and whispering behind her hand as if afraid Mrs. Puri would hear from upstairs, who incited the boy to come down and ask for money and new clothes—just as a feeler and to see how far they could go. Let Durga wait and in a short time she would see: saris they would ask for, not ten-rupee notes but hundred-rupee ones, household furniture, a radio, a costly carpet; and they would not rest till they had possessed themselves not only of the upstairs part of the house but of the downstairs part as well. . ..
Just then Govind passed the door and Durga called out to him. When he came, she asked him, “Where are you going?” and then she stroked the shirt he was wearing, saying, “I think it is time you had another new bush shirt.”
“A silk one,” he said, which made Durga smile and reply in a soft, promising voice, “We will see,” while poor Bhuaji stood by and could say nothing, only squint and painfully smile.
One day Bhuaji went upstairs. She said to Mrs. Puri: “Don’t let your boy go downstairs so much. She is a healthy woman, and young in her thoughts.” Mrs. Puri chose to take offense: she said her boy was a good boy, and Durga was like another mother to him. Bhuaji squinted and laid her finger by the side of her nose, as one who could tell more if she but chose. This made Mrs. Puri very angry and she began to shout about how much evil thought there was in the world today so that even pure actions were misinterpreted and made impure. Her two daughters, though they did not know what it was all about, also looked indignant. Mrs. Puri said she was proud of her son’s friendship with Durga. It showed he was better than all those other boys who thought of nothing but their own pleasures and never cared to listen to the wisdom they could learn from their elders. And she looked from her veranda down into the courtyard, where Govind sat with Durga and was trying to persuade her to buy him a motor scooter. Bhuaji also looked down, and she bit her lip so that no angry word could escape her.
Durga loved to have Govind sitting with her like that. She had no intention of buying him a motor scooter, which would take more money than she cared to disburse, but she loved to hear him talk about it. His eyes gleamed and his hair tumbled into his face as he told her about the beautiful motor scooter possessed by his friend Ram, which had many shiny fittings and a seat at the back on which he gave rides to his friends. He leaned forward and came closer in his eagerness to impart his passion to her. He was completely carried away—“It does forty miles per hour, as good as any motor car!”—and looked splendid, full of strength and energy. Durga laid her hand on his knee and he didn’t notice. “I have something for you inside,” she said in a low hoarse voice.
He followed her into the room and stood behind her while she fumbled with her keys at her steel almira. Her hand was shaking rather, so that she could not turn the key easily. When she did, she took something from under a pile of clothes and held it out to him. “For you,” she said. It was a penknife. He was disappointed, he lowered his eyes and said, “It is nice,” in a sullen, indifferent voice. But then at once he looked up again and he wetted his lips with his tongue and said, “Only twelve hundred rupees, just slightly used, it is a chance in a million”—looking past her into the almira where he knew there was a little safe in which she kept her cash. But already she was locking it and fastening the key back to the string at her waist. He suddenly reached out and held her hand with the key in it—“Twelve hundred rupees,” he said in a whisper as low and hoarse as hers had been before. And when she felt him so close to her, so eager, so young, so passionate, and his hand actually holding hers, she shivered all over her body and her heart leaped up in her and next thing she was sobbing. “If you knew,” she cried, “how empty my life has been, how lonely!” and the tears flowed down her face. He let go her hand and stepped backward, and then backward again as she followed him; till he was brought up short by her bed, which he could feel pressing against the back of his knees, as he stood, pinned, between it and her.
She was talking fast, about how alone she was and there was no one to care for. Yet she was young still, she told him—she invited him to look, look down into her face, wasn’t it a young face still, and full and plump? And the rest of her too, all full and plump, and when she was dressed nicely in one of her best saris with a low-cut blouse, then who would know that she wasn’t a young girl or at least a young woman in the very prime of her life? And she was good too, generous and good and ready to do everything, give everything for those she loved. Only who was there whom she could love with all the fervor of which her heart was capable? In her excitement she pushed against him so that he fell backward and sat down abruptly on her bed. At once she was sitting next to him, very close, her hand on his—if he knew, she said, what store of love there was in her, ready and bursting and brimming in her! Then it was his turn to cry, he said, “I want a motor scooter, that’s all,” in a hurt, grieved voice, trembling with tears like a child’s.
That was the last time he came down to see her. Afterward he would hardly talk to her at all—even when she lay in wait for him by the stairs, he would brush hurriedly past her, silent and with averted face. Once she called after him, “Come in, we will talk about the motor scooter!” but all she got by way of reply was, “It is sold already,” tossed over his shoulder as he ran upstairs. She was in despair and wept often and bitterly; there was a pain right in her heart, such as she had never experienced before. She longed to die and yet at the same time she felt herself most burningly alive. She visited Mrs. Puri several times and stayed for some hours; during which Mrs. Puri, as usual, talked a lot, and in the usual strain, and kept pointing out how her children were Durga’s too, while the two daughters simpered. Evidently she knew nothing of what had happened, and assumed that everything was as it had been.
But, so Durga soon learned, Mrs. Puri knew very well that everything was not as it had been. Not only did she know, but it was she herself who had brought about the change. It was she who, out of evil and spite, had stopped Govind from coming downstairs and had forbidden him ever to speak to Durga again. All this Durga learned from Bhuaji one hot afternoon as she lay tossing on her bed, alternately talking, weeping, and falling into silent fits of despair. She had no more secrets from Bhuaji. She needed someone before whom she could unburden herself, and who more fit for that purpose than the ever available, ever sympathetic Bhuaji? So she lay on her bed and cried: “A son, that is all I want, a son!” And Bhuaji was soothing and understood perfectly. Of course Durga wanted a son; it was only natural, for had not God set maternal feelings to flow sweetly in every woman’s breast? And now, said Bhuaji angrily, to have that God-given flow stopped in its course by the machinations of a mean-hearted, jealous, selfish woman—and so it all came out. It was a revelation to Durga. Her tears ceased and she sat up on her bed. She imagined Govind suffering under the restraint laid upon him and yearning for Durga and all her kindness as bitterly as she yearned for him. There was sorrow upstairs and sorrow downstairs. She sat very upright on the bed. After a while she turned her face toward Bhuaji, and her lips were tight and her eyes flashed. She said, “We will see whose son he is.”
She waited for him by the stairs. He came late that night, but still she went on waiting. She was patient and almost calm. She could hear sounds from upstairs—a clatter of buckets, water running, Mrs. Puri scolding her daughters. At the sound of that voice, hatred swelled in Durga so that she was tempted to leave her post and run upstairs to confront her enemy. But she checked herself and remained standing downstairs, calm and resolute and waiting. She would not be angry. This was not the time for anger.
She heard him before she saw him. He was humming a little tune to himself. Probably he had been to see a film with friends and now he was singing a lyric from it. He sounded happy, light-hearted. She peeped out from the dark doorway and saw him clearly just under the lamppost outside the house. He was wearing an orange T-shirt that she had given him and that clung closely to him so that all his broad chest and his nipples were outlined; his black jeans too fitted as a glove over his plump young buttocks. She edged herself as close as she could against the wall. When he entered the doorway, she whispered his name. He stopped singing at once. She talked fast, in a low urgent voice: “Come with me—what do your parents ever do for you?”
He shuffled his feet and looked down at them in the dark.
