before she realised what she was hearing.
But it was impossible! No, that was nonsense, she knew what she was hearing, once the memory fell into place. But how was it possible, then? ‘Siddhartha’ wasn’t anything like finished yet, not even the shooting. The music had certainly not yet been recorded. How could a street porter or an office messenger know the entire air of Yashodhara’s bereaved lullaby, the simplified theme of the Buddha’s morning raga?
Leaning over the rail of his balcony, Dominic pricked up his ears abruptly, listening.
‘Hey, did you hear that? Listen!’
‘Somebody whistling,’ said Tossa, unimpressed, ‘that’s all. They do it even here. You remember, Ashok said…’
‘Hush!’
She hushed obediently; he was very serious about it. She held her breath, following the tiny, silvery trail of notes up and down, a curiously rueful air. It receded, suddenly muted by the high hedge, but still heard, growing clearer again for a while as the angle changed, then cut off finally by the bulk of the wing. Now he must be in the street, lost among the trees. Theirs was a select residential road, silent at night. Indian cities have their preserves of silence, even close to the hub and the heart.
‘Did you hear it? Did you get it?’
‘I heard him whistling,’ she said wonderingly. ‘What about it?’
‘You didn’t get what it was he was whistling?’ And Dominic picked up the air himself, and whistled it softly in his turn; he had an ear for a tune even at first hearing. ‘You don’t recognise it? But was it the same? The same as his?’
‘I think so. It sounds the same. Why? How did you know it?’
‘I heard it the other day, and so did you. It’s the song from Ashok’s music to the film, don’t you remember? The simple one, the one Kamala sings. He
‘But are you sure?’ she asked doubtfully. ‘After all, the ragas are everybody’s property, you just take them and improvise on them, don’t you? Somebody could accidentally produce a tune that recalled Ashok’s, couldn’t he? I mean, the unit is in Sarnath – or back in Clark’s Hotel at Benares, probably, at this hour. Not in Delhi, anyhow.’
‘I know. I must be imagining things,’ agreed Dominic, shivering, and turned back from the staring stars into the warmth of the room.
V
« ^ »
Anjli arose in the early hours of the morning, and stood beside her bed for a little while, listening to the silence, which was absolute. Not even a stirring of wind in the trees outside the open window. The air was clear, still and piercing, like dry wine.
She was just getting used to the size of the room, which held two beds, and could have accommodated ten. The distance between her single bed and Tossa’s made movement easy and safe. She dressed with care and deliberation, because she had the deep conviction within her that she was not coming back, that she had better get everything right the first time, for there was not going to be any chance of revising measures once taken. Delhi would be as cool as an English spring for some weeks yet, the nights cold, midday perhaps reaching summer warmth in the sun. Better be prepared for all temperatures. She put on the lambswool and angora suit in muted strawberry pink, took a scarf and her light wool coat, and slipped her feet into supple walking shoes. Then she carefully tucked into her large handbag a cotton dress, sandals, toilet necessaries and a towel. That was all. The Lord Buddha, when he passed through the palace gardens among the oblivious sleepers, carried nothing but what he wore, and even that he gave away when he entered the outer world and sent Channa back with the weeping white horse Kantaka.
She had some money of her own, changed into rupees for shopping, and some travellers’ cheques. Her passport, her own personal papers – it seemed wrong to possess any of these. But she was living in this present world, and its customs were not those of Kapilavasru, and a certain respect was due to the laws of the land. So she allowed herself the money and the credentials. And at the last moment she turned back to her dressing-table, and painstakingly tied round her left wrist the slightly wilted bracelet of jasmine buds. Dominic was, after all, rather sweet, and it wasn’t like allowing oneself real jewels. The Lord Buddha had divested himself of all his jewels before he exchanged his rich silk robes for a huntsman’s homespun tunic in the woods. Maybe she could exchange her expensive cardigan suit for shalwar and kameez and a floating, infuriating gauze scarf, such as the schoolgirls wore. She peered into the dark mirror, where a faint cadence of movement indicated the ghost of Anjli peering back at her, and imagined the transformation.
In the other bed Tossa slept peacefully. She never stirred when the door of the room was gently opened. Anjli looked back, and was reassured, and at the same time curiously touched. She hadn’t expected much from Tossa, to tell the truth; anyone her mother deputed to do her dirty work for her was automatically suspect. But Tossa had been a surprise; so quiet, and so reasonable, and so aware, as if she knew just what was going on. Which was nonsense, because there couldn’t really be two Dorettes, could there? And how else would she know? Not stupid, either, she could put her foot down gently but finally when she liked. Anjli hoped they would not feel too responsible, and that she would soon be able to get in touch with them and put their minds at rest. Also that they would spend the last dollar of Dorette’s money on seeing India before they went back to England.
The corridor was lit only by a small lamp at the end. No one was moving. She listened, and the whole house seemed to be one silence. Anjli closed the door of the room softly behind her, and tiptoed along the darker wall towards the landing window that led to the balconies. There was a stairway to the courtyard there; and there were no gates or doors closing the archway that opened into the street. She knew the lie of the land by now; by the carriage gates farther along there were always a few rickshaws and taxis hopefully waiting, even at night.
She was not going back to Dorette’s synthetic world. Not now, nor ever. There were plenty of things in India that she didn’t want, the cockroaches, the flies, the dirt, the lean, mad-looking tonga horses, half-demented with overwork and rough usage, the maimed animals that no one was profane enough to kill but no one was vulnerable enough to pity, the hunger, the disease, the monumental indifference. Nevertheless, India was all she wanted, India and the links that bound her to it, notably her father, the indispensable link.
There was a room-boy curled up asleep in the service box at the end of the corridor. She passed him by silently, and he slept on. Down the stairs into the courtyard she went, and from shadow to shadow of the spaced trees across to the end of the box hedge – perhaps it wasn’t box, but it looked like it, and that was how she thought of it – and round it into comparative security. Now there was only the porter’s box by the archway. They were asleep there, too. She stole past them like a ghost, and never troubled their dreams. She was in the street, melting into the shelter of the trees, alone in the faintly lambent darkness.
