‘Do you go to school?’ asked the Magistrate pleasantly.
The boy silently nodded, ‘Yes.’
‘What texts are you reading?’ asked the sāheb.
Not understanding the meaning of the word ‘text’, Nilmani went on staring at the Magistrate. Later, he enthusiastically described this meeting with the Magistrate to his sister.
That afternoon Jaygopal dressed himself up in chapkan, pantaloons and turban, and went to pay his respects to the honourable Magistrate. Petitioners, defendants, messengers and constables crowded round. To escape the heat, the sāheb had emerged from his tent and was sitting at a camp-table in the shade outside. Offering Jaygopal a stool he questioned him about local affairs. Jaygopal swelled with pride to be given this privileged position in front of the villagers, and thought, ‘If only the Chakrabartis and Nandis could see me now!’
It was then that a veiled woman appeared, bringing Nilmani with her, and stood before the Magistrate. ‘Sāheb,’ she said, ‘I entrust this orphaned little brother of mine to you: please look after him.’
Seeing for the second time this serious, large-headed little boy, with a woman who was clearly of good family, the sāheb stood up and said, ‘Come into the tent.’
‘I shall say right here what I have to say,’ said the woman. Jaygopal went pale and began to fidget. The curious villagers closed in avidly; but withdrew when the sāheb raised his cane.
Holding her brother’s hand Shashi told his whole story from beginning to end. From time to time Jaygopal tried to interrupt, but the Magistrate, flushed with anger, snapped at him to shut up and, pointing with his cane, directed him to stand up from his stool. Jaygopal stood in silence, inwardly fuming at Shashi. Nilmani pressed against his sister and listened open-mouthed.
When Shashi had finished her account the Magistrate asked Jaygopal some questions, and after hearing his replies fell silent. Then, addressing Shashi, he said, ‘My dear, although I can’t hear this case myself, you can rest assured that I shall do what needs to be done. You can return home with your brother without fear.’
‘So long as he cannot get back the house which is his by rights,’ said Shashi, ‘I shall not dare to take him there. Only if you keep Nilmani yourself will he be safe.’
‘Where will you go?’ asked the sāheb.
‘I shall return to my husband’s house. I have nothing to fear.’
With a slight smile, the sāheb gave in. He agreed to take away this skinny, dark, serious, calm, gentle, amulet-wearing Bengali boy.
As Shashi said goodbye, the boy clung to her sari. ‘Don’t worry, little chap,’ said the sāheb. ‘Come with me.’
With tears streaming behind her veil, Shashi said, ‘Darling brother, go now – you’ll see your Didi again.’ Then she embraced him, stroked his head and back, somehow extricated the end of her sari from his grasp and swiftly walked away. The sāheb put his left arm round Nilmani, but he cried out, ‘Didi, Didi!’ Shashi turned once and waved at him with her right hand, trying to send him silent consolation. Then, heart-broken, she continued on her way.
Once again husband and wife were reunited in their long-familiar home. Fated to be united! But this reunion did not last long. For not long afterwards the villagers heard one morning that Shashi had been smitten with cholera during the night and had been cremated that very night. No one made any comment on this. The neighbour Tara would sometimes shout out what she thought, but people told her to shut up.
When she said goodbye to her brother, Shashi said that he would see her again. I do not know if that promise has been fulfilled.
Fury Appeased
I
Gopinath Shil’s wife Giribala lived on the top floor of Ramanath Shil’s three-storey house. There were tubs of bel-flowers and roses outside the southern door of her bedroom. The roof had a high parapet around it, with spaces between the bricks so that one could look at the view. The bedroom was hung with engravings of foreign ladies in various states of dress and undress; but the reflection of the sixteen-year-old Giribala in the large mirror opposite the door was not inferior to any of the pictures on the wall.
Giribala’s beauty was like a sudden ray of light, a surprise, an awakening, a shock. It could be quite overwhelming. One felt on seeing her, ‘I was not prepared for this. She is absolutely different from what I see around me all the time.’ And she herself was thrilled by her own beauty. Her body seemed brimful of youth, like foaming wine in a beaker – overflowing in her dress and ornaments, movements, gestures, the tilt of her neck, the dance of her steps, the jingle of her bracelets and anklets, her laugh, her sharp retorts, her brilliant glances.
She was drunk with the wine of her beauty. She was often seen restlessly pacing on her roof, draped in brightly coloured clothes: as if she wished to dance with every limb to an unexpressed tune in her mind. She had a kind of joy, driving and hurling her body into movement; she seemed to receive from the various facets of her beauty a strange pulsation, a throbbing in her blood. She would tear a leaf off a plant, raise it high and release it on the breeze: the graceful curve of her arm soared towards the clouds like an unseen bird released from a cage, while her bangles tinkled and her sari slipped from her shoulder. Or else she would pick up a clod from a tub and pointlessly scatter it about; or standing on tiptoe glance through the spaces in the wall at the great world beyond; or spin her sari-end around her, so that the keys that were tied to it jingled. Maybe she would go to the mirror, unbind her hair and whimsically plait it again – tying the hair at the root with a string, holding the end of the string in her jasmine-white teeth, and lifting her arms behind her head to coil the plaits up tightly. With nothing to do next, she would spread herself out on the soft bed, like moonlight shining through leaves.
She had no children; nor in this wealthy home did she have any housework. Alone every day like this, it was becoming impossible for her to contain herself. She had a husband, but he was outside her control. It had somehow escaped his notice that she had grown out of her childhood so fully.
She had, on the contrary, received his affection when she was a child. He had played truant from school, evaded his dozing guardians, to come and flirt with his girlish young bride. Even though they lived in the same house, he wrote her letters on fancy notepaper, showing them proudly to his schoolfriends. His feelings were amorous enough to be ruffled by clashes with his wife over small or imaginary matters.
Since then, his father had died and Gopinath had himself become master of the house. Unseasoned planks are soon attacked by woodworm. Gopinath had gained independence early: there were many pests to fasten themselves on to him. His visits to the inner part of the house became rarer as he roved further and further afield.
To be a leader is exciting; society can be a potent drug. The desire that Napoleon had to extend his influence over men and history can be felt on a smaller scale in the drawing-room. It is marvellously exciting to create and bind together with crude wit an admiring circle of cronies, to lord it over them and win their applause. Many are willing to embrace debt and scandal and ruin to obtain this.
Gopinath found it thrilling to be a leader. Each day, new feats of wit brought him ever greater glory. In the eyes of his followers, his repartee was unparalleled. Blinded by vanity and excitement to all other duties and feelings, he abandoned himself completely to a ceaseless social whirl.
Meanwhile Giribala, imperiously beautiful, ruled a realm without subjects from her bedroom’s desolate throne. She knew that God had given her a sceptre; she knew she could conquer with a glance the vast world she could see through the gaps in the parapet – yet no one in the world was hers.
She had a pert and witty servant called Sudhamukhi – Sudho for short – who could sing, dance, make up verses, celebrate Giribala’s beauty and rail that it was wasted on so boorish a husband. Giribala leant on her utterly. She would wallow in Sudho’s praise of her face, figure and complexion; sometimes she demurred, took pleasure in rebuking her for flattery – but when
Sudho swore by her opinion, Giribala easily believed her. When Sudho sang, ‘I have signed myself in bondage at your feet’, Giribala took this as a hymn to her own flawless, lac-painted feet, and imagined a lover rolling before them. But alas, despite the victorious jingle of her anklets as she strode to and fro on her empty roof, no lover came to enslave himself to those feet.
Gopinath, however, was enslaved to Labanga, who acted at the theatre. She was wonderful at swooning on stage, and whenever she broke into artificial tears, nasally sobbing ‘Lord of my life, Lord of my soul’, the audience in their long stockings and waistcoats worn over dhotis would roar, ‘Excellent, excellent.’1
Giribala had often heard descriptions of Labanga’s extraordinary talent from her husband (he still came to her occasionally). She did not know the full extent of his infatuation, but she felt jealous all the same. She could not bear to think that another woman had charms and accomplishments which she lacked. She frequently asked, with jealous curiosity, to be taken to the theatre; but her husband refused.
Finally one day she gave Sudho some money and sent her there. When she came back, she spoke of the actresses with disgust, frowning, screwing up her nose. Really, in God’s name, they should be beaten on the brow with a broomstick, and men who fell for their ugly figures and phoney movements deserved the same treatment! This reassured Giribala a little. But with her husband virtually cut off from her now, her doubts returned. She voiced them to Sudho, who swore on her life that Labanga was as ugly as a burnt stick dressed in rags. Giribala, unable to see what her husband saw in the actress, smarted with this blow to her pride.2
In the end one evening she secretly went to the theatre with Sudho. Forbidden acts are thrilling! The soft throbbing in her arteries made the brightly lit, crowded stage – filled with music, surrounded by spectators – all the more wondrous to behold. Instead of her lonely, cheerless room, here was a festive world, gorgeous, beautiful. It was like a dream.
The musical play ‘Fury Appeased’1 was being performed that day. The warning bell rang, the band stopped playing, the eager spectators fell silent for a moment, the footlights brightened, the curtain rose, a troupe of girls beautifully dressed as the milkmaids of Vraj danced to musical accompaniment, the theatre resounded with bursts of clapping and roars of approval from the audience – and Giribala’s youthful blood surged. The rhythm of the music, the lights, the brilliant costumes and the bursts of applause made her forget for a moment her whole domestic world. She had found a place of beautiful, unfettered liberty.
Sudho edged up to her at intervals and whispered nervously, ‘Bauthākrun, it’s time to go home. If the Master finds out, we’ll be done for!’ Giribala took no notice. Nothing frightened her now.
The performance neared its climax. Radha was in an almighty huff; Krishna was thrashing hopelessly – his moans and appeals were getting him nowhere. Giribala seethed with outrage, felt as exultant as Radha herself at Krishna’s discomfiture. No one ever assailed her like this – neglected, deserted wife that she was; but how thrilling it was to realize that she too could make a lover groan! She had heard that beauty could be ruthless, had guessed how it might be so: now, in the light and music of the stage, she saw its power in action. It set her brain on fire.
At last the curtain fell, the gas lights dimmed, the audience started to leave; Giribala sat in a trance. She had no thought of leaving the theatre to return home. The performance would surely go on for ever! The curtain would rise again, Krishna would be crushed by Radha; nothing else was conceivable. ‘Bauthākrun,’ said Sudho, ‘what are you doing? Come on! They’re turning out the lights!’
Late that night Giribala returned to her room. A lamp flickered in a corner; there was not a soul or a sound – just an old mosquito-net stirring in the breeze above the empty bed. Life seemed horribly mean and trivial. Where was that brightly lit musical realm, where she could reign at the world’s centre, dispensing her greatness, where she would no longer be merely an unknown, unloved, insignificant, ordinary woman.
From now on she went to the theatre each week. Gradually the rapture of her first visit faded: she could now detect the make-up of the actors and actresses’ faces, the lack of real beauty, the falseness of the acting; but she remained addicted to it. Like a warrior thrilling to the sound of martial music, her heart leapt each time the curtain went up. For an Empress of Beauty, what throne was more magical than this high, enchanting stage, separate from the world, lettered in gold, adorned with scene-paintings, strung with a fabulous web of music and poetry, pressed by enraptured spectators, pregnant with off-stage mysteries, revealed to all by garlands of brilliant lights?
On the night that she first saw her husband at the theatre, loudly appreciating one of the actresses, how she despised him! She decided bitterly that if the day came when her husband, lured by her beauty, were to fall at her feet like a scorched insect, enabling her to walk away grandly, her very toenails shining with contempt, only then would her wasted beauty and youth be avenged! But how could such a day come? She hardly saw him now. She had no idea of his movements, where he went to with his gang of followers, driving them on like dust before a storm.
On a night of full moon in Caitra, Giribala, dressed in the light-orange colours of the spring, sat on her roof, the end of her sari floating in the breeze. Though her husband never came to her, Giribala had not given up her constant changes of clothes and ornaments. Jewels created a stunning effect when she wore them – a gleaming, tinkling aura around her. Today she wore armlets, a necklace of rubies and pearls, and a sapphire ring on her left little finger. Sudho sat by her and sometimes stroked her soft, perfect lotus-pink feet, saying with artless eagerness, ‘O Bauṭhākrun, if I were a man I would clasp these feet to my breast and die!’ Giribala laughed haughtily and said, ‘You would die before that, for I’d kick you away! Stop blabbering. Sing me that song.’ On the quiet and moonlit roof-top, Sudho sang:
I have signed myself in bondage at your feet.
Let all in Vrindavan witness it!
It was ten o’clock at night. Everyone had finished their dinner and gone to bed. Suddenly Gopinath appeared, smeared with pomatum, silk scarf flowing; and Sudho, mightily flustered, hastily pulled down her veil and fled.
‘My day has come,’ thought Giribala to herself. She did not look up. She sat as still as Radha, proud and dignified. But the curtain did not rise, Krishna did not roll at her feet in his head-dress of peacock feathers, no one burst out singing, ‘Why darken the moon by hiding your face?’ In a gruff and tuneless voice, Gopinath said, ‘The key please.’
On a moonlit spring night like this, after so long a separation, that these should be his first words! Was all that was written in poems, plays and novels utterly false? On the stage, the lover would have come with a song and fallen at his lady-love’s feet; her husband as a member of the audience would have melted at the scene – but here he was on a roof on a spring night, saying to his matchless young wife, ‘The key please.’ No music, no love, no magic, no sweetness – it was so utterly banal!
The breeze sighed heavily now – pained, so it seemed, by this insult to all the world’s poetry. Fragrance spread across the roof from the tubs of bel-flowers; Giribala’s unbound tresses blew across her face and eyes; her scented spring-coloured sari fluttered uneasily. She swallowed her pride and stood up. Taking her husband’s hand, she said, ‘Come into the bedroom – I’ll give you the key.’ Today her crying would make him cry, her lonely fantasies would be fulfilled, her divine weapons would be used and would triumph! She was sure. ‘I haven’t got long to wait,’ said Gopinath. ‘Give me the key.’
‘I’ll give you the key and everything it locks,’ said Giribala. ‘But tonight I shan’t let you go out.’
‘That’s impossible,’ said Gopinath. ‘I’ve got to go.’
‘Then I shan’t give you the key,’ said Giribala.
‘You’ll give it or else!’ said Gopinath. ‘Just you try not to give it to me.’ He noticed then that t
here were no keys tied to the end of her sari. He went into the bedroom, pulled open the dressing-table drawer: no keys there either. He broke open her hairdressing box, found collyrium, vermilion, hair-string and other things – but no key. He rumpled the bedding, upturned the mattress, smashed the cupboard, ransacked the whole room.
Giribala stood in silence, gripping the door and looking out at the roof. Seething with rage and frustration, Gopinath shouted, ‘I’m telling you to give me the key, or there’ll be trouble.’ She made no reply. He then grabbed hold of her, wrenched off her armlets, her necklace and rings, kicked her, and left.
No one in the house woke up; no one near by knew anything; the moonlit night remained as still as ever; peace seemed to reign unbroken. But if the pounding in Giribala’s heart could have been heard outside, the serene and moonlit Caitra night would have been split through and through with a fierce howl of agony. Such total silence; such fearful heart-break!
All nights end, even this. Giribala could not reveal – even to Sudho – her shame and defeat. She thought of killing herself, of tearing to shreds her incomparable beauty, to avenge her loveless state. But she realized that nothing would be gained by that: the world would remain unaffected, no one would feel the loss. There was no pleasure in living, but no consolation in dying.
‘I shall go back to my parents,’ said Giribala. Her parents’ house was a long way from Calcutta. Everyone told her not to go, but she listened to no one and took no one with her. And meanwhile Gopinath too went off on a boat-trip with his cronies – no one knew where.