heh, heh—bowing before Ma Durga! Others, of course, l-like y-you, live abroad, and keep the flats locked up, or give out the flats to Marwaris. Most of the Marwaris are tenants.” He had shaken his head and made a softly uttered judgement. “It’s spoiling the building.” What he meant exactly he hadn’t clarified.

They had continued to refer to each other in the formal way, as “aapni” rather than “tumi,” for the first month they’d known each other, until Jayojit interjected, “I may be a father and I may have been a husband, but really, I’m much younger than you.” After the second meeting, he’d told the doctor about his divorce, the court case, how he’d refused to recognize the verdict and brought the matter to India; and Dr. Sen had listened with proper astonishment and sympathy, as if he could not believe that these things, which he’d only remotely heard about, could actually happen to real people; people with minor complaints like colds, who had fathers who were ageing and stubborn. Part of his surprise was that Jayojit should be the incarnation of this breakdown; such a fine “boy,” educated abroad, obviously doing well in America, earning a sizeable amount in dollars, a person who should be eminently desirable, a “catch,” not a divorcé. Despite the gap in their age of sixteen years, they’d had long conversations and had come to exchange confidences about their respective problems. He’d even known the second girl’s family— Arundhati, with whom his parents wanted to set up something. “I—I’ll put in a good word,” he’d said, smiling but quite serious. “No, no that family’s a good one, known them for years.” Then, when things hadn’t worked out in the end, “Please, don’t misunderstand . . . but I
heard
,” emphasizing that word, as if he’d picked up the information in the air, “I may be wrong, they said the man wants not a wife as much as a governess to look after his child . . .” Then silence, a silence that explained more things than actions could. “But are things all right now?” Dr. Sen had asked, ruminating, that summer.

“Things can never be all
right
, I guess,” Jayojit had said, “but my son will be with me for at least part of the year.” Had Jayojit imagined it, or had the doctor, since then, spoken to him with a special gentleness? But no one’s life is perfect; the doctor himself was involved in a litigation with his brother, a property dispute: it had been going on for years. Saddened, he now wanted to end the dispute and let his brother have the property, which was somewhere on the outskirts of Calcutta. “Keep it, I want to say to him,” he’d told Jayojit, almost wearily, reminiscently. “I don’t want it.” Yet the doctor had achieved a sort of composure by taking regular walks and keeping to a strict diet; “Exercise is important,” he’d said in some context during a visit.

“Dr. Sen!”

The figure, about to descend the flight of stairs, looked vaguely in Jayojit’s direction.

Jayojit found himself walking fast towards him, down the corridor he’d been looking at absently so far. He moved quickly but heavily—because of the heat, and the excess weight he’d gained in the last few months.

“Dr. Sen!” he repeated, coming closer.

The doctor didn’t respond at first, but as Jayojit came nearer, recognition came.

“What a surprise!” he said, smiling. Then, “Jayojit! A-ARE you well? When did you come back?”

The same soft, almost liquid way of speaking.

“It’s been about three weeks—a month,” said Jayojit, thinking back briefly. “But tell me, Dr. Sen, how are you?”

“Strange . . .” said the doctor, musing seriously. “I haven’t seen you . . .” Then a smile returned to his face as unexpectedly. “Well, things go on. Nothing to report from here,” he laughed gently, using the English word “report” in his sentence. A black crow, oddly majestic, alighted at the window of the lower landing.

The doctor was wearing a greyish-green t-shirt and trousers—there had evidently been no change in his appearance in these past nine months. He was balding, but looked much younger than his fifty-six years; for he had a light, quick stride—unlike, for instance, Jayojit’s father, who ambled heavily. It must be his regular exercises, his long walks in the compound and down the lane (he always walked alone, never with his wife) that kept him trim. In many ways, in fact, he led a bachelor’s life (it was difficult to catch a glimpse of Mrs. Sen). The spectacles he wore did not succeed in giving him a focused look, but dispersed the direction of his gaze. He was about four inches shorter than Jayojit—who wondered, for an instant, how the doctor’s court case was going.

“Heh—I got tired of waiting for the lift,” said the doctor with a chuckle, as if he felt the need to explain, now that he’d been seen doing it, the purpose of embarking on this unusual adventure of going down eight flights of stairs. “But one can’t do this all the time.” A man of great energy, apparently, something belied by the slowness of his speech. Then:

“But you’re quite well, I trust? No stomach infections?” he smiled. “Thank God! No, I say this only because of this nasty weather, cool under the fan, hot outside, the change of season coming,” again, the words “change of season” in English; he shook his head in a grim, condoling way, as if speaking of a regrettable political manoeuvre. “
Lots
of diseases this time of the year,” he said, “viral fevers, gastrointestinal problems,” the doctor for the first time ventriloquizing unselfconsciously through him as he uttered the terms, “bacterial infections, influenza.”

“Then you must be very busy,” said Jayojit.

“No, no! . . . I mainly lecture at the medical college these days,” said the doctor, as if a subtle gear had shifted within him. “I go to the hospital once a week, and I see the patients who call me.” He meant that he no longer sat at a chamber. Behind the doctor’s seemingly fluid lifestyle, some sort of choice had been exercised; at some point he’d taken the decision that making money would take on a secondary importance in his life.

“How is your father?” asked Dr. Sen, looking up and, for the first time, meeting Jayojit’s gaze. “I don’t think it’s time to do an ECG again, is it? Anyway,” he waved his hand, “we can talk of those things later. How long will
you
be here?”

“Till the end of June, most probably. Or early July,” said Jayojit, as if he lived in a time when the simplest things were subject to unresolvable influences. “That’ll leave me about a month to the end of July, when my college leave ends and, anyway, when I have to take my son back.”

“Hu—hu,” said the doctor, before Jayojit had even completed the sentence, like one absent-mindedly soothing a child or allaying an agitation within himself. “He must be taller now . . .” referring to the boy—then, delightedly, as if he had quite forgotten, and as if no personal calamity could take away this simple, happy fact: “They grow so quickly at this age, don’t they!” A little hesitantly, “Uh—Vikram, isn’t it? Or is it Benoy?”

“Vikram—that’s his proper name,” said Jayojit. “But we call him Bonny at home.”

“Bonny!” laughed Dr. Sen, that unfocused look returning. He gazed downward at the floor. “
Bonny
. Yes . . . yes . . .” He seemed to be remembering something. Then he looked up at the space above the staircase and said without real interest: “Any plans—going anywhere?”

“Not really. I’m planning to complete—no,” he laughed, “begin, I should say—my second book,” said Jayojit. “I don’t write quickly . . .”—this was confessed with regret— “I take a while. I hope it will deal with the ethics of developmental policy.”

“Very good. Excellent,” said Dr. Sen, nodding. “Economists are doing well these days, aren’t they? In my days it was Professor Amiya Dasgupta and . . .” he hummed, “Bhabatosh Dutta! My word, all the students swore by him.” Jayojit waited patiently, as a “modern” composer might preserve a decorous silence as Beethoven is praised. “I think Amartya might have been his student . . . Amartya Sen . . . My God, he’s done well! When d’you think he’ll get the Nobel Prize—or do you think he’ll get it?”

“It depends on which political lobby is currently dominant,” said Jayojit with a laugh, but feeling an unpleasant weight too at having to speculate on another’s career. He was a generation younger than Sen, but felt equal to him; there were others equal to him; and yet he was defined by him as well. “It’s more politics than anything else. I mean also which school of thought exercises most power at the moment. Whether it’s free-market friendly or not.”