The Moneylenders of Shahpur (15 page)

‘Where can a woman cry in peace?’ Anasuyabehn asked herself miserably, as she went back home from the park. She felt that if she did not cry soon she would choke. Her last stronghold, her bedroom, was at present invaded by her two cousins. They would not leave until after her marriage – and, after that, she would cease to be a person in her own right and be an appendage of Mahadev’s.

Apart from her grief at Tilak’s behaviour and her approaching marriage, she was still haunted by memory of the fearsome monk. Her religion, with its ruthless rules for the purification of the jiva, the soul, during each rebirth, had re-asserted itself that morning in a most alarming way.

In betrothing her to Mahadev, her father had broken only a rule of caste, which had crept into the originally classless, casteless Jain belief. Jainism had, at first, been a movement of revolt against caste, she thought, and, to be honest, he was marrying her into a group which epitomized Jain life.

If she ran away with Tilak, she would commit the sin of
filial disobedience and would, in addition, marry a man of another religion, a high-caste Hindu. Even to love a man so much was in conflict with the teachings of her religion, she moaned to herself. To become too attached to anything or anybody was a prelude to suffering, and, as tears welled up in her, she knew the teaching had meaning.

‘When are the merchants bringing wedding saris to show you?’ broke in one of her cousins excitedly. ‘I’m longing to see them.’

‘Ask Aunt,’ replied Anasuyabehn shortly. ‘She has it all arranged.’

They turned hopefully to the old lady, to ask about everything to do with the marriage. ‘When shall we visit the Desais? Can we go to a potter’s yard? We want to mark his wheel with red powder and buy some pots for the marriage booth? And Lord Ganesh must get an offering of rice from us and have his elephant head specially marked, mustn’t he, Aunt? Respected Aunt, do tell us?’

Aunt laughed and answered them amiably, while the object of all the preparations trailed slowly behind her and began to regret bitterly her sharpness with Tilak. Perhaps, she argued, he had been held up by his work, so that he could not meet her. And there simply had to be a reasonable explanation of his attendance on Miss Armstrong, if she could only think of one.

The servant had put out string beds on the roof for the gentlemen and on the veranda for the ladies, each bed swathed in a mosquito net.

On arriving home, the Dean immediately excused himself and went to his study to perform his evening devotions, while his more worldly brother betook himself to the roof with a copy of
Gone with the Wind
and a flashlight by which to see to read it. The older ladies retired to one end of the veranda to say their prayers and sink
thankfully into their beds. The younger ones sat, cross-legged, on their beds and loosened their long plaits of hair, while they continued to whisper across to Anasuyabehn for some time. She was taciturn in her replies, however, and eventually feeling a little deflated they curled up and slept.

Anasuyabehn could not rest. For greater comfort, she took off her blouse and wrapped her sari loosely round herself. Her throat ached with suppressed tears.

Finally, she slipped out of bed and went into the house. There was no light under the study door, so she assumed her father had gone up to bed on the roof. She made her way to her own room and switched on the light. The heat of the house was almost intolerable, but the need to cry was urgent. She paced up and down restlessly; the tears, so long repressed, would not come.

Undeniably, Tilak still had the intention of marrying her; otherwise, he would not have bothered to follow her to ask about the passport. She understood the importance of the question; a large deposit was needed in order to obtain one, and government procedure was extremely slow.

Well, she had a passport, obtained when she had accompanied her father to a conference in Sri Lanka. The problem was how to get this information to Tilak and how to ask his forgiveness for her rudeness.

Her cotton sari was soaked with perspiration. She went to the window, opened it and leaned her head against the iron bars. There was not a breath of wind. She stared aimlessly out at the rural scene lit by a moon partially shrouded in dust. She hoped that houses would never be built behind her father’s bungalow.

Then she remembered that, unless Tilak moved quickly, she would soon leave this pleasant home for the cramped and ugly Desai Society, behind high walls in the inner city.
She had not yet seen it, but she could well visualize its crumbling walls and worn steps, its wavery, tiled roofs, its lack of fresh air. Aunt had told her that not many people lived in its multitude of rooms, that the business took up a number of them. She thought of Mahadev’s little girl wandering, solitary, through them. What was she like, after being pushed about by a spiteful aunt? Anasuyabehn felt suddenly cold at the thought of having to establish her seniority over her future sister-in-law – her aunt had warned her about this. And then there was the lonely, sad uncle whose wife and children were already dead. What was he like?

‘I can’t face it,’ she cried softly. ‘Tilak Sahib, how can I get a note to you?’

Her question was answered as if she had rubbed a magic lamp. From outside the window came an urgent whisper, ‘Put the light out.’

Mouth half-open in surprise, she stood motionless, and then began to giggle almost hysterically.

‘The light, Bahin.’

Still giggling, she went obediently and switched the light out.

‘Come to the window,’ pleaded Tilak.

She stood with her hand on the switch, trying to calm herself. She succeeded only in bursting into tears.

‘Come, Rani.’

She ran to him, tears pouring down her face. Putting her arms through the bars, she clasped them round Tilak. A very delighted Tilak slipped his arms through the maddening bars to hold her as best he could. The bars bit into their flesh.

‘My love, my dear love,’ he murmured. Endearments and passionate kisses passed between them, and the passport was momentarily forgotten.

Suddenly, from the roof, Anasuyabehn’s uncle shouted, ‘Who’s there?’ Keener of hearing than his elder brother, he leaned over the parapet and swung his torch wildly about, the darting beam moving too fast to pick out any single detail.

Without a further word, Tilak slid away from the windowsill. Like a squirrel, he streaked along the backs of the bungalows, then cut across the field path into common land, where he lay panting in the dry grass, until the lights went out again in the Mehta home. Then he jogged back to his room, cursing under his breath.

The following day, Dean Mehta asked his brother to come into his study. ‘I must tell you something,’ he said.

His brother had just washed his mouth out after lunch, and a few drops of water still clung to his chin. As he followed his brother into the stifling room, he dabbed his dripping face on his sleeve.

Contrary to the best advice of his guru, the Dean had an electric fan. Though he could not bring himself to stop using it altogether, he turned it off during his fast days.

‘A fan,’ the guru had said, ‘injures the souls in the air. Yours, being electric, can also kill insects.’

Today, the fan was back in its cardboard box, and the windows were shut to keep out the onslaught of the afternoon sun. The heavy Western desk and chairs, the crowded bookcases, added to the oppressiveness of the atmosphere. Because of the extra people in the house, the boy servant
had not had time to attend to the chattyas, the heavy copra mats which covered the outside of the windows and usually dripped comfortingly with water to cool the room. There was nothing to mitigate the sweltering weather.

The Dean’s brother wondered how he was going to endure the house for a whole month. He deposited himself on one of the stuffed chairs, which immediately caused him to perspire even more.

The Dean told him briefly of Mahadev’s disappearance. He did not mention his own suspicions that Mahadev might have absconded. He ended by saying, ‘I shall, of course, tell Anasuyabehn. She has a right to know.’

‘Anasuyabehn isn’t very lucky, is she?’ his brother responded glumly. ‘If Mahadev turns up, we’d better hold the marriage as soon as possible, before anything else happens.’ And then I can go home to an air-conditioned house, he added to himself.

‘It’s odd that you should say that. Desai said the same thing this morning. They have some business in France they want to send Mahadev to attend to; they want his wife to go with him.’

The younger Mehta scratched miserably at the sweat rash on his stomach. ‘Certainly we can manage it, if Sister is agreeable.’ He examined the backs of his hands thoughtfully; the skin was already dry and cracking from Shahpur’s desert climate. ‘Anasuyabehn was not very keen on this match, was she?’

‘Not at first,’ replied the Dean. ‘It came as a surprise to her. Her aunt assures me that she’s quite happy about it, now she knows more about the family.’

‘It was a pity we could not find her a scholarly man.’

‘Well, those we considered were either without prospects – and I wanted her to do better than our poor sister – or they were personally unprepossessing. And young Desai is
really keen on her. He sent her a superb diamond, you know.’ He sighed, and then added a little defiantly, ‘He’s not ignorant either. He’s a matriculate and has travelled a lot.’

The younger Mehta nodded. Then he suggested, ‘Perhaps she should be a little more tightly chaperoned until her marriage – to avoid any hint of scandal.’

‘Scandal?’ The Dean looked shocked.

‘Well, you know what people are,’ his brother said defensively. ‘She has a lot of freedom.’

‘Well,’ responded the Dean. ‘We’ll tell her aunts that she is not to go out of the house alone.’

Relieved that he had persuaded the Dean to have Anasuyabehn chaperoned, without having to mention to him vague suspicions aroused the previous night, he offered to send the girl in to see her father.

He found the ladies on the veranda. Each had a piece of needlework in her lap, but they, too, were wilting from the heat, and the needles were not being plied. When he came over to them, Anasuyabehn got up from the floor and her uncle could not help but observe the change in her from yesterday. The silence and the pinched look had gone from her. She was radiant, and when she spoke it was with the excitement of one in a fever.

He told her to go to her father and he watched her, as she vanished into the bungalow. He felt that she certainly had the strength of character to carry on an intrigue with a considerable amount of duplicity. Had he heard a man’s voice last night or had he imagined it? he asked himself. Had she been saying her prayers, as she said she had? One did not pray in the dark, and, as he came down the stairs from the roof, he had distinctly heard a light being switched on. Her window had been shut, when his wife had gone into her room – he had asked particularly. Miss
Anasuyabehn was up to something, he was sure, but he could not accuse her without proof.

He was worried about a scandal for another reason. Soon his daughters would face the same shortage of marriageable men as Anasuyabehn had. He did not want the problem made worse by a scandal in the family. Some castes were short of women and a girl could take her choice of eager young men, but amongst the Mehtas, at the moment, there seemed to be a real dearth of males. He must tell his wife to watch their girls, he decided.

Further down the veranda, Aunt was watching
him
out of the corner of her eye, wondering why the Dean had sent for his daughter. She, too, was giving thought to possible husbands for her nieces, and was going over in her mind all the young men who might be eligible. Unlike their father, she had taken into account that they were nearly a decade younger than Anasuyabehn – a different generation. ‘Ah,’ she exclaimed, satisfied, as she managed to thread her needle and at the same time recollect a possible sixteen-year-old boy.

‘This man you’ve sent me to work for, this Tilak Sahib, is very strange,’ remarked Tilak’s new servant to his uncle, Ranjit.

‘He’s no stranger than most modern people. Be thankful for a job. Now you can eat well – and, with care, you can make a little money,’ Ranjit scolded.

They were seated on John’s back veranda, sharing what
was left over of John’s breakfast porridge. Having dispatched Tilak to his lectures, the nephew was on his way to the vegetable bazaar and had stopped for a minute or two to report to his uncle.

When he saw that Ranjit was cross with him, the boy immediately became obsequious. ‘I’m grateful for the job, Uncle.’

‘It isn’t Tilak Sahib’s fault that he has to cut up fish for a living,’ Ranjit remarked. ‘It’s his father’s fault for training him so.’

‘Is he a fishmonger?’ the boy asked, horror creeping into his voice. ‘I thought you said he was a professor.’

‘He is, he is,’ replied Ranjit testily, as he collected up their dishes. ‘He studies the insides of fish and frogs.’

The nephew’s distaste, as he digested this information, was apparent on his ratlike face. Then he said uneasily, ‘He went for a walk in the middle of the night – so late that the moon was beginning to set. What man in his senses would do that?’

Ranjit had the answer immediately. ‘Perhaps he went to look at his experiment in the University.’

‘What’s an experiment?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Ranjit truthfully, ‘but I have heard from other University servants that, sometimes, professors go at night to check their experiments.’

‘Oh,’ said his nephew, and was satisfied.

Tilak was, however, news. Ranjit mentioned the late walk to another servant, joking that he might be hunting for another frog. This servant told the joke to someone else, and in due course it reached Miss Prasad’s woman servant, who was one of Aunt’s main sources of gossip, and Aunt learned that mad Dr Tilak went hunting frogs all through the night. She filed the information, with a lot of other more juicy titbits, for further use.

In the late afternoon, Ranjit went to town and ordered a tonga to come out to the house that evening, to take John to the home of Mr Lallubhai, one of the district’s wealthier millowners.

Though Lallubhai was very rich, he was also a very conscientious man. His mills might hum with machinery forbidden by the Jain religion and turn out more cloth than any other works in India, but he combined in himself much that was good in a Jain gentleman. He provided housing for his workers which was the envy of other Shahpur citizens packed together in shocking slums. A small hospital, properly staffed, took care of the health of his workers, and a school for children up to the age of ten had recently been opened in his compounds. When building his house, he had installed outside his gates an extra water tap. This tap was considered miraculous because, no matter what the time of day, water ran out of it – and it ran fast, unlike the miserable trickle of the municipal supply. The tap was for public use, for all castes, and it was used with gratitude by Jain, Hindu and Muslim.

As John paid the tongawallah, and the chowkidar opened the gates for him, he watched the red-clad or white-clad women filling their water-pots. Amongst them stood Diana wiping her hands with her handkerchief. She smiled when she saw him, and the women all paused in their task, while they watched the couple.

She held out her hand to him, her discomposure at the end of their last meeting forgotten. ‘My hands felt filthy from travelling on the bus, so I was washing them,’ she explained.

John nodded, continuing to hold her hand and smile at her; she had four blue bracelets on her wrist, he noticed, and a hell of a lot of freckles.

A burst of giggles from the women, as they hoisted their water-pots on to their heads, made him drop her hand hastily. ‘We should go in,’ he said.

They turned and went through the heavy gates covered with beaten silver, and approached the huge, marble-trimmed bungalow. One broad picture window was lit up and they could see, on the inner wall of the room, a large copy of the famous painting of Gandhi and Nehru sitting together, a picture which graced many Indian homes. John grinned. The austerity of the great leader, clad only in his loin-cloth, seemed a bizarre comment on the ostentation of the house.

John’s stick clicked across the terrazzo terrace. He could not think of anything to say to Diana and felt awkward in consequence. He thought she looked charming and he wondered that she had not been approached by someone like Lallubhai to become either his mistress or his wife. Diana could have told him, had he asked, that she had become quite adept at turning down such offers.

He found himself indulging in thoughts suspiciously close to jealousy, when Lallubhai seated her on a settee next to him. Lallubhai’s wife also noticed the seating arrangements. She was an extraordinarily beautiful Madrasi woman, her red sari draped round her shoulders to make a frame for a face marred only by an expression of cynical boredom. John bowed to her and sat down himself. She may be beautiful, he brooded sourly, as he accepted glasses of water and fruit juice from a bearer, but in this provincial backwater, Diana, with her red hair, is unique.

Lallubhai cracked a joke with Diana and made her laugh. Then he called the meeting to order. He might enjoy dallying with a pretty woman, but he was, first and foremost, a businessman with little time at his disposal.

Within half an hour, John found himself with enough
mapmaking to last him through six months of spare time. A garrulous assistant from the City Engineer’s Department, already overwhelmed at being amongst such wealthy people, was appointed to help John.

John was amused by the expressions on the faces of the remainder of the Committee, as Lallubhai apportioned to each of them a slum district to be visited, censused, as far as possible, and recommendations made regarding it. Since many of the slums were as horrifying as those of London in the eighteenth century, John was not altogether surprised at their sudden lack of enthusiasm. The police hardly ever visited such places and they were avoided by the health authorities, except at times of epidemics. The whole Committee quailed visibly and began to make excuses.

At last, a Christian missionary spoke up. He was a ghostlike, malaria-drained man from the American Middle West, white-haired, withdrawn. Though his voice was querulous, his white hairs demanded respectful attention.

‘Gandhiji said that we
must
help ourselves,’ he told them gently. ‘If we can clean up and improve the city, we shall be acting on his behest. A healthier city benefits all of us – we shall have less to fear from disease, for one thing.’ He paused, and put his hand on the back of John’s chair for support.

John remembered when he had first come out to Shahpur, a brash, vulgar man with a text always on his lips. He had not had much success with his mission, but Shahpur had moulded him into a very fine person. Now, he put courage back into the Committee. He shamed them with Jain and Christian texts and his own eighteen years of work in the city. As they rose, they promised, resignedly, to do as Lallubhai had asked them.

The old missionary sank down into his chair again, and John shifted himself round so that he could shake his hand. At the same time, he became aware of Lallubhai’s rumbling bass voice, accompanied by Diana’s protesting contralto.

‘Miss Armstrong, you cannot go home alone at this time of night, even in a tonga. I won’t hear of it. I have ordered a car for you; it will be at the front door in a few minutes. Unfortunately, I cannot accompany you …’ He looked round, and at the same moment John turned back from the missionary. ‘Ah, my dear Dr Bennett, I wonder if you would take care of Miss Armstrong. My chauffeur will drive you both to your respective homes.’

Diana’s green eyes twinkled momentarily, though she resented John’s obvious alarm.

‘Why – why – of course.’ John leaned heavily on his stick, as he got up from his chair. ‘Delighted.’

Snugly ensconced in the back of Lallubhai’s air-conditioned Cadillac, the uniformed back of the chauffeur comfortably anonymous in the darkness, Diana sat quietly by John, her hands folded in her lap. Nothing indicated the dejection within her. He had not really wanted to escort her – and why should he? She felt, suddenly, despairingly lonely.

‘Do you think this survey will ever be carried out?’ John asked her. Her sweet and heavy perfume was from Lucknow, he guessed.

‘Yes, it will,’ she replied. ‘Lallubhai will see to that. He is so powerful – and he has a most vindictive tongue at times.’

So she didn’t like Lallubhai all that much. In case the chauffeur understood English, he quickly changed the subject.

He said cautiously, ‘I wonder if you would like to walk for a little while in the Riverside Gardens?’

She sparkled immediately and said she would.

John redirected the chauffeur, much to the man’s disappointment. He had been wondering what an Englishman did when he was left alone with a gorgeous woman, and now he would probably never know. He clicked his tongue irritably and swung the car around.

A Cadillac stopping by the park gates caused a rush of
beggars, each with his cry of woe. John had a busy moment or two while, with his stick, he kept them away from Diana. With good humour, he spoke to them in Gujerati, the homely language learned as a child from his beloved Ayah.

‘Hey, Brothers,’ he cried. ‘Leave me enough so that I, too, may eat.’

They grinned at him, and whined, ‘In the name of God, Sahib, you do not know the pain of an empty stomach.’

‘I do know,’ he said, and pushed pennies into sore-covered hands. The memory of his hunger in prison made him generous. ‘Now, chelo,’ he ordered them, and the chowkidar reinforced his order to them to go, by threatening them with his lathi.

Though she was not afraid, Diana kept close to him. So often, she had to face such people alone. Though their diseases, their starvation, their filth grieved her, one could get overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

They strolled into the nearly deserted park and John’s stick thumped heavily on the asphalt path.

A man who had been leaning on the balustrade, his head buried in his hands, looked up suddenly. They were upon him before they realized he was there.

The light of a lamp fell full on Tilak’s face, a face ravaged by weeping and lack of sleep, so filled with despair that it was hard to recognize the usually fretful, dogmatic man.

‘Are you ill, old man?’ John asked in concern, while Diana diplomatically stepped back a little.

‘No, Bennett Sahib.’ Tilak straightened up and made a great effort to appear calm. He rubbed his hands over his face. ‘I may have a touch of fever, that’s all. I thought it might be cooler down here. The servant you sent is very good – cooks quite well – and it hasn’t dawned on him yet that the tradespeople pass our room by.’ He rattled on, ‘Ah, Miss Armstrong – it’s pleasant down here, isn’t it?’

Diana smiled shy acquiescence. Her nurse’s eyes ran over the careworn face. Yes, probably fever – though, to her, he seemed terribly distressed mentally. Pity overcame her disappointment at not having John to herself.

John prepared to say goodbye and walk on with Diana, but Tilak was reluctant to let them go; it did not occur to him that there were times when John could do without him. When they moved, he moved with them, talking about odds and ends of campus news.

At first Diana left John to answer him. The serenity of the night enfolded her, a golden moon in its first quarter, a cloud of stars, the perfume of flowers ground to dust in the scorching daytime heat. Then, feeling that perhaps she should help John out, she interrupted the men to say brightly, ‘Isn’t the sky clear! No wonder poets praise the night.’

Tilak pounced on her remark and said, ‘Poets create romantic illusions, Miss Armstrong. Romance has no place in India.’

His sharp response was unexpected, and she replied a little nervously, ‘Come now, Dr Tilak. Indians are just as romantic as Westerners, and the winds of change have made them more able to express it, nowadays.’

‘There
are
some of us who try to assist the wind, Miss Armstrong,’ he admitted. He shivered, though there was no breeze to chill him.

John had listened uneasily to the exchange, and now he said, ‘You’re shivering. Perhaps you’ve a touch of malaria. You should get into bed soon.’

Tilak shrugged, as if to indicate that it did not matter if he had.

They returned to the gate. John gave up hope of having Diana to himself that evening; it would have to await another opportunity. ‘Let’s take a tonga between us,’ he
suggested. ‘We can take Diana home first.’ Tilak agreed absently and left John to bargain with the tongawallahs. A bargain was struck with a Muslim as thin and brown as an old pipe cleaner, and they climbed into the awkward little carriage.

In the enforced proximity, knees touching, bodies swaying together, the two Europeans could feel Tilak continuing to shake. They both expressed their concern.

Tilak shook his head. ‘It’s – how do you say in English – a goose walking over my grave. I’ll feel better later on. Don’t worry.’

As they passed under a street lamp, however, Diana saw that his eyes were fever-bright. He’s terribly overwrought, she thought anxiously. She ventured to advise him, ‘As a nurse, I prescribe three aspirins and bed.’