Out of India (12 page)

He jumped on her in the same sudden way Manny had done. Betsy thought, do all Indian men make love like this? In spite of his frail appearance, Har Gopal was strong. Not with Manny's massive body strength, but he had a sort of sharp, incisive, relentless quality that rode down opposition. He went straight ahead without question, not skillful but resolute, steely. He commanded respect.

Betsy was in love with Har Gopal. If she hadn't been, the situation might have become embarrassing. He came every day to the flat, and when any of Christine's friends was there, he sat in a corner like a poor relation and looked at them with burning, hungry eyes. Afterward he was angry with Betsy and blamed her for any lack of respect he felt had been shown to him. Christine was always very nice and tactful with him, and in return he went to some pains to make serious conversation with her. He would tell her about the unemployment problem in Uttar Pradesh, or the number of light aircraft manufactured by the Hindustan aircraft factory per year. She would appear to be listening and would say “No really?” and “How fascinating!” in between, without irony. She might be doing her nails, daubing on the varnish with exquisite little brush strokes, and he would look on in fascination. He loved seeing her do her nails.
Sometimes he asked Betsy why she didn't paint hers, and he clicked his tongue in disapproval when she held them out to him, clipped very short and one or two of them bitten down at the end of her short, squarish fingers.

But she took a lot of trouble for him. She brushed and brushed her hair till it shone, and then she slipped a red band around it. She wore white frilly blouses and short skirts and white ballet shoes and a gold locket around her neck. She loved going out for walks with him and would tuck her hand proudly under his arm. He allowed her to keep it there and walked by her side in a stately manner, with his head held stiffly. Many people looked at them. They were both about the same height, both short, but he was thin and she was rather stocky with very muscular legs. Once or twice they met people he knew—some friend or neighbor—and he would stop to exchange a few words in a rather formal, self-conscious way, and though her hand remained tucked under his arm, he made no attempt to introduce her. But if they met anyone she knew, some fellow countrymen from her office or the High Commission, she made a point of introducing Har Gopal at once, flaunting him and clinging to him in such a way that her acquaintances became embarrassed and looked away and parted from her as quickly as possible. But Har Gopal always behaved correctly and said “Very happy to meet you,” and shook hands all around the way he knew foreigners did.

Betsy confided a lot in Christine. She needed to have someone to talk to about Har Gopal. “I know it's ridiculous, ridiculous,” she said and buried her head in her arms, overwhelmed with laughter and happiness. “He's all wrong—of course he is—
and
he's married,
and
three children.” She hid her face again and her shoulders shook laughing. She tried to but could never quite explain to Christine what it was she loved so much about Har Gopal. His finely drawn features, yes, his dark, dreaming eyes, his sadness, his sensitivity: and also—but how could she tell Christine this?—she loved the shabby clothes he wore, his badly cut cotton trousers and his frequently washed shirt with his thin wrists coming out of the buttoned cuffs. She was positively proud of the fact that he looked so much like everybody else—like hundreds and thousands of other Indian clerks going to offices every morning on the bus and coming home again with their empty tiffin carriers in the evenings: people who worked for small salaries and supported their families and worried. She
frowned with the effort of trying to express all this to Christine and said finally that well, she supposed she loved him for being so typically Indian.

Christine laughed: “But that's why I like Manny too.”

Betsy had to admit that Manny too was typically Indian—but in a very different way. Manny was the India one read about in childhood, colored with tigers, sunsets, and princes; but Har Gopal was
real,
he was everyday, urban, suffering India that people in the West didn't know about.

Har Gopal often asked her: “Do you talk about me with Christine?” He wanted to know everything that they said. When she teased and wouldn't tell, he twisted her wrist or squeezed her muscles till she screamed. He loved practicing these boyhood tortures on her; it was the only way he knew of being playful, for that was how he had played with his friends at school and college. He had never had a woman friend before. But he had had many male friends, and they had had grand times together. He often told Betsy about his friends, and it always put him in a good mood. He had a serious, even melancholy nature, but when he recollected his student days, he became gay and laughed at all the mad pranks they had played together. One of his friends, Chandu, had been a great joker, and how he had teased the masters at school! No one could do anything to him, because his father was an important man in town. Another friend had had the ability to chew up newspapers and even razor blades. They were all crazy about the cinema and went to see the same film over and over again till they knew the lyrics and dialogues by heart. He could still recite great chunks of old films and he did so for Betsy, and he sang the songs for her. She loved his voice, which was sweet and girlish, and the soft expression that came into his eyes when he sang; but he said no no, his voice was nothing, she should have heard Mohan, then she would have known what good singing was. They had all thought that Mohan would surely go into films and become a playback singer, but instead he had got a job in the life insurance corporation. There had been so many friends, and they had all been so close and had thought their friendship was eternal; but now Har Gopal didn't even know where most of them were. Everyone was married, like himself, and had their own worries and no more time for their friends. But he still thought about them often and wished for the old days back again, or at least to have one friend left with him in whom to confide his thoughts and have a good time together.

“Well you've got me now,” said Betsy, putting her arm around his neck, tender and comradely.

But he could not feel about her the way he did about his friends. He was, she knew, less fond of her. She excited him, and he was proud to have her, but he did not really, she often suspected,
like
her. All the loving came from her side, and he accepted it as his due but made no attempt to return it. There was something lordly, almost tyrannical in his attitude to her. When he lounged at his ease in her room, all his shyness and shabbiness—that
depressed
quality that was so evident in him when he stood with his tiffin carrier at the bus-stop—left him completely, and he became what, as a Brahmin, he perhaps was by nature: an aristocrat for whom the goods and riches of this world were created and whose right it was to be served by others. Betsy was the one who served, and the goods and riches were the things she gave him for which he had developed a taste: English biscuits, raspberry syrup (he never again drank alcohol), tinned peaches.

He kept some clothes in her room, and when he came to her straight from the office, as he usually did, he would take off his trousers and carefully fold them and then put on his dhoti. He dressed and undressed with delicate precaution, so as never to be seen naked by any human eye, not even his own. Although his lovemaking left nothing to be desired, he never lost his reticence: his manner was always controlled and fastidious, and never for a moment was there any abandon in it. Betsy, on the other hand, was all abandon. She would fling off her clothes, leaving them just where they dropped, and walk around the room naked. Very often she forgot to lock the door, so that the servant or Christine or anyone who came to the flat could have walked in at any time. She didn't care. Her attitude shocked and at the same time pleased him. In the beginning he could only watch her undressing with his face averted and his eyes half lowered, ashamed of himself and of her, but as time went on, he looked at her boldly and with a strange smile that was perhaps partly appreciation and partly, she sometimes suspected, contempt.

He never spoke to her about his family. She wanted to know so much about them, but he always completely evaded her questions. If she insisted too much, he became annoyed and refused to speak to her at all and perhaps even went home earlier than usual. So she dared not ask much. But it tortured her to have all this area of his life concealed from her with a deliberateness that suggested she was not worthy to approach it. Why should he feel that way? He was
proud
of her—she knew he was—otherwise would he parade through the town with her on his arm and greet people he met on the way with such a superior air?

Sometimes, when she found he was relaxed and in a good mood, she tried to coax him into talking: “Is your wife taller than me? Shorter? The same? Say!” But at once his good mood would disappear and he turned away from her, frowning. Once she asked him half jokingly, “What's the matter? You don't think I'm good enough to hear about your family?” But at that he took on such a strange, closed expression that she realized she had stumbled on something near the truth. But she wouldn't at first believe it; she even laughed at it and said, “My God, what am I—a fallen woman or something?” Still he made no answer, but the expression on his face did not change nor did he make any attempt to contradict or deny. She laughed again, more harshly, even though by now she felt far from laughing. It was ridiculous, something out of Victorian melodrama, but still it was true, it was the way he saw her. She felt so humiliated that she could speak nothing further and tears flowed silently from her eyes: but even as they rolled down her cheeks and her heart heaved with pain at the thought of her humiliation, at the same time—so bizarre were her feelings for him—this very humiliation actually increased, exacerbated her passion for him.

One day she went secretly to see the place where he lived. She found blocks of tenements set out side by side and surrounded by an area of wasteland on which had sprung up a dusty little bazaar and a shanty colony of thatched huts. As soon as she got out of her taxi, she found herself the center of a group of children who laughed and marveled at her strangeness and followed her closely. She looked around her for a time, then plucked up courage and walked through the doorway that led into the compound of the first block of buildings. It was as lively here as in any street. Children played, and there were some men repairing string beds and a number of itinerant vegetable sellers and a fish seller, all of whom were bargaining with women who suspiciously untied their bundles of money from the end of their saris and complained to one another about dishonest traders; other women called down from the windows that opened in tiers and rows from the tall buildings. Betsy, with her little cluster of attendant children, looked around her and did not know what to do next. Suddenly she wondered what would happen if he were to come now out of one of those dark doorways and find her standing there.
She could almost see the expression of panic and fury that would instantly transform his face, and at the thought of it, she began to panic a little herself and to wish she had not come.

But then it was too late to retreat. A round little man in an English-style suit came running up to her, calling in an excited voice, “Yes, please, yes, please! You have come to see Mr. Har Gopal?” Betsy did not recognize him, but guessed at once that he must be someone whom they had met and Har Gopal had talked to on one of their evening walks.

“This way, please,” said the little man, pushing aside all the children and leading her out of the compound. To curious bystanders he explained importantly, “For Har Gopal in C Block.” He strutted in front while the children surged after him and Betsy found herself swept along in the procession. Behind her the women nudged and talked. The little man led her along the street and then turned into the next compound, waving a plump hand over his shoulder at her and calling, “This way, please!”

Then she saw that the little procession had brought her back to the street where her taxi was waiting. Murmuring apologies that no one heard, she suddenly climbed into it and sat down, and the driver skillfully flicked away the children who at once surrounded the car. Betsy did not dare look out of the window as she was driven away, and she even put her handkerchief up to her face as if she hoped thereby neither to see nor be seen.

The next time Har Gopal came to the flat he did not talk to her at all but straightaway took his dhoti and a pair of slippers and bottle of hair oil he kept in her bedroom and, grimly determined, wrapped them up in a bundle. “What are you doing?” she cried out in distress. He did not answer but made for the door. She clung to him to prevent him. She begged him to stay.

“Let me go, please,” he said, but standing quite still and making no effort to release himself.

“It's only that I wanted to
see
where you were.”

“You came to spy on me. Yes, and now you will laugh at me with your friends because my house is poor and I am poor.” Suddenly he shrieked: “I don't care! You can laugh, what do I care!”

“Please don't,” she said and clung to him tighter, but he shook her off and shouted at her, “And my position? That's nothing to you what people will say that you come openly to my home—” He sank down to sit on the edge of her bed and covered his eyes with his
hands in grief and shame. And Betsy sank down beside him, and she too covered her eyes. What followed was a loud scene, echoing all over the flat, in which he spoke a lot about his position in the world and she lacerated herself with accusations regarding her own selfishness and insensitivity; and when this had gone on for a long time, and she had again and again begged his forgiveness, they were at last reconciled, and she dissolved in tears of gratitude while he was proud and gracious with her.