Algren at Sea

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “I forgot the suit in the closet,” Smith explained, “and she forgot to remind me.”

  “Why didn’t you go back and pick it up?” I asked.

  “I didn’t have the time. I phoned her. I asked her to bring it down to the dock.”

  “Did she?”

  Smith looked at me cynically. “Did you ever know a broad to keep her word?”

  “Why should any woman keep her word to anyone like you,” I heard Danielsen asking quite distinctly, “no woman in her right mind could respect you.”

  Anna stopped stirring the ice in her glass and looked over at me curiously. I looked out the window at the roofs of Calcutta. I hoped Smith would have the sense to let it pass.

  He did. “You’re kidding,” was all he said, and laughed uneasily; knowing Danielsen wasn’t kidding at all. I forced myself to glance at Danielsen.

  He looked positively gaunt. And the shadow of an old determination lent his face an expression too fixed. Yet he’d had only two drinks.

  Anna rose, put a record on, and went to Danielsen with her hands outstretched.

  He didn’t take them.

  “Dance with your boy friend,” he ordered her.

  “I don’t even know the woman, Danielsen,” Smith said, trying to sound casual.

  Anna wore a sheepish look, like anyone who doesn’t know her next move.

  “I told you to dance with him,” Danielsen let her know what her best move was. “I told you. And I’m getting pretty well fed-up waiting.”

  “I’ll dance with her if you want me to, Danielsen,” Smith offered amiably, and added, as he ought not to have added, with the pair dancing stiffly under Danielsen’s eye—“I just don’t see what you’re getting so cocky about.”

  Danielsen put down his glass too carefully.

  “Turn off that record,” he commanded me. I turned it off.

  “I’ll tell you what I’m getting cocky about, sailor,” Danielsen told him, “you’re a clap-ridden forty-year-old degenerate running a crooked card game, that’s what I’m getting cocky about.”

  Smith sat down across the room. He wasn’t going to precipitate a fight. But he was going to draw a real firm line.

  “Alright,” he told Danielsen. “I do have the clap. Since you say so, I’m a degenerate. And I do run a crooked card game. But I’m not forty. I’m only thirty-nine. And that makes you out a liar.”

  Danielsen swung into the kitchen and swung back with a bread knife. We were in business.

  Smith stood up, looking toward me yet watching Danielsen. Anna waited dead-white under her rouge.

  I got a chair in front of me.

  Danielsen looked ridiculous, but he was holding the knife right. He began tiptoeing, then sprang—Smith leaped clean over the pink settee, tilted it in front of him, holding it by its springs, with his back to the wall: as perfect a fort as I’ve ever seen constructed in two seconds. There was absolutely no way of Danielsen getting at him.

  Danielsen’s eyes, glazing around the room to find where Smith had gone, skipped across Anna and found me. It was my move.

  All I had was the chair behind which I was standing. Smith put his nose over the top of the red settee.

  “Don’t throw the chair,” he advised me conversationally; and pulled his nose back.

  The settee moved an inch toward Danielsen; Danielsen didn’t see it move. Smith was holding it, a bit off the ground, by its springs. Even at that moment I realized how much strength that required.

  Danielsen began trying to ask me something. I could tell only because his lips were moving.

  “I can’t hear you, Danielsen,” I told him with my hands on the chair’s back. He raised his voice.

  “The last stitch,” he told me—“you’re asking for it.”

  I shifted my eyes. He followed the shift, saw the settee coming and came at me blade first as Smith lunged with the settee—and missed. I thrust the chair upward to block the blade. It went into the chair’s rattan bottom and stuck.

  Smith lay sprawling. I leaped across him and got to the door while Danielsen was extricating the knife. As I opened the door he turned and leaped across Smith.

  It was me he wanted.

  I knew I was running only because two long dark walls, on either side, kept passing me. I knew I’d fallen because the walls weren’t moving. I rolled over onto my back just in time to get both hands on the wrist that held the knife.

  Danielsen was astride me with the blade four inches off my heart.

  I held.

  I was the strongest man in the world. I held it and cried up to the blind eyes looking down:

  “Danielsen! Danielsen!”

  Through a dark and distant land he heard his name called once—and called again.

  The blindness faded from his eyes.

  But not the rage.

  Now he knew who he was. He knew who I was. He saw the knife. And knew he could kill me.

  And he didn’t know why he shouldn’t.

  He switched the knife to his free hand.

  There was nothing I could do. The decision was Danielsen’s.

  “You asked for it. You want it now?”

  “No,” I assured him, without knowing what it was, “I don’t want it.”

  Then he smiled that ever-so-wan, ever-so-lonesome, terrible smile.

  “You’ve got me,” I assured him. “You win.”

  “Get up,” he commanded me.

  I got up.

  “Run for your life.”

  I ran. For my life.

  I ran for Anna’s door. I shut the door and locked it. I turned.

  Smith had Anna spread-legged on the naked springs, her dress over her head, screwing like a madman.

  I went into the kitchen and found whiskey and a cup. I had to hold the cup with both hands to bring it to my lips. Then I had another. My shakiness diminished to an interior quivering: I was going to quiver inwardly for some time to come, I realized.

  When I came out of the kitchen Anna was huddled on the floor, her dress ripped down the middle. Smith was sitting on the edge of the settee buttoning his pants.

  A high shrill shout challenged us from the other side of the door.

  “Anyone one of us! Last stitch! Last stitch!”

  “Go back to the ship, Danielsen,” I called.

  “Last stitch through your nose!”

  Then his step fled lightly down the hall.

  Anna had recovered sufficiently to sit up, holding her dress together while shifting her dazed look between us: she didn’t know which one of us had raped her.

  “Don’t leave me with him,” she decided, looking at me.

  The night’s events were just a series of cheerful little coincidences to Smith, but they’d left me exhausted; the only thing that kept me from leaving was the fear that Danielsen might be waiting in the hall. I waited until Smith was ready to leave too.

  He was taking his ease by cracking peanuts between his palms and spitting the shells out onto the carpet.

  “After you get through picking up the shells, sailor,” I suggested, “we’ll set the settee rightside up.”

  Smith studied me thoughtfully.

  “For a man whose life I’ve just saved you don’t sound overly grateful,” he reproached me. And spat another shell onto the carpet.

  “Don’t leave me alone with him,” Anna repeated.

  But I waited at one end of the settee until Smith felt sufficiently obliging to get his can off of it long enough for me to upend it. Then he sat down again.

  “Didn’t you know that Danielsen is beach-nuts?” he asked me.

  “I know now,” I told Smith, tossing him his cap.

  “What do you think you’d have if you put Danielsen’s brain in a cat?” Smith wanted to know. “That’s a riddle, son,” he explained, grinning contentedly. He’d enjoyed every minute of the row, it was plain.

  “Don’t leave me alone with him,” Anna said again.

&nbs
p; “She don’t want to be left alone with you,” Smith told me.

  “What do you think you’d have? Guess.”

  “Why don’t you both go?” the woman asked weakly.

  Smith jammed a finger into his bottle and got up.

  “Coming, Pops?” he asked at the door.

  “I’m coming.”

  “Just want me to wait out first, eh?” he asked, grinning.

  “You’re cutting in close,” I admitted, “after you.”

  There was no shadow, in that long hall, of Danielsen.

  “What’s the next stop, Pops?” he asked me, more ready than ever for anything.

  My own next step was bed and that bed wasn’t far. But I waited till I had the key in the lock before I let Smith know how close to home I was.

  “See you on the ship, sailor,” I told him; let myself in and barred the door behind me.

  If Danielsen was waiting down the hall, Crooked-Neck Smith had a problem. It no longer interested me.

  “Wait till Anna gets Martha’s ear tomorrow,” I thought.

  Martha’s boy was curled up on the couch.

  I helped myself to the brandy on the bookshelf.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “What do you want?” I called through the door.

  “What you’d have is a crazy cat!” Smith whooped—and I heard him walking off laughing his head off all the way.

  I lit a cigar and began reading Commander on Trial: A car running at a stormy speed on the Flora Fountain Road turned suddenly towards a magnificent building in the beautiful city of BOMBAY, knows as “JEEVAN JYOT.” The gate of the Car was opened with a zerking sound and a hand-some man of dominating personality exactly six feet tall came out, pushing the door back and rushed straight towards the upper stairs, a Place well known to him.

  It was a hot afternoon of April 27, 1959. People were gasping for wind. Pitch on the road was melting, the sea was calm, which was the clear indication of some unexpected storm.

  BANG . . . ! BANG . . . ! ! BANG . . . ! ! ! was the sound which naturally diverted the attention of the passers-by. This unusual gun shot in a residential flat made people curious to know about the reasons for. this unfortunate event. Before the persons assembled outside could know the reason they saw the dramatic turn of an Officer looking man, running down with a naked revolver in his hand. Automatically, it created a curiosity among people assembled outside the gate to know what actually had happened. The well dressed man wearing a spotless Fawn colored shirt and a pair of dark colored trousers appeared. From his very appearance it looked as if his excellent character was blotted with some undesirable act, which was clearly reflected from his perplexed appearance. The Durwan of the building tried to stop him but he could not.

  POLICE! POLICE!! cried the mob, but the man did not care for police, got into the Car and without properly answering the queries of DURWAN and others, he went on, though he uttered something but exactly he could not remember as his conscience was guilty.

  Taking a sharp turn he drove fast assuring the people outside, in hurry and went to a Police Constable on duty. He slowed down his car. It was Government House Lower Gate where he stopped for a while and asked the Constable, who was on fixed post duty, the nearest Police Station?

  I looked up, feeling I was being watched. There was only an infant sleeping. I resumed reading:“Will you take me to the Police Station” asked the man.

  “No, I am on fixed post duty and cannot move from here” told the Constable.

  After enquiring of the Police Station and being told that the nearest Police Station was GAMDEVI P.S. he drove away. Now the man was totally undecided and was in half-haphazard state of mind, completely perplexed and could not ascertain his further steps. He was under the impression as some thing unpleasant had happened. He had never imagined the consequences which actually happened because only an hour and a half before he was the man who was seen at METRO CINEMA dropping his beautiful blue-eyed English born wife and his three kids. What a tragedy it was? That the wife was enjoying a film show on the screen and husband was playing a prominent role in another practical life drama outside the auditorium which was even more powerful and packed with thrills and followed by unexpected events. How for a fate can play with a man no body can guess?

  It was Commander Samuel’s Office, where Commander in his white official dress was busy with his office routine. Suddenly he was diverted from his official work to an unofficial one, when another officer of same rank stepped in the office. He was well acquainted with him.

  “I do not know exactly but I think I killed a man” said the man and asked his advice in this matter where the matter of accident according to his own belief was to be reported. The fact that the Smith & Mason .38 Service Revolver was used in this unfortunate event created an anxiety in Samuel’s mind but he advised him the proper way and asked him to see Deputy Commissioner LOBO a C.I.D. Officer.

  Actually this was an extraordinary event which happened for the first time in Commander’s pleasant life.

  “She is not faithful to me! She is not faithful to me”!! were the repeated words which were rotating in his mind and even the whole picture of past was coming by and by to his mind, which he could not avoid. Thinking it better to submit himself to Police, he did so and relied upon the theory of accident and struggle.

  The accused in this case, Commander Kavas Maneckshaw Nanavati, a handsome well built man of 37, was a man of three battle fronts and had spent eighteen and a half years of his life in the Navy Service.

  I glanced about the room and saw nobody but the sleeping infant. I got up and looked into the bedroom. Nobody. Then the bath. Nobody. The windows were secure. Danielsen had frightened me more than I cared to admit to myself, I began to think, when I saw her.

  She was squatting like a watchful fox in a corner, that old ayah who lived on the floor. And what had gotten her nose up was my cigar.

  I held it out to her and she came a-scuttering, snatched it out of my hand, puffed at it twice while squatting, thrust it back to my hand and, holding in the smoke she had inhaled, held it until she’d scuttered back to her corner: there, her eyes bright with pleasure, she let the smoke out. I’d never seen anyone so old take so much joy out of so small a pleasure.

  I returned to reading:Nanavati married Sylvia in England in 1949. The couple had three children, the youngest being of three years. They came to stay in a flat at Coloba in Bombay in December, 1957, as a Naval Officer Nanavati had to be away from home for long periods of duty at sea. During 1958, Nanavati was away from Bombay for about six months.

  Mr. Trivedi said that Nanavati was introduced to Ahuja by another naval officer, Lt. Cdr. Yagnik, in July or August, 1950. During the absence of Nanavati at Sea, his wife used to visit Ahuja’s house to see his sister, Miss Mammie Ahuja. She also happened to meet Ahuja during those visits. Actually, Nanavati visited Ahuja’s house along with his wife only twice or thrice.

  During these visits, the Prosecution said, “some intimacy appears to have developed between Ahuja and Sylvia.” On April 18, 1959, Nanavati returned to Bombay. He took ten days’ leave from April 19 and stayed in Bombay. It was during this leave period that the murder of Ahuja was committed.

  The prosecutor told the jury that just before the return of Nanavati, Sylvia, it appeared, had written “some sort of a letter” to Ahuja. During the leave period Nanavati noticed a “sort of inexplicable coldness” on the part of Sylvia towards him. He was unhappy about this change in her attitude, but could not find out the exact reason.

  On the morning of April 27, 1959, the date of the offence—the couple got up early and took their sick dog to a veterinary surgeon. Later they went to a picture house to reserve some tickets for the afternoon show. They returned home after buying some vegetables at the Crawford Market.

  At breakfast that day, Nanavati asked her the reason for the change in her attitude, but failed to get any answer. He raised the matter again during lunch. As he approached Sylvia, th
e Prosecutor said, she asked him to keep away. Further questioning elicited a reply from his wife.

  To a query as to how she happened to lose her love for him and whether there was anyone else for whom she cherished her affection, she said “yes.” Nanavati then asked Sylvia if that person was Ahuja. To this too she replied in the affirmative. This naturally upset Nanavati.

  She even acknowledged that she had not been faithful to her husband. This stunned Nanavati. From that moment Nanavati was hot.

  “This gentleman in the dock is one of the ablest officers in the Navy and the Victim happens to be a flourishing Business Man dealing in motor cars.” By these words public Prosecutor Mr. C. M. Trivedi, broke the silence of the Court and opened the case for the prosecution.

  I glanced up: she was waiting for another chance at the cigar. It was hardly more than a butt but, when I held it toward her, she came and returned to the corner with it: now it was all hers.

  In the corner she puffed the dying butt with her eyes closed, as if she’d lived her whole life for this moment. She didn’t open her eyes till the butt went dead. Then, as though she’d known my eyes had been on her, she looked up at me with a mischievous air.

  “Brrrr-andy,” she demanded, in a low, long growl.

  Martha had put the stuff too high on the shelf for the ayah to reach. Well, I could stand a snort myself.

  When I brought the bottle down she crouched beside me, eyes alight with apprehension lest I drink it all and leave her not a drop. I had one drink but I didn’t trust this one with the bottle. She understood and put her mouth up like a baby lamb. I let her have enough to stagger a ewe and drew it away. The stuff ran down the corners of her mouth, brown as her brandy-colored hide. She flashed me a smile white as milk and scrambled back to her corner. I put the bottle on the shelf and went back to the trial of Commander Nanavati:SYLVIA’S EVIDENCE

  Clad in pure white, Indian style, 28-year-old Sylvia Nanavati, English wife of Commander Nanavati, gave her evidence for the defence in the Bombay Sessions Court, in clear low tones, which had a touch of sadness at times and told the court “I was infatuated with Ahuja.”