But the old man was kind to her. He was a strange old man. He did not seem to expect anything of her at all, except only that she should be there in his house. Sometimes he brought saris and bangles for her, and though at first she pretended she did not want them, afterwards she was pleased and tried them on and admired herself. She often wondered why he should be so kind to her. He wasn’t to anyone else. In fact, he was known as a mean, spiteful old man, who had made his money (in grain) unscrupulously, pressed his creditors hard and maliciously refused to support his needy relatives. But with her he was always gentle and even generous, and after a while they got on very well together.
So when he was dead, she almost missed him, and it was only when she reminded herself of other things about him – his old-man smell, and his dried legs, when she had massaged them, with the useless rag of manhood flopping against the thigh – that she realized it was better he was gone. She was, after all, still young and healthy and hearty, and now with the money and property he had left her, she could lead the life she was entitled to. She kept two servants, got up when she wanted and went to sleep when she wanted; she ate everything she liked and as much as she liked; when she felt like going out, she hired a tonga – and not just any tonga, but always a spruce one with shining red leather seats and a well-groomed horse wearing jingling bells, so that people looked round at her as she was driven smartly through the streets.
It was a good life, and she grew plump and smooth with it. Nor did she lack for company; her own family and her husband’s were always hovering around her and, now that she had them in the proper frame of mind, she quite enjoyed entertaining them. It had taken her some time to get them into that proper frame of mind. For in the beginning, when her husband had just died, they had taken it for granted that she was to be treated as the widow – that is, the cursed one who had committed the sin of outliving her husband and was consequently to be numbered among the outcasts. They had wanted – yes, indeed they had – to strip her of her silken coloured clothes and of her golden ornaments. The more orthodox among them had even wanted to shave her head, to reduce her diet to stale bread and lentils and deprive her from ever again tasting the sweet things of life: to condemn her, in fact, to that perpetual mourning, perpetual expiation, which was the proper lot of widows. That was how they saw it and how their forefathers had always seen it; but not how she saw it at all.
There had been a struggle, of course, but not one of which the outcome was long in doubt. And now it was accepted that she should be mistress of what was hers and rule her household and wear her fine clothes and eat her fine foods: and out of her abundance she would toss crumbs to them, let them sit in her house and talk with them when she felt like talking, listen to their importunities for money and sometimes even perhaps – not out of pity or affection, but just as the whim took her – do them little favours and be praised and thanked for it. She was queen, and they knew it.
But even a queen’s life does not bring perfect satisfaction always, and there were days and even weeks at a time when she felt she had not been dealt with as she had a right to expect. She could never say exactly what had been left out, but only that something had been left out and that somehow, somewhere, she had been short-changed. And when this realization came over her, then she fell into a black mood and ate and slept more than ever – not for pleasure, but compulsively, sunk in sloth and greed because soft beds and foods were all that life had given to her. At such times she turned her relatives away from her house, and those who nevertheless wheedled their way in had to sit respectfully silent round her bed while she heaved and groaned like a sick woman.
There was one old aunt, known by everyone as Bhuaji, who always managed to wheedle her way in, whatever Durga’s mood. She was a tough, shrewd old woman, small and frail in appearance and with a cast in one eye which made it seem as if she was constantly peeping round the next corner to see what advantage lay there. When Durga’s black mood was on her, it was Bhuaji who presided at the bedside, saw to it that the others kept suitably mournful faces and, at every groan of Durga’s, fell into loud exclamations of pity at her sufferings. When Durga finally got tired of all these faces gathered round her and, turning her back on them, told them to go away and never come back to be a torture and a burden on her, then it was again Bhuaji who saw to it that they left in haste and good order and suitably on compassionate tiptoe; and after locking the door behind them all, she would come back to sit with Durga and encourage her not only to groan but to weep as well and begin to unburden herself.
Only what was there of which she could unburden herself, much as, under Bhuaji’s sympathetic encouragement, she longed to do so? She brought out broken sentences, broken complaints and accusations, but there was nothing she could quite lay her finger on. Bhuaji, always eager and ready to comfort with the right words, tried to lay it on for her, pointing out how cruelly fate had dealt with her in depriving her of what was every woman’s right – namely, a husband and children. But no, no, Durga would cry, that was not it, that was not what she wanted: and she looked scornful, thinking of those women who did have husbands and children, her sisters and her cousins, thin, shabby, overworked and overburdened, was there anything to envy in their lot? On the contrary, it was they who should and did envy Durga – she could read it in their eyes when they looked at her, who was so smooth and well-fed and had everything that they could never even dream of.
Then gradually, Bhuaji began to talk to her of God. Durga knew about God, of course. One had to worship Him in the temple and also perform certain rites such as bathing in the river when there was an eclipse and give food to the holy men and observe fast days. One did all these things so that no harm would befall, and everybody did them and had always done them: that was God. But Bhuaji talked differently. She talked about Him as if He were a person whom one could get to know, like someone who would come and visit in the house and sit and talk and drink tea. She spoke of Him mostly as Krishna, sometimes as the baby Krishna and sometimes as the lover Krishna. She had many stories to tell about Krishna, all the old stories which Durga knew well, for she had heard them since she was a child; but Bhuaji told them as if they were new and had happened only yesterday and in the neighbourhood. And Durga sat up on her bed and laughed: ‘No, really, he did that?’ ‘Yes, yes, really – he stole the butter and licked it with his fingers and he teased the young girls and pulled their hair and kissed them – oh, he was such a naughty boy!’ And Durga rocked herself to and fro with her hands clasped before her face, laughing in delight – ‘How naughty!’ she cried. ‘What a bad bad boy, bless his heart!’
But when they came to the lover Krishna, then she sat quite still and looked very attentive, with her mouth a little open and her eyes fixed on Bhuaji’s face. She didn’t say much, just listened; only sometimes she would ask in a low voice, ‘He was very handsome?’ ‘Oh very,’ said Bhuaji, and she described him all over again – lotus eyes and brows like strung bows and a throat like a conch. Durga couldn’t form much of a picture from that, but never mind, she made her own, formed it secretly in her mind as she sat there listening to Bhuaji, and grew more and more thoughtful, more and more silent.
Bhuaji went on to tell her about Krishna’s devotees and the rich rewards granted to those whose hearts were open to receive him. As Durga avidly listened, she narrated the life of Maya Devi, who had retired from the world and built herself a little hut on the banks of the Ganges: there to pass her days with the baby Krishna, whom she had made her child and to whom she talked all day as to a real child, and played with him and cooked for him, bathed his image and dressed it and put it to sleep at night and woke it up with a kiss in the morning. And then there was Pushpa Devi, for whom so many advantageous offers had come but who rejected them all because she said she was wedded already, to Krishna, and he alone was her lord and her lover; she lived with him in spirit, and sometimes in the nights her family could hear her screams of joy as she lay with him in their marital rite and gav
e him her soul.
Durga bought two little brass images of Krishna – one of him playing the flute, the other as a baby crawling on all fours. She gave them special prominence on her little prayer table and paid her devotions to him many times a day, always waiting for him to come alive for her and be all that Bhuaji promised he would be. Sometimes – when she was alone at night or lay on her bed in the hot, silent afternoons, her thoughts dwelling on Krishna – she felt strange new stirrings within her which were almost like illness, with a tugging in the bowels and a melting in the thighs. And she trembled and wondered whether this was Krishna descending on her, as Bhuaji promised he would, showing her his passion, creeping into her – ah! great God that he was – like a child or a lover, into her womb and into her breasts.
She became dreamy and withdrawn, so that her relatives, quick to note this change, felt freer to come and go as they pleased and sit around in her house and drink tea with a lot of milk and sugar in it. Bhuaji, indeed, was there almost all the time. She had even brought a bundle of clothes and often stayed all day and all night, only scurrying off to have a quick look at her own household, with her own old husband in it, and coming back within the hour. Durga suspected that, on these home excursions of hers, Bhuaji went well provided with little stocks of rice and lentils and whatever other provisions she could filch from the kitchen store. But Durga hardly cared and was, at any rate, in no frame of mind to make a scene. And when they asked for money, Bhuaji or the other relatives, as often as not she gave – quite absent-mindedly, taking out her keys to unlock the steel almira in which she kept her cashbox, while they eagerly, greedily, watched her.
At such moments she often thought of her husband and of what he would say if he could see her being so yielding with these relatives. She could almost imagine him getting angry – hear his shrill old man’s voice and see him shaking his fist so that the sleeve of his kurta flapped and showed his plucked, dried arm trembling inside. But she did not care for his anger; it was her life, her money, she sullenly answered him, and she could let herself be exploited if she wished. Why should he, a dead old man, dictate his wishes to her, who was alive and healthy and a devotee of Krishna’s? She found herself thinking of her husband with dislike. It was as if she bore him some grudge, though she did not know what for.
The relatives sat in the house and got bolder and bolder, until they were giving their own orders to the servants and complaining about the quality of the tea.
It was about this time that the tenants who had rented the place upstairs gave notice – an event which brought great excitement into the lives of the relatives, who spent many happy hours apportioning the vacant flat out among themselves (Bhuaji, of course, was going to move her old husband into one room, and she left the others to fight for the remaining space). But here suddenly Durga showed herself quite firm again: tenants meant rent, and she had no intentions, not even to spite her husband, of sacrificing a regular monthly income. So only a few days after the old tenants moved out, and the relatives were still hotly disputing among themselves as to how the place was to be apportioned, a new family of tenants moved in, consisting of one Mr Puri (a municipal tax inspector) with his wife, two daughters and a son. Their belongings were carried upstairs to loud, remonstrative cries from the relatives; to which Durga turned a deaf ear – even to the plaints of Bhuaji, who had already brought her old husband and her household chattels along and now had to take them back again.
Durga had been worshipping her two images for so long now, but nothing of what Bhuaji had promised seemed to be happening to them. And less and less was happening to her. She tried so hard, lying on her bed and thinking of Krishna and straining to reproduce that wave of love she had experienced; but it did not return or, if it did, came only as a weak echo of what it had been. She was unsatisfied and felt that much had been promised and little given. Once, after she had prayed for a long time before the two images, she turned away and suddenly kicked at the leg of a chair and hurt her toe. And sometimes, in the middle of doing something – sorting the laundry or folding a sari – she would suddenly throw it aside with an impatient gesture and walk away frowning.
She spent a lot of time sitting on a string cot in her courtyard, not doing anything nor thinking anything in particular, just sitting there, feeling heavy and too fat and wondering what there was in life that one should go on living it. When her relatives came to visit her, she as often as not told them to go away, even Bhuaji; she did not feel like talking or listening to any of them. But now there was a new person to stake a claim to her attention. The courtyard was overlooked by a veranda which ran the length of the flat upstairs. On this veranda Mrs Puri, her new tenant, would frequently appear, leaning her arms on the balustrade and shouting down in friendly conversation. Durga did not encourage her and answered as drily as politeness permitted; but Mrs Puri was a friendly woman and persisted, appearing twice and three times a day to comment to Durga on the state of the weather. After a while she even began to exercise the prerogative of a neighbour and to ask for little loans – one day she had run out of lentils, a second out of flour, a third out of sugar. In return, when she cooked a special dish or made pickle, she would send some down for Durga, thus establishing a neighbourly traffic which Durga had not wished for but was too lethargic to discourage.
Then one day Mrs Puri sent some ginger pickle down with her son. He appeared hesitantly in the courtyard, holding his glass jar carefully between two hands. Durga was lying drowsily on her cot; her eyes were shut and perhaps she was even half-asleep. The boy stood and looked down at her, not knowing what to do, lightly coughing to draw her attention. Her eyes opened and stared up at him. He was perhaps seventeen years old, a boy with large black eyes and broad shoulders and cheeks already dark with growth. Durga lay and stared up at him, seeing nothing but his young face looming above her. He looked back at her, uncertain, tried to smile, and blushed. Then at last she sat up and adjusted the sari which had slipped down from her breasts. His eyes modestly lowered, he held the jar of pickle out to her as if in appeal.
‘Your mother sent?’
He nodded briefly and, placing the jar on the floor by her cot, turned to go rather quickly. Just as he was about to disappear through the door leading out from the courtyard she called him back, and he stopped and stood facing her, waiting. It was some time before she spoke, and then all she could think to say was, ‘Please thank your mother.’ He disappeared before she could call him back again.
Durga had become rather slovenly in her habits lately, but that evening she dressed herself up in one of her better saris and went to call on Mrs Puri upstairs. A visit from the landlady was considered of some importance, so Mrs Puri, who had been soaking raw mangoes, left this work, wiped her hands on the end of her sari and settled Durga in the sitting-room. The sitting-room was not very grand, it had only a cane table in it and some cane stools and a few cheap bazaar pictures on the whitewashed walls. Durga sat in the only chair in the room, a velvet armchair which had the velvet rubbed bare in many places and smelled of old damp clothes.
Mrs Puri’s two daughters sat on the floor, stitching a quilt together out of many old pieces. They were plain girls with heavy features and bad complexions. Mr Puri evidently was out – and his wife soon dwelt on that subject: every night, she said, he was sitting at some friend’s house, goodness knows what they did, sitting like that, what could they have so much to talk about? And wasting money in smoking cigarettes and chewing betel, while she sat at home with her daughters, poor girls, and wasn’t it high time good husbands were found for them? But what did Mr Puri care – he had thought only for his own enjoyment, his family was nothing to him. And Govind the same . . .
‘Govind?’
‘My son. He too – only cinema for him and laughing with friends.’
She had much to complain about and evidently did not often have someone whom she could complain to; so she made the most of Durga. The two plain daughters listened placidly,
stitching their quilt; only when their mother referred to the urgent necessity of finding husbands for them – as she did at frequent intervals and as a sort of capping couplet to each particular complaint – did they begin to wriggle and exchange sly glances and titter behind their hands.
It took Durga some time before she could disengage herself; and when she finally did, Mrs Puri accompanied her to the stairs, carrying her burden of complaint right over into her farewell and even pursuing Durga with it as she picked her way down the steep, narrow stone stairs. And just as she had reached the bottom of them, Govind appeared to walk up them, and his mother shouted down to him, ‘Is this a time to come home for your meal?’
Durga passed him in the very tight space between the doorway and the first step. She was so close to him that she could feel his warmth and hear his breath. Mrs Puri shouted down the stairs: ‘Running here and there all day like a loafer!’ Durga could see his eyes gleaming in the dark and he could see hers; for a moment they looked at each other. Durga said in a low voice, ‘Your mother is angry with you,’ and then he was halfway up the stairs.
Later, slowly unwinding herself from her sari and staring at herself in the mirror as she did so, she thought about her husband. And again, and stronger than ever, she had that feeling of dislike against him, that grudge against the useless dead old man. It was eighteen or nineteen years now since they had married her to him: and if he had been capable, wouldn’t she have had a son like Govind now, a strong, healthy, handsome boy with big shoulders and his beard just growing? She smiled at the thought, full of tenderness, and forgetting her husband, thought instead how it would be if Govind were her son. She would not treat him like his mother did – would never reproach him, shout at him down the stairs – but, on the contrary, encourage him in all his pleasures so that, first thing when he came home, he would call to her – ‘Mama!’ – and they would sit together affectionately, more like brother and sister, or even two friends, than like mother and son, while he told her everything that had happened to him during the day.
At the End of the Century Page 4