Читать книгу Out of India - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala - Страница 11

THE WIDOW

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 at the bedside, saw to it that the others kept suitably mournful faces and, at every groan of Durga’s, fell into loud exclamations of pity at her sufferings. When Durga finally got tired of all these faces gathered around her and, turning her back on them, told them to go away and never come back to be a torture and a burden on her, then it was again Bhuaji who saw to it that they left in haste and good order and suitably on compassionate tiptoe; and after locking the door behind them all, she would come back to sit with Durga and encourage her not only to groan but to weep as well and begin to unburden herself.

Only what was there of which she could unburden herself, much as, under Bhuaji’s sympathetic encouragement, she longed to do so? She brought out broken sentences, broken complaints and accusations, but there was nothing she could quite lay her finger on. Bhuaji, always eager and ready to comfort with the right words, tried to lay it on for her, pointing out how cruelly fate had dealt with her in depriving her of what was every woman’s right—namely, a husband and children. But no, no, Durga would cry, that was not it, that was not what she wanted: and she looked scornful, thinking of those women who did have husbands and children, her sisters and her cousins, thin, shabby, overworked, and overburdened, was there anything to envy in their lot? On the contrary, it was they who should and did envy Durga—she could read it in their eyes when they looked at her, who was so smooth and well-fed and had everything that they could never even dream for.

Then, gradually, Bhuaji began to talk to her of God. Durga knew about God, of course. One had to worship Him in the temple and also perform certain rites such as bathing in the river when there was an eclipse and give food to the holy men and observe fast-days. One did all these things so that no harm would befall, and everybody did them and had always done them: that was God. But Bhuaji talked differently. She talked about Him as if He were a person whom one could get to know, like someone who would come and visit in the house and sit and talk and drink tea. She spoke of Him mostly as Krishna, sometimes as the baby Krishna and sometimes as the lover Krishna. She had many stories to tell about Krishna, all the old stories that Durga knew well, for she had heard them since she was a child; but Bhuaji told them as if they were new and had happened only yesterday and in the neighborhood. And Durga sat up on her bed and laughed: “No, really, he did that?” “Yes yes, really—he stole the butter and licked it with his fingers and he teased the young girls and pulled their hair and kissed them—oh, he was such a naughty boy!” And Durga rocked herself to and fro with her hands clasped before her face, laughing in delight—“How naughty!” she cried. “What a bad bad boy, bless his heart!”

But when they came to the lover Krishna, then she sat quite still and looked very attentive, with her mouth a little open and her eyes fixed on Bhuaji’s face. She didn’t say much, just listened; only sometimes she would ask in a low voice, “He was very handsome?” “Oh very,” said Bhuaji, and she described him all over again—lotus eyes and brows like strung bows and a throat like a conch. Durga couldn’t form much of a picture from that, but never mind, she made her own, formed it secretly in her mind as she sat there listening to Bhuaji, and grew more and more thoughtful, more and more silent.

Bhuaji went on to tell her about Krishna’s devotees and the rich rewards granted to those whose hearts were open to receive him. As Durga avidly listened, she narrated the life of Maya Devi, who had retired from the world and built herself a little hut on the banks of the Ganges: there to pass her days with the baby Krishna, whom she had made her child and to whom she talked all day as to a real child, and played with him and cooked for him, bathed his image and dressed it and put it to sleep at night and woke it up with a kiss in the morning. And then there was Pushpa Devi, for whom so many advantageous offers had come but who rejected them all because she said she was wedded already, to Krishna, and he alone was her lord and her lover; she lived with him in spirit, and sometimes in the nights her family would hear her screams of joy as she lay with him in their marital rite and gave him her soul.

Durga bought two little brass images of Krishna—one of him playing the flute, the other as a baby crawling on all fours. She gave them special prominence on her little prayer table and paid her devotions to him many times a day, always waiting for him to come alive for her and be all that Bhuaji promised he would be. Sometimes—when she was alone at night or lay on her bed in the hot, silent afternoons, her thoughts dwelling on Krishna—she felt strange new stirrings within her that were almost like illness, with a tugging in the bowels and a melting in the thighs. And she trembled and wondered whether this was Krishna descending on her, as Bhuaji promised he would, showing her his passion, creeping into her—ah! great God that he was—like a child or a lover, into her womb and into her breasts.

She became dreamy and withdrawn, so that her relatives, quick to note this change, felt freer to come and go as they pleased and sit around in her house and drink tea with a lot of milk and sugar in it. Bhuaji, indeed, was there almost all the time. She had even brought a bundle of clothes and often stayed all day and all night, only scurrying off to have a quick look at her own household, with her own old husband in it, and coming back within the hour. Durga suspected that, on these home excursions of hers, Bhuaji went well provided with little stocks of rice and lentils and whatever other provisions she could filch from the kitchen store. But Durga hardly cared and was, at any rate, in no frame of mind to make a scene. And when they asked for money, Bhuaji or the other relatives, as often as not she gave—quite absentmindedly, taking out her keys to unlock the steel almira in which she kept her cashbox, while they eagerly, greedily, watched her.

At such moments she often thought of her husband and of what he would say if he could see her being so yielding with these relatives. She could almost imagine him getting angry—hear his shrill old man’s voice and see him shaking his fist so that the sleeve of his kurta flapped and showed his plucked, dried arm trembling inside. But she did not care for his anger; it was her life, her money, she sullenly answered him, and she could let herself be exploited if she wished. Why should he, a dead old man, dictate his wishes to her, who was alive and healthy and a devotee of Krishna’s? She found herself thinking of her husband with dislike. It was as if she bore him some grudge, though she did not know what for.

The relatives sat in the house and got bolder and bolder, until they were giving their own orders to the servants and complaining about the quality of the tea.

It was about this time that the tenants who had rented the place upstairs gave notice—an event that brought great excitement into the lives of the relatives, who spent many happy hours apportioning the vacant flat out among themselves (Bhuaji, of course, was going to move her old husband into one room, and she left the others to fight for the remaining space). But here suddenly Durga showed herself quite firm again: tenants meant rent, and she had no intentions, not even to spite her husband, of sacrificing a regular monthly income. So only a few days after the old tenants moved out, and the relatives were still hotly disputing among themselves as to how the place was to be apportioned, a new family of tenants moved in, consisting of one Mr. Puri (a municipal tax inspector) with his wife, two daughters, and a son. Their belongings were carried upstairs to loud, remonstrative cries from the relatives; to which Durga turned a deaf ear—even to the plaints of Bhuaji, who had already brought her old husband and her household chattels along and now had to take them back again.

Durga had been worshiping her two images for so long now, but nothing of what Bhuaji had promised seemed to be happening to them. And less and less was happening to her. She tried so hard, lying on her bed and thinking of Krishna and straining to reproduce that wave of love she had experienced; but it did not return or, if it did, came only as a weak echo of what it had been. She was unsatisfied and felt that much had been promised and little given. Once, after she had prayed for a long time before the two images, she turned away and suddenly kicked at the leg of a chair and hurt her toe. And sometimes, in the middle of doing something—sorting the laundry or folding a sari—she would suddenly throw it aside with an impatient gesture and walk away frowning.

She spent a lot of time sitting on a string cot in her courtyard, not doing anything nor thinking anything in particular, just sitting there, feeling heavy and too fat and wondering what there was in life that one should go on living it. When her relatives came to visit her, she as often as not told them to go away, even Bhuaji; she did not feel like talking or listening to any of them. But now there was a new person to stake a claim to her attention. The courtyard was overlooked by a veranda that ran the length of the flat upstairs. On this veranda Mrs. Puri, her new tenant, would frequently appear, leaning her arms on the balustrade and shouting down in friendly conversation. Durga did not encourage her and answered as dryly as politeness permitted; but Mrs. Puri was a friendly woman and persisted, appearing twice and three times a day to comment to Durga on the state of the weather. After a while she even began to exercise the prerogative of a neighbor and to ask for little loans—one day she had run out of lentils, a second out of flour, a third out of sugar. In return, when she cooked a special dish or made pickle, she would send some down for Durga, thus establishing a neighborly traffic that Durga had not wished for but was too lethargic to discourage.

Then one day Mrs. Puri sent some ginger pickle down with her son. He appeared hesitantly in the courtyard, holding his glass jar carefully between two hands. Durga was lying drowsily on her cot; her eyes were shut and perhaps she was even half asleep. The boy stood and looked down at her, knowing what to do, lightly coughing to draw her attention. Her eyes opened and stared up at him. He was perhaps seventeen years old, a boy with large black eyes and broad shoulders and cheeks already dark with growth. Durga lay and stared up at him, seeing nothing but his young face looming above her. He looked back at her, uncertain, tried to smile, and blushed. Then at last she sat up and adjusted the sari which had slipped down from her breasts. His eyes modestly lowered, he held the jar of pickle out to her as if in appeal.

“Your mother sent?”

He nodded briefly and, placing the jar on the floor by her cot, turned to go rather quickly. Just as he was about to disappear through the door leading out from the courtyard, she called him back, and he stopped and stood facing her, waiting. It was some time before she spoke, and then all she could think to say was “Please thank your mother.” He disappeared before she could call him back again.

Durga had become rather slovenly in her habits lately, but that evening she dressed herself up in one of her better saris and went to call on Mrs. Puri upstairs. A visit from the landlady was considered of some importance, so Mrs. Puri, who had been soaking raw mangoes, left this work, wiped her hands on the end of her sari and settled Durga in the sitting room. The sitting room was not very grand; it had only a cane table in it and some cane stools and a few cheap bazaar pictures on the whitewashed walls. Durga sat in the only chair in the room, a velvet armchair that had the velvet rubbed bare in many places and smelled of old, damp clothes.

Mrs. Puri’s two daughters sat on the floor, stitching a quilt together out of many old pieces. They were plain girls with heavy features and bad complexions. Mr. Puri evidently was out—and his wife soon dwelled on that subject: every night, she said, he was sitting at some friend’s house, goodness knows what they did, sitting like that, what could they have so much to talk about? And wasting money in smoking cigarettes and chewing betel, while she sat at home with her daughters, poor girls, and wasn’t it high time good husbands were found for them? But what did Mr. Puri care—he had thought only for his own enjoyment, his family was nothing to him. And Govind the same. . . .

“Govind?”

“My son. He too—only cinema for him and laughing with friends.”

She had much to complain about and evidently did not often have someone whom she could complain to; so she made the most of Durga. The two plain daughters listened placidly, stitching their quilt; only when their mother referred to the urgent necessity of finding husbands for them—as she did at frequent intervals and as a sort of capping couplet to each particular complaint—did they begin to wriggle and exchange sly glances and titter behind their hands.

It took Durga some time before she could disengage herself; and when she finally did, Mrs. Puri accompanied her to the stairs, carrying her burden of complaint right over into her farewell and even pursuing Durga with it as she picked her way down the steep, narrow stone stairs. And just as she had reached the bottom of them, Govind appeared to walk up them, and his mother shouted down to him, “Is this a time to come home for your meal?”

Durga, passed him in the very tight space between the doorway and the first step. She was so close to him that she could feel his warmth and hear his breath. Mrs. Puri shouted down the stairs: “Running here and there all day like a loafer!” Durga could see his eyes gleaming in the dark and he could see hers; for a moment they looked at each other. Durga said in a low voice, “Your mother is angry with you,” and then he was already halfway up the stairs.

Later, slowly unwinding herself from her sari and staring at herself in the mirror as she did so, she thought about her husband. And again, and stronger than ever, she had that feeling of dislike against him, that grudge against the useless dead old man. It was eighteen or nineteen years now since they had married her to him: and if he had been capable, wouldn’t she have had a son like Govind now, a strong, healthy, handsome boy with big shoulders and his beard just growing? She smiled at the thought, full of tenderness, and forgetting her husband, thought instead how it would be if Govind were her son. She would not treat him like his mother did—would never reproach him, shout at him down the stairs—but, on the contrary, encourage him in all his pleasures so that, first thing when he came home, he would call to her—“Mama!”—and they would sit together affectionately, more like brother and sister, or even two friends, than like mother and son, while he told her everything that had happened to him during the day.

She stepped closer to the mirror—her sari lying carelessly where it had fallen around her feet—and looked at herself, drawing her hand over her skin. Yes, she was still soft and smooth and who could see the tiny little lines, no more than shadows, that lay around her eyes and the corners of her mouth? And how fine her eyes still were, how large and black and how they shone. And her hair too—she unwound it from its pins and it dropped down slowly, heavy and black and sleek with oil, and not one gray hair in it.

As she stood there, looking at herself in nothing but her short blouse and her waist petticoat, with her hair down, suddenly another image appeared behind her in the mirror: an old woman, gray and shabby and squinting and with an ingratiating smile on her face. “I am not disturbing?” Bhuaji said.

Durga bent down to pick up her sari. She began to fold it, but Bhuaji took it from her and did it far more deftly, the tip of her tongue eagerly protruding from her mouth.

“Why did you come?” Durga said, watching her. Bhuaji made no reply, but went on folding the sari, and when she had finished, she smoothed it ostentatiously from both sides. Durga lay down on the bed. As a matter of fact, she found she was quite glad that Bhuaji had come to see her.

She asked, “How long is it since they married me?”

“Let me see,” Bhuaji said. She squatted by the side of the bed and began to massage Durga’s legs. “It is fifteen years, sixteen . . .”

“No, eighteen.”

Bhuaji nodded in agreement, her lips mumbling as she worked something out in her head, her hands still skillfully massaging.

“Eighteen years,” Durga said reflectively. “I could have been—”

“Yes, a grandmother by now,” said Bhuaji, smiling widely with all her empty gums.

Durga suddenly pushed those soothing massaging hands away and sat upright. “Leave me alone! Why do you come here, who called you?”

Instead of sitting in her courtyard, Durga was now often to be found pacing up and down by the door that led to the staircase. When Govind came down, she always had a word for him. At first he was shy with her and left her as quickly as possible; sometimes he waited for her to go away before he came down or went up. But she was patient with him. She understood and even sympathized with his shyness: he was young, awkward perhaps, like a child, and didn’t know how much good she meant him. But she persevered; she would ask him questions like: “You go often to the cinema?” or “What are you studying?” to prove to him how interested she was in him, interested like a mother or a favorite aunt, and ready to talk on any topic with him.

And slowly he responded. Instead of dashing away, he began to stand still at the bottom of the steps and to answer her questions; at first in monosyllables but soon, when his interest was stirred, at greater length; and finally at such great length that it seemed pointless to go on standing there in that dark cramped space when he could go into her house and sit there with her and drink almond sherbet. He kept on talking and told her everything: who were his friends, who his favorite film stars, his ambition to go abroad, to become an aircraft engineer. She listened and watched him while he spoke; she watched and watched him, her eyes fixed on his face. She became very familiar with his face, yet always it was new to her. When he smiled, two little creases appeared in his cheeks. His teeth were large and white, his hair sprang from a point on his forehead. Everything about him was young and fresh and strong—even his smell, which was that of a young animal full of sap and sperm.

She loved to do little things for him. At first only to ply him with almond sherbet and sweetmeats, of which he could take great quantities; later to give him money—beginning with small amounts, a rupee here and there, but then going on to five- and even ten-rupee notes. He wanted money so badly and his parents gave him so little. It was wrong to keep a boy short of money when he needed a lot: for treating his friends, for his surreptitious cigarettes, for T-shirts and jeans such as he saw other boys wearing.

It became so that he got into the habit of asking her for whatever he wanted. How could she refuse? On the contrary, she was glad and proud to give—if only to see the look of happiness on his face, his eyes shining at the thought of what he was going to buy, his smile, which brought little creases into his cheeks. At such moments she was warm and sick with mother’s love, she longed to cradle his head and stroke his hair. He was her son, her child.

That was exactly what his mother told her: “He is your son also, your child.” Mrs. Puri was glad to see Durga take such an interest in the boy. She taught him to say thank you for everything that Durga gave him and to call her auntie. She made pickle very often and sent it down in jars. She also came down herself and talked to Durga for hours on end about her family problems. So much was needed, and where was it all to come from? Mr. Puri’s salary was small—175 rupees a month plus dearness allowance—and he spent a lot on betel and cigarettes and other pleasures. And what was to become of her poor children? Such good children they were, as anyone who took an interest in them was bound to find out. They needed a helping hand in life, that was all. Her boy, and her two girls who ought to have been married a year ago. She sent the girls down quite often, but Durga always sent them quickly back up again.

Toward the beginning of each month, when the rent was due, Govind came down every day with pickle and after a while Mrs. Puri would follow him. Dabbing with her sari in the corner of her eye, she would give an exact account of her monthly expenditure, what were her debts and what she had in hand, so that Durga could see for herself how impossible it was to impose any demand for rent on such an overburdened budget. And though Durga at first tried to ignore these plaints, this became more and more difficult, and in the end she always had to say that she would not mind waiting a few days longer. After which Mrs. Puri dried her eyes and the subject of rent was not mentioned again between them till the first week of the following month, when the whole procedure was repeated. In this way several months’ rent accumulated—a fact that, had it been brought to their notice, would have surprised Durga’s previous tenants, who had not found her by any means so lenient a landlady.

The relatives were much alarmed at this growing friendship with the Puris, which seemed to them both ominous and unnatural. What need had Durga to befriend strangers when there were all her own relatives, to whom she was bound in blood and duty? They became very indignant with her, but had to keep a check on their tongues; for Durga was short-tempered with them these days and, if they touched on subjects or showed moods not to her liking, was quicker than ever to show them the door. But something obviously had to be said and it was Bhuaji who took it upon herself to say it.

She began by praising Govind. A good boy, she said, that she could see at a glance, respectful and well mannered, just the sort of boy whom one ought to encourage and help on in life. She had nothing at all against Govind. But his mother now, and his sisters—Bhuaji, looking sideways at Durga, sadly shook her head. Alas, she knew women like that only too well, she had come across too many of them to be taken in by their soft speech. Greedy and shameless, that was what they were, self-seeking and unscrupulous, with their one aim to fasten upon and wring whatever advantage they could out of noble-hearted people like Durga. It was they, said Bhuaji, coming closer and whispering behind her hand as if afraid Mrs. Puri would hear from upstairs, who incited the boy to come down and ask for money and new clothes—just as a feeler and to see how far they could go. Let Durga wait and in a short time she would see: saris they would ask for, not ten-rupee notes but hundred-rupee ones, household furniture, a radio, a costly carpet; and they would not rest till they had possessed themselves not only of the upstairs part of the house but of the downstairs part as well. . ..

Just then Govind passed the door and Durga called out to him. When he came, she asked him, “Where are you going?” and then she stroked the shirt he was wearing, saying, “I think it is time you had another new bush shirt.”

“A silk one,” he said, which made Durga smile and reply in a soft, promising voice, “We will see,” while poor Bhuaji stood by and could say nothing, only squint and painfully smile.

One day Bhuaji went upstairs. She said to Mrs. Puri: “Don’t let your boy go downstairs so much. She is a healthy woman, and young in her thoughts.” Mrs. Puri chose to take offense: she said her boy was a good boy, and Durga was like another mother to him. Bhuaji squinted and laid her finger by the side of her nose, as one who could tell more if she but chose. This made Mrs. Puri very angry and she began to shout about how much evil thought there was in the world today so that even pure actions were misinterpreted and made impure. Her two daughters, though they did not know what it was all about, also looked indignant. Mrs. Puri said she was proud of her son’s friendship with Durga. It showed he was better than all those other boys who thought of nothing but their own pleasures and never cared to listen to the wisdom they could learn from their elders. And she looked from her veranda down into the courtyard, where Govind sat with Durga and was trying to persuade her to buy him a motor scooter. Bhuaji also looked down, and she bit her lip so that no angry word could escape her.

Durga loved to have Govind sitting with her like that. She had no intention of buying him a motor scooter, which would take more money than she cared to disburse, but she loved to hear him talk about it. His eyes gleamed and his hair tumbled into his face as he told her about the beautiful motor scooter possessed by his friend Ram, which had many shiny fittings and a seat at the back on which he gave rides to his friends. He leaned forward and came closer in his eagerness to impart his passion to her. He was completely carried away—“It does forty miles per hour, as good as any motor car!”—and looked splendid, full of strength and energy. Durga laid her hand on his knee and he didn’t notice. “I have something for you inside,” she said in a low hoarse voice.

He followed her into the room and stood behind her while she fumbled with her keys at her steel almira. Her hand was shaking rather, so that she could not turn the key easily. When she did, she took something from under a pile of clothes and held it out to him. “For you,” she said. It was a penknife. He was disappointed, he lowered his eyes and said, “It is nice,” in a sullen, indifferent voice. But then at once he looked up again and he wetted his lips with his tongue and said, “Only twelve hundred rupees, just slightly used, it is a chance in a million”—looking past her into the almira where he knew there was a little safe in which she kept her cash. But already she was locking it and fastening the key back to the string at her waist. He suddenly reached out and held her hand with the key in it—“Twelve hundred rupees,” he said in a whisper as low and hoarse as hers had been before. And when she felt him so close to her, so eager, so young, so passionate, and his hand actually holding hers, she shivered all over her body and her heart leaped up in her and next thing she was sobbing. “If you knew,” she cried, “how empty my life has been, how lonely!” and the tears flowed down her face. He let go her hand and stepped backward, and then backward again as she followed him; till he was brought up short by her bed, which he could feel pressing against the back of his knees, as he stood, pinned, between it and her.

She was talking fast, about how alone she was and there was no one to care for. Yet she was young still, she told him—she invited him to look, look down into her face, wasn’t it a young face still, and full and plump? And the rest of her too, all full and plump, and when she was dressed nicely in one of her best saris with a low-cut blouse, then who would know that she wasn’t a young girl or at least a young woman in the very prime of her life? And she was good too, generous and good and ready to do everything, give everything for those she 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.