River of Smoke - Amitav Ghosh [68]
For all these reasons, Robin Chinnery had, for a time, been a large presence in her life – but that had come to an abrupt end when she was about fifteen. Around that time he had developed a strange fixation on Jodu and had decided to launch upon a project – a painting – in which Jodu and Paulette were to feature as the principal figures. The composition was inspired, he said, by one of the great themes of European art, but when Paulette asked what this was he would not tell her. She didn’t need to know, he said, and it didn’t matter anyway because he was re-interpreting it, and giving it a new spirit.
Paulette and Jodu were not at all enthusiastic about the project and their reluctance to participate grew stronger still when they discovered that they would have to spend hours standing still. But Robin’s pleas were too heartfelt to be brushed aside – this, he declared, was his opportunity of creating a masterwork, of forging his own identity as an artist – so they had taken pity on him and relented. For a fortnight or so, they had obeyed his instructions, standing side by side while he laboured at his easel. Through this time he never once allowed them to look at what he was doing: if they asked he would say, wait, wait, it’s not time yet; you’ll see it when it’s ready to be seen. In these sessions both Jodu and Paulette had worn their usual clothes, a gamcha or langot in his case, and a calf-length sari in hers, and although, at his pleading, they had sometimes wrapped these coverings a little tighter than they might otherwise have done, they had never once gone without them – neither of them could have imagined such a thing.
This was why, when at last they managed to sneak a look at the unfinished picture, they were doubly outraged to discover that they had been painted stark naked, with not a thread of clothing on their bodies. Not only that, they had been made to look utterly ridiculous in other ways as well, and shameless too, for they were shown to be standing under an enormous banyan tree, staring directly at the viewer as if to flaunt their nakedness – as though they were Naga sadhus or something. What was more, Paulette’s skin was painted an ashy-white colour and she was shown to be holding a mango (under a banyan tree!), while Jodu was an inky shade of black and had a cobra rearing up above his head. Fortunately Paulette’s mango was so positioned as to conceal that part of her which she would least have wanted the world to see – but Jodu was not so lucky with his cobra: even though the snake had its tail wound around his waist it did not cover what it could so easily have done; that part of his body could not only be clearly seen, it was painted in such vivid detail that it gave the clear impression of being uncircumcised, which added in no little measure to Jodu’s sense of injury.
The whole thing was so shocking and outrageous that Jodu, who was always quick to anger, flew into a rage and snatched the canvas off the easel. Robin was not his match in strength and could do nothing except plead with Paulette to intervene. Stop him, I beg you, he had said; I’ve painted you as Adam and Eve, in all the beauty of your innocence and simplicity; no one will ever know that it is you – please, I beg you, stop him!
But Paulette was almost as incensed as Jodu was, and far from heeding Robin she had boxed his ears and then helped Jodu rip the canvas to shreds. Robin had watched silently, with tears running down his face, and at the end of it, he had said: You wait and see; you’ll pay for this, some day …
After this the visits had ceased and from then on, Paulette had not followed the Chinnery boys’ doings closely. The little she knew of their subsequent careers came from Tantima’s occasional asides: she remembered