‘Yes, there is a little favour, a special favour I want to ask of you. You see, I had to come to Calcutta on some business, and am returning tomorrow to my parents’ in Guwahati. I don’t have any place to stay in Calcutta. Tonight if—if you would allow me to stay here.’ As I heard the words, it struck me that you had said Nilima was ‘not a good girl’. Prior to her marriage, she’d devastated many a young man. She was once expelled from the college hostel. It was because this madness hadn’t left her even after marriage that there’d been problems. Besides, in the meantime, I’d become somewhat of an experienced husband, and it seemed to me that you wouldn’t appreciate it if I allowed a young woman to spend the night here when I was alone in the house.
Apologetically, but with a few words, I bid goodbye to Nilima that evening. I even wrote to you about it. In reply you sent me three letters in a row, cautioning me not to have anything to do with Nilima if she should come back again, and under no circumstance was I to allow her to stay in the house (you had underlined that). ‘I’m not saying it for myself, but the neighbours might misunderstand. If word should leak out to my parents, it would be an ugly situation. You know I couldn’t stand it if anyone had the least wrong impression about you.’ You always wish me well, Maloti. You’re not jealous, not suspicious—I have to accept this just because I am a man and you are a woman.
But I know, if the situation had been reversed, if I’d been in Allahabad and some relative or friend of mine were stranded and wanted to spend the night in our flat, I’d have hoped that you wouldn’t have shown him the door and the thought that this might give you a ‘bad name’ wouldn’t even cross my mind. Later I felt that probably I had done wrong that night. Maybe Nilima was truly in difficulty. I didn’t talk much with her, didn’t even offer her a cup of tea—behind me was your shadow, Maloti. I had cowered in the face of it. That type of behaviour hardly reflected my true nature. It’s because I am your husband. For that alone I had to do what I did. Maloti, you must admit that I had blind faith in you, unconditional, limitless, but you were, perhaps unwittingly, watchful of me. If I’d compliment someone’s cooking or some woman’s sari a little too warmly, you inevitably came out with: ‘Now don’t overdo it, please! People will think you’ve never seen anything, never eaten anything before.’
‘People will think!’ Like an idiot you’d blurt out those words, ‘People will think!’ As if any intelligent person ever cared a whit about what people will think or won’t! Besides, the fear that someone might think ill of me—had you been so attentive to that, then why are you so tolerant these days when it comes to Aparna Ghosh? And it’s not just tolerant, you’re almost enthusiastic about it. Perhaps you think that if I somehow get involved with her, you gain complete liberation from me. A weapon against me falls into your hands, and you find a moral justification for your actions. But no, Maloti, you won’t see this hope of yours realized. Just because you want it, I won’t let anything like that happen. I’ll cast the dark shadow of my pent-up anger and hurt over your life.
Yet perhaps I am mistaken. Maybe jealousy is possible without love—at least among women. For example, if some day you come and see me playing with Aparna’s hands, wouldn’t you tear me to shreds? You couldn’t stand it if someone else were to pick up the coin you have carelessly dropped in the street. Maybe God just made you that way. But once I saw Jayanto and you in exactly the same position. You weren’t thinking then about what the neighbours would say, what situation would arise in your parents’ home. All those concerns have left you of late. In a calm and composed voice, you told me my observation was incorrect. And I simply had to accept that you were speaking the truth, because you’re a woman and because, if I’d gone on about it, I’d be reduced to that comical and despicable organism called the ‘jealous husband’.
Marriage! What a complex, difficult, necessary and fantastically durable institution it is—yet how fragile! Two human beings will spend their entire lives together, not five or fifteen years but their entire lives—what more atrocious a tyranny, what more inhuman an ideal could there be? One doesn’t spend one’s entire life with one’s children. At different ages one chooses different friends. Yet it is hoped, indeed it is demanded, that once they are husband and wife, a couple shall stay that way forever. This unnatural state is tolerable only if we assume that it is by divine edict and remove it from the realm of our personal happiness and sorrow, or if we grant freedom to both parties to graze far and wide, understanding marriage as a mere formal edifice, an ornate cowshed, so to say, constructed according to rules. But if anyone marries and wants to be happy—as I had wanted—if anyone hopes to maintain a loving relationship with just one wife, or one husband—for good, lifelong—as I had hoped—if anyone has the fearsome fantasy, that deadly thing called ‘heart’ in the marriage—as I had—then at some point, either because of an external event or some change in oneself or just because of the enmity of time, that person will be frustrated, despondent and uprooted—as I am tonight, here on this bed, in this loneliness, this darkness.
We used to talk a lot about the relationship between man and woman. You always said: women are oppressed, persecuted; even today, women cast out by their husbands have no place in society; they are not forgiven the least slip, but nobody sees it as a fault if men are licentious. Who doesn’t know that the plight of women in our country is in general a sorry one? Even today, how much unspeakable abuse is heaped on them. But you never considered that the persons who have struggled to remedy the situation were all men. The kind of life you and I and many couples like us lead today has been made possible through the efforts of men, through their initiative. And there’s another thing you’ve never acknowledged and which I’ve never been able to make you understand: since society is ruled by men, it is men who are enjoined to act with courtesy and generosity. It is demanded of the man that he have complete trust in his wife. Even if he detects some hint of infidelity, he must keep it to himself. Women receive an inordinate amount of respect as compensation for all their weaknesses, while men must constantly pretend that their wives are above criticism, beyond reproach. In plays, in novels, when the husbands are unfaithful, the wives become the authors’ and readers’ object of pity or even tragic heroines, but when the reverse happens, when the husband has sufficient reason to suspect the wife, and becomes jealous—nearly always—he is depicted in a slightly ridiculous manner, as the eternal, stereotypical ‘jealous husband’. And nothing can be more humiliating for a man than to be cast in this role. That is why we must remain silent, why I must remain silent—to keep my self-respect, and to maintain my wife’s honour.
Can you say, Maloti, when we first realized that our marriage had fallen apart? You don’t recall? Listen, I’ll refresh your memory. That time, when Jayanto came here drunk and babbled something incoherent to you, and I took his arm and led him down the stairs and put him in a taxi, and came back and told you that I’d told him not to come to our place again. I really did say just that, but not with enough conviction. Rather faintly I had said, ‘Perhaps it would be better if you didn’t come to our place again.’ I worded it something like that, so that it wouldn’t sound too harsh. I put in a ‘perhaps’, I remember—even though the whole scene had disgusted me. When I’d seen Jayanto drunk there at the front door, my whole body had started to tremble with anger, yet I wasn’t able to express that rage—that’s just my nature, my weakness. Still, with all my heart and soul, I really had wanted Jayanto not to come any more. For a few days I’d even hoped that maybe we’d regain the life we used to have.
But as day after day went by, I could see that you seemed to be dead. Your face had become ashen. Hardly a sound came out of your throat. You moved about like a marionette. Gradually I began to have doubts about whether I’d done the right thing. After all, it didn’t benefit me much to have a halfdead wife. I avoided talking to you because a biting, sarcastic tone asserted itself whenever I tried to speak. I could not suppress it, and I did not want to quarrel. On the cont
rary, I felt it would have a curative effect on you if you spent some time confronting yourself, your dejection. (Like a fool, an arrogant fool, I thought of it as a ‘cure’ then, as though you were ill, and I had found the right prescription!) But, as the days passed and the more I observed your facial expressions—though you were unaware of it—the more it seemed to me that this was not the proverbial darkness before dawn. Rather, it was a cold grey hue, as we might see on a rainy day or in winter, when even the little drops of sunshine that filter through now and then are pale and sickly and devoid of warmth.
You don’t know how you looked at that time—thin, colourless, dispirited—not sad, for even sadness has its beauty. No one who saw you then would have said you were beautiful. Even the shape of your face seemed to have changed. And so as I observed you, I felt a weird sensation. I could sense how much you were suffering, and I realized that Jayanto must be suffering like this, too. Then I reasoned: wasn’t it better for just one person to be miserable rather than three? That look of affliction on your face pierced my heart like a dagger. It wasn’t sympathy I felt. It was like death itself, for your condition had been brought about by the absence of another. Even though there was no remedy for this situation, at least there would be a smile on your face, you would live again—here, in this place, to where I return from office, where I sleep at night. I was tempted to bring Jayanto back to our house. I kept saying to myself that the present situation was intolerable. Whether it got better or worse afterwards, I just wanted to get out of this black hole.
Winter had ended suddenly, and spring breezes began to blow. The gloom dispersed as sweetness spread through the sky the day Maloti and I went to watch Chandalika together. Pure were the tears that trickled down my cheeks as I listened to the songs of the untouchable girl. Pure was the agony of the dishonoured maiden that cleansed my heart and restored the purity of my being, filling me with fresh enthusiasm and youthfulness. Ah, youth, enthusiasm: the source of it all is love. For a moment I understood that youth need not be lost in old age if love remains in the heart, as was in Rabindranath’s, whose written words were then pouring and flowing over me, drop by drop, wave after wave, dissolving into melody, being reflected in the dancers’ eyes and gestures—delightful, enchanting, tearing through my torpor, revitalizing the strength of my love, as if by loving that poetical composition, I had once again fallen in love with the world.
And a few hours later, at that instant I awoke from sleep, in darkness, my newly regained ability to love materialized in a longing for Maloti, my only desire was to become one with her in mind and body—and you, Maloti, all of a sudden, you turned stiff and cold, out of reach of those hands which at that moment could have touched the sky. You lowered yourself from the epitome of womanhood to a mere lump of flesh— the frustration, the shame, the insult I then felt—could that ever be conveyed to anyone? My body’s engine had no driver then—it went ahead a little way, then crashed into a ditch and stopped. I knew at that moment—just as surely as when one opens a dictionary and finds the meaning of some new word—that you were thinking of Jayanto, had been thinking of him. Nothing mattered to you at all except Jayanto. Yet I lay there beside you a little while longer, to gather the strength to get up and move away, for even then the pillow, anointed with the scent of your hair, was dear to me. I did not feel any animosity towards you, which might have made me say stubbornly to myself, ‘Never again in my life!’ I thought that even after what had just transpired I could perhaps return to you some time—and that was the most deeply wounding shame of all.
I was not really surprised when the following day I found Jayanto in our house when I got back from office. In fact, I was almost happy—I had almost taken it for granted that his part in the drama was not yet over.
That night, after we’d eaten, I sat down to write as usual (these days I write routinely, even try my hand at something original once in a while—whether it gets published or not—merely to do something, so that I get tired and can fall asleep, that’s really why I do it), but when I opened the writing pad I saw on the white sheet three words, fifteen letters—they stared at me, with a hundred eyes, with a thousand eyes. They danced on the wall before me. They started to fly out of the ceiling like little bats. ‘Jayanto, come back.’ My breath came quicker. Gradually I pulled myself together, tore the page out, folded it, and placed it in the drawer, inside an envelope, under various business documents. A melee of thoughts, like a host of hornets, stung my brain: had Maloti actually written to Jayanto, and had he come today upon receiving that message? No—then she wouldn’t have left this paper lying around so carelessly, in a place where my eyes were bound to fall upon it. Anxious, pathetic, despondent Maloti—she had no control over herself when she wrote those words. Her practical sense, her feminine wiles had completely deserted her. Those three words, fifteen thick letters—obviously Maloti had run her pen over them many times—how much they had to say to me, how directly, beyond all doubt, with unquestionable lucidity! ‘Jayanto, come back.’ It was like a lethal line of poetry into which I had to slowly penetrate, deeper and deeper; like some cruel moon, seen through old Galileo’s telescope, whose features I had to decipher for the rest of my life.
Be that as it may, a weapon against Maloti had fallen into my hands. I could threaten her now, frighten her. At the very least I could sit in judgement over her. I could reassert my once deflated pride before her. Sensational—I would really have scored one on her if I’d called Maloti right then and shown her the piece of paper—just to watch the expression on her face. I had to muster all my strength to suppress that temptation. I left for office with the piece of paper in my pocket (in the breast pocket, tucked away very carefully, as if it were some amulet or mystic charm). When I returned, I put it back in the drawer. Whenever I’d have a free minute in office, or at home very late at night, I’d open and stare at it sometimes. Many days went by in this way. In the meantime Jayanto and Maloti were getting more and more intimate with each other. I saw it all but didn’t really see it, for I had learned a magic charm with which I could destroy them in a flash if need be. But I couldn’t decide what to do.
Sometimes I thought I should place the paper in Maloti’s hand one day all of a sudden and say, ‘Here, take this. I’m returning your love letter to you’ (with what cheap novelists call a ‘malevolent grin’). Or I’d send it to her father, along with a detailed letter of explanation (but writing the letter seemed to me such a tremendous task that I almost immediately put the notion out of my head). Then again I felt the best thing would be to wait for an opportune moment—one day when there’d be a quarrel (which happened often these days), when both our tempers would have risen to the seventh degree, I’d suddenly bring it out and throw it at her face—like an ace from a deck, like a surprise bombing raid on a city which has its lights on. Instantly the colour on her face would fade, the fire would go from her voice. Her wall of false arguments would crumble, and I would at least have the satisfaction of finally defeating her. But then I thought: suppose she throws herself on the floor and begs for mercy at my feet. What if she cries, ‘I want nothing more, do what you will, just let me stay in this house, with Bunni’—what will I gain? Will I get back what I want? Besides—if, on seeing tears in her eyes, on hearing her entreaties, I should break down too and delude myself into imagining that we can return again to the past? No—what I thought at first to be a heaven-sent weapon was actually just a broken piece of pottery, something which might have made a splash in the stream of my worries but which wasn’t good for anything else. One day I got tired of carrying it around in my pocket all the time.
Where’s that piece of paper now? That ultimate witness, that precious document, that fantabulous bit of evidence? I don’t even remember where I finally put it. Maybe I moved it to some other drawer, among all the worthless papers and letters and odds and ends—maybe there, between the dust and the cockroaches, that little piece of dull matter is eroding away. Or else it slipped my mind and I left it a
t office, or did it just fall out of my pocket? Is there any need to recover it now, when Maloti and I have become eyesores to each other, daggers in each other’s heart, when what she wrote is manifested a thousand times more strongly in her every action, in every movement of her body, and I—weak that I am!—not finding any other means of revenge, keep on hurting her as much as possible only with words?
Do you know, Maloti, what I’m thinking now? Neither because I was wounded by what you said, nor because you were hurt by what I said. All that might just have faded away or perhaps we, with a little effort, could have wiped all that away—if, if at least some sort of friendship could have been maintained between your body and mine. Why do I say ‘at least’—the body is the main thing, the ultimate, the be-all and end-all. That’s what a husband and wife depend on, what a marriage relies on—it’s through the force of this bond that the impossible is hoped for—that two people will live together forever.
It Rained All Night Page 10
