Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

But Maan, who had interpreted the negative signal correctly, had leapt over the fence in a flash, and was at the door before she could close it.

‘What?’ he said, his voice barely controlled. ‘The Begum Sahiba said that she would receive me this evening. What has happened?’

‘She is indisposed,’ said Bibbo, with great emphasis on ‘indisposed’. It was clear that Saeeda Bai was nothing of the kind.

‘Why are you annoyed with me, Bibbo?’ said Maan, helplessly. ‘What have I done that all of you should treat me this way?’

‘Nothing. But the Begum Sahiba is not receiving anyone today.’

‘Has she received anyone already?’

‘Dagh Sahib—’ said Bibbo, pretending to relent but throwing out a provocative hint instead, ‘Dagh Sahib, someone whom I might call Ghalib Sahib is with her. Even among poets there is an order of precedence. This gentleman is a good friend, and she prefers his company to that of all others.’

This was too much for Maan. ‘Who is he? Who is he?’ he cried, almost beside himself.

Bibbo could simply have told Maan that it was Mr Bilgrami, Saeeda Bai’s old admirer whom she found boring but soothing, but she was excited to have evoked such a dramatic response. Besides, she was angry with Maan and felt like giving him a spoonful or two of jealousy as punishment for her own misfortunes. Saeeda Bai had slapped Bibbo very hard several times after the kiss on the staircase, and had threatened to turn her out of the house for her shamelessness. In Bibbo’s recollection it was Maan who had initiated the kiss that had got her into all this trouble.

‘I can’t tell you who he is,’ she said, raising her eyebrows slightly. ‘Your poetic intuition should tell you.’

Maan grabbed Bibbo by the shoulders and began to shake her. But before he could get her to speak and before the watchman could come to her rescue, she had escaped from his grip and slammed the door in his face.

‘Come now, Kapoor Sahib—’ said the watchman calmly.

‘Who is he?’ said Maan.

The watchman slowly shook his head. ‘I have no memory for faces,’ he said. ‘If someone asked me if you had visited this house, I would not remember.’

Stunned by the brazen manner in which the appointment had been broken, and burning with jealousy, Maan somehow made his way back to Baitar House.

Sitting on top of the great stone gate at the entrance to the drive was a monkey. Why it was awake so late was a mystery. It snarled at him as he approached. Maan glared at it.

The monkey leapt down from the gate and rushed at Maan. If Maan had not been away in Banaras over the previous two days, he would have read in the Brahmpur Chronicle of a vicious monkey that was loose in the Pasand Bagh area. This monkey had apparently lost her mind when some schoolchildren had stoned her baby to death. She had since been charging at and biting and generally terrifying the local residents. She had attacked seven people so far, usually biting off chunks of flesh from their legs, and Maan was to be the eighth.

She charged at him with fearless malignity. Even though he did not turn and flee, she did not slacken her pace, and when she was close enough, she made a final lunge at his leg. But she had not accounted for Maan’s anger. Maan had his cane ready and gave her a blow that stopped her dead.

Into that blow went all his bodily strength and all the power of his jealousy and rage. He raised his stick again, but the monkey was lying on the road, not moving, either stunned or dead.

Maan leaned against the gate for a minute, trembling with anger and nervous shock. Then, feeling suddenly sick at himself, he walked slowly towards the house. Firoz was not in, nor Zainab’s husband, and the Nawab Sahib had retired already. But Imtiaz was up reading.

‘My dear fellow, you’ve had a shock. Is everything all right — at the hospital, I mean?’

‘I’ve just killed a monkey, I think. It charged at me. It was sitting on the gate. I need a whisky.’

‘Ah, you’re a hero,’ said Imtiaz, relieved. ‘It’s a good thing you had that stick on you. I was worried it might be Pran or Savita. The police have been trying to catch her all day. She’s bitten quite a few people already. Ice and water? Well, perhaps not such a hero if you’ve killed her. I’d better get her moved from near the house, or we’ll have a religious disturbance on our hands. But did you do anything to upset her?’

‘Upset her?’ said Maan.

‘Yes, you know, did you wave your stick at her or something? Throw a stone perhaps?’

‘Nothing,’ said Maan with great vehemence. ‘She just took one look at me and charged. And I’d done nothing to upset her. Nothing. Nothing at all.’

Everyone had told Savita that the baby would be a boy; her way of walking, the size of the bulge, and other infallible indications all pointed to a boy.

‘Think nice thoughts, read poems,’ Mrs Rupa Mehra was continually exhorting her, and this Savita tried to do. She also read a book called Learning the Law. Mrs Rupa Mehra advised Savita to listen to music, but this, since she was not particularly musical, she did not do.

The baby kicked from time to time. But sometimes it seemed to sleep for days on end. Lately it had been very quiet.

Mrs Rupa Mehra, while telling Savita to think restful thoughts, often shared her own birth experiences and those of other mothers with her. Some stories were charming, some not. ‘You were overdue, you know,’ she told Savita fondly. ‘And my mother-in-law insisted that I must try her own method of inducing labour. I had to drink a whole glass of castor oil. It’s a laxative, you know, and it was supposed to begin my birth pangs. It tasted horrible, but I felt it was my duty, so I had to drink it; it was lying on the sideboard. It was winter, I remember, bitterly cold, the middle of December—’

‘It couldn’t have been December, Ma, my birthday’s in November.’

Mrs Rupa Mehra frowned at this interruption of her reverie, but she quickly saw that the logic of it was irrefutable, and continued calmly:

‘November, yes, winter, and I saw it lying on the sideboard, and I drank it in a sudden gulp on the way to lunch. I remember we had parathas for lunch, and so on. I normally didn’t eat much, but that day I stuffed myself. But it had no effect. Then came dinner. Then your Daddy came with a pot full of my favourite sweet, rasagullas. I had one, and then I had a second, and the second one was just going down, when it suddenly felt like it had turned into a fist in my stomach! The birth pangs had begun, and I had to run.’

Savita said, ‘Ma, I think—’

But Mrs Rupa Mehra continued: ‘Our Indian remedies are the best. Now they say that in this season I should eat lots of jamuns, because they are good for diabetes.’

‘Ma, I think I’d better finish this chapter,’ said Savita.

‘Arun was the most painful,’ continued Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘You must be prepared, darling; with the first child the pain is so terrible that you want to die, and if I hadn’t thought of your Daddy I would have surely died.’

‘Ma—’

‘Savita, darling, when I’m talking to you you shouldn’t be reading that book. Reading about law is not very restful.’

‘Ma, let’s talk about something else.’

‘I am trying to prepare you, darling. Otherwise what is a mother for? I had no mother living to prepare me, and my mother-in-law was not sympathetic. Afterwards she wanted me to be in confinement for more than a month, but my father said this was all superstition and put his foot down, being a doctor himself.’

‘Is it really that painful?’ said Savita, quite frightened now.

‘Yes. Truly unbearable,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, ignoring all her own admonitions about not scaring or upsetting Savita. ‘Worse than any pain I have ever had in my life, especially with Arun. But when the baby is born, it is such a joy to behold — if everything is all right, that is. But with some babies, it is very sad, like Kamini Bua’s first child — still, such things happen,’ ended Mrs Rupa Mehra philosophically.