Classic Mulk Raj Anand

by Mulk Raj Anand

  June came that evening chaperoned by Captain Partap Singh.

  I was in the hall, handing over some letters to the porter to post, when I saw them arrive.

  Her small face, framed by the lovely blonde hair, and her slim presence made her look like an imitation Garbo, as the great film actress must have looked in the early days in Sweden when she too was a shop girl. But June had not Garbo’s self-confidence. For her little hand was trembling as I greeted her, the colour from her cheeks had evaporated and her eyes were like two miniature birds, fluttering in a panic in the strange exalted atmosphere of the Mayfair service flat.

  Self-consciously, she went into the lift, awed by the uniform of the lift man and rather afraid, I guessed, because she felt people might say that she was visiting the Maharaja for only one purpose and one purpose only.

  As we emerged from the lift the carpeted corridor was empty and she glided between us into our rooms.

  Victor, who had dressed with greater care today than for weeks together, looked very elegant in his small closed collar, black coat and white corduroy breeches.

  He took June’s limp hand and kissed it in the gallant Polish manner, so that the colour rose to June’s cheeks. And, in order to cover the gap of strangeness, and to put her at ease, he began to talk in his best play-acting manner.

  ‘I am so glad you have come, Miss Withers, I thought you might be frightened—you see I know that Maharajas are supposed to be rather dangerous animals, professional seducers and all that! Come and sit down. Let me take your coat. Captain Partap Singh, please help Miss Withers. My ADC is a Sikh, Miss Withers, and his tribe is not supposed to be inured to the courtesies and graces of European life. Did you notice his rough accent? He is a peasant by birth. But Doctor Shankar was here in England and knows English manners and customs. Now, what will you have to drink?’

  ‘Oh, anything,’ June said, breathless with the impact of his words and flushed with embarrassment.

  There was a hush as Victor stopped his monologue and went towards the miniature bar we had made in the sitting-room.

  ‘May I mix you a cocktail or will you have some sherry?’ Victor broke the lull.

  ‘Sherry, please.’ She was obviously unused to the world of cocktails and even sherries, a glass of beer or an occasional ‘gin-and-it’ being much more her line of approach through hereditary and environment, and the shop girl’s modest emoluments.

  ‘Please relax,’ Victor said, noticing with an uncanny instinct that she was overawed.

  June smiled demurely and dipped her eyes, then lifted them to watch the stage set for her seduction.

  ‘Of course, Partap Singh will have whisky,’ said Victor. ‘What about you, Harry?’

  ‘I’ll have a little whisky too, please.’ And I went over to him to help him dispense the drinks, Partap Singh following suit.

  I noticed that June was transfixed, almost as though she had been numbed by the shock of finding herself, the silly goat, in a lion’s den. She drummed the arm of the chair in which she sat with the forefinger of her right hand and her half-open mouth lifted towards the tall stems of the gladioli in a vase on the sideboard, with a blind appeal for help.

  ‘Don’t be so shy, Miss Withers,’ said Victor, coming up towards her with the glass of sherry in his hand. ‘Here’s the drink. What’s your first name? Mine is Vicky—Vicky is short for Victor! I was christened Victor Edward George—after Queen Victoria, King Edward VII and George V. What does your mother call you?’

  ‘June,’ came the whisper as she took the sherry. And, with the utterance, June seemed to brighten up a little, her fresh complexion colouring a vivid pink and her hazel eyes under the tiny blue-black eyelids lifting shyly up to her would-be paramour.

  ‘I suppose you are called June because you were born in June,’ said Victor casually.

  ‘How do you know I was born in June?’ the girl asked, almost as though she thought he was clairvoyant.

  Victor sat down on the arm of her chair and explored her eyes.

  I saw from the corner of my eye that she was looking up to him, her body still, very still. And I knew that they understood what they wanted of each other, though the colour on her cheeks showed that the virgin in her would not admit his desire without a fight.

  ‘Let me look at your hand,’ Victor asked, affecting the amateur palmist’s manner.

  ‘Can you really tell fortunes?’ she said, with a childishly credulous tone in her voice.

  I realized that she was a particularly dumb blonde, the usual average young English flapper, with hazy romantic notions about India and Indians, considerably frightened by the tales of hearsay about snakes and panthers and dark natives. She had heard and read many strange things in the penny bloods during her childhood, and she was fascinated by the prospects of an adventure with a Maharaja in her young coltish body.

  ‘Ah, you have a good heart line,’ Victor said, ignoring her naïve question. And he smiled at her, with a mischievous glint in his eyes. ‘Show me—you will have, let us see—nine children!’

  June burst out laughing at this, her head swaying. And she withdrew her slim arm away from him.

  ‘Give me your hand,’ Victor said, pressing a double meaning into the phrase, but adding quickly, ‘I haven’t yet told you about your line of destiny.’

  June let him take her hand.

  ‘It is a lovely little hand,’ Victor said, stroking her gently, and then he lifted the palm. ‘Come and help me out, Harry,’ he added, looking towards me.

  ‘Were you also given the name Harry by your English friends?—and what is the pet name of the other gentleman?’ asked June, obviously trying to put me and Partap Singh at ease while she yielded to the flirtatious Victor.

  ‘All Sikhs have long hair under the turban, you know,’ Victor began an explanation at the expense of the ADC. ‘And as it is very hot in India, and long hair makes it difficult for Sikhs to think after noontime, I often call Captain Partap Singh “Twelve o’clock Singh”.’

  He made this up for the occasion to amuse June, as he had never called Partap Singh by a nickname like that. But June did not understand the joke, though Partap Singh servilely entered the fun and laughed a slight artificial laugh, adding his own quota of humour by saying:

  ‘The best nickname given by His Highness to anyone is to his ex-tutor and Private Secretary: his real name was Munshi Mithan Lal: Maharaja Sahib named him Mian Mithu, which means parrot in Hindustani.’

  No one was amused by this naïve revelation and June simply did not understand all the words which were coming out of the beard, far less the joke implicit in the few words that she did hear.

  There was a protracted awkward silence after this, during which Victor strained to bridge the gulf that divided him from this lovely stranger. His face darkened with the struggle to work up the necessary enthusiasm in his sick soul. He watched her furtively for a moment, then he turned aside, unable to look at her as though it hurt his eyes.

  The dumb blonde also seemed to become shyer and smiled a delicately evasive smile, even as she bent her eyes to the satin sheen of the frock where it crumpled a little on her knees and while she again drummed nervously with the forefinger of her right hand on the arm of the chair in which she sat, overshadowed by Victor.

  At last Victor broke the silence with a vague gesture of his right hand and asked, ‘Another drink?’

  ‘I will beg your leave, Highness,’ I said, feeling that the whole thing would be easier if Victor and June were left alone.

  ‘No, no,’ Victor said. ‘We shall all have another drink. Meanwhile, please ring for the waiter and we can order the food.’ And he got up to pour the drinks.

  ‘Please sit down, Your Highness, I will fetch the drinks,’ offered Partap Singh, because even he seemed to be groping for a point of contact with the woman so that the sombre happiness of this meeting could be made lighter.

  ‘Acha, you fetch the drinks,’ Victor said, responding to the ADC’s gesture with an exaggera
ted bonhomie. And then he leaned over June a little more intimately and whispered: ‘I am a very unhappy man. Please don’t be frightened of me. . . . You see, I—’

  I could not hear the last sentence because I was on my way to press the bell for the waiter. But I noticed that June’s face relaxed immediately and lit up with a mellow smile.

  ‘What is the matter?’ I heard her breathe gently. And her eyes glowed with tenderness as she looked up to him.

  As he sat silent with his head bent, so unutterably silent that his heart seemed to be weighed down by a millstone, she was filled with still more tenderness for him and pulled at his sleeve, saying importunately:

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  Captain Partap Singh gave June some more sherry, and a large peg of whisky to Victor and me.

  Victor’s sensuality seemed to be released at the touch of her pity and he stroked her hand even as his eyes became tear-dimmed, and he searched for words for his trembling lips to utter the agony in his heart.

  ‘I have lost my throne,’ he said. ‘But that wouldn’t have mattered. Only, only, the woman whom I loved also left me.’

  June’s compassion hovered in the air before her in this critical moment. From the blossoming of her face she seemed to be drawn to him. His sorrow had apparently revealed that he could also love and was not merely a seducer. And yet her lips were pursed as though she doubted if he could ever love her, since he was suffering the pangs of having been left by another woman. Her senses seemed to have suddenly pricked up and she was transported beyond herself by the attraction of his personality.

  ‘Why did she leave?’ June asked.

  Victor swept me and Partap Singh with an embarrassed glance. I wished he had let us go away when I had suggested this earlier.

  ‘I can’t understand why she did it,’ Victor said, really talking aloud to himself, though he was revealing himself to the English girl. ‘I gave her everything at the risk of losing everyone’s respect and even my throne. But she . . . well . . . I don’t know. No one will ever know how much I loved her. You see, she was—well, always selfish—selfish and wayward! Doctor Shankar here says she is ill with schizophrenia—’

  ‘What’s that?’ June asked innocently.

  ‘A kind of split mind,’ I explained. ‘When one part of a person’s mind does not know the other and acts independently—or rather when a person’s mind is in pieces.’

  ‘Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde!’ said June brightly. ‘Oh, I know. . . .’

  ‘She probably had no heart at all,’ Victor continued, ‘because I have done everything since then to get her back.’ He quivered, and his eyes became hard. ‘I have almost lost faith in women, when I used to adore women, simply worship them. . . .’

  ‘Oh, you musn’t feel like that,’ June said, stroking his arm.

  A haunted look came into his eyes, as if he wished, now that this lovely stranger had melted, to tell her everything, to throw himself at her feet. He looked towards me. But I had already got up. And, going towards Partap Singh, I took the ADC by the arm and announced:

  ‘We will go and order the food.’

  The would-be lovers accepted this suggestion without a demur.

  As soon as we woke up next morning, Victor began to talk of Ganga Dasi again. I guessed that he did so now because he wanted to justify his flirtation with June Withers, while at the same time trying to convince me that the escapade of the evening was not a violation of the love he felt for Gangi. And behind the explanation was a certain masochism, a kind of heightened satisfaction at the licking of old wounds, through the re-enactment of the rage and misery and bereavement at the betrayal as well as the attempt to rise above the bitterness. Perhaps, also, there was the urge to clear the previous tenant from his heart in order to admit a new one; for one cannot easily launch on a love affair when one is not free; and the murder of the previous image, or its burial alive, or safe embalmment, is necessary before the new idol can be worshipped.

  ‘Is there no mail, this morning?’ he asked significantly.

  ‘No,’ said I, as I perused the pages of the Times.

  Victor hesitated for a moment to demolish the distance between us before launching on the inexhaustible exploration of his conflicts. His face was harrowed and tense before the passionate floodburst with its tremendous rush. My sombre preoccupation with the paper was obviously irritating him, and he rolled from side to side. But he did not allow his displeasure at my remoteness to harden into impatience, because he knew that I was the only confidant who did not show boredom in the face of his constant outpourings. In order to show consideration for me, he affected a deliberate ennui, yawned and stretched his legs. Then he lay flat. And, from the depths of his nature, from the chaotic world of ruin inside him, he said:

  ‘You know, it is strange, but there is not a word from her, nothing at all!’

  ‘First of all she is illiterate and can’t write. But if she did write, it would upset you because she looked for quite different things in her relationship with you than you did. . . . I don’t know which is more upsetting, her writing to you or not writing.’

  ‘If only she would be honest and tell me about herself, I would accept it.’

  ‘I think she did seem to leave the back door open for the return in the letter she wrote to you. I have a peculiar hunch that she will ultimately come back, but then you may have June or someone else and may not want her after all that she has done. Meanwhile, the only thing to do is “to grin and bear it”, as the English say.’

  ‘But I can’t grin and bear it, I want to love and be loved. I want her. I want to look after her, protect her. If you say she is ill, she must be cured. I feel responsible for her. I don’t know what is happening to her. If only I knew she was happy, really happy, I would not worry so much.’

  ‘I can see that it is no use for me to give you counsel of perfection. One can endure, but one suffers even when one endures. And yet one has to endure.’

  Victor seemed exasperated even by this admission, because of the last qualifying phrase.

  ‘I am a stoic,’ he said.

  ‘And yet you fell for June last night!’ I commented cynically.

  Victor shifted sharply and said impatiently:

  ‘I don’t love June, but I can even include her in the pervasive love I feel for everyone. You don’t know that I felt very tenderly towards the praja in Sham Pur. My heart bled for them in their difficulties. I could not do much for them, but I often felt that I could sit down by the worst leper and tend his wounds. . . . And I could live with Gangi even if she never gave herself to me.’

  After saying this he lay motionless, still and intent, with a curiously bright tension in his face.

  I did not know whether to prick the bubble of what seemed to me his newly acquired saintliness or to remain silent and let him harbour the illusions in which he was wrapping himself. I could well believe that he felt a kind of pervasive feeling for all women, but it was a strange self-deception on the part of the man who had been dramatically called the ‘tyrant of Sham Pur’, the levier of illegal taxes and the egotistical head of a lawlessly lawful government, whose sanctions lay in his whims and fancies, now to pose as a kind of St Francis.

  ‘I am not too sure that you feel the same concern for other people that you feel for Ganga Dasi,’ I said in a rather hesitant voice, lest I should annoy him. ‘Perhaps you felt like mai-bap to the people of Sham Pur, because you were brought up to think that you should feel like a father-mother to your praja, but the people were not convinced of these feelings and rose against you. And as for living with Gangi, even if she never gave herself to you, it is mere wish-fulfilment on your part. You know you want sex. The way you looked at June last night, the way you hungered for her and ached for her—I am afraid you are deceiving yourself!’

  ‘Perhaps you are right,’ he confessed. ‘But I did not look at another woman while I had Gangi.’

  ‘I agree she fulfilled you in a way in which no other woman did,
’ I said. ‘But she would not stay. And you were angry with her. Now you are trying to make this fixation into an exalted philosophy of pervasive love. It means that if Gangi is ill, because she had a whore for a mother and a bully for a father, your soul is also sick with a thousand neuroses. Otherwise, you would not be obsessed with the thought of her, absorbed by her so completely.’

  ‘I know I am sick,’ Victor said weakly and humbly.

  ‘I don’t know if you were loved enough in your childhood,’ I ventured a guess about the reasons for his inordinate concentration on women.

  ‘Not much,’ he said, looking as though he felt rather diminished, belittled and degraded. And then he fell into a silence as though he did not want to have things dragged out of the depths.

  I took up the paper again, feeling that I could not go on with my brutal fault-finding.

  ‘What then shall I do?’ he asked me after a protracted wordlessness between us, during which I felt that he felt my disapproval of his confused state of mind like a powerful presence.

  ‘You must accept the fact, hard as it is to bear, that it is finished, it is finished, it is all finished between you and Gangi! Your only hope is June’s friendship.’

  Victor looked away from me.

  During the next few days Victor saw a great deal of June Withers. Fortunately for them, the two days after she first came to our flat coincided with the week-end, and they went out for long drives in the country.

  June was at once shy, even frightened, and wild: on the ordinary plane she seemed to be inhibited by ingrained petit-bourgeois respectability, because most Maharajas were supposed to be philanderers, and she knew that her own people, as well as others, would talk; but on the other secret plane, this liaison had released in her certain insidious romantic impulses from under the layers of convention, the ‘pagan’ part, as Michael Arlen might have called it, of her ‘Chislehurst mind’.