The Householder (21 page)

These gloomy thoughts accompanied him to the college and back home again. On his return he found Mr. Seigal standing on the porch, looking out at the weather and probing at a tooth. ‘The monsoon should not be long now,' he told Prem.

Prem stood beside him and also looked out at the weather. He felt small and weak beside Mr. Seigal, who was tall with a big head and a big stomach thrust far in front of him.

‘Another week perhaps,' said Mr. Seigal, concentrating on a cavity in his mouth and trying to pull something out of it.

‘Yes, I think so,' said Prem. He was trembling with nervousness, but all the same he said, ‘I find your rent very high for me, Mr. Seigal.'

Mr. Seigal thrust his head back in an effort to get deeper into the tooth.

‘My salary is not very big and it is difficult for me to pay so much rent every month.'

‘Ai,' said Mr. Seigal in irritation at his tooth and digging deeper.

‘Especially now I expect my expenses to go up higher.' Prem looked out into the street where a man was passing with a barrowful of little cut cubes of sugar-cane. ‘Perhaps you know already—you see, I am expecting,' he cleared his throat, ‘my wife is expecting a baby,' he said and scuffed his feet. Mr. Seigal said ‘Ah' as he dislodged the offending particle; then he said ‘Very nice', and slapped Prem on the back; ‘let us hope for a boy.'

‘Thank you,' Prem said.

‘Though nowadays, what does it matter—boy, girl, it is all the same. Very nice,' he said again and went indoors.

Prem had not really expected anything better. He realized that no one was interested in his difficulties, that the problem of supporting himself and Indu and any family they might have was his alone. The harshness of the world filled him with bitterness and despondency. It seemed to him that adult, settled, worldly people—people like Mr. Khanna and Mr. Seigal—should be glad and even eager to help a young man just starting out in life and with a family to support. But nobody cared. ‘Wherever you look in the world,' he told Sohan Lal, ‘people think only of themselves and they don't love their neighbours at all.' Sohan Lal looked sad in sympathy. ‘Everywhere there is selfishness and even cruelty, so that it is very difficult for a young man to make his way.' Sohan Lal nodded and sighed; then he said, ‘I am going to see Swamiji this evening; you will come?' Prem at once said he would. He wondered he had not thought of it himself. With the swami there would be an escape, for however brief a time, from his sense of the world's oppression.

The swami had many visitors. People sat tightly packed against one another on the floor, and some stood against the walls and some were even out on the staircase. Prem and Sohan Lal managed to get in and to find room to sit on the floor. The swami waved and smiled to them and seemed very pleased they had come, though he did not say anything to them. The room was perfumed with incense and there were fruits and orange flower-garlands and a basketful of rose petals.

The fat Sethji, whom Prem had seen on his first visit, sat near the swami. He wore immaculate clothes of fine white muslin. There was a melancholy expression on his face, and he was saying: ‘I often think, if I could start again from the beginning, I too would give my whole life for the love of God.'

Vishvanathan, the tall, dark, angry young man, said, ‘And what is stopping you now?'

Sethji shrugged. ‘What can I tell you?' he said.

‘I know what you will tell me,' Vishvanathan said. ‘You will tell me that you have a wife and children and many commitments, daughters to marry and younger brothers to educate and widowed sisters to support. You will also tell me that there are many charities and other good works which depend on you, and for the sake of these you cannot leave off all your activities. Isn't that so?'

Sethji said, ‘I have come to listen to Swamiji, not to you.'

‘Well, answer me at least,' Vishvanathan said with a laugh.

‘Answer him,' the swami smilingly urged. ‘Sometimes he also knows a little sense.'

Sethji told Vishvanathan, ‘What can I say to you? What do you understand of responsibilities which eat up a man's life so that it is no longer his own life?'

‘Only this,' said Vishvanathan. ‘That they are no stronger than threads of cotton compared with the responsibilities you have to God.'

‘It is easy enough for you to talk,' Sethji said.

‘And I will tell you something more!' Vishvanathan cried, loud enough to drown other voices which had begun to contribute to the conversation. ‘If once you feel your responsibility to God—which is nothing more than the responsibility to love Him—if you feel it once, only once, strong enough, here and here and here'—and he sharply struck his head and his chest and his belly with the flat of his hand—‘then at once you will forget everything you now think so important, and you will let it go and never even think of looking back!'

He spoke with such fire and truth that there was no place for argument. In the silence that followed, his words echoed in many minds. Prem felt himself much moved. He imagined how it would strike him, this love for God, and how he would leave everything and everyone behind him and devote himself to that alone. So sweet was this vision, so tempting and rapturous, that he had no regrets for what he would leave behind him; not even for Indu.

The swami said, ‘When I was a boy, I was like all the other mischievous boys in the village. I stole mangoes from the trees, I licked curds from the bowl, I cut down the fish hung up to dry. In the village they named me the Wild One. Then God called me.' He was smiling, and yet there were tears in his eyes. ‘I left my village and I spent my time thinking of Him. I wanted Him to possess me entirely and to make me one with Him. But sometimes it was hard. I could not get a vision of Him and this tormented me. I would throw myself on the ground and beat it with my fists and drum my feet like a naughty child. I cursed Him and scolded Him and told Him I would kill myself because He did not want me. But then, at these moments, when I was sunk so deep in anguish that I thought I would never be able to rise from it again, then God would call me. Gently, softly, like the mother calls her child, He called me; and at once I was comforted and I was good again, as the child is good when it is restored to the embrace and forgiveness of the mother.'

Sethji said sadly, ‘He does not call everyone.'

‘He has called you,' Vishvanathan said. ‘Only you don't want to hear.'

‘No,' the swami said, ‘he wants to hear but the world is too loud in his ears.'

Prem felt a desire to cry, I also want to hear! He thought he could if he wanted to, and at that moment it seemed to him that it would be easy to still the noise of the world in his ears. He was sitting quiet on the floor, with his legs tucked under him and his hands folded, but inwardly he trembled with new longings.

Someone began to sing. He sang: ‘You have many good sons on earth, O Mother, few fickle as I; and yet, O gracious one, it is not right for you to abandon me; a son may be bad, but never a mother.' Everyone sat silent and listened. The voice was low and unemphatic but sonorous with feeling; it inspired at the same time both peace and longing. Prem looked at the swami, who sat crosslegged on the bed, his eyes half shut in ecstasy, his mouth open with the tip of the tongue protruding; and from him he looked at Vishvanathan, sitting on the ground at the foot of the bed, with his head erect and an expression of calm and certainty on his face. And Prem felt that his own life too had, like a river, found its own bed and was running with theirs in one current towards God.

But next morning he was thinking mainly of his job and his rent. Indu said, ‘You always look cross', watching him step into his trousers.

‘I have many worries,' he sighed.

‘What worries? It is I who have many worries.'

‘You also have worries?'

‘Of course,' she said, rather proudly. He smiled and quickly bit her neck. ‘Get away from me!' she cried.

He finished dressing and combed his hair in front of the mirror. He studied his face and noted, not without satisfaction, that it was a man's face, no longer a boy's. ‘Shall I grow a moustache?' he said.

Indu covered her face and rocked with laughter.

‘What is funny? I think I shall look quite nice.'

Indu threw herself on the bed. ‘Oh,' she gasped, ‘now he wants to become a film star!' She rolled herself from side to side. Prem watched her for a while, smiling, then he could bear it no longer and fell on top of her, covering her face and neck with kisses. ‘You are tickling me!' she panted; but soon she stopped laughing and they were both very passionate.

Afterwards, as always when they had loved one another in the daytime, they were rather shamefaced. She helped him straighten the collar of his shirt and, with her face averted from him, murmured, ‘You will be late for your college.' She accompanied him to the top of the stairs; suddenly, just as he was about to go down, she said, ‘I have been thinking something.'

‘What have you been thinking?'

‘I have been thinking …' She stood and twisted her hands.

‘Please hurry, I have to go to the college.'

‘We have never had any guests.'

Prem laughed. ‘I will invite guests for you.'

‘Really?'she said. ‘When?'

He was already half-way down the stairs. ‘Soon!' he called, without looking back at her.

She leant over the banister. ‘What shall I cook for them?' and though she could no longer see him: ‘Will they like pilao, do you think?'

At lunchtime, on his way back from the college, Prem stepped in at the Seigals to use the telephone. He met no one except Romesh, who lay fast asleep on the floor with the fan blowing on him full blast. Mrs. Seigal could be heard having an argument with her servant in the kitchen. At the other end of the line Raj sounded cross: ‘You should not telephone to me in the office. It will create a bad impression.'

Prem said formally: ‘I am telephoning to invite you and your family to eat with us at one o'clock on Sunday, the twenty-second.'

‘The bus fare will come very expensive for me.'

‘I hope you will honour me by accepting this invitation,' Prem said.

There was a short pause at the other end; then Raj said, ‘Oh all right,' and added grudgingly, ‘Thank you.'

Prem replaced the receiver, feeling proud and pleased. Now, when he and Indu had cooked for and entertained their own guests, they would have grown to their full stature of householders and married couple.

The evening before they were to go to Sohan Lal's brother's wedding, the rains broke. Prem and Indu flung open all their windows and then they ran up on the roof to bathe in the rain. Water trickled from their hair and down their faces and soaked into their clothes. They laughed and ran round and round the roof and flapped their arms. Afterwards they rubbed themselves with towels, laughing and panting, their eyes and noses glistening, their hair clinging in wet coils. Water came dripping through the ceiling in the bedroom and they had to set a saucepan underneath to catch it. Prem looked up at the defective ceiling and shook his head: ‘Forty-five rupees rent a month, and the water comes in.'

Indu was wiping her hair with a towel. Suddenly she said, ‘If it rains like this tomorrow, how can I wear my georgette sari and my platform-sole shoes to the wedding?' She appeared rather worried for the rest of the evening.

But though it rained all night, by next morning it had stopped. Indu took a long time to get dressed. She stood in front of the mirror and was very critical of herself. Prem, ready long before her, sprawled across the bed, his head supported on his hand, and watched her with a great deal of pleasure. She wore a fine flimsy lilac-coloured sari, spangled all over with silver stars, and a lilac-coloured blouse of satin that shone like a mirror; though she had draped her sari as loosely as possible, it did nothing to hide the swelling splendour of her pregnant belly and breasts.

It was a long bus-ride to Mehrauli. Since it was Sunday, the bus was almost empty; there were only a few solitary old men and one solitary old woman clutching a dirty little cloth bundle on her lap. The conductor sat on the front seat writing a letter though the bus, which was old and loose, rattled a good deal. Prem and Indu sat side by side; Indu looked out of the window and Prem looked mostly straight ahead of him. They did not talk all the way, for they would have felt it to be indelicate to have a conversation together in public. They were also careful to sit far enough apart never to come into contact with one another, however much the bus rattled and shook them.

They found the countryside wet and juicy-green with the night's rain. The air looked liquid and the birds too sang like water. The sky was massing dark blue—soon there would be more rain. But now it was very still; raindrops trembled like dew on the freshened leaves.

‘Do you know the way?' Indu said.

‘He told me go past the lake——'

‘There is the lake.' It was swollen with water. A group of women in bright reds and yellows squatted on the bank, washing clothes. They pounded the clothes on stones with vigorous arms raised high, and at the same time they chatted and laughed in shrill voices. On the far bank, hovering on the edge of the lake like a lotus, was a crumbling little stone pavilion.

‘I hope it is not far,' Indu said. ‘There is something in my shoe.'

‘You can take it out,' Prem said. Off the road, set among shrubs and bushes, were some old grey mausoleums. He led her to one of them and she sat down on the steps and took off her shoe. ‘It was a stone,' she said.

He stood above her, supporting himself against a pillar. ‘It is nice here,' he said. He looked with pleasure at the lush grass, the bushes heavy with rain, the swollen lake. ‘And rents are cheap,' he said. But he knew that he did not want to come and live here. It was pleasant for a day's outing, but he was too proud of having established himself in a big town like Delhi, with buses and tongas and coffee-houses and many cinemas, ever to want to change it for a place like Mehrauli. To have done so would have been a step backwards for him; almost like going back to Ankhpur.