Baumgartner's Bombay by Anita Desai

Author:Anita Desai [Desai, Anita]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: GAPPAA.ORG
Published: 2015-03-08T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

BAUMGARTNER WOKE IN a panic, feeling an iron weight press upon his solar plexus, press and press till it threatened to crack under pressure, and his heart hammered to get out. He struggled and heaved, fought to get out from under it, hitting out with his arms.

Lotte muttered in angry protest. It had been her weight against him, leaning heavily, moist with perspiration.

Remorsefully, Baumgartner rubbed her rubbery red arms, then struggled out of bed, groaning, ‘And no Mittagessen, no lunch, even have we had. Lotte, won’t you make some Mittagessen now?’

She muttered something inaudible, and threw her head about on the pillow. Baumgartner sighed, straightened his clothes and stumbled towards the table. Still half-blind with sleep, he hunted in bread-bins and biscuit tins. ‘No chocolate?’ he whined. ‘No chocolate even, Lotte?’

She suddenly jerked herself upright. Her eyes were red and her hair stood on end. She glowered in his direction, but without recognition. ‘Chocolate – chocolate –’ she chewed the words with her gums, having lost her dentures in the pillow. ‘You pig you, go out and eat chocolate. Don’t come to me saying chocolate – chocolate – this time of day – this time of night – oh – aah!’ she cried out as though an unseen weight had descended on her too, all at once, and collapsed on to the bed and slept on, suddenly immobile, noisily drawing air up her nose like a chimney.

Baumgartner removed his fingers from her tins and bottles, guiltily. ‘Then I must go home and eat – so hungry, Lotte,’ he complained, and fastened his buttons, buckles, smoothed his hair. Oh, he felt awful, awful. To sleep like this, soaked with gin, on a hot afternoon in Bombay – oh, it was stupid, stupid. He stumbled towards the door, and fumbled amongst the bolts and chains, rattled them helplessly, frightenedly, in a panic, wanting to get out.

The staircase was pleasantly shaded, silent, even if thick with cooking smells, but when he reached the door at the bottom on the stairs, the fresh air and the heat struck at him like twin knives. It was cruel, but he had to go, he had to walk back to his flat, get some food, he had to eat. And feed his cats. Thinking of them prowling around and crying with hunger, he struck the side of his head and spat, ‘Ech!’

Ramu, seated on a chair at his door, asleep, opened one eye to see the old man stumble away, talking to himself. Before going back to sleep, he gave a wink, and a sarcastic, ‘Hah – that memsahib – and the sahib – so old – still – hmp!’

Half an hour later Baumgartner staggered into the Café de Paris, a great sigh surging out of his lungs as he dropped into the nearest chair. Unlike the street outside, strident with afternoon light, the café was thick with shadows, green quiet shadows that seemed to be generated by the blaze and glare outside. The clockwise fans revolved at top speed, keeping flies at a distance.

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