The Householder (9 page)

Prem said, ‘I thought once one is married and is earning money, one will become different.'

‘Perhaps you will like to come with me?' Sohan Lal suggested.

Prem did not ask where to, but he reflected for a moment. Really he ought to go home and see that Indu had let herself out of the bathroom and perhaps pacify her a little. But supposing she was still angry, and would shout at him again, within earshot of the servant-boy and the Seigals? ‘Thank you,' he told Sohan Lal, ‘I will like to come.'

When they had got far enough from the college, they both sat on the bicycle. Prem was on the saddle and Sohan Lal sat sideways on the bar and gave directions. When they had to turn right or left, Sohan Lal held out an arm. The tiffin-carrier clattered from the handlebar. There was no bell, but when necessary, Sohan Lal shouted ‘Look out!' Prem pedalled with pleasure, and a breeze ran through his hair.

They cycled a long way, right into the heart of the old city. Here, in a narrow lane running off the main bazaar, Sohan Lal stopped them. In this lane there were mostly large prosperous cloth-shops, with large prosperous merchants sitting crosslegged inside them, smoking hookahs or chewing betel-leaves and looking more like gentlemen of leisure taking their ease than like shopkeepers anxious to sell. Sohan Lal led Prem into an arched gateway set slightly back between two shops, then through another arch leading off that one. Now they were in a paved courtyard. Under a tree sat a cobbler slowly hammering at a heel. A horse was being led out of the gateway and a cook went running into a door with a dead chicken held by its neck.

Sohan Lal carefully locked up his cycle and then he led Prem into a little doorway and up a dark and narrow winding stair. They went right up to the top of the house, till they came to a curved wooden door which was so low that they had to stoop to pass through it. Now they were in a room with, so it seemed to Prem, a great many people in it. They sat on the floor, with their hands clasped round their knees; they were all of them smiling and their eyes were fixed on a bearded swami in an orange robe who sat crosslegged on a string-bed with his beads held loosely in his hand. The swami was also smiling, and he looked altogether very happy. Sohan Lal at once went up to him and touched his feet with respect. The swami affectionately tousled Sohan Lal's hair and said, ‘You have been neglecting me.'

Sohan Lal said, ‘If only I could, I would like to be with you all day and all night.'

‘This is exactly how the lover speaks to the girl he has been neglecting,' the swami said. Everybody laughed, including Sohan Lal and the swami. Someone said, ‘We are all your lovers', and the swami replied, ‘And you all neglect me', which brought more laughter. ‘It is like this, you see,' said the swami. ‘Sometimes you love me very much and then you come running to me; but at other times you think—oh my wife, oh my job, oh my little finger which is hurting me, and then you don't remember me at all. Isn't that true?' he asked Sohan Lal, who looked sad and replied, ‘You must forgive us.'

The swami smiled very sweetly and chucked Sohan Lal under the chin, so that he did not look sad any more. ‘Today I see you have brought me a new visitor,' said the swami. Prem came forward, and he too touched the swami's feet. ‘Oh-ho,' said the swami, ‘so good to me already.'

‘He is my colleague,' Sohan Lal said. Prem was aware of everyone looking at him, but he did not feel particularly shy. There did not seem to be any cause for shyness in such good-humoured company.

‘It is nice of you to come,' the swami told him. ‘But you must be feeling hot. Please give him some water,' he said to one of the young men sitting near him.

Prem said he was not thirsty. Someone said, ‘Seeing you, he feels refreshed.'

‘I would like to refresh him, if he will let me,' said the swami, looking at Prem with what seemed to be love.

‘Chant the name of God to him then,' someone said.

‘What is the use of my chanting if his ears are stopped with wax?' the swami replied.

‘Wash them for him,' they suggested.

‘This is exactly what I would like to do,' the swami said. He motioned Prem and Sohan Lal to sit on the floor with the others. ‘I would like to wash everyone's ears,' he said. ‘But most people won't let me.'

Someone said, ‘The trouble is that most of us don't know what is valuable in the world and what is worthless.'

‘We all run after trash,' said someone else.

‘Once a prince passed with his attendants through a poor village,' the swami said. ‘The prince dropped a diamond ring there but he was in a hurry and did not even notice its loss. One of his menials had a worthless glass bauble, which broke, so that he had no further use for it and he threw it away. The villagers fought bitterly about this broken glass bauble. But the prince's diamond ring they did not even bother to pick up, for it seemed a thing of no value to them.'

Some more people came in, and one of them said, ‘You are telling stories again?'

‘To amuse my friends,' the swami said, ‘to make them love me and want to come to see me often.'

‘All day we run after broken glass baubles,' someone said. ‘It is only you who teach us to pick up the prince's diamond ring.'

Prem looked round the room and saw that most of the people there were young men. Some of them wore beautifully starched clothes of fine white muslin; others looked shabby and poor. There were also a few older men, and some of these too wore good clothes and looked like successful doctors or lawyers, while others, like Sohan Lal, were careworn and threadbare and obviously not in the least successful. But all of them now had an eager bright air about them, as they sat there on the floor looking up at the swami perched on his bed. Prem too looked up at the swami and, like the others, he could not take his eyes away again.

A very fat man entered, wearing a dhoti and a thin muslin shirt over it. Behind him came servants carrying baskets of sweetmeats and flower garlands, which the fat man placed at the swami's feet. ‘Ah,' said the swami, ‘Sethji is treating us again today.'

A young man said,' Do you think you ought to accept things from Sethji?'

‘I am happy that he thinks of me,' the swami said.

‘But he is so tainted with worldly interest,' said the young man.

‘I am not sure we ought to allow him to come near you at all,' said another.

‘Now keep quiet,' said Sethji, who was busy untying the string from the baskets he had brought. When he had done so, he offered the sweetmeats to the swami who broke off a piece and tasted it and then sent the rest round the room. Everyone ate; they were very good sweatmeats. Someone said, ‘If he brings sweetmeats like this, perhaps we will allow him to come after all.'

‘You are a pack of rogues,' said Sethji.

The swami laughed and said, ‘They are all my beloved rogues.' The flower garlands lay at his feet, pervading the room with a strong sweet smell.

‘Rogues we may be,' said one young man. ‘But we come here to talk of God.'

‘What do you know of these things?' mocked Sethji.

The swami said, ‘Only as the child knows its mother, so we know God. When the child goes out into the street to play with its companions, then it becomes so engrossed in its game that it forgets the mother at home.'

Someone said, ‘So when Sethji goes out to make money——'

‘And that he does all the time,' someone else gaily called between.

‘—then he forgets all about God.'

‘But when the child falls down and hurts itself,' said the swami, ‘it again remembers its mother and goes running to her, crying for comfort.'

‘Which means,' said a young man, ‘when the Income Tax comes after Sethji, then he goes crying to God.'

Everyone laughed, even Sethji, and the swami said, ‘You are in a very naughty mood today.' Prem looked at him and looked. He had never seen anyone like the swami. His face was like a child's, so laughing and clear and happy; there was a glow in his cheeks and his eyes shone.

A young man started to sing. He sat there on the floor, with his legs tucked under him, a young man with close-shaved hair and a badly sewn striped shirt. ‘What is this longing I have for you?' he sang. ‘God, let me come to you.' His voice was low and sweet and appealing, like a lover's. The swami's eyes, as he listened, misted over with longing and his lips were parted in an expression which was part joy and part anguish.

When the young man had finished singing, there was a murmur of approval all round the room. The swami said, ‘When I hear singing like that, I don't know how it is with me ‘His voice broke and Prem noticed with surprise that tears came rushing out from his eyes. ‘Oh, Ram Ram Ram!' the swami called, and then he laughed, while the tears were still flowing down his cheeks, and he took up the flower garlands and flung them towards a group of young men. ‘Oh, God,' he sang, ‘let me adore your feet!' and he sang with such ecstasy and fervour that everyone was moved, and some wept and some laughed, and then some more people were singing and one young man draped the garlands round his neck and danced. Prem was laughing with joy, though at the same time there were tears in his eyes, and he clapped his hands in time with the singing and shouted ‘Wah!' in delight.

Late at night he went home. He did not want to go, especially when he saw that several of the others, including Sohan Lal, were intending to stay the night. Prem too wanted to stay with the swami and his followers; he wanted to be one of them, eat with them, sleep with them, pray with them, be with them always. But Sohan Lal told him he had better go home or his wife would be worried. ‘Next time, perhaps,' Sohan Lal said, ‘you will stay.' The swami asked him, ‘You will come to see me again?' Prem touched his feet very reverently and replied, in a voice shaking with emotion, ‘I will come always, every day I will come.'

The swami laughed and shook his finger at him. ‘Now you are talking with too much extravagance.'

‘It is true,' Prem said. ‘Really—I promise.'

‘If you want to come,' said the swami, ‘then come. But only because you want to, not because you have promised.'

‘I will always want to,' Prem said with sincerity and fervour.

Later he could not remember how he got home. He felt lightheaded, and kept laughing to himself. Probably people who met him thought he was drunk. In a way that was how he felt. But it was not so much as if he had drunk spirits than as if he had drunk pure well-water, and it was the unaccustomed purity of it that had gone to his head. He lay at home in bed, with Indu fast asleep beside him, and felt as if he were floating, he was so light and clear and happy. He thought yes, this is how one must live—with love and laughter and song and thoughts of God. All his former worries about his rent, his rise in salary, his lack of authority as teacher and husband, were nothing but a thin scum floating on top of a deep well of happiness and satisfaction. Nothing, he thought, would ever trouble him again. From now on he would live in contemplation only of spiritual things. Indu would be like a sister to him—he would love her as a sister and both would sit at the feet of the swami and think of God and indulge in happy, innocent play.

He wanted to tell her so, and he leant towards her gently to shake her shoulder. She went on sleeping. One cheek was pressed deep into her pillow and she was breathing regular breaths laden with warmth and sweetness. Her hair lay straggling behind her in a pigtail and when he leant close to her, it delicately tickled him. He bent over her and saw right down into her blouse where her breasts were pressed together into a cleft around which they rose in two soft mounds of abundant flesh. He sighed and laid his lips into the back of her neck. He had to shut his eyes, the sensation was so unutterably sweet to him. His hand groped down into her blouse, but suddenly she jerked away from him and muttered, ‘Leave me alone.' He turned back into his own part of the bed and did not feel so good any more.

Next morning it appeared they were not on speaking terms. He had forgotten all about her quarrel with him but she, he now found out, had not. When she served his breakfast, she did so with a defiant little slam. He looked up in surprise, but saw only her retreating back with the pigtail swinging aggressively. After a while he made an excuse to talk to her. He followed her into the kitchen where she squatted stirring something in the fire. ‘The puris were very good this morning,' he said sheepishly. It was the first time he had ever praised her cooking, but she gave no indication of having heard. Only her lips tightened, and she leant forward to peer into the pot in which she was stirring. Prem waited a bit longer, but finally saw nothing for it but to leave for college. He was about to go down the stairs, when a voice hissed behind him, ‘Bibiji's puris are always very good.' He turned round and there was the servant-boy glaring at him with angry eyes.

So all morning he thought more about Indu than he did about the swami. He wondered what he could do to placate her. Perhaps, he thought, he should bring her some present. Only he did not know what she would like. He might have consulted Sohan Lal if, after yesterday's visit, he had not felt a little ashamed to show his concern over these trivial worldly matters. But he could not help being concerned: he wanted Indu to think kindly of him again. He had had no experience of giving presents to women, and the only thing he could think of that might please her was a sari. But that took rather more money than he at present had. He had still not decided on anything when he went home at midday. On the way, as he went through the bazaar, he passed a sweetmeat stall where people stood outside drinking frothy buttermilk out of tall, brass tumblers or eating sweetmeats, swimming in syrup, out of earthenware pots. Prem made his selection of sweetmeats and spent rather more than he could afford.

But when he got home, he did not know how to present his gift to her. His lunch was served to him with the same slam as his breakfast had been, and she walked away with the same swing of her hips and of her pigtail. Afterwards, though, he followed her into the bedroom and, holding out the earthenware pot of sweetmeats to her, he said in a shy appealing voice, ‘I brought this for you.'