Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘I hope you’re right.’ Malati sounded weary. Her heart was sick for both Lata and Kabir.

‘It’s more like Nala and Damyanti than Portia and Bassanio,’ said Lata, trying to cheer her up. ‘Haresh’s feet touch the ground, and he has dust and sweat and a shadow. The other two are a bit too God-like and ethereal to be any good for me.’

‘So you’re at ease,’ said Malati, searching her friend’s face. ‘You’re at ease with yourself. And you know exactly what you’re going to do. Well, tell me, out of curiosity, before you write him off, are you at least going to drop a line to Kabir?’

Lata’s lips began to tremble.

‘I’m not at ease — I’m not—’ she cried. ‘It’s not easy — Malu, how can you think it is? I hardly know who I am or what I’m doing — I can’t study or even think these days — everything is pressing in on me. I can’t bear it when I’m with him, and I can’t bear not to see him. How do I know what I may or may not do? I only hope I have the courage to stick to my decision.’

Maan sat at home or in the garden with his father or visited Pran or Veena. Other than that he did very little. He had been eager to visit Saeeda Bai when he was in jail, but now that he was out of jail, he found that he had inexplicably lost his eagerness to do so. She sent him a note, which he did not reply to. Then she sent him another, more urgent one, upbraiding him for his desertion of her, but to no effect.

Maan was not very fond of reading, but these days he spent whole mornings with the newspapers, reading everything from the international news to the advertisements. Now that Firoz was out of danger he had begun to worry about himself and what was going to happen to him once the charge-sheet was prepared.

Firoz had remained in hospital for about twenty days before the doctors consented to his being moved back to Baitar House. He was physically weak, but on the mend. Imtiaz took charge of him, Zainab stayed on in Brahmpur to nurse him, and the Nawab Sahib watched over him and prayed for his full recovery. For his mind was still clouded and agitated, and he would sometimes cry out in his sleep. These fragments of speech, which would have meant nothing to anyone earlier, could now be fitted into the frame of the rumours by anyone who sat by his bedside.

The Nawab Sahib had turned to religion almost two decades ago partly as the result of his appalled realization of what he had done when he emerged from the worst of his drunken binges, and partly because of the quiet influence of his wife. He had always had a taste for scholarly and analytical pursuits but, being a sensualist, had allowed these to be overlaid by his more urgent needs and pleasures. The change in his life had been sudden; and he had hoped to save his own children from the sins and the repentance that he himself had undergone. The boys knew he did not approve of their drinking, and they never did so in his presence. As for his grandchildren, they would never have been able to imagine him as a young — or even a middle-aged — man. They had known their Nana-jaan throughout their lives as a quiet, pious old man whom only they were permitted to disturb in his library — and who could easily be persuaded to grant them a respite from bedtime by the telling of a ghost story. The Nawab Sahib understood all too well the infidelities of their father and, while his heart went out to his daughter, he was reminded of the suffering he had in his own time inflicted on his own wife. Not that Zainab would have wanted him to speak to her husband. She had needed comfort, but had not expected relief.

The Nawab Sahib now suffered once again, but this time not only from the memory of the past but from the present opinion of the world, and — worst of all — from the sense of what his children must think of him. He did not know what interpretation to place upon the rejection of his continuing financial help to Saeeda Bai. He was more troubled by it than relieved. He did not really think of Tasneem as his daughter, or feel any affection for this unseen being, but he did not want her to suffer. Nor did he wish Saeeda Bai now to feel free to publish to the world whatever it suited her convenience to publish. He begged God to forgive him for the unworthiness of this concern, but he was unable to put it aside.

He had shrunk further into his library in the course of the last month, but every visit to Firoz’s bedside and every appearance at meal-time was infinitely painful to him. His children, however, understood this, and continued to be outwardly as respectful towards him as before. Firoz’s illness or the acts of the distant past were not to be allowed to split the shell of the family. The grace was said, the meat stew was passed, the kababs served, the permission to rise accepted with routine decorum. Nothing was said or shown to him that might add to his disequilibrium. He had still not heard about the fliers announcing that Firoz had died.

And if I had died, thought Firoz to himself, what would it have mattered to the universe? What have I ever done for anyone? I am a man without attributes, very handsome, very forgettable. Imtiaz is a man of substance, of some use to the world. All that would be left of me is a walking stick, the grief of my family, and terrible danger for my friend.

He had asked to see Maan once or twice, but no one had passed the message on to Prem Nivas. Imtiaz could see no good coming of the meeting, either for his brother or for his father. He knew Maan well enough to realize that the attack had been a sudden one, unpremeditated, almost unintentional. But his father did not see it that way; and Imtiaz wanted to spare him any avoidable shock of emotion, any access of hatred or recrimination. Imtiaz believed that Mrs Mahesh Kapoor’s death had indeed been hastened by the sudden and terrible events that had struck their two houses. He would insulate his father from anything similar, and his brother from any agitation about Maan or, through the revival of his memory of that night, about Tasneem.

Tasneem, though she was no doubt his half-sister, meant nothing to Imtiaz at all. Zainab too, though she was curious, realized that wisdom lay in closing the door of interpretation.

Finally, Firoz wrote a note to Maan, which read simply: ‘Dear Maan, Please visit me. I’m well enough to see you. Firoz.’ He half-suspected his brother of mollycoddling him, and he had had enough of it. He gave the note to Ghulam Rusool, and told him that he was to see that it got to Prem Nivas.

Maan received the note in the late afternoon and did not hesitate. Without telling his father, who was sitting on a bench reading some legislative papers, he walked over to Baitar House. Perhaps this call, rather than a summons from the court of the committal magistrate, was what in his state of idle tension he had been waiting for all along. As he approached the grand main gates, he looked instinctively about him, thinking of the she-monkey who had attacked him here earlier. This time he carried no stick.

A servant asked him to enter. But the Nawab Sahib’s secretary, Murtaza Ali, happened to be passing by, and asked him, with stern courtesy, what he imagined he was doing there. He had been given strict orders not to admit anyone from Mahesh Kapoor’s family. Maan, whose instinct not very long ago would have been to tell him to go hang himself had been shaken by his jail life into responding to the orders of his social inferiors. He showed him Firoz’s note.

Murtaza Ali looked worried but thought quickly. Imtiaz was at the hospital, Zainab was in the zenana, and the Nawab Sahib was at his prayers. The note was unambiguous. He told Ghulam Rusool to take Maan up to see Firoz for a few minutes and asked Maan if he would like something to drink.