Out of India

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  That is the end of my peace and contemplation. Now I am very upset, I walk up and down the garden and through the house, talking to myself and sometimes striking my two fists together. I think bad things about him and talk to him in my thoughts, and likewise in my thoughts he is answering me and these answers make me even more angry. If some servant comes and speaks to me at this time, I get angry with him too and shout so loud that he runs away, and the whole house is very quiet and everyone keeps out of my way. But slowly my feelings begin to change. My anger burns itself out, and I am left with the ashes of remorse. I remember all my promises to myself, all my resolutions never to give way to my bad temper again; I remember my beautiful morning hours, when I felt so full of peace, so close to the birds and trees and sunlight and other innocent things. And with that memory tears spring into my eyes, and I lie down sorrowfully on my bed. Lakshmi, my old woman servant who has been with me nearly forty years, comes in with a cup of tea for me. I sit up and drink it, the tears still on my face and more tears rolling down into my cup. Lakshmi begins to smooth my hair, which has come undone in the excitement, and while she is doing this I talk to her in broken words about my own folly and bad character. She clicks her tongue, contradicts me, praises me, and that makes me suddenly angry again, so that I snatch the comb out of her hand, I throw it against the wall and drive her out of the room.

  So the day passes, now in sorrow now in anger, and all the time I am waiting only for him to come home again. As the hour draws near, I begin to get ready. I have my bath, comb my hair, wear a new sari. I even apply a little scent. I begin to be very busy around the house, because I don’t want it to be seen how much I am waiting for him. When I hear his footsteps, I am busier than ever and pretend not to hear them. He stands inside the door and raps his umbrella against it and calls out in a loud voice: “Is it safe to come in? Has the fury abated?” I try not to smile, but in spite of myself my mouth corners twitch.

  After we have had a quarrel and have forgiven each other, we are always very gay together. These are our best times. We walk around the garden, my arm in his, he smoking a cigar and I chewing a betel leaf; he tells me some funny stories and makes me laugh so much that sometimes I have to stand still and hold my sides and gasp for air, while begging him to stop. Nobody ever sees us like this, in this mood; if they did, they would not wonder, as they all do, why we are living together. Yes, everyone asks this question, I know it very well, not only my people but his too—all his foreign friends who think he is miserable with me and that we do nothing but quarrel and that I am too stupid to be good company for him. Let them see us like this only once, then they would know; or afterward, when he allows me to come into his rooms and stay there with him the whole night.

  It is quite different in his rooms from the rest of the house. The rest of the house doesn’t have very much furniture in it, only some of our old things—some carved Kashmiri screens and little carved tables with mother-of-pearl tops. There are chairs and a few sofas, but I always feel most comfortable on the large mattress on the floor that is covered with an embroidered cloth and many bolsters and cushions; here I recline for hours, very comfortably, playing patience or cutting betel nuts with my little silver shears. But in his rooms there is a lot of furniture, and a radiogram and a cabinet for his records and another for his bottles of liquor. There are carpets and many pictures—some paintings of European countryside and one old oil painting of a pink and white lady with a fan and in old-fashioned dress. There is also a framed pencil sketch of Boekelman himself, which was made by a friend of his, a chemist from Vienna who was said to have been a very good artist but died from heatstroke one very bad Delhi summer. Hanging on the walls or standing on the mantelpiece or on little tables all over the room are a number of photographs, and these I like to look at even better than the paintings, because they are all of him as a boy or as oh! such a handsome young man, and of his parents and the hotel they owned and all lived in, in a place called Zandvoort. There are other photographs in a big album, which he sometimes allows me to look at. In this album there are also a few pictures of his wife (“Once bitten, twice shy”), which I’m very interested in; but he never lets me look at the album for long, because he is afraid I might spoil it, and he takes it away from me and puts it back in the drawer where it belongs. He is neat and careful with all his things and gets very angry when they are disarranged by the servants during dusting; yet he also insists on very thorough dusting, and woe to the whole household if he finds some corner has been forgotten. So, although there are so many things, it is always tidy in his rooms, and it would be a pleasure to go in there if it were not for Susi.

  He has always had a dog, and it has always been the same very small, very hairy kind, and it has always been called Susi. This is the second Susi I have known. The first died of very old age and this Susi too is getting quite old now. Unfortunately dogs have a nasty smell when they get old, and since Susi lives in Boekelman’s rooms all the time, the rooms also have this smell although they are so thoroughly cleaned every day. When you enter the first thing you notice is this smell, and it always fills me with a moment’s disgust, because I don’t like dogs and certainly would never allow one inside a room. But for B. dogs are like his children. How he fondles this smelly Susi with her long hair, he bathes her with his own hands and brushes her and at night she sleeps on his bed. It is horrible. So when he lets me stay in his room in the night, Susi is always there with us, and she is the only thing that prevents me from being perfectly happy then. I think Susi also doesn’t like it that I’m there. She looks at me from the end of the bed with her running eyes, and I can see that she doesn’t like it. I feel like kicking her off the bed and out of the room and out of the house: but because that isn’t possible I try and pretend she is not there. In any case, I don’t have any time for her, because I am so busy looking at B. He is usually asleep before me, and then I sit up in bed beside him and look and look my eyes out at him. I can’t describe how I feel. I have been a married woman, but I have never known such joy as I have in being there alone with him in bed and looking at him: at this old man who has taken his front teeth out so that his upper lip sags over his gums, his skin is grey and loose, he makes ugly sounds out of his mouth and nose as he sleeps. It is rapture for me to be there with him.

  No one else ever sees him like this. All those friends he has, all his European lady friends—they only see him dressed up and with his front teeth in. And although they have known him all these years, longer than I have, they don’t really know anything about him. Only the outer part is theirs, the shell, but what is within, the essence, that is known only to me. But they wouldn’t understand that, for what do they know of outer part and inner, of the shell and of the essence! It is all one to them. For them it is only life in this world and a good time and food and drink, even though they are old women like me and should not have their thoughts on these things.

  I have tried hard to like these friends of his, but it is not possible for me. They are very different from anyone else I know. They have all of them been in India for many, many years—twenty-five, thirty—but I know they would much rather be somewhere else. They only stay here because they feel too old to go anywhere else and start a new life. They came here for different reasons—some because they were married to Indians, some to do business, others as refugees and because they couldn’t get a visa for anywhere else. None of them has ever tried to learn any Hindi or to get to know anything about our India. They have some Indian “friends,” but these are all very rich and important people—like maharanis and cabinet ministers, they don’t trouble with ordinary people at all. But really they are only friends with one another, and they always like each other’s company best. That doesn’t mean they don’t quarrel together, they do it all the time, and sometimes some of them are not on speaking terms for months or even years; and whenever two of them are together, they are sure to be saying something bad about a third. Perhaps they are really more like family than
friends, the way they both love and hate each other and are closely tied together whether they like it or not; and none of them has any other family, so they are really dependent on each other. That’s why they are always celebrating one another’s birthday the way a family does, and they are always together on their big days like Christmas or New Year. If one of them is sick, the others are there at once with grapes and flowers, and sit all day and half the night around the sickbed, even if they have not been on speaking terms.

  I know that Boekelman has been very close with some of the women, and there are a few of them who are still fond of him and would like to start all over again with him. But he has had enough of them—at least in that way, although of course he is still on very friendly terms with them and meets them every day almost. When he and I are alone together, he speaks of them very disrespectfully and makes fun of them and tells me things about them that no woman would like anyone to know. He makes me laugh, and I feel proud, triumphant, that he should be saying all this to me. But he never likes me to say anything about them, he gets very angry if I do and starts shouting that I have no right to talk, I don’t know them and don’t know all they have suffered; so I keep quiet, although often I feel very annoyed with them and would like to speak my mind.

  The times I feel most annoyed is when there is a party in Boekelman’s rooms and I’m invited there with them. They all have a good time, they eat and drink, tell jokes, sometimes they quarrel; they laugh a lot and kiss each other more than is necessary. No one takes much notice of me, but I don’t mind that, I’m used to it with them; anyway, I’m busy most of the time running in and out of the kitchen to see to the preparations. I am glad I have something to do because otherwise I would be very bored only sitting there. What they say doesn’t interest me, and their jokes don’t make me laugh. Most of the time I don’t understand what they are talking about, even when they are speaking in English—which is not always, for sometimes they speak in other languages such as French or German. But I always know, in whatever language they are speaking, when they start saying things about India. Sooner or later they always come to this subject, and then their faces change, they look mean and bitter like people who feel they have been cheated by some shopkeeper and it is too late to return the goods. Now it becomes very difficult for me to keep calm. How I hate to hear them talking in this way, saying that India is dirty and everyone is dishonest; but because they are my guests, they are in my house, I have to keep hold of myself and sit there with my arms folded. I must keep my eyes lowered, so that no one should see how they are blazing with fire. Once they have started on this subject, it always takes them a long time to stop, and the more they talk the more bitter they become, the expression on their faces becomes more and more unpleasant. I suffer, and yet I begin to see that they too are suffering, all the terrible things they are saying are not only against India but against themselves too—because they are here and have nowhere else to go—and against the fate that has brought them here and left them here, so far from where they belong and everything they hold dear.

  Boekelman often talks about India in this way, but I have got used to it with him. I know very well that whenever something is not quite right—for instance, when a button is missing from his shirt, or it is a very hot day in summer—at once he will start saying how bad everything is in India. Well, with him I just laugh and take no notice. But once my eldest son, Shammi, overheard him and was so angry with him, as angry as I get with B.’s friends when I hear them talking in this way. It happened some years ago—it is painful for me to recall this occasion. . . .

  Shammi was staying with me for a few days. He was alone that time, though often he used to come with his whole family, his wife, Monica, and my three darling grandchildren. Shammi is in the army—he was still a major then, though now he is a lieutenant colonel—which is a career he has wanted since he was a small boy and which he loves passionately. At the cadet school he was chosen as the best cadet of the year, for there was no one whose buttons shone so bright or who saluted so smartly as my Shammi. He is a very serious boy. He loves talking to me about his regiment and about tank warfare and 11.1 bore rifles and other such things, and I love listening to him. I don’t really understand what he is saying, but I love his eager voice and the way he looks when he talks—just as he looked when he was a small boy and told me about his cricket. Anyway, this is what we were doing that morning, Shammi and I, sitting on the veranda, he talking and I looking sometimes at him and sometimes out into the garden, where everything was green and cool and birds bathed themselves in a pool of water that had oozed out of the hose pipe and sunk into the lawn.

  This peace was broken by Boekelman. It started off with his shouting at the servant, very loudly and rudely, as he always does; nobody minds this, I don’t mind it, the servant doesn’t mind it, we are so used to it and we know it never lasts very long; in any case, the servant doesn’t understand what is said for it is always in English, or even some other language that none of us understands, and afterward, if he has shouted very loudly, Boekelman always gives the servant a little tip or one of his old shirts or pair of old shoes. But Shammi was very surprised for he had never heard him shout and abuse in this way (B. was always very careful how he behaved when any of the children were there). Shammi tried to continue talking to me about his regiment, but B. was shouting so loud that it was difficult to pretend not to hear him.

  But it might still have been all right and nothing would have been said and Shammi and I could have pretended to each other that nothing had been heard if Boekelman had not suddenly come rushing out on to the veranda. He held his shaving brush in one hand, and half his face was covered in shaving lather and on the other half there was a spot of blood where he had cut himself; he was in his undervest and trousers, and the trousers had braces dangling behind like two tails. He had completely lost control of himself, I could see at once, and he didn’t care what he said or before whom. He was so excited that he could hardly talk and he shook his shaving brush in the direction of the servant, who had followed him and stood helplessly watching him from the doorway. “These people!” he screamed. “Monkeys! Animals!” I didn’t know what had happened but could guess that it was something quite trivial, such as the servant removing a razor blade before it was worn out. “Hundreds, thousands of times I tell them!” B. screamed, shaking his brush. “The whole country is like that! Idiots! Fools! Not fit to govern themselves!”

  Shammi jumped up. His fists were clenched, his eyes blazed. Quickly I put my hand on his arm; I could feel him holding himself back, his whole body shaking with the effort. Boekelman did not notice anything but went on shouting, “Damn rotten backward country!” I kept my hand on Shammi’s arm, though I could see he had himself under control now and was standing very straight and at attention, as if on parade, with his eyes fixed above Boekelman’s head. “Go in now,” I told B., trying to sound as if nothing very bad was happening; “at least finish your shaving.” Boekelman opened his mouth to shout some more abuses, this time probably at me, but then he caught sight of Shammi’s face and he remained with his mouth open. “Go in,” I said to him again, but it was Shammi who went in and left us, turning suddenly on his heel and marching away with his strong footsteps. The screen door banged hard behind him on its spring hinges. Boekelman stood and looked after him, his mouth still open and the soap caking on his cheek. I went up close to him and shook my fist under his nose. “Fool!” I said to him in Hindi and with such violence that he took a step backward in fear. I didn’t glance at him again but turned away and swiftly followed Shammi into the house.

  Shammi was packing his bag. He wouldn’t talk to me and kept his head averted from me while he took neat piles of clothes out of the drawer and packed them neatly into his bag. He has always been a very orderly boy. I sat on his bed and watched him. If he had said something, if he had been angry, it would have been easier; but he was quite silent, and I knew that under his shirt his heart was beating fast. When h
e was small and something had happened to him, he would never cry, but when I held him close to me and put my hand under his shirt I used to feel his heart beating wildly inside his child’s body, like a bird in a frail cage. And now too I longed to do this, to lay my hand on his chest and soothe his suffering. Only now he was grown up, a big major with a wife and children, who had no need of his foolish mother anymore. And worse, much worse, now it was not something from outside that was the cause of his suffering, but I, I myself! When I thought of that, I could not restrain myself—a sob broke from me and I cried out “Son!” and next moment, before I knew myself what I was doing, I was down on the ground, holding his feet and bathing them with my tears to beg his forgiveness.

  He tried to raise me, but I am a strong, heavy woman and I clung obstinately to his feet; so he too got down on the floor and in his effort to raise me took me in his arms. Then I broke into a storm of tears and hid my face against his chest, overcome with shame and remorse and yet also with happiness that he was so near to me and holding me so tenderly. We stayed like this for some time. At last I raised my head, and I saw tears on his lashes, like silver drops of dew. And these tender drops on his long lashes like a girl’s, which always seem so strange in his soldier’s face—these drops were such a burning reproach to me that at this moment I decided I must do what he wanted desperately, he and all my other children, and what I knew he had been silently asking of me since the day he came, I took the end of my sari and with it wiped the tears from his eyes and as I did this I said, “It’s all right, son. I will tell him to go.” And to reassure him, because he was silent and perhaps didn’t believe me, I said, “Don’t worry at all, I will tell him myself,” in a firm, promising voice.