At the End of the Century

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  Elizabeth smiled with him. She saw it too, although she had never been there: the mighty mountains, the grandeur and the peace, the abode of Shiva where he sat with the rivers flowing from his hair. She longed to go, and to so many other places she had heard and read about. But the only place away from Delhi where she had ever been was Ankhpur, to stay with Raju’s family.

  Margaret began to tell her about all the places she had been to. She and Arthur had been posted from district to district, in many different parts of the country, but even that hadn’t been enough for her. She had to see everything. She had no fears about travelling on her own, and had spent weeks tramping around in the mountains, with a shawl thrown over her shoulders and a stick held firmly in her hand. She had travelled many miles by any mode of transport available – train, bus, cycle, rickshaw, or even bullock cart – in order to see some little-known and almost inaccessible temple or cave or tomb: once she had sprained her ankle and lain all alone for a week in a derelict rest-house, deserted except for one decrepit old watchman, who had shared his meals with her.

  ‘That’s the way to get to know a country,’ she declared. Her cheeks were flushed with the pleasure of remembering everything she had done.

  Elizabeth agreed with her. Yet although she herself had done none of these things, she did not feel that she was on that account cut off from all knowledge. There was much to be learned from living with Raju’s family in Ankhpur, much to be learned from Raju himself. Yes, he was her India! She felt like laughing when this thought came to her. But it was true.

  ‘Your trouble is,’ Margaret suddenly said, ‘you let Raju bully you. He’s got something of that in his character – don’t contradict. I’ve studied him. If you were to stand up to him more firmly, you’d both be happier.’

  Again Elizabeth wanted to laugh. She thought of the nice times she and Raju often had together. He had invented a game of cricket that they could play in their bedrooms between the steel almira and the opposite wall. They played it with a rubber ball and a hairbrush, and three steps made a run. Raju’s favourite trick was to hit the ball under the bed, and while she lay flat on the floor groping for it he made run after run, exhorting her with mocking cries of ‘Hurry up! Where is it? Can’t you find it?’ His eyes glittered with the pleasure of winning; his shirt was off, and drops of perspiration trickled down his smooth, dark chest.

  ‘You should want to do something for those poor children!’ Margaret shouted.

  ‘I do want to. You know I do.’

  ‘I don’t know anything of the sort. All I see is you leading an utterly useless, selfish life. I’m disappointed in you, Elizabeth. When I first met you, I had such high hopes of you. I thought, ah, here at last is a serious person. But you’re not serious at all. You’re as frivolous as any of those girls that come here and spend their days playing mahjong.’

  Elizabeth was ashamed. The worst of it was she really had once been a serious person. She had been a schoolteacher in England, and devoted to her work and her children, on whom she had spent far more time and care than was necessary in the line of duty. And, over and above that, she had put in several evenings a week visiting old people who had no one to look after them. But all that had come to an end once she met Raju.

  ‘It’s criminal to be in India and not be committed,’ Margaret went on. ‘There isn’t much any single person can do, of course, but to do nothing at all – no, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at nights.’

  And Elizabeth slept not only well but happily, blissfully! Sometimes she turned on the light just for the pleasure of looking at Raju lying beside her. He slept like a child, with the pillow bundled under his cheek and his mouth slightly open, as if he were smiling.

  ‘But what are you laughing at!’ Margaret shouted.

  ‘I’m not, Margaret.’ She hastily composed her face. She hadn’t been aware of it, but probably she had been smiling at the image of Raju asleep.

  Margaret abruptly pushed back her chair. Her face was red and her hair dishevelled, as if she had been in a fight. Elizabeth half-rose in her chair, aghast at whatever it was she had done and eager to undo it.

  ‘Don’t follow me,’ Margaret said. ‘If you do, I know I’m going to behave badly and I’ll feel terrible afterwards. You can stay here or you can go home, but don’t follow me.’

  She went inside the house, and the screen door banged after her. Elizabeth sank down into her chair and looked helplessly at Babaji.

  He had remained as serene as ever. Gently he rocked himself in his chair. The winter afternoon was drawing to its close, and the sun, caught between two trees, was beginning to contract into one concentrated area of gold. Though the light was failing, the garden remained bright and gay with all its marigolds, its phlox, its pansies and its sweet peas. Babaji enjoyed it all. He sat wrapped in his woollen shawl, with his feet warm in thick knitted socks and sandals.

  ‘She is a hot-tempered lady,’ he said, smiling and forgiving. ‘But good, good.’

  ‘Oh, I know,’ Elizabeth said. ‘She’s an angel. I feel so bad that I should have upset her. Do you think I ought to go after her?’

  ‘A heart of gold,’ said Babaji.

  ‘I know it.’ Elizabeth bit her lip in vexation at herself.

  Shafi came out with the tea tray. Elizabeth removed some books to clear the little table for him, and Babaji said, ‘Ah,’ in pleasurable anticipation. But Shafi did not put the tray down.

  ‘Where is she?’ he said.

  ‘It’s all right, Shafi. She’s just coming. Put it down, please.’

  The old man nodded and smiled in a cunning, superior way. He clutched his tray more tightly and turned back into the house. He had difficulty in walking, not only because he was old and infirm but also because the shoes he wore were too big for him and had no laces.

  ‘Shafi!’ Elizabeth called after him. ‘Babaji wants his tea!’ But he did not even turn round. He walked straight up to Margaret’s bedroom and kicked the door and shouted, ‘I’ve brought it!’

  Elizabeth hurried after him. She felt nervous about going into Margaret’s bedroom after having been so explicitly forbidden to follow her. But Margaret only looked up briefly from where she was sitting on her bed, reading a letter, and said, ‘Oh, it’s you,’ and ‘Shut the door.’ When he had put down the tea, Shafi went out again and the two of them were left alone.

  Margaret’s bedroom was quite different from the rest of the house. The other rooms were all bare and cold, with a minimum of furniture standing around on the stone floors; there were a few isolated pictures hung up here and there on the whitewashed walls, but nothing more intimate than portraits of Mahatma Gandhi and Sri Ramakrishna and a photograph of the inmates of Mother Teresa’s Home. But Margaret’s room was crammed with a lot of comfortable, solid old furniture, dominated by the big double bed in the centre, which was covered with a white bedcover and a mosquito curtain on the top like a canopy. A log fire burned in the grate, and there were photographs everywhere – family photos of Arthur and Margaret, of Margaret as a little girl, and of her parents and her sister and her school and her friends. The stale smell of food pervading the rest of the house stopped short of this room, which was scented very pleasantly by woodsmoke and lavender water. There was an umbrella stand that held several alpenstocks, a tennis racket and a hockey stick.

  ‘It’s from my sister,’ Margaret said, indicating the letter she was reading. ‘She lives out in the country and they’ve been snowed under again. She’s got a pub.’

  ‘How lovely.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a lovely place. She’s always wanted me to come and run it with her. But I couldn’t live in England any more, I couldn’t bear it.’

  ‘Yes, I know what you mean.’

  ‘What do you know? You’ve only been here a few years. Pour the tea, there’s a dear.’

  ‘Babaji was wanting a cup.’

  ‘To hell with Babaji.’

  She took off her sandals and lay do
wn on the bed, leaning against some fat pillows that she had propped against the headboard. Elizabeth had noticed before that Margaret was always more relaxed in her own room than anywhere else. Not all her visitors were allowed into this room – in fact, only a chosen few. Strangely enough, Raju had been one of these when he and Elizabeth had stayed in the house. But he had never properly appreciated the privilege; either he sat on the edge of a chair and made signs to Elizabeth to go or he wandered restlessly round the room, looking at all the photographs or taking out the tennis racket and executing imaginary services with it; till Margaret told him to sit down and not make them all nervous, and then he looked sulky and made even more overt signs to Elizabeth.

  ‘I brought my sister out here once,’ Margaret said. ‘But she couldn’t stand it. Couldn’t stand anything – the climate, the water, the food. Everything made her ill. There are people like that. Of course, I’m just the opposite. You like it here too, don’t you?’

  ‘Very, very much.’

  ‘Yes, I can see you’re happy.’

  Margaret looked at her so keenly that Elizabeth tried to turn away her face slightly. She did not want anyone to see too much of her tremendous happiness. She felt somewhat ashamed of herself for having it – not only because she knew she didn’t deserve it but also because she did not consider herself quite the right kind of person to have it. She had been over thirty when she met Raju, and had not expected much more out of life than had up till then been given to her.

  Margaret lit a cigarette. She never smoked except in her own room. She puffed slowly, luxuriously. Suddenly she said, ‘He doesn’t like me, does he?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘“Who”?’ she repeated impatiently. ‘Your Raju, of course.’

  Elizabeth flushed with embarrassment. ‘How you talk, Margaret,’ she murmured deprecatingly, not knowing what else to say.

  ‘I know he doesn’t,’ Margaret said. ‘I can always tell.’

  She sounded so sad that Elizabeth wished she could lie to her and say that no, Raju loved her just as everyone else did. But she could not bring herself to it. She thought of the way he usually spoke of Margaret. He called her by rude names and made coarse jokes about her, at which he laughed like a schoolboy and tried to make Elizabeth laugh with him; and the terrible thing was sometimes she did laugh, not because she wanted to or because what he said amused her but because it was he who urged her to, and she always found it difficult to refuse him anything. Now when she thought of this compliant laughter of hers she was filled with anguish, and she began unconsciously to wring her hands, the way she always did at such secretly appalling moments.

  But Margaret was having thoughts of her own, and was smiling to herself. She said, ‘You know what was my happiest time of all in India? About ten years ago, when I went to stay in Swami Vishwananda’s ashram.’

  Elizabeth was intensely relieved at the change of subject, though somewhat puzzled by its abruptness.

  ‘We bathed in the river and we walked in the mountains. It was a time of such freedom, such joy. I’ve never felt like that before or since. I didn’t have a care in the world and I felt so – light. I can’t describe it – as if my feet didn’t touch the ground.’

  ‘Yes, yes!’ Elizabeth said eagerly, for she thought she recognized the feeling.

  ‘In the evenings we all sat with Swamiji. We talked about everything under the sun. He laughed and joked with us, and sometimes he sang. I don’t know what happened to me when he sang. The tears came pouring down my face, but I was so happy I thought my heart would melt away.’

  ‘Yes,’ Elizabeth said again.

  ‘That’s him over there.’ She nodded towards a small framed photograph on the dressing-table. Elizabeth picked it up. He did not look different from the rest of India’s holy men – naked to the waist, with long hair and burning eyes.

  ‘Not that you can tell much from a photo,’ Margaret said. She held out her hand for it, and then she looked at it herself, with a very young expression on her face. ‘He was such fun to be with, always full of jokes and games. When I was with him, I used to feel – I don’t know – like a flower or a bird.’ She laughed gaily, and Elizabeth with her.

  ‘Does Raju make you feel like that?’

  Elizabeth stopped laughing and looked down into her lap. She tried to make her face very serious so as not to give herself away.

  ‘Indian men have such marvellous eyes,’ Margaret said. ‘When they look at you, you can’t help feeling all young and nice. But of course your Raju thinks I’m just a fat, ugly old memsahib.’

  ‘Margaret, Margaret!’

  Margaret stubbed out her cigarette and, propelling herself with her heavy legs, swung down from the bed. ‘And there’s poor old Babaji waiting for his tea.’

  She poured it for him and went out with the cup. Elizabeth went after her. Babaji was just as they had left him, except that now the sun, melting away between the trees behind him, was even more intensely gold and provided a heavenly background, as if to a saint in a picture, as he sat there at peace in his rocking chair.

  Margaret fussed over him. She stirred his tea and she arranged his shawl more securely over his shoulders. Then she said, ‘I’ve got an idea, Babaji.’ She hooked her foot round a stool and drew it close to his chair and sank down on it, one hand laid on his knee. ‘You and I’ll take those children up to Agra. Would you like that? A little trip?’ She looked up into his face and was eager and bright. ‘We’ll have a grand time. We’ll hire a bus, and we’ll have singing and games all the way. You’ll love it.’ She squeezed his knee in anticipatory joy, and he smiled at her and his thin old hand came down on the top of her head in a gesture of affection or blessing.

  Desecration

  It is more than ten years since Sofia committed suicide in the hotel room in Mohabbatpur. At the time, it was a great local scandal, but now almost no one remembers the incident or the people involved in it. The Raja Sahib died shortly afterwards – people said it was of grief and bitterness – and Bakhtawar Singh was transferred to another district. The present Superintendent of Police is a mild-mannered man who likes to spend his evenings at home playing card games with his teenage daughters.

  The hotel in Mohabbatpur no longer exists. It was sold a few months after Sofia was found there, changed hands several times and was recently pulled down to make room for a new cinema. This will back on to the old cinema, which is still there, still playing ancient Bombay talkies. The Raja Sahib’s house also no longer exists. It was demolished because the land on which it stood has become very valuable, and has been declared an industrial area. Many factories and workshops have come up in recent years.

  When the Raja Sahib had first gone to live there with Sofia, there had been nothing except his own house, with a view over the ruined fort and the barren plain beyond it. In the distance there was a little patch of villagers’ fields and, huddled out of sight, the village itself. Inside their big house, the Raja Sahib and Sofia had led very isolated lives. This was by choice – his choice. It was as if he had carried her away to this spot with the express purpose of having her to himself, of feasting on his possession of her.

  Although she was much younger than he was – more than thirty years younger – she seemed perfectly happy to live there alone with him. But in any case she was the sort of person who exudes happiness. No one knew where the Raja Sahib had met and married her. No one really knew anything about her, except that she was a Muslim (he, of course, was a Hindu) and that she had had a good convent education in Calcutta – or was it Delhi? She seemed to have no one in the world except the Raja Sahib. It was generally thought that she was partly Afghan, perhaps even with a dash of Russian. She certainly did not look entirely Indian; she had light eyes and broad cheekbones and a broad brow. She was graceful and strong, and at times she laughed a great deal, as if wanting to show off her youth and high spirits, not to mention her magnificent teeth.

  Even then, however, durin
g their good years, she suffered from nervous prostrations. At such times the Raja Sahib sat by her bedside in a darkened room. If necessary, he stayed awake all night and held her hand (she clutched his). Sometimes this went on for two or three weeks at a time, but his patience was inexhaustible. It often got very hot in the room; the house stood unprotected on that barren plain, and there was not enough electricity for air-conditioning – hardly even enough for the fan that sluggishly churned the hot air. Her attacks always seemed to occur during the very hot months, especially during the dust storms, when the landscape all around was blotted out by a pall of desert dust and the sky hung down low and yellow.

  But when the air cleared, so did her spirits. The heat continued, but she kept all the shutters closed, and sprinkled water and rose essence on the marble floors and on the scented grass mats hung around the verandas. When night fell, the house was opened to allow the cooler air to enter. She and the Raja Sahib would go up on the roof. They lit candles in coloured glass chimneys and read out the Raja Sahib’s verse dramas. Around midnight the servants would bring up their dinner, which consisted of many elaborate dishes, and sometimes they would also have a bottle of French wine from the Raja Sahib’s cellar. The dark earth below and the sky above were both silver from the reflection of the moon and the incredible number of stars shining up there. It was so silent that the two of them might as well have been alone in the world – which of course was just what the Raja Sahib wanted.

  Sitting on the roof of his house, he was certainly monarch of all he surveyed, such as it was. His family had taken possession of this land during a time of great civil strife some hundred and fifty years before. It was only a few barren acres with some impoverished villages thrown in, but the family members had built themselves a little fort and had even assumed a royal title, though they weren’t much more than glorified landowners. They lived like all the other landowners, draining what taxes they could out of their tenant villagers. They always needed money for their own living, which became very sophisticated, especially when they began to spend more and more time in the big cities like Bombay, Calcutta, or even London. At the beginning of the century, when the fort became too rough and dilapidated to live in, the house was built. It was in a mixture of Moghul and Gothic styles, with many galleries and high rooms closed in by arched verandas. It had been built at great cost, but until the Raja Sahib moved in with Sofia it had usually remained empty except for the ancestral servants.