Out of India (11 page)

PASSION

A
part from the fact that they had both been in India for about a year and both had well-paid jobs with British cultural organizations, Christine and Betsy had very little in common. Nevertheless they shared a flat. Their friends—Christine's friends especially, Betsy didn't have all that many—were surprised when they first decided on this step and wondered how it would ever work out; but in fact it worked very well, perhaps just because they were so different, and led different lives, and so never got in each other's way.

The mantelpiece in their flat was always full of invitations, and they were almost all Christine's. She was tall, slim, and good-looking. She had a number of Indian boyfriends, who would call for her at the flat in the evenings in order to take her out in their cars. Sometimes she wasn't quite ready and she would trill from out of the bathroom that she wouldn't be a second; Betsy in the meantime invited them to make themselves comfortable in the sitting room and have a drink. Sometimes they had several before Christine finally appeared, and then they jumped smartly to their feet while she, laughing and breathless and tying a gauze scarf around her hair, flippantly apologized for keeping them waiting.

Her favorite escort was a tall, handsome officer of the President's bodyguard called Captain Manohar Singh (“Manny” to his friends). Betsy too was glad when it was Manny who was taking Christine out, and the longer he was kept waiting the better Betsy liked it. She felt good sitting next to the handsome Manny on the sofa and talking to him. She talked to him about India—Indian philosophy or music, or about the current political situation—while he drank one whiskey after the other and sat at his ease with his large
legs apart and a good-natured, listening expression on his face. Betsy sometimes had reason to believe that he wasn't really listening, for he never made any kind of remark that could be construed as a comment on what she was telling him. Indeed, he hardly said anything at all, and when he did, it was something completely unexpected like, “Boy, did we have a party last night! Wow!” But for Betsy it was really enough to be allowed to talk to him and look at him at such close quarters to her heart's content. Manny was a Sikh, and he had an exquisitely barbered, shining black beard and wore a dark-blue turban; his eyes were not dark but surprisingly light-colored, a pellucid gray shining like a lake between the heavy fringe of his black lashes.

Once Manny kissed Betsy. It was entirely unexpected. They were sitting on the sofa and Betsy was telling him about her preference for the Kangra school of painting over that of Basohli, when suddenly he jumped on her. Really, there was no other word for it—he
jumped,
took a leap from where he was sitting and snatched her into his arms. She gave a short cry of shock, but next moment his lips were pressed weightily on hers, his tongue—strong, pulsing, muscled like some animal alive in its own right—pushed its way into her mouth; beneath his silk shirt she could feel his chest and his ribs as strong as steel. Waves of rapture passed over her like a fainting fit. But it seemed he was more collected than she was. As suddenly as he had seized her, he pushed her away, hastily adjusted his turban and got to his feet as Christine came breezing in, wafting scent and shouting “Darling!” “Darling!” he answered with his great boom of a laugh. “Again you are late, ho-ho, darling!” He was quite unembarrassed, while Betsy was left sitting stunned on the sofa with her hair disheveled and her skirt slipped high up on her thighs.

With few friends and few entertainments, Betsy had very little to do in her spare time and spent most of it reading. She often went to the American library and became well known to the local staff there. One member of the staff was particularly assiduous in finding the books she wanted and keeping back those she had asked for. He was a slim, shy young Indian who, like a thousand other clerks, was always dressed in a clean but rather old white shirt and Western-style trousers. In the evenings, when she took a taxi home from the office, Betsy often saw him standing in a bus queue. The queue was always immensely long, and many of the buses that passed were crowded and did not even stop. He looked very patient standing there, holding
a small, worn brass tiffin carrier in his hand. Once it was raining, and she saw him trying to protect himself by placing the tiffin carrier on his head. She stopped her taxi and offered him a lift; he got in without a word.

“Where can I drop you?” she asked.

“Where you are going.”

“But that may be miles out of your way.”

“It is all right.”

That was all she could get out of him: “It is all right.” For the rest, he sat straight and silent on the edge of the seat, holding his arms close to his sides; he was very wet and exuded vapors of dampness and discomfort. When the taxi stopped at her house and she got out, he got out with her, without a word. “Do you live near here?” she asked; she felt quite guilty about him by this time. “It is all right,” he said, and stood and waited. Perhaps he was waiting to be asked up, but Betsy couldn't do that because Christine was having people in. She fumbled in her bag for her keys and, in the process, feeling nervous and hurried, dropped many things on the pavement. He stooped to pick them up, and she cried out in alarm, “No, don't bother!” She crouched down with him on the pavement, and they both scrabbled for her things and got wet in the rain. When she had found her keys, she stuffed everything back into her bag and tucked it bulging under her arm and ran inside, leaving him standing. She had a bad conscience about him for hours afterward.

A few days later she passed him again at the bus stand. Feeling embarrassed, she looked quickly the other way, but he had seen her, and without a moment's hesitation he ran into the road and signaled her taxi to a halt; he waved both arms like a person in distress. But he wasn't in distress at all, he only wanted a ride with her. Again he came to her door and stood there, waiting expectantly. When she asked him up, he agreed at once. He sat down on a chair and looked around him with undisguised curiosity, up and down the walls, across the ceiling, at all the furniture. Betsy said, “Would you like a drink?” Now that she had brought him here, she didn't know what to do with him.

When she had mixed him his drink, he held the glass as if it were some strange object and then he asked: “It is alcohol?”

“Oh dear.” She bit her lip and stared at him in consternation. “Don't you drink? I'm so sorry—”

But he took a big gulp and, after coughing a bit, another; then
he finished the glass. She looked at him apprehensively. “It doesn't taste very nice,” he said.

“No, if you're not used to it. It never occurred to me that you might not—everybody seems to drink such a lot. I mean, all the people one meets—” She stopped herself, for she realized she was saying he was not the sort of person one met. She sought desperately for something to say to cancel this out. But he did not seem to have noticed. He was smiling: “It is a funny taste.”

“Would you like some more?”

“Yes.”

This time too he drank it down very quickly, as if it were water or tea. She would have liked to warn him but was afraid of hurting his feelings. When he had finished, he was smiling again; he seemed happy.

“Once we drank beer,” he said. “It was at my friend's sister's wedding. We hid behind the cowshed, but afterward one of the uncles found the empty bottle, and how angry everyone was with us!” He giggled. Betsy realized to her dismay that he was drunk. “We were very mischievous boys. I could tell you other stories also . . . It is a nice place here. Who else lives here? There are many rooms?” He got up and began to walk around the room as if he owned it. He picked up objects and asked their price, and peeped into cupboard doors. “I think you must be getting a lot of salary. How much? More than one thousand rupees? More? How much more? Tell me, please. Only for my information.”

Suddenly and without any warning he was sick all over the off-white rug. He stood there and retched, and held his stomach and groaned. Betsy laid her hand on his forehead. “Don't worry,” she said. “It doesn't matter.” She had to turn her head away, but she felt terribly sorry for him.

And afterward she blamed herself severely. She disliked herself for having mismanaged the not overwhelmingly difficult task of inviting an unsophisticated young man up to her flat and making him welcome. She longed to make amends, to invite him again and see to it that the occasion went off with dignity on both sides. Yet at the same time she felt that she could not bear to have him here again, indeed ever to see him again; and what she would really have liked to do was to forget the whole incident and the person who had caused it.

A day or two later she heard an altercation at the door. Angry
voices were raised, and then her servant came in. “He says he wants to see you,” said the servant accusingly. The young librarian had followed him into the room, looking indignant and like a man determined to stand on his rights.

“Your servant was rude to me,” he said as soon as they were alone. He waved aside her explanation and apologies. “I am not very much used to being treated rudely by servants.”

“Betsy!” called Christine from inside her bedroom. “Has Manny come?”

“Not yet!”

“Who is that?” asked the young man sternly, but before Betsy could explain, Christine stood in the doorway. She was wearing a pink flowered wrap that she held shut with one hand. “Hallo,” she told the young man.

Betsy said, “This is—” and realized she didn't know her visitor's name. He was too stunned by Christine's appearance to help her out.

“I'm Christine,” Christine said. She waited politely for him to introduce himself, but when he didn't, she smiled at him in her friendly way and disappeared again inside. She could be heard, a moment later, singing in her bath. The young man remained staring at the spot where she had stood.

Betsy explained, “We share this flat.” She smiled: “I don't even know your name, how silly.”

“Har Gopal. She is English also?”

“Oh yes. She works for the British Council.” For want of anything better to say, she began to tell him about Christine's job. But he did not listen. He looked rather distraught, glancing now around the room, now at the spot where Christine had stood. Betsy noticed how refined his face was, with a delicately chiseled nose and sad eyes. Every now and again he brought his hand up to his open collar, pressing the two ends together over his throat as if wanting thereby to improve his appearance; it was a movement at once modest and self-protective. Betsy found herself feeling very tender toward this young man.

Then Manny came to fetch Christine. He was in uniform and all his buttons shone and so did his beautiful, brown, hard-leather boots. He strode up and down the room, waiting for Christine, immensely tall and exuding a smell of whisky and eau de cologne. His eyes had merely swept for a second over the top of Har Gopal's
head—it did not need more than that for him to sum up a fellow countryman. With Betsy he was, as usual, absently affable. He had never, after the event, given a sign that he remembered having kissed her. Probably he didn't remember. He strode about the room, thinking of other things, and only became alert when Christine entered. She was no longer in her negligée but in a primrose-yellow dress, and golden sandals with high heels that made her even taller than she was. The room seemed very small with these two in it, and when they had gone, it seemed very empty.

Har Gopal spoke bitterly: “Are they your friends? I don't like that Sikh. I know his type very well.” When she made no comment, he spoke harshly to her, as if she had dared to contradict him: “I tell you I have seen hundreds like him. What do you know about it?” Neither of them in the least questioned his right to speak to her in this manner.

“I am B.A. Kurukshetra University,” he said next. “Yes, now you are surprised. You thought I was just anyone, isn't it? B.A. in history and philosophy. And my wife is a matriculate. Come here.” He beckoned to her with his slender, fine-boned hand, displaying a surprising authority, and she went.