Out of India. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
she crept in behind the others and sat quietly at the back; till finally she showed herself to him quite openly and even began to make scenes again. “Have pity!” she cried. “God is eating me up!” At last he quite lost his temper with her. He took off his slipper and began to beat her with it and when she ran away, screaming and clutching her sari about her, he ran after her, brandishing his slipper. They were a funny sight. He pursued her right out into the street, and then he turned back and began to chase all the other people out of the house. He scattered them right and left, beating at them with his slipper, and cursing and scolding. Everyone ran away very fast—even Rahul, who had been cooking potato cakes, made off in a great fright. When they had all gone, M. returned to his room and locked the door behind him. He looked hot and angry.
And next day he was gone. People came as usual that day but when they realized he was no longer there, they went away again and also took their gifts back with them. That night the men from the beggars’ home were disappointed. I stayed on by myself, it didn’t matter to me where I was. Sometimes I sat in one of the rooms, sometimes I walked up and down. The families from upstairs tried to make me eat and sleep, but I heard nothing of what they said. I don’t remember much about that time. Later Daddy came to take me away. For the last time I tied my things up in a sheet and I went with him.
I think sometimes of Savitri, and I wonder whether I too am like her now—a candle burning for him in a window of the world. I am patient and inwardly calm and lead the life that has been appointed for me. I play tennis again and I go out to tea and garden parties with Mama, and Rahul and I often dance to the gramophone. Probably I shall marry Rahul quite soon. I laugh and talk just as much as I used to and Mama says I am too frivolous, but Daddy smiles and encourages me. Mama has had a lot of new pieces of jewelry made for me to replace the ones I sold; she and I keep on quarreling as before.
I still try and see his face in my mind, and I never succeed. But I know—and that is how I can go on living the way I do, and even enjoy my life and be glad—that one day I shall succeed and I shall see that face as it really is. But whose face it is I shall see in that hour of happiness—and indeed, whose face it is I look for with such longing—is not quite clear to me.
Durga lived downstairs in the house she owned. There was a small central courtyard and many little rooms opening out from it. All her husband’s relatives, and her own, wanted to come and live with her; they saw that it would be very comfortable, and anyway, why pay rent elsewhere when there was that whole house? But she resisted them all. She wouldn’t even allow them to live in the upstairs part, but let it out to strangers and took rent and was a landlady. She had learned a lot since she had become a widow and a property owner. No one, not even her elder relatives, could talk her into anything.
Her husband would have been pleased to see her like that. He hated relatives anyway, on principle; and he hated weak women who let themselves be managed and talked into things. That was what he had always taught her: stand on your own, have a mind, be strong. And he had left her everything so that she could be. When he had drafted his will, he had cackled with delight, thinking of all his relatives and how angry they would be. His one anxiety had been that she would not be able to stand up to them and that she would give everything over into their hands; so that his last energies had been poured into training her, teaching her, making her strong.
She had grown fond of him in those last years—so much so that, if it hadn’t been for the money and independent position with which he left her, she would have been sad at losing him. That was a great change from what she had felt at the beginning of her marriage when, God forgive her, she had prayed every day for him to die. As she had pointed out in her prayers, he was old and she was young; it was not right. She had hated everyone in those days—not only her husband, but her family too, who had married her to him. She would not speak to anyone. All day she sat in a little room, unbathed, unkempt, like a woman in mourning. The servant left food for her on a tray and tried to coax her to eat, but she wouldn’t—not till she was very hungry indeed and then she ate grudgingly, cursing each mouthful for keeping her alive.
But the old man was kind to her. He was a strange old man. He did not seem to expect anything of her at all, except only that she should be there in his house. Sometimes he brought saris and bangles for her, and though at first she pretended she did not want them, afterward she was pleased and tried them on and admired herself. She often wondered why he should be so kind to her. He wasn’t to anyone else. In fact, he was known as a mean, spiteful old man, who had made his money (in grain) unscrupulously, pressed his creditors hard, and maliciously refused to support his needy relatives. But with her he was always gentle and even generous, and after a while they got on very well together.
So when he was dead, she almost missed him, and it was only when she reminded herself of other things about him—his old-man smell, and his dried legs, when she had massaged them, with the useless rag of manhood flopping against the thigh—that she realized it was better he was gone. She was, after all, still young and healthy and hearty, and now with the money and property he had left her, she could lead the life she was entitled to. She kept two servants, got up when she wanted, and went to sleep when she wanted; she ate everything she liked and as much as she liked; when she felt like going out, she hired a tonga—and not just any tonga, but always a spruce one with shining red-leather seats and a well-groomed horse wearing jingling bells, so that people looked around at her as she was driven smartly through the streets.
It was a good life, and she grew plump and smooth with it. Nor did she lack for company: her own family and her husband’s were always hovering around her and, now that she had them in the proper frame of mind, she quite enjoyed entertaining them. It had taken her some time to get them into that proper frame of mind. For in the beginning, when her husband had just died, they had taken it for granted that she was to be treated as the widow—that is, the cursed one who had committed the sin of outliving her husband and was consequently to be numbered among the outcasts. They had wanted—yes, indeed they had—to strip her of her silken colored clothes and of her golden ornaments. The more orthodox among them had even wanted to shave her head, to reduce her diet to stale bread and lentils, and deprive her from ever again tasting the sweet things of life: to condemn her, in fact, to that perpetual mourning, perpetual expiation, that was the proper lot of widows. That was how they saw it and how their forefathers had always seen it; but not how she saw it at all.
There had been a struggle, of course, but not one of which the outcome was long in doubt. And now it was accepted that she should be mistress of what was hers and rule her household and wear her fine clothes and eat her fine foods; and out of her abundance she would toss crumbs to them, let them sit in her house and talk with them when she felt like talking, listen to their importunities for money and sometimes even perhaps—not out of pity or affection, but just as the whim took her—do them little favors and be praised and thanked for it. She was queen, and they knew it.
But even a queen’s life does not bring perfect satisfaction always, and there were days and even weeks at a time when she felt she had not been dealt with as she had a right to expect. She could never say exactly what had been left out, but only that something had been left out and that somehow, somewhere, she had been shortchanged. And when this realization came over her, then she fell into a black mood and ate and slept more than ever—not for pleasure, but compulsively, sunk in sloth and greed because soft beds and foods were all that life had given to her. At such times she turned her relatives away from her house, and those who nevertheless wheedled their way in had to sit respectfully silent around her bed while she heaved and groaned like a sick woman.
There was one old aunt, known by everyone as Bhuaji, who always managed to wheedle her way in, whatever Durga’s mood. She was a tough, shrewd old woman, small and frail in appearance and with a cast in one eye that made it seem as if she was constantly peeping around the next corner to see what advantage lay there. When Durga’s black mood was on her, it was Bhuaji who presided