Ruth Prawer Jhabvala - Heat and Dust

"Did that surprise you?" Olivia asked.

She felt Major Minnies look at her across the dark verandah. His cigar glowed as he pulled at it. He answered her calmly: "No."

It was Douglas who was not calm: "It's time he was taught a lesson."

"You talk as if he's a schoolboy!" cried Olivia.

Major Minnies fair and judicious, seemed to be intervening between them. "In some ways," he said, "he is a fine man. He has some fine qualities — and if only these were combined with a little self-restraint, self-discipline… " Again Olivia felt his eyes on her in the dark; he said "But somehow I admire him. And I think you do too. "

She said "Yes. "

He nodded. " You're right. No, "he said, as Douglas began to protest, "we must be fair. He is a strong, forceful character, and perhaps given other circumstances — I've thought about him a great deal," he said and now seemed to be addressing only Olivia. "As you know, I've had dealings with him over several years and we have, I can't deny, had a lot of trouble with him."

"And of what sort!" said Douglas, unable to hold back. "He is a menace to himself, to us, and to the wretched inhabitants of his wretched little state. The worst type of ruler — the worst type of Indian — you can have."

"Perhaps you're right; no doubt you're right" said Major Minnies. He was silent and thoughtful for a long time; at last he said, slowly, as one making a confession: "Sometimes I feel that I'm not quite the right kind of person to be in India. Mary and I have spoken about it. Not that I would, at any stage of my career, have contemplated changing my job, this place — never, not for anything!" he said with an access of passion that surprised Olivia. "But I do realise that in many ways I step over too far."

"Into what?" asked Olivia.

"The other dimension." He smiled, perhaps not wanting to sound too serious. "I think I've allowed myself to get too fascinated. Take the Nawab: I can’t deny that he does fascinate me — as I’m sure,” he told Olivia, "he does you.”

"Oh gosh darling,” Douglas laughed "does he?”

"Well,” said Olivia, laughing back, "he is a fascinating man… And terrifically handsome.”

"Really?” Douglas asked as if he had never seen him in that light.

"Oh absolutely,” said the Major. "He is — a prince. No other word for him. The trouble is that his state is unfortunately not quite princely enough to satisfy either his ambition or indeed-his need for money.”

Douglas was amused;" So he has to take to armed robbery to make up for it?”

"I also think he’s tremendously bored the Major said. _ "He’s a man who needs action — a large arena… I can always tell when he’s feeling particularly frustrated because then he starts talking about his ancestor Amanullah Khan;”

"That brigand,” said Douglas.

"Was he?” Olivia asked the Major.

"An adventurer — at a time of adventurers.- That’s what our Friend wants: adventure. He is not really the type to sit in a palace all day, or he would like not to be. But that’s all there is for him, and moreover all he’s ever known.”

"All he can do,” Douglas said.

"I used to know his father,” the Major told Olivia. "What a character. A great penchant for the nautch girls — till he went to Europe and discovered chorus girls. He brought several back with him, and one of them stayed for years. She was in that room where he is now, what’s his name.”

"Harry?”

"As a matter of fact, the old Nawab died in there. He had a stroke while he was with her… He was a great connoisseur of Urdu poetry. Every year there was a symposium at Khatm to which all the best poets came from all over India. The old Nawab wasn't a bad poet himself — he was always making up couplets — wait, let me see if I remember… "

After a moment he began to recite in mellifluous Urdu: it sounded very beautiful. Olivia looked up at the sky, furrowed with wavelets of monsoon clouds, and the moon slowly sailing there. She followed her own thoughts.

"Are these dew drops on the rose or are they tears? Moon, your silver light turns all to pearls," the Major translated. He apologised: "Doesn't sound like much in English, I'm afraid."

"No it never does," Douglas agreed. In the dark he took Olivia's hand and held it in his own. The Major went on reciting in Urdu. His voice was loud and sonorous, and under cover of it Douglas whispered to his wife" Are you all right? — She smiled at him and he pressed her hand. "Happy?" he asked, and when she smiled again, he lifted her hand to his lips. The Major didn't see, he was looking up at the sky and reciting in Urdu; his voice was full of emotion — a sort of mixture of reverence and nostalgia. And afterwards he sighed: "It gets you," he said. "It really does. "

"Doesn't it," Olivia agreed politely. But she did not feel moved, either by the poetry or by his emotion. They did not; she felt, add up to much. She remembered what he had said about going over too far — and it made her scornful. What did he know about that? If he thought that the nostalgic feelings engendered by a little poetry recited on a moonlit night was going too far! She laughed out loud at his presumption, and Douglas thought it was with happiness which made him very happy too.

"Did you know that the old Nawab died in this room?" Olivia asked Harry.

Harry said "What else do you know?"

"Oh there was some chorus girl… "

He burst out laughing, then told her the rest of the story.

After the old Nawab's death, the Begum had not permitted the girl to leave the Palace without first surrendering all the valuables the Nawab had given her. The girl — a tough little character from Yorkshire, Harry said — had tried to hold on to some of them, but there she had reckoned without the Begum. One day — actually, Harry said, it was the middle of the night — the girl had turned up in Satipur with nothing but the clothes she stood up in (which happened to be a satin nightie and a japanese kimono). She had been in a terrible state and claimed that the Begum had tried to poison her. The Collector and his wife, not entirely sceptical of her story, had done their best to calm her, promising to send her to Bombay and arrange for her to leave on the next boat home. But when they offered to send to the Palace for her clothes and other possessions, she became hysterical and begged them not to. She told them some tale she had heard about poisoned wedding garments that had been sent to an unwanted bride in the family: no sooner had the unfortunate victim put on the cloth-of-gold bodice than it clung to her, penetrating her with its deadly ointments. The girl swore that she knew this to be actual fact because the old Nawab himself had told her; also that all attempts to save the bride had been in vain and she had died writhing in agony. The old woman responsible for preparing the fatal garment was still alive and living in the Palace at Khatm. She lived a very pampered life in the purdah quarters where she was kept to pass on her art to others. "Oh you don't know what goes on in there," the girl said with a shudder. No one could talk her out of her fears, and although the Begumhad of her own accord sent her suitcases after her, the girl refused to touch them but had left for Bombay wearing an odd assortment of clothes lent to her by the English ladies of Satipur.

Olivia smiled when she heard this story: "She must have been crazy. Those poor old things in the purdah quarters," She asked, casually, "Do they know about me?"

"Know what about you?" Harry answered.

Olivia hardly ever thought about the purdah ladies. Sometimes it seemed to her that the curtains up in the galleries were moving, but she did not look up. The Nawab never spoke to her about his mother. Olivia realised that the Begum belonged to a different part of his life, perhaps to a more inner chamber of his heart: and this made Olivia proud and stubborn so that she did not want to speak to him about his mother, or to acknowledge her existence.