Neel Mukherjee - The Lives of Others

Chhaya was beginning to get irritated by this rude inquisition, so she said tetchily, ‘I don’t keep a list of Somnath’s friends. And, anyway, what is it to you? Now move out of my way, I’m getting late for work.’

‘No, we won’t. Take us to your mother, we have things to tell her,’ the woman insisted.

Chhaya, taken aback by such impudence on the part of a servant, tried a new tack. She said, ‘You think my mother has nothing to do except meet riff-raff all day? Think again. Now move.’ That note of command in her voice would ensure that these two women backed down.

The woman who had remained silent so far now spoke. ‘Your brother and Paltu have been frolicking with my sister. She works as a maid in that Paltu’s house. She’s with child now. People at your home know about this?’

The words had the effect of a furious slap across Chhaya’s face. She edged backwards and ran into the house. She wanted to shout, ‘Lies, lies, all filthy lies’, but this would have been too feeble. She ran up two flights of stairs, found her mother on the first floor and panted, ‘Ma, there are some people outside. . servants, servants from another neighbourhood. . Filthy stuff, filthy. . Somnath and his friend, Paltu, all lies. . They’re outside and want to see you. Don’t go, don’t listen to what they have to say. Send Madan-da to deal with them — throw them out.’

‘What is wrong with you?’ said Charubala. ‘Sit down. What are you babbling on about? Which servants, what filthy stuff?’

‘There, outside,’ Chhaya could only point weakly.

Charubala got up to go to the front balcony. Chhaya said, ‘Don’t listen to them!’

From the balcony Charubala looked down onto Basanta Bose Road, noticed nothing special and half-turned to Chhaya, still inside, to say, ‘Where? What am I looking for? What women?’

‘Two maidservants. They’re standing outside.’

‘Oh, maids. I see. Where. . I can’t. . oh, those two? Come here and point them out to me.’

Chhaya quailed at the prospect of facing them. She let out a brief ‘No’, then began to think whether it was not better that her mother heard from her, Chhaya, what she had been told than from those strangers. But how was she going to bring herself to say it? Even thinking about it made her feel polluted. How could people have such cesspools inside their heads? How typical of that class of women.

She heard her mother call out, ‘You, what do you want?’ The reply was inaudible. Then her mother again, ‘You want work? We have all the people we need. You should go elsewhere to look for work, there’s nothing here.’

A pause again, this time followed by an impatient outburst from Charubala, ‘Yes, yes, I am Somnath’s mother. Say what you have to say from there, and be quick about it, I don’t have all day.’

At the mention of Somnath’s name some familiar dread in Charubala was beginning to sound a warning that an ill-humoured attitude was probably not the wisest one to take, especially standing on the balcony, in view of the whole wide world. She gripped the balustrade tightly. She was glad of the support, because what the women then proceeded to say made the ground beneath her feet move as if to dislodge her. She squeezed her eyes tight shut and opened them again; the women were still there, this was not a dream; the snaky trails of poison were still streaming out of their mouths. The brief vertigo over, Charubala now felt seized by anger.

She found her voice and shouted down at the women, ‘Don’t you feel any shame, coming here and spouting these unspeakable lies? Who has put you up to this? I know my son, and I’m not going to stand here listening to all this sewage. Get out of here, get out now!’

She turned around, expecting to find succour from someone in the house, but realised that all the menfolk had left. There was no one she could ask to take charge of things except Madan.

‘Madan,’ she called, going back inside. ‘Madan. See to the women outside. Two maidservants. Get rid of them immediately.’

Charubala sat down on the edge of her bed, panting. Chhaya was in the room too; neither could bring herself to look at the other. United in humiliation, each felt as if she had done something wrong and was being silently judged by the other person. Aeons passed as Madan went down, spoke to the two women, clanged the front gate shut and came upstairs. They strained to hear what was going on. Sounds of vehicle horns; people passing, talking, calling out; more people; a utensil-seller calling out her wares; a man selling toy flutes made out of bamboo and palm-leaves.

Then the screaming began. Not every single word could be heard from indoors, partly because of the way sound travelled through a competing wall of other sounds, partly because of a willed underhearing to protect themselves, but what filtered through was enough.

‘. . didn’t care much about filth when fucking maidservants. . may be poor, but we don’t have to put up with. . go around from street to street, telling everyone. .’

The woman shouting was on the further side of Basanta Bose Road; she had clearly been asked by Madan not to hang around outside the house. She raised her voice as she progressed through her litany, the escalation in volume and the accusations feeding off each other. Within minutes a small crowd had gathered: what could be more interesting than other people’s lives?

Charubala sensed rather than saw the people — strangers, neighbours, acquaintances, passers-by — assembling in a wide, loose circle around that vile, shrieking woman and felt that whirling dizziness again, this time accompanied by a spreading heat in her ears, her face, neck and arms. Chhaya seemed to have turned into stone.

Purnima came to the front room and asked, ‘Ma, there are some women standing outside, shouting. Is there some problem?’

Charubala shrank. A fantasy of disappearance pressed urgently against her.

On the third floor the two little boys, Supratik and Suranjan, attracted by the noise outside, ran to the verandah to see what was happening.

‘Look!’ Supratik said to his younger brother, ‘people are gathering around in a circle. A monkey-dance. Or maybe travelling players. There’ll be a circus.’

‘Where are monkeys?’ Suranjan asked.

‘Ufff, wait, they’ll come. That woman is announcing their arrival,’ Supratik replied, impatient at his five-year-old brother’s obtuseness.

But, wait, something about the pitch, the tone. . He felt something was not quite joyous and entertaining here. There weren’t going to be any monkeys, or madaris setting up a tightrope and swinging their toddlers in a sack in huge, heart-dropping arcs. There was also something of the forbidden going on down there. Some of those words. .

‘. . think we don’t know why she tried to kill herself’ — then some incomprehensible word — ‘that’s what the lot of you. .’

Sandhya rushed out to the verandah, swooped down on her two sons and shooed them inside, barking, ‘Go inside, you two monkeys, go on, go inside, nothing doing standing out here, listening to that rubbish.’

‘. . see to it that the son of a whore is sodomised on the streets and left bleeding. .’

Before the two boys ran inside reluctantly, Supratik took one last look at the street below: the number of people seemed to have swelled and everyone was looking at their house.

Suranjan was about to start bawling. ‘No, no, I want to see monkey-dance, I want to go downstairs and see monkey-dance.’

Sandhya turned and smacked him. ‘Not one word from you,’ she said.

The wailing burst like a ripe cloud. Supratik felt intimidated; it was unusual for his mother to be so short-tempered. He had better slink away and sit with his books to mollify her by pretending to study.