Scenes From Early Life Page 7

  Altaf had his own views on this matter. ‘But what has changed?’

  ‘Her son wrote to her from Cox’s Bazar, and suggested that she come and live with him in her declining years,’ Amit said. ‘He has told her about the healthful sea air and his beautiful house, and the peace and quiet. He is a very generous man, I know.’

  ‘He is worried that she is going to die and leave her money to you,’ Altaf said. ‘That is why he is making this invitation. I have heard about this man before.’

  ‘Well, she ought to bequeath him her widow’s mite,’ Amit said. ‘That would be the right thing to do. I really don’t blame him, and I can see why she wants to go and live with him. But that is not the problem.’

  ‘What is the problem?’ Altaf said. ‘Something is worrying you.’

  ‘It seems very silly,’ Amit said apologetically. ‘But I don’t know where I am going to live.’

  ‘Why can’t you take over the lease of the flat where you are living? Is it too expensive?’

  ‘No, not at all,’ Amit said. ‘The landlord is really very reasonable. The rent is a good one, all things considered, and I think I could pay it. Unfortunately, my aunt never really got round to telling him that I was living there and paying rent for the spare room. So he never knew that anyone else was in the flat. How could he, if you think about it? I went to him, and explained the situation to him, and asked if he could consider me as the tenant after my aunt gave notice. I set out how very reasonable it would be for him – he would not have to struggle to find a new tenant, he would not have to ask people, or take anyone on trust. He would have the same tenant he had had for the last three years. I put it to him like that.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  Amit looked up at the sky; he looked down at the road. A cart loaded with old books, pulled by a bent man crying out, ‘Mind, mind,’ separated the pair of them for a moment. When they came together again, Amit had failed to produce any kind of positive interpretation to put on his landlord’s reply.

  ‘I am sorry to say he told me to be out of the flat with the rest of my aunt’s rubbish,’ Amit said. ‘Those were his words.’

  ‘He can’t do that,’ Altaf said.

  ‘He can do what he likes with his flat,’ Amit said. ‘I don’t know where I am to live. I think I will have to go back to Chittagong.’

  ‘No, no,’ Altaf said. He looked at Amit. To his surprise, there were tears in his friend’s eyes. No one, after all, likes to be removed from their house at a time not of their choosing. ‘I know exactly who to speak to.’

  4.

  For eighteen years, Altaf and his family had lived in Dacca, and all his brothers, except two, had been born there. But his family had not always lived in Dacca. His mother and father had married in another part of Bengal, but one which was now part of India. They had made the decision, in 1947, to leave the settlement fifty miles outside Calcutta and go to the new country of Pakistan. They went to the eastern division, where the largest city in the region was Dacca. Not all of their relations had done the same thing. Altaf still had cousins who lived in Calcutta, who had not been killed in the mob violence and rioting. They owned a tailor’s shop around the corner from the American consulate, in a very respectable part of the city, or so Altaf believed.

  Altaf had been ten. He remembered bundling under the seat in the train, that one time, clutching his six-year-old brother and holding his mouth shut. His mother and father remained in their seats, holding the baby his mother had not known how to surrender; she made little gulps and gasps as the train juddered to a halt. Who had stopped the train? Everyone knew what happened to the passengers in trains bound for Pakistan, in 1947: the trains were stopped by murderous gangs, and the gangs killed all those inside. That was why his mother had pushed him and his brother underneath the seats. The gang that had stopped this train might murder his mother and father, but they would not think to look under the seats, and Altaf and his brother, alone, could make a new life in Pakistan. She had not known how to surrender the baby she held. Altaf’s blood ran cold to think of the sacrifice she would have made, and at the thought that it would not have worked. The Hindu gangs knew how to look under a train seat.

  It had not been a Hindu gang of murderers, but a party of soldiers. They had actually stopped and boarded the train to protect the passengers from gangs further up the line. That terrible journey had finally come to an end, the five of them in a strange city with no possessions but alive. Much later, Altaf had realized that many people had not made the journey in the same way they had. He wondered what had happened to most of the boys he had known at the madrasa and the mosque in the small town outside Calcutta. They had been planning to leave with their families as well, and to make the journey to the new country. Some had arrived; some had stayed. But there were also some who had been killed, as everyone knew, and others whose end had not been discovered.

  Altaf’s father had made his way in Dacca: he was a small bookseller for college students. He spoke of himself as a Paragraph-wallah; most of his business was selling volumes of Paragraphs, small essays in the English language that every schoolchild had to write sooner or later. It was a good, steady business, down in Old Dacca, not far from the ferry terminal, a back-street business where no schoolmaster would find his way. When the wind blew in the wrong direction, the stink from the nearby tanneries made the atmosphere for learning in the back-street unendurable. Generations of schoolboys went there, and turned in the same Paragraphs, year after year, with the same mistakes. The family business gave Altaf a respect for Amit’s profession; it also gave him some sense of connection with the sort of people who read and thought.

  Among those who had, like Altaf and his family, reached Dacca alive was the son of the most important landowner in the village. He had sacrificed a great deal. He had been a lawyer in Calcutta, whose name was Mr Khandekar. Because of the position his father held in Murshidabad, Altaf’s family were accustomed to approach Mr Khandekar on any question of law or of business. He had always helped them, and always would.

  It was interesting and strange to Altaf that Amit did not have such a person in his life. He seemed entirely vulnerable and friendless. The only lawyers he seemed to know, or know of, were the broken-down ones who sat by the courthouse with ancient typewriters balanced on planks on their knees, saying, ‘Affidavit, sir?’ to anyone who passed by. Altaf’s heart went out to him: he decided that he would take charge of Amit’s problem. He was sure that the landlord could not, in fact, evict Amit from the flat he had lived in for three years without any problem, and that Mr Khandekar would bring about a happy conclusion. His only concern was whether Amit, as he said, could really afford the rent of the whole flat. It was possible that Amit would make this claim to Altaf, without it being true, to save face. If the flat were awarded to him, Amit might himself need to take in a lodger.

  5.

  Mr Khandekar lived in a wealthy part of Dacca, where Amit and Altaf had rarely, if ever, been. They had planned to get there early in the morning, so as not to intrude on Mr Khandekar’s day, and so that it would be more likely that he would be at home. Altaf, in explaining about Mr Khandekar to Amit, had stressed how important and busy he was in his law practice. Perhaps he had overdone it. The night before, Amit had interrupted Altaf’s explanation: ‘Let’s not bother him. I’m sure I will be perfectly all right. There are plenty of places to live. I don’t think I have a leg to stand on.’ But Altaf explained that Mr Khandekar would be very helpful, so long as they arrived at his house early enough and did not interrupt his working day. He was the most important person Altaf knew.

  But they were not very familiar with Dhanmondi, where Mr Khandekar lived. They got off the bus on Mirpur Road, which circled the district, and it pulled away. The servants, drivers and other unimportant people who had got off the bus at the same time scattered swiftly in every direction. Altaf had been to Mr Khandekar’s house before, and had thought he would be able to find it easily. But in fact the
y had got off the bus half a mile too soon, in their nervousness. It took half an hour of doubling backwards and forwards to discover the direction in which the wide, leafy avenues were numbered, and an hour beyond that to find road number twenty. That was the road in which Mr Khandekar’s house lay. In this district, there were few people about, and none to ask for directions. In Altaf’s part of Dacca, a request for help would pull a small crowd, eager to explain that the goal of the journey was beyond the mosque, down the small road behind Suleiman’s hardware store and so on. Here, the only people to ask were scurrying ayahs or servants, late for their tasks, slipping behind high white walls. From time to time a large car murmured down the centre of the road, and behind a shining window, a small face inspected Altaf and Amit, unfamiliar figures in this rich and green-shaded neighbourhood.

  It was quite late in the morning when they found Mr Khandekar’s house. The gate was ajar, and they pushed it open nervously. From the white-painted square house, the noise of a discussion was going on and, somewhere deeper in the house, the clamour and clang of cooking pots. They stood under the dense shade of the large mango tree at the entrance. ‘We should go in,’ Amit said. ‘Or knock on the door.’

  ‘I can’t remember,’ Altaf said. ‘There might be an entrance at the back. For clients.’

  But Amit walked forward, quite boldly, and pushed a button to the side of the door. Inside the house, a bell rang – an electric two-note song. The door was opened almost immediately, and behind was Mr Khandekar – Altaf recognized him. He was obviously going out: he was wearing a black suit and a white shirt, and was struggling with a white cambric stock at his throat. His collar was detached, and flying away like the wing of a bird: it was clear that Mr Khandekar was trying to do everything in the wrong order. ‘Salaam,’ he said, fumbling with the stock. ‘Good morning to you.’

  ‘Sir,’ Altaf said, ‘if this is an inconvenient time—’

  ‘Please, introduce yourselves,’ Mr Khandekar said. Altaf did so, reminding Mr Khandekar of his family, and of his knowledge of his father’s family, his respect for Mr Khandekar’s father. ‘Thank you, thank you,’ Mr Khandekar said. ‘I don’t have the time to see you now. Come in, walk with me.’

  They went into the dark wooden hallway of Mr Khandekar’s house and followed him through the salon into a room lined with books. ‘Explain, explain,’ Mr Khandekar said, as he walked. He had given them each one assessing look, from top to bottom, at the front door. But then he had averted his eyes and talked to them without looking, rummaging about in the drawers of his desk, pulling out a paper from a pile, picking up a clever neat little stud to hold his white collar down and pushing it into a hole, somewhere at the back of his neck. ‘Explain, explain,’ Mr Khandekar said, picking up a second collar stud and getting to work with it.

  Altaf stood in front of this furious activity, and started to explain about his friend, his friend’s aunt, the nephew in Cox’s Bazar, the will and the legacy, the spare room, the terms of the lease—

  ‘Explain, explain,’ Mr Khandekar said. ‘I can’t find the last collar stud. It must be here. Explain, explain.’

  Altaf explained about Amit, how his aunt’s landlord had known perfectly well that he was living there but now chose to say that he was flabbergasted to discover it, and that Amit wanted to stay on there, but the landlord’s view was that—

  ‘There it is,’ Mr Khandekar said, with relief, pouncing on a small silver stud, like a chicken on a seed. ‘Now I can go. Come with me.’

  Altaf had feared they were about to be ejected – Mr Khandekar seemed so busy and unconcerned. But he knew that great men were not as you expected. He had expected that they would be asked to wait in an antechamber, rather than following Mr Khandekar about his house as he dressed. Mr Khandekar had his own ways, and he had been listening to them in his own fashion. He had been friendly, manly, and would now be helpful. Altaf had stumbled over the story, but Mr Khandekar had followed its disorganized path and had made sense of it, and now he would present them with a solution. Mr Khandekar led them out of his study. He paused at a looking glass in the salon, and with one hand smoothed down his greying hair; he licked the tips of the forefinger and thumb on his left hand and, in a gesture Altaf half knew, half remembered as being characteristic, wiped them across his eyebrows in a single opening gesture. ‘Come with me,’ he said again. They followed him across the crowded salon, stepping cautiously between little tables and low stools, and through the hallway. Mr Khandekar stopped at a closed door, knocked briefly and pushed it open.

  ‘I don’t have time for this,’ he said. ‘Two fellows from the village.’ He turned to Altaf. ‘What did you say your name was? A problem with accommodation. Talk to them. See if you can do anything. I have to be off. I’m fearfully late. How are you, Nadira? Always a pleasure.’

  He turned swiftly, in his immaculate black-and-white dress, the white stock now quickly tied and beautifully neat at his throat. There was genuine warmth in the greeting or, Altaf supposed, the farewell to the girl. ‘I always like to see old friends from the village,’ he said. ‘Always, always. Explain everything to my wife – she is the true power in this house. She can do so much more for you than I can, believe me.’ The front door opened anonymously, smoothly, and in front of the house, under the mango tree, a car stood idling. A driver was waiting for Mr Khandekar.

  ‘Goodbye, goodbye,’ Mr Khandekar said. ‘Always a pleasure.’

  6.

  Mrs Khandekar was a tiny woman, dressed enchantingly in a pink sari and a single simple necklace. The room she came to the door of was also pink, and lit by the light of the morning sun, coming through the leaves of the tree outside. It was a graceful, charming room, with two Chinese vases on either end of a teak sideboard, the sofa and armchairs upholstered in pale green silk. On the low teak and glass table was a tray with tea things on it, a blue-and-white Chinese set, and a plate of sweet biscuits arranged in a little fan. In the small brown vase on the table, a branch of fruit blossom.

  Mrs Khandekar had a guest. She was a girl of perhaps fifteen, who craned her head at the visitors as Mrs Khandekar rose and went to speak to Amit and Altaf at the door. The girl sat very upright, and her hair was arranged in an upwards style. She sat as if aware of the way she would be looked at. Mr Khandekar had called her Nadira.

  ‘I am so sorry about my husband,’ Mrs Khandekar said, smiling. ‘He is always in such a rush. But perhaps I can help you? You are an old friend of Mr Khandekar’s father, I think?’

  Altaf explained. Standing at the door to Mrs Khandekar’s sitting room, he found it came out in a much more orderly way. Amit’s problem seemed to unfold to an easy, elegant, listening audience. Amit stood, listening to Altaf’s explanation with a furrowed brow.

  When Altaf had finished, Mrs Khandekar said, ‘I see. It happens to many people, that sort of thing. But do you think your friend’s landlord is at all likely to change his mind? He sounds quite set in his decision.’

  ‘He doesn’t want me to stay in the flat,’ Amit said, speaking for the first time. ‘I’m sure he has his own good reasons.’

  ‘I don’t think anyone can force him to rent his flat to someone, once he has made his mind up,’ Mrs Khandekar said. ‘It is unfortunate, but there it is.’

  She looked at them, levelly and not without kindness.

  ‘I’m sorry to have troubled you in your home,’ Altaf said after a moment, lowering his head.

  ‘But what would you hope for, at the end of all this?’ Mrs Khandekar said. ‘Don’t think about how you would achieve it but what you actually want.’

  ‘Somewhere to live,’ Altaf said. ‘Merely somewhere to live.’

  ‘Mrs Khandekar,’ the girl in the pink sitting room said – her voice was low and melodious, and she had an air of adult confidence about her. ‘Excuse me, Mrs Khandekar. What about—’

  ‘This is Nadira,’ Mrs Khandekar said. ‘The daughter of a very old friend of my husband’s, come to visit and take a cup of tea in
the morning. It is so kind of her to drop in like this.’

  Altaf and Amit bowed in her direction. ‘And now,’ Mrs Khandekar said, ‘I wonder if the best thing for me to do is not to start telling you about lawyers and law courts and the laws relating to landlords and their tenants, but just to try to help you to find somewhere to live. After all, that is all you want, I believe?’

  ‘That was just what I was going to say,’ the girl said.

  Mrs Khandekar, she said, owned a block of flats in Old Dacca. They had belonged to her father before her, and he had left them to her. They were nice flats – a little old-fashioned, perhaps, but in good order, well looked after and in a very respectable, quiet neighbourhood.

  ‘What are your professions, gentlemen?’ Mrs Khandekar said.

  Altaf let Amit say, ‘Schoolmaster,’ which at least sounded regular and respectable.

  Somehow, it seemed to be established in Mrs Khandekar’s mind that the two of them were looking for a flat together, and he found himself saying, ‘I am a musician,’ adding for good measure, ‘I play on the radio,’ and going on to explain the Saturday-evening programme on which he was a regular.

  ‘How delightful!’ Mrs Khandekar said, with real warmth, clapping her hands together in pleasure. ‘My husband and I never miss it. We must listen out for you.’ She used an English expression.

  There were some landlords who would be put off by the idea of musicians, but Mrs Khandekar was not one of them. In fact, once she had discovered that Amit was not just a schoolmaster but also a musician – ‘A famous musician,’ she flatteringly said – it appeared to act as a recommendation and a passport. She asked them into her sitting room, and offered them a seat and a cup of tea. Before long, it had emerged that Nadira, the assured and dignified girl on the sofa, liked to sing and, after a little more conversation, they had agreed to come to her house to teach her, the next free afternoon. In half an hour, everything seemed to have been arranged, and Mrs Khandekar had told them where to meet her the next morning to look at a flat in the block that had become vacant in recent weeks. ‘It is rather small, I am afraid,’ she said apologetically. ‘You must say at once if it does not suit you.’