Out of India

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  “He was a very strict man,” Paniwala said. “With himself and also with others. Everyone had to work hard, no slacking allowed. My grandfather also got his discipline from him. Yes, in those days they were different men—a different breed of men.” He passed his hands over his totally bald head. When he spoke again, it was to say, “Your expenses must have gone up; money is not what it was. I wonder if your check . . . You’ll excuse me.” He lowered his eyes.

  The Uncle waved his hand in a gesture that could mean anything.

  “You’ll allow me,” said Paniwala, terribly ashamed. “From the first of next month. Thank you. The little house where he was born, near Surat, is still there. It is so small you would not believe that the whole family lived there. There were nine children, and all grew up healthy and well. Later he brought his brothers and brothers-in-laws to Bombay, and everyone did well and they too had large families . . . You are going? No, you must take one of the cars—what are they all standing there for? Allow me.” But the Uncle wanted to walk, so Paniwala escorted him to the door. He told him how his grandfather had always insisted on walking to the warehouse, even when he was very old and quite unsteady, so that the family had made arrangements for a carriage and an attendant to follow him secretly.

  The two sisters also often spoke about their family—not about past generations but about the present one. They were always visiting relatives, many of whom were bedridden, and then they would come home and discuss the case. Sometimes they predicted an early end, but this rarely came to pass. The family tended to be very long-lived, and though crippled by a variety of diseases, the invalids lingered on for years and years. They stayed in their mahogany bedsteads and were fed and washed by servants. There was also an imbecile called Poor Falli, who had lived in the same Edwardian house for over fifty years, though confined to one room with bars on the windows; he was not dangerous, but his personal habits made it difficult for other people. The two sisters spoke about all these family matters quite openly now before the Uncle. It had not always been so. True, they had always been scrupulously polite to him—ignoring his shabby clothes, calling him by his first name, never omitting a greeting to him on entering or leaving a room—but he had remained an outsider. Nor had they forgotten the difference between his family and theirs. But as the years passed they regarded him more and more as one of themselves. This happened not all at once, but gradually, and only after Rusi’s birth—an event, in the eyes of the sisters, that had finally drawn the two families together and made them as one.

  The Uncle fell ill with fever. He lay in his room, tossing on his string bed, which had no sheets but only a cotton mat and a little pillow hard as a stone. Neighbors came in and, because he was shivering so much, covered him with a blanket and tried to make him drink milk and soup. He let them do whatever was necessary. His body felt as if it were being broken up bone by bone by someone wielding a stone hammer. He wondered whether he was going to die now. All the time he was smiling—not outwardly, for he groaned and cried out so much that the neighbors were very worried and sent messages to the Paniwala house, but inside himself. Sometimes he thought he was at the sweetmeat seller’s, sometimes he saw himself back in the little house in the suburb with his brother and the old woman and Nargis ripening like a fruit in sunshine. It didn’t matter in which of these places he fancied himself, for they were both wonderful, a foretaste of Paradise. He thought if he were really going to die now, he would never need to return to the Paniwala house at all. When he thought of this, tears welled into his eyes and flowed down his cheeks, so that the neighbors exclaimed in pity.

  When Nargis came, he was better. The fever had abated and he lay exhausted. He had not died and yet he felt dead, as if everything were spent. Nargis wasted no time. She paid what was left of his rent and reimbursed the neighbors. They helped her pack up his things. He kept wanting to say no, but he didn’t have the strength. Instead he wept again; only now the tears were cold and hard. The neighbors, not seeing the difference, told Nargis that he had been weeping like that all through his sickness, and when she heard this, she also wept. At last he was carried down the stairs, and as they passed the door of the paralytic landlady, she called out to him in triumph, “You see! It has come true what I said! It was all written in your hand.”

  Sometimes, as he lay in the large four-poster in the Paniwala bedroom, he looked at his hand and wondered which were the lines that had told the landlady about the new life awaiting him. It was very still and quiet in that room. He gazed at the painting on the opposite wall; it had been specially commissioned and showed a scene in the Paniwala counting house at the beginning of the century. The Paniwala founder sat at a desk high up on a dais, and his sons at other desks on a slightly lower dais, and they overlooked a hall full of clerks sitting cross-legged in rows and writing in ledgers. It had been done in dark, murky colors, to look like a Renaissance painting. When he was tired of it, he looked at the other wall, where there was a window and the top of a tree just showing against it. Nargis had engaged a servant for him, who made his bed and washed him and performed other personal functions. Khorshed and Pilla came in at least once a day and sat on either side of him and told him everything that was happening, in the family and in Bombay society in general. Rusi also came in; he had been warned to be good to his uncle, and for quite some time he observed this injunction. But as the weeks and then the months passed and the Uncle still lay there, Rusi could not help himself and reverted to his former manner. He was especially gleeful if he happened to come in while the Uncle was being fed. This had to be done very carefully and with a specially curved spoon, and even then quite a lot went to waste and trickled down the Uncle’s chin.

  It was usually his servant who fed the Uncle, but sometimes Nargis did it herself. Although she was less satisfactory than the servant and got impatient quite quickly, the Uncle much preferred her to do it. Then he would linger over his food as long as possible. Then Rusi could stand there and say what he liked—the Uncle didn’t care at all. He just looked into Nargis’s face. She always sat with her back to the window and the tree. Even when she got annoyed with him—saying, “You are doing it on purpose,” when the food drooped on his chin—still he loved to have her sitting there. At such times it seemed to him that his landlady had been right and that his life was not over by any means.

  ON BAIL

  Although I get tired working in the shop all day, once I reach home I forget all about it. I change into an old cotton sari and tuck it around my waist and I sing as I cook. Sometimes he is at home but not often, and usually only if he is sick with a cold. What a fuss he makes then; I have to take his temperature many times and prepare hot drinks and crush pills in honey and altogether feel very sorry for him. That’s the best time, especially since he forgets quite soon about being sick and wants to amuse himself and me. How we laugh then, what a fine time we have! He doesn’t seem to miss his friends and coffeehouses and all those places one bit but is as happy to be at home with me as I am to be with him. Next evening, of course, he is off again, but I don’t mind, for I know it’s necessary—not only because he is a very sociable person but because it is for business contacts too.

  I’m used to waiting up for him quite late, so I was not worried that night at all. When my cooking was finished, I sat at the table waiting for him. I love these hours; it is silent and peaceful and the clock ticks and I have many pleasant thoughts. I know that soon I will hear his step on the stairs, and the door will open and he will be there. I smile to myself, sitting there at the table with my head supported on my hand, full of drowsy thoughts. Sometimes I nod off and those thoughts turn into dreams on the same subject. But I always start up at the sound of his steps—only his steps, because that night Daddy was already in the room, calling my name, before I woke up. Then I jumped to my feet. I knew something terrible had happened.

  When Daddy said that Rajee had been arrested, I sank down again onto my chair. I couldn’t stand, I couldn’t speak. Daddy tho
ught it was with shock, but of course it was out of relief. I had imagined far worse. It took me some time to realize that this too was very bad. I knew Daddy thought it was the worst thing there could be. He was so badly affected that I had to make him lie down while I prepared tea for him. I also served him the meal I had cooked for Rajee and myself. Daddy ate both our portions. Now that he is old, he seems to need a great deal of food and is always ready to eat at any hour, whatever his state of mind may be.

  But when he had finished this time, he became very upset again. He pushed away the dish and said, “Yes, yes, yes, I knew how it would be.”

  Of course, this was no time to start defending Rajee. In any case, I have long stopped doing so. I know it isn’t so much Rajee that Daddy doesn’t like but the fact that I’m married to him and have not become any of the grand things Daddy wanted.

  “A case of cheating and impersonation,” Daddy said now. “A criminal case.”

  I cried, “But where is he?”

  “In jail! In prison! Jail!”

  Daddy moaned, and so did I. I thought of Rajee sitting in a cell. I could see him sitting there and the expression on his face. I put my head down on the table and sobbed. I could not stop.

  After a while Daddy began to pat my back. He didn’t know what else to do; unlike Rajee, he has never been good at comforting people. I wiped my eyes and said as steadily as I could, “What about bail?”

  That made Daddy excited again; he cried, “Five thousand rupees! Where should we take it from?”

  No, we didn’t have five thousand rupees. Daddy only had his pension, and Rajee and I only had my salary from the shop. Again I saw Rajee sitting there, but I quickly shut my eyes against this unbearable vision.

  I made Daddy comfortable on our bed and told him I would be back soon. He wanted to know where I was going. He asked how I could go alone in the streets at this time of night, but he was too tired to protest much. I think he was already asleep when I left. I had to walk all the way through the empty streets. I wasn’t frightened, although there had lately been some bad cases in the newspapers of women being attacked. I had other things to think about, and chief among them at the moment was how I could wake up Sudha without waking the rest of her household. But this turned out to be no problem at all, because it was she who came to the door as soon as I knocked. I think she hadn’t gone to sleep yet, although it was two o’clock in the morning. No one else stirred in the house.

  When I told her, she had a dreadful shock. I think she had the same vision of him that I had. I put out my hand to touch her, but she pushed me away. The expression of pain on her face turned to one of anger. She said, “Why do you come here? What should I do?” Of course she knew what it was I wanted. She said, “I haven’t got it.” Then she shouted, “Do you know how long I haven’t seen him! How many days!”

  I looked around nervously, and she laughed. She said, “Don’t worry. He wouldn’t wake up if the house fell down.” She was right; I could hear her husband snoring, with those fat sounds fat people make in their sleep. “Listen,” she said. “It’s the same every night. He eats his meal and then—” She imitated the snoring sounds. “And I can’t sleep. I walk round the house, thinking. Does Rajee talk about me to you? What does he say?”

  I didn’t know what to answer. I had already suspected that Rajee did not like to be with her as much as before, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Also, this was not the time to talk about it. I had to have the money from her. I had to. There was no other way.

  When I said nothing, her face became hard. She and I have known each other for a long time—we were at college together—but I have always been a bit afraid of her. She is a very passionate person. “Go!” she said to me now, and her voice was hard. “How dare you come here? Aren’t you ashamed?”

  “Where else can I go?”

  We were silent. Her husband snored.

  I said, “I had cooked fish curry for him tonight, he loves it so much. Do you think they gave him anything to eat there? You know how particular he is about his food.”

  She shrugged, like someone to whom this is of no concern. But I knew these were not her true feelings, so I continued. “Will he be able to sleep? I don’t know if they give beds. Perhaps there are other people with him in the cell—bad characters. I’ve heard there are many people who share each cell, there is such overcrowding nowadays. And there are no facilities for them, only one bucket, and they take away their belts and shoelaces, because they are afraid that—”

  “Be quiet!”

  She went out of the room, stumbling over a footstool in her hurry. I could hear her in the bedroom, rattling keys and banging drawers. She took absolutely no care about making a noise, but the sounds from her husband went on undisturbed. I waited for her. I didn’t like being here. The room was furnished with costly things, but they were not in good taste. I have always disliked coming here. The atmosphere is not good, probably because she and her husband don’t like each other.

  At last she came back. She didn’t have cash, but she gave me some jewelry. She had wrapped it in a cloth, which she thrust into my hands. Then she said, “Go, go, go,” but that was not necessary, for I was already on my way out.

  Rajee came home the next evening. I wished we could have been alone, but Daddy and Sudha were also there. Rajee smiled at them, but they both averted their eyes from him and then his smile faded. He didn’t know what to say. Neither did I.

  Rajee is so good-humored and sociable that he hates it when the atmosphere is like that, and he feels he has to do something to cheer everyone up again. He rubbed his hands and said, “Nice to be home,” in a cheerful, smiling voice.

  Sudha shot him a burning look. Her eyes are already large enough, but they look even larger because of the kohl with which she outlines them.

  “North, South, East, West, home is best,” Rajee said.

  “Fool! Idiot!” Sudha screamed.

  There was a silence, in which we seemed to be listening to the echo of this scream. Then Rajee said, “Please let me explain.”

  “What is there to explain?” Daddy said. “Cheating, impersonation—”

  “A mistake,” Rajee said.

  They were silent in a rather grim way, as if waiting to hear what he had to say. He cleared his throat a few times and spread his hands and began a long story. It was very involved and got more and more so as he went on. It was all about some man he had met in the coffeehouse who had seemed an honest, decent person but had turned out not to be so. It was he who had drawn Rajee into this deal, which also had turned out not to be as honest and decent as Rajee had thought. I didn’t listen very carefully; I was watching the two others to see what impression he was making on them. Rajee too was watching them, and every now and again he stopped to scan their faces, and then he ran his tongue over his lips and went on talking faster. He didn’t once look at me, though; he knew it didn’t make any difference to me what he said, because I was on his side anyway.

  Rajee is a very good talker, and I could see that Sudha and Daddy were wavering. But of course they weren’t happy yet, and they continued to sit there with very glum faces. So then Rajee, sincerely anxious to cheer them up, said to me, “How about some tea? And a few biscuits, if you have any?” He smiled and winked at me, and I also smiled and went away to make the tea.

  When I came back, Daddy was arguing with Rajee. Daddy was saying, “But is this the way to do business? In a coffeehouse, with strangers, is this the way to make a living?” Rajee was proving to him that it was. He told him all big deals were made this way. He gave him a lot of examples of fortunes that had been made just by two or three people meeting by chance—how apartment houses had been bought and sold, and a new sugar mill set up with all imported machinery by special government license. It was all a matter of luck and skill and being there at the right time. I knew all these stories, for Rajee had told them to me many times. He loves telling them and thinking about them; they are his inspiration in life. It
is because of them, I think, that he gets up in such good humor every day and hums to himself while shaving and dresses up smartly and goes out with a shining, smiling face.

  But Daddy remained glum. It is not in his nature to believe such stories. He is retired now, but all through his working life he never got up in good humor or ever went to his office with high expectations. All he ever expected was his salary, and afterward his pension, and that is all he ever got.

  “Do you know about Verma Electricals, how they started—have you any idea?” Rajee said, flushed with excitement. But Daddy said, “It would be better to get some regular job.”

  Rajee smiled politely. He could have pointed out—only he didn’t, because he is always very careful of people’s feelings—that the entire salary that Daddy had earned throughout his thirty-five years of government service was less than Rajee can expect to make out of one of his deals.

  Now Daddy started to get excited. His lips trembled and his hands fumbled about in the air. He said, “If you—Then she—she—she—” He pointed at me with a shaking finger. We all knew what he meant. If Rajee got a job, then I wouldn’t have to go to work in the shop.

  I said, “I like it.”

  Daddy got more excited. He stammered and his hands waved frantically in the air as if they were searching for the words that wouldn’t come to him. Rajee tried to soothe him. He kept saying, “Please, Daddy.” He was afraid for his heart.

  And, indeed, Daddy’s hands suddenly left off fumbling in the air and clutched his side instead. He must have got one of his tremors. He started whimpering like a child. Rajee jumped up and kept saying, “Oh my goodness.” He took Daddy’s arm to lead him to our sofa and make him lie down there. Rajee said several times, “Now keep quite calm,” but in fact it was he who was the most excited.