Tales of Freedom (8 page)

It is a lovely fair, and my first time attending. The lounge is beautiful, the restaurant restful, and browsing through the exhibition of books proved to be one of the most magical experiences I’ve had.

I gazed into books that took me away to distant kingdoms where I was instantly happy. In the world of these special books there is no stress, only a kind of peace, and a freedom, and a sense of having been redeemed into a weightless condition of pure
beauty
. The imagination renews the world like dawn does.

And yet this whispering scandal grows. Someone here, amidst all these flowers, has ruined the innocence of our faces. In this labyrinth of beauty, under a clear sky, there is someone whose face is not what it seems.

I linger among the pages of distant realms. Books from all over the universe are here. The tethered balloons are all outside. Most of us have come here in usual modes of transportation, but this year balloons borne aloft are the most favoured way.

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Towards the evening a bald man with a rocklike head was seen walking through the fair. He was a hired hand for hard jobs. He was next seen sitting on a wooden chair, giving an account, cap in hand, to the one who had commissioned him. He had done satisfactorily what he had been told to do, making everyone a suspect. It was now impossible to separate the innocent from the guilty.

When he had finished giving his report, the hired hand disappeared into the
unsuspecting
crowd. The rigged condition lingered, but it meant nothing, it changed nothing. For here, in this fair, the only thing that matters is the charmed condition of books that endure. It is impossible, in the long run, to rig a book into a magic condition, or make it give off a light it does not have.

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And so the lady of the fair wandered among the flowering books untouched by the scandal. And the scandal itself was soon dissolved by the higher truth and the beautiful light that protects this place from all evil.

The air is clear again. The books breathe out a timeless peace and an eternal youth into the festival. It is as though nothing untoward had happened here, or ever could.

The Racial
Colourist

THIS HAPPENED DURING
the war. A group of us were sitting on a wall, and I was trying to get these two people to meet. But one of them was a racial colourist. He had a chart in one hand and paste on his fingertips. He told me there was no way he could shake hands with a third-rate white man. I was surprised, because this chap too was white, and he would receive a hug from me but he wouldn’t touch another white man whom he considered inferior. The other man was so offended that he stormed off. I went after him, but he walked away so fast he disappeared. As I went back to the group, I became aware for the first time of the danger of my position.

The man who began it all had gone. I stood among the rest, ill at ease. I had no way of telling who was a racial colourist. Then I noticed a white youth in the place of the man who had gone. He wore little round glasses. He kept looking at me in a peculiar way. I tried to ignore him. A girl went past and waved at me. She was someone I knew. The youth with the glasses consulted his colour chart and then made an urgent call with a walkie-talkie.

‘Yes, sir. He said hello to one of ours. Yes, yes, sir.’

It was clear he was monitoring the contact I had with people of accepted racial purity. I became aware that he belonged to a shadowy organisation. What else do they do? Do they murder people like me? I felt unsafe. I hurried away from the group. The bespectacled youth, with his chart, and his walkie-talkie, came after me. I crossed a field, at a near run. He picked up speed. Where was I running to, where could I run to, where was safe for me? It grew dark. The chap kept on my trail, pursuing me. I lost him across a whispering maze of fields. Soon it was night. Then suddenly I saw him in the distance, with a torch in his hand. He walked alongside the nocturnal silence of a village green. Behind him, revealed in a blue flash of lightning, was a quaint provincial town. A voice within me said:

‘Go towards him. Don’t run away. Go menacingly, purposefully. He’s more scared of you than you are of him.’

So I stopped running. And as I strode towards him, with a mean purpose in me, he appeared to hesitate. When I neared him I
gazed
into his eyes. Behind his glasses, he had scared, timid eyes and an ordinary harmless face which I didn’t have the heart to hurt in any way. I brushed past him in the dark. I went towards the village. I didn’t look back. I didn’t care any more.

The Black
Russian

THE FIRST TIME
we failed but, this time, we will succeed in filming our version of
Eugene Onegin
, in splendid technicolour.

There were four of us. We were going to use the local tools available. One of us had to be in the kitchen, in charge of the taper. When the train approached the one in the kitchen had to light the taper. This was a sign to the train driver to keep the train’s fire blazing, and to maintain his speed. His fire and speed would then activate another scene, where one of the women on a bicycle would ride forth. And then somewhere else another character would do what he was supposed to do.

It was all so well co-ordinated, and depended utterly on a one-take success, a once-only event. It was then or never.

The taper caught fire, the train driver saw it, the other dependent scenes went off perfectly, and as the train sped past I jumped on the open-backed platform where, to my surprise, I encountered a black man who was an important worker on the luxury train. He was in charge of looking after the higher-ranking travellers. He was dressed beautifully
in
a red jacket with gleaming epaulettes. He had dark, almost blue skin. When I jumped on the platform of the moving train he smiled at me. Then, to my astonishment, he said:

‘Welcome, Dubchanka,’ as if he had known me all my life. He smiled again knowingly.

Whereupon I helped myself to one of his freshly cut and lovingly buttered sandwiches, with delicious slices of cheese. The one I chose had been bitten into by him, but I didn’t mind. Then I jumped off the slowing train. The black Russian jumped down too. He ran elegantly towards the local shops to buy some caviar for the remaining sandwich, and to get other items for himself during the train’s brief stop in town.

But someone else in our crew had jumped on the train’s platform and, imitating me, had helped himself to the last of the splendid cheese sandwiches. I could see the black Russian’s polite dismay as he watched the crew member devour his sandwich. It was so funny.

Anyway, all the scenes went off well. The school teacher had her moment. Kuragin had his. The train was beautiful and was
painted
black. Colours were so perfect on that day. The women played their roles excellently. All the co-ordinated filming had been a great success, and we knew in our hearts that we had brought home a great Russian classic. It was the last day of filming. We had done Pushkin proud, at last.

Wild Bulls

IT IS THE
aftermath of war, and there is chaos everywhere. I am in a fabulous house where they have gathered the children of war. They are all orphans and all lost. I am meant to be their teacher.

They can’t absorb anything just yet, so I try to get them interested in art. To my surprise, they take to it. They paint and draw freely, for long hours, absorbed and lost in colour, fleeing from grief into a world of mysterious shapes, of bulls, birds, hybrid creatures, and patterns in which are concealed indeterminate beings.

I also try to get them to do other subjects, like maths, history, geography, but about these they are desultory. For them art is the thing.

After some time folks come visiting, acquaintances from various universities. They take an interest in what the children of war had been doing. They find little to remark upon in the general subjects. Then I show their art. The visitors are bowled over, thunder struck. They are astounded at the paintings, in rich ochre, in reds and yellows,
of
enormous wild bulls. The canvases are large, and the paintings bristle with unaccountable energy and wildness.