The Sleeping Dictionary (33 page)

Speaking warmly, I coaxed two street boys to make a step with their arms for me to use getting up to the window. It was not so bad to get up, and the window was already fully open. I pulled myself through after making sure the room really was still empty. I landed on
a desk and carefully slid off it. After straightening my dress, I exited the office into a hallway buzzing with movement.

Well-dressed Englishmen strode from one place to another, as did smaller numbers of Indian gentlemen dressed in copies of the Englishmen’s clothes. I looked for a woman to whom I could ask directions but saw none save for one European lady who looked at me with obvious surprise. Based on this, I didn’t approach her but spoke to a barefoot peon carrying a tea tray. He told me the office of Mr. J. White in accounting was on the third floor, second door on the left.

When I knocked on the closed door, a voice shouted to enter. I found myself standing in a small room bordered floor-to-ceiling with file cabinets. A young Indian man wearing an English suit was seated at a desk with a large typewriter and stacks of files next to him. He looked past me as if he were still expecting the person who’d knocked.

“I’ve come to interview for the file clerk job,” I said in my best attempt at Oxbridge.

“Who invited you?” The clerk snapped back in English, but with a regular Bengali accent.

“I received a letter.” I would have to say it wasn’t with me, if he demanded to see it.

“What is your name?” He was looking at a list with a frown.

Another lie. “Camilla Smith.”

He looked up at me with eyes that said he understood my game exactly. “That is very odd. I am making all of the calls for Mr. White, and nobody on my list is female. The job is for a male graduate with references.”

“I have brought a reference letter as requested.” I spoke calmly, pretending I hadn’t heard the rejection in his voice.

The clerk took the letter from my hands and held it up to the light. Smiling broadly, he said, “Ah, yes! I recognize this cheap paper. You had this typed by one of the fellows in the Hogg Market, didn’t you?”

“Sir, that is not true!” I felt my chest tighten under my uncomfortable European dress. He was taking pleasure in my defeat.

“And how did you come by the name Smith?” the clerk snickered. “Another lie, or was your mother a bad woman?”

As I stood there, shocked by the gross insult to me by one of my own, a portly, red-faced European man in a khaki business suit came through the door. Another one followed him. In a flash, I guessed that one of them could be the Mr. White I was seeking, whose opinion would perhaps overrule the pompous clerk’s.

I looked at the second man who’d entered and appeared to be scrutinizing me with interest. He was the younger of the two, with an angular build and a lightly tanned face that made his blue eyes appear piercing yet not unkind. My woman’s intuition told me to speak to him first. In a strong but polite voice, I said, “Sir, I have come to apply for Mr. White’s filing position.”

“Sorry, I’m not your man. But he is.” The man spoke easily in the upper-class accent that I was striving carefully to replicate.

The other gentleman looked at me critically without speaking, and I began feeling self-conscious. At last, he said, in an accent that was not as pleasant as Oxbridge, “I didn’t expect a woman would come for the job interview.”

“The advertisement didn’t say woman or man,” I protested.

“No ladies were invited,” the clerk interrupted. “Sir, she is a pure interloper!”

I remembered the way Lucky had taught me to use my eyes; I made them large for Mr. White. He grunted and said, “Since you’re here, I’ll look at your reference letter. Ranjit, give it to me.”

The clerk called Ranjit handed his employer the letter with obvious disdain. Mr. White skimmed the letter while the second man settled down in a chair facing the desk. I stared at the two men, wondering how much money they earned.

Mr. White cleared his throat and said, “You were schooled in Darjeeling? I haven’t heard of this one.”

“It’s quite small, run by some teachers from England and Ireland—”

“And it seems you have worked as a lady’s private secretary. That’s well and good, but it’s hardly filing experience.”

As I opened my mouth to defend myself, a memory of what I’d done for Miss Richmond came forth. “It’s filing and much more. I can type correspondence and make translations: Bengali to English and the converse. I cared for all of the memsaheb’s books, organizing them completely and protecting them from mildew with regular cleaning. I see that your files are already threatened by damp.” I gestured toward the shelves loaded to the ceiling with discolored files and papers bound with red tape.

“Moisture is worrisome,” the second man said in his crisp voice. “Mr. White, I hope that my expense report hasn’t moldered away.”

“Not at all, sir,” Ranjit chimed in. “We have many reports to process. It takes time. We do everything according to regulation.”

“I won’t hire you,” Mr. White said, giving me back the letter with a baleful look. “This is a seat of government where men do serious work. Ranjit, show the girl the way out.”

I left without a glance at any of them, stepping rapidly down the hall, where it now felt that everyone was staring. My face was warm, and there was a lump in my throat that would turn into a sob if I had to open my mouth. I hurried out through the main doors, ignoring the outraged chowkidars. My attempt to secure an interview had been so humiliating that I vowed on the spot never to apply for jobs with any English organization again.

Yet outside in the sun, after I’d been walking for ten minutes, I was able to restore myself. I’d failed to find work within the Writers’ Building, but it was just the second day of looking for work in the city where Rabindranath Tagore wrote, Netaji had crafted his plans for independence, and Pankaj was practicing law. They didn’t work for the British; they worked for themselves.

For me to come here, I’d given up Kabita. Failing to find work would mean failing her, for I had it in mind to send as much money as I could spare to Abbas and Hafeeza. So the next day, and the day
after that, I began searching for work at Indian businesses, this time wearing a sari and a forced smile on my face. And again I was rejected; sometimes for my gender or lack of credentials or known family, but most often for no reason at all.

It was only at night that I allowed myself to feel hopeless. A week into my stay, as I tossed and turned in the narrow hotel bed, I wondered what Bidushi would suggest. And it seemed that, with a rush of wind clattering the window, I heard a name.

Pankaj. Find him for both of us.

CHAPTER

19

POSH:
The suggestion that this word is derived from the initials of “port outward starboard home” is referring to the more expensive side for accommodation on ships formerly travelling between England and India is often put forward but lacks foundation. . . . Smart, “swell,” “classy,” fine, splendid, stylish, first rate.

—A Supplement to the
Oxford English Dictionary,
Vol. 3, 1933

N
umber 27 Lower Circular Road, Ballygunge.

This address had lived in my mind since Bidushi had spoken of it years ago. This was the house where Bidushi and I were to live in peace and enjoyment forever. But when I went to Pankaj’s residence the next afternoon, it was not exactly as I’d hoped. I had expected a shining white palace: instead, it was a graciously proportioned, lemon-colored bungalow the same size as its neighbors. But it was a very pretty house, with many long windows shielded by ornate grilles. Tall mango trees stood on either side of the front walk that was guarded by a Sikh chowkidar sleeping in a chair.

I walked close enough to read
BANDOPADHYAY AND SON, PARTNERS AT LAW
inscribed on a brass plaque attached to the fence. I gazed up to the guarded windows, remembering how Bidushi had asked me to take care of Pankaj. It had been my dream, too. But approaching him now? How could I possibly do this? He or his parents could remember me from that awful last day at Lockwood School. Perhaps they’d still think of me as a thief at large and would shout for their chowkidar to fetch a constable. I should not have visited their street at all; but I felt such a longing to see at least a bit of the dream that Bidushi and I had shared in our lost girlhood days.

A long car drew up and stopped at the house. Hearing the motor, the chowkidar I feared came awake in his chair. I walked down the street a bit farther and casually turned at the sound of the opening car door, hoping against hope to see Pankaj.

The car’s occupants were three men wearing white Congress caps. Sunlight sparked off the edge of the round glasses worn by the tallest gentleman, who was too old to be Pankaj. In fact, he strongly resembled Subhas Chandra Bose, the new president of the Congress Party. It couldn’t be, I told myself; but when I saw his moon-round face, I recognized it from the newspapers. This man was the legend: the honorable Netaji, who had been an important topic in letters between Pankaj and me.

At this point, I lost all pretenses of continuing to walk. I stood there gaping as Netaji walked through the gate the chowkidar opened for him, followed by the others. If I’d been braver, I would have run up and said how much I admired his words and deeds; that he had given me strength during my darkest times. But before I could do anything, a bowing servant boy opened the front door, and they vanished inside.

The car in which the men had traveled moved on to park at a slight distance, underneath a shade tree. I watched it, thinking about whether I dared approach the chauffeur. I walked the few extra steps and leaned in the window where the driver sat reading a newspaper.

“Was that Netaji who went inside?” I asked, still excited from the
surprise. The driver looked at me a bit cautiously, so I said, “I admire him so.”

“Yes, it is Netaji,” the driver said after a pause.

“Why is he in the Bandopadhyays’ home? I live in the neighborhood,” I added to make my inquisitiveness seem reasonable.

“Strictly a business matter! Bandopadhyay-babu aids with matters for the party.” His tone was as starchy as if he himself had picked up fame by associating with the leader. Still, I noted the respectful title he had attached to the surname of the family his employer was visiting. It made me wonder which Bandopadhyay, Esquire, he was talking about. “Do you mean the old gentleman?”

“No, the young one. The old gentleman is dead—died of heartbreak while his son was in the Andamans.”

I found this very sad but believable. “And the son is back now, living at home? Married with children?”

“Not that I know about.” He scowled at me. “But if you live in this neighborhood, you should surely know all of this.”

Pankaj was still alive, free from prison, and working with Netaji! And maybe not yet married. As I walked home, these morsels of information filled me with as much happiness as if I’d had a decent meal.

MY MODEST FUNDS were declining more rapidly than I’d expected. Regretfully, I decided to vacate the hotel because Mr. Jones was asking me to make payment every second day, as if he sensed something was wrong. He had given me directions to many of the schools that I had found listed in
Thapar’s Calcutta Guide
. But it was obvious to him—and to me, too—that the job search was not fruitful.

“Why not try the telephone company?” he suggested the day I was leaving. “Many of our girls are becoming operators.”

The hotel receptionist still believed that my background was
Anglo-Indian and that I could find work based on my fictitious name and accent. But I had learned over the weeks that I was too dark, too shy, and too unsophisticated for any of the teaching and saleslady and secretarial jobs. I understood it, but it made me angry, this haughty professional world with the whites on top, Anglo-Indians next, and sycophantic Indians trying to catch up. I was sick of aping the English. I was in a blue-and-pink-printed sari, with bangles on my wrists and chappals on my feet when I checked out.