The Moneylenders of Shahpur (11 page)

The following morning, preparatory to going to the Marwari Gate temple, Tilak wrote a note on the blackboard of his lecture room, telling the students that the lectures for that day were cancelled.

He had spent most of the night going over his financial position, a record of which he kept in a battered account book. He had some savings and a little money in Government Bonds left him by his father, but it was not enough. He wondered which of his relations could be prevailed upon to lend him some more.

He was certain that his uncle would be pleased about his Fellowship and would stand surety with the passport people, so that he would not have to find the considerable deposit which would, otherwise, be demanded of him.

Suddenly, he stopped writing. How was he to get a passport for Anasuyabehn?

His uncle would certainly not connive with him in the abduction of a young woman. He had planned to marry her and then take her straight on to the boat or plane for England. This would not give time to have her name included on his own passport; and to obtain a separate passport would take even longer. Speed was of the essence if they were to avoid her family’s wrath breaking over their heads, not to speak of the anger of the mighty Desai clan.

He was standing staring with glazed eyes at the blackboard, when Dr Yashvant Prasad, walking along the corridor, spotted him.

‘Ah, Tilak,’ he called. ‘I was about to send my clerk to find you. Will you come into my office for a few minutes.’

Tilak turned sharply, trying vainly to think of an excuse to evade the interview.

‘Ji hun,’ he assented, and followed the Vice-Chancellor with lagging feet. ‘My murdered frog,’ he thought glumly and correctly.

As Tilak sat opposite him, Dr Prasad’s pleasant voice meandered on. Tilak said, ‘Yes, sir,’ and ‘No, sir’, wherever it seemed appropriate, and thought of Anasuyabehn loitering alone by the temple. He prayed that she had sought seclusion inside the building.

‘I propose,’ said the Vice-Chancellor, putting his fingertips together, ‘to speak personally to each Jain member of the staff and urge tolerance.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ responded Tilak, seething with worry under his polite exterior.

‘I also propose to call on the more influential and forward-looking Jains in the city, to seek their help. I hope through them to reach the more orthodox groups with whom we do not so frequently come into touch. There is a
very powerful family of Desais here, for example – if one could get people like that …’

‘Desai?’ queried Tilak, jerked back from thoughts of the Marwari Gate temple.

‘Yes. Big financiers – they live in the centre of the city.’

‘I’ve heard of them,’ responded Tilak. It dawned on him that it was probably one of these Desais who was to marry Anasuyabehn. He thought bitterly that it would be too ironical to lose Anasuyabehn to a family which might be able to influence favourably his own position in the community.

The Vice-Chancellor was continuing.

‘It will be slow work, I fear. In the meantime, Tilak, lock the laboratory door while doing your researches.’ He smiled conspiratorially.

Tilak felt despairingly that if the Vice-Chancellor went on much longer, all his anger at the Dean, all his worry regarding Anasuyabehn and his frustration in respect of his work would explode out of him. He took a large breath, however, and then managed to reply, ‘Certainly, sir.’ Now was not the time to precipitate his resignation.

Desperate in his general agitation, Tilak half rose, hoping that Dr Prasad had finished.

‘Before you go, I would like to ask your opinion about establishing a postgraduate course,’ Dr Prasad went on remorselessly. Tilak sat down in his chair again and commended Anasuyabehn to any gods who happened to live in the temple.

He emerged at lunchtime at a loss to know how to communicate with her. He strode across the campus through the broiling heat of the sun. Suddenly his legs faltered and he had to stop in the shade of a tree. He watched the tree ants make a detour round his fingers and continue their endless running up and down the tree trunk,
while the trembling in his legs eased. As the faintness passed, he remembered that he had not eaten a proper meal for over a day, and he wondered how to get one without travelling into town; he had only a little rice and lentils in his room.

He remembered John, ever kind and sympathetic.

‘Perhaps he’d be kind enough to give me lunch,’ he thought, ‘and maybe Ranjit could find me a boy as temporary servant.’

A very exhausted Tilak again presented himself at John’s door and was fed by a resigned Ranjit and comforted by John, who assumed that his friend’s shaken appearance was due, largely, to lack of food and the long session with Dr Prasad about the murdered frog and fish.

‘I thought I might be able to pick up a little Delhi rice,’ Anasuyabehn told her aunt that morning, in the hope of justifying a visit to the Marwari Gate bazaar in which the temple lay. They had both been busy, getting ready for the expected arrival of their relations, and Anasuyabehn would, ordinarily, have gone to the nearest bazaar for the day’s vegetables. She watched the indecision in her aunt’s face. She knew the old woman loved the long delicate grains of Delhi rice, so hard to obtain in Shahpur, even on the black market.

‘Well,’ the older woman said finally, ‘perhaps I could spare the boy for an hour to go with you.’

‘I’ll be all right alone, respected Aunt,’ Anasuyabehn assured her quickly.

‘Very well, then. Be a modest, circumspect girl and keep your sari over your head. I hope no Desais see you.’

Anasuyabehn obediently hitched her sari over her head, seized her cotton shopping bag, checked that sufficient money was tied safely in a tucked-in corner of her sari, and fled before Aunt could change her mind.

The bazaar was packed with people. After she had made her purchases, including a seer of Delhi rice from under a stall, she paused apprehensively to scan the crowd for Tilak. A young man on a bicycle eyed her insolently and, as he approached her, began to slow down. She moved hastily closer to the stalls, only to be jostled by a group of millhands going off shift. They touched her obscenely and shouted ribald remarks, as, impeded by the heavy shopping bag, she tried to shrink from them. In a moment, they were past her and clambering into a bus, leaving her nearly weeping with humiliation.

A countrywoman shouted a stream of abuse at them and then called to Anasuyabehn to come closer to her. Anasuyabehn stumbled towards her, wiping her face with her sari and trying not to be sick, while a policeman, rifle on back, leaned against a door jamb and laughed at her.

The woman nodded her head towards the pavement beside her. ‘They won’t bother you if you don’t stray on to the street. Stay here, near us.’

Anasuyabehn nodded and made her way quickly into the temple behind them. She went only as far as the outer cloisters, feeling that Tilak would be sure to find her there.

The building was cool and shadowy. Morning prayers were long since over. The cloisters, with their fifty-two small shrines, were almost deserted. Only at one end a man and a young boy sat together, cotton masks over their mouths, and told their beads. The boy looked up as she entered, but a reproving glance from his companion made him hastily bow his head and continue his prayers.

Anasuyabehn stood leaning against the wall and drank
in the peace of the place after the heat and hurly-burly of the bazaar outside. The minutes ticked by and her pounding temples and nausea eased.

Where was Tilak? He should have been there fifteen minutes ago. She went to the top of the entrance steps and looked out over the crowd. No sign of him. She retraced her steps inside and continued to wait.

When her watch told her she had been waiting half an hour, she turned reluctantly and sadly once more to the entrance. Perhaps he had regretted his impetuosity of the previous night and decided that his suit was hopeless.

Head bowed to hide her tears, she did not see, until she nearly trod on him, the monk who had been silently watching her from behind.

Tall, naked except for a tattered cloth covering his genitals, it seemed as if he had no flesh, that the skin was drawn straight over his skeleton. His body was ingrained with dirt and his bald head was covered with sores, where the hair had been painfully plucked out by hand. In one emaciated hand he held a peacock feather and in the other a begging bowl. For a moment, until he drew hastily back from her, her face was within a foot of his.

Her father’s guru, his religious teacher, Anasuyabehn realized, with a sense of shock.

As if to pierce her soul, penetrating, bloodshot eyes had looked deep into her own, and made her shiver.

She recoiled from him, feeling as if her mind lay naked to the man and that he had divined her reason for being alone in the temple. She cringed with sudden fear of his supernatural power. Then she bowed low, to touch the horny bare feet.

He knew her. Mehta’s daughter, a modern miss with no real respect for her religion. He had warned her father once that he had left her too long unmarried. For his own
spiritual good a man must see his children married before he dies. Marry her into an orthodox family, he had counselled. He had heard, however, that he was marrying her, instead, into a monied one.

And now, what was she doing in the temple? She was obviously not there for worship; her clothes were not fresh and she had shopping with her.

He knew that he should not care, that he should turn away from her; but perhaps the child had, of her own accord, sought to return to her religious observances and was not sure how to accomplish this.

Perplexed, he surveyed her ashy face as she rose from her obeisance. She could not go out through the gate until he moved, and he had been so long cut off from any consideration of time, that he was unaware that he had kept her standing there, head bowed, for several minutes.

Anasuyabehn was frozen with fear, as she suffered an intense examination by serene, intelligent eyes, that had spent years looking for the Ultimate Truth, and seemed now to be able to look through her and past her.

She was suddenly acutely aware of her own pettiness compared to men like this. Though she might assure herself that she had discarded her religion, she knew in those scarifying minutes, that it could not be shrugged off like a Kashmir shawl; it was part of the warp and weft of her life, hopelessly woven into her thoughts and actions, and now showing its strength, by making her stand, so frightened, before this uncanny, withdrawn monk.

At last the monk spoke. His voice was soft, so as not to disturb the souls in the air. ‘You were looking for me?’

‘No.’ The answer came in a whisper.

It was an essential part of a monk’s creed that he feel no personal interest in anyone. It was laudable, however, and would gain him merit, to hear confession or to instruct in
the scriptures. Furthermore, try as he might to conquer it, he was curious to know what had caused her to visit the temple and why she was so obviously terrified.

If he stares at me much longer, thought Anasuyabehn, I shall die at his feet.

The man saw her sway. A bad conscience, he diagnosed.

‘You wish to make confession?’

‘No.’

‘I am here each day. Go home and examine your conscience. You may ask your father to bring you to see me, if you wish, and I will hear you.’

After this pronouncement, he seemed to forget about her, and he turned along the side of the cloister, slowly sweeping the floor in front of him with his peacock feather, so that he would not kill an insect by treading on it. Anasuyabehn tottered out into the blazing sunlight, to the shrieks of the bazaar radios and the vendors’ voices.

The bustling crowd around her did little to dispel the mesmeric effect of the monk’s frightful godliness. For, to her, godly he undoubtedly was, with a personality purged of all human desire. She felt he did not need to hear her confession to know all that was in her mind.

Hypnotized by the mystic, she forgot to look again in the bazaar for Tilak and the bus was well along the road to home before she remembered him.

Mahadev Desai’s father sat on the worn stone steps of one of the verandas that faced the courtyard of his home. Though the morning sun shone warmly upon him, he was shaking as if with cold. The hands that held the telegram, which his servant had just handed to him, trembled so much that he could hardly reread it, to assure himself that he had understood it.

‘Send my brother and my son to me,’ he snapped finally, his wizened face looking more than usually owlish as he tightened his lips under his large, hooked nose.

The scared servant flew to obey, while, with quivering fingers, old Desai smoothed the crumpled edges of the telegram.

His second son, his usually blank face full of apprehension, rolled across the courtyard like a billiard ball slowly into a pocket. His uncle followed him, still tucking in his flapping dhoti as he came.

They each read the telegram and, as its full implications sank into their minds, utter consternation made them both burst into speech. Yet the message was such an innocent one. It merely informed them that Mahadev had not arrived on the Delhi Mail and asked on which train he would be travelling.

‘The diamonds,’ wailed Uncle, his hawklike face blenched.

‘The rubies!’ exclaimed his nephew, a mass of dithering fat.

‘My son,’ gasped old Desai. ‘My only intelligent son,’ and he glared at his second son, who shrank visibly at the insult.

The smell of trouble had by this time brought others to the scene. A knot of servants and hangers-on had gathered at a little distance and were watching the conference speculatively. The daughter-in-law of the wicked tongue could be heard approaching, scolding Mahadev’s daughter as she came. The child trotted in front of her, silent and sullen. Automatically, her grandfather hid his fears and called her to him and she thankfully nestled down by him on the step. She stuck her tongue out at her aunt, who mercifully did not see the impudent gesture.

‘What’s the matter?’ the daughter-in-law asked in respectful tones.

‘It does not concern you,’ replied old Desai coolly. ‘I must, however, go out on business.’ He turned to his younger son. ‘Have the carriage brought out.’ His voice sounded as brittle as his frail limbs looked, beneath their thin cotton covering.

The man went obediently, doing his best to crush the rancour he felt at his father’s unkind remark. ‘It’s unjust,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘I work so hard.’

Old Desai’s waspish daughter-in-law hung on to every word, in the hope of obtaining a clue as to what was wrong.

‘Daughter,’ he addressed her. ‘Get out a clean set of khadi and put it in my room. I must change. Your husband will accompany me and will need the same.’ He motioned her away impatiently with his walking stick.

The woman’s face fell. Her temper flashed out as she called to a servant to get the clothes requested.

‘Brother, you must stay here. Several important people are coming in this morning. I’ll go to see the Chief of Police immediately.’ He sighed deeply, and then exclaimed in apprehension, ‘Heaven help us! I hope Mahadev is all right.’

His brother nodded his bald head. ‘I was afraid for him when we heard of the robbery,’ he said.

‘I thought he would be all right,’ said the older man. ‘He’s so quick-witted. I should have sent him by plane – it would have been much safer – though very expensive,’ he sighed.

‘I’ve never known dacoits in this district take someone right off a train – usually they rob and murder on the train – or just by – in which case the Railway Police would have found him, and his death would have been reported at the same time as the white woman’s.’

‘Someone here must have betrayed him, either deliberately or by gossip,’ said old Desai suspiciously.

‘The dacoits must have been primarily concerned with the registered mail, as usual,’ reassured his brother. ‘They could, of course, have stumbled on Mahadev by accident.’

Mahadev’s father rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘I doubt if they could have done,’ he said at last. ‘There was nothing to distinguish him from fifty other Banias who must have been travelling on the train – the boy was himself so sure that he would not be picked out in such an event as this – that is why he carried the stones with him, rather than entrusting them to the registered mail – as you know, some of the stones are particularly good. Our honoured customer, the Maharaja inherited some excellent ones – and they were a good partial surety for the loan to start his factory. Now he’s ready to pay his debt – and we have lost them – and our boy.’

He got up wearily.

‘Brother, you had better arm me with some money – and a gift – a good ring, perhaps. Some presents are indicated to speed investigating feet. Arree! Shall I ever see my son again?’

His brother touched his arm comfortingly, and assured
him, with more confidence than he felt, that Mahadev was probably safe. The much maligned police were not really so inefficient. There would certainly be a dreadful row about the murder of the English lady and that would galvanize them into action.

The little granddaughter, still as a scared mouse, had all this time been sitting, forgotten, on the step beside them. Her father was a magical person to her, who was often away from home. But when he returned his suitcase was full of presents for her and he had wonderful stories to tell. She opened her mouth suddenly and howled.

Her grandfather and great-uncle jumped guiltily, and, until a servant came to say that the clothing was ready, they kept assuring the little girl that Papa would be all right. She must, however, say nothing about him until Grandpa came home again – and maybe he would bring her a gift from the bazaar when he returned.

‘I’ll keep her with me,’ promised Great-Uncle, and swung her cheerfully up into the air, and carried her off towards the counting house. He stopped suddenly, and turned back to his brother. ‘Shall I inform Dean Mehta?’ he asked.

‘Tell nobody,’ replied old Desai. ‘Let’s first try to find out what’s happened.’

Old Desai climbed into the little black carriage, and told his second son to drive fast. No servant went with them. This business had to be kept as quiet as possible, he reflected, if only because he did not wish the Income Tax collector to read in the newspaper anything of their rapidly expanding operations. There was safety in a fair display of poverty. Where riches are splashed about, there come the thieves, the spongers, the hangers-on, the tax collector. Better to hide behind the ancient walls of one’s Society, deep in the older part of town. A story of valuable rubies
and diamonds lost would alert every robber to the possibility of large quantities of valuables hidden in the floors of the Desai Society, he thought dismally, however poverty-stricken it looked. They would not realize that nowadays money was invested in ships, planes, factories and machinery, instead of being buried as gold.

The traffic was held up by the Red Gate, which was too narrow to allow the vehicles to flow through fast. Old Desai shouted to a toy seller on the pavement, and the man fought his way through the stalled vehicles to the middle of the road. Old Desai solemnly bargained for and then purchased a monkey-on-a-stick.

‘Father’s reached his dotage,’ thought his second son gloomily, as he whipped up the horse again.