A Madman's World

A DEFECT OF VISION

Dipanjan Rai Chaudhuri

2007

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A DEFECT OF VISION

Dipanjan Rai Chaudhuri declares his right to be known as the author of this work. All rights related to this work are reserved by him January 2007

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FIRST ENCOUNTER

She was a city girl. Her first memory was of television antennae, seen through a grilled window, against a lumpy mass of cloud, so white that the glare almost hurt the eyes. It must have been the end of the rains, just before the feathery clouds of autumn invade the high sky. Like all people of the city she had a love-hate relationship with it. This morning she had expected the metropolis to relinquish hold over the scene only very gradually, but the bus route rode across the industrial suburbs in a short cut, and the landscape, sliding away past her window, had soon become monotonously flat, with lush green paddy fields on both sides of the highway, parcelled into a grid by raised pathways, continuously turning away from one through the gaps between gnarled old trees. The monotony of the flat grid was such that even the dusty, noisy crossroads and marketplaces, where the bus stopped every now and then, afforded relief by offering for scrutiny the always interesting behaviour of men and women on the roadside. People sensed the aura of the metropolis about her, casting covert glances or, quite often, staring frankly at her. She was dressed in jeans and a top, an attire still not common in these parts, but, to her surprise, not entirely absent, too, among the girls boarding the bus in twos and threes at the different stops, their destination being, as she understood from their chatter, a degree college farther down the road. She wore no make-up and her hair was long and black and braided demurely, while one or two of the college goers had bobbed hair 3

with traces of dye and almost all had paid more attention to their faces. Yet, the glances of the people on the road and in the bus were for her alone, her origin having been identified infallibly. The smartness of the girls was not something she had expected to find. Again, the two women who shared adjoining seats with her were dissecting their respective workplaces, namely, a post office and a bank, and, while white collar bread winning by females was quite an ordinary occurrence in the metropolis, she had not known that so far in the outlier, too, women going out to white collar work no longer invited comment or even a second glance. Her cousins were sitting separately at windows behind her, and, as she found out by craning her neck backwards once or twice, sleeping with abandon. They were both much older than she was, her father having been the youngest of five brothers and three sisters, all of whom were now dead. The six other cousins, converging from elsewhere to the ancestral lands today, worked and lived in suburban satellites of the metropolis. These two, who accompanied her, were brothers, and lived in the metropolis, an hour's journey away by public transport from the tiny one-storeyed house where she stayed with her mother. She had been a toddler swaying unsteadily around their legs, while they were growing up, because their fathers shared accommodation for a few years between two bouts of quarrelling and splitting. The generation of their parents had generally been a quarrelsome one, and it was only after they died was it found possible for all concerned to sit together over the ancestral lands. The two brothers had watched her grow up into a lovely and accomplished young woman with wonder, and, though finding it difficult to adjust to the transformation, they only thought it proper to play a protective role whenever they were out in the world with her. During this journey, they were called upon to do this on the rather mundane 4

occasion when she felt an urgent need to relieve herself. Bus stops did not provide conveniences and the men simply stepped behind trees.

She went

down the slope into the fields while the brothers stood on the road side, screening her and discouraging inquisitive urchins. As the bus emptied its load of people commuting to work or school, it picked up a different type of passenger, on a shorter trip and talking of the rains or the lack of them, fluctuations in the market prices of vegetables, the iniquity of cold storage owners and the uppishness of hired labour. No one sat beside her. The odd woman or two did board the bus, their clothes reeking definitely of the world of hired labour, but they cowered at the front of the bus, minding and, when necessary, giving suck to children, and uppish would be the last word the girl would have thought of associating with them.. She would learn later from her rural cousins that thirty years back such women would sit on the floor of the bus and not dare rest their backsides on seats. So she had seen uppish behaviour after all. The day was turning sultry and she started to nod. This was unfortunate, because awake her attention was engaged by the new impressions crowding into her mind, while even twenty winks sufficiently loosened her controls to allow the events of the morning to rerun in a flash of distaste. She not only saw herself looking at her friend at the bedroom door and drawing the bed-clothes up to her neck, but distinctly felt his touch, and the relived reluctance of her body shocked her awake rather than the jerk of her nodding head. He lived next door and his family had been there for three generations. His father had befriended the prickly man who spent all his savings building a house for his wife and baby girl, and the two children, the boy a year younger than the girl, grew up together, romping about in both houses. Her mother, being a 5

schoolteacher, ran short of time for much neighbourliness, but the boy's mother, affectionate and easy-going in nature, made up the deficit, especially after the death of the girl's father. This event brought the boy's father to extend a sort of guardianship over her, and he perhaps knew more than her mother of what went on inside the head of the girl of few words, as she was known to the workless boys who dawdled about all day on their street. What none of the parents knew of had started off almost as an academic exploration of comparative anatomy at a very early stage of their growing up, so much so that they discovered pleasure as a climax of touching even before they heard and read the usual insinuations about it through the good offices of peers and seniors. As a result they indulged themselves clinically at first and without any guilt, until the boy started to develop a possessiveness which was his way of falling in love, while she remained emotionally untouched in spite of deep affection for him and a genuine concern over the indolence which was the hallmark of his spoilt nature. Their physicality was unimpeded by their unsuspecting parents, who had left them to play in locked rooms since they were kids, and misinterpreted closed doors, after they had grown up, because the boy had taken up smoking and in these households it was still not a done thing to flaunt cigarettes before elders. As she flowered into a beauty, smart and intelligent, earning excellent grades and showing a flair for creative writing, she was praised and feted and wooed and, in general, made much of by boys and men, to the intense chagrin of her friend whose insecurity reflected itself in a fierce need for handling her and, as he convinced himself, giving her pleasure, though the fact of the matter was that to her the intimacy became more and more a violation as she matured into an

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understanding of pleasure as a part of lovemaking,

romantic love being

something which she was definite she did not feel for the boy. After every incident like this morning's, she decided to terminate the relationship, but she had not succeeded in taking the final plunge yet, not because of the tiny flicker of involuntary, clinical pleasure which she could never hide from the boy and of which he made much in reassuring himself of his continued possession of the body which tormented him night and day, but because she was afraid he would let go his life completely and drift into an indifference little short of madness. Once she had resisted him for six months, but her very real affection for him wore her down when his sleeplessness and loss of appetite not only shook up his parents but led to feverishness and a cough which was treated at his mother's place in a manner sufficiently hushhush to convince her that it had been early consumption.

The sun was up over one's head when they arrived and shadows were minimal. Overnight bags were all they had as luggage, and because, as usual, there were no conveniences for women, they set out, without loss of time, from the marketplace, where the bus had set them down, along a broad metalled road, lined with buildings, quite a few of which housed shops and offices. There were two shops selling audio and video equipment with running television sets at the display windows and stacks of cassettes and discs near the door. There were three national banks side by side, an office complex exhibiting the government logo, and a post office. There were two doctors, a dentist, and an optician, the last unmistakable because his wares were generously advertised at a window above which jutted out the model of a huge frame for glasses. Where the buildings started to thin out, a sprawling compound enclosed a bungalow 7

nestling among huge trees. She was surprised to note that this was the police station. The buildings petered out and the road became an embankment separating two groups of green paddy fields with barebodied men working in them, a mass of green darkness, where the road seemed to reach the horizon, being the hamlet which contained the house of their ancestors. The dark stain grew in size and resolved itself into groves and, then, individual trees; thatched cottages began to be visible, and people moving about. The horizon receded away and a turn in the road showed a group of brick houses. Soon they took a dirt road at a fork, which led across pasture land, on which were feeding cows with tinkling bells around their necks, right to a fallen down wall which must once have boxed in the unexpectedly spacious one-storeyed house they were approaching. The bricks of the arch which had framed the gateway were still standing and she had a sensation of the bizarre as she followed her cousins though the archway although she could have skirted the arch without any impediment. Turning back once just before passing under the arch, through a gap in the trees of the orchard surrounding the house, she saw fields stretching away to the horizon. Noting her gaze one of the cousins said, 'Our lands are out there.' But what had actually caught her eye was in the middle distance, the statue of a man sitting on the ground with his back to the house. It was an odd posture for a statue and an odd place to put it in. The house itself showed signs of maintenance and had newly been treated to a limewash, to impress them regarding costs, as her cousins muttered to one another. It was built on a raised platform and young people rushed down the steps shouting welcome. A pretty girl took her arm and led her up the steps to where the aunt, wizened and bent with age, sat on the platform in a wicker chair, 8

gently smiling at her, with the two resident cousins, shirts thrown over their usually bare torsos in honour of the gathering guests, hovering shyly behind their mother. She touched the feet of the old woman who looked back triumphantly at her sons so that the act of obesiance could be properly registered. The wife of the elder of the two brothers came out swiftly though the doorway, and, putting an arm around her shoulders, took her inside to the chattering welcome of the many women and children, who gathered around her immediately with gasps of laughing admiration, quite confusing her, so that she was relieved when the girl who had come down the steps to her, and whom she now made out to be the daughter of the elder cousin, took her away from the throng to her mother's room where the visitor was to stay the night. The light was soft when she came out onto the platform where tea was being served in delicate crockery, brought out, no doubt, for the occasion. The bathroom had had all the usual fittings. Only the taps had been dry and one was expected to take water from a drum. But there had been plenty of water in the drum and she had no problem freshening herself up. Her aunt beckoned to her to sit on the mat at her side and launched immediately into questions about her life with her mother, inquiring about her mother's menstrual status and other such quite private matters without qualm. The statue was directly in her line of sight, and she thought of asking about it, but stopped at the last moment. Light began to fail swiftly after sunset, and the fields seen through the avenue of trees darkened. Her eyes widened as she saw the statue rise, turn and walk straight up through the archway towards the house. She understood, then, that the statue was actually a man who had been sitting motionless so long. Now he walked past them with firm steps across the platform towards the door of the house, returning shortly to sit on the ground at one corner of the 9

platform. The upper part of his body was bare and he wore only the doubled cloth which was the traditional wear in this part of the country. He was fair and tall and without the flab which middle age confers on sedentary people. His hair was long, rust coloured from lack of oil but not unkempt, and a salt and pepper beard covered his face. While passing her the first time he looked intently at her, and, when he returned, he looked at her again, and, this time, smiled. No one took any notice of him. Lights went on inside the house. She had already noticed the bulbs and fans. The platform remained in restful shadow. Birdsong awakened her. It was light outside though the sun was not up. Her sister-in-law and the pretty niece, who had slept in the same wide bed with her, were up, no doubt, and could not be seen. The drum was a little less than half-full now, and she could still indulge in her habit of taking an early bath without hesitation. She came out to the platform, savouring the freshness of the air. The sky was filled with colour and the sun came up, a red disc brightening to dazzling yellow in a remarkably short time. The man who had been a statue was working in the garden below the platform, the sweat glistening and running in streams down his bare body. Finding her looking at him, he raised a hand in salutation, but did not stop his digging. Soon, the other cousins started to arrive, having spent the night near the railway station at the house of a relation, who had actually been instrumental in the brokering of the deal. There was breakfast in an inner courtyard, everyone sitting on the floor and exchanging badinage, the sisters-in-law and nieces running between kitchen and courtyard, distraught with serving the large party of cousins and the numerous children of the house. She tried to have herself included in the serving party but everyone shouted protests at her, and. of course, the work for which they had all gathered would begin right after 10

breakfast. The resident brothers had breakfast with them, but the digger in the garden did not come in. The buyer was a local man, a would-be property developer, now a clerk in the land revenue office, with a bizarre anachronism of an official title which might be translated as He-who-places-the books-for-the-perusal-of-the-representativeof-the-regent-for-the province-on-behalf-of-the-emperor-who-is-the-only-chosenof-the All-powerful. The empire was dust, but the title lived on. The title-holder was already seated with the broker in front of papers in an outer room flanked by the platform. The multitude of papers finalising the sale were supposed to be signed in front of the revenue officer who doubled as registrar. To save time at the registration table they were actually signed beforehand, but the custom was that all signatories, or their authorised agents, were to swear an affidavit in person before the officer. In fact, it was this requirement which necessitated her journey here. Otherwise, the negotiations with the buyer, not to speak of the many bouts of negotiations among themselves, and even the signing of the agreement for sale, had all taken place either at the residence of her metropolitan cousins or at that of the suburban cousin nearest the metropolis. Breakfast upset her. A pair of cousins spoke pointedly of the coconuts and the offerings of the season visible in the orchard. The elder sister-in-law rose in confusion and immediately sent out two of the boys, who fished out a servant with plucking rods and knives and ran down to the orchard. Even before they finished breakfast, to the intense embarrassment of the girl, luscious slices of seasonal fruit were set before them on plates and coconut water in tumblers. It was an obsession with these two cousins that the residents were enjoying all the fruits of the land and everyone else was missing out. That this basic sentiment was supported by the others was clear at the time of the negotiations. The point 11

that the residents had so long been enjoying sole possession was brought up again and again, and the proposal of the resident cousins to allow them to buy the entire house out of their share of the proceeds of the sale was repeatedly blocked with an eye to raising the price to be paid for the house. The assignment of the house to the occupiers was cleared only after the girl pointed out, during one of the absences of the resident cousins, that it had been possible to keep possession of the property intact, without the encroachment and even usurpation which often attended the fate of the landed property of absentees, precisely because of the residency of the occupiers,

. In fact, she was

surprised, she said, that they were agreeing meekly to equitable division, when they could have used their de facto possession as a bargaining counter for forcing out a disproportionate share for themselves. 'They wouldn't dare,' said the others on the face of it, but her argument actually impressed them into a more accommodating mode. During the signing of the papers, she was seated by a window which gave on the platform, and so she saw the digger when he came in, flushed with the exercise and covered in sweat. After the signing was over, they all trooped out to go to the office which was on the main street they had walked down the previous afternoon. There had been a shower in the night and the dirt lanes across the paddy fields, connecting the house to the paved way leading to the street, were muddy and the mud sucked at her shoes. She took them off, taking her cue from the cousins and the buyer, all of whom had their shoes dangling from their hands. The mud was washed off at a clear puddle when they stepped onto the paved way, and shoes were put on once more. In the office itself she was made much of and whisked into the chamber of the officer who promptly made seating arrangements for her, and, ruling out her 12

protests, ordered tea. A young woman signing for property was clearly still a rarity in these parts. Despite the welcome, however, annoyance soon overcame her when she learnt that after a month or so she would have to make the journey again. This day, they were consummating the sale and applying for registration of this fact, along with payment of the requisite fees, and the registration itself would follow in time after the application was checked and the details of the land, in question, verified. The actual payment in cash of two-thirds of the sale price, a third having already been paid at the time of agreement, took place in the outer office, most of the time, she found, being taken up in the counting of each one's share. Nobody was interested in payment by cheque, not only because of the delay in knowing whether the cheques would be honoured ; nobody would be paying capital gains tax. She had tried to object to the arrangement as it was risky for her to move about with so much cash on her, and she would, in any case, be paying all her taxes, but the metropolitan brothers protested that they would see her right to her house when they came back, and she did not persist with her objection, shrinking from adopting what might be construed as a holier-than-thou attitude. She felt drained when she returned and would have liked to lie alone in bed for some time, but her nephews and nieces pounced upon her. They were excited to see this city-bred aunt, breathtakingly lovely, and young enough to be included in their generation rather than their parents', though they were also somewhat disconcerted by her self-possession and confidence. The eldest nephew, about to take his school-leaving examinations, was visibly smitten, and pestered her continually for her cellphone number. She had realised last evening that she should have brought little presents for them, but the ancestral lands and 13

their occupants were shadowy concepts to her, and her mother did not know how many children she would find and what their ages would be like. This morning she had remedied the oversight by buying loads of candy, and she was content now to see them swarming all around her on the platform, happily munching away. She looked out through the gap in the foliage and there he was sitting at his post in the shade of the ancient tree where the meadow began, a statue gazing out to the horizon, seemingly timeless. After the mid-day meal, at which, this time, fruits were conspicuous by their presence, she felt definitely sleepy. But the sun was obscured by light cloud and there was a pleasant breeze, and the younger set wanted her to undertake a tour of the lands. When she tried to wriggle out of it, the elder niece laughed and said, 'You never came to see your ancestral lands once, and now will you just sell them off and go, without even taking a look?' The complaint was tailored for a laugh, but it was too true not to cut her to the quick, and she was about to give in, when the gazer at the horizon, who had eaten his meal with them, though at a separate corner of his own, came and stood beside them. He smiled at her, and, calling the elder niece by name, said, 'Look at her. She is falling asleep in her chair. Let her rest an hour or two, and then I shall also accompany you.' He had a soft, firm voice, and clearly enjoyed good rapport with the children, who quietly dispersed, all except the elder niece, who seemed quite contrite not to have noticed her tiredness and now took her to her room to rest. Before entering the house she turned her head. He was moving towards the gap in the avenue, through which he would, no doubt, walk to his tree. He showed her the lands while the children chattered on, a riot of laughter and colour wandering through the staid countryside. He taught her which was 14

homestead land, which was pasture and which cultivable. Of course, almost the whole of the last was under paddy. Most of the land had been acquired by her great-grandfather from the proceeds of a business encompassing the making and selling of gold jewellery, run from a shop at the district town, and, also, as she made out from bashful understatements, some usury. The shop was no longer there but its goodwill continued to help the elder of the resident brothers who had a shop in the same locality. She almost chuckled as she thought of the chagrin of the pair of pertinacious cousins who must have smelt an unenforceable claim on the goodwill. They wandered to the meadow where he sat and she was bowled over by his tree. It was a venerable giant on the squat side, having, over the years, sent down subsidiary trunks from the main branches till it was a one-tree grove. In fact, from the house she had thought that there were many trees where he sat. The meadow, dotted about with grazing cattle, stretched to an eclectic collection of different species of trees on the opposite side. But it was the orchard which he exhibited with most pride and affection. Every tree was an individual to him, with a separate history, and, while showing off its points, he had a habit of patting the trunk as if it were a horse. The orchard had been set up by her grandfather, although some of the trees had been planted by the old usurious jeweller himself. The broker was to go to the metropolis, and, considering everything, he had hired a station wagon to take along with him whoever found it convenient. She had known of the arrangement, and they set out before sundown, because the approach roads to the metropolis were choked up in the late evening. She made her farewells at the house and came out together with the metropolitan cousins and two others who would get down on the way. 15

He was standing near the solitary gate, smiling at her. She was touched by the fact that he had broken his routine to bid her good-bye. 'Come again,' he said. The entire junior troop, neighbouring children having further swelled its number, accompanied her to where the car was waiting, and sent her off. The eldest nephew, crestfallen, waved his hands with a mournful slowness, which made her want to giggle, and then with a swish they were on the highway. She started nodding right away, and her return journey was made up mostly of torn fragments of sleep, with a succession of vivid dreams: the house as it first looked from the gate, her sisters-in-law fanning the deity during evening prayers, the meadow with grazing cattle, a circle of children chanting 'She will sell off and run away',

the ringing laugh of the elder niece on being asked about boy-

friends, and, again and again, a tree which was many and a statue which stood up and smiled to say, 'Come again'. As they approached the metropolis, her cellphone rang. It was the person her mother wanted her to marry, and though she did not usually dislike the attention he showered on her, her half asleep reveries were jarred by the call, and she was quite short with the poor man, who, however, thought that her irascible response was the result of tiredness, and rang off soon. But, already, as the massive bridge vibrated under them, the present caught her in its toils, and her visit quickly dissolved into shadows at the back of her mind. Her phone rang again. Her mother was anxious to know where she was. There had been a smart shower and the roads glistened under the streetlights.

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THE MAN WHO SAW COLOURS

Her mother was at a loss, at first, when her daughter described what she had seen of the man whom she had mistaken for a statue. Then, suddenly, the unhappy times she had spent in the inhospitable house, and which she had thought she had set behind her for good, caught up with her, and, out of the host of memories which flooded her mind, a quiet face with brooding eyes came to the foreground, and she exclaimed, 'Oh, you are talking of the stepson.' It transpired that the crafty old usurer had, in his dotage, fallen for the daughter of an indigent tenant, a pale, insignificant girl with a pretty face. He married her, in the face of understandably intense opposition from his wife of fifty years, a formidable harridan in whose quite tyrannical running of the household even he dared not interfere, and a quiet resentment on the part of their grown-up son, who was already married and blessed with children. The young wife was mercilessly ill-treated by her senior in a thousand unobtrusive ways and soon died, but not before leaving behind an issue, the stepson. It was a quirk of fate that the old matriarch took the motherless infant to her bosom and with fierce possessiveness brought him up just like her own grandsons. She shooed away her husband whenever he came near him, complaining to the skies that the satyr had killed the poor innocent (for, after death, she had promptly been canonised by her erstwhile rival), and would kill the poor boy given half a chance.

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She would, no doubt, have spoilt him irrevocably had she lived, but both the older people passed away soon after the boy started to walk and talk. His halfbrother's wife was a good soul and he grew up without special attention but also without any neglect. He grew up to be a hard-working farmer, quiet and taciturn, his only expression of insecurity being a quite excessive interest in gods and goddesses. At every village fair he bought icons and earthen images and placed them in alcoves at the heads of the doors opening into the various rooms. He had no confidant or special friend and no-one knew what went on in his mind. The first outburst which signalled the occurrence of some catastrophe in his mental life took place shortly after his twenty-first birthday. His brother's wife would get up at first light, take a bath and perform a ritual of worship at the temple, which, though so styled, was just a room housing the image of the family deity, a statue carved from an alloy of eight metals. As the statue was valuable, the temple room was locked up at night, but all family members and the older servants knew the niche where the key was concealed. This morning, as the mistress of the house walked towards the temple room, after taking her bath of purification, she noticed the door to be open. She thought it was another sign of the declining faculties of her husband with age, his being the task of locking the house up at night. Making a mental note of remembering to have this duty transferred to her son, she went serenely on, till she could see into the room, when she found that the idol was not there. A hue and cry ensued, and, during the search of the premises, it was found that each little niche housing an idol gaped emptily. The mistress who was the only one who had or cared to have even an inkling of the thought processes of the collector of idols, approached him where he was sitting on the platform looking 18

out to the land beyond. On being asked about the mystery, he calmly replied, ' I have thrown the b........s and b.......s into the water.' On casting fishing nets into the pond, the eight-metal statue and those of the larger statuettes which were made of stone were recovered. The earthen idols had been disfigured irrevocably by the water. The family priest re-installed the guardian deity in the temple room with the appropriate incantations and also placed the smaller idols there. When the miscreant was asked by his much older half-brother about the affair, he remained silent. As the master of the house persisted in the queries, he began to display signs of excitement, and the mistress stepped in to stop the inquisition which was attended by all the members of the family and the full complement of servants. On taking him aside, he beckoned her to come closer, and whispered in her ear, 'They are of no use'. The mistress sighed. She had no intention of going into the theological fray with, as was now apparent, her demented half-brother-in-law, and adopted the easier option of recommending religious tolerance. She told him that, sometimes, she felt the same about them, but even so, he should not prevent those who thought them to be of use from exercising their right of persisting in their deluded worship. He thought for a while, and agreed to her proposition. "So, there won't be a repetition of today's act?' He shook his head. For some time after this, he remained a recluse. He wouldn't shave, washed minimally, ate little, and slept for only an hour or two at dawn. Children saw his unkempt hair and shrank away. This mood passed off after a few months and he fell into the routine she had seen. 'Didn't people find out what had really happened ?' 'He never talked about the incident again. Shortly afterwards, your grandfather and grandmother passed away, one after the other.' 19

She stared pensively at the skyline of the city and wondered what he thought about all day as he stared at the horizon bounding the field before him. Her reverie was broken by her mother asking her to return the phone-call of the person she had styled in her own mind as the Suitor. Apparently, he had expected her to call from the 'village', as he called it, signalling her safe passage. 'You should have called,' complained her mother. 'Mother, don't be tedious,' was the reply. 'My cell-phone couldn't send signals from there. There is no tower nearby. Otherwise, I would have called you.' Her mother went on grumbling but resolute silence finally won the day, and they went off to sleep talking about the family and the deal which would allow them to repair and refurnish this house and change the leaky plumbing and scotch-taped electrical wiring.

Next morning she was ready for her troublesome friend, but he showed up much later, just as she was leaving for work. He was a rock music buff, and, while accompanying her to the stairway to the underground, went on chattering about a concert he had attended the previous evening while she was away. She liked to talk to him, they had similar interests, and she wished he was always like this. He spoilt it all just before she stepped down below, by asking her to tea in his room in the evening, an invitation which carried the connotation of all that she had grown to shun. She shook her head and averted her face but not before she had seen disappointment and a resentful sullenness wipe out from his eyes the flushed brightness of just the previous moment. With a sigh she went down to the trains.

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As she stepped out onto the sidewalk her spirits lifted. Nattily dressed men and smart young women were all bustling to work. The boy who opened the shutters of the tiny confectionery shop, wedged in beside the entrance to the high-rise beanstalk which housed her workplace on its fifth floor, gave her a saucy grin and fielded her repartee with aplomb. The lift attendant gave her a 'You are the top' sign, and, then, she parted the tall glass doors, and, in a trice, bright faces were all about her, chattering and laughing. Suddenly, she felt a momentary return of the happiness she had known at times as a child. Even the Suitor, standing in the middle distance and holding a well-rehearsed pose of feigned disinterest, appeared merely ridiculous instead of exasperating. She even gave him a 'You are transparent' look, which was a mistake, for, as she settled into her cubicle and lifted the first file of the day, he poked in his head and asked her to join him for lunch at the refectory, a simple request which would gain in seriousness if refused. Resigned, she nodded acceptance. The Suitor was, in fact, quite presentable. Personable, soft-spoken and polite, nobody would take him to be a son of the major partner of the business, a raucous rogue who treated with contempt the cultured diffidence of this his younger son, the elder being a tyrant after his own heart, the boss in this office. When his younger son began to show a flair for painting, the father scolded his wife for spoiling his character, and, riding roughshod over his unwillingness, booted him into this office in a junior post, not for the dubious prospect of learning the business from bottom upwards so beloved of romantic writers, but because he sincerely, and bitterly, believed that his son could do no better. In the office, the son, on his part, was perennially apologetic for the behaviour of his father and his elder sibling. Just now, he was telling her why he could not attend art school. 21

'My father, you see,' he earnestly explained, 'is a Philistine.' He was not speaking pejoratively, and was only concerned that she should understand the attitude of his father exactly. The men in the office were protective towards him and the girls thought him sweet. He was loved by everybody like a kid brother, and she could never make her mother understand that, in spite of the presence of undeniable affection, you don't marry the likes of your kid brother. Her mother was interested in the match, not only, as her daughter believed cynically, because he was his father's son, but also because she sensed responsibility and fairness behind his somewhat fatuous exterior, qualities, which, along with loyalty, she prized as essential foundations for a lasting marriage, having seen their durability in her own case, although she would ruefully admit to herself that these and all other qualities of her husband had been masked by his ungovernable temper. Having successfully brought the meal to an end just as he bravely suppressed a sigh, a clear signal that he was again preparing to bare his soul, she jumped up perkily, and started to walk briskly towards the cash counter. He rushed to overtake her at the counter to pick up the tabs, and another session was over. Her mother had enlisted the help of her uncle next door. She called him to have tea with them on a few occasions when the Suitor was also present. Having sized up the subject, he opened talks with her. "Don't you like him?' 'Of course I like him. Otherwise he wouldn't be here, would he now?' 'So, then, why do you reject his proposal?' This question would come between them again and again.

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'Uncle!' she would exclaim, ' marriage is entirely different.' An awkward silence would ensue, broken by the plea, 'He bores me. I can't imagine living with him twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.' 'Look, he paints. He must have ideas in his head.' 'If he had any artistic temperament to speak of, he wouldn't have submitted docilely to his father in forgoing art school.' But the exchanges tired her, every time.

This time she pooled resources with the metropolitan cousins to hire a car on rent for the day. The nearest cousin from the suburbs would also go with them. The car would start from the house of the cousins, and she woke up with first light only to see her mother already up and about, packing dry lunch for her and cookies to share with everybody during the journey. She gave her a hug, bathed quickly, had a cup of tea, and ran out into a clear morning. Their neighbourhood, set off quite some distance from the main thoroughfare, was just stirring, but when she reached the bus stop she found the city wide awake. She wanted to start quickly, because, this time, they were not to stay the night, and the city roads and footways were growing increasingly inhospitable for women in the late hours. But her aunt would not think of letting them start without proper breakfast, and, although everything was at hand, a meal meant conversation and time was consumed. In fact, the cousin whom they were to pick up had been standing on the roadside at the appointed place for half an hour when they arrived, and the sun was no longer mild. However, the car did not follow the principal highway and sped along chords. The discomfort they felt on account of dust and bumps, was adequately compensated by the time they

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gained. More-over, the cousins were careful to include a railway station on the way, where they washed and relieved themselves. She entered the house before noon, looking back as before at the gate, and a glow of satisfaction suffused her mind when she saw the statue motionless under the tree. The family again gathered around her, and after she extricated herself from the excitement and chatter, and had greeted her aunt, she learnt from the resident cousins that the buyer had sent word that the registrar would be a little late, and, they would go to the office after the midday meal. Of course, this time there would not be any payment, and, without the chore of counting, the business of the day should not take up much time. Every one had arrived. Plates of fruits and home-made sweetmeats were placed before them after they had freshened themselves up, and she promptly rose with her plate and sought permission to go out to the tree under which sat "Step-greatuncle," as she styled him. There was a general raising of eyebrows as it were, but noone objected. Her aunt insisted that the eldest niece should accompany her, and as the niece seemed quite pleased with her charge, she made no demur, apart from a scuffle when the niece tried to wrest the plate from her hands to carry it for her. On the way, the niece confided shyly to her that she found school work boring and liked to design dresses for herself and the other girls of the family. The tailor at the market was impressed by the cuts, and, locating her as the designer, offered her seasonal work, an offer, which, of course, had to be turned down as the family erupted with incredulity at the cheek of the tailor. Her father had told her that if she did not get a first at the school-leaving examinations he would start looking at matches for her. Her eyes lit up when her city cousin 24

talked about fashion designing courses and schools in the metropolis, but the gleam died. "Father would never agree." He turned around at the sound of their approach and looked genuinely pleased to see her. There were polished stones under the tree and he waved to them to sit down on stones of their choice. 'So, you have come for the signing,' he said. It was a statement as well as a question, and she was mildly surprised to note his awareness of the world. 'Yes,' she said, and sat for some time in contented silence, gazing out to the meadow and beyond, to the horizon, trying to see what he saw here hour after hour, day after day. She said finally, 'Last time, too, I saw you sitting here. What do you see?' He looked doubtfully at the eldest niece and looked back at her. The frown slowly left his face and he started to answer her question. 'The colours,' he said in a low voice, 'so many of them, merging and separating, trembling in a haze as the sun rises.' He stopped and searched her eyes. "Do you see them?' She did see the steel grey sky above, pale blue near the horizon, white clouds, and green grass and foliage, serenely beautiful, no doubt, but they were all parts of a still picture, not alive as he saw them, colours residing within outlines, not existing per se, independent of objects, flowing and shimmering, as they presented themselves to him. But he was already away. 'Mango leaves are bright green clumps on a deep green background. The green of the tamarind is different, fresh and airy. Lime leaves are dark and succulent. I see the greens and I know the leaves are there, though I don't see them.

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Leaves are not green always. But this you know. Mango leaves turn red. Red on green is a sight to remember. Death for most leaves is coloured brown and when mango leaves start to turn brown one knows their time has come.' His discourse was about the world, but it was not the world they saw, it was a world within the world, and he peeled off the cover as he talked. Even her niece fell under the spell and stopped fidgeting, initial impatience giving way to a wonderment and a peacefulness. 'The colours change with the light. They are deep and dark before sunrise, the leaves barely distinguishable from the stems, darknesses against a barely lighter background. Then, the starpoints fade as light washes the sky with grey and rose, the sun rises, huge and red, colours flow down to the meadow and the trees as the sky pales through progressively lighter shades of blue, the tints and hues on the land changing fast all the time, but soft till the gold spreading over the sun from the top contracts it to a yellow disc with a dazzle in the middle, when softness gives over to brightness, with shades of colour flaunting their individuality. The evening again is a play of colour, this time in pastel, blue deepening to indigo from the horizon upwards, flecked by clouds with red and orange underbellies, deepening to crimson and velvet, the sky draining back the colours it gave to the trees and the meadow, darkening till a silver moon rises if it does, and a haze of electric blue covers leaf and grass. I see all this every day, but the colours are never the same from one day to the next. The clouds, too, are never the same. The dance of the trees and the trembling of leaves in the wind never repeat themselves. The colour of the young leaves of spring deepens through the summer. The rains darken the shade and, then, yellow flecks appear. Some are discoloured rapidly and fall

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before winter comes. Those that survive the winter yellow out, and, as the sun becomes stronger, they grow brown and drop.' He stopped for a while and tears filled her eyes. The afternoon stillness hovered like a sentient presence. He sighed and went on. 'If you clear your mind and learn to listen you will also hear the sounds. Brown ants and weevils and earwigs bustling below the rotting leaves, red ants scurrying under the bark, this is the background which you will hear only when the birds suddenly fall silent and the crickets. Otherwise, the chirruping of crickets is what you will hear most of the time. At first, you will hear a constant whirr, and, then, as you learn to listen, you will catch the variations from morning to night, and, finally, from moment to moment. Mornings and evenings you will hear birdtalk and nothing else, especially evenings. As light softens they start returning to the tree and start chattering. Soon, their talk drowns all other sounds till night shuts them up. Sometimes a bird breaks into a tune late in the morning. But they sing best in the afternoon, those that do. The most interesting calls are also reserved for the afternoon. When the afternoons first start becoming warm after the winter you will wait for the cuckoo's call, although I have heard him clearly at midnight, too. In summer you will hear the keening of the hawk, faint because of the height, but sharp, incisive, cutting down through the afternoon air like a tiny bolt.' Who knows how long he would have gone on, but the niece had kept half an eye on the house, and saw her mother the moment she emerged on the platform beckoning them back. She rose and the spell broke. 'Go, little cousin, you must be hungry,' he said. 'I have never heard him talk so much and for such a long time,' the niece told her as they walked towards the house. 27

The dinner and then the signing of the deeds, the horseplay of the cousins, the bustle at the office, the short, sharp shower which delayed them and forced her to take tea with the frankly admiring registrar, the careful walk back over muddy ways, all appeared a dream to her, part of unreal, puerile games played with grave seriousness by men and women because these were all they had been taught to have solidity and importance or social grace, though actually they were nothing but artifacts of a make-believe show, worthless and meaningless. They were the emperor's clothes, she thought in a flash and burst out laughing, drawing startled glances from her relations. They were having tea before departing, and while all the cousins were in high spirits at the conclusion of the sale and were settling the date for a final, grand get-together and feast, she wondered whether the stepson would come to see her off, and a warmth stole over her when she saw the statue rise and the man set off towards the house in the deliberate way he had of walking. She sauntered to the edge of the platform to meet him, and, before he could say anything, said, ' There will be a feast and we will come back next month', and was rewarded by the radiance in his eyes. It was a tight fit in the car in the beginning of the return journey because four more cousins were taken in, to be set down at the railway station. Again, she started dozing right away, her head nodding on to the shoulder of one or the other of the cousins flanking her. Soon the railway station arrived, there were hasty farewells, and she sank into one corner at the rear of the car, her mind returning to the tree and the meadow. It was then that the thought hit her like a physical blow : the sale was over, the tree and the meadow no longer theirs, the buyer a property developer. What would happen to the meadow and would the

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tree be cut down? Where would he sit and what would he see? She felt guilt seize her chest in a vice. Did he know what was going to happen?

The Suitor had been invited to tea mainly at the insistence of her mother who said that it was a long time since he last came. He was asking about her last visit "to the village", and she hesitated to speak of the man who saw colours. She had told her friend and was disappointed at his response. He always evaluated any male acquaintance of hers from the point of view of how big a threat he was to his claim on her. That the man was not a possible rival was clear to him, but he was upset by the depth of the impression made by him on her. Devoid of philosophy, he was never intrigued by the meaning or worth of what he did or would like to do. He was driven by unreasoning acceptance or rejection of the myths and opinions of his milieu, and would be contemptuous of the foolishness of anyone who might ask him why he accepted something and rejected something else. The man's talk sounded high-falutin nonsense to him and he thought that the manner of living of the man bore out the general view that he was touched in the head. He tore to bits all men she met, and this amused her as she knew why he was doing it and also because he had a penchant for caricature and lampoon. So, he was genuinely surprised to see her disapproval of his usual bantering tone in this case and it made him even more offensive in his effort to strip him down. He observed that she steered clear of a quarrel, which was the usual outcome of their disagreements, and withdrew her mind from what he was saying. In fact, he was a little afraid for the first time. But the Suitor was diffident and tongue-tied as usual and she started to tell him all that the man said and did. He heard everything in silence and made 29

quite an unexpected comment. He said that Van Gogh had astigmatic vision, and the world was blurred to him. Some art experts have tried to say that a point of light was a blob to him, and this had led to the characteristic blurring of contours, and representation by colours without outlines, observed in his painting. "I think your relative suffers from a similar ailment of the eye," he concluded prosaically. Trust the Suitor to wash all the romance off any circumstance however out of the ordinary, she thought. But she could not just laugh it away, for she knew that such a benign defect would have remained undetected in that household. Nobody cared, and he himself would just accept it as a condition of life and adapt to it. The tea party ended badly. Her friend arrived, and, after he had had tea, the three young people went to her room as was expected of them. Right away, he began to behave badly with the Suitor, interrupting him, and making pointed remarks about people who never understood when they had outstayed their welcome. The Suitor had encountered such barracking on earlier occasions, too, and, at first, did not rise to the bait. He even withstood comments about his appearance and abilities and sneers about fathers arranging sinecures for sons. She remained a helpless spectator because she knew that the slightest protest would invite worse barbs. But the Suitor was shaken when he started to touch her deliberately, as if showing off his claim, and, after a few minutes of acute embarrassment, left the room to take leave of her mother. She followed, because her mother would be upset if she did not show him out, but returned to her room directly he had left.

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Her friend followed her back to the room, excited at the prospect of a quarrel, because that always meant a reconciliation, which often paved the way for him to force his attentions on her because she would not want the stress of fresh altercation. But she did not say anything about what had just happened. 'I want to rest,' she said, ' Please come back later.' Nonplussed, he retired in some confusion. She put off the light, buried her face in her pillow and wept. She had to regain her freedom. 'What a fool I was to have lost it in the first place.' She did not know that her friend was, that minute, hitting his head against a wall in his room anticipating this emancipation. Previously he would do things like this in front of her with telling effect, but today he had been afraid she would view the flagellation quite calmly and would not lift a finger to stop him.

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THE GIFT

It had been decided that all progeny of the sibship to which her father belonged would be invited to the final feast. Some of the suburban cousins wanted the resident brothers to bear the expenses, but she was vehemently against such ungracious behaviour, and was supported this time by quite a few others, and, finally, everyone sent some contribution to the kitty. Her mother was going with her and this had encouraged her aunt, the mother of the metropolitan brothers, to do likewise, and, this time, they made an early start in the rented vehicle. Her mother was on medication which required a watch on fluid intake and possible dehydration, and she had packed adequate water and fruit juice apart from the sandwiches her mother had made for everyone. But age, the constant enemy, was against the older women, and, midway through the journey, they complained of leg cramps. The car had to be stopped thrice to let them stretch their legs and sip juice. But it was a long time since either had travelled far and their enthusiasm overruled bodily discomfort, and they arrived at the house in high spirits. Both had been young wives here decades back, till their husbands had left for the metropolis, and it was the first time they were returning to the house. Having, no doubt, to catch up with a lot of memories, they spoke little on the way, and, in the last lap, she fell asleep, her head resting on one shoulder of her mother. It made a pretty picture and her aunt whispered to her mother, 'O had she been mine.' The sibilation woke her up for a moment, but she went off again,

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and, when she next opened her eyes, they were churning up dust on the pathway to the house. Having satisfied herself that the familiar figure was at his post, she concentrated her attention on the reception of her mother by the families of the house. Her aunt was the orthodox widow, all white borderless dress and strictly vegetarian meals, but she and their neighbours had forced her mother not to indulge in either of these abstentions. Her mother wore normal dresses, with colouring and prints in accordance with her view of herself as an elderly matron, and ate with her daughter. At first, there were problems at family gatherings, where widows were served separately, and people were confused as to where she should be seated. Glances askance were not a rarity, too, and, for a time, her mother stopped going out to marriages and other such social ceremonies. She never spoke of it, but there must have been some barbed talk within the school community, too, teachers being notoriously fond of dividing themselves into sectarian groups on the basis of quite mild likes and dislikes. Time bred acceptance, and, in any case, her mother's was the generation which overflowed out of professions like school-teaching and nursing, where the presence of women had been accepted for long, to invade male preserves in mercantile offices, banks, courts, and doctors' chambers. But, she had been worried about her mother's first appearance as a widow in this backwater. To her relief she found that there were no startled looks or pursed lips. Either the families here knew everything already from the grapevine and had decided to accept with grace things over which they had no control, or they were wellbred and good-natured enough to conceal any surprise they might have felt.

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What she saw, in fact, was the three wives holding hands in tears, memories of their long dead husbands, companions of the youth they spent here, rising like the vapours of a mist from the stones of the house which bore them and raised them to manhood. The strange mystery enveloping siblings reached out across the spent decades to touch her with awe, confronting her with time's ghostly residue of feelings which she could never know at first hand. Then her niece came and took her hand, and peals from the children brought them all back to the present. Her previous visits had made her sisters-in-law and nieces easy with her and she had no difficulty in making them waive the formalities of welcome and allow her to start off for the meadow directly she had finished washing. She had a plan which required quick action before the lazy noon-break fell like a cloak on all activity here. She stopped a little behind the man, and, although she had tried to be soundless, he sensed her presence and turned to her with that smile which she had grown to regard as her real welcome to the house of their fathers. She got to the point immediately and spread out the day's news-sheet, which had come with them from the metropolis, on the ground in front of him. 'Read it', she commanded. Obediently, he read out the headlines and the sub-headings, and, confirming the suspicion of the Suitor, began to falter more and more as the print grew finer, and had to bring the sheet closer and closer to his eyes. 'You are going to get a pair of glasses,' she announced. He pondered over her statement, and, during that interval, she was on edge. How would he react? He sighed finally. 'It cannot do any harm,' was, to her great relief, his considered opinion. She gave a shout of laughter and pulled him up by the arm, and the two 34

started off for the house. Her sisters-in-law were taken aback by the reason for the stepson's initiation of an untimely toilet and a change into outdoor apparel, but the mistress of the house, her aunt, set seal on the venture by expressing the same opinion as the man himself. 'It cannot do any harm', she said, adding, however, the rider, 'provided he doesn't break them and cut himself.'

She

nodded to her two sisters-in-law darkly, 'I once knew some-one who blinded himself on his glasses.' 'These will be unbreakable, not really made of glass,' she said. Her cousins were doubtful whether the optician here would have such lenses, and, on this tentative note, they started their little enterprise. His outdoor dress was also robe-like, and, with his finely-chiselled features, pepper and salt beard, and russet mane of hair, he looked distinguished, a Roman senator, she thought, and a note of surprise flicked though her mind. He must have been a handsome man in his youth. The optician, she found, stocked all the latest materials and designs. The resident refractionist had, however, started packing up for the day, and she had to expend much charm to make him reopen the case of test lenses. She was helped by the shopowner who was keen to sell a pair of the expensive unbreakable lenses which did not find ready buyers in this community dominated by thrifty farmers. He detained the technical hand also, because he understood that the deal would only go through if there was quick action. He was found to have high myopia and substantial astigmatism, the latter making his vision blurred at all distances. The Suitor had been right. His age had also affected his near vision, and he would need reading glasses, too. 'Two pairs are indicated,' the shopowner declared gleefully. 'My artisan cannot make up bifocal lenses in such a short time.' 35

"But I don't read,' he interjected. 'Not even the newspapers?,' she asked. He replied diffidently, 'I used to read the daily paper, but I didn't like the news.' 'But won't you read a letter if I write you one?' 'You will write to me?' She saw again the inner radiance and was sad because she knew it was unlikely that she would come again. The man took child-like pleasure in choosing a frame, looking again and again at his face from different angles in the triplet of mirrors handed to him. But, she thought his choice was inappropriate, and he readily accepted the frame pointed out by her. The shopowner, of course, knew all about him and, for that matter, all about her, and sent them home after payment was over. He would send the glasses over later in the afternoon to the House with the Gate, this being the name by which their house was known to the local populace. While returning, he was in an uncharacteristic state of fidget, and she waited patiently until, when the gate was first sighted, he blurted out his unrest. 'I do have money, you know.' 'I do know,' she said. 'But I want you to have something from me which will not allow you to forget me at any time.' He laughed. 'It matters to you if people remember you or not?' 'Indeed it does. Won't it matter to you if I don't remember you day after day?' He fell into silence. As they passed through the gate, he said, 'No.' He saw that she was badly wounded by his answer. He took her hand and said, 'But I shall not forget you.'

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Her hand lay limp in his huge paw, and it was only when they were at the steps to the platform that she managed to give a little answering pressure as she withdrew the hand. The dinner, which was the central point of the day's programme, lasted for a long time. There were interminable jokes aimed at people, one arising from the other. The three elders had numerous anecdotes about the cousins in their childhood, none of them too complimentary, all lapped up with great glee by the children, who circled about the diners, themselves having already been fed. The light-hearted shuttling between the past and the present, and the ambience of carefree closeness slowly infected her, and her early reticence, which was on the point of being remarked upon, gave way to participation in the general merriment. For once, the pretty niece was not serving, and had been allowed to dine with her. She found an opportunity to whisper to the girl that, if she so wished, she could stay at their house in the city if she found a place in some school of fashion designing. The niece brightened and pressed her hand joyfully, but, soon, her eyes dropped, reminded, no doubt, of the formidable struggle which would ensue if she ever took up the offer. The stepson ate separately as was the rule and said nothing, though he couldn't but have heard everything. He finished long before they did, and, when she finally came out, she saw the technician from the optician's shop fitting him with his glasses. He waved away the man, who was fussing about, trying to make him read something, and, taking the pairs of glasses in one hand, beckoned to her to accompany him. He put on the glasses for distant vision after he sat down under the tree, and, for a long time, looked at the meadow. She sat, apprehensive at 37

what would happen, now that his view of the world was changing radically. Finally, he turned and looked at her. 'I can see you more clearly, too.' 'What about the meadow?' "Yes, I can see each individual leaf with curl and turn and serration. The world is sharp, and not only are there colours but shapes and form and outline.' 'Is it still beautiful?,' she asked fearfully. 'O my dear, even more beautiful. Look at this tree. No two leaves are the same. The trees lining the meadow, their trunks and branches standing against the sky, the stems and leaves swaying gently in the wind, the weird shapes made by the clouds, I could see none of this earlier.' 'And the colours, they are still there?' 'Yes, yes, I can make out shades I never imagined existed. The smallest change, each nuance of tint and hue will now be revealed to me as it emerges or fades.' Precious radiance filled his face. 'You have presented to me a whole new world.' Tears filled her eyes. He looked gravely into them. 'If you look, you will also see.' 'What! Television antennae?' He was surprised at her response, and said, ' Everywhere, all is made of colour and sound,' and, after a pause, added, 'and form. Also, the beauty changes with time.' 'But your world is lonesome. There are no people.' He meditated on her comment for a time. Finally, he nodded, 'I am not good with people.' His face darkened. 'They look only in the mirror at themselves and like to hear only their own voices.' 38

She realised she was probing his vulnerability and promptly changed the subject, chattering away about inconsequential facets of city life. And then her voice broke. 'We have sold away all this. What will you do, what will you see?' 'But the orchards remain, I understand,' he looked enquiringly at her. She nodded. 'I shall sit in the orchards.' He gazed at his new world for some time, and asked, 'How long do you stay this time?' 'We start at sundown.' 'At sundown we will visit the farther end of the orchards. It will take just a few minutes.' She inclined her head and the two of them sat looking at the forms and colours, the latter now changing fast as the shadows of the trees lengthened on the meadow. When the meadow was fully in shadow, he rose, and they walked into the orchards, waving reassuringly at the clan gathering on the platform for the farewells. They were walking towards an arbour with a canopy of overhanging branches and leaves. Birdtalk grew louder and louder as they neared the arbour, and, when they were enclosed under the natural canopy, the sound took on a three-dimensional quality, the cross-talk of numerous birds pervading the arbour, overlapping to form a pulsating fog of sound. The loudness assailed the mind, making normal thought impossible, attention imprisoned in the furious conference. She found that her mind was being drained of conscious processes, awareness monopolised by the not unpleasant pulsing of shrill talk like the unending chatter of a machine gun. She was drifting into another world where 39

her friend and the Suitor, her disappointments and ambitions, her dream of becoming an author, fast receded into puny elements of little importance. She rose and turned about. Her hold on her world was starting to slip, and she fought back to keep her grip. Slowly, as she walked away from the cocoon of sound, the profound emptiness which was entering her soul receded. They came out of the orchards to find the metropolis party nearing the gate. She ran up the platform to bid good-bye to her aunt. Everyone else, she had seen, was moving together with the departing guests. The stepson was outside the gate, standing a little away from the others as was his wont, the glasses gleaming on his face in the last light. When she turned her head at the point where the gate went out of view, she saw him still, gazing at her across the empty space between them. The nephew, who was smitten by her, chattered on by her side, and, for once, she was grateful to him because his chatter obviated any need for her to make conversation. Then, suddenly almost, the rented van was before them, it was evening and there was hurry in their departure. The last thing she remembered seeing was a huge cloud overhead with a bright centre of many colours, a patch of rainbow in fact. She never again saw such a shapeless rainbow in the sky. A wave of tiredness assailed her and she sank back against her mother. He had gifted her a secret world, and, at first, she kept it shut tightly inside her. Slowly, from time to time, she would dare to peep in. But she could never stay there for any length of time. The emptying of the mind, with the draining away of all questions of worth and meaning and purpose from life, made her uneasy. It was frightening, almost, and, then, she always had so much to do. When the news of his death came, she was afraid that his gift too would disappear. But it was not a thing which could decay, nor a thought whose 40

memory could fade. It was there always, another world, waiting for her, only she was never quite ready for it. But she enjoyed secretly a detachment and calm just knowing it was there: a madman's world, but as real and tangible as the daily whirligig all around her.

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