Heat and Dust (7 page)

It used to embarrass Inder Lal to find me waiting for him. Perhaps he was even a little ashamed to be seen with me. I suppose we do make a strange couple – I'm so much taller than he is, and I walk with long strides and keep forgetting that this makes it difficult for him to keep up with me. But I think by now he has got used to me and perhaps is even rather proud to be seen walking with his English friend. I also think he quite likes my company now. At first he welcomed it mainly to practise his English – he said it was a very good chance for him – but now he also seems to enjoy our conversations. I certainly do. He is very frank with me and tells me all sorts of personal things: not only about his life but also about his feelings. He has told me that the only other person he can talk to freely is his mother but even with her – well, he said, with the mother there are certain things one cannot speak as with the friend.

Once I asked “What about your wife?”

He said she was not intelligent. Also she had not had much education – his mother had not wanted him to marry a very educated girl; she said there was nothing but trouble to be expected from such a quarter. Ritu had been chosen on account of her suitable family background and her fair complexion. His mother had told him she was pretty, but he never could make up his mind about that. Sometimes he thought yes, sometimes no. He asked my opinion. I said yes. She must have been so when young, though now she is thin
and worn and her face, like his, always anxious.

He told me that during the first years of her marriage she had been so homesick that she had never stopped crying. “It was very injurious to her health,” he said, “especially when she got in family way. Mother and I tried to explain matters to her, how it was necessary for her to eat and be happy, but she did not understand. Naturally her health suffered and the child also was born weak. It was her fault. An intelligent person would have understood and taken care.”

He frowned and looked unhappy. By this time we had reached the lake. (This is about as far as Olivia would have got if she ever ventured to this side: because beyond this point the Indian part of the town began, the crowded lanes and bazaar where I now live.)

Inder Lal said “How is it possible for me to talk with her the way I am now talking with you? It is not possible. She would understand nothing.” He added: “Her health also has remained very weak.”

There were some boys swimming in the lake. They seemed to be having a very good time. We could see the water rising in sprays as they jumped up and down and splashed one another. Inder Lal watched them wistfully. Perhaps he wished he were one of them; or he may have been remembering summer evenings of his own when he too had gone swimming with his friends.

It could not have been all that long ago – he is still a young man, a few years younger than I am, about 25 or 26. When you look closer, you can see that his face really is young, only he seems older because of his careworn expression. When I first saw him, he seemed to me a typical Indian clerk, meek and bowed down with many cares. But now I see that he is not meek and bowed at all – or only outwardly – that really
inside himself he is alive and yearning for all sorts of things beyond his reach. It shows mainly in his eyes, which are beautiful – full of melancholy and liquid with longing.

10 March.
    I work hard at my Hindi and am beginning to have conversations with people which is a great advantage. I wish I could talk more with Ritu, Inder Lal's wife, but she is so shy that my improved Hindi doesn't help me with her at all. Although I'm quite a shy person myself, I try not to be with her. I feel it is my responsibility to get us going since I'm older and (I think) stronger. There is something frail,
weak
about her. Physically she is very thin, with thin arms on which her bangles slip about; but not only physically – I have the impression that her mind, or do I mean her will, is not strong either, that she is the sort of person who would give way quickly. Sometimes she tries to overcome her shyness and pays me a visit in my room; but though I talk away desperately in my appalling Hindi just so she will stay, quite soon she jumps up and runs away. The same happens when I try to visit her – I've seen her at my approach run to hide in the bathroom and, though it is not very salubrious (the little sweeper girl is not too good at her job), stay locked up in there till I go away again.

The days – and nights – are really heating up now. It is unpleasant to sleep indoors and everyone pulls out their beds at night. The town has become a communal dormitory. There are string-beds in front of all the stalls, and on the roofs, and in the courtyards: wherever there is an open space. I kept on sleeping indoors for a while since I was embarrassed to go to bed in public. But it just got too hot, so now I too have dragged my bed out into the courtyard and have joined it on to the Inder Lals' line. The family of the shop downstairs also
sleep in this courtyard, and so does their little servant boy, and some others I haven't been able to identify. So we're quite a crowd. I no longer change into a nightie but sleep, like an Indian woman, in a sari.

It's amazing how
still
everything is. When Indians sleep, they really do sleep. Neither adults nor children have a regular bed-time – when they're tired they just drop, fully clothed, on to their beds, or the ground if they have no beds, and don't stir again till the next day begins. All one hears is occasionally someone crying out in their sleep, or a dog – maybe a jackal – baying at the moon. I lie awake for hours: with happiness, actually. I have never known such a sense of communion. Lying like this under the open sky there is a feeling of being immersed in space – though not in empty space, for there are all these people sleeping all around me, the whole town and I am part of it. How different from my often very lonely room in London with only my own walls to look at and my books to read.

A few nights ago there was such a strange sound – for a moment I didn't react but lay there just
hearing
it: a high-pitched wail piercing through the night. It didn't seem like a human sound. But it was. By the time I had sat up, Inder Lal's mother had got to Ritu's bed and was holding her hand over the girl's mouth. Ritu struggled but the mother was stronger. No one else had stirred yet-and the mother was desperately holding on. I helped her get Ritu into the house, and when I turned on the light, I saw Ritu's eyes stretched wide in fear above the mother's hand still laid over her mouth. When those strange sounds had completely stopped, the mother released her and she sank at once to the floor and remained hunched up there with her face buried in her knees. Now she was quite still except for occasional spasms
that twitched through her little bird body. The mother went to the jars where the rice was stored and scattered a handful over Ritu's head. The grains bounced off the girl's hair though one or two got stuck there. She still didn't move. The mother opened and closed her hand and circled it over that bowed head, cracking her knuckles, and she was also murmuring some incantation. Quite soon Ritu got up, looking tear-stained and exhausted but otherwise normal. The three of us went out again and lay back on our beds next to the others, who hadn't moved. Next day neither the mother nor Ritu mentioned the incident, so that it might just not have been except that there were some rice grains stuck in Ritu's hair.

20 March.
    After that night the mother and I have drawn closer together. We have become friends. Now she often accompanies me to the bazaar and bullies the shopkeeper if he is not giving me the best vegetables. She has seen to it that everyone charges me the right price. I understand her Hindi much better now, and she some of mine though it still makes her laugh. But she does most of the talking and I like listening to her, especially when she tells me about herself. I have the impression that, although she is a widow, the best part of her life is now. She does not seem to have a high opinion of married life. She has told me that the first years are always difficult because of being so homesick and thinking only of the father's house: and it is difficult to get used to the new family and to the rule of the mother-in-law. She rarely mentions her late husband so I presume he didn't make up for much. But she seems to be very close to her son – it is she, not Ritu, who does everything for him like serving his food and laying his clothes out. She is very proud of him for being a
government servant and working in an office instead of sitting in a shop like his father used to do (he was a grocer). It is a great step up for him and so for her too. She certainly holds her head high when she walks through the town. She is about fifty but strong and healthy and full of feminine vigour. Unlike Ritu, she doesn't spend all her time at home but has outings with her friends who are mostly healthy widows like herself. They roam around town quite freely and don't care at all if their saris slip down from their heads or even from their breasts. They gossip and joke and giggle like schoolgirls: very different from their daughters-in-law who are sometimes seen shuffling behind them, heavily veiled and silent and with the downcast eyes of prisoners under guard.

Since we started getting friendly, Inder Lal's mother invites me along on some of her jaunts. I've been introduced to all her friends, including a sort of leader they have – another widow whom they call “Maji” though she is not that much older than they are. Maji is said to have certain powers, and though I don't know what they are, she does give me the impression of having something more than other people, even if it is only more vim and vigour. She seems to be positively bursting with those. She lives very simply in a little hut under a tree. It is a lovely spot, in between the lake where the boys go swimming and a lot of old royal tombs. When I was taken to see her, we all crawled inside her hut and sat on the mud floor there. I enjoyed being with all those widows, they were so gay and friendly, and though I couldn't take much part in their conversation, I did a lot of smiling and nodding; and when they all began to sing hymns – led by Maji, who sang very lustily, throwing herself around in her enthusiasm – I tried to join in, which seemed to please them.

After that Inder Lal's mother took me to see the suttee
shrines. We walked to the end of the bazaar and through the gateway leading out of town, then down a dusty road till we came to a tank or reservoir by the wayside. Here Inder Lal's mother showed me a cluster of little shrines under some trees: they were not much bigger than mile-stones, though some of them had little domes on top. There were crude figures scratched hair-thin into the stone: presumably the husband with the faithful wife who had burned herself with him. They gave me an eerie feeling, but Inder Lal's mother devoutly joined her hands before the shrines. She decorated one of them with a little string of roses and marigolds she had brought. She told me that, on certain days of the year, she and her friends come with sweets, milk, and flowers to worship these widows who have made the highest sacrifice. She sounded really respectful and seemed to have the greatest reverence for that ancient custom. She even seemed regretful – this merry widow! – that it had been discontinued (it was outlawed in 1829). She showed me the shrine of the last suttee, which of course I knew about as it had taken place during Olivia's time. Although this shrine only dates back to 1923, it looks as age-old as the others.

1923

It had happened when Mr. Crawford was away on tour and Douglas on his own in charge of the district. A grain merchant had died and his widow had been forced by her relatives to burn herself with him on his funeral pyre. Although Douglas had rushed to the scene the moment information reached him, he had arrived too late to save the woman. All he could still do was arrest the main instigators who were her sons, brothers-in-law, and a priest. Everyone
praised Douglas for the calm and competent way he had handled the situation. Even the Nawab made a point of congratulating him – though Douglas received
those
congratulations rather coldly. But the Nawab did not notice or, if he did, was not put out.

Olivia had still not told Douglas about the Nawab's picnic; nor about the Nawab's subsequent visits – he came almost every second or third day now, usually with all his companions. Not that she didn't want to tell Douglas – of course she did! – but he was always home so late and then with so many preoccupations of his own, she never seemed to have an opportunity to tell him. However, one day the Nawab lingered on till Douglas' arrival home. He must have deliberately planned to do so because that day he had left all his young men behind. If Olivia was nervous about this meeting, she need not have been because the Nawab handled it perfectly. He sprang to his feet to receive Douglas and held out his hand in hearty English greeting. It was as if he were the host and this his house in which it was his duty to make Douglas welcome. He said at once that his purpose in driving over that day was to congratulate Douglas on his prompt action. When Douglas, cool and deprecating, said he wished he had been prompt enough to get there before rather than after the event, the Nawab shrugged in commiseration:

“What is to be done, Mr. Rivers. These people will never learn. Whatever we do, they will still cling to their barbaric customs. But, Mr. Rivers, what praise there is for you everywhere! On your conduct of this miserable affair, all speak as one.”

“You are misinformed,” Douglas said. “There's been a lot of murmuring. It seems my prisoners – the unfortunate woman's relatives – are in some quarters regarded as
martyrs. We even had a bit of trouble outside the jail today.” He gave Olivia a quick, sharp look: “You are not to worry. Nothing we couldn't easily handle.”

“Of course you need not at all worry, Mrs. Rivers!” the Nawab likewise assured her. “Where Mr. Rivers is, there is firm control and strong action. As there must be. Otherwise these people cannot be managed at all. All must be grateful to you, Mr. Rivers, for your strong hand,” he said, looking at Douglas man-to-man and not seeming to notice that Douglas did not look back at him that way.