Amitav Ghosh - The Shadow Lines

Ila turned to look at me after they were gone.

So here we are, she said, smiling. We’re back under our old table, playing houses.

I nodded and threw myself down on the edge of one of the beds. My knees were shaking and the palms of my hands were wet. Ila turned her back on me and pulled off her jacket and sweater, talking in a low voice all the while, about May and how she had ruined the evening.

She was in a thin blouse now; I could see the outline of her breasts and even the shadow of the mole above her nipple.

It’s hot in here actually, she said, undoing the buttons of her blouse. I don’t think I’m going to need any nightclothes.

She turned to reach for a towel and her eyes fell on me, crouched on the edge of the camp bed.

Why, you’re staring, she laughed in surprise. I’ll have to turn my back on you again.

She turned away and shrugged off her blouse. I could smell her now: she smelt of soap and fresh sweat. I could see the soft skin of her waist curving gently into her belt.

She wrapped the towel around herself and kicked off her skirt. I could see the slanted grain of the down running down her legs. At that moment, draped in a towel, from her armpits to her thighs, her weight resting on one leg, her skin shimmering like soft, dark silk, she seemed to belong to a wholly different species of being from the women my friends and I had visited — more perfect than any human form could possibly be.

I could not sit still any more. I stole up behind her and put my hand on her bare shoulder.

Take your hand away, she giggled. It’s cold.

She spun around, and I don’t know what she saw on my face but the laughter died on her lips.

Oh, what’s happened? she cried. Why are you looking at me like that?

She stepped back to look at me and then she ran into my arms and hugged me.

You poor man, she said.

Her voice was full of pity.

You poor, poor man.

She reached up and ran a hand over my face. It was only then that I felt the tears running down my cheeks.

I didn’t know, she said. You were always the brother I never had. I’m sorry. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have behaved like this. Really, believe me.

It doesn’t matter, I said.

She came and sat beside me and ran a finger over my neck and back. I’m sorry, she said. I’m really, truly sorry.

You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, I said. It’s no one’s fault but mine.

We heard the sound of a door shutting somewhere upstairs. Ila leapt to her feet.

I’ve got to go now, for a bit, she said, her voice light with relief. I’m going up to have a chat with Nick; he’s very upset.

I felt the warmth of her body over mine as she leant to kiss me on my chin.

Go to sleep, she said. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.

A moment later I heard her tiptoeing softly up the staircase.

I lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling, and as the hours passed I saw Ila again and again as she was when she stepped out of that car at Gole Park, eighteen years ago; on that morning when she wrenched me into adulthood by demonstrating for the first time, and for ever the inequality of our needs. And when she did not come back to the cellar that night, I knew she had taken my life hostage yet again; I knew that a part of my life as a human being had ceased; that I no longer existed, but as a chronicle.

In 1962, the year I turned ten, my grandmother retired, upon reaching the age of sixty. She had taught in a girls’ high school since 1936. When she’d first joined, the school had had only fifty pupils and the premises had consisted of two sheds with tin roofs. During the monsoons she had often had to teach standing in ankle-deep water — once, or so she claimed, it had been so bad that a girl had actually managed to spear a fish with a compass during a geometry lesson. But over the next two decades the school had grown into a successful institution and had acquired a big building near Deshapriya Park. For the last six years before she retired, my grandmother had been its headmistress.

She had been looking forward to her retirement although she’d grown very attached to the school in the twenty-seven years she had spent there. But she no longer had the stomach for staff-room intrigues and battles with the board, she would tell my parents; she was growing old, she had earned her rest. And besides, my father’s career was going well, so she had no real worries left.

There was a farewell ceremony on her last day at school, to which my parents and I were invited. It was a touching ceremony in a solemn kind of way. The Calcutta Corporation sent a representative and so did the Congress and the CPI. There were many speeches and my grandmother was garlanded by a girl from every class. Then the head girl, a particular favourite of hers, unveiled the farewell present the girls had bought for her by subscription. It was a large marble model of the Taj Mahal; it had a bulb inside and could be lit up like a table lamp. My grandmother made a speech too, but she couldn’t finish it properly, for she began to cry before she got to the end of it and had to stop to wipe away her tears. I turned away when she began dabbing at her eyes with a huge green handkerchief, and discovered, to my surprise, that many of the girls sitting around me were wiping their eyes too. I was very jealous, I remember. I had always taken it for granted that it was my own special right to love her; I did not know how to cope with the discovery that my right had been infringed by a whole school.

Later we were served a meal in the staff room. The teachers had decided to give her a surprise.

When she was headmistress my grandmother had decided once that every girl who opted for home science ought to be taught how to cook at least one dish that was a speciality of some part of the country other than her own. It would be a good way, she thought, of teaching them about the diversity and vastness of the country. As a farewell surprise, the home science department had arranged for us to sample the results of my grandmother’s initiative.

After we had been led into the staff room the girls came in, one by one, bearing dishes on trays. My grandmother was delighted; she understood at once what was in store for us. She had taken so keen an interest in this project that she knew each girl’s speciality by heart. There’s Ranjana (or Matangini), she would say, clapping her hands as they entered the room — Ranjana’s doing Kerala, so avyal is what you’ll get. Or: That’s Sunayana, she’s our Tamil for this term, wait till you taste her uppama, you’ll want to be Tamil yourself. But then, in her mounting excitement, she began to make mistakes. There’s a nice Gujarati mutton korma for you, she said, and then, leaping to her feet, she cried: Ah, there’s my dear dahi-bara, you wait and see what a plump and juicy Punjabi she is!

As it happened, the girl who had made the dahi-baras was unusually fat. She burst into tears, dropped her plate of dahi-baras with a loud splash on the Sanskrit teacher’s silk sari and ran out of the room.

We ate the rest of our meal in silence.

That was the only false note, however, and afterwards, since there would not have been room for the Taj Mahal in a taxi, the headmistress lent us one of the school’s buses to go home in. The whole school lined up to wave as we steamed out through the gates. My grandmother waved back, tears streaming down her cheeks.

I remember very well the first day of her retirement. She spent the morning clearing away all the old files and papers that had accumulated in her room over the years. In the evening, we were invited to have a look. It was transformed. The files and papers were gone and the room was bathed in the gentle white glow of the Taj Mahal. She was very happy that night. At dinner, smiling her real smile, warm and impish, not the tight-lipped headmistress’s smile that we had grown accustomed to, she told us funny stories about her early days in the school.