The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s

‘I have to go out almost at once, Eddie …’ She looked as if she would have liked to faint. When he sat down close to her on the straight-back chair with the tapestry seat that was an heirloom from her old Flemish grandmother, she became rather fixed in expression, and said nothing more.

‘What I was going to tell you, Etienne, darling, what I especially came over for, was to say that I feared our engagement must be broken off. It’s not so much that we are not suited, although that is a consideration; it is more that I don’t even seem to know what century I am living in – from which it follows, I suppose, that I don’t even know what country I am living in – which in turn means that I don’t know what language I am speaking, or what my name is. In fact I don’t even know what planet I’m on, whether it’s the Moon, or Earth, or Mars.’

Etienne gestured out of the window towards the beach, where two sand yachts were bowling merrily along.

‘Take a look for yourself. Does that look like Mars? You were born on this coast; you know the North Sea when you see it, don’t you?’

‘Don’t interrupt me! Of course I can see it’s the flaming North Sea –’

‘Well then, don’t talk so stupid! Look, Eddie, I’ve really had about enough of your nonsense! You come up here every Saturday night and break off our engagement –’

‘I do not! I’ve never broken it off before, often though I’ve been tempted to!’

‘You do, too! You don’t know what you do do! How do you think I like it? I’ve got my pride you know! I can take emotional scenes as well as the next girl – in fact sometimes I rather think I enjoy them in a kinky sort of way. Maybe I’m the kinky kind –’

He shook a fist under her nose. ‘No self-analysis, please, at least while I’m speaking! Have you any interest in me or haven’t you? And who am I? Who indeed? Man’s eternal quest for identity – pity I have to carry mine out with such rotten partners.’

‘If you’re going to be insulting, you can go, Eddie Morré! I know perfectly well what’s wrong with you, and don’t think I’m not sympathetic just because I don’t show it. You have built up that fine little dentist’s practice just so’s you will have enough money to support me comfortably when we get married, and the overwork has resulted in brain fatigue. Poor Eddie! All you need is a little rest – these fantasies about Mars and the Moon are just phantoms of escape filtering across your over-heated cerebellum, reminding you of the need for rest and quiet. You know how damned quiet it is on Mars.’

Tears filled his eyes. It seemed she really was sympathetic. And perhaps her explanation was correct. He threw his arms round her in perfect forgiveness and attempted to kiss her.

‘Do you mind! Your breath stinks of cornflowers!’

The two vast human figures confronted each other in the tiny artificial town-room. Sparked by sudden anger, he grasped her more closely. They struggled. Nobody was there to see a chair tipped over and they rolled on to the floor, arms round each other’s necks. After some while, they were both still. Then one of the figures rose and hurried out of the apartment, slamming the door in haste.

Plainly, he was in need of some form of purification. When it was dark, he changed into clean garments and walked down to the burning ghats. The usual crowds of beggars stood and lay in the temple doorway; he gave to them more generously than usual.

Inside the temple, it was stuffy, although a cool breeze moved near the floor, fluttering the tiny lights of the faithful – who were not many this evening, so that they formed only a small cluster of insects in the great dim hallowed interior of the hall.

E. V. Morilal prostrated himself for a long while, his forehead to the stone, allowing his senses to go out amid the generations who had pressed foreheads and feet to this slab in the solemn contortions of devotion. He felt no devotion, only isolation, the opposite of devotion, but the sense of other human beings was some sort of balm.

At last he rose and walked through the temple on to the ghats. Here the smells that lingered in the building took on definition: wood smoke, burning unguents, the mouldy Ganges slowly trundling by, bearing its immemorial burden of holiness, disease and filth. As ever, there were a few people, men and women, bathing in their clothes off the steps, calling on their gods as they sank into the brown flood. Morilal went tentatively to the edge of the water, scooping up a handful of the stuff and pouring it on his shaven crown, letting it run pleasurably down into his clothes.

It was all very noisy. There were boats plying on the river, and children and youths shouting on the bridge, some of them with transistor radios.

‘Hello! Back in the twentieth century now!’ Morilal thought sharply.

Restless, he shuffled back and forth among the funeral pyres, some of which were unlit, awaiting midnight, some of which were almost burnt out, the human freight reduced to drifting ash or a bit of recalcitrant femur. Mourners crouched by most of the biers, some silent, some maintaining an arbitrary wailing. He kept looking for his mother. She had been dead three years; she should have been immolated long ago.

His old friend Professor Chundaprassi was walking slowly up and down, helping himself along with a stick. He nodded to Morilal.

‘May I have the honour and pleasure of joining you, professor, if I do not interrupt a chain of meditation?’

‘You interrupt nothing, my friend. In fact, I was about to ask if you would delight me by joining me, but I feared you might be about to engage in a little mourning.’

‘No, no, I have only myself to mourn for. You possibly know I have been away for some while?’

‘Forgive me, but I was not aware. You recall I greeted you yesterday at the railway station. Have you been away since then?’

Morilal had fallen in with Chundaprassi, walking sedately through the puddles and wet ash; now he stopped in some confusion and gazed into the wrinkled face of his companion.

‘Professor – you are a professor, so you understand many things above the powers of ordinary men such as myself – though even as I say “ordinary men such as myself”, I am conscious of my own extraordinariness. I am a unique being –’

‘Of course, of course, and the point really cannot be too greatly emphasised. No two men are alike! There are a thousand characteristics, as I have always maintained –’

‘Quite so, but I’m hardly talking about a characteristic, if you will forgive my being so disagreeable as to interrupt you when you are plainly just embarking on an interesting if somewhat long lecture on human psychology. And forgive me, also, if I seem to be talking rather like a Dostoevsky character – it’s just that lately I’ve been obsessed –’

‘Dostoevsky? Dostoevsky?’ The professor scratched his head. ‘Naturally I am familiar with the major writing of the Russian novelist … But I fail momentarily to recall which of his novels is set, even partially, in Benares.’

‘You mistake my meaning – unintentionally, I’m sure, since a little sarcasm is positively beyond you. I happen to be in a spot, professor, and if you can’t help, then to hell with you! My trouble is that my ego, or my consciousness, or something, is not fixed in time or space. Can you believe me if I tell you that no more than a couple of hours ago, I was a Belgian dentist at a seaside resort?’

‘Allow me to wish you good night, sir!’ The professor was about to turn away when Morilal grasped him by one arm.

‘Professor Chundaprassi! Please tell me why you are going so suddenly!’

‘You believe you are a white man! A Belgian white man! Clearly you are victim of some dreadful hallucination brought about by reading too much in the newspapers about the colour bar. You’ll be a Negro, next, no doubt! Good night!’

He pulled himself free from Morilal’s grip and tottered hurriedly from the burning ghat.

‘I will be a Negro and be damned to you, if I so desire!’ Morilal exclaimed aloud.

‘Congratulations, sir! You are quite right to exercise your freedom of judgment in such matters!’ It was one of the bathers who spoke, a fat man now busily oiling his large and glistening breasts; Morilal had noticed that he was avidly listening to the conversation with the professor and had already taken a dislike to the man.

‘What do you know about it?’ he enquired.

‘More than you may think! There are many people like yourself, sir, who are able to move from character to character, like birds from flower to flower. I myself, but yesterday, was a beautiful young Japanese lady aged only twenty years with a tiny and beautifully-proportioned body, and a lover of twenty-two of amazing ardour.’

‘You are inventing filth, you fat old Bengali!’ So saying, he jumped at the man, who tripped him neatly but failed to stand back in time, so that Morilal took him with him as he fell, and they rolled together, hands at each other’s throat, down the slimy steps into the Ganges.

He dragged himself out of the river. For a while, as he lay on the bank with his head throbbing, he thought he had experienced another epileptic fit. Something of the chequered past came back to him, and he dragged himself up.

He was lying half out of a shallow stream, under a stone bridge. As he got to his feet, he saw the stream cut through a small country town. The place seemed to be deserted: so empty and so still that it looked almost like an artificial place. Slowly, he walked forward, down the curving street, staring at the small stone houses with their gardens neat and unmoving in the thin sun.

By the time he reached the other end of the street, where the buildings stopped and the fields began again, he had seen nobody. The only movement had come from an old cat, stuffily walking down a garden path. As he looked back the way he had come, he saw that he had just passed an unpretentious building bearing the sign POLICE STATION. For several minutes, he stared at it, and then moved briskly towards it, opened the door and marched in.

A portly man with a grey moustache that drooped uncomfortably over his lips sat reading a newspaper behind a counter. He wore a green uniform. When the door opened, he looked up, nodded politely and put down his paper.

‘What can I do for you, sir?’

‘I want to report a murder. In fact, I want to report three murders.’

‘Three murders! Are you sure?’

‘Not really. I don’t know whether I killed the persons concerned or not, but it must be worth checking. There was a friend of mine, a producer, and my fiancée, and a poor black man in India. I can give you their names. At least, I think I can remember. Then there’s the time and place …’

His voice died. He could see it was going to be difficult. His impulse had been to enlist help; perhaps it had not been a wise impulse. And had he ever been anyone else, or had it all been the product of a fever?

The policeman slowly came round the counter, adjusting his face until it was absolutely without expression.