The English Teacher

by R. K. Narayan

  ‘Oh, I will take great care. You may depend upon us …’

  The following were days of iron routine. I had very little sleep all night. I got up at six o’clock in the morning and took her temperature. It was recorded once in four hours – starting with six a.m. and ending with ten at night. It duly recorded 102 at the first count. As the day progressed the mercury column rose step by step till it reached and passed 104. I watched the mercury column with a beating heart … When I pulled the thermometer out of its shining case, it was always with a fine hope that the fever was going to be mild. When I stuck it under her tongue and waited, it was like waiting for a verdict – with prayer and trembling. And then taking it against the light and straining to catch its growth from 102 and 104 and the fractions it touched! I began to dread this instrument – it had something irrevocable, stern, like a judge on the bench. I always commented to myself: ‘Something wrong with this thermometer. Must break it and get another one.’ My wife asked: ‘What does it show?’ And she was always told a degree or two less. And then the entry on the chart, always ranging between 102 and 104. My vision of a paradise was where all the entries would be confined between normal and 100.

  This was a world by itself – this sickroom. The aspirations in this chamber were of a novel kind, different from what they were outside. The chief ambition here was to see a fall in the chart. The height of contentment was reached in observing perfect bodily functions, which at other times would pass unnoticed. ‘The patient is hungry!’ Ah, very good. ‘The patient likes her food.’ ‘Excellent …’ ‘The patient gives sensible answers.’ Marvellous. And so on and on. The depth of misery was touched when there was any deviation from these standards. The doctor came in twice a day and radiated good cheer: ‘Absolutely normal course. No complications. A perfect typhoid run …’ he used to declare, make a few routine observations, and go away. I sat in that chair watching her sleep, every hour or so pouring into her throat medicine or barley water or glucose. I hardly stirred from the place, and got up only at nine in the evening when my father-in-law or mother-in-law (both of whom had arrived a few days before) took charge of the patient. After ablutions with Lentol, I went in, bathed, changed, and ate my dinner, and took charge of the child, who would not go to bed till she had me to sleep by her side in a corner of the hall.

  The child exhibited model behaviour. She came and stood twice or thrice in the course of a day outside the threshold and watched her mother. Susila’s eyes lit up when the child came to the door. She would ask if the little one had had her food, and put to her numerous other questions in her feeble voice, to none of which the child would reply. A sort of shyness had seized her. She conducted herself before her mother as if she were a stranger. But though she would speak no word, she liked to stand there and watch. She occasionally put a foot into the room and felt thrilled, as if it were an adventure. She went away and her mother shut her eyes and listened to her footfalls. The child spent all her time with her grandparents and her friend next door. Her grandfather took her out shopping and bought her sweets and toys. At night she waited for me to get free of sickroom duties. The moment I had sufficiently cleansed myself and warded off the poison, she hugged and clung to me, sat on my lap while I ate my dinner, and prattled away about all her day’s activities. From the corner where I lay at night, I watched the sickroom, its shaded light, the low voices asking or answering; every time there was a movement in that room I woke up with a start. Once or twice when she snored, I got into a panic and ran to her door, only to see her sleeping peacefully with one of her parents sitting up in the chair. My parents were unable to come. My father was down with his annual rheumatic attack, and my mother was unable to leave his side. They wrote me frantic letters every day, and it was my duty to drop them a card every day. I wrote a number of cards to others too. My brother at Hyderabad, my sister at Vellore, and the other sister at Delhi, wrote me very encouraging letters, and expected me to drop them postcards every day. They wrote, ‘Nothing to fear in typhoid. It is only a question of nursing.’ Everybody who met me repeated this like a formula, till I began to listen to it mechanically without following its meaning. Numerous people – my friends and colleagues – dropped in all day, some standing aloof fearing infection, and some coming quite close reckless and indifferent.

  I lost touch with the calendar. In doing the same set of things in the same place, I lost count of days. Hours flew with rapidity. The mixture once in three hours, food every two hours, but two hours and three hours passed with such rapidity that you never felt there was any appreciable gap between doses.

  But I liked it immensely. It kept me so close to my wife that it produced an immense satisfaction in my mind. Throughout I acted as her nurse. This sickness seemed to bind us together more strongly than ever. I sat in the chair and spoke to her of interesting things I saw in the paper. She spoke in whispers as the weeks advanced. She said: ‘My father said he would give me five hundred rupees when I got well again …’

  ‘Very good, very good. Hurry up and claim your reward.’

  ‘Even without it I want to be well again.’ There was a deep stillness reigning in the house but for the voice of the child as she argued with her grandparents or sang to herself.

  There was an interlude. The contractor and Sastri knocked on my door one day. ‘Oh, come in,’ I said and took them to my room, but there was no chair or table there. I said apologetically: ‘No chair. It is in the other room and also the table, because my wife is down with typhoid.’ Sastri said promptly, ‘Oh, we will sit on the floor.’ They squatted down on the floor.

  And then after the preliminaries, Sastri said: ‘It is about that house – they are keeping it in abeyance. There is another demand for it …’ I remembered my decision was due long ago. ‘I’m afraid I can’t think of it. Wait a moment please.’ I went up to my wife’s bedside and asked: ‘Susila, what shall I say about that house?’ She took time to understand. ‘Do you like it?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, it is a fine house – if we are buying a house.’

  ‘Why not think of it when all this is over?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I agreed. I ran out and told them: ‘I have no time to bother about it now. If it is a loss to you waiting for me …’ As I spoke I disliked the house. I remembered the shock Susila had received in the backyard. They went away. Before going, they said: ‘Nursing is everything.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know,’ I said.

  The contractor said: ‘May I say a word about it?’

  ‘Go on, by all means.’

  ‘Never trust these English doctors. My son had typhoid. The doctors tried to give this and that and forbade him to eat anything; but he never got well though he was in bed for thirty days. Afterwards somebody gave him a herb, and I gave him whatever he wanted to eat, and he got well within two days. The last thing you must heed is their advice. The English doctors always try to starve one to death. Give the patient plenty of things to eat and any fever will go down. That is my principle …’

  Susila’s parents suffered quietly. There was a deep attachment between them and their daughter. My mother-in-law was brought up in a social condition where she had to show extreme respect for a son-in-law, and so she never came before me or spoke to me. My father-in-law was more sociable. He was an important landholder in his village, and beside that, he was on the directorate of a number of industrial concerns in Madras. He constantly travelled to and fro and met numerous people and had a very cosmopolitan outlook. So in spite of his age – he was past sixty (my wife being his last issue) – he was rather unorthodox in his speech and habits. He constantly admonished me to be careful not to have a large family: ‘One grandchild from this quarter is quite adequate. We are quite satisfied.’ He was an extraordinarily merry person for his age. But now he looked intimidated. He was full of anxiety for his daughter’s welfare and recovery, but he concealed it under a mask of light-heartedness, for fear that it might frighten me. He sat up with
his daughter all night, reading a novel and speaking to her very kindly, but without betraying any excessive sentimentality in his voice. ‘Don’t trouble me, Susila. The world is a bad enough place without your adding to it by refusing the medicine.’ He told me: ‘Your mother-in-law is definite that if you hadn’t allowed her to go into that lavatory, Susila would not have fallen ill.’

  All day he spent unobtrusively in the company of his granddaughter, teaching her lessons, telling her stories, or taking her out shopping. He spoilt her a great deal: ‘I believe in spoiling children; who should be spoilt if not children?’ he often asked. He undid in a couple of weeks all the elaborate cultivation of character which we imagined we had been practising on the child for over three years now. As a result of his handling Leela spoke like an infant-in-arms (if it could speak) and constantly insisted upon being carried on her grandfather’s shoulder, or grandmother’s arm. Her grandmother gave her plenty to eat defeating all our regulated dieting. And I was not in a position to protest very effectively.

  She was convinced that the Evil Eye had fallen on her daughter and that at the new house a malignant spirit had attacked her. She admonished me: ‘You should never step into an unknown house in this manner. You can never be sure. How do you know what happened to the previous tenants or why they left?’ She went out in the evening and visited a nearby temple and prayed to the god for her daughter’s recovery. She brought in regularly every evening sacred ash and vermilion and smeared it on her daughter’s forehead. She helped us run the house and got on well with the cook, who found her a willing help. All through the day, one heard their low voices going on in the kitchen, narrating each other’s life and philosophy. My mother-in-law arranged with the help of the cook for an exorcist to visit us. One fine afternoon a man came and knocked on the door. My daughter was the first to see him. My father-in-law was having his afternoon nap in my room, and my mother-in-law was in the kitchen. The little girl had been playing on the front veranda with a doll when she looked up and saw a stranger entering the gate. She let out a cry of fear on seeing him, and she came running in and stood in the doorway of the sickroom, bubbling with excitement. I was just caressing the patient’s forehead, because it was the hour when the temperature mounted and she complained of headache.

  ‘What is it, Leela?’

  ‘There is a bad man, a fearful man there!’

  I rose and followed her. I saw a man with his forehead ablaze with sacred ash, and a thick rosary around his neck and matted hair, standing at the door. ‘Go away,’ I said, taking him to be a beggar.

  ‘I am not come to beg,’ he said, ‘I have been asked to come.’

  Meanwhile my mother-in-law came out, saw him, and with great respect brought him in. ‘He’s come for Susila,’ she said, and conducted him to the bedside. He sat in the chair and watched the patient, while Susila who had never seen a bearded man at close quarters gazed on him in panic. Her mother said: ‘This Swamiji has come for your sake.’ I watched it all from the doorway in fury, but I had to be silent because I couldn’t argue with my mother-in-law, and I was uncertain how it would be viewed by the Swamiji. He felt her pulse. He uttered some mantras with closed eyes, took a pinch of sacred ash and rubbed it on her forehead, and tied to her arm a talisman strung in yellow thread. When he came out of the room, my mother-in-law seated him on a mat in the hall, gave him a tumbler of milk to drink and placed before him a tray containing a coconut, betel leaves, and a rupee. Meanwhile, the doctor’s car stopped before the house, and I heard his steps approaching. I felt ashamed and wished I could spirit away this mystic. The doctor came in, and saw him and smiled to himself. The mystic sat without noticing him, though looking at him. ‘My mother-in-law’s idea of treatment,’ I said apologetically. ‘Ah, no, don’t belittle these people,’ said the doctor. ‘There is a lot in him too, we don’t know. When we understand it fully I am sure we doctors will be able to give more complete cures.’ He said this with a wink at me. My mother-in-law was greatly pleased and said to the doctor: ‘You must allow us old people to have our way now and then.’ As I went in with the doctor, the Swamiji got up and took his leave, muttering: ‘May God help you to see the end of your anxieties.’

  The doctor stood at the bedside. He lifted his arm, saw the talisman, and said: ‘Now how do you feel after this, lady?’ My wife made an effort to smile. She indicated her abdomen and said, ‘A lot of pain here.’ The doctor pressed his fingers on it. He went over to the temperature chart and scrutinized it: ‘You haven’t taken the four o’clock temperature yet?’ he said.

  ‘No.’ He inserted the thermometer, took it out, and washed it. ‘How much?’ my father-in-law asked, standing at the door, having been disturbed out of his nap by the visitors. ‘The usual run,’ the doctor answered. My father-in-law asked one or two questions about the patient and moved on. The doctor closely observed the patient and her movements and left the room. I followed him to his car, listening to instructions. At the car he told me, ‘Have you an ice bag?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I will send one. Get some ice and apply it constantly, whenever the temperature is above 102.’

  ‘What is the temperature, doctor?’

  ‘Rather high today, but don’t get into a fright: 105, but that is common in this fever. Apply ice.’ He went away.

  All day I sat pressing down the ice bag on her forehead. The Bombay Ananda Bhavan, where we had our morning tiffin on that Sunday, and perhaps where she had caught her typhoid, had a refrigerator and sold us ice. I purchased a block of ten pounds at a time, covered with sawdust and wrapped in gunny. My father-in-law obliged me by keeping an eye on the ice position and going out and getting it. I loved the smooth crystal appearance as I opened the gunny-sack covering and wiped away the sawdust particles; the cool gust which emanated from it; and then the hammer blow which split it up into lumps just the size to be put into the ice bag. I always took a pride in the fact that the blow I gave was so well calculated that the pieces were neither too large nor too small but of the correct size and slipped into the mouth of the bag … It was a queer delight for me to see the bag bulging, I liked the feel of it as it acquired the correct weight. I carried it in, sat down, with a towel in hand, and pressed it down to form a cap on her head; when it fitted her head nicely it gave me a profound satisfaction. I sat pressing it down with one hand, while with the towel I wiped off the trickling drops of water condensing on it. My palm froze by this constant contact with ice and her forehead felt like a marble surface on a winter morning. And as the ice inside melted, it made a peculiar gurgling when the bag was shaken, so that by practice and intuition I learnt to gauge how much of the ice inside had melted, without opening the lid. Everything in this sickroom seemed to me profoundly ingenious and full of technical points and pleasures and triumphs. This impressed me so much that one day I wrote a poem about it. With my left hand I was applying the ice on her forehead. She slept and spoke a little in her sleep; I watched her for a while; a coloured bee had drifted in and was droning near the rafters. I had nothing else to do. I left the ice bag balanced on her head, ran in and returned with my writing-pad and a pencil. I placed the pad on my lap and wrote, while she slept and talked in sleep:

  The Great Kailas is one Mound of Ice

  Where Shiva and Parvathi sport, which catch the

  Gleam of ethereal lights, heavenly Rainbows.

  Here for us God has sent a piece of Kailas down

  To subdue the Mercury column …

  And here out of its wood dust it comes,

  Cold mist cloud rises on its crystal face,

  And it reflects not mountain light

  But my face …

  And here is a great battle ground,

  The great fight goes on

  On either side of this red bag.

  But so far it is not the fever which cools,

  But Ice that melts.

  It was a fact. Ice turned int
o water with great rapidity. I had to hammer out blocks into pieces every twenty minutes.

  It was not necessary to keep the ice on at night, but in a couple of days it became indispensable even then. The temperature declined only after midnight. She spoke less clearly now, took time to understand what was being said to her, and she constantly agitated her arms up and down. ‘Why do you do it?’ I asked.

  ‘Something is running up and down. I won’t sleep here unless you make a new bed.’ With elaborate difficulty, my father-in-law, mother-in-law and everybody assisting, we rolled her to one side and made a new bed for her. It took us nearly an hour. Changing the sheets was a daily adventure, but now we had to make an entirely new bed for her top to bottom. But the labour was worth it, because she remained quiet, but only for an hour. Again she began to toss her arms and legs. ‘You can’t do it, child,’ I said. ‘You will put up your fever.’ She merely glared at me and said: ‘Don’t tell me all that. I know how to look after myself.’ I sat down and applied the ice. She tried to seize the ice bag and push it away. ‘Oh, I don’t want this, please. I am tired of it.’ I had to cajole and admonish and keep the bag. She went on grumbling and muttering something. I had to beg her to keep quiet: and when she persisted, I called in her father.

  ‘Do you think I am a child to be frightened?’ she asked when her father stood in the doorway.

  ‘Come in, come in, please,’ I said to her father. He came over and stood at her bedside. She said: ‘Father!’ She implored weakly, ‘He is worrying me too much. I don’t want the ice bag.’

  ‘All right, all right, child, it is good for you. I will apply it.’ He sat down in the chair. He took up the ice bag and said to me: ‘Why don’t you go to your room and rest for a while? It will do you good. You have been sitting up without a break since 6 a.m. I will look after her.’