A Suitable Boy(65)

THE next evening, when Maan asked the watchman about Saeeda Bai’s health, he was told that she had left instructions that he was to be sent up. This was wonderful, considering that he had neither left word nor sent a note to say that he would be coming.

As he walked up the stairs at the end of the hall he paused to admire himself in the mirror, and greeted himself with a sotto voce ‘Adaab arz, Dagh Sahib,’ raising his cupped hand to his forehead in happy salutation. He was dressed as smartly as ever in a starched and immaculate kurta-pyjama; he wore the same white cap that had drawn a comment from Saeeda Bai.

When he got to the upstairs gallery that fringed the hall below, he stopped. There was no sound of music or talk. Saeeda Bai would probably be alone. He was filled with a pleased expectation; his heart began beating hard.

She must have heard his footsteps: she had put down the slim novel she had been reading – at least it appeared to be a novel from the illustration on the cover – and had stood up to greet him.

As he entered the doorway she said, ‘Dagh Sahib, Dagh Sahib, you did not need to do that.’

Maan looked at her – she appeared a little tired. She was wearing the same red silk sari that she had worn in Prem Nivas. He smiled and said: ‘Every object strives for its proper place. A book seeks to be near its truest admirer. just as this helpless moth seeks to be near the candle that infatuates hirn.’

‘But, Maan Sahib, books are chosen with care and treated with love,’ said Saeeda Bai, addressing him tenderly by his own name for – was it? – the first time, and entirely disregarding his conventionally gallant remark. ‘You must have had this book in your library for many years. You should not have parted with it.’

Maan had in fact had the book on his bookshelf, but in Banaras. He had remembered it for some reason, had thought immediately of Saeeda Bai, and after some search had obtained a perfect secondhand copy from a bookseller in Chowk. But in the pleasure of hearing himself so gently addressed, all he now said was, ‘The Urdu, even of those poems that I know by heart, is wasted on me. I cannot read the script. Did you like it?’

‘Yes,’ said Saeeda Bai very quietly. ‘Everyone gives me jewels and other glittering things, but nothing has caught my eyes or my heart like your gift. But why are we standing? Please sit down.’

Maan sat down. There was the same slight fragrance that he had noticed before in this room. But today attar of roses was slightly interfused with attar of musk, a combination which made the robust Maan almost weak with longing.

‘Will you have some whisky, Dagh Sahib?’ asked Saeeda Bai. ‘I am sorry that this is the only kind we have got,’ she added, indicating the half-empty bottle of Black Dog.

‘But this is excellent whisky, Saeeda Begum,’ said Maan.

‘We’ve had it for some time,’ she said, handing him the glass.

Maan sat silent for a while, leaning against a long cylindrical bolster and sipping his Scotch. Then he said, ‘I’ve often wondered about the couplets that inspired Chughtai’s paintings, but have never got around to asking someone who knows Urdu to read them to me. For instance, there is one picture that has always intrigued me. I can describe it even without opening the book. It shows a watery landscape in orange and brown, with a tree, a withered tree, rising out from the water. And somewhere in the middle of the water floats a lotus on which a small, smoky oil lamp is resting. Do you know the one I’m talking about? I think it’s somewhere at the beginning of the book. On the page of tissue that covers it is the single word “Life!” That’s all there is in English, and it is very mysterious – because there is a whole couplet underneath in Urdu. Perhaps you could tell me how it reads?’

Saeeda Bai fetched the book. She sat down on Maan’s left, and as he turned the pages of his magnificent gift, she prayed that he would not come upon the torn page that she had carefully patched together. The English titles were oddly succinct. After flipping past ‘Around the Beloved’, ‘The Brimming Cup’, and ‘The Wasted Vigil’, Maan came to ‘Life!’

‘This is the one,’ he said, as they re-examined the mysterious painting. ‘Ghalib has plenty of couplets dealing with lamps. I wonder which one this is.’

Saeeda Bai turned back to the covering sheet of tissue, and as she did their hands touched for a moment. With a slight intake of breath, Saeeda Bai looked down at the Urdu couplet, then read it out:

‘The horse of time is galloping fast: let us see where he halts.

Neither is the hand on the reins nor the foot in the stirrup.’