‘I‘ve never heard anything like that,’ said Saeeda Bai dismissively. ‘Anyway, why are you holding that cage in such a funny way?’
‘Oh, it’s nothing really,’ said Ishaq, setting the cage down on a table and rubbing his right wrist. ‘Just a pain in my wrist.’
In fact it was very painful and had become worse during the previous few weeks.
‘You seem to play well enough,’ said Saeeda Bai, not very sympathetically.
‘Saeeda Begum, what would I do if I didn’t play?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Saeeda Bai, tickling the little parakeet’s beak. ‘There’s probably nothing the matter with your hand. You don’t have plans to go off for a wedding in the family, do you? Or to leave town until your famous explosion at the radio station is forgotten?’
If Ishaq was injured by this painful reference or these unjust suspicions, he did not show it. Saeeda Bai told him to fetch Motu Chand, and the three of them soon began to make music for Maan’s pleasure. Ishaq bit his lower lip from time to time as his bow moved across the strings, but he said nothing.
Saeeda Bai sat on a Persian rug with her harmonium in front of her. Her head was covered with her sari, and she stroked the double string of pearls hanging around her neck with a finger of her left hand. Then, humming to herself, and moving her left hand onto the bellows of the harmonium, she began to play a few notes of Raag Pilu. After a little while, and as if undecided about her mood and the kind of song she wished to sing, she modulated to a few other raags.
‘What would you like to hear?’ she asked Maan gently.
She had used a more intimate ‘you’ than she had ever used so far – ‘tum’ instead of ‘aap’. Maan looked at her, smiling.
‘Well?’ said Saeeda Bai, after a minute had gone by.
‘Well, Saeeda Begum?’ said Maan.
‘What do you want to hear?’ Again she used tum instead of aap and sent Maan’s world into a happy spin. A couplet he’d heard somewhere came to his mind:
Among the lovers the Saki thus drew distinction’s line,
Handing the wine-cups one by one: ‘For you, Sir‘; ‘Yours’; and ‘Thine’.
‘Oh, anything,’ said Maan, ‘Anything at all. Whatever you feel is in your heart.’
Maan had still not plucked up the courage to use ‘tum’ or plain ‘Saeeda’ with Saeeda Bai, except when he was making love, when he hardly knew what he said. Perhaps, he thought, she just used it absent-mindedly with me and will be offended if I reciprocate.
But Saeeda Bai was inclined to take offence at something else.
‘I’m giving you the choice of music and you are returning the problem to me,’ she said. ‘There are twenty different things in my heart. Can’t you hear me changing from raag to raag?’ Then, turning away from Maan, she said: ‘So, Motu, what is to be sung?’
‘Whatever you wish, Saeeda Begum,’ said Motu Chand happily.
‘You blockhead, I’m giving you an opportunity that most of my audiences would kill themselves to receive and all you do is smile back at me like a weak-brained baby, and say, “Whatever you wish, Saeeda Begum.” What ghazal? Quickly. Or do you want to hear a thumri instead of a ghazal?’
‘A ghazal will be best, Saeeda Bai,’ said Motu Chand, and suggested ‘It’s just a heart, not brick and stone,’ by Ghalib.
At the end of the ghazal Saeeda Bai turned to Maan and said: ‘You must write a dedication in your book.’
‘What, in English?’ asked Maan.
‘It amazes me,’ said Saeeda Bai, ‘to see the great poet Dagh illiterate in his own language. We must do something about it.’
‘I’ll learn Urdu!’ said Maan enthusiastically.
Motu Chand and Ishaq Khan exchanged glances. Clearly they thought that Maan was quite far gone in his fascination with Saeeda Bai.
Saeeda Bai laughed. She asked Maan teasingly, ‘Will you really?’ Then she asked Ishaq to call the maidservant.
For some reason Saeeda Bai was annoyed with Bibbo today. Bibbo seemed to know this, but to be unaffected by it. She came in grinning, and this re-ignited Saeeda Bai’s annoyance.
‘You’re smiling just to annoy me,’ she said impatiently. ‘And you forgot to tell the cook that the parakeet’s daal was not soft enough yesterday – do you think he has the jaws of a tiger? Stop grinning, you silly girl, and tell me what time is Abdur Rasheed coming to give Tasneem her Arabic lesson?’
Saeeda Bai felt safe enough with Maan to mention Tasneem’s name in his presence.
Bibbo assumed a satisfactorily apologetic expression and said: ‘But he’s here already, as you know, Saeeda Bai.’