The Householder

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  ‘Why are you talking so much?’ Prem’s mother scolded the servant-boy. ‘Have you no work in the kitchen that you must stand here like an uncle?’

  The boy went out muttering to himself. ‘He is a very bad servant,’ Prem’s mother said severely. ‘He should be told to go and a better one taken in his place.’

  In the night Prem felt very much alone, even though his mother was sleeping in the next room. He wondered for how long Indu had gone away. She had taken all her things, so it looked as if she intended to stay a long time. Perhaps she would stay there till she had the baby. That was another three months—and she had not even said good-bye to him, not even left a message. Suddenly he was angry. Why did she go? Who told her to go? She knew very well that he had forbidden it. Yet she had completely ignored his wishes—and not only his wishes, but even his existence; had just packed and gone off with her uncle, without leaving a message. He felt in a mood to go after her and show her how angry he was at her. He could take leave from Mr. Khanna on some pretext and go off on the evening train. But when he thought of arriving at her house, and how her sisters would gape and giggle at him, and her fat merry uncles make jokes at him, and Indu herself perhaps be angry with him, he abandoned the idea. Instead he would write her a letter. A long and very angry letter.

  But next day he was no longer angry. Now he was too despondent to want to write a letter. He went to the college and found everything there very depressing. Mr. Chaddha was lecturing on the Portuguese and French settlements in India and his class was fervently taking notes. Prem’s class sat around in easy attitudes, played the Dot-game and passed notes to one another. Everything was so very much as usual. At the morning break Sohan Lal unpacked his food from his tiffin-carrier and hastily swallowed it in a corner; Mr. Chaddha sat and read a book, swinging one leg and making notes in the margin; the other lecturers carried on a low-toned conversation about dearness allowances. Once Mr. Khanna came down, addressed them all as ‘Gentlemen’ and disappeared again upstairs. The students thronged noisily in the corridor and out in the street, and Mrs. Khanna’s tea tasted of stale tea-leaves.

  His mother waited eagerly for him at home. She cooked all the things she knew he liked, tidied his clothes and bought him a new bottle of hair-oil. As soon as he came home, she began to talk to him and never stopped. Even while he was having a bath, she talked to him through the bathroom door. Afterwards she made him lie down and rubbed his temples and forehead, though he had no headache. She rubbed and rubbed, looking complacent and happy as she did so. ‘What is a mother for,’ she said, ‘if not to spoil her only son?’ His eyes were shut and he felt profoundly gloomy. ‘Ah, son,’ she said and sighed, ‘there is nothing like a mother’s love.’

  Prem felt this to be true. Nobody would ever love him again, he thought, like she did. Who else would serve him like this, fuss over him, cook his favourite dishes, massage his temples? It was perhaps what one expected of a wife—but all Indu did was go away with her uncle without even leaving a message for him. He felt tears filling into his eyes behind the closed lids and hastily turned his head away. ‘No one can ever take the place of a mother,’ said his mother.

  He hoped to get a letter from Indu but nothing came. He found staying in the house had a very depressing effect on him, so in the evening he decided to go for a walk. On the way down he looked through the fly-screens of the Seigals’ house and saw Mr. Seigal at the card-table and, on the veranda, Mrs. Seigal crocheting and having conversation with the wives of the other card players. They all looked so happy and comfortable that he quite forgot Mrs. Seigal’s tears which he had pitied a few days ago. Now he pitied only himself.

  His life seemed a complete failure to him. In his present mood it even gave him a grim satisfaction to count up his various failures: he could not earn sufficient money; his career as a teacher was turning out to be unpromising; he had no real friend—even Raj, who had once been a real friend, had deserted him; he was not a successful husband. If he had thought further, he would probably have been able to find many more failures, but at this last one he stopped short and brooded about it. It was because he was not a successful husband that she had gone away; he had not been able to make her obedient and respectful; if she had been obedient and respectful, she would not have dared to go away. Or if she had liked him better, she would not have wanted to go away.

  He had crossed the little children’s park and had reached the bazaar. As usual at this time of the evening, a lot of shopping was going on. All the booths were lit up by electric light bulbs dangling from their wooden roofs. By the side of the road stood men with little barrows, illuminated by bright flares of naphtha light, selling cheap fruits or sugar-cane juice or coloured drinks in second-hand bottles. Prem thought why does she not like me enough to want to stay with me? He felt very much hurt. He had thought that perhaps she had begun to grow fond of him a little, but now he saw that this was not so. For the first time he thought about how he felt about her: yes, he thought, he had begun to grow fond of her.

  Perhaps because he had grown used to her. He was used to her being there when he came home from the college and he was used to having her sleep next to him and used to her smell which was a mixture of hair-oil and perspiration and vanilla essence and a special woman-smell—used to so many things that he felt quite dizzy now when he thought about them all. He had not realized that there were so many. Yet she, it seemed, had not got used to him at all. If she had done so, she would never have gone; or even if she had, she would have come back at once because she would not have been able to bear missing all the things she had got used to.

  He came, with a pang, to a sweetmeat stall. She loved sweetmeats so much, yet only once had he brought some for her. He had promised to bring her more, had promised to bring some every day, yet he had not done so. He was selfish and mean, and she was right to go away from him. But now how he longed to buy sweetmeats for her! He looked at the rows of yellow and green and white and pink and silvery chunks, with the flies hovering over them, and the proprietor, very large and fat with huge stomach and calves and many chins, sitting crosslegged above his goods and indolently waving his hand at the flies. Prem groped in his pocket to see how much money he had with him. But what was the use of buying now? He could neither send them to her nor keep them for her. He bitterly regretted all the opportunities of buying things for her he had wasted when she was still here. He remembered how once he had bought a little bag of nuts and raisins for himself and had quickly eaten it before he got home so that he would not have to give her any. Even that much, even a little bag of nuts and raisins costing a few annas, he had grudged her!

  There were so many booths in the bazaar, so many things to buy as a present for Indu. Pots and pans and gleaming brass tumblers, coloured and gilded pictures of gods and saints, tiny bottles of scent essence and clay images and sticks of incense and bolts and bolts of cloth and fine thin saris printed with flowers suspended fluttering above the doorways. He again felt the money in his pocket and decided that he would buy something for her. Not sweetmeats, but something that would keep. He did not have to think long; he knew at once that he wanted to buy her something that she could wear and be proud of; something shiny and beautiful. He would send it to her and she would remember him and perhaps be sorry that she had gone away without even leaving a message for him. Or he might keep it for her. Then he would be able to see the expression of pleasure on her face when he gave it to her; and she would know that he had been thinking of her while she was away.

  He lingered outside a cloth stall and was beckoned in by the proprietor. There was a narrow little bench, and he perched himself on the very edge of it. Two fat middle-aged women, freshly bathed and puffed out in clean starched saris of white organdie, also sat on the bench with him; they looked sideways for a moment, giving him rather a contemptuous glance, then turned back, one to digging among the billows of materials which the shopman had already taken down for them, the other to range a commanding eye over the b
olts of cloth stacked up to the ceiling. Prem sat shyly and with his hands pushed tight between his knees. His eyes too ranged over the materials, not so much out of curiosity as out of embarrassment. But at once he saw what he wanted: a shimmering pink satin. What a beautiful blouse it would make for her. He looked at it admiringly as it was brought down for him: how soft, how pink. It reminded him of Indu’s tongue as he had seen it come flicking out to lick at sweetmeats.

  He took his parcel, which was tied with newspaper and string, and walked home and stole into the bedroom with it. There he unpacked it, and he felt happy when he saw the pink material shine out at him. He stroked it and rubbed his cheek against it. How lovely it was! Surely she would like it? Very softly he pressed it against his mouth. Then his mother called, ‘Son? Did you enjoy your walk, son?’ He hid the material under the shirts in his drawer and went to sit with her in the sitting-room.

  He often nowadays tried to think of excuses not to have to go home. Only there were not many other places he could go to. It made him feel very lonely to roam about by himself; and there was no friend to roam with him. Raj was busy with his office and his family; Sohan Lal had to cycle to Mehrauli; and that left only Hans. Perhaps Hans could be the friend he needed—the friend with whom he could spend pleasant social evenings, with whom he could have long discussions, with whom he could share all his inward thoughts and problems. He very much wanted such a friend.

  One day he told his mother that he would be home late in the evening. ‘Some urgent work,’ he murmured. ‘Go, child,’ she sighed. ‘I am here to see to everything.’ This made him feel vaguely guilty and as if he were evading his duty. However, the feeling left him as soon as he left her, and by evening he went quite cheerfully to Hans’ house.

  ‘He’s in his room, dear,’ Kitty said. She was sitting writing in a little notebook, a pair of very large spectacles perched on the tip of her nose. She only glanced briefly at Prem over the top of these spectacles, then licked the point of the tiny stub of pencil she held and carried on writing. She looked very much intent, so Prem did not like to disturb her further but tiptoed quietly past her and out at an opposite door. This led him into the courtyard, which was paved with marble tiles and must have been a very handsome courtyard once. But now it had some not too clean washing strung across it, and there were two rickety and sagging string-cots, a ladder with four rungs missing propped against a wall and a mangy parrot in a bent wire cage. Mohammed Ali was squatting on the threshold of the kitchen. He looked melancholy and even rather depressed, as if he were thinking of better times. Prem’s intrusion seemed to annoy him, and when asked to point out Hans’ room, he did so very ungraciously.

  It was the untidiest room Prem had ever seen. Books, papers, boots, pieces of clothing, empty cups were scattered all over. Hans sat on the floor with his legs crossed under him and his hands laid palm upwards on his knees; there was a rather self-conscious look of meditation on his face. Prem thought Hans might be embarrassed by the disorder in the room, so he said quickly, ‘How nice your room is’; but after he had said it, he thought perhaps that was wrong, because it drew attention to the room. He covered it up quickly with, ‘It was very hot today.’

  ‘Today I achieve nothing,’ Hans said from the floor. He pounded his fist against his forehead in a mood of anguish ‘My thoughts are wild and bad, I cannot control them.’

  Prem’s heart leapt, partly with shock, partly with excitement. Did Hans too have these moments of shame that he himself had when he thought unworthy thoughts about Indu and could not stop thinking them? He sat down rather breathlessly and wondered whether it would be possible to have an intimate talk with Hans.

  ‘I try to gather them in one point’—Hans cupped his hand—‘but—pfutsch!—they scatter wild like this——’ and he flung out both his arms as if he were chasing away birds. ‘Do you also suffer like this?’

  ‘Yes, I——’ Prem slid down from the chair, which he had originally chosen, to sit with Hans on the floor. He wanted to be near to him, so that they could talk in low voices. ‘Sometimes I feel great shame at my thoughts.’

  ‘You are right—one must feel shame when one fails!’ Hans shouted very loudly, which made Prem nervous that they might be overheard. ‘Why must our thoughts be full with trivial things, when Reality is there waiting for us to grasp her with both the hands?’ He got up to stride around the room, impatiently kicking aside a pair of braces as he did so. Apparently he was not at all embarrassed at the disorder in his room; nor by his appearance, though all he was wearing was a very short pair of shorts.

  ‘The sadhus are right,’ Hans said. ‘One must sit on nails and mortify the flesh.’ He pulled viciously at the flesh around his midriff, shouting, ‘It must be mortified so the thoughts will be controlled!’

  Prem hung his head. Perhaps Hans was right; perhaps he had been too soft with himself, indulging his unworthy thoughts instead of plucking them out. He felt a desire to confess to Hans. If only Hans would sit down close to him: he could not very well shout out his confession.

  But Hans was still walking around the room in agitation, so at last Prem said shyly from the floor, ‘I am also suffering from this same difficulty.’

  Hans stopped pacing, and he squatted down on his haunches in front of Prem. He scanned Prem’s face.

  ‘Yes, I—you see,’ but now that it came to confessing, Prem did not know how to.

  ‘That is interesting, very interesting,’ Hans said, his eyes still roaming Prem’s face as if he wanted to read secrets there.

  Prem looked down and drew invisible patterns on the floor. He wanted to tell Hans, but found it unbearably difficult to do so.

  ‘Your mind is also fixed too much on the things of the world?’

  Prem nodded silently. He swallowed, wanting to define what things they were specifically fixed on, but instead of speaking he cleared his throat. Telling of these things would involve mentioning, or at least referring to, the existence of Indu; and he could not bring himself to that.

  ‘But for you, an Indian, how easy it is!’ Hans cried. ‘By nature you are unworldly. But my nature is so that I thrust outwards to adventure and action——’

  ‘I am weak,’ Prem murmured, sinking his head lower and lower while he continued furiously to draw imaginary patterns.

  ‘A Westerner’s nature is so that he feels he must conquer the world. Can I change my nature so that I can conquer myself? This is what I strive for.’

  ‘I have not been married very long,’ Prem said in what was hardly more than a whisper. ‘Perhaps that is why’ but he could not say it further. He tried to force himself. It is my duty to tell, he persuaded himself; he is my friend. ‘I believe very much in friendship,’ he said. Hans looked at him attentively, as if he hoped to hear something very wise and true. ‘Friends must share everything. They must not hide anything from each other. Even if they don’t like to tell something to their friend, still they must tell it.’ Hans continued to look at him with that same expression of attentiveness, his pale eyes eager for knowledge. ‘For instance,’ Prem said, ‘I am your friend. But what do you know of me? Only by looking at my face you can learn nothing. If I want you to know me, I must open my heart to you and let you read everything that is there——’

  ‘I understand you!’ Hans cried. ‘Maya! Illusion! You are saying the outward thing, the face, is Illusion, and only what is inside is the Reality! How wise you speak!’ He grasped Prem’s hands and squeezed them. Admiration shone from his face. Prem, allowing his hands to be squeezed, thought it better not to say anything further. He was embarrassed and also disappointed, but he did not wish to destroy the good impression he had apparently created.

  There was still no letter from Indu. Every day he looked for one and every day he was disappointed. He left for the college in the morning with this feeling of disappointment, but returned at lunchtime buoyant with hope because the midday post might have brought a letter. Then he was disappointed again; and in the evening the proces
s was repeated.

  Sometimes he got angry and wanted to write her an angry letter. Once he did actually write such a letter. He had set his class a Hindi poem to paraphrase into prose; and while they were busy with this, he took a piece of paper and began to write to Indu. His students shuffled in their seats, sucked their pens and appealed to one another for help. Mr. Chaddha marched up and down in front of his blackboard, with his hands behind his back, lecturing in an important voice on the origins and development of the Congress movement. Prem thought only of his letter. He frowned as he wrote: ‘What harm did I do that you had to run from me without leaving even one note for me, and also no letter have you sent for me? Do I drink spirits or I beat you or perhaps I do not give you sufficient money for your household that you must treat me like this?’ The more he wrote the angrier he became. There was perspiration on his forehead and he was biting his lip. He did not notice that his students had finished or had given up and had gathered into groups to play four-on-ace. ‘It is the wife’s duty to stay with her husband, when once she has been married to him then she must stay with him and not run home to her parents when this whim comes over her.’ It was only when the bell rang to mark the end of the lesson that he remembered his class. He gathered in the exercise they had done, and spoke to them with a severity which was calculated to make up for his previous neglect. His letter he had folded tightly and thrust into his pocket. He did not tell himself that he did not mean to post it, but on his way home he tore it into very small pieces and threw it into the sewage canal.

  He spent as much time as his mother would let him lying on the big bed in his bedroom. He looked at the two cupids with their arms and wings entwined at the head of the bed and felt great longing and loneliness. How he had loved this bed, this room. But now it had lost everything; he sniffed the air, but instead of the smell of perspiration, hair-oil and vanilla essence there was only the smell of the disinfectant soap with which his mother had had the floor washed. He opened the drawer and took out the piece of pink satin he had bought, and he stroked it and admired it and put his lips to it. Then he went back to lie on the bed and looked with melancholy eyes at the cupids. Soon his mother would be calling him—‘Son? What are you doing, son?’—and he would have to go and sit with her in the living-room and listen to her talk about Ankhpur and her sons-in-law and the new Principal. And about the servant-boy. Every day she said, ‘He must be told to go.’ Every day Prem promised to dismiss him. Yet he never did.