‘No?’ he challenged. ‘I’ll bet you they are. In their world women are victims. That’s the way it is. She’s no different. She’ll have her baby, go back to her family in Zapallar and eke out a living somehow.’
‘Nacho!’ Mariana exclaimed in horror. ‘You’re not going to fire her?’
‘What do you want me to do?’ He shrugged.
‘She can work for us and look after her baby,’ she suggested calmly.
‘We’re not running a charitable organization here,’ he retorted firmly. Mariana noticed his ears go red, usually a sign that he was on the verge of losing his temper.
‘I can’t bear her to lose her livelihood as well as her fiance. We can’t be so heartless, Nacho. Mi amor, let’s not talk about it any more, we have five or six months to think about it.’
He nodded gruffly and watched her walk out onto the terrace. The problem with people, he thought to himself, is that they take no responsibility for their actions. Ramon is just as bad as Estella’s lover, he concluded, he brings
Ramon had slept with several women since he had left Chile and yet he still couldn’t erase the sweet memory of Estella that dogged his mind and refused to give him any peace. On top of that he felt guilty. He had told her to wait for him. He knew she would. The right thing would be to write and put her out of her misery and yet he couldn’t. He didn’t want to lose her. He wanted to keep the door open in case he woke up one of these mornings with the urge to go back to her. Sometimes he woke with a gnawing longing that racked his loins as well as his conscience and yet he managed, every time, to persuade himself that he couldn’t love her the way she wanted to be loved, the way all women wanted to be loved. Just like Helena. He couldn’t be there for her. He couldn’t be there for anyone.
Ramon sat on the old rickety train that cut through the arid western Indian desert on its way to Bikaner. The sun blazed down upon the roof of the train, cooking up a sweltering heat inside that smelt of sweat and the intoxicating aroma of spices that clung to his nostrils and made his throat dry. The compartment was crowded with the dusky brown faces of men in turbans of saffron and fuchsia, their dark-eyed children watching him with innocent curiosity and giggling behind grubby hands. They knew he was a foreigner in spite of his homespun kurta pyjamas and chappals. When he had entered at Jodhpur he noticed the women arrange their veils in front of their aquiline faces with an almost ethereal movement of their long bejewelled fingers to ensure their modesty. Their timid eyes were at once lowered behind their veils like exotic birds in mist. After a while they forgot he was there, watching them with the scrupulous gaze of a voracious storyteller and they chattered away among themselves in a language he didn’t understand. He loved Indian women. He was enchanted by their delicate femininity and their virtue, the graceful way they moved behind their glittering saris, bright flowers against so dry a desert. He didn’t prey on these women, they were paragons of virtue, but he found the mysterious theatre of their world too compelling a spectacle to tear his eyes away from them. He felt that if he made too abrupt a movement they would fly off to settle in the green leaves of one of those banyan trees that miraculously survived in such barren terrain.
The dust entered through the windows like thin smoke and settled wherever
it could. A bony old Indian sat cross-legged in the corner under a scarlet turban and unloaded his tiffin box, arranging the aromatic food and utensils around him with the ritual of a priest. He had taken up two seats in spite of the weary passengers who crowded the corridors for lack of places. A small child watched the man arrange his food, dribbling with hunger and hopeful that if he stared hard enough the man might offer him a bite.
Suddenly the train screeched to a frantic halt. Ramon looked out of the window through the horizontal bars. The compartment erupted out of its somnambulant state into confused chatter as the passengers left the train to see why it had stopped. Ramon watched them all spill out onto the desert like ants. Soon the heat grew too intense for him to stay inside without being fried alive and he too joined them to choke in the dust under the sun. As he descended he noticed a beautiful European woman move through the crowd with the gracelessness of a mule walking through a herd of elegant sambar. Just like Helena, he thought to himself and guessed she must be British. She was striding impatiently towards the throng that had gathered around the railway track. Her face was pinched with irritation and yet she still managed to look down her nose with a haughtiness more at home in the days of the Raj. She wore a pair of white trousers and knee-high riding boots, revealing long legs and a shapely bottom.