Classic Mulk Raj Anand

by Mulk Raj Anand

  Prabha kept silent and made towards the account books.

  Munoo stood waiting in suspense, not knowing whether to go near the platform.

  There was a panic in Ganpat’s soul. He knew that his little game of lying and suppressing the truth about the accounts was played out. He tried, however, to distract his partner’s attention from the money question.

  ‘Why should that boy be treated any better than the others?’

  ‘He is not treated any better,’ said Prabha softly, and began to unfold the account books.

  The hour of decision had come for Ganpat. But he still wanted to avert it.

  ‘He raised all the trouble this afternoon,’ Ganpat said, ‘by giving jam to that witch.’

  ‘Don’t abuse people,’ said Prabha, a little sternly. ‘You know I have had to apologize to those people for your rudeness already. I sent them the jam through this boy. So it is neither their fault nor his. And I did it because I wanted to be on good terms with them, as we have not acknowledged the pro-note.’

  ‘I don’t believe in the pro-note method of raising capital,’ said the goat-face, driven from one stratagem to another. ‘I’d much rather borrow money without making any promises, so that if I cannot pay it back I am not committed in any way.’

  ‘It isn’t the right thing to do in business, you know, to be dishonest,’ said Prabha.

  ‘I don’t care whether it is the right thing to do or not,’ said the goat-face. ‘If you don’t give a receipt, no one can sue you for money. And don’t you call me dishonest or else I shall break your bones for you.’ He had made up his mind to force a quarrel on his partner.

  ‘I didn’t say you are dishonest, Ganpat,’ assured Prabha. ‘There is no reason to get heated. Cool down and we will talk all this over tomorrow.’

  Ganpat knew that today or tomorrow could not avert the coming break. Prabha’s concessions infuriated him more than any violent reaction might have done.

  ‘You have been insinuating that I am dishonest!’ he exclaimed. ‘And you believe in all that woman accused me of this afternoon. Well, I don’t mind telling you that I collected 800 rupees and I have spent all that money save fifty. I met Amir Jan, who used to live in Daulatpur. But you need not think that I had no right to spend this money. Don’t think that what I have told you gives you power over me. I shall not have any bullying from you. I am not your slave and I shall not be blackmailed.’

  ‘Ohe but I am not blackmailing you, Ganpat,’ said Prabha, pale with anger now, but torturing himself to be kind. ‘It is all right. You are a young man and unmarried. Why shouldn’t you have an occasional debauch? It doesn’t matter about the money being spent. And I am glad you have told me. We will try and raise a loan somewhere to pay off these pro-notes and then everything will be settled.’

  ‘You think you are going to suppress me with your meekness and humility,’ cried Ganpat. ‘But you will not. I can see through this saintliness and mealy-mouthedness of yours. You think you are very good, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, don’t talk like that, brother Ganpat,’ said Prabha, aroused for the first time. ‘It is not fair. You know that I have never said anything to you about your private affairs, because I myself might have done those things had I been in your circumstances. You can think whatever you like about me, but I have nothing to say about your conduct. I felt angry when you lied to me about the money you collected at Moga, and, you remember, I was very harsh with you. But don’t feel angry about anything like that now.’

  ‘You are a sly devil! You are a hypocrite!’ cried the goat-face.

  ‘Please don’t wrong me,’ said Prabha. ‘I am innocent of all you think. I am just a straightforward hillman. I have lived and worked hard throughout my life, and I don’t think in the way townsmen do. I wish I were a coolie still, and not in business.’

  ‘You innocent!’ sneered Ganpat. ‘You combine business with your innocence well. You are artful and sly, as artful and sly a rogue as ever wandered from the hills. You sly hill dog!’

  ‘You can say what you like,’ said Prabha in a desperate effort to lose all his pride and dignity in order to win the man back to the routine business connection and friendliness, though all trust between them, he knew, had been irrevocably lost. ‘I am what I am, very sinful and wicked in spite of my efforts to be good.’

  ‘I am through with you!’ shouted Ganpat, suddenly rising. ‘You think you are mighty good and that you will “be gooder” if you feign badness.’

  ‘Oh, be sensible!’ cried Prabha, trying to catch hold of Ganpat to make him sit down. ‘Don’t you see we are partners, we have everything in our joint names?’

  ‘I shall dissolve the partnership and I shall see that you grovel in the ditch for the insults that you have heaped on me this morning. You have betrayed me. You are a dirty coolie, and a dirty coolie you will remain all your life.’

  He assembled the account books and, putting them across his shoulder, went to put on his shoes to go.

  ‘Oh, your shoe and my head,’ said Prabha, taking up one of Ganpat’s shoes and handing it to him, with desperate humility. ‘Beat me on my head till I go bald, but don’t leave me. We have been together two years and built up this business. It will be terrible for me to have to bear weights on my back as a coolie in my old age.’

  ‘I don’t care if you go to the dogs, you meek, cunning swine,’ said the goat-face. ‘Give me my shoe. And go and eat dung and drink urine! Your father was a coolie and you are a coolie. I shouldn’t have associated with you, dirty swine! Go and be humble to those neighbours, worm that you are! Go, you coward! I won’t disgrace myself and go down on my knees to anyone, least of all to a low coolie like you!’

  ‘Oh, abuse me as much as you like,’ said Prabha, ‘but don’t go. Cool down, it will be all right. Your anger will blow over.’

  ‘Get away, you cur!’ shouted the goat-face, rushing towards the door.

  Munoo, who had stood watching the tense quarrel with the fear of hell in his heart, rushed up, and caught the lapel of Ganpat’s tunic and pleaded:

  ‘Oh master, don’t go, don’t go, this is not a good thing.’

  Tulsi and Bonga and even Maharaj ran up with joined hands.

  ‘Get out of my way, swine!’ roared Ganpat, raising his hand in hysterical temper and dropping it on the boys like a sledge-hammer, till they slid back to the platform, some frightened, some weeping.

  ‘Horror! Horror!’ moaned Prabha, as he had sat with his head in his hand. And then, rising, he rushed to fetch Ganpat back, wailing, ‘Oh come back, come back!’

  ‘Get away, low hill dog!’ shouted Ganpat, striking him on the face with his fist and wresting his body fiercely away from his grasp. ‘Go to your coolies, you dirty coolie.’

  ‘Hai!’ wailed Prabha as he fell back.

  ‘Shut up, demented swine, ignoble wretch!’ Ganpat hurled his last abuse as he turned round with one foot outside the door and one foot in. ‘Stop howling, dog, and don’t follow me. I tell you I have made up my mind. I am through with such scum as you. You are not my class. You belong to the street, and there you shall go. I spit on you.’

  And he spat and shot out.

  The goat-face was as good as his word. He went and opened a pickle-making, essence-brewing factory of his own. The fifty rupees that was left of the money he had collected for the old firm was enough to rent a place and buy a few necessary articles. He obtained the raw materials on credit. And he set out to establish connections with Prabha’s clients, by posing as the maltreated partner of a business which was going to the dogs because of its owner’s accumulation of large debts which would never be repaid.

  This malicious misrepresentation of facts soon defined itself into a rumour of Prabha’s impending bankruptcy. And though really Prabha was as little bankrupt, or near bankruptcy, as any of the firms which have large stocks, the goodwill of the business was lost, and creditors flocked, panic-stricken, to the doors of the factory, knocking loudly and shouting vehemently, calli
ng on Prabha to come out and settle his debts.

  ‘Ohe come out, Prabha,’ they said one after another. ‘Come out and face us! Why have you retreated into your house? Come out and be a man!’

  Unfortunately, Prabha had taken the departure of Ganpat very much to heart. And the fear of not being able to pay the debts at once had so upset him that he had succumbed to a fever. His employees in the factory were too afraid to open the door. And the creditors knocked more persistently and shouted more furiously.

  ‘Come out! Come out and face us, upstart hillman! Come out, lover of your mother!’

  Prabha lay at the far end of his room and could not hear, though his wife, who sat by his bedside, heard. She got up, but, not wanting to face the crowd because of her natural and conventional modesty, looked into the factory and said to Tulsi:

  ‘Ohe Tulsi, go and tell the lallas that your master is ill and that he will see them tomorrow.’

  ‘Go, ohe Munoo,’ said Tulsi, passing on the order as was his wont. ‘Go and say that the master is ill.’

  Munoo climbed up into the living-room, past Maharaj, who still drew cans of water from the well, and, going to a large window which looked out into the gully, said:

  ‘Lallaji, Master Prabha is ill with a fever. Could you come tomorrow!’ ‘Ill? Did you say ill?’ one of the creditors, a long-faced, small man, clad in muslins, burst out. ‘I know he is ill. Of course he would be ill, with so much money on his conscience. But go and bring him, or we will come and drag him out, the illegally begotten!’

  ‘Lallaji, he is really ill,’ Munoo repeated, joining his hands and assuming responsibilities. ‘Be kind and go away. Tomorrow he will himself come and see you.’

  ‘Go, go, seducer of your sister, go and get him,’ said a merchant with an enormous turban on his head, muslins on his pot belly, and gold-worked slippers on his feet.

  Munoo retreated.

  Lady Todar Mal happened to be washing the floor of the kitchen on the top of her house and she did not hear anything at first or she would have come down instantly. But as she threw her dirty water on to the gully from the terrace of her fourth storey she heard an uproar from below:

  ‘Oh, have you no shame, no consideration, that you throw dirty water on us?’ a chorus of men were shouting. ‘Look, you have ruined our clothes, mother.’

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Lady Todar Mal, apologetically. ‘How did I know you were there? What do you want?’

  ‘We want this bankrupt Prabha,’ one of them said.

  ‘Hai! ni horror! Terror! May his face be blackened,’ she shouted as she rushed down the stairs. ‘So he has gone bankrupt, has he?’ she cried as she saw the other creditors.

  ‘Han, he won’t come out and face us,’ one of the creditors said.

  ‘Vay, eater of your masters!’ she cried. ‘Vay, may you die! May a snake bite you! Why don’t you come out and face us now? Where are you hidden? Come, give me back my own five hundred rupees first. Then people can have your tins of pickles. What shall we do—what shall we do for our money?’

  ‘So he even owes you five hundred rupees,’ said the long-faced small man.

  ‘Han, this dead one! He came so humbly and played on my husband’s good nature. And we let him have money in spite of the fact that the smoke of his factory has ruined our house.’ And then she switched the full fury of her tongue on to Prabha’s house again. ‘Come, vay, open the door! Where have you absconded now? Where are you? May the vessel of your life never float in the sea of existence!’

  There was no answer. Only the soft sound of someone weeping could be heard. It was Prabha’s wife and Munoo, sobbing, as they embraced each other by the bed where Prabha was sleeping.

  ‘We must go and fetch the police,’ the long-faced, small merchant said.

  ‘Wait!’ said Lady Todar Mal. ‘My son has not become a thanedar for nothing. He is upstairs. I will call him.’ And she rushed upstairs.

  Prabha had been awakened by the sound of his wife’s sobs.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘The creditors are shouting outside,’ Munoo said, with an effort. ‘They want you.’

  He got up at once and came to the window overlooking the gully. He was pale and his limbs shivered slightly. He joined his hands to the creditors and was going to speak to them when they burst out:

  ‘Oh, there he is, the illegally begotten. There is the rogue! The scoundrel! Come down, son of a dog! Come and pay us our money!’

  ‘Oh, please forgive me, Lallaji. I will pay every one of you. I will pay every penny that I owe you, even though I may die in doing so. But please don’t abuse me.’

  ‘Come down! Come down!’ they shouted together. ‘Come down and talk to us! Why don’t you come and face us? We have been shouting for you.’

  ‘I was ill,’ Prabha said, with his hands still joined. ‘And I was lying down, I didn’t hear you.’

  ‘You didn’t hear us! And we have been shouting ourselves hoarse!’

  ‘Where is he? Where is he? Where is he now?’ said Lady Todar Mal, descending with lightning speed.

  ‘Where are you, ohe! Come down, you son of a——!’ shouted Ram Nath, her son, as he followed her, stiff-necked and swaggering with the pride of the important position he had acquired through his father’s influence. He was dressed in a khaki uniform with black belt, pistol and whistle complete.

  ‘Oh, forgive me, Thanedar Sahib!’ said Prabha, trembling with fear.

  ‘Come down, or I will skin you alive,’ shouted the thanedar.

  ‘Acha, Thanedarji, acha,’ said Prabha. But he hesitated to decide whether he should explain to all these people how he had been let down by his partner.

  ‘You won’t come down!’ shouted the thanedar. ‘Acha I will go and fetch constables.’

  ‘Forgive me, oh, forgive me,’ Prabha wailed. ‘I am only a humble workman, a coolie. I didn’t know that Ganpat would go away and leave me like this.’

  ‘Now you know your true status,’ said the pot-bellied Lalla. ‘You tried to be a big Seth, didn’t you?’

  ‘Let us get him out and lock up the factory,’ said the long-faced merchant. ‘We can perhaps recover our money by selling the stock.’

  ‘I have the first right,’ said Lady Todar Mal. ‘I have suffered from the smoke of his stone-coal fires all these years. I will see to it that he pays my husband’s debt first.’

  ‘Come, Prabha Dyal, pay up the rent for the factory and the living-room you have occupied,’ said a prim, monkey-faced man, the shining whites of his eyes exaggerating the coal black of his face, as he walked up, dressed in an open-collar shin, alpaca jacket, white cotton trousers, a christy cap on his head and black boots on his feet.

  ‘Make way for Babu Dev Dutt,’ said a woman in the crowd of men, women and urchins congregating at the mouth of the gully.

  ‘I will pay up, Babuji,’ Prabha said, extending his joined hands towards his landlord. ‘I will pay you the rent even if I have to die in doing so.’

  ‘Well, your word is of no value. You are a bankrupt.’

  ‘Wait, Babuji, you will have your money.’

  Prabha darted in to get a few of his wife’s trinkets to offer in lieu of rent to the landlord.

  Just then a Sikh and a Muhammadan, uniformed in khaki tunics and shorts, red and blue turbans, flourished their batons at the crowd to make way for the English Inspector of Police and Sir Todar Mal’s son, the Sub-Inspector of Police, who were walking up with great pomp and show.

  ‘Where is Prabha?’ roared Ram Nath.

  ‘He has evaporated, the eater of his masters!’ said Lady Todar Mal, hiding her breasts under the sari and self-consciously withdrawing into the hall of her house, in an attempt to reflect the modest dignity of her position as Lady Todar Mal to the English Inspector of Police.

  ‘Go and drag him out, Teja Singh and Yar Muhammad!’ ordered Ram Nath.

  The door of the factory was opening as the police constables rushed towards it, because Prabha was coming out,
followed by his workmen.

  ‘Come out, swine! Come out!’ raved the policemen as they blindly flourished their batons and collared Prabha.

  When they wrested Prabha from the embrace of Munoo, Tulsi and Bonga and brought him out, kicking him from behind, the creditors howled like beasts.

  ‘Bring the dirty dog out. The dirty hillman! The scum! Push him out!’

  ‘Take him to the police station, quickly,’ said the English Inspector of Police, eyeing Prabha suspiciously. ‘Looks a bad character!’

  ‘Yes, a rogue of number ten,’ said Ram Nath. Then he turned towards his mother and said in his own language:

  ‘Lock up the door of the factory till I come back.’

  Next he turned to all the creditors and said:

  ‘Come to the kotwali tomorrow, all of you; your evidence will be taken. Meanwhile, go to your shops. We will deal with him!’

  ‘Han, janab!’ agreed one merchant. The others joined hands to the mighty symbol of the Angrezi Sarkar, whom they dreaded and respected as they dreaded and respected nothing else.

  Teja Singh and Yar Muhammad led Prabha away through the narrow width of the gully, past whispering, curious sight-seers, all of whom seemed to be fascinated by this show of force. There were tears rolling down Prabha’s cheeks as he looked back to the window where his wife stood weeping.

  Munoo, Tulsi, Bonga and Maharaj followed, Munoo sobbing, Tulsi grim and pale, Bonga staring wildly and straining to speak, Maharaj slobbering without saying a word.

  As the procession passed through Cat Killer’s Lane and turned into the Book Bazaar which led to the police station, under the shadow of the Clock Tower, the passers-by and the shop-keepers stood to watch, some dazed, others whispering, others babbling, still others casting curses and abuse on the man whom they had once respected as Sethji.

  A fair-complexioned, hawk-nosed Muhammadan sergeant was puffing at the tube of a hubble-bubble as he sat on a charpai.