The Householder

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  ‘Please remember that you have invited us for a meal,’ Raj said.

  ‘You will come?’ Prem exclaimed in a pleased voice.

  ‘Of course, the bus-fares will be an expense for me.’

  Hans held up his forefinger again. ‘BUT,’ he said and smiled: ‘Yes, there is always a big BUT.’

  ‘Babli can travel free on the bus,’ Prem pointed out.

  Raj grudgingly admitted it, then added: ‘My wife cannot travel free. I will have to pay for her.’

  ‘But to achieve this pure spirit—yes, there is where we stumble and fall down.’ His face had now clouded with unhappiness. ‘Our materialist civilization has collected so much waste matter inside us that the spirit has become dirty with mud.’

  ‘You must come very soon,’ Prem said. He was about to add, ‘as soon as my mother has gone’, but then remembered that he was not supposed to know that she was going.

  ‘We are rubbish-dumps!’ Hans cried.

  Raj said in a stern voice, ‘Please don’t shout so loud. People will look at us.’ Prem cast a hasty glance round the restaurant. But nobody was looking at them. Most of the people there were too intent on themselves to pay attention to what was going on around them.

  ‘What does it matter if people look?’ Hans said. ‘What we are talking is not a secret thing but the Truth which everyone must know if he is to lead a good spiritual life.’

  ‘They are all loafers,’ Raj said with a contemptuous look around the clientele. They were most of them young men, but very different from the young men who lounged, easy and satisfied, in the vestibules of the cinemas. These young men sat over their coffee with an air of cynical gloom, and the way they blew cigarette smoke indicated their low opinion of the world

  ‘Perhaps they are already on the path of the Truth,’ Hans said.

  ‘They are all worthless loafers,’ Raj said. ‘They sit in coffee-houses and do no work the whole day.’

  Prem said, ‘Perhaps they can’t find work. It is not easy to find work, even if you are B.A. or M.A.’; and he gently sighed, thinking of the long columns of Situations Vacant in which there was nothing for him.

  Raj frowned at his watch: ‘I must go. I have to get clothes from the dry-cleaner on my way home.’

  ‘And even if you do get work,’ Prem said, ‘often the salary is so low that it is difficult to live.’

  ‘I have a theory,’ Hans announced.

  ‘Especially if you have a family to support,’ Prem murmured.

  ‘My theory is that where there is greatest unemployment among the educated classes there is also greatest spiritual development.’

  ‘And it is so difficult to get a rise in salary,’ Prem said miserably.

  ‘Yes, I know, my theory sounds very strange,’ Hans said with a pleased laugh. ‘But I will explain.’

  Raj got up.’ If I don’t hurry, the dry-cleaner will shut and we will be without our clothes.’

  Prem got up with him and said, ‘There were some things I wanted to talk with you about.’

  ‘I was very happy to have this meeting with you,’ Hans said. He clasped Raj’s hand in a big firm handshake. Now all three of them were standing and the waiter came hurrying over with the bill.

  ‘I sent a petition to the Principal,’ Prem told Raj. But Hans put a hand on his shoulder and pressed him back into his seat. ‘Now I will explain my theory,’ he said; he was smiling and his eyes too gleamed with pleasure.

  Prem’s mother was sitting on her bed, looking at the letter in her hand. She said, ‘Here is a letter for me from your sister in Bangalore.’

  ‘What does she say?’ Prem asked casually, fingering the morning paper which lay folded on a chair.

  ‘Please don’t be angry with me, son.’

  Prem pretended to be interested in the newpaper although he had already read it very thoroughly in the morning.

  ‘Your sister needs me, son. I will have to leave you.’ She opened the letter again and glanced over it and nodded. ‘What can I do, son? She needs me.’

  Prem looked crestfallen, but he said bravely, ‘Of course if she needs you, you must go.’

  ‘A mother’s duties never end,’ she said with a sigh. But she looked pleased.

  So next evening Prem saw her off at the station. She had as many baskets and bundles as she had brought with her when she came, for she was taking a good supply of Delhi sweetmeats to her daughter. When she was settled in her compartment and had seen to it that the porter had stowed all her things properly on the racks, she spoke to Prem out of the window. She said, ‘I am not easy in my mind about leaving you, son.’

  ‘Please don’t worry at all,’ Prem said. He stepped nearer to the train, for barrows filled with mail-bags were being pushed along the platform.

  ‘I did my best for you, son. We chose the girl as carefully as we could.’

  Prem said again, ‘Please don’t worry about me at all.’ He was embarrassed, afraid that she would say something about Indu and then he would not know where to look.

  ‘However careful we are, what can we do? These things are all in the hands of God.’ A group of women, fat and elderly and wearing widow-white, came thronging into the compartment. They were followed by a porter who carried their luggage on his head and looked despondently at the racks into which Prem’s mother had crowded all her things. ‘Someone has taken up all the space,’ said one of the women.

  ‘For one seat one must take up only one luggage rack,’ said another.

  ‘Try and bear up, son,’ Prem’s mother told him.

  He cleared his throat and said, ‘I think some of your things must be moved.’

  The porter was already gingerly moving them. Prem’s mother pretended not to notice what was going on.

  ‘If I could stay with you, son, I would look after you and make everything nice for you. Then there would be no need for worry.’

  ‘Film-Fun, Film-Fare, Film-Frolic!’ shouted a paper-man, thrusting a splayed-out array of highly coloured film magazines into the train window.

  ‘But what to do? Your sister needs me.’ She drew back from the magazines thrust into her face, saying ‘Go away, what do I want with these things.’

  ‘It is all about films,’ said the man invitingly.

  One of the fat widows shook her head: ‘That is all young people think of nowadays. Only films.’ The others also shook their heads. One of them was already untying a little bundle on her lap out of which came a heap of potato pancakes. She began to eat at once. With a full mouth she said, ‘It is a great evil.’

  Prem’s mother said, ‘I thank God, my son is not like that. He is a good hard-working boy.’ The other women stared at Prem in appreciation and said ‘Ah’, swaying their heads at him and smiling.

  ‘He has been married less than a year. I have been staying with him.’ She sighed. ‘What help a mother can give, I have given.’

  ‘What can compare with a mother’s love?’ the others said politely.

  Prem looked towards the end of the train: ‘I think it is starting.’

  One of the fat women came pushing to the window. ‘It is starting? We have not had our tea!’ She began gesticulating to a man with a glass-trolley from which he served tea and biscuits and dust-flecked cream-rolls. Soon steaming cups and heaped plates passed between the trolley and the compartment.

  ‘Now his sister from Bangalore has written to say she needs me. That is why I have to go.’ The women were busy eating and drinking, but they nodded sympathetically. ‘It is difficult for me to leave this boy, but what can I do?’

  The man with the glass trolley was looking nervously at the women drinking tea from his cups and eating off his plates. ‘It is starting,’ he said. Prem peered towards the engine. His mother said, ‘I run from one to the other, all our lives our children need us’; she tried to sound harassed but her tone was complacent.

  ‘Please give me my things!’ shouted the man with the trolley from behind Prem. Flags were being waved and whistles blown.
>
  ‘He wants his cups and plates,’ Prem said.

  ‘I tried to teach her your favourite dishes, son,’ Prem’s mother said. ‘But she does not learn well.’

  ‘Your biscuits are very bad!’ one of the women shouted to the man with the trolley.

  ‘But give me my things!’ he shouted back.

  ‘He wants his things,’ Prem said.

  ‘I have done all I could, son. The rest is in God’s hands.’

  Cups and plates were passed out to Prem, who handed them on to the man with the trolley. The train started. Prem ran alongside it, with the trolleyman behind him.

  ‘If your sister had not needed me, I would have stayed with you a much longer time.’

  Prem received the last two cups.

  ‘There was not enough sugar in your tea!’ one of the women cried, leaning out of the window.

  Prem’s mother also leant out of the window: ‘Try and bear up, son!’ she cried.

  Prem waved and said, ‘Please don’t worry at all’, though it was not likely that she could any longer hear.

  He did not wait till the train was out of sight but turned straightaway and made his way to the exit. He was so excited that he hardly noticed the crowds milling round the station-yard and kept stumbling against porters and hawkers and passengers, over mail-bags and abandoned clusters of luggage, and once he almost slipped on a sucked and discarded mango-peel. He thought only of getting home as quickly as possible, where Indu would be sitting waiting for him.

  In the night they went to sleep out on the roof. They felt both alone and supreme. The sky, vaulting huge and black above them, nailed with silver points of stars and a slice of moon, seemed closer than the earth. Sounds of cars, the bark of a dog, a distant train reached them faint and filtered and far-off. He tried to persuade her to take off all her clothes and show herself naked to him. She blushed, giggled, clutched the sari defensively to her breast, while he tried to pull it off. They struggled together and then they loved one another. Never had they known such an excess of sweetness. Cloyed and sated, they slept together on the bed. Later they woke up again and loved some more. After that they did not go to sleep for a long time; the night was large and silent and empty, and they did not want to lose a moment of the feeling of space and solitude it gave them. They peered over the roof down into the courtyard where Mr. Seigal lay sleeping alone on a string-cot, with an earthen water-container by his side. They could see his stomach curving like a dome into the air. Silvered in faint moonlight, he did not look like a real person at all. They went to sleep towards early morning, when the sky was already grey with dawn, but soon afterwards the servant-boy stood there, saying crossly, ‘I have been searching for you everywhere.’ They woke up and noticed that the hot sun was shining on them, so they went running indoors.

  Even in the daytime, at college, Prem thought mostly of Indu and what they did together. He gave his lessons automatically, while his thoughts were on her. His students did not bother to listen to him. They held their own conversations, leaning across to one another and hardly bothering to lower their voices. Prem remained unaware of this, until suddenly Mr. Chaddha interrupted the flow of his own lecture on ‘Conflicts in the North-West Frontier Provinces’ to say in his sharp piping voice: ‘There is too much noise on the other side of the classroom.’

  There was instant silence. Mr. Chaddha’s students turned round to have a look at Prem’s, who now sat quite quiet and pretended to be engrossed in their notes.

  From his dais at one end of the class-room Prem faced Mr. Chaddha on his dais at the other. Prem said, ‘I was giving my lecture’, in a shaking voice.

  ‘Perhaps you were giving your lecture but your students don’t seem to have been listening to you,’ Mr. Chaddha said.

  Prem felt rebuked like a schoolboy. He hung his head and plucked at the notes in front of him. There was a heavy silence, during which Prem felt his disgrace mounting. At last Mr. Chaddha resumed his lecture and his students turned back. Prem also continued to speak, though he could not remember where he had left off before Mr. Chaddha’s interruption. His students remained more quiet than he had ever known them for the rest of the lesson; nevertheless Prem was greatly relieved when it was over.

  But a sense of shame remained with him. He had been publicly disgraced and made to lose face before his students. He felt it acutely. He knew he was not very successful at keeping discipline—indeed not very successful at teaching—but this was a fact that should be kept decently hidden. No man could hope for standing and respect if his weaknesses were exposed. His sense of shame began to be mingled with some indignation. He realized that Mr. Chaddha had really no right to administer any rebuke to him, let alone disgrace him as he had done in front of all their students. Prem was himself a teacher, a husband, a householder, and as such some respect was due to him.

  His indignation increased when he saw Mr. Chaddha sitting in his usual position in an armchair in the middle of the staffroom, with his little legs crossed and one foot swinging free in the air. He was reading a book with his usual air of pompous authoritativeness. Without thinking at all, Prem went straight up to him and said in a voice trembling with resentment, ‘It is not nice to disgrace a teacher in front of his students.’

  Mr. Chaddha lowered his book and glanced up at Prem standing accusingly in front of him. Prem noticed that he wore a look of astonishment.

  ‘If you wish to tell me something, you can tell me quietly after the lesson!’ Prem cried, close to tears.

  Mr. Chaddha’s look of astonishment gave way to one of extreme annoyance. He said, ‘You will please lower your voice when you speak to me.’

  Prem cried, ‘I can speak to you any way I like! I am not your student, I am a teacher!’ His voice was shrill. He put up his hand and, ashamed and impatient, brushed a tear from his cheekbone.

  Mr. Chaddha rose from his armchair. He rose with the slow and terrible dignity of a figure of vengeance, though his short stature made it end in rather an anticlimax. ‘Unheard-of!’ he brought out in fearful wrath.

  The other teachers were listening breathlessly, though they were half turned away from the scene and watching only from the corner of their eyes. No one wished to be involved.

  ‘What is impertinence?’ Prem cried shrilly. ‘To make a teacher look small before his students—perhaps that is not impertinence?’

  ‘Gross impudence!’ cried Mr. Chaddha.

  ‘Don’t speak to me like that!’ Prem shrilled, balling his fists and stamping one foot.

  ‘Unprecedented insolence!’ cried Mr. Chaddha. Puffing and snorting, he began to pace up and down the staff-room with quick angry little steps. ‘This is a matter for the Principal.’

  ‘It is not right for a teacher——’

  ‘I shall make a full report to the Principal,’ said Mr. Chaddha, pacing and puffing.

  ‘Then make report, what do I care!’ Prem cried in tearful defiance. But it was not a defiance he could quite feel: the idea of Mr. Chaddha reporting to the Principal was not pleasant to him. Especially just now when he hoped Mr. Khanna was considering his petition and nothing must be allowed to prejudice him in that delicate task.

  ‘I shall point out to him how my own lectures are disturbed because of indiscipline at the other end of the class-room.’

  ‘What indiscipline? How can you say indiscipline?’ Prem said; his voice had become milder, even anxious.

  But Mr. Chaddha was not to be deflected. ‘A full report shall be made,’ he said, intent on his own indignation. Only the bell stopped him pacing up and down the room. He gathered up his notes at once; in the doorway he stopped still and announced in a fateful voice, ‘The end of this has not yet been heard.’

  The other teachers hurried away. No one said anything. Prem walked along the corridor with Sohan Lal who also did not say anything. Though he would have appreciated some words of sympathy and support, Prem understood that Sohan Lal could not afford to get involved by taking sides.

  All th
e way home he felt uneasy. Not so much because of the disgrace in the classroom; or because of the unpleasantness of his scene with Mr. Chaddha; but because of the possible consequence of these things. If Mr. Chaddha really reported to the Principal and drew his attention to the fact that Prem was not very good at maintaining discipline, then Mr. Khanna might not be as favourably disposed towards an increase in salary as Prem now hoped he was.

  He worried till he got home: but then he forgot all about it, for Indu was singing in the kitchen. When she saw him, she pretended to be annoyed. ‘You are so early—I have not finished any of my work yet,’ she said, trying to sound busy and flustered. But he saw that she had already had her evening bath and was wearing a fresh sari and her scent like vanilla essence, and her hair was newly brushed and oiled. He tried to embrace her. ‘Go away,’ she said; ‘have you no shame, in the middle of the day?’ ‘What does it matter?’ he murmured into her scented neck. ‘Who can see us?’ She smelt so fresh, with soap and scent, and yet underneath that there was her own deep woman-smell. ‘Let me go,’ she said, half-heartedly pushing against his chest. The servant-boy was vigorously sweeping the stairs—swish, went his broom, and in time with it he chanted a counting-out rhyme.

  So it was not until next morning, on his way back to the college, that Prem remembered to worry again. By that time he thought it unlikely that Mr. Chaddha had done anything so drastic as reporting to Mr. Khanna, so his thoughts centred mainly on whether his request for an increase in salary would be granted or not. Though he was by no means sure that Mrs. Khanna had handed the petition on. He would give Mr. Khanna three more days; if he had heard nothing from him after that, then he would really have to write another petition.

  But he did not have to wait that long. For with the tea that morning, the servant brought a note which asked Prem to come up and see the Principal. Prem became quite excited; he showed the note to Sohan Lal, saying: ‘It must be about my increase in salary.’ He smoothed his collar, ran a comb through his hair, patted his cheek to see if he had a nice close shave. He wanted to look his best.