The River Page 11

  Nan was standing there outside Mother’s door, but her back was turned to Harriet.

  ‘Is it born?’ That was on Harriet’s tongue again when Nan’s attitude arrested her.

  Nan was standing and waiting for the moment to come. The light showed her thin shoulder blades under the straps of her apron crossed on her back; it showed the combs holding her thin bun of hair, and her old black jacket that she wore under her apron, her print skirts, and slippers. As she stood there, she looked small and quiet and humble to Harriet, who felt she herself had been making something of a clamour. She felt ashamed, but not so ashamed that she went away. ‘I couldn’t, I couldn’t go down now,’ argued Harriet. ‘Nobody could. Not now.’ She stood, trying to emulate Nan in stillness, on the stairs.

  Then Nan started, her hands unclasped, and a sound ran through Harriet from her scalp to her feet and from her feet up again.

  It was a new sound. First it was a sound like birds chirping; like sparrows in twigs; a twig sound; then it grew; it was broken into hiccoughs: coughs; it was like a little engine starting; it grew again, and it was the baby crying. It was the actual baby crying.

  There had never been any days as peaceful as those late winter days after the baby was born.

  There was no ripple of disturbance in them. Mother lay in bed, and Harriet only saw her to say good morning and good night; Father was away, up-river, on a jute conference; Sister Silver lived apart with the baby and Mother; Bea was still with Valerie; Nan and Victoria were the only two with Harriet, and Nan was never a disturbance, and Victoria never, in any case, made ripples.

  Now the days were tinged with heat at midday, cool again at morning and evening. It was almost spring. In the fields the early sowing was finished and the young jute and rice made dark-green and light-green patches over the land. The yellowness of the mustard had dimmed and the first great red pods of the simul, the wild cotton trees, had opened their colour. In the sky, the clouds were soft and puffed as cotton-wool. The sky itself had altered. This was the time of its deepest blue; later the heat took its colour, and later still the monsoon broke and turned it heavy and grey, with intervals that were pale, washed out. Now Harriet, by looking at the sky, knew it was nearly spring.

  The sky so attracted her that she opened her money box and took out two annas and asked Ram Prasad to fetch her two new kites from the bazaar. He bought an excellent one, striped red and white with emerald corners, and a second one of plain pink paper. He helped Harriet to pierce the first, and fix it to her glassed string that was wound on a light polished roller made of bamboo with two long handles. Then they went up together on to the roof.

  ‘You launch it,’ said Ram Prasad, ‘and I will get it up for you.’

  ‘No. I want to get it up myself,’ said Harriet.

  ‘You never will. You never can.’

  ‘I can. I shall,’ said Harriet. ‘Stand out of my way.’

  She took the roller on the palms of her hands and allowed plenty of space behind her in which to run back. Ram Prasad took the kite between his fingers and walked with it to the other end of the roof.

  Above them the sky waited for the kite. Nothing showed between the grey stone parapet walls, not a tree, not a roof, not a mast, except only the top of the cork tree flowering in its green, and, far up, the specks of the hawks making their circles on the edge of the wind current. ‘I am going to send it as high as that,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Ready?’ called Ram Prasad, holding it up.

  ‘Ready.’

  Ram Prasad sent it up in a strong flight. The string pulled taut, Harriet jerked it higher twice, the kite found the wind, rose and jerked away of itself in a short cornerwise dance. Harriet pulled backwards, it rose again, and then suddenly made an arc in the air and fell, dashing itself against the parapet.

  ‘I told you so,’ said Ram Prasad.

  ‘Is it broken?’

  She stood there while he looked at the torn kite. She kept her lips stiff. She meant to fly that kite. It was important to her that she should, because she had, in true Harriet fashion, made it into an omen. If it flies, I shall fly, is what Harriet had decided.

  ‘It can be mended,’ grunted Ram Prasad. As always when they sailed kites, he had brought the second kite up on the roof and with it a pot of flour-and-water paste, a stick with a rag round it and some strips of coloured paper. Squatting on their heels, he and Harriet began to mend the kite; they first patched the torn place, then they weighted the opposite tip with the same amount of paper and paste; they added a blob to the tail to steady it and laid the kite in the sun to dry.

  Nowadays Ram Prasad and Harriet were neither of them conversational. While the kite dried Harriet went to lean over the parapet by herself, looking down on the garden as if it were a map in another focus. She saw a small launch tied to the jetty and a pigmy Captain John walking up the drive. She felt herself pause; she looked down on him, held in her thoughts. Then Ram Prasad called her. He held the roller. ‘Pick up the kite,’ he said, ‘and I will get it up for you.’

  ‘No,’ said Harriet, ‘I shall get it up for myself.’

  ‘You will never do it.’

  ‘Then it shall not be done,’ said Harriet.

  ‘If you have husband, poor Godforsaken man,’ said Ram Prasad, ‘he will need a padlock and a stick.’

  ‘Put it up,’ said Harriet, standing ready. She hoped she would get it well up before Captain John found out where they were.

  Ram Prasad put it up, clumsily. Harriet stepped back, pulled, and the kite came down flat on the roof in front of her, flat on its back with its string doubled up.

  ‘See how clever you are,’ said Ram Prasad.

  Harriet did not contradict him. ‘Is it broken?’ she said.

  ‘No. No thanks to you, thanks to God.’

  ‘Then put it up and more carefully this time.’

  Her lips were in a firm straight line as Ram Prasad sent the kite into the sky. Captain John appeared in the stairway.

  Harriet jerked her roller, the kite rode up; out of the corner of her eye she saw his eyes follow it. It rode up well, and she brought it up again strongly. Then she let it go a little and it danced away down the current of the wind.

  ‘Bring it up,’ said Ram Prasad.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ said Harriet.

  She brought it up herself, riding straight again, then to the left, to the right, another cornerwise dance off, and a bold fresh flight taking the string. Now it was safe, right up riding the wind, taking the string out, further and further away, higher and higher.

  ‘You do it well,’ said Captain John.

  ‘At the third try,’ said Ram Prasad. ‘Bogey Baba could get it up first time, every time.’

  The kite string sang in the wind; it pulled and tugged at Harriet’s hands … ‘This is me – me – me,’ she was singing triumphantly to herself. The string seemed to go up until the kite was among the hawks’ rings in the sky.

  ‘Feel it,’ she said, and put the roller into Captain John’s hands.

  It was handing him something that was alive. His arms jerked and his hands had to close quickly to hold it and he had to use his strength on it. She saw his cheeks flush and his eyes grow darker with the excitement of the kite. Soon she saw that he was nearly as moved and as exhilarated as she.

  They flew the kite while the afternoon grew later and richer in the world beyond the parapet, until the small clouds took the sunset as they had on the walk by the river. The same sounds, the same smells, came up to them.

  Now I have been up here long enough, thought Harriet. I am tired. She began to wind the kite in.

  ‘Are you bringing it down?’ he asked regretfully.

  ‘Yes.’ She added, ‘I always like them to be in before the first star comes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it would be fatal for them to be out then,’ she said seriously. ‘The star would turn them back into paper.’

  He did not laugh as she had been half afraid he wo
uld. He gravely helped her to wind the string in and the kite came back to them, fluttering, pulling away, getting larger in the dusk until it was over their heads, and Ram Prasad put up his hands and caught it level with his turban, as the last wind sank out of its sides. ‘That was not so bad,’ said Ram Prasad, ‘but not as well done as Bogey Baba could have done it.’

  Captain John took Harriet downstairs to ask permission from Nan to go out. ‘It is very late,’ said Nan, looking at them over her spectacles. ‘It is dark.’

  ‘Yes, but we wanted it to be dark. I want to show Captain John the fireflies,’ pleaded Harriet.

  Nan appeared to be thinking it over. Harriet checked her own arguments, of which she had a torrent ready, and waited too.

  ‘Very well,’ said Nan at last. She wisely did not say anything about time, nor bed.

  ‘Shall we say good night to the baby?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘Very well,’ said Captain John.

  The cot was on the verandah, and all they could see in the folds of shawl was the baby’s head and face asleep, and her fist doubled up. As they looked, the shawl moved up and down with her breathing.

  ‘Feel how warm she is,’ said Harriet.

  Captain John held his finger near.

  ‘She is very ugly, isn’t she?’ said Harriet.

  ‘Look again,’ said Captain John.

  Harriet looked, at the line of cheek and the forehead where the veins spread, at the tiny mottled lids, like seals or sleeping shells, that showed a line of hairs that were lashes. She saw the nose and the mouth whose corners folded as it slept, and the chin. ‘There is a dimple in her chin, like Father’s,’ she whispered, and Captain John nodded. The lobe of the one ear Harriet could see was laid flat to the head with a glimpse of tender skin behind it, going into the line of the back of the head turned into the shawl. The head was covered with fluff, a down, that was gold too. Harriet looked at the doubled fist, and at the hand and the fingers and the nails. ‘I like her nails,’ said Harriet. And Mother made her, she thought, finished, complete outside and inside. That was the wonder. This, this like to like. That was the wonder: foals, little horses, to horses; rabbits to rabbits; people to people; all made without a mistake. And without a pattern, thought Harriet, touching the baby’s hand. It was always a fresh shock to find it warm, soft and firm, the feel of a real hand … Where did Mother … what did Mother—she thought. Queer, what people can make: the flight of a kite – and poems – and babies. What a funny power – and I too, one day! thought Harriet, see, how I have grown already.

  All at once she said to Captain John, ‘Could I go just one minute? There is something I very badly want to write down.’

  The minute was half an hour, but when Harriet came out of the Secret Hole, Captain John was waiting quietly for her.

  It was nearly dark. They did not walk along the river. ‘The villages are interesting at night,’ said Harriet, ‘and the fireflies are in the village tanks.’ They walked away from the Works and the bazaar along the road, where it began to run through the fields and villages. Soon they came to a village. There was a stucco house on the edge of the huts, and, as they passed, a man whose white clothes shone in the darkness stepped through its gateway with a floating oil lamp in his hand. By this house there was an orange tree; it was in blossom like the cork tree, and its flowers glimmered as they passed it, and its scent followed them up the road.

  ‘This is a very smelly time of year, isn’t it?’ said Harriet.

  ‘You mean scented,’ corrected Captain John.

  ‘Yes. All the flowers smell,’ said Harriet.

  Here was a village tank, a sheet of water with a black shine, with the fireflies they had come to see along its bank and under its trees. Now they came to the huts built of earth, mud-walled with reed and bamboo roofs; every doorway, as they passed, was lit and showed a still life of figures or of things, lit and quiet. Here, on the earth floor, was a block of wood with a hollow in it, and a handful of spices and a pestle. ‘That is where they grind spices for curry,’ Harriet interpreted. By the block on the floor were chilis, bright red in the lamplight, and behind them on the wall hung a wicker scoop. ‘That is for separating the husks from their rice,’ said Harriet. Here a woman in a cotton cloth crouched down on her ankles, while she turned the stone handmill for grinding grain to flour; with her other hand she threw in the grain, and on her turning arm her silver bangle caught and lost the light. Two old men, next door, sat by the bamboo pole that held the roof up and shared a waterpipe, passing it from one to another politely. Here a mother sat and oiled another baby, her own baby, in her lap; the baby had a girdle of silver bells round its waist. There were sounds too of a tap, a goat bleating, of bullock-cart wheels in the road, of a passing bicycle’s bell.

  They went further, to another village and another, and then turned to come back. When they came to the first village again, some of the doorways were already dark, and the mother was singing to her baby, a song that was ineffably sleepy and low with only half cadences of notes.

  ‘That is like Nan sings to our baby,’ said Harriet. ‘Nan sings like that.’ The other woman was still grinding, the old men were still smoking and no one put the spices away.

  From the stucco house, as they passed it, came music, a flute, cymbals, the interpitched grasshopper-playing of a sitar, and a drum. As they came nearer, a man’s voice began to sing.

  ‘What is he singing?’ asked Captain John.

  Harriet listened, but she could not make out the words. ‘It will be about Radha and Krishna, I expect, and their love. They are always singing about that. Or else about Ajunta and his wars. It is always love and war,’ she said.

  Now they had come back to the house again, and they went in at the gate and up the drive, where the cork tree stood in its complete wheel of fallen flowers. Its branches were quite bare.

  ‘So the winter is over,’ said Harriet, as they stood under it.

  The drum gave two throbs, a beat, and was still. ‘It has done, for tonight,’ said Harriet. ‘Do you remember Diwali, Captain John? There were drums there too.’

  ‘Diwali?’

  ‘The Feast of Lights.’ He nodded. ‘Funny,’ said Harriet. ‘We talked about living, and being born and dying, and we didn’t now then about … Bogey … nor the baby really … nor anything …’ And she said under her breath, ‘Bellum … Belli … Bello … Bello … Amamus … Amatis … Amant. I was doing those then.’ How young I was, thought Harriet. Now how I have grown, and she said aloud to Captain John, ‘Are you any different?’

  ‘I think I am,’ said Captain John.

  ‘Because you have decided to go?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘Partly, perhaps.’

  Harriet nodded. ‘That is what Nan used to say. “Leave him. He will go on when he is ready.” I used to wonder what was wrong with you,’ she said candidly. ‘You hadn’t died … but …’

  ‘I wasn’t alive?’ he suggested.

  ‘You hadn’t come alive,’ said Harriet, and she said, ‘You were like the baby … you had to be born … You were quite right when you said that,’ said Harriet. ‘I died a bit … with Bogey. I died much more when Valerie said that to me … for a long time I didn’t come alive … not the whole afternoon!’ she said.

  ‘You are alive now, Harriet.’

  ‘Yes, and so are you …’

  She had a sudden excess of happiness as she had had that other morning, long ago.

  ‘Look at my tree,’ she said. ‘Do you see it turning … Up in the stars? Sometimes,’ she said, remembering that morning, ‘I write poems that are taller than I am.’

  Captain John brought his eyes down and looked at her. ‘I thought you were not going to write any more.’

  ‘That was—’ but Harriet did not say what it was.

  ‘You can’t help it, can you?’ said Captain John. ‘And what is this one? A story? A poem?’

  ‘It is a poem.’

  ‘And I have to read it, don’t I, Harriet?’
/>   ‘It is too dark to read,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Well, say it to me then,’ said Captain John.

  ‘It is good enough to say,’ said Harriet. ‘Really it is. This one is good. You will enjoy it. You will really. I wrote it after my other poem. It is much older.’

  ‘I see,’ said Captain John.

  ‘This is it,’ said Harriet, and she said it aloud:

  ‘The day ends. The end begins …’

  ‘Hm!’ said Captain John, when she had finished. ‘You will be a real writer one day, Harriet.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Harriet. ‘I shall be very great and very very famous.’

  He did not say anything to that and she ran her hand up and down the tree’s smooth bark. The woodpeckers, of course, had gone to bed. ‘Does everyone have one?’ she asked.

  ‘Have what? A poem?’

  ‘No, a tree.’

  ‘Not everyone finds theirs so soon,’ said Captain John. ‘You are lucky, Harriet. That is where I am going,’ he said more firmly. ‘I am going to look for mine.’

  A launch, as it passed on the river, gave a mournful little hoot that sounded like an owl. A real owl hooted a minute after.

  ‘I must go,’ said Captain John.

  ‘It is so dark you can hear the river,’ said Harriet. She meant ‘quiet’, but dark was better. ‘Time to go? Oh, no!’ but that tag of remembrance came in her mind. When had she said it? You can’t stop days or rivers?

  Captain John smoothed his hair with his hand, smiled once more at Harriet, and went.

  ‘But … you haven’t said goodbye to me,’ she called, caught unawares, in dismay, but he did not answer and limped steadily away until his footsteps died in the distance, and she knew he had reached the Red House.

  Slowly she turned the edge of the thick carpeted wheel of flowers over in the grass with her foot; over and over and over.

  ‘Tomorrow we shall have to sweep these up,’ said Harriet. ‘They don’t smell nice when they wither.’