Free The Artist of Disappearance by Anita Desai Page A

That was Prema's first impression—how tired she seemed, how apart from the rest of the pleased, satisfied crowd. Wrapped about in her grey cotton sari and wearing a shawl that was clearly a sample of her region's weaving, incongruously bright, and steel-rimmed spectacles perched on her nose, in a small, hurried voice she spoke a few lines in the language she wrote in but which only a segment of the audience understood.
    Of course Prema did. And Prema, after an initial disappointment at how unimpressive, how unprepossessing a figure her writer cut on the stage during her five minutes of public fame—she would have liked her to be more assured, more flamboyant, more like Tara, she admitted—began to feel an unaccustomed urge to take this elderly, unassuming woman under her wing, protect her and support her as she might a sister or an elder. She hardly paid attention to the speech, so involved was she in taking in Suvarna Devi's presence, trying to connect it to her writing, out of which she had constructed an image that was not quite corroborated by the reality.
    Then the proceedings for the day were over and everyone poured out of the auditorium into the foyer. Prema went scurrying around agitatedly like a beetle ahead of a broom, trying to find her author and have at least one private moment, or two, with her. When she finally found her, she was in conversation with Tara who had managed to locate her and welcome her before Prema could do so. This was upsetting; Prema was upset. Was she not the one to have a word with the author she had discovered and come to know so well during the arduous labour of going over, line by line and word by word, the author's work in a way no one else could claim to have done?
    And there was the shy grey person she had hurried to protect and chaperone, conversing with Tara who did not know a word of the language she wrote in and would never have heard of it if it had not been for Prema who now broke in with a cry: 'Suvarna Devi! Oh, at last we meet!'
    Suvarna Devi, a little startled, looked from her to Tara. It was Tara who introduced them, formally, instead of the other way round as Prema had imagined the introduction.
    'Prema Joshi, your translator, and we hope you are pleased with her—'
    Hope? That was all Tara felt,
hope
? Prema found she could barely speak for outrage. She hardly knew how to place herself, how to draw away Suvarna Devi's attention and make Tara leave them alone to discuss what they had in common, author and translator, sisters in spirit.
    It looked as if the moment would elude her and the author vanish with barely a word of recognition of who and what her translator represented. She had already folded her hands and bowed, turning away to leave, when Prema flew after her, confronted her and insisted they have a few moments together, to discuss—didn't she know there were matters to discuss?
    Suvarna Devi seemed taken aback. Perhaps she had not realised how large a role Prema had played in getting her book accepted by Tara's firm, in making her book available to a larger audience by translating it into English. She seemed like a creature who had been startled out of her forest hiding, one of those well-camouflaged speckled birds that will dart under the bushes on being surprised, and now she was flustered, at a loss as to how to respond. But once Prema had made clear the need to meet again, in private, and talk, she asked Prema to come and see her—if she wished, if she could, if it was not too much trouble, in which case she would quite understand and write a letter instead—at her nephew's house where she was staying. And now she had to go ... There he was, come to collect her in his car.
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    It was not what Prema would have planned—in place of a meeting with the author alone so they might have an intellectual discussion about books, translation and language. Suvarna Devi's family—the nephew, a young married man and a dentist, his