Lament on the Death of a Master of Arts… and Other Stories

by Mulk Raj Anand

  ‘Wait my son, wait child,’ said the old woman hobbling after him. ‘Son, you haven’t eaten anything yourself...’

  But the Chaudhri had gone stamping down the stairs and was out of reach of her entreaties and prayers.

  ‘And now, now,’ the old woman wailed. ‘He hasn’t even eaten a crust of bread, and he went to work at dawn on an empty stomach... Hai... what shall I do?’ And she waited near the door of the stairs, torn between following him and coming to Nur. Then she returned towards Nur, who was slipping back into bed, pale and hushed, and stretching her arms said: ‘Don’t take any notice of what he says, my son; he is worried on account of you and overwrought, and he loses his temper... I am sure he is sorry at heart, and he loves you... And now he will be hungry. But never mind, I shall get you your soup and take his meal to the shop for him...’

  She shambled and shuffled and hurried upstairs.

  Nur lay still petrified and looking on through misty eyes at the broad naked heat of the sun. His mind seemed to be closed. Only, there was a dry taste at the base of his tongue, a parched feeling in his throat, mixed with a vague sense of betrayal. His face which had changed colour so often since the visit of the Doctor was set in a livid mould as if it were plastered with a mud mask. His brain wheeled dizzily, and he moved his head this side and that, as if he wanted to stir it into thought... But his eyes just stared hard into the air and he could not notice a thing in the crowded room...

  Then, after a moment, he felt a weight rise from his belly to his chest, and stand there pressing down on his ribs. He breathed hard and turned on his side and, twisting his body, moaned as if to summon all the fragile cells of his body to come and look at the new wound that his father’s hard words had inflicted on him. But he felt an increasing weakness in his legs and thought he was fainting. His limbs seemed like loose streamers falling away from his leaden trunk. The drowsy shade of the room in which he lay seemed to exaggerate his contours, and he felt as if he were breaking. His will relaxed and weakened...

  And yet the bitterness of his father’s cruelty lingered... This was the man... this was the man who was responsible for his very existence, this was the man who had loved him so when he was a little child in arms, with dark eyes and a fair complexion, when he was full of mischief and learning to toddle and speak... It seemed strange and unbearably tender; but his earliest memory, almost his first vivid recollection, was the Chaudhri laughing heartily as he flung him into the air playfully and kissed him at each fall, fairly smothering his face with kisses... After that, except now and then during the years, he had only worn a serious expression on his round, rugged face... But he had been proud even then of his father’s hefty, handsome form. Only afraid, so afraid, that he remembered only a very few occasions when he had lifted his eyes to face him... Although he must admit, he was also attracted by the magnetic presence of the man; in fact, the war between these two emotions in him had always led to awkward collisions, and he had faltered, stumbled, stammered, perspired whenever he had to say anything to the Chaudhri... His father had towered over him, simple and stubbornly upright... Was it because of his mother’s death that this difference had arisen between them? Anyhow, it was unfair... Was it because I, an only son, had been the cause of anxiety to him... I am a failure indeed... But why, oh why did he have to drag me into the dust by educating me? How could a parent expect to get a return for the money he had spent on his child? Why should he have expected anything? You produced me for your own pleasure... You produced me for your own pleasure, do you hear, and you didn’t consult me beforehand! Why didn’t you...? If you had to hate me... And tell me afterwards... Why did you? I didn’t want to be born...

  He felt his soul rising in revolt and he rolled in a frenzy. His eyes saw the injustice of it all and welled with tears.

  ‘Oh God, why did he produce me if he had to be so hard to me? Oh, why did he have to educate me, why did he not let me sit at the shop and follow his own profession...? Oh why did he, why did he, why did he...? Why did he insist on my passing my MA if he had to blame me for it afterwards...? Oh why did he drag me...?’

  No one seemed to hear his cries and in order not to waste his suffering on the empty air, he stifled his moans and with averted eyes still filled with tears, thought of the injustice more coolly.

  ‘Whose fault is it? He gave me all this education to flatter his own vanity and not because he meant me to learn anything. And was it my fault that I couldn’t get into any of the Services? Was it not because I was his son, the confectioner’s son, who couldn’t get any recommendations? For had I not always worked hard and always been top of my class? Of course, he couldn’t understand what books or anything meant. But had I not always passed in the first division? Did he not hate me because, not having flourished himself, he could not see his own son fail to ascend the pinnacles of glory so that he could call the faithful to come and witness the success of his investment... And he hit me...’

  His tears ran down his cheeks and he was convulsed with sobs... ‘He has worked so hard in the grime and the dirt of the shop, the wretch has become surly and bad tempered serving his impatient customers,’ he thought. ‘But it was swinish the way he treated me, keeping a strict watch on everything I did. I must return home at seven. I must not consort with this man and that man. I must be respectful to his friends, his trusted friends, the pious practitioners of five prayers a day, who were always trying to kiss me and asking me to come and sit in their laps... And I dared not complain because they threatened to tell him that I didn’t go to say prayers at the mosque regularly... What right had he to fill me with fear... It was fear that had kept me from telling him openly about things... fear and his ignorance, for how could I have explained to him that Darwing said there wasn’t a God, and Huxley was an agnostic... What was Darwin to him and who was Huxley?...’

  But he felt he was being naive, thinking like that... Only the blows rankled.

  ‘Oh! God, oh! My God... Oh! My mother, my mother, come and take me... I am burning, I am bursting, I am torn... Oh come, they have crushed me, they have ruined me, they have broken me, they have made me ill, they have destroyed me, your son, and there is none in this hovel, there is none who loves me at all... Oh, I was an orphan, my mother, I was an uncared for orphan when you died... Why, oh why did you have to bring me into the world if you had to leave me...? Oh why did he have to have me if he had to loathe the very sight of me...? Why did he have to do that, why...’ But he couldn’t go on. His cries were becoming louder and the reiterated hiccups of his sobs were choking him so that he would have to shriek to be heard even by his own ears. And he didn’t want the women upstairs to come down, because he would be too ashamed to face anyone. And yet he could not control the passion that he had let loose in himself, the anger, the resentment, the grief and the longing that lay choking him now...

  He turned on his side and suddenly, his whole form was numbed, as if he had been struck in the heart.

  For a moment he writhed in a paroxysm. The frenzied fire in his head drummed through his temples, the hot tears of remorse ran from his eyes, and his hard teeth ground a swooning sigh.

  His throat suddenly brought up a profusion of saliva rich with blood and he lurched over to throw it into the spittoon.

  He kept his head hanging over the streaks of dribbling blood and gaped weakly into the spittoon for a confirmation of his dread. The streaks of blood clotted the edge of the brass bowl. There was a coloured space before his eyes. He was sure now...

  ‘O mother,’ he cried and clutched the sheet tight. His brain was faint, the light of his eyes dimming slowly like an invisible anguish and his mind blended in a soundless void. He opened his mouth to call his grandma. But he felt the nerves of his body relaxing, as if the pain were being pressed out by the inexorable advance of death... ‘Nur, my child, Nur, wake up and drink this essence,’ his grandmother said, coming towards the bed... �
��Nur...’

  His face looked strange.

  She stood fixed to the ground. Then she struggled on heavy feet to the bed and shook him with trembling fingers, calling the while, ‘Nur, Nur, Nur my son, awake...’

  But his face turned... and hung limply aside...

  ‘Hai, hai!’ she lifted her voice and cried. ‘Hai hai! Hai hai!’ And she struck the palms of her hands on her breasts, on her forehead, on her face and moaned and howled and tore her hair as she fell across his neck.

  The women on the top storey came screaming down, beating their breasts, their thighs, their foreheads, their cheeks and their breasts again and cried, ‘Hai, hai! Hai hai! Hai hai!’

  The women of the neighbourhood rushed and, entering the room, began to beat their bodies deliberately crying and wailing, ‘Hai hai! Hai hai!’

  The body of death lingered on the sick bed.

  [1] Also spelt as salwar.

  [2] Also spelt as topi.

  [3] Also spelt as gali or gully.

  Appearance and Reality

  Dedicated to Goronway Rees

  Sir Hasan Ali was surprised at the cordiality of the man’s greeting as he looked out from the ferry-boat which was carrying him ashore to Gibraltar from the steamer. A South Indian, or Ceylonese, by the look of him, Sir Hasan thought. But where had he met him before? Because the man was smiling and waving his arms with the familiarity of one who might have been his friend since the day when he wore a strip of cloth to hide his fore and aft. The warmhearted Punjabi in Sir Hasan, however, made him return the compliment with a broad sweep of his right arm, and with an effusive ‘Adab arz.’ The English ladies and gentlemen in the ferry-boat looked askance at him and Sir Hasan became somewhat selfconscious and sought to resume the dignified pose which he had begun to cultivate ever since he had been made a Knight Commander of the Star of India.

  Nervously he rubbed his short French beard at the chin and then smoothed the new suit he had had made at Ranken & Co., Simla, for this, his first, trip to England. He had found it a great strain to keep up appearances on board the ship throughout the voyage. Because at the mature age of sixty he found it difficult to practise the gymnastics which ordinary European behaviour demanded, what with having to keep the crease of the trousers in which his awkward legs, used to the loose shalwar, could contain themselves with great difficulty, specially as the braces tugged at his bunch of piles, and the armour-like waist-coat and jacket, and the boots which strapped his feet used to the old style open Indian shoes of the nineteenth century. Still, he had accustomed himself to all these inconveniences and knew that, in spite of his doubts, he carried himself with the dignity and precision expected from India’s ambassador at large to the Western world. There was a great deal in a title and in properly made clothes. Sir Hasan was sure that even a small cloth merchant from Bazaar Sabunian in Amritsar could almost pass off as an Englishman if he had been honoured by the Angrezi Sarkar and gone in for a few fittings at Ranken’s. Whereas he himself had, at least, been used to shaking hands with the Deputy Commissioner Sahib and other England-returned men for a generation as head of one of the biggest carpet manufacturing firms of Amritsar, and as Vice-President of the local Municipal Committee. Only he was not sure whether the fez cap he wore was an advantage or a disadvantage: he had felt that he ought to keep his native head-dress in order to keep the prestige of his religion intact, but on the voyage he had inclined towards the use of a topee in the heat of Africa. But it was all a question of izzat, and propriety and his mission required that he should put up a good show...

  Before Sir Hasan had finished his sartorial speculations, however, the ferry-boat splashed the blue-green water against the wharf and his compatriot greeted him with, ‘Salam alaikum’ as if he were his twin brother in Islam. To a devout Muslim like Sir Hasan, the ‘Wa alaykum as-Salam’ was as automatic as ‘How do you do?’ to an Englishman. But though he had meant no more than conventional politeness, he found himself committed to a cordial handshake with the stranger, in spite of the fact that the first close look at the man made him smell something black in the pulse. Other passengers were about and he could not be cool to the man now that he had shown a certain amount of warmth.

  ‘We have a common friend in His Highness the Aga Khan,’ the stranger said with the bluff of a broad smile on the full lips of his dark face, which was handsome in spite of the deep, degenerate circles round his eyes, the lean and hungry hollows of his cheeks. And then he added in a furtive whisper, ‘My name is Samuel Vijayaragavacharia.’

  ‘I am pleased to meet you — what did you say your name was?’ Sir Hasan said with a certain hauteur and contempt in his manner.

  ‘They call me Sammy here, Sir Hasan; so you call me Sam.’

  ‘Oh, so you know my name? ‘ Sir Hasan asked, surprised but correct.

  ‘Who doesn’t know of your fame, Sir Hasan?’ Sammy said. And then he lied, ‘The Aga Khan often mentioned you in his conversation with me as one of the older Muslim statesmen of Northern India.’

  Sir Hasan was too puffed up by this flattery to question the man’s friendship with the Aga Khan or to be put off by the dirty collar which he wore, or his unkempt hair under the pork-pie felt hat, or the shabby suit, and they walked along together towards the gateway where the policeman was inspecting passports.

  ‘So you have been here a long time?’ he said, indifferent and worldly, after he had shown his papers and emerged on to the road where a number of taxis were lined up.

  ‘Oh yes, I know the Continent very well,’ said Sam obsequiously. ‘Too well, in fact, if you see what I mean!’ And he cocked his left eye as he pronounced the last sentence, and even before Sir Hasan could answer or acknowledge that significant gesture, he added, ‘I would like to show you La Linea, the Spanish part of the town. I could take you to places where none of these bahin chod Angrez log have been.’

  ‘So you speak Hindustani also, though by your name you come from the South!’ Sir Hasan said humorously, shocked at the sound of the vulgar abuse, but pliant.

  ‘We are all Asiatic brothers,’ Sammy said, ‘wherever we come from. These sale, harami think of all of us as black men... Actually, I come from Jafna...’

  Sir Hasan surveyed Sam’s presence dispassionately for a moment. He knew that he was in the hands of a guide, a tout or a pimp, and he knew the other passengers around knew this. But he couldn’t back out now. For Sammy had hit him below the belt, as it were. Firstly, he had aroused that suspicion and hatred for the Government in him which, in spite of his long and loyal association with the Sarkar, was a major instinct in the Indian. And, secondly, he had touched those desires which even the devout Muslim in him had not been able to suppress through a lifetime of assiduity in the performance of physical (or spiritual?) jerks five times a day.

  ‘What will you show me?’ Sir Hasan asked with a lascivious smile.

  ‘All the houris promised to the faithful in heaven,’ said Sammy with a laugh emboldened by the softening of Sir Hasan’s manner. And he hailed a motor with a flamboyant lordly gesture.

  ‘Arey, arey, wait!’ Sir Hasan’s caution and respectability returned. ‘What is the fare to the town and what will you charge?’

  ‘Oh, Sir Hasan, come, you are my brother,’ said Sam, effusive and deliberately vague. ‘I don’t see many of my countrymen here in exile. I will take you to see the sights and if you are pleased you can pay me what you like.’

  Sir Hasan was totally disarmed by this generous offer.

  He even lost all the inhibitions which generally kept him from doing the wrong thing in the presence of the English passengers. He did not look before or after as he got into the taxi. Fortunately, he saw two first-class English passengers get into a similar car with a lady and he felt he had the necessary sanction for courage in the casual way they conducted themselves. But, as the c
ar began to move and Sammy gave orders to the driver, in a language which seemed to him to be French though it was Spanish, his careful, timid soul which had never ventured so far, bubbled inside his stomach.

  ‘You know that the boat leaves at exactly nine o’clock this evening,’ he said. ‘So don’t let us go further than the main bazaar of the town.’

  ‘I know the time your boat leaves, Sir Hasan, but if you only want to see the bazaar I’ll have to ask the driver to change his direction,’ Sammy said sternly.

  ‘No, no, let us go where you like — only I must get back in time!’ said Sir Hasan flustered. For he felt the chance of seeing the houris, out of sight of all the eyes which had in the past prevented his enjoyment of this pleasure slipping away.

  ‘Then you are safe in my hands,’ said Sammy with a direct look in his eyes which became full of sinister meaning as it became fixed for a moment in the hollows of his eyes.

  The shadows of evening were spreading slowly over the blue sea which took colour from the bluer sky. And as the taxi sped along the dusty road to La Linea, Sir Hasan surrendered to the twilight, and to Sammy, almost as if he had been hypnotised. For though he felt a certain trepidation in his small heart, the deeper urges in his spine seemed to incline him to the warmth of the Spanish peninsula with memories of the heroic Moors as they sped across it, tasting of its wines, raping its flesh, cutting its corn during the conquests. For a minute or two he had qualms about having missed performing the evening prayers, but then he rationalised his mood of wonder by contemplating the ineffable mystery behind everything created by the One God, of whom Muhammad was the Prophet, and by assuring himself that he was, today, earning the reward for all his prayers in the past — he was going to meet the houris!