Touch

Auntie Edwina takes me to Kim Li Loy. She says she has to meet a friend there. The place looks like someone’s house and the only way you can tell it’s a restaurant is the red, grime-covered, rectangular signboard nailed lop-sided above the entrance with yellow lettering in Chinese and English. The Chinese letters look like spiders. We enter and it smells of chilli sauce and hot-and-sour soup. The lighting is dim; round tables painted red, wooden chairs with cane seats; tiny white bowls of green chillies soaked in vinegar on every table. We sit at the far end of the restaurant where the wall tiles have different scenes printed on them. The one closest to my face has a man standing on the edge of a fishing boat. He has a long, thin moustache that reaches to the water; behind him an orange sun is rising. Auntie Edwina orders wonton soup and beef chow. I wolf it down in no time and Auntie Edwina settles her curls. “Your friend is late,” I tell her. “You eat like a pig,” she replies. I look down and there are specks of chilli sauce drying on my white blouse.

The owners of Kim Li Loy have a tortoise. His name is Boo and his shell is the size of a quarter plate. He waddles around from table to table and once in a while diners give him boiled lettuce or pak-choi and he chews on the leaves as if he has all the time in the world. He has a bed under the moss-glass aquarium where the tiger fish are crowded in one corner. I kneel beside Boo and I stroke his shell. It’s wet as if he’s sweating. Auntie Edwina’s friend arrives around nine o’clock. He is a tall man in a light blue shirt and dark trousers. They hug and sit opposite each other. From where I’m kneeling, I can see his ankle rub up against Auntie Edwina’s shin. She doesn’t pull her legs back and I watch as their feet keep rubbing up against each other. Now they’re laughing and Auntie Edwina calls me over. The waiter, a fat Chinese boy with soda-bottle glasses, brings two mugs of beer and places it on the table.

“Arup, this is my niece, Margaret,” says Auntie Edwina.

“Edwina tells me you’re from Kharagpore,” he says. “I have a lot of Anglo-Indian friends there.”

I look at Auntie Edwina.

“Most of the time I can’t get her to shut up and now the cat’s got her tongue,” says Auntie Edwina.

“She’s got Freddy’s eyes,” says Arup.

I like that Arup talks about Daddy as if the accident never happened. I sit down and play with the serviettes.

Arup tells us about the time he had to travel to Bishnupur for work and was pickpocketed on a local train. He sells transistors for a living. I picture him going house to house selling radios, showing people how they work, trying to convince them to buy a new one. He has long hair parted at the side and a beard that is patchy around his round cheeks and thick at the chin. I wonder how many radios he has to sell every day. And almost as if he hears me, he tells Auntie Edwina that he hit all his targets for the last three weeks and that his boss gave him a bonus. “Calls for another round of beer,” she says. She beckons the waiter and he comes carrying two bottles of Kalyani Black Label. Arup orders a plate of double-fried chilli beef and a plate of steamed pork momos for me. I thank him and he ruffles my hair. He has a lovely smile that make his eyes disappear and lines appear at the side of his head. I can tell when adults don’t want me around so I pick up my plate of momos and go and sit near Boo. The restaurant is crowded and I can hear the aquarium pump bubbling, swordtails darting from under a plastic fern; glasses clinking and forks on plates. I like this place. Outside, the traffic on Bentinck Street is loud, ceaseless, and the only thing keeping it all out is a stained yellow curtain at the entrance of Kim Li Loy, founded in 1921, according to the crooked signboard. It’s late when Auntie Edwina and Arup get up to leave. They walk behind me, Arup’s hand at Auntie Edwina’s elbow. On the way, Arup doesn’t stop talking.

“You see that house, Maggie,” he says, pointing to a dilapidated bungalow between Tung Nam and New Shanghai Dry Cleaners. “The first Chinese person to arrive in India used to live there. He used to sell tea. Way back in the 1700s.”

“He was a chai-wallah?” I asked.

Arup laughed. “He was a tea trader. His name was Tong Ah Chew.”

I was about to say that his surname sounded like a sneeze but then I remembered how girls at the orphanage had made fun of my surname, Deedumball, and I felt like Anglo-Indians and Chinese were not so different from each other because we had strange names and strange faces. We keep our shortcuts to ourselves and walk the long way back to Auntie Edwina’s flat on Ripon Street.

Arup makes omelettes and toast for breakfast. But he adds a pinch of sugar to the eggs and we laugh at the table. “Such a Bengali,” says Auntie Edwina, but she says it with a twinkle in her eye as she nudges his arm. Arup tucks his hair behind his ear and grins sheepishly. Down below, the nankhatai man is passing by. If Ma hadn’t died in the accident, if she were still here with me, she would’ve corrected me and said the proper English name was shortbread biscuits. I can hear the children hounding the nankhatai man. Auntie Edwina gives me a five-rupee coin and tells me to take my time. I know exactly what that means so I put on my Bata sandals and lock the door behind me.

I buy a packet of ginger biscuits and go sit with Papa Joe on the verandah of his ground floor flat. Besides being the neighbourhood gossip, Papa Joe used to work for Calcutta Port and now he lives off his pension and sits in his rocking-chair all day. When he stands up to go empty his piss-bag, his body is the shape of a question mark and I’m always amazed that his fishbone spine hasn’t snapped in two yet.

“What’s going on up there,” he points to our flat.

“Auntie’s getting ready for work.”

“You know when I was your age my family owned half of Ripon Street.”

“Papa Joe you’re such a liar. You need to go to confession.”

He snorts. “If I go to confession the priest, he’ll have to take the week off.”

I break a ginger biscuit in half and hand it to him.

“Not enough ginger,” he grumbles, “not like the olden days when I used to buy biscuits from this chap’s father. You heard about the Mohammedan family two houses down?”

He goes on to tell me that the Rahmans’ youngest daughter ran away with the eldest son of the Peters family.

“I know where they’ve gone,” he says. “They’re either in Digha having a good time or Writer’s Building to get married. Once they sign the papers then the families can’t do nothing, you mark my words they’ll be back in a few days. If he was my son, I would’ve given him a motherless pasting.”

I laugh loudly. “You’ve already got one leg in the grave and another on a plantain skin, you can’t do anything.”

“You little whippersnapper don’t make me spank you.”

The bhisti-walla takes his slippers off and fills Papa Joe’s drums with water from his goatskin bag. Tube-well water tastes sweet. Papa Joe gives him a few coins.

‘You know something Maggie, we Christians are the quietest community. Look at the racket these Mohammedan buggers make during Moharram and these Bongs have about four hundred gods and festivals for three hundred and sixty-five days.’

‘If my brother Dimmy was here, he would’ve told you there are three hundred and sixty-six days in a leap year. He’s a proper smartarse.’

‘When’s he coming to Cal?’

‘You should mind your own bloody business, Papa Joe.’

Papa Joe shuts up even though I don’t mean it rude. I actually like sitting on his verandah talking to him. It was my fault for talking about Dimmy, but there are days when I forget that he’s gone, and I can hear him screaming and the sound of glass and metal smashing into the concrete culvert.

‘We’re quite noisy during the Corpus Christi procession, no,’ I say, ‘with all those hymns and holding up traffic and everything.’

‘Very soon you’ll have a boyfriend,’ says Papa Joe.

‘I don’t want one.’

‘You want a girlfriend or what,’ he says, and laughs.

‘There’s nothing wrong with that.’

‘It’s just not right,’ he says. ‘You should find a nice Anglo boy. As I was saying, in the olden days, everyone in this neighbourhood was Anglo and we used to have parties right here in the street and no one had to run away to get married.’

‘But they’ll come back.’

‘Listen, young lady, Papa Joe knows everything about everyone on Ripon Street. Of course, they’ll come back and I’ll bet you five bucks they’ll invite us for the wedding.’

We place the bet and finish the packet of ginger biscuits. I go back upstairs once Papa Joe begins to snore and drool on his banyan.

Arup is taking a bath and Auntie Edwina is in her underwear pulling on her stockings when I walk into the bedroom. In the reflection of the bedside mirror, I can see she has passion marks on the underside of her right arm and her thighs. ‘That must hurt,’ I mumble. ‘Nah I enjoyed it,’ she says. And that’s the thing I don’t understand because it was no fun at all when Father Alfie was giving me piano lessons at the orphanage while making me sit on his lap. But anyway, Auntie Edwina says I didn’t deserve any of that and that everyone is different and people like all kinds of things in bed.

#

After Arup, there was Cyril who wasn’t around for too long on account of all the Benadryl he was drinking. Pastor Poddar, who would land up with his child and I would have to take the little turd for long walks to Allen Park. Bhavin, Angelo, Kadeem, Prabhjot, Patrick, Bhadrak, Alee. Then a French backpacker whose name I never really got around to pronouncing right; it sounded something like mow-the-lawn. Jyotiraj, who sobbed like a ninny, clinging to the doorknob, when Auntie Edwina told him she was leaving the country. He said he would jump off the Howrah Bridge. She told him which bus to take and shoved him down the stairs.

And still they came. And rightfully so. Auntie Edwina was prettier than all the ladies in church, at school meetings, at the pork shop, and wherever else we went. She even looked pretty when she was asleep, her lips slightly apart, and her wrist resting on her forehead. The way she smiled, looking beyond you, tucking her soft curls behind her ear as she changed out of her petticoat and got ready for her job (Secretary to the Principal of St Mary’s High School). When she leaves the building, in her navy-blue pencil skirt and her off-white shirt tucked neatly at the waist, I stand on the balcony and watch her calves and her shiny black heels walk perfectly down the bumpy road.

The men kept coming because Auntie Edwina made you feel like you were the only person in Calcutta. There were nights, when I first got here from the orphanage, when I would scream and grind my teeth and toss and turn until I was all knotted up in the bedsheet—cursing at the old Ambassador, Daddy losing control on the wet road—and Auntie Edwina would pull me by my collar from the edge of the bed, where I would be curled up like a dog whimpering and she would spoon me close, tucking her warm knees behind mine singing Pearly Shells really softly into my ear until my tears were all dried up and I drifted back to sleep. In the morning, we don’t talk about it. She makes me a tall mug of Bournvita. I kiss her on the cheek and she kisses me back and slips a ten-rupee note into the back pocket of my shorts and tells me I don’t have to go to school today if I didn’t feel up to it.

#

And then Arup came back! The long hair was gone, but he still had a side parting, and it made him look even younger. Auntie Edwina said, teasingly, that he looked all the more like a good Bengali boy. Bhadralok, she called him. We laugh easy and when he thinks I’m not looking, he runs his finger along Auntie Edwina’s right earlobe down the nape of her neck. He asks me about school and I tell him about the couple that eloped. It’s Friday evening and I’m sure we’re going to Kim Li Loy or Eau Chew or Tung Nam. Instead, we stay in. Arup gets us a bag of three-rupee beef kathi rolls, Thums Up and a pint of McDowell’s. I eat four rolls and lie down at the foot of the couch while Auntie Edwina and Arup sit drinking their rum. I can hear Connie Francis from Papa Joe’s tape deck and Lassie, our neighbour’s Apso, whining for her food. Auntie Edwina nudges me with her heel and when I turn around, she looks at Arup, ‘Should we take her along?’

‘I’m not sure,’ says Arup, a smile on his lips, ‘She might find it boring.’

‘Take me where? I want to come!’

‘Go pack your bag then, we’re going to Bishnupur for the weekend,’ says Auntie Edwina.

It’s still early in the morning when we get off the Bokaro Express that ran two hours late. The night is still pulling away when we pile into a rickshaw and the birds sound like they have a lot of catching up to do. I’m struck by how quiet it is and the only sound I hear—from the station to the government tourist lodge—is someone cranking a hand-pump or a gate on rusty hinges swinging open, or maybe this is how history tosses and turns in her sleep.

We spend the day exploring one terracotta temple after the other and by lunchtime I can’t tell if we’ve seen this temple before or not. Arup tells me that Rasmancha Temple is the oldest brick structure in the country. ‘Historians believe it was meant to serve as the template for other terracotta temples in the east,’ he says. ‘You sound like Dimmy,’ I reply, turning away, and Auntie Edwina squeezes my arm. Arup and Auntie Edwina disappear around the temple. Even though there are signs that say no touching, I pretend I’m blind and run my fingers over the terracotta tiles and I guess all the scenes correctly. Birds and flowers are easy, and I can tell it’s a hunting scene by the shape of the bow and arrow, and the female dancers by the size of their breasts.

‘That’s an ek ratna temple,’ says Arup. And he goes on to describe the exact scene on the terracotta plaques that are from some Hindoo book called the Puranas. He talks about the interplay of light and shadow and he buys me a toy bullock cart from a blue-walled handicrafts shop. He tells us Garh Darwaza was built in the seventeenth century to protect the fort and he points out the arrow slits on the topmost gallery. ‘You should’ve been a tour guide,’ says Auntie Edwina, as Arup rattles off facts about the Malla Empire, about the war with the Marathi invaders, the tenth century statue of Indrani the elephant, and the stone tools from the Neolithic period at the museum no bigger than our flat back in Calcutta. ‘Might as well make use of that history degree,’ says Arup, as he translates the Bengali index cards below the black-and-white photographs of the founders of Bishnupur village.

Outside Mona Lisa Restaurant, a carpenter is chipping away at a block of wood that will one day be a table. Even though we don’t bump into any tourists at the temples, the restaurant is packed, and when we enter, I can feel everyone staring at us. I stare right back but I bend my shoulders inwards because the waiters are running their eyes over my body. Auntie Edwina doesn’t seem bothered and I forget about the inquisitive looks when they serve us this dark-gravied mutton curry that makes my eyes water.

Back at the tourist lodge, I have my own room. I kiss Auntie Edwina goodnight and I hug Arup. ‘Thank you,’ I mumble, and I leave them alone in the corridor.

It’s still not bright when I feel a pair of arms lift me off the bed. I know it’s Arup by the scent of his aftershave. I snuggle into his shoulder and I can hear Auntie Edwina whispering as we get into a rickshaw. I move in and out of sleep and when I finally wake up, it is to the sound of the train leaving the station. Auntie Edwina is sitting across from me and I look around for Arup. The lady next to her gets off at Bankura and I change seats. Auntie Edwina tells me that Arup is getting married next week. I don’t know what that means but I feel a familiar emptiness covering me like a blanket. I can’t remember words. ‘Don’t be sad,’ I say, finally. ‘Look,’ she says, and she points to a man squatting in front of a blue hut pumping air into the tyres of a child’s tricycle near dusty yellow flowers potted in a Campa-Cola crate, ‘remember that.’ We hold hands all the way to Howrah station. I was too young to know that sudden departures were always impossible to understand.

Papa Joe wins the bet and I grudgingly hand him five rupees. The Rahmans’ youngest daughter and the eldest son of the Peter family came back two days ago, walking hand in hand down Ripon Street while we all stared at them from our verandahs. ‘What’d I tell you,’ says Papa Joe, baring his nearly-toothless grin, slapping me on the back. ‘All right, calm down,’ I say. He was right. Their families don’t make a scene because they’re married already and true enough, we get a gaudy wedding invitation card the next day. Auntie Edwina says she’s not in the mood and she helps me wrap a set of tumblers and a wall clock for the couple. And on Sunday evening I wear the powder-blue tunic Auntie Edwina bought me last Christmas with my favourite tan moccasins. I go downstairs and Papa Joe is in a three-piece suit as if he’s the groom. I hold his hand and we walk slowly to the reception hall on McLeod Street. We pass the shop selling mirrors and I’m happy to see that my curls are in place and I’m nearly as tall as Papa Joe.

I congratulate the couple. The Rahman’s youngest daughter looks like a goddess; it’s the middle of June and the foundation is cracking on her face because she can’t stop smiling. Papa Joe blesses them on their foreheads and we head straight to the dining hall as soon as the first call for dinner goes out. Long tables draped in stained white sheets are laid out parallel to each other in the middle of the hall and we sit opposite a Mohammedan family. Papa Joe reaches into his coat and brings out a spoon and a fork wrapped in a serviette. I’m ploughing through the beef biryani on my plate, licking the gravy from the mutton chaap off my fingers, when Papa Joe nudges me in the ribs. ‘A little etiquette,’ he says, ‘that’s not too much to ask, right?’ I think he’s reprimanding me but then I look across the table. The Mohammedan man, completely oblivious to Papa Joe’s glowering stare, is chewing beef bones to a dry pulp and lining them around his plate, smacking his lips loudly. His wife and four children are doing the same. We keep staring at them. There are vertical piles of chewed bones on the table. ‘Looks like Stonehenge,’ I say. Papa Joe laughs until he’s choking and I have to rub his back with my left hand and give him my glass of water.

It’s almost ten o’clock when we reach Ripon Street and I give the dogs the bones from my dinner. ‘Look at them,’ says Papa Joe, ‘they’re better behaved than that family back there.’ ‘Stop it,’ I mumble, as I unlock the door to his flat. I help him out of his suit and I try not to look at the brown stain on his drawers. I tuck him in and sit by the bed and don’t really listen to him rambling. Even though his children hardly visit him, I’m jealous of Papa Joe because at least he’s still got his family. I’m about to leave when he grabs my wrist and says, ‘Barley spider chocolate fool.’ He’s looking directly at me and I can tell he doesn’t recognise me at all. ‘Good night,’ I whisper. I kiss him on the forehead, turn on the night lamp and head back to my flat.

Auntie Edwina is at the dining table with the letter opener and a thick brown envelope. She places the envelope to the side, picks up the filer and starts doing her nails. I tear open the envelope and it’s an album with all the photographs (and negatives) from our trip to Bishnupur. ‘We should frame this one up,’ I say. It’s a photograph of Auntie Edwina and Arup standing on either side of the Dalmadal Cannon with me straddling the wrought-iron muzzle, clinging to their shirts as I try to balance myself. ‘Photographs aren’t real memories, Maggie,’ says Auntie Edwina, ‘use it as a bookmark if you want.’ I slip the photo out and keep the album away inside the chest of drawers.

I change out of my tunic and head in for a bath. I think of that Mohammedan family at the wedding. I’ll never get to chew bones with Daddy, Dimmy and Ma ever again. When I come out, Auntie Edwina is already in bed facing the wall. I climb in and put my arm around her but it barely reaches across her broad, lean shoulders. So, I wiggle downward until my face is at her lower back; now I put my arm around her slender waist and rub my cheek against her hip. Her satin slip feels cool on my face. The June night is very still and I can almost hear her eyelids blink in the dark—once, twice, three times—and then we both drift into dreamless sleep.