by Anita Desai
‘Nur Sahib,’ stammered Deven, once again overcome by his own presumption in appearing before so great a man, and by the poet’s graciousness in allowing him to do so. How was it possible not to become a chela, a disciple, when in the presence of such an undeniable guru?
‘Is it you, Deven?’ the old man murmured tearfully. ‘You have heard? You have come because you heard?’
‘No, Sahib, I haven’t heard,’ Deven said nervously, wondering what new and fearful element had entered upon the scene when he was not watching. ‘I – don’t know –’
‘That she’s so ill? Imtiaz Begum? Lying ill in her room and no doctor able to help?’ groaned Nur, rubbing his forehead back and forth across the palm of his hand as though faced with the great dilemma of his life.
‘Oh?’ said Deven, trying to sound shocked and frightened but actually brightening with quick relief. ‘Is that so? Is it very – very –?’
‘You see what has come of that mistaken celebration we had for her birthday? I did not want it at all – I am superstitious – but she insisted – and it proved too much for her. She is not strong, you see. She never was very strong, and she breaks easily – under strain –’
‘Strain?’
‘Yes, yes, terrible strain – having to face an audience, having to perform before it – according to the standards she sets herself. She collapsed that very night, you know,’ he snivelled into his hand.
Deven stood respectfully at the door, hands clenched before him, but allowed himself the thought that it was more likely the beating she had had at the hands of the older woman – older wife? – that had brought about this ‘collapse’. Nor could he entirely quell his rejoicing at hearing who had lost the battle. It was fortunate the room was so dark that he could conceal his expression. Yet it was the darkness that made the sound of the old man snivelling more pathetic, like a child’s crying in the night. He came forward to soothe him, tentatively.
‘Perhaps, sir,’ he murmured, ‘it is only a passing – passing ailment. My son, too, is down with a fever. The doctor says it is a virus. Maybe the begum is also ill with a virus.’
To his relief Nur seemed glad to accept this prosaic explanation. ‘You think so? You think it can be?’ he asked at once. ‘Then we should take her to a hospital. I am wanting to – I was saying she must go – she has been ill for so many days, ever since that night –’
‘Ever since that night?’ repeated Deven, exulting.
‘She is wasting away, poor woman. She has had no food, she refuses to eat unless I go and feed her, spoon by spoon, and even then she won’t swallow more than a few spoonfuls. I told them all – I keep telling them she must go to the hospital –’
‘Nur Sahib, that is an excellent idea!’ Deven called out elatedly, much too loudly: he could not help that; he thought of that threatening presence withdrawn from the house, leaving it to Nur and to him so that they could conduct the taped interview in peace, without her evil interruptions. It seemed like a piece of pure gold, such fortune as had never come his way before. Naturally he could not suppress the ring in his voice.
Nur suppressed it for him. ‘Of course she would not agree,’ he moaned. ‘She refused. She cries and weeps if they come to take her to the hospital, and then her temperature rises. It was a hundred and one yesterday, you know. Also she is having diarrhoea. I got so frightened that I begged them to leave her – I told them I would nurse her myself – and she wept in my arms when I said that, you know, wept in my arms –’
Deven withdrew, frowning, feeling more than a little impatient with the old man’s weakness and gullibility. It might be a good idea to give him a stiff drink to make him more aware of his own powers, his own individuality and commitment and vocation. He looked around the shadowy room to see if he could spot the bottle, a tray and a glass. Since he could not, he decided to try to distract the poet from this dismal subject. But he had little gift for speech, for conversation, so little practice in it, and knew only how to stumble awkwardly to the point, gracelessly. ‘Nur Sahib, you remember I spoke to you of this special issue of Urdu poetry in Awaaz? I had hoped that today – since I have come so early – we might be able to discuss it a little –’
Nur stopped rubbing his nose in the palm of his hand and peered through his fingers at Deven. Deven could not make out if it was with interest or amazement, so he continued, ‘I hoped you would give me some time and that we could begin –’
‘Yes,’ murmured Nur, lowering his hands to his knees, straightening his back and growing quite calm. ‘It is certainly time to start. Before Time crushes us into dust we must record our struggle against it. We must engrave our name in the sand before the wave comes to sweep it away and make it a part of the ocean. Only yesterday I was thinking about an old poem of mine that I wrote in the days when I was a student, when I was starving, when I was facing the same certainty that the hand of Time was descending to crush me like a fly, and I remembered those lines. They have never been published – but they all came back to me and I wanted to write them down. If only I still had my secretary, that poor boy. If only I had time –’
‘Please give me some of your time, Sahib,’ Deven begged in an urgent whisper. ‘I cannot take dictation, I haven’t learnt shorthand but I have arranged for a tape recorder so that your recitation can be recorded. We will not need to write out questions and answers. I will switch on the machine and you can recite and speak and say all you wish on any subject and it will be recorded on tape for everyone to hear –’
The old man was frowning, his mouth pouting in the centre of the tousled beard. ‘A record, you say? Record – like in the cinema? For songs? I am not one of those singing poets, you know, some performer at weddings and festivals –’
Deven lowered himself on to a stool beside the bed and prepared to explain whatever he himself understood of the technicalities of a tape recording. He suddenly realized – Nur’s protests made him realize – that he was undertaking something of which he knew very little and which ought to be done professionally if at all, and certainly not as some dilettante’s self-indulgence. If it was really to be of professional standard, it ought to be done in a studio, by technicians. Strange – he shifted uncomfortably – that neither Murad nor Siddiqui nor Jain nor Chiku had ever mentioned a studio. What made them think that he, who scarcely knew how to turn on a radio, could perform a task of such a highly specialized nature? He was seized by fear that he was completely unfit for the project, the wrong choice for it: this was evidently no matter for amateurs, and he was less than one. With its many facets, some literary and artistic, others technical, who was he to take control of them all, put them all together and then in a manner worthy of the poet and his verse, of the universities and the students who studied his work in them. Where was such an expert to be had? There was only he, totally inadequate, incompetent and unconfident. But now it was too late to withdraw. He would have to stretch himself as he had never stretched before, reach for something he had not been trained to reach nor was qualified to reach, and use whatever capacities he had to the fullest in order to achieve something worthy of his hero. But what were his capacities? Like sandflies, they disappeared into the shadows, first tormenting him and then withdrawing and vanishing.
Nervously spreading his hands, he tried to convince both Nur and himself. ‘If we could spend a few quiet mornings together in this room sir – if you could give me a time when we would be left undisturbed – I could bring the tape recorder with me, and also my – my assistant who will work it – and then you could speak or recite, as you liked. I could perhaps begin by asking you a few questions about your life and work, your ideas, too, and you could answer those you wanted to answer, briefly or at length, just as if you were writing your memoirs. If you prefer, you could recite your poetry instead, and it would all be taken down on tape. Later I would take it away and edit it and prepare it for the Awaaz article, or your memoirs, or a new volume of verse, anything you want. It would take only a few sessions. If y
ou can tell me when it is possible –’
But after listening very intently and attentively, his head lowered so that it was very close to Deven’s, and seeming to consider the matter very seriously, the old man shook his head and withdrew, sighing, ‘You do not know what you are saying. I recite the story of my life here, in this house, when she is so ill in her room, there?’ He pointed through the door to the room across the courtyard. ‘She would hear – it would disturb her – and then, you know, she does not like me to recite any more.’
‘Why?’ burst out Deven furiously, pressing his fingers into the edge of the divan. ‘Why will she not allow you to recite your poetry when she recited hers in – in public? We all come to hear you – poetry lovers come only to hear you – why does she stop you then?’
Nur grimaced with horror. ‘Shh, shhhh,’ he hissed at Deven. ‘Don’t speak like that, we will be heard. I am forbidden. You don’t understand. She is right – absolutely right – I only make a fool of myself – an old man, my day is over – and people laugh, or feel bored, they want someone new, and young, you see –’
‘Who told you that?’ Deven cried in a passion. ‘It is a lie. We all come to this house to hear you, only you – it is your poetry we love, Nur Sahib.’
‘Don’t shout! You are mad, you will be heard,’ the poet cried, throwing himself about in fright. ‘You had better go. I told you – it is impossible. No, no, we can’t – please put this idea out of your head – don’t talk to me about it any more,’ and he covered up his ears with his hands and refused to listen.
Deven sprang up, sending the stool flying in his indignation. He had come so close! He had come so close to convincing not only the poet but, what was almost as hard, himself, and now – ‘Nur Sahib,’ he began, when the bamboo screen in the door lifted and Ali came in, saying, ‘Nur Sahib, the begum is calling you. She has something to say to you, very important – she wants you.’ Then, staring at Deven, he added, ‘And your visitor also – she wants to speak to him too.’
Deven and Nur exchanged wild looks. How had she known he was here, when he had crept in so quietly and secretly? Was everyone in the house a spy, set to keep an eye on the poet? Deven realized there was no question of holding the interview or getting the tape recording done in this nest of her spies where they would not be safe for a moment from her jealousy or her vengeance – if these were indeed, as they seemed to be, her motives in persecuting him.
If similar thoughts went through Nur’s head at that moment one could not tell. There was only a pathetic resignation in the old man’s posture as he rose to his feet, supporting himself on Ali’s shoulders, and shuffled towards the door, clutching at his loose pyjamas like some intimidated schoolboy. The pyjama string dangled beneath the hem of his shirt, somehow adding to his look of helplessness. ‘She is so ill, and wants me,’ he said to Deven as if in an appeal for understanding.
But Deven could not bring himself to trust her even if she were on her deathbed, and found himself cowering a little behind Nur, remembering vividly the scene in which she had flown at the older woman across the prostrate body of the poet.
Outside her door an old woman sat holding the small boy on her lap, rocking him. Nur stooped over them for a moment, murmuring, ‘Poor boy, poor boy, he had only his mother – his father much too old – too old for such a pretty baby, pretty boy – and his little mother, too, his mother now –’ but the old woman drew back, tightening her hold on the child and grimacing with annoyance so that he moved sadly on and went in.
Deven was relieved to find that she was lying in bed – reclining upon it, propped up against large pillows with frilled edges. Her thin and perfectly triangular face, lined and furrowed with fever and fretfulness, was as small as a sick child’s between the lank folds of her horrendously dyed black hair. Deven’s eyes shifted uneasily from the sight of these black loops to that of similar coils strewn around her bed on the floor. Had there been another fight, he wondered in panic, as between jealous tigresses? Was this a common scene in this home of ferocious felines? Would they not, between them, devour the helpless quaking flesh of the poet and his as well?
‘Come closer,’ she said weakly and, stepping carefully over the clumps, he realized they were only the black thread plaits that she used for thickening her own hair which was quite thin and hung over her shoulders like two rats’ tails. Wearing a broad bandage across her forehead, she looked like the victim of an accident, or of a sacrifice that had left her with nothing.
Her acolytes hovered around her. One young girl knelt at her bedside and massaged her feet, rhythmically. Another stood at her head, stirring a cup of milk and fussily blowing on it, for it was steaming hot. The odour of chewed straw, of cud, rose with the steam. Deven recognized her as the woman who had sung the accompaniment that night in the courtyard.
Weakly lifting up a hand that was narrow and long and painted all over with a henna pattern that made it look like a glove of snakeskin, she said very clearly in a high-pitched voice that boded ill, Deven knew boded ill, ‘Before you persuade that confused old man to appear in public, take one look at one who has done so – and suffered.’
‘But,’ said Deven, taking one step backwards and nearly falling over Nur who had somehow contrived to get behind him instead of in front of him, ‘but I was not planning – I had no intention –’
The reptilian hand swayed in the air, warningly. ‘You do not deceive me even if you have thrown dust in his poor weak eyes. I have made my inquiries – I have found out about you. I know your kind – jackals from the so-called universities that are really asylums for failures, trained to feed upon our carcasses. Now you have grown impatient, you can’t even wait till we die – you come to tear at our living flesh –’
‘Bibi, my heart,’ interrupted Nur, coming forwards agitatedly, ‘I don’t know what your spies – ah, friends – have told you about Deven. I can tell you he is not trying to murder you, or me, or anyone –’ he broke into a nervous giggle, and fell silent under her contemptuous look.
‘Jackals don’t murder,’ she said coolly. ‘They wait for others to murder, because they haven’t the courage. Then they come to feed on the flesh.’
Deven felt a prickling up his spine and Nur tried unsuccessfully to laugh. ‘What flesh, bibi, my heart? Dear heart, you are ill –’
‘Yes, I am,’ she cried, sitting bolt upright in bed so that the sheets slipped off her and the women who attended her stepped backwards, and then hurried forwards to adjust them. She waved them aside – nervy, irritable, imperious, inconsiderate and frantic. They trembled as they tried to soothe her with little sucking sounds of their lips – they feared her as much as they admired her, keeping at a distance as from a poisonous snake, a snake that was also an object of worship. Yet there was gentleness in their ministrations that showed they pitied her as well, that they found here much to be pitied. She glared past them at the two men. ‘Still my eyes can see more clearly than yours. You,’ she said, spitting at Deven from between her very small, sharp teeth, ‘you – tell me why you keep coming here. What are you here for?’
‘I? I come as – as others come,’ Deven tried not to stammer and to hold his ground, feeling he was beginning to understand her a little. ‘To pay my respects to – to a distinguished poet, to hear him recite –’
‘He will not recite,’ she hissed, making small white bubbles of spit fly.
‘Dear heart, I will not, no, I will not recite,’ Nur assured her, coming closer to the bed with his hands outstretched. ‘I am giving no recitation again, ever, please don’t think I am.’
Suddenly her eyes turned from hard black beads to liquid and tears streamed down her cheeks, blackening them with kohl. ‘Yes, you will,’ she wailed like a child, ‘you may. Call your friends. Call for drinks. Sit and recite your poems. Sing, let everyone clap and dance while I – while I lie here, dying.’
Nur clucked with horror, ‘Bibi, how can you think –’ he protested, lowering himself to the edge of her
bed while the women attendants rose up and began to fuss. ‘Please calm yourself – please don’t think such things – please lie still – you are ill –’
She threw herself back into her pillows and more black cotton came undone from her head, leaving her scalp very nearly bald. She looked much thinner and smaller suddenly, like a child who has fever, and her hands tore at the sheets in what might have been feigned or else very real anguish. Nur reached out to catch them and still them between his, making small consoling sounds with his lips, and Deven stumbled backwards until he sensed he was near the door, fresh air and sunlight, then turned around and, restraining his impulse to flee, walked out with dignified deliberation.
Out on the staircase his feet could be heard to clatter in rapid descent, although his relief was actually mixed with a large measure of regret at having left without making any arrangements or even an appointment with Nur for the interview he still hoped passionately to record. The question was – where, and how? Perhaps it was as well he was giving himself time to ponder the matter. It was quite obvious that the recording could not be done in this house: even if the begum were genuinely ill, she would somehow become aware, her long needle-like nose would make her aware, of what she would definitely consider an act of treason and no doubt she would find some scandalous way to sabotage it. So he must somehow spirit Nur away, and take him elsewhere – to Murad’s office? Murad’s house? – and arrange for the recording to be done there. Deven had still enough wits left about him to realize that this was an opportunity no poetry lover, still less a lecturer hoping for a promotion or at least a confirmation, could possibly forgo. Only the practical details of arranging such a session – or a series of such sessions – remained. Nur, whom he had never seen outside the walls of his house, had to be bodily transported out of it, and that too invisibly, without the venomous begum observing it … Deven chewed his lip and clutched his fists to his sides, worrying. Might Siddiqui, that resourceful little bird with the black, bright eye, come to his aid once more?