The English Teacher

by R. K. Narayan

  I had to wait in the bathroom passage for some time, all the cubicles were engaged. Behind the doors, to the tune of falling water a couple of boys were humming popular film songs. I paced the passage with the towel round my neck. It was a semi-dark, damp place, with a glass tile giving it its sole lighting. ‘I shall soon be rid of this nuisance,’ I reflected, ‘when I have a home of my own. Hostel bathrooms are hell on earth … [God said to his assistants, “Take this man away to hell”, and they brought him down to the hostel bathroom passage, and God said, “torture him”, and they opened the room and pushed him in … No, no, at this moment the angels said “the room is engaged” … God waited as long as a god can wait and asked “Have you finished” and they replied “still engaged”, and in due course they could not see where their victim was, for grass had grown and covered him up completely while he waited outside the bathroom door. This promises to be a good poem. Must write it some day …]’ At this moment a door opened and someone came out dripping. It was a student of the second-year class. He asked agitatedly: ‘Sir, have I kept you waiting long?’

  ‘Yes, my dear fellow, but how could you come out before finishing that masterpiece of a song?’ The other held the door ostentatiously open and I passed in.

  I was back in my room. I applied a little hair-cream, stood before the small looking glass hanging by the nail on the wall, and tried to comb. The looking glass was in the southern wall and I could hardly see my face. ‘Nuisance,’ I muttered, picked up the glass, and looked for a place to hang it on – not a place. Light at the window struck me in the face and dazzled. ‘The room is full of windows,’ I muttered. ‘These petty annoyances of life will vanish when I have a home of my own. My dear wife will see that the proper light comes at the proper angle.’ I finally put the looking glass down on the table. It had a stand which would not support it. I picked up Taine’s History of Literature and leaned the glass against it. ‘Taine every time,’ I muttered and combed my hair back, interrupting the operation for a moment to watch the spray from the comb wet-dotting the covers of books and notebooks on the table. I paused for a moment gazing at my face in the glass. ‘This is how, I suppose, I appear to that girl and the little one. Yet they have confidence that I shall be able to look after them and run a home!’

  I was ready to start out. I picked up the letters, smelt once again my wife’s epistle, and sat back in the chair, and read the letter over again, without missing a single word. ‘I want to see the baby and her mother very badly. How long am I to be in this wretched hostel?’ I said to myself. I leaned back, reflecting. Through my window I could see the college tower and a bit of the sky. I had watched through this window the play of clouds and their mutation for a decade. All that was to be learnt about clouds was learnt by me, sitting in this place, and looking away, while studying for examinations or preparing lectures.

  I started out. At the hostel gate I saw Rangappa standing. He was involved in a discussion with Subbaram – an assistant in the Economics Department. I tried to go away pretending not to have seen him.

  ‘Krishna, Krishna! Just a moment,’ Rangappa cried on seeing me. He turned to his friend and said: ‘Let us refer it to a third party.’ I stopped. ‘You see,’ began Rangappa. ‘The point is this …’

  ‘No, let me first say what it is,’ the other interrupted.

  ‘What place would you give to economic values …’ he began.

  ‘It all depends,’ I said ironically, without allowing him to finish the sentence.

  ‘No, no, don’t put it that way,’ interrupted Rangappa.

  ‘I will simplify it for you. Is a hundred per cent materialism compatible with our best traditions?’ Just another of our numerous discussions going on night and day among my colleagues, leading God knew where. What pleasure or profit did they get by it? ‘I will give the matter deep consideration and tell you in due course,’ I said, and moved away. Rangappa cried: ‘Wait, I will go with you.’

  ‘I am not going for a walk but to search for a house,’ I said, and went away.

  ‘I must have a house,’ I told myself, ‘which faces south, for its breeze, keeps out the western sun, gets in the eastern, and admits the due measure of northern light that artists so highly value. The house must have a room for each one of us and for a guest or two. It must keep us all together and yet separate us when we would rather not see each other’s faces … We must have helpful people and good people near at hand, but obnoxious neighbours ten miles away. It must be within walking distance of college and yet so far out as to let me enjoy my domestic life free from professional intrusions.’

  I spent the entire evening scouring various parts of the town watching for ‘To Let’ signs.

  ‘The builder of this house must have been dead-drunk while doing the latter portion of the house. This is a house evidently intended for monkeys to live in. This house must have been designed by a tuberculosis expert so that his business may prosper for the next hundred years. This house is ideal for one whose greatest desire in life is to receive constant knocks on his head from door-posts. A house for a twisted pigmy.’ Thus, variously, I commented within myself as I inspected the vacant houses in the east, west and south of the town. I scoured South Extension, Fort Area, Race Course Road, and Vinayak Mudali Street. I omitted Lawley Extension because it was expensive, and also the New Extension beyond it, because it was too far out of the way.

  The search extended over three or four days. I could think of nothing but houses all the while. The moment I met anyone I asked: ‘Can you suggest a good house?’ I was becoming a bore, capable of talking of nothing but houses, houses, night and day. I got into the habit of taking aside my students and asking them about it. I was becoming anxious. The day was fast approaching when my wife and child would be arriving. There didn’t appear to be a single house fit for their occupation in the whole town. Suppose fifteen days hence I was still in this state and they arrived and had nowhere to go outside the railway station! This vision was a nightmare to me. However I was spared. One of my students knew somebody who knew somebody else who had a house in Sarayu Street, and who was eager to have a good, cultured family as tenants. ‘Am I good? Is mine a cultured family?’ I asked myself immediately. Sarayu Street was a coveted spot in the town. It fulfilled almost all the conditions that are looked for in a residential locality, cheap houses, refined surroundings, and yet near enough to the market and the offices. I fell into feverish anxiety over this house. The boy promised to take me to the first link in the chain of introductions, on the following morning. I was too impatient to wait till then. I implored him: ‘There is no sense in postponing these matters. Somebody else may be there before me. Let us go today.’ I visualized the whole town waiting to crowd into the house and fight for it. The boy begged to be let off today since his evening was already committed to some other duty, but I brushed aside all his explanations and clung to him fast. He took me to his house behind the market, and then to someone a mile east of the market, and finally an old man hunched up in a rag-covered cane chair on the veranda of a house in Ellamman Street. It was a very narrow place with the tiles touching one’s head, and the chair completely filled the veranda. The old man fussed about on my arrival and compelled me to sit on a stool, which was placed on the edge of the veranda, and I was in constant danger of being tipped off into the street if I moved my limbs a little carelessly. So I sat there holding my breath. He was a very shrunken palsied patriarch. His sight was dim. He strained his eyes to catch a glimpse of me, but did not succeed. A silence fell between us. I broke it by asking: ‘Are you the owner of the house?’

  ‘No,’ he replied, promptly, in his querulous voice. ‘God is the owner and I am his slave.’

  ‘What is the rent?’

  ‘First see the house and tell me if you like it.’ I felt rather cowed by his authoritarian manner. I ventured: ‘I can’t do anything unless I know something about it …’ He shook his head reflectively: ‘Do you want the
garage or not?’

  ‘Has it a garage?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t ask all that now,’ said the old man.

  ‘Unless I know first if it has a garage …’ I said.

  ‘You want everything to be told first,’ he snapped with disgust, ‘before you say anything yourself. Go, go away. I am not prepared to talk to you any more. I don’t want to give you my house. I have seen hundreds like you come and ask questions and vanish out of sight.’

  ‘What is the matter with you?’ I asked indignantly. He bent close to my face and said: ‘I am semi-blind. Till three months ago, I could see clearly, but it came on suddenly. And I can’t talk without faltering: that’s what paralysis has done for me: speaking is a strain to me. Otherwise I am prepared to sit here a whole day and wag my tongue to your heart’s content, not caring whether you are a true tenant or a bogus one who comes and pesters me by the score each day. I will send the boy along with the key. See the house and then come and talk to me.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. He called a boy, pressed into his hand a large rusty key and said: ‘Show this master the bungalow. Show him every cupboard,’ he commanded. I followed the boy out. On the way I tried to engage him in friendly conversation, but he did not want it. He had his pocket filled with fried nuts, and was ceaselessly transferring them to his mouth. He walked ten yards ahead. ‘What class are you reading in?’ ‘I won’t read,’ he replied. He tossed the key up and caught it in mid-air. He led me through some maze of lanes and took me to Sarayu Street.

  Mine was the last house in a particular row. I liked it at first sight. A small wooden gate, ten yards of garden space, and then four steps up to a gabled veranda. There was a small room opening on the veranda detached from the main house. I went in and threw the window open: ‘A lovely view of Sarayu Street. When I have nothing else to do,’ I told myself, ‘I can watch the goings on of Sarayu Street. This room is evidently built for me, where I can study and write without disturbing the household or being disturbed.’

  ‘Why has this been untenanted so long?’ I asked the boy, without hoping for a reply as the boy waited for me tossing up the lock and key. But he seemed to have melted towards me; and promptly replied, ‘Because grandfather refuses to give it.’

  ‘When was this last occupied?’

  ‘Fifteen days ago,’ he said.

  ‘Is that all?’ I asked, but he suddenly lapsed into his silent ways once again.

  I liked the house very much. It had a central hall, ‘where all of us can meet’, and a small room at one end of the hall. ‘This must be her room and the child’s’, I told myself. The kitchen and other portions of the house were very satisfactory. There was a coconut tree in the backyard. ‘When a monkey goes up that tree, I can show it to the child,’ I said, viewing it from the tiny back veranda.

  I went back to the old man and said: ‘I will take the house. What is the rent?’

  ‘H’m,’ he reflected, ‘do you want it with or without a garage?’ I studiously avoided asking if it had a garage at all and where. I merely said, with a trembling diplomacy: ‘What’ll be the difference with or without. Suppose I want a garage?’

  ‘Hush!’ He made a gesture of utter despair. ‘I don’t like you to brag about all that unnecessarily. Empty talk! Don’t pretend you own a car. You have come walking. Even if I’m blind, do you think I can’t notice it?’

  ‘Look here,’ I cried, losing all patience. ‘If you are letting the house, let it, otherwise don’t talk of matters which are not your concern. I’m not here to learn lessons from you. I am myself a teacher: and I teach a thousand boys in that college, mind you!’ He was greatly impressed.

  ‘College teacher!’ He gave a salute with both hands and said, ‘I revere college teachers, our Gurus. Meritorious deeds in previous births make them gurus in this life. I’m so happy. I only wanted a good, cultured family.’

  ‘Everybody knows how good we are, and how cultured our family is!’ I replied haughtily. This had the desired effect. I added: ‘Don’t mistake me for an ordinary person!’ I drew myself up proudly. He was tremendously impressed. His face beamed with relief: ‘Do you know why I want a cultured family?’ He whispered as if it were a State secret: ‘I’m going away to live with my son after letting the house, and I want someone who will send me the rent without fail …’

  ‘Depend upon me,’ I said. ‘What shall I have to pay you?’

  ‘Twenty-five on the fifth of every month. It must reach me on that day at Bellary.’

  ‘Very well. And what about the garage?’ I asked haughtily.

  ‘I’ll build you one if you want, but ten rupees extra,’ he said.

  ‘All right, I will tell you when I need one,’ I said.

  Four days later my table and trunk and chair were loaded into a bullock-cart, my old room was locked up and the key was handed to Singaram. My hostel friends stood on the veranda and cracked a joke or two. The hostel was a place where people constantly arrived and departed and it was not in anyone’s nature there to view these matters pensively. Rangappa and the mathematics man stood on the veranda and said: ‘Well, goodbye, friend. Good luck. Don’t forget us for the house-warming,’ and laughed. Singaram had been very busy the whole day packing up and loading my things. He had attended on me for ten years – sweeping my room, counselling me and running my errands. He walked behind the creaking cart warning the driver: ‘When you unload, remove the trunk first and the table last. If I hear that you have broken any leg, I will break your head, remember …’ I walked behind the cart. Singaram had come to the border of his domain – the hostel drive – and stopped. He salaamed me and said, ‘Don’t forget our hostel, keep visiting us now and then.’ He hesitated for a moment and said: ‘Now permit this old man to go …’ It was his hint that the time had come for him to receive his reward. He nearly held out his hand for it. I took out my purse and put a rupee on his palm. He looked at me coldly and said: ‘Is this all the value you attach to the old man?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I should have given half that to anyone else …’

  ‘No, no, don’t say so. Don’t grudge an honest man his payment. I’ve been your servant for ten years. Do you know what Professor X gave me when he left this hostel?’ ‘I don’t want all that information,’ I said and added a nickel to the rupee. He said: ‘Don’t grudge an old servant his due. You will perhaps not see me again: I will perhaps be dead; next year I’m retiring and going back to my village. You will never see me again. You will be very sorry when you hear that old Singaram is dead and that you wouldn’t give the poor fellow eight annas more …’ I put in his hand an eight-anna coin. He bowed and said: ‘God will make you a big professor one day …’ and walked away. I passed out of the hostel gate, following my caravan and goods.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The next three days I was very busy. My table was placed in the front room of the new house. All my papers and books were arranged neatly. My clothes hung on a peg. The rest of the house was swept and cleaned.

  My mother arrived from the village with a sack full of vessels, and helped to make up the house for me. She was stocking the store-room and the kitchen and spent most of her time travelling in a jutka to the market and coming back with something or other. She worked far into the night, arranging and rearranging the kitchen and the store. At night she sat down with me on the veranda and talked of her house-keeping philosophy. I liked this veranda very much. We had a cool breeze. I felt immensely satisfied with my choice of the house now. I hoped my wife too would like it. But my mother, the moment she arrived from the village, said, ‘What an awful kitchen! so narrow! And the dining-room would have been better if they had added at least a yard in length that side …’

  ‘We can’t have everything our way in a house built by someone else …’ I became rather impatient if anyone criticized this house. She understood it and said: ‘I’m not saying it is a bad house …’ She had been used to our large, sprawling home in the village, a
nd everything else seemed to her small and choking. I explained this fact to her and she agreed it was so: ‘But do you know how hard it is to keep a huge house like ours clean? It takes me a whole lifetime to keep it tidy, but I don’t grudge it. Only I want a little more co-operation. Your father is becoming rather difficult nowadays …’ She explained how impatient he became when he heard the swish of a broom or the noise of scrubbing, and shouted at her to stop it all. As he was growing old, these noises got on his nerves. And so every time she wanted to clean the house, she had to wait till he went away to the fields. ‘And do you know, when I delay this, how many other things get out of routine? Unless I have cleaned the house I can’t go and bathe. After bathing I’ve to worship, and only after that can I go near the cows … And if I fail to look at the cow-shed for half an hour, do you know what happens?’ She was completely wrapped up in her duties. House-keeping was a grand affair for her. The essence of her existence consisted in the thrills and pangs and the satisfaction that she derived in running a well-ordered household. She was unsparing and violent where she met slovenliness. ‘If a woman can’t take charge of a house and run it sensibly, she must be made to get into man’s dress and go out in a procession …’ I thought of my wife and shuddered at the fate that might be awaiting her in the few weeks my mother was going to stay and help us run the house. My wife was the last daughter of the family and was greatly petted by her parents, in her own house, where she spent most of her time reading, knitting, embroidering or looking after a garden. In spite of it, after my marriage my mother kept her in the village and trained her up in house-keeping. My wife had picked up many sensible points in cooking and household economy, and her own parents were tremendously impressed with her attainments when she next visited them. They were thrilled beyond words and remarked when I went there, ‘We are so happy, Susila has such a fine house for her training. Every girl on earth should be made to pass through your mother’s hands …’ which, when I conveyed it to my mother, pleased her. She said: ‘I really do not mind doing it for everyone, but there are those who neither know nor learn when taught. I feel like kicking them when I come across that type.’ I knew she was referring to her eldest daughter-in-law, my brother’s wife, whom she detested heartily. I had half a suspicion that my eldest brother went away to seek his livelihood in Hyderabad solely for this reason, for there used to be very painful scenes at home while the first daughter-in-law was staying in our house, my mother’s idiosyncrasy being what it was and the other being of a haughty disposition. She was the daughter of a retired High Court Judge, and would never allow a remark or a look from my mother to pass unchallenged, and as a result great strife existed in the household for a number of years. My mother used to declare when my elder brother was not present, ‘Whatever happens, even with a ten-thousand-rupee dowry, I shall never accept a girl from a High Court Judge’s family again …’