The moment was inevitable. I knew it would come from the time I ran into Mark in Dharamshala. With such dread and curiosity had I anticipated it, and now, as an old suppressed vision arose before me, I knew again the familiar horrible clamour of memories, memories of that evening on the roof, the night at Kalpi, the evening in Pondicherry and so many other days — the poisoned past that for many years never left my side, that first clung to me on those aimless travels across the country, during sleepless nights in creaking, crackling train compartments, as relentless and futile as the circling shadows around me, the past that scratched old wounds on serene mornings in high mountain valleys and among the sullen ruins of remote monasteries, the past that long after I settled in Dharamshala and began to heal, pursued me into innumerable exhausting dreams.
Miss West was saying, ‘I suppose you haven’t heard about Catherine and Anand.’
The boat coming in from the opposite direction moved closer. Its four or five rowers frantically pushed at the oars, sending little ripples coursing through the water; their frenzy enhanced the stillness of the women with long sari veils and men in white kurtas, one of them holding a large gleaming brass urn.
Miss West said, ‘The whole thing collapsed not long after they got to Paris.’
The boat appeared to be heading directly towards us, and in the end passed us barely inches away. It was at that very moment that a strong wind suddenly came over the water. The veils of the women fluttered and were immediately tugged back into position. Little clouds of dust and sand loomed up on the other, empty side of the river and rolled for a little distance before abruptly fading.
Miss West said, ‘It collapsed once it became clear that Anand was no Ravi Shankar. I sort of knew it wouldn’t last long, but I was surprised by how quickly it folded. I remember just before she left Benares, Catherine was neurotic about him; she would go on about him to everyone she met. I thought she was totally insecure, almost pathetic in her insecurity. But she was right to be so, because when they got to Paris no one would give Anand a job, even those Indians who are in the cultural business in such places and do things for European consumption. Catherine’s parents were horrible to him, in their own subtle manner. Catherine defended him; she was good at that. She still went on about him, but in a different way.’
We were halfway to Dashashvamedh Ghat, its throng of bathing devotees partly visible behind the plume of black diesel smoke that one of the empty anchored boats breathed into the air. The boat slid forward in smoother bursts now. A small breeze blew in from the other side, ruffling the water and making Miss West, as she spoke, draw her shawl around her even more tightly.
She said, ‘I saw them together once in Paris. She had a little party; all her friends were there; she kept talking about Anand to her friends; he was her little trophy from India. Anand this, Anand that. Oh, look at him, isn’t he wonderful? But when I next went to Paris, he was gone. He had gone back to India. Catherine wouldn’t speak much about him; her mother, a rather tedious middle-class woman, complained to me about the water he spilled on her bathroom floor. Catherine was living with a new boyfriend, an Algerian, some sort of film-maker. I didn’t see her again.
‘She wrote a few times. Her boyfriends kept changing. The last time she wrote she was with some stockbroker; she said she was planning to marry him, raise a family. She felt secure with him. It was all very odd: she sounded so much like her mother; she wanted children, security, stability, all those middle-class things. All that bohemianism had gone.
‘I saw Anand in Delhi a couple of years ago. He plays for some radio orchestra in Delhi and lives in a dreadful slum east of the river — probably not a slum, most of Delhi, even the middle-class suburbs, looks like a slum to me. He looked completely wasted, even thinner. His sisters are still unmarried; his parents have almost disowned him. When I met him, it was four years after he came back from Paris and the poor man was still devastated, still pining for Catherine, hoping for some sort of miracle, writing long letters to her and getting shorter and shorter notes in return.
‘I had to be tough with him. I told him to stop thinking about her. I told him to move on, get married, work hard, lose himself in something. But I thought later that I was probably too harsh with him.
‘His love for Catherine, his time in Paris: this was the greatest thing that could ever happen to him. He had only this past and he was trapped by it. Catherine could move on, but he was stuck. She is drifting, too, poor girl, but she is supported by her father’s money, her culture, her background; they give her at least an idea of what she owes to herself.
‘Anand, people like him, they can’t afford such ideas; they don’t know who they are; they don’t know what they want; they are just trying hard not to sink into the misery and wretchedness they are born into. That’s what he is doing now.
‘But he was young when he first met Catherine. And when you are young you have these desires like everyone else; you’re greedy for love, you feel then that the world owes you your happiness; you feel you are entitled to it simply by being alive. .’
She stopped suddenly. We were about to reach Dashashvamedh Ghat. It was dark over the river now; a tangle of sounds from the city reached us. Broken reflections of the sodium lights on the ghat glimmered and trembled in the black water.
I couldn’t see Miss West’s face, and when she spoke again her voice seemed to come from the same faraway world she had been talking of. She said:
‘I have been going on for far too long. Now tell me about your own life. It’s been such a long time since you were here.’
Until now, as she was speaking, I had felt an old bitterness and anguish surge up within me. I had suddenly felt myself full of things to say. I had longed to speak, somehow or other to express the great turmoil in my heart.
But now the moment was dead, and Miss West’s question left me feeling drained. What could I have told her about my life? There were the broad details, and I tried to list them: the school, the job, the travels in the Himalayas. But the things that really mattered in it were all so private; they were like the events in Miss West’s own life. Where would I have started? How could I have confessed to her the circumstances that had driven me to a life so different from any I could have expected to lead when I first knew her in Benares? How could I have confessed that the larger world that I had once longed to enter had become a fearful place?
*
A thin drizzle had started by the time we got out of the boat. A stronger wind now blew in from the other shore; the anchored boats rocked and thudded into each other.
The glare of the sodium lamps outlined the thin slanting threads of rain as we went up the long wide steps to the top of the ghat. The concourse ahead was a sea of agitated black umbrellas and glistening plastic sheets, people everywhere running for cover, past the bright blurred gleams of the brassware and gift shops.
‘What a dreadful time to rain,’ Miss West said. ‘We’ll all get pneumonia.’
She added, ‘But look! There’s a rickshaw.’
She skipped and flounced towards it, the hand she had raised to point at the rickshaw still held up, and then she jumped in.
I followed her to the rickshaw and stood before it.
Miss West wiped the rickshaw seat with her handkerchief, and then in one swift movement pulled the tarpaulin hood over her head. There was a moment of uncertainty before she realized that I was not going to join her.