The Gathering Storm

Thirteen

145 THIRTEEN A light wind blew over the town, picking up scraps of paper in its current, wherever they drifted up to the red walls of the mud houses. It was cold and the market was becoming less and less peopled. Music blared from the huge radios in the Indian shops, their usual Gujerati music being in full tide. Charan sat in his shop on the big armchair, his legs resting apart on the counter and his right palm holding his cheek. Three years had elapsed since he came to Bulembe. Business was good, but not as he had expected. He was deep in thought when, like shadows, two women dressed in kaniki entered and stood before the counter. “Match-boxes we want,” they said, holding coins in their hands. Charan looked at them blankly. He shook his head. The customers looked at him for a while with discernible embarrassment on their faces. They looked at the matchboxes that lay on the shelf 146 behind the shopowner, and then at him again. But he just seemed too deep in his world of dreams to be pricked to conscious attention by any gestures. They turned their backs on him and vanished. “Alli,” Charan called, without a single motion other than that of his lips. Alli appeared. “Bring my sweater.” Alli went into the bedroom and brought out a thick woolen sweater. “Close the shop. I am going to Jayandra.” He went out to his second-hand land-rover, drove across the market square to a shop opposite his and parked at the roadside. He mounted the steps to the door of the shop. There was a line of customers, some African women purchasing their needs. Charan passed through the counter by way of a side opening. Jayandra, who had then been serving the women, called for a servant to bring a chair. A big armchair was brought. Charan seated himself. Jayandra, too, sat down, and engaged himself with his visitor. The women opposite the counter kept standing where they had been, still gripping their coins in their hands. They were anxious to be served and leave. They had been at the market since morning and were now tired and hungry. The sky was cloudy and soon it would rain. They kept gazing at Charan and Jayandra, watching their lips move up and down as if they understood and were interested in what was talked about, while the two shopkeepers engaged themselves in hearty conversation. 147 Then one of the women asked if she could get kerosene. Her voice was absorbed completely by the cold air without in the least disturbing the talk of the shopkeepers. Finally, one by one, the customers, burning with indignation, went away. A vessel cut out of a kerosene debe was filled with hot embers and laid between Jayandra and Charan by a servant. “Bring tea,” Jayandra ordered the servant. The servant disappeared and in a quarter of an hour reappeared with a tray of cups and a kettle. Charan and Jayandra drank and talked, feeling the warmth which seeped through their pull-over sweaters deep into the marrow of their bones. “This place is really cold.” “It’s June. All the three months. May, June and July. You know Bulembe is on a plateau.” “Mmmh! It’s cold, really,” Charan insisted, bending a little more over the fire. “But do you mind very much staying here? I mean, don’t you like this place?” “Bulembe is excellent,” Charan said with a nod. Jayandra did not add anything and a silence reigned for a while. He kept looking blankly at the red embers and stretched his arms over the fire. It had begun to rain outside and water flowing in sheets coloured red by the bare earth streamed to fill the trenches at the roadsides. “This place is quiet, too,” Charan added. “Yes, this place is quiet, food very cheap, and have you ever had any fuss with anybody among those at the boma?” 148 “Who?” Charan lifted his eyes to Jayandra. Jayandra lifted his hands above his head to show the caps the messengers used to wear. “I mean messengers.” “Only once I had a little trouble with them, but only a little trouble, that year when I was still a stranger here. Alli, you know that servant I have, that Alli?” “Yes. Tall and strong, with a big nose.” “That’s him.” “He...