Out of India (35 page)

Master finally settled everything to everyone's satisfaction. He said Vishwa and I were to be a couple, and whereas Vishwa was to be the Guru, I was to embody the Mother principle (which is also very important). Once she caught on to the idea, the Countess rather liked it. She designed an outfit for me too—a sort of flowing white silk robe, really quite becoming. You might have seen posters of Vishwa and me together, both of us in these white robes, his hair black and curly, mine blond and straight. I suppose we do make a good couple—anyway, people seem to like us and to get something out of us. We do our best. It's not very hard; mostly we just have to sit there and radiate. The results are quite satisfactory—I mean the effect we seem to have on people who need it. The person who really has to work hard is the Countess because she has to look after all the business and organizational end. We have a strenuous tour program. Sometimes it's like being on a one-night stand and doing your turn and then packing up in a hurry to get to the next one. Some of the places we stay in aren't too good—motels where you have to pay in advance in case you flit—and when she is very tired, the Countess wrings her hands and says “My God, what am I doing here?” It must be strange for her who's been used to all the grand hotels everywhere, but of course really she likes it. It's her life's fulfillment. But for Vishwa and me it's just a job we do, and all the time we want to be somewhere else and are thinking of that other place. I often remember what Master told me, what happened to him when he looked up in Times Square and Piccadilly, and it's beginning to happen to me too. I seem to
see
those mountains and the river and temples; and then I long to be there.

DESECRATION

I
t is more than ten years since Sofia committed suicide in the hotel room in Mohabbatpur. At the time, it was a great local scandal, but now almost no one remembers the incident or the people involved in it. The Raja Sahib died shortly afterwards—people said it was of grief and bitterness—and Bakhtawar Singh was transferred to another district. The present Superintendent of Police is a mild-mannered man who likes to spend his evenings at home playing card games with his teenage daughters.

The hotel in Mohabbatpur no longer exists. It was sold a few months after Sofia was found there, changed hands several times, and was recently pulled down to make room for a new cinema. This will back on to the old cinema, which is still there, still playing ancient Bombay talkies. The Raja Sahib's house also no longer exists. It was demolished because the land on which it stood has become very valuable, and has been declared an industrial area. Many factories and workshops have come up in recent years.

When the Raja Sahib had first gone to live there with Sofia, there had been nothing except his own house, with a view over the ruined fort and the barren plain beyond it. In the distance there was a little patch of villagers' fields and, huddled out of sight, the village itself. Inside their big house, the Raja Sahib and Sofia had led very isolated lives. This was by choice—his choice. It was as if he had carried her away to this spot with the express purpose of having her to himself, of feasting on his possession of her.

Although she was much younger than he was—more than thirty years younger—she seemed perfectly happy to live there alone with him. But in any case she was the sort of person who exudes happiness.
No one knew where the Raja Sahib had met and married her. No one really knew anything about her, except that she was a Muslim (he, of course, was a Hindu) and that she had had a good convent education in Calcutta—or was it Delhi? She seemed to have no one in the world except the Raja Sahib. It was generally thought that she was partly Afghan, perhaps even with a dash of Russian. She certainly did not look entirely Indian; she had light eyes and broad cheekbones and a broad brow. She was graceful and strong, and at times she laughed a great deal, as if wanting to show off her youth and high spirits, not to mention her magnificent teeth.

Even then, however, during their good years, she suffered from nervous prostrations. At such times the Raja Sahib sat by her bedside in a darkened room. If necessary, he stayed awake all night and held her hand (she clutched his). Sometimes this went on for two or three weeks at a time, but his patience was inexhaustible. It often got very hot in the room; the house stood unprotected on that barren plain, and there was not enough electricity for air-conditioning—hardly even enough for the fan that sluggishly churned the hot air. Her attacks always seemed to occur during the very hot months, especially during the dust storms, when the landscape all around was blotted out by a pall of desert dust and the sky hung down low and yellow.

But when the air cleared, so did her spirits. The heat continued, but she kept all the shutters closed, and sprinkled water and rose essence on the marble floors and on the scented grass mats hung around the verandas. When night fell, the house was opened to allow the cooler air to enter. She and the Raja Sahib would go up on the roof. They lit candles in colored glass chimneys and read out the Raja Sahib's verse dramas. Around midnight the servants would bring up their dinner, which consisted of many elaborate dishes, and sometimes they would also have a bottle of French wine from the Raja Sahib's cellar. The dark earth below and the sky above were both silver from the reflection of the moon and the incredible numbers of stars shining up there. It was so silent that the two of them might as well have been alone in the world—which of course was just what the Raja Sahib wanted.

Sitting on the roof of his house, he was certainly monarch of all he surveyed, such as it was. His family had taken possession of this land during a time of great civil strife some hundred and fifty years before. It was only a few barren acres with some impoverished villages
thrown in, but the family members had built themselves a little fort and had even assumed a royal tide, though they weren't much more than glorified landowners. They lived like all the other landowners, draining what taxes they could out of their tenant villagers. They always needed money for their own living, which became very sophisticated, especially when they began to spend more and more time in the big cities like Bombay, Calcutta, or even London. At the beginning of the century, when the fort became too rough and dilapidated to live in, the house was built. It was in a mixture of Mogul and Gothic styles, with many galleries and high rooms closed in by arched verandas. It had been built at great cost, but until the Raja Sahib moved in with Sofia it had usually remained empty except for the ancestral servants.

On those summer nights on the roof, it was always she who read out the Raja Sahib's plays. He sat and listened and watched her. She wore colored silks and the family jewelry as an appropriate costume in which to declaim his blank verse (all his plays were in English blank verse). Sometimes she couldn't understand what she was declaiming, and sometimes it was so high-flown that she burst out laughing. He smiled with her and said, “Go on, go on.” He sat cross-legged smoking his hookah, like any peasant; his clothes were those of a peasant too. Anyone coming up and seeing him would not have thought he was the owner of this house, the husband of Sofia—or indeed the author of all that romantic blank verse. But he was not what he looked or pretended to be. He was a man of considerable education, who had lived for years abroad, had loved the opera and theater, and had had many cultivated friends. Later—whether through general disgust or a particular disappointment, no one knew—he had turned his back on it all. Now he liked to think of himself as just an ordinary peasant landlord.

The third character in this story, Bakhtawar Singh, really did come from a peasant background. He was an entirely self-made man. Thanks to his efficiency and valor, he had risen rapidly in the service and was now the district Superintendent of Police (known as the S.P.). He had been responsible for the capture of some notorious dacoits. One of these—the uncrowned king of the countryside for almost twenty years—he had himself trapped in a ravine and shot in the head with his revolver, and he had taken the body in his jeep to be displayed outside police headquarters. This deed and others like it had made his name a terror among dacoits and other proscribed
criminals. His own men feared him no less, for he was known as a ruthless disciplinarian. But he had a softer side to him. He was terribly fond of women and, wherever he was posted, would find himself a mistress very quickly—usually more than one. He had a wife and family, but they did not play much of a role in his life. All his interests lay elsewhere. His one other interest besides women was Indian classical music, for which he had a very subtle ear.

Once a year the Raja Sahib gave a dinner party for the local gentry. These were officials from the town—the District Magistrate, the Superintendent of Police, the Medical Officer, and the rest—for whom it was the greatest event of the social calendar. The Raja Sahib himself would have gladly dispensed with the occasion, but it was the only company Sofia ever had, apart from himself. For weeks beforehand, she got the servants ready—cajoling rather than commanding them, for she spoke sweetly to everyone always—and had all the china and silver taken out. When the great night came, she sparkled with excitement. The guests were provincial, dreary, unrefined people, but she seemed not to notice that. She made them feel that their presence was a tremendous honor for her. She ran around to serve them and rallied her servants to carry in a succession of dishes and wines. Inspired by her example, the Raja Sahib also rose to the occasion. He was an excellent raconteur and entertained his guests with witty anecdotes and Urdu couplets, and sometimes even with quotations from the English poets. They applauded him not because they always understood what he was saying but because he was the Raja Sahib. They were delighted with the entertainment, and with themselves for having risen high enough in the world to be invited. There were not many women present, for most of the wives were too uneducated to be brought out into society. Those that came sat very still in their best georgette saris and cast furtive glances at their husbands.

After Bakhtawar Singh was posted to the district as the new S.P., he was invited to the Raja Sahib's dinner. He came alone, his wife being unfit for society, and as soon as he entered the house it was obvious that he was a man of superior personality. He had a fine figure, intelligent eyes, and a bristling moustache. He moved with pride, even with some pomp—certainly a man who knew his own value. He was not put out in the least by the grand surroundings but enjoyed everything as if he were entirely accustomed to such entertainment.
He also appeared to understand and enjoy his host's anecdotes and poetry. When the Raja Sahib threw in a bit of Shakespeare, he confessed frankly that he could not follow it, but when his host translated and explained, he applauded that too, in real appreciation.

After dinner, there was musical entertainment. The male guests adjourned to the main drawing room, which was an immensely tall room extending the entire height of the house with a glass rotunda. Here they reclined on Bokhara rugs and leaned against silk bolsters. The ladies had been sent home in motorcars. It would not have been fitting for them to be present, because the musicians were not from a respectable class. Only Sofia was emancipated enough to overlook this restriction. At the first party that Bakhtawar Singh attended, the principal singer was a well-known prostitute from Mohabbatpur. She had a strong, well-trained voice, as well as a handsome presence. Bakhtawar Singh did not take his eyes off her. He sat and swayed his head and exclaimed in rapture at her particularly fine modulations. For his sake, she displayed the most delicate subtleties of her art, laying them out like bait to see if he would respond to them, and he cried out as if in passion or pain. Then she smiled. Sofia was also greatly moved. At one point, she turned to Bakhtawar Singh and said, “How good she is.” He turned his face to her and nodded, unable to speak for emotion. She was amazed to see tears in his eyes.

Next day she was still thinking about those tears. She told her husband about it, and he said, “Yes, he liked the music, but he liked the singer too.”

“What do you mean?” Sofia asked. When the Raja Sahib laughed, she cried, “Tell me!” and pummeled his chest with her fists.

“I mean,” he said, catching her hands and holding them tight, “that they will become friends.”

“She will be his mistress?” Sofia asked, opening her eyes wide.

The Raja Sahib laughed with delight. “Where did you learn such a word? In the convent?”

“How do you know?” she pursued. “No, you must tell me! Is he that type of man?”

“What type?” he said, teasing her.

The subject intrigued her, and she continued to think about it to herself. As always when she brooded about anything, she became silent
and withdrawn and sat for hours on the veranda, staring out over the dusty plain. “Sofia, Sofia, what are you thinking?” the Raja Sahib asked her. She smiled and shook her head. He looked into her strange, light eyes. There was something mysterious about them. Even when she was at her most playful and affectionate, her eyes seemed always to be looking elsewhere, into some different and distant landscape. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking. Perhaps she was not thinking about anything at all, but the distant gaze gave her the appearance of keeping part of herself hidden. This drove the Raja Sahib crazy with love. He wanted to pursue her into the innermost recesses of her nature, and yet at the same time he respected that privacy of hers and left her to herself when she wanted. This happened often; she would sit and brood and also roam around the house and the land in a strange, restless way. In the end, though, she would always come back to him and nestle against his thin, gray-matted chest and seem to be happy there.