he received a banana. Its skin was blackened in the heat, but he ate it all the same.
The attendant began making the rounds with blankets and sheets, readying the berths for sleep. After he left, the neatly dressed man took a chain and padlock from the bag that held his bananas and shackled his trunk to a bracket under the seat. Leaning towards Maneck’s ear, he explained confidentially, “Because of thieves — they enter the compartments when passengers fall asleep.”
“Oh,” said Maneck, a little perturbed. No one had warned him about this. But maybe the chap was just a nervous type. “You know, some years ago my mother and I took this same train, and nothing was stolen.”
“Sadly, now the world is much changed.” The man took off his shirt and hung it neatly on a hook by the window. Then he removed the plastic case from the pocket and clipped it to his vest, careful not to snare his chest hair in the formidable spring. Seeing Maneck watching, he whispered with a smile, “I am very fond of my pens. I don’t like separating from them, not even in sleep.”
Maneck smiled back, whispering, “Yes, I also have a favourite pen. I don’t lend it to anyone — it spoils the angle of the nib.”
The father and daughter did not take kindly to these whispers which excluded them. “What can we do, Papaji, some people are just born rude,” she said, handing him his crutch. They went off again to the bathroom, hurling a frosty glance at the opposite seats.
It went unnoticed, for Maneck had begun to worry about his suitcase. The pen-lover’s soft words about thieves ruined his night, and he forgot all about the woman in the upper berth. By the time he remembered, she was under cover from prying eyes, Papaji having tucked in the sheet around her neck.
Before climbing into his own berth, Maneck positioned his suitcase so that one corner would be visible from above. He lay awake, peering at it every now and then. The young woman’s father caught him looking a few times, and eyed him suspiciously. Towards dawn, slumber overpowered Maneck’s vigilance. The last thing he saw while surrendering to sleep was Papaji balanced on one crutch, curtaining off his daughter with a bedsheet as she descended without exposing so much as a calf or an ankle.
He did not awake till the attendant came to collect the bedclothes. The young woman was already busy with her knitting, the inscrutable woollen segment dancing below her fingers. Tea was served. Now the neatly dressed pen-lover was more talkative. The cluster of pens was back in his shirt pocket. Maneck learned that yesterday’s reticence had been due to a throat ailment.
“Thankfully, it has eased a little this morning,” said the man, as he coughed and threatened to hawk.
Remembering how he had returned the man’s hoarse whispers by whispering back dramatically, Maneck felt a little embarrassed. He wondered if he should apologize or explain, but the pen-lover did not appear to bear any resentment.
“It’s a very serious condition,” he explained. “And I am travelling to seek specialist treatment.” He cleared his throat again. “I could never have imagined, long, long ago, when I started my career, that this was what it would do to me. But how can you fight your destiny?”
Maneck shook his head in sympathy. “Was it a factory job? Toxic fumes?”
The man laughed scornfully at the suggestion. “I’m an LL.B., a fully qualified lawyer.”
“Oh, I see. So the lengthy speeches in dusty courtrooms strained and ruined your vocal cords.”
“Not at all — quite the contrary.” He hesitated, “It’s such a long story.”
“But we have lots of time,” encouraged Maneck. “It’s such a long journey.”
Papaji and daughter had had enough of them exchanging comments in low voices. Papaji was certain that their soft laughter contained a leering note, aimed directly at his innocent daughter. He scowled, picked up his crutch, took his daughter by the hand and stomped one-leggedly down the aisle. “What to do, Papaji,” she said. “Some people just have no manners.”
“I wonder what’s wrong with those two,” said the pen-lover, watching the precise, machinelike movement of the crutch. He uncorked a small green bottle, sipped, and put it aside. Fingering his pens affectionately, he tried out the freshly medicated larynx with the opening sentence of the story of his throat.
“My law career, which was my first, my best-loved career, started a very long time ago. In the year of our independence.”
Maneck counted rapidly. “From 1947 to 1975 — twenty-eight years. That’s a lot of legal experience.”
“Not really. Within two years I changed careers. I couldn’t stand it, performing before a courtroom audience day after day. Too much stress for a shy person like me. I would lie in bed at night, sweating and shivering, scared of the next morning. I needed a job where I would be left to myself. Where I could work
“Photography?”
“No, that’s Latin, it means in private.” He scratched his pens as though relieving an itch for them, and looked rueful. “It’s a bad habit I have, because of my law training — using these silly phrases instead of good English words. Anyway, seeking privacy, I became a proofreader for
How would proofreading ravage the throat? wondered Maneck. But he had already interrupted twice and made a fool of himself. Better to keep quiet and listen.
“I was the best they had, the absolute best. The most difficult and important things were saved for my inspection. The editorial page, court proceedings, legal texts, stockmarket figures. Politicians’ speeches, too — so boring they could make you drowsy, send you to sleep. And drowsiness is the one great enemy of the proofreader. I have seen it destroy several promising reputations.
“But nothing was too tricky for me. The letters sailed before my eyes, line after line, orderly fleets upon an ocean of newsprint. Sometimes I felt like a Lord High Admiral, in supreme command of the printer’s navy. And within months I was promoted to Chief Proofreader.
“My night sweats disappeared, I slept well. For twenty-four years I held the position. I was happy in my little cubicle — my kingdom with my desk, my chair, and my reading light. What more could anyone want?”
“Nothing,” said Maneck.
“Exactly. But kingdoms don’t last for ever — not even modest little cubicle kingdoms. One day it happened, without warning.”
“What?”
“Disaster. I was checking an editorial about a State Assembly member who made a personal fortune out of the Drought Relief Project. My eyes began to itch and water. Thinking nothing of it, I rubbed them, wiped them dry, and resumed my work. Within seconds they were wet again. I dried them once more. But it kept on happening, on and on. And it was no longer a tear or two which could be ignored, but a continuous stream.
“Soon, my concerned colleagues were gathered around me. They crowded my little cubicle, pouring comfort upon what they thought was grief. They presumed that reading about the sorry state of the nation, day after day — about the corruption, the natural calamities, the economic crises — had finally broken me. That I was dissolving in a fit of sorrow and despair.
“They were wrong, of course. I would never let emotions stand in the way of my professional duties. Mind you, I’m not saying a proofreader must be heartless. I’m not denying that I often felt like weeping at what I read — stories of misery, caste violence, government callousness, official arrogance, police brutality. I’m certain many of us felt that way, and an emotional outburst would be quite normal. But too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart, as my favourite poet has written.”
“Who’s that?”
“W.B. Yeats. And I think that sometimes normal behaviour has to be suppressed, in order to carry on.”
“I’m not sure,” said Maneck. “Wouldn’t it be better to respond honestly instead of hiding it? Maybe if everyone in the country was angry or upset, it might change things, force the politicians to behave properly.”
The man’s eyes lit up at the challenge, relishing the opportunity to argue. “In theory, yes, I would agree with you. But in practice, it might lead to the onset of more major disasters. Just try to imagine six hundred million raging, howling, sobbing humans. Everyone in the country — including airline pilots, engine drivers, bus and tram conductors — all losing control of themselves. What a catastrophe. Aeroplanes falling from the skies, trains going off the tracks, boats sinking, buses and lorries and cars crashing. Chaos. Complete chaos.”
He paused to give Maneck’s imagination time to fill in the details of the anarchy he had unleashed. “And please also remember: scientists haven’t done any research on the effects of mass hysteria and mass suicide upon the environment. Not on this subcontinental scale. If a butterfly’s wings can create atmospheric disturbances halfway round the world, who knows what might happen in our case. Storms? Cyclones? Tidal waves? What about
