Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Maan shook his head sadly. Rasheed’s father was telling his story without tears, but not coldly — as if he were recounting with sympathy the story of someone other than himself.

‘Well, anyway,’ he went on, ‘after his accident at the railway station, I don’t know what happened to me. I didn’t leave the house for months. My strength drained away. I was unconscious for days. He was so young. And then a little later his mother died.’

He looked up towards the house, half-turning away from Maan, and continued:

‘This house was ghostly. I don’t know what would have happened to me. I was so full of grief and weakness that I wanted to die. There was no one in the house even to offer me water.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Where is Rasheed?’ he asked somewhat coldly, turning back to Maan.

‘At the mosque, I think.’

‘Ah, yes, well, finally, Baba took me in hand and said I should pull myself together. Our religion says that the izzat, the honour of an unmarried man is half that of a married man. Baba insisted that I should get a second wife.’

‘Well, he was speaking from experience,’ said Maan with a smile.

‘Yes. Well, Rasheed has told you no doubt that Baba had three wives. We two brothers and our sister are all from different wives. He didn’t have three wives at the same time, mind you, just one wife at a time. “Marté gae, karté gae.” When one died he married another. There’s a tradition of remarriage in this family: my grandfather had four wives, my father three and I two.’

‘Why not?’

‘Why not, indeed,’ said Rasheed’s father, smiling. ‘That’s just what I thought eventually — once I’d got over my grief.’

‘And was it difficult to find a wife?’ asked Maan, intrigued.

‘Not really,’ said Rasheed’s father. ‘By the standards of this place we are well off. I was advised to get not a young woman but someone who had been married before — a widow or a woman who had been divorced. So I did get married again — it’s been about a year now — to a woman who is fifteen years younger than me — that’s not much. She’s even related to my wife — of blessed memory — in a distant way. And she handles the house well. My health has improved again. I can walk unaided to my land two miles away. My eyesight is fine, except for seeing things up close. My heart is fine. My teeth, well, my teeth were past treatment anyway. One should be married. No question about it.’

A dog began to bark. Others joined in after a while. Maan tried to veer away from the subject by saying:

‘Is she asleep? Can she sleep through all this?’

Rasheed’s father looked lovingly down at his granddaughter: ‘Yes, she’s asleep. She’s very fond of me.’

‘I noticed that when you came from the fields with the umbrella today she ran after you in the heat.’

Rasheed’s father nodded with pride.

‘When I ask her if she wants to live in Debaria or Brahmpur she always says Debaria—“because you, Dada-jaan, are here.” And once when I went to her mother’s village, she left her Nana and ran after me.’

Maan smiled to think of this passionate competitiveness between the two grandfathers. He said: ‘Presumably, Rasheed was with you.’

‘Well, he may have been. But even if he hadn’t been, she would have run after me.’

‘In that case she must love you very much,’ said Maan, laughing.

‘Indeed she does. She was born in this house — which people later began to call ill-fated and inauspicious. But in those dark days she was like a gift of God to me. It was I who pretty much brought her up. In the morning, tea — tea and biscuits! “Dada-jaan”, she’d say, “I want tea and biscuits. Cream biscuits”—none of this dry stuff. She’d tell Bittan, a maidservant here, to go and fetch her cream biscuits from my special tin. Her mother would be making the tea in a corner. And she wouldn’t eat from her mother’s hands. I had to feed her.’

‘Well, luckily now there’s another child in the house,’ said Maan. ‘To keep her company.’

‘Doubtless,’ said Rasheed’s father. ‘But Meher has decided that I belong to her alone. When she’s told that I’m her sister’s Dada too, she refuses to believe it.’

Meher shifted in her sleep.

‘There has been no child like this in the whole family,’ said Rasheed’s father definitively.

‘She seems to operate on that assumption,’ agreed Maan.

Rasheed’s father laughed, then continued: ‘She has a right to do so. Oh, I remember, there used to be an old man in this village. He had fallen out with his sons, and had come to live with his daughter and son-in-law. Well, he had a pomegranate tree, which for some reason used to bear much better fruit than ours.’

‘You have a pomegranate tree?’

‘Oh yes, of course, inside. I’ll show you some day.’

‘How?’

‘What do you mean, how?’ said Rasheed’s father. ‘It’s my house. . Oh, I see what you mean. I’ll shunt the women around as you go through. You’re a good boy,’ he said suddenly. ‘Tell me, what do you do?’

‘What do I do?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not much of anything.’

‘That’s very bad.’

‘My father thinks so too,’ agreed Maan.

‘He’s right. He’s quite right. No young men want to work these days. It’s either studies or staring at the sky.’

‘Actually I do have a cloth business in Banaras.’

‘Then what are you doing here?’ said Rasheed’s father. ‘You should be making money.’

‘Do you think I shouldn’t be here?’ asked Maan.

‘No, no — of course, you are welcome,’ said Rasheed’s father. ‘We are glad you are here as our guest. Though you have chosen a hot and boring time to come. You should visit at the time of Bakr-Id. Then you’ll see the village at its most festive. Yes, do that — remember to. . Oh, yes, pomegranates. This old man was very lively, and he and Meher made a fine pair. She knew that whenever she went to his house she’d get something. So she was always forcing me to take her there. I remember the first time he gave her a pomegranate. It wasn’t ripe. Still, we peeled it with great excitement, and she ate six or seven spoonfuls of the grains and we kept the rest for breakfast!’

An old man walked past. It was the Imam of the Debaria mosque.

‘You will drop by tomorrow evening, won’t you, Imam Sahib?’ asked Rasheed’s father in an anxious manner.

‘At this time tomorrow — yes. After the prayer,’ added the Imam in mild rebuke.

‘I wonder where Rasheed is,’ said Maan, looking at his unfinished exercises. ‘He’ll probably be returning any minute.’

‘He is probably taking a walk around the village,’ said his father in an outburst of quite virulent anger, ‘talking to all the low people. That is his style. He should show more sense of discrimination. Tell me, has he taken you to the patwari with him?’

Maan was so taken aback by the tone that he hardly registered the question.

‘The patwari. Have you visited the village patwari?’ There was a touch of iron in the voice as the question was repeated.

‘No,’ said Maan, surprised. ‘Is something the matter?’

‘No,’ said Rasheed’s father. After a pause he said: ‘Please don’t mention that I asked you this.’

‘If you like,’ said Maan readily, but he was still puzzled.

‘Well, I’ve done enough damage to your studies,’ said Rasheed’s father. ‘I’d better not disturb you any further.’ And he walked back to the house with Meher in his arms, frowning in the light of the lantern.

Maan, quite concerned now, fetched the lantern and tried to get back to reading and copying the words that Rasheed had written out for him. But Rasheed’s father was soon back, this time without Meher.