Seven

What was to happen happened; no one's effort availed. The doctor was still trying to draw blood from Nirmala's body when Mansaram, showing the last gleam of his bright character, departed from this world of delusion. Perhaps it was for Nirmala that his life had been waiting all that while. How could he have given up the body without proving her stainless? Now his purpose was accomplished. Munshiji became convinced of Nirmala's innocence — but when? When the arrow had already left the hand, when the traveller had already set his foot in the stirrup.

In the grief for his son, Munshiji's life became a burden to him. From that day no smile ever came to his lips again. This life now seemed to him meaningless. He went to the courthouse, but not to plead cases — only to divert his mind; in an hour or two he would grow weary and come away. When he sat down to eat, no morsel would go into his mouth. Nirmala cooked the finest dishes, but Munshiji could not eat more than a few mouthfuls. It seemed as though the morsel were coming out of his mouth again. The moment he went toward Mansaram's room, his heart broke into pieces. Where the lamp of his hopes had burned, darkness now lay spread. He still had his two sons, but when the cow that gives milk dies, what hope is there in the calf? When the tree that was to flower and fruit has fallen, what hope is there from the tiny saplings? True, young and old all die — but the sorrow was this: that he himself had taken the boy's life. The moment the memory came back to him, it felt as though his breast would split — as though his heart would burst out.

Nirmala had true sympathy for her husband. As far as she could, she took pains to keep him content, and never, even by a slip, brought past matters to her tongue. Munshiji was ashamed to make any mention of Mansaram to her. Sometimes the wish came over him to open out to Nirmala all the feelings of his heart, but shame held him back. In this way he did not even gain the solace that comes from telling one's anguish, from making others share in one's grief. The matter, not coming out, spread its poison within and within; day by day his body wasted away.

In these days a friendship had grown up between Munshiji and the doctor who had treated Mansaram. The good man would come from time to time and reason with Munshiji; sometimes he would draw him away with him for a turn in the open air. His wife too had come two or three times to meet Nirmala. Nirmala had also gone several times to their house, but whenever she returned from there she would remain low-spirited for several days. Seeing the happy life of that couple, she could not but grieve over her own lot. The doctor received only two hundred rupees in all, yet within that very sum the two of them passed their lives in contentment. There was only one maidservant in the house; the wife had to do much of the household work with her own hands. There were very few ornaments upon her body either, but between the two of them there was that love which cares not a straw for wealth. At the sight of her husband the wife's face would blossom. At the sight of his wife the husband would be transported with joy. In Nirmala's house there was wealth far greater than this; her body was bursting with ornaments; she had to do no household work with her own hands. Yet, though wealthy, Nirmala was the more unhappy, and Sudha, though poor, was happy. Sudha possessed something that Nirmala did not, before which her own opulence seemed worthless to her — so much so that she felt ashamed to go to Sudha's house wearing her ornaments.

One day Nirmala came home from the doctor's, and Sudha, seeing her very downcast, asked, "Sister, you are very low today. The lawyer sahib's health is well, is it not?"

"What shall I say, Sudha?" said Nirmala. "His condition grows worse day by day; one can hardly speak of it. There is no knowing what God intends."

"Our father says he must go somewhere for a change of climate," said Sudha, "or else some dreadful illness will arise. He has told the lawyer sahib so several times, but he only says, 'I am perfectly well; I have no complaint.' Today you tell him."

"When he has not heeded the doctor sahib," said Nirmala, "will he heed me?"

As she spoke, Nirmala's eyes filled with tears, and the misgiving that for months past had been troubling her heart escaped her lips. Till now she had hidden that misgiving, but now she could hide it no longer. She said, "Sister, the signs do not seem at all good to me. Let us see what God will do."

"Today insist with him strongly," said Sudha, "that he ought to go somewhere for a change of climate. From staying outside for two or four months, many things would be forgotten. I think perhaps even changing the house would lessen his grief somewhat. But you will not be able to go anywhere either. Which month is this?"

"The eighth month is passing," said Nirmala. "This worry too is killing me. I never prayed to God for this. Why this affliction has been thrust upon my head, I cannot tell. I am very unfortunate, sister. A month before my marriage my father passed away. The moment he died, Saturn's evil planet mounted my head. The people with whom my marriage had first been settled turned their eyes away. My poor mother, defeated, had to marry me here. Now my younger sister's marriage is to take place. Let us see at what landing her boat draws up!"

"The people with whom your marriage was first settled — why did they refuse?" asked Sudha.

"Let them know that themselves," said Nirmala. "When my father was no more, who would give a bundle of gold?"

"That is baseness," said Sudha. "Where did they belong?"

"To Lucknow. The name I do not remember; he was some high officer in the Excise department."

Sudha asked gravely, "And what did their son do?"

"Nothing — he studied somewhere, but was very promising."

Lowering her head, Sudha said, "Had he said nothing to his father? He was a grown young man — could he not have prevailed over his father?"

"Now how should I know that, sister?" said Nirmala. "Who does not love a bundle of gold? The pandit who carried the proposal from our house had said that it was the boy himself who was refusing. The boy's mother, indeed, was a goddess. She reasoned with both son and husband, but nothing of hers prevailed."

"Had I got hold of that boy, I would have taken him well to task," said Sudha.

"What was written in my fate has come to pass," said Nirmala. "Who knows what poor Krishna will have to suffer."

In the evening, when the doctor came in from outside after Nirmala had gone, Sudha said, "Tell me — what would you call a man who, having settled a marriage in one place, then, out of greed, settles it somewhere else?"

Dr. Sinha looked at his wife with curiosity and said, "One ought not to do such a thing — what else?"

"Why do you not say that it is utter baseness, meanness of the first order?"

"Yes, I do not refuse to say that either."

"Whose offence is the greater — the bridegroom's, or the bridegroom's father's?"

Sinha still did not grasp what the drift of Sudha's questions was. In surprise he said, "Whatever the case — if he were under his father's control, then count it the father's offence."

"Even if under his father's control, has a grown man no duty of his own?" said Sudha. "If he needs a new coat for himself, he gets it made, by hook or by crook, even against his father's opposition. Can he not, in a matter of such importance, carry his voice to his father's ears? Say, rather, that both he and his father are at fault — but the bridegroom more so. The old man thinks: I shall have to manage the whole expense, so the more I can squeeze out of the bride's side, the better. But it is the bridegroom's duty, if he has not utterly sold himself into the hands of self-interest, to give some proof of his strength of spirit. If he does not do so, then I shall say he is both greedy and a coward. Unfortunately, just such a creature is my husband, and I cannot tell in what words to scorn him."

Sinha said, hesitatingly, "That... that... that was a different matter. There was no question of give-and-take; it was an altogether different matter. The bride's father had passed away. In such a case, what could we do? It had also been heard that there was some flaw in the girl. That was an altogether different matter — but who told you this tale?"

"Say, rather, that the girl was one-eyed, or hunchbacked, or born of a barber-woman's womb, or unchaste," said Sudha. "Why leave out so much? Pray let me hear — what flaw was there in that girl?"

"I had not seen her, after all," said Sinha. "It had been heard that there was some flaw in her."

"The greatest flaw was just this — that her father had gone to heaven and she could not give any large sum," said Sudha. "Why are you so abashed to admit that much? I shall not bite off your ears! If I say a few biting words, then hear them with this ear and let them fly out of that one. If I chatter too much, you may take to the stick. Womankind is kept in order only by the rod. If there was a flaw in that girl, then I shall say that even Lakshmi is not without flaw. Your luck was bad — that is all. What else? It was your fate to be thrown in with me."

"Who told you she was so-and-so?" said Sinha. "You have, it seems, heard it from someone and believed it."

"I have not believed it on hearsay," said Sudha. "I have seen with my own eyes. Why describe her at length — I had never seen so beautiful a woman."

Anxiously Sinha asked, "Is she somewhere here? Tell me truly — where did you see her? Did she come to your house?"

"Yes, she came to my house, and not once but several times," said Sudha. "I too have been to her house several times. The lawyer sahib's wife is that very girl whom you cast off on account of her flaws."

"Truly!"

"Quite truly. If she came to know today that you are that very great man, perhaps she would never set foot in this house again. Of such good character, so skilled in household work, and so supremely beautiful a woman, there will be but two or four in this whole city. You praise me — I am not worthy even to be her maidservant. In the house there is everything that God can give, but when the human beings themselves are not matched, what use is all the rest? Honour to her patience, that she is passing the days of her life with that decrepit old lawyer. I would long ago have swallowed poison. But the anguish of the heart is hardly revealed by mere telling. She laughs, she speaks, she wears ornaments and clothes, but every fibre of her weeps and weeps."

"She must complain a great deal about the lawyer sahib?"

"Why would she complain?" said Sudha. "Is he not her husband? In the world, whatever she now has, it is the lawyer sahib. Old he may be, or sick, but he is her lord all the same. Women of good family do not slander their husbands; that is the work of wantons. They fret to see their condition, but say nothing with their lips."

"What came over this lawyer sahib, that he set out to marry at this age?"

"If there were no such men, who would carry the boat of poor unmarried girls across?" said Sudha. "You and your fellows will not say a word without a heavy bundle, so where are these poor creatures to go? You have done a great wrong, and you will have to do penance for it. May God make her wifehood immortal — but if anything were to happen to the lawyer sahib, the poor woman's whole life would be destroyed. Today she wept a great deal. You people are truly very heartless. As for me, I shall marry my Sohan to some poor girl."

The doctor did not hear this last sentence. He had fallen into deep worry. This question rose again and again in his mind and tormented him: what if something were to happen to the lawyer sahib? Today the dreadful face of his own self-interest was revealed to him. In truth, this had been his own offence. If he had told his father firmly, "I will marry nowhere else," would his father have married him off against his will?

Suddenly Sudha said, "Shall I bring about a meeting between you and Nirmala tomorrow? Let her too have a look at your face. She will say nothing, but perhaps with a single glance she will so scorn you that you will never be able to forget it. Speak — shall I introduce you tomorrow? I will make even a very brief introduction."

Sinha said, "No, Sudha. I beg of you with folded hands — do not commit such an outrage! Otherwise, I tell you truly, I will leave the house and run away."

"The thorn you have sown — why are you so afraid to eat its fruit?" said Sudha. "On whose neck you have drawn the dagger, just see him writhe a little, too. My grandfather gave five thousand, did he not! At my younger brother's marriage another five or six thousand will come in. Then there will be no man in the world as rich as you. Eleven thousand is a great deal. Good heavens! Eleven thousand! If you set about lifting it and stacking it, it would take months; if the boys take to squandering it, it would last for generations. Is something being arranged anywhere or not?"

At this jest the doctor was so abashed that he could not even raise his head. All his eloquence vanished. His face shrank to a tiny thing, as if he had been beaten. At that very moment some doctor was called for from outside, and the poor man fled for dear life. How skilled a woman is in jesting — of this he had today received proof.

At night, as the doctor lay down to sleep, he said to Sudha, "Nirmala has a sister, has she not?"

"Yes, she was speaking of her today," said Sudha. "The worry of her is already mounting upon her. Whatever was to befall herself has befallen; she was deep in concern for her sister. With the mother there is nothing left at all now; helplessly, she too will be hung about the neck of some such old fellow."

"Nirmala can help her mother, surely," said Sinha.

Sudha said in a sharp voice, "You too sometimes start talking things with neither head nor tail. At the very most Nirmala will give two or four hundred rupees — what else can she do? The lawyer sahib's condition is as it is; she has a mountain of life still to pass. And then, who knows what the state of their household is? For the past six months the poor man has sat at home. Rupees do not rain down from the sky. There may be ten or twenty thousand, but it will be in the bank — none of it kept with Nirmala, surely. If our expense is two hundred rupees a month, will theirs not be four hundred a month?"

Sudha fell asleep, but the doctor kept turning from side to side for a long while; then, after some thought, he rose and, sitting at the table, began to write a letter.

Two things happened at one and the same time — Nirmala gave birth to a daughter, Krishna's marriage was settled, and Munshi Totaram's house was put up for auction. The birth of a daughter was an ordinary matter — though in Nirmala's eyes it was the greatest event of her life — but the other two events were extraordinary. Krishna's marriage — how had it been settled into so well-to-do a family? Her mother had not so much as a cowrie to the name of dowry, and on the other side, old Sinha sahib, who had now retired on pension and come home, was famous in the community as a great miser. How had he agreed to marry his son into so poor a household? No one could readily believe it. A still more astonishing matter was the auction of Munshiji's house. People regarded Munshiji, if not as a millionaire, then certainly as a man of substance. How had his house come to be auctioned? The matter was this: Munshiji had borrowed some money from a moneylender and taken a village in mortgage. He had hoped that within a year or half a year he would repay the money, and then in five or ten years would take possession of the village; the landlord would prove unable to pay the whole sum of principal and interest. It was upon this expectation that Munshiji had made the arrangement. The village was very large, yielding a profit of four or five hundred rupees; but the mind's planning stayed only in the mind. However much Munshiji counselled his heart, he could not go to the courthouse. The grief for his son had left in him no strength for any work. What father is so void of heart that, having drawn the sword across his son's neck, he can set his mind at rest?

When for a whole year the interest did not reach the moneylender, and when, despite his repeated summonses, Munshiji did not go to him — and when, at the last, Munshiji plainly told him that he was no one's slave, the Sahu might do as he pleased — then the Sahu grew angry. He filed suit. Munshiji did not even go to plead the case. All at once a decree was passed. Where was money kept here in the house? In those very days, too, Munshiji's credit had collapsed. He could make no arrangement for money. At last the house went up for auction. Nirmala was in the lying-in chamber. When she heard this news, her heart went numb. Though she had had no happiness in life, she had been free of the worries of want. Wealth, if it is not the foremost thing in human life, is certainly a thing very near to it. Now, along with the other wants, this worry too mounted her head. She sent word through the midwife: "Sell all my ornaments and save the house." But Munshiji would by no means accept this proposal.

From that day Munshiji grew still more worry-worn. The wealth for whose enjoyment he had married was now a mere memory of the past. Out of sheer self-loathing he could not even show his face to Nirmala now. He now grasped the measure of the injustice he had done Nirmala; and the birth of the daughter had filled up what little was wanting — had brought about utter ruin!

On the twelfth day, coming out of the lying-in chamber, Nirmala went to her husband carrying the newborn infant in her lap. Even in this destitution she was so happy, as though she had no worry at all. Pressing the little girl to her heart, she had forgotten all her cares. Seeing the open, joy-lit eyes of the infant, her heart was blossoming. In this welling-up of motherhood all her sufferings had dissolved. She wished to be transported with joy by placing the infant in her husband's lap; but Munshiji, looking at the daughter, recoiled in dread. His heart did not leap to take her in his arms; yet he looked at her once with compassionate eyes and then bowed his head — the infant's face was the very image of Mansaram's.

Nirmala understood the feeling of his mind quite otherwise. With a hundredfold affection she pressed the little girl to her heart, as though saying to him: "If you are crushed beneath the burden of her, then from this day I will not let even your shadow fall upon her. The jewel that I have gained after such penance — does your heart not break to slight it?" That very moment, clasping the infant to her bosom, she came away into her room and wept for a long while. She made not the slightest effort to understand this indifference of her husband's; otherwise, perhaps she would not have thought him so hard. Where upon her head lay so great a load of responsibility as had fallen upon her husband? Had she tried to think, would even this much not have entered her understanding?

In a single instant Munshiji realized his mistake. A mother's heart is so steeped in love that the worries and obstacles of the future do not frighten her in the least. She feels within her inmost being a supernatural power, which routs all obstacles before her. Munshiji came hurrying into the house and, taking the infant in his lap, said, "I remember — Mansa too was just like this — exactly like this!"

"Sister says the very same thing," said Nirmala.

"Just those same large eyes and red, red lips," said Munshiji. "God has given me my Mansaram back in this form. The very same forehead, the same face, the same hands and feet! God, boundless is your play."

Suddenly Rukmini too came in. The moment she saw Munshiji she said, "Look, brother — is this Mansaram or not? He himself has come back. Let anyone say what he will a hundred times, I will not believe otherwise. It is plainly Mansaram. It is about a year, too, since he went."

"Sister, every single limb matches," said Munshiji. "Truly, God has given me back my Mansaram." (To the infant) "Tell me, you — you are Mansaram, are you not? Do not speak of leaving and going away, or I shall fetch you back again. How hard-heartedly you ran off. In the end I have caught you and brought you, have I not? There — I have said it: now do not speak of leaving me and going. Look, sister, how she gazes and gazes!"

That very moment Munshiji began once more to build the mansion of his desires. Attachment drew him back toward the world. Human life! You are so fleeting, yet how long-reaching are your imaginings! That very Totaram, who had grown detached from the world, who night and day had been calling upon death — finding the support of a straw, he was now thrashing his hands and feet with all his strength to reach the shore.

But, finding the support of a straw, has anyone ever reached the shore?