Amitav Ghosh - The Glass Palace

And now here was Dinu, on his way to Morningside— strange old Dinu — so incorrigibly serious, so awkward and unsure of himself. She looked at her watch and at the window. Far in the distance, she could see a train making its way across the plain. She reached for her handbag and found the keys to the Daytona roadster. It would be a relief to get away, even if just for a couple of hours.

It was because of the war that Dinu’s arrival at Morningside was so long delayed. The threat of submarine activity in the Bay of Bengal had forced steamship companies to cease publishing their schedules. Departures were now announced only hours before the time of sailing. This meant, in effect, that a constant vigil had to be maintained at the companies’ offices. Dinu had considered himself lucky to get a berth at all and had not given any thought to wiring ahead.

The station at Sungei Pattani was as pretty as a toy: there was a single platform shaded by a low red-tiled awning. Dinu spotted Alison as the train was drawing in: she was standing in the shade of the tin awning, wearing sunglasses and a long, black dress. She looked thin, limp, wilted — a candlewick on whom grief burnt like a flame.

The sight of her induced a momentary rush of panic. Emotion of any kind inspired fear in him, but none so much as grief: for several minutes after the train pulled in he was literally unable to rise from his seat. It was not till the station master brandished his green flag that he started for the door.

Stepping out of the train, Dinu tried to recall the phrases of condolence he had rehearsed in preparation for this moment. But now, with Alison approaching across the platform, the idea of consolation seemed like an impossible impertinence. It would be kinder, surely, to behave as though nothing had happened?

‘You shouldn’t have come,’ he said gruffly, dropping his eyes. ‘I would have found a taxi.’

‘I was glad to come,’ she said. ‘It’s nice to have a break from Morningside.’

‘Still.’ Hefting his leather camera cases on his shoulders, he handed his suitcase to a porter.

She smiled. ‘Is your father better?’

‘Yes,’ Dinu said stiffly. ‘He’s fine now. . and Manju and Neel are expecting a baby.’

‘That’s good news.’ She gave him a smile and a nod.

They stepped out of the station into a compound that was shaded by an immense, dome-like tree. Dinu stopped to look up. From the tree’s moss-wrapped branches there hung a colourful array of creepers and wildflowers.

‘Why,’ said Dinu, ‘isn’t that a padauk tree?’

‘We call them angsana trees here,’ Alison said. ‘My father planted this one the year I was born.’ She paused. ‘The year we were born I should have said.’

‘Why yes. . of course. . we were born the same year.’ Dinu smiled, hesitantly, surprised both by the fact that she’d remembered and that she’d chosen to comment on it.

The Daytona was parked nearby, with its hood pulled up. Alison slipped into the driver’s seat, while Dinu saw to the loading of his luggage in the back. They drove out of the station and past the main marketplace with its long arcades of tiled shophouses. On the outskirts of town they passed a field that was ringed with barbed-wire fencing. At the centre of the field there stood several orderly rows of attap huts, roofed with sheets of corrugated iron.

‘What’s this?’ Dinu asked. ‘I don’t remember any of this. .’

‘It’s our new military base,’ said Alison. ‘Sungei Pattani has a big army presence now, because of the war. There’s an airstrip in there and it’s guarded by Indian soldiers.’

The road began to climb and Gunung Jerai reared up ahead, its peak obscured by the usual daytime heat haze. Dinu sank back in his seat, framing the mountain in an imaginary lens. Alison’s voice took him by surprise.

‘Do you know what the hard part is?’

‘No — what is it?’

‘Nothing has any shape.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s something you don’t see until it’s gone — the shapes that things have and the ways in which the people around you mould those shapes. I don’t mean the big things — just the little ones. What you do when you get up in the morning— the hundreds of thoughts that run through your head while you’re brushing your teeth: “I have to tell Mummy about the new flowerbed”—that sort of thing. Over the last few years I’d started to take over a lot of the little things that Daddy and Mummy used to do at Morningside. Now, when I wake up in the morning those things still come back to me in just that way — I have to do this or that, for Mummy or for Daddy. Then I remember, No, I don’t have to do any of those things; there’s no reason to. And in an odd way, what you feel at those moments is not exactly sadness but a kind of disappointment. And that’s awful too, for you say to yourself— is this the best I can do? No: this isn’t good enough. I should cry — everyone says it’s good to cry. But the feeling inside doesn’t have an easy name: it’s not exactly pain or sorrow — not right then. It feels more like the sensation you have when you sit down very heavily in a chair: the breath rushes out of your body and you find yourself gagging. It’s hard to make sense of it — any of it. You want the pain to be simple, straightforward — you don’t want it to ambush you in these roundabout ways, each morning, when you’re getting up to do something else — brush your teeth or eat your breakfast. .’

The car veered suddenly towards the side of the road. Dinu snatched at the wheel to steady it. ‘Alison! Slow down— careful.’

She ran the car on to the grassy verge that flanked the road and stopped under a tree. Raising her hands, she touched her cheeks in a gesture of disbelief. ‘Look,’ she said. I’m crying.’

‘Alison.’ He wanted to reach for her, touch her shoulder, but it was not like him to be demonstrative. She lowered her forehead to the wheel, sobbing, and then suddenly his hesitations evaporated.

‘Alison.’ He drew her head to his shoulder, and felt the warmth of her tears dampening the thin cotton of his shirt. Her hair was silky against his cheek and smelt faintly of grapes. ‘Alison, it’s all right. .’

He was struck by a deep astonishment at what he had done. It was as though someone had reminded him that gestures of this kind did not come naturally to him. The arm that was holding her cradled against his shoulder grew heavy and wooden and he found himself mumbling awkwardly: ‘Alison. . I know it’s been hard. .’

He was cut short by the roar of a fifteen-hundredweight truck, rolling down the road. Alison pulled quickly away and sat upright. Dinu turned as the truck rumbled by. A squad of Indian soldiers was squatting in the back of the truck, dressed in turbans and khaki shorts.

The sound of the truck faded away and the moment passed. Alison wiped her face and cleared her throat. ‘Time to go home,’ she said, turning the ignition key. ‘You must be tired.’

It was mid-February when the long-awaited mobilisation orders finally arrived. Hardy was one of the first to know and he came running to Arjun’s room.

‘Yaar — have you heard?

It was early evening and Hardy didn’t bother to knock. He pushed the door open and looked in: ‘Arjun, where are you?’

Arjun was inside the curtained dressing room that separated his bathroom from the living area. He had just finished washing off the dirt of a football match and his mud-caked shoes and shorts lay heaped on the floor. It was a Thursday — a night when, by tradition, dinner jackets were worn at the mess, this being the day of the week when the news of Queen Victoria’s death had been received in India. Kishan Singh was at work in Arjun’s bedroom, laying out his clothes for the evening— dinner jacket, dress trousers, silk cummerbund.