Two Short Novels (7 page)

‘What is it, my son?’ his grandmother pouted in a short-breathed drawl, as she came trembling and shaking back to him with the eternal tears in her eyes. ‘What is it then? May I be your sacrifice!’

Disturbed in the flow of his thoughts he looked at her in a dazed, absent-minded stare. Then he looked straight across her to where his wife stood after sending the other women upstairs and smiled a weak, helpless smile at her, wishing she would come and put her arms round him. But the slight, pale, irregular face of the girl was impassive, as if she were still frightened of him.

‘Iqbal,’ he said to summon her to him.

The girl lifted her innocent, downcast, brown eyes, but just that moment the old woman began to stroke his head and murmur: ‘Go to sleep, my child, may I be your sacrifice! Those fainthearted women frightened me.’

And moving aside with bent back she said, ‘Come, Iqbal, you come and rest too, my daughter. Come, my child, why didn’t you bring the baby?’

‘She is coming with my other aunt, grandma,’ Iqbal said, and then she looked towards her husband, as if imploring him with her eyes to call her again.

Nur’s eyes were averted, however. Someone had suddenly come in between them, some ugly, horrible fate which had intervened to isolate them, as it had always done, till their eyes had never met in the nakedness of a common light, and now
there was no building up of a private relationship between them, for now he was far removed from everyone.

If it had not been for the weight of responsibilities that had been piling up, he thought to himself as he saw her turn her back and follow grandma, if life had not buried him under the weight of his duties as a son, a husband and as a father, he might have loved her. But poverty
. . . .
Oh! how it had hardened him to life, how it had made him insensitive to the colours, the shapes, the forms of things, to the thoughts, the feelings of people, till he had no contact with anyone or anything and went irritably through the world without any perception of even the lumps of human existence, to say nothing of the subtle nuances of experience
. . .
poverty had come between him and her, how cruel it had made him to her, how stubbornly aloof and hard, so that now when he wanted to smile at her, to touch her, he had turned his eyes away, frozen and rigid, too proud and too ashamed to look at her, to yield
. . . .
And it was all his father’s doing.

‘The son of Sheikh Pir Baksh has become a deputy collector, why can’t you? The son of Sardar Kalyan Singh has become a sub-judge, why can’t you?’ Those words and the searching gleam of the Chaudhri’s blood-streaked eyes had spread a terror in his soul till he had felt that every breath he breathed was in jeopardy, that every morsel of food he ate in the house was being watched.

And, afraid of the penalties he might have to pay for disobedience, he had put his heart and soul into the work necessary for the I.C.S. But only he knew what he had gone through, waking up with aching eyelids in the dawn and getting down to work by the light of that kerosene lamp after washing his face in the water of
amlas
. . .
sighing over every second page as he felt hopeless about his success in the competition. Those long summer months of work
. . . .
He had felt like being in a prison of books. The date of the examination hanging like the sword of Damocles over his head
. . .
the misery of ten hours a day while all the world laughed, played and went about as usual. He used to cover his head with wet towels to keep himself from going mad with the heat. But he had known that this city would follow him, the streets of this city which had grown stale and horrible from the familiarity of being seen in the glare of the sun, day after day, for years, the streets of the city in which everyone knew him and whispered as he passed by, ‘There goes Nur, the son of the confectioner who is an M.A. Pass, but who sits idle, with one hand on the other, and kills flies because he can’t get a job.’ And he knew that the flower-seller lane in Dhab-Khatikan of this city would direct his footsteps within its narrow purlieus by the children who sat excreting in the drain and the women who sat spinning or weaving garlands in lightless hovels; he would grow grey and die in his father’s hateful house; fate had shattered his will to live, he really wanted to die and would never be able to escape; the foul breath he breathed here had poisoned him, so that he would take the bitter taste of its air about with him wherever he went till the poison would work its way slowly into his entire system and destroy him.

And, true to his prognostications, being a confectioner’s son, he had only secured five marks in the viva and failed to get into the I.C.S. in spite of the other high marks. And for months he had gone about living in a dead and lightless world with the winds of his father’s temper raging against the dark walls of his mind. And he had wished for release, longed for it, prayed for it, for each day he had awakened to recognise himself still breathing
. . .
till he had just ceased to care, gone beyond suffering to a listlessness and apathy like that of the first days of his illness, and as if there was no meaning in anything, that one just drifted along anyhow, hoping for little, believing less, and committed to one’s breath because one hadn’t the courage to take one’s life and end it all.

Then, as the last remaining desire in life, he had wished between periods of hopelessness and blank despair and endless, bottomless misery for the gift of a little job, howsoever insignificant and humiliating, even the job of a peon if it were not in this city, so that he could earn a little bread for himself, Iqbal and the child. But even this last little wish was not to be fulfilled easily. Only days and unending days morning, noon and night and the rub of his father’s abuse and curses with every morsel of bread and every bite at a bone. And months
. . . .
Oh where could one hide one’s face? Where could one go? For when it came to the point one couldn’t even go and become a boot-black in a different town as the news would spread, and there was still a lingering pride left in one’s body, pride and the fear of being laughed at by the world, of being beaten and insulted by the Chaudhri
. . . .
One only had to eat a little food and this stupid pride came creeping back into one, the pride of one’s manhood and the pride of being an educated, intelligent man, a Babu, an M.A. Pass. The world was so snobbish, and one was so afraid of doing the wrong thing all the time.
‘
Ohe
,
look at that Nur, the son of the confectioner; he fancied himself as a Babu, and now he has come down to his real state, become a coolie.’ Any kind of manual labour was bad, was low and unworthy. It wasn’t respectable to exert one’s hands
. . .
the only
izzat
was in Government service. And it wasn’t only that the outside world believed this, the trouble was, if one was honest, that one had begun to believe in the snobbery oneself and was ashamed and embarrassed.

Then, at last, after the exertions of his father-in-law, after the abject crawling of his father with joined hands before that Bhai Bhachanga Singh, Inspector of Post Offices, after all the influence, brought to bear on Sheikh Pir Baksh, the Minister of Education, after all the recommendations, a clerkship in the Post Office at twenty rupees, and lucky to get it, as fifteen MA’s and a hundred and thirty-seven BA’s had applied for the same post, and but for the wire pulling, the favouritism for the Mohammedan and all the other influences, he would never have got it.

And then he lay still, listening to his own breath as if he were fascinated by his own naiveté, saying to himself, ‘Strange, it’s my pain
. . .
the pain I can’t understand
. . .
of which I am going to die. Doesn’t hurt really
. . .
I feel no different from what I have felt for months
. . .
a little better, a little worse
. . .
I must be dying
. . .
’

The disappointment had done it, the routine of that office, working with dingy clerks, when the hours weighed like lead . . . selling postage stamps when he might have been an Imperial Service Officer.

Was he ungrateful to feel doomed though?

He looked into his heart with the inner eye and asked whether there was nothing in all the flux of his life that could have relieved his doom, no beauty, no tenderness, no faith, nothing but foiled desire.

There was no answer.

Only a slight tremor turned into perspiration, and the weakness of his body was sucked by the heat, and the heavy eyelids closed in stupor, against his will, conjuring queer images: Tarzan was lifting the woman, her golden hair streaming
. . . .
Myrna Loy, perfect featured, and William Powell with a face like any He-man’s. Wonderful white houses in the English style
. . . .
Charlie Chaplin running after the new woman he had seen on the corner of the restless street, all for love, a new love.

He felt his heart throbbing with a helpless pity for himself, that he had never fallen in love, that he had not gone to England as a probationer of the Imperial Forest Service or the LCS and come back to live a life in the English style, but lay completing the circuit of his life, fading into the unknown, into a future where there seemed to be a dearth even of past memories, where even the facts of his present state were slipping.

‘What had happened and what was happening? Nothing
. . .
the Doctor will be coming soon
. . .
’

‘It was my perverse pride that denied Iqbal’s feelings,’ he said to himself, ‘and sent her away to her father’s house. Even the playful smile on the face of Rashida whom my sperm had made, did not move me.’

In his recoil, he frowned and wriggled and then, turning in upon himself, said, ‘Oh, it couldn’t be helped.’

He listened intently to the silence, controlling his breath for a moment. The blood was pumping into the veins and the arteries seemed swollen and hard. Perhaps they were affected by the heat. But there was no doubt. Life was ebbing in him. It was a matter of days.

That first haemorrhage had been a surprise to him. He had taken the shock calmly. But now it was no easy matter to sleep over it, for it might be a question of hours
. . . .
He felt afraid.

But he mustn’t get excited, else the Doctor would complain. He must be calm, above all things, calm. Look how calm he had been for days. Why, the Doctor had complimented him on his ability to notice each symptom of the disease.

He recalled the changing phases of his body, while he felt his pulse. One day, it was a month ago, he had felt bad, very bad. But then he had felt well, and had even read Charles Garvice. It was curious how, when he was reading books, the festoons of clothes, the hurricane lamp hanging by the wall, and all the jumble of things which looked ugly in the ordinary light assumed a certain grandeur. The next day he had not been so well, and he felt apathetic to everyone and everything. His breathing had been heavy as it was now, and his fever was rising, and he had moaned exactly as he had done today. Perhaps he was trying grimly to hold on to himself, but what was the use, the cure was outside himself, and why couldn’t he get out of the prison of his own broodings. But there was nothing else to do
. . .

It was no use looking to anything outside of himself for help. For he felt so exhausted, lying there. Why couldn’t he wrestle with every moment and delay the end for a few months, for a few years? By prayer, for instance. That had given him whole days of good health. What a boon it was; he had liked people. ‘I wonder if the attacks of haemorrhage come because I don’t pray any more.’ But that was stupid! What was he thinking about? Neither God nor the Devil could help him.

A gleam of kindliness coloured his face for a moment, then changed to a frown, and he turned his tired body again, and shrank back like a snail into his own skin.

That haemorrhage, a fortnight ago, was the worst he had had. His disease had surely begun to overpower him then. He had been terrified. But, after all, it could not have done him much harm. It couldn’t have done, because he had felt life in his body. Why, the blood had rushed to his cheeks and that ghastly pallor of months had gone. But for the chill that he caught at dawn last Thursday. How he had trembled: always he had trembled when he had had fever, even as a child, a soft tremor went shivering through the nerves of his body. The cold had affected him badly, because he had had a terrible haemorrhage on Saturday. How helpless he had felt till the Doctor prescribed arsenic. But on Sunday his depression had lifted. He could rise again from the ashes
. . . .
Yesterday he had felt that too, and today
. . . .
He was tired perhaps, but he would get up, in spite of the haemorrhage, this morning. Would he though? Could he?
. . .
after months of sinking life? Could he? Hark, there was someone.

He listened.

There was the Doctor. They were Captain Pochanwala’s footsteps. He must ask him. He must get ready, not shuffle the clothes, lie still.

‘Well, Mr. Nur, how are you this morning?’ asked Captain Pochanwala superciliously, advancing into the room with an urbane manner which he seemed to have cultivated specially to suit the distinctive fawn-coloured polo topee which he alone of all the Indians in Amritsar wore with his well-cut suit. Being a Parsi, he perhaps thought himself superior to all the other Indians who had begun to wear English clothes.

Nur strained to say, ‘Good morning,’ but his father appeared behind the Doctor, and, somehow, he felt ashamed to be speaking English in the presence of the Chaudhri, as it would seem like showing off.

‘Flushed, very flushed, breathing bad,’ the Doctor said and fixing his gaze on Nur he asked, ‘How is the cough?’

‘Better,’ said Nur, and he saw his father going upstairs, presumably to fetch the money for the Doctor’s fees, since Captain Pochanwala didn’t believe in credit and had asked for his remuneration even when he had arrived too late to cure Nur’s mother.

‘Let us see the temperature!’ the Doctor said, screwing up his eyes and nose as if he really didn’t want to come into contact with his patient.

And while Nur was drawing his hand out of the sheet, Captain Pochanwala looked contemptuously round the room, and then put his hand on the boy’s forehead.

‘Very hot, very hot, very hot!’ he said, ‘What have you been doing to excite yourself this morning?’

‘Nothing, Doctor,’ said Nur.

Captain Pochanwala was applying the stethoscope to his patient’s heart, and didn’t wait for the boy to answer.

‘Hum
. . .
’ he said rather abstractedly and twisting his lower lips coldly and looking at the boy with knitted brows and eyes turned sideways, ‘that intractable lung
. . .
any haemorrhage this morning?’

‘No,’ said Nur, then correcting himself, ‘Yes.’

Captain Pochanwala looked quizzically about him and contemplated the purple glow on the boy’s face for a moment.

‘There is some medicine there, isn’t there?’ he asked and then turning to the table himself confirmed, ‘Yes.’

‘How is he, Doctor Sahib?’ asked the Chaudhri coming down the stairs, grim and heavy.

‘I am afraid Mr. Nur has been exciting himself,’ Captain Pochanwala replied, putting away his stethoscope. ‘He should remain absolutely quiet. That medicine in the bottle will do for some days.’ Then he took out his watch and moved towards the door, beckoning the Chaudhri.