by Anita Desai
‘Biochemistry – that was Sud’s subject. He went to Indiana on a fellowship, to study, and at the end he was offered a job. Why should we not do the same? Why should we not also leave this dustbin Mirpore and go to America where the women are tall, white, blonde …’
‘And what will you teach them – Hindi?’ Deven interrupted, impatiently. He stubbed out the cigarette in the saucer. ‘What are these dreams of yours? America! You want a job there as a Hindi teacher?’
Jayadev flushed, both hurt and annoyed. He had tried to cheer up a despondent colleague and been snubbed and made to feel despondent as well. He admitted, ‘We are in the wrong department. We took up the wrong subject. We should have taken physics, chemistry, microbiology, computer technology – something scientific, something American. Then we would have had a future.’
Deven gave him a pitying look. ‘We have no future. There is no future. There is only the past.’
Jayadev made a face. ‘What is all this past-fast stuff? I am sick of it. It is the only thing we know in this country. History teaches us the glorious past of our ancient land. Hindi and Sanskrit teachers teach us the glorious literature of the past. I am sick of that. What about the future?’ he muttered.
He made no protest when Deven got up to leave. At the door Deven was stopped by a familiar group of boys, eyeing him with suspicion and with threat in their eyes. He brushed past them, roughly.
Pushing open the door to the veranda, he saw two letters lying on the unswept floor, slipped in by the postman. He recognized Sarla’s handwriting on one and dropped it on to the table, then opened the other with the more familiar, more compelling writing. He found separate sheets in the envelope. One bore the careful, regular script he knew and dreaded. The other was a piece of greasy yellow paper. Unfolding it, he saw it was a bill for five hundred rupees. ‘Rent of room,’ it stated, giving the dates during which they had occupied the room at the top of the pink house, he and Nur and the tape recorder. He lowered himself into his cane chair to read the accompanying letter.
‘Safiya Begum has begged me to forward the enclosed bill,’ Nur wrote, ‘to be paid immediately. It was as a favour to her that the rent was not collected in advance as is custom. Please arrange for payment.’
Sarla had not returned. The college had not re-opened. There was still time to go to Delhi once more. One last time. Then he would never go again.
‘Cold water, ten paise,’ yelled the water vendor at the bus depot, wheeling his portable water container up and down the queue that waited for the Delhi bus. Seeing Deven hesitantly step out of line, he stopped and said encouragingly, ‘Going out in this heat can lead to sunstroke, Sahib. Fill up with cold water, ten paise a tumbler.’ Deven reached out for a thick glass and held it to the metal spout. Would it help him to survive this trip?
It was the last fortnight before the monsoon arrived in Delhi. The whole plain around it was laid waste by months of devastating heat. There was nothing to see in it but sulphur-yellow dust, the white sky, the occasional glitter of a tin sheet. There were no stray dogs, no vultures or even crows in sight. Bushes and grasses all appeared to have died; the land was shorn, or shrouded. The bus rattled through the wastes as if taking corpses to be dumped.
Yet, in Delhi, the tea-stall owner boiled his cans of tea, called to the dust-covered travellers as jovially as he had in kinder seasons. Now they all turned away from him and made for the cold drinks stall, choosing between red and orange aerated drinks. Deven did not stop for one but hailed a scooter rickshaw and asked to be taken into Kashmere Gate. The searing wind that blew through the open vehicle felt as if it would reduce him to cinders. Holding one hand over his mouth and nose to keep out the dust, and another clinging on to his dark glasses, he arrived in the walled city and stopped outside Murad’s office.
Upstairs the gloom was a relief, like a bandage upon the lacerations made by the heat outside. Murad and the old printer with whom he appeared to be sorting out a tray of newsprint were both startled by his appearance in the doorway.
‘Has the sun driven you mad?’ Murad asked bluntly.
‘Please have some water,’ said the printer politely.
Deven sat down and accepted a glass of water brought by the small urchin still tying up bundles on the balcony.
‘The journal is not out yet – you sent in your article so late – it held up everything. You can’t expect it out till the fifteenth,’ Murad said loudly.
Deven put down his glass, wiped his mouth, and then took out the scrap of yellow paper and held it out to Murad.
‘What is this?’ Murad asked suspiciously, refusing to take it.
‘Another bill –’
‘Look here,’ Murad shouted belligerently. ‘Don’t you try any more of that on me. I’ve already spent every paisa I could get from my mother on that blasted poet of yours –’
‘Murad, it was you who sent me to him, you,’ Deven’s voice trembled as he spoke. It made them stare at him. He doubled over in his chair, his arms wrapped around his middle as if to forcibly prevent his sorrow from spilling out. If he had been an old woman, he would have swayed and wailed.
After a moment’s reflection, Murad said, ‘Yes, but what did it cost you? It is I who paid for everything – bought those bottles of rum, sent for food for a whole roomful of idlers and no-gooders, for week upon week. In the end even my sainted mother became suspicious and wanted to know why I needed so much money. She is willing to indulge me so far – but no further. No further, I tell you, so don’t hold out that bit of filthy paper to me – take it away. Take it back to Mirpore and show it to your bank manager.’
The old printer stood blinking now at Murad and now at Deven, timidly, like an owl in daylight.
‘Look, Murad,’ Deven pleaded, leaning forward in his chair. ‘I am not going to ask you to pay any more bills. I am only asking you to advance the payment for the article I sent you. After all, you already have it –’
‘What?’ roared Murad indignantly. ‘Those two, three sheets you sent me? You think they are worth – worth five hundred rupees?’ He shook his fist at the bill Deven had laid on the table before him. Murad’s lips were flecked with spit, and purple in colour, he was so enraged.
‘I never asked you how much you were going to pay me,’ Deven said sadly, heavily. ‘I took up the work only because it interested me.’
‘Exactly!’ Murad sputtered, cutting him short. ‘It was an honour – you said it was an honour – something you had never dreamt could happen to you in all your life – going to see Nur, talking to him. You have had all the fun, and all the honour – now you want payment on top of that?’
The printer clicked his tongue disapprovingly. Deven looked to him in appeal, sensing his sympathy. ‘Are not all contributors paid?’ he asked him in despair. ‘Why am I not to be paid for my contribution?’
‘Yes, Murad Sahib, he is right, it is only fair, equal treatment for all …’ pleaded the old man, his head wagging nervously as he spoke.
Outnumbered, Murad marched away to a distant corner of the room. From there, he shook his fist at Deven and shouted, ‘All right, you will be paid. But only when the article appears – that is the rule; all my contributors get paid after publication, not before. I have to give equal treatment to all. And don’t think, don’t you think,’ he raised his voice threateningly, ‘that I will pay you that sum. It is ten times the amount I pay for a two-page interview! You are only the interviewer, Deven, not the poet.’
Deven’s head sank so low that his forehead touched the top of the desk before him. He held still, staring at the wooden rim, waiting for its solid darkness to enter his head and turn it to black wood as well.
Now they were all hurrying up to him, bustling around him. The old printer was patting him on the back and feeling his pulse. The urchin was sent to fetch another glass of water. Even Murad was close by – Deven saw the tops of his shoes near his chair. The glass of water arrived. The printer held it to his lips, saying, ‘Oh the heat �
�� how long will it go on? The monsoon is delayed. How can we bear it? It is too much. Should not have come in this heat, should not leave the house …’
Deven wiped his mouth and put down the glass. Then he got up to go. There was after all nothing left to do. Oddly enough, the certainty that he could expect no more help from Murad had a calming effect upon him. Perhaps when everyone had cut him off and he was absolutely alone, he would begin to find himself and his own strength.
Murad hurried after him and caught him by the arm out on the landing. ‘Look, Deven, I know you have a problem. You have run up debts. You let yourself get carried away by the whole thing, you simply lost control over it, you let everyone bully you and cheat you, and now you can’t pay the bills –’
Deven swayed slightly on the landing, but said nothing. Murad went on, ‘I’ll tell you what. The tape you say you have made – the finished one, the cleaned-up one – give it to me. Give me the sole rights. Let me try to sell it to HMV or Polydor. Then I shall clear your debts, pay that hotel bill, pay Nur, pay his wife, pay everyone. In return for the sole rights.’ He had his hand on Deven’s shirt front and was shaking him lightly to elicit the correct response to his splendid idea. ‘See?’ he said.
Deven put up both his hands and pushed him back as far as he could on the small landing, till his back was against the wall. ‘I can’t do that,’ he hissed, ‘it is the property of the college. The college put up the funds for the tape recorder, the tapes, the recording. It belongs to them.’
‘Oh?’ said Murad, straightening up in the corner and throwing off Deven’s hands violently. ‘Then get your college to pay the bills too.’
Deven went down the wooden staircase as steadily as he could although his knees shook weakly. Murad’s perfidy filled him with the iron of resistance and he felt steady, straight. As he reached the foot of the stairs, he heard Murad call over the banisters, ‘One last time I am offering to help – one last time. Sole rights! Only sole rights!’
Deven went towards the exit without looking back.
The temperature that day was a hundred and fourteen degrees. The neem trees along the streets drooped, stricken, encased in dust. The horses between the shafts of the old tongas stood with their legs sloping under them, their necks swaying between their knees. Even the flies that adhered to their muzzles and flanks had ceased to buzz and crawl and appeared to be stuck on with glue. Traffic continued to move, motor and bicycle traffic, but as if searching for somewhere to go and die. Deven moved through it slowly, like a swimmer in unknown water, stopping often in the shade of a tree or a building, sometimes having a drink of water at one of the many drinking water booths set up by philanthropists. He had tied his handkerchief on to his head by making knots at each corner. He walked aimlessly but late that afternoon found himself in Chandni Chowk, standing outside the jewellery and sweet shops, amongst the shoppers and hawkers and barrows and handcarts, staring.
The green wall of the hospital was visible over the top of the fruit and garland stalls that flanked a pink and white stucco temple with a chased silver door. It was a few minutes’ walk to Nur’s house. If he went there, he would find Nur stirring after his long afternoon siesta. He would find his servant boy preparing his couch for him on the terrace, amongst his pigeons, for the evening. He would sit at Nur’s feet, listening to his voice as he recited his verse and lamented his fate, and then perhaps he would learn if it had been worth all the trouble, if anything of value had been gained. What’s it all about, Nur Sahib? he would ask, O what is it all about?
But he found himself wandering on. He walked past the sandstone walls of the Red Fort still incandescent with heat, and across the dusty flat spaces separating them from the great Friday Mosque. He walked on towards Darya Ganj, thinking he might visit Raj’s aunt: he had left the house without telling her he would not be back. He ought to explain. She would only smile when she saw him and say nothing. Perhaps she would be seated before her garlanded gods, plying her cymbals while the tailor sang. Then he would ask them, Why? What is it all for? What is it about?
Instead, he veered to the right and entered a small park where royal palms marched in grave rows on either side of a gravel path and benches were set amongst beds of cannas. All was calmly geometrical. It was too early for the city crowds to pour out for a breath of air and Deven sat down on an empty bench. Putting his head back, he found he could see the dome and the eastern wall of the mosque. The sun was behind it, in a great brassy conflagration, dazzling his eyes, but its forms and lines stood out against the heat and light clearly. The white and black marble facing of the eastern doorway made a graceful calligraphic pattern. The enormous arched doorway soared upwards to the dome which rose like a vast bubble that the flat earth had sent out into the dusty yellow-grey sky, a silent exhalation of stone. It was absolutely still, very serene. It was in fact the silent answer to his questioning. Since it was silent, he could not hear it, but he felt it impress its shape upon his eyelids, very gently, very lightly, like fingertips pressing them down to sleep. Gradually the sky disappeared, the sun and the light and the glare, and the shape became clearer and sharper till it was all there was – cool, high-minded and remote.
Sitting there while the dusk gathered, oblivious of the children who were climbing on to the back of the bench and leaping down from it with howls and shrieks or of the women who moved about in twittering bunches under their black and brown and white veils or of the families that sat on the grass around transistor radios and paper cones of salted gram, Deven recalled, incongruously enough, the conversation in the canteen with Jayadev, how they had envied their scientist colleagues who had at their command the discipline of mathematics, of geometry, in which every question had its answer and every problem its solution. If art, if poetry, could be made to submit their answers, not merely to contain them within perfect, unblemished shapes but to release them and make them available, then – he thought, then –
But then the bubble would be breached and burst, and it would no longer be perfect. And if it were not perfect, and constant, then it would all have been for nothing, it would be nothing.
Chapter 11
THE HOUSE STOOD open when he returned to it next morning. Sarla was back. She was down on her haunches, sweeping the floor with a long, soft broom. Dust lay heaped in small piles all around her. Some contained dry neem leaves, others feathers, and all were mixed with torn-up letters. Through the door he could see her luggage heaped behind, still unopened.
She looked up as he came in. She had wrapped the end of her sari around her mouth and nose to keep out the dust as she swept. She pulled it off with one finger, letting it fall, and stared at him. ‘So, still spending all your time in Delhi?’ she asked heavily.
He stood very still, although he was immensely agitated, and immensely worn out by a sleepless night spent at the bus depot. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were returning today? I would have come to the station to meet you.’
‘I did write,’ she snapped, and pointed at an unopened letter that lay on the small table next to his chair. ‘You never opened it,’ she accused him, and started sweeping again.
He did not move out of her way but stood watching her crawl about the floor, sweeping the dust into little hills before her. He found he was no longer irritated by the sight of her labour, or disgusted by the shabbiness of her limp, worn clothes, or her hunched, twisted posture, her untidy hair or sullen expression. It was all a part of his own humiliation. He considered touching her, putting an arm around her stooped shoulders and drawing her to him. How else could he tell her he shared all her disappointment and woe?
But he could not make that move: it would have permanently undermined his position of power over her, a position that was as important to her as to him: if she ceased to believe in it, what would there be for her to do, where would she go? Such desolation could not be admitted. So he turned aside, asking, ‘Where is Manu? I don’t see him. Manu!’
‘He has gone to the neighbours to show
them his new clothes,’ Sarla said, not looking up. ‘My parents have given him new clothes. And shoes.’
He nodded, entirely accepting this slap to his pride and dignity as the breadwinner. He deserved their insults. They were perfectly right to insult him. When had he last bought his son anything? And now of course he never would – he was ruined.
He sat down on the cane chair and stared out of the open door at the garden gate, waiting for Manu. At least that was what Sarla thought he was doing. She felt moved to ask, ‘Tired? Shall I make you tea?’ Contrary to appearances, she was actually quite pleased to be back in her own domain, to assume all its responsibilities, her indispensable presence in it; in her parents’ home she had missed the sense of her own capability and position.
Deven only shook his head, saying nothing. She began to get irritated by his inaction. She wanted to get on with the cleaning of the house. She got up and went to fetch a duster, shouting from the kitchen, ‘How could you let the house get so filthy? Why didn’t you call for the sweeper to come and clean?’
He started to tell her that he did not know where the sweeper lived, but he would have had to raise his voice and he couldn’t; he was much too tired. He knotted his hands together and stared at the unopened letters on the table beside him.
It must have been Sarla’s hand that guided him, by remote control, because the letter he at length picked up was not one in Nur’s familiar handwriting at all. Sheets, closely folded, fell out in a solid packet. Opened out, they proved very fine, very thin. The writing upon them was large, sloping, filled with flourishes and ornamentations. The words ran into each other like one wave upon another merging into a whole flood.
The recording is no secret. Whatever your reason for concealing it from me, Nur Sahib could not conceal it from me. Was I considered incapable of understanding the need to record Nur Sahib’s voice for posterity? Was Safiya Begum considered wiser and more capable because of her greater age and her longer years with him? Dear friend, I beg to put it to you that you have insulted my intelligence by your deception.