Anila's Journey Read Online Free PDF Page B

past the sturdy passageway arches of the great courthouse. The last door was open. It led into an enormous hallway floored with black and white slabs. A stairway curved in two directions, an elegant shape like the hands in my ring. A single flight then vanished to the dark floors upstairs.
    â€œYes?”
    A man stepped out from a room on the right of the hall. I had never seen anybody who really looked white before. Most English people were pink or red though some turned quite yellow under our sun. But this man’s face was as white as a shirt. He was dressed completely in black and a huge bundle of keys hung from his belt.
    â€œI was told to ask for Mr Edward Walker, sahib,” I said. “I have an important letter for him.”
    He picked the letter from my hand and held it out far from his face, squinting at Miss Hickey’s clear writing.
    â€œGive it here,” he said. “Mr Walker arrived back unexpectedly in Calcutta yesterday, it is true, but I have not seen him yet so I imagine he is resting from his journey at his home. Go along, then. It’s safe with me.”
    Until I had spoken with the soldier, this was just what I had been expecting, that I would leave the letter with somebody in charge and go on my way. But now I was disappointed.
    â€œBut I thought, sir,” I said, “well, it’s just that the sentry soldier seemed to think Mr Walker was here today, and I would very much like to hand this letter over myself because of its nature.”
    The man was staring at me with his forehead puckered in a puzzle. I knew he was trying to make a place for me in his divisions of people. I could almost see the wheels of his brain turning over like the wheels in a timepiece.
    Here is a girl who looks half-bred but she speaks English well enough. She must have an education of some sort. She’s got strange clothes, she must not have a mother who shows her the proper ways. People noticed these things first. Then there was usually a division, just as there was in the stairs ahead, in the way they behaved towards me. One way went: the unfortunate child, I’ll hear her story out. The other way went: she’s got right little airs, this one, for what she is.
    I could always tell when this last was the conclusion. It mostly led to a poor outcome for me.
    â€œGo on your way, girl,” he said. “Whatever this is, it hardly concerns you, and I’ll have some words with that sentry about his loose tongue. Mr Walker is not to be bothered…”
    â€œWho’s talking about me being bothered? I’m always being bothered, Mr Minch, and uncomfortably often it’s by your good self.”
    The deep voice was coming from the dark at the top of the stairs.
    â€œSend the young lady up to my room since she’s good enough to arrive in person.”
    The man in black stood back and made me a mock bow. There was no expression in his face, though, and he vanished back into his room without a further word.
    I started up the left arm of the stairs. Then the voice boomed out again.
    â€œAnd bring some tea up, Mr Minch, please.”

MY FATHER
    MY FATHER WORKED FOR the East India Company. He was a Writer. The Company had lots and lots of Writers, young men like my father who travelled in ships all the way from the river in faraway London to the river in Calcutta. My father was only eighteen that morning he met my mother on the riverbank. He was not much more than a boy, just four years older than she was
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    A Writer was not a poet or a storyteller. A Writer was a clerk. Or a scrivener, my father said. That was a word with a thin, mean feel to it. Writer sounded better, I thought. Every thing that the Company officers did or owned, the Writers wrote down
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    â€œCottons and silks, spices and diamonds. Fresh minted rupees. Horses and camels and elephants. Pinnaces and palaces and palanquins. Soldiers and sailors. Princes, merchants, farmers, weavers and bearers. Battles and