Baumgartner's Bombay (2 page)

When Baumgartner shut the door and came out on the landing, he had to take great care the cats did not slip out. Fritzi, still dragging his battered hind leg and with blood turned to a black and shining crust where his ear once was, had been indicating with increased impatience that he was ready for the streets again and tried to hobble out from between Baumgartner’s legs, but was scraped up and returned to the dimness and safety of the flat, while Mimi had made a swift dart like a cobra’s head for the exit but been pressed back gently with a murmur: ‘Now you wait here,
mein Liebchen
, and I bring you something tasty – a piece of sausage, hah?
Blutwurst, Leberwurst, Bratwurst – was willst du
?’ He laughed at his daily joke so that the warts on his nose all bunched together in a purplish lump that wobbled and his eyes disappeared in nests of wrinkles. Mimi was not amused, she was hungry and bit him sharply in the thumb. ‘
Ach, Liebchen
,’ he moaned, drawing back the thumb and nursing it in his fist, ‘that was naughty, was it not?’ She withdrew, her back still arched in outrage, and he shut the door on her, assuring her through the crack, ‘Something I will bring back for you, so be good now, please, for a little,’ and made his way down the stairs.

They were ancient stairs, worn into hollows at the centre, and each heavy tread raised dust. He felt carefully for the safe hollow of each board as he went down, holding an empty plastic bag in his hand, reminding himself to be careful, not to
fall
and cause trouble in his old age. Down in the hall which was unfurnished but for the cooking smells of the building that collected and boiled and steamed within its green walls, the watchman on his stool shifted his legs to let Baumgartner pass, smiling faintly out of politeness but with a twist of distaste at the corner of his mouth. The plastic bag was empty but the watchman knew how it would stink when he returned. Also, Baumgartner rarely washed his clothes; they emanated a thick, cloudy odour that he himself found comforting in its familiarity but some considered offensive. His eyes were short-sighted and blinked half-shut against the glare that thrust itself in at the door and so he did not notice that watchman’s expression as he passed him on his perch under the wooden board that bore the tenants’ names – Hiramani, Taraporevala, Barodekar, Coelho, da Silva, Patel – mumbled ‘Good morning,
salaam
’, and went down the steps into the street with his bag, uncertain as ever of which language to employ. After fifty years, still uncertain. Baumgartner,
du Dummkopf
.

The glare came from the sea, down at the end of the street, glittering solder in the morning heat and heavy and sullen at low tide, but Baumgartner did not turn his face in its direction. He had to look down and watch his feet as he picked his way past the family that lived on the pavement in front of Hira Niwas. They worked constantly at reinforcing the shelter they had built here, flattening out packing-cases for walls and tin cans for the roof, attaching rags to the railing around Hira Niwas and stretching them on to their own rooftop; yet it remained tremulously impermanent and Baumgartner took care not to run into one of the sticks that propped it up or the rope on which the washing hung. He had to avoid the gnarled and rotting feet of the man who always lay in a drunken stupor at this time of the morning, his head inside the shelter and his legs outside, like pieces of wood flung down, as well as the pile of cooking pots that the woman washed in the gutter so that they shone like crumpled tinfoil in the glare, and the heaps of faeces that the children left along the same gutter, and the
squares
of greasy paper from which they had eaten their food the night before. It was a familiar sight to Baumgartner, as he was to them, with his plastic bag in his hand and his shoes slit at the sides for comfort, but they still had to watch each other, to be vigilant.

The woman, washing, automatically edged her sari over her face with a twitch of her wet hand as she did in the presence of any male; actually she hardly thought of Baumgartner, a lump in grey pants, as one: the gesture was a conditioned one, now instinctive. The child that had the straw-coloured and straw-textured hair of the famine-struck standing about its head like Struwwelpeter’s in Baumgartner’s nursery book, sat on its haunches, straining to defecate. It looked up at Baumgartner as it looked at all passers-by, its face clenched with the problem: should it sing out for money, for
baksheesh
, or not waste its small, painfully hoarded energy? In the case of Baumgartner, the problem was easily solved: he clearly had nothing to give, they all knew that, the family on the pavement that watched him set out daily with his plastic bag. So she drew the snot on her upper lip back into her nostrils with a contemptuous snort and began to wail for her mother who cursed her casually, simply as a comment on life, on all their lives.

Baumgartner knew that family as well as a devout Christian is familiar with the Holy Family in the cattle stall; he knew all the looks, the voices and words in their gamut. But he never walked past them, never turned his back without feeling the hairs on the back of his neck rise, a brief prickle of – not exactly fear, but unease, an apprehension. He knew the absolute degradation of their lives; he knew the violence it bred – the brawling in the night, the beating, the weeping. Now the effect of it all had become dulled, but in the beginning it had appalled, and he remembered that – how he had returned to Hira Niwas one night, soon after they had set up abode on the pavement, a part of the migrant wave from the drought-stricken countryside, refugees from famine, or riots, and the woman had been screaming as though run over by an
automobile.
He had found a crowd of onlookers already gathered there, watching the man beat his wife with his fists and then kick her down, grab her by her hair and drag her up the street, swearing. ‘What is happen?’ asked the concerned Baumgartner of the watchman at the door. ‘Is murdering her? Is police not come?’ The watchman had shrugged – he did not consider Baumgartner worth talking to – but some of the onlookers turned round with amused looks and explained, ‘Drunk man saying his wife behaving badly with other men, so he is beating her.’ ‘He is killing her,’ Baumgartner bleated, wondering at their nonchalance. ‘We better call police.’ But no one moved. When the man began to beat his wife’s head against the pavement so that the blood spilt and gushed he hurried up to him and caught him by his shoulder only to be flung off and hurled against the wall. Some in the crowd helped him to his feet, saying, ‘Don’t trouble, sir, no good people. Both drinking too much.’ Baumgartner tottered to his feet and allowed them to push him away. He did nothing more, knowing himself incapable of anything, but although the man had been too blind with liquor and fury to know what he was doing, Baumgartner was sure he had taken note of his intervention. After so many years and so many similar scenes, he remembered the look that the man had flung over his shoulder at him when he had tried to intervene, and the yellow, blood-streaked eye of the drunkard, murderous. It still brought out the prickle, those beads of sweat on his neck, and he walked by, hunching his shoulders protectively, fearing them. They watched him fearlessly – to them he was nobody, an old man with an empty bag. Finishing with the pots, the woman spat into the gutter, then bent to pick them up.

Baumgartner did not turn towards the sea. That was for the evening, when the breeze came up with the tide, and the sun fell headlong into the waves, livid and melodramatic in its orange and purple flames, and people strolled, for pleasure, buying themselves peanuts to eat or coconuts to drink from, and one was not conspicuous if one loitered too. But now
everyone
was out on business – cars and people had a purpose, everyone bustled, the vehicles became entangled in their hurry and horns hooted in furious impatience. The morning scene had no tropical languor for all that it was hot; the Bombay style was brisk, Baumgartner thought regretfully, brisk and businesslike.

He was very aware of his lack of business; if he were ashamed of it, he was relieved too, relieved not to join the crowd, the traffic, but to amble alone into the lanes and alleys that made off from the main road, and shuffle past the old dingy houses that no one bothered to paint, that stood perpetually in the shadows, and where life washed up in drifts, like debris. Scuffing through that litter, he turned into the dark doorway of the quiet and nearly empty Café de Paris.

Here he met with the first smile of the day, but so slight and sardonic and well concealed behind a bush of tobacco-coloured moustache, that he did not see it. Nor did the café proprietor’s eyes reflect it; they were the bottomless pits of a cynic and a melancholic and so the smile was no more than a grimace. Baumgartner did not mind; he did not see, being still dazzled by the light of the streets, that explosion of light that his weak eyes could hardly tolerate. Groping for a chair, he lowered himself on to its comfortless tin seat by a marble-topped table, placing his hands on it for coolness and grateful for the green murk of the Café de Paris: Farrokh wasted little money on electricity.

‘Tea,
sahib
? Coffee?’ he asked as he came across since the waiter was still in the kitchen, noisily preparing the cutlery and the crockery for the day’s custom. He leaned over the table, placing his raw, meaty hands on its edge and frowning at a smear of grease on the marble that he wiped with the napkin he carried on his shoulder.

‘Och, Farrokh, so good. Yes, tea, pliss, tea is nice,’ sighed Baumgartner, feeling the perspiration trickle down his neck and back, almost audibly. ‘And something for the pussy-cats,
yes
? You have something from last night, Farrokh?’ he coaxed, edging the plastic bag across the table at him.

Farrokh gave another of his dour smiles that failed to light his eyes. He took the bag from Baumgartner resignedly and went to the kitchen door with it, handing it to one of the boys who worked there in striped underpants and tattered vests and with towels flung over their shoulders. Then he called back to Baumgartner, ‘I’ll have it ready for you later, I told them keep fish curry for you. It’s hot. Your cats like
masala
, spice, chilli, turmeric,
jeera
, bay leaf?’

Baumgartner had no option but to smile and nod. He was in debt to Farrokh and the other restaurateurs who filled his bag for him with the remains of the food cooked the night before. Without their help he could not feed the cats that flocked to him in the alleys, knowing him to be the Madman of the Cats, the Billéwallah Pagal, or the sick and maimed ones he picked up from the streets and carried home to nurse, telling them they would have to leave when they were cured but never finding the heart to turn them out.

In return, he gave them his custom. He could not really afford to patronise cafés, however third-rate their quality and competitive their rates, but it was necessary to remain a customer, not to slip down to being a beggar. Baumgartner was not as unconscious as one might think of the dividing line. Planting himself heavily at the table and grasping the glass of thick, milky tea that had been set before him by the waiter’s wet and dripping hand, he made himself play the role of customer. It would not do to smile and thank the waiter, he had to remember he was paying for what he got, remind them also that he would pay. In that comfortable knowledge he could raise his head after the first gulp and look across to the counter where, behind glass cases containing livid yellow queen cakes with pink icing and plates of fried salted savouries, Farrokh stood swatting flies. Over his head the tinsel garland he had hung around the tinted portrait of his god Zoroaster stirred and twinkled like a ring of bluebottles in the shadows. It was almost
impossible
to read the faded sign he had hung beneath it:
TRUST IN GOD
, or the handwritten label attached to the sign:
Terms Strictly Cash
.

‘Mmm.’ Baumgartner tried to show his appreciation of the hot, the thick, the suffocatingly sweet tea. He tried to think of some repartee he might have with the dour Farrokh. There was a time when he had enjoyed every opportunity to talk, even to strangers, particularly to strangers since all acquaintance with them, however quick, however warm, had to be fleeting, leaving him to go on alone. Now the habits of a hermit were growing upon him like some crustaceous effluent; it required an effort, an almost physical effort, to crack it, to break through to the liquidity and flow and shift and kinesis of language. Crustaceous – crab – ungainly turtle: that was how he thought of himself, that was how he saw himself – an old turtle trudging through dusty Indian soil.

On this morning he was still struggling to find some item of news that he might discuss with Farrokh – for Farrokh read a Gujarati newspaper spread on the counter before him with ferocious attention and could always be roused by mentioning the name of a politician or referring to any political situation, being at heart a suppressed and thwarted leader of men like every other Indian he had ever met – when Farrokh folded up the grease-yellowed paper, leant across with his elbows on it, between the case with the sponge cakes and the case with the fried samosas, and jerked his unshaven chin gloomily in the direction of the far end of the room. ‘D’you see that one there?’ he asked conspiratorially. ‘He was here last night, we had to turn him out when we closed, then found him in the doorway when we opened up this morning. Back he is here, and I don’t know what to do with him – throw him out?’ He made the appropriate gestures with his powerful arms and no one could have mistaken his intention.

Baumgartner could not twist his neck any longer; it had long ago become set; he had to turn himself right around on the small swivel of the tin chair and look into the dark corner at
which
Farrokh so balefully glared. There he could make out nothing at first but what seemed like a bag of pale fur on the table; it might have been a cat. He found himself giving an involuntary twitch that started in his neck and ran down his shoulder and through his arm, making his hand turn over on the table in a flutter of excitement: could Farrokh have found him a cat, a homeless one? In his amazement he opened his small, watery eyes wide to take in its condition, and made out two solid baked brick-red arms of human flesh that lay on either side of it, protectively. It was only another human being, another – but here Baumgartner pulled himself together: it was too easy to use the coarse language everyone else used these days, to be uncharitable. And it might be a fellow countryman, although of another generation, for the head, covered with such a mass of blond curls, surely was youthful. Nordic possibly, it was so pale – if not Teutonic. It lay helplessly on the table-top, like something carelessly left behind, the arms that sprawled about it sunburnt to a raw, meaty red on which the bracelets he wore seemed incongruous in their delicacy, their femininity. Angel-child, raw meaty man, helpless lass – he was all three. That was how young men were now, Baumgartner knew – they saw no difference between what was considered masculine or feminine, and, as for Baumgartner himself, he was too old for it to matter.