Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘I don’t know,’ said the Nawab Sahib, smiling. ‘But it appears to me to be a good sign.’

‘Something about his sister, I think,’ said the policeman, his pencil poised over a new page.

‘She was here before you took over,’ said the Nawab Sahib. ‘But, poor girl, she was distressed to see him in this state and did not stay long.’

‘Tasneem—’ It was Firoz’s voice.

The Nawab Sahib heard and flinched. That was her name, the name of Saeeda Bai’s daughter. He had spoken it with a terrifying tenderness.

The policeman continued to jot down whatever Firoz said.

The Nawab Sahib looked upwards in sudden fear. A lizard was climbing up the wall in an irregular wriggle, stopping and starting. He stared at it, transfixed.

‘Tasneem—’

The Nawab Sahib sighed very slowly, as if the effort of drawing and releasing breath had suddenly become painful. He released Firoz’s hand, and unconsciously joined both his own together. Then he let them fall to his side.

He tried, in his fear, to piece the words together. His first feeling was that Firoz had somehow come to learn the truth, or some part of the truth. The thought caused him such pain that he had to lean back in his chair and close his eyes. He had longed for his son to open his eyes and to see him sitting by his side. But now the thought was terrifying. When his eyes open and he finds me sitting here, what will he say to me or I to him?

Then he thought of the policeman’s dutiful note-taking. What would happen if ever anyone else pieced together the fragments of the truth? Or if they heard about the past from whoever had told Firoz about it? Things that had long been dead would rear themselves out of the grave; and matters so little known that they had almost lost their sense of existence would become the business of the world at large.

But perhaps no one had said anything at all. Perhaps Firoz did not know anything. The Nawab Sahib reflected that possibly in his own guilt he had merely conjoined a few innocent fragments into a frightening whole. Perhaps Firoz had merely met the girl at Saeeda Bai’s.

‘In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate,’ he began hurriedly.

‘Praise belongs to God, the Lord of all Being,

the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate, the Master of the Day of Doom.

Thee only we serve; to Thee alone we pray for succour.

Guide us in the straight path—’

The Nawab Sahib stopped. If it was in fact the case that Firoz did not know, that was no cause for relief at all. He would have to know. He would have to be told. The alternative was too terrible to imagine. And it was he who would have to tell him.

Varun was reading the racing results in the Statesman with great interest. Uma, who was in Savita’s arms, had grabbed a handful of his hair and was tugging at it, but this did not distract him. Her tongue was poking out between her lips.

‘She will be a tell-tale when she grows up,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘A little chugal-khor. Whom will we tell tales on? Whom will we tell tales on? Look at her little tongue.’

‘Ow!’ said Varun.

‘Now, now, Uma,’ said Savita in mild reproof. ‘I find her very exhausting, Ma. She’s so good-natured as a rule, but last night she kept on crying. Then this morning I discovered she was wet. How does one sort out the tantrums from the genuine tears?’

Mrs Rupa Mehra would hear nothing against Uma. ‘There are some babies who cry several times in the night until they’re two years old. Only their parents have a right to complain.’

Aparna said to her mother: ‘I’m not a crybaby, am I?’

‘No, darling,’ said Meenakshi, flipping through the Illustrated London News. ‘Now play with the baby, why don’t you?’

Meenakshi, whenever she gave the matter any thought, still could not quite figure out how Uma had succeeded in becoming so vigorous, born as she had been in a Brahmpur hospital that was, as Meenakshi saw it, simply seething with septicaemia.

Aparna turned her head down sideways, so that her two eyes were in a vertical line. This amused the baby, and she gave her quite a generous smile. Simultaneously she yanked Varun’s hair once more.

‘Cracknell’s done it again,’ murmured Varun to himself. ‘Eastern Sea in the King George VI Cup. By just half a length.’

Uma grasped the paper and drew a handful of it towards herself. Varun tried to disengage her clasp. She latched on to one of his fingers.

‘Did you bet on the winner?’ asked Pran.

‘No,’ said Varun glumly. ‘Need you ask? Everyone else has all the luck. My horse came in fourth, after Orcades and Fair Ray.’

‘What peculiar names,’ said Lata.

‘Orcades is one of the Orient Line boats,’ said Meenakshi lazily. ‘I am so looking forward to going to England. I shall visit Amit’s college at Oxford. And marry a duke.’

Aparna straightened her head. She wondered what a duke was.

Mrs Rupa Mehra did not care for Meenakshi’s brand of idiocy. Her hardworking elder son was slaving himself to the bone to support the family, and in his absence his empty-headed wife was making jokes in poor taste. She was a bad influence on Lata.

‘You’re married already,’ Mrs Rupa Mehra pointed out.

‘Oh, yes, silly me,’ said Meenakshi. She sighed. ‘How I wish something exciting would happen. Nothing ever happens anywhere. And I was so looking forward to something happening in 1952.’

‘Well, it’s a leap year,’ said Pran encouragingly.

Varun had reached the end of the racing results and turned to another inside page. Suddenly he exclaimed ‘My God!’ in such a shocked tone that everyone turned towards him.

‘Pran, your brother’s been arrested.’

Pran’s first instinct was to consider this another joke in dubious taste, but there was something in Varun’s voice that made him reach for the paper. Uma tried to grab it on the way, but Savita held her off. As Pran read the few lines dated ‘Brahmpur. January 5’ his face grew taut.

‘What is it?’ said Savita, Lata and Mrs Rupa Mehra almost simultaneously. Even Meenakshi raised a languid head in surprise.

Pran shook his head from side to side in agitation. He quickly and silently read about the attack on Firoz — and that he was still in critical condition. The news was worse than he could possibly have imagined. But no telephone call or telegram had come from Brahmpur to inform him or warn him or summon him. Perhaps his father was still campaigning in his constituency. No, thought Pran. He would have heard within hours and rushed back to Brahmpur. Or perhaps he had tried to get through by phone to Calcutta and failed.

‘We will have to leave for Brahmpur immediately,’ he said to Savita.

‘But what on earth has happened, darling?’ asked Savita, very alarmed. ‘They haven’t really arrested Maan? And what for? What does it say?’

Pran read the few lines out aloud, hit his forehead with the palm of his hand and said: ‘The idiot — the poor, unthinking, crazy idiot! Poor Ammaji. Baoji has always said—’ He stopped. ‘Ma, Lata — you should both remain here—’

‘Of course not, Pran,’ said Lata, very concerned. ‘We were due to return in a couple of days anyway. We’ll all travel together. How terrible. Poor Maan — I’m sure there’s an explanation — he couldn’t have done it. There must be—’

Mrs Rupa Mehra, thinking first of Mrs Mahesh Kapoor and then of the Nawab Sahib, felt tears start to her eyes. But tears, she knew, were not helpful, and she controlled herself with an effort.

‘We’ll go directly to the station,’ said Pran, ‘and try to get a ticket on the Brahmpur Mail. We only have an hour and a half to pack.’