The English Teacher

by R. K. Narayan

  ‘I will do my best, but I have to mind my college,’ I added again.

  ‘I think my time is nearing. It is midnight, isn’t it? I may not see the sunrise tomorrow.’ I was greatly moved to hear him say it. I implored him: ‘Don’t believe all this, my friend. You will be back in the morning. Or will you sleep here in my house?’ I suggested apprehensively. He shook his head: ‘It’s my last night. I should like to spend it with my wife and children.’

  ‘Shall I see you home?’ I asked, hoping he wouldn’t agree. I had forgotten the child when I made the offer. He brushed it aside: ‘No, don’t trouble yourself. I can go home quite safely. I am quite sober and sound in mind, I assure you. If you have still any doubt about me, see this paper …’ He took out of his pocket a folded piece of paper, and spread it out on his knee. He tilted it towards the light. ‘Go on, read it. I took it out of the file. It is nearly the last sheet, you know,’ he said with a forced laugh. ‘Go on, read it aloud.’ I read out with difficulty: ‘This person’s earthly duties over, he will pass over on this day, surrounded by his wife and children at his last moment …’ I read it, and did not know what to say about it. What does one say on such occasions?

  ‘You are looking quite well?’ I said testingly.

  ‘I’m in perfect condition,’ he said. ‘But what is there to prevent anyone dying in perfect health as well as in ill-health?’ he said. This was the strangest man I had ever come across. I had never known this side of the man. I felt foolish and fatuous. I had never thought that he viewed death in this manner, even theoretically. On the one or two occasions he had condoled with me on the loss of my wife, he was causal and off-hand; but I put it down to the delicacy which he might have felt. I never discussed with him my psychic efforts or experiences, thinking that it would not interest him; but now I felt like telling him about them and said: ‘Do you know, I don’t believe in death myself. My wife has communicated with me so often, and has given me directions for self-development.’ I went on and on. He listened in silence, his head looking large in a shadow on the ground in front of us. He answered: ‘Don’t mistake me. It is all a matter of personal faith and conviction. But I am not interested in life after death. I have no opinion either way. There may be a continuation in other spheres, under other conditions, or there may not be. It is immaterial to me. The only reality I recognize is death. To me it is nothing more than a full stop. I have trained myself to view it with calm. Beyond it …’ He shook his head. ‘In fact in my prediction, if you will turn over the page, he says something about my next birth too. I’m to be born in a Cochin village to Brahmin parents and so on … but I don’t really care for that part …’

  ‘When you trust so much in these predictions, you must trust in that too …’

  ‘But my trust is only in regard to matters of this life, not an inch beyond … I’ve never looked at that page more than once. My knowledge of past, present and future, strictly pertain to this life. Beyond that I have nothing to say, because I believe I shall once again be resolved into the five elements of which I’m composed: and my intelligence and memory may not be more than what we see in air and water!’

  I felt very unhappy to hear all this. I thought of my wife – all that I heard from her. Were they all self-deceptions? Was she nothing more than the mute elements, the funeral fire resolving her into vapour, unseen air, and dust? I felt sad and shaken. He said: ‘This is my view. But don’t let it disturb you …’ My daughter stirred in her sleep and moaned. I started up. He rose, gripped my hand, and said: ‘Goodbye. If we meet once again tomorrow, don’t laugh at me.’ ‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘I shall celebrate it with a feast. I shall think you have a new life.’

  I saw him off at the gate. He went away without turning his head.

  I awoke earlier than usual. I was very anxious about my friend. My child was still asleep. I had a wash, drank my coffee, requested the old lady to mind the child, and went out.

  At Anderson Lane my heart thumped with excitement. I gazed towards the headmaster’s house. It was still half dark. A few artisans were moving about, and a few more were sleeping in front of their houses. Even this street looked soft in the morning light.

  In a dozen bounds I reached the headmaster’s house. The door was shut. I strained my ears to catch any sound of weeping inside. But I heard nothing except the clanging of vessels. The housewife was apparently up, and nothing untoward had happened. I took this as an encouraging sign and decided to turn back. But I changed my mind. I couldn’t resist the desire to go in and see. Only the sight of him safe and talking to me would satisfy me. I knocked. His wife opened the door, and scowled on seeing me.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked.

  ‘Is the headmaster in?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He doesn’t tell me,’ she said. ‘Does he keep all those courtesies? Not he. He went out after dinner, and has not been in since … Not for him such things as wife, children, home, and so on. These boys are fatherless …’ she said bitterly. I was irritated to see her in this mood, so early in the morning. I felt an admiration for the man who had stood her company for so many years. She turned to go. I felt like wringing her neck – it seemed to offer an ideal grip with her hair knotted high up. ‘Why do men marry such wives?’ I reflected. ‘A moment, lady,’ I said. ‘There is a very important thing I want to tell you. Was he not here last night?’

  ‘No. I have told you that,’ she replied.

  ‘Perhaps you will never see him again. I hope it pleases you,’ I said. She could not make out what I meant. She turned, threw at me a puzzled look, and asked, with her throat going dry: ‘Why?’

  ‘Do you care enough to know?’ I asked. ‘It was in your hands to have made his life happier, while he lived. But now he is gone, and I hope you have a free and happy life before you now …’ She let out a shrill cry and cried, ‘What has happened? What has happened?’ By this time her children, dishevelled and in rags as usual, more so because just out of bed, came up rubbing their eyes and stood beside their mother. She embraced them sentimentally and sobbed. ‘Oh, these are orphans today, who will feed them? They are in the streets, from this moment.’ She wrung her hands and cried, ‘Tell me sir, tell me, what is happening?’ I told her of the prediction and his visit. ‘Ah, couldn’t he have confided this in me, his wife?’ She broke down utterly. She collapsed on the floor and her lamentation filled the whole street, and the whole street crowded into the house. I slipped out. I began to wonder what had happened to him. I walked back home, and then saw that my child was still sleeping. My purpose was to search for him by the river, and then tell the police. I stepped out of my house and was going down the road. As I passed the school I saw him standing at the school gate. ‘Ghost, ghost,’ I muttered to myself. ‘I never heard of a ghost being seen by morning light …’ He grinned, came towards me, and shook my hands.

  ‘I’m not my ghost, be assured,’ he said. An unusual cheerfulness had seized him. He looked rejuvenated. ‘Don’t look so full of questions. I can’t answer them any more than you can. It simply didn’t happen, that is all … I don’t know why that Sadhu thought fit to put my last date thus. One mistake in an otherwise perfect prediction. The first error in it, and the most agreeable …’

  ‘Didn’t I say that it might be wrong? …’ I gripped his hand and jumped about in glee. ‘I am so happy …’

  ‘So am I,’ he said. ‘You have no idea how it has been weighing me down all these years, in spite of what I might have felt and said; it was like having cancer and knowing fully when you would be finished. It was a terrible agony stretching over years. I rejoice it is over. I have no more pages to watch in my notebook. I can live free and happy.’

  ‘But there is that thing about your next birth …’

  ‘Rubbish, I don’t care. This life is good enough for me …’

  ‘You shouldn’t have put such faith in that thing … They are afte
r all …’

  ‘But see here, my friend. For all these years it has been so accurate that I’d no reason to doubt its soundness; but this is the first mistake, and the last you know, for the reading stops with this, except for the next birth. I don’t know what made that great hermit say this. It might be after all a test,’ he said. He sighed: ‘I don’t know where he is. No chance of ever clearing this point with his help …’ He looked radiant.

  ‘Didn’t you go home last night?’ I asked.

  ‘No. I went up to my door, and turned back. If I had to die, I’d prefer to wait for it at the school, rather than at home.’

  ‘But you said you wished to be with your wife and children.’

  ‘Yes. But I felt they did not deserve it on second thoughts.’

  ‘Go home, go home,’ I said. ‘The whole street is in your house. Poor lady! Her lamentations can be heard over the whole town!’

  ‘Oh, is that so!’ he cried in joy. ‘What a happy piece of information! I don’t care. Let her cry till she brings down the sky. I am going to treat myself as dead and my life as a new birth. You will see – I don’t know if that hermit might not have meant my death, after all, in that sense …’ I implored him to go and relieve his wife and end the confusion in his street.

  ‘Not I,’ he said. ‘I’m dead, I wish I could change my face somehow, so that I should not be recognized …’

  ‘Even by your school children?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, no,’ he said. I tried to hustle him into returning home. But he stubbornly refused. ‘I have ceased to be my old self, and so don’t belong to that home in Anderson Street … It is all over. This school is my house hereafter. I will settle here …’

  ‘But what about them? …’

  ‘They can come and see me here if they like, that is all. I will give them a monthly allowance for their upkeep. That is all I am prepared to do, but not behave as a father and a husband hereafter. I didn’t sleep a wink the whole night. It is a novel feeling sitting up and waiting for death.… I was wondering how it’d take me. I felt so fit and well. When I felt a little drowsy with sleep, I thought the end had come!’

  After all I persuaded him to pay a visit (at least the last one) to his house. He agreed, adding: ‘After all it is not given to every man to watch his own death scene.…’ We walked there together. People in the street looked at him in wonder and cried: ‘Here he is.’ ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘What of it?’ Soon the news spread, and a great crowd poured out of his house and surged towards us. The whole of Anderson Street was there – very few tinsmiths were at their foundry, very few blacksmiths and tailors at their work. People surrounded and fired questions at him. But he refused to answer anyone. ‘I can’t tell you why I am alive,’ he said. ‘There is no explanation for it, as there is no explanation for death.’ The crowd gaped at him and pressed us on all sides. ‘I never imagined that I had such a large public!’ he said. ‘I thought I was fairly obscure!’

  His wife, whom news of his arrival reached, picked herself up, her hair all over her face, swollen and tear-drenched. She looked at him, and let out a cry of relief: ‘Oh, my lord, you are here! What demon thought fit to tell me …?’ She fell down and clung to his feet. His children came up and, with cries of rapture, hung on to his arms. He tried to shake himself free, but found it difficult. The crowd looked at him expectantly. He faced them and said: ‘Why don’t you all go away now?’ They murmured something and waited for an explanation. He looked at them helplessly, with his family clinging to his feet. The crowd looked at him. He put his hand into his pocket, and took out the slip of paper, jerked it open and held it to the crowd. ‘Who can read this?’ A man came forward, received the slip and read it. ‘Read it aloud,’ the headmaster commanded; at which he read out the prophecy to the gathering, and the headmaster added, ‘This is the prediction and it has not proved false. I tell you, friends, no more of this wife and family for me. You may treat me as dead or as one who has taken Sanyasa Ashrama.’

  His wife protested and cried hoarsely. But he was adamant. He announced his decision grandly. ‘She will get her money for her monthly expenses, but that is all. They will never see me here again …’ She clung to him and pleaded: ‘Whatever wrong I have committed forgive me. I will be careful hereafter …’ He shook her off without a word. The children came after him. ‘You may all come and see me in school later. But remember you have no father any more …’ He pushed his way through the crowd, and walked away. I followed him sheepishly. The whole business was too confusing. I didn’t know what to make of it. His wife ran after us and appealed to me. I looked at her helplessly. I felt a tremendous pity for this creature now. I said: ‘Headmaster, just think …’

  ‘Krishnan, leave me alone,’ he said. ‘I have a far greater work to do, and I’m going to do it. I feel such a freedom now …’ He set his face and walked off resolutely. The crowd followed us for a while, and then dissipated. His wife and children followed. ‘Go back,’ he said, ‘create a scene if you like, it is none of my business to stop you, but don’t put me in that scene, that is all, do you understand?’

  Months rolled on. Life falls into ruts of routine, one day following another, expended in set activities: child, school, college, boys, walk, and self-development. This last was the most enchanting item of my life’s programme. It was a perpetual excitement, ever promising some new riches in the realm of experience and understanding. I sat up at nights faithfully following the instructions she had given, keeping my mind open, and I was beginning to be aware of a slight improvement in my sensibilities. There was a real cheerfulness growing within me, memory hurt less, and I was more and more aware of vague perceptions, like a three-quarter deaf man catching the rustle of a dress of someone he loves … That this was not a vain presumption on my part was borne out at a sitting we had about this time. Our regular Wednesday meetings were gradually given up, and we met now at unspecified intervals, once in six or seven weeks or so. Nor did I feel these days the hopeless longing for a regular sitting. My nightly contacts gave me peace. ‘At first it will be a matter of belief,’ I remember her saying. I clung to it fast; ‘Belief, belief.’ Above reason, scepticism, and even immediate failures, I clung to it. ‘I do meet her when I sit down, and she is with me when I sit with my mind passive, calling her,’ I repeated to myself night and day, and it wrought a curious success. Any other thought was impossible.

  After a long time my friend gave me a sitting one dusk beside the lotus pond. The hour was as beautiful as ever. She started by saying: ‘Have you observed one effect of your development? I can say now that you are developing quite satisfactorily. Think of about four days ago – the small hours of the night. I tried to appear and make my presence felt by you. I purposely wore the garb, which you called on a former occasion, “gorgeous” – the blue, shimmering with light interwoven. I appeared, and I tried to make my presence felt. We went out together into the garden. We walked for a while, indeed for a considerable time, and then the experience ended. You returned to bed, and went to sleep again … You turned over and resumed your sleep, thinking that you had had a slight disturbance. If there is any chance that you remember this experience, let me assure you that it was I myself who was there with you and if you remember it, it is a sign that you are developing quite well …’

  It required no great effort to recollect this. I was overcome with great joy. I seized my friend’s hand and cried: ‘It is true, absolutely true. I thought it was a private dream. It wasn’t. How little do we know what a dream is, how little do we understand! Yes, friend, every word of it is true. I don’t remember it clearly, but I dreamt of her as standing before me with some gorgeous dress on. I greeted her, and I held her hand. We went out into the garden. That is all the dream I remember. It was not a shadow cast and created by a troubled mind, but the substance … It was she, it was herself,’ I cried.

  ‘Ask her,’ I said. ‘After the dream we parted. How long did she stay with me? How oft
en does she meet me?’ It was a series of incoherent questions. I myself had no clear notion what I wanted to ask or how to ask it. I only felt the urge to ask questions … She evidently understood whatever it was that was in my mind, and replied: ‘I shall try to answer these questions of yours, but I have to do it unsatisfactorily, because of their nature. You have been in this garden house today for over two hours. Can you say you have been in the company of your friend just once, twice or thrice? The moment you call someone who is in the next room, he answers you and comes to your side if need be. I am present at your side when you sit for development and communion. At other times it is as if I were in the next room, aware of the fact of your presence, easily accessible and ready to come at your slightest behest. You may even think of the walls separating us as walls of glass.’

  It was a delightful surprise for me one day, returning home from college, to receive a card from my mother, saying she was coming by the eleven o’clock bus on the following morning. I told the child immediately. But she asked: ‘Who is coming with her? Is she bringing dolls?’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes,’ I said. I cancelled the walk that evening. The house needed a lot of tidying up, otherwise mother would spend her entire stay doing it. I took off my shirt, tucked up my dhoti, and wrapped a towel round my head, as a preparation. In the kitchen I told the old lady, ‘Please polish all the vessels. My mother will be here tomorrow. You know how she views these things!’ The old lady pulled down all the vessels, and the purr of her broom, sweeping the store, resounded through the house. I took a duster and a long-handled broom, and cleaned up the cornices and dusted everything, dragged the trunks about, pulled down all the books, sneezed and caught a cold which lasted a day or two. The child followed me about. She had caught the fever of activity and followed me about whining and imploring for work. I said: ‘Your toy box, you have stuffed it in such a way that we cannot close it. It looks ugly in the hall with its lid thrown back agape; do something about it. Throw away all the unimportant things, and clean and arrange the things in the box. What will your grandmother say if she sees your box?’