Susanna's Seven Husbands

by Ruskin Bond

  When they returned to Delhi, there was the usual round of parties, attended by diplomats, politicians, retired bureaucrats, and the upper echelons of Delhi society.

  Naturally I did not see much of Susanna during this period, as her trips to Meerut were infrequent and brief. The estate seemed to run quite well on its own, with the Goonga looking after the stables, Maggie looking after the house, and Shah Rukh taking care of the grounds.

  However, after a hectic party season, both Susanna and Signor Romero felt the need of a rest, and returned to Meerut for a month of peace and quiet.

  It was quiet enough, but peace did not reign for long.

  Signor Romero was rude to the servants, and treated them as serfs. He was used to dealing with the humble, poverty-stricken peons of Mexico, Bolivia and Peru. They could be bullied, even thrashed, if they did not please their masters. Susanna’s servants, if you could call them that, were not in the habit of being pushed around. Going for an early morning ride, the Signor had fallen from his horse because the saddle had not been strapped on properly. He had proceeded to thrash the young syce, using the handle of his whip. The boy had not retaliated, but the Goonga arrived just then, and raising his riding-whip, had threatened the Signor.

  ‘Oh, it’s a whipping contest you want, is it?’ sneered Signor Romero, who hated the little jockey, as indeed he hated anyone with a physical defect. ‘Come on, then! Let’s see who is better with a whip. I’ll lend you one of mine!’

  Although the Goonga was hard of hearing, he understood what the Signor meant, and he did not decline the challenge. He had a long whip of his own, a leather-thonged ‘hunter’—the sort that is sold by hawkers outside the Agra Fort.

  A small crowd assembled to see the duel, and I had a clear view of the encounter from the boundary wall.

  Some ten or twelve spectators had formed a large circle, and in that circle the two men, stripped to the waist, were fighting a duel! A duel of a kind that I had never before witnessed or even dreamed of. They were fighting with their whips—the Signor with his South American stock-whip, the little jockey with his ‘hunter’.

  The cruel leather thongs, some ten feet long, were hissing and curling through the air like venomous snakes. As I gazed, astounded, a lash snapped around the neck of the Goonga with a horrible crack. Instantly a gush of blood spurted from the small man’s flesh and I saw that the skin had been cut away as with a razor. It was horrible!

  The ferocity of both fighters, fuelled by their hatred of each other, was almost inhuman. Wherever the lash curled and struck, a fiery cut marked the impact. Both appeared insensible to pain, but I realized that the little jockey was no match for his tormentor … I soon realized that the Signor’s object was to cut out his opponent’s eyes, and as I watched, I saw a thin snaky thong curl and flicker round the little man’s face. He could not curse as his opponent was cursing, he could barely cry out. But he staggered to and fro, grunting and moaning in agony, with his hands pressed to his face.

  The Signor straightened up, coiled his whiplash round his arm, and calmly walked away. The little crowd melted away.

  I slipped to the ground and ran towards the scene of the fight, where I found the Goonga lying on the ground, unconscious, his body slashed to ribbons and drenched in blood.

  Shah Rukh was approaching from the opposite direction. I yelled to him to fetch Susanna, and then I made a dash for the road and stopped a passing taxi. Shah Rukh ran back to say that Susanna was at the club, and that he’d phoned and left a message for her. Together we lifted the Goonga into the taxi, and twenty minutes later we had him in the emergency ward of the local hospital.

  ‘At least one of his eyes has gone,’ said the doctor.

  ‘As he’s deaf and dumb that doesn’t leave him with much,’ I said.

  ‘And he’ll be scarred for life,’ added the doctor.

  ‘He was not much to look at, anyway,’ said Shah Rukh. ‘But will he live?’

  ‘He’s tough, he’ll pull through.’

  When Susanna arrived, she found the Goonga swathed and wrapped in bandages; only his mouth and nose were visible. The doctor informed us that he was delirious and that morphine had been administered.

  ‘Do all you can for him, doctor,’ said Susanna. ‘Spare no expense.’

  And abruptly she turned on her heels and walked out of the ward. But I had seen the expression on her face. I would not have cared to be her enemy at that moment.

  What happened next we heard from Maggie.

  There was a quarrel, of course. Susanna’s voice was raised in fury. The little jockey had been her father’s favourite, and she was outraged at the treatment that had been meted out to him. The Signor shrugged, and tried to laugh off the incident. Such duels were common enough in his own country, he said; nothing to get excited about. He ate his dinner with relish, and went to bed with a song on his lips. Later, he called out, ‘Aren’t you going to give me my insulin, darling?’

  Susanna hesitated, then entered the bedroom, accompanied by Maggie, who carried the necessary equipment—a new needle and syringe, and the vial of insulin.

  The Signor bared his arm and turned his face away.

  Susanna took the syringe from Maggie, but instead of drawing the insulin into it, she drew in a syringe full of air. Gently as ever, she pushed the needle into his flesh and injected a bubble of air.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, as though just realizing her mistake. ‘We forgot the insulin.’ And she filled the syringe and gave him another jab. Then she and Maggie left the room.

  The air-bubble was on its way, moving unsuspectedly and with great rapidity through the veins of the doomed man.

  Susanna and Maggie were barely out of the room when they heard an agonized cry. Maggie dropped the tray of vials and syringes. Susanna rushed into the bedroom. The Signor was struggling to get up, his hands clutching his chest. His head was thrown back, as he struggled to breathe. His face and neck began to swell, his chest wall bulged. He coughed once, then pitched forward and brought up blood; then he lay still.

  ‘A massive heart attack,’ said Dr Dutta, making out the death certificate. ‘Did he suffer from blood pressure?’

  ‘Yes. And diabetes.’

  ‘Had he exerted himself recently?’

  ‘He’d been out riding.’ She did not mention the duel with whips. ‘His horse fell, and he walked home in the rain.’

  ‘That probably brought it on. Well, you’d better inform his embassy. And take care of yourself, Susanna. You look pale and tired. You’ve been under some strain, I can see. Give yourself a long rest. And don’t get married in a hurry. Your husbands appear to be more of a liability than a support. You’re the type who attracts men of weak character. They will fasten on to you as vines fasten themselves to a sturdy, independent tree. You don’t need such men. Keep them at bay.’

  This conversation was repeated to me by Susanna a few days later, when her household had settled down to its normal routine. Her late husband’s body was taken to Delhi, thus depriving Jimmy Rogers and his guitar of a companion in the Meerut cemetery. Signor Romero was shipped off to the Argentine, to be buried near his ancestral home. It is not known if his favourite whip was buried with him.

  The Goonga recovered from his ordeal, albeit with only one good eye. He carried on with his duties as though nothing had happened. In fact, he won more races than before, largely because the other jockeys were superstitious about his one fearsome eye, and kept as far away from him as possible.

  And did Susanna take the friendly doctor’s advice and avoid further matrimony? Time alone would tell …

  But one day, when I was sitting beside her under the neem trees, and trying to be sympathetic, she surprised me by saying something that was totally unexpected and yet revealing of her inner self.

  ‘I can’t help it,’ she said. ‘I feel the need of a husband, but the more I see of him, the more I hate him. It’s the sudden hatred which practically every wife sometimes feels for her husband just becau
se he is her husband. It’s real hatred. It grows upon you. And I can’t help what I’m doing.’

  As I walked home, I kept hearing those words of Susanna’s. ‘I can’t help what I’m doing …’

  Episode Six

  The Health Club

  In her thirties Susanna was more beautiful than she had been in her twenties. It wasn’t just physical beauty. She seemed to glow all over, give out a certain radiance that attracted men as a bright lamp attracts a variety of insects. The men who succumbed to her charms were very much like insects—no match for the spider who, though often mistaken for an insect, is actually a different and far superior creature.

  The trouble was, Susanna did not realize that she was a superior being compared to the creatures with whom she sought alliances. Hence she was doomed to disappointment.

  ‘Men get some happiness, but women don’t,’ she told me one day. ‘Certainly not for long. Sometimes I look back and see that I was happy once. A long time ago.’

  ‘When were you happy?’

  ‘When I was a girl—when I went out riding with my father, when I helped him train the horses, when I followed his fortunes on the racecourse …’

  ‘What you need is a father, not a husband,’ I said.

  ‘You would make a good father.’

  ‘But I can’t be your father. I can only be a younger brother.’

  She nodded. ‘But you have a fatherly manner. I can confide in you. When I was a girl—dreaming of the sort of man I’d marry—it never occurred to me that all men are alike, that you can pick one off a busy street and he would turn out to be no different from the others. Commonplace …’

  ‘So why did you marry them?’

  ‘Everyone dreams of the coming of a prince. But when the prince comes, he too is commonplace.’

  ‘So no woman can be happy?’

  ‘Not for long.’

  ‘Would a child have made a difference?’

  ‘Yes. A child would have made the husband more acceptable.’

  ‘But you would still have eaten him up,’ I said, laughing.

  ‘Oh, no. They want to be eaten up. Haven’t you noticed?’

  It was to be some time before I could notice anything of the kind, because later that year I managed to obtain a scholarship to Oxford, and so two years passed before I saw Susanna again.

  She was now forty, looking thirty. And I was thirty, looking forty!

  And I wasn’t surprised to find that she had another husband on the premises.

  At least she called him her husband, although it wasn’t clear to me (or anyone else) if she was legally his wife or if they were just living together.

  Mr Gupta was a short, rotund man of about fifty. He had greying hair, a sagging chin, and he waddled rather than walked. Perhaps he was the father-figure that Susanna needed.

  Mr Gupta was a dietician (although he didn’t look it) who believed in organic foods, nature cures, herbal remedies, early morning jogging, cold baths in winter, and daily enemas.

  In short, he had turned a large part of the estate into a Health Farm.

  Every morning at six, when I looked over my wall, I could see about twenty solid citizens, of various shapes and sizes, jogging around the gardens and the estate. They ranged from the local magistrate and his wife to sundry local businessmen, several overweight housewives, a school principal, and a couple of out-of-shape policemen.

  Huffing and puffing, and looking quite miserable, they did two or three rounds of the estate before collapsing on the grass and looking at their waistlines to see if they had got their money’s worth in terms of an improvement in their figures. Naturally Mr Gupta charged them for the privilege of running about in the grounds in the pursuit of health and happiness.

  He did not run himself, but watched from a distance, shouting words of encouragement to his bedraggled flock.

  When they were quite exhausted he would have an attendant pass around glasses of juice made from senna pods, guaranteed to cure constipation in half an hour flat. Before that, however, everyone was put to work in Mr Gupta’s organic garden, picking tomatoes or ladies’ fingers, washing carrots and beetroots, and feeding liquid compost to the mushrooms.

  Mr Gupta was a great believer in mushrooms. According to him, they purified the blood, cured skin diseases, prevented baldness, and improved your sex life. He had turned the basement into a mushroom garden, and spent many happy hours watching his mushrooms grow from spores to lovely rounded edible delicacies.

  When the members of the Health Club had finished with their exertions, they were sent home. And they were always in a hurry to get home and to the toilet before the senna cocktail took effect.

  If the senna did not cure constipation, there was always the enema—a sinister-looking contraption by which soapy water was squirted into the rectum to ‘irrigate’ the colon, as Mr Gupta put it.

  The enema was usually administered by Maggie, who took great pleasure in chasing nervous old gentlemen and hysterical ladies around the gardens, while she waved the enema-can in the air with obvious enjoyment.

  Susanna did not take part in all this frivolity but she put up with it because it kept Mr Gupta occupied and happy and brought him some income—which meant he did not have to dip into their joint account more than once or twice a week.

  And what did Susanna’s staff think of all this tamasha?

  The Goonga, of course, could say nothing. He wore a patch over his bad eye, and his one good eye was expressionless. He got on with his work and took no interest in the proceedings.

  Maggie, on the other hand, was fully involved, as Mr Gupta depended upon her to administer fruit juices to the ladies whenever they felt exhausted. She was also an adept at massage, and Mr Gupta charged extra for this. And when he discovered that Maggie had six toes on one foot, he told his following that six toes were a sign that the possessor had miraculous healing powers.

  Maggie’s massages became instantly popular. A little of her ‘touch therapy’, and those who felt under the weather were soon on top of the weather, frisking about and saying they felt wonderful. Such are the powers of suggestion—and, of course, a good massage.

  And what of my friend Shah Rukh? What was his attitude?

  Shah Rukh found it a wonderful source of entertainment. He leant against the garden wall, hands on his hips, grinning at all the well-fed health-conscious citizens doing their best to get rid of the flab they had accumulated.

  ‘First they fatten themselves up at the most expensive restaurants, and then they spend more money in trying to get rid of all that lovely fat.’

  Shah Rukh had a philosophical turn of mind. And he did not prevent the Health Club members from creating their own vegetable garden—just as long as he was not expected to do all the hard work.

  ‘They must be crazy,’ he told me, as he showed me the mushroom patch in the special shed. ‘They grow these things in horse-shit, cow-dung, and all sorts of decaying matter, and then they tell you that they are good for the health! Even the wild ones look healthier.’ And to prove his point, he took me to a shady spot near the snake-pit and showed me a patch of brightly-coloured mushrooms.

  They certainly looked attractive. Some were red, some purple, some green, some crimson with yellow stripes—nature at her most artistic!

  ‘I wouldn’t eat them if I were you,’ I said. ‘These colourful varieties are usually poisonous.’

  ‘I suppose they make you very sick,’ he said.

  ‘Worse than that. They are poisonous enough to kill you. As poisonous as those vipers in the tank. Why don’t you clear them away?’

  ‘I was about to do so, but Miss Susanna stopped me. She said they looked beautiful.’

  ‘They are certainly beautiful. But sometimes beauty spells danger.’

  ‘Like our lady Susanna? Her husbands were not very lucky.’

  ‘Let’s hope Mr Gupta does better. He seems a harmless sort.’

  ‘He calls himself a doctor. Is he a real doctor?’

/>   ‘I don’t know. But all sorts of people call themselves doctor, or are honoured with the title.’

  Well, Dr Gupta became quite popular in the town, and people came to consult him for their various ailments. They found the enema treatment rather drastic, but they went along with eating leaves and grass and mushrooms, and apparently no harm was done.

  Susanna fond it all very tiresome and boring. She had grown up on mutton chops and grilled fish and roast lamb and fried chicken, not to mention curried prawns, nargisi koftas and an occasional Irish stew. And now, suddenly, all these delicacies were banned from the dining table, and Susanna was expected to follow Gupta’s example and subsist on pulses, paneer, fruit and salads. Finally, even the paneer was banned, Dr Gupta having decided to become a complete vegan—forbidding all animal products such as milk, butter, cheese and eggs. Dr Gupta, an easy-going character in many ways, was fanatical on the subject of food, and made Susanna promise not to touch any of the polluting items that she had been consuming all her life.

  Susanna put up with this for some time, as she wanted to please and help her dedicated husband. But at times she felt weak and depressed. Basically, she was missing her proteins.

  She was becoming increasingly irritable and discontented, and one day she stopped by at my place and asked me if I would do her a favour.

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Anything you want, including the moon.’

  ‘Better than the moon,’ she said. ‘I need a good meal. Will you take me out to lunch?’

  Well, I took her to the best restaurant in town, and we dined on a spicy Malabar grilled fish, which went well with a bottle of red wine, and Susanna began to look quite happy and relaxed.

  ‘You need a change,’ I told her.

  ‘A change of man or a change of menu? All this health food is wearing me down.’

  ‘A change of place,’ I said.