The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai [54]
Open Competitive Examination, June 1942
He sat before a row of twelve examiners and the first question was put to him by a professor of London University—Could he tell them how a steam train worked?
Jemubhai’s mind drew a blank.
“Not interested in trains?” The man looked personally disappointed.
“A fascinating field, sir, but one’s been too busy studying the recommended subjects.”
“No idea of how a train works?”
Jemu stretched his brain as far as he could—what powered what?— but he had never seen the inside of a railway engine.
“No, sir.”
Could he describe then, the burial customs of the ancient Chinese.
He was from the same part of the country as Gandhi. What of the noncooperation movement? What was his opinion of the Congress?
The room was silent. BUY BRITISH—Jemubahi had seen the posters the day of his arrival in England, and it had struck him that if he’d yelled BUY INDIAN in the streets of India, he would be clapped into jail. And all the way back in 1930, when Jemubhai was still a child, Gandhi had marched from Sabarmati ashram to Dandi where, at the ocean’s maw, he had performed the subversive activity of harvesting salt.
“—Where will that get him? Phtool His heart may be in the right place but his brain has fallen out of his head”—Jemu’s father had said although the jails were full of Gandhi’s supporters. On the SS Strathnaver, the sea spray had come flying at Jemubhai and dried in taunting dots of salt upon his face and arms…. It did seem ridiculous to tax it….
“If one was not committed to the current administration, sir, there would be no question of appearing here today.”
Lastly, who was his favorite writer?
A bit nervously for he had none, he replied that one was fond of Sir Walter Scott.
“What have you read?”
“All the printed works, sir.”
“Can you recite one of your favorite poems for us?” asked a professor of social anthropology.
Oh! Young Lochinvar is come out of the west,
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best
By the time they stood for the ICS, most of the candidates had crisp-ironed their speech, but Jemubhai had barely opened his mouth for whole years and his English still had the rhythm and the form of Gujerati.
But ere he alighted at Netherby gate
The bride had consented, the gallant came late:
For a laggard in love and a dastard in war
Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar….
When he looked up, he saw they were all chuckling.
While her mother did fret, and her father did fume,
And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume….
______
The judge shook himself. “Damn fool,” he said out loud, pushed his chair back, stood up, brought his fork and knife down in devastating judgment upon himself and left the table. His strength, that mental steel, was weakening. His memory seemed triggered by the tiniest thing—Gyan’s unease, his reciting that absurd poem…. Soon all the judge had worked so hard to separate would soften and envelop him in its nightmare, and the barrier between this life and eternity would in the end, no doubt, be just another such failing construct.
Mutt followed him to his room. As he sat brooding, she leaned against him with the ease that children have when leaning against their parents.
______
“I am sorry,” said Sai, hot with shame. “It’s impossible to tell how my grandfather will behave.”
Gyan didn’t appear to hear her.
“Sorry,” said Sai again, mortified, but again he didn’t appear to have heard. For the first time his eyes rested directly upon her as if he were eating her alive in an orgy of the imagination—aha! At last the proof.
______
The cook cleared away the dirty dishes and shut the quarter cup of leftover peas into the cupboard. The cupboard looked like a coop, with its wire netting around a wooden frame and its four feet standing in bowls of water to deter ants and other vermin. He topped the water in these bowls from one of the buckets placed under the leaks, emptied the other buckets out of the window, and returned them to their appointed spots.
He made up the bed in an extra room, which