Page 49 of Algren at Sea

Sylvia’s evidence was eagerly awaited by the parties as well as the public because it was she from whom some extraordinary story was expected. She was refused by the prosecutor to be called as a prosecution witness as prosecution did not place any reliance on her.

  Examined by the defence counsel, Mrs. Nanavati said that she was married to Commander in July, 1949 and had three children, aged 9 ½, 5 ½ and 3. She came to know Prem Ahuja three years ago. Before she knew Ahuja, her married life was perfectly happy. Her friendship with Ahuja resulted in intimacy with him, roughly speaking about the beginning of 1958.

  Mrs. Nanavati did not disclose this intimacy with Ahuja to her husband till April 27 last (1959). Describing her activities on that day, witness stated that in the morning, she and her husband went to the veterinary hospital at Parel, and on the way back to their residence at Colaba, she purchased from Metro Cinema one ticket for herself and three tickets for three children. Then she did shopping at Crawford Market and returned home at 12-30 P.M.

  Before lunch, they were sitting in the sitting room when Commander Nanavati came and touched her. Witness asked him not to do so because she did not like him.

  Defence counsel: Why did you not like him (husband)?

  Mrs. Nanavati: At that time I was infatuated with Ahuja.

  Witness, continuing, said that Commander Nanavati asked her why she was so cold and why she did not like him. She replied that she did not want to talk about the matter.

  After lunch Commander Nanavati went to lie down in the bedroom and witness was in the sitting room. After a time her husband came out and told her they must talk this matter out. He further said that for the last few months “you have been cool to me.” He also asked for the reason, and said, “Don’t you love me?”

  Witness did not give any reply. Commander Nanavati then asked her whether she was in love with anyone else . . . and she said yes. He then wanted to know who the other person was, but witness said nothing.

  Witness continued: When he asked me whether it was Ahuja I said yes. He asked me whether I had been faithful to him. I told him I had not been faithful to him.

  Commander Nanavati just sat dazed. Suddenly he got up rather excitedly and said that he wanted to go to Ahuja’s flat and square things up. Witness became alarmed and put her hand to her husband and said, “Please don’t go there, he will shoot you.”

  Commander Nanavati said: “Don’t bother about myself. It does not matter, and in any case I will shoot myself.”

  Witness then caught hold of his arm and tried to calm him down. She told her husband “Why should you shoot yourself? You are the innocent one in this.”

  After this, witness said, her husband cooled down a bit and asked her whether Ahuja was willing to marry her and look after the children. She avoided answering that question, because she was too ashamed to admit that she had felt that Ahuja was trying to avoid marrying her. Thereupon her husband told her that he was prepared to forgive her if she promised never to see Ahuja again. But witness hesitated to give an answer.

  Witness: I was still infatuated with Ahuja, so I hesitated to give the answer. As this was question which affected my whole future, I could not give an answer at the moment.

  Continuing, witness stated that in the meantime, the doorbell rang and the neighbour’s child came in for going to the cinema. Then they got ready for the cinema and her husband said that they should not talk about it any more and that they would talk about it the next morning.

  Witness went to the cinema with three children, her husband driving the car. Though she requested Commander Nanavati to go with her for the show, he did not go, but just took them to the cinema. Counter foils of the tickets, which were taken charge of by the police were then tendered.

  After leaving them at the theatre, her husband told her that he was going to the ship, I.N.S. Mysore, to get some medicine for the dogs.

  Witness identified a silk shirt and coloured pants as having been worn by Commander Nanavati at the time her husband told her that he would return and pick them up at the cinema, the show ending at 5-30 P.M.

  When she came out of the cinema she did not find her husband, but she was picked up by a relative of her husband. When she reached home, she came to know as the incident in the case. Her husband had taken the keys of their flat.

  Question: I am definitely suggesting that your husband never said that he would kill himself?

  Witness: My husband clearly said that. Asked how she was indifferent to that statement of her husband, she replied:

  “I was myself in a state of upset. So I did not think clearly, but I was not indifferent to my husband shooting himself.”

  Question: Despite all that happened you went to the Cinema on that day?

  Witness: It is difficult to explain things to the children. So as I had promised them, I took them to the Cinema.

  Question: Where are you staying?

  Witness: I am staying with the parents of my husband.

  Question: “I am suggesting that you have agreed to oblige your husband now that lover is no more.”

  Witness: It is not true. I am stating what I actually know.

  I fell asleep over the sorrows of Nanavati; and slept so soundly I did not hear Martha let herself in. I did not waken until she called to me from the bed.

  My tactic was to make no love to her until she took the initiative: had she been making love, my approach would be tolerated only because I was supporting her for a short while.

  So now, when she fell to sleep on my shoulder, I merely held her.

  The drumming of the overhead fan began to drum to a slower beat; like the throb of great engines hauling below deck. They were whispering the same warning over and over—or was it a seaman, whispering to himself while he listened, on the other side of my stateroom door? Baliram, in a white uniform and his face bloodied, stood, smiling knowingly, above me.

  “Bombay is a great city, my friend,” he said sorrowfully—and bent so low above me I felt his breath on my face and wakened.

  It was Martha’s breath, while she slept with her head on my shoulder. She had thrown her arm across me, and on the nape of my neck I could feel her fingers lying lightly. Her breasts, crushed against me, yet felt firm. She moved her thigh across mine and caught the calf of my leg with her heel, pressing herself against me. Her fingers tapped my nape: she was awake and waiting. I swept my hand down her back to the fullness of her hips and gently backward till she joined her hands about my back. Then joined her thighs.

  When her breath began coming harder I took her mouth till her lips went cool in release. A moment later she had fallen back to sleep; her head upon her palm.

  All night, in voluptuous gravity, this woman of Assam, wearing golden earrings, slept; her cheek upon her palm. All night the ceiling fan above her whirred. I saw her purchased breasts: their rise and fall.

  While four roses made a shadow, as of many roses, on the wall.

  Beyond the door her ancient ayah slept upon the floor.

  All night, along the flaring street below, I heard the cabareting taxis’ roar.

  A night that roses, at one rupee for four, made a shadow, as of many rupees, on the wall.

  I wakened to a tremendous crash, flinging my hands across my eyes—I thought the overhead fan had fallen.

  Martha was pulling on a robe. There came a long low wail of fright. I got up and stumbled into the living room.

  The top shelf of the great bookcase had crashed to the floor on top of the ayah, lying prone and wailing with the brandy bottle smashed across a litter of broken records. That she had tried to climb the shelves for the bottle and had gotten high enough to reach it before the top shelf crashed was plain enough. Martha was rocking the baby while keeping up such a flow of abuse—in a tongue I’d never heard—that the kid was becoming more frightened than ever.

  The ayah came crawling toward her on her belly, but Martha ignored her, joggling the baby in her arms. She paced up and down, strode to the bookcase and, with one hand de
monstrating the enormity of the old woman’s crime, shook the lower shelves angrily—and down they came with a louder crash than the one the old ayah had caused. In this fresh plunge every record, that had not fallen in the first fall, was smashed utterly.

  And the ayah, as though sure now she must be responsible for all the bookshelves in the world, emitted a howl like a terrified child. She clutched, in her misery, at the hem of Martha’s robe and Martha slapped her off so forcefully I felt I myself had been struck.

  The old woman lay howling face-down in the rug.

  “She’s honest. You said so yourself,” I reminded Martha.

  Martha didn’t seem to hear.

  “She’s too old to get work,” I insisted, “she’ll die in the streets.”

  “Let her die,” Martha decided.

  In the morning the ayah was gone. Anna would be pleased, I knew.

  It was time for me to leave as well.

  So farewell to Ezekiel’s and Ezekiel’s creatures: goodbye to slicky-boy mackers with paralyzed mugs—may their ricepaddy angels all turn out to be carhops.

  Good fortune for keeps to old ruined customs-men asweat in the noon bazaars: may police never entrap him in his Anglo-Indian home. And farewell to slipper-sloppering snitch-on-Papa girlfinks: may they wind up in such cages as have room for one more.

  Goodbye to all Mama-sans of low-voltage ports whose girls sell their clothes when no ship comes to dock. Farewell and soft blessings on all mascaraed ghosts who subsist on green ladydrinks along old Ho-Phang Road.

  Farewell to the flares of Kamathipura and its sixty-watt night-bulbs burning all in a row. May all cockeyed whores, the whole wide world around, find rest under lamps that lean each to each.

  Farewell to poor girls who put up with everything: and to upside-down tightwire walkers who wind up on all fours in fly-buzzing bars.

  Good riddance to all cheesified, praise-me-and-I’ll praise-you bone-deep begrudgers, whittling their words to gain six more floppy-hats at the next lecture—small-time cross-indexing annotators: Fiedlers, Kazins, Podhoretzes, Macdonalds and such, sniffing the wind while counting the house—mere nosedrops in the nostrils of literature—screw the whole spiteburning lot.

  Goodbye to all seamen whose heads are on crooked as well as to those whose heads are on straight. Goodbye to dead pursers who kept their ships out of trouble; and to radio officers, headphones clamped, who can’t remember whether it was in Macao or Saigon.

  Forever farewell to all mariners, beached or ashore, adrift between lonely hotel rooms and the shifting floor of the ocean’s deeps.

  Goodbye to all seamen who fear those deeps: yet fear the shore even more.

  Goodbye to that ominous tenement—goodbye most of all and goodbye for keeps—goodbye to the woman of Assam.

  Wherever she sleeps.

  The Malaysia Mail was swinging out of the Port of Calcutta.

  It was that hour when the ship, leaving the quais lighter for cargo discharged, seems heavier than ever with a weight of regret. Those short-term loves that might have been long-term; those glimpses of the Might-Have-Been that never would be now, leave officers and men alike feeling low. I needed a drink myself.

  Concannon’s door was open; the radio was beep-beep-jotting. But all to be seen of Sparks was two big feet, with shoes unlaced, stretched on his bunk. He opened one eye when I came in and rolled face to the wall. I helped myself to his gin, sat down and waited.

  Fantasies, of having Martha with me in Chicago, came and went; in each of which she was companion and lover. Coming down one level of fantasy, she became faithful servant in a spacious house, with living quarters for herself and her son: the boy was growing up to share his mother’s everlasting gratitude to the magnanimous American who had rescued them both from a life of shame, all of that. How to fit this into a sixty-a-month walkup in Chicago I hadn’t quite resolved, when Concannon came awake at last.

  “That was the worst one yet,” he concluded.

  “You look it,” I assured him.

  “I feel like it,” he acknowledged, splashing cold water across his temples. He was already beginning to get his color back.

  “What’s the story on Manning?” I wanted to know.

  “You know as much as I do,” he told me, “a thousand watches worth fifty apiece, and twelve thousand dollars, American, in undeclared bills.”

  “I didn’t know about the money.”

  “It’s a break for him, as it turns out,” Concannon filled me in, “he’ll be tried in the States instead of here.”

  “You mean he’s still on board?”

  “Karensen got hold of the American embassy—they wouldn’t let the customs cops take him off the ship. He has to face charges on the twelve thousand first. Then India can extradite him. They didn’t like it one bit.”

  “What becomes of the watches?”

  “Customs confiscates them, then sells them at auction. The merchant who tipped them off will be allowed to get them back for a token bid.”

  “Do you think the old man was in on it?”

  Sparks shook his head, no. “But he’ll have trouble getting another ship all the same. Drink up.”

  He slipped the headphones on to indicate he had to get to work.

  “Watch out you don’t get the ship in trouble,” I warned him.

  I glanced into the officers’ lounge on the way down to the crew’s quarters. Danielsen, stirring something in a cup, seemed to be waiting for me. He gave me a faint bird-like shuttering of his eyes to indicate he wanted to say something. I tried a hearty, “How’s things? What’s your story?”

  I had to put my ear down toward his mouth to catch his answer.

  It sounded like “I’m not going ashore anymore.”

  “I don’t blame you,” I assured him, “if I’d had a gun I would have had to shoot you.”

  “I know,” he smiled weakly, “I know.”

  “Has it happened before?” I asked, sitting down across from him.

  He started to nod, yes. “But never aboard ship,” he assured me, “never at sea.”

  There was an awkward silence.

  “It’s why I never go home at Christmas,” he told me, “I always ship out.”

  “Something about Santa Claus does it?”

  He shook his head. “I can drink at sea but not ashore.”

  “Well,” I told him, “I thought I’d had my last drink, at sea or on shore, you can believe me.”

  “I’m sorry,” he told me wistfully, “I apologize.”

  I didn’t like it. His fury had diminished, yet had not died. When the light of sanity had come back into his eyes he had still wanted to kill me.

  What I represented to him, that he needed to kill it, I surmise, had something to do with being—or seeming to him to be—of some specially privileged order.

  “Have you seen Manning?” I asked, to change the subject.

  “I haven’t seen him,” Danielsen told me, “the First Mate was taking care of the store when I was down there. Either Manning is ashamed to show his face or afraid to.”

  “What does he have to be afraid of?”

  “The men won’t get a draw again until we hit Long Beach. He was using their money to buy watches. There goes Smith’s funny poker game.”

  I left Danielsen stirring whatever-that-was in a cup.

  Cutting through the narrow Officer’s Galley I had to squeeze past Smith and Captain Karensen in front of Manning’s stateroom. Had either recognized me I would have exchanged greetings. But, as both moved aside to let me pass without a word, I took it as one of those small snubs that men at work put on the man who has nothing to do but stroll idly about.

  “Mister Manning!” I heard Smith call loudly as I left the galley. I continued on, down the ladder and into the crew’s quarters.

  Nobody was around but Bridelove and Muncie, playing call rummy for matches. Bridelove looked to be winning.

  “What’s our next port?” I asked him.

  “The Philippi
nes,” Bridelove informed me. “I don’t know whether we’ll hit Tacloban City. Probably Ilo-no and Cebu.”

  “Why not Manila?”

  “Not this trip,” Bridelove was certain.

  Crooked-Neck Smith stood in the doorway, his head as far out on his neck as I’d ever seen it. It was really stretching.

  “Manning just killed himself,” he told us.

  And turned and walked off.

  Manning had been not only a scandal himself, but a cause for others to behave scandalously. The overdose he had taken had not been, necessarily, fatal. Had there been a single person aboard who cared, in the slightest degree, whether the man lived or died, he could have been saved.

  Nobody had reported to the Captain that the purser hadn’t shown up for duty. The Third Mate had rapped the man’s door at six that morning and, receiving no answer, had informed the First Mate; who had simply dismissed the matter until ten, and had then opened the ship’s store himself.

  It had remained for Smith—who else?—on his customary round of making everybody’s business aboard his own, to bring Karensen down to Manning’s door. It had been Smith who’d broken in and dragged the man, without help, into the galley.

  He’d tried mouth-to-mouth breathing, but the man’s lips had turned blue even while he was trying. The Captain and the First Mate had had to carry the body down to the engine room.

  There was no other place aboard to keep a corpse. Manning could not be buried at sea because the cause of death had not been determined. Karensen could scarcely risk an investigation like that on top of the one he was already facing because of Manning’s black-market operations. Beyond sending a radio cable to the next of kin, Karensen could do nothing about Manning’s body until he could turn the body over to a company doctor at Tacloban City or Ilo-Ilo.

  That meant keeping the body in ice for a full week.

  Whether Smith volunteered or was ordered to it I wasn’t told: yet he seemed the logical man for the job.

  “Talk about getting the ship in trouble,” I heard Smith mourning the loss of his poker game, “I’m going to freeze the fat bastard’s balls off!”