Out of India (31 page)

She was irritated. “If you're so frightened, why don't you lock your door? You should lock it. Any kind of person can come in and do anything he wants.” It struck her how much like a murder victim he looked. He was so small and weak—one blow on the head would do it. Some morning she would come down and find him lying huddled on the floor.

But there he was, alive, and, now that he had got over the shock, laughing and flustered and happy to see her. He fussed around and invited her to sit on his only chair, dusting the seat with his hand and drawing it out for her in so courtly a manner that she became instinctively graceful as she settled herself on it and pulled her nightdress over her knees.

“Look at me, in my nightie,” she said, laughing. “I suppose you're shocked. If Mother knew. If she could see me! But of course she is fast asleep and snoring in her bed. Why are you awake? Reading one of your stupid books—what stuff you cram into your head day and night. Anyone would go crazy.”

Doctor Sahib was very fond of reading. He read mostly historical romances and was influenced and even inspired by them. He believed very strongly in past births, and these books helped him to learn about the historical eras through which he might have passed.

“A fascinating story,” he said. “There is a married lady—a queen, as a matter of fact—who falls hopelessly in love with a monk.”

“Goodness! Hopelessly?”

“You see, these monks—naturally—they were under a vow of chastity and that means—well—you know . . .”

“Of course I know.”

“So there was great anguish on both sides. Because he also felt burning love for the lady and endured horrible penances in order to subdue himself. Would you like me to read to you? There are some sublime passages.

“What is the use? These are not things to read in books but to experience in life. Have you ever been hopelessly in love?”

He turned away his face, so that now only his cardboard lens was looking at her. However, it seemed not blank but full of expression.

She said, “There are people in the world whose feelings are much stronger than other people's. Of course they must suffer. If you are not satisfied only with eating and drinking but want something else . . . You should see my family. They care for nothing—only physical things, only enjoyment.”

“Mine exactly the same.”

“There is one cousin, Sarla—I have nothing against her, she is not a bad person. But I tell you it would be just as well to be born an animal. Perhaps I shouldn't talk like this, but it's true.”

“It is true. And in previous births these people really were animals.”

“Do you think so?”

“Or some very low form of human being. But the queens and the really great people, they become—well, they become like you. Please don't laugh! I have told you before what you were in your last birth.”

She went on laughing. “You've told me so many things,” she said.

“All true. Because you have passed through many incarnations. And in each one you were a very outstanding personality, a highly developed soul, but each time you also had a difficult life, marked by sorrow and suffering.”

Pritam had stopped laughing. She gazed sadly at the blank wall over his head.

“It is the fate of all highly developed souls,” he said. “It is the price to be paid.”

“I know.” She fetched a sigh from her innermost being.

“I think a lot about this problem. Just tonight, before you came, I sat here reading my book. I'm not ashamed to admit that tears came streaming from my eyes, so that I couldn't go on reading, on account of not being able to see the print. Then I looked up and I asked, ‘Oh, Lord, why must these good and noble souls endure such torment, while others, less good and noble, can enjoy themselves freely?'”

“Yes, why?” Pritam asked.

“I shall tell you. I shall explain.” He was excited, inspired now. He looked at her fully, and even his cardboard lens seemed radiant. “Now, as I was reading about this monk—a saint, by the way—and how he struggled and battled against nature, then I could not but think of my own self. Yes, I too, though not a saint, struggle and battle here alone in my small hut. I cry out in anguish, and the suffering endured is terrible but also—oh, Madam—glorious! A privilege.”

Pritam looked at a crack that ran right across the wall and seemed to be splitting it apart. One more heavy snowfall, she thought, and the whole hut would come down. Meanwhile he sat here and talked nonsense and she listened to him. She got up abruptly.

He cried, “I have talked too much! You are bored!”

“Look at the time,” she said. The window was milk-white with dawn. She turned down the kerosene lamp and opened the door. Trees and mountains were floating in a pale mist, attempting to surface like swimmers through water. “Oh my God,” she said, “it's time to get up. And I'm going to have such a day today, with all of them coming.”

“They are coming today?”

“Yes, and you needn't bother to visit. They are not your type at all. Not one bit.”

He laughed. “All right.”

“Not mine, either,” she said, beginning the upward climb back to her house.

Pritam loved to cook and was very good at it. Her kitchen was a primitive little outbuilding in which she bustled about. Her hair fell into her face and stuck to her forehead; several times she tried to push it back with her elbow but only succeeded in leaving a black soot mark. When her mother pointed this out to her, she laughed and smeared at it and made it worse.

Her good humor carried her successfully over the arrival of the relatives. They came in three carloads, and suddenly the house was full of fashionably dressed people with loud voices. Pritam came dashing out of the kitchen just as she was and embraced everyone indiscriminately, including Sarla and her husband, Bobby. In the bustle of arrival and the excitement of many people, the meeting went off easily. The mother was relieved. Pritam and Bobby hadn't met for eight years—in fact, not since Bobby had been married to Sarla.

Soon Pritam was serving a vast, superbly cooked meal. She went around piling their plates, urging them to take, take more, glad at seeing them enjoy her food. She still hadn't changed her clothes, and the smear of soot was still on her face. The mother—whose main fear had been that Pritam would be surly and difficult—was not relieved but upset by Pritam's good mood. She thought to herself, why should she be like that with them—what have they ever done for her that she should show them such affection and be like a servant to them? She even looked like their servant. The old lady's temper mounted, and when she saw Pritam piling rice onto Bobby's plate—when she saw her serving
him
like a servant, and the way he turned around to compliment her about the food, making Pritam proud and shy and pleased—then the mother could not bear any more. She went into the bedroom and lay down on the bed. She felt ill; her blood pressure had risen and all her pulses throbbed. She shut her eyes and tried to shut out the merry, sociable sounds coming from the next room.

After a while Pritam came in and said, “Why aren't you eating?”

The old lady didn't answer.

“What's the matter?”

“Go. Go away. Go to your guests.”

“Oh my God, she is sulking!” Pritam said, and laughed out loud—not to annoy her mother but to rally her, the way she would a child. But the mother continued to lie there with her eyes shut

Pritam said, “Should I get you some food?”

“I don't want it,” the mother said. But suddenly she opened her eyes and sat up. She said, “You should give food to him. He also should be invited. Or perhaps you think he is not good enough for your guests?”

“Who?”

“Who. You know very well. You should know. You were with him the whole night.”

Pritam gave a quick glance over her shoulder at the open door, then advanced toward her mother. “So you have been spying on me,” she said. The mother shrank back. “You pretended to be asleep, and all the time you were spying on me.”

“Not like that, Daughter—”

“And now you are having filthy thoughts about me.”

“Not like that!”

“Yes, like that!”

Both were shouting. The conversation in the next room had died down. The mother whispered, “Shut the door,” and Pritam did so.

Then the mother said in a gentle, loving voice, “I'm glad he is here with you. He is a good friend to you.” She looked into Pritam's face, but it did not lighten, and she went on, “That is why I said he should be invited. When other friends come, we should not neglect our old friends who have stood by us in our hour of need.”

Pritam snorted scornfully.

“And he would have enjoyed the food so much,” the mother said. “I think he doesn't often eat well.”

Pritam laughed. “You should see what he eats!” she said. “But he is lucky to get even that. At least his family send him money now. Before he came here, do you want to hear what he did? He has told me himself. He used to go to the kitchens of the restaurants and beg for food. And they gave him scraps and he ate them—he has told me himself. He ate leftover scraps from other people's plates like a sweeper or a dog. And you want such a person to be my friend.”

She turned away from her mother's startled, suffering face. She ran out of the room and out through the next room, past all the guests. She climbed up a path that ran from the back of her house to a little cleared plateau. She lay down in the grass, which was alive with insects; she was level with the tops of trees and with the birds that pecked and called from inside them. She often came here. She looked down at the view but didn't see it, it was so familiar to her. The only unusual sight was the three cars parked outside her house.
A chauffeur was wiping a windshield. Then someone came out of the house and, reaching inside a car door, emerged with a bottle. It was Bobby.

Pritam watched him, and when he was about to go back into the house, she aimed a pebble that fell at his feet. He looked up. He smiled. “Hi, there!” he called.

She beckoned him to climb up to her. He hesitated for a moment, looking at the bottle and toward the house, but then gave the toss of his head that she knew well, and began to pick his way along the path. She put her hand over her mouth to cover a laugh as she watched him crawl up toward her on all fours. When finally he arrived, he was out of breath and disheveled, and there was a little blood on his hand where he had grazed it. He flung himself on the grass beside her and gave a great “Whoof!” of relief.

She hadn't seen him for eight years, and her whole life had changed in the meantime, but it didn't seem to her that he had changed all that much. Perhaps he was a little heavier, but it suited him, made him look more manly than ever. He was lying face down on the grass, and she watched his shoulder blades twitch inside his finely striped shirt as he breathed in exhaustion.

“You are in very poor condition,” she said.

“Isn't it terrible?”

“Don't you play tennis anymore?”

“Mostly golf now.”

He sat up and put the bottle to his mouth and tilted back his head. She watched his throat moving as the liquid glided down. He finished with a sound of satisfaction and passed the bottle to her, and without wiping it she put her lips where his had been and drank. The whisky leaped up in her like fire. They had often sat like this together, passing a bottle of Scotch between them.

He seemed to be perfectly content to be there with her. He sat with his knees drawn up and let his eyes linger appreciatively over the view. It was the way she had often seen him look at attractive girls. “Nice,” he said, as he had said on those occasions. She laughed, and then she too looked and tried to imagine how he was seeing it.

“A nice place,” he said. “I like it. I wish I could live here.”

“You!” She laughed again.

He made a serious face. “I love peace and solitude. You don't know me. I've changed a lot.” He turned right around toward her, still very solemn, and for the first time she felt him gazing full into
her face. She put up her hand and said quickly, “I've been cooking all day.”

He looked away, as if wanting to spare her, and this delicacy hurt her more than anything. She said heavily, “I've changed.”

“Oh no!” he said in haste. “You are just the same. As soon as I saw you, I thought: Look at Priti, she is just the same.” And again he turned toward her to allow her to see his eyes, stretching them wide open for her benefit. It was a habit of his she knew well; he would always challenge the person to whom he was lying to read anything but complete honesty in his eyes.

She said, “You had better go. Everyone will wonder where you are.”

“Let them.” And when she shook her head, he said, in his wheedling voice, “Let me stay with you. It has been such a long time. Shall I tell you something? I was so excited yesterday thinking: Tomorrow I shall see her again. I couldn't sleep all night. No, really—it's true.”