At the End of the Century

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  ‘Why not?’ Driving past his office after her visits to the ladies in the Civil Lines was still the highlight of her expeditions into town.

  He shrugged. ‘They are beginning to talk.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Everyone.’ He shrugged again. It was only her he was warning. People talked enough about him anyway; let them have one more thing. What did he care?

  ‘Oh nonsense,’ she said. But she could not help recollecting that the last few times all the policemen outside their hutments seemed to have been waiting for her car. They had cheered her as she drove past. She had wondered at the time what it meant but had soon put it out of her mind. She did that now too; she couldn’t waste her few hours with Bakhtawar Singh thinking about trivial matters.

  But she remembered his warning the next time she went to visit the ladies in the Civil Lines. She wasn’t sure then whether it was her imagination or whether there really was something different in the way they were with her. Sometimes she thought she saw them turn aside, as if to suppress a smile, or exchange looks with each other that she was not supposed to see. And when the gossip turned to the SP, they made very straight faces, like people who know more than they are prepared to show. Sofia decided that it was her imagination; even if it wasn’t, she could not worry about it. Later, when she drove through the Police Lines, her car was cheered again by the men in underwear lounging outside their quarters, but she didn’t trouble herself much about that either. There were so many other things on her mind. That day she instructed the chauffeur to take her to the SP’s residence again, but at the last moment – he had already turned into the gate and now had to reverse – she changed her mind. She did not want to see his wife again; it was almost as if she were afraid. Besides, there was no need for it. The moment she saw the house, she realized that she had never ceased to think of that sad, bedraggled woman inside. Indeed, as time passed the vision had not dimmed but had become clearer. She found also that her feelings towards this unknown woman had changed completely, so that, far from thinking about her with scorn, she now had such pity for her that her heart ached as sharply as if it were for herself.

  Sofia had not known that one’s heart could literally, physically ache. But now that it had begun it never stopped; it was something she was learning to live with, the way a patient learns to live with his disease. And moreover, like the patient, she was aware that this was only the beginning and that her disease would get worse and pass through many stages before it was finished with her. From week to week she lived only for her day in Mohabbatpur, as if that were the only time when she could get some temporary relief from pain. She did not notice that, on the contrary, it was on that day that her condition worsened and passed into a more acute stage, especially when he came late, or was absent-minded, or – and this was beginning to happen too – failed to turn up altogether. Then, when she was driven back home, the pain in her heart was so great that she had to hold her hand there. It seemed to her that if only there were someone, one other living soul, she could tell about it, she might get some relief. Gazing at the chauffeur’s stolid, impassive back, she realized that he was now the person who was closest to her. It was as if she had confided in him, without words. She only told him where she wanted to go, and he went there. He told her when he needed money, and she gave it to him. She had also arranged for several increments in his salary.

  The Raja Sahib had written a new drama for her. Poor Raja Sahib! He was always there, and she was always with him, but she never thought about him. If her eyes fell on him, either she did not see or, if she did, she postponed consideration of it until some other time. She was aware that there was something wrong with him, but he did not speak of it, and she was grateful to him for not obtruding his own troubles. But when he told her about the new drama he wanted her to read aloud, she was glad to oblige him. She ordered a marvellous meal for that night and had a bottle of wine put on ice. She dressed herself in one of his grandmother’s saris, of a gold so heavy that it was difficult to carry. The candles in blue glass chimneys were lit on the roof. She read out his drama with all the expression she had been taught at her convent to put into poetry readings. As usual she didn’t understand a good deal of what she was reading, but she did notice that there was something different about his verses. There was one line that read, ‘Oh, if thou didst but know what it is like to live in hell the way I do!’ It struck her so much that she had to stop reading. She looked across at the Raja Sahib; his face was rather ghostly in the blue candlelight.

  ‘Go on,’ he said, giving her that gentle, self-deprecating smile he always had for her when she was reading his dramas.

  But she could not go on. She thought, what does he know about that, about living in hell? But as she went on looking at him and he went on smiling at her, she longed to tell him what it was like. ‘What is it, Sofia? What are you thinking?’

  There had never been anyone in the world who looked into her eyes the way he did, with such love but at the same time with a tender respect that would not reach farther into her than was permissible between two human beings. And it was because she was afraid of changing that look that she did not speak. What if he should turn aside from her, the way he had when she had asked forgiveness for the drunken servant?

  ‘Sofia, Sofia, what are you thinking?’

  She smiled and shook her head and, with an effort, went on reading. She saw that she could not tell him but would have to go on bearing it by herself for as long as possible, though she was not sure how much longer that could be.

  Expiation

  I was thirteen when he was born. He was the youngest of seven of us, of whom only I, my brother Sohan Lal, and one sister (who is married, in Kanpur) are still living. Even after he had learned to walk, I used to carry him around in my arms, because he liked it. The one thing I couldn’t bear was to see him cry. If he wanted something – and he often had strong desires, as for some other child’s toy or a pink sweet – I did my best to get it for him. Perhaps I would have stolen for him; I never did, but if called upon I might have done it.

  Our father had a small cloth shop in the town of P—— in Haryana, India. Today this town is known all over the world for its hand-spun cotton cloth, which is made here, but when my father was alive he could barely make a living from his shop. Now we take orders from all the rich Western countries, and our own warehouse is stocked so full of bolts of cloth that soon we shall need another one. I have built a house on the outskirts of the town, and when we have to go any distance we drive there in our white Ambassador car.

  On that day – a cold Friday in January – I stood outside the prison gates. I wore a warm grey coat. There was a crowd there waiting, and everyone looked at me. I had got used to that. For more than two years, wherever I went people had pointed and whispered, ‘Look. It is the eldest brother.’ My photograph was often in the newspapers; whenever I went in and out of the court, I had to walk past all these people with cameras, from the newspapers and from the television station. So when they took my photograph outside the prison that day, I didn’t mind it. I stood and waited. My brother Sohan Lal was with me, along with some cousins and one elderly uncle. We waited and shivered in the cold. Our thoughts were only on what was going on inside. I kept reading the words that are carved over the prison entrance: ‘Hate the Sin but Not the Sinner’.

  When they opened the gates at last, everyone rushed forward, but they would permit only me to enter. The old uncle tried to squeeze in behind me, but he was pushed back. I felt angry with him; even at that moment I had this anger against the old man, because I knew he was trying to come in not out of a feeling of love but to put himself forward and be important. They led me through the prison, which I had come to know very well, to where the body was. Everything was different that day. The courtyard and passages were empty, for whenever there is an execution they lock all the prisoners inside their cells. The officials and the doctor spoke to me in a very nice way. They stood with me whi
le we waited for the municipal hearse, which I had ordered the night before. They had put a sheet over the face. I uncovered it to see him once more, though I knew it would not be the same face. Then I covered it again. I stood very straight and looked ahead of me. They offered me a place to sit, and I thanked them and declined. They spoke among themselves about the other body, which no one had come to claim. They would have to cremate it themselves, and they were discussing which warders should be assigned to this duty. They had neglected to place an advance order for a hearse, so they would have to wait. I didn’t know where the other body was; it was not with his. They must have put it aside somewhere else.

  His name was Ram Lal, but we always called him by his pet name, Bablu. Besides being much younger than I, he was also much smaller in build. All our family, including the girls, are big; only he stayed small. I could lift him even when he was grown up. I used to do it for a joke. When I put him down again I would hug him. I often hugged him and kissed him. He knew I loved him. Before my marriage we shared a bed, and when he cried out in his sleep – he often had bad dreams – I pressed him against my chest. He was six years old when I was married. A little satin coat was stitched for him, and he sat behind me on the mare on which I rode to the bride’s house, with a band playing in front and cousins and friends (they had taken opium) dancing in the street. My wife’s family made a good wedding for us, and he enjoyed it all. But he never liked my wife and she never liked him. From the beginning there was this between her and me. She tried to change my feelings for him and could not succeed.

  It was not just weddings he was fond of but all festivals where special food is cooked and good clothes are worn. He didn’t like anything that was old or ugly. He didn’t like our home – two rooms in an old house in Kabir Galli, where we had to share a bathroom with eight other families. He was also unhappy sitting in the shop with me, because the bazaar is so crowded and smelly. At that time, the whole town was in a bad state, with all the old houses falling down and with dirty water from the gutters overflowing in the streets. In the old parts, it is still like that – in Kabir Galli, for instance, and in the bazaar where my father’s shop used to be – but now there are also completely new areas, with bungalows and the temples that people have donated out of their black market money. When we were children, all these areas were fields and open ground where we could play. He spent many hours there alone in those days. He sat by the canal or lay under a tree – whole days sometimes.

  I expected him to be a good student when he grew older, because although he was so quiet, his mind was always busy. Even at night he was alive with those bad dreams he had, while the rest of us, heavy with food and the day’s work, lay asleep like stones. But it turned out he wasn’t fond of studying, and whenever possible he stayed away from school. By this time, with the growing market for our cloth, I began to get free of the debts by which our family had been bound hand and foot since my grandfather’s time. There was nothing to spare yet, but when he wanted some little sum he could ask me and I was in a position to give it. He was fond of going to the cinema, and if it was a good film he would see it six or seven times. Like everyone else, he knew all the film songs, though he didn’t sing them out loud. He never sang and he didn’t speak much, either; he was always very shy and alone, even when he was enjoying himself in the cinema or at a wedding. His face was always serious. It was unusual, almost strange, to see him smile. That may have been because his teeth were so odd – very small and pointed with spaces in between. When he did smile, his gums showed, like a girl’s, and when he grew up and became very fond of chewing betel, they were always red and so were his lips and tongue.

  Now I must record a small incident that I have never liked to remember. It was not just one incident, in fact, but several. The first time it happened, he was about nine years old. One day when I came home, my wife told me that she had seen Bablu taking money out of the metal box that I used to keep under my bed. Her eyes shone as she told me this, as if she were happy that it had happened, so I frowned and told her he had taken this money at my instruction. She didn’t believe me. ‘Then why did he say he was looking for his slippers under the bed?’ she said, challenging me. She said that he had tried to run away but that she had caught him and given him one or two slaps. When she told me that, I became angry, and said, ‘How many times have I told you never to raise your hand to this boy?’ For she had done it before – she is a strong woman, with a strong temper – and he had come to me crying bitterly and didn’t stop until I had rebuked her. But when she slapped him because of the metal box he never mentioned the incident to me.

  From then on, she was like a spy with him. She would watch his movements, and more than once she reported to me that she had awakened at night and seen him searching through our clothes. I wouldn’t believe her; I told her to keep her mouth shut. She became cunning, and one night she whispered in my ear, ‘Wake up and see.’ I didn’t open my eyes. I didn’t want to see what she wanted me to, so I turned around on my other side and pretended to be angry with her for waking me. Next day, when he came to bring me my food in the shop, I said, ‘Bablu, do you want money?’ He said yes, so I gave him three rupees and said, ‘Whenever you need money, I’m always here.’ He was silent, but he looked at me as if he were saying, ‘Why are you telling me this? I know all that very well.’ His eyes had remained as I remembered them when he was a baby. All small children have this very serious look – as if they know things their elders have forgotten – but with him it remained till the end.

  People say that you can learn a lot from a person’s eyes. The moment I saw that one – the other one, the one whose body no one wanted to claim – I noticed his eyes. Although he was dark-complexioned, his eyes were very light – like a Kashmiri’s or a European’s, or even lighter, for they had no colour at all, so that at first it looked as if he had no vision but had lost it because of disease. I hated and feared him from the beginning. We all did, yet we had to tolerate his presence in our house. I even had to be grateful to him, because it was he who had brought Bablu back after he was lost to us for over two years.

  When Bablu was sixteen, he wasn’t like other boys – nothing like the way Sohan Lal had been at that age, when we had to find a bride and marry him off before he became too troublesome. Bablu was no trouble at all in that way – or in any other way. He never even smoked or drank anything. He was fond of nice clothes made of Terylene, and modern shoes with pointed toes. He also grew his hair long, and to keep it in place used a costly brand of oil, with a very sweet smell. But it is common for young boys to be careful of their appearance. Sohan Lal also dressed up and sat with his friends outside the Peshawar Café, and they talked among themselves the way boys do, and when girls walked past they shouted. This behaviour is to be expected before natural satisfaction is obtained in marriage.

  Bablu, though he dressed so nicely, never sat with friends in the Peshawar Café. He was always by himself. Never once did I see him with a friend. He didn’t care to come and help us in the shop or with the rest of the business, which was just starting to do well. Most of the time he stayed at home. We were still in our house in Kabir Galli, it was a very small place, but during the day the children were at school and Sohan Lal’s wife liked to go to neighbours’ homes to talk. So usually there was only my wife at home with Bablu. She didn’t like it; she kept asking me to send him to the shop or find some other work for him, but I said let him be. Although he never did anything or had anything to read except some film magazines, I could see that he was thinking all the time. I had respect for him for being such a thoughtful person and not at all like Sohan Lal and me, who were always busy and had no inclination for thinking at all.

  One night when I came home, my wife called to me from the other room – the one where our beds were put out at night, and also where I kept a metal safe I had bought when the business began to progress. When I went in, she wouldn’t let me put on the light, but I saw at once that the safe was open; t
he bundles of money I’d had in it were gone, though the jewellery was intact. My wife was sitting on the floor. ‘Quickly,’ she said. ‘Help me.’ I squatted down beside her, and she put one hand over my mouth to stifle my cry. I saw that she had tied up her arm with a bundle of cloth, but already this cloth was soaked in blood. Neither of us spoke. I threw a shawl round her and, hurrying through the other room where the family were all sitting, I took her out into the street and put her in a cycle rickshaw, and we went to the hospital. There she explained that the knife had slipped while she was cutting up a chicken that she was preparing for a feast.

  We didn’t see him again for two years. At first I was glad he was gone, and I told a lie to everyone about how I had sent him to Ludhiana to look after a new business I was starting there. I even told this lie to Sohan Lal, and he kept quiet, knowing there was something it was better for him not to know. If only I, too, could have remained as ignorant! But my peace was gone, even my sleep was gone. Every night my wife lay beside me, and she too was awake, and I knew she was seeing again what she had described to me – the expression on his face when he turned round to her from the safe. He had raised his hand, and though she didn’t see the knife in it she quickly put her arm over her chest – and what if she had not done so! Even in the dark, I covered my eyes so as not to see such a thing. I thought also of how he had taken the key of the safe out of my pocket and had had it copied in a shop, and of how he had thought all this out while he sat with me at meals, so quiet and sweet-natured, and while he had stood before the mirror and combed his hair up into a wave, his eyes serious and pure like a child’s.

  So at first I was glad he was gone. Then I began to miss him. I thought of the bundles of money he had taken with him and of how unsafe it was for anyone, let alone a young boy, to travel with so much cash. Secretly, I arranged to put out a search for him. I changed my story and I told everyone, even relatives, that he had run away – probably to be in films in Bombay, like so many other boys. I inserted advertisements in many newspapers all over India, in English and in Hindi, with his photograph and, printed underneath, ‘Bablu, come home. All is forgiven’. The advertisements offered a reward of two thousand rupees. There was no result.