It was too late for Maan to visit Pran in hospital; humming to himself, he wandered along to Saeeda Bai’s. The watchman looked rather abstracted tonight; he knocked at the door, and held a consultation with Bibbo. Bibbo glanced at Maan, who was standing eagerly at the gate, then turned back to the watchman and shook her head.
But Maan, who had interpreted the negative signal correctly, had leaped over the fence in a flash, and was at the door before she could close it.
‘What?’ he said, his voice barely controlled. ‘The Begum Sahiba said that she would receive me this evening. What has happened?’
‘She is indisposed,’ said Bibbo, with great emphasis on ‘indisposed’. It was clear that Saeeda Bai was nothing of the kind.
‘Why are you annoyed with me, Bibbo?’ said Maan, helplessly. ‘What have I done that all of you should treat me this way?’
‘Nothing. But the Begum Sahiba is not receiving anyone today.’
‘Has she received anyone already?’
‘Dagh Sahib –’ said Bibbo, pretending to relent but throwing out a provocative hint instead, ‘Dagh Sahib, someone whom I might call Ghalib Sahib is with her. Even among poets there is an order of precedence. This gentleman is a good friend, and she prefers his company to that of all others.’
This was too much for Maan. ‘Who is he? Who is he?’ he cried, almost beside himself.
Bibbo could simply have told Maan that it was Mr Bilgrami, Saeeda Bai’s old admirer whom she found boring but soothing, but she was excited to have evoked such a dramatic response. Besides, she was angry with Maan and felt like giving him a spoonful or two of jealousy as punishment for her own misfortunes. Saeeda Bai had slapped Bibbo very hard several times after the kiss on the staircase, and had threatened to turn her out of the house for her shamelessness. In Bibbo’s recollection it was Maan who had initiated the kiss that had got her into all this trouble.
‘I can’t tell you who he is,’ she said, raising her eyebrows slightly. ‘Your poetic intuition should tell you.’
Maan grabbed Bibbo by the shoulders and began to shake her. But before he could get her to speak and before the watchman could come to her rescue, she had escaped from his grip and slammed the door in his face.
‘Come now, Kapoor Sahib –’ said the watchman calmly.
‘Who is he?’ said Maan.
The watchman slowly shook his head. ‘I have no memory for faces,’ he said. ‘If someone asked me if you had visited this house, I would not remember.’
Stunned by the brazen manner in which the appointment had been broken, and burning with jealousy, Maan somehow made his way back to Baitar House.
Sitting on top of the great stone gate at the entrance to the drive was a monkey. Why it was awake so late was a mystery. It snarled at him as he approached. Maan glared at it.
The monkey leaped down from the gate and rushed at Maan. If Maan had not been away in Banaras over the previous two days, he would have read in the Brahmpur Chronicle of a vicious monkey that was loose in the Pasand Bagh area. This monkey had apparently lost her mind when some schoolchildren had stoned her baby to death. She had since been charging at and biting and generally terrifying the local residents. She had attacked seven people so far, usually biting off chunks of flesh from their legs, and Maan was to be the eighth.
She charged at him with fearless malignity. Even though he did not turn and flee, she did not slacken her pace, and when she was close enough, she made a final lunge at his leg. But she had not accounted for Maan’s anger. Maan had his cane ready and gave her a blow that stopped her dead.
Into that blow went all his bodily strength and all the power of his jealousy and rage. He raised his stick again, but the monkey was lying on the road, not moving, either stunned or dead.
Maan leaned against the gate for a minute, trembling with anger and nervous shock. Then, feeling suddenly sick at himself, he walked slowly towards the house. Firoz was not in, nor Zainab’s husband, and the Nawab Sahib had retired already. But Imtiaz was up reading.
‘My dear fellow, you’ve had a shock. Is everything all right – at the hospital, I mean?’
‘I’ve just killed a monkey, I think. It charged at me. It was sitting on the gate. I need a whisky.’
‘Ah, you’re a hero,’ said Imtiaz, relieved. ‘It’s a good thing you had that stick on you. I was worried it might be Pran or Savita. The police have been trying to catch her all day. She’s bitten quite a few people already. Ice and water? Well, perhaps not such a hero if you’ve killed her. I’d better get her moved from near the house, or we’ll have a religious disturbance on our hands. But did you do anything to upset her?’