It was fortunate for both him and Saeeda Bai that the watchman had alerted the police. They came in, and he was forced to leave. He did not know, either then or afterwards, how close he had come to becoming that well-washed fruit knife’s second victim.
17.31
FIROZ lay between life and death for several days. Eventually the Nawab Sahib grew so exhausted that he was ordered home by his elder son.
It was the fear of Firoz’s death that finally forced Mahesh Kapoor, that upright and law-abiding man, to speak to the Superintendent of Police. He knew what he was doing: he did it with his eyes open, and he was ashamed, but he did it. He had lost his wife, he could not bear to lose his son. If Firoz died, and the investigating officer and committal magistrate saw fit, Maan might be tried under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code – and this thought was so horrific – and to his mind, unjust – that he could not bear it. The SP for his part was a man who knew how many ways bread could be buttered. He said that it was a difficult problem now that matters had been aired so openly in the press, but that he would do what he could. He repeated several times that he had always had the greatest respect for Mahesh Kapoor. Mahesh Kapoor repeated, though the words tore at his sense of his own integrity, that his feelings towards the SP were very similar.
He visited Maan once more in jail. Once again, father and son did not have much to say to each other. He then left for Salimpur for a few days. He did not tell anyone what he had done, and he reproached himself both for having done it and for not having done it earlier.
Maan had begun working in the jail garden, and this did help him somewhat. Even now, he found the visits of his brother and sister painful. Once he asked Pran to send some money anonymously to Rasheed and gave him his address. Once he asked for a few harsingar flowers from the garden of Prem Nivas and Veena told him that the season was over. For the most part Maan did not know what to say to them. He continued to feel that the shock of his crime had killed their mother, and that they felt the same. But time passed, and exhaustion eased his mind.
Firoz too became better. The advances in medicine of the previous ten years had saved his life, but only just. Had antibiotics not been available in Brahmpur, or had doctors not been sufficiently skilled in their administration, he would surely not have gazed at that lizard again. But despite the wound and the infections, whether he wished to or not, he lived.
A change came over Maan too with the slow recovery of his friend. It was as if he had come out of the valley of the shadow of his own death. If his own danger had caused Saeeda Bai to realize how much she loved him, the danger Firoz had been in had given him a similar insight. He cheered up as soon as Pran told him that Firoz was finally and definitely on the mend. His appetite recovered. He asked for certain kinds of food to be brought from Prem Nivas. He joked about rum chocolates, which a friend had once brought from Calcutta, as a means of smuggling alcohol into jail. He asked for certain visitors: not his immediate family, but people who would bring him a sense of something different: Lata (if she wouldn’t mind paying him a visit) and one of his old girl-friends, who was now married. Both came, on consecutive days: one with Pran (after she had overcome Mrs Rupa Mehra’s objections), one with her husband (after she had overcome his).
Lata, despite the sad and, in some ways, sinister venue, was pleased to see Maan. It was true that their worlds hardly intersected. It had amazed her that Pran had been able, last April Fool’s, to convince her mother of their elopement. But she remembered Maan as she always had – jovial and affectionate – and she was glad to think that he had remembered her. She was not determinedly cheerful, but she could see that talking with her was doing Maan good. They talked about Calcutta, particularly the Chatterjis, and – partly because she wanted to keep him interested – she talked a great deal more freely with him than she normally would have, or than she ordinarily did with Pran. The jail officers sat out of clear hearing, but they looked at them curiously when they burst out laughing. They were not accustomed to that sound in the visiting room.
The next day they heard more of the same. Maan was visited by his old friend Sarla and her husband, who for some reason was called Pigeon by all his friends. Sarla, who had not seen Maan for months, regaled him with a description of a New Year’s party that she and Pigeon had been to. It had been organized by Pigeon’s friends.
‘In order to add a little spice to the gathering,’ said Sarla, ‘they decided this year to be bold and hire a cabaret dancer – from a cheap hotel in Tarbuz ka Bazaar – one of those hotels that advertises stripteases with a new Salome every week and is constantly being raided by the police.’