House of the Sun (17 page)

‘She’ll be all right now, Mother,’ he assured Rekha. ‘A word with you, Jyoti,’ he said and drew her outside the door.

‘I’ve done what I can,’ he said. ‘I won’t upset you with details. She’ll be all right. But you’d better let them know at the right moment that she won’t be having any more children. I’ll look in again at the end of the afternoon.’ He walked away down the corridor.

She thought they spoke privately, but found the women had stepped up to the door to listen. They stood silent and tight-lipped before her.

‘It cannot be,’ whispered Rekha, sinking down upon a bed provided for an attendant relative, in a corner of the room.

‘Without delay she must be returned to her
husband’s
house. If they learn of this they may refuse to take her back,’ Mrs Bhagwandas insisted.

‘Sooner or later they will know,’ Rekha sobbed.

‘For what reason has she done this thing?’ Mrs Hathiramani asked. ‘It is only a first child, and it would have made her place with them secure.’

Jyoti turned to the window in distress. The hospital was cool and white. Before it was a lawn, and beyond a wall the sea, stretching luminously beneath the sun.
She understood only too well the desperation of the dilemma. Rekha continued to sob upon the bed.

‘There is a mistake. It was a simple miscarriage, nothing more. At the time she phoned me. She was frightened and needed reassurance. She spoke with me sincerely,’ Rekha cried.

‘Maybe then, it is the fault of the doctor. Only for the sake of getting money he has done this operation, and ruined Lakshmi’s life,’ Mrs Hathiramani offered at once.

‘Nonsense,’ Jyoti yelled at her.

They sat in silence about the unconscious Lakshmi, waiting for the arrival of Mrs Samtani. It had been impossible to contact her again. She knew only that Lakshmi was in hospital. She was unaware there had been an operation.

Sham and Padma arrived first with Chachi, who waddled in awkwardly upon stiff, arthritic legs and seated herself upon the bed beside Rekha. She had brought with her various string bags of edibles, a tiffin carrier and a thermos flask.

‘They will give her only boiled foods and English tea in this place. How will she regain strength with such food?’ she inquired. Before she could be answered the door opened, and Mrs Samtani appeared followed by Hari and her husband. The small room bulged with agitation.

‘Without even our presence so many things seem to have been decided,’ Mrs Samtani icily observed. ‘In Mahim we have a very good lady doctor. Already she has attended to Lakshmi, and given medicine. On the phone I gave Mr Hathiramani instructions.’

‘It was a matter of life and death, an emergency. You were not available.’ Rekha tried to raise her voice, but it seemed instead to disappear within her.

‘This morning she was all right. There was nothing wrong with her,’ Hari said, pushing out his lower lip.
He stepped up to the bed to glance at Lakshmi. He shrugged and turned away. Mr Samtani concentrated upon his bare toes in open sandals.

‘A few days ago there was a miscarriage. Our lady doctor came to see her. There is no need for a hospital, we will take her home. Why waste money here?’ Mrs Samtani spoke shrilly.

‘She has had an operation.’ Sham’s voice was curt. Jyoti had explained things to him when he arrived.

‘For what has she had an operation?’ Mrs Samtani shrieked. Behind her Hari glared. ‘Who is to pay for this? We have no money to squander on unnecessary operations. No more than medicine was required. What is the meaning of this?’ There was a sudden silence in the room. Rekha began to sob again. Only Chachi raised her voice.

‘From the beginning I was against this match. But my voice was not heard.’ She sniffed and pulled her veil over her head, and began to count her prayer beads.

‘I demand an explanation,’ Mrs Samtani screamed. The room remained silent about her. A nurse entered to take Lakshmi’s blood pressure, and Mrs Samtani turned upon her with the same demand. The nurse looked surprised, but spoke in a matter-of-fact way after a quick glance about the silent faces. At her
explanation
a shadow passed over Mrs Samtani’s face. As the nurse shut the door she broke into a wail.

‘She has dared to deliberately deny me my
grandchild
? I thought it was a natural miscarriage. What kind of girl is this? For what reason has she done this thing?’ Mrs Samtani began to sob and had to be helped to a chair before she spoke again.’

‘She is a wicked girl. I will tell you why she has done this.’ Her face was charged with fierce expression. ‘From the beginning she has refused to adapt to our family. Every love has been shown her, but we are not
good enough for her. She is a devil who makes my son’s life a misery.’ Mrs Samtani smothered more sobs in her handkerchief before continuing. ‘When she found she was expecting, she knew she would have to remain with us: this she could not bear. She got rid of the child herself by some method, so that she would be free to run back to her family. Our doctor told her there was a danger of miscarriage, she saw this as an opportunity to end her pregnancy. Oh God, what karma to have such a girl in our house, and not even a full settlement given.’

Suddenly everyone in the room began to speak at once. In the noise Lakshmi stirred, opened her eyes and whimpered. Another nurse appeared.

‘Clear this room at once,’ she ordered. ‘The patient must rest. How will she do so in this circus?’

‘I shall stay the night with her,’ Mrs Samtani decided. ‘In spite of all, I am not a woman to neglect my duty.’

‘I am the mother, it is my duty to stay.’ Rekha remained determinedly seated on the spare bed. If Mrs Samtani was allowed to stay she would twist it about, and claim Rekha had neglected her duty as a mother. She was besides too dazed by all Mrs Samtani had said to have strength enough to leave.

‘I shall also remain,’ Chachi announced. ‘While Rekha sleeps, I will watch.’

‘Let only the mother remain,’ the nurse ordered firmly, standing, hands on hips, to see them all depart.

*

The sun was sliding in a fiery blaze over the horizon, when Jyoti returned to Sadhbela. The sea had turned grey with approaching night, and had a cold, repelling look. The children, long since returned from school, had been fed and attended to by the ayah. During the day Jyoti had spoken over the phone several times to the servants, ordering a lunch for Prakash and
Lokumal
,
issuing instructions about the children. She had told the cook to do as he wished for dinner, too tired to think herself. She had forgotten the chicken, cooked that morning, and found now that he had ignored it, storing it away in the back of the fridge. He had
prepared
instead a meal of Lokumal’s favourite dishes.

‘What about the chicken?’ Jyoti asked, holding open the door of the refrigerator, feeling slighted.

‘I have cooked according to the children’s
suggestions
. They have ordered me to prepare these things in secret, as a surprise for their grandfather,’ the cook replied.

As soon as Jyoti had entered the flat the sound of Lokumal’s voice, still intoning his prayer, had engulfed her. Frankincense smoked in a corner of the lounge, billowing up in clouds from a small clay brazier. Thin sticks of incense were stuck in profusion about the room in every possible container. Jyoti coughed and waved her handkerchief about.

‘This also has been done with the children’s
instructions
,’ the cook informed her. ‘They are with Lokumat sahib now, in his room.’

Jyoti pushed open Lokumal’s door. It stuck halfway upon a draught protector she had once bought him, at a school bazaar. The smell of frankincense hit her again, as did the loud and hollow magnification of Lokumal’s voice, rising from a tape recorder.

He sat upon his bed. Astride the bolsters sat the
children
, as if they rode plump animals. They bounced up and down, reciting the prayer with Lokumal, in sequence with the tape recorder. Lokumal’s eyes were closed in concentration as he conducted with a single
finger, held up high before them all. Nobody noticed Jyoti.

*

When they were free of the routine of the day, the children had run to Lokumal’s room. They climbed upon his knees as he sat on his bed, amidst the leafy piles of Swamiji’s writings, and the drone of prayer. It was some days since they had been allowed to visit him in their usual manner.

‘Tell us stories, Grandad,’ they cried. ‘Tell us
something
exciting, like you always do.’

He had settled down at once with them to an old favourite. The children rested against him, sucking their thumbs. Lokumal loved to recite the old religious legends, as real to himself as to the children. The three bodies amongst the bolsters tensed as one, bracing themselves for the next, terrible, well-loved scene.

‘And then Ravana sat in fury, devising means to conquer Rama. He gnashed his teeth and bit his lips and then laughed and went with Big-belly, Squint-eye and Great-flank to the field of battle, boasting, “I shall make an end of Rama and Lakshman today.” Nor could the monkeys stand before him, but were destroyed like flies in fire. But Sugriva engaged in a single fight with Squint-eye and made an end of him….’

Beneath Lokumal’s impassioned voice, the sound of prayer from the tape recorder continued as a low,
background
hum. When the story was finished the children had asked him, ‘Will you sit to eat dinner with us tonight?’

‘If the table is pure,’ he replied.

‘If your favourite food is there, you promise you will eat with us?’ Bina demanded, and Lokumal nodded and kissed her.

‘If the house too is pure, then you cannot say no,’
Ravi added, and Lokumal nodded and bent to kiss him too.

They had run from the room and ordered the cook to make a special dinner, and demanded the lighting of frankincense in a clay brazier. They themselves lit thin incense sticks, thrusting them into convenient
containers
, to perfume the room still further.

‘There is a chicken,’ the cook had pointed out.

‘Such things are impure,’ they replied, looking regretfully at the bird as it reclined upon a dish, for they liked a piece of chicken.

‘It is to be a surprise,’ they said, and pressed their fingers to their lips until the cook agreed.

*

Jyoti retreated quietly to her room and turned on the light, glad of a few moments by herself before Prakash returned. Her head thumped painfully. She returned to the living room, extracted from a cupboard a bottle of brandy secreted there, and poured herself a glass. Soon, she thought, such things need no longer be
ridiculously
hidden, but displayed in splendour for all to see. This triumph refused suddenly to yield any pleasure.

She sat on the edge of the bed and sighed, depressed. In the course of the day she felt as though she had grown old, sullen and enfeebled. It had all to do with Lakshmi. She was exhausted by involvement, and unsettled in a painful way. She took a sip of the brandy, feeling its fire attack her, and lay back upon the bed. Above her hung a new and expensive lamp. She had been well into her modernization drive when she had bought it, doing what she could to herself and the house, working up courage to tackle the bigger moves forward. She wondered now what the lights were like in Lakshmi’s home upon the seventh floor, where not even the luxury of daylight was profuse. In their way the Pumnanis had thought of pushing forward, when
they married Lakshmi into the Samtani family. And the relentless Samtanis had also desired a certain grim progress in their lives. Jyoti thought then of her own life in Lokumal’s house, of the love and kindness she had always known she could depend upon. There might at times have been grumbles, but never wilful
obstruction
. Thinking again of Lakshmi, Jyoti felt her own desires, sweeping her along so fast, to be in some way ephemeral.

Lokumal’s voice penetrated the closed door to settle gently about her.

She tipped the brandy down her throat, angry again on Lakshmi’s behalf.

May seared the city. Sweat streamed from Mrs
Hathiramani
even as she sat beneath the fan, cleaning her chutney jars. In the heat before the rains the ants were a plague, and became glued to the rims of bottles. At intervals Raju spread containers upon the living-room table, for Mrs Hathiramani’s inspection. On a hot day in late May she faced the jars industriously, Raju attentive with a wet cloth. Mrs Hathiramani scraped a crust of dead ants from each bottle with a knife, her tongue thrust out with purpose. She squinted down into each jar, to pick out on a long-handled spoon any ants she spied within. Each vessel was wiped and recapped by Raju. From where she sat at the table Mrs Hathiramani had a clear view of her husband, sprawled upon pillows on their teak bed. The front door stood open as always. Every so often the clanking of the lift grew near, came level and passed on. Mr Hathiramani looked up lethargically and did not record these
sightings
; the work of translating Shah Abdul Latif engrossed him entirely. He had grown tired and
irritable
lately, and was caught by a thirst no amount of liquid assuaged.

‘Donkey,’ Mrs Hathiramani roared at Raju, to
alleviate
anxiety about her husband. ‘That cloth is full of ants. You are only putting back into the bottles with your wiping all the ants I am taking out. Go and wash the cloth.’

Raju shrugged. ‘Half the ants, Memsahib, you are anyway always leaving inside. You cannot see them properly.’

Mrs Hathiramani turned upon him, but Raju ran off
down the corridor. Mrs Hathiramani resumed her work, her sapphire gleaming on her hand. She had set the stone in a ring, its contact with her flesh was
constant
. She had continued to feed the cow. Within a few weeks Saturn would move out of the House of the Sun, and leave her in safety at last.

Once more the lift approached. Mr Hathiramani did not raise his head until it stopped outside his door. Mrs Samtani emerged and, without ringing the bell or polite hesitation, marched up the corridor and into the living room to stand before Mrs Hathiramani.

Mrs Samtani sat stiffly upon a couch of red rexine, and fixed Mrs Hathiramani with a cold stare. ‘You are to blame for the present situation. We trusted your judgement of Lakshmi, and this is the result,’ Mrs Samtani said. ‘You have ruined Hari’s life.’

‘Raju. O, Raju. Bring one Thums Up drink and cashew nut sweet,’ Mrs Hathiramani yelled down the corridor to the kitchen.

‘I will not take food or drink in this house,’ Mrs Samtani insisted coldly. A blue plastic handbag with a pink flower at the clasp was settled upon her knees. ‘Responsibility is yours. We want the thing finished. We have been tricked, and now we have learned from the doctor that she can never have children. It will be no problem for us to get a divorce. Go and tell her family.’

‘Raju. O, Raju. Hurry up, donkey,’ Mrs
Hathiramani
implored.

‘You fixed it up, and now you must unfix it,’ Mrs Samtani spoke grimly.

‘Oh ho,’ moaned Mrs Hathiramani, unexpectedly lost for words. Raju appeared with the cold drink.

Mrs Hathiramani clasped plump hands and rubbed her sapphire. ‘She is a good girl, before she was born we knew her parents in Sind. So much money and respect they had there.’

‘They are no longer in Sind. Here they have neither respect nor money. Had you told us this clearly we should not have proceeded with the match. My son cannot waste his life for this girl,’ Mrs Samtani retorted.

‘Oh ho,’ Mrs Hathiramani moaned softly again. ‘Drink. Eat,’ she urged. She instructed Raju to call Mrs Bhagwandas. Mrs Samtani pursed her lips and ignored the refreshment before her.

‘You saw the girl, the decision was yours,’ Mrs
Bhagwandas
said at once in a combative voice, when seated before Mrs Samtani. ‘Our job was only to give a
suggestion
. We cannot be blamed for what has occurred.’

Mrs Hathiramani nodded, feeling new strength now that Mrs Bhagwandas had arrived. ‘That is correct,’ she agreed.

Mrs Samtani grew brilliant with anger. ‘In the law court I will tell how you misled us, and ruined my son’s life. Did the family give you money to arrange things?’ Mrs Samtani yelled. Mrs Hathiramani clapped a hand to her mouth, Mrs Bhagwandas leaned back, stunned. They exchanged an anxious glance.

‘Let us seek the advice of Dada Lokumal,’ Mrs
Bhagwandas
suggested in sudden inspiration.

‘Just now I have seen Tunda Maharaj go up. Let us see what he has to say,’ Mrs Hathiramani added,
seizing
upon Mrs Bhagwandas’ idea with relief.

‘There is nothing to seek advice about. You must tell the family to take Lakshmi back, and we shall proceed with the divorce,’ Mrs Samtani retorted. ‘Holy men can do nothing in this matter.’ She stood up and turned towards the door. Mrs Hathiramani and Mrs
Bhagwandas
hurried after her.

‘Only give a little more time,’ Mrs Bhagwandas pleaded.

‘We will speak to the family once more. From
somewhere
they will get money,’ Mrs Hathiramani promised.

Mrs Samtani gave a curt nod of goodbye, and stepped into the lift. Gopal slammed the bars shut behind her with a grimace, and propelled her away down the shaft. Mrs Bhagwandas and Mrs
Hathiramani
exchanged a meaningful look and began to climb the stairs to the seventh floor, already full of words to throw at Rekha.

*

Mr Hathiramani had lowered his head to his work before the shrill voices in the outer room. He felt at one with his hero King Chanesar, in the tribulations endured by men at the universal foolishness of women. He pressed his pen to the paper, intent on translation of Latif’s ‘The Song of the Necklace’. As the sparring voices in the next room faded, he was back once more in Chanesar’s palace, with its immense rooms of marble and fine draperies, its gardens of flowers and singing birds. He saw King Chanesar, splendid in silks and jewels, distraught at the discovery that his beloved Queen Lila had sold a night in his bed to the Princess Kaunru, for a diamond necklace. Mr Hathiramani reached for a glass of water from the nearby table.

The room about him smelled of stale food, a heavy, slightly rotten odour that he had come to associate with his wife. Beyond the bed stood a glass-topped sideboard, upon which Mrs Hathiramani kept a variety of vessels, each covered by a netted fly hood. Milk stood here to cool after boiling, until the first thick cream had clotted and could be ladled off. Sweetmeats and leftovers not accommodated in the refrigerators, each gave their odour to the room. At night Mrs
Hathiramani
, never happy far from food, could raise her head and take comfort from the moonlight’s glow upon her hooded bowls. Mr Hathiramani felt suddenly
nauseous
at the pungent smell. He took another gulp of
water. In the outer room there was silence; the women had departed. He leaned back and closed his eyes.

In the beginning he had not perceived the immensity of his work. After ‘The Song of the Necklace’ there was ‘The Song of the Lake’, ‘The Song of the Desert’, ‘The Song of Songs’, ‘The Song of Battle’ and more to be translated. The titles of Shah Abdul Latif’s
Rasalo
stretched before him, filling him with sudden dread, like the sound of marching feet. He looked about the room, at the stacks of mildewing books, the piles of magazines and yellowing newspapers emanating musty fumes, the battered covers of the
Oxford
Dictionary
of
Quotations
and the
Encyclopedia
Britannica.
They seemed to press in upon him, shutting out all air. Two
flabby-jawed
politicians clasped hands and bared their teeth, staring at him from their frozen moment in time, on the cover of a magazine. A film star waved, a child implored from a drought-stricken village. Mr
Hathiramani
shrank back in his bed before the pressure of emotions rotting in their paper corpses. Paper rose like a relentless fungus about the walls of the room. He began to feel dizzy, and his breath seemed to stop in his throat. The words of his diary rose up from their page like gritty stones against his eyes. He let out a shout and dived under the sheet. And there, in the darkness, he felt the room vomit its mass of stacked words upon him. He tried to scream and could not. A black weight settled upon his eyes.

*

‘Raju. O, Raju,’ Mrs Hathiramani yelled on her return from the seventh floor and a firm talk with Rekha, who had done little more than press a hand to her mouth and sob further tears. ‘Donkey. Look at this. Where have you been?’ She stood before the chutney jars, left forgotten upon the table at Mrs Samtani’s sudden appearance. A vein of moving ants stretched across the floor and up the table leg, to spread blackly over the
jars. Mrs Hathiramani sat down in defeat before the seething table. In the next room her husband appeared to be asleep.

At last all the jars were wiped clean and the two open bottles, blackened now with ants like seeds within, had been given to the sweeper whose lack of
fastidiousness
in such things was well known. Mrs Hathiramani heaved a tired sigh and turned to the bedroom, to see about the pans of milk, boiled up in the morning and left to cool upon the sideboard.

‘Raju. O, Raju. Here, take the milk, remove the cream. Don’t flap that dirty cloth around, still there are ants upon it. Just see, now ants from the chutney have dropped into the milk.’

‘These are not ants, Memsahib.’ Raju peered closely at the milk. ‘I think this is cockroach shit.’

‘Get out,’ Mrs Hathiramani roared and turned towards the bed and her husband. He had done nothing to help her that day; all he cared about was writing and sleeping. She bent to shake him awake, but he would not rouse. She called to him loudly in sudden agitation. When he groaned at the vigour of her shaking she was angry he had forced her, in the course of several seconds, to assess the grim state of widowhood.

*

As soon as her husband appeared recovered, Mrs Hathiramani hurried down to the second floor, to
consult
once more with Bhai Sahib. He was disappointed to see Mrs Hathiramani carried none of her
cashew-nut
sweets; she rarely came to him empty-handed.

‘Today is full moon,’ he reminded her, but she appeared not to take the hint. She had disturbed him from his afternoon nap. He had not put on a clean
kurta
but sat before her in his vest, which rode up to reveal his navel buried in flesh above his
dhoti.
His hair was askew.

Mrs Hathiramani explained about her husband’s
abnormal exhaustion, and the stupor she had thought was death. She voiced her fear that these circumstances were the result of Mrs Watumal’s malevolence, as
predicted
by Tunda Maharaj. Bhai Sahib yawned,
showing
stained, brown teeth.

‘There is no black magic from Mrs Watumal,’ he declared. ‘This is the work of Saturn. All these weeks Saturn was quiet because of our precautions.’ He yawned again.

‘All you ordered I have done. Why then is Mr
Hathiramani
so ill?’ Mrs Hathiramani asked, her face
knotted
in distress.

‘Soon Saturn will move out of the House of the Sun. Before he leaves he wishes to show his full strength. I will perform another rite, but it will cost,’ Bhai Sahib warned, with a shrewd wag of his head.

Mrs Hathiramani nodded mutely, and left Bhai Sahib’s temple in a state of uncomfortable agitation. She rattled the bars of the lift but received no response, and began to climb the stairs distractedly. Each landing was strewn with somnolent servants, released briefly from work to the mid-afternoon. Mrs Hathiramani passed without finding reasons for reprimand. She appeared not even to notice Raju, squatting with a cigarette outside her front door. He rushed back in behind her.

‘Memsahib, are you all right?’ he asked, alarmed at such docility. Mrs Hathiramani began to cry.

‘I bring you tea?’ Raju offered. ‘Or one Thums Up drink?’ Mrs Hathiramani shook her head and sank down on her rexine sofa. She did not agree with Bhai Sahib that Mrs Watumal had worked no magic, but she realized this too was the evil intent of Saturn, who now controlled her life. The illness of her husband and his obsession with work that boiled up his brains, the terrible business with Lakshmi, for which she and Mrs Bhagwandas now were blamed and that threatened to
take them to a court, even Mrs Watumal’s magic, all were the work of Saturn. Raju appeared anxiously beside her.

‘See, Memsahib, I have made tea,’ he said. ‘I will pour it out for you.’ Mrs Hathiramani took the cup Raju offered and drank it gratefully.

*

The monsoon broke early that season. For days the sky darkened with threatening clouds. Mrs Hathiramani played Ludo with Raju on the table where she had cleaned her chutney jars the week before, and from where she could keep an eye on her husband. He
listened
to no one, and grew more feverish over his work. He refused to shave regularly and sometimes to bath. A grey stubble covered his cheeks. He complained at times he could not see. He did not leave the house.

‘You are also now blinding yourself,’ Mrs
Hathiramani
had warned, no longer able to hide her distress. ‘Only rest a few weeks, then Saturn will move and we shall be safe.’

‘My glasses need changing, nothing more,’ Mr Hathiramani insisted. Mrs Hathiramani thought of
pilgrimages
, but was afraid to leave the house for reasons different from her husband. Out in the streets she felt vulnerable to Saturn. She no longer went to Crawford Market on Thursday mornings with Mrs Bhagwandas. Warrens of roads, thousands of eyes, dark bodies, the great arc of the sky and the high odoriferous roof of the market, filled her now with terror. She sat before her refrigerators and took comfort from their contents, handling the fruit and vegetables, poking into the small bowls of leftovers, examining the condition of the butter.