Scenes From Early Life Page 27

  ‘I am very sorry,’ my mother said. ‘But Mahmood is caught up with an important client – he won’t be able to extricate himself this afternoon, he says, with regrets. Could you,’ she called to the office clerk, now leaving the room, ‘could you ask the kitchen to send up some tea?’

  The office clerk agreed, with rather bad grace.

  ‘I see your little Saadi has grown a lot,’ Boro-mama said.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ my mother said. ‘He is really too heavy to lift, now.’

  ‘Well, he was always too heavy to lift,’ Boro-mama said, laughing heartily. ‘Does he still like his food as much as he always did?’

  ‘Sunchita is the great reader in the family,’ my mother said. ‘She reads so well for her age! She is always asking me to read to her, and then I can’t read quickly enough for her, and she complains, and takes the book away, and before I know it, she is in a corner, reading some quite difficult book by herself. She is so far ahead of all the other children at her school. Her teacher does not know what to do with her. Papa would be so proud.’

  ‘Good, good,’ Boro-mama said. Sunchita, who had been emerging somewhat, now buried her face in a cushion. But she liked being praised in this way, I knew she did: I could tell from the set of her shoulders.

  There was a stiff pause.

  ‘What does Shibli most enjoy doing?’ my mother asked. ‘Don’t be shy, Shibli. Tell me – what are your favourite things?’

  ‘Oh, he likes to play in the garden, to run about, to jump, that sort of thing,’ Boro-mama said impatiently. ‘All little boys like to do that, don’t they?’

  My mother nodded. Fortunately, at this point, the tea arrived, and for five minutes they could talk about whether the children could have a very milky tea, really just milk in a cup, whether it was strong enough for Boro-mama, whether he would have a pakora or a spoonful of chaat or a piece of the special cake, made only that morning in the kitchen, a speciality of Majeda’s, the children’s ayah.

  ‘Had you heard that Mira is marrying?’ Boro-mama finally said, when the demands of tea had been established and finished with.

  ‘Oh, how wonderful!’ my mother said. ‘I am so happy. When? Tell me everything.’

  Boro-mama was not her ideal choice of person within the family to tell her about her younger sister’s marriage – anyone else would have been better. But he was here, and he told her.

  ‘He is a young lecturer at the university – in physics. They think very highly of him down there, in everything he does. He studied abroad for two years, in Britain. They tell me what he studied, but you don’t expect me to understand what it is he has set his mind to. My wife understands it, or some of it, or so she says. Anyway, he seems a solid sort of young man and Mira is very happy. It is really a love-match. Mira would have come herself, but she particularly asked me to come.’

  ‘Yes, I understand,’ my mother said, overcome with embarrassment.

  ‘I know there have been difficulties between us in the past,’ Boro-mama said, ‘but I think we should try to set these things on one side.’

  ‘Well . . .’ my mother began. She was thinking of what my father would say, if he were there in the room. She did not think that ‘difficulties’ was the word for his rage with Boro-mama. In her hand she clutched the postcard with its angry scribble from my father. He was refusing to see his brother-in-law at all. It did not seem likely that he would try to set these difficulties on one side.

  ‘Mira is getting married on the twenty-sixth of this month,’ Boro-mama said. ‘Papa has sent me to ask you and Mahmood to come to her wedding, even if just for half an hour. It would make her so happy. Papa thinks you should come.’

  ‘Well, that is very good of Mira to think of us,’ my mother said. ‘I will have to speak to my husband, of course, and I will let Father know.’

  They talked a little more – about the troubles in the country, about the famine, about the neighbours in Rankin Street, and then, before they knew it, it was time for Boro-mama and Shibli to go. ‘Say goodbye to your cousins, Shibli,’ Boro-mama said, but the boy clung on, and would not be detached. ‘Say goodbye,’ he said, now becoming a little irritated, and he pulled Shibli loose, and pushed him firmly against us. There was nothing of an embrace or the regard of fond cousins in that nearness; it was just Shibli’s howling face, pushed up against our own, then pulled impatiently away. My mother smiled weakly, her hands one in the other, saying goodbye in an ineffectual, benevolent, unspecific manner.

  7.

  ‘Laddu has changed so much,’ my mother said. My father had heard the gate shut behind the visitors, and had not waited for my mother to send a note. He had come out immediately, abandoning his client. ‘I would hardly have known him.’

  ‘Changed in what way?’ my father said.

  ‘Well . . .’ my mother said. ‘It is quite hard to put your finger on it.’

  My father made a remark to the effect that it was not very likely that Boro-mama had changed in any important, useful or significant way, then said that it was surely time the children were having their tea. We had had our tea, but my father’s intentions were clear, and Majeda came to carry us away.

  ‘Mira-aunty is getting married,’ Sunchita informed her.

  ‘Oh, how lovely,’ Majeda said.

  ‘On the twenty-sixth, Boro-mama said. I do hope that I am allowed to have a salwaar kameez. When Fatima’s sister got married, in the village, she wore a beautiful salwaar kameez, all in purple, and it shone like the sun.’

  ‘Who is Fatima, child?’

  ‘Fatima!’ my sister said. ‘In my book. You were reading it to me only last week. She travelled all the way to the village, and her sister cried for joy when she saw her, because she thought that she had been lost for ever in the jungle, eaten up by wild animals, and then a wise woman, her didi ma, saved her and gave her the beautiful new clothes and came with her to the village on the very day and at the very hour that her poor sister was getting married, and her sister cried and cried when she saw her, in her beautiful new salwaar kameez, in purple, remember. Don’t you remember? I want a salwaar kameez just like that for Mira-aunty’s wedding.’

  ‘Do you think anyone is going to cry for joy when they see you?’ I said scornfully.

  ‘Saadi, don’t be rude to your sister,’ Majeda said. ‘No little gentleman is rude to his sister – remember what Papa told you?’

  ‘In any case,’ Sunchita said, not caring one bit what I had said, ‘they will cry when they see me, I’m sure of it. They don’t know what has happened to us. You don’t remember them, but I remember them all. There was Boro-mama and Choto-mama, there was Era-aunty, and Mary-aunty, and Dahlia-aunty, and Nadira-aunty—’

  ‘I remember them all,’ I said. ‘You aren’t the only one who can remember them. I remember them all, too. And if they cry when they see you, they will cry when they see me, too. They will cry so much, crying and crying and crying, they’ll never be able to stop.’

  ‘No one is going to cry,’ Majeda said. ‘Don’t wish for people to cry. There is enough crying in the world.’

  And that was true to a point, because we did not, after all, go to Mira’s wedding. It was said among the servants to be a shame for the children’s sake, because children always love a wedding. I do not know what Mira and her new husband thought, or the other aunts and uncles, or Nana and Nani. But the day of Mira-aunty’s wedding, my mother stayed in her room, and I know that she cried almost all day long. For her, on that occasion, there was not enough weeping in the world.

  8.

  My brother and my sister Sushmita talked, too.

  ‘Other people have aunts and uncles,’ Sushmita said, ‘but we only have parents.’

  ‘We have aunts and uncles,’ Zahid said sensibly. ‘It is just that we never see them. But one day we will see them.’

  ‘Where are you going to put my article?’ Sushmita said. ‘Is it going to be on the cover of the magazine?’

  At this time, Zahid at his schoo
l was the editor of the school magazine. He was very involved with it: he instructed people what they should write. For the rest of us, it was clear that Zahid’s magazine would be full of nothing but articles about how things were made, how a steam engine worked, how you could make a simple radio, the invention of the steam engine by James Watt. The teachers at the school liked and admired Zahid’s magazine, much of which he wrote himself, and all of it he rewrote to his own taste. But he did not write it to please the teachers. He wrote it because he thought that was what everyone should be interested in, the most interesting subjects in the world.

  ‘I have almost finished my article,’ Sushmita said. ‘But I want to know where you are going to put it in your magazine.’

  ‘That depends,’ Zahid said dismissively. Under some pressure from my mother, he had asked Sushmita to write an article for his magazine. Sushmita did not go to the same school as Zahid; she went to a girls’ school, as he went to a boys’ school. He had been told by my mother that it would be interesting for his readers to discover what it was like at a girls’ school, and that he should ask Sushmita to write such an article. She had spent a week writing the article: ‘A Day in the Life of a School for Girls’. She was proud of it; she had been reading parts out to all of us. Zahid puffed and sighed when he heard any of it. He could not think that it would be of general interest.

  ‘My article will be dynamite,’ Sushmita said. ‘It is quite an ordinary story, but the implications are tremendous.’

  ‘How can the implications be tremendous?’ Zahid said, bursting into a rage. ‘You are talking nonsense.’

  ‘The education of women is a subject that everyone should be concerned with,’ Sushmita said. ‘Even your reading public. They will have daughters one day, too. They should know what the education of women in this country is like.’

  ‘I am sure it is nothing but silliness,’ Zahid said. ‘I will tell you what I think of your article when it is finished. I make no promises.’

  ‘You promised to print it,’ Sushmita said.

  ‘I will print it if it meets our required standard,’ Zahid said.

  9.

  My parents did not go to Mira’s wedding, but nobody went to the next wedding in the family. One morning, Nana came down to breakfast; he hurriedly ate a roti, drank some hot tea, and was out of the house. More slowly, the rest of the family came down, dawdled about the breakfast table, went about their day calmly. Some went to work; some stayed inside and read, or worked at their household tasks; Nani was supervising the cleaning of the silver, an annual task she always rather enjoyed. Some of the others, the younger ones, went to school or college for the day. Among the ones who should have been going to college was Bubbly, but she was not seen by anyone during the day. Because of the long-drawn-out nature of the family’s breakfast, which could go on for hours as one or another came down and asked for tea, nobody expected to see anyone else at any particular time. It was really only the servants who knew that Bubbly had not been seen all day.

  When she did not appear in the evening as dinner was served, Nana asked where she was. Nobody knew. ‘Have you seen her today?’ Nana asked, but not even Pultoo had – he had the least to do.

  ‘Sir, please,’ Nana’s houseboy said, stepping forward. Nana looked at him with surprise: they were not supposed to listen to conversations within the family. But he went on, and explained that Bubbly had left the house the previous night. She had not, in fact, slept at home. Where had she gone? He did not know. Nani rose to her feet, the tablecloth crushed between her two hands. The hubbub in the little room was immense. Nana asked Nadira to go up to Bubbly’s room, and she returned saying that all Bubbly’s best clothes were gone, and a suitcase, and so was Bubbly’s favourite possession, the porcelain figurine of a ballerina she had had since she was eight, glimpsed in an advertisement in a girls’ magazine, obtained after begging for it from all her sisters. She would not go anywhere for good without her china ballerina, everyone knew. In Nadira’s hand was an envelope, addressed in Bubbly’s loose, dramatic hand to her mother.

  Of course Bubbly had run away to marry Pultoo’s friend Alam. She knew, she said, that her father would never give consent for her to marry Alam. They were very much in love. He was from a very good family. Bubbly did not want to live with people whose idea of entertainment was to sit and listen to old poems and songs. She wanted to live in a place where there was a television in every room, washing-machines and other labour-saving devices, and no one talking about politics. She hoped that her family would come to like Alam, since he was her choice of husband, and in the meantime she hoped that her family, if she met them, would refrain from making the kind of remarks about Alam and his family that she had had to put up with silently for years. She was sorry, but there it was.

  She was the second of Nana’s children to marry by eloping. They forgave her and him, and the remarks about Alam and his family stopped abruptly. People made their living in all sorts of different ways, after all, Nana remarked, and Nani would chime in that it would be a dull world if we were all the same. Word was passed to Bubbly through Alam’s plantation-owning parents that there was no reason for Bubbly and Alam to hide themselves away. No word came for two weeks, and then a stiff little note with only formal expressions of warmth, saying that the plantation owners were delighted to welcome little Bubbly into their family. The marriage had taken place two weeks before.

  Pultoo took it hardest – he could not understand why he had had no idea what had been happening between his closest sister Bubbly and his friend Alam. But Nana kept reflecting about the wedding: how had he offended them? What did his children think about him that they could marry in such a sly James-Bond, secret-service manner? Of course he would have wanted to be there. He would not have cared if his daughter had wanted to marry a street-sweeper, if she truly loved him. It was perfectly acceptable to be in trade, to make your living by thinking of nothing but taka-per-pound, and currency fluctuations, and the future value of tea. A lot of people did so. It was true that they were not necessarily the most interesting people in the world, but that was only a personal opinion, after all. Some people might enjoy the company of tea-merchants, night after night in the remote hills as darkness fell and there was nothing to do until bedtime except eat, and play cards, and talk about the tea crop, and not a book in the house. It was easy to imagine some people enjoying that sort of thing. What, really, had he done to offend them?

  Nana had long ago determined that he would never require a child of his to marry anybody in particular. (That was one of the things that was held against him by his friends and contemporaries when two of his children eloped with unsuitable people.) All his children in the end married out of love, or as a consequence of their own decisions. But on the whole, most of them, unlike Bubbly, did marry somebody whom they must have known their father would approve of. When they finally returned, Bubbly was bold and forward, Alam was cringing and embarrassed, as if suppressing a snigger, but Nana seemed painfully anxious to please, showing his new son-in-law to a chair, asking him what he preferred to eat, insisting that Rustum should drive them home – Alam’s parents’ house, where they were living for the time being, was only a half hour’s walk away but Nana insisted. He could not understand, as he began to say, where he had gone wrong.

  10.

  So that was why, not very long afterwards, an old man appeared at the gate of our new house. He was shown in, and ascended with a ceremonious, pompous manner. He allowed his arm to be taken as he was guided into the salon where my mother sat. She shooed my sisters away, and the door into the world of adults was closed against them. Nobody knew who he was.

  ‘You were early back from court today,’ my mother said to my father, as he came down from changing in the evening.

  ‘Yes, the case collapsed,’ my father said. ‘I knew it would. There was no case to answer. It was all perfect nonsense.’

  ‘That was the land case?’ my mother said.

  ‘Yes. You see .
. .’ my father said, and went on to explain the ins and outs of the case, his hands working in the air, though it had amounted to nothing in the end.

  When he had finished, and was in a thoroughly good mood, my mother said, tentatively, ‘Lutfur-chacha was here today.’

  ‘Who?’ my father said.

  ‘Lutfur-uncle,’ mother said. ‘My uncle, your uncle. From Jhenaidah.’

  ‘Little-uncle Lutfur!’ father said. ‘It has been years since we saw him – he came to visit once, when we were in Barisal, didn’t he? I had quite forgotten about Lutfur-uncle.’

  (This was not surprising. There were many uncles in the country, some my father’s relations, some my mother’s, some both, and some not really the uncle of either of them, but just nominated as members of the immense crowd of uncles. I have no idea, really, whether Lutfur-uncle was any relation by blood to any of us. He would have been my great-uncle, as always afterwards he was described, but in fact it is quite possible that my father once acted for him in a long-running court case, or something of that nature.)

  ‘He was sorry not to see you,’ Mother said.

  ‘What was he doing in Dacca? Is he visiting?’

  ‘Yes, he has been here for a month. Unfortunately, he goes back to the country tomorrow, or he would have liked to see you. Apparently,’ my mother pressed on dauntlessly, ‘Nadira is marrying soon.’

  ‘Nadira-sister?’ my father said. ‘Every month, another of your sisters marries. How did Lutfur-uncle hear about that?’

  ‘In fact,’ my mother said, ‘Papa particularly asked if he would come to see us to let us know. Papa, and Nadira, they both particularly asked if we could come to the wedding.’

  ‘No,’ my father said. ‘Under no circumstances.’ His face darkened; he got up to leave. My mother would have done better to leave the discussion until after my father had eaten his dinner. He would still have said no; he would still have left the room to immure himself in his study; but he would have done so with better grace.