Ruth Prawer Jhabvala - Heat and Dust

When he's excited like that." But the way she went on staring at him, he had to continue: "He said when this baby was born, Douglas and all were going to have the shock of their lives."

"Did he mean-the colour?" Then she said "How is he so sure?" She looked at Harry: "You are too, aren't you… You think he's a — irresistible force of nature — "

"Don't you?"

She turned back to the window. She stuck out her hand to see if the rain had started. It had, but so softly that it was both invisible and inaudible, and everything — the garden pavilions, the pearl-grey walls, the mosque — seemed to be dissolving of its own accord like sugar in water.

"I've been thinking about having an abortion,” she said. "Are you quite crazy.”

"Douglas is terribly happy too. And making all sorts of plans. There's a christening robe in their family that was worked by some nuns in Goa. His sister has it at the moment — her littlest one was christened in it a couple of years ago, at Quetta where they're stationed.. But now Douglas is going to send for it. He says it's awfully pretty. Cascades of white lace — very becoming to the Rivers' babies who are very very fair. Douglas says they all have white-blond hair till they're about twelve. "

"Babies don't have hair."

"Indian babies do, I've seen them. They're born with lots of black hair… You have to help me, Harry. You have to find out where I can go." When he stood dumb, she said:

"Ask your friend the Begum. It'll be easy enough for her." She laughed: "Easier than poisoned garments, any day" she said.

* * * *

31 August. Today, as I came down from my room, a woman standing outside the slipper shop greeted me like an old acquaintance. I didn't remember meeting her but thought she might be a friend of Inder Lal's mother; perhaps one of the group of women who had accompanied us on the Husband's Wedding Day. When I walked away through the bazaar, she followed me. It now struck me that perhaps she had been waiting for me outside the shop; but when I stood still and looked back at her, she made no attempt to catch up with me. She just nodded and smiled. This happened several times. She even made signs at me to walk on; all she seemed to want was to walk behind me. I had intended to go all the way to the hospital, but I felt strange being followed, so when I got to the royal tombs I turned aside and made my way to Maji's hut. This time when I looked back, the woman was not following me but was walking straight on as if she had no further business with me.

Maji was in the state of samadhi. To be in that state means to have reached a higher level of consciousness and to be submerged in its bliss. At such times Maji is entirely unaware of anything going on around her. She sits on the floor in the lotus pose; her eyes are open but the pupils turned up, her lips slightly parted with the tip of the tongue showing between them. Her breathing is regular and peaceful as in dreamless sleep.

When she woke up — if that's the right expression which it isn't — she smiled at me in welcome as if nothing at all had occurred. But, as always at such times, she was like a person who has just stepped out of a revivifying bath, or some other medium, of renewal. Her cheeks glowed and her eyes shone. She passed her hands upwards over her face as if she felt it flushed and fiery. She has told me that, whereas it used to be very difficult for her to make the transition from samadhi back to ordinary life, now it is quite easy and effortless.

When I spoke to her about the woman who had so mysteriously followed me, she said "You see, it has started." Apparently it wasn't mysterious at all: the woman was a midwife marking me down as a potential client. She must have noticed me before and followed me today to check up on her suspicions. My condition would be perfectly obvious to her by the way I walked and held myself. In a day or two she would probably offer me her services. And now Maji offered me her own again: "This would be a good time," she said. "8 or 9 weeks — it would not be too difficult."

"How would you do it?" I asked, almost in idle curiosity. She explained that there were several ways, and that at this early stage a simple massage, skilfully applied, might do it. "Would you like me to try?" she asked.

I said yes — again I think just out of curiosity. Maji shut the door of her hut. It wasn't a real door but a plank of wood someone had given her. I lay down on the floor, and she loosened the string of my Punjabi trousers. "Don't be afraid," she said. I wasn't, not at all. I lay looking up at the roof which was a sheet of tin, and at the mud walls blackened from her cooking fire. Now, with the only aperture closed, it was quite dark inside and all sorts of smells were sealed in — of dampness, the cowdung used as fuel, and the lentils she had cooked; also of Maji herself. Her only change of clothes hung on the wall, unwashed.

She sat astride me. I couldn't see her clearly in the dark, but she seemed larger than life and made me think of some mythological figure: one of those potent Indian goddesses who hold life and death in one hand and play them like a yo-yo. Her hands passed slowly down my womb, seeking out and pressing certain parts within. She didn't hurt me — on the contrary, her hands seemed to have a kind of soothing quality. They were very, very hot; they are always so, I have felt them often (she is always touching one, as if wanting to transmit something). But today they seemed especially hot, and I thought this might be left over from her samadhi, that she was still carrying the waves of energy that had come to her from elsewhere. And again I had the feeling of her transmitting something to me — not taking away, but giving.

Nevertheless I suddenly cried out "No please stop!" She did so at once. She got off me and took the plank of wood from the door. Light streamed in. I got up and went outside, into that brilliant light. The rain had made everything shining green and wet. Blue tiles glinted on the royal tombs and everywhere there were little hollows of water that caught the light and looked like precious stones scattered over the landscape. The sky shone in patches of monsoon blue through puffs of cloud, and in the distance more clouds, but of a very dark blue, were piled on each other like weightless mountains.

"Nothing will happen, will it?" I asked Maji anxiously.

She had followed me out of the hut and was no longer the dark mythological figure she had been inside but her usual, somewhat bedraggled motherly self. She laughed when I asked that and patted my cheek in reassurance. But I didn't know what she was reassuring me of. Above all I wanted nothing to happen — that her efforts should not prove successful It was absolutely clear to me now that I wanted my pregnancy and the completely new feeling — of rapture — of which it was the cause.

1923

Satipur also had its slummy lanes, but Khatm had nothing else. The town huddled in the shadow of the Palace walls in a tight knot of dirty alleys with ramshackle houses leaning over them. There were open gutters flowing through the streets. They often overflowed, especially during the rains, and were probably the cause, or one of them, of the frequent epidemics that broke out in Khatm. If it rained rather more heavily, some of the older houses would collapse and bury the people inside them. This happened regularly every year.

It had happened the week before opposite the house to which Olivia was taken. The women attending her were still talking about it. One of them described how she had stood on the balcony to watch a wedding procession passing below. When the bridegroom rode by, everyone surged forward to see him, and there was so much noise, she said, the band was playing so loudly, that at first she had not realised what was happening though it was happening before her eyes. She saw the house opposite, which she had known all her life, suddenly cave inwards and disintegrate, and next moment everything came crashing and flying through the air in a shower of people, bricks, tiles, furniture, cooking pots. It had been, she said, like a dream, a terrible dream.