East Into Upper East (17 page)

Again she spoke defiantly: “As long as it helps my parents in their trouble.”

“Yes, and what about being a college lecturer? That was just talk. All you want is to be rich and buy jewelry and eat those horrible cream cakes.”

After a while she said in a very quiet voice, “That's not what I want.”

“Then what? Don't try and fool me. I know you like no one else knows you. Like no one else ever will know you. You can never forget me. Never. Never.”

“No. I shall never forget you.” Then she broke out: “But what can I do, Arun! You tell me: what else can I do!”

And on the other side of the curtain, Raju's heart was fit to burst, and it was all he could do not to cry out to Arun: “Tell her!” He was almost tempted to show him—ah, with what abandon Raju himself would have acted in his son's place, how he would have flung himself at the girl's feet and cried: “I'm here! Marry me! I'm yours forever!”

But Arun was saying something different: “I'll haunt you like a ghost. You'll keep reading about me in the newspapers because I'm going to be very famous. If necessary, I'll go into politics to clean up our country from all these corrupt politicians and smugglers who are sucking it dry. You'll see. You'll see what I'll do.”

“I have to go. Let me get dressed.”

“Not yet. Five minutes. Ten.”

Then there was no more talking and almost complete silence in the bedroom, so that when Indu came home, she didn't know anyone was in there and said to Raju, “Why aren't you in bed?”

He laid a finger on his lips and glanced toward the other room. She followed his eyes and gasped when she saw the earring that had rolled from under the curtain. “Sh—sh—sh,” said Raju.

“He's got that girl in there,” Indu whispered fiercely.

“You needn't worry.”

“What do you mean not worry? His finals are next week.”

“Oh, he'll do very well. He's your son; and your father's grandson.”

And for the hundredth time in their life she said, “Thank God anyway that he hasn't taken after you. Let go of me. Let go.” For he had seized her in his arms and pressed his lips against hers—she thought at first it was to silence her but relaxed as his kiss became more pressing and more passionate: as if he wanted to make it up to her for his shortcomings, and then, giving himself over completely, to make it up to all women for the shortcomings of all men.

HUSBAND AND SON

In his latter days—and even that is now over thirty years ago—her husband was always referred to as “the old man.” Or “the old man up there,” for he was by that time living almost entirely on the roof of the family house. The only sound that came from him was the Vedic hymns he sang at dawn; his voice, though cracked, sounded very sweet. Vijay was left to rattle around by herself in their large mansion, with nothing to do except bully the servants. It was her boast that any member of the household could walk in any time—rising from the dead, that is—and find the place just as they had known it At the beginning of every summer she had the carpets rolled up and stowed away, as though her father-in-law and his guests were still there to be kept cool amid marble floors sprinkled with rose water; and every winter the quilts were stuffed with new cotton, though there was no one now to sleep under them except herself. The old man on the roof just covered himself with a blanket, as threadbare with age as he was.

She spent many hours sitting on her verandah, looking out over the river Jumna. During the monsoon, it regularly flooded, and one year they had had to go up and down the streets in boats. This was before the Ring Road and the fortifying walls and the overpass were built: now you would no longer be able to see the river from their house—but anyway, once Vijay herself had died, less than a year after the old man, the house was torn down and rows of municipal offices built in its stead. Even in her day, changes were taking place. For instance, the mansion at their rear, which had belonged to a prosperous Muslim family, had been divided up among refugees from Pakistan; straw-roofed huts, selling betel and other necessities,
had been built into the niches of its compound wall. And the house next door, where a famous eye-surgeon and his family had lived on a lavish scale, had been taken over by a school of Indian dance, sponsored by the Ministry of Culture.

Vijay welcomed these new activities around her. Despite her age, she was still full of energy and had nowhere to expend it. Her parents-in-law and their entire generation of widowed aunts were dead. Her son Anand—in his thirties now but too busy to get married—was posted in Bengal where he was an important government officer. And the old man was becoming more and more eccentric. He had cut down his meals to one a day, consisting of a few chapattis and a vegetable or a lentil dish, never both, for he wanted to eat no more than the poor could afford. Vijay's appetite had remained healthy and she still needed her regular meals, with meat or fish. The old man did not grudge her this rich food and often came to keep her company while she ate. He read to her from those strange books he had or expounded his even stranger ideas. She didn't understand or even listen much, but it gave her the opportunity to keep a sharp watch on him. Why was he holding his jaw like that? Next day she hauled him off to the dentist, overriding his protests: did horses go to the dentist? he asked. Or when it turned out he had a hernia and a truss was prescribed—did horses wear trusses?

He had always been careless of his health; careless of himself. In the past, when they were both young, it was because he had been so busy, immersed in public affairs. Although he came from a pro-British family—his father had been a High Court judge—he himself had been deeply involved in the Indian independence movement and had spent several years in jail. Later, after Independence, he had been elected to parliament and had been given a cabinet post. Those had been wonderful years for Vijay. They had moved out of the family house on the Jumna to one of the former British residences requisitioned by the new government of India. An armed sentry stood at their gate, supplemented by a whole posse of policemen when the Prime Minister or other members of the cabinet came to the house. Important decisions on national and international policy had been taken in this house. Foreign dignitaries had been entertained there, or they themselves had been driven in their official limousine to the President's palace to attend
banquets in honor of visiting prime ministers, or royal guests from the neighboring kingdoms.

All this was still going on in New Delhi, on an ever larger and more sumptuous scale, but she and the old man were no longer part of it. He had resigned his offices and all his honors after only a few years of holding them, and they had moved out of the official residence back to the family house on the Jumna. She had protested—what was the use of all their sacrifices and his years in jail if they were not now to reap the benefits along with everyone else? But she had acquiesced, because she realized how unhappy he was, disgusted with the politics of power. And she could not bear to see him unhappy: it was his cheerfulness that had from the first drawn her to him, the sprightly way he moved around, humming a tune to himself (Urdu love lyrics it had been then, or Hindi patriotic songs, also the
Marseillaise
and the
Internationale).
Even on their wedding day, when they had sat together before the sacred fire and the rest of the family had been full of the usual marriage fuss and fury, he had muttered irreverent jokes from behind the strings of flowers that hid his face from her as hers was hidden from him; so that, instead of weeping the way brides are supposed to, she had had trouble stifling her giggles. Their marriage had been arranged while he was still abroad, taking his degree in Cambridge (England). The year was 1923. When he returned, the old man—only he was called Prakash then—was twenty-five years old, full of high spirits and high ideas. She liked him immediately. He wasn't handsome but he had a very nice face, with spectacles and a mouth that was always twitching with suppressed laughter. He rarely laughed out loud, as she did all the time. Even during sex—and they had had a lot of it, oh my God what a lot of sex—he had to put his hand over her mouth so that the rest of the family wouldn't hear the racket she made. They had been given a bedroom of their own, but all around them were the rooms of other members of his large family. With the door shut, they felt quite private, and besides making love, they also talked a lot and he told her his ideas, which she adopted as her own. Her eyes blazed when he spoke of the necessity of throwing out the English; and during the years he was in jail, she quarreled with his family and with her own, all of whom, far from throwing out the English, only wanted to be like them and to be allowed to join their clubs. He never argued with his family but only made jokes: for instance, about
his mother and aunts—poor things, he said, every day oppressed by three terrible problems: What to wear? Where to go? What to do?

Nowadays, sitting on her verandah and the old man up there on the roof, Vijay found herself beset with the same problems, or at least two of them. What to wear she had settled long ago. For a time, under his influence, she had sacrificed her fine saris for the patriotic homespun cottons he wore; but they felt scratchy and coarse, and she soon went back to her imported silks with embroidered borders. To her regret, he never again wore the suits he had brought from England, but she kept them hanging in her wardrobe—they were still hanging there, and she touched them sometimes, stroking the sleeves of tweed and wool and sniffing at them for the last aroma of the English cigarettes he had chain-smoked.

Every evening she walked by the river and sometimes joined the groups of hymn-singers clustered around a priest or holy person; she was not religious but sang as lustily as all the others. She also sat cross-legged in a circle of friendship with simple housewives whom she advised on birth control and other topics they were eager to learn about from a superior person like herself. Everyone knew and liked her; when she bought from the shops in the compound wall, they told her the correct price, as though she were not rich but one of them. As soon as the dance school moved into the eye-surgeon's house, she couldn't wait to pay them a visit and be shown around and watch the pupils at their practice and lessons. After that, she went every day, she liked it so much. The students were all young girls—not at all the sort you would expect to be students of Indian dance (that is, the illegitimate daughters of temple dancers) but from good families for whom the Indian classical arts had replaced the piano as part of a girl's accomplishments. But the teachers were still of the traditional class, hereditary musicians and dancers transmitting their art from father to son. They were delighted with this new source of income, especially the old men who had spent their lives turning over the sparse coins that came their way from weddings and festivals. Now they were civil servants under the Ministry of Culture, with regular salaries and pensions and provident fund. Those who were too old for the job had sent their sons or nephews,
so that there were a few young teachers too, with whom the girls fell in love. All day the house was filled with the sound of ankle-bells and drumbeats, of notes plucked from many lyres and the laughter of light-minded girls; sticks of incense, rose and jasmine, burned in honor of the patron goddess of dance and music.

Vijay, as was her way, made friends with everyone, teachers and students, but her favorite was Ram, one of the dance teachers. He came from Jaipur and was the nephew of a famous exponent of the Kathak form of dance. His mother tongue was some strange Rajasthani dialect and the Hindi in which he had to communicate in Delhi was atrocious and made everyone laugh. Vijay also laughed and she tried to make him speak more correctly, but he couldn't learn, or wouldn't. He said he would like to learn English, which she spoke well and he not at all. He admired her for her higher education, and for being rich. She invited him to the house, even sometimes to eat with her; it was good to have someone share the big meals the cook prepared every day for her alone. At first Ram was shy because he didn't know how to eat rice at a table with a spoon and fork. She taught him, and there he was quick to learn and eager, for it was his ambition to be sent abroad and perform for foreign audiences in their big halls.

Sometimes the old man came down and joined them. The first time Ram was astonished to see such a shabby person in this grand house and even more astonished to learn that he was Vijay's husband. But when she enlightened him who this husband was, or had been, Ram's attitude changed completely. The next time he saw the old man he stooped to touch his feet in the traditional mark of respect—or at least he tried to, but the old man prevented him by jumping backward and flapping his hands at him, as though shooing away some noisome insect about to sting him. Vijay covered her mouth to stifle her laughter; she had always been amused by the way the old man had dealt with people who tried to pay him respect. When he was a cabinet minister, she had seen him literally turn and flee before a group of citizens advancing toward him with garlands to hang in honor around his neck.

The old man accepted Ram's frequent visits without comment. Perhaps he did not always notice him—sometimes it seemed to Vijay he did not even see or notice her, he appeared so lost in his thoughts or in his reading. He carried his strange books around
with him—old books, falling to pieces, out of which he would occasionally read a passage aloud to them. Ram listened with the utmost respect, with reverence, swaying his head in appreciation of what he heard, though Vijay knew he understood even less of it than she did. In the old days, when they were first married, the old man—Prakash—had read to her out of the books he had brought from his studies in England: Tom Paine, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx—she hadn't always understood them entirely but had grasped the gist of their ideas. Now what he read was way beyond her. But so was the old man himself—she understood him less and less but accepted him wholly in all his eccentricity; and so did Ram, honoring him as supremely noble, a sage who had given up the world. The three of them had begun to form a family group, Vijay and Ram at the dining table enjoying one of the cook's sumptuous meals while the old man read aloud out of his tattered book, about the soul and the Absolute and their identity-in-difference.