Heat and Dust

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  As the Nawab touched the baize cloth covering the grand piano, a small animal – it looked like a squirrel – came scurrying out and ran for its life. The Nawab did not seem surprised. “Do you like my pianos?” he asked Olivia; and added apologetically “There is no one to play them.”

  The keys were swollen and stuck, and when Olivia tried to play some of them, all she could get was a shrill jangle. “What a shame,” she said with feeling.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes you are right.” He too was suddenly sad. He sank down on to an unopened packing-case. After a heavy silence he said “They were ordered for my wife.”

  Olivia tried again but the sounds produced were too heartbreaking.

  “Can they be mended?” he asked.

  “If you can get a good tuner.”

  “Certainly. I will send for it immediately.”

  “It’s a person,” Olivia said. “I’ve been desperately wanting someone but Douglas says he has to come all the way from Bombay.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Such things you must tell me. There is so little I can do to serve my friends. Did you know I was married?”

  “I’ve heard,” Olivia murmured.

  He leaned forward: “What have you heard?” His eyes scanned her face which she kept lowered and, she hoped, expressionless. Nevertheless he seemed to have read something into it.

  He said “You will hear many things about me. There are many people to give bad report. Whatever I do – there are always those who will say one thing when it is another. You know Murad?” Olivia knew him to be one of the young men who were always there, but it was difficult to distinguish one from another. “He is a spy,” the Nawab said. “Oh I know it and he knows I know it, we understand each other. And he is not the only one. There are others, among the servants and everyone.” His eyes as they rested on Olivia were veiled with dark thoughts. If he suspected her too – and he probably did – she knew no way to defend herself.

  But he reverted to the pianos: “If I have them repaired and brought upstairs, you will come and play for me, Olivia? It will make me so very happy. Sandy had been learning the sitar but she got tired of it so I sent for the pianos. By the time they arrived she had gone away. Please play.”

  “But it sounds so awful.”

  “For my sake.”

  He stood behind her while she tried to play a Bach Prelude. It was murder, but he nodded solemnly as if he liked it. He bent over her closely.

  “I wish Sandy could have learned to play like you. I miss her very much. She was supposed to be in purdah upstairs but she often hid from everyone to come and be with me. You see, she was a modern girl, she went to school in Switzerland and all the rest. She was not like our other Indian ladies but – yes, like you, Olivia. She was like you. Also beautiful like you.”

  Olivia had now got to some intricate trills. She played them as well as she could, but the sounds that came out were tuneless and eerie. In any case, he seemed to have lost interest in the piano music. He straightened up with a sigh and, though she was still in the middle of her piece, turned to go out. She had to break off and follow him as she did not think she could find the way back by herself.

  It was about this time – the time of her growing friendship with the Nawab – that she and Douglas began to speak seriously about having children. They were both very keen on it. Olivia felt that someone as handsome, as perfect as Douglas should be procreated many times over! She teased him about it – she said he had only married her so as to people the world with a whole lot of Douglases. Not at all, he said; it was Olivias he wanted – as many of them as possible.

  “Oh but I’m unique, don’t you know.”

  “Of course you are. Absolutely,” he agreed with enthusiasm. He bent down to kiss her naked shoulder. They were getting dressed for dinner – they were expecting the two grass-widowers, Mr. Crawford and Major Minnies – and Olivia sat at her dressing-table in her cream silk slip, liberally dousing herself with lavender water.

  They went on speaking about their sons. Olivia liked to think of these tall pro-consuls – one in the army, one a civilian like Douglas, perhaps a politician? All of them in India of course – but she did have one doubt: “Supposing things change – I mean, what with Mr. Gandhi and these people”-but she trailed off, seeing Douglas smile behind her in the mirror. He had no doubts at all; he said “They’ll need us a while longer,” with easy amused assurance. He was in shirtsleeves and braces and raised his chin to tie his black bow tie.

  “And what about Olivia?” she asked, set at ease about her sons.

  Douglas had no doubts about her either – she was going to marry into a family just like her own, to someone like her brothers, and become like –

  “Mrs. Crawford?”

  Douglas smiled again: “No, like Olivia – I’ll settle for nothing less.”

  “Oh Olivia’s no good,” she said with sudden deep conviction, even a kind of self-disgust. He didn’t notice the change of tone – he laughed and said “Good enough for me.” But when he tried to kiss her shoulder again, she got up quickly and began to slip her dress over her head. “They’ll be here soon,” she said. “You’d better go.”

  She had had a table carried out into the garden and arranged it very decoratively. The gentlemen appreciated all her feminine touches. Their mood became relaxed, even though it was a hot night and they of course in dinner jackets. They spoke of the absent ladies. The news from Simla was good: Honeysuckle Cottage had come up to expectations and the weather was so cool that they had even lit a fire one night! Not so much because they needed it (Mrs. Crawford had confessed) but because it was such a treat to see it roaring in the big cosy fireplace.

  Major Minnies said “That’s one treat we can very well do without, down here.” He mopped his face which was glistening with perspiration; but nevertheless he was smiling, contented. He raised his glass to Olivia. “We owe a toast to our hostess who has remained with us in our ordeal of fire.”

  “Yes indeed” and “Rather” said Mr. Crawford, also raising his glass to her. So did Douglas. Olivia saw their three faces beaming at her. “Oh nonsense,” she murmured and looked down at her hand lying on the tablecloth. She felt enveloped in their admiration and gratitude. They all drank the cool wine. The moon had risen behind the house, making it look like a silhouetted stage-set; servants came out of it in procession, bearing the next course. The garden was full of the summer smells of jasmine and Queen of the Night. At its furthest end, huddled against the wall, were the servants’ quarters exuding muffled but incessant sounds.

  “What about you, Minnies?” Mr. Crawford asked. “When will you be deserting us for cooler climes?” When Major Minnies shook his head, he said sympathetically “Our Friend is still playing up, is he. Hard luck.”

  “Oh I’m used to it,” said Major Minnies good-naturedly. “Except I wish it hadn’t all come up at this particular season. Poor Mary. We haven’t had a Simla holiday together since, let me see, yes it was in ‘19. Two years ago of course we had the Cabobpur affair and this year –” He made a gesture, assuming they all knew what it was this year. And of course they did, only too well; except Olivia who hazarded “Is it still,” in a nervous voice, “that awful Husband’s Wedding Day thing?”

  “No dear lady,” said Major Minnies, “Husband’s Wedding Day has come and gone. We got off relatively cheaply this time: only 6 killed and 43 wounded. Let us be thankful for small mercies amen – and yes let us also pray that we shall extricate ourselves from the dacoit affair without too much of a bust-up . . . At present,” he said, “I wouldn’t like to be in that boy’s shoes.”

  “Which boy’s shoes?” said Olivia. She called to Douglas across the table – “Darling, what are you doing, do tell them to get the other bottle.” “Sorry sorry sorry,” said Douglas, tearing himself away from the conversation to motion to the head bearer.

  “Our Friend’s,” said Major Minnies.

  “They’re taking a grave view, are they,” said Mr.
Crawford.

  “Very much so. I’ve been trying to use moderate language in my reports but, dash it all, it’s not easy to be moderate when you have to stand by and see a recognised ruler turning himself into a dacoit chief.”

  “A dacoit chief!” cried Olivia. It came out really startled and she shot a quick look at Douglas: but he hadn’t noticed, he was too indignant himself and all his attention was on Major Minnies.

  “Of course we all know the fellow’s bankrupt,” Major Minnies said, “that’s nothing new. What is new is that, having bled his unfortunate subjects white by means of more or less legitimate extortion, he is now taking to cruder methods. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, to outright robbery.”

  He was silent in order to collect himself. He was genuinely outraged. The others too were silent. A bird woke up in a tree and gave a shriek. Perhaps it had been dreaming of a snake, or perhaps there really was a snake.

  “I envy you chaps in the districts,” Major Minnies said. “Dealing only with banyas and peasants who can be – well – what shall I say-understandable. Containable.”

  “Pretty decent sorts some of them,” confirmed Mr. Crawford.

  “Quite,” said the Major. Again he had to master some strong emotion before he could continue: “At one time I was supposed to be advising the Maharaja of Dhung. It was when he was building his new palace – perhaps you’ve seen it? At least you must have heard of it, it caused a great hullaballoo. The latter-day Versailles it was to be. In fact, it turned into a most hideous hotch-potch with a pepper pot roof on Doric columns, but that’s not the point. The point is that, at the time HH was a-building, the monsoons failed twice in succession and Dhung along with all the surrounding districts was under threat of famine. HH was too busy to notice, or to listen to any of us. I had the heck of a time even getting to see him, he was always so busy with the people he had imported from Europe. There was an architect, and a decorator, and a tailor if you please, from Vienna (for the curtains), also a champion swimmer – female – to inaugurate the underground swimming pool . . . When I managed at last to pour my tale of woe into his luckless ear, he called me an old fuddy-duddy. He loved these expressions – he’d been at Eton. ‘You’re an old fuddy-duddy, Major,’ he said. And then he grew very serious and drew himself up to his full height, which was almost five feet, and he said ‘The trouble with you, my dear fellow, I’m sorry to tell you, is you have no vision. No vision at all.’ Unfortunately it turned out that I did have some – at any rate more than he – because there was a famine. You remember ‘12.”

  “Most dreadful,” said Mr. Crawford.

  “One thing to be said in Dhung’s favour,” said Major Minnies, “he was a fool. It’s worse when they’re not. Like our Friend. When they are so well endowed by nature with looks, brains, personality, everything: and then to see them go to pot . . . What is it, dear lady? You’re leaving us?”

  “To your brandy and cigars.”

  The three men were on their feet, watching her walk across the moonlit lawn. She went into the house but not into the drawing-room where the servants were bringing her coffee. She went up on the terrace and leaned thoughtfully on the parapet. She could see the three men still at table down below. Probably now that she had gone they were talking more freely-about the Nawab and his mysterious misdeeds. She felt strange, strange. She looked beyond the little tableau in her garden of three Englishmen in dinner jackets blowing smoke from their cigars while the servants hovered around them with decanters: she had a moonlight view of the Saunders’ house, then the spire of the little church and the graves in the cemetery, and beyond that the flat landscape she knew so well, those miles of dun earth that led to Khatm.

  12 June. I keep getting letters from Chid. I was surprised on receiving the first one as I did not think he was the type to look back and remember people. The letter started off not with a personal salutation but in black letters: Jai Shiva Shankar! Hari Om! He wrote: “It is the light around our body that controlls our mind. A pure true un-harmfull mind is a place of perfect HAPPINESS. So it is the perfect PURE TRUE and UN-harmfull mind – that is Heaven.” It went on like that for most of the letter except that somewhere in the middle he wrote “We are here in Y Dharmsala. A Pure place except the priest who tries to cheat and rob us.” And at the end there was another line: “I forgott my drinking mug send care Y Sri Krishna Maharaj Temple Dharmsala by registered post express.”

  His subsequent letters conformed to the same pattern: a lot of philosophy with somewhere in the middle a couple of factual lines (usually to do with being “cheated and robbed”) and at the end a request. They are interesting documents and I am keeping them, with Olivia’s letters, on my little desk. They make strange company together. Olivia’s handwriting is clear and graceful, even though she seems to have written very fast just as the thoughts and feelings came to her. Her letters are all addressed to Marcia, but really they sound as if she is communing with herself, they are so intensely personal. Chid’s letters are absolutely impersonal. And he always writes on those impersonal post office forms which seem to constitute, along with stained and illegible postcards, the bulk of the mail that crosses from one end of India to the other. They always look as if they have been travelling great distances and passed through many hands, absorbing many stains and smells along the way. Olivia’s letters – more than fifty years old – look as if they had been written yesterday. It is true, the ink is faint but this may have been the quality she used to blend with the delicate lilac colour and scent of her stationery. The scent still seems to linger. Chid’s crumpled letters, on the other hand, appear soaked in all the characteristic odours of India, in spices, urine, and betel.

  Inder Lal is always eager to hear Chid’s letters. He comes up to my room in the evenings so that I can read them out to him. He likes all that philosophy. He tells me that Chid’s is a very old soul which has passed through many incarnations. Most of them have been in India and that is why Chid has come back in this birth. But what Inder Lal doesn’t understand is why I have come. He doesn’t think I was Indian in any previous birth, so why should I come in this one?

  I try to find an explanation for him. I tell him that many of us are tired of the materialism of the West, and even if we have no particular attraction towards the spiritual message of the East, we come here in the hope of finding a simpler and more natural way of life. This explanation hurts him. He feels it to be a mockery. He says why should people who have everything – motor cars, refrigerators – come here to such a place where there is nothing? He says he often feels ashamed before me because of the way he is living. When I try to protest, he works himself up more. He says he is perfectly well aware that, by Western standards, his house as well as his food and his way of eating it would be considered primitive, inadequate – indeed, he himself would be considered so because of his unscientific mind and ignorance of the modern world. Yes he knows very well that he is lagging far behind in all these respects and on that account I am well entitled to laugh at him. Why shouldn’t I laugh! he cries, not giving me a chance to say anything – he himself often feels like laughing when he looks around him and sees the conditions in which people are living and the superstitions in their minds. Who would not laugh, he says, pointing out of the window where one of the town’s beggars happens to be passing, a teenage boy who cannot stand upright but drags the crippled under-part of his body behind him in the dust – who would not laugh, asks Inder Lal, to see a sight like that?

  At such times I remember Karim and Kitty. I had gone to see them in London just before coming out to India. Karim is the Nawab’s nephew and heir, and Kitty, his wife, is also of some Indian royal (or rather, ex-royal) house. When I phoned Karim and told him I was going to India to do some research into the history of Khatm, he asked me round to their flat in Knightsbridge. He himself opened the door: “Hi there,” he said. He was an extremely handsome young man, dressed in the height of London boutique fashion. I kept wondering whether he resembl
ed the Nawab at all. Probably not, as Karim is very slender, almost slight, with delicate features and long curly hair; whereas the Nawab in his prime is said to have been a well set-up man with a strong, rather hawk-like face.

  Karim ushered me into a room full of people. At first I thought it was a party but afterwards realised that they had just dropped in. They were Karim and Kitty’s set. Most of them were sitting on the floor which was strewn with cushions, bolsters, and rugs. Everything was Indian, including most of the people there. They had a tape playing of sarod music – no one was listening but it made a good background to their talk which was carried on in high-pitched, rather bird-like voices. Kitty was curled up on a red and gold sofa which had once been a swing and was fixed to the ceiling by long golden chains. She too was dressed in smart London casual clothes – pants and a silk shirt – and wore them as gracefully as a sari: this may have been the effect of her very slender limbs, waist, and neck, combined with hips of a surprising voluptuousness. She too said “Hi there,” and then she waved her hand vaguely around the room, murmuring “Take a pew.”

  I never did make out who they all were and whether they were all living in London or were just visiting. I had an impression that they commuted rather freely and sometimes I didn’t know whether they were talking about something that had happened in Bombay or in London. They seemed to be engaged in a lot of selling and spoke knowingly about which family treasures could be safely carried out of India in one’s hand baggage and which had to be got over by other means.

  The only English people there besides myself were a couple called Keith and Doreen. They looked larger, stronger, coarser than the other people in the room and were listening eagerly – even, it seemed to me, greedily – to the conversation about family treasures. They told me that they were designers and were about to go into the manufacture of boutique clothes made exclusively of Indian materials. They were starting a partnership with Kitty and Karim: Karim would be helping them with their contacts and Kitty was to come in on the creative side. She was, they said, very creative.