‘Oh, I didn’t notice,’ Margayya said, and went up. The man looked up from his papers and asked: ‘What can I do for you?’ He pointed at an iron chair. Margayya sat down, placed his manuscript before him and said with a lot of self-assurance: ‘I wish to have this book printed. Can you take it on?’
‘That I can say only after going through the manuscript.’
‘Go on, read it.’
‘I have no time now. You can leave it here.’
‘Impossible,’ said Margayya. ‘I am not prepared to leave it with anyone. You can go through it here while I wait.’
‘I’ve other business.’
‘I’ve also other business. I have come to you for printing, not for any other business. If you are not prepared to take it on, say so,’ and he put out his arms towards the manuscript.
‘Oh, no, don’t lose your patience,’ the other pleaded. ‘I was only –’ He picked up the manuscript and glanced at the title page: ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed. And then he passed on. Every chapter-heading and every page seemed to fascinate him. He kept exclaiming, ‘Ah!’ ‘Ah!’ and Margayya sat before him and watched with complete aloofness. He admired himself for it. ‘This is the right attitude to cultivate in business. If we show the slightest hesitation or uneasiness others are only too ready to swallow us up.’ Proof-bearers came up and waited around until Lai should look up. An accountant stood there with an open ledger in his hand, waiting to catch his attention. Lai kept exclaiming, ‘Ah! Ah!’ every few seconds. His staff stood around in a circle. ‘Get out of the way everyone and give me light,’ he suddenly shouted. The accountant alone came up and said undaunted: ‘This is urgent.’ He placed the fat book on the manuscript; Lai snatched a minute to look into it, and pushed it away. When his accountant showed signs of looking over his shoulder, he said brusquely: ‘Don’t try to see what people are reading. Go away.’ And the accountant went away. Lai looked for a moment at Margayya and said: ‘The curiosity some people have! They have a lot of unhealthy curiosity about all sorts of things.’
Margayya said: ‘Are you going to read through the entire manuscript?’
‘Yes,’ said the other. ‘Otherwise, how can I know whether I can print it or not?’
‘Have I to sit here all the time?’ asked Margayya.
‘Why not? That’s what you said you would do. Otherwise you may go out and return.’
What was the man proposing? Margayya reflected. Perhaps he had some dark design. No, even if it took a whole day, he would sit up there. Never go out of sight of those papers. ‘I will wait here,’ said Margayya. ‘Go through it fast.’
‘Yes, yes,’ the other cut in impatiently. ‘Don’t disturb me.’
Papers continued to come to him. Lai was indifferent. Proofs piled up on his table. Attenders waited around for approval of copy. The accountant came up again and again for his signature on a leather-bound book. Lai snapped at him and signed. And then he pushed the other papers unceremoniously off his table saying: ‘No one is to come near me till I am through with this piece of work: this is very urgent and important. Don’t you see this gentleman waiting?’ The machine-room foreman came up presently. He hovered about, cleared his throat, and ventured to say: ‘The School report, sir. The machine is idle.’
‘Oh!’ he replied, then rummaged amongst his papers, snatched a proof, and after the briefest glance at it, flung it at him. ‘Go ahead.’
It was one o’clock in the afternoon when Lai looked up and said: ‘I’m hungry, and yet I have not finished. Still thirty pages more. I have to go home. You wouldn’t leave this with me, I suppose!’
‘No,’ said Margayya resolutely. ‘How can I?’
‘Then you come along with me for lunch.’
Margayya felt worried. This man from the North – God knew what he ate at home: perhaps beef and pork and strange spices. How could he go and sit with him? He said bluntly: ‘I have already had my food.’
‘That’s excellent; come along with me.’
‘No, I have to go home.’
‘Why should you if you have had your dinner already?’
‘I have got some other business.’
‘Then what do you want me to do? Sit here with this, forgoing my meal, is that it?’
‘As you please. You must have read enough of it to know what to tell me.’
‘Be reasonable, Mister,’ he appealed. ‘If you give me a little more time, I will finish it and then I shall be in a position to discuss the matter with you.’
‘Then go on,’ Margayya said. ‘I am not preventing your reading further.’
The other hammered on the call bell impatiently till an attendant came up and stood before him: ‘Go home and tell them I’m not coming for my meal today. Send somebody and get something from the restaurant for two.’
Coffee and several plates arrived. Lai pushed away all the papers to make space for the plates and invited Margayya to eat. He kept the manuscript on his lap, his eyes running down the lines; his fingers strayed towards the plates on the table and carried the food to his mouth as if they had an independent life of their own. He looked up for a brief moment at Margayya and said: ‘Go on, go on, make yourself comfortable.’
Margayya had some plates on his side of the table; he hesitated only for a moment, and then said to himself: ‘Why not?’ He was hungry. He had had a sparse meal hours ago. They had put before him many tempting coloured sweets and coffee. ‘This is indeed lucky,’ he reflected. ‘This is good tiffin. It’d have cost me over a rupee.’ He ate the jilebis, and wondered if it would be proper to carry a bit of it home for little Balu. He was racked with a feeling that he was stealing some delicacy which ought to have gone to his child.
‘Make yourself comfortable,’ Lai said hospitably from time to time without lifting his eyes from the manuscript.
Margayya noticed that the other was a voracious eater, and polished off all sorts of oddments in a lump, it didn’t matter what. ‘That’s why he is so hefty,’ Margayya reflected. ‘He is not a half-fed, half-starving business man like me. That’s why he is able to command so much business and income.’
When the plates were removed, Lai wiped his mouth with a handkerchief, looked at Margayya and announced: ‘I have finished reading the book.’
‘Well, what do you think you can do?’
‘It’s an interesting book, no doubt.’
‘It’s a book that must be read by everybody,’ Margayya added.
‘No, no, don’t say that; it’s not fit for everybody’s reading. For instance, if a young unmarried person reads it –’
‘He will know a lot of facts beforehand,’ Margayya said; and this established a greater communion between the two.
Lai said: ‘Mister, I must consult my lawyer first.’
‘What has a lawyer to do with it?’ Margayya asked. The mention of a lawyer was distasteful to him.
‘The trouble is,’ said the other, ‘I must know if it comes under the obscenity law. There is such a law you know. They may put us both in prison.’
‘It’s not obscene. It’s a work of sociology.’
‘Oh, is it? Then there is no trouble. But I’d like to be told that by a lawyer. Will you please come again tomorrow at this time?’
‘What for?’
‘I will have discussed the matter with my lawyer, and then I shall be able to tell you something. If only you could leave the book with me!’
‘That I can’t do,’ said Margayya, sensing another effort on the part of the printer to get at the manuscript. He added for emphasis: ‘That I can’t do, whatever may happen.’
‘Won’t you come with me to the lawyer?’
‘When?’ asked Margayya, with a profound air of having to consider his engagement diary.
‘Sometime tomorrow.’
Margayya sat considering. It was no use going to a lawyer. The thought of a lawyer was distasteful to him. The Co-operative Society Secretary was a lawyer. All lawyers were trouble-makers. Moreover, why should he cheapen himself
before this man? He said: ‘Impossible. I have a busy day tomorrow. I can probably drop in just for a few minutes if you like, that is if you are going to tell me definitely yes or no.’ He added: ‘I came to you because yours is the biggest establishment. I knew you could do it, although a dozen other printers were ready to take on the job.’
‘Ours is the best and biggest press,’ Lai said haughtily. ‘You will not be able to get this service anywhere else, so much I can assure you.’
‘What will be your charge?’
‘I can tell you all that only after we decide to take on the work.’
‘Will you require a long time to print the book?’ Margayya persisted.
‘I will tell you tomorrow,’ Lai said.
Margayya said: ‘You are a very cautious man. You don’t like to commit yourself to anything.’
‘That’s right,’ the other said appreciatively, sensing a kindred soul. For among business men as among statesmen, the greatest dread was to be committed to anything. Being non-committal was the most widely recognized virtue among business men and it came to Margayya instinctively as his other qualities came to him. The musician hums the right note at birth, the writer goes to the precise phrase in the face of an experience, whereas for the business man the greatest gift is to be able to speak so many words which seem to signify something, but don’t, which convey a general attitude but are free from commitment.
Next day Margayya tidied himself up more than ever and was at the press at the appointed time. He still carried his manuscript securely wrapped in a paper sheet. The moment he entered the press he had a feeling that all was going to go well. He went straight up to Lai and asked: ‘Well, what does your lawyer say?’
‘We can take it if you agree to a couple of small conditions.’
‘You can speak your mind freely,’ Margayya said, encouragingly. ‘In business we either conclude a deal or we don’t, but there is no room for mincing words. If you don’t want it here, I can take it somewhere else,’ he added.
‘No, no, don’t say such a thing, Mister,’ the other said. ‘I don’t like negative statements to be made in this press.’
‘I don’t like negative statements myself unless I am forced to make them,’ said Margayya, discovering instinctively yet another principle of business life: to have the last word. He concluded that he who spoke last gained most. He was burning with anxiety to know if the other would print the book, for he seemed to be a man who knew his job. Margayya looked about and asked in a business-like manner: ‘What are the two conditions you mentioned just now?’
‘I will take up the printing provided it’s done on a basis of partnership.’
‘What’s the partnership for?’
‘Well, that will make our work more interesting. Let us publish it together, and share whatever we get. I mean fifty-fifty in everything; expenses as well as returns. Do you agree?’
Margayya took a little time before answering: ‘I won’t say “Yes” or “No” before thinking over it deeply. What’s your second condition?’
‘You must indemnify me against any legal action that anyone may take at any time.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You must bear the legal responsibility for bringing out this book.’
‘I see!’ said Margayya with deep suspicion. ‘Why?’
‘It’s because you are bringing it out.’
‘If I am bringing it out, you have nothing to do with it except to print it, isn’t that so? Then why do you ask for profits? How are you concerned with profits?’
For a moment the other looked a little confused, but soon recovered enough composure to say: ‘I mean to propose a non-liability partnership.’
Margayya was taken in by the high-sounding phrase. What did it mean? It meant evidently sharing his profits, not his troubles.
He said: ‘I’ve done a variety of business. I’m experienced in different kinds of partnership.’
‘What business were you doing before?’ asked Lai.
‘Chiefly banking,’ Margayya said. ‘You know when a man is a banker he is at once involved in a number of other things too,’ picturing himself writing a letter here for a villager and arranging a joint-loan for another there.
Lai seemed to appreciate this. He said: ‘We have a bank in Gujerat, but you know it also deals in oil-seeds in certain seasons.’
‘It’s inevitable,’ Margayya said, with an air of profundity.
‘It’s impossible not to be interested in more than one business,’ added Lai.
They went on talking far into the day. Once again lunch-time came. Once again they got their tiffin from a hotel and Margayya stuffed himself with sweets and coffee and began to feel quite at home in the press. They kept talking non-committally, warmly, discreetly and with many digressions, till late in the evening, but without concluding anything. Their talk, and counter-talk never ceased, and the manuscript lay between. At about six they dramatically stretched their arms over it, shook hands and concluded the pact, whereby Margayya had the satisfaction of seeing himself a fifty-fifty partner without any investment on his part. He covered the satisfaction he had in the deal with: ‘I’m not keen on this, but you know you seem to have become such a friend to me that I find it difficult to refuse.’ He pulled a long face and signed a partnership deed with the utmost resignation. He kept saying: ‘You have won me over. You are a sharp business man,’ a compliment which Lai accepted with the utmost cheerfulness.
‘We can never be business men unless we give and take on a fifty-fifty basis,’ Lai kept saying, a proposition heartily endorsed by Margayya, although its arithmetic was somewhat complex and beyond the understanding of ordinary men.
Margayya knocked on his door with great authority. Lai had offered to drive him home in his car. But Margayya declined it definitely. He didn’t want him to see his house or street. He explained that after all the hours of sitting in a stuffy atmosphere he would prefer a walk, so as to be fit for work next day.
He knocked on his door with such authority that his wife came up hurriedly and opened it. She stood aside to let him pass in. She could not pluck up enough courage to put to him the usual irritating questions. She served him his food and then said in a forced light manner: ‘This has almost become your usual hour?’
‘Yes, it may have to be even later hereafter. I shall have to be very busy.’
‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Is that book printed?’
‘It’s not so easy,’ he replied. ‘There are many complications.’ And as she did not annoy him with further questions, he added: ‘I have almost signed a partnership agreement with a big man.’ He liked the sentence and the feeling of importance that it gave him. But he didn’t like the word ‘big’ that he had used. Reflecting, he felt he might take the word out and knock it flat lest his wife should think he really meant anyone was bigger than he. He rectified his mistake by adding: ‘Big business-man! Big! A North Indian; he thinks he is very clever, but I was able to tweak his nose –’
‘Oh!’ said his wife gratified. He seemed to acquire a new stature and importance. He finished his dinner and when he got up she was ready with a bowl of water for his hands. And then she held a towel up to him.
He was pleased with all these ministrations, thinking, ‘Yes, she is not a bad sort, except when she gets into a bad mood.’ He said aloud: ‘We can live differently hereafter, I think. A lot of money is coming in.’
The next day he had a very busy time discussing several technical matters, of which he was totally ignorant, with Lai. Lai seemed to assume that Margayya knew what he was talking about. Margayya true to his principles did not wish to show his ignorance.
Lai asked: ‘Shall we print in demy or octavo?’
What was demy and what octavo? What strange terms were these; to what universe did they belong? Margayya frankly blinked, wondering: ‘What was this man talking about?’ He said grandly: ‘Each has its own advantage, it’s for you to decide; you are a technical man.’
L
ai said: ‘You see, demy will give us greater area.’
Margayya was hearing the word for the first time in his life. He could not understand to which part of a book or press or sales the word referred. He kept himself alert, deciding not to lose any hint that might fall in the course of the other’s talk. He added: ‘If it means extra area, what other consideration can you have?’
‘It’s not only that, octavo is more handy, and will look less like a gazetteer.’
At the mention of gazetteer Margayya made a wry face: ‘Oh, no, we cannot afford to make it look like a gazetteer.’
‘In that case we will print it on octavo.’
‘All right,’ he said, permitting it graciously. ‘But as a matter of formality I shall be glad to know the difference in cost.’
‘Not much, about an anna per pound,’ Lai said.
Pound! Where did pound come in? He was about to blurt out the question, a survival of his boyhood days in the classroom where, whenever the word pound was mentioned, the immediate question was: ‘Lb Pound or Shilling Pence Pound?’ He almost opened his mouth to ask it, but pressed it back in time, remembering that it was a silly betraying question even in those days: the teacher caned all the boys who asked him that question, for it showed that they had not paid any attention to the sum they were doing. Margayya feared if he raised it the other might tear up their agreement or decide to swindle him with absolute impunity. What did they weigh in the book trade? He could understand nothing of it. He dropped it, hoping on some future occasion that he would know all about it. He had an unfailing hope that whatever there was to be known would be known by him one day. ‘Only I must keep my eyes open, and in six months I shall be able to tell them what is wrong with them,’ he thought, with much self-esteem.
Lai observed him for a moment and then said: ‘Why are you silent? You are not saying anything.’
‘It is because I have nothing to say,’ said Margayya.
‘So you accept my choice.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Margayya said, hoping this would once and for all save him from further embarrassment.
But Lai turned up with a new poser for him: ‘Shall we use ordinary ten-point Roman or another series which I use only for special works? It’s also ten-point but on an eleven-point body.’