Rajmahal (10 page)

“But in the end,” sighed the spent octogenarian looking ironically at his blunt nails, “I held back, didn't I?”

His mind sank again into confusion and escaped to the immediate scenes down below outside the Rajmahal, the crowds queuing up at the planetarium and the ever-so-slow revolution of the Venus on the Victoria Memorial dome. And he willfully blurred his mind to his impotence, the cruel fallout of a prostrate gland operation. The doctors had suspected and then confirmed cancer of the prostrate gland when Jack was seventy, a late discovery. He and Myrna had flown out to London, and with Martin to support them the operation had been performed by the best surgeon available. But none of this could avert the aftermath of the surgery, the impotence.

“It's partly because of your age,” the doctor had comforted him, “and partly because it was discovered so late . . . ”

“Too late,” thought Jack.

And he had to console himself. “At least I'm released from my devilish desires . . . ” But he forgot that much before the operation, his “devilishness” had retracted, and the loving couple had long decreased their sexual activity to suit their age.

Although Jack's own death may not have frightened him, he was filled with terror by Myrna's incomprehension when he talked of his health. “Oh Jack, don't
say
such things. Don't
say
such things. You're
such
a hypochondriac!
I'm
the one who's ill!” She would clutch her bosom and call for her medicines and Jack would instantly forget his own problems. After a few moments Myrna would say, “Call the doctor Jack. I don't feel at all well, not at all well.” He knew then the uselessness of calling on her for support. Another operation was unthinkable.

He tried his best to clarify his thoughts. “How will she cope if I go first? Who'll care for her when she has an attack of angina? Ayah? Bearer?
How can I place such a burden on them? Should I call in Martin? But what about Gwen, and the children and all their problems, who's lucky enough not to have problems . . . ?” And then, before he could go on to the next logical thought, of him being left without Myrna, his mind broke apart and refused to come together. More and more, he had blank periods, when days coalesced into forgotten intervals. And then, while thus torn and anguished, he convinced himself he could recognize the recurring symptoms of his cancer.

He remembered the pact with Myrna again, and his plans took concrete shape.

It must be at the end of the perfect day. Nothing must go wrong on that day. When the miracle took place, as if willed by him, the very next day, he felt hopeful again. “But she's fine,” he thought. “Look at her! She's beautiful. Just like old times!” There had been visitors, Surjeet Shona and some of her friends, and the eminently sane, intelligent, and good-looking Rajmahalians enlivened them so much with their warmth and humor, and they laughed so freely, that nothing seemed amiss.

But later that evening, Myrna threw endless tantrums, bathing herself in tears and unleashing bitter streams of invective on the servants and Jack. When he saw Abdul and the
khansama
signaling to each other in the pantry and laughing at Myrna's buffoonery, he knew their laughter was more from perplexity and pain than from amusement. He decided to act before the suffering became pure hell.

The mosquito netting was still up, and Myrna was sitting on the edge of the bed trying to kick her slippers off her swollen feet, a task made more difficult by her tipsiness that night. Jack had given her three stiff drinks, accepted eagerly by her each time. Even the semblance of vigor shown by her kicking off her slippers, her quivering bosom, gave Jack a twinge. But he too had numbed himself with whiskey. He diverted his attention to his meticulously rehearsed actions.

Myrna would be drowsier than usual tonight, and he must act quickly. Once she fell asleep it would be impossible to go through another interval of anguish and invective, another agonizing struggle to get to this point. Conscious of the affection accrued over the years between him and the servants, and their devotion, he had given each of them large sums of cash to
avoid cumbersome wills. And he had made elaborate arrangements to free them of involvement in the sleeping pills he had bought, a circumspection encouraged by reading countless Agatha Christies.

A talkative ghost tried to say something, but the mansion shushed him.

“Can't you keep quiet for once!” the other ghosts added. “Look at poor Jack's anguish!”

“This is the beginning of the end,” insisted the talkative ghost. “Just you wait and see.” But silence soon descended, as the talkative ghost finally recognized the solemnity of the occasion.

Jack walked over to Myrna's side of the bed and prepared her medicine as he did every night carrying two glasses this time.

“Here's our new tonic, my darling. Come on. Down the hatch!”

He handed her a glass and drank from the other, matching sip for sip while he watched her over the rim. But Myrna, with the liquid half drunk, put down her glass. Jack didn't trouble to hide the tears streaming from his eyes. Myrna would never notice them . . . Before she could draw up her legs he sat by her side and held her in an embrace. “I've drunk it,” said Myrna slurring her words. “Go to bed now and let me sleep. I'm awfully sleepy you know. They say one must have a good night's sleep, especially with angina . . . ”

Jack felt a painful throbbing in his head together with a familiar feeling. The corners of his lips trembled, then drew back to expose his canine teeth. He snarled, a deep growl emanating at the base of his larynx, and viciously wiped the tears from his cheeks. His grasp on Myrna tightened and he held her up with uncharacteristic force.

“Come on old girl!” he snarled. “Drink up!”

The ghosts left one by one, going back to their normal haunts where they huddled in sorrow.

Jack felt his head exploding, two horns emerging from the top and dislodging his thin hair. He knew his eyes were getting bloodshot and slanting upwards at the corners and his feet were developing cloven hooves. He forced the shocked and weak Myrna to open her mouth and, while her teeth clacked against the glass, he poured the liquid from his glass into her mouth, forcing her to swallow, again and again. The glass cracked and a sliver came off. When he put the glass on the table her upper lip was torn and bleeding. He missed the suffusion of red on her face, the look of utter terror, and the bubbling heave of breath before she fell back onto the bed,
her after all susceptible heart at its final standstill. Jack felt his own heart becoming impossibly heavy as he recognized what had happened. The unspeakable, that he should suffer for the shortest second from her loss . . . And from the very terror of discovery he blocked out any thought of feeling for her pulse and confirming what he knew. Summoning his strength and sanity, he wiped Myrna's lips and chin, and with the same manic precision pulled her legs on to the bed and arranged them in a seemly fashion, covering her to the neck with a quilt. His movements became heavy as he picked up the other glass, earlier hers, shambled over to his side of the bed, and gulped down the remains. He put the glass down, pushed the slippers off his feet, lay down and pulled the double-sized quilt over himself. He manipulated the strings on the wall and the mosquito net slid gently down enveloping them in its loving mist. He pressed the light switch dangling behind him. In the darkness he felt for and found Myrna's hand, and softly taking it in his, just managed to close his eyes.

PROSHANTO MOJUMDAR, SCION OF A RICH ZAMINDARI FAMILY, HAD the good luck of bagging the apartment on the conservatory floor of the Rajmahal. It included the Sardar Bahadur's favorite bedroom, heavy glass panels embossed in the contemporary European style of the Rajmahal's construction year, peacocks trailing their showy tails in turquoise blue, and the clear ceiling mirror over the bed.

After graduating from the Imperial College in London, Proshanto had been recruited straight away by the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company as an engineer. During his childhood he had been taken on the annual seaside vacation to Puri, and to the Sagar Mela where the many-headed Ganga lay dynamically sprawled, its mouths fanged with mangrove and crocodile. The boundless seascape made him dizzy with longing and a shipping career became his goal. When he started traveling up and down between India and England on P&O liners as a student, always first class thanks to an indulgent father, this goal became a passion. To him, the ocean liners were miraculous, floating skyscrapers voyaging between the ends of the rainbow. The luxury thrilled him then spoiled him, and he longed to spend his life skimming the high seas in this softly lit encapsulated world, tinkering with engines. When he took his apartment in the Rajmahal he would dream of all this in his bedroom which bore such a close resemblance to the grand interiors of the liners, the blue-green luminescent waves roaring and pounding outside the tall bedroom windows, flecking them with foam. But conditions at work were far from this secured luxury, and Proshanto had to sleep in a sultry bunk room while the sweat poured and cold drinks were no help against the pulsing air of the engine rooms. “Even the Calcutta heat is better than this,” said Proshanto, when his ship drifted on the Red Sea or scraped between
the sand banks of the Suez Canal. As a “blackie” he had to face relentless racial barbs from his mates, though he won their respect with his sharp ripostes. He was more assiduous than the rest in his work, for defensive reasons too, and soon, he was promoted and given a small cabin of his own. It wasn't yet like the luxury he expected, but the cabin would keep improving as he rose. And then he came face-to-face with the ultimate bitterness, discrimination, when a junior, an Englishman, was promoted over his head. The directors ignored his complaints, and highly aggrieved, he simply resigned. “This takes things beyond the acceptable,” he said to Mohini. “I have no need of a livelihood from them anyway!” It wasn't a bad choice at a time when large passenger liners were in decline after the leap into air travel.

When the newly married couple had first moved into the Rajmahal, Mohini was still a dewy teenager, and the mirror was witness to god knows what concupiscent activities on the part of this nubile couple. Mohini used to often join Proshanto on his voyages as a paid passenger, anticipating the future revival of these liners for luxury cruising. It had allowed her to devour the plays, concerts, food, and culture of other countries, and indulge in shameless leisure. The ships' captains disapproved of all this, but Proshanto persuaded them she had every right to be there as a paying passenger. It suited him fine as he could share her cabin and life became so romantic they were convinced they could conceive on board if nowhere else, not even in the mirrored peacock bedroom at home. But it didn't work and they were destined to stay childless, which though saddening, allowed Mohini the freedom to travel.

They missed the old life after Proshanto's resignation, but he couldn't bring himself to take up a job with an Indian company. “I am reluctant to change at this advanced age,” he said. “The contrast will be too great.” He wasn't that old, but other Indians of his generation suffered from the same plight.

“You should have joined an Indian company at the very beginning,” said Mohini, “instead of going for the first offer.”

Mohini Mojumdar was from a wealthy family and with her dowry and the Mojumdar riches, Proshanto could have lived a life of retired leisure. But his father encouraged him to work just as he pushed him into marrying the right wife. Proshanto could have insisted on a love marriage, which he once almost did with a girl he had picked up with in Gibraltar. No one could have been more unsuitable. The house rejoiced in the old custom, of
the bride holding a bowl of water with a fish in it, and stepping into a basin of milk at the threshold of her new home, to the lusty blowing of conch shells and ululation of the females of the family. When she held the fish in her hands as custom demanded, she cleverly slipped it back before it had a chance to flip out of her hold, thus ensuring a faithful husband. But the house mourned when the symbolic ritual failed to give them the blessing of fertility.

Mohini and Proshanto settled down to a comfortably compatible sex life, with a passion fired by pill-less, condomless concerns because it was Proshanto who was sterile though far from impotent. But it was intensely galling to Mohini that he got carried away by any new belle he encountered well into their married life, and that these belles were always in their twenties, while the two of them grew older and older. “Can't even get me pregnant, and he's off every week on some new crush!” she thought angrily. She wasn't to know he never carried his crushes further than the moony behavior. Ever polite, Proshanto had suggested adoption. “Why don't you stretch the limits of politeness and hire a stud for me then?” she almost said.