The guard was a lanky fellow with a pimpled face and long arms sticking out below sleeves that were too short. He wore his uniform awkwardly and spoke the way he had been trained to. “He didn’t say why,” he added.
He told the guard to take his place on deck and went down the stairs leading to the cabins. As he crossed the saloon he saw the captain chatting with a passenger at the bar. For years he’d seen him there and now he waved his hand in a gesture that was less a greeting than a sign of old acquaintance. He slowed his pace wanting to tell the captain that he wouldn’t see him that evening: it’s my last day of service and tonight I’ll stay on the mainland, where I have some things to attend to.
Then it suddenly seemed ridiculous. He went down the next flight of stairs to the cabin deck, then along the bare, clean passageway, taking the master-key off his chain. The prisoner was standing near the porthole, looking out to sea. He wheeled around and looked at him out of those childlike blue eyes. “I want to give you this letter,” he said. He had an envelope in his hand and held it out with a timid but at the same time peremptory gesture. “Take it,” he said; “I want you to post it for me.” He had buttoned up his shirt and combed his hair and his face was not as haggard as before. “Do you realize what you’re asking?” he answered. “You know quite well I can’t do it.”
The prisoner sat down on the bed and looked at him in a manner that seemed ironical, or perhaps it was just his childlike eyes. “Of course you can do it,” he said, “if you want to.” He had unpacked his canvas bag and lined up the contents on his bunk as if he were making an inventory. “I know what’s wrong with me,” he said. “Look at my hospital admission card, have a look. Do you know what it means? It means I’ll never get out of that hospital. This is a last trip, do you follow me?” He emphasized the word “last” with an odd intonation, as if it were a joke. He paused as if to catch his breath and once more pressed his hand against his stomach, nervously or as if in pain. “This letter is for someone very dear to me and, for reasons I’m not going to bother explaining, I don’t want it to be censored. Just try to understand, I know you do.” The ship’s siren sounded as it always did when the harbour was in sight. It was a happy sound, something like a snort.
He answered angrily, in a hard, perhaps too hard voice, but there was no other way to end the conversation. “Repack your bag,” he said hurriedly, trying not to look him in the eyes. “In half an hour we’ll be there. I’ll come back when we land to put your handcuffs in place.” That was the expression he used: put them in place.
In a matter of seconds the few passangers dispersed and the pier was empty. An enormous yellow crane moved across the sky towards buildings under construction, with blind windows. The construction yard siren whistled, signalling that work should stop and a church bell in the town made a reply. It was noon. Who knows why the mooring operation had taken so long? The houses along the waterfront were red and yellow; he reflected that he’d never really noticed them and looked more closely. He sat down on an iron stanchion with a rope from a boat wound around it. It was hot, and he took off his cap. Then he started to walk along the pier in the direction of the crane. The usual old dog, with his head between his paws, lay in front of the combined bar and tobacco shop and wagged his tail feebly as he went by. Four boys in T-shirts, near the juke-box, were joking loudly. A hoarse, slightly masculine woman’s voice carried him back across the years. She was singing Ramona and he thought it was strange that this song should have come back into fashion. Summer was really here.
The restaurant at the far end of the harbour was not yet open. The owner, wearing a white apron, with a sponge in hand, was wiping a deposit of salt and sand from the shutters. The fellow looked at him and smiled in recognition, the way we smile at people we’ve known for most of our life but for whom we have no feelings. He smiled back and walked on, turning into a street with abandoned railway tracks, which he followed to the freight yard. At the end of one of the platforms there was a letterbox whose red paint was eaten by rust. He read the hour of the next collection: five o’clock. He didn’t want to know where the letter was going but he was curious about the name of the person who would receive it, only the Christian name. He carefully covered the address with his hand and looked only at the name: Lisa. She was called Lisa. Strange, it occurred to him: he knew the name of the recipient without knowing her, and he knew the sender without knowing his name. He didn’t remember it because there’s no reason to remember the name of a prisoner. He slipped the letter into the box and turned around to look back at the sea. The sunlight was strong and the gleam on the horizon hid the points of the islands. He felt perspiration on his face and took off his cap in order to wipe his forehead. My name’s Nicola, he said aloud. There was no one anywhere near.
THE TRAINS THAT GO TO MADRAS
The trains from Bombay to Madras leave from Victoria Station. My guide assured me that a departure from Victoria Station was, of itself, as good as a trip through India, and this was my first reason for taking the train rather than a plane. My guide was an eccentric little book, which gave utterly incongruous advice, and I followed it to the letter. My whole trip was incongruous and so this guidebook suited me to perfection. It treated the traveller not like an avid collector of stereotype images to be visited, as in a museum, by three or four set itineraries, but like a footloose and illogical individual, disposed to taking it easy and making mistakes. By plane, it said, you’ll have a fast, comfortable trip but you’ll miss out on the India of unforgettable villages and countrysides. With long-distance trains you risk unscheduled stops and may arrive as much as a whole day late, but you’ll see the true India. If you have the luck to hit the right train it will be not only comfortable but on time as well; you’ll enjoy first-rate food and service and spend only half as much as you would on a plane. And don’t forget that on Indian trains you may make the most unexpected acquaintances.
These last points had definitely convinced me, and perhaps I was so lucky as to have hit the right train. We had crossed strikingly beautiful country, unforgettable, also, for the variety of its human components, the air-conditioning worked perfectly and the service was faultless. Dusk was falling as the train crossed an area of bare red mountains. The steward came in with tea on a lacquered tray, gave me a dampened towel, poured the tea and informed me, discreetly, that we were in the centre of the country. While I was eating he made up my berth and told me that the dining-car would be open until midnight and that, if I wanted to dine in my own compartment, I had only to ring the bell. I thanked him with a small tip and gave him back the tray. Then I smoked a cigarette, looking out of the window at the unfamiliar landscape and wondering about my strange itinerary. For an agnostic to go to Madras to visit the Theosophical Society, and to spend the better part of two days on the train to get there was an undertaking that would probably have pleased the unusual authors of my unusual guidebook. The fact was that a member of the Theosophical Society might be able to tell me something I very much wanted to know. It was a slender hope, perhaps an illusion, and I didn’t want to consume it in the short space of a plane flight; I preferred to cradle and savour it in a leisurely fashion, as we like to do with hopes that we cherish while knowing that there is little chance of their realization.
An abrupt braking of the train intruded on my thoughts and probably my torpor. I must have dozed off for a few minutes while the train was entering a station and I had no time to read the sign displaying the name of the place. I had read in the guidebook that one of the stops was at Mangalore, or perhaps Bangalore, I couldn’t remember which, but now I didn’t want to bother leafing through the book to trace the railway line. Waiting on the platform there were some apparently prosperous Indian travellers in western dress, a group of women and a flurry of porters. It must have been an important industrial city; in the distance, beyond the tracks, there were factory smokestacks, tall buildings and broad, tree-lined avenues.