Out of India (25 page)

“A heart of gold,” said Babaji.

“I know it.” Elizabeth bit her lip in vexation at herself.

Shafi came out with the tea tray. Elizabeth removed some books to clear the little table for him, and Babaji said, “Ah,” in pleasurable anticipation. But Shafi did not put the tray down.

“Where is she?” he said.

“It's all right, Shafi. She's just coming. Put it down, please.”

The old man nodded and smiled in a cunning, superior way. He clutched his tray more tightly and turned back into the house. He had difficulty in walking, not only because he was old and infirm but also because the shoes he wore were too big for him and had no laces.

“Shafi!” Elizabeth called after him. “Babaji wants his tea!” But he did not even turn around. He walked straight up to Margaret's bedroom and kicked the door and shouted, “I've brought it!”

Elizabeth hurried after him. She felt nervous about going into
Margaret's bedroom after having been so explicitly forbidden to follow her. But Margaret only looked up briefly from where she was sitting on her bed, reading a letter, and said, “Oh, it's you,” and “Shut the door.” When he had put down the tea, Shafi went out again and the two of them were left alone.

Margaret's bedroom was quite different from the rest of the house. The other rooms were all bare and cold, with a minimum of furniture standing around on the stone floors; there were a few isolated pictures hung up here and there on the whitewashed walls, but nothing more intimate than portraits of Mahatma Gandhi and Sri Ramakrishna and a photograph of the inmates of Mother Teresa's Home. But Margaret's room was crammed with a lot of comfortable, solid old furniture, dominated by the big double bed in the center, which was covered with a white bedcover and a mosquito curtain on the top like a canopy. A log fire burned in the grate, and there were photographs everywhere—family photos of Arthur and Margaret, of Margaret as a little girl, and of her parents and her sister and her school and her friends. The stale smell of food pervading the rest of the house stopped short of this room, which was scented very pleasantly by woodsmoke and lavender water. There was an umbrella stand that held several alpenstocks, a tennis racquet, and a hockey stick.

“It's from my sister,” Margaret said, indicating the letter she was reading. “She lives out in the country and they've been snowed under again. She's got a pub.”

“How lovely.”

“Yes, its a lovely place. She's always wanted me to come and run it with her. But I couldn't live in England anymore, I couldn't bear it.”

“Yes, I know what you mean.”

“What do you know? You've only been here a few years. Pour the tea, there's a dear.”

“Babaji was wanting a cup.”

“To hell with Babaji.”

She took off her sandals and lay down on the bed, leaning against some fat pillows that she had propped against the headboard. Elizabeth had noticed before that Margaret was always more relaxed in her own room than anywhere else. Not all her visitors were allowed into this room—in fact, only a chosen few. Strangely enough, Raju had been one of these when he and Elizabeth had stayed in the house. But he had never properly appreciated the privilege;
either he sat on the edge of a chair and made signs to Elizabeth to go or he wandered restlessly around the room looking at all the photographs or taking out the tennis racquet and executing imaginary services with it; till Margaret told him to sit down and not make them all nervous, and then he looked sulky and made even more overt signs to Elizabeth.

“I brought my sister out here once,” Margaret said. “But she couldn't stand it. Couldn't stand anything—the climate, the water, the food. Everything made her ill. There are people like that. Of course, I'm just the opposite. You like it here too, don't you?”

“Very, very much.”

“Yes, I can see you're happy.”

Margaret looked at her so keenly that Elizabeth tried to turn away her face slightly. She did not want anyone to see too much of her tremendous happiness. She felt somewhat ashamed of herself for having it—not only because she knew she didn't deserve it but also because she did not consider herself quite the right person to have it. She had been over thirty when she met Raju and had not expected much more out of life than had up till then been given to her.

Margaret lit a cigarette. She never smoked except in her own room. She puffed slowly, luxuriously. Suddenly she said, “He doesn't like me, does he?”

“Who?”

“‘Who?'” she repeated impatiently. “Your Raju, of course.”

Elizabeth flushed with embarrassment. “How you talk, Margaret,” she murmured deprecatingly, not knowing what else to say.

“I know he doesn't,” Margaret said. “I can always tell.”

She sounded so sad that Elizabeth wished she could lie to her and say that no, Raju loved her just as everyone else did. But she could not bring herself to it. She thought of the way he usually spoke of Margaret. He called her by rude names and made coarse jokes about her, at which he laughed like a schoolboy and tried to make Elizabeth laugh with him; and the terrible thing was sometimes she did laugh, not because she wanted to or because what he said amused her but because it was he who urged her to, and she always found it difficult to refuse him anything. Now when she thought of this compliant laughter of hers she was filled with anguish, and she began unconsciously to wring her hands, the way she always did at such secretly appalling moments.

But Margaret was having thoughts of her own, and was smiling
to herself. She said, “You know what was my happiest time of all in India? About ten years ago, when I went to stay in Swami Vishwananda's ashram.”

Elizabeth was intensely relieved at the change of subject, though somewhat puzzled by its abruptness.

“We bathed in the river and we walked in the mountains. It was a time of such freedom, such joy. I've never felt like that before or since. I didn't have a care in the world and I felt so—light. I can't describe it—as if my feet didn't touch the ground.”

“Yes, yes!” Elizabeth said eagerly, for she thought she recognized the feeling.

“In the evening we all sat with Swamiji. We talked about everything under the sun. He laughed and joked with us, and sometimes he sang. I don't know what happened to me when he sang. The tears came pouring down my face, but I was so happy I thought my heart would melt away.”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said again.

“That's him over there.” She nodded toward a small framed photograph on the dressing table. Elizabeth picked it up. He did not look different from the rest of India's holy men—naked to the waist, with long hair and burning eyes.

“Not that you can tell much from a photo,” Margaret said. She held out her hand for it, and then she looked at it herself, with a very young expression on her face. “He was such fun to be with, always full of jokes and games. When I was with him, I used to feel—I don't know—like a flower or a bird.” She laughed gaily, and Elizabeth with her.

“Does Raju make you feel like that?”

Elizabeth stopped laughing and looked down into her lap. She tried to make her face very serious so as not to give herself away.

“Indian men have such marvelous eyes,” Margaret said. “When they look at you, you can't help feeling all young and nice. But of course your Raju thinks I'm just a fat, ugly old memsahib.”

“Margaret, Margaret!”

Margaret stubbed out her cigarette and, propelling herself with her heavy legs, swung down from the bed. “And there's poor old Babaji waiting for his tea.”

She poured it for him and went out with the cup. Elizabeth went after her. Babaji was just as they had left him, except that now the sun, melting away between the trees behind him, was even more intensely
gold and provided a heavenly background, as if to a saint in a picture, as he sat there at peace in his rocking chair.

Margaret fussed over him. She stirred his tea and she arranged his shawl more securely over his shoulders. Then she said, “I've got an idea, Babaji.” She hooked her foot around a stool and drew it close to his chair and sank down on it, one hand laid on his knee. “You and I'll take those children up to Agra. Would you like that? A little trip?” She looked up into his face and was eager and bright. “We'll have a grand time. We'll hire a bus and we'll have singing and games all the way. You'll love it.” She squeezed his knee in anticipatory joy, and he smiled at her and his thin old hand came down on the top of her head in a gesture of affection or blessing.

BOMBAY

S
ometimes the Uncle did not visit his niece for several days. He stayed in his bare, unventilated lodging and fed himself with food from the bazaar. Once, after such an absence, there was a new servant in the niece's house, who refused to let him in. “Not at home!” the servant said, viewing the Uncle with the utmost suspicion. And indeed who could blame him; certainly not the Uncle himself.

But Nargis, the niece, the mistress of the house, was annoyed—not with the servant but with her uncle. In any case, she was usually annoyed with him when he reappeared after one of his absences. It was resentment partly at his having stayed away, partly at his having reappeared.

“Look at you,” she said. “Like a beggar. And I suppose you have been eating that dirty bazaar food again. Or no food at all.”

She rang the bell and gave orders to a servant, who soon returned with refreshments. The Uncle enjoyed them; sometimes he did enjoy things in that house, though only if he and she were alone together.

That could never be for long. Khorshed, one of her unmarried sisters-in-laws, was soon with them, greeting the Uncle with the formal courtesy—a stately inclination of the head—that she extended to everyone. Since he was family, she also smiled at him. She had yellow teeth and was yellow all over; her skin was like thin old paper stretched over her bones. She sat in one of the winged armchairs by the window—her usual place, which enabled her to keep an eye on the road and anything that might be going on there. She entertained them with an account of a charity ball she had witnessed at the Taj Mahal Hotel the day before. Soon she was joined by her sister
Pilla, who took the opposite armchair in order to see the other end of the road. They always shared a view between them in this way. They had done the same the day before at the Taj Mahal Hotel. They themselves had not bought tickets—it had not been one of their charities—but had taken up a vantage point on the velvet bench on the first landing of the double staircase. Khorshed had watched the people who had come up from the right-hand wing, and Pilla those from the left. Now they described who had been there, supplementing each other's account and sometimes arguing whether it had been Lady Ginwala who had worn a tussore silk or Mrs. Homy Jussawala. They quarreled over it ever so gently.

Rusi came in much later. He had only just got up. He always got up very late; he couldn't sleep at night, and moved around the house and played his record player at top volume. When he came in—in his brocade dressing gown and with his hair tousled—everyone in the room became alert and intense, though they tried to hide it. His two aunts bade him good morning in sweet fluting voices; his mother inquired after his breakfast. He ignored them all. He sank into a chair, scowling heavily and supporting his forehead on his hand, as if weighted down by thoughts too lofty for anyone there to understand.

“Look, look,” said Pilla to create a diversion, “here she is again!”

“Where!” cried Khorshed, helping her sister.

“There. In
another
new sari. Walking like a princess—and they owe rent and bills everywhere.”

“Just see—a new parasol too, matching the sari.”

Both shook their heads. The boy, Rusi, took his hand from his brow, and his scowling eyes swept around the room and rested on the Uncle.

“Oh, back again,” he said. “Thought we'd got rid of you.” He gave one of his short, mad laughs.

“Yes,” said the Uncle, “here you see me again. I had no food at home, so I came. Because of this,” he said, patting his thin stomach.

“All dogs are like that,” Rusi said. “Where there is food to be got, there they run. Have you heard of Pavlov? Of course not. You people are all so ignorant.”

“Tell us, darling,” said Nargis, his mother.

“Please teach us, Rusi darling,” the aunts begged eagerly.

He relapsed into silence. He sat hunched in the chair and, drawing his feet out of his slippers, held them up one by one and studied
them, wriggling the toes. He did this with great concentration, so that no one dared speak for fear of disturbing him.

The Uncle now forced himself to look at him. Every time he came here, it seemed to him that the boy had deteriorated further. Rusi had a shambling, flabby body, and though he was barely twenty his hair was beginning to fall out in handfuls. He was dreadful. The Uncle, instead of feeling sorry for this sick boy, hated him more than any other human being on earth. Rusi looked up. Their eyes met; the Uncle looked away. Rusi gave another of his laughs and said, “When Pavlov rang a bell, saliva came out of the dog's mouth.” He tittered and pointed at the Uncle. “We don't even have to ring a bell! Khorshed, Pilla—look at him! Not even a bell!”

The women laughed with him, and so did the Uncle, though only after he caught his niece's eye and had read the imploring look there. Then it was not so difficult for him to join in; in fact, he wanted to.

Everyone always thought of the Uncle as a bachelor, but he had once been married. His wife had been dull and of a faded color, and soon he sent her back to her parents and went to live with his brother and with Nargis, the brother's daughter. The brother's wife had also been dull and faded; she did not have to be sent away, but died, leaving the two brothers alone with the girl. These three had lived together very happily in a tiny house with a tiny garden that had three banana plants and a papaya tree in it. This was in an outlying suburb of Bombay, with a lot of respectable neighbors who did not quite know what to make of the household. It included an ancient woman servant, who was sometimes deaf, sometimes dumb, sometimes both. Whatever the truth of her disability, it prevented her from communicating with anyone outside the house and quite often with anyone in it. The two brothers didn't work much, though Nargis's father was a journalist and the Uncle a lawyer. They only went out to practice their respective professions when money ran very low. Then Nargis's father made the rounds of the newspaper offices, and the Uncle sat outside the courts to draw up documents and write legal letters. The rest of the time, they stayed at home and amused Nargis. They were both musical, and one sang while the other accompanied him on the harmonium. The whole household kept very odd hours, and sometimes when they got excited over their music they stayed up all night and slept through the day, keeping
the shutters closed. Then the neighbors, wondering whether something untoward had happened, stood outside the little house and peered through the banana plants, until at last, toward evening, the shutters would be thrown open and a brother would appear at each window, fresh and rested and smiling at the little crowd gathered outside.

Both were passionate readers of Persian poetry and Victorian poetry and prose. They taught Nargis everything they could, and since she was in any case not a keen scholar, there was no necessity to send her to school. Altogether they kept her so much to themselves that no one realized she was growing up, till one day, there she was—a lush fruit, suddenly and perfectly ready. The two brothers carried on as if nothing had happened—singing, reading poetry, amusing her to the best of their ability. They bought her all sorts of nice clothes too, and whatever jewelry they could afford, so that it became necessary for them to go out to work rather more frequently than in the past. Nargis's father began to accept commissions to write biographies of prominent members of their own Parsi community. He wrote these in an ornate, fulsome style, heaping all the ringing superlatives he had gathered from his Victorian readings onto these shrewd traders in slippers and round hats. In this way, he was commissioned to write a biography of the founder of the great commercial house of Paniwala & Sons. The present head of the house took a keen interest in the project and helped with researches into the family archives. Once he got so excited over the discovery of a document that he had himself driven to the little house in the suburb. That was how he first saw Nargis, and how he kept coming back again even after the biography had been printed and distributed.

Nargis had no objections to marrying him. He wasn't really old—in his late thirties—though he was already perfectly bald, with his head and face the same pale yellow color. His hands were pale too, and plump like a woman's, with perfectly kept fingernails. He was a very kind man—very kind and gentle—with a soft voice and soft ways. He wanted to do everything for Nargis. She moved into the family mansion with him and his two sisters and with his servants and the treasures he had bought from antique dealers all over Europe. Positions were found in the house of Paniwala for Nargis's father and the Uncle, so that they no longer had to go out in order to work but only to collect their checks. Everyone should have been
happy, and no one was. The little house in the suburb died the way a tree dies and all its leaves drop off and the birds fly away. It was the old woman who felt the blight first and had herself taken to hospital to die there. Next, Nargis's father lay down with an ailment that soon carried him off. Then the Uncle moved out of the house and into his quarters in the city.

Nargis had once visited him there, to persuade him to come and live in the family mansion. He wouldn't hear of it. He also said, “Who asked you to come here?” He was quite angry. Her arrival had thrown the whole house—indeed, the whole neighborhood—into commotion. A crowd gathered around her large car parked outside, and some lay waiting on the stairs, and children even opened the door of his room to peep in at the grand lady who had come. He bared his teeth at them and made blood-curdling noises.

“Come,” Nargis pleaded. She looked around the room, which was quite squalid, though it had a patterned marble floor and colored-glass panes set in a fan above the door. The house had once been a respectable merchant's dwelling, but now, like the whole neighborhood, it was fast turning into a slum.

“You needn't talk with anyone,” she promised. “Only with me.”

“And Khorshed?” he asked. “And Pilla?” He opened his mouth wide to laugh. He got great amusement out of the two sisters.

“Only with me.”

He gave an imitation of Khorshed and Pilla looking out of the window. Then he laughed at his joke. He jumped up and cackled and hopped up and down on one foot with amusement.

“You haven't come for four days,” she accused him, above this.

He pretended not to hear, and went on laughing and hopping.

“What's wrong? Why not?” she persisted. “Don't you want to see me?”

“How is Paniwala?”

“He says bring Uncle. Get the big room upstairs ready. Send a car for him.”

“Oh go away,” he said, his laughter suddenly gone. “Leave me alone.”

She wouldn't. Usually complaisant, even phlegmatic, she became quite obstinate. She sat on his rickety string bed and folded her hands in her lap. She said if he wasn't coming, then she was staying. She wouldn't move till he had promised that, even if he
wouldn't go and live in the house, he would visit there every day. Then at last she consented to be led back to her car. He went in front, clearing a way for her by poking his stick at all the sightseers.

He kept his promise for a while and went to the house every day. But he was always glad to come back home again. He walked up and down in the bazaar, looking at the stalls and the people, and then he sat outside the sweetmeat seller's and had tea and milk sweets and read out of his little volume of Sufi poetry. Sometimes he was so stirred that he read out loud for the benefit of the other customers and passersby, even though they couldn't understand Persian:

                
“When you lay me in my grave,

                
don't say, ‘Farewell, farewell.'

                
For the grave is a screen hiding the

                
cheers and welcome of the

                
people of Paradise.