One that merely excites, unsettles, and makes you uneasy;
The other that –
Well, I can’t remember exactly, but he talks about a calmer, less frantic love, which helps you to grow where you were already growing, “to live where as yet I had languished” – I just read it yesterday, it isn’t in my head yet, but it said everything that I couldn’t express on my own. Do you understand what I mean…? Malati?’
‘All I understand,’ said Malati, ‘is that you can’t live on other people’s words. You’re throwing away the golden casket and the silver one, and you seem to think that you’ll be as lucky with the bronze casket as your English literature tells you you’ll be. Well, I hope you will, I really hope you will. But you won’t be. You won’t.’
‘You’ll grow to like him too, Malu.’
Malati didn’t answer.
‘You haven’t even met him,’ continued Lata with a smile. ‘And I remember at first you refused to like Pran.’
‘I hope you’re right.’ Malati sounded weary. Her heart was sick for both Lata and Kabir.
‘It’s more like Nala and Damyanti than Portia and Bassanio,’ said Lata, trying to cheer her up. ‘Haresh’s feet touch the ground, and he has dust and sweat and a shadow. The other two are a bit too God-like and ethereal to be any good for me.’
‘So you’re at ease,’ said Malati, searching her friend’s face. ‘You’re at ease with yourself. And you know exactly what you’re going to do. Well, tell me, out of curiosity, before you write him off, are you at least going to drop a line to Kabir?’
Lata’s lips began to tremble. ‘I’m not at ease – I’m not –’ she cried. ‘It’s not easy – Malu, how can you think it is? I hardly know who I am or what I’m doing – I can’t study or even think these days – everything is pressing in on me. I can’t bear it when I’m with him, and I can’t bear not to see him. How do I know what I may or may not do? I only hope I have the courage to stick to my decision.’
18.22
MAAN sat at home or in the garden with his father or visited Pran or Veena. Other than that he did very little. He had been eager to visit Saeeda Bai when he was in jail, but now that he was out of jail, he found that he had inexplicably lost his eagerness to do so.
She sent him a note, which he did not reply to. Then she sent him another, more urgent one, upbraiding him for his desertion of her, but to no effect.
Maan was not very fond of reading, but these days he spent whole mornings with the newspapers, reading everything from the international news to the advertisements. Now that Firoz was out of danger he had begun to worry about himself and what was going to happen to him once the charge-sheet was prepared.
Firoz had remained in hospital for about twenty days before the doctors consented to his being moved back to Baitar House. He was physically weak, but on the mend. Imtiaz took charge of him, Zainab stayed on in Brahmpur to nurse him, and the Nawab Sahib watched over him and prayed for his full recovery. For his mind was still clouded and agitated, and he would sometimes cry out in his sleep. These fragments of speech, which would have meant nothing to anyone earlier, could now be fitted into the frame of the rumours by anyone who sat by his bedside.
The Nawab Sahib had turned to religion almost two decades ago partly as the result of his appalled realization of what he had done when he emerged from the worst of his drunken binges, and partly because of the quiet influence of his wife. He had always had a taste for scholarly and analytical pursuits but, being a sensualist, had allowed these to be overlaid by his more urgent needs and pleasures. The change in his life had been sudden; and he had hoped to save his own children from the sins and the repentance that he himself had undergone. The boys knew he did not approve of their drinking, and they never did so in his presence. As for his grandchildren, they would never have been able to imagine him as a young – or even a middle-aged – man. They had known their Nana-jaan throughout their lives as a quiet, pious old man whom only they were permitted to disturb in his library – and who could easily be persuaded to grant them a respite from bedtime by the telling of a ghost story. The Nawab Sahib understood all too well the infidelities of their father and, while his heart went out to his daughter, he was reminded of the suffering he had in his own time inflicted on his own wife. Not that Zainab would have wanted him to speak to her husband. She had needed comfort, but had not expected relief.
The Nawab Sahib now suffered once again, but this time not only from the memory of the past but from the present opinion of the world, and – worst of all – from the sense of what his children must think of him. He did not know what interpretation to place upon the rejection of his continuing financial help to Saeeda Bai. He was more troubled by it than relieved. He did not really think of Tasneem as his daughter, or feel any affection for this unseen being, but he did not want her to suffer. Nor did he wish Saeeda Bai now to feel free to publish to the world whatever it suited her convenience to publish. He begged God to forgive him for the unworthiness of this concern, but he was unable to put it aside.