East Into Upper East (16 page)

“Sh!” she said, putting her hand over his mouth. “He's come home . . . Arun?”

She had to call twice more before Arun answered: “What do you want? Why do you have to keep disturbing me?”

“Are you studying?”

“Well, what do you think I'm doing?”

“He's studying,” Indu said to Raju. She took her hand from his mouth: “Go on, but keep your voice down.”

Raju continued: “‘My sting is transformed into desire to suck the essence of your beauty . . .' Do you like it?”

“Is it something you made up? I don't know why you can never think of anything except bees and flowers.”

“Should I turn off the light?”

She assented, yawning to show how tired she was. “I must get to sleep. I have to be up early to go to work, unlike some people.”

But once the light was off, it turned out she wasn't so tired after all. Although they tried to make no noise, they became so lively together that Arun in the next room had to cover his ears, in an effort to muffle the sounds from the bedroom as well as those pounding in his own head.

Next day Arun had an important pre-exam tutorial, but instead of attending, he went to see Dipti. He prepared himself to find her house as silent and gloomy as on her birthday, but instead it was in turmoil. They were moving out—having lost his official position, the father also lost his official residence, and all its contents were being carried into cars and moving vans parked around the house. In supervising this operation, Dipti's mother had regained her former bustling, domineering personality. She was on the front lawn, fighting with a government clerk who had been sent to ensure that no government property was removed. Whenever he challenged a piece of furniture being carried away, she told him that whatever was not theirs by private purchase had been earned by years of selfless public service, and overruling his protests, she waved the coolies on with a lordly gesture.

Arun found her attitude to himself completely changed. She greeted him haughtily, and when he tried to enter the house in search of Dipti, she barred his way. She told him that her daughter was busy, and working herself up, went on indignantly, “My goodness, the girl
has a sick father to look after, and here we are in the middle of a move to a big house of our own, not to mention other important family matters—you can't expect to walk in here whenever you please to take up our time.”

Arun flushed angrily but was not to be put off. When she turned away to resume her argument with the clerk, he strode past her into the house. He picked his way among sofa-sets, chandeliers and china services, through the courtyard full of packing cases and cooking pots to the family rooms at the back of the house. All the doors here were wide open except one: he did not hesitate to turn its handle and found himself in the father's room. The invalid had been placed in an armchair, with Dipti beside him feeding him something out of a cup.

Her reception of him made Arun even more angry than her mother's: “What a lovely surprise,” she said in a bright, social voice. “And I was thinking of you only yesterday.”

“I was thinking of
you
,” he replied, but in a very different tone, his voice lowered and charged. “That's why I'm here.”

“I was going to send you a note—to wish you good luck. For your finals. Isn't it next week? You must be so jittery, poor Arun.”

“I have to talk to you.”

“One more spoon, Daddy, for me.” She put it in his mouth, but whatever was on it came dribbling out again.

“I must see you. Alone. Where can we go?” He didn't know if Dipti's father understood anything or not, and he didn't care. He thought only to leap over all the barriers between Dipti and himself—her huge helpless father, the house in upheaval, her mother, and most of all Dipti's own manner toward him.

Her mother came in. She addressed Arun: “You must leave at once. You can see we're very busy.” To Dipti she said, “The jeweler has come. I told him it's a bad day, but now he's here, we might as well look at what he's brought. There's not much time left.”

“Not much time left for what?” Arun asked Dipti, ignoring her mother.

Dipti had her back to Arun, and instead of answering him, she scooped up the food from her father's chin back into his mouth.

Her mother told her, “Don't forget those people are sending a car for you in the afternoon. I said, Where is the need, we have plenty
of cars of our own, but they insist. They like to do everything right—naturally, they can afford it. I'll call the jeweler in here, he can spread it out on the bed for us to see.”

“It'll disturb Daddy.”

But her mother went to the door to call for the jeweler. Quick as a flash, Arun drew near to Dipti and bent down to breathe into her ear, “Tomorrow. Four o'clock.” She still had her back to him, and he laid one finger on the nape of her neck—it was the lightest touch, but he felt it pass through her like an electric current, charged with everything that had always been between them.

But it so happened that next day Raju stayed home. Usually he accompanied his wife when she left in the morning and then remained in the center of town for the rest of the day, calling on friends, sitting with them in their favorite coffee-houses, enjoying himself. But that day he had a cold, and as always when he was sick, he looked at Indu with piteous eyes that said “What has happened to me?” Before leaving for the office, she rubbed his chest with camphor and tied a woolen scarf around his neck. She left tea ready brewed for him on the stove, and two little pots of food she had prepared. He stayed in bed, mostly asleep; but as the day wore on, he became more cheerful, and by afternoon he had almost forgotten about his cold.

Arun arrived just before four, and as soon as he entered, he heard his father singing a lyric to himself, in that swooning way he had when deeply moved by a line of verse. “What are you doing here?” Arun said, in shock.

Raju stopped singing and pointed to the scarf Indu had tied around his neck. He coughed a little.

“Oh my God,” Arun said in such despair that Raju assured him in a weak voice, “It's just a cold, maybe a little fever.” He felt his own forehead: “Ninety-nine. Perhaps a hundred.”

There was a soft knock on the living room door, and Arun ran to admit Dipti. “Who is it, Arun? Has someone come?” Raju called from the bedroom. Dipti's eyes grew round in distress and with the same distress Arun said, “My father has a cold.”

Raju came shuffling out of the bedroom, and when he saw Dipti,
he held his hands to cover the crumpled lungi in which he had slept all night and day. “Oh, oh!” he cried in apology. “I thought you were Indu come home early from the office. She was very anxious about me when she left.”

But he quickly recovered and began to compliment Dipti on her appearance. She was dressed in pale turquoise silk with little spangles sewn on in the shape of flowers; she also wore a pair of long gold earrings set with precious stones—“Are they rubies?” Raju admired them. “All set around a lovely pearl. They say that older women should wear pearls, here, around their throat,” he touched the woolen scarf, “but I love to see them on a young girl.”

“You could go back to bed,” Arun suggested.

“And leave you alone here with this pearl?” A flush like dawn had tinted Dipti's face and neck. “Anyway, I feel much better. Completely cured by the sight of beauty, which is the best medicine in the world for a poor susceptible person like myself. I don't have a heart,” he informed Dipti, “I have a frail shivering bird in here, drenched by the rains and storms of passion.”

Arun exclaimed impatiently, but when he saw Dipti, still freshly flushed, smile at Raju's extravagance, irritation with his father turned to anger against Dipti. “You should ask her some more about those earrings,” he said. “Ask her if they're her wedding jewelry—” Her flush now a deepest rose, Dipti's hands flew to her ears. “What was he doing there yesterday with you and your mother,” he challenged her more harshly, “what had he come to sell?”

“Whatever they are,” Raju said, “she's come here wearing them for you. I wish I could say it were for me, but even I'm not such a conceited optimist. But I'm really feeling much better and I think I might just lie and rest here a little bit on this couch. I won't disturb you at all—I'll shut my eyes and I shall probably be fast asleep in a minute. But if you're afraid of waking me, you could go in the other room and keep very quiet in there.”

He did exactly what he said—stretched himself on the couch and shut his eyes, so that they could think of him as fast asleep. But they had no time to think of anything—before they had even got into the next room, Arun was already tugging at her beautiful clothes and she was helping him. It was many weeks since they had last been together, and they were desperate. Their youth, their lust, and their love overflowed in them, so that their lovemaking was like
that of young gods. It is not in the nature of young gods to curtail their activities, and they forgot about keeping quiet and not disturbing Raju.

He
was
disturbed, but in a way he liked tremendously. He lay on the couch, partly listening to what was going on next door but mostly preoccupied with his own thoughts. These made him happy—for the young people in the bedroom, of course, and for
all
young people, and these included himself. Raju was nearly forty, he did not have an easy life—he told no one about the many shifts he had to resort to in Bombay, to keep himself going in between assignments, which often fell through, or were never paid for. Nevertheless, he had not changed from the time he had been a student in Delhi and used to creep up to the roof of Indu's parents' house. She often had to put her hand over his mouth to keep him from waking everyone up, for in his supreme happiness he could not refrain from singing out loud—he knew all the popular hits as well as more refined Urdu lyrics, and they all exactly expressed what he felt, about her, and the stars above them, and the white moonlight and scent of jasmine drenching the air around them.

But now the sounds from the next room changed: Raju propped himself up on his elbow. “I'll tear them off!” his son was saying. He was back on the subject of the earrings. The girl screamed—Raju sprang up, ready to intervene: he knew there was something in his son that was not in himself—a bitter anger, perhaps transmitted to him by his mother during the years she had struggled to make a living for them both. But somehow the girl pacified him, or it may have been his own feeling for her that made him hold his hand. She pleaded—“What else could I do? Arun, what could I do? With all that was happening, and Daddy's illness.”

“You wanted it yourself. Because they're rich. Ah, don't touch me.”

“Yes, they're rich. They can help Daddy.”

“Who are they anyway?”

She hesitated for a moment before replying: “They're Daddy's friends.” He had to insist several times for a more definite answer before she came out with the name. Then Arun said: “Great. Wonderful.” And Raju too on the other side of the wall was shocked: for the name she had mentioned was that of a tremendously wealthy
family notorious for their smuggling and other underworld activities and involved in several political scandals, including that of Dipti's father.

Dipti said with a touch of defiance: “They helped us when there was no one else.” But her voice trembled in a way that made Raju's heart tremble too; but not Arun's, who continued to speak harshly: “And you're madly in love with the boy . . . Why don't you answer!”

“I've met him twice. Arun, don't! I'll take them off. Here.” She unhooked the earrings before he could tug at them again. He flung them across the room. One of them rolled under the partitioning curtain into the next room. Raju looked at it lying there but did not pick it up.

Arun said, “It's like selling yourself. It
is
selling yourself.”