The letter arrived on the last day of November.
It was a bright breezeless day. The sun was streaming out from behind the clouds after two days of heavy rain. Aniruddha entered his studio and flung open the window. A square of light fell on the floor and made strange patterns on the maroon carpet. He loved this hour of the day for painting. It was the time of the day when the sound of distant traffic had diminished to a less than monotonous hum, and, except for the quivering laughter of girls from a nearby government school who came down the road at this time every day, the neighbourhood sunk in to an afternoon siesta. He could now gather all his concentration and paint peacefully. Aniruddha arranged his brushes and oil and picked up the palette in his left hand. He was working on a portrait. A commissioned work for which he had charged an exorbitant price. He looked at the portrait. It was the face of an old woman who still retained a faint glow of her departed youth. Aniruddha dipped his filbert brush into the oil, mixed some umber green and titanium white to create a lighter tone and applied it to the lips of the woman. He took care not to make the woman sombre-looking. So he made a curve in her lips to give them a hint of a smile.
Suddenly he turned his head and listened. There were two impatient knocks on the front door. He rose from his stool, put the palette and the brush on a low table beside him and went to answer the knocks. He opened the door and found the postman standing there.
‘Good morning sir. There’s a letter for you,’ the postman said and handed him an azure envelope.
Aniruddha took the envelope from the postman’s hand and closed the door behind him noiselessly. The envelope smelt of strawberries. It had a plastic rose attached to it like a brooch. Coming into, his studio he tore open the envelope. Inside, he found a sheet of green bond paper. He unfolded the sheet. The letter was brief and written in a hand that reminded him of medieval manuscripts. He read the letter slowly, moving his lips inaudibly.
Dear Mr. Bose,
First of all, allow me to apologize for intruding on your privacy. I know you are an artist and lead a secluded life. It is my present circumstances that have prompted me to write to you. You must remember Mr. Francis D’Mello who was the principal of St Paul’s school at Darjeeling when you were a student there. He has suffered two strokes over the last couple of months that have left a portion of his body paralysed. His memory too has begun to falter. He can hardly remember anything from his St Paul’s days except for you. In his dreams he murmurs your name incoherently. Doctors have advised that only your presence can help him now. I shall remain grateful to you if you could come and meet him once. You are our last hope.
Regards
Patricia D’Mello
The letter brought a frown to Aniruddha’s dark brow. The mere name of St Paul’s had stirred his memories afresh. He went to his bedroom, drew the curtains and lay on the bed. He read the letter again, this time uttering each word distinctly. He had left St Paul’s school a long time ago. Since then, he had been living a solitary life undisturbed by any external intervention. Once or twice he had run into some of his friends from his St Paul’s days at exhibitions but he didn’t want to renew any of the old acquaintances. Today, the letter made memories swarm to his consciousness. He tried to picture those days to himself. It was on his mother’s insistence that he was sent to Darjeeling, a sleepy hill town nestling among the pines. Its damp, sluggish weather didn’t go well with his lungs, though the days at St Paul’s remained the best days of his life. It was there that the first germs of artistic ambition were sown in his heart. Every day he woke up early in the morning and walked with his sketchbook under his arm towards the Clock Tower. He sat beneath the Grandfather Clock and drew for hours watching the slow approach of dawn from behind the mountains. In front of him the landscape stretched like an undulating upland that melted into the distant gray mist. And he felt as though he were drawing his own Arno valley. Often at night under the half starless sky he wanted to do a Van Gogh.
It was in his third year at St Paul’s when Mr. D’ Mello joined the school as its principal. He was a man of robust health and dark personality. His broad serious face sported a well-trimmed beard and steely, hard eyes. He detested change and contradiction was a word that never found its way into his dictionary. From the very beginning he imposed strict regulations on students and guardians alike. He hardly spoke but whenever he opened his mouth, Aniruddha remembered, it seemed as though he were chewing on something. During the interval between two classes he often marched along the corridor with his hands behind his back in measured steps. The distinct clatter of his shoes filled the students with awe. No one ever dared to speak with him looking straight in to his eyes. Everybody talked to him dropping his eyes to the ground. ‘They always burn with anger,’ his friend Dino had once told Aniruddha. He only met D’Mello twice, once during his admission interview. The second time was when his sketchbook had somehow reached his table and he had summoned him. He was scolded for drawing in class. Aniruddha never had any admiration for him.
Is the sketchbook still with me or has it also been lost like all the other things from the past? Aniruddha thought within himself for a moment. It contained the last vestiges of St Paul’s. He rose from his bed and went to the storeroom. It was dimly lit. Except for a thin shaft of light that came in through the crack of a window, the whole room was dark. Aniruddha opened a window to clear the fuzziness. The room wore the look of a deserted place. A thick film of dust had gathered on every article. The old worn-out cupboard wobbled in the corner. Aniruddha opened the cupboard. A puff of dust blew out of it. Inside he found a Camel pencil box with a few broken charcoal sticks, bottles of Waterman ink that he wrote with in his schooldays, a few used Gamblin oil colour tubes his mother had bought him from New Delhi when he had just begun to show promise as an artist; there were some Loew-Cornell paintbrushes that he had abandoned long ago in favour of more costly Da Vinci ones, the Bridgeman book of drawing was lying crumpled at a side, its pages dog-eared. He searched for the Brustro sketchbook that had been his constant companion in his schooldays. It contained his thoughts on everything that he saw and felt as a boy. He found it lying beneath a heap of old Marg magazines. He eased it out and blew away the dust that had almost blurred its cerulean blue cover. He began flipping through its pages and memories overwhelmed him like fresh-fluted notes. He wondered how early he’d bloomed as an artist. Mostly of his pencil sketches had all the promise of an artist in the making. The lines had the strength of a mature hand. He came out of the room with the sketchbook in his hand. He was overjoyed. He went to his bedroom and, lying on his bed, looked at the drawings, thus reliving the memories he’d thought had slipped out of his mind years ago.
After battling his contradictory feelings for nearly a week, Aniruddha decided to visit Mr.D’Mello in Kaushani, a picturesque village in Uttarakhand which is where the old man had settled after retirement. It was a decision born more out of the prospect of seeing the mountains after a long time than any sympathetic fellowship with D’Mello. So at the end of December he found himself walking along a steep path that snaked through a small forest. As he ascended the hill, a large two-storied house with chocolate-coloured doors and white windows revealed itself. He knocked on the door. But no one answered it. He knocked again. This time too it went unanswered. He stood there in silence. A few minutes later he heard the sound of shuffling footsteps upstairs and as they came nearer a husky voice called:
‘Wait a minute.’
The door opened a few inches and an old man with a wizened face peered out.
‘Yes?’
‘I’m Aniruddha, Aniruddha Bose, his student. Is Mr. D’Mello at home?’
The old man stared at him for a few seconds, and then smiled.
‘Please come in. He is waiting for you,’ he said, opening the door and admitting him. He took his coat and hung it on a nail on the wall. Aniruddha lowered his backpack and set it on the ground.
‘This way,’ the old man said and led him through a bleak, dimly lit narrow corridor. The corridor had rooms on both sides. They were dimly lit as well but seemed cozy at first glance.
‘You were supposed to come sooner,’ he said.
‘Yes but I couldn’t find the time. How is he doing?’
‘See for yourself.’
Reaching a low door he paused and turned back.
“Wait a second. Let me switch on the light,’ he said and entering the room lighted the lamps. ‘Come in.’
As Aniruddha entered the room and the sight that greeted him chilled him to the bone. The man who was lying in bed had no resemblance to the Mr. D’Mello whom he had known. This man had a skeleton of a body. He slept as his mouth hung open slightly. Aniruddha sat on the edge of the bed and took his hand in to his own. It was bony, the skin had grown coarse. His hair that once covered a part of his forehead had thinned at the temples. His lips were chapped; his face, all furrows.
‘Look Babu who’s come,’ the old man said.
‘Sir, I’m Aniruddha. You had asked me to be here,’ he whispered.
Hearing his words Mr. D’Mello opened his eyes.
“I’m Aniruddha, your student from St Paul’s. Do you recognize me?’ Aniruddha repeated.
‘Aniruddha…my boy….I knew you would come,’ he said, smiling and swallowed his breath. His speech was slurred. The old man poured a glass of water and lifting Mr. D’Mello’s head, put it to his lips. It trickled down from the corners of his mouth. The old man wiped his mouth with a small towel.
‘What is ailing him?’ he asked the old man who was busy plumping pillows behind Mr. D’Mello’s back.
‘I’m dying Aniruddha…dying,’ Mr. D’Mello answered, trying to lift himself on bed but in vain.
‘I never expected to see you in this condition.’
‘Man thinks, God laughs. It’s all in our fate,’ he said, pointing to his forehead. Then he gestured to the old man to go away. The old man nodded his head and went away, closing the door behind him.
‘Where are you living now?’
‘In Mumbai.’
‘I read about you the other day in The Telegraph. It was a review of one of your exhibitions. What do you paint?’
‘Everything.’
‘Everything? Don’t you specialize in anything? Portraiture, marine painting or, for that matter, landscapes?’ He was gasping for breath but still retained a faintly commanding tone in his voice.
‘I’m not so great an artist,’ Aniruddha said, smiling.
‘But you look like one.’
The words echoed in Aniruddha’s heart. It was a rare compliment coming from a man who never bothered to lend a thought to his students’ artistic pursuits. ‘Do you remember Dino, Dino Bajaj? The troublesome boy who always made the most absurd excuses in class?’ He asked, trying to change the subject because he always felt uncomfortable when someone praised him.
Mr. D’Mello looked at him inquisitively.
‘You don’t remember him? Let me help you. Do you remember the Christmas evening when all the students of class nine were supposed to sing a carol? Dino put a frog inside someone’s socks and the boy screamed. We ran to and fro. The next day you called the boy to your room and snubbed him. He was not guilty. Can you recollect now? The incident?’
‘Don’t put pressure on his brain. He doesn’t remember anything about that school except for you.’ A crisp female voice said from behind. Aniruddha turned around and saw a tall beautiful woman standing at the doorway. Her face was glowing quietly in the half-light of the room. ‘How are you feeling papa’, she asked, coming forward and placed her left palm on Mr. D’Mello’s forehead. ‘The fever has subsided. Would you like to have some tonic?’
‘I’m fine dear. Please be seated,’ Mr. D’Mello said, waving at space beside him. But the woman drew a small tool and sat on it instead. She stole a quick glance at Aniruddha.
‘Meet my daughter Patricia, Aniruddha. Pat, this is Aniruddha, my best student,’ he said. There was a tinge of pride in his words.
As Aniruddha looked at her, she nodded her head slightly, in acknowledgement of his gaze and then turning to Mr. D’Mello, she asked about a telegram that was supposed to arrive that day.
‘Forget about it. Do you know Aniruddha is a painter and a famous one too? Aniruddha can you paint a portrait of my little Pat?’
‘Papa, is this the time or the place to talk about such things?’ She exclaimed in mock anger.
‘I think she is right. You should take some rest now,’ Aniruddha chimed in, seconding her.
‘Don’t listen to her boy,’ he said, waving a finger at his daughter. ‘She loves me a lot and is therefore anxious about me. She thinks I’m immortal and I’ll always be there to watch over her. But we all know when fate summons monarchs must obey.’
Hearing this she looked at her father pleadingly and was about to say something when someone knocked softly on the door. ‘Come in Kaashi kaka,’ she said and the old man entered the room with a large wooden tea-tray in his hands. Patricia rose and drew a low table near the bed on which he placed the tray. She handed Mr. D’Mello a bowl of soup and poured coffee into two cups.
‘Are you still mad at me boy?’ Mr. D’Mello asked.
‘For what?’ Aniruddha asked, taking the cup from Patricia’s hands.
‘For being…rude to you.’
‘No sir, you did your duty,’ he said, sipping the coffee that felt slightly insipid in his mouth.
‘It was a thankless job, you know?’
‘I’ve never heard anyone say that the job they are doing is rewarding.’
They fell silent. Except for the clink of cups and the saucers, the room had suddenly become soundless. Outside, a hazy afternoon was slowly drawing to a misty dusk. Lost in his thoughts, Aniruddha tried to visualize the last days of Mr. D’Mello at St Paul’s. He imagined an old worn-out man, dressed in white, walking the corridors with the same measured steps but this time with a slightly stooping posture, and instead of the clicking of his boots it was the muffled sound of palm shoes that no longer commanded the atmosphere of the school. He imagined him looking frowningly at others through his wire-rimmed glasses, trying to read their faces, only now his once steely eyes were a little cloudy. Lines had begun to form on his forehead. His face, dotted with freckles, had lost some of its former hardness. He stood at the balcony and stared fixedly at the uninviting hills that were changing colour with the coming and going of the sun, thinking, perhaps, about a wasted life devoted to the cause of others.
They didn’t talk anymore that night. After finishing his coffee, Aniruddha rose and took leave of them. He was given a room upstairs. It was a large square room and softly-carpeted. It had a double bed, a chair and a small bookshelf, half of which was packed with old basil-green Wordsworth Classics. The coffin-shaped wardrobe stood at a corner. There was a bedside lamp which threw a mournful light across the room. Blue-floral wallpaper covered a side of the wall against which the framed prints of paintings of various Dutch artists looked elegant. The large bay window that beautifully framed a slice of the landscape was covered with stiff maroon curtains. He went near the window. Outside, a lazy afternoon was slowly dissolving into a perfumed evening. The air was thick with the smell of wild flowers. In the distance, the mountains stood with an imperious demeanour watching the tragic flow of life and death beneath them. A streak of dull ochre spread across the western sky like a ribbon around the mountains, illuminating a landscape that could have inspired one of Ruisdael’s paintings. Looking on, Aniruddha felt a pang in his heart. He too had wanted to become a landscape painter. But unlike Ruisdael and Constable he could never learn the secret language of nature. The cooing of birds, the vertiginous heights of mountains, the quivering delight of streams, the kindling mirth of the sky were things he could not communicate with. Nature, the informer of poet’s art, never showered favours on him. Like Delacroix, he could not use Nature as dictionary, picking up its images at will to grace his canvas. It remained shut to his intelligence. He had eyes but not vision.
Easing out of his clothes Aniruddha took a long shower, washing away the tiredness. He had just settled himself comfortably in bed with his notebook when a knock was sounded on the door.
‘Good evening. Dinner is usually served at 8:30 p.m., would you like to have it in your room?’ The old man asked him as he opened the door. Aniruddha was tired, so he requested that it be brought to his room. Coming back to the bed he took out his notebook and jotted down the events of the day. It was a habit he had picked up at a workshop in J.J. College of Art, his alma mater. After finishing dinner he took out A Pair of Blue Eyes from the shelf and read till his vision got blurred with sleep. He slept well that night, dreaming of Elfride Swancourt who, strangely, had the face of Patricia.
Morning came with its share of beautiful weather. After a night of short, intermittent drizzles, the sun shone radiantly in the sky. Wrapping a shawl around himself, Aniruddha went downstairs and found Patricia in the dining hall. It was a large room with an oval mahogany table in the middle surrounded by four upholstered chairs. There was a dresser on one side for storing kitchen sets and appliances. The rectangular window was fitted with wooden venetian blinds through which light was streaming in to room, giving a slick appearance to it. Two blue and white ceramic ginger jars shone brightly on the cupboard.
‘Good morning,’ he said, drawing a chair to sit.
‘Good morning. Did you sleep well?’ she asked.
‘Yes. I was tired and it was quiet comfortable up there.’
She was peeling oranges attentively. A slab of slanting light fell on her face through the window illuminating its sharp contours. For the first time since his arrival Aniruddha saw her clearly. At first sight, her face suggested a volatile nature, even a certain impetuousness and ambition. But if one looked long enough, one would realize that it was neither impetuosity nor ambition that distinguished her features; it was rather a calmness that spread across her face, registering its presence most distinctly in the curve of her jaws.
‘I didn’t want to disturb you Mr. Bose,’ she said, gathering the orange segments in a bowl, her voice was all embarrassment.
‘Do you think my presence here will help him in any way?’
She sighed gently and gazed out of the window for a moment. Then turning towards Aniruddha said: ‘He is dying Mr. Bose.’ She spelled out the sentence sombrely as though it were a prophecy rather than an apprehension. He wanted to say something in reply but words fumbled in his mouth. Patricia rose from her chair and asked Aniruddha to come to the lawn.
The beautiful, well-kept lawn offered a panoramic view of the mountains. The slopes of the mountains, abrupt and broken, were dotted with nondescript cottages. A few lambs were grazing in the fields. Unlike Nainital, Kaushani had not yet graduated o the status of a full-fledged town. It still retained a certain bucolic charm. Coming to Kaushani from Nainital by car, Aniruddha saw the landscape change from one of Atkinson Grimshaw’s paintings to that of Helen Allingham, the brick built houses slowly giving way to humble cottages. He had brought his Brustro Sketchbook to draw this landscape and bring back a treasure trove of memories, but he still hadn’t found the time to sit down and study the landscape properly.
A table was laid in the middle of the lawn with two chairs. Patricia poured coffee in two bone china cups and handed Aniruddha one of them.
‘You know, Mr. Bose, it really surprises me how my father has forgotten everything about St Paul’s but still remembers your name,’ Patricia said, taking a sip from her cup.
‘It surprises me too.’
‘Were you close to him?’
‘Close? Oh no! Not at all. To be frank, no one was really close to him, not even the teachers. He maintained a distance from all of us. He was a man of dark wit. We never understood whether he was snubbing us or paying us compliments. Every time he entered the class he brought all the students down on their knees, figuratively speaking. We always stood in anticipation of his instructions regarding our lessons and we were supposed to follow them without question. His presence inspired a feeling of awe in us. But now I really feel sorry for him.’
‘One day he showed me a review of your exhibition published in Marg magazine. He was so proud.’
Aniruddha turned around to Patricia and looked at her fully.
‘You may not believe me,’ she continued, ‘but he secretly admired your artistic pursuits. He showed the reviews to others.’
‘Strange. In my schooldays he never encouraged his students to pursue anything except for rote learning which I detested. He’d even scolded me once for drawing in the class.’
‘Are you sure he never showed any interest in your paintings?’
‘Then let me share a story with you. One day I did a study of a forest in charcoal. But somehow my sketchbook reached his table and he called me to his room. I went there with a great deal of trepidation. He studied my drawing for a long time and then asked me in his grave corrosive voice “So is this the place behind your house where witches still dance”.’
Patricia laughed, covering her mouth with one hand. Then she exclaimed, ‘I really feel sorry for you, Mr. Bose, I do.’
‘You say he’s dying. Is there no hope?’
‘No Mr. Bose. Your presence may only delay the process but cannot salvage him.’
‘When did he shift to this place?’ Aniruddha asked after a long pause during which both of them were thinking how to lengthen the conversation for they had already started to enjoy each other’s company.
‘Just after his retirement. He had lived in Puducherry for a few months before coming here.’
‘Why Kaushani of all places?’
Patricia shrugged her shoulders lightly. ‘I don’t know. Maybe he wanted to spend the rest of his life in seclusion.’
Aniruddha nodded. ‘Have you been living here too since then?’
‘No. I was in Australia, working at an IT firm. I came here after the first stroke.’
‘When did it happen?’
‘About six months ago. One day he fell on the floor and became unconscious. He was taken to a nearby hospital. Doctors released him after primary examinations. They said it was a mild stroke. But soon he complained of a weakness in his left hand. Slowly it stopped functioning,’ she said, suppressing a sigh.
They both fell silent and turned their gaze to the distance. Suddenly the memories of his mother came back to Aniruddha. She was a tall, beautiful woman with a hint of melancholy in her eyes. She had a comely countenance and possessed the kindest heart in the world. Being tolerant of others’ faults, she suffered on her own silently. But what did she get from life? Nothing. In the last few days of her life when the cancer was slowly spreading through her body she had stopped talking to everyone. Tears rolled down the sides of her attenuated cheeks. She was afraid of death. Not because she would no longer see this beautiful world, but because she would have to part from her son who was the trajectory of her life. Now another man was fading away before his eyes and, once again, he could do nothing to stop it. The only thing that a man could do in these circumstances was to endure the pain.
‘Madam, the doctor has come to see Babu.’
The old man had walked in silently and was now standing behind them. He broke the silence that seemed to have settled between them permanently. They rose from their chairs and went indoors. The doctor was sitting on a sofa, sipping his morning cup of coffee. A burly man in his early sixties, he had a desolate face. It seemed as though all kindness and sympathy had drained out of his system a long time ago leaving only a clinical nonchalance in its wake. The hunched set of shoulders gave ample impression of his being a gloomy cynic. He sprang to his feet watching them come.
‘Good morning dear. How are you feeling today’, the doctor addressed Patricia vigorously.
‘Well, I haven’t died yet, doctor,’ Patricia replied showing little interest in his greeting and introduced Aniruddha to him.
‘You are our only hope, gentleman,’ the doctor said, squeezing Aniruddha’s shoulders so energetically that his skin continued to smart for quite some time. ‘Come, let us see Mr. D’Mello.’
The doctor lifted his briefcase from the sofa and marched towards D’Mello’s room. The room was now brightly lit. Mr. D’Mello was lying in his bed with eyes wide open, staring in the direction of the ceiling.
‘Good morning, Mr. D’Mello,’ the doctor greeted Mr. D’Mello dispassionately. The latter’s face puckered up in distress at the sight of this pudgy man. The doctor sat down on the edge of the bed with a thump and propped his briefcase up against his side. He fished out a small torch from his briefcase and pointed it at Mr. D’Mello’s eyes. The eyes didn’t blink. Instead they offered a hard and austere stare as the doctor kept flashing the light at his pupils. He checked his blood pressure twice. He asked for the last prescription and read it with such attention as though he were trying to find a solution to a century-old riddle. ‘Stick to this for now,’ he said, returning the prescription to Kaashi-kaka. Then, turning towards Mr D’Mello, he said: ‘You are alright old man. Come January, we will play poker together.’
The doctor snapped his briefcase shut and rose from the bed. Coming out of the room, he looked sternly at Patricia and whispered, ‘I don’t know, Pat, how long we can fight like this, if I’m being honest. You have to be strong. His death, I hope, will be quick and painless.’ Patricia nodded as if she had expected nothing else from the doctor. She saw him to the gate and returned with a face that was completely drained of colour.
That evening Patricia came to Aniruddha’s room. He was busy taking notes when two soft knocks sounded at the door. He climbed out from bed and opened the door.
‘Come in,’ he said and drew up a chair for her.
Patricia sat down on it with her legs crossed. She was wearing blue jeans with a black cardigan. Some of her hair which always remained tied had come adrift in front of his face. Aniruddha sat on bed, his hands crossed on his chest.
‘I was getting bored downstairs so I thought I’d come up and talk to you, and maybe even see your work. Have you brought your sketchbook with you?’
‘Hmm…yes. Wait a minute,’ Aniruddha said and went to the wardrobe. His American Tourister duffel bag lay on the floor next to it. He took out his large spiral-bound Fabriano sketchbook. ‘Here it is,’ he said placing the sketchbook on Patricia’s lap.
Patricia felt the cover as she ran her hand over it. It had a beautiful scene of Venice sketched with charcoal. She turned the pages slowly, rubbing the corner of each leaf between her finger and thumb. The drawings, mainly charcoal studies, were of Mumbai cityscapes. The Gateway of India, the marine drive, the skyscrapers, all seemed to have come alive in the pages. She was turning the pages attentively, her eyes brimming with admiration. Every study bore the stamp of artistic genius. She was looking up now and then to see the reaction on Aniruddha’s face.
‘Are you a landscape painter?’ she asked, closing the sketchbook.
‘I wanted to become one, but I didn’t have the courage to pursue that path.’
‘So what do you paint mainly?’
‘I paint portraits, mostly commissioned works.’
Patricia nodded and looked down at the carpet. ‘You artists seem enigmatic to me,’ she said after a long pause, ‘nobody can understand you entirely. A part of you will always remain beyond our grasp.’
‘I don’t think so. You need to have patience in order to understand art and the artist,’ Aniruddha said with conviction. ‘It is true that some of us are eccentric. One reason for that may be that we all are slaves to our instincts. Here I agree with Augustus John. He said artists are always at the mercy of their temperament.’
‘What is your temperament like, Mr. Bose?’ she asked him as she handed him the sketchbook.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, thumbing the pages of the sketchbook quickly. ‘It varies. When I am painting a portrait and I am satisfied with it, I feel relaxed. But when I cannot give expression to my ideas on canvas, I become restless. I feel as though the end is near.’
‘Mr. Bose, artists are blessed. Not everyone is born with such talent. They seem to know the meaning of life whereas we plod through existence blind.’
Silence descended in the room softly. The incessant ticking of the wall clock once again filled the air. Outside, the wind was rising. Patricia rose from her chair and went to the window. She drew away the curtains. Dots of water were sparkling on the glass which reflected her face vaguely. ‘Papa was an unhappy man,’ she resumed after a brief pause. It was a voice from which all past excitement had evaporated. It seemed tired. ‘After my mother died in a car accident, he lost his faith in God. He grew irritable. His relationship with the school managing committee deteriorated during his last days at St Paul’s. He was even denied a farewell on the day of his retirement. He came out of the school as a lonely man who’d no one to share his sorrows with. Even his students didn’t stand by him. Nonetheless, he never complained. Mr. Bose don’t you think he was wronged beyond measure?’
Aniruddha made no reply. Preserving an expression on his face that bordered on stoicism he nodded his head vaguely.
‘I feel sorry about telling you all of this. You must be bored. Why should you share the guilt of others when you are not complicit in it?’
‘I also feel sorry for you. You are enduring so much anxiety for the sake of your father,’ he said, bringing as much tenderness to his voice as he could on that moment.
‘I have accepted it as my fate,’ she said, bringing a strained smile on her lips.
At this moment someone pushed the door from the outside. It was Kaashi-kaka peeping through the gap. ‘I’ve served his dinner,’ he said, pushing a trolley inside. They saw the old man setting the plates and bowls on the table. ‘If you need anything else, just ring the bell,’ he said before leaving.
‘I think I should go now,’ Patricia said, buttoning up her cardigan. ‘By the way, how do you like the food?’
‘It’s delicious.’
‘Kaashi-kaka is a good cook,’ she said, holding the brass doorknob on her way downstairs. Then she stepped out of the room, wished Aniruddha a good night and went towards the stairs. She had hardly taken a few steps when she stopped as though something had crossed her mind. She turned back and came back to the door.
‘Tomorrow is Friday. I shall go to the church to offer my prayers. Would you like to come with me?’ she asked.
‘It’s been a long time since I last paid a visit to a church.’
‘Then you should come,’ she said smiling and went down the stairs quickly.
The next morning they found themselves walking along a cobbled path that snaked through a pine forest. The weather was crisp; a chill wind was blowing from South which hurt Aniruddha’s earlobes. Last night he had slept fitfully. After finishing his dinner he was flipping through the pages of a volume of D.G. Rossetti’s poems, though he could hardly concentrate. The image of Patricia came between the poems and him, interrupting his reading. It surprised him a little. He was not a person to be moved by a woman’s beauty. Women, he knew, are like venomous flowers. Was not Modigliani’s life torn apart after he fell madly in love with Jeanne Hebuterne? Years ago, when he had read Meryl Secrest’s biography of Modigliani in college, he had shed silent tears in sympathy with the great artist. What did Modigliani get in return of his love? Youth wasted, mind degraded, honour lost, Modigliani at last found his life’s life being dried away. He could become a martyr to art, but love made him its poor victim. Aniruddha did not want to follow that path. Instead he had decided to bear the chalice of art through the temptations of love without deviation. He began to interpret life by the coordinates of art. In his long career as an artist, he thought, many women had laid traps to seduce him. He knew he was handsome with a face whose features his art college professor had once compared to Antonio Canova’s Self-Portrait bust. Women naturally flocked to him. The day he had stepped in to Government Art College he had made his mind to become an artist-hermit and he had never deviated from that path since then.
So today when he was walking behind Patricia a strange unnamed feeling gripped his heart. Had he fallen in love with Patricia? He asked himself doubtfully. How could it be possible? Patricia was beautiful indeed. The day he saw her at lawn she seemed like a woman taken out of Bogeareau’s canvas, a beauty that does not dazzle your eyes; rather you can let your eyes rest on her face and drew sustenance from it. Then why did he feel attracted towards Patricia? Does this mean that all his old concepts of love were unfounded? Did this mean that no matter how much he tried to evade its adamantine grasp, love would trick its way into his life? Aniruddha began reasoning with himself. Every life is a reservoir of fairy tales. One only has to recognize the moment it surfaces. Today, Aniruddha saw it happen. This morning as they walked silently through this pine forest he felt that a fairy tale was unfolding around him, the only one that he was destined for in his life. He stood for a while and watched Patricia walk ahead of him. Her block heel shoes made a thudding sound on the cobbled path. Was she the woman whose fate had been woven into his through a divine conspiracy? He swallowed his breath.
‘Patricia,’ Aniruddha called out at her, a puff of vapour came out of his mouth.
Patricia turned around. She was wearing a maroon trench coat and a black woolen hat. A scarf was wound around her neck in an intricate way. ‘What happened, Mr. Bose?’ she asked taking a few steps towards him.
Aniruddha stood speechless for a few seconds. He was staring at her, full in the face, in wonderment. All of a sudden he found himself asking her: ‘Can I draw a portrait of you?’
Patricia smiled. ‘I will be honoured if you draw me, Mr. Bose. But, you know, I am too anxious these days. I cannot sit for long hours for you to draw my portrait. Let me calm down a little first.’
‘I’m sorry, Patricia. I got carried away. But ever since I’d come to this place I wanted to do a portrait of you. An artist rarely comes across a face like yours.’
‘My face? What is in my face, Mr. Bose?’ she asked curiously.
‘Women possess three kinds of faces. One is ordinary. It neither attracts nor repels. The second is beautiful but bland like the surface of a dull sea. Most of the people get attracted towards this kind of face but not artists. Artists look for faces that evoke speculation. Try as they might artists can never paint such a face in its entirety because there will always be shades of meaning which escape them. These shades will continue to change until the person dies. And even in her death the face will possess a new meaning and evoke a new interpretation in an artist’s mind. Such a face tempts an artist to go beyond imagination. The ideal example of such a face was that of Lizzie Siddal’s. Rossetti had tried to possess her by painting her in various ways. His canvases became the prisons of her souls. But at the end of the day Rossetti failed to capture her. He had failed because he was ignorant of the fact that one could not paint an ephemeral face with all its hues, its meanings and its changes in their entirety. Patricia, you remind me of Lizzie Siddal, though I don’t want to possess you.’
Patricia listened to the words spellbound and then smiled. ‘Mr. Bose, you are more of a philosopher than an artist.’
‘Every artist is a philosopher. Tell me, how can a painter paint a landscape if they do not know the secrets of nature?’
Patricia nodded, agreeing with him. Her face glowed under the piercing rays of the sun.
They resumed walking. They were making their way along a tar-coloured road that rose steeply before them. There was a small hill where the road ended and they could see the steeple of the church peeping out of its top. It was an old church made of grey-black stones, its façade showing medieval architectural pretensions. It was called the church of St Thomas. A slim gravel path led the visitors straight from the road to the church with two well-tended plots of lands on either side of it. As they entered the church, the first thing that greeted Aniruddha’s eyes was the image of Jesus Christ. It was a large rectangular painting with Christ averting his face from humanity in resignation. It was badly painted, a poor imitation of Raphael’s original. They took two seats not far from the pulpit. It was colder inside the church. Aniruddha buttoned up his jacket up to his collar. A few other people were present there apart from them. An old woman, her face wrinkled in pain, was silently muttering her prayer in long unintelligible syllables; a young girl, her veil half drawn over her face, was praying with her hands clasped at her breast; an old couple sat a little way off from the pulpit holding each other’s hands, tears rolling down their cheeks unceasingly. A spare middle-aged man in a wheelchair who had followed them crept to a seat at the farthest corner of the chamber. For a moment the church seemed to be filled with dim emotions of loss and fear. Aniruddha felt uneasy. He stole a glance at Patricia. Her sharp face seemed to be tinged with an unfamiliar shade of melancholy. Her eyes were closed; her lips poised gently for prayer. Aniruddha let his eyes linger on her face for a few moments, and a desire to touch it gathered dimly in his heart. He turned away his face and looked the other way, seeking some sort of a distraction. The church was slowly filling up as the time for prayer approached. A few moments later a man came up to the pulpit. He was dressed in white robe, falling loosely over his plump body. He crossed himself extravagantly. The man had a grim expression on his face. His troubled eyes threw a deprecating gaze at his audience. His beard was neatly trimmed revealing the hard line of his jaw; his hair was flecked with grey which was commensurate with his age. An anxious frown was perpetually set on his brow, imparting a caustic look to his overall appearance.
He opened the Bible and began reading from the Corinthians, his voice rising and falling like the waves of a sea. He had a deep voice, heavy with passion, which reached to the last pew of the chamber. He was reading the lines out slowly with a distinctive pronunciation, and the words, bright and haunting, fell from his mouth in clear cascades. Everyone was listening to him in rapt attention with their eyes closed, their limbs taut, their minds wandering elsewhere. As he came to the end of the chapter, his voice grew meditative. He weighed the last few words with equal force, each word lingering in his lips a few seconds more than the previous one. When he said ‘Amen’, a ripple of joy went through the church. There was an entranced silence inside. Aniruddha opened his eyes slowly. They were watery. He was evidently impressed by this reading. He was not a religious man. But today, the way this man read the Bible left him numb with an austere joy. He looked at Patricia. Her face was buried in the handkerchief she held in her hands. Tears had made soft scars on her cheeks.
A young man opened the door of the church. The crowd had begun to clear out, the people falling off in twos and threes, talking among themselves of today’s service. Patricia wiped her tears, crossed herself and followed the other people who were heading out.
‘Did you like the service?’ she asked Aniruddha as they came out of the church.
‘He was reading from the Corinthians,’ Aniruddha said with a hint of drowsiness in his voice. He still had not come out of the trance he had fallen into.
‘Have you read the Bible?’
‘Not entirely.’
‘Papa read me a few chapters especially from the Book of Genesis. He says the Bible is more literature than religion.’
‘It surely is.’
They entered the main road. The mist had begun to gather around them obscuring the pines in the distance. The houses huddled together on the slopes of mountains wore a mournful look. The sky that had been bright with light a few hours ago looked sullen now. Wisps of clouds had appeared there. It was a sight not unfamiliar to Aniruddha’s eyes. The fog in Darjeeling covered the roads in a similar way. It often rained there too, coming in short sharp spells. It left puddles in the streets in which he tried to see the reflection of the whole sky. Here, in Kaushani, the rain comes without warning, and when it comes it stays longer than in the plains.
‘I hate the rain. It bodes something ill,’ Patricia said looking up at the sky. Her face twitched in disgust.
They were walking quickly now. A streak of lightning raced across the sky followed by a clap of thunder. By the time they reached home they were partially drenched. It was dark everywhere, so dark that the lights were switched on in every room. Kaashi-kaka was mopping the floor that smelt strongly of Dettol. He straightened up when he saw them coming in through the gate. He propped the floor-mop against the wall and went to kitchen to prepare tea. While going upstairs, Aniruddha stood still for a while at the foot of stairs and stole a glance at D’Mello’s room. A rectangle of wan light fell on the floor through the door. He walked towards the door. Mr. D’Mello was sleeping, his pale hand clutching the edge of his quilt. The vital signs monitor that stood at his bedside showed the erratic zigzag of his frail heartbeats. Aniruddha stepped into the room cautiously. He stood motionless at the foot of the bed. The room was so silent that he was afraid that the sound of his breathing might wake Mr. D’Mello. Aniruddha stared fixedly at him. His hair cropped short, his body failing a little more each day, D’Mello looked slightly disfigured, like one of Lucien Freud’s self-portraits. The stoic face, that had once remained undisturbed before many a disaster, was now haunted by the shadow of death. Aniruddha felt a pang in his heart. He sighed deeply and came out of the room. Kaashi-kaka was standing in the corridor with his evening cup of tea. He took the cup from him and went upstairs.
Patricia came back to her room trembling with an unnamed joy. She still could not get over of what Aniruddha had said. Like a man coming from the edge of the unknown, he had come into her life and touched her inner reality. She undressed in front of the mirror and looked at her reflection with admiration. It was not the first time she was seeing herself naked in the mirror. Many an afternoon, when no one was around, she secretly admired her beauty in the exact same pose and blushed unknowingly. But today she looked at her reflection with new eyes. She had been praised by an artist. Is there a greater compliment for a woman’s beauty than to be praised by an artist? She knew there was none. Would she be born again on the canvas of Aniruddha? Would she be another Dorian Gray? Patricia felt her body getting inflamed at these thoughts. A gathering of emotion she felt rising up like tongues of fire inside her stomach threatening to consume her. The world saw her as a woman with an imperious personality. The illusion was so strong that she too had been taken in, she had lived with it all her life. It weighed her do
- Today that illusion had been broken. Love had revealed her true self to her; that she, Patricia D’Mello, was no woman made of different clay. Love could bend her to its will.
Patricia opened her wardrobe and wrapped a housecoat around her naked body. She sat on a chair near the window. Under the close clouds of December morning the valley looked sad and monotonous. The cottages now blurred with hanging clouds seemed to withdraw into themselves. Soon, walls of mist would completely hide them. She was still quivering from a nameless joy that seemed to creep along her spine like a fever. She knew it was love. The day she entered her father’s room and exchanged the first glance with Aniruddha, she knew she was in love. There was something exquisitely charming behind that impenetrable gaze. Ever since then she had wanted to Aniruddha what she felt, but she found herself unable to do it. At first, it seemed too uncivil of her to confess her feelings to a man who had come to save her father’s life. And now it seemed too late. Life, like waves in the sea, never repeats itself. She knew that once Aniruddha left Kaushani he would never come back. Then what would she be left with? Only a raiment of woven sighs. Patricia closed her eyes. Needles of rain had turned the window glass opaque. Colour seemed to have been draining away from the landscape, from her life.
Patricia didn’t know how long she had been sitting there when she startled back to reality by two loud knocks on the door. Someone was banging on it. She rose from her chair, tightened the knot of her housecoat and opened the door. Kaashi-kaka was standing there with fear in his eyes.
‘Babu is feeling unwell,’ he said in a trembling voice.
On hearing this, Patricia rushed to her father’s room almost pushing Kaashi-kaka away from her path. Mr. D’Mello had difficulty breathing. He was murmuring something in long unintelligible phrases. Patricia knelt down before the bed and moved her hand over D’Mello’s head. She tried to listen to his words but could hardly make out anything.
‘Call the doctor,’ she said to Kaashi-kaka who was ceaselessly wiping his tears away with shirtsleeves.
‘Should I call him too?’ he asked, gesturing upwards.
Patricia nodded. ‘Yes’.
Moments later, Aniruddha came quickly down the stairs. ‘Have you called the doctor?’ he asked Kaashi-kaka, sitting himself on the edge of the bed and massaging D’Mello’s chest.
‘He’ll be here in a minute,’ Kaashi-kaka said.
Mr. D’Mello was slowly losing his consciousness. A trickle of saliva ran down from the corner of his mouth. His eyes became hazy. His body was turning limp.
‘He’s losing consciousness. Talk to him. He should remain conscious until the doctor arrives.’
‘Papa, do you hear me?’ Patricia asked, trying to stifle her sobs.
‘Babu, you had promised that you would take me to Darjeeling. You cannot go away without fulfilling your promise.’
‘Mr. D’Mello, why didn’t you tell me that you secretly admired my paintings? A few words of praise from you would be worthy of a hundred reviews in The Marg. Why did you spend your life without sharing anything with anyone, pining away silently in your heart? Why didn’t you tell me that you loved me? Why didn’t you tell the world that you were not what you looked like?’
Aniruddha said at length. His voice was quivering with compassion. He lowered his head next to D’Mello’s and sighed. Soon, he began to cry like a child. The sight stunned the other two people present there. They did not try to console him; rather, they let him unburden his heart. Patricia rose from her kneeling position and stood a little way off. Life is always like this, she thought. Everything is belated here. And memories are nothing but a bunch of regrets that we must carry with us all our life.
They would have stayed that way forever but for the scratching sound of scratching of car wheels at the gate. The doctor bustled into the room with a heavy leather bag. He checked D’Mello’s pulse. It was feeble. He brought out two disposable syringes from his leather bag and filled one of them with an opaque solution and the other with a bright one that looked like mercury. He pushed the injections one after another into D’Mello’s arms. ‘He’ll regain consciousness in an hour. But I’m afraid, Pat, your father may not survive the week.’ the doctor said with a clinical indifference as though death was something that paid him a visit every alternate week and he had lost interest in it.
Three days later Mr. D’Mello died. They went to the church for the service. It was a windy afternoon. A few people, mostly strangers, accompanied them. They were talking among themselves in broken whispers. The plump clergyman, his austere face still devoid of any emotion, uttered some vague words. The service done, the flowers thrown over the grave, dust to dust D’Mello returned. Someone suggested raising a stone but Patricia declined.
The next day, Aniruddha and Patricia set off on a car for Kathgodam. Aniruddha had to catch the Bagh Express to Kolkata, and Patricia had some papers to be submitted at the insurance company in Lalkuan. They did not say a single word to each other hroughout the journey. When they reached the station, Bagh Express was already at platform number 1. A few vendors were threading in and out of the crowds of passengers. Aniruddha took leave of Patricia saying he felt sorry his presence did not help her father recover from his illness. She remained silent. She pulled out a blue plastic packet from her handbag.
‘Aniruddha,’ she said. She called him by his name for the first time since his arrival there.
Aniruddha was about to board the train but turned back. Patricia stretched out her hand.
‘What are these?’ he asked, feeling surprised.
‘Primroses. For you. For everything.’
Illustration : Shimul Sarkar