Amitav Ghosh - The Shadow Lines

As the days went by the more Denise hated Magda.

Then today it happened.

Mrs Tolland asked Denise to write a sentence on the blackboard. Denise went to the blackboard, and when she’d finished the class saw that what she’d written was: John cot the ball.

The whole class burst into laughter.

Then Mrs Tolland asked Magda to write the sentence. And of course Magda knew, so she wrote: John caught the ball, in her beautiful round handwriting.

Good girl, Mrs Tolland said to her, and then she turned to Denise and said: Well, Denise, perhaps you ought to take English lessons from her , even though it’s your own language, not hers.

Everyone turned to look at Denise and laughed and laughed. Denise had to sit there and listen.

When Magda was going back to her desk, she heard Denise say: See you outside, little wog. She saw how Denise had gone red in the face and she was scared.

So today, after school, she decided not to come back the way she usually does. Most days she walks through the park near Hillfield Road, but today she didn’t. She thought she would hurry past the park and take the other road instead.

After school, that was what she meant to do. But when she turned the corner near the park, keeping her head down so that nobody would notice her, she heard someone shout: Little wog, nig-nog!

She didn’t turn to look, but she knew it was Denise; she could tell from the voice. She began to walk faster.

But the voice followed her, shouting: Don’t run, little wog, nig-nog.

Now Magda began to run. She ran across the road without stopping to look right or left, as she’d been told to. She was very scared now. She dropped her bag, and though she knew Baba would be furious with her if she lost it, she didn’t dare stop. She was running as fast as she could, in a straight line. She could hear them running too, three or four of them, right behind her, catching up. But she was running fast now, faster than she ever had before, and she could tell that some of them were giving up. Now there was only one pair of feet running after her. She could hear them clearly, thudding on the pavement behind her.

Something hit her between her shoulders, and she fell sprawling on the pavement. When she looked up, Denise was scowling down at her, panting: Bloody wog, nig-nog.

An open hand came slashing down and struck Magda on the face. Magda’s cheek hit the pavement. She could see her blood spattering in the dust.

Denise was crouching over her. Her face was so close that Magda could smell the Mars bars on her breath.

Nig-nog, she said, filthy little nig-nog, and she stuck her fist into Magda’s mouth. Then she swung her hand back again. Magda shut her eyes, covered her face and waited. There was nothing else she could do; Denise was too strong for her.

And then there was a little yelp of pain and she heard Denise being pulled off her. She didn’t dare look at first.

When she opened her eyes, there he was, with his hands on his hips, standing over her.

Go on, Nick Price said to Denise. Go on, get out of here.

Denise made a face and scrabbled to her feet.

When she was gone, Nick Price knelt down beside Magda and wiped her face with the sleeve of his shirt. He helped her to her feet and put a sweet in her mouth and, taking her hand in his, he said: Come on, I’ll take you home now.

That was how Nick Price had looked to me, under that table: a boy in shorts, like me, but much bigger, his head a blaze of yellow, rescuing a little girl from her tormentor.

But then, unaccountably, Ila had burst into tears.

When I had finished telling May this story, in that very room, three years later, she’d put a hand on my shoulder and said: Come on, let’s go out, it’s terribly dark in here.

I led her out into the brilliant sunlight of the portico, and she flopped down on one of the stairs that led down into the paved courtyard. Reaching for my hand, she pulled me down beside her.

That wasn’t quite what happened, she said gently. You do know that, don’t you?

I shook my head.

I happened to be at home that day, she said. And I know that Nick didn’t stop to help Ila. He ran all the way back. He used to run back home from school early those days.

Why?

May plucked out a peepul leaf that was growing out of the brick staircase and fanned herself with it.

I’m not sure, she said. But I think Nick didn’t want to be seen with Ila. Ila didn’t have any friends in school, you see. Perhaps it was just that she was shy. But after she began going to school Nick used to come home much earlier than he used to. Then that day something happened in Ila’s class, and I think Nick got to hear of it. He ran back even earlier than usual and went straight up to his room. Mummy asked him what the matter was but he wouldn’t tell her. An hour or so later, just when we were beginning to worry about Ila, a policeman brought her back. She was a bit bruised, but otherwise all right. She never told us what happened but she didn’t go back to school after that. And then, soon after, they left.

I tried then to think of Ila walking back from school alone through the lanes of West Hampstead. I could see her swinging her schoolbag in time with her footsteps, faster and faster, until she was almost running, laughing out loud, so that people turned to smile after her; Ila walking, smiling to herself as I had sometimes seen her, her dimple rippling on her cheek. Ila walking alone in a drizzle under that cold grey sky: Ila who in Calcutta was surrounded by so many relatives and cars and servants that she would never have had to walk so much as the length of the street — and as for alone, why there we were, all of us, I, her relatives, her friends, all waiting to walk with Ila, Ila the sophisticate, who could tell us stories about smart girls and rich boys in far-away countries whose names we had learnt from maps. Ila walking alone because Nick Price was ashamed to be seen by his friends, walking home with an Indian.

You shouldn’t think too badly of him, May said. She was pleading with me now. He was very young, and at that age children want everyone to be alike.

Many years later, when my grandmother had been lying in bed for months with what was to prove to be her final illness, one evening, while I was sitting by her bedside, I found myself telling her the story Ila had told me and about the odd little ending that May had added.

That evening, although she was surrounded by oxygen cylinders, bottles of glucose, disposable syringes and all the other paraphernalia of her sickness, she seemed more cheerful than she had been in a long time. When she had heard me out she said: I don’t blame the boy. It was Ila’s fault. It was her own fault, and Maya’s fault and the fault of that half-witted mother of hers. It was bound to happen: anyone can see that. She has no right to be there. She doesn’t belong there.

She buried her head in a towel and began to cough. In the two weeks that had passed since I came back from Delhi for my college’s summer holidays I had been kept up every night by that hollow, echoing cough. After a quarter of an hour the fit left her and she fell back panting, on her pillows. She turned to look at me, with a handkerchief clamped over her mouth. I knew then, from the brightness of her eyes, that she was about to go into one of her sudden rages. I rose guiltily from my chair, angry with myself for having told her the story, and tried to calm her.

It doesn’t matter, Tha’mma, I said, pulling her shawl over her thin, trembling shoulders. It doesn’t matter. Lie down now and rest.

Ila shouldn’t be there, she said, stammering hoarsely. She doesn’t belong there. What’s she doing in that country?

She’s just studying there for a while, Tha’mma, I said gently. At that time Ila was at University College in London, doing a BA in history.