The English Teacher

by R. K. Narayan

  The priest and the carriers are ceaselessly shouting for someone or other. Basket after basket of dry cowdung fuel is brought and dumped … Lively discussion over prices and quality goes on. The trappings of trade do not leave us even here. Some hairy man sits under a tree and asks for alms. I am unable to do anything, but quietly watch in numbness … I’m an imbecile, incapable of doing anything or answering any questions. I’m incapable of doing anything except what our priest orders me to do. Presently I go over, plunge in the river, return, and perform a great many rites and mutter a lot of things which the priest asks me to repeat.

  They build up a pyre, place her on it, cover her up with layers of fuel … Leaving only the face and a part of her chest out, four layers deep down. I pour ghee on and drop the fire.

  We are on our homeward march, a silent and benumbed gang. As we cross Nallappa’s Grove once again, I cannot resist the impulse to turn and look back. Flames appear over the wall … It leaves a curiously dull pain at heart. There are no more surprises and shocks in life, so that I watch the flame without agitation. For me the greatest reality is this and nothing else … Nothing else will worry or interest me in life hereafter.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The days had acquired a peculiar blankness and emptiness. The only relief was my child, spick and span and fresh, and mocking by her very carriage the world of elders. I dared not contemplate where I should have been but for her. So much so that I refused to allow her to be taken away by her grandparents and decided to keep her with me. It was a wonder to them how I was going to look after the girl – but our nature adapts itself to circumstances with wonderful speed. In three or four months I could give her a bath with expert hands, braid her hair passably, and wash and look after her clothes, and keep correct count of her jackets and skirts. I slipped into my double role with great expertness. It kept me very much alive to play both father and mother to her at the same time. My one aim in life now was to see that she did not feel the absence of her mother. To this end I concentrated my whole being. From morning till night this kept me busy. I had to keep her cheerful and keep myself cheerful too lest she should feel unhappy.

  My mother could come and stay with me only for a couple of weeks occasionally, and whenever she was here, I could well imagine what it meant to my father, who could not get on for a day without her help. Of late he had become utterly helpless, nearly starved, and could not look after himself even for an hour if she was away. He did not know where his clothes were, when to go in for dinner, or what to ask for at dinner. When she came and stayed with me for a week or two at a time, it took months to bring him and his health under control again. My mother was very good and helped me ungrudgingly. But I could not accept her service indefinitely. ‘God has given me some novel situations in life. I shall live it out alone, face the problems alone, never drag in another to do the job for me …’ I found a peculiar satisfaction in making this resolve. And next time when my mother had to leave, I did not remonstrate with her as I used to do. She suggested: ‘Kittu, send the child with me. Why are you so stubborn?’ I was. She grew angry with me when I went to see her off. She sat in the bus. I and the little child stood by waiting for the bus to start. I made it a point to take the child wherever I went, except the college. ‘You are unpractical and stubborn,’ my mother persisted. ‘How are you going to look after her?’ ‘As if it were a big feat!’ I replied with bravado. ‘God intends me to learn these things and do them efficiently. I can’t shirk it …’ Tears gathered in my mother’s eyes. ‘That I should be destined to see these scenes in our life – I have never known such things in our family.’ I let her quietly have her cry. I was used to such situations and treated them with business-like indifference. Condolences, words of courage, lamentations, or assurances, were all the same. I had become a sort of professional receptacle of condolence and sympathy, and I had received them in such quantity these months that they had ceased to move me or mean anything. Death and its associates, after the initial shock, produce callousness …

  My mother averted her face in order that the child might not observe the tears in her eyes. The child asked: ‘When will you be back, mother?’ She controlled her voice and gave some vague reply. I didn’t want the child to have any illusions about things and be misled. Living without illusions seemed to be the greatest task for me in life now. So I explained, ‘She can’t come again for a long time, child; she has to look after grandfather …’ That was the stuff to give humanity, nurtured in illusions from beginning to end! The twists and turns of fate would cease to shock if we knew, and expected nothing more than, the barest truths and facts of life. The child accepted my answer with calmness. ‘How long will she be away?’ This was a point about which I could not be very clear. But it moved my mother and she said, ‘I shall try to be back as soon as possible. I only wish your grandfather were more helpful.’

  The bus conductor blew his whistle. The driver sat on his seat. An old village woman, with a basket on her knee, sitting next to my mother asked, ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Kamalapuram … My son is employed here. There you see him with his child …’ She whispered, ‘A motherless child and so I come here often.’ At which the village woman clapped her hands and wailed, ‘Oh, the poor child! Oh, the poor child!’ She insisted upon having the child lifted up and shown to her. She touched the child’s cheeks and cracked her fingers on her temple as an antidote for Evil Eye. She cried: ‘What a beauty! And a girl!’ She sighed deeply, and my mother was once again affected. I wished the bus would move. But the conductor would not allow it to go, he was deeply involved in a controversy with another villager who refused to pay the regular fare but wanted some concession … The village woman now said: ‘When is he marrying again?’ I was shocked to hear it, and my mother felt confused. She knew how much such talk upset me … She did not wish me to overhear it. But the old woman stared at me and said: ‘You must marry again, you are so young!’ My mother was agitated, and desperately tried to suppress her … ‘Oh, don’t speak of all that now.’ The old woman could not be suppressed so easily. She said: ‘Why not? He is so young! How can he manage the child?’

  ‘That is what I also say,’ my mother echoed indiscreetly.

  ‘Men are spoilt if they are without a wife at home,’ added the old woman. I looked desperately at the conductor who showed no signs of relenting. I said: ‘Conductor, isn’t it time to start?’

  ‘Yes, sir, look at this man …’

  ‘He wants four annas for …’ began the controversialist.

  The old woman was saying: ‘A man must marry within fifteen days of losing his wife. Otherwise he will be ruined. I was the fourth wife to my husband and he always married within three weeks. All the fourteen children are happy. What is wrong?’ she asked in an argumentative manner. The bus roared and started and jerked forward. My daughter sat in my arms, watching the whole scene spellbound. As the bus moved my mother said: ‘Don’t fail to give her an oil anointment and bath every Friday. Otherwise she will lose all her hair …’

  I was never a sound sleeper at any time in life, but now more than ever I lay awake most of the night, sleeping by fits and starts. My mind kept buzzing with thoughts and memories. In the darkness I often felt an echo of her voice and speech or sometimes her moaning and delirious talk in sickbed. The child lay next to me sleeping soundly. We both slept in my little study on the front veranda. The door of the room in which my wife passed away remained shut. It was opened once a week for sweeping, and then closed again and locked. This had been going on for months now. It was expected that I should leave the house and move to another. It seemed at first a most natural and inevitable thing to do. But after the initial shocks had worn out, it seemed unnecessary and then impossible. At first I put it down to a general disinclination for change and shifting. To remove that chair, and that chaotic table with its contents … and then another and another … We had created a few favourite corners in the house, and it seemed i
mpossible to change and settle in a new house. My daughter had played on the edge of that veranda ever since she came to me as a seven-month baby. Yes, at first I put it down to a general disinclination for change, but gradually I realized the experience of life in that house was too precious and that I wouldn’t exchange it for anything. There were subtle links with a happy past; they were not merely links but blood channels, which fed the stuff of memory … Even sad and harrowing memories were cherished by me; for in the contemplation of those sad scenes and hapless hours, I seemed to acquire a new peace, a new outlook; a view of life with a place for everything.

  The room which was kept shut had an irresistible fascination for my daughter. She looked at the door with a great deal of puzzlement. On that unhappy day when we had returned from the cremation ground, the child had also just come home. ‘Father, why is that door shut?’ It threw us into a frenzy. We did not know what to reply. The house at that time was full of guests, all adults – all looking on, suffering, and bewildered by death. Death was puzzling enough, but this question we felt was a maddening conundrum. We looked at each other and stood speechless. My daughter would not allow us to rest there. She repeated authoritatively: ‘Why is that door closed?’ My father-in-law was deeply moved by this. He tried to change her mind by asking: ‘Would you like to have a nice celluloid doll?’

  ‘Yes, where is it?’ she asked.

  ‘In the shop. Let us go and buy one.’ She picked up her green coat, which she had just discarded, and said: ‘All right, let us go, grandfather.’ It had been a strenuous morning and we had eaten our food late in the day and were about to rest. He looked forlorn. ‘Come on,’ she said and he looked at me pathetically. I told my daughter, ‘You are a good girl, let your grandfather rest for a little while and then he will take you out …’ She said: ‘Why have you had your meal so late?’ Another inconvenient question under which we smirked. We were all too fatigued to invent new answers to beguile her mind. She waited for a moment and returned to her original charge. ‘Doll – come on grandfather.’ He had by this time thrown himself on the floor and was half sunk in sleep. I said: ‘Child, you are a nice child. Allow your grandfather to rest. He will take you out and buy two dolls.’ She was displeased at this, removed her coat and flung it down. I couldn’t check her, as I would have done at other times. She looked at me fixedly and asked: ‘Why is that door closed?’ At which everyone was once again convulsed and confused and dismayed. She seemed to look on this with a lot of secret pleasure. She waited for an answer with ruthless determination. ‘Mother is being given a bath, that is why the door is closed …’ She accepted the explanation with a nod of her head, and then went up to her wooden trunk containing toys, rummaged and picked out a rag book. I went away to my room and reclined on my easy-chair. As I closed my eyes, I heard her footfalls approaching. She thrust the rag book under my nose and demanded: ‘Read this story.’ I had read that ‘story’ two hundred times already. The book was dirty with handling. And she always kept it with all the junk in her trunk. It had illustrations in green, and a running commentary of a couple of lines under each. It was really not a story, there was not one in it, but a series of illustrations of tiger, lion, apple, and Sam – each nothing to do with the other. But Leela would never accept the fact that they were disconnected. She maintained that the whole book was one story – and always commanded me to read it; so I fused them all into a whole and gave her a ‘story’ – ‘Sam ate the apple, but the lion and tiger wanted some of it …’ and so on. And she always listened with interest, completely accepting the version. But unfortunately I never repeated the same version and this always mystified her! ‘No, father, Sam didn’t hit the tiger,’ she would correct. So when this book was pressed into my hand today my heart parched at the thought of having to narrate a story … ‘Once upon a time …’ I said, and somehow went on animating the pictures in the book with my narration. She said: ‘You are wrong, father, it didn’t happen that way. Your story is very wrong …’

  Towards the evening she came up once again and asked: ‘The door is still closed, father. Is she bathing still?’

  ‘H’m. If the door is open, she may catch a cold …’

  ‘Don’t you have to go to her?’

  ‘No …’

  ‘Is she all alone?’

  ‘There is a nurse who looks after her.’

  ‘What is a nurse?’

  ‘A person who tends sick people.’

  ‘You don’t have to go and stay with mother any more, ever?’

  ‘No, I will always be with you.’ She let out a yell of joy and threw herself on me.

  Four days later, she stole into my room one evening, and whispered, with hardly suppressed glee: ‘Father, say what I have done?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘There was no one there and it wasn’t locked; so I pushed the door open and went in. Mother is not there!’ She shook with suppressed glee, at the thought of her own escapade.

  ‘God, give me a sensible answer for this child,’ I prayed.

  ‘Oh,’ I said casually and added, ‘the nurse must have taken her away to the hospital.’

  ‘When will she be back?’

  ‘As soon as she is all right again,’ I replied.

  The first thing that woke me in the morning was the cold hands of my daughter placed on my forehead and the shout ‘Appa’ (father), or sometimes she just sat, with her elbows on the ground and her chin between her palms, gazing into my face as I lay asleep. Whenever I opened my eyes in the morning, I saw her face close to mine, and her eyes scrutinizing my face. I do not know what she found so fascinating there. Her eyes looked like a pair of dark butterflies dancing with independent life, at such close quarters.

  ‘Oh, father has woken up!’ she cried happily. I looked at her with suspicion and asked: ‘What have you been trying to do so close to me?’ ‘I only wanted to watch, that is all. I didn’t wake you up.’

  ‘Watch what?’

  ‘I wanted to watch if any ant or fly was going to get into you through your nose, that is all …’

  ‘Did any get in?’

  ‘No. Because I was watching.’ There was a hint in her tone as if a sentry had mounted guard against a formidable enemy.

  ‘What do you do when you sleep, father?’ Once again a question that could not be answered by an adult; perhaps only another child could find an answer for it. ‘I was saying something close to you and yet you didn’t reply.’

  ‘What were you saying?’

  ‘I said: There is a peppermint, open your mouth!’

  After these preambles we left the bed. I rolled her about a little on the mattress and then she sat up and picked a book from my table and commanded: ‘Read this story.’ I had no story-book on my table. She usually picked up some heavy critical work and brought it to me. When I put it back on the table, she brought out her usual catalogue of the Calcutta mail order firm, and asked me to read out of it. This happened almost every morning. I had to put away the book gently and say to her: ‘Not now. We must first wash.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That is how it must be done.’

  ‘No. We must first read stories,’ she corrected me.

  ‘We must first wash, and then read stories,’ I persisted.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it is Goddess Saraswathi and we must never touch her without washing.’

  ‘What will she do if we touch her without washing?’

  ‘She will be very unhappy, and she is the Goddess of Learning, you see, and if you please her by washing and being clean, she will make you very learned.’

  ‘Why should I be learned?’

  ‘You can read a lot of stories yourself without my help.’

  ‘Oh! What will you do then?’ she asked, as if pitying a man who would lose his only employment in life.

  It was as a matter of fact my chief occupation in life. I cared for little else. I
felt a thrill of pride whenever I had to work and look after the child. It seemed a noble and exciting occupation – the sole responsibility for a growing creature.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The day had been unusually heavy. I had more or less continuous work till three in the afternoon. And at three, when I was looking at the clock, hoping to drop things and go home, I received a note from Gajapathy to say that I was to take Fourth Hons Class, because George of the language section was absent. Some teachers were absent this week, exhausting their leave, and those who were present were saddled with extra work. I implored Gajapathy to spare me this pain since as a student I had found language a torture, and as a teacher I still found it a torture. But he said: ‘Just keep the boys engaged. The Principal doesn’t want to let the boys off when they have not a teacher for a particular period. In the English department everybody ought to be able to handle any part of it; and I agree with him.’ And I had no option but to sit down in the Fourth Hons Class and engage their young minds in tittle-tattle for an hour. Our chief believed in keeping them well-read, and when they had spare time, in spending it over a library book of some consequence. I sent a boy to the library to fetch any book from the English section he liked. He brought down a book of nineteenth-century essays and I sat down to read mechanically through the pages aloud: the boys were busy, with a lot of conversation among themselves. In harmony with this din I read on. Some boys in the front listened. But they found it difficult to hear and complained: ‘Can’t hear, sir.’

  ‘Ask your friends to shut up and you will hear better,’ I said. They turned and stared helplessly at the noise-makers behind them. It was a small class and I could have easily established law and order, but I was too weary to exert myself. I was past that stage of exertion. A terrible fatigue and inertia had come over me these days and it seemed to me all the same whether they listened or made a noise or whether they understood what I said or felt baffled, or even whether they heard it at all or not. My business was to sit in that chair and keep my tongue active – that I did. My mind itself could only vaguely comprehend what was being read …‘This influence became so marked towards the later part of the century that those writers seized on it with avidity. It was a new-found treasure for the literary craftsman, a new weapon for his arsenal, shall we say …’ My voice dully fell on my ears, but my mind refused to maintain pace with its sense. I caught myself constantly reflecting: ‘What is it all about? What influence? On whom? Oh, good author, why not say arsenal or whatever you like if you choose?’