Four days later my mother’s letter came; she had written on a yellow paper with a pencil: “. . . I gave my signature not because I was happy about it but because otherwise the lawyer would not go from here, and your uncle would not let him stay in peace. It is all confusing to me. I’m sick of everything. I signed without your uncle’s knowledge, when he was away in the garden, so that the lawyer might leave this place without any damage to his person. Anyway, what does it all mean? Your lawyer mentioned that you are looking for a new house for that woman. If it is so, I’ll come back to live in my old house. After all, I wish to spend the rest of my days in my own house.” It was good of my mother to have set aside her own anger and written to me. I felt touched by her solicitude. I was troubled by her desire to come back. I could understand it, but I resisted the idea. It seemed best to let the Sait take the home and be done with it once for all. Who wanted this ramshackle house anyway? To have Mother live in the house, I should have to pay a rent to the Sait. Who would look after her? I was so busy. I rationalized in all possible ways and put away her letter without a reply. I moved to another house and became very busy, and in all the rush quietened my conscience. I felt sorry, but I rationalized: “After all her brother is dear to her, and he will look after her. Why should she come here and live all alone?”
I had three or four grades of visitors. Some I received on the veranda; these were musicians or aspiring musicians who wanted a chance to accompany Nalini. I was offhand with them. About ten such asked for an interview with me every day. They were always waiting on the outer veranda to have a chance to speak to me. I went in and out, hardly noticing them. They respectfully rose at the sight of me and saluted, and if they intercepted me I kept up a show of giving them a hearing, and then said, “Leave your address with my clerk there. If there is anything that can be done, I’ll ask him to call you up.” When they flourished a batch of testimonials I snatched a brief look at them and said, “Good, good. But there is nothing I can do now. Leave your name in the office”—and I passed on. My outer veranda was cluttered with benches on which people sat and waited all day to have a chance to speak to me. I treated them with the scantiest attention. I left them to guess when I would come to my table. Sometimes obscure composers turned up with new songs especially created for Nalini’s benefit. Sometimes when I sat at the office table I did not mind if they peeped in and took their chance to speak to me. I never offered this class of visitor a chair, but did not mind if he pulled one up and sat down. When I wanted to dispose of him, I pushed my chair back and went in abruptly, leaving it to my secretary to see him off. Sometimes I observed how big a crowd waited for me outside, through the glass window in the hall, and I made a strategic exit through a side door, straight on to the garage, and from there dashed to the gate, while the visitors looked on helplessly. I felt vastly superior to everyone.
Apart from those that came as supplicants, there were others who approached me with genuine offers of engagement. They were the higher grade of visitors. I received them on the hall sofa and rang the bell for coffee. I offered my inner circle of visitors coffee day and night. Our coffee bill alone amounted to three hundred a month, enough to maintain a middle-class family in comfort. The appointments in the hall were all expensive—brass inlaid trays, ivory knickknacks, group photographs with Nalini in the middle. Sitting in that hall and looking round, I had the satisfaction of feeling that I had arrived.
Where was Nalini in all this? Away out of sight. She spent a great part of the day in her rehearsal hall with her musicians. One could hear the stamping of feet and the jingle of anklets on the upper floor. After all, she was living the life she had visualized. Visitors had always a hope that they might get a glimpse of her passing in or out of the house. I knew what they were looking for, with their shifty looks darting at the inner doorway. But I took care to see that no one saw her. I had a monopoly of her and nobody had anything to do with her. If anyone ventured to ask for her I said, “She is busy,” or “No need to trouble her. You have told me; that is enough.” I resented anyone’s wanting to make a direct approach to her. She was my property. This idea was beginning to take root in my mind.
There were, however, a few friends of the inner circle whom I took upstairs to her room. It was a very eclectic group. They had to be my intimates; I had had no friends at all formerly; my friendship was now sought after by others. I was on back-slapping terms with two judges, four eminent politicians of the district whose ward could bring ten thousand votes at any moment for any cause, and two big textile-mill owners, a banker, a municipal councilor, and the editor of The Truth, a weekly, in which an appreciation of Nalini appeared from time to time. These men could come into my hall without appointment, demand coffee, and ask loudly, “Where is Nalini? Upstairs? Well, I think I’ll see her for a moment and go.” They could go up, talk to her, order coffee, and stay on as long as they pleased. They addressed me as “Raj,” familiarly. I liked to hobnob with them because they were men of money or influence.
Apart from them, sometimes musicians or actors or other dancers called on Nalini and spent hours and hours with her. Nalini enjoyed their company immensely, and I often saw them in her hall, some lying on carpets, some sitting up, all talking and laughing, while coffee and food were being carried to them. I occasionally went up and chatted with them—always with a feeling that I was an interloper in that artistic group. Sometimes it irritated me to see them all so happy and abandoned. I signaled to Nalini to come over to the bedroom, as if for a big, important aside, and when she closed the door I whispered, “How long are they going to stay?”
“Why?”
“They have been here the whole day and may go on till night—”
“Well, I like their company. It’s good of them to visit us.”
“Oh, as if we had no one else to visit us.”
“It’s all right. How can I tell them to go? And it makes me happy to be with them.”
“Surely; I’m not denying it. But remember, you have to rest and we have a train journey ahead. You will have to pack up, and also practice. Remember you have promised new items for the Trichy show.”
“That’s easy to manage!” she said, turning round and going back to her friends, shutting the door on me. I silently fretted. I liked her to be happy—but only in my company. This group of miscellaneous art folk I didn’t quite approve. They talked too much shop and Nalini was likely to tell them all our business secrets. She never missed a chance to get a gathering of such friends, wherever she might be. She said, “They are people with the blessing of Goddess Saraswathi on them, and they are good people. I like to talk to them.”
“You don’t know the world—they’ll be a jealous lot. Don’t you know that real artists never come together? These people come to you because they are your inferiors.”
“I’m tired of all talk of superior and inferior. What is so superior about us?” she asked in real indignation.
“Well, you know, you have more engagements than a hundred of them put together,” I said.
“That’s more money,” she said. “I don’t care much for that sort of superiority.”
Gradually arguments began to crop up between us, and that, I said, put the final husband-wife touch on our relationship. Her circle was widening. Artists of the first and second rank, music teachers, dilettantes of the town, schoolgirls who wanted ideas for their school functions, all kinds of people asked to see her. Wherever possible I turned them back, but if they managed to slip through and get upstairs, I could do nothing about it. Nalini kept them for hours and would hardly let them go back.
“I want you to keep an idea before you of where you are going next.”
“Not necessary,” she cried. “What am I going to do, looking at those dates?” She rolled it up and put it in my hand. “Don’t show it to me. It only frightens me to see so many engagements,” she said. When I told her to get ready for the train, she got ready; when I asked her to come down, she came down; she got in and out
of trains at my bidding. I don’t know if she ever noticed what town we were in or what sabha or under whose auspices a show was being held. It was all the same, I think, whether it was Madras City or Madura, or a remote hill town like Ootacamund. Where there was no railway, a car came to fetch us from the railhead. Someone met us at the platform, led us to a limousine waiting outside, and drove us to a hotel or a bungalow. Our circus of accompanying musicians was taken away in a bunch and berthed comfortably somewhere. I kept this lot in good humor by fussing about their comfort. “They are our accompanists. I hope you have made proper arrangements for them too.”
“Yes, yes, sir. We’ve reserved two large rooms for them.”
“You must send them a car later to bring them over to our place.” I always made it a point to collect them and keep them handy two hours ahead of a show. They were a timeless lot, those instrumental players; they slept, or went shopping, or sat around playing cards—never looking at a clock. Handling them was an art—they had to be kept in good humor; otherwise they could ruin a whole evening and blame it on mood or fate. I paid them well. I kept up a show of looking after them, but I kept aloof. I was careful to see that they assumed no familiarity with Nalini.
If the show was at six, I generally insisted upon Nalini’s resting until four o’clock in the afternoon. If we were guests in a house, she generally liked to sit around with the womenfolk and chat endlessly with them. But I went up to her and said with a good deal of firm kindness, “I think you had better rest a while; the train journey last night was not very comfortable,” and she finished the sentence she was uttering or hearing and came up to our guest room.
She felt annoyed at my interference. “Why should you come and pull me out of company? Am I a baby?” I expostulated with her that it was for her own good that I did so. I knew it was only a partial truth. If I examined my heart I knew I had pulled her out because I did not like to see her enjoy other people’s company. I liked to keep her in a citadel.
If there was a train to catch after the show, I managed to have a car waiting ready to take us to the station. I had food brought to us on the train in silver or stainless-steel vessels, and we had our supper in the privacy of our compartment. But it was a brief, short-lived relief, as it soon began all over again, getting down at another station, going through another performance, and off again. When we visited places of importance, she sometimes asked to be taken to see a famous temple or a shop or some local sight. I always replied, “Yes, yes. Let us see if we can fit it in,” but it was never done, as I always had to catch another train so as to fulfill another engagement. We were going through a set of mechanical actions day in and day out—the same receptions at the station, fussy organizers, encounters, and warnings, the same middle sofa in the first row, speeches and remarks and smiles, polite conversation, garlands and flash photos, congratulations, and off to catch the train—pocketing the most important thing, the check. Gradually I began to say, not “I am going to Trichy for a performance by Nalini,” but “I am performing at Trichy on Sunday, on Monday I have a program . . .” and then, “I can dance in your place only on . . .” I demanded the highest fee, and got it, of anyone in India. I treated those that came to ask for a show as supplicants, I had an enormous monthly income, I spent an enormous amount on servants and style, and I paid an enormous amount of income tax. Yet I found Nalini accepting it all with a touch of resignation rather than bouncing contentment. She had seemed such a happy creature in our old house, even when my uncle was bullying her.
We were in a train when she said it. I asked her, “What makes you say so?”
“I love jasmine.”
“Not the check that comes with it?”
“What is one to do with so much? All day long and all through the week you are collecting checks, and more and more often. But when is the time coming when we can enjoy the use of those checks?”
“Well, you have a big household, a big car and whatnot—is that not enjoyment of life?”
“I don’t know,” she said, remaining moody. “How I wish I could go into a crowd, walk about, take a seat in the auditorium, and start out for an evening without having to make up or dress for the stage!”
Some dangerous weariness seemed to be coming over her. I thought it best not to prod too much. Perhaps she wanted fewer engagements, but that was not possible. I asked, “You are not saying that your legs are aching, are you?”
It had the desired effect. It pricked her pride and she said, “Certainly not. I can dance for several hours at each show. Only you want me to stop.”
“Yes, yes; true,” I cried. “Otherwise you would be fatiguing yourself.”
“Not only that; you also want to catch the train—though what will be lost if we catch the next day’s, I don’t know—”
I didn’t allow her to finish her sentence. I called her flatteringly a shrewd girl, laughed and enjoyed it as a joke, fondled her, and made her forget the subject. I thought it was a dangerous line of thought. It seemed absurd that we should earn less than the maximum we could manage. My philosophy was that while it lasted the maximum money had to be squeezed out. We needed all the money in the world. If I were less prosperous, who would care for me? Where would be the smiles which greeted me now wherever I turned, and the respectful agreement shown to my remarks when I said something to the man in the next chair? It filled me with dread that I should be expected to do with less. “If we don’t work and earn when the time is good, we commit a sin. When we have a bad time no one will help us.” I was planning big investments as soon as possible—as soon as we could count on a little more margin. As it was, the style of living and entertaining which I had evolved was eating up all our resources.
Sometimes she said, “Spending two thousand a month on just two of us. Is there no way of living more simply?”
“Leave that to me; we spend two thousand because we have to. We have to maintain our status.” After a good deal of thought, I ran the bank account in her name. I didn’t want my creditors to get at me again. My adjournment lawyer was proceeding at his own pace, sometimes coming to me for a signature or funds, and managing things without bothering me. Nalini signed any check I asked her to sign. One thing I must add: whenever I was in town I gathered a big circle of friends and we played cards practically twenty-four hours at a stretch. I had set apart a room for the purpose and I had two personal servants serving tea and coffee and even food on the spot; and we had surreptitious drinks too, although there was prohibition in force—well, the prohibition law was not for a man of my influence. I had managed to get a medical certificate to say that I needed alcohol for my welfare. Although I myself cared very little for drink, I hugged a glass of whisky for hours. “Permit-holder” became a social title in our land and attracted men of importance around me, because the permit was a difficult thing to acquire. I showed respect for law by keeping the street window shut when serving drink to non-permit folk. All kinds of men called me “Raj” and slapped my back. We played Three-Cards sometimes for two days at a stretch; I changed a two-thousand-rupee check for the purpose, and expected those who came there to meet me on equal terms. Through my intimacy with all sorts of people, I knew what was going on behind the scenes in the government, at the market, at Delhi, on the race-course, and who was going to be who in the coming week. I could get a train reservation at a moment’s notice, relieve a man summoned to jury work, reinstate a dismissed official, get a vote for a cooperative election, nominate a committee man, get a man employed, get a boy admitted to a school, and get an unpopular official shifted elsewhere, all of which seemed to me important social services, an influence worth buying at the current market price.
He held the book open. I snatched it from him. It was a book by Marco, a book full of illustrations and comments. “See page 158” read a penciled message. I turned it over, and there it was, the heading “Mempi Cave Pictures.” At the head of the chapter was a brief line to say, “The author is obliged to acknowledge his debt to Sri. Raju o
f Malgudi Railway Station for his help.” The book was from a firm of publishers in Bombay, with their compliments, sent by instructions of the author. It was a gorgeous book costing twenty rupees, full of art plates, a monograph on The Cultural History of South India. It was probably an eminent work on the subject, but beyond me.
I told the secretary, “I’ll keep it. It’s all right.” I turned the pages. Why did the boy bring it up as a special matter? Did he know who was who? Or—? I dismissed the idea. It must have been because he was rather taken by the blue and gold of the binding and the richness of the material. He must have feared that if he didn’t draw my attention to it, I might probably demand an explanation. That was all. So I said, “Thank you, I’ll read it.” And then I sat wondering what I should do about it. Should I take it upstairs to Nalini or—? I told myself, “Why should she be bothered with this? After all, it is a piece of academic work, which has bored her sufficiently.” I turned it over again, to see if there was any letter enclosed. No. It was impersonal, like the electricity bill. I turned to page 158 and reread his note. It was thrilling to see my name in print. But why did he do it? I lost myself in speculating on his motives. Was it just to keep his word because he had promised, or could it be to show that he’d not forgotten me so lightly? Anyway, I thought it would be best to put the book away. I carried it to my most secret, guarded place in the house—the liquor chest, adjoining the cardroom, the key of which I carried next to my heart—stuffed the volume out of sight, and locked it up. Nalini never went near it. I did not mention the book to her. After all, I told myself, “What has she to do with it? The book is sent to me, and the acknowledgment is of my services.” But it was like hiding a corpse. I’ve come to the conclusion that nothing in this world can be hidden or suppressed. All such attempts are like holding an umbrella to conceal the sun.