The Householder

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  After that Prem became used to her bursting into tears in the course of her prayers—indeed, he even expected it. Consequently he was not at all surprised when he heard her deep sigh as she sat on the bed and told her beads; soon she had dropped the rosary into her lap and was wiping tears from her eyes and her cheeks with the end of her sari. ‘What has become of my life?’ she sobbed.

  But even though he had expected her tears, Prem could not help feeling sorry for her when he actually saw them. He cleared his throat, ran his hand over his hair and wished he could say something to comfort her.

  ‘What am I today?’ his mother said. ‘No one cares for me, no one thinks of me, I am nothing, less than nothing.’

  ‘We all care for you,’ Prem said hoarsely.

  His mother covered her face with her sari and sobbed from behind it. ‘Would it not be better for me to be dead?’

  ‘Why do you speak like that?’ Prem mumbled. He hardly dared look at her. Though he had never shown any disrespect towards her, yet he knew he was guilty. He did not need her or want her any more the way he had done before he was married.

  ‘Why should you care for me? You have your wife now, soon you will have a family—what is your mother to you now?’ She wiped at her eyes again. ‘It is so in life. When we are old we are forgotten. No one has need of us any more.’

  ‘Yesterday I brought a present for you,’ Prem said. ‘I wanted it to be a surprise for you.’ He went into the bedroom, opened the drawer and took out the piece of pink satin.

  Her eyes lit up as soon as she saw it. ‘You brought this for me?’ She stroked it, held it up to the light, touched it against her cheek. ‘What is the use of bringing such a thing for an old woman like me?’ She held it in front of herself. ‘For your wife you should bring.’

  ‘I brought it for you.’

  One evening he decided he wanted to see Raj again. He felt Raj was now the person with whom he had most in common and he wanted to have a long discussion with him about the problems of family life.

  Raj’s office was a sub-division of the Ministry of Food. It was housed in a row of barracks, consisting of one room next to the other and with a long narrow veranda running all down the row. The doors and windows were boarded with screens made of scented grass on which water was to be sprinkled to keep the rooms cool; however, the grass was quite dry and the rooms looked hot. Each room was divided into cubicles and they were all crowded with regulation office chairs, steel filing cabinets, tables littered over with odd charts and papers and brimming wire trays, telephones and big old-fashioned typewriters. Among these sat many clerks with their sleeves rolled up high and their foreheads wet with perspiration; from time to time they drank water or wiped their palms with handkerchiefs. The rooms looked close and tense with heat; old fans in inadequate working order creaked slow and lazy from the ceiling, stirring up hot air.

  Prem wandered down the stretch of veranda, peering round each grass-screened door to see if he could find Raj. But though all the clerks were rather like Raj, with oiled hair and thin worried faces, none of them actually was he. Prem wondered whether he could ask someone. He hardly dared, for everybody looked hot and bad-tempered; and after one short impatient glance when he first peered in, they took no further notice of him. The peons, who stood lounging outside on the veranda in their khaki uniforms, also took no notice of him; they were either sleeping or carrying on desultory conversation with one another.

  Prem lingered on the veranda and felt excluded. All these men were Government servants, graded correctly according to their official standing, with salaries and increments laid down precisely, with so many days sick leave a year, with a dearness allowance and family allowance apportioned to them. They belonged here, among the regulation chairs and tables and grass screens; they had their allotted share in the working of files and ordinances, and when they retired, they were given a pension which was in a fixed and settled ratio to what they had been earning all their working lives.

  Prem wanted very much to be one of them. If one succeeded in getting into government service, one’s future was settled; there was nothing more to fear. And one belonged somewhere, one was part of something bigger than oneself. That was just what Prem wanted: he felt a great need to be absorbed. He knew that this could never happen to him in Khanna Private College, for Khanna Private College was neither big nor impartial enough. But Government was: it was like a stern kind father who supported his children and demanded nothing in return but their subservience.

  At exactly five there was a rush from out of all the office rooms. Youngish men in frequently washed white shirts and thin gaberdine trousers rushed to the bus-stops or to the close-packed cycle sheds. Some of them already wore their cycle-clips round their legs. Prem was afraid of missing Raj in this crowd of clerks who all resembled him so closely, but it was not long before he saw him, hurrying with the same frowning intensity as the others towards the bus-stop. He was not at all pleased to see Prem.

  ‘Why do you come here?’ was his first greeting, and Prem at once felt guilty.

  ‘This is a Government office,’ Raj said severely. ‘It does not look nice for people who are not Government servants to come and pay social visits.’

  ‘I was only waiting outside,’ Prem mumbled. But he knew this was no excuse.

  He walked down the road with Raj. After a while he said, ‘Do you think it is possible for me to get into Government service?’ and he looked anxiously at Raj’s stern profile.

  Raj pursed his lips. ‘It is not easy.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘To make an application one has to fill in a long form and then there is a competitive examination and also an interview.’

  ‘An examination?’ Prem asked tremulously. He thought he had already passed all the examinations it was his duty in life to pass, and he did not feel like starting again.

  ‘A competitive examination,’ Raj said with some relish. ‘It is very difficult.’

  Prem hung his head. ‘I only wanted to——’

  ‘I know,’ Raj said dryly. ‘There are many people like you who only want to get into Government service.’

  ‘No, there is something else also,’ Prem said. But he found it difficult to explain what this was. The fact that he wanted to belong somewhere; and not only that, but also his whole position as householder, as husband, which he wanted to stabilize, register as it were, make sure and accepted. He was so different from the Prem who had been a student in Ankhpur College and had lived in his father’s house. He did not know how to say all this to Raj; so instead he said, ‘One day please bring your family to my house, I invite you.’

  ‘The bus fare to your house will come very expensive for me,’ Raj said.

  ‘When my wife comes home. She has gone to her parents.’

  Raj gently shook his head and made clicking noises with his tongue.

  ‘What is the matter?’

  Raj went on shaking his head: ‘Why did you let her go ?’

  Prem was embarrassed. He could not admit that she had gone on her own, without waiting for his consent, and indeed without even as much as leaving a note for him. But he was afraid that Raj might guess at something like that, so he said as lightly as he could, ‘Why not? They are her parents.’

  Raj looked shrewd: ‘Did you have a quarrel?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Prem said, kicking at stones on the road.

  ‘That is when wives usually go home to their parents. Is your mother still staying with you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Prem said, kicking away.

  ‘Ah,’ Raj said in a triumphant I-guessed-as-much voice.

  ‘They lived very well together,’ Prem said unconvincingly.

  Raj gave a mirthless laugh: ‘There is not much you can teach me about these things. Please remember, I have been married a good deal longer than you have. Here is my bus-stop. Good-bye.’

  ‘One minute,’ Prem said. He felt that they had just reached to the kind of conversation he had been longing to
have for a long time. But Raj saw his bus coming and he broke off into a run to join the queue at the bus-stop. Prem ran with him, shouting ‘When can we meet again?’ as he ran.

  Raj came too late. He was pushed back by the other passengers and the bus left without him. ‘How rude some people are in their behaviour,’ he said indignantly.

  ‘Perhaps we can meet again in the Regal Cinema at our usual time?’

  ‘Like college boys you want us to meet in a cinema,’ Raj said.

  ‘I will take you to a new place which I have found where we will get very good pakoras.’ Prem looked at him pleadingly.

  Just then another bus came. Raj quickly elbowed his way to the door, but when he had got on, he called to Prem, ‘I will see you on Monday.’

  But Monday seemed a long way off, and Prem felt heavy with the longing to talk about his life. And because there was no one he could talk to, he sat on the bed with his legs tucked under him and a note-pad on his lap. He wrote a letter to Indu: ‘If you will come home now, I shall be glad.’ He was almost tempted to write that he missed her, but he felt shy. For one thing, it was not something he felt it was proper for a husband to tell his wife; and for another, he knew all her family would read the letter and, if he wrote anything very personal like that, they would laugh or perhaps even be shocked. So he wrote, ‘We are all well. It is not very hot yet here for this time of year. There is a very good crop of mangoes and they have come down to only twelve annas a seer.’ He sucked his pen a little and stared at the two cupids entwined so lovingly at the head of the bed. And then he looked at the little table with the gilded lion-feet on which she had kept her hair-oil and her glass phial of scent; and he sniffed the air and smelt the carbolic soap which had replaced the smell of perspiration, vanilla essence and hair-oil.

  Suddenly he was writing quite differently, and instead of dawdling and hesitating over each word, his pen raced over the paper: ‘Why did you go away from me? I long for you and sometimes I feel like crying with tears because you are not there. I think of you so often. The house is empty without you and my heart also is empty. In the night I lie alone in our bed. Then I want to feel you and I remember how warm you always are and so soft like silk. I want to stroke you and kiss you everywhere with my mouth and then I want to be inside you. When I think of this, I feel I shall die with longing so much for you.’

  ‘Son!’ His mother came into the room. ‘What are you doing, son?’ Prem quickly covered the writing with his hand.

  ‘You are writing a letter? You are writing to your wife? Let me see.’ She held out her hand.

  ‘No no,’ he said. He tore off the sheet and crumpled it almost viciously and held it tight in his fist. He felt hot with shame. ‘I am only——’

  ‘I have cooked rice and mincemeat for you, son,’ she said proudly. ‘Come and eat.’

  ‘I am just coming. Please take it out for me.’ When she had gone, he released the crumpled ball of paper from his fist and let it drop to the floor. He took matches and set fire to it on the stone floor; he swept up the ashes carefully in his hand and threw them out of the window. He felt terribly ashamed of himself. Hans is right, he thought; a person like me, with so many evil uncontrolled thoughts, must mortify the flesh until all shameful desire is purged away. And yet, even while he was thinking this, he longed for Indu and to do to her all the things he had written.

  After the tea-party had, from his point of view, proved such a failure, he had not liked to give much thought to his obligation to ask for a rise in salary. But it still remained, he knew, an obligation. Sooner or later he would have to approach Mr. Khanna again on the subject. He was very reluctant to do so. He was put off by the thought of again going upstairs into Mr. Khanna’s living-room and standing there, asking for a rise in salary, while Mr. Khanna ate his breakfast and Mrs. Khanna looked suspiciously at Prem’s feet lest they dirtied her carpet. He felt it was difficult to keep up one’s dignity in such a situation.

  But he could send a letter. It would be so much easier to state his case in writing, pointing out how he was a family man and had to pay 45 rupees rent a month. ‘If I write a letter,’ he told Sohan Lal, with whom he consulted on this point, ‘I will be able to give my story at length and convince him it is really necessary for me to have a rise in salary.’

  ‘You can try if you like,’ said Sohan Lal in a voice which did not commit him to any comment on the success or unsuccess of the venture.

  So in the evening, when he got home, Prem tried. He sat down on the bed with a note-pad (the same on which he had begun to write his letter to Indu) and tried to formulate a petition to Mr. Khanna. Since it was a petition he started off with ‘If it please you, sir’; but after that it was difficult for him to progress. There were so many points to be considered. As he put it to Sohan Lal the next day: ‘I will have to write in official style to make him see that my demand is just, but I also want to be personal and touching, so that his feelings will be softened.’ It took several consultations more and a lot of sitting on the bed with the note-pad before he finally got his petition completed. He liked his beginning, which was straightforward and factual: ‘I am a lecturer in your college.’ From there he went on to define the duties of a lecturer, ending up with, ‘And so, is it not right to presume that a lecturer’s great responsibility to Youth and Learning entitles him to higher salary than is given to him?’ After that he became official again (‘I submit hereby my request for rise in salary’) but followed it up with an account of his personal history. From then on he hinted rather than stated directly, ‘You also must have learnt from experience, sir, that when once a man marries, soon other things follow and it is not long before he has the burden of a family to support’, and ended up in a crescendo of personal appeal: ‘I stand before you with folded hands and trust in your goodness that you will not turn aside the appeal of one who has only recently started out in life and is in need of assistance and kind thoughts from his elders.’ After reading this over several times, he added ‘and betters’.

  There remained the problem of how to present this petition to Mr. Khanna. He thought about it all evening. He saw himself knocking on Mr. Khanna’s door, walking into the room with sure and certain steps, laying his letter before the Principal, joining his hands in a respectful manner, and then leaving the room as softly, courteously but confidently, as he had entered it. It seemed easy enough when he thought about it like that, but all the same he wished he did not have to do it. So much did he wish this, that he even looked in the morning’s paper to see if there was no suitable job advertised for him. There was not, so he went to look in the old papers stacked on a shelf in the kitchen. And as he sat on the floor, looking through the advertisement columns of old papers, he remembered that other time when he had sat among the old papers on the kitchen floor looking for a possible job. He remembered that he had felt sad then; and he felt rather sad now. But it was different. The only thing that was the same was that there were no jobs advertised for him. He looked through column after column and wished he were an engineer or a town planner or a doctor. His mother called from inside, ‘Son, why are you in the kitchen?’ At that moment it occurred to him why it was so different from the other time he had looked through the papers for a job. Then he had felt sad because Indu was there; now he felt sad because she was not there. He folded the papers back and called to his mother that he was coming.

  He did not shrink from his decision. Next day he really walked up the stairs to Mr. Khanna’s private apartment, holding the letter tightly in his hand. But his plan was upset when he saw that Mr. Khanna was not there. Only Mrs. Khanna and three other ladies. They sat in a close circle, each one stirring in a tea-cup; one lady was talking and the others leaning eagerly towards her. Their eyes were gleaming. ‘Every afternoon from two to five when her husband was in office,’ the lady was saying. The others swayed their heads and clicked their tongues. They did not notice Prem. ‘And the children in the house all the time,’ the lady said in a shocked gloat
ing voice. ‘Hai-hai,’ said Mrs. Khanna with another click of the tongue. The teaspoons went round in the cups in quick agitation.

  Prem cleared his throat and the four heads spun round towards him. ‘What do you want?’ Mrs. Khanna shouted hoarsely.

  ‘Mr. Khanna,’ Prem said, holding out the letter. It shook slightly for his hand was trembling. The four ladies looked at him angrily.

  ‘This is what it is like in a college,’ Mrs. Khanna told the others. ‘Not one moment’s rest or peace. Every minute these people come to bother you.’

  ‘It is not right,’ said one lady.

  ‘They must be told,’ said another.

  ‘What is the use of telling,’ said Mrs. Khanna. ‘Now leave your letter and go!’ she shouted at Prem. They drew their chairs closer together and leant towards each other. ‘And what is worse …’ the lady began again. Prem shut the door behind him. As he walked down the stairs, he could hear a loud delighted gasp of shock emitted in chorus.

  ‘It was very embarrassing for me,’ Prem commented when he had told Sohan Lal about this occurrence. He could still feel the ladies’ angry looks on his face. ‘I am a lecturer of the college. I have the right to go upstairs.’

  ‘She doesn’t like us to come up,’ Sohan Lal said in a matter-of-fact way.

  ‘Why?’ Prem insisted, ready to argue the point out. But Sohan Lal was not. He knew he could not afford to annoy the Principal’s wife and that was all the argument needed for him.