Rajmahal (15 page)

Shudhangshu went up to his collapsed chuckling brother, placed his arms under his shoulders, and half carried half dragged him to his bedroom. He maneuvered him on to the bed, feeling like laughing and weeping at the same time. Poor old
Dada
! And shaking his head he switched on the fan and left Proshanto fast, and noisily, asleep, to the relief of Mohini's ghost.

Then Shudhangshu cleaned up the mess in the drawing room.

The pink of the dawn welled up and was reflected in the western sky. The cooing and flapping of pigeons mingled with the chirping of sparrows. Shudhangshu opened one of the large glass-paned doors and walked out on to the deep veranda over Chowringhee. He leaned over the balcony, breathing in the sulphurous Calcutta air mixed with the fresh scent of newly mown grass from the garden below. The traffic was already swelling, and an empty double-decker bus passed by crab-wise, listing dangerously as though the passengers already weighed down one side. Shudhangshu was aware also that the effects of the gin, which had earlier added to the dimensions of his odor, were wearing off, leaving a sour taste in his mouth.
The light seeped across the sky like bloody treacle, resembling the blood coagulating around poor dead Rover whom the preoccupied Shudhangshu had quite forgotten. He had also forgotten the empty shells, one ejected after he had shot the creature, and the other after the accidental firing off at his brother.

Proshanto Mojumdar woke up in the morning, and found himself in great pain and in pajamas smelling of urine. He pulled himself out of bed and righted his balance with difficulty. Not only did his body ache, but his hands and feet were chilly. “My circulation's going,” he thought. He gave a tired yawn, snapping his fingers to save his jaw from locking, and went shakily through his ablutions. Warily, he removed his pajamas, holding his breath and turning his mind away from the signs of incontinence. Was getting old really so dramatic? He remembered nothing and the puzzling pain about the jaws would stop him from shaving ever again.

Shudhangshu collected himself enough in the morning to rid the apartment of Rover's body with help from the bemused servants. He himself would never recover from memories of that gin-drunk night and he gave up alcohol in contrition again, for twenty-four hours.

Circumstances now pushed Proshanto's elevator campaign into its final stages. One day, the pulleys of the dumbwaiter gave way and deposited it with such a jarring impact on the lobby floor that he passed out for a second. There were many witnesses, most significantly, Junior, who was on the stairs.

“That does it!” he said. “I've had enough! This contraption is going to be dismantled today!”

Proshanto, still struggling on the floor of the constricting dumb waiter, couldn't get his words together before Junior had stalked away. Junior saw to it that the dumb waiter was dismantled and all traces of it removed. Thus ended the last of Proshanto's aspirations . . .

More and more, as he lay in his bedroom, the
Hong Kong
salon's look-alike, he lived on board in his dreams, a way to bring back his prime and his wife in one go. Between decks he coasted vertically in the fancy elevators displayed in his brochures, emerging at each deck from a different model.
He thought of death, though apart from a blood pressure problem and those few aches and pains, he felt quite well. The overwhelming will to live and enjoy his day made nonsense of these and other setbacks.

He didn't realize his failing memory had a part in this. Most senile forgetfulness, apart from obliterating the recent past, highlights stressful rather than pleasant memories of the distant past, reaching back to childhood. In Proshanto's case it was the opposite, only the happy past came up. Hence his laughing dreams. Mohini's ghost looked forward to the nights, because then she too could lull herself to sleep and imagine she was sharing Proshanto's bed.

The beveled edges and glinting peacock-tail eyes of the room's finest glass caught the light, filling the air at sunset with golden sparklers and sprinkling the room at dawn with diamonds. To Proshanto the dawn was best. This was when he would wake up, in an interval in every dream, still with the promise of the rest of the dream to follow. The sun would rise over the back of the Rajmahal, and the southwesterly peacock windows would be pearly and opalescent, a playful
Aurora-Ushas
throwing streamers across to strike those cold jewels. Proshanto would savor the dream already passed and fall happily into it again. What were the memories embellishing that half world? What dolphins and mermaids disported themselves in the sparkling deep? What provoked him to this nightly rejuvenation of erotic laughter? Maybe it was something to do with the children of his lacking seed, sensual nights planting that seed, magically fertilized, and then awaiting the sequel in a state of timeless arousal. In and out of the spirit world, in and out of the looking glass of mortality drifted the couple in pleasant and expectant camaraderie. Never before in reality had they such harmony and peace as during those nights, one not in and not out of this world, the other in a dream.

But how long could such bliss last? Mohini's ghost was frantic on the night of Shudhangshu's madness. Unlike Proshanto, she was fond of the dog and sorry his ghost had appeared only briefly in great distress before vanishing, an indication of the deterioration setting in at the Rajmahal. “Poor Proshanto's had enough,” she said. “First, Shudo's installation in our apartment. Then his unheard of violence. Rudro and Rover's disappearance. And the Stracheys, our good friends in the end, into their graves together. Why did they have to take such a drastic step? Foolish ones! They didn't even show up in my world! Poor dear Proshanto! All he can do is call out
and call out for the nonexistent. Except for me. He can never forget I'm gone from his world. For good! Oh come soon dear, come soon to me! It's time.”

She grimly watched Proshanto, still dwelling on young girls, still devouring them with his eyes when he went swimming, a daily routine he kept up with tenacity. Still swirling the aquamarine water with his arms so streams of translucent bubbles could connect him to the springing breasts and tight bottoms of those unattainable beauties. She could catch his thoughts. “Where are the girls? The fresh girls with the utterly soft fingers and damp palms I once held so delicately while I taught them how to dance?” He would have to wait for the young ones, children, for that kind of beauty. Did they come to the Rajmahal any more . . . ? Where had the Mojumdars the joy of their own? “It's time,” thought Mohini. “There's only one worthwhile service left for him in this world, and that's to leave dear Rudro well off. It's high time . . . ”

Time it was that decided to cut short Mohini's vigil, and she was soon to receive the ghost of her Proshanto in her nebulous embrace. “Cardiac arrest,” the doctor's death certificate clearly stated, not doing that portentous event justice with this brusque brief. Proshanto was fortunate his death took place even while he was in the middle of one of those laughing, happy dreams.

No sooner did Mohini's ghost scream with joy at her beloved Proshanto's still-dazed ghost joining her, than there was a whirling swirling agitation in the Rajmahal spirit world, and the Mojumdar couple vanished forever.

“Are they all going to leave like this without even bidding me farewell?” creaked the Rajmahal, its walls darkened permanently with loss. The remaining residents were slow to notice the growing gloom, but their spirits were affected, and they went about with grim faces for a while. The ghosts knew the end was near. “The Mojumdars have got away in time,” they griped. “Some are luckier than others.”

It was Rudrangshu who returned to perform the rituals of the eldest son at the burning ground. Scattering scented powders on his uncle's spare en-flowered body, setting his soul free by smashing the earthen pot to the ground, putting to flame the nest of logs within which the body lay. As the flames crackled high Shudhangshu, who stood by his side, raised his
shining eyes to his son, and sang to himself, “At last! At last, my boy will get his chance!”

Other Rajmahalians who attended the cremation couldn't help but notice his widely stretched lips. For a moment they wondered if this denoted sorrow. Smiling and weeping are so similar.

Surjeet Shona looked away from the embarrassing spectacle. She avoided Shudhangshu and went up to Rudro. “What are your plans, Rudro? Are you giving up your job?”

Before Rudrangshu could answer, Shudhangshu had come up to her, blooming, his mustache bristling with health. He laughed boisterously. “The beautiful Shona, here in person! We are honored!” Shudhangshu was making no attempt to hide his delight. “Rudro must fulfill his destiny, Shona
. Dada
has made him his heir and there's no hindrance! Isn't God great?”

“Oh, Rudro's the heir,” she said. “And, er, what about you . . . ?”

“It's all the same,” said Shudhangshu with uncontained joy. “He's my son after all. He's the one who needs it most, not me!”

Surjeet Shona looked at the rich young inheritor, the son of this joyous father, and found something distasteful in his expression.

Later, when she visited the Mojumdar apartment she would find Rudrangshu reclining on a chair, absentmindedly pushing his fingers through his beautiful hair.

“Where's your father?”

“Oh I've sent him away!”

“Sent him away . . . ? Your own father . . . ?

“So? He's an old rogue! Mini-ma and Uncle were more like my own parents.”

“But, where's he gone?”

“I don't know. Where he always went, I suppose? He doesn't need all this.” Rudrangshu gestured vaguely around him. “I'm getting married, you know. And this is mine, all mine.” He hugged himself. “All mine.”

This was the ruthless side of Rudrangshu again. The first sign of that ruthlessness had manifested when he had, without warning, walked out of his doting uncle and father's lives and gone to sea. Since then, the parameters of his ruthlessness had widened. With practice perhaps. And he had done something recognizably ruthless by disowning his devoted father.

IN ONE OF THE SECOND FLOOR APARTMENTS LIVED THE RUSSIAN Anatoly Sergeivich Petrov. Firmly fixated on India and India studies, he fled the Bolsheviks, and was forced to take a tortuous and decade-long route to Calcutta via Tashkent and Europe. He reached the city when British Calcutta was descending from its imperial apogee with the shift of the capital to Delhi. But it was still commercially crucial, elegant, well-lit by gaslight, and it could still reflect distant London to some and St Petersburg to others. Its flourishing port and riches still impressed.

Petrov belonged to a family connected to the Romanoffs, though not especially royalist in its leanings. His father, for one, was a dove toward his serfs, releasing them from bondage in imitation of his mentor, Tolstoy. When he heard Tolstoy was helping the poor during the famine of 1891, he made plans to join him. But they never materialized, and his contact with the great man was restricted to a few letters. The obstacle was his obsession with his vast and orderly library, in direct contrast to the confusion in other aspects of his life. So he kept papers and clippings on the famine neatly bound in numbered volumes, while his ideals struggled for translation into action.

From the time he could understand, Anatoly Sergeivich Petrov would hear his father's discourses on the subjects of Tolstoy, freedom and famine, and from his early teens, he had become familiar with all the newspaper clippings that his father so sedulously kept in chronological order in his library, including records of Tolstoy's correspondence with Indian nationalists agonized by British rule. And by contrast, items on the ancient civilization and learning of that country.