The Householder (10 page)

She gave one short look, then turned away again. She said, ‘I don't want.'

‘Take it,' Prem urged, going one step nearer and still holding it out to her.

After a while she said, ‘What is it?'

‘Sweetmeats,' he replied eagerly. ‘Rasgullas and gulab jamuns and jelabis.…'

‘All right. Give it.'

She sat down on the edge of the bed and at once began to eat. He watched her, first with gratification then with surprise at the amount and speed with which she was eating. She finished each sweetmeat in two neat bites, then at once fished for another one. In between she licked her lips and her finger-tips with a pink and greedy little tongue.

He said, ‘You are very hungry?'

‘No,' she said. ‘But I long for sweetmeats. I long and long and long for them,' she said passionately, fishing out another one.

He sat down beside her on the bed. ‘Why didn't you tell me before? I would have brought for you'; and when she merely shrugged in reply added, ‘You must tell me everything.'

‘You want?' she said and held out a piece of rasgulla, wet and wounded where she had just bitten into it. He opened his mouth and allowed her to lay it on his tongue, managing to lick her fingers before she withdrew them.

‘If you don't tell me, how am I to know what you want?' he urged her. After a while a new thought struck him, ‘You don't feel ill any time?' he anxiously asked; and when she shook her head, ‘Or do you have a pain—here?' he whispered, shyly pointing at that part of her where she was carrying her baby.

‘No no,' she laughed. ‘Only I want to eat sweetmeats all the time.'

‘Every day I will bring for you.' Midday heat lay hot and close in the room. Indu smelt of perspiration and a very sweet scent, rather like vanilla essence, which she used.

‘Please take them away from me,' she begged, giving him the earthenware pot in which there were now only a few sweetmeats left.

‘Eat eat,' he said indulgently. He took out another sweetmeat and offered it to her between finger and thumb. ‘No,' she said. ‘Yes,' he said, and gently forced it between her lips. She ate with relish, moaning, ‘I have had too many already.' He kissed her cheek and then her neck. She did not push him away, nor did he feel at all ashamed, though it was daytime.

Then there was a loud knock on the outer door and a voice called ‘Telegram!' Prem started up and took it and tore it open. He went back into the bedroom and told her: ‘My mother is coming this evening on the Punjab Mail.'

‘Oh,' she said. And he, too, to his surprise, found he was not as pleased as he thought he would have been.

‘B
E
careful with that jar,' Prem's mother said. ‘It is your favourite pickle.' Prem smiled rather sheepishly, and helped her to climb into the tonga. ‘Are all my things here?' she asked. ‘They won't fall out?' She had a lot of baggage: there was a steel trunk with a big padlock to it, a roll of bedding, a great number of cloth bundles tied with thick string, a basket and an earthenware water-container. Prem did his best to accommodate all these things safely in the tonga, while the tonga-driver sat perched up on his seat, with his whip in his hand, and watched him. The horse stood with its head patiently lowered and the porter stood waiting for his money.

At last they started off and Prem's mother asked, ‘How much did you pay him?' When Prem told her, she said, ‘That is too much. I never give more than two annas to a porter. They don't expect more.' Prem said nothing, only lowered his eyes as if he felt the justice of her rebuke. ‘You must learn not to be extravagant,' she said. ‘Now that you will soon have a family of your own.'

When they got home, she looked Indu up and down. ‘You don't show,' she said, almost accusingly.

Indu turned away her face and drew up her sari to hide her bashful look. Prem hovered around them; he felt nervous, without quite knowing why.

Prem's mother sighed and said, ‘May it be a healthy boy.'

A string-cot had been put up for her in the livingroom, and she had soon accommodated herself, her steel trunk, her earthenware water-container and her basket. She sat on the bed and began to untie her many cloth bundles. There were Prem's favourite biscuits, pickles, chutneys, guava cheese, sherbet—all of which she had made at home for him before she came. As she unpacked and displayed them, she sighed, ‘I know how much you like these things.' Her sigh at once made clear the infinite labour she had undergone in the preparation of them.

Indu went to bed early. Prem was tired and would have liked to follow her soon after, but his mother had a lot to tell him. She gave him all the news about his four sisters and complained about her four sons-in-law. One did not earn enough, another spent too much time at the Club, the third expected his wife to massage his legs every evening, the fourth made too many children. All of them were lacking in respect towards their mother-in-law. ‘If your father had been alive,' she kept saying, ‘things would have been different'; and she wiped her eyes with a corner of her sari.

Prem's sisters were all considerably older than he was, and though he was fond of them, he was not as interested in their affairs as his mother's lengthy recital assumed. On the other hand, he very much wanted to know about some other aspects of his Ankhpur life, but when he asked about these, she was not able to give him any information. ‘And Rajinder—he is still in his uncle's business?' ‘Have they made Ganpat's marriage yet?' ‘Has the new cinema been opened?' ‘Who has replaced Mr. Williams as station-master?' To almost every question he asked, she pursed her mouth and said, ‘What do I know of these things?'

Besides his sisters and their families, the only other topic on which she cared to dwell was that of Ankhpur College and its Principal. ‘Things are becoming worse and worse,' she reported. ‘He is ruining that college. All your father's lifework he is undoing.' Prem shook his head and tried to look troubled. Though really he had never had much affection for Ankhpur College. It was housed in a grim nineteenth-century Gothic building which had once been the municipal offices, and its main purpose was to turn out graduates to fill the lower-rank posts in the U.P. Civil Service. ‘Just think,' his mother said, ‘in this year's B.A. results there was no one in the first division and only four students in the second division!' Prem clicked his tongue, as seemed expected of him. ‘What sort of man is he to replace your father?' his mother demanded. ‘And his wife …' Here she had a lot more to say. Prem did not listen very carefully. He was wondering when she would allow him to go to bed. Indu was probably asleep by now. At last his mother said, ‘Come, son, I have had a tiring journey.' Prem left her and lay down next to Indu in their bedroom. He fell asleep in a somewhat gloomy state of mind.

The following night Indu again went to bed much earlier than she usually did. As soon as she had gone, Prem's mother said in a flat and melancholy way, ‘She seems a good girl.' Prem made no comment; as a matter of fact, he felt very much embarrassed and pretended that there was something wrong with the leg of the little cane table which urgently needed his attention.

‘I did my best for you, son,' his mother said with a sigh. ‘If your father had been alive, perhaps …' and she gave another deeper sigh. Prem turned the table right round and hit at its leg with the flat of his hand.

‘Her family could have given you some more things,' she said. ‘Look at this room—how bare it is.…'

Prem mumbled, ‘They have given us a bed.'

‘
One
bed,' his mother said. She added, ‘It is not as if the girl is very pretty.' Prem bent his head lower to hide his flushed face. What could he say?

‘And she is not very much educated,' his mother said. She scratched under her bun of hair with her finger-nail, then looked at the finger-nail as if she expected to find something in it.' She is not even very good at household duties.'

Prem said in a strangled voice, ‘I think I will go to bed. I have to get up early in the morning.'

‘My poor son. You work so hard.' She heaved another sigh.' God's will,' she said, and laid herself sadly to sleep.

Prem very much wanted to say something to Indu. She seemed to be asleep, but he hoped that she was only pretending. ‘Listen,' he urgently whispered, and when there was no response: ‘Listen, it is very important.' ‘What?' she whispered back, rather suspiciously. He tried to think what he could tell her that was of any importance. ‘You have not forgotten Sunday the fourth,' he finally said.

‘What?' she said sleepily.

‘Sunday the fourth—the Principal's tea-party.'

‘You have woken me up because of that?'

‘You don't understand—it is very important. You see, we must make a good impression so that Mr. Khanna will give us——'

‘Please let me sleep.'

‘Listen to me.'

‘Son?' inquired Prem's mother from the living-room. Prem sank back on to the pillow. Indu flung herself to the extreme edge of the bed, where she again pretended to be asleep.

‘Son? Is something wrong?' Prem shut his eyes and kept silent. ‘Shall I come, son?'

‘We are sleeping, Mother!'

There was a slight mutter from the living-room, then silence. Prem did not dare talk again to Indu. He could only lie there, feeling guilty towards her; he knew he should have said something to his mother to let her know that Indu was not such an inferior girl as she seemed to suppose.

With his mother staying there, the atmosphere in his small flat became rather strained. It seemed to him that both his mother and Indu were waiting for him to resolve the strain, but this he always failed to do. It was so unpleasant for him that, if he had had somewhere else to go, he would never have come home in the evenings. So that he looked forward quite eagerly to Saturday, which was the day Hans and Kitty were going to take him to a party.

But it turned out not to be a real party at all. By party Prem understood some kind of festivity—a wedding, a name-giving ceremony, a Puja celebration—with fairy lights in the trees and auspicious banana-leaves, and marigold garlands; with sweetmeats oozing syrup and ghee, and excited children, and shouting and laughing and music and spontaneous singing, and bejewelled women shimmering in satin with jasmine in their hair. But there was nothing like that at this party. It was out in the garden, but no one had bothered to put up any pretty decorations. People sat on cane-bottomed chairs with high stiff backs to them, and all anyone did was talk. There were a great many middle-aged European ladies. Some of them had Indian husbands with them, who sat staid and subdued on the chairs while their wives ran about and eagerly talked. Others had no husbands, but they had all, Prem gathered, been in India a long time. They were worn-looking ladies in floral frocks which did not fit very well and from out of which came pallid white legs with blue veins on them. When they talked, they interspersed the flow of rapid English with a number of Hindustani words, which they pronounced fluently enough but with a strange accent.

Both Hans and Kitty seemed to enjoy themselves tremendously. Both of them were too busy to take much notice of Prem, who was consequently left sitting unintroduced on a hard-backed chair by himself, From time to time Hans threw himself on to the chair next to him, which was mostly left vacant, shouting, ‘I have just had the most marvellous conversation!' But he never had time to explain what it was about, for he soon caught sight of someone else he wanted to talk to and jumped up with a great bound to join them. Prem could see him talking emphatically and with many gestures, from time to time wiping the saliva from his lips which had gathered there in the excitement.

‘Having a nice time, dear?' Kitty asked Prem absent-mindedly, as she passed near him, deep in conversation with another lady. He stumbled hastily to his feet and said, ‘Thank you, I am enjoying very much.'

‘Isn't he a nice boy,' Kitty said. ‘Well dear, if you like, we'll have a discussion on it next week.'

‘Of course it
must
be discussed,' the lady said earnestly. She had big teeth like a horse and a long neck thrust slightly forward round which she wore a bead necklace.

‘The soul must be aired, so to speak,' Kitty said. She turned to Prem: ‘Don't you think so, dear?'

‘Who is he?' the lady with the bead necklace inquired, looking keenly at Prem who shuffled his feet and smiled ingratiatingly.

‘Ever such a nice boy,' Kitty said.

‘Is he aware?' asked the lady with the necklace.

‘Oh, I should think so. He's ever such a—there's a sandwich crumb on your lip, dear,' she told Prem, who hastily began to brush at his mouth.

The lady thrust her head forward at Prem and told him, almost viciously, ‘You may be Indian by birth, but we are all Indian by conviction.' She pulled back her head and looked complacent.

‘Marvellous!' cried Hans who now came up to join them. ‘How well you spoke it: Indian by conviction.'

Prem cleared his throat and began to speak. ‘All through our long struggle for Independence, our convictions——'

‘Don't drag politics into it!' cried the lady. ‘What does it matter, Independence or no Independence?' Prem was horrified. Was she suggesting that India should not be free? All his patriotism bristled up.

‘Can anyone rule the spirit except the Self?' the lady fiercely demanded, stretching wide her blurred yellowish eyes as if to make them flash.

‘Bravo!' cried Hans, clapping his hands together.

‘Afghans, Moghuls, British, Hindus—what does it matter who rules the body of India? Her soul is always free and calm and lost in contemplation of the Self.'

Hans was radiant with delight. He looked with eager eyes from the lady's face into Prem's, as if he were now expecting the latter to retort with something equally forceful. But Prem did not know what to say. Nevertheless Hans exclaimed: ‘What marvellous discussion we are having!'