Heat and Dust

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  Olivia stared back at her. Mrs. Saunders nodded with grim knowledge; she adjusted her dress over her gaunt chest. Olivia found that her hand too had strayed to adjust the rather low neckline of her pale brown silk frock. Ridiculous! She jumped up – it was time to go, the Nawab’s car would nearly be there now.

  The Nawab laughed at the idea of bringing in Dr. Saunders. He said, if a European doctor was needed, he would of course send for the best specialist – if necessary, all the way to Germany or England. However, to humour Olivia and Harry, he consented to send a car for Dr. Saunders.

  Dr. Saunders, pleased and flattered to be called in by royalty, laid his finger-tips together and used many technical terms. He puffed while he spoke and with each word blew out the hairs of his moustache so that they fluttered around his mouth as if stirred by a breeze. The Nawab treated him with that exaggerated courtesy that Olivia had learned to recognise as his way of expressing contempt: but it made Dr. Saunders, who took it at face value, expand even further inside his tight shantung suit. The sight of the two of them seated opposite each other – the Nawab leaning forward deferentially while the doctor expounded and expanded – gave Harry the giggles and, seeing him, Olivia too could not stop. Dr. Saunders did not notice but the Nawab did and, glad to provide such good entertainment for his friends, he insisted that the doctor stay for luncheon.

  Dr. Saunders reached new heights at the dining table. Flushed with enjoyment of his host’s food and drink, he allowed himself to be prompted into expressing his considered opinion of India and Indians. He had many anecdotes to relate in illustration of his theme, mainly drawn from his hospital experience. Although Olivia had heard most of them before, she shared Harry’s amusement at the Nawab’s way of eliciting them.

  “Then what did you do, Doctor?”

  “Then, Nawab Sahib, I had the fellow called to my office and, no further argument, smartly boxed his ears for him, one-two, one-two.”

  “You did quite right, Doctor. Quite right. You set a good example.”

  “It’s the only way to deal with them, Nawab Sahib. It’s no use arguing with them, they’re not amenable to reason. They haven’t got it here, you see, up here, the way we have.”

  “Exactly, Doctor. You have hit the – what is it, Harry?”

  “Nail on the head.”

  “Quite right. The nail on the head.” The Nawab nodded gravely.

  After a while Olivia ceased to be amused. Dr. Saunders was too blatantly stupid, the joke had gone on too long. Harry also became weary of it. With his usual sensitivity, the Nawab at once became aware of the change in atmosphere. He threw down his napkin and said “Come, Olivia and Harry.” Leaving the doctor unceremoniously behind, he led the other two upstairs to Harry’s suite. There he threw himself into a chair and, laying back his head, gave way to loud laughter. He was quite hurt when the other two did not join in: “I have worked so hard and done so much only to amuse you two,” he complained.

  “It’s cruelty to animals.”

  “But he calls us animals,” the Nawab pointed out.

  Harry said “He’s just an old bore. Why ever did you bring him.”

  “It was she,” the Nawab said, pointing at Olivia. But when she looked embarrassed, he tried to make it up to her: “He is not a bore. He is very amusing. ‘We doctors at home in England’,” he said, laying his fingertips together and blowing out an imaginary moustache. It was not a very good imitation, but to oblige him the other two laughed. At first he was gratified but then his mood changed and he said with disgust “You are right. He is a bore. Tcha, why did we bring him, let’s send him away.”

  Olivia felt compelled to say: “He really is exceptionally obnoxious. Don’t judge by him.”

  The Nawab looked at her rather coldly: “Don’t judge what by him?”

  “All of us.”

  “Who’s us?” Harry asked her. He too sounded hostile. Olivia felt herself floundering – it was the same sensation she had had at the Crawfords’ dinner party, of not knowing where she stood.

  “I don’t know how you feel about it,” Harry pursued, “but please don’t lump me in with all that lot.”

  “But, Harry, the Crawfords – for instance – they are not like Dr. Saunders, you know they’re not. Or the Minnies. Or for that matter Douglas and –”

  “You?”

  “All are the same,” the Nawab said suddenly and decisively.

  Olivia had a shock – did he mean her too? Was she included? She looked at his face and was frightened by the feelings she saw so plainly expressed there: and it seemed to her that she could not bear to be included in these feelings, that she would do anything not to be.

  “I shall send him away,” the Nawab said, calling loudly for servants. He gave orders that Dr. Saunders was to be put in a car and despatched home. “Oh and pay him, pay him”, he said. “You do it. Just give him the money, he will take it”, he told his servant and laughed; and the servant smiled too at this insult that was being delivered to Dr. Saunders of being paid off by servants.

  “I’d better go too,” Olivia said, swallowing tears.

  “You?” cried the Nawab. “With him?” He sounded outraged. “Do you think I would allow you to go home in the same car with him? Is that the idea you have of my hospitality? Of my friendship?” He seemed deeply hurt.

  She protested “But I have to go home soon – and since the car is going –” She was laughing, feeling suddenly terribly light-hearted.

  “Another car will go. Ten cars will go if necessary. Sit down please. Oh we are having a rotten time instead of enjoying ourselves, why are we like this? Harry! Olivia! Please be jolly! I will tell you a dream I had last night – you will laugh – it was about Mrs. Crawford. No but wait, wait – she was not Mrs. Crawford, she was an hijra and she was doing like this.” He clapped his hands as one dancing and laughed uproariously. “She was with a whole troupe of them all singing and dancing, but I recognised her quite easily. It is true,” he said, “she does look like an hijra.”

  Olivia asked “What is an hijra?”

  The Nawab laughed again: “I will show you.”

  It was then that he called his attendant young men and ordered eunuchs to be brought to sing and dance. And for the rest of Olivia’s stay that day she had a very enjoyable time.

  20 June. Shortly before the monsoon, the heat becomes very intense. It is said that the more intense it becomes the more abundantly it will draw down the rains, so one wants it to be as hot as can be. And by that time one has accepted it – not got used to but accepted; and moreover, too worn-out to fight against it, one submits and endures. There are compensations too. The hotter it is, the sweeter are the mangoes and the sugar melons, the more pungent the scent of the jasmine. The gul mohar tree, spreading its branches like a dancer, blooms with astonishing scarlet blossoms. All sorts of sweet sherbets are sold in the bazaar, and the glasses in which they are served (though perhaps not very clean) are packed to the top with crushed ice (also not very clean but who cares).

  On Sunday Inder Lal and I went to Baba Firdaus’ grove for a picnic. It was my idea though when we were sitting, soaked with perspiration, in the bus and rattling through the broiling landscape, I wondered whether it had been such a good one. We got off and toiled up the rocky, completely barren and exposed path that led to the grove: but once there, it was like being received in Paradise. The sun could not reach here through the foliage of the trees; the sound of the little spring trickled cool and fresh. Inder Lal lay down at once under a tree, but I was so delighted with the place that I wandered around it. The contrast could hardly have been more complete with the last time I had been here – on the Husband’s Wedding Day – when it was packed with pilgrims and loudspeakers. Now it was quite, quite still except for the water and the birds, and sometimes the leaves rustled. I bathed my hands and face in the spring which was so shallow that I could touch the stone-cold pebbles in its bed. I inspected the shrine and found it to be a very plain structure with an arch
ed entrance and a small striped dome like a sugar-melon set on top. Inside it was rather thickly whitewashed – probably each time a Husband’s Wedding Day came round a new coat of paint was hurriedly slapped on; the latticed window was covered with red threads tied by supplicants. There was no tomb – Baba Firdaus’ whereabouts at the time of his death were unknown – but a little whitewashed mound of stone stood in the centre. On this were draped several strings of flowers, most of them dead but one or two quite fresh. The place was so completely deserted, so full of silence and solitude, that I wondered who could have left them there.

  When Inder Lal woke up, I unpacked the sandwiches I had brought for us. He had never had sandwiches before and ate them with interest, always glad to be learning something new. What was also new to him was to have an outing with only one other person present instead of the usual crowd of family and friends. He said he appreciated the conversation that could be had when there were only two people together, each then being in a position to disclose the contents of his heart to the other. I waited for him to do so, but he only asked me some rather banal questions, such as about picnics in England. He listened eagerly to my answers and kept trying to draw out further details. “For my information only,” he said. It is a phrase he often uses when asking me questions. He seems to relish collecting irrelevant bits of information and to store them away for further use. His mother does the same with things. I have seen her reverently pick up and smooth out a wrapper of chocolate paper I have thrown away, corks, empty bottles, shreds of cloth. She hoards them away in her big trunk and when I ask what for she is surprised. To her, as to him, every scrap is useful or could become so in the future.

  He said “Look what I have brought.”

  He produced two pieces of red string; he said we had to tie them to the lattice in the shrine and then our wishes would be fulfilled. We took off our sandals and entered the shrine. He first tied his piece of string, to show me how to do it; he shut his eyes and wished fervently. I said “I thought it was only for barren women.”

  “All wishes are heard,” he said. “Now you do it.” He handed me my string and watched me with interest: “You can say your wish aloud,” he encouraged me. “If you are alone or only one friend with you.”

  Instead of answering, I pointed at the fresh garlands laid on the stone mound: “Who do you think can have put them? It looks as if no one’s been here for ages.”

  He said “Even if a place like this is in the middle of the desert, one thousand miles from anywhere, people will come . . . What did you wish?”

  I smiled and went back to sit in our place under the tree; he followed me. “Tell me,” he coaxed, really consumed with curiosity.

  “Well what do you think?” But whatever it was, he felt embarrassed to say. So now I was curious, wondering what he could be thinking.

  He parried: “How can I say. I am not a magician or other person with powers to read another’s thoughts. But if you tell me,” he said cunningly, “I will tell you.”

  “Let’s try and guess.”

  “You first.” He enjoyed this game.

  I pretended to concentrate very hard while he looked at me eagerly. “I think,” I said finally, “it had something to do with your office.”

  At once his face fell – in astonishment, in consternation: “How did you know?”

  “Oh I just guessed.”

  But I wished I hadn’t. He became depressed and no longer enjoyed the game. When I said “Now it’s your turn,” he gloomily shook his head. Sunk in his own troubles, he was no longer interested in my wishes.

  But now I wanted him to be. I really had the desire – as he had said – to disclose the contents of my heart to another. However, it is difficult enough to do that to a person conversant with one’s life and problems: what then to say to him to whom these are utterly unknown and alien! If I had had a definite wish – such as for a husband, a baby, or the removal of an enemy – I would have been glad to tell him. But in fact, while I had tied my thread with all the others, there had been nothing really definite I knew to wish for. Not that my life is so fulfilled that there is nothing left to ask; but, on the contrary, that it is too lacking in essentials for me to fill up the gaps with any one request.

  However, at that moment I did have a desire, and a strong one: to get close to him. And since this seemed impossible to do with words, I laid my hand on his. Then he looked at me in an entirely different way. There was no lack of interest now! But it was difficult to tell what there was. I could feel his hand tremble under mine: and then I saw that his lips trembled too. Perhaps because he was about to speak; perhaps with desire, or with fear. There was certainly fear in his eyes as they looked at me. He did not know what to do next, nor what I was going to do next. I could see – it was ludicrous! – how everything he had heard about Western women rushed about in his head. And yet at the same time he was a healthy young man – his wife was away – we were alone in a romantic spot (getting more romantic every moment as the sun began to set). Although the next few moves were up to me, once I had made them he was not slow to respond. Afterwards he made the same joke the Nawab had made, about what had happened here on the original Husband’s Wedding Day to make the barren wife pregnant.

  1923

  One day Harry arrived with the car sent for Olivia. She was ready to leave at once but he said to wait awhile, he wanted to rest before going back. He sat on and on. He seemed ready to spend the day. She said, several times, “If we don’t leave soon, it’ll get too hot.”

  “Play something, “he said, indicating the piano. “Goon, I haven’t heard you in ages.”

  “And then we’ll go, “she bargained.

  She sat down at the piano and began to play with her customary dash. She played Debussy, and Harry put back his head against the yellow armchair and shut his eyes and one foot tapped with pleasure. But after a while she played too fast and stumbled, and once or twice a key got stuck and she banged at it impatiently. She broke off: “I’m out of practice. Come on now, Harry, we must go.”

  “Why are you out of practice?”

  “It’s too hot to play. And have you heard the piano, what a state it’s in?” She banged at a defective note again. “This is simply no climate for a piano and that’s all there is to it. Get up, Harry, do.”

  “You could get a tuner. From Bombay.”

  “It’s not worth it. I hardly play now.”

  “What a pity.”

  He said this with such feeling that she became thoughtful. Why hadn’t she been playing? She hadn’t asked herself that before, had vaguely thought it was too hot or she just didn’t feel like it. But there was something more, and she tried to think what that could be.

  “Debussy,” she said. “Schumann. It’s so . . . unsuitable.” She laughed.

  “It suits me,” Harry said.

  “Here?”

  “Why not?” He looked around her room and repeated “Why not? You’ve made it very nice in here. Very nice indeed.” He settled deeper into his chair as if never wanting to leave again: “The Oasis,” he said.

  “Don’t start that again please.” It really irritated her. “I can’t see why anyone should want an oasis. Why it should be necessary.”

  “Goodness,” he said, “how tough you are, Olivia, who’d have thought it . . . And you’re never ill either, are you.”

  “Of course not. Why should I be.” She was quite scornful. “That’s all just psychological.”

  “Last night I was so bad again. And I haven’t eaten Indian food in weeks. I don’t know what it’s due to.”

  “I told you: psychological.”

  “You may be right. I’m certainly feeling quite psychological . . . In fact I’m feeling,” he said, shutting his eyes again but this time in pain, “as if I couldn’t stand it another day.” And he sounded as if he really couldn’t.

  She tried to be sympathetic but could not overcome her impatience. For one thing, she was so impatient to be off! And he just sat the
re, not wanting to move. From the servant quarters came the sound of a voice chanting and a drum being beaten in accompaniment, both on one flat note and without pause in absolute monotony.

  “It’s like brain fever,” Harry said.

  “What? . . . Oh, that. I don’t hear it any more. It’s been going on for days. There’s always something like that going on in the quarters. Someone dying or getting born or married. I think it may be why I don’t play the piano much any more. I mean, it doesn’t exactly harmonise, does it . . . Harry, we must go or we’ll die of heat on the road.”

  “I don’t want to go,” he said.

  She had a moment of panic. Her voice trembled: “What about the car?”

  “We’ll send it back.”

  Olivia stared at the tips of her white shoes. She sat very still. Harry watched her but she pretended not to notice. At last he said: “What’s the matter with you, Olivia?” He spoke very gently. “Why are you so eager to go?”

  “We’re expected.” Hearing how lame that sounded, she became more irritated with him: “And you don’t think I like sitting around here all day, day after day, staring at the wall and waiting for Douglas to come home, do you? I can well see how people can go batty that way . . . like Mrs. Saunders. Just sitting inside the house and imagining things. I don’t want to become like Mrs. Saunders. But if I go on sitting here by myself, I shall.”

  “Is that why you like to come to the Palace?”

  “Douglas knows I go to the Palace. He knew about Dr. Saunders coming there – he spoke to him himself – and that I’d been to see you.”

  “Yes, to see me.”