Amitav Ghosh - The Glass Palace

Manju began to sob. ‘I want to go home,’ she said. ‘Please let me go. Don’t send me out in front of them.’

‘Everyone who comes here says that,’ the women reassured her. ‘Then they stay for ever.’

They took hold of her arms and led her out on to the brilliantly lit studio floor. Manju was now completely distraught, her nerves frayed and on edge. To keep herself from crying, she kept her gaze fixed on the floor, with her sari slung over her head. Presently a pair of polished black shoes edged into her circle of vision. She heard herself being introduced to the director. She put her hands together and whispered a nomoshkar without looking up. Then she saw a second pair of shoes approaching her, across the floor.

‘And this here is my good friend,’ the director’s voice intoned. ‘Mr Neeladhri Raha of Rangoon. .’

She looked up. If she hadn’t heard the name she would not have known who it was. She’d met both Neel and Dinu many years ago. They were visiting with their mother, staying downstairs, in her aunt Uma’s flat. But he looked completely different now, with his trimmed black beard and his suit.

‘Neel?’

He was staring at her, his mouth agape, his tongue locked above an unuttered exclamation. It was not that he had recognised her: the reason he was unable to speak was because she was, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman he’d ever spoken to.

‘Neel, is that you?’ said Manju. ‘Don’t you remember me? I’m Manju — Uma Dey’s niece.’

He nodded, in slow disbelief, as though he’d forgotten the sound of his own name.

She flew at him and threw her arms round his chest. ‘Oh, Neel,’ she said, wiping her eyes on his jacket. ‘Take me home.’

The dressing room was a different place when Manju went back to reclaim her own clothes. The two make-up women were now almost worshipful in their attentiveness.

‘So you know him then?’

‘But why didn’t you tell us?’

Manju wasted no time on explanations. She changed quickly and went hurrying to the door. Neel was outside, waiting beside the passenger-side door of a new 1938 Delage D8 Drophead. He opened the door for her and she stepped in. The car smelt of chrome and new leather. ‘What a beautiful car,’ she said. ‘Is it yours?’

‘No.’ He laughed. ‘The dealer offered to let me borrow it for a few days. I couldn’t resist.’

Their eyes met for a moment and they both looked quickly away.

‘Where would you like to go?’ he said. He turned the ignition key and the Delage responded with a purr.

‘Let’s see. .’ Now that she was seated in the car, she no longer felt quite so pressed to get home.

He started to say something: ‘Well. .’

She could tell that they were both thinking along similar lines. ‘Perhaps. .’ A sentence that had begun promisingly in her head died unfinished on her tongue.

‘I see.’

‘Yes.’

Somehow this terse exchange succeeded in conveying everything they wanted to communicate. Neel started the car and they drove out of the studio. They both knew that they were going nowhere in particular, just enjoying the sensory pleasure of sitting in a moving car.

‘I was so surprised to see you in that studio,’ Neel said with a laugh. ‘Do you really want to be an actress?’

Manju felt herself changing colour. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to see what it was like. Things are so dull at home. .’

Having said this much, she couldn’t stop. She found herself telling him things she hadn’t told anyone else: how much she missed Arjun; how his letters from the Military Academy had filled her with despair about her own future; about what a curse it was for a woman to live vicariously through a male twin. She even told him about the matches her mother had tried to arrange for her; about the mothers of the prospective grooms and how they had tugged her hair and inspected her teeth.

He didn’t say much but she understood that his silence was caused principally by a habitual lack of words. His face was hard to read behind the heavy black beard but she had a feeling that he was listening sympathetically, taking everything in.

‘And what about you?’ she said at last. ‘Are you really a big film producer?’

‘No!’ The word burst out of his mouth with the force of an expletive. ‘No. It wasn’t my idea at all. It was Apé—my father — who suggested it. .’

What he really wanted, he said, was to work in the timber trade. He’d asked to be allowed to join the family business— only to be turned down by his father. Rajkumar had suggested that he think of other lines of work: the timber business wasn’t for everyone, he’d said, especially a city-bred boy like Neel. When Neel persisted, he’d given him a sum of money and told him that he should come back after he’d doubled his capital. But how? Neel had asked. Rajkumar’s response was: Go and put it in films — anything. Neel had taken him at his word. He’d looked around for a film to invest in and hadn’t been able to find one in Rangoon. He had decided to travel to India instead.

‘How long have you been here then?’ Manju said. ‘And why didn’t you come to see us? You could have stayed with Uma-pishi, downstairs.’

Neel scratched awkwardly at his beard. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but you know, the trouble is. .’

‘What?’

‘My father doesn’t get along with your aunt.’

‘That doesn’t matter,’ Manju said. ‘Your mother often comes. I’m sure your father wouldn’t mind if you did too.’

‘Maybe not — but I wouldn’t want to anyway.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well,’ Neel scratched his beard again. ‘It wouldn’t be right.’ ‘What wouldn’t be right?’

‘I don’t know if I can explain.’ He gave her a bemused glance and she saw that he was struggling to find words for a thought that he’d never articulated before, even to himself.

‘Go on.’

‘You see,’ he said, almost apologetically, ‘it’s just that I’m the only one who’s on his side.’

Manju was startled. ‘What do you mean?’

‘That’s just how I feel,’ Neel said. ‘That I’m the only one on his side. Take my brother Dinu, for example — I sometimes think he really hates Apé.’

‘Why?’

‘Maybe — because they’re opposites.’

‘And you’re alike?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘At least, that’s what I would like to think.’

He turned his eyes away from the road to grin at her.

‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,’ he said. ‘I feel like an idiot.’

‘You’re not — I know what you’re trying to say. .’

They went on driving, more or less at random, down one street and another, backing out of blind alleys, and making U-turns on the wider avenues. It was almost dark by the time he dropped her off. They agreed that it would be better if he didn’t come in.

They met again the next day and the day after that. He extended his stay and after a month had gone by he sent a telegram to Burma.

One day Dolly presented herself at Uma’s office door.

‘Dolly? You here?’

‘Yes. And you’ll never believe why. .’

The wedding was like a force of nature, changing everything it touched. In a matter of days Lankasuka was transformed into a huge, noisy fairground. Up on the roof a team of pandal- makers was at work, erecting an immense awning of coloured cloth and bamboo. In the tree-shaded yard at the back, a small army of hired cooks had pitched tents and dug pits for cooking fires. It was as though a carnival had moved in.