Classic Mulk Raj Anand

by Mulk Raj Anand

  I sat down on the arm of a chair, feeling emptied of all content. I could not utter another word either of sympathy or contempt. I just felt numbed with my realization of what had happened. Something in me seemed to snap, not with a dramatic force, but merely through a sudden hardening of my nerves and an equally sudden relaxation, so that I felt I did not care any more.

  Victor also seemed to have been numbed by the shock. For a moment, he looked up and saw the chaos of the bedroom, a reflection of the amorphous confusion in him. But then he hung his head down.

  ‘The Inspector is waiting,’ I said after a while.

  ‘Oh, how I hate her, the whore!’ he said in a hoarse whisper that seemed to spring from the depths. ‘Look what she has made me do. She murdered me and I have murdered back! The cruel bitch left me out of sheer perversity! Just because she likes all the dogs and is not content with one! . . . That cur Bool Chand was also a traitor. And I had to do something for the sake of my manhood. The dog—the snivelling, snorting scoundrel did not deserve a better fate!’

  ‘I hope you won’t say all that to the CID, for your own sake,’ I said.

  His face became grisly pale. And he snapped:

  ‘I won’t see him. I won’t see him!’

  ‘Acha, Victor, I will tell him.’

  ‘Has he a warrant for my arrest?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Then tell him to communicate what he has to say to me in writing. And if there is no warrant for the arrest of Partap Singh, ask him not to worry.’

  I stalked out of the bedroom and told Inspector Ward that His Highness had just finished his toilet and was not feeling particularly well and wanted to know on what business the Inspector wished to see him. I made up all this to see if the CID man had, indeed, a warrant for Victor’s arrest.

  ‘Oh, I shall call again,’ Inspector Ward said, his fat red face flushing a more vivid red. ‘But this gentleman had better come with me.’

  ‘Have you a warrant for his arrest?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ the Inspector said confidently, looking me straight in the eye. ‘Something like a warrant.’

  I felt the dread of the policeman again. For Ward oozed the very stink of the policeman’s soul, the tang of death. Would I also be involved in this unholy business? I seemed to be sinking into the welter, descending into the fathomless pit.

  ‘Good morning!’ the Inspector said with an artificial cheeriness. And, beckoning Partap Singh to go ahead of him, he cleared out.

  I went in to see Victor. He was still sitting on the edge of the bed. And he was talking to himself even as tears rolled down his eyes.

  ‘Why did she have to drag me through the mire like this? Why did she have to choose to go to bed with Bool Chand? I . . . I only wanted—what is there wrong in loving a woman? And she loved me. So she said. . . . Oh, why did she have to make me so desperate?’

  ‘What exactly did you do, Victor?’

  ‘Shall I do away with myself, Hari? If one’s life is empty and one fills it with hatred only, then don’t you think one is justified in taking one’s own life?’

  ‘Of course one is justified in taking one’s own life, but not other people’s.’

  ‘I can’t stand alone. And now with this thing happening, she will be so stubborn she will never come back.’

  ‘Oh, forget the bloody woman now!’ I said impatiently, shouting in spite of myself. ‘You seem to go on and on. . . . But the situation has gone far beyond her. A man has been murdered. And now, in spite of yourself, the vicious circle is broken. Things will never be the same.’

  ‘I am done for,’ said Victor. ‘Will this get into the papers?’

  I didn’t answer him. I only said:

  ‘I will ring up India House and go and see the High Commissioner.’

  He looked at me with a stony stare, like a madman. And his frame was rigid as though with a cold frenzy of fear, his face set into a mould paralyzed by the very excess of the fears and guilts that played behind it.

  I was trying to get through to India House on the telephone to see if they knew the exact reasons why Captain Partap Singh had been taken to Scotland Yard for questioning, when the hall porter’s assistant brought His Highness’s mail up. And just when I had secured an appointment to see one of the secretaries, Victor handed me a letter from India House, which briefly purported to inform him that, owing to the murder, under very suspicious circumstances, of Sjt Bool Chand, Secretary to the Administrator of Sham Pur, a public inquiry had been ordered in which it was necessary for His Highness and his staff to give evidence. Therefore, the States Department of the Government of India had asked that His Highness be advised to return to India immediately. And, accordingly, arrangements had been completed to enable His Highness and his staff to travel by the Air India International plane ‘Moghul Princess’ the next day.

  Victor had received the polite, curt note in silence. But, in a little while, he got up from the bed where he had been seated, still in his pyjamas and dressing-gown, and, wringing his hands, began to hammer at his forehead, shouting the while:

  ‘O my fate! Why have you chosen me for a victim? Why is there only humiliation after humiliation for me! Oh, God, how it hurts! This dishonour of being ordered to return home, almost under arrest! What Providence contrived to make me do such foolish things? Why, oh, why did I have to do this? May the fires of hell devour them all. May she . . .’

  And, like the blundering buzzing cohorts of doom, the words broke forth from his mouth, echoes of his ravening soul, hating itself, loathing itself and the universe for what it had done. And as he flung himself from place to place, and struck his head with his fists and cried bitter tears, the rocking introspection made him a colossus of weariness, anger, shame and passion, trampling upon himself and the soft carpet under his feet like Caliban in the last throes of his revolt against his persecutors.

  ‘Oh, why did I have to get bound up with this murder?’ he wailed. And then, turning to me, he said: ‘My father once told me: “My son, you will have many affairs. But take my advice. Never fall in love with an ignorant woman. For to do so will not only be a reflection on your taste and intelligence, but you will not be able to control her when her greed is provoked. She will want power and will destroy you in the pursuit of her ambitions. A temporary affair, yes. But not a permanent alliance. Let your emotions, if you like, dominate your physical being; do not let them cloud your brain or bewilder your reason. Many affairs are better than a few. Distribute your affections regally while you are young, then you will not be plagued by regrets when you are old.” And I forgot this advice. . . .’

  I found myself staring at him, as though unable to believe that he was uttering so lucidly perverse a statement, because his earlier hysteria had seemed to me to have annulled his being, to have crushed his ego under the immensity of the doom which had mounted from all sides around him, on to him, reducing him to the ultimate fate of non-existence. His forehead was heavy with the weight of the anguished burden as it were, and he seemed, for a moment, to be fighting back from the last ditch of his pride. Hence his attempt, I presumed, to beckon the words of his father to chastise himself with. For, more plebeian words would be an affront to the spirit of royalty, which still possessed him. I was correct in my prognostications, because he soon began to try to rehabilitate his royal ego on the throne of Sham Pur.

  ‘Oh, come, come, my fate, and take me back to my Sham Pur! Oh, back, back, let us go to my state, to my kingdom! Oh, come, come, come and let us go where we belong, among my people. Let us go away from this wilderness of London, where my head is filled with waves till it aches—cold, monstrous, unfriendly London. Hai! I feel an utter stranger here. How all my body is chilled by the icy wind and seems to be breaking up, stripped. I feel naked, naked, naked like a murderer! But I did not murder Bool Chand. I did not do so with my own hands. My hands are clean! I tell you, Hari, they are clean! . . . Only, I don’t know why I feel oppressed. I had dreams last night, and my
head aches. Give me some medicine, will you? And tell me what I should do now . . . . Will it all get into the papers? Is there no avail against going back like this? Can’t we go to Paris for a few days? And Partap Singh? . . .’

  The anguish of his soul seemed to become physical. His eyes glittered with a curious hard light, pushing me into a terrorized silence, stifling me with the pressure of their peering emptiness into an abject helplessness. I felt an uncanny fear that he was disintegrating and might soon lose control. And, even before I had formulated my feelings, I found him trying to stand on his head. As he could not keep his balance in two attempts to do so, he fell athwart the bed and began to say:

  ‘That will ease the pain, Hari, don’t you think? I shall perform yoga. How do you do it? Ooof! . . . I feel I am coming into myself, into my own self, into the single point. No pain now. . . . Hai! But my head still aches. Oh, come, come to Sham Pur. . . . Come, then, come, let us go.’

  Giddily, his eyes closed and he lay still for a moment, his mouth slobbering.

  I was very afraid for him, and thinking that he might sleep if I lifted him and stretched him out on the bed, I took hold of him by the waist.

  Immediately, he stiffened and began to wriggle out of my grasp, shouting:

  ‘No, no, I don’t want to go to Sham Pur. No, no, no, thieves, traitors, I do not want to hear the echoes of my own voice. I tell you I am the Maharaja of Sham Pur. Are you not frightened of me? . . . Who are you? An Englishman? The Political Resident? No, Sahib, I do not want to hear your voice. . . . Go! May your face become cursed! . . . Do not push me! . . . Go, go your way! . . .’

  I realized that he had lost consciousness, that he did not know the meanings of the words which formed themselves in his mouth any longer, that he had gone mad.

  I struggled with him and lifted him up, while he kicked and beat me with his hands. I was about to fling him on to the bed, when he hardened like a stone and dragged me down on the floor. His eyes were bright with a cold, unmoving hatred, and I felt furious with him for getting out of my control. So I tried to be rough with him and, exerting my full strength, picked him up and flung him on the bed.

  This seemed to sober him a little, for his lips moved contritely from the void into which he was slipping.

  ‘I shall give you a sleeping draught. Try to sleep.’

  ‘I shall give you a sleeping draught,’ he repeated. ‘Try to sleep.’

  I couldn’t help smiling with grim amusement at the mockery of the mad man parroting my words.

  ‘I can fly,’ he babbled suddenly. ‘I can fly. I can fly away on my own. . . .’ And he got up and, stretching his arms out, began to flap them like a bird taking off. And he fell so that his head dangled on to the side of the bed.

  I tried to pull him back to a more restful position. But again he began to push me away from him, breaking the hold of my fingers with his sharp nails, with some unprecedented strength in his bones that had come into him, I did not know from where. And, thrusting me away with the ruthless frenzy of madness, he raved at the top of his voice, from somewhere in the chaos of his perjured self, the lilt of a folk song:

  ‘Oh, where have you gone, my stranger . . .’

  The raucous accents of the shouted Punjabi song deafened my ears, and was likely to bring the whole house to Victor’s bedroom. I therefore hit him hard, even as I grappled with him by the waist, and laid him low. Pinned under my arms, held fast, he stared into the empty space with the horror of horrors and talked snatches of words in which his first and last memories seemed to touch each other in a jungle of images. His mouth was frothing with the phobia, and he made an effort to bite my ear off, till I slapped him into comparative docility and silence. And then he began to weep and sing, even as he made renewed efforts to get up. I dragged a sheet from under him with some difficulty and slowly tied him down to the mattress.

  There he lay and, by turns, tittered and laughed and shouted and sang, from the impulse of the several straying herds of memories all overshadowed by the dim mist of time, where everything seemed indistinct and lost, and from which it reappeared only in the form of remnants of an existence which was half extinguished and half transformed into the emptiness of the maniacal becoming, where everything was like a naked, primeval horror.

  Introduction

  1 Sir Malcolm Darling records the following conversation with his peon in his Apprentice to Power (1966): ‘Do you know, what “fool” means, Ghulam?’ ‘No, Huzoor.’ ‘Do you know what “damned fool” means?’ ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed, ‘those are the Sahib’s words.’

  2 Vicky claims descent from the God Indra via the God Rama. So did many other princes: Maharana of Udaipur from Rama, Patiala from the moon, Benaras from Lord Shiva, and Travancore from the God Vishnu.

  Chapter 1

  1 The Brahmins, the Kshatriyas, the two upper castes in Hindu society, justify their superiority by asserting that they have earned their position by the good deeds of multiple lives.

  2 The Hindus do not allow a person to die in bed, but bring the dying to rest as near the earth as possible; the idea being that from the earth we come, to earth we return.

  Epilogue

  ALTHOUGH WE FLEW BY THE AIR INDIA INTERNATIONAL PLANE ‘MOGHUL Princess’, which covers the span between London and Bombay in about twenty-four hours, it was a long journey we had of it. For Victor’s condition had worsened. From standing on his head and ranting in the Mayfair suite, throughout the flight he kept up a continuous monologue, interrupted by songs sung in a raucous voice, and by sporadic violence, until he became a complete nuisance to the other passengers and had to be strapped up and bound to his chair. Fortunately for me, Captain Partap Singh had been allowed to travel with us, though he was asked to surrender himself to the Bombay police on arrival at the airport; and he kept the Maharaja in hand at Heathrow, while we were going through the passport formalities, also holding him down during the early part of the journey before he was bound hand and foot and across the waist. Still Victor’s outbreaks, both verbal and physical, were extremely boisterous and disturbed the voyagers greatly, particularly during the night, when he would not go to sleep. It was strange and uncanny; what a power had come into his bones through the madness. For it took me and Partap Singh all our strength to control him and keep him seated; and his eyes glowed like coals in an imitation gas fire as he stared at us between bouts of profane and less profane utterances, while he frothed at the mouth and wriggled to get free.

  He had begun to be very excited at the sight of an Englishman with a full moustache at Heathrow aerodrome—the most intense and prolonged fit of violent hysteria which I had noticed. He had poked his tongue out at the gentleman and spat in his direction and abused him roundly in Hindustani as ‘betrayer of his salt’ and worse. It had taken me and Partap Singh all our strength to move him away from the waiting-room, where this happened, towards the gangway of the plane. And, later, on the plane, it was again and again the confrontation to his gaze of one white face or the other that seemed to rouse his ire. Except that the poor Anglo-Indian air hostess, so gentle and kind, also became the object of his contempt.

  For the rest, the ravings and the burblings were directed against mankind at large. And the only relieving grace was the tender and mournful atmosphere of a Punjabi verse from the epic poem Heer-Ranja, by Waris Shah, which he kept on reciting and singing:

  Your love, oh my Hiré, has dragged

  Me through the dust of this world.

  I encouraged him to sing, because the oppression of his madness was bearing me down, destroying me with the shame of his misbehaviour and the fear that he might become much worse and do harm to the other people in the plane. The dark seething waves of power that welled up from the hidden sources of his being made him demoniac, and I felt that the potential destructiveness of his nature would demolish me completely if he did not get some release.

  I found that my suggestion worked. He recited sentences of ribald old Punjabi folk songs. At first he hammered
the verses which describe the two Lachis, the demi-mondaines of the village:

  Akha, in one village there were two Lachian,

  And it was the little Lachi who made all

  The trouble . . .

  As the original accent in which he couched his sing-song was so loud that it seemed to clamp the hold of his will obscenely on the inmates of the plane, I began to sing in unison with him in a gentler voice. This modulated the extroversion of his tormented, leonine spirit somewhat, and he softened a little. But, immediately, there was a resurgence of the ghoulish tiger from the dark jungle in which he lay and he began to growl at me with a fiendish hardness in his voice:

  ‘How do you do, Doctor Shankar. I am Maharaja Ashok Kumar of Sham Pur. Don’t you understand, you swine!—I am a prince! Why, why do you hold me like that? Let me go, let me go, rape-mother! . . . Let me go! . . . I shall allow no one to come near me, not even the Viceroy. Why did that dhobi touch me? I am a king. Do you not understand? I am the Maharaja Ashok Kumar, spoiler of my salt!’

  ‘Come, come, Victor, you are not a little boy any more,’ I rebuked him in a firm voice. ‘Don’t be a fool.’

  This seemed to sober him. And, with a cunning candour imprinted on his face, he said:

  ‘Why am I ill?’

  ‘You must calm down,’ I said.

  But by this time the lucidity had gone and he was shouting at the top of his voice:

  ‘Khabardar! Khabardar! The thieves are coming! Look out, folk, the robbers! the bandits!’

  ‘Try and sing,’ I suggested again, smacking my lips sympathetically.

  ‘Try and sing,’ he repeated my words, and mimicked me by smacking his lips sympathetically.

  I held his left hand and pressed it warmly.

  ‘Sing,’ I said.

  And he burst out with the raucous lilt of a First World War Sikh soldier’s song:

  Han ni, may I buy you, may I buy you