The Householder

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  Mrs. Khanna said,’ It is seven o’clock already.’ Everybody stood up. The tea-party was over, but Prem did not want it to be over. There still remained so much to do. He wished desperately to make some contribution to the conversation, to distinguish himself and show everyone that he was an intelligent and deep-thinking young man. But the guests were already leaving, filing past Mr. Khanna who stood at the door with his hands folded in an attitude of gracious hospitality. Prem wanted to call out ‘Stop!’ and then as everybody turned round to look at him, begin to address them with something so poignant and striking that even those who had already gone down the stairs would be called back again. But he did not have the courage to call out, and besides, he could not really think of anything poignant and striking to say.

  Though next morning he could think of plenty. How he wished then that he had had the courage to get up and make a speech, like Mr. Chaddha! While he was shaving he outlined this speech which he should have made and even watched himself in the mirror making it. He spoke with a mixture of courteous flattery and touching sentiment. But it was too late. This sense of having missed an opportunity not likely to occur again greatly depressed him. Life, he thought, offers us so few chances to prove our worth. It was bitter to reflect that he had passed one by.

  He spoke to Sohan Lal about his sense of failure. He said, ‘It is difficult for a young man to show off his best qualities before his superiors.’

  Sohan Lal did not enter on the subject with enthusiasm. It was evident that he had himself given up any ambition he may ever have had to shine, and consequently did not share Prem’s sense of dissatisfaction at the silent and undistinguished role they had both played at the tea-party. Prem did not know whether to blame or admire him for his lack of ambition. On the one hand, of course, lack of ambition was a very good thing, meaning renunciation of the things of this world and the concentration of the spirit on exalted matters; but on the other hand, a man must—as Prem’s father had taught him—strive and strive and strive again to reach a high and worthy position in life. Sohan Lal, it was evident, had given up hope and perhaps even desire for such position; yet his was not a true renunciation. Prem remembered the expression of anxious deference his face had worn at the tea-party and, in contrast, his gaiety and carefree abandon when they had gone to see the swami. Why, if he had truly renounced, should he be anxious to please Mr. Khanna?

  And here Prem came up against an inconsistency in his own attitude as well. When he remembered the swami—the happy young men, the flower garlands, the songs of praise—and the sense of exhilaration and even of release which he himself had experienced there, then his eagerness to show himself in a good light before Mr. and Mrs. Khanna in order to get an increase in salary, or to secure and improve his position in the college, or whatever it was he wanted from them—all that seemed futile and meaningless. But, though he realized it to be so, nevertheless his mind always tilted back again to these things. It was as if he had been turned into the light only of his own free will to swivel back to darkness.

  Why had he not gone back to the swami? He had been so happy there and had promised, and really wanted, to go every day. It would cost him nothing to go, nobody asked him not to go, he would be gay and joyful there, he knew—and yet, he did not go. He wondered whether Sohan Lal had been back since that time they had gone together. But when he asked him, Sohan Lal shook his head and looked sad. ‘It is difficult for me to go,’ Sohan Lal said. He said nothing more, but Prem felt that this explanation was sufficient, and indeed fitted his own case too. It was difficult, not because of lack of time or distance or of any outward circumstance; but because it was so different from what one was accustomed to. The swami seemed to ask for nothing, yet afterwards one realized that he asked for almost everything and expected one to forget, for his sake, all the things one was used to and thought important.

  Prem told himself that he was not ready for that yet. Perhaps if he had been unmarried; or if his wife had not been pregnant; or if it had not been expected of him to earn a living; then perhaps it would have been easy to go to the swami and sing hymns of praise. But now he was caught up in the world. He knew it was very important for him to improve his position, and by this he meant mainly, at present, his financial position.

  His thoughts turned back to the rent and the Seigals, and he knew that—if only to satisfy his own conscience—he would have to make another attack on that front. Only he felt it might be more effective if Indu were to make the attack, and he told her so. ‘It will be so easy for you,’ he persuaded her. ‘Only while you are talking with Mrs. Seigal you can tell her——’ Indu shrugged one shoulder and turned away from him. ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘What harm will it do you?’

  He spoke—as usual nowadays when he wanted to speak to her alone—in whispers, even though he had first taken the precaution of drawing her into the bedroom and shutting the door. ‘While you are having conversation together you can tell her it is difficult for my husband to pay so much rent.’ Indu shook her head. ‘But why not?’ he urged again.

  ‘Son!’ his mother called from the next room. Prem could not help emitting a small sound of impatience, and that made Indu laugh. ‘Son?’

  ‘Yes, please!’ Prem called back, rather too loudly. Indu threw the end of her sari over her face and laughed from behind it.

  ‘What are you doing, son?’ his mother asked rather plaintively.

  ‘Nothing, Mother!’ Indu rocked herself to and fro on the bed.

  ‘Why do you leave me to sit here alone?’

  ‘Keep quiet,’ Prem urgently whispered to Indu who was making choking sounds. ‘I am just coming!’ he called to his mother. ‘I am only changing my shirt!’ Quickly he put his hand over Indu’s mouth; she was squirming and puffing with laughter. ‘She will hear you,’ he whispered.

  It was not till late in the night, till his mother was asleep, that he dared talk to Indu again about the Seigals. But the most he could persuade her to was that she would accompany him on a visit to the Seigals; she would not even promise to say anything. So he could only hope that she would be manœuvred into a position where she would have to join him in talking.

  Next evening, consequently, they both washed their faces and combed their hair very carefully and went down the stairs. Prem’s mother said, ‘Go, children, I am here to see to everything.’ On the stairs, Prem said, ‘Now please remember, you promised me.’

  ‘What did I promise?’ Indu asked indignantly.

  ‘That you would——’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Sh,’ Prem said, for they were quite near the Seigals’ door now.

  Mrs. Seigal was sitting on the veranda; she was crocheting. There were neither visitors nor Mr. Seigal; ‘He has gone out to play cards,’ she said. Romesh was in the sitting-room, ostensibly studying for his examinations, but as soon as he saw there were visitors, he came out to take part in the conversation. He stood jingling coins in his pocket and said, ‘Yesterday I saw the new film at the Regal.’

  ‘Please be quite comfortable,’ Mrs. Seigal said. Prem thought that maybe it was a good thing that they had found her alone; it would be easier to impress their need on her and then leave her to impress it on her husband. He only hoped that Indu would co-operate.

  ‘It was an historical film,’ Romesh said. ‘The love story of Shah Jehan and Mumtaz Mahal.’

  ‘It was good?’ Indu asked.

  ‘There was plenty of singing and dancing,’ Romesh said. ‘But I don’t care much for historical films. I like modern films best.’

  ‘One can learn a lot from historical films,’ Indu said. Prem wished she would not encourage Romesh. He did not want to spend the evening discussing films. Mrs. Seigal was not paying any attention to the conversation, but sat with her head bent over her crocheting.

  ‘I like the smart clothes that the actors wear in modern films,’ Romesh said. ‘And then also the nice way their houses are furnished, and the night clubs and restaurants they go to. I don’t get
much chance to see what elegant life is like, that is why I am glad I can learn from films.’

  Prem thought about how he could come to discuss young married life and its difficulties with Mrs. Seigal. It seemed to him that the subject would be interesting to her and that she would listen with sympathy; so that he could, from there on, lead to the necessity of having a lower rent. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, wondering how to start off, and saw that she was crying.

  ‘And singing and dancing I am very fond of,’ Romesh said.

  Prem did not know whether he should pretend he had not noticed Mrs. Seigal’s tears, or whether he should offer comfort to her. It was becoming difficult to ignore her. She was sniffing and dabbing at her eyes, which were red-rimmed.

  ‘I am very fond of all comic actors,’ Romesh said. ‘They make me laugh a lot.’

  Indu said, ‘I don’t like to laugh in the cinema.’

  Mrs. Seigal drew a closely folded letter out of the petticoat string at her waist. ‘Today I had a letter from my daughter,’ she said and dabbed at her eyes.

  ‘She is well, I hope?’ Indu said.

  ‘My poor child,’ Mrs. Seigal said, dabbing. Prem cleared his throat whereat Indu, for some unknown reason, frowned at him, so that he dared not do it again though he felt he wanted to.

  ‘I am also fond of very sad films which make one cry,’ Romesh said.

  ‘What can a mother do,’ Mrs. Seigal said. She unfolded her letter and nodded over it gloomily. ‘We were so careful when we made the match.’

  Indu said in a grown-up sensible voice, ‘Often it is difficult to tell.’

  ‘Did you see that film,’ Romesh said, ‘in which the heroine was married to a man who turned out to be the chief of a gang of gangsters? He was a proper rogue.’

  ‘My poor daughter,’ Mrs. Seigal said and covered her eyes with her handkerchief. ‘What can we do for her, with such a husband?’ She added in a shocked whisper: ‘He is a big drinker.’

  Prem instantly looked serious and troubled. ‘It is a very bad vice,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, my poor daughter.’

  ‘If it is not checked in time,’ Prem said gravely, ‘it can lead to very serious consequences.’

  ‘How many times have I told Mr. Seigal,’ Mrs. Seigal said, ‘go and see our daughter, see what can be done, but what is his anwer to me?’

  ‘In such cases it is the duty of the relatives to intervene,’ Prem said. Indu directed a terrible frown at him. He looked down and twisted his hands and kept quiet.

  ‘He says to me what is the use of going there? He will not even listen to me, but sits down to play cards. How selfish men are.’ Indu sighed in sympathy, which made Prem give her a hurt look.

  ‘Who else is there I can turn to? My Romesh is a good boy, but he is a child only.’ Romesh looked down at his own feet and scuffed them. Then he murmured in a thick voice, ‘I am eighteen.’

  Indu said, ‘Yes, it is often difficult for a woman to know where to turn for help and protection.’ She spoke with an authority that surprised Prem and also made him feel guilty.

  ‘We gave her such a beautiful wedding,’ Mrs. Seigal moaned. ‘More than three hundred came.’

  ‘There were two bands,’ Romesh said. ‘They played very good tunes.’

  ‘My poor daughter, my child,’ Mrs. Seigal said and wept into her handkerchief.

  Later that night, when they were in bed together, Indu whispered, ‘Why did you not ask her about reduction in rent?’

  ‘How could I do so,’ he whispered back, ‘when she was so sad?’

  Indu made no reply.

  ‘How could any person with feelings ask her at such a moment?’

  ‘I told you not to ask.’

  ‘But we shall have to ask! When she is feeling better, that is.… Do you realize that 45 rupees is more than one-quarter of our whole monthly salary? How can we give more than one-quarter for rent only? We will starve. Are you listening to me?’

  ‘No, I am sleeping.’

  Prem lay awake for quite a long time. He was thinking, but not of the reduction in rent he had to ask for. Instead he was thinking of Mrs. Seigal and how she had dabbed at her eyes and said, ‘My poor daughter.’ He felt very sorry for her. How little one knows of other’s sorrows, he thought. He had always regarded her as a placid, happy woman who sat crocheting on her veranda and chatted with guests amid a round of tea and sweetmeats. Now he realized that this ideal picture was not true. And he thought of how everywhere in the world it was like that, how people one thought happy all had some hidden sorrow, so that there was no happiness anywhere but only people crying alone and in secret. It is true, he thought, everything is Illusion, and this thought saddened him: yet at the same time he felt a kind of relief, for he realized that if everything was Illusion, then his own worries too were Illusion and there was no need for him to be oppressed by them.

  However, his new-found sense of freedom did not last till morning, and even if he still had some slight remembrance of it when he woke up, this was quickly dispelled by the sound of his mother quarrelling. She was shouting in a shrill voice, ‘Is this the respect I get in my son’s house?’ He got up hurriedly. Indu came running in and he asked her in a whisper, ‘What has happened?’ Indu shrugged and lay face-downwards on the bed. ‘I have come from so far away to be with my son, and this is how I am treated!’

  Prem lingered for a while. He combed his hair and stared with unhappy eyes into the mirror. Indu lay without moving on the bed; he knew from her attitude that she would not speak to him, so he asked her nothing further. He gave a last sad look into the mirror and went into the sitting-room. As soon as she saw him, his mother began to cry. He gave an inaudible sigh and then asked, ‘What has happened?’

  ‘No, son,’ she sobbed. ‘Why should I burden you with my troubles?’

  He sat down and quietly sighed to himself again.

  ‘It is enough that I should suffer.…’

  The servant-boy came with her tea on a tray. ‘I don’t want it,’ she said. ‘I am not eating or drinking anything in this house again.’

  ‘Put it down,’ Prem told the boy.

  ‘No, son, I will have nothing. I have been insulted in your house.’

  Prem wrung his hands. ‘How insulted? Who insulted you?’

  ‘I would go out in the fields so as not to trouble anyone, but there are no fields and I must use the bathroom.’

  Prem stirred her tea and said, ‘Drink, you will feel better.’

  ‘Why should she grudge me the use of the bathroom?’

  ‘But I did not know she was in there!’ Indu cried in an anguished voice from the bedroom.

  ‘You see!’ his mother said. ‘You see how she shouts at me!’

  Prem said, ‘It was a mistake. She did not know you were in there.’

  ‘What mistake! She grudges me the use of the bathroom, even though I have come all this way to be with my son.’ She wiped her eyes with the corner of her sari. ‘Get me my ticket for tomorrow night, son. I will go home. I am not welcome here.’

  He handed her the tea and she drank it. When she had finished, she said, ‘There is no need to take me to the station. I will find by myself. I don’t wish to be a trouble to anyone’; she began to cry again.

  When Prem came home at lunchtime, the atmosphere was still very strained. His mother was walking round the sitting-room, silently and with a tight-lipped look of martyrdom, ineffectively piling up a few clothes in a pretence of packing. Indu was equally silent and tight-lipped. Prem was glad to get back to the college again.

  But in the evening everything was different. His mother was in the kitchen. She was cooking. ‘What are you doing?’ he exclaimed, quite shocked. She tilted the frying-pan in which onions were floating in clarified butter. ‘Just wait, son, and see what I am cooking for you today.’ She looked and sounded remarkably cheerful.

  ‘Why are you cooking? Where is——?’

  ‘Bibiji has gone,’ the servant-boy said. He
was sitting despondently in a corner with his knees drawn up and his hair hanging over his face.

  ‘Her uncle came for her,’ Prem’s mother said in the same cheerful voice as before. ‘Your favourite dish I have cooked—just wait till you taste it.’

  ‘She went away with her uncle?’

  ‘She took a big suitcase,’ the servant-boy moaned.

  Prem went into the bedroom. Indu was always neat, so it did not look very different. But he noticed at once that her little wooden table on gilded lion-feet was empty of the bottle of hair-oil, the comb and the glass phial of scent she usually kept on it. The picture of Mother and Baby, which she had bought since her pregnancy, had also gone from the wall. Timidly he opened her wardrobe, but shut it again immediately for it was quite empty. He lay down on the bed and closed his eyes and stayed like that for a long time. And he would have liked to stay even longer if his mother had not called him.

  She was bustling and almost cheerful, the way he remembered her as being in her own home. And she talked a lot—about his sister in Bangalore and Ankhpur College and the new Principal there. He listened quite carefully, hoping she would say something about Indu’s departure, but she never did. At last he asked, ‘She left no message for me?’

  ‘What?’ said his mother, her mind still back in Ankhpur.

  The servant-boy, hovering in the doorway, said, ‘She left just like that; without one word.’

  Prem, who was sitting crosslegged on the floor, drew invisible patterns with his finger-nail on the ground before him. His mother went on talking: ‘And on the Annual Day he did not hire enough chairs, so that many of the visitors had to stand.’ The servant-boy said, ‘I begged her to take me with her, but she would not even answer me.’ ‘You are sure she left no message for me? Nothing at all?’ ‘I told you—she left without one word.’