Greatest Short Stories

by Mulk Raj Anand

  And then there were swirling movements in her tummy. And, somehow, the thought came to her of the moments of the night when he wanted her blandishments. She had become pregnant, when, on that hot night of end summer, half out of fear and half out of coquetishness, she had evaded him on the top terrace of the house and he had chased her, caught her in his arms and crumpled her on the bed. Oh that night! All the shame had disappeared from her face and she had looked at his strong face, with the hard jaw, relieved by the big black eyes. All the impulses of her youth had flared up into the fire which consumed her and filled her with the insouciance of dreams, before she knew she had gone off to sleep… Oh that night!

  She quivered with trepidation in case ‘they ’ should ask her to come inside. And yet she felt the pang of remorse that

  she had resisted him always. Why, even now she felt the gnawing desire to be with him…

  ‘I would like some tamarind from aunt Kesaro’s tree’, she breathed the only words which she could mention to evade the longing to be touched by him.

  ‘And I heard you singing with the girls the other day:

  ‘Where have you gone, oh gone away?’ he said to her, restraining his voice almost into a whisper.

  ‘I cannot reach the branches’, she said ignoring his meaning. ‘And, anyhow, the old woman is vigilantly guarding her tree’.

  ‘Come, come inside’, he coaxed her.

  Only, at that moment, her father-in-law coughed a wheezy cough, ground the phlegm in his throat, and spat out the weight of age in the direction of the tree. And he called:

  ‘The wife of my son — what about my hookah?’ Roopa sighed.

  Her husband wheeled on his feet, stamped the earth with the harsh resentment of defeat, twisted his mouth into unuttered speech and went towards his bicycle.

  She sat open mouthed, holding the tumbler of water she was going to offer him. And in her upraised right hand there was also a resentment, a spite against the whole world that her inner impulses always remained where they were, incommunicable even to her man.

  She felt she wanted to cry. And she covered her face so as not to be seen in her weakness.

  She strangled the cry in her belly.

  Then she got up and began to prepare the hubble bubble for her father-in-law.

  As she blew at the smouldering coal covered by the ashes in the oven, the smoke drew tears from her eyes. And she was gratified that she could pass off her sorrow under cover of the smoke. And her pallid face glowed with the agitation of effort to go towards her father-in-law.

  Quickly, she recovered her equanimity after she had placed the hookah before the old man and came back.

  At that moment, however, she heard Kesaro shouting:

  ‘That is you? Daughter-in-law of Rakha?.. And what ails you, young woman — that you cannot even produce the child you have been carrying in your belly all these months?… And, in spite of all the tamarind you have stolen and eaten from my tree…’

  Roopa wished she could run away — far far away from these cruel harsh words.

  But these sentiments were reinforced by the voice of her mother-in-law, who had just then returned from the well.

  ‘Sister, these girls look at the mirror all day! Or they sit about longing for the husband to come back! They don’t want to bear the children…’

  The young woman reeled as she stood by the kitchen. She felt she might faint. So she rushed towards the inner sanctum of the barn and lay down on the bridal bed that had come in her dowry.

  The body with which she had borne the aggravated state of her pregnancy flowered into shooting stars of pain. Almost as though her belly was being churned up… And she tried to think of the softer things which she felt for the forthcoming offspring.

  ‘Moon-faced one-will it be? Or rough? Certainly, it was the creature of violent loving? But she had not eaten enough of the good things which made a child’s bones strong? The scanty money of her husband’s pay as a peon hardly provided bare bread and lentils… The terrible thought occurred to her: Will the lack of enough nourishment turn the boy into a robber? It may know somehow that it never had enough as a child; and it may wish to revenge itself on others. But, perhaps, if it was a robber it may be like Jagga, the bandit, who robbed the rich to feed the poor and sang in the loveliest words.

  Roopa lay prostrate on her bed. The pains now gripped her.

  And she tore the ceiling with her shrieks.

  The mother-in-law came to her and held her hand, smoothened her straying hair and wiped the sweat form her face. And then she went and called Kesaro who had been midwife at the birth of Roopa’s husband.

  The shrill cries of the little boy soon tore the quite of the courtyard.

  Groups of neighboring women from beyond the tamarind tree came over to greet the newly born.

  ‘May he live long!’ old Kesaro said. ‘He will give me a tunic of velvet and a silk headcloth.’

  ‘May he not have to beg for food’, the mother-in-law of Roopa said to avert the evil eye.

  ‘May he survive.!’ a neighbour said grudgingly. ‘And may my own daughter-in-law become green!…’

  Spring turned into early summer. And that year the tamarind tree bore more fruit then ever. Only Roopa never tasted a clove of this fruit which she had desired — the neighbouring children having looted everything in spite of old aunt Kesaro’s vigilance.

  But the lips of the young bride were ripe and blood red as she put her mouth to her babe — even though her face was sallow like the leaves of the tamarind tree…

  * From Lajwanti and Other Stories.

  21

  The Silver Bangles *

  The lines on the corners of her mouth became deeper, the faded texture of her pale face turned livid, and her sleek brows knitted into a frown, as soon as Shrimati Gopi Goel saw the silver bangle on the wrist of the sweeper girl, Sajani…

  She drifted away from the kitchen where she was frying sweet bread to please her husband on the first day of the welcome month of rains, shravan, and she took position by the jallied window of the living room, overlooking the verandah. She wanted to see what effect Sajani’s silver bangle, would have on the owner of the house.

  She had seen, passing on his face, the ghost of a smile every time he had seen Sajani arrive. Sometimes, there had been a light in his eyes which she could not help mistaking for a mischievious twinkle. And, once or twice, she felt, she had caught him ‘red-handed’ or rather ‘red-headed’, because he had looked up to the untouchable girl with the segment of his lascivious lips slavering and wet, even as he had hummed the phrase of the folk song:

  “Sajani, I wake up in a hot sweat in the night…”

  As she had surmised, she saw from the window the confirmation of his interest in Sajani quite clearly. A smile brimmed over his face, the eyes lit up, the mouth puckered, and he said with a hearty bluff designed to hide exaltation on seeing the girl:

  ‘Ao ji, Ao, come, Sajani, you are late this morning…’

  Shrimati Gopi Goel felt her heart throb, in spite of herself, at the intimate strain in her husband’s voice as he greeted the sweeper girl, specially in the lilting manner in which he pronounced her name: ‘sajaniai…’

  She heard the girl respond, shyly draping her headcloth across one side of her face, but with obvious pleasure at being taken notice of, on the other side of her face: ‘the rains…

  Shrimati Gopi Goel tried to explore the young woman’s visage. In the half concealed, half revealed profile, she thought she could detect a radiance, which seemed to rise from the flush of youth, as well as from the vanity of being admired, and the meaningful exaggeration, the emphasis of near song in his pronounciation of her name.

  ‘Oh, Mundu, ask, ‘them’ to give Sajani a sweet poora…’ Shri Ram Goel called to the servant boy as he lifted his gaze from the Tribune to caress the trim, small crouching figure of the sweeper, girl wielding the broom on the verandah. ‘them’ will give Sajani everything.’ commented Shrimati Gopi Goel.

>   ‘Bibiji, I am unworthy,’ said Sajani apologetically. ‘Master is king to the poor’…

  Could she restore between herself and him, asked Shrimati Gopi Goel in her nerves, the actuality of any connection now. At the end of her heart’s echo, there was the sinking feeling that there had been no connection at all.

  Only he had taken her after their marriage as a kind of ritual, because the orthodox brotherhood put them on the terrace of the family house in Amritsar by themselves. She had been so frightened. The shame of exposing any part of her body, including her face, instilled into her by her mother had suffused her face with blushes, soaked her clothes in sweat, and she had lain back supinely, offering no resistance and no help. And he had turned away and soon begun to snore… Since then the ritual had been repeated for five years, becoming completely mechanical, without the intervention of words-automatic, like the gestures of old puppets… In spite of this routine, however, because of the commencement of some kind of feeling in her body, which would make her limbs warms and opulent, which would send swirling waves of desire, pushing her from side to side in the ocean of hell, which would torment her in the nights floating in the incandescent air, she would respond with a frightened apathy couched in the form of blandishments of ennui…

  Thus her underjaw hardened, her lips were parted, almost as though by a tremor, and her eyes jutted out. She wished she could confront them both with the accusation:

  ‘Lovers!’ But she knew that her husband would stave off any direct words with the evasive calm of the practised hypocrite in some neat little phrase from the poem.

  To be sure, even without her uttering a sigh, he had scanned her spying figure behind the jailed window and recited a made-up verse:

  ‘Ah, between me and this bird here, there stands the shadow of despair…’

  ‘What are you talking about?… I came to say: are you going to get ready to go to office or not?’… Breakfast is ready!!! It is no use having the pooras cold!!!

  The shrillness of her voice compelled Shri Ram Goel to be sweeter still.

  ‘In this opaque heart of mine, there is only poetry but no office — I hate the outline of that prison…’

  ‘Poetry will not give us bread!…’

  ‘Ah there is no way to tame this shrew’, he mumbled and he folded the paper, stole a glance at the shapely curves of Sajani’s body, yawned to cover the retreat of his eyes from the innocent pleasure of his ascending soul, and got up.

  Shrimati Gopi Goel believed that her husband had deposited bits of his poetaster’s soul in her every time he had come near her… And she did not want to allow any of this deposit to be left anywhere else, especially in the body of Sajani, to whom he had already addressed his insinuating love words, in that half-joking, half embarassed manner of the heart-squanderer, even as he deposited on the palm of the sweeper girl’s hand occasional tips of money.

  As she sat down to make pooras for him with her own hands, she fancied the feeling her secret heart, had conferred upon her the right to the exclusive possession of his glances, his words, his embraces, and that none could have the privilege of encroaching upon her vested interests.

  ‘You have burnt every second poora for the one you have made — and anyhow they are all cold,’ Shrimati Goel said. ‘Let me make them…’ She said this to Mundu, as she really wanted to admonish someone just now.

  And as though this irritation with the servant boy had heightened her devotion to the fictional image of her husband, she burr-burred:

  ‘I am burning’.

  Actually, the hot glow of the fire in the earthen chulha had induced heat in her body, which she mistook for the warmth for him.

  ‘My life,’ she said, ‘do finish dressing up. You are, standing before the mirror like a bridegroom today…’

  ‘I would not mind going through a marriage, again!’ he answered lightly.

  ‘With whom?’ She asked, disturbed by the ambiguity of his speech.

  ‘With you’, he said, cornered.

  This reassured her. She paused for a moment, put all the pooras fried so far, back into the pan sizzling with hot butter, and then craning her head to see if he had addressed his remarks to her or to Sajani, she found that the sweeper girl was, in fact in the room where he confronted the looking glass.

  She stirred the hot oil with the perforated spoon and, with a histrionic ability far in excess of her usual placid manner she asserted:

  ‘Already, we are one, my life… Already, you have changed me, from my shyness into a wanton… Like Mira, I am the Gopi of my Krishna…’

  ‘I should not seek the Lord in this way, if I were you!’ he said cunningly. ‘such devotion will bring pain…’

  ‘But, my life-why?’ she protested. ‘I am your…’ She wanted to say. ‘I am your servant’, but the presence of Mundu prevented her from mouthing his intimate, servile utterance.

  ‘Oh why, Oh why, oh why…’ Shri Ram Goel intoned the words, trying to clothe the atmosphere with the aura of a bluff, because he was waiting for the moment when he could meet Sajani’s eyes just once before going to the office, so that the day should pass happily, poetically, specially in this lover-like weather, when the clouds hovered over the town, spreading the cool of heaven everywhere and making the green parrots fly in droves towards the freedom of the skies.

  ‘But why?’ she insisted. ‘Why will my devotion bring more pain?’

  ‘Because, in one of the two, who have become one, takes it into his head to depart, as when you suddenly decide to go to your mother’s home in a sulk, the pain which this causes is the most virulent disturbance… There is an emptiness in one’s life. And the partner who is left behind has to try to fill the vessel again with nectar…’

  This profound decorative speech was made in so deliberately light-hearted a voice that Shrimati Goel was amused flattered and reassured.

  At the moment, she saw Shri Ram Goel pressing a ten paisa coin on the palm of Sajani. Actually, he had merely placed the coin on the sweeper girl’s open hand and not pressed it. But the insensate imagination of Shrimati Goel fancied as though this act of charity had established the connection of love between those two in a final and clear manner. She even thought that she had seen them exchange glances which were like shooting stars.

  The wife felt like upsetting the cauldron of boiling butter on the heads of the two lovers. But the imperturbable calm on the countenance of Shri Ram Goel offset any such wild action. Instead, she dipped her head coyly and cooed to him like an innocent lover.

  ‘I am going to give you the pooras fried with my own hands-not those done by Mundu!’… Did you notice the silver bangles on that low woman’s wrist! How she preens herself-this sweeper! I wish her mother would come to do our house and not this film star.

  The eyelids of Shri Ram Goel dipped before these words. He carried the hot pooras to his mouth and pretended to have burnt his tongue. And he rolled his eyes with a mock humour to cover his retreat from the defence of his innocence and poetry to the fool’s paradise where the illusion of marriage must go on, so that Shrimati Gopi Goel may believe that she was his only love, his otherself, the better half.

  ‘And what about the silver bangles you are wearing?… Which lover has given them to you?’ Shrimati Gopi Goel asked Sajani as though her mouth was that of a loud policeman’s.

  ‘Bibiji, we survive by your grace…’ Sajani said meekly.

  ‘God is looking down on the oven of fire in your heart, and he will condemn you to burn in the hell of your own making, if you don’t look out!’, Shrimati Gopi Goel challenged the girl.

  ‘Hai Bibiji — What have I done?’ the sweeper girl sighed and turned pale.

  ‘What have you not done? You have seduced all the men of the neighbourhood with your smiles. ‘Bag of dirt that you are! And you ask me innocently ‘What have I done?’

  From the hot air of the kitchen, the blue anger of Shrimati Gopi Goel travelled like sparks of fire and thus hung in the atmosphere like festoons of smok
e over the trembling figure of Sajani.

  ‘My mother brought the silver bangles — they are the first offering for my betrothal!’ the untouchable girl explained. And then she looked up to the mistress with her nose bedewed with perspiration, her frank forehead clear, and her eyes filled with tears of innocence accused of guilt by someone.

  ‘Lies won’t help to make you people honest!’ charged Shrimati Gopi Goel. ‘Let me see if these were not stolen from my house…’

  Sajani put her hand forward.

  ‘How can I be sure that this profligate husband of mine, who is so generous to you, has not taken them out of my box of jewellery and given them to you.’

  ‘Bibiji’, protested Sajani.

  Shrimati Goel answered without listening:

  ‘I know the kind of lovers who look separate, but are drawn by the invisible words of mock poems, and who indulge in all the extravagances of connection, without an embrace…’

  ‘I only like to hear Babuji talk’ the girl said. ‘He is a learned man and speaks so many fine words…’

  ‘Don’t you be familiar with me and talk of his fine words you like to hear!!! Only take off those silver bangles which he has stolen from my box and given to you!”

  The perfume of Shri Ram Goel’s words evaporated before the disillusioned gaze of Sajani. She realised that she should never have uttered her admiration for the Master of the house. Their eyes had once met. But she was not guilty. Her head swirled. And she crumpled up in a swoon on the floor.

  ‘Get up and go out and don’t you come into this house again. You have raised your head to the sky — low people, wearing silver bangles!!! Don’t your know that untouchable in the south are not supposed to wear silver at all… And you go posing like a cheap film star… Go die!’

  Sajani had lost the use of her muscles, but not of her heart. She began to sob as she sat huddled in a corner of the verandah. But each movement of her throat was like a knife jab, bringing more sobs, as though the fainting fit had been succeeded by hysteria, the sobs welling from the belly where lay years of humiliations, now thrusting up like daggers on her sides.