Classic Mulk Raj Anand

by Mulk Raj Anand

  ‘Then you don’t feel miserable and destitute if you lose your self-respect, your honour, decency and gentleness? Does not the debauchee lose his manhood? Does not a coward lose something essential of himself?’

  ‘If you put it so bluntly, then I must confess that I have already lost my self-respect by my continued association with the Maharaja.’

  ‘And what are you going to do about repairing the damage?’

  ‘Well, I am aware of the differences between myself and Victor.’

  ‘Then you must discover what these differences are and thrash them out with him and either change him or leave him.’

  ‘What about the conflicts in him? As a doctor I have to understand him and not to judge him.’

  ‘From understanding, certain values can be born. He can’t escape responsibility merely because he is ill. Other people who are also ill with hunger are involved.’

  ‘Acha, I will try and evolve some such understanding as may serve like a balance for weighing up matters, some test for distinguishing between what is straight and crooked.’

  ‘If you do so then already you have begun to think. You have become a philosopher. And you may thus be able to decide on a way of life. . . .’

  Before this colloquy was finished, I had a message from Victor, through Munshi Mithan Lal, to ask me why I was so late in attending on him that morning, and would I come over to discuss arrangements for the hunt. I told Mian Mithu I would be along presently. There went my decision: I did not even have the opportunity to think for myself in this capricious atmosphere where I was on duty all the twenty-four hours.

  The sun was already fairly high in the heavens when I walked up to Victor’s rooms. And there was that extraordinary silence which sometimes comes on the Indian scene before noon in the hot weather. Only a few sparrows shrilled across the lawn in the courtyard, and a crow alighted from the dome above the deohri, caw-cawing for food, but was shooed away in mid air by the chaprasi in the hall. And then the silence, the awe-inspiring silence, which had always been deliberately built up in and around the palace to supply the aura of grandeur, reverence and unreachability, added itself like a weight of oppression on to the quiet of the garden.

  I had been asking myself how, exactly, I could communicate the inner thoughts which arose in me after reading the détenu’s letter. I realized, as I drew nearer Victor’s rooms, that I could only feel a certain remorse for my weakness. And yet I felt calm in the heart of the storm, detached as though I was standing on an island, looking on at the violent battle of wills and bodies that was going on in Sham Pur, with all the enemies of His Highness ranged around this palace, as it were, together in their minimum aim to bring him to heel, but separated by ideological conflicts from each other. Victor was nearly drowning in the well of his own loneliness, seeking desperately to keep afloat and clutching at any straw, but an indifferent swimmer, and doomed to go down to the bottom, to come up again as a corpse, of which the ashes would later be suitably cremated and adorned with a tombstone, as the remains of the last Maharaja of Sham Pur. I knew that he too surmised that he was heading for disaster, in fleeting glimpses of the shape of things to come, but that he hoped that his cleverness might help him to survive.

  As against the depression from which I suffered, Victor’s mood was extremely buoyant that morning.

  ‘Hallo, you misanthrope!’ he said to me as I entered. ‘Now what is troubling you?’

  I smiled sheepishly and stood by Munshi Mithan Lal, who was poised before His Highness with joined hands.

  ‘Mian Mithu is another one of the same kidney,’ Victor continued.

  ‘Please forgive me, Maharaj,’ Munshiji said abjectly, ‘I have erred.’

  Meanwhile, Mr Bool Chand sat in an armchair, with an inanely gleeful smile on his face, witnessing the humiliation of Munshi Mithan Lal.

  I could not guess what could have happened to bring Munshiji into such disfavour. But while I was pondering on this, Mr Bool Chand snorted, according to that ugly habit of his which he could not overcome, and His Highness turned on him.

  ‘I think you are a bigger ass than Mian Mithu himself, a real ugly ass, the way you snort!’

  ‘To what do we owe this excess of good humour?’ I dared to ask.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘all of you are such dunces that you can only see the dark side of life! And none of you know the ecstasy of union . . . .’

  ‘Han, han, I understand now,’ I said, significantly cocking my head to one side. ‘But why this displeasure with poor Munshiji?’

  ‘The fellow keeps a most important telegram from the American Embassy in his pocket for two days and doesn’t even tell me about it until I ask him!’

  Victor said this working up a mock anger.

  ‘But, Maharaj, you were in the . . . zenana,’ Munshi Mithan Lal whined.

  ‘You are like an uncle to me and the Queen Bee,’ Victor answered. ‘Oldie, why didn’t you come in?’

  ‘Is the telegram very urgent?’ I asked.

  ‘All telegrams are by their very nature urgent!’ Victor answered.

  ‘That is true,’ I agreed, humbly accepting my defeat. ‘And they tend to make one angry,’ I added in order to get my own back.

  ‘Sometimes they make one glad,’ he said quick-wittedly.

  ‘And what is the glad news in this telegram?’ I asked.

  ‘Mr Peter Watkins of the American Embassy in Delhi is coming down to hunt tomorrow with a party.’

  ‘Is he the Ambassador?’ I asked.

  ‘Nearly the Ambassador,’ Victor said. ‘He is an important secretary. Actually more important than the Ambassador, because the real power is always in the hands of the underlings.’

  ‘Your Highness,’ said Bool Chand, ‘we should really have asked some people from the Home Department for the hunt. What use are these Americans?’

  ‘Fool!’ said Victor. ‘You don’t know anything about statecraft. The Americans are the coming power in India. And if they back my claim for an independent buffer state of Sham Pur, then I will have some more cards up my sleeve to play against the Home Department.’

  ‘The Americans are certainly the coming power in India,’ repeated Munshiji.

  ‘Han, han,’ agreed Bool Chand weakly, because, from the blank look on his face, the subtlety of the stratagem had really not quite dawned on him.

  ‘Don’t you see, idiot, that Sham Pur is so placed strategically that an aeroplane flying at a sufficiently high altitude can reach Samarkand in seven hours!’

  ‘I understand, I understand now, your Highness,’ said Bool Chand enthusiastically.

  ‘But Mian Mithu can only mechanically repeat my words,’ rebuked Victor. ‘He did not understand how important this wire was.’

  ‘Highness, you were inclined to plump for the Communists yesterday,’ I said. ‘After your quarrel with your uncles.’

  ‘You are also thick-headed!’ said Victor. ‘You people have learnt nothing from the British. But my Principal at the Chief’s College taught me that the safest and surest rule in diplomacy is an ambiguous foreign policy. You always apply two lines and see which one will win!’

  I tried to wear an air of casual indifference.

  ‘Acha, now go and get the arrangements ready, Mr Mian Mithu,’ ordered Victor. ‘We will not go in the direction of the Panna hunting lodge where the guerillas are, but go twenty miles to the north, to the Dharam Pur Lodge. Lalla Chottu Ram knows all that is to be done. Only, I suppose, there will be some European ladies in the party and Maharani Ganga Dasi. So we must send all the cars from the Sham Pur palace garages there immediately. Bool Chand, you help Mian Mithu and ask Captain Partap Singh to exert himself also. You will all be rewarded if the hunt is successful. Doctor Sahib, I want you to come and see the Queen Bee. She is feeling slightly out of sorts. And I want her to be well enough to come to the hunt tomorrow.’

  We headed towards the courtyard which led to the inner sanctums of the zenana, but we had hardly traversed the veranda when we
saw Gangi approaching.

  ‘But you must not strain yourself, childling,’ Victor scolded her. ‘We were coming to see you.’

  ‘I was lonely and couldn’t stay up there,’ Gangi said in a petulant child’s voice. ‘I wanted you near me.’ And, with a charming blandishment, she coyly drew the end of her apron on to her forehead and advanced towards Vicky’s drawing-room. We followed her.

  As we entered the room, Gangi walked briskly with a deliberately exaggerated swaying of her buttocks and went and sat cross-legged on the ample settee.

  ‘Listen, listen, boys,’ she said. ‘I have something to tell you. I have a hunch we can trap the new Diwan. . . .’

  ‘What makes you say that?’ Victor asked.

  ‘I feel I could make him dance on my palm, if I liked,’ Gangi said. ‘You will see what I can do to him if you ask him to the hunt.’

  A sudden pallor came on Victor’s face as he listened to these words. Then he hung his head down. It seemed to me that he had sensed that there might be something between her and Popatlal J. Shah.

  Myself, I was certain that she was already having an affair with the Diwan.

  ‘He seems to be a bore,’ Victor said. ‘And I am not sure that he will want to come to the hunt.’

  ‘He may be old, but he seems to be impressionable,’ said Gangi. ‘And you may be able to get more out of him than out of those American idlers!’

  ‘In terms of sheer diplomacy you are right,’ said Victor. ‘But . . .’

  He did not complete his sentence. She was laughing with her eyes, blind to him, and full of the power that she had acquired over Popatlal J. Shah, which, in turn, would help her to increase her hold upon Victor. She was radiant as she sat there, amused at the cleverness with which she could manipulate the lives of men.

  With a swift, desperate impulse to possess her soul and body, to get confirmation of his hold on her, he went and clasped her hand, saying boisterously:

  ‘We shall have fun at the party, but you must get well and come.’

  And he stroked her hand with a soft, insidious movement, seeking to intoxicate her sensuality with the tender caresses of his own body.

  In the tentative gestures of affection between them, I was conscious of the strange sense of dramatized sentimentality that seemed to characterize their mixings.

  I wanted to withdraw and leave them, so that Victor could extend his grasp over her elusive mind and body and wean her away from where, I was sure, she had been straying for the last few days.

  I walked up to the window and stood gazing emptily at the garden, a gossamer film between my eyes and the outside world, while my inner vision turned terrified on the resolve I had made to tell Victor about the grievances of the détenues. I felt frustrated and impatient in the face of the superficial, elegant and polished atmosphere of statecraft which I always had to experience even when I wanted to do or say something serious. A violent hatred surged up in me against Gangi, who seemed to me to be the cause of much of the putrescence of the court. In everything she did, whether she laughed or cried, she was instinctively manoeuvring and intriguing to acquire greater power. Even now she was obviously playing a game, yielding to Victor, accepting his caresses, when she had only betrayed him yesterday and would betray him again and again. She was pitilessly involved with herself, and would draw him on, only so far and no further than it suited her. And then she would thrust him away. I stood motionless, timeless, like a skeleton, harrowed by the subtle tension of a half-dead, sick body. ‘Shall we go and have a look at the stable, Hari?’ Victor said. I turned and nodded assent.

  ‘Oh, Vicky, don’t leave me alone,’ Gangi whined in a maudlin voice. ‘Stay with me, will you?’

  ‘I shall just go and come back, Jan,’ Victor said. ‘I will be back in half an hour only.’

  ‘Acha, I will go to sleep here for a while,’ Gangi said, shuffling sulkily and averting her face from him.

  ‘All right, you go and order Chottu Ram to speed up the preparations,’ said Victor, turning to me. ‘The hunting lodge at Dharam Pur must be got ready and all arrangements made to take the guests there direct from the station. We shall go by motor-boat up river and join them there tomorrow evening.’ And he sat down by his mistress.

  The hunting lodge of Dharam Pur was accessible both by road and by the river Sutlej. And while the Americans had been taken by the land route, His Highness decided to take the party by motor-boat.

  After about an hour’s steady run up river, through fields, we began to enter the jungle.

  Like a sharp sword the boat tore its passage against the current of the Sutlej. The foliage became dense as soon as we left the main river and went up the tributary stream, so that, though the afternoon sun had been omnipresent when we left Sham Pur, we seemed already to have entered the twilight. And, with this gloom, we also seemed to feel a kind of dementia overtake us, a kind of craziness produced by the suffocating heat, by the heavy smell of the trees and bushes, and by the eerie expectancy which the atmosphere produced. And yet, even though we felt oppressed as we gnawed our way into the heart of the jungle, we were also fascinated and drawn by the thickening, clammy vegetation. And while the light filtered, a greenish blue, through the dense bushes and the interlaced boughs, we contemplated the water hyacinths and the deathly yellow sponge-like bells which hung down from the trees.

  While Victor was at the wheel of the motor-boat, Srijut Popatlal J. Shah had been sitting, set and impassive, in his chair, in the cabin of the launch, and Gangi lay felinely curled up on a small settee. Munshi Mithan Lal, Mr Bool Chand, myself and the various attendants were lounging about on the boat.

  ‘There is something in the souls of men which draws them back to the jungle,’ Mr Popatlal J. Shah said pompously after he had been contemplating the dark forest for a long time.

  Gangi was half asleep and oblivious of everything outside her, so long as she held the souls and the bodies of the men she wanted securely in her hands.

  ‘Why is it that the jungle draws one?’ Victor asked with a bored cynicism in his voice.

  ‘Perhaps because life is elemental here,’ answered Popatlal. ‘Everything in the jungle preys upon everything else and the survivor is not always the strongest, bravest and the most godly.’

  ‘I think that is so not only in the jungle but also in the whole kingdom of Sham Pur,’ I said from the bitterness which had been welling up in me since I had received the letter from the jail.

  The remark was greeted with silence, because whether Popatlal’s generalization about the forest was true or not, certainly it was true about Sham Pur State.

  ‘The jungle is a good escape,’ said Bool Chand, trying to be smart. ‘If one’s feet have pounded for a few years on the hard safe pavements of civilization.’

  ‘I hate it,’ burst out Victor. ‘It frightens me. I feel there is something sinister in the air. It is choking me. . . .’

  I realized that, under the effect of the dark suffocation around him, the inner discord in the Maharaja’s soul, due to his suspicions about Gangi and Popatlal, had fermented into a kind of hysteria.

  ‘I will take the wheel if you like,’ I said.

  ‘No, I am all right,’ said Victor with gritted teeth.

  ‘Whatever you may say,’ began Popatlal again, his dark face glowing with the sense of power that arose in him not only from his position as Diwan but from being Gangi’s paramour, ‘man has to be eternally on guard here against things he seldom sees, for fear that when he sees them it will be too late.’

  ‘So has man to be vigilant in Sham Pur,’ I said.

  ‘To be sure!’ said Victor.

  ‘Diwan Sahib means snakes and pythons and tigers and insects,’ said Mr Bool Chand brightly.

  ‘I mean the same thing!’ I said, emphasizing the ambiguity in my previous observations, though I could see that the emphasis fell flat on Bool Chand.

  Srijut Popatlal J. Shah continued, however, as though having understood the oblique reference, he was
now trying deliberately to camouflage the actual situation by mere rhetoric.

  ‘Can you hear the hum of the jungle? The forest is never quiet. It pulses with myriads of lives. The earth and vegetation are full of living creatures. Things climb and creep and crawl. The bigger insects eat the smaller ones. Treachery always wins.’

  ‘And guile, Diwan Sahib,’ I added. ‘I have seen the lovely full-blown death-lotus trap a humming bird’s beak in its sticky heart and slowly close its tender petals round the fluttering body of its victim.’

  The parallel was not lost on the Diwan and he looked at me with bated breath, and even Gangi half-opened her eyes and, sweeping us all with a sleepy glance, said:

  ‘The butterflies alone are happy.’

  ‘Yet I have seen a jaguar smack a butterfly in a fit of sheer wantonness and crush its lovely wings beneath its paws,’ I said. ‘So not even butterflies are safe!’

  ‘Everything has its enemy,’ said Bool Chand, butting in again. And he snorted.

  ‘Certainly you are our public enemy number one!’ exclaimed Victor.

  And everyone smiled. And the situation was eased. All the talk we had been having seemed like empty sound in the face of the sheer insidious beauty of the jungle, the secret exhilaration that seemed to arise from the eerie glow of the sunset, which was spreading itself over the placid mirror of the greenish, black water, lit up here and there by the fading lances of the dying sun.

  After a few long, seemingly endless miles, the stream opened out into a lake, and the creepers and water hyacinths gave place to lotuses, which were folding on the placid waters on the approach of the night from the steep mountains that rose to the north.

  As we veered towards the left of the lake, little thatched huts became visible at the foot of the biggest pine-clad mountain and some tracks leading to a magnificent pagoda-style building which was obviously the hunting lodge.

  Some village women were filling their pitchers with water on the edge of the lake, but fled as soon as they saw the motor-boat approach, ostensibly because Victor’s reputation as a seducer had not been forgotten here since the days of his teens, when he used to demand any woman who came within the orbit of his lustful vision.