Amitav Ghosh - The Shadow Lines

What story? May said. I tried to remember, tried very hard, but somehow it wouldn’t come back to me. But later that day, back in Calcutta, in Tridib’s house in Ballygunge Place, when Tridib asked me what I’d shown May in Raibajar, I said: I took her to that underground room — do you remember, where …

… Where I found Ila crying, and you sitting beside her? he said.

And to stop her crying you told us a story, remember?

What was the story? said May. I want to know. Tell me.

Tridib seated himself on a mat and folded his legs.

It was a wonderful, sad little story, he said. I forgot all about the air raid while he was telling it to me.

Where did it happen? I asked. Which country?

Ah, said Tridib. That’s the trick, you see. It happened everywhere, wherever you wish it. It was an old story, the best story in Europe, Snipe said, told when Europe was a better place, a place without borders and countries — it was a German story in what we call Germany, Nordic in the north, French in France, Welsh in Wales, Cornish in Cornwall: it was the story of a hero called Tristan, a very sad story, about a man without a country, who fell in love with a woman-across-the-seas …

That was on the day before they left for Dhaka: it was the last story Tridib ever told me.

And I heard his voice again, in that cellar, while Ila cried, sitting beside me on the camp bed.

She was crying very hard. I had never seen her cry like that: her whole body was racked by the effort of her sobs; at times it seemed as though she was going to retch into her handkerchief.

I put an arm around her and held her tight against me. I knew; I’d known from the moment I’d seen her eyes at Trafalgar Square that she wanted to tell me something. I knew she was waiting for me to ask her what it was, but also knew I wouldn’t: I did not want to know; I did not want to offer a sympathy I did not feel.

It was a while before she stopped crying, and even after that she lay with her head against my chest, hiccuping, unable to speak.

I’m sorry, she said at last. I don’t know what came over me.

I waited, in silence.

It’s Nick, she said.

All right, I said. Go on, tell me. What’s he done? Forgotten to buy you roses or spilt your morning tea?

You bastard, she said, pushing herself upright. Don’t you dare talk to me like that.

Go on, I said. Let’s get it over with. You may as well tell me now. What happened? Did you creep back home in the still of the day and find him in bed with another woman?

She gave me a startled glance and turned away again, to look at her fingernails.

Could I ever have imagined, she said, that I, Ila Datta-Chaudhuri, free woman and free spirit, would ever live in that state of squalor where incidents in one’s life can be foretold like teasers for a bad television serial? I suppose not, but there you are. Yes, you’re right, more or less — you’ve seen it all already, on TV. That’s more or less exactly what happened.

She had telephoned him at home, one afternoon, soon after they got back from their honeymoon in Africa. She used to miss him dreadfully while she was at the office; miss being with him all day long, miss his voice, the smell of him. But she’d made it a rule not to telephone him too often; she didn’t want him to feel that she was being too possessive.

But that afternoon she gave in. She picked up the phone in her office, when the others happened to be out for a bit, and dialled the number, hoping he’d be at home. He usually stayed in, or so he said, since he wasn’t working yet. The phone rang for a while, and just when she was about to ring off, a female voice answered — breathless, as though they’d had a playful tussle. The voice said: ‘Allo, with a French kind of intonation. Ila was so taken aback, she found herself saying: Could I speak to Nick Price please? as though she were asking her bank manager’s secretary for an appointment. The voice giggled and said: ‘Oos speaking please?

His wife, Ila answered, and slammed the phone down.

Despite myself, I began to laugh. Oh, sad little Ila, I said. Your sins have finally come home to roost.

I wish it were that, she said, with a tired little shake of her head. I wish I could say to myself, why, I used to do that kind of thing too, it doesn’t mean anything. But I never did, you know. You see, you’ve never understood, you’ve always been taken in by the way I used to talk, when we were in college. I only talked like that to shock you, and because you seemed to expect it of me somehow. I never did any of those things: I’m about as chaste, in my own way, as any woman you’ll ever meet.

I was ashamed now. I dropped my eyes and said: Did you ask him about it?

Yes, she said. He was waiting for me when I got home. He was very calm, very cool. He had obviously thought it all out. I think he’d wanted me to find out, in a way; maybe he’d even guessed I’d ring and asked her to answer the phone. He wanted to make a point; to let me know that I shouldn’t take anything for granted just because we’re living in a flat my father’s bought for me. And because I have a job and he doesn’t.

She turned to look at me, her eyes hysterically bright, her mouth twisted into a smile.

He told me, she said, that the woman who’d answered the phone was from Martinique. He’d met her in a pub or something and he’s been seeing her for a year or so, since long before we were married. He’s got an Indonesian woman in line too, somewhere. And there’s me, of course.

Why does he do it? I said.

She began to laugh, gritting her teeth, while tears ran down her cheek.

That’s exactly what I asked him. He said he just likes a bit of variety; it’s his way of travelling.

I could think of nothing to say; nothing that would console her for the discovery that the squalor of the genteel little lives she had so much despised was a part too of the free world she had tried to build for herself.

You must leave him, Ila, I said.

I can’t, she said. Can’t you see that I couldn’t?

Why not?

She began to laugh. It was her familiar, high-spirited laugh, and I found myself laughing with her.

Don’t you see? she said. I wouldn’t leave him if he moved a whole bloody massage parlour from Bangkok into the house. He knows that perfectly well; he knows I love him so much I could never leave him.

And yet, I discovered soon enough that she had invented her own ways of punishing him.

Half an hour later, when Nick arrived and came into his mother’s drawing room, she announced, laughing, to me and Mrs Price: Do you know? Nick’s had another of his ideas. He’s trying to get my father to buy him a partnership in a warehousing business.

She gave him a long look, her face going hard in a way I had never before noticed in her. Of course, she said, it takes hard work to make a success of a thing like that, and Nick, well …

Nick’s face crumpled, and he looked down at the carpet, hanging his head.

Looking at him, I tried to think of the future as it must have appeared to him: of helpless dependence coupled with despairing little acts of rebellion. I wanted to get up then and hold him, chest to chest, his shoulders to mine. But, of course, I didn’t — he did not know of the part he had played in my life, standing beside me in the mirrors of my boyhood: I knew he would not have understood.

I remembered what May had said about him in that underground room in Raibajar: He’s different; he’s not like us.

That was on the day before they left for Dhaka.

On 2 January 1964, the day before they left for Dhaka, my grandmother received a letter. It was from Mayadebi. It had taken ten days to reach Calcutta because it had come through Delhi by the diplomatic bag.