East Into Upper East Read online

  “Let’s go away,” he whispered to her.

  “We are going away,” she pointed out. “We’re going to London. I’m booked in the Royal Albert Hall in October.”

  “Not like that. Not with all these people. Just you and me.” Chastely he kissed her cool neck.

  “Where were you thinking of going?” she murmured.

  “Away. Up there,” he said, gesturing toward a mountain peak glimmering with moon and snow.

  “There’s nothing up there.”

  “Yes there is. You said so. You’ve been there. You said there’s a cave.”

  “Oh, my goodness,” she said. “That old story. You’d better go to bed and get some sleep. You’re dreaming with your eyes open.”

  His reply was to move closer to her; he put his arm across her. After a long silence, during which both of them lay quite still, she said, “I don’t want to go up. I want to go down—go back. This time, it’ll work out. You’ll see.”

  How often he had heard that from her—each time she had started some new scheme. She seemed to remember this herself, for she went on: “Sunil will help us. He’ll look after all that—you know, the business side you and I could never manage.”

  “Sunil!” he said scornfully. “All he knows is buying and selling.”

  “No one can live without buying and selling,” she said.

  He was shocked. He sat up and stared at her in the moonlight. She looked back at him defiantly; and again he was reminded of how it had been between them all the years in London. Was she still the same? Hadn’t she changed after all?

  She knew at once what he was thinking, of course. “It’s you who haven’t changed!” she cried. “You still think you can lie around with your mouth open, waiting for sweets to drop in. Well, that’s not my style at all, and this time you’re not going to drag me down with you.”

  “But I told you, I don’t want to go down,” he said. “I want to go up—up to where that cave is.”

  She snorted loudly—a sound of impatient anger that he knew very well. “And go away now,” she said, and when he didn’t move she gave him a little push. “Go on, before anyone sees us.”

  “So what?” he said. “We’re married, aren’t we?”

  A shipment of boxes arrived from London—the men in Daks slacks had arranged it all. The boxes contained new uniforms for the handmaidens and a white robe of Italian silk for Farida, along with a string of prayer beads set by a famous Italian designer, and a new deerskin, which must have been synthetic, for it had no smell at all. Everyone had gathered around for the unpacking—everyone, that is, except for Farid, who kept himself completely aloof from the excitement. By the time he next came to visit the tree, the handmaidens had changed into their new permanent-press robes and were gliding up and down in them like ethereal airline stewardesses. Farida appeared tremendously pleased with herself in her new white robe and Italian beads. She looked at Farid as if she expected a compliment, which he refused to pay. Sunil was there, surveying the scene with the satisfaction of an impresario. He stared at Farid, and Farida said at once, “Yes, he’ll need a new outfit, too.”

  Farid shrugged contemptuously and went away. But when night came and everyone was asleep he got up and went to her again. She was awake and seemed to be expecting him. When he lay down next to her, she ran her finger over his frayed collar and said, “We’ll get you a new shirt and new shoes and ties and everything. We’ll start again.” She stroked what was left of his hair. “It’ll all be different this time,” she said. But when he groaned and said, “Oh, no,” she pulled back from him. “That’s all I’ve ever heard from you!” she shouted. “Whatever I wanted you to do, your only contribution was ‘Oh, no.’ I’m sick of it! I’m tired of it and I’m tired of you.”

  Though she spoke in anger, Farid saw the tears trickling from her eyes.

  “Who did I ever do anything for but you?” she said. “All those businesses I started—who was all that for? And even now, who is it all for?” Her voice broke. Her tears fell in perfect drops like pearls.

  “Never mind,” he said. “Don’t say any more.” He lay beside her and held her hand, and remembered the time when he had had to rescue her and flushed her cooking oil away.

  The next day, he invited Sunil to go for a walk with him. Sunil, who was in no condition to walk uphill, didn’t want to go, but Farid used his old tactics—taunting him about his ungainly figure, his breathlessness, his age—until Sunil gave in. Farid walked ahead, jaunty with his hat and stick, sometimes stopping on the steep path to look back at his friend panting behind him. When he reached his destination, which was his usual overlook, he sat comfortably on a stone and watched Sunil slowly coming up and, beyond him, the mountainside that spiraled away below.

  Sunil arrived flushed and angry. “You want to kill me, making me climb up here?” he said.

  “Calm down,” Farid said. “Take it easy. I only want to tell you something. Farida and I are leaving.”

  “Oh, my God, is that all?” Sunil said, standing above him. “I know you’re leaving. So am I. Everyone is. Is that all you have to tell me?”

  “We’re not going with you,” Farid said calmly. “We’re going up, not down. I just wanted you to know there’s been a change of plan.”

  “Oh, sure, sure. A change of plan. I make the arrangements, spend a few hundred thousand, and he changes the plan.”

  Farid remained serene. He pointed toward the mountaintop far above them, where its peak disappeared into mist. “That’s where we’re going, Farida and I,” he said.

  “Listen, Farid,” Sunil said. He took a deep breath to keep his patience. “I don’t know what’s on your mind, but please try to get this straight. We’re going to London. Everything’s booked. Everything’s arranged. There’s a whole public waiting for us out there. There’s money to be made, and we’re going to make it.”

  Farid, still seated on his stone, looked up at his friend. It was so easy. One push in the right direction and Sunil would go rolling off the path and down the steep ravine. He would not be heard from again. Farid stood up. He gave Sunil a sharp little push in the chest—he could have laughed at the expression on Sunil’s face as he lost his balance and began to tumble backward. The next moment, he didn’t feel like laughing at all but went running after him down the path. Sunil didn’t roll far. His bush shirt caught in the lower branches of a little pine tree, which stood a foot or two above a mountain ledge, and Sunil stuck there, while a few stones he had dislodged went bouncing down the path and sailed off into empty air. Farid jumped after him. He pulled and tugged at him, while Sunil awkwardly tried to heave himself back onto the path. It was not easy for either of them, for they were both overweight, out of breath, and terribly upset. When at last they managed it, Sunil slowly arose and stood there with his eyes shut in fright, while Farid felt him all over, pressing his limbs to see if anything was broken, and trembling as much as Sunil himself. Without opening his eyes, Sunil said at last, “Let me go. Take me down.”

  Farid carefully led him down, his arm around Sunil’s stout waist, stopping solicitously every few steps to see if he was all right. Then he took his hat off and put it on Sunil, to guard him from the sun.

  Later that day they presented themselves before Farida. “We’re all leaving tomorrow,” Sunil said.

  “Certainly,” Farid said. “He can go down and we’ll go up.”

  There was a pause. When Farida spoke, it was to Farid. “There’s nothing up there,” she said coldly. “Can’t you get that into your head? Absolutely nothing.” She looked at him with a face of stone.

  What could he say to convince her? What could he do? He knelt beside her on the new deerskin; seen through his tears, she swam in a halo of light. He called her name out loud—“Farida! Farida!”—as if she were far away, instead of right next to him. He seized her hands and began to talk and cry desperately. He told her how he had tried to kill Sunil, so that the two of them, Farid and Farida, could go away together and e
verything could be again as it was. Yes, for that he had been prepared to murder their childhood friend. He said this twice, to impress it on her, but she only extracted her cool hands from between his and said, “You’re neurotic.”

  “Neurotic!” Sunil exclaimed. “He’s completely psychotic. We have to get him to London for treatment.”

  The next day, two other air-conditioned limousines arrived, and Sunil and Farida and the handmaidens and their luggage prepared for a stately departure. Pilgrims gathered while the cars were being loaded; they joined their hands in respectful salutation and shouted “Jai Mataji!” Some of them waved little orange flags with Farida’s picture imprinted in black. Sunil and Farida were sitting in the back of the third car, waiting for Farid to join the chauffeur on the front seat. But Farid could not be found. Sunil tapped his foot and said, “We’ll miss our plane.”

  “Give him a few more minutes,” Farida said. Under her breath she muttered, “Isn’t that just like him!” A signal was given, and the two cars in front moved off. “We can’t just leave him behind!” Farida cried, as the procession began to wind downhill.

  “Please smile, Farida,” Sunil said. “Please wave.” She waved at the pilgrims by the roadside as the car slowly descended, but kept turning in her seat and craning to peer behind her. For the first time in many years she looked discontented, disappointed.

  Farid was standing above them at his overlook, at the terminal point of his daily walk. He looked down at the cars leaving. They seemed to go very slowly and reluctantly, and he knew it would be easy, if he wanted to, to run after them and catch them up. He felt a sensation in his heart as if someone—some other heart attached to his—were tugging him down. But he planted himself a bit more sturdily, with his legs apart, and stood his ground. The cars grew smaller, creeping down the mountain into the bazaar, into the town, into the plains below. When they were completely out of sight, he descended the path and returned to her tree. The place was deserted now, and there was nothing to be seen except her old deerskin, which someone had rolled up and stuffed under a root. Farid spread it out again and smoothed it and sat on it. He thought he would just wait here until she came back for him. Of course, this might take a long time—many years, even—but when she came at last he would say, “Let’s go up, Farida,” and after the inevitable argument she would agree.

  INDEPENDENCE

  Kuku Malhotra was a modern Indian girl who lived with her boy friend in a roof-top studio in New Delhi. Kuku was a documentary film-maker and had lately obtained a grant from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to make a documentary about her grandmother Sumitra. It may already have been too late. Nowadays the old lady sat mostly on her lawn or her verandah, bundled in shawls in the winter, fanned by a woman servant in the summer. Her name was still known, though she herself forgotten. Most people thought she was dead, along with all the others of her generation, who had been pioneers in the early years of Independence, the first truly modern Indians. When Kuku tried to interview her about those days, she remained silent, sunk into apathy. Only her lips chewed and mumbled; she rarely wore her teeth nowadays, except when it was time to eat. She still relished her food and got very excited over it, making frantic signs to her servant to hand her more hot bread and refill her little bowls with rice and fish. It seemed to Kuku that it was only in those moments that there was any trace left of the former Sumitra—of her boundless energy and her uninhibited enjoyment of life (and, Kuku thought, of lovers) that had broken down so many barriers for Kuku’s own generation.

  Born between two European world wars, Kuku’s grandmother had come of age at the right time—just as Indians were reclaiming their country from British rule. She had grown up in Bombay where her father was a very rich businessman. She had lived in a big house on a hill overlooking the Arabian Sea and surrounded by a garden thick with palm trees. Her father’s money was at her disposal and she used it freely on herself and her friends. They had parties for every occasion, birthdays and the New Year and even Christmas, besides all the Hindu holidays. There were plenty of servants, and her father employed two cooks, one for Indian and the other for European cuisine. The parents and the servants enjoyed the parties almost as much as the young guests, who had names like Bunny, Bunti and Dickoo, carried over from their pampered childhood. The parties too were carried over from their childhood, together with the balloons and the jokes and the nicknames they shared. They were attractive, high-spirited young people, and it would have been impossible to predict how serious and important and even pompous they would become within a few years. Those who stayed in Bombay entered their fathers’ businesses and expanded them beyond all previous limits; those who went to New Delhi took over the highest posts of government and became rulers, kings of their country, crowned with offices.

  It may have been the pull of New Delhi with all its might and power that influenced Sumitra to marry a boy from an old Delhi family. She could have married anyone she wanted. Many offers came for her, from all the leading families of their caste. Her father laid them before her for her consideration, always emphasizing that she was entirely free to choose or reject. She rejected them all, for of course she was going to make a modern love marriage; but she refused other young men too, those with whom she had grown up and partied in their fathers’ mansions. Many of them were in love with her, and she in love with some of them. She met Hari Prasad—known as Harry—on a visit she made to a cousin in Delhi. Here too the young people were throwing parties, and though these were not as lavish as the ones in Bombay, they held another kind of attraction. A transfer of power was taking place, and while the young people were dancing to gramophone records in the drawing room, their fathers and uncles were closeted in the study distributing cabinet posts among themselves. This was intoxicating.

  Even without all that, Harry was attractive enough in himself, and different from the boys she had grown up with. He liked painting and literature; he had been to Oxford where he had developed his taste for oriental poetry and French wine. Somewhat languid and passive, he let Sumitra woo him; that suited her too, for it was in her nature to initiate and take the leading part. It made him laugh and pleased him—at that time—the way Sumitra took charge of things. It pleased his father too and was useful to him, for she became his hostess—a part few women at that time were qualified to play, for most of them were like Sumitra’s mother, and Harry’s, who spoke little English and spent their time in their prayer rooms or closeted with their spiritual advisers to ward off evil influences. But Harry’s father was entering a new, a wider world than any known to them before. He was a brilliant lawyer who had defended Indian leaders and kept or sprung them out of jail. He lived with his family in his own large New Delhi residence built many years before Independence with his own wealth and in the style of the surrounding residences of high-ranking British administrators.

  Before moving in with her boy friend, Kuku Malhotra had lived in this house, with her grandmother Sumitra and her mother Monica, who was Sumitra and Harry’s only child. By that time the other grand British-style villas around them had been requisitioned for ministerial residences or torn down for modern blocks of flats. Monica too would have liked to sell the house and land at huge profit, but this was impossible while her mother was still alive. Monica took over a plot of land at the rear—part of what had been extensive servants’ quarters—and here, under her supervision, a group of flats was built as rental units. Her mother Sumitra did not like this activity on her estate, and she squinted malevolently at the workmen trampling over her lawn. Monica, busy fighting with the contractor, ignored Sumitra’s resentment: now, at fifty, she felt free for the first time to do what she and not what her mother wanted.

  Monica had always been eclipsed by her mother, in looks and personality. Yet Sumitra herself had not been beautiful, not even in her youth—she was short and had always tended to be plump and her facial features too were rounded. But her gestures were as graceful as an Indian dancer’s, and like a dan
cer, she jingled with golden bangles and with the anklets that it had become fashionable to wear along with other traditional Indian jewelry (Sumitra also tried a diamond nose stud but it didn’t suit her). The blouses she wore under her saris were copied from Indian miniatures—it was all part of the cultural renaissance—and they were very short, just sufficient to support her breasts, leaving bare a large expanse of her midriff, as smooth as beige satin.

  As her father-in-law’s hostess, Sumitra had introduced an original style of entertaining, which was partly modern and partly derived from the traditional refinements of an Indian royal court. Later, after he died, she was greatly in demand at the official parties to which foreign dignitaries were invited. At that time, many of the cabinet ministers and even the President in his palace were peasant politicians with village wives and no idea how to function in society. Sumitra became New Delhi’s semi-official hostess. The food she ordered to be prepared was mostly Indian but with the spices so cunningly blended that only their exquisite fragrance and none of their sharpness remained. Often a classical musician or dancer was brought in to entertain, their art also toned down to appeal to blander tastes; and though the guests were encouraged to immerse themselves in this cultured Indian ambience, they did not have to sit on the floor reclining against bolsters but were provided with chairs and sofas to support their stiff European spines.

  At first her husband Harry accompanied her to all these grand receptions. Tall and slim, handsome and educated, he was an asset to her, though all he did was talk to the second secretary of some embassy or a cultural attaché’s wife. This became very boring for him, and after a while he began to refuse to go with her; he said he couldn’t stand another set of speeches extolling the amity and friendship between two great nations. At first she coaxed him—laughingly agreed with him that yes, wasn’t it horrible, but if she could suffer why couldn’t he, and anyway please for her sake—till he said, oh all right, and put on his high-collared coat with the jeweled buttons. But more and more he preferred to stay at home and cultivate his own interests. He tried his hand at translating couplets of Urdu poetry—purely as an amateur of course, he wasn’t a poet, he wasn’t a scholar; and when collections of these verses were published by real poets and scholars, he was content to admire and retreat, claiming nothing more for himself than the pursuit of a hobby. And as with all hobbies, this one could be taken up and put down at will, which suited him for he liked to spend his time in his own way. He lay under the ceiling fan, thinking about translating Urdu poetry and reading English detective stories. With the cessation of imports, he could no longer cultivate his taste for fine wines so he took to stronger drink—whisky and vodka.