The Moneylenders of Shahpur

by Helen Forrester

  The parade to the communal bathrooms could be heard shuffling up and down the corridors and slowly sleep crept through the building. In that time, Tilak finally made up his mind.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  While Tilak dozed the afternoon away and John worked, Diana Armstrong trudged through the blinding heat to Pandipura village. She wished she could have afforded a tonga, but she had already spent eight annas on one to John’s house, and that was the limit if she were to be sure of eating for the rest of the month.

  ‘You don’t have to see this old girl at Pandipura,’ she told herself, as she paused to wipe the sweat from her eyelids with her handkerchief. She had, however, volunteered to keep a watch on her, so, after a moment, she went on again.

  The operation on the scrawny body had been a success, and it seemed as if the woman’s excellent constitution would lead to her early recovery. They had not counted, however, on the stark fear of being cut open, nor on the fact that she had expected that such a cut would fester and that she would die.

  Dr Ferozeshah had found her by the roadside near his house when taking his usual early morning walk. She and her niece had been on their way to the market with a basket of vegetables when the pain which had been bothering her for some days had suddenly flared up. The young girl was seated with the woman’s head in her lap trying to soothe her. Though the old woman was doubled up with pain, it had taken the united efforts of the watchman’s wife and Diana, hastily called by the doctor, to persuade her to come into the consulting room to be examined. Nothing would persuade her to remove her cotton skirts, so the doctor had to feel through them to find the source of the pain.

  He diagnosed appendicitis and advised an immediate operation, which was enough to send the old woman nearly into hysterics. She tried to get off the examination table. Dr Ferozeshah, and the sharp agony within, persuaded her to lie down again, while he sent the watchman’s son out to Pandipura to get her brother-in-law.

  Once over her first panic, she gasped to Diana that she had been a widow for years and that her brother-in-law, with whom she lived, disliked her very much. It was better that she should die.

  Diana suggested that this would be tantamount to suicide, since the doctor had the power to cure her. She took a cloth and wiped the sweat off the sick woman’s face, and added, ‘There may be work for you to do yet, respected mother. Grandsons or grandnephews to guide. Motherless children to look after.’

  A gaggle of relations had come running, babbling with fear of the unknown. They had blenched when the doctor had explained what needed to be done. The brother-in-law, his small, bright eyes shifting uneasily from the doctor’s feet to his face, had said, ‘I remember, Sahib, that when the cholera raged, you and the city Doctor Sahib came to our village and put needles in us to save us. I do not forget this, Sahib – but a cut like that would fester and mean certain death. Why bother? A little opium may help her to get over the pain and recover.’ He shrugged, as if to suggest that the woman’s life was of little importance.

  His sister-in-law had all this time been lying on the examination table, breathing heavily and trying not to moan. Suddenly she had spoken up.

  ‘There is no particular reason why I should live,’ she gasped, ‘but let the Doctor Sahib assuage the pain in any way he can. If I don’t recover, who will mourn me?’ She turned her head and glared malevolently at her brother-in-law.

  The brother-in-law spluttered about the cost.

  ‘I shall not charge,’ Dr Ferozeshah assured him, and before anybody could say anything more, he called the bearer to wheel the woman into the next room and told Diana to scrub up.

  A cry of real fear burst from the forlorn little group behind the brother-in-law, but the doctor turned and said authoritatively, ‘One of you stay here to cook for her. There is a veranda where you may sleep and cook, and a well in the yard. Bring in a little food to which she is accustomed.’

  With much going to and fro and grumbling and fussing, it had all been arranged. After a few days, the invalid had been carried home on a stretcher borne by her nephews. She was cheerful and had undoubtedly enjoyed being made a fuss of and the unaccustomed rest in a real bed with a cotton mattress. Not so many of her caste practices had been flouted, and she hoped that prayer and suitable ablutions, when she was well, would appease her caste brethren.

  Diana reached the village and stood for a minute in the shade of a tree by the well, to recuperate from the heat.

  How very quiet everything was. Though it was long past the hour of afternoon naps, there was none of the usual shouting back and forth between housewives across the lanes, no sound of scolding mothers, no sound of goatherds playing their flutes – or a cloud of dust on the horizon to herald the return of the buffaloes to be milked. A few men sat on string beds outside their houses. They were talking quietly, heads close together, not arguing loudly with lots of gesturing, as they usually did. When a woman with a small child on her hip came out of one house, crossed the lane and went into another house, Diana relaxed. It must be the heat, she decided. She walked briskly down the main lane and then turned into another, in which her patient lived.

  The woman’s brother-in-law and his sons rose from their string bed outside the hut door and greeted her politely. Two women came out and led her inside to the old woman. They watched quietly, as Diana checked and changed the dressing, and took the woman’s temperature and blood pressure. It was obvious to her that her patient was far from well; yet the wound appeared clean and healing. The silence of the waiting relatives oppressed her – Indians were not a silent people. Diana slowly put her thermometer back into its case. She wondered if something had happened to the village as a whole; had a fine been levied collectively for some misdemeanour? Or were they afraid of some infectious disease? Or had they lost a crop?

  The hut in which she stood was clean, she noted, its earthen floor smooth and shining from a recent application of cow dung; the talis and other eating utensils twinkled on a shelf cut out of the earthen walls; the womenfolk’s spare skirts and a couple of clean, unwound turbans hung neatly over a rope stretched across the hut, so as to divide it and give a little privacy; a figurine of the Elephant God, Ganesh, shone softly in a corner, a small offering of rice before it. Everything was as it should be, and yet she sensed that something was wrong.

  The woman opened her eyes, knew her and tried to smile. Again, Diana took her wrist to check the faltering pulse. In slow, clear Gujerati, she teased the old lady that she would soon be up and making flower offerings in the temple in thanks for her recovery. Now she was going to give her a pill, something like opium, which would give her a good, long sleep, after which she should feel very much stronger.

  ‘Radhabahin,’ murmured the sick woman. ‘Sister of God.’ She trustingly swallowed the pill.

  As Diana went outside to speak to the three men and the two older women who followed her, she was worried. She reiterated to the relations that the woman would live, if the family would help her. Perhaps the little niece could be delegated to sit with her, hold her hand, fan her, make her feel she was needed and respected.

  ‘She’s not easy to live with,’ the brother-in-law said frankly.

  Diana laughed, and responded, ‘We all grow old and impatient, in time.’

  The response was an absent-minded smile, instead of the light joke which she had expected. She snapped her little black bag closed and said she would return on the following day.

  It’s as if all their cheerful gossip has been turned off, by order, she thought crossly.

  Across the way, she was almost relieved to see Miss Prasad, a volunteer who came each week to teach women to read. She was asking Jivraj, a member of the village council, if he could send a donkey to fetch her servant, who was sitting by the side of the track leading to the village, unable to walk because she had a thorn deeply embedded in her foot. After the lesson, Miss Prasad would like to retain the animal to take her servant home. She would see that it was returned the following
day.

  Jivraj was looking most uncomfortable. He was an old man and he walked with the support of a grandson, a quiet, wide-eyed boy, round whose shoulders he draped one arm. In his right hand he held a staff for further support. His short, frilly jacket hung loosely on him and his dhoti flapped against sticklike legs. Jivraj had faced many famines, many disasters, and Diana thought that life could hardly present him with a problem he could not solve; and, yet, the polite request for a donkey from a most respected lady had obviously put him out.

  ‘All the donkeys are at work, Miss,’ he was telling her. He dug his stick into the sand and looked around him doubtfully. ‘They will be busy for several days.’ Then relief dawned on the lined, tired face. ‘My grandson can go and help her,’ he said.

  Miss Prasad’s earnest face still showed some anxiety, but she agreed to this. His grandson helped the old man back to his seat on the string bed outside his house, and then skipped away to find the servant.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ Diana called as cheerfully as she could to Miss Prasad.

  ‘Namuste,’ responded Miss Prasad briskly, as she gestured to a growing group of women and children to follow her to the shade of a nearby neem tree. She set up a tiny blackboard, and, as Diana made her farewells to her patient’s family, the women sat down cross-legged and began to chant the letters of the alphabet, as she wrote them on the board. Diana had seen her do this in many villages, and usually the women made a social event of the occasion and there was much laughter. Today, they kept their veils across their faces and sometimes their excellent memories slipped.

  ‘I can’t imagine what’s up,’ Diana thought irritably, as she waved to them in passing. ‘But something is.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Tilak waited patiently until the students’ hostel had been perfectly quiet for over an hour. Then he moved swiftly.

  He dug out a clean shirt and cotton trousers from his untidy cupboard. Taking a towel and a sliver of soap, he walked with his usual, quick, masterful stride down to the indescribably filthy bathrooms. He found a shower cabinet less disgusting than the others and made a hasty toilet. Back in his room, he put on his clean clothes and his chuppells and slipped his torch into his pocket.

  Very quietly he opened the door of his room.

  The passage was empty, except that at the far end a servant lay sleeping on a mat outside a door.

  Tilak glided across the passage and down the ill-lit main stairs. Behind the last flight of stairs he found a narrow door, made originally for the entry of Untouchable cleaners. It creaked when he opened it and he waited for a second or two to make sure that the nightwatchman, sitting on his stool towards the front of the building, had not heard him. Then he slid silently through it and left it a trifle ajar for his return.

  The moon had risen and cast a great shadow of the building. Tilak made full use of it. The ground was rough, undeveloped land, criss-crossed by tiny paths made by many student feet. He found one of these paths leading to the lane bordering the campus, and followed it. Once out of the shadow, he might be seen by a watchman, but he would be far enough away not to be recognized.

  He began to breathe more easily. There was no curfew to prevent his taking a walk at night, but anyone observing him would undoubtedly gossip speculatively about his being out at such a late hour.

  On the other side of the lane bordering the campus, grazing land stretched for at least a mile, and he could hear heavy beasts moving about and snuffling at the herbage. The herdsmen must be somewhere near, he thought, and he walked lightly, using the shadows of a few mango trees to mask his presence as much as possible.

  He saw them before they saw him. They were crouched in a tight circle, their woollen blankets clutched around them against the night chill. When they heard him, they sprang to their feet and raised their staffs ready. Tilak lifted his hand in salute and passed on quickly; he did not know whether he was recognized or not.

  He reached the row of bungalows in which many of the senior professors lived. Here he paused, beside a small Jain temple which lay a little to the rear of them. His head throbbed and his throat was dry. He had walked so fast that his breath came in short gasps.

  He wanted the eighth bungalow from where he stood. He forced himself to think carefully. The Dean, he reasoned, would at this time of year probably be sleeping in the courtyard, the boy servant nearby; Anasuyabehn, with her sharp-eyed aunt, would be either on the inner veranda or on the roof. The problem was to get close enough to the girl to talk to her without waking her family. Would he have to get on to the roof? And thence, possibly down to the veranda? That, he decided, would be madness.

  He began to move, rather uncertainly, down the field path that ran at the back of the bungalows. His heart sank when he realized that a bungalow emitting a great deal of light from its back window was that of the Dean.

  ‘I’m crazy,’ he muttered, and wondered if he should look for an opportunity to speak to Anasuyabehn when she went out to the bazaar or the library. ‘But it could take days,’ he told himself, ‘and then she might have the servant with her.’

  The lighted window was open and the thin curtains flapped sporadically in the night breeze. Was a late-working Dean behind the curtains? Or a sleepless old lady? Or Anasuyabehn?

  The curtains solved the problem for him by suddenly billowing inward. Before they subsided, he caught a glimpse of Anasuyabehn sitting on an iron bed, reading. His mercurial spirits rose. What luck!

  He crept forward to stand at the side of the window, so that he would not be silhouetted against the light. He had to find out if she were alone. When, eventually, the curtains obliged by flipping inward again, he could observe no one else, so he chanced anyone being in the corner outside his line of vision, and called softly, ‘Bahin!’

  The quiet voice calling ‘Sister’ through the window shocked Anasuyabehn. She dropped her book and jumped off the bed to slam the window shut before the impudent student or would-be thief had time for action, but again the voice came, ‘Anasuyabehn!’

  ‘Ramji!’ she exclaimed, and gripped a window bar for support. With the other hand, she parted the curtains slightly. The shadow of a neem tree dappled the side of the house and she could see no one. ‘Doctor Sahib,’ she whispered.

  ‘Put the light out,’ whispered the disembodied voice hoarsely.

  In her agitation she vacillated.

  ‘Don’t be frightened,’ urged Tilak, his usual irritability apparent in his tone. ‘There are excellent window bars between us.’

  Shakily, she went across the room and switched the light off. Then she wrapped her sari closer round herself and returned. A small plump hand timidly drew one of the curtains back. ‘Bhai,’ she whispered. ‘What are you doing here? Go home before you’re caught.’ Here was romance straight out of a Western novel, but it was too scary.

  There was no reply to her question, so she gripped the window bars to peer out, and gave a frightened squeak as a masculine hand closed over one of hers. ‘Brother,’ she gasped again imploringly, as she tried to free her hand.

  Tilak was entranced and held her firmly. He could just see her face glimmering in the moonlight, despite the tracery of the tree shadow, and behind her was the immense shadow of her loosed hair. Though the folds of her cotton sari covered her completely, she was blouseless and petticoatless. He could feel the heat of her body and smell her perfume. He nearly choked with desire and leaned close to the unyielding bars.

  As he put his arm through the bars and then round her shoulders, she sobbed, ‘Bhai, please, please go home. You’ll be caught – and I’ve enough grief to bear without any more.’ She burst into tears. Without thinking, she laid her wet face on the arm which gripped her, and Tilak came to his senses.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ he said softly. ‘I’m sorry I frightened you.’

  He had come to find out if his feelings were in any way reciprocated. Now he knew by the trustful way in which she wept in his arms that love was there. All the ancient love stories
seemed suddenly to be true. He was going to fight for this woman.

  The words came tumbling from him. ‘Rani,’ he said. ‘All I want to do is to marry you and take you to England and make you happy. I’m going to England to study – I can take you with me …’

  ‘I’m to be married to Mahadev Desai,’ she interposed, her voice lifeless. ‘Tomorrow some relations will arrive – the first guests – and Aunt has already sent for the astrologer to name the day. Desais have already sent the last gifts before the marriage. I am inundated with silken saris and jewellery.’

  The jackals howled at the moon and the insects sang, while Tilak silently digested this information. In the distance, the nightwatchman called to his relief man to take over.

  ‘I have to be quick,’ he told her. ‘When is the marriage likely to be?’ He slipped his hand under her hair and ran his fingers along her neck. She shivered, and said, ‘Two or three weeks, probably.’

  ‘You must prevaricate – bribe the astrologer. Pretend to be ill. Defer it somehow while I make arrangements.’ She was trembling under his touch, but she did not draw back, and he thought that few would let him come so near, bars or no bars. She loves me, he rejoiced.

  Her deepset eyes searched the gloom to see his dark face. ‘Father is so upset by you. He’d never give permission.’

  ‘Nothing’s hopeless,’ he assured her passionately. ‘We’re old enough to decide for ourselves. Would you like to marry me?’

  Her teeth flashed, as she smiled up at him, and the heavens rang with pure joy for him, before she even breathed out, ‘Oh, yes, of course.’

  With a curious prescience, Tilak felt that this was the happiest moment of his life, and he savoured it.

  The fresh watchman’s staff was plunking down the front lane. ‘I must go,’ he said. ‘Meet me tomorrow. Where?’