by Anita Desai
He was at the courtyard door, trying to let himself out without making a sound, when a small voice called him. Not by name of course, but it was without doubt a summons, an invitation, and since there was no one else in the courtyard, which had been returned to the sleeping cat and the leaning bicycle, it could only be meant for him. He turned, keeping one hand on the door in case it needed to be opened suddenly and quickly, and looked about him cautiously. There was still no one else there – the cat slept, the bicycle stood, the tap dripped. Whatever sound, light and activity there was in that tall house was concentrated on its topmost floor, out of reach. Or was it? He hardly dared lift his head to look upwards but no, there was no one on the verandas and balconies, leaning down, preparing to spit or launch a missile at him. Dropping his eyes, he noticed that one of the doors in the back wall, usually tightly shut, was ajar, and a small girl stood clinging to the post, almost a part of it – that was why he had not noticed her before. Her pigtail hung over one shoulder, tied with a red thread, and she regarded him through slightly squinting eyes. Then the voice called him again and since the child had not opened her mouth, he realized the call came from behind her, on the other side of the door. He walked slowly towards it and sidled past the gravely watching child.
The door led into an inner courtyard, a small and private one that he had not known lay behind the outer one into which all visitors were admitted. It seemed scarcely to belong to this tall house in the congested lane off one of the main bazaars of the city. It had the air of a village courtyard about it, a rural scene, and not only because of the pipal tree that grew in its centre, throwing its heart-shaped shadows on the brick flooring, or because of the two goats, one black and one liver-coloured, tied to the legs of a string-cot dragged out beside the water pump. Clothes hung out to dry on a line, a grinding stone stood in a corner where it had obviously just been used for grinding grain, for the powdery white flour still lay scattered around it. A woman crouched before an outdoor stove, trying to light a fire with a bundle of twigs. Her head was covered with a thick brown veil and she had to lift it off her forehead and push it back over her sparse henna-dyed hair before Deven recognized her as the old woman who had come into Nur’s room to silence the young begum during a previous tantrum.
‘More tantrums going on up there?’ she asked drily, looking up from the stove.
Deven gave a cautious nod, unsure if he wanted to be drawn into another vulgar family quarrel. It was true that it was Nur’s family – Nur’s wives, he imagined – and therefore no ordinary one, but it was still vulgar, and he had quite enough of that at home to want any more.
‘A fine actress, that one,’ chuckled the old woman, breaking up the twigs and stuffing them into the earthen stove. ‘She used to be a dancing girl out there –’ she jerked her sharp chin at the high wall beyond which lay the city and its bazaars – ‘and she knows all the dancer’s tricks. Now she’s persuaded them she’s really ill. It is always like that when she wants something from him, always.’
In spite of himself, Deven could not help asking, with dry lips, ‘What does she want?’
She gave him a shrewd, sidelong look from under the fold of her veil. ‘She wants to get rid of you,’ she smiled mischievously.
Deven gave an involuntary twitch of fear. He had an instant vision of a dagger, a blade, slicing downwards. That was not so very preposterous – he had seen her in a rage, and knew. Then he regained his composure and felt quite flattered to learn that he had been chosen by that terrifying woman as her adversary, the cause of her jealousy and rage and even illness. He could not quite suppress a smirk at the extravagance of this compliment.
The old woman, intently watching, frowned at the smile fluttering foolishly across his face: perhaps he did not believe her. But she knew better than anyone else. ‘All his followers – all his disciples, his chelas – are hated by her,’ she insisted. ‘She is always trying to stop those evening gatherings on the roof when he recites his poetry. But they only come for the entertainment after all, and because he feeds them. You have come for more than that.’
Deven’s eyes dropped to the ground. He felt humble again, and nervous – his old self.
‘You are serious,’ she continued, cracking some more twigs between her fingers. ‘She has heard that you have come to write a book.’
‘No, no,’ he mumbled. ‘Only an article, an interview. I am not going to write it, I am going to tape it – with a tape recorder,’ he said loudly, as much to convince himself as to convince her. ‘My college has bought it for me so I can record his voice –’
She was clearly impressed, in an uncomprehending way, for these were not words this lighter of fires, washer of clothes and keeper of goats might understand. That made them more impressive to her. ‘Hmm, yes – that is what she must have heard. And she wants to stop it.’
‘But why? No harm will come of it,’ he urged her, ‘only glory for Nur Sahib – glory which should be, must be recorded for all time.’
‘Don’t tell her that,’ the old woman cackled, then bent forwards, struck a match and held it to the twigs. An incredible amount of thick, odorous smoke began to leak out of a small heap of kindling. She began busily to smother it with pieces of wood. Deven choked and coughed. ‘That is just what she wants to take away from him. She has taken much away,’ she said bitterly, ‘and she wants his fame as well, his glory.’
‘But,’ said Deven earnestly, ‘she can never take that. She is not a poet of the same quality – she can never have his fame or glory.’
The words did not seem to impress the old woman; she was blowing at the fire, making it thrum. Then she looked over her shoulder at the child still clinging to the post, watching and listening, and called, ‘O Munni, go and get me the dal,’ and watched sharply while the child ran to the veranda to fetch a cooking pot and bring it to the fire. Setting it on the earthen stove, the old woman clanked a lid on top of it, then sank back on her heels with a sigh, evidently preparing to wait till it boiled. It struck Deven as incongruous that he, a college lecturer, should be discussing the quality of Nur’s poetry with this old woman cooking in her courtyard, watched by two goats and a child with a squint. He shifted on his feet, wishing to leave the scene as an unworthy one.
Noticing, she gave him that sidelong glance again and beckoned him to come and sit beside her. He looked about for somewhere to sit – he was not going to squat on his heels like her. The child saw and ran and brought a low wooden stool. He lowered himself on to that, unwillingly and awkwardly.
‘Don’t let that woman stop you,’ she hissed as soon as he was on a level with her. ‘You write that book –’
‘It is going to be a tape recording.’
‘Yes, yes, you write that,’ she repeated sharply. ‘It is important, nah? For your college? For the professor people there? They will want it, na?’
‘Oh yes,’ he breathed solemnly, ‘it will be very, very important. It will be placed in the library. Students and scholars will listen to it. Other universities will borrow it –’
‘Yes, yes,’ she interrupted impatiently. ‘I know. I know he is a great man. They all tell me so. Is he a great man?’ she asked suddenly.
‘Of course,’ he cried, amazed that she should ask. ‘The greatest poet alive – the greatest Urdu poet,’ he qualified, ‘in India.’
‘Then do it, son, do it,’ she urged him.
‘But when?’ he asked desperately. ‘How?’
She sat silently for a while, trying to understand his needs. They were novel ones to her, she did not comprehend them at all, but felt the urgency. The pot on the fire began to bubble and she leant forward to remove the lid. Steam poured out, bringing out beads of moisture on her upper lip. All her clothes gave out an odour of woodsmoke and cooking. ‘Hmm,’ she said, letting the lid slide halfway back so that the steam was diverted from her. ‘You need a room – you need to be alone in it with him, eh?’
‘Yes, and the technician, too. Maybe one or two other p
eople. We will be a small group. We need three, four days with him in private, maybe a week.’
She understood now, precisely. ‘Then you will have to leave the house,’ she said. ‘It can’t be done while she is here.’
‘Can’t she be sent away?’ he pleaded. ‘If she is ill – can’t she be sent away to the hospital? Or to her family?’
The old woman laughed soundlessly. ‘Don’t you try that. If you say “hospital” she will jump out of bed, perfectly well. And family – you think she has a family, that one?’ The laughter became audible, a kind of hollow crackling, like the sound the fire made.
‘She will not leave,’ the woman went on. ‘She has planted herself in our house – like a witch. You will have to take him away – through this door,’ she pointed to a small door in the wall behind the goats. ‘He will come down to visit me – he does that sometimes – then you can take him away by that door. Why not find a room – not far from here, a little up the lane, he can’t go further, the old man – take a room and do your work there. Bring him back through the back door, I will send him upstairs again. She will fume, seeing him come to visit me, but she can’t stop that, I am the older one, the first.’ She laughed again, showing her blackened teeth. ‘Even if I had only daughters and she the son, I am still first,’ she brooded. Then, sharply, ‘And your work will be done, hah?’
Deven bit his knuckles, thinking. ‘If that is the only way –’
‘It is the only way,’ she assured him. ‘You want me to arrange a room for you? I can.’
He stared at her, wondering if he had underestimated her after all. ‘Can you?’
‘Of course,’ she waved her hand casually, with a surprising elegance. ‘It is easy for me, I have lived here all my life, know every house, everyone who lives in this lane. I can arrange a room. If you come tomorrow morning, at ten – no, eleven o’clock – and stand at the back door, I will let him out –’
‘No, not tomorrow,’ he burst out in a panic. ‘Give me time –’
‘Then when?’ she snapped.
‘Soon. I will let you know soon. I have to discuss this – I will send you a postcard –’
‘She will read the postcard, not I,’ said the old woman, contemptuous of his poor thinking powers.
‘All right, a message then. I will make all the arrangements, then send you a message and come and fetch him as you say.’
She nodded, then turned to the child to give some instructions about the food she was cooking. The girl scurried off to fetch things, and the woman took a spoon from her and began to stir with it. ‘His favourite dal,’ she said with a satisfied smack of her lips. ‘Only I can cook it as he likes,’ she smirked.
Deven got up from the wooden stool, creaking painfully at the joints. Making a kind of bow, he turned to walk away and leave her but she called him back sharply.
‘Listen,’ she said, in a direct, uncouth way that startled him. ‘You will not forget about payment, will you?’
‘Payment?’ Deven stopped short. This was a new demand, an unexpected one for which he had made no provision. Panic rose inside him, scattering his words and thoughts in its stormy approach.
‘Yes, yes, payment,’ she said, jerking her head and gesturing with her henna-stained hand at the same time. ‘Payment – payment. You think he can do all this for you – give you so many hours of his time and write and recite for you and tire himself out – for no payment at all? What is this – you think the poet has not to earn his bread? You think he has no family to feed? Are poets and poets’ families to starve while you and your kind from the colleges feast?’
‘No, no,’ he mumbled, flushing with shame at her speech. ‘That can never be –’
‘It must not be,’ she flashed. ‘So when you send that message of yours, make sure you send a message about the payment that will be made for his labour as well. If I find it is insufficient, you will not find him at the door when you come to fetch him. You will wait and wait but he will not come. Now go. Go.’
Walking away with her crude speech ringing in his ears, so unlike the flowery Urdu spoken upstairs, Deven wondered if this was why the poet had turned from an uneducated country wife to the kind he had upstairs. He himself would not have known how to choose between them. He had no way of satisfying or evading either. He would have to abandon the project.
Chapter 8
DEVEN DID NOT go to Delhi for a long time after that.
Sarla sat watching him, scratching the side of her nose in an offensive way as she watched. Finally she gave her lips a sarcastic twist and said, ‘So, no more Delhi for you? What happened – you were thrown out?’
He threw her a murdering look, then raised the newspaper an inch higher to block out the maddening view. From behind the stiffly held, nearly tearing sheets, he said in as controlled a voice as was possible in the circumstances, ‘I go to Delhi on work. When I do not have work, I do not go. But,’ he added deliberately, ‘when I have work, I will go.’
‘Hunh, work!’ she said under her breath and then removed herself to the kitchen where she did not need to restrain herself but could find expression in shouting out of the window at the child or over the wall to the neighbours since it was not possible to shout at her husband, at least not without danger of retaliation.
It was only when she had disappeared into this narrow, cluttered fastness of hers and could be heard freely rattling and clattering in there that it occurred to Deven that it might have made a greater impression on her if he had allowed her to think he really had someone – female – to visit in Delhi. But that was how it was with him, he sighed: his reflexes, sluggish out of a habitual timidity and indecisiveness, were slowing still further; tardy in both thought and deed, he was never ready with the apt word or appropriate action; both seemed to trail him at a moody distance. He sighed again and drew out a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it up for comfort. Strange how, with all the world around in its stupefying profusion, there was nothing in it that could be counted upon for solace as much as a cheap cigarette.
Solace. He turned the roll of paper between his fingers and wondered if that had not been his error – to search always for solace when there was other game to hunt in the forest. Had he had more spirit, more nerve, more desire and ambition, then perhaps he would have instead hunted for success, distinction, magic. Perhaps he would have followed in pursuit of an art, published a book of poetry, earned a name for himself, a little fame, even gold bangles for Sarla …
But the thought was so puerile that it made him spit out a bitter shred of tobacco. Every effort he had made had ended in defeat: most of the poems he had written and sent to Murad had been rejected, his monograph never published; his wife and son eyed him with blatant disappointment; nor had he won the regard of his colleagues or students. The inherent weakness in his father that had made him an ineffectual, if harmless, teacher and householder, had been passed on to him. He felt it inside him like an empty hole, one he had been staring at all his years, intimidated by its blackness and blankness. Even his attempt to fill it with a genuine and heartfelt homage to a true poet, a man who had distinguished himself as he would have liked to do, had been defeated by all the obstacles that sprang up in his life like shards and pebbles sent up at every step. It was one more blow, and perhaps the bitterest of all.
He sat bent double in his cane chair, his arms hanging between his knees, his cigarette dangling from between his fingers, its smoke curling upwards in a spiral.
Peering through a crack in the kitchen door, Sarla watched, thinking: is he dead? is he alive? without concern, only with irritation. It was only men who could play at being dead while still alive; such idleness was luxury in her opinion. Now if she were to start playing such tricks, where would they all be? Who would take Manu to school and cook lunch for them?
Deven would not have known how to answer her.
Leaning back in his chair and putting his cigarette to his lips again, he laid his head back against the lace antimacassa
r made by Sarla in her bridal days and much blackened by use, and shut his eyes. The room became as dim then as Nur’s room with its bamboo screens and green-tiled walls and invisible pigeons that cooed so comfortingly. He recalled their first meeting on that afternoon – how he had recited Nur’s poetry aloud to him:
‘My body no more than a reed pen cut by the sword’s tip,
Useless and dry till dipped in the ink of life’s blood.’
while Nur lay on the bed, curled up like a gigantic baby, listening to him, and he had felt as though Nur were his child, he the parent, and they were both enclosed within the circle of some intimate, instinctive embrace.
Out on the road the earthen-jar seller was walking past with his donkey loaded with his ware, calling in a high-pitched wail: ‘Su-ra-hi! Su-ra-hi! – a sure sign of approaching summer. Opening his eyes, Deven saw that his cigarette had burnt down almost to his fingers and having dropped it on the floor beside him, he crushed it under his foot, rubbing backwards and forwards till there was nothing left but a smear of ash. Looking down, he made sure: that was all, just a smear of ash.
But Sarla, walking in noisily, handed him a postcard that had just come, a yellow postcard marked Delhi with the small precise handwriting he recognized. ‘My dear sir,’ it said, ‘you will be happy to know I have composed a new cycle of thirty-six couplets. My dear wife has inspired me to write on the subject of the suffering of women. You will be interested to copy same. Kindly report at earliest instance. Yours faithfully –’ and the Urdu flourish that was his name.