The Householder (19 page)

‘Here is my friend,' Prem said weakly.

Hans clicked the heels of his big black boots together, then joined his hands meekly under his chin. ‘Hans Loewe,' he introduced himself to Raj, who stared at him.

‘Loewe means lion,' Prem said anxiously.

‘I am Prem's good friend,' Hans said. ‘I want also to be the friend of his friend.' He grasped Raj by his shoulders and looked down seriously and intently into his face. Raj stared back at him in silent amazement.' He has a good face,' Hans pronounced at last, turning to Prem, ‘but I think he has been neglecting the spiritual side.'

He insisted on taking them to the coffee-house where he had gone with Prem the first time they had met. Prem and Raj followed meekly behind him; they did not look at one another but behaved as if they were only together because they had both been towed along by Hans.

‘This is good,' Hans said, settling himself squarely on the settee, his arms planted on the table. ‘Today we will have such conversation that our minds will fly open and the understanding will come in with a big rush!' He strained across the table, eager for the conversation to begin.

Prem put his hand on Raj's shoulder and said, ‘My friend works in the Ministry of Food. He is a Government officer.' Raj did not say anything. He sat stiffly upright, his arms held close to his body, and stared in front of him.

Hans beamed at him: ‘So you are a cog in the vast machinery of the Government?'

‘No, I am a sub-officer, Grade Two.'

‘By cog I mean one little screw in a big big wheel. It is a joke.' Raj continued to stare ahead of him but now he wore a look of tight-lipped disapproval. Quite obviously he did not regard his job as fit subject for a joke.

‘He has an important post,' Prem said, mostly to appease Raj, but partly also so as to be able to lead up to talk of his own inadequate job. Perhaps, after all, he would be able to consult Raj about his application for a rise in salary.

Hans said: ‘How can a man's work have importance? This is my meaning: work is nothing, only the spirit within is important.' His eyes searched Prem's face, then Raj's. Prem felt constrained to nod and look intelligent. ‘If the spirit is pure, all action is pure. How simple it is,' Hans cried, ‘how beautiful!' He clasped his hands and looked rapt.

‘Your wife has come back from her parents' house?' Raj asked.

Prem turned half towards him and nodded. He would like to have turned to him fully, but he also had to show interest in what Hans was saying.

‘Please remember that you have invited us for a meal,' Raj said.

‘You will come?' Prem exclaimed in a pleased voice.

‘Of course, the bus-fares will be an expense for me.'

Hans held up his forefinger again. ‘BUT,' he said and smiled: ‘Yes, there is always a big BUT.'

‘Babli can travel free on the bus,' Prem pointed out.

Raj grudgingly admitted it, then added: ‘My wife cannot travel free. I will have to pay for her.'

‘But to achieve this pure spirit—yes, there is where we stumble and fall down.' His face had now clouded with unhappiness. ‘Our materialist civilization has collected so much waste matter inside us that the spirit has become dirty with mud.'

‘You must come very soon,' Prem said. He was about to add, ‘as soon as my mother has gone', but then remembered that he was not supposed to know that she was going.

‘We are rubbish-dumps!' Hans cried.

Raj said in a stern voice, ‘Please don't shout so loud. People will look at us.' Prem cast a hasty glance round the restaurant. But nobody was looking at them. Most of the people there were too intent on themselves to pay attention to what was going on around them.

‘What does it matter if people look?' Hans said. ‘What we are talking is not a secret thing but the Truth which everyone must know if he is to lead a good spiritual life.'

‘They are all loafers,' Raj said with a contemptuous look around the clientele. They were most of them young men, but very different from the young men who lounged, easy and satisfied, in the vestibules of the cinemas. These young men sat over their coffee with an air of cynical gloom, and the way they blew cigarette smoke indicated their low opinion of the world

‘Perhaps they are already on the path of the Truth,' Hans said.

‘They are all worthless loafers,' Raj said. ‘They sit in coffee-houses and do no work the whole day.'

Prem said, ‘Perhaps they can't find work. It is not easy to find work, even if you are B.A. or M.A.'; and he gently sighed, thinking of the long columns of Situations Vacant in which there was nothing for him.

Raj frowned at his watch: ‘I must go. I have to get clothes from the dry-cleaner on my way home.'

‘And even if you do get work,' Prem said, ‘often the salary is so low that it is difficult to live.'

‘I have a theory,' Hans announced.

‘Especially if you have a family to support,' Prem murmured.

‘My theory is that where there is greatest unemployment among the educated classes there is also greatest spiritual development.'

‘And it is so difficult to get a rise in salary,' Prem said miserably.

‘Yes, I know, my theory sounds very strange,' Hans said with a pleased laugh. ‘But I will explain.'

Raj got up.' If I don't hurry, the dry-cleaner will shut and we will be without our clothes.'

Prem got up with him and said, ‘There were some things I wanted to talk with you about.'

‘I was very happy to have this meeting with you,' Hans said. He clasped Raj's hand in a big firm handshake. Now all three of them were standing and the waiter came hurrying over with the bill.

‘I sent a petition to the Principal,' Prem told Raj. But Hans put a hand on his shoulder and pressed him back into his seat. ‘Now I will explain my theory,' he said; he was smiling and his eyes too gleamed with pleasure.

Prem's mother was sitting on her bed, looking at the letter in her hand. She said, ‘Here is a letter for me from your sister in Bangalore.'

‘What does she say?' Prem asked casually, fingering the morning paper which lay folded on a chair.

‘Please don't be angry with me, son.'

Prem pretended to be interested in the newpaper although he had already read it very thoroughly in the morning.

‘Your sister needs me, son. I will have to leave you.' She opened the letter again and glanced over it and nodded. ‘What can I do, son? She needs me.'

Prem looked crestfallen, but he said bravely, ‘Of course if she needs you, you must go.'

‘A mother's duties never end,' she said with a sigh. But she looked pleased.

So next evening Prem saw her off at the station. She had as many baskets and bundles as she had brought with her when she came, for she was taking a good supply of Delhi sweetmeats to her daughter. When she was settled in her compartment and had seen to it that the porter had stowed all her things properly on the racks, she spoke to Prem out of the window. She said, ‘I am not easy in my mind about leaving you, son.'

‘Please don't worry at all,' Prem said. He stepped nearer to the train, for barrows filled with mail-bags were being pushed along the platform.

‘I did my best for you, son. We chose the girl as carefully as we could.'

Prem said again, ‘Please don't worry about me at all.' He was embarrassed, afraid that she would say something about Indu and then he would not know where to look.

‘However careful we are, what can we do? These things are all in the hands of God.' A group of women, fat and elderly and wearing widow-white, came thronging into the compartment. They were followed by a porter who carried their luggage on his head and looked despondently at the racks into which Prem's mother had crowded all her things. ‘Someone has taken up all the space,' said one of the women.

‘For one seat one must take up only one luggage rack,' said another.

‘Try and bear up, son,' Prem's mother told him.

He cleared his throat and said, ‘I think some of your things must be moved.'

The porter was already gingerly moving them. Prem's mother pretended not to notice what was going on.

‘If I could stay with you, son, I would look after you and make everything nice for you. Then there would be no need for worry.'

‘Film-Fun, Film-Fare, Film-Frolic
!' shouted a paper-man, thrusting a splayed-out array of highly coloured film magazines into the train window.

‘But what to do? Your sister needs me.' She drew back from the magazines thrust into her face, saying ‘Go away, what do I want with these things.'

‘It is all about films,' said the man invitingly.

One of the fat widows shook her head: ‘That is all young people think of nowadays. Only films.' The others also shook their heads. One of them was already untying a little bundle on her lap out of which came a heap of potato pancakes. She began to eat at once. With a full mouth she said, ‘It is a great evil.'

Prem's mother said, ‘I thank God, my son is not like that. He is a good hard-working boy.' The other women stared at Prem in appreciation and said ‘Ah', swaying their heads at him and smiling.

‘He has been married less than a year. I have been staying with him.' She sighed. ‘What help a mother can give, I have given.'

‘What can compare with a mother's love?' the others said politely.

Prem looked towards the end of the train: ‘I think it is starting.'

One of the fat women came pushing to the window. ‘It is starting? We have not had our tea!' She began gesticulating to a man with a glass-trolley from which he served tea and biscuits and dust-flecked cream-rolls. Soon steaming cups and heaped plates passed between the trolley and the compartment.

‘Now his sister from Bangalore has written to say she needs me. That is why I have to go.' The women were busy eating and drinking, but they nodded sympathetically. ‘It is difficult for me to leave this boy, but what can I do?'

The man with the glass trolley was looking nervously at the women drinking tea from his cups and eating off his plates. ‘It is starting,' he said. Prem peered towards the engine. His mother said, ‘I run from one to the other, all our lives our children need us'; she tried to sound harassed but her tone was complacent.

‘Please give me my things!' shouted the man with the trolley from behind Prem. Flags were being waved and whistles blown.

‘He wants his cups and plates,' Prem said.

‘I tried to teach her your favourite dishes, son,' Prem's mother said. ‘But she does not learn well.'

‘Your biscuits are very bad!' one of the women shouted to the man with the trolley.

‘But give me my things!' he shouted back.

‘He wants his things,' Prem said.

‘I have done all I could, son. The rest is in God's hands.'

Cups and plates were passed out to Prem, who handed them on to the man with the trolley. The train started. Prem ran alongside it, with the trolleyman behind him.

‘If your sister had not needed me, I would have stayed with you a much longer time.'

Prem received the last two cups.

‘There was not enough sugar in your tea!' one of the women cried, leaning out of the window.

Prem's mother also leant out of the window: ‘Try and bear up, son!' she cried.

Prem waved and said, ‘Please don't worry at all', though it was not likely that she could any longer hear.

He did not wait till the train was out of sight but turned straightaway and made his way to the exit. He was so excited that he hardly noticed the crowds milling round the station-yard and kept stumbling against porters and hawkers and passengers, over mail-bags and abandoned clusters of luggage, and once he almost slipped on a sucked and discarded mango-peel. He thought only of getting home as quickly as possible, where Indu would be sitting waiting for him.

In the night they went to sleep out on the roof. They felt both alone and supreme. The sky, vaulting huge and black above them, nailed with silver points of stars and a slice of moon, seemed closer than the earth. Sounds of cars, the bark of a dog, a distant train reached them faint and filtered and far-off. He tried to persuade her to take off all her clothes and show herself naked to him. She blushed, giggled, clutched the sari defensively to her breast, while he tried to pull it off. They struggled together and then they loved one another. Never had they known such an excess of sweetness. Cloyed and sated, they slept together on the bed. Later they woke up again and loved some more. After that they did not go to sleep for a long time; the night was large and silent and empty, and they did not want to lose a moment of the feeling of space and solitude it gave them. They peered over the roof down into the courtyard where Mr. Seigal lay sleeping alone on a string-cot, with an earthen water-container by his side. They could see his stomach curving like a dome into the air. Silvered in faint moonlight, he did not look like a real person at all. They went to sleep towards early morning, when the sky was already grey with dawn, but soon afterwards the servant-boy stood there, saying crossly, ‘I have been searching for you everywhere.' They woke up and noticed that the hot sun was shining on them, so they went running indoors.

Even in the daytime, at college, Prem thought mostly of Indu and what they did together. He gave his lessons automatically, while his thoughts were on her. His students did not bother to listen to him. They held their own conversations, leaning across to one another and hardly bothering to lower their voices. Prem remained unaware of this, until suddenly Mr. Chaddha interrupted the flow of his own lecture on ‘Conflicts in the North-West Frontier Provinces' to say in his sharp piping voice: ‘There is too much noise on the other side of the classroom.'

There was instant silence. Mr. Chaddha's students turned round to have a look at Prem's, who now sat quite quiet and pretended to be engrossed in their notes.