For the past few days, however, I have been seeing her in the same place. There is an alley behind our house where our washerman lives (the same alley where I saw the eunuchs dance). A few days ago I took some clothes to him, and I can’t be sure of this but I think she may have been lying there at the time. The trouble is, one is so used to her that one tends not to see her. But I definitely noticed her when I went back to fetch the clothes. There was something about the way she was lying there that drew my attention. The lane ends in a piece of land where a man lives in a shed with two buffaloes. Just outside his shed the municipality have put up a concrete refuse dump, but most people see no point in throwing their refuse within the concrete enclosure so that it lies littered around it, forming a little mound. The reason why I noticed the beggar woman was because she was lying on the outskirts of this mound of refuse. I thought at first she was dead but realised this could not be since no one else in the lane seemed concerned. The animals snuffling around in the refuse also paid no attention to her. Only the flies hovered above her in a cone.
The washerman was not at home and his wife was very busy with her household chores as well as pushing a long wooden pole into the clothes that had been put to boil. When I mentioned the presence of the beggar woman, she had no time to listen to me. Neither had the coalman who lives in an opening in the adjoining wall, nor the man with the buffaloes. They murmured vaguely when I asked how long she had been there. It struck me that perhaps she was dead and it was no one’s business to take her away. Not mine either, and I went home carrying my laundry.
Later I wondered what had happened to me – that I had not even bothered to go close to see whether she was alive or dead. I told Inder Lal about her, but he was busy getting ready to leave for his office. I wanted him to come with me to see her so I followed him when he started off. He was wheeling his cycle with his tiffin carrier tied to the handlebar. Although he was very reluctant, I persuaded him to enter the alley with me. I saw at once that she was still there. We stopped to look at her from a distance. “Is she alive?” I asked him. He didn’t know and was not inclined to investigate; anyway, it was time for him to go, he could not be late to the office. I decided I had to see. I stepped closer – Inder Lal cried “No don’t!” and even rang the bell of his cycle as a warning. I went up to the refuse dump, I stood over the beggar woman: her eyes were open, she was groaning, she was alive. There was a terrible smell and a cluster of flies. I looked down and saw a thin stream of excrement trickling out of her. My first thought was for Inder Lal: I made gestures to him to go away, go to his office. I was glad he had remained at a distance. I gestured more wildly and was relieved when he turned away – clean in his much washed clothes and with his freshly cooked food in his tiffin carrier. I walked away, and when I passed the coal merchant, I said “She is ill.” He assented vaguely. The washerman could be seen through the arched doorway eating his food in his courtyard. I could not disturb him. In fact, I felt I could not disturb or go near anyone. For the first time I understood – I felt – the Hindu fear of pollution. I went home and bathed rigorously, rinsing myself over and over again. I was afraid. Pollution – infection – seemed everywhere; those flies could easily have carried it from her to me.
Later I went to the local hospital situated at the Civil Lines end of town. It is an old, grim stone building – the same one Dr. Saunders was in charge of – and it is too small for the town’s needs. In-patients and out-patients overflowed on to the verandahs and corridors and the patch of grass outside. I went straight into the Medical Superintendent’s room which was large, airy, and tidy. The Medical Superintendent, Dr. Gopal, was also tidy – a goodlooking man in a white coat and an oiled moustache. He was very polite, even gallant, and got up from behind his desk to greet me and seat me in the chair facing him. The desk and chairs were solid old pieces of English furniture, probably dating from the time of Dr. Saunders. Dr. Gopal was very sympathetic to my story and said, if I would bring her in, they would see what could be done. When I asked whether it would be possible to have her brought in an ambulance, he said that unfortunately the ambulance was under repair and in any case it was only meant for cases of emergency.
“But she is an emergency.”
The doctor smiled sadly and stroked his moustache. He asked me the standard question: “Which country are you from?” Although no doubt a very busy man, he seemed prepared to talk to me longer. I had the impression that he wanted to, perhaps in order to practise his English.
Two out-patients came in, bearing slips of paper. They were villagers with simple faces under big turbans; they stretched out the slips of paper to Dr. Gopal. Under his brusque questioning, it soon transpired that the two prescriptions had got mixed up, and that Meher Chand who was suffering from piles was taking the medicine meant for Bacchu Ram who had gall-stones. Dr. Gopal quickly rectified this mistake and dismissed the patients who left looking satisfied.
I asked “Does it happen very often?”
“Of course. These people can’t read and the orderlies are not very careful. You see our problem. If she is dying,” he said, “then don’t bring her, there is not much we can do.”
“But then where should she die?”
“You see our problem,” he said again. “There has been no addition to the hospital for over twenty years. We don’t have beds, we don’t have staff or equipment.” He went on. It was a long list of difficulties. Again I saw that he liked talking to me – partly to practise his English, that motive may have been there, but also to have someone to whom he could in this way unburden himself. “You saw the type of patients we have, and then also we make mistakes on our side, how is it to be avoided? I would like to have more staff, I make applications in triplicate, I go to see the Minister: at last when I get the staff, they are often useless people.” His English was fluent and he expressed himself well. He had a lot to express – his feelings were deep and his life difficult. He looked at me across the desk with the same eyes as Inder Lal’s, craving understanding.
What I understood best was that the problem of the beggar woman, if I wished to undertake it, was now mine. Everyone else had too many problems of their own. I thought what to do. Perhaps she could still be treated and, on that chance, I had to get her to the hospital. I could hire a cycle rickshaw or a horse carriage to take her there. Then I thought how to get her into a vehicle. I would have to lift her by myself, for I could not expect anyone else to take the risk of touching her; also, I was not at all sure whether I could persuade any carriage owner to take her.
I made my way from Dr. Gopal’s office through the crowded hospital corridors. I kept having to step over patients lying on the floor. “Then where should she die?” I had asked Dr. Gopal. It had seemed a forceful question to me at the time, but now it no longer was so. Now a new thought – a new word – presented itself to me, and it was this: that the old woman was dispensable. I was surprised at myself. I realised I was changing, becoming more like everyone else. But also I thought that, if one lives here, it is best to be like everyone else. Perhaps there is even no choice: everything around me – the people and the landscape, life animate and inanimate – seemed to compel me into this attitude.
Walking back from the hospital, I passed Maji’s hut near the royal tombs. She was sitting outside and beckoned to me. She looked into my face and asked me what was the matter. I told her; by this time I spoke of it with the same indifference as everyone else. But I was startled by Maji’s reaction which was not at all like everyone else’s. “What?” she cried. “Leelavati? Her time has come?” Leelavati! The beggar woman had a name! Suddenly the whole thing became urgent again. Maji scrambled up and dashed off in the direction of the bazaar with amazing speed for one so stout and elderly. I hurried behind her, to lead her to the garbage dump. But when we got there, the beggar woman had gone. We asked the washerman, the coal merchant, the buffalo owner: all shrugged as before and said she had gone somewhere else. They thought she must have got hungry and dragg
ed herself off to beg for food. I felt foolish, having made so much fuss.
But Maji said “I know where she may be.” Again she set off at the same trot, sticking out her elbows to steer herself more quickly. We hurried back to the bazaar, then through the gate leading out of town till we came to the reservoir with the suttee stones on its bank. “Ah!” cried Maji. She had seen her before I did. She was lying under a tree in the same way she had been lying by the garbage dump. The stream of excrement was still flowing out of her but only in the thinnest trickle now. Maji went up to her and said “There you are. I have been looking for you. Why didn’t you call me?” The old woman was staring into the sky but it seemed to me her eyes were already sightless. Maji sat down under a tree and took the old woman’s head into her lap. She stroked it with her thick peasant hands and looked down into the dying face. Suddenly the old woman smiled, her toothless mouth opened with the same bliss of recognition as a baby’s. Were her eyes not yet sightless – could she see Maji looking down at her? Or did she only feel her love and tenderness? Whatever it was, that smile seemed like a miracle to me.
I sat with them under the tree. There had been a particularly severe dust storm earlier in the day and, as sometimes happens, it had cleared the air, so that now, for the remaining hour of daylight, everything was luminous. The water in the reservoir was pure as the sky, disturbed only by the reflections of skimming kingfishers or of trees momentarily nodding their leaves into its surface. At the far end some buffaloes were bathing, immersed so deeply that only their heads were visible above the water. There were a lot of skinny, lively monkeys skipping about on the bank, in and out and over the suttee stones.
“You see,” said Maji, “I knew she would come here.” She continued to stroke the old woman’s face, not only with tenderness but with a sort of pride too; yes really as if she were proud of her for having done something special. She began to tell me about the old woman’s life: how she had been left a widow and had been driven out of her father-in-law’s house. Next her parents and brother had died in a smallpox epidemic, leaving her homeless and destitute. Then what could she do, Maji said: having been literally thrown on to the world to beg a living from it. At that time she had stayed not in one place but had gone all over, mostly from one pilgrim spot to the other because those were the most rewarding for beggars. About ten years ago she had come to the town and fallen sick here. She recovered but was never again strong enough to move on, so she had just stayed.
“But now she is tired,” said Maji. “Now it is time. Now she has done enough.” And again she stroked her face and again with pride as if the old woman had acquitted herself well.
It was pleasant sitting here – cool by the water – and we were ready to stay many hours. But she did not keep us waiting long. As the glow faded and sky and air and water turned pale silver and the birds fell asleep in the dark trees and now only soundless bats flitted black across the silver sky: at that lovely hour she died. I would not have noticed, for she had not moved for a long time. There was no death rattle or convulsion. It was as if everything had already been squeezed out of her and there was nothing left for her to do except pass over. Maji was very pleased: she said Leelavati had done well and had been rewarded with a good, a blessed end.
1923
One day Olivia told Douglas that Harry was lying ill at Khatm and that she wanted to go and visit him. Douglas said “Oh?” and nothing further. She took this as the permission she wanted: from now on, she decided, Douglas knew that she went to Khatm, she had told him, he was apprised of the facts. There would be no need in future to hurry back lest he arrive at home before her. If he did, she could simply and truthfully tell him that she had been to visit sick Harry at Khatm. But he never did arrive before her; somehow he seemed to be kept at the office later and later, and when he came home he was so tired that he went to sleep very soon. Olivia stayed up much later, sitting by the window to catch some cool air. She was usually still asleep when he left in the morning; he always left very early so as to be able to ride out on inspection before the sun got too hot.
However, one morning she was awake. She came and sat with him in their breakfast room (now the post office); this was something she had not done for some time. She watched him eat ham and sausages. It struck her that his face had become heavier, even somewhat puffy, making him look more like other Englishmen in India. She pushed that thought aside: it was unbearable.
“Douglas,” she said, “Harry doesn’t seem to be getting any better.”
“Oh?” He had cut up his food into small pieces and was chewing it slowly, stolidly.
“I was wondering whether we shouldn’t ask Dr. Saunders to have a look at him.”
“Dr. Saunders doesn’t take private patients.”
“But he’s the only English doctor around here.” When Douglas did not react, she added “And Harry is English.”
Douglas had finished his breakfast and now lit his morning pipe (he smoked a pipe almost constantly now). He puffed at it as slowly and stolidly as he had eaten. She had always loved him for these qualities – for his imperturbability, his English solidness and strength; his manliness. But now suddenly she thought: what manliness? He can’t even get me pregnant.
She cried “Must you smoke that dashed pipe? In this heat?”
He stayed calm, knocking ash into an ashtray – carefully, so as not to spill any on the tablecloth. At last he said “You should have gone to Simla.”
“And do what? Take walks with Mrs. Crawford? Go to the same old boring old dinner parties – oh oh,” she said, burying her face in despair, “one more of those and I’ll lie down and die.”
Douglas failed to respond to this outburst. He went on smoking. It was very quiet in the room. The servants, clearing the breakfast dishes, were also as quiet as could be so as not to disturb the Sahib and Memsahib having a quarrel in English.
After a while Olivia said in a contrite voice “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“I told you: it’s the heat. No Englishwoman is meant to stand it.”
“You’re probably right.” She murmured: “As a matter of fact, darling, I’d like to consult Dr. Saunders myself.”
He looked at her. His face may have changed, but his eyes had remained as clean and clear as ever.
“Because I’m not –” she looked down shyly, then back into his eyes, “getting pregnant.”
He left his pipe in the ashtray (a servant solicitously knocked it out), then got up and went into their bedroom. She followed him. They clung to each other; she whispered “I don’t want anything to change . . . I don’t want you to change.”
“I’m not,” he said.
“No you’re not.” But she clung to him tighter. She longed to be pregnant; everything would be all right then – he would not change, she would not change, they would be as planned.
“Wait a while,” he said. “It’ll be all right.”
“You think?”
“I’m sure.”
She leaned on his strong arm and went out with him to the front of the house. Although it was still so early in the morning, the air was stale.
“I wish you’d gone to Simla,” he said.
“Away from you?”
“It’s so bad for you here. This awful climate.”
“But I feel fine!” She laughed – because she really did.
He pressed her arm in gratitude: “If I can get away we’ll both go.”
“You think you can? . . . Oh you don’t have to for me,” she said. “I’m quite all right – I don’t mind it – really I don’t. I’m fine,” she said again.
He exclaimed at her fortitude. He wanted to linger, but his syce stood holding his horse, his peon carried his files, his bearer stood waiting with his solar topee.
“Don’t come out,” Douglas said, but she did. She looked up at him as he sat in the saddle and he looked down at her. That morning it was difficult for him to leave.
He said “I’ll have a word w
ith Dr. Saunders about Harry.”
She waved to him for as long as she could still see him. A servant held the door open for her to go back into the house, but she stayed looking out a bit longer. Not in the direction in which Douglas had left, but the other way; towards Khatm, towards the Palace. It did not make any difference as everything was under the same pall of dust. But it was true what she had told Douglas: she felt fine – entirely untroubled by the heat or the murky atmosphere. It was as if there were a little spring welling up inside her that kept her fresh and gay.
Later that morning – she looked at her wrist watch, there was still time before the Nawab’s car was to come for her – she walked across to the Saunders’ house. But Dr. Saunders had already left for the hospital and there was only Mrs. Saunders. Olivia was surprised to find her out of bed. She was sitting in one of the cavernous rooms staring into an empty fireplace. She told Olivia “It’s not good to let them see you in bed . . . the servants,” she explained, lowering her voice and with a look towards the door. “I want to be in bed. It’s where I ought to be. But you don’t know what goes on in their heads.”
She went on staring into the fireplace (it did not even have a grate) as if she saw haunting visions there. There was something haunted about the room: perhaps this was due to the furnishing which did not belong to the Saunders but had been handed on through several generations of government issue. The prints on the wall had also been there for a long time; they were mostly scenes from the Mutiny, as of Sir Henry Lawrence struck by a bullet in the Lucknow Residency.
“You hear a lot of stories,” Mrs. Saunders said. “There was one lady in Muzzafarbad or one of those places – she was a lady from Somerset.” She sighed (thinking of the fate of this lady, or of distant Somerset?). “Her dhobi,” Mrs. Saunders whispered, leaning closer to Olivia. “He was ironing her undies and it must have been too much for him. They’re very excitable, it’s their constitution. I’ve heard their spicy food’s got something to do with it – I wouldn’t know if there’s any truth in that but of this I’m sure, Mrs. Rivers: they’ve got only one thought in their heads and that’s to you-know-what with a white woman.”
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