Baumgartner's Bombay by Anita Desai

above had screamed several of their names for her, all filthy.
    ‘What kind of night was it then? Up dancing in the Café de Paris till dawn, eh?’ he teased, lowering himself on to his favourite chair, a bucket of cane that had over the years sagged to fit his shape. Besides, it had a small flat cushion covered in the same bright material as the curtains. He eased it up against his back, grateful for its support.
    Lotte flung herself on to the kitchen chair at the table, spreading out her legs to make a generous meaty triangle, and then flinging up her arms to repeat the attitude over her head on which her hair stood in a reddish frazzle. ‘Dancing he talks about,’ she groaned. ‘In this bloody heat and in this bloody graveyard? What a joke.’
    ‘Come, Lotte, there is enough life in it, you know.’
    ‘Life, what life? Mosquito life, yes, I know – millions and millions of bloody mosquitoes, all coming to nest in my hair, I think –’ she ran her fingers through it so that it stood up like orange grass – ‘they think I am Mama Mosquito and drink my blood like milk. All night at my ears, crying and crying for more. See how I’ve scratched myself everywhere –’ she leant towards him, exposing the scratches, relishing the harsh gashes she had drawn through her raw skin.
    Baumgartner drew back, flinching. One could have too much of Lotte. ‘A little coffee may help,’ he suggested.
    ‘What, on the skin? Are you
meshuggeh?
’
    ‘Down the throat, Lotte, down the throat,’ he waggled a finger, raising and opening his lips to it like a fish on a hook.
    But she scowled, clapping her hand to her head and groaning, ‘With the sun so hot, it fries you like an egg in a pan? Coffee is not for this land. Better you have a drink with me,’ and she gave him a look that was close to a wink, then got to her feet and padded around the table to the kitchen end of her single room.
    It was not what Baumgartner wanted at all – he did not care for gin in the morning and with Lotte one could not even be sure it would be that and not the local brew Ramu brought her, a poison called
feni
that stank. He felt despondent as he watched her take a bottle from behind a row of tins in which she kept her rice and sugar, and pick out glasses from the basin in which dirty dishes were heaped. ‘So, you want?’ she called aggressively and he gave a reluctant, resigned nod, then watched her rinse the glasses perfunctorily under the brass tap that ran into a plastic bucket. ‘Ramu brought it up last night,’ she told him as she poured out the colourless fluid. ‘Real stuff – from the consulates – not that stuff they make of cashew-nuts in the courtyard.’
    ‘Ach, Lotte, how can you trust Ramu?’ he sighed, trying to reconcile himself to the fiery drink he did not want. ‘You will be lucky if it is cashew-nut. Not so many cashew-nuts in the courtyard – but many dog turds in the drain.’
    She splashed some gin on the table, she had set down the bottle so violently. ‘
Nein, was ist das?
What’s that?’ she spat at him. ‘You need the soap to wash out the mouth. Don’t talk dirty about the food – or drink – in my house,
hörst du?
Good food – good drink – don’t spit on it, Hugo,
sei dankbar
.’ She splashed some water into the glasses from another bottle, then limped across to the small grey refrigerator that stood shuddering and rattling irately in a corner and got out a tray of ice.
    Seeing the ice-cubes slither out of it on to a plate, Baumgartner began to feel refreshed, and mopped his neck with his handkerchief, preparing to feel cooler and to rest. ‘Of course is good, Lotte,’ he pacified her, ‘but not Grand Hotel, hah, not Prince’s exactly.’
    ‘Prince’s!’ she snorted, picking up a handful of ice-cubes and throwing them into a glass. ‘Grand Hotel!’ She tossed some into the other glass. ‘So that is what
mein Hugolein
has come to talk about.’ She brought his glass across to him,