THE DOCKS HAVE GONE!'
SUNDARI was bending over the table, cutting out a choli according to the paper pattern, when she heard the explosion. The walls of the house shivered as though a giant had shaken it, and the glass panes rattled. Somewhere below, a door banged with the report of a rifle shot..
She ran to the window. The sea was a bright blue-green under the baking April sun, and still as glass. But even as she watched, the tops of the palm-trees shuddered as a great wind swept from over the sea, and then she saw the faint white ridge on the surface of the water, crawling towards the shore. She stood entranced, holding the side of the window, conscious of the sound of foot- steps and of agitated talk below stairs. The white line rolled on, with incredible speed, gathering size; it soon became an immense wall of water, rushing towards the shore. It caught up a tiny sailboat and swallowed it, leaving no sign, and then rushed up the beach with a hiss and a roar, sweeping over the fishermen's puny canoes drawn up on the sand and the nets spread out to dry, rushing muddily through the palm trees lining the shoreline, to spend itself in the garden below. Baldev the bearer, the maid and the mali all came running into the room, open-mouthed and dazed, chattering incoherently, but at the sight of the water rushing right below them, at least two hundred yards beyond the normal waterline, their babbling stopped. They stood behind her, watching.
The wave receded, almost reluctantly; now, on its return journey, a mass of yellow scum like an overflowing drain, back to the sea which was no longer blue-green but dirty, the colour of boiling sulphur. "What is it? What's happened?" she asked.
'It must be bombs,' Baldev said. 'I heard the explosion. I felt the shock." It must have been an earthquake,' wailed the maid. 'Hai-hai!-- may God spare my dear ones?"
They ran downstairs and into the garden. People from adjoining houses were already out, their heads turned towards the city. A tiny black cloud towered high over Malabar Hill. "That's smoke,' the mali said.
The bombers have destroyed the city. The Japanese have reduced the city to dust,' Baldev said.
Even as they watched, the cloud billowed up until it was an enormous, grey-black cabbage blotting out the outline of the city.
'It's a fire, it can only be a fire,' the mali said. 'Hare-ram! It's the greatest fire anyone ever saw. The whole city's ablaze-every house is burning; look at it!' Baldev said. 'Look at the smoke." Everyone must be dead,' the maid moaned. 'Ayaya, what could have happened to my sister? With a new-born child too!"
Realizing something terrible had happened, but still unaware what it was, they stood watching. On all sides, people were coming out of their houses, excitedly asking what it could be. The smoke was like a giant playing in the bright blue sky, assuming frighten- ing shapes to scare them.
They say the docks are on fire,' a cyclist yelled from the road. *Some ships in the docks have blown up!"
At first the words were just a part of the background, a new voice added to the nervous chatter of the onlookers. "What is it? What did he say?" asked Sundari.
"The docks have gone!' someone answered. "Finished!'
Then it registered. The docks!' Sundari gasped. 'Oh, God!'
It was almost useless to think about it. The young man in the soiled overalls standing on the wharf, the dingy crumbling house with its outdoor latrine near the railway track. She ran to her car parked in the porch. She had to go, to see for herself what had happened.
She drove fast. The smoke was now tinged with red. Even on the Worli stretch, she could feel the taste of dust and ashes in her mouth. Now and then, a tongue of fire would leap up in the smoke, losing itself instantly. How many fires were there, she wondered.
The roads leading to the docks were jammed with cars. Men and women were milling about in panic. At the corner of Crawford market, she found it impossible to turn left, where the traffic had come to a standstill. She turned right, sped along the almost empty road past the art school, only to encounter another traffic jam in front of the post office. She wheeled back again, was sworn at by a lorry driver who had to screech to a halt to avoid hitting her. She drove into the car park at Victoria Station and parked the Ford there. Then she ran back into the milling stream of traffic, threading her way to the docks. At the end of the road, the traffic again came to a halt. No one was allowed to proceed farther. She pushed her way to the front, broke through the police cordon and ran up to the Victoria Docks Bridge which stood empty before her. A helmeted British soldier barred her way. The bridge had been damaged, he told her, parts of it had already fallen down; the remainder would crumble at any minute. No one was allowed across it.
She stood for a moment, glaring incredulously at the red-faced soldier, when behind him she suddenly saw the centre of the bridge cave in just as he had said, and a cloud of dust appear. Then she saw the devastation all round. The dust and the pungent fumes from the fire made her nostrils smart. Not a single building seemed to be intact. Many had fallen down, and dust was still rising from their debris. Others had had their roofs and walls blown off in segments. A crumpled railway wagon was lying beyond the railing of the bridge, upside-down, like a beetle on its back, with its wheels and springs exposed to view. The nearest railway track must be at least a hundred yards away, she reflected. She turned to the left, peering in the direction of the Yellow Gate where the railway track was. She could see nothing because of the thick blanket of smoke and dust. She turned back and almost stumbled on a man lying close to the wall, sprawled out like one of the hundreds of homeless men who sleep on the sidewalks of Bombay. But he was a white man, and stark naked. It was only after she had passed that she realized he must be dead. She ran back through the crowd, jostling, cursing, pushing her way, not caring what they thought or said. When she came to the edge of the crowd, at first she did not know where she was, because there was nothing familiar about the locality. Then she realized that she was right in front of the main Alexandra Docks Gate. Again she ducked, broke through the crowd and dashed to the entrance.
The enormous steel gates were lying awkwardly twisted on their hinges, and the high walls enclosing the dock area were full of gaping holes. Again there was the ubiquitous British sentry, standing squarely in her path. You can't go in, miss,' he said cheerfully. They're expecting the whole place to go up in flames." She felt trapped, on the verge of tears. I just have to go,' she pleaded. "I have to find someone.. 'Them's orders, miss. No one can go in; except for wives and mothers."
'My husband works there,' she told him. 'My child is there... please, please!" He waved her on. Don't stay long, ma'am,' he said. 'And good luck!" She thanked him and rushed past. The paved yard felt hot under her feet, and she realized she had lost her chaplis in the scramble. Now there were more bodies, some grotesquely mutilated. They were all completely hairless and all were white, Only a few of them seemed to have any clothes on. Then she realized that they were not the bodies of Europeans. They were Indians burned white by fire. 'Oh, God!' she said. 'Oh, God!' She ran towards the Yellow Gate.
The great cobble-stone yard was completely deserted. The railway track had been torn up and the rails twisted into grotesque shapes. The wooden sleepers on the track were still burning. The damage was more severe as she went closer to the Yellow Gate. Not a single house seemed to be standing. Somewhere, a bell was ringing; a loudspeaker had come into action, and someone was shouting instructions in a distorted, foghorn voice. Nothing was familiar. She stood uncertainly near the railway gate for a few seconds before she realized this was where she had stopped her car, waiting for the gate to open. In the place where the three- storied building had stood, was a heap of rubble. The doors and windows of the building were still on fire, making jagged, geometric patterns of red.
She stood rooted to the ground, staring at the fallen house and coughing in the heat and smoke.
The bell was ringing again, much more loudly. All round her was the sound of running footsteps. The loudspeaker had gone on blaring without let-up, telling them, in Hindi and English, something about the outer perimeter wall. Almost involuntarily, she tried to concentrate on the words:... close to the Customs shed wall inside the main gate of Alexandra Docks...safe from blast,
Someone was speaking to her, urgently, almost angrily. One of the men running. He had stopped and was trying to say something. She turned upon him in irritation. He was black with soot and oil, and his clothes were charred and in shreds. "What are you doing here!' he was saying. His voice was thick and gruff.
Óh, leave me alone!" she said viciously, angry at being accosted. And then she realized that there was something familiar about the face and figure. It was Gian. She flung her arms around him and pulled him tight to her chest.
He held her shoulders and pushed her away from him, roughly. 'Come on, they're expecting another explosion,' he told her. His voice was a hoarse, throaty whisper. His clothes were drenched with oil and his boots were squelching. There was a spot of fresh blood on his shoulder and as they began to run, she noticed that he was limping. Arm in arm, they joined the throng of dockworkers all running in the same direction, yelling to each other. 'Run! Run!"
The firemen were dragging back their hoses, hoping to save them for other fires, long black snakes following the running men, glistening in spite of the gloom and the smoke. The loud- speaker was more insistent now, announcing only in English. Make for the wall! Lie flat down! On the other side-on the side of the street! Down flat, down flat!"
At last it loomed before them, the high wall surrounding the main customs shed, a part of the original wall erected in the days when the British Fort of Bombay was built for defence. About a hundred men were lying prone against the wall. They flung themselves down, in the press of other bodies, clinging to each other, while more and more people kept coming and throwing themselves down on both sides of them.
They waited panting, not daring to speak, their bodies wringing wet with sweat, in the midst of strangers, like lovers locked in each other's arms in a crowded railway carriage. The minutes passed. The clamour of the loudspeaker was like a record stuck in a groove.... make for the Custom shed wall near Alexandra. Gate...lie down flat... down flat... on the street side... on the street side... down flat... make for the... And then everything was drowned in the convulsion for which they were waiting; a hundred express trains converging, roaring, hissing. They were lifted up and flung away by the earth rising under them; and suddenly the air was full of smoke and dust and pieces of burning cotton. The men lying all round them were on their feet-running away. Sundari raised her head. Things were still falling, whistling through the air. Drums of burning oil soared up and fell down in slow arcs, a heavy bar of some metal came and smashed against the wall, only to drop harmlessly bent into an L. The loudspeaker had stopped. Suddenly, they were alone: everyone had gone. "Come!' she called out. They've all gone! And then she realized that he lay limp in her arms, his eyes closed. God, was he dead? She grabbed his shoulders and shook them. 'Come on!-wake up! Everyone's gone!"
He opened his eyes and blinked, almost coming out of a sleep. In her relief, she bent down and kissed him on the mouth. 'Come on. Get up!'
He pushed himself into a sitting position, panting with the effort. Then he said. 'Look! they've all gone. You had better go now. It is quite safe... so they say... until another ship blows up.' His voice cracked. "What about you? Where will you go? Your house.
'I'll find somewhere to go. They are bound to make some arrangements. I don't know, not just now. Just now I want to sit here and rest, do nothing.' He leaned back against the wall. 'But please go away from here. Please; it is dangerous to hang about here."
"Isn't it dangerous for you?" she asked.
'I belong here.' He slid back into a more comfortable position, and his eyes began to close.
Steady! You're not going to black out again, are you!" she asked.
He blinked and shook his head but said nothing. "You are coming with me. I won't leave until you get up. Make the effort now! Come on... that's better." She almost pulled him to his feet and began to lead him away from the wall. Try not to put any weight on the leg,' she told him. 'Lean on my shoulder.' They began to pick their way through the debris.
The car was hardly a quarter of a mile away, but it took them an hour to get to it, stopping every few steps because of the pain in his leg. His face was bathed with perspiration, and his hands felt cold. She wiped his face with the end of her sari before she started the car.
Gian lay on the sand, wearing linen slacks and a bush shirt, making furrows with the toe of his white chapli, preparing his mind for what he was about to do. He glanced at Sundari, lying next to him, relaxed, unsuspecting.
He could never be like the Prince, he had decided. His upbringing, his background of Hindu orthodoxy, the narrowness and rigidity of a schoolboy conditioned by Aji and Hari, had triumphed over his new-found disregard for convention. This was something he had to do, if only to salvage his ego.
The heady plunge into unrestrained sexual intimacy was something he had accepted avidly, not knowing where it would lead him and not caring, consoling himself with the thought that he was incapable of resisting it. It was as though their venture into romance had broken away all barriers. Now, he told himself, she was like a she-leopard who had found a foster-cub, showering her love with a fierce possessiveness, sheltering and protecting him.
She had no business to come barging into his life, that day of the fire, he kept telling himself; after that it was almost inevitable that they should abandon all restraint. He had allowed himself to be taken back to the house. She had put him to bed and sent for a doctor to examine his leg. There had been nothing seriously wrong; a small splinter of metal had cut right through his calf. The doctor probed and dressed the wound and gave him a sedative. He had dropped off to sleep instantly. But he could easily have left the next morning; he should have insisted on doing so, Gian told himself.
Instead, overcome with languor, he accepted her hospitality and stayed on in the secluded house on the beach, knowing that her husband was away, somewhere in the middle East, and savouring the anticipation of a romantic idyll.
But now the thought that his romance was built up on a foundation of deceit tormented him, he reminded himself that he had not hesitated to take advantage of her vulnerability. This was the moment to cry a halt; the time to thrash things out. He had made up his mind. He was going to open his heart to her and tell her he loved her. After that it was up to her. He could no longer continue with a substitute for love.
After the intimacy of the past four days, it was going to be like tearing out a part of himself, but he was elated at having brought himself to face the situation and to find that his suburban rectitude had surmounted the corrosive damage suffered in the Andamans.
'I just have to do this," he told her. 'For my sake as well as yours. Because I love you."
She had been lying beside him, not saying anything, letting him talk away. Now she leaned over on her elbow and looked at him. But he went on staring at the sea, not daring to trust himself to the impact of the blood-red swimming costume that was so daringly brief, the bare brown body with long, slender legs and small-boned arms and that almost Spanish face with its pointed chin and high cheek-bones-so much like that of her brother.
"Love,' she said flatly, is not an emotion for grown-ups. It is something only for schoolboys and girls, and for poets who died before they grew up."
I don't know about the love of poets. I know my own love, and it's like a fire-something that keeps a lonely man going."
She reached out and patted his hand. He turned and looked at her. On her face was a smile, a smile almost of amusement. 'In any case, you don't have to feel guilty. I love you too."
What did she mean by that? Was she thinking of the momentary, wholly sensual intimacy of the past few days, or of the desperation with which she had pulled him to her chest in the docks?
'But you don't realize,' he protested. 'I've loved you ever since I first saw you. I swear I've never thought of another girl... not even in all those days in the Andamans. It was you, you, all the time, even in my dreams. You don't believe me? No, no; I tell you I am about to make a sacrifice giving up what I most want-knowing what is best for both of us. He produced his wallet and pulled out the photographs. "Look! Do you remember sending these to your brother? Sundari held the photographs in her hands. The colour had gone from her face, and there were two tiny furrows above her nose. "But I sent these to Debi-with money hidden inside!"
He did not hesitate. The lie came easily to his lips, knowing that he alone would suffer from it. I begged Debi for the photographs, and he gave them to me, knowing how I felt about you. Yes, he knew. There were few secrets between us.' The lie had come and gone. It left no after-taste.
Sundari leaned back and lay on the sand, her eyes closed. She looks so pure and helpless, he thought, and yet, it was because she was so vulnerable, so trusting, that it was important to make her realize that his love too was pure.
She had removed her rubber bathing cap and the wet strands of stray hair clung to her forehead. Her limbs glistened with flecks of fine sand. A thought, wholly sensuous, crossed his mind. That was the sort of impulse that had made him forget himself so irrecoverably, three days earlier. He shook his head. A moment earlier, he reminded himself, he had been speaking of love that had to be pure, telling new lies to prove how pure his love had been.
He went on, stung by his own sense of guilt. And when I speak of love, I mean an open, world-defying love, not a clandestine, hole-and-corner affair. I want you always, yes, always; for ever and for ever. Suddenly he leaned over and gripped her shoulders, his fingers clamping tightly like brown claws against the bare flesh. He saw the bright flecks of moisture against her closed eyelashes, but did not know whether they were tears or moisture from the sea.
He let her go, and she lay back as she was, rigidly, with her eyes still tightly shut. Doesn't it mean anything to you at all? I want you to be my own; share my life. Doesn't love mean anything to you at all?
She could not tell him, because she did not know herself. What was love? Love was a little girl's crush for Ronald Colman, something kindled by a glance and a smile from a man from another world, a flame kept alive through the frustrations of a honeymoon by tenderness and self-flagellation, and then smothered in one evening by a hard-faced woman in a satin swim-suit; it was something that could be shattered by a society whore, a perishable, tender thing for tender ages. After that, love was a game; a game strictly for grown-ups so that if you were not sufficiently skilful, you could be broken by it; heady, exciting, polychromatic, a thing of retaliation, of playing a card in the same suit, and if your card was higher, you won the trick. For a Queen card in a stunning red costume, a King card in dark glasses; an over-ripe society bitch mated with a brown and handsome man in soiled overalls. You had to learn about love, as you had to learn about drinking; and that was not something you could learn in an affluent family house in Duriabad or in the Silver Jail. It thrived best in the circle of the rich and the gay, took its proper place as an exciting accompaniment to life, but never as life itself. What was love but a sparkling, synthetic companion of an evening, a sneaking away from a dance to go for car rides and not returning until the small hours of the morning...?
Or was it the hollow feeling deep within one that made one want to cry out, the desperate rush to a scene of convulsion to see an old building, the impulsive flinging of your arms around a man in a dirty, oil-soaked work suit and the sudden wave of gratitude that followed.
But there's another side too,' he was saying very quietly. "And that too has to be faced. I have little to offer, but if you ever become mine, we shall be comfortable. I have money saved. Not anything that can run to this, but a small flat and middle-class living. I can buy a business of my own, make money and who knows, even this, a big house, servants, may be possible. With you, nothing would be impossible; without you, life will mean. nothing. As soon as the war ends, I shall go back to the Andamans."
"Andamans!' she looked up with sudden interest. "I would like to go there. Debi will be there."
That is what it means to me,' he said. "With you, an assumed name, happiness, who knows, even prosperity. Without you, the Andamans."
'But you don't have to go there, even without me,' she pointed out. "Why can't you go on living here?"
'Because I shall have nothing to live for here. Why should I remain here, a man who never was? I shall go back to the Andamans proudly, buy a cottage, a beach of my own. And I shall have served the ends of justice."
She gave a nervous little laugh. "The ends of justice!' she repeated. 'Such a terrible phrase... so sinister; the ends of justice.'
"That is what I had to say-all I have been meaning to say. But I have my pride too; some semblance of it, I suppose, for pride is a queer luxury in one who has worn the Andaman collar. To me, there is something shameful in what I have done, taking advantage of you, forgetting myself. I want to be able to hold my head high, if such a thing is still permissible to someone like me; to be able to go and tell everyone-the world that we are in love."
He was so desperately earnest, still the college boy who had been offended because they had joked about his sacred thread, she caught herself thinking. Why did he keep on mixing it up with love, thinking it was something to be ashamed of? He had committed murder and had spent time in jail, yet he was afraid to flout convention. She, on her part, would have had no objection to her husband knowing about it. Was it not he who had written the rules of behaviour in their marriage? But she could see that Gian would never understand. Instead of taking what was there to take, he was determined to let it go on hurting him, like those short-lived poets of love. For his kind of love, there was no easy, uncomplicated solution.
"I plucked up courage to say what I did, because I saw that you cared; otherwise I would never had insulted you by offering my humdrum life, against this sheltered living, the car, the servants. Why should you give up all this? Why? There can be only one reason: because you don't love him. Otherwise... otherwise what has happened would never have been possible. That was my only excuse, the reason for bringing all this out; that was what gave me the courage. When you brought me out from the docks, looked after me, when we kissed, lay together.. did not all that mean anything to you?" "Of course it did,' she told him. 'It meant a lot to me."
"That is what I wanted you to say, longed for you to say. Now the choice is yours. And this is how I want it to be between us. It is best to leave it like this, before I forget myself again and degenerate merely into a creature of lust. Don't you agree?"
She nodded, ever so lightly. How little he had grown; how much he still resembled the boy who had petulantly dived into the river. The drops of moisture on her eyelashes were now fuller and the flecks of sand on her limbs shone like stars in the dying sun. The two photographs, now yellowed and curled, were still clutched in her fingers. She was so desirable, so forlorn. He longed to put his arms around her and kiss away her tears. Instead, he stood up, dragging the leg which now had a large plaster across the gash, and tightened the straps of his chaplis.
'I want to leave it like that, he said, 'and I promise you will never be disturbed by me again, never. But one thing I do ask; I think I have a right to ask after... after what has happened. If you ever decide to share my love, marry me. You only have to say so. I shall come."
He turned and walked away, without a backward glance.
