She would sit by his bed and ease the throbbing at the back of his head by pressing it with her hands with a constant, soft, firm movement. She would press his body, which was swollen and weighted with the heat in his blood. And, when the ache in his limbs was evaporating with torturing slowness in the sweat, she soothed the unbearable agony of that drawn-out languishing which his body felt after its struggle for health with kind words, such as his mother used to utter: ‘May I be your sacrifice! May I die for you! May I suffer instead of you!’
She would lie down by him and take him into her arms while he was tossing from side to side, restless and weak, and he would fall sound asleep, drugged into a stupor by the warmth that radiated from her comfortable body, intoxicated by the tenderness that was in the smell of her body.
And this was another unforgettable memory which remained ever fresh in him. A memory different from the recollection of his mother’s embrace, yet like it, but with an extra element of reaching out to the unknown. A memory which stretched from the innocent joy of a child’s love, learning from one woman the need to know another, a memory of love travelling from faith and trust and care, along the curves of desire, into the wild freedom of a love which is natural, which acknowledges the urges of the heart, which seeks fulfilment, like the animals, and which mocks at the subterfuges of religion and the limitations of morality.
When he recovered from his illness with the frequent doses of sherbet and Ayurvedic powders that one of the clients of Prabha Dyal, a practitioner of indigenous systems of medicine, had prescribed, and when the passing of various slides of cool antimony by his mistress’s loving hands had cured the redness of his eyes, he descended again into the inferno of the factory.
Everyone was very kind to him and he had to do only the minimum of work. He felt weak and thoughtful and still.
The goat-face took longer over the tour than was expected. But that was in a way a blessing, except that Prabha was badly in need of the money which Ganpat had gone to collect. He thus arranged for a loan of 500 rupees from Sir Todar Mal, who in his retirement from the role of Public Prosecutor had, according to some, turned into a Public Persecutor. Prabha, who had risen from cooliedom to own a factory, gave Sir Todar Mal a note of exchange promising to repay the sum along with interest at thirty-five per cent, a month hence. He had given two, three other notes of exchange for a 100 rupees each to moneylenders in the bazaar, as he had to defray bills for overhead expenses. But he knew the firm was owed about 2000 rupees and that when Ganpat came back everything would be all right.
Meanwhile, at least he had reconciled the neighbours into tolerating him, if nothing else. He knew that they were friendly because they were making money out of him. But he felt, somehow, that there was an element of goodwill in the relationship also. He sought to cement this goodwill by a further undertaking to rent a large room on the ground floor of Sir Todar Mal’s house, for the purpose of housing an increased staff of women who were busy kneading rose-leaves for the preparation of rose-leaf jam. More money into Sir Todar Mal’s pocket meant an increasing show of patronage to the social upstart: ‘Why are you getting so pale, Prabha?’ Lady Todar Mal would even condescend to ask him. Prabha did not know whether she was really being kind. He joined his hands to her and apologized for nothing. For, whether there was goodwill on the side of the neighbours or not, he felt a certain reverence for them both, because they were old and rich. He occasionally wished he had nothing to do with them and that Ganpat would come back so that he could pay back the money he owed them. But Ganpat was a long time coming.
At last he came. But he brought trouble on the tip of his bad-tempered tongue. He bullied the coolies, swore at the women and was reticent with Prabha.
Munoo, who was always quick to sense people’s emotions, had emerged with a capacity for more real intuitions since his illness. He had vaguely surmised the causes of Ganpat’s temper long ago from the way the goat-face looked at Prabha, at Lachi, at the workers, at the cash-box and the ochre-coloured account books.
He knew on the day that Ganpat arrived that the goat-face had something on his mind. What it was he did not quite know. So he vaguely called it guilty conscience.
The goat-face caught Munoo looking at him three or four times that day. At first he stabbed him with an angry glance. The second time he scowled at him. The third time he turned his face away. The fourth time he shouted at him: ‘Get on with your work, ohe inquisitive swine!’
Munoo did not stare at Ganpat any more, but wondered whether it was the air and water of provincial towns that had roughened his face and made it more drawn out and ugly. He soon forgot all about Ganpat as he helped Prabha inside a cavern to fill tins with rose-leaf jam.
But Ganpat did not forget the suspicious manner in which Munoo had been looking at him. He waited for an opportunity to thrash him for his knowingness.
He soon had the opportunity.
Prabha had given Munoo a jar full of fresh jam to take to Lady Todar Mal as a further bribe to cover the gap of seven days that the pro-note had been due. As Munoo ran with the jar to the gully in his eagerness to go and deliver it in a house which he liked to visit because of the marvellous Angrezi furniture and pictures in it, Ganpat, who had been seated on the wooden platform in the niche puffing at his hubble-bubble, saw him. He got up to see where the boy was rushing. He went to the door. He saw Munoo hand over the jar to Lady Todar Mal, who sat gossiping with a woman in the hall of her house. He had been angry with the boy. With that anger became mixed his pent-up rage against this woman. He did not say anything, but turned back from the door with a frown on his face. He was pale with fury at the thought that Prabha should establish cordial relations with the people whose son had beaten him and who had then brought the Health Officer to the factory. He swerved round deliberately as he heard Munoo come in. He collared the boy and shouted:
‘By whose orders did you give her that jam?’
‘The big Sethji asked me to go over and deliver it,’ said Munoo, afraid. ‘He has asked us to give her anything she wants.’
‘Is that the talk, then?’ Ganpat said, grinding his words between his teeth. ‘And you want to be a favourite both here and with our enemies that you run so eagerly to deliver jams and essences!’
He struck Munoo a ringing slap on the right cheek.
The boy raised his left arm to protect his face.
Ganpat’s second slap fell on the hard, conic bone at the corner of the joint. His hand was hurt. He was infuriated beyond control. He struck the boy in the ribs with his fist, one, two, three blows, till Munoo fell stumbling on to the mud in the passage, sobbing and shrieking hoarsely.
‘You go and run about in the gully, wasting your time,’ the goat-face shouted, to cover up his resentment against the gift-giver and gift-taker by bullying the boy. ‘You go out another time and I shall break your bones.’
Prabha rushed out of the grotto and stood looking at Munoo sobbing as he lay with his face buried in the mud. His pitying glance crossed Ganpat’s bloodshot eyes over the body. Then it travelled beyond the door to where Lady Todar Mal stood aghast. She had apparently recognized in Ganpat’s face the animosity which she expected, and knew the words of his outburst against Munoo were only a camouflage.
‘Vay, eater of your masters! You mean one! That you should grudge us a jar of rose-leaf jam! And we have been so kind to you, in spite of the fact that your smoke is a nuisance to us. We should really have had you ejected. But we gave you money when you needed it. We even let you have a part of our house for those filthy women to work in. Ungrateful wretches! Don’t they say truly “Whose friend is a man of the hills, he comes, he eats the rice and dal at your house and goes?”’
‘Oh, go away, go away,’ said Ganpat, agitated by the storm he had created. ‘It has nothing to do with you. We have a right to chastise our servants if we like.’
‘You goat-face!’ raved the woman, invoking her real fighting mettle. ‘It is you who are the cause of all the trouble betwe
en Prabha and us. He is a gentleman. But you, you are a rogue, and an upstart! Your father, the broker, was an upstart, too. Don’t I know you and your family! Your father turned his wife out and lived with a Muhammadan prostitute. And you are a drunkard and a debauche! Your father robbed other people of their money with promises to do business for them. You are robbing your partner. I can see it in your looks. You are not a fit person to be in a respectable neighbourhood where there are young daughters and newly-wed brides about.’
Munoo had lowered the tone of his cries and checked his sobs as he began to hear the neighbour’s wife sum Ganpat up. He got a righteous pleasure in seeing the goat-face defamed. He wished he did not have to sob, as he did not want to miss a word of what she was saying. But Prabha was speaking to her.
‘Oh mother, mother, forgive us. I join my hands to you. I will fall at your feet. I will draw a hundred lines on the earth with the tip of my nose. I will do any penance you may impose on me. But please forgive him. Forgive him, for God’s sake, forgive him. He did wrong. He is senseless. I shall talk to him about it. Now go and rest. You know we are your children and you are our mother. Now cool yourself. Forgive us.’
But she was not to be stopped. She leaned forward and slowly but deliberately cried:
‘No, you won’t have any mercy shown you this time. I forgave him the last time when he dared to quarrel with my son. I must have the keys of my ground floor. You have shown yourself in your true colours after all. Get out of my house and return our money!’
Prabha now felt the seriousness of the situation. To his natural humility was added the fear of going to the wall. He still joined his hands to the woman, but, for a moment, he tried to muster his strength against her.
‘Mother, forgive us,’ he said coolly. ‘This man has no sense of neighbourly relationships. But you ought to have more sense. Surely you can’t treat us like that. . . .’
But he had not the strength to censure her.
‘Don’t come asking for forgiveness,’ she cried. ‘You are trying to shield him. Get out of my house! Give us our money back. And I will see you ejected from the shed yet.’
‘Oh, forgive, mother, forgive!’ Prabha wailed, abjectly now, straining for words to convey the utmost humility which he felt.
Munoo had ceased to cry and sob. His soul was full of fear, fear for his master.
The workers in the factory, too, had ceased to attend to their jobs and the women in the neighbourhood had gathered in the gully.
For a moment there was a tense silence.
Then the knowledge of other people’s presence aroused the snob in Lady Todar Mal to show off a little more dramatically. She stamped her foot and shouted:
‘Come out! Why do you hide yourself like women and become meek when you are challenged?’
‘What is the matter? Hoooahar! what is the matter?’ coughed Sir Todar Mal, coming down the stairs of his house, dressed to go out for his afternoon drive in the gardens.
‘These eaters of their masters!’ cackled Lady Todar Mal, her dark face glowing at the sight of her husband and then assuming a superior air of disgust. ‘They have spoiled our whole estate with their smoke, and we have been kind to them, letting them a room, lending them money, and they are so mean they resent giving us a jar of rose-leaf jam.’
‘We have got enough money to buy jams in the bazaars!’ said Sir Todar.
‘These rogues . . . hooo ho ar har hoho.’ He broke out in an asthmatic cough.
‘Rai Bahadur, forgive us,’ said Prabha, pushing his joined hands in front of Sir Todar Mal and making the most abject bows, while Sir Todar’s coughing fit lasted: ‘Ganpat is senseless. I sent some jam to you as an offering. He did not know who the boy had taken it to. We get so many people coming in here to ask for gifts. He didn’t know. He is quick-tempered and headstrong.’
‘Oh you liar, now you are shielding him,’ Lady Todar Mal shouted.
‘Oh wait, let him speak,’ said Sir Todar Mal, brushing his wife aside.
‘But he lies, this dead one, to cover up for that scoundrel, that drunkard, that frequenter of ill-famed houses!’ she cried.
‘You know,’ said Sir Todar Mal, assuming a detached, judicious air, because he knew he would get another asthmatic fit if he shouted, ‘it is a very ungrateful thing to do to resent us a little jam when I gave you money, rented you a room and withdrew my complaint against you from the Sahib.’
He mentioned the complaint last because really it had had no effect. Dr Marjoribanks had never done anything about it, having merely said one day when he met Sir Todar Mal after a Committee Meeting that there ought to be a chimney built on top of the factory for the expulsion of smoke, and then rushed away to play polo at the gymkhana.
‘Forgive us, Rai Sahib, forgive us this once,’ said Prabha, falling at Sir Todar’s feet. ‘It will never happen again. You are our father and mother.’
‘All right, Prabha, all right,’ said Sir Todar, screwing up his face not to look as proud as he felt to see a man grovelling in the dust before him. ‘Don’t let that swine be so foolish and mean another time.’ And he moved away.
‘They haven’t even the shame to yield my keys, after having angered me,’ Lady Todar Mal said, withdrawing and spreading her arms to address the crowd of women and children in the gully.
Prabha crawled back and picked up Munoo from the gutter.
‘Throw some water on him and give him a bath, ohe Maharaj,’ he said to the idiot, who was drawing pail after pail of water from the well, as usual.
‘Come here, ohe Munoo,’ slavered Maharaj as he abruptly poured a can of water on him.
Munoo felt happy and proud in his heart that Ganpat was in disfavour. He felt that Fate had inspired everyone to take his revenge on the goat-face. He was too humiliated with weeping to look at anyone, least of all at the goat-face, but after the bath he set to work more enthusiastically than ever.
‘It is not good to annoy the neighbours like this,’ said Prabha to his partner in a kind manner, when things had cooled down. ‘They helped us with money while you were away.’
‘Oh, don’t go on at me like that!’ roared Ganpat. ‘You are ruining the business with this gift-giving habit. They must have charged you high interest on the money they lent you!’
‘But no one would give us money, Ganpat, without charging interest,’ reasoned Prabha. ‘You did not send any of the money which you collected. As a matter of fact the pro-note was due to be acknowledged days ago. Now tell me, how much money have you brought? Because we might settle this debt, and the two other debts I have incurred with Devi Dayal and Gansham Das, and start clear of obligations in the summer.’
‘About fifty rupees,’ murmured the goat-face sullenly, bending his head down.
‘Fifty rupees!’ exclaimed Prabha. ‘But we owed nearly 2000!’
‘I can’t help that!’ said the goat-face, cornered. ‘I really collected about 300, but as I have not been paid my share of the profits for the last year, I have kept 250 for myself.’
‘That is different,’ said Prabha. ‘You gave me a shock when you mentioned fifty rupees.’
There was tense silence between the two men as they sat on the platform.
‘I didn’t think you would insult me like this,’ said Ganpat, in an attempt to bully his partner. But his face paled with a suggestion of guilt.
Prabha looked up at him just as the goat-face was changing the awkward expression deliberately into a contortion of self-righteousness.
Somehow, in a moment, Prabha had a sudden revulsion against Ganpat. The last look on his partner’s face had broken something in him, as a word, a phrase, an act, a gesture can break the most cherished, the most stable, the most profound beliefs in men. He became conscious of his partner’s selfishness. He realized what he had always ignored or forgotten: that his partner was not straight. He knew that Ganpat had something evil about him. He was through with him really, but he still felt friendly, he still felt a genuine goodwill towards him, and he
was not going to let anything separate them.
‘Listen,’ he said in an effortless voice. ‘Lend the firm 200 rupees out of the 250 you have kept for yourself, so that we can be rid of some of the obligations we owe to these neighbours and to Devi Dayal, both of whom are difficult people to deal with. I will go to Pathankot next week and collect the five hundred we are owed there, and which you did not collect, and you shall have your money back.’
‘I haven’t got it,’ answered the goat-face, his face going very pale. For he had been lying to his partner, having in fact realized 800 rupees, and having spent the best part of that money on a courtesan he knew. ‘I have spent my share of the money,’ he added in a panic, ‘and you won’t be able to get any more in Pathankot, because I did my best with the clients there and couldn’t get much out of them.’
Prabha became very suspicious now.
Assuming the dignity of the elder brother whom he had always fancied himself to be, he said:
‘Come, tell me everything. Let us check up the accounts and see where we can get money to meet this.’
And he called Munoo:
‘Oh Munoo, come and add up the sums which Master Ganpat dictates to you.’
Munoo, who had been eavesdropping throughout the conversation, as he stirred the spices in a pickle pan, began to wash his hands as a preliminary to handling the account books.
‘I shall not discuss accounts before these workmen,’ said Ganpat in a fury. ‘And I shall not let that boy touch the account books. You have spoiled him thoroughly!’
‘That boy is an orphan,’ said Prabha. ‘Come, we should be kind to him for the sake of religion. We should try to train him to do accounts and things, because he is too good for coolie work. He is intelligent. And let us treat all these boys as one family. There is no harm in doing accounts before Munoo. And the others don’t understand.’
‘That little wretch doesn’t understand either,’ the goat-face sneered. ‘These schoolboys don’t learn to apply mathematics, they only learn to do sums. Don’t let him come anywhere near me or I shall kill him.’
Classic Mulk Raj Anand Page 30
