Out of India. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
loved. Only who was there whom she could love with all the fervor of which her heart was capable? In her excitement she pushed against him so that he fell backward and sat down abruptly on her bed. At once she was sitting next to him, very close, her hand on his—if he knew, she said, what store of love there was in her, ready and bursting and brimming in her! Then it was his turn to cry, he said, “I want a motor scooter, that’s all,” in a hurt, grieved voice, trembling with tears like a child’s.
That was the last time he came down to see her. Afterward he would hardly talk to her at all—even when she lay in wait for him by the stairs, he would brush hurriedly past her, silent and with averted face. Once she called after him, “Come in, we will talk about the motor scooter!” but all she got by way of reply was, “It is sold already,” tossed over his shoulder as he ran upstairs. She was in despair and wept often and bitterly; there was a pain right in her heart, such as she had never experienced before. She longed to die and yet at the same time she felt herself most burningly alive. She visited Mrs. Puri several times and stayed for some hours; during which Mrs. Puri, as usual, talked a lot, and in the usual strain, and kept pointing out how her children were Durga’s too, while the two daughters simpered. Evidently she knew nothing of what had happened, and assumed that everything was as it had been.
But, so Durga soon learned, Mrs. Puri knew very well that everything was not as it had been. Not only did she know, but it was she herself who had brought about the change. It was she who, out of evil and spite, had stopped Govind from coming downstairs and had forbidden him ever to speak to Durga again. All this Durga learned from Bhuaji one hot afternoon as she lay tossing on her bed, alternately talking, weeping, and falling into silent fits of despair. She had no more secrets from Bhuaji. She needed someone before whom she could unburden herself, and who more fit for that purpose than the ever available, ever sympathetic Bhuaji? So she lay on her bed and cried: “A son, that is all I want, a son!” And Bhuaji was soothing and understood perfectly. Of course Durga wanted a son; it was only natural, for had not God set maternal feelings to flow sweetly in every woman’s breast? And now, said Bhuaji angrily, to have that God-given flow stopped in its course by the machinations of a mean-hearted, jealous, selfish woman—and so it all came out. It was a revelation to Durga. Her tears ceased and she sat up on her bed. She imagined Govind suffering under the restraint laid upon him and yearning for Durga and all her kindness as bitterly as she yearned for him. There was sorrow upstairs and sorrow downstairs. She sat very upright on the bed. After a while she turned her face toward Bhuaji, and her lips were tight and her eyes flashed. She said, “We will see whose son he is.”
She waited for him by the stairs. He came late that night, but still she went on waiting. She was patient and almost calm. She could hear sounds from upstairs—a clatter of buckets, water running, Mrs. Puri scolding her daughters. At the sound of that voice, hatred swelled in Durga so that she was tempted to leave her post and run upstairs to confront her enemy. But she checked herself and remained standing downstairs, calm and resolute and waiting. She would not be angry. This was not the time for anger.
She heard him before she saw him. He was humming a little tune to himself. Probably he had been to see a film with friends and now he was singing a lyric from it. He sounded happy, light-hearted. She peeped out from the dark doorway and saw him clearly just under the lamppost outside the house. He was wearing an orange T-shirt that she had given him and that clung closely to him so that all his broad chest and his nipples were outlined; his black jeans too fitted as a glove over his plump young buttocks. She edged herself as close as she could against the wall. When he entered the doorway, she whispered his name. He stopped singing at once. She talked fast, in a low urgent voice: “Come with me—what do your parents ever do for you?”
He shuffled his feet and looked down at them in the dark.
“With me you will have everything—a motor scooter—”
“It is sold.”
“A new one, a brand-new one! And also you can study to be an aircraft engineer, anything you wish—”
“Is that you, son?” Mrs. Puri called from upstairs.
Durga held fast to his arm: “Don’t answer,” she whispered.
“Govind! Is that boy come home at last?” And the two plain sisters echoed: “Govind!”
“I can do so much for you,” Durga whispered. “And what can they do?”
“Coming, Ma!” he called.
“Everything I have is for you—”
“You and your father both the same! All night we have to wait for you to come and eat your food!”
Durga said, “I have no one, no one.” She was stroking his arm, which was smooth and muscular and matted with long silky hair.
Mrs. Puri appeared at the top of the stairs: “Just let me catch that boy, I will twist his ears for him!”
“You hear her, how she speaks to you?” whispered Durga with a flicker of triumph. But Govind wrenched his arm free and bounded up the stairs toward his mother.
It did not take Bhuaji long after that to persuade Durga to get rid of her tenants. There were all those months of rent unpaid, and besides, who wanted such evil-natured people in the house? Bhuaji’s son-in-law had connections with the police, and it was soon arranged: a constable stood downstairs while the Puris’ belongings—the velvet armchair, an earthenware water pot, two weeping daughters carrying bedding—slowly descended. Durga did not see them. She was sitting inside before the little prayer table on which stood her two Krishnas. She was unbathed and in an old crumpled sari and with her hair undone. Her relatives sat outside in the courtyard with their belongings scattered around them, ready to move in upstairs. Bhuaji’s old husband sat on his little bundle and had a nap in the sun.
“Only pray,” Bhuaji whispered into Durga’s ear. “With prayer He will surely come to you.” Durga’s eyes were shut; perhaps she was asleep. “As a son and as a lover,” Bhuaji whispered. The relatives talked gaily among themselves outside; they were in a good, almost a festive mood.
It seemed Durga was not asleep after all, for suddenly she got up and unlocked her steel almira. She took out everything—her silk saris, her jewelry, her cashbox. From time to time she smiled to herself. She was thinking of her husband and of his anger, his impotent anger, at thus seeing everything given away at last. The more she thought of him, the more vigorously she emptied her almira. Her arms worked with a will, flinging everything away in abandon, her hair fell into her face, perspiration trickled down her neck in runnels. Her treasure lay scattered in heaps and mounds all over the floor and Bhuaji squinted at it in avid surmise.
Durga said, “Take it away. It is for you and for them—” and she jerked her head toward the courtyard where the relatives twittered like birds. Bhuaji was already squatting on the floor, sorting everything, stroking it with her hands in love and wonder. As she did so, she murmured approvingly to Durga: “That is the way—to give up everything. Only if we give up everything will He come to us.” And she went on murmuring, while stroking the fine silks and running hard gold necklaces through her fingers: “As a son and as a lover,” she murmured, over and over again, but absently.
The relatives were glad that Durga had at last come around and accepted her lot as a widow. They were glad for her sake. There was no other way for widows but to lead humble, bare lives; it was for their own good. For if they were allowed to feed themselves on the pleasures of the world, then they fed their own passions too, and that which should have died in them with the deaths of their husbands would fester and boil and overflow into sinful channels. Oh yes, said the relatives, wise and knowing, nodding their heads, our ancestors knew what they were doing when they laid down these rigid rules for widows; and though nowadays perhaps, in these modern times, one could be a little more lenient—for instance, no one insisted that Durga should shave her head-—still, on the whole, the closer one followed the old traditions, the safer and better it was.