Rajmahal (22 page)

Kali, the terrible black goddess with blood-dripping tongue, garland of skulls, and girdle of chopped-off arms, holds on one side the guns and knives of war and the decapitated head of the enemy, while on the other, her hands gesture gently to gratify and bless. The evil inherent in God is out in the open, balanced by the visible but temporarily subordinated good. Perhaps it is the vexing riddle of a supposedly ever-loving and benign God,
in whom the existence of evil is unacceptable or never overtly acceptable in the Christian tradition that baffled Petrov through the filter of his ancestral memory, a Christian memory. Yet mystics and philosophers such as Ramakrishna and Vivekenanda cheerfully accept the Goddess image and its evil aspect.

Does evil exist? Does good exist? Is either absolute? God-with-an-extra-O—good? Evil-with-a-D—the Devil? Is human nature immutable? Had he himself, Petrov, ever been evil? What would he have done if his father, or Reema's father or brother, had been one of those hoarders of grain during the famine? Why had he chosen to stay on in this country, almost immediately tying himself to it with a commitment to the theater, racing off at a tangent from his aim, always elliptical? Was his aim really to examine the contradictions of country and society, ruler and ruled? What of his dubiously illustrious countryman, a century and a half ahead of him? Herassim Stefanovich Lebadeff, 1795. He too had come to Calcutta to study philosophy, language. And he too had involved himself in the theater. He had been hounded out of Calcutta by the machinations of a rivalrous British theater group “thirsty for gain.” That was a telling phrase. “The gold glittering humors and silver glinting blood that runs in the veins of theatrical people thirsty for gain,” the wrathful Lebadeff had said. His theater would be burned down by his enemies, and the ruling power would see to it that the Russian “infiltrator” would be run out of the capital of British India. They had been more concerned with keeping ahead in the Great Game than the fate of a crazy adventurer. Why had Lebadeff started a theater in Calcutta, for Bengali drama, when no European would have any contact with Indians except for “law courts, commerce, brothels and servants”? Why had he, Anatoly Sergeivich Petrov, set down roots before he knew about the old Lebadeff, along such dramatically parallel lines a century and a half later? British attitudes hadn't changed much after that century and a half, when he had arrived in India, still broadly restricted to the same four points of contact. But then, he, Petrov, in spite of being a white man, would find the life so rich, the strange and deep culture of the Bengalis, the indeterminate twilight tragedy of the Anglo-Indians, the Calcutta upper crust Joseph's-coat society. And so, instead of pursuing his aim, he had diverted himself with the theater. And Reema Devi. And now. Was he really fulfilling his destiny by going through to the last two of the four stages of life as ordained by the Hindus, of the apprentice, the householder, the forest-dweller and the ascetic?

Seated on his divan and looking out at the horizon through half open eyes he dreamed and had visions. He saw the flighted kites cresting the clouds, the black crows croaking and flapping below them. He watched the sun rising and setting in its myriad forms, cool mist-covered white, in and out of golden clouds, fireball.

He dwelled on his adopted language, Bengali, its beauty and expressive-ness. On
digonto
—the imaginary line between sky and earth.
Sheema
—the limit, of which he was the opposite, Osheem—without end or limit. His Bengali friends had dubbed him “without limit,” in a semantic slide from the Russian Herassim. Did Herassim have a meaning, and did that meaning, through the bedrock of the Indo-European linguistic family, have any connection with Osheem? Would that lead to a clue in the great mystery, and would the confirmation of such a linguistic syllogism mean that he, originally Anatoly Sergeivich Petrov, was without limit? His mind moved playfully about the possibilities, soaring beyond semantics. He thought of Reema Devi. Did she age gracefully? Was he aging gracefully? Did those who kept as healthy and cheerful as possible without expectation, or those who wanted to be told how young they looked, or those who had facelifts, dyed hair, and artificially removed fat, age gracefully? Wasn't there always a gap, a never-ideal situation?

So then, ultimately, the ideal can never be. The second that state is achieved it
must
end! The moment utopia is, in that split second,
it is not
. It follows, therefore, that the impetus for all being is conflict, contradiction. Though theories of the ideal state can be intellectually conceptualized and framed in constitutions and laws and safeguards by the good state,
it can never work
. There is no perfectly workable state of being. If there is, it
must
be the end, the imploding-exploding, big-bang end! Perfection is an illusion. There will always be famine . . .

He sits and dozes, watching each morning and evening when the horizon, that imaginary line,
digonto
, appears and disappears in the changing light, and the globe and the dome merge, another illusion.

Why do the poor people on the streets of India laugh? Why do the beggars of India laugh? Do they laugh because they are happy? If one laughs, does it automatically mean one is happy? Do those whose intestines refuse to accept food ever laugh again, if they survive? Is old age its own exploitation, when the fading faculties deprive the possessor of those very faculties, when that deprivation invites youth to exploit age? Does youth always exploit age? Why do children wish to discard parents after their use
is over? He thinks of his children, Boris and Meera, Boris and Meera, he has to keep repeating their names like a mantra to recall their images, Boris and Meera, their eager distancing, of which he felt the currents even as they wept and held him. Didn't Rudrangshu discard his poor father in the end? Calcutta too is being discarded by many, those who find it old, aged. The aged interfere with the aspirations and fulfillment of youth, by holding up inheritance, by their very presence. And he thinks of Reema Devi who went long after the ending of her career, but just at the time when he, her husband, no longer needed her. Did he, Anatoly Sergeivich Petrov, exploit her? Is desertion exploitation, is indifference exploitation, the ultimate indifference of his children, is that exploitation? Are they waiting eagerly for him to die so they can get the apartment, his treasures, his money? When Proshanto Mojumdar was cremated why did Shudhangshu look so happy? Did he gain from his brother's death? Did that gain make him happy? What about the Stracheys? Myrna the beauty, reduced to dithering old age, and Jack Strachey, dying together while holding hands? Who is exploiting whom? Is someone having a malevolent joke at the expense of their age? And old, whatever his name was, the titled
sardarji
who built the mansion, with the peasant face of a Tolstoy, was he too exploited by his children in spite of his great power and wealth? In the time of famine, did children push aside their parents to snatch at the last morsels of food? But he had witnessed the opposite, hadn't he?

The mansion and its ghosts tremble and writhe. He is dealing with things that are sacred, turning them profane . . . Petrov's brain grows sharper, clearer.

“Dear
Shaheb
. Are you ready to come down to your own home? It is a void without beloved
memshaheb
. It behooves you to fill it with your presence to make up for that unimaginable loss.” Robi feels deeply hurt at Petrov's indifference to his great wife's passing.

The mansion wills Petrov to follow Robi's injunction, so that it will be allowed to nurture and soothe him till his end, instead of this unnatural exposure to the elements in its least propitious region. How it longs for him to come down so that it can manifest again through a rainbow in memory of the first time.

“Dear
Shaheb
, have your broth,” says Robi. “It is late and your body is weak.”

“Yes all right. Give me my broth Robi, oh faithful Robi.”

Hope flares, even excitement, when Petrov orders Robi to massage his
body, the initial sensitivity gradually dissolving till greater vigor can be applied. Repeatedly Robi pleads with him to reoccupy his apartment.

“Keep quiet, Robi!” Petrov scolds. “How do you expect me to give up the free air for an enclosed space again?”

The Rajmahal groans each time it hears these words, and Robi sighs, while a tear trickles down his wide cheek. “Hey Ma Kali, what can we do, what can we do after all?” In the meantime, he reinstructs Petrov in the simpler aspects of yoga. The earlier years of practice pay and one day Petrov is upright, able to take a few shaky steps and then walk, his knees huge between his fleshless shanks and shins. While the physical regeneration goes on, Petrov's brain is active. His mind relaxed from all those vexing questions and in that state of rest arrives at a culmination, the final full recognition of the nonexistence of the secret. “Why all these questions,” he asks himself, “which of us can have the arrogance to claim we
know
? How many of us are Buddhas and Christs or know if even they, the Buddhas and Christs,
knew
?” And his Christian grounding pulls at him. Cautiously, he takes his mind to his childhood. He thinks of Christ, after his whole life spent in labyrinthine pleonasms. His early conditioning comes up to the surface. He now knows there is no answer, no secret. Only a simple rule. Of which his beloved Reema reminded him at the very end. Love. Love for the starving, love for him. The greatness of her acting was built on love, he knows that. He tries to remember the Sermon on the Mount, not abstract theories about good and evil and the existence of consciousness or the nature of the self. But a human state-of-being for those who will it or are blessed with it. Love. Ramakrishna, Jesus Christ . . . He is combining his indelible conditioning—both pre- and post-Russia, the one inherited, the other acquired. He blows an imaginary balloon up into a vast, shimmering round with the breath of love and lets go the string. The balloon floats away and becomes invisible against the bright glare of the sky.

The renewed Petrov commands Robi to call up Surjeet Shona from her ground floor apartment. Robi leaps up to obey, almost having an accident as he circles swiftly to the bottom of the stairs.

“Come, come, Shona baby.
Shaheb
is calling you.”

“What is it, Robi? Is he all right?”

“Yes, yes. Just come . . . ”

They go up the broad inner stairway, sensing the house's unease, and access the winding staircase from the top floor Mallik kitchen. On the roof they find the ascetic teetering at the balustrade, the ancient mariner on the bridge of his ship, his age like the albatross gripping him at the neck. Surjeet Shona joins him quietly, swallowing her emotions at seeing him exposed in his meager loincloth.

“Uncle Osheem, I have come. Tell me. What is it?”

Petrov continues gazing out, but holds Surjeet Shona's elbow with one hand.

“Do you see it?” he points to the horizon. “Look out there. Do you see the
digonto
, that nonexistent and illusory line between there and here? We are all from that division, dear child, all of us, half here, half there. And there is the
no answer
.” He puts up his hand to stop any interlocution. “Now,” he says. “Look down there, and tell me what you see.”

Surjeet Shona glances down. “Oh no!” she says. “Oh no!” She draws back jerkily, trying to pull Petrov with her, and Petrov directs his colorless eyes at her.

“Well?” he asks in his dry tone. “Well?”

Surjeet Shona turns reluctantly to look down again at the ghoul in person, a vulture. It is perched on a ledge outside the far end of the veranda, but Surjeet Shona feels she can reach out and touch the bald head on the scrawny neck comically emerging out of its large jacket of feathers. The bird hops clumsily away, one untidily hanging wing drooping out of alignment with its monstrous bird body so unlike other birds, whose wings fit sleekly along their curves, and who are so much
smaller
. She relaxes as the vulture flies away heavily, its powerful wings beating, to perch on the raintree. “You're all for me,” it seems to say. “In the end.”

Robi is frantically trying to drag his master back to his seat. But Petrov chuckles, “What is it, oh Robi?” He soothes Surjeet Shona, stroking her trembling and hot arm.

“Why not some enjoyment now? Didn't Ramakrishna say that of his beloved Kali? Didn't he say in answer to all those serious questions, that Kali visits us with such pain simply because it is great fun? Well then. What do you think I was doing, coming up here like this?”

Before either of his friends can respond Petrov starts heaving for breath.

Surjeet Shona swallows. She can't see the ghosts whooping and shooing at the vultures, their efforts flagging, so tired are they with all the whooping
and shooing at all the vultures which have been hovering in the vicinity for so long, more and more reluctant to leave as their bodies get heavier and heavier with dreams of carrion.