The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (23 page)

We had a merry laugh, but the truth was not so very different. When he came to the city, it had been usually with other boys, on a school trip. And whenever he saw Indian boys and girls on the streets, they would look alien to him, forbidding, and he was afraid that that’s what Deepa and I had become—alien Indians with whom he would never be on intimate terms again. He thought of making inquiries, and one Saturday morning he actually did a round of the shops in Indian Bazaar. But he felt too timid to ask about his Asian friends, and instead came away with a flimsy Japanese shirt and a pair of cheap Hong Kong socks—one of which, it turned out, had the heel missing. I’m not joking, he insisted, at Deepa’s delighted face. Then finally, after a few more years had passed, he fell into a chat with Mr. Mithoo of the Ismailia and asked, Do you know the Lalls from Nakuru? And the man said, Over there, across the street and opposite the Jivanjee Gardens, above the motorcycle shop, that’s where Mr. Lall the estate agent has his office.

And?

As I was walking over to the motorcycle shop—guess what I saw? A lovely Indian girl had come down the stairs followed by her father—whom I had no problem recognizing, though he was older.

She blushed.

I was too nervous, I decided to come back another day. I couldn’t believe that it was you, little Deepa, after twelve years. Will she want to know me, I asked myself, will she talk to me?

Gradually the three of us began to talk about our days together in Nakuru, even about Annie and Bill; it took Njoroge, like a magician, to break the glass barrier behind which we had sealed that past.

Deepa once said, making a face: And Vic even has a picture on his dresser of himself as Rama and that girl as Sita—

That girl
, is she now, I uttered bitterly.

She whitened. Her excitement had turned her callous and I, jealous but all-important chaperone, had brought her to task.

It was so long ago, Vic, she said in a whisper, almost in tears.

But why
that girl
?

Annie, then—Annie, Vic.

And Njo put his hand on mine and said: Annie, of course. And Bill, Field Marshal Montgomery…vroooom!…and Kit Carson…and pow! pow!

We couldn’t help but break out laughing at our memories of warrior Bill in his various guises, the funniest of which had been Hanuman bounding monkeylike behind me as Rama, and fighting Njoroge the ten-headed demon Ravana. Even from such a remove, pompous Bill could entertain.

One day soon after we had arrived from Nakuru, Mother proceeded to remove one by one all the pictures from our family photo album that would remind us of that terrible period, that bloody episode. She was in the living room, the album on
her lap, and I stood like a shadow behind the sofa watching over her shoulder. When she was finished, the dismembered album on the armrest, and was quietly looking through the culled photos, lingering ever so long a moment over each, I took from her hand one of these pictures, went to my room, and put it on my dresser. It was the one of Annie and me. When I was in school one day, Mother placed the photo inside a frame which Papa had brought from River Road for the purpose. There it stood, on my dresser, in front of a little brass statue of Ganesh, until later Mother put it away in my top drawer, where it stayed with my handkerchiefs, socks, and ties. I brought it out on the dresser only on Christmas, on Diwali, and on her birthday, March 4. Yet no one at home had ever spoken a word about this little fetish of mine.

During those holidays I worked doing odd jobs for my father. It was my task to take prospective tenants around the rental properties he managed, and on certain days to take the plumber, the carpenter, the electrician, and the mason to wherever they happened to be required. Outside of these duties, my time was my own, and I had set some of it aside to catch up with my academic work.

Njoroge’s job took him to the countryside around Nyeri, and whenever he returned to the city the three of us would spend time together. We would soon part, we knew, and were already making plans of how to stay in touch, when to visit each other. We met for coffee during the day, and sometimes in the evenings went to the movies or the theatre or to listen to a public lecture. Prominent Afro-American figures were often visiting our city and speaking at one venue or another. In the afternoons we might sit at the lively bar of the Donovan Maule Theatre, where university students discussed politics and art late into the night. One day Njoroge took us to a house in the African working-class area of Pumwani, where he said his parents had had a room. His father was arrested here during the massive Operation Anvil in 1954; his mother disappeared a
few weeks later. Neither of them had been heard from since then. I recalled him telling us in Nakuru that his father was studying in Uganda. Did he believe that then?

When Njoroge and I were together by ourselves, we were like old friends; among the three of us I was the third one, the odd one out, the chaperone. I would wonder if Njo and I would have met so often had Deepa not been in the picture. Deepa, of course, already had several admirers in Parklands, two of whom were rather faithful, accompanying her home from school and buying her snacks whenever they got the chance, and phoning her on flimsy pretexts. Deepa had always enjoyed the attention; but recently, when I brought up these two suitors in a conversation, my attempt at humour had misfired. A deeply blushing Deepa kicked me under the table.

She couldn’t wait for Njo to be back in town from his journeys. Her problem was that she was too transparent—as was Mother, who was frantic with worry. Mother, so happy to see him, little insecure Njoroge-William now a big man who would go on to become important some day, and yet so worried that he would compromise, or worse, marry her daughter.

Vikram, bété, do something, say something to her, Mother pleaded with me one day.

What, Mother? She’s still young and just an excitable girl. She’s simply happy he is back, that nothing bad happened to him. We are old friends. Even
you’re
excited that he’s back in our lives!

Rabba! I hope you are right.

My sister’s situation was the first instance I noticed a certain detachment in myself. Whether she would finally marry Njoroge or not did not bother me. I personally did not favour circumstances—the possible outcome of the relationship—to turn out one way or another. I found myself waiting passively for the situation to resolve itself. I would watch my sister and Njoroge flirting and feel only a bit saddened that I was alone; I would witness my parents’ anxiety and comfort them. If I felt saddened by my own loneliness, I did not wish to get
involved in a relationship either. Mother called me her brahmachari, a Hindu man who has taken a vow of celibacy for religious reasons, or teased that I had entered early sanyas, the fourth stage of life, renunciation, undertaken after one’s householder responsibilities are over. I was very close to her, especially now that she and my father had somehow detached themselves from each other. Deepa, on the other hand, was a firecracker, as both my parents sometimes called her.

And so they had agreed privately that it was time she settled down into a staid, happy family life, with a burden of her own responsibilities.

It was time to call the Sharmas and cash in an old promise.

FOURTEEN.

The Sharmas, Harry (actually Hari) and Meena, were among our close family friends in Nairobi. Harry Uncle, like my mother, was a native of northern Punjab, an area that became a part of Pakistan, and this fact created a special affinity between the two. He had met and married Meena Auntie in New Delhi, where he had arrived after the partition of India. He had hinted to Mother once that he had lost his only brother to that bloody event and was only too happy to be out of the subcontinent. Meena Auntie was a science teacher, and the couple easily obtained a visa to come to Kenya. Harry Uncle set himself up in the real estate business, into which he later brought my father, rescuing him from his unhappy foray into Indian groceries. The Sharmas had a daughter, Reshma, who was sixteen and a son, Dilip, who was now in his third year at university in England, studying pharmacy. Soon after Papa
joined Mayfair Estate Agents, Harry Uncle left the business to start a development and banking company. We did not see the Sharmas very frequently nowadays, therefore a sudden invitation to dinner at their house came as a surprise to Deepa and me, until Mother’s designs revealed themselves.

Deepa, naïve Deepa, had joined Mother in preparing a dessert for the occasion, a bowl of enticing, perfectly round and golden gulab jamuns. She wore a dazzling yellow sari that pleased my parents no end. Mother was so moved by the gesture that she presented Deepa with one of her own set of gold bangles. They embraced, Mother shed a tear. A typical Nairobi Indian family, the women adorned in silk saris, gold jewellery, and Chanel No. 5, the men casual in sports jackets, we set off for the Sharmas’ residence in Hurlingham. It was a property well guarded by a cowled watchman hovering at the gate and two fiercely barking Alsatians who had to be curbed before we were let through. The house, constructed on the slope of a valley, was an old grey stone bungalow, which had been modernized recently with a living room extension at one side and a bedroom at the back. As you approached up the hill, it came into view suddenly and surreally past a bend, the brightly lit glass-walled extension glowing like a magical emanation in the thick and misty night. Harry Uncle himself opened the door for us, limping, for he had one false leg, a condition with which he had arrived from India. He was a tall and burly man with a mane of thick white hair on a large, squarish head. The TV was on, but in the background somewhere an evening raga was being plucked out plangently on a tape.

We had come, in a sense, to arrange her marriage, and poor Deepa walked into the setup unaware.

She had a charming, filial manner for such occasions, full of humour and respect, not to say outright flattery, joining the older women in the kitchen and helping to serve the food, yet young and modern enough to banter and joke with the men. Soon she found herself between Uncle and Auntie on a sofa, beaming happily, and Harry Uncle put his hand on her head,
part blessing, part token of fondness. Mother asked, How is Dilip doing, how many more years to finish his course? Harry Uncle told her two years, maybe three, then Meena Auntie said, with that characteristic affirmative roll of the head side to side and a singsong intonation, We always spoke of Deepa and Dilip, as if the two went together like a pair.

Yes, said Papa, that we did, little knowing how fast they would grow. Dilip is what?—twenty-two, and already in England. And this one, our laadlee, eighteen—

Already marriageable age, Meena Auntie put in, but Deepa’s face had clouded, and she got up, saying curtly, Not yet.

But soon enough, we hope, Uncle said, and as Deepa moved forward to come to sit on the chair beside me, Auntie fondly held on to her hand, only very gradually and by inches letting it slip out.

We had had our dinner and dessert, the gulab jamuns receiving full marks, and Papa and Harry Uncle, skipping brandies, were back to whisky, while the rest of us were left to admire pictures of handsome Dilip in England. The one in which he appeared outdoors after a snowfall, in navy blue overcoat and boots, his cheeks glowing pink from the cold, was admired the most and Mother took a copy for herself.

Isn’t it getting late, Deepa said. I had promised some friends to stop over at the Parklands Club fashion show around ten…

But you didn’t tell us, bété, that you had made this plan, Papa said.

I hadn’t known of this plan either, but Deepa’s look told me to keep quiet.

It was decided that I would go with Deepa, and Uncle would drop Mother and Papa at our house an hour later. Reshma decided she too wanted to go to the fashion show, and seeing Deepa’s face turn a momentary black at this news, I knew what scheme she must have set afoot.

We are to meet Njoroge, she said as we practically rushed to the car ahead of the girl, but I don’t want little Reshma to see
me with him. So please, dear brother, you keep her company.

The look she gave me then, and that pleading, anxious tone of voice, were the first admission I had from her that she was growing seriously involved with Njo. I said yes, and as soon as I parked the car at the club grounds, she disappeared and I had a sixteen-year-old teenybopper in short skirt and boots to entertain.

Do you like Beatles or Elvis, Reshma asked with great curiosity, apparently inspired by the music of the Fab Four that was playing inside the club hall.

I told her I liked both, and she replied, For me, it’s Beatles, Beatles, Beatles! I am mad about them! I would die for them!

The fashion show, with displays of A-lines and miniskirts and sack dresses from London, together with the latest sun-wear, was ending as we arrived; six African and European models toting toy pistols in bikinis finished the show to the James Bond theme music and much applause. Dancing started soon after and the two of us went on the floor and twisted away. There was a new dance in town called the Zulu stomp, and we did that too. The hall was packed, uproarious and humid, with people from all the races of Nairobi present. In that mixed crowd was the mood of happiness and all the hope and excitement, at least for the well-positioned classes, brought on by the rush of independence.