The Final Question

by Saratchandra Chattopadhyay

  Shibnath gravely replied, ‘It’s most certainly mine.’

  Akshay said, ‘Never. All of us know it belonged to Jogin Babu.’

  Shibnath said, ‘If you knew it, why didn’t you go and bear witness in court? Did you ever hear of any document that said so?’

  Abinash gave a start. ‘I never heard anything. But did the matter reach the courts?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Shibnath, ‘Jogin’s brother-in-law appealed in court. The verdict was in my favour.’

  Abinash sighed and said, ‘That’s fine. So finally you didn’t have to pay anything to the widow and her children.’

  ‘No,’ said Shibnath. ‘No. Khalim, these kebabs are excellent. Could you bring some more?’

  Ashu Babu sat in a daze. Looking up suddenly, he said, ‘You’re not doing justice to the food, gentlemen.’

  Everyone’s appetite had disappeared. As Manorama was leaving silently, Shibnath called to her and said, ‘How’s this? You’re leaving before we’ve finished!’

  Manorama did not reply, or even turn around. Her entire body shrank in disgust.

  3

  A WEEK HAD PASSED SINCE THESE INCIDENTS. IT HAD BEEN WET and cloudy for the last two days, but now, after a few showers, the rain stopped at midday, though the clouds remained: it could start raining again any moment. Manorama, ready to go out, came into her father’s room. Ashu Babu, draped in a thick quilted shawl, was resting in his armchair, book in hand. His daughter was surprised and said, ‘What’s this, Father, aren’t you ready yet? We’re supposed to visit the tomb of Etwari Khan today.’

  ‘True enough, my dear, but this gout …’

  ‘Then let me send the car back. Perhaps we could go tomorrow.’

  Her father stopped her and said, ‘No, you’ll get a headache if you don’t go out. Why don’t you take the air for a while? I’ll browse through this magazine in the meantime. There’s a good story in it.’

  ‘All right, I’ll go. But I shan’t be long. Tell me the story when I return.’ She went out alone.

  Returning within the hour, Manorama entered her father’s room and asked: ‘How did you like the story, Father? Have you finished it? Who’s written it?’ As soon as she had spoken, she was taken aback to see that her father was not alone. Shibnath sat in front of him.

  Shibnath stood up, did namaskar and said, ‘How far did you go?’

  Manorama did not reply to the greeting. She turned her back to him and addressed her father: ‘Have you finished reading it, Father? How did you like it?’

  Ashu Babu only answered: ‘No.’

  The daughter said, ‘Then let me take it. I’ll return it as soon as I’ve finished.’ She went away with the magazine, but sat silently in her room. She did not change her clothes or wash her face. She did not even open the magazine to find out what the story was about or who had written it and how well.

  What she thought as she sat there remains uncertain. Seeing the servant pass, she asked him, ‘Has the man in my father’s room gone away?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied.

  ‘When did he leave?’

  ‘Before it began to rain.’

  Manorama drew aside the window curtains and saw that he was right. It had started raining lightly. She looked up and saw that the clouds on the western horizon were growing thicker. There might be a heavy shower at night. As she entered her father’s room, magazine in hand, she found him sitting silently. She placed the magazine slowly on the arm of his chair and said, ‘Father, you know I don’t like all this.’ She sat down on a chair beside her father. Ashu Babu looked up and asked, ‘What don’t you like, my dear?’

  Manorama said, ‘You quite understand what I mean. I know how to appreciate a talented man, but isn’t it too much to indulge an unprincipled debauchee and drunkard like Shibnath?’

  Ashu Babu seemed to grow pale with shame and diffidence. A large number of books were piled on a table in a corner of the room. Manorama had not yet arranged them properly for want of time. Looking in that direction, he could only say, ‘There he is …’

  Turning her head nervously, Manorama saw Shibnath standing at the table, hunting for a book. The servant had misinformed her. She felt like sinking into the earth with embarrassment.

  Shibnath came and stood before her. She could not look at him. He said, ‘I couldn’t find the book, Ashu Babu. Goodbye for now.’

  Ashu Babu could not say anything either. He only blurted out, ‘But it’s raining outside.’

  ‘Let it,’ said Shibnath, ‘it isn’t much.’ He was about to leave, but suddenly stopped. Addressing Manorama, he said, ‘What I’ve accidentally heard is both fortunate and unfortunate. You needn’t feel embarrassed about it. I often have to hear such things. I know that, though your words were about me, they weren’t meant for me to hear. You’d never be so unkind.’

  He paused and continued: ‘But I have another grievance. The other day Akshay Babu and the other professors hinted that I had some design in trying to get intimate with this family. Of course, everybody’s sense of right and wrong is not the same. Equally, whatever you see from outside is not the whole truth. However that may be, I neither had any sinister intent in entering your circle at that time, nor do I have any now.’ Turning to Ashu Babu, he added: ‘You like hearing me sing. I don’t live far away. If ever you wish to, do drop in. It will be a pleasure.’

  He did another namaskar and went out. Neither father nor daughter could say anything in reply. Many questions jostled in Ashu Babu’s mind, but he kept silent. It was pouring heavily outside; yet he could not say, ‘Shibnath Babu, wait here for a while.’

  The servant laid out the tea things. Manorama asked, ‘Shall I make some tea for you, Father?’

  ‘Not for me,’ replied Ashu Babu. ‘Shibnath had asked for a little tea.’

  Manorama signalled to the servant to take the tea away. In spite of his rheumatism, Ashu Babu rose from his chair and started walking about the room. Suddenly he stopped before the window, looked intently for a while and said, ‘Isn’t that Shibnath standing under the tree? He couldn’t go after all. He’s getting drenched.’ The next moment he said, ‘There’s a woman with him. She wears her sari Bengali-fashion. The poor girl seems to be even more drenched than him.’ He called for his servant and said, ‘Jadu, go and see who those people are, getting wet under the tree near our gate. Is it the same gentleman who left just now? But no, wait a moment …’

  He stopped in mid-sentence, suddenly struck by a terrible doubt. Could that woman be Shibnath’s new wife?

  ‘Let him call Shibnath Babu in,’ said Manorama. She rose and stood beside her father at the open window. She said, ‘If I knew that he’d asked for tea, I wouldn’t have let him go.’

  Ashu Babu slowly replied to his daughter: ‘No doubt, Mani. But I’m afraid the woman is probably that wife of his. He didn’t have the nerve to bring her in with him. She’s been waiting somewhere outside all this time.’

  As she heard this, Manorama too was certain that this was the woman. She hesitated for a moment, debating whether it was permissible to invite her into the house under any circumstances. However, looking at her father’s face, she made up her mind. Calling the servant, she ordered, ‘Jadu, bring both of them in. If Shibnath Babu wants to know who’s invited them, tell him I have.’

  The servant went away. Ashu Babu anxiously said, ‘Mani, was this the right thing to do?’

  ‘Why, Father?’

  ‘Whatever Shibnath may be,’ said Ashu Babu, ‘he is, after all, an educated gentleman—it’s different with him. But should we set up acquaintance with that woman because of her connection with Shibnath? We may not care much about her caste, but after all there is a difference. One can’t be friends with maids and servants.’

  ‘There’s no question of making friends, Father’, said Manorama. ‘Even a traveller off the road can be given shelter for a few hours in times of danger. That’s all we’re doing.’

  Ashu Babu was in two minds. He shook his head a few
times and said slowly, ‘It’s not that. I’m worried as to how you should behave with the woman when she comes.’

  Manorama said, ‘Don’t you have confidence in me, Father?’

  Ashu Babu smiled drily and said, ‘Of course I do, but I don’t understand this business. You know how to treat people of your own class—few women know better. Your treatment of the maids and servants is faultless. It’s just that I have an affection for Shibnath and admire his talents. By an unlucky accident, he has suffered much humiliation today. I don’t want to hurt him further after inviting him back into the house.’

  Manorama realized this was a complaint against her. ‘As you please, Father,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not so simple,’ Ashu Babu said with a smile. ‘I’m not sure what ought to be done. The only thing I know is that Shibnath shouldn’t feel hurt in our house.’

  Manorama was going to say something, but suddenly gave a start and said, ‘They are here.’

  Ashu Babu came out of the room agitatedly. ‘Now there, Shibnath Babu, you’re completely soaked!’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Shibnath, ‘it suddenly started pouring. But she’s much wetter than I am.’ He pointed to the woman with him. But he did not identify her clearly, nor could they ask directly who she was.

  She was indeed thoroughly soaked. Her clothes sagged with water, and water was dripping down her shoulders from her thick black hair. Father and daughter both gazed at the new arrival, speechless with utter amazement. Ashu Babu was not a poet, but it struck him immediately that it was such feminine beauty that poets of the past had compared with the dew-washed lotus, and that there could be no better comparison. The answer that Shibnath had given in disgust at Akshay’s battery of questions that day—that he had married her not for her education but for her beauty—had not then been grasped for the truth it was. Now Ashu Babu silently recalled Shibnath’s words again and again. He felt, in fact, that even if their relationship was indecent and immoral, even if they lacked the sanctity of the husband—wife relationship, an immortal truth of creation had blossomed in these two mortal forms of man and woman in this mortal world. More amazingly still, in a nation which had no special procedure for choosing beauty, a nation where one had to shut one’s own eyes and rely on another’s, how had they come to know of each other through the darkness?

  It did not take more than a second for him to get over his stupor. He anxiously said, ‘Shibnath Babu, get out of your wet clothes. Jadu, take this gentleman to my bathroom.’

  Shibnath went away with the servant. Manorama was now in trouble. The girl was almost her own age; she too needed to change out of wet clothes. In view of her origins as recounted by Shibnath the other day, Manorama was not sure how to address her. However great her beauty might be, she was an uneducated, uncultured, low-born maid’s daughter. Manorama hesitated to address her by the familiar tumi before her father; equally, she was revolted by the thought of respectfully calling her apni and taking her to her own room.

  The woman herself soon solved the problem. She looked at Manorama and said, ‘I too am completely wet. I must have a sari.’

  ‘I’ll get one.’ Saying this, Manorama took her inside the house and told the maid to show her to the bathroom and give her whatever she needed. The young woman scrutinized Manorama repeatedly from head to toe and said, ‘Tell her to give me a fresh sari from the wash.’

  ‘So she will,’ replied Manorama.

  ‘Is there some soap in the bathroom?’ the woman asked the maid.

  ‘Yes,’ answered the maid.

  ‘I don’t use soap already used by someone else.’

  The maid was startled by the stranger’s remarks. She replied, ‘There’s a box of new soap in the bathroom. But didn’t you hear it’s my mistress’s bathroom? What’s wrong with using her soap?’

  The woman pursed her lips and said, ‘No, I can’t do that. I’m squeamish. Besides, you can pick up diseases from soap used by just anybody.’

  Manorama flushed with anger, but only for a moment. The next instant, her eyes shone with a frank smile. It seemed as if a cloud had lifted from her mind. Smiling, she asked, ‘From whom did you pick up all this?’

  ‘From whom?’ countered the woman. ‘I know all this on my own.’

  ‘Really?’ said Manorama. ‘Then teach this maid of ours a few of these useful things. She’s quite ignorant.’ As she said this, she laughed again. The maid also laughed. She said, ‘Well, mistress, first wash yourself with soap and get ready, then I’ll learn many fine things from you. Who is she, madam?’

  If Manorama had not turned away to conceal her own smile, she would have seen traces of fun and subdued ridicule on the face of this unknown, uneducated woman.

  4

  MANORAMA WAS NOT ONLY ASHU BABU’S DAUGHTER; SHE WAS his friend, companion and adviser all rolled into one. Thus she often could not maintain the deferential distance that Bengali society enjoins on a child to protect paternal dignity. They often discussed matters that would jar on many fathers’ ears, but not on theirs. Ashu Babu’s love for his daughter was unbounded; she was one of the reasons why, after his wife’s death, he could not think of a second marriage. Whenever the question arose among his friends, he would shelter behind the pretext of his huge bulk and crippling gout, saying ruefully, ‘Why ruin yet another girl? I know what anguish Mani’s mother carried to heaven with her. That should be enough for Ashu Vaidya.’1

  Whenever Manorama heard this, she would protest strongly and say, ‘Father, I can’t bear these words of yours. When people come here and see the Taj Mahal, they think of so many things. But I think only of you and Mother. How can you say that Mother suffered anguish?’

  Ashu Babu would answer, ‘At that time you were just ten or twelve. Only I know who garlanded whom, Mani2—only I know!’ His eyes would grow moist as he spoke.

  In Agra he mixed freely with everybody, but had become more intimate with Abinash Babu than anyone else. Abinash was a man of patience and self-control. There was a natural tranquillity and contentment in him that easily drew everyone’s respect. However, he impressed Ashu Babu for another reason as well. Like him, Abinash too had not married a second time; and as proof of his devotion to his wife, he had hung portraits of her around his house. Ashu Babu used to tell him, ‘Abinash Babu, people praise us for what they think is our self-control, as though we were performing a very difficult task. I wonder how the question comes up at all. People who marry twice do so because they want to. I don’t accuse them or belittle them; I only feel I can’t do it. I only know that it’s not only difficult but impossible for me to accept another woman as my wife in place of Mani’s mother. Do other people know this? No, they don’t. Isn’t it so, Abinash Babu? Ask your own heart whether I’m right or not.’

  Abinash would smile and say, ‘But as for me, I simply couldn’t manage to get anyone. I live by teaching. I have no time and I’m getting old. Who’s going to offer me his daughter?’

  Ashu Babu would gladly agree. ‘Quite so, Abinash Babu, quite so. I too have told everyone that I weigh three and a half maunds.3 I’m crippled with gout, and no one knows when my heart might fail. Who’ll offer me his daughter? But I also know that many men would do so; only the person to accept her is dead—dead, Abinash Babu, Ashu Vaidya is dead!’ And the doors, windows, and the very panes and shutters would shake with his uproarious laughter.

  Every afternoon, when Ashu Babu went out to take the air, he would get down from his car at Abinash’s house and say, ‘Mani, I want to stay out of this cold evening breeze. Why don’t you pick me up on your way home?’

  Manorama would smile and say, ‘It isn’t cold, Father. On the contrary, there’s quite a warm breeze.’

  The father would parry, ‘That isn’t very good for me either. A warm breeze is also harmful for an old person. You go on your own. We two old men will have a chat meanwhile.’

  Manorama would smile again and say, ‘Chat as much as you like, but let me remind you that neither of you is old.’ With
this, she would depart.

  On days when the gout left Ashu Babu completely immobile, Abinash had to visit him. Ashu Babu would send his car, or a messenger, or else an invitation to tea. Abinash could not possibly avoid such importunities. When they were together, Shibnath would often figure in their conversation, among many other matters. Ashu Babu could not forget the time when Shibnath was invited to his house and everybody drove him out after humiliating him. Shibnath was a scholar, a man of parts; he was full of youth, health and beauty. Were all these nothing? Why then did God bestow such profuse gifts on him? Was it to banish him from human society? He had been a drunkard; so what? Many people get drunk. Ashu Babu himself had indulged in such things when he was young. Had anyone cast him out for that? Being strongly inclined to forgive (though not to entertain) human errors and lapses, Ashu Babu often argued the matter over with himself as he did with Abinash. True, he did not now dare invite Shibnath openly to his house, but his heart still yearned for Shibnath’s company. However, he had no satisfactory answer to one question from Abinash: how could Shibnath abandon an ailing wife and take up with another woman?

  Ashu Babu would diffidently say, ‘I too wonder how a person like Shibnath could do such a thing. But you know, Abinash Babu, perhaps there’s some mystery behind it—perhaps. You can’t explain everything to everybody, nor should you.’

  Abinash would say, ‘But he himself admitted before everybody that his wife was innocent.’

  Worsted, Ashu Babu would nod and say, ‘He did indeed.’

  Abinash would go on: ‘And what do you have to say about his cheating his deceased friend’s wife, of taking over the business as his own?’

  This mortified Ashu Babu. He felt as though he himself had committed the offence. Slowly, like a criminal, he would add: ‘But you know, Abinash Babu, there might be some mystery all the same. How did the court come to judge in his favour? Did they investigate nothing?’