It was useless to expect Too to have any understanding of these realities. She dropped the subject of the Minister and took up her own—and his: “As commander-in-chief you would be in Delhi all the time—we would see each other whenever we want . . .” But his face remained closed, his eyes fixed on some distant place above her head. She broke down: “What’s the matter? Ever since you’ve come back, it’s been like this—as if you don’t want to be back; as if you don’t want to be with me.”
He did not reply but began to pace the room in thought. It was a large room, with sofa-sets imported from England, hunting trophies on the walls, and family photographs in silver frames scattered over occasional tables. He circled it several times, but his pacing brought him nothing—he still had no idea how to deal with the situation.
Again it was she who had to take the initiative: “All that matters is that you should be here; near me; that we should be together. All right, refuse, if you don’t want to be the army chief, if you feel it’s not for you—”
“That’s right!” he exclaimed and stopped pacing, relieved to have this thought expressed for him. “It’s not for me!”
“Then what’s for you?” she said softly; she laid her face against his chest and stroked it with both hands. But she felt him stiffen. She stepped back to gaze up into his face, which remained closed against her. Her heart beat in anguish; her eyes swept around the room as though seeking some other help. She took in the photographs—most of them were of his children, his handsome young family of two girls and a boy, also some of his wife, who was very beautiful but had always remained cold to him, caring more for her own family, her sister and brothers, than for him.
Sumitra became desperate: “If you resign your commission, we could go away somewhere, you and I. Why not—look at me! I’m willing to do it, why not you? I’d arrange it, everything—we’d go abroad to some place where not a soul knows us and we need never come back here ever again—”
He groaned aloud. If she was desperate, so was he, and now he dared to say this much: “I need to be at home—no, not here but my home—yes, with my family and in my house and on my land and with my people—what shall I tell you!” He broke off, unable to continue and tell her what it was he intended to do.
He told Harry and Monica—but only just before he left. By that time Sumitra was away on one of her cultural relations tours—she had taken a group of potters and weavers to a symposium on handicrafts in Bangkok—so he was relieved of the necessity of telling her at all. She was only away for ten days, but by the time she returned, he was dead. He had been shot in the back of the head, ambushed by the outlaws he had gone to suppress. Harry read the news on the front page of the newspaper, which also carried a photograph of Too’s corpse. Harry hid it from Monica and broke the news to her himself as gently as he could. Both of them were devastated. They could not believe it: Too had left in such tremendous high spirits! He had himself asked to be sent on this expedition and had been looking forward to it as to a tiger shoot. And in a way it had been like a tiger shoot for him: this band of outlaws had for years been harrying the countryside—his countryside! his people!—pillaging, burning, raping, kidnapping, killing, worse than wild beasts. Worse, much worse than wild beasts! cried Too; and if he caught them—and he would catch them, he promised—he would shoot them in cold blood. “Killed while attempting to escape,” was the usual formula, Too told Harry and Monica with a chuckle. He would have them shackled together in a row and them one by one—bang! bang!
It was about this time that Monica had her nervous breakdown, which her daughter Kuku later diagnosed as due to a lack of sex life. Kuku, who had plenty of sex herself, ascribed most malfunctions to this cause; but at the time Sumitra must have come to the same conclusion, for it was around then that she had arranged a marriage for Monica with the ambitious young under-secretary Malhotra. This marriage had only lasted long enough to produce Kuku, and then Monica and her baby had moved in with Sumitra, who was by that time a widow. So Kuku, growing up with these two women, had from childhood been a witness to the fights between them. Monica, who continued to blame her mother for everything, was always on the attack, forcing Sumitra to defend herself. For instance, Monica blamed her for letting Too go on the expedition that had led to his death: “You could have stopped it,” Monica said.
“How? How? I was in Bangkok, I didn’t even know about it.”
“You could have got him some appointment to keep him in Delhi. You could easily have done it, you were in so thick with the Milkman. You certainly got everything out of him for yourself, though goodness only knows what you had to do in return.”
Once, when Kuku was about twelve, her grandmother told her about the Minister, “He was very kind to me.”
“But what did you have to do for him?” Kuku innocently inquired.
Sumitra shrugged: “I suppose I helped him to become the Foreign Minister.”
She always considered that he had done more for her than she had for him, and at a time when she needed it. After Too’s death, she had to contend not only with Monica’s nervous breakdown but with Harry’s increasing alcoholism. He began to drink the moment he got up and continued steadily until his servant helped him to bed at night. He and Monica no longer had their pleasant times together—it was as though, without Too, they had broken apart and each was locked up in solitary misery. Sumitra meanwhile was kept busier than ever, for it was the winter season and many important foreign visitors had to be entertained and taken to see the Red Fort and the Qutb Minar. It was always very late when she was at last driven home; but however late it was, Monica would be waiting up for her. She seemed to have spent the day brooding about her mother, whom she held responsible for Too’s death, Harry’s drinking, and Monica’s own inferiority complex and generally unhappy life. Sumitra, although exhausted after her long day, tried to calm her, and it always ended in the same way, with Monica’s ragé melting into tears and Sumitra tucking her into bed and tenderly kissing her goodnight. It was only then that Sumitra could go to bed herself and give way to her own grief, which she shared with no one.
After Too had refused the high command, the Minister and Sumitra did not mention him again between them; except on his death, when the Minister spoke some conventional words of condolence to her, on the loss of her family friend. At this time the Minister was even more occupied than Sumitra, for besides all the social activities and the official meetings, he was involved in the many secret comings and goings preceding a major cabinet reshuffle. When, at the end of that busy season, he was offered the post he had coveted, Sumitra was the first person he informed of his success. She almost admired him at that moment: he was not a handsome figure—the very opposite, even now after she had done all she could to improve his appearance. But there was something about him in his triumph—an energy, a manliness—that she had known in no other man, not even in Too with all his shining looks and chest full of medals. And where had it all led to, with Too, she thought, shot like a dog by thieves and murderers: and for the first time the tears she shed by herself every night sprang to her eyes in broad daylight and in the presence of another person.
It could not have been the reaction the Minister had expected to his announcement; but it was his life’s business to deal with the vagaries of human psychology and conduct. He scrutinized her face with his eyes that were set too deeply in fat to reveal their penetrating intelligence. Then he joined his palms together like a supplicant and said that there was something she must do for him; that she could not refuse him, must not. He offered her three choices: the high commission in London, the embassy in Washington, and the Indian mission to the UN in New York. He knew it was much too much to ask of her who had already done everything for him, but he needed her more than ever in his new responsibilities, and without her he was helpless as a little child and could proceed no further.
During the following years, Sumitra lived mostly abroad. Although she was already middle-aged during her great year
s as India’s ambassador to the UN, she had retained her smooth olive skin and her pitch-black hair and sparkling eyes; and she wrapped herself so skillfully in her sari that she appeared merely plump, as she had been, and not fat, as she had become. She had always loved jewelry and now was so laden with it that she resembled a barbaric queen—an impression enhanced by the bolder colors and patterns of her saris, which were of traditional designs adapted to modern tastes. The expression on her face was that of a person used to giving orders to people—in contrast to her manner, her exquisite gestures of courtesy and submission to the point of immolation which were a mark of royal breeding as well as of the courtesan and temple dancer. Her parties were, like herself, an enchanting mixture of east and west. There was always plenty of liquor, but also pomegranate and mango juices and spiced yoghurt drinks; the servants glided around with silver trays of delicacies that were to be found only in the finest Indian homes where they were made from recipes handed down by a grandmother. A visiting Indian musician—always a maestro of the first rank—would entertain after dinner; but for those who had business with each other there were brandy and cigars in the study and doors that could be closed. Sumitra herself closed them, smiling for a moment as she did so with perfect understanding and a promise of privacy for whatever matters of high state had to be discussed.
Now in charge of foreign affairs, the Minister frequently traveled abroad, stopping off in New York whenever he could. She looked forward to his visits. He consulted her about policy and discussed the personalities of the world and national leaders they both had to deal with. She continued to monitor his personal habits, and here too he followed her advice—for instance, he left off using a certain pungent body oil prescribed as beneficial to the flow of blood to the brain and other important organs.
Monica quarreled with her about the Minister, as she quarreled with her on all subjects. Monica traveled between her mother in New York and her father in New Delhi, and it would be difficult to say in which place she was more unhappy. She was undergoing treatment with a New York analyst and was learning far more about herself and her relationship with her mother than was good for either of them. She also learned not to suppress her natural feelings, and whenever the Minister visited, she made no secret of her contempt for him. But even though she tossed her head and flung out of the room without returning his courteous greeting, he smiled tolerantly and reassured Sumitra that the girl was young, a child only. Nevertheless, it was he who suggested matrimony in place of psychiatry (he had just married off his own sixteen-year-old daughter, with two thousand guests consuming five hundred pounds of clarified butter). And it was he who found Monica’s bridegroom: on his return to New Delhi, he made discreet inquiries in his own Ministry, and after personally interviewing several likely candidates, he finally selected Under-Secretary Malhotra. However, Monica always denied that her marriage had been arranged. She claimed she had met Malhotra at a diplomatic party, and had been fool enough to be taken in by him. “It was because I was so unhappy,” she explained to her daughter Kuku. “Because of Mummy and what she had done to me.”
During her years at the UN, Sumitra’s husband Harry also sometimes came to stay with her. Unlike the Minister, he fitted well into her diplomatic salon. Harry had elegant manners and conversed easily in English and with charm. Unfortunately he also got drunk very quickly—and now it only took a drink or two to get him into that state. He was never rowdy or ill-behaved but continued to stand holding his glass with a smile frozen on his face. If anyone spoke to him, he tried sincerely to respond, but so unsuccessfully that people tended to back away and he was left standing by himself, still smiling and still on his feet, though by now supporting one shoulder against a wall. He was very apologetic about his condition, and readily agreed to enter a clinic in Virginia that Sumitra had arranged for him. But he returned after less than a week—“Leave it,” was all he said in answer to Sumitra’s reproaches. That same night he was for the first time noisily drunk and she had to make signs to the servants, while her guests pretended not to notice him being hustled away, loudly declaiming poetry as he went.
Nevertheless, she liked having him there, at least during the few hours of the day when he was sober. He was the one person with whom she could be as she had been. They spoke of old friends—about these also as they had been and not as they were now: some of them were bureaucrats or judges, some were alcoholics like Harry, some dead like Too. They both spoke of Too with loving nostalgia, and it didn’t matter that she was nostalgic for the moonlit nights in the ruined pleasure palace and Harry for the poetry and vodka and chit-chat in his New Delhi garden. It all appeared as remote now as those scenes of royal indulgence depicted in the miniature paintings that hung on Sumitra’s walls. These pictures were just beginning to be recognized at their true value, and she had been among the first to acquire, for a few rupees, a collection that was later auctioned at Christie’s. Harry himself seemed to belong in those paintings, to be one of the long dead princes, from Kulu or Kashmir, shown reclining among little golden drinking vessels and flowers that scintillated like the jewels in their turbans.
Harry’s last visit to New York—he died shortly after his return to India—coincided with one of the Minister’s foreign tours. Both of them were present at a cocktail party given by Sumitra in honor of the Minister, preceding a dinner at the Iraqi embassy, also in his honor. Sumitra had been nervous all day, for Harry was very irritated by the presence of the Milkman (as he still called him), who was living in the house with them. “Well, what should I do?” Sumitra defended herself. “It’s not my house, it’s an official residence belonging to the government of India.”
“Oh yes,” sneered Harry, “he is the government of India. He’s certainly got his dirty hands in the treasury up to the elbows.” He was referring to a major financial scandal that again involved the Minister: this was nothing unusual—rumor as pungent as his body oil clung to him throughout his career.
Sumitra did not try to argue with Harry. Like Too before him, he would never understand. He had no conception of the shifts and makeshifts necessary to hold on to a position of power, and that what appeared to him as bribery and corruption was nothing but a judicious balancing of funds to keep the machinery of government oiled and functioning.
That evening, though performing with her usual accomplishment the role of diplomatic hostess, she glanced more often than ever toward Harry in his corner. It was also second nature for her to keep an eye on the Minister; but this was really no longer necessary, for by now his very defects had turned into assets. His English had remained rudimentary, but that only made people listen to him more attentively, as if fearful of missing something important he was saying. And there was a sort of power in his earthiness—the smell of cow dung still seemed to cling to him, if no longer physically—a suggestion of roots and soil that was exciting to Sumitra’s cosmopolitan guests. Elegant women clustered around him and he made no secret of his liking for them, though of course in a very respectful way. He knew perfectly where to draw the line, and also where it was permissible to go beyond it—there were rumors about him in this area as well, and whenever he arrived in some backwater of his electoral district, the local bosses knew what sort of girls to bring for him from the bazaar.
Now, at Sumitra’s cocktail party, he was playful with a kind of crude gallantry that charmed his listeners. Although at home he was a strong advocate of the national program of total prohibition, here he indulged his liking for strong liquor, at the same time retaining the full use of his perfectly honed faculties. His eyes darted around as swiftly as his mind to pinpoint those guests who were the most important to him on his present visit. At that particular party it was the head of an international monetary fund, and he had already taken care to establish a friendly rapport with him prior to their official meeting scheduled for the following day. Now he felt at liberty to relax and to amuse his sophisticated audience with his own brand of rustic humor. Stretching out his hand to a
servant for another glass, he burst into a snatch of song—a simple folk melody that suited his remarkably pleasant singing voice. There was applause and delighted laughter, so that Sumitra—now herself occupied in exerting her charm on the head of the monetary fund—glanced over to the little circle of which he was the admired centre. She smiled to see this strong and wily politician, who held power over millions of souls and vast stretches of land, turn back into the lusty village youth he had once been. He sang of the dust swirled up at dusk by the homecoming cows, and the jingle of the ornaments adorning the village bride. He also shared his taste for Bombay talkies and switched from folk song to popular film song—the rose and the nightingale at their last gasp but now shrill and sweet enough to delight his sturdy peasant soul. “When you dip in the lake, O bathing Beauty, beware of driving us mad!” he sang and even broke into a little shuffle of a dance. Although squat as a toad in his politician’s homespun garb, he transformed himself into a screen heroine with a wet garment clinging to her body, combing the long tresses that cascaded down to her hips.
Along with everyone else, Sumitra was so intent on this performance that for a moment she relaxed her vigilance over Harry in his corner. It was only when she saw the Minister—seemingly engrossed in his little song and dance act—glance in that direction that she too looked at her husband. Harry had climbed on to a chair and was declaiming something—but already, at a sign from the Minister, the servants had closed around him and were half coaxing, half lifting him down. The Minister was giving another sample of a film song—“I’m a vagabond, wandering in the woods of the heart”—so that everyone’s attention continued to be fixed on him. Only Sumitra was with Harry, along with several servants—some of them brought from his childhood home in Delhi—who had got him down from his chair and were edging him toward the door. He was trying to tell them something with all the earnestness of someone completely drunk, and when they didn’t understand, he appealed in frustration to Sumitra: “Dragging our poets in the mire—Ghalib and Faiz!” Then he shouted, “Degradation!” and tried to point at the Minister, who was still giving his audience a taste of Bombay film lyrics; but the servants quickly lowered Harry’s arm and kept it pinned to his side. Sumitra followed them through the door and stood at the foot of the stairs, watching them lead Harry up to his room. He was looking back at her and quoting something but slurring his words, so that she wasn’t sure whether it was about the rose and the nightingale, or Jamshed’s throne gone on a puff of wind.
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