Amit Chaudhuri - A New World

“How much is this?” asked Jayojit. He was holding a large hardcover in one hand; the picture of a cheetah, gold and black, jumped out of the cover. Its shadow leapt with the lightning.

The shopkeeper touched the book as if he intended, by some power of transformation, to make it seem like a saleable commodity. Wrapped in cellophane, its price was scribbled on the first page. “Five hundred and twenty rupees,” he said; some of his teeth were rust-brown with betel. His eyes held Jayojit’s. “Hm.” Jayojit turned the pages and consulted them heavy-handedly, superiorly. “Well, less than what I’d pay for it in New York,” he thought.

THE NEXT MORNING, the first day of the last week of May, he woke up feeling vulnerable and exposed. He hadn’t felt desire in a long time. Bonny’d been born, and at that time there had been a cutting off of sexual activity. Instead, when they had time, they would go to parks and sit on benches, admire the Fall’s redness that hung about the trees like an aura, talk about the new General Electric factory that was to come up in the outskirts and what it would do to jobs and to Claremont, and discuss moving to big cities in the East.

“When I was a kid, you know,” he told her when they were talking about the appeal of New York, and the fact that New York is attractive to every kind of Indian, from taxi drivers to dentists, “I used to think the Big Apple was the studio where the Beatles recorded their songs.”

She, in turn, warming to her memory of the Beatles, revealed to him how she’d liked Paul the best of the four, and how her friends would count how old they’d be when he was thirty-five. “ I’m twenty-nine now,” she said, watching two children play with a frisbee. “He must be. . forty-five.”

“You’ll still be quite young when he’s sixty-four,” said Jayojit.

She turned to him in mock disdain. “Poor joke, Mr. Chatterjee,” she said.

“I’m a Lennon fan myself,” he’d said, remembering the sixties in which both he and Amala had grown up, she in Calcutta and he in so many different places.

He lay there, thinking of what he’d dreamed of, and couldn’t return to it. Had he had indigestion? A crow perched on the silent air-conditioner was crying out repeatedly. He gave himself to recalling, for a couple of minutes, what it was that accounted for this pressure of longing; as if it were someone else’s body, he discovered he had an erection beneath his shorts. He was bare-chested — he’d taken off his shirt during a power-cut in the morning — and his body-hair was ink-black spread against the fair skin.

He got up to urinate; washed his face; glanced at the watch; nine forty-five. It had rained when they were sleeping, a stealthy downpour; the water from the tap was cool. They might have had another child. Two to five minutes, that’s all it took. In retrospect, thank God they didn’t.

He didn’t dry his face immediately, but draped the towel around his neck, his forehead moist.

His mother was standing near the dining table.

“Once the rains come”—to her, evidently, the incontrovertible fact of rainfall wasn’t enough; the rains would only “come” when it was time for them to, the 10th of June—“I’ll have to dry these in the bathroom,” she said, looking at the clothes in the verandah.

“Why don’t you buy a washing machine?”

His mother looked up. “Joy, they have new ones in that shop in Gariahat—‘Pleasant’—I’ve seen them; they wring the clothes so dry that it takes only half a day to dry them.”

“I know,” said Jayojit, with the air of speaking of a celebrated personality with whom he was already on first-name terms. “Who makes them?” he asked.

“There’s that one,” she said vaguely, “BPL. . No— IBF or IFB. .” She sounded tired and unconvinced.

There was a difference between his parents with regard to appliances; his father distrusted them as he would a rival; his mother had no confidence in using them, but none the less desired them. There was no doubt that a washing machine would help; probably it was too expensive for them. Jayojit wondered if he could offer to buy them one.

“But what use will it be?” said the Admiral, dismissing the idea with a wave of one hand.

Mrs. Chatterjee would say nothing; she would not argue with her husband.

“They’ve been around in the U.S. for more than fifty years now,” said Jayojit, slightly impatient. “They don’t seem to have done too badly — so I presume they have some uses.”

“But we have cheap labour , Joy,” said Admiral Chatterjee, as if making an important point.

“Once, being married was to have cheap labour,” said Jayojit. A little coldly, he added, “That was a joke.”

“You know what I mean,” said his father, still pursuing his original line of thought. “You know what I’m saying. It’s easier — and cheaper — to have what’s-her-name do the washing than to buy a washing machine.” He said, “Even if they sold these things in the Fort William canteen”—referring to the place where the Armed Forces could buy certain things at a reduced price—“which I doubt they do, it would still be dear.”

The sharp conversation reminded Mrs. Chatterjee of her husband’s working days and of the time of her own relative youth. But she enjoyed the impassioned exchange between father and son, the language giving it an intimacy which they could only communicate to each other in words which not so much excluded her as turned her into a spectator.

“That’s not a worry. If buying it’s the worrisome bit, there’s nothing to worry. Because I’m thinking of buying it.”

The Admiral stared at him, absorbing this final bit of information, this decision that had been taken without him.

“This is your doing,” he said, turning to his wife. “Tumi ki bolechho oke?” The accusing Bengali words sounded as unconfrontational as flute-music. For the first time in what seemed a while, Mrs. Chatterjee allowed herself a smile.

“She hasn’t told me anything, baba! It’s my idea. The way you’re reacting is as if the washing machine was some suspect foreign gadget that arrived here yesterday. You know, it’s been around for more than ten years.”

The Admiral became glum, like a child always used to having his own way finding himself again in a situation where all is not going as he wishes it to.

“It’s out of the question. Besides, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

Jayojit sighed. It was difficult to negotiate with his father when he was in this dogmatic mood.

“We’re living in a consumer society, baba,” said Jayojit. “We might as well make use of it.” So saying, he suddenly unbuttoned the top of his shirt and began to fan himself with an old magazine.

“We are. . we are,” said the Admiral, not sounding very pleased, as if the realization had dawned on him in a moment of final and unexpected insight.

“I need a glass of water,” said Jayojit, getting up abruptly. “My throat keeps going dry in this heat.”

“Not just one glass, baba!” said his mother. “You must have at least eight glasses a day, isn’t it?” She looked around, beaming. “And the same is true,” she said, “for a young man I know.”

HEAT, COLD, HEAT, COLD… especially when the air-conditioner was switched on. And the Admiral, having gone in once to convey some message to Jayojit, had stepped out into a wall of heat.

“This is not good for anyone,” he’d said. “This is why I don’t like this city. This swamp climate and that artificial coolness.” He scratched his beard. And though the city was the Admiral’s birthplace, he didn’t feel it was; he was always a newcomer here, slightly taken aback by the weather and the people.