22

The rose flowers have a little history of their own.

The previous night Gora had taken his leave of Pareshbabu’s house, but Binoy had been put to considerable trouble over the proposal to participate in the theatrical performance at the Magistrate’s residence.

It was not that Lalita had any enthusiasm for this performance — indeed she rather disliked such affairs. Yet something like a stubborn wilfulness had taken hold within her to somehow draw Binoy into the theatrical. She had conceived a fixed determination to bring about, through Binoy, all those things that ran counter to Gora’s convictions. Why Binoy’s subservience to Gora had become so insufferable to Lalita, she could not herself understand. She felt she would be at peace only if Binoy could somehow be freed, every bond cut away.

Lalita tossed her plait, shook her head, and said, “Now tell me, sir, what is wrong with theatrical performance?”

Binoy said, “There may be nothing wrong with theatrical performance, but going to perform at that Magistrate’s house does not sit well with me.”

Lalita. Are you speaking your own mind, or someone else’s?

Binoy. The burden of speaking another’s mind is not mine to bear, nor is it easy to do so. You may not believe it, but I speak only what is in my own mind — sometimes in my own voice, and sometimes in another’s.

Lalita made no reply to this, but merely smiled a slight smile. After a moment she said, “Your friend Gourababu probably thinks that by refusing the Magistrate’s invitation one performs a great act of heroism — that this amounts to waging battle against the English.”

Binoy, stirred to agitation, said, “My friend may not think so, but I do. Is it not battle? A man who does not count me at all — who thinks that if he crooks his little finger in summons I shall consider myself blessed — if I do not meet his contempt with contempt in return, how shall I preserve my self-respect?”

Lalita was herself a person of proud disposition, and the proud words from Binoy’s lips were not displeasing to her. But it was precisely for that reason — feeling the argument on her own side to be weakened — that Lalita continued to wound Binoy in speech with needless sarcasm and gibes.

At last Binoy said, “Look — why do you argue? Why not simply say, ‘It is my wish that you take part in the performance.’ Then, out of regard for your request, I would find joy in setting aside my own opinion.”

Lalita said, “Well, why should I say that? If you truly hold some opinion, why should you abandon it at my request? But it must be a genuine opinion.”

Binoy said, “Very well, let us settle it thus. I have no genuine opinion of my own. Never mind your request — defeated by your argument alone, I agree to join the performance.”

Just then, the moment Baradasundari entered the room, Binoy rose and went to her and said, “Tell me what I must do to prepare myself for the performance.”

Baradasundari said with some pride, “You need not trouble yourself about any of that — we shall get you perfectly ready. You will only need to come regularly every day for rehearsal.”

Binoy said, “Very well. I shall take my leave for today, then.”

Baradasundari said, “What is this? You must stay and dine with us.”

Binoy said, “Not today — let me forgo the meal this time.”

Baradasundari said, “No, no, that cannot be.”

Binoy ate, but he lacked the natural cheerfulness he brought on other days. Today Sucharita too seemed somehow distracted, sitting in silence. While the battle between Binoy and Lalita had been going on, she had been pacing up and down the veranda. That evening, the conversation never found its footing.

At the time of parting, Binoy noticed Lalita’s grave expression and said, “I have admitted defeat, and yet I have not been able to please you.”

Lalita made no reply and walked away.

Lalita did not cry easily, but today tears seemed to force their way to her eyes, as if pressing to break free. What had happened? Why did she keep prodding Binoy again and again in this manner, and why was she herself suffering for it?

For as long as Binoy had been unwilling to join the performance, Lalita’s obstinacy had only mounted. But the very moment he agreed, all her enthusiasm vanished. Every argument in favour of not joining rose up in her mind with overwhelming force. Her heart, now tormented, began to say inwardly: ‘Binoy Babu ought not to have agreed merely to honour my request. My request! Why should he honour it? He believes that in honouring my request he is showing me courtesy. As though I were desperately anxious to receive this courtesy of his!’

But why should she now allow herself such arrogance? It was true that she had repeatedly pressed him to join the acting company. If Binoy had yielded to her persistent entreaties out of a sense of social obligation, what right had she to be angry with him? This incident stirred in Lalita such a sharp revulsion and shame toward herself as was far in excess of what the situation naturally called for. On any other day, when her mind was unsettled, she would have gone to Sucharita. Today she did not go; and why tears should well up in her with such force, as though thrust up from the very depths of her breast, she could not herself properly understand.

The following morning, Sudhir had brought Labanya a bouquet. In that bouquet, on a single stem, were two half-opened Basra roses. Lalita detached the stem from the bouquet. Labanya said, “What are you doing?”

Lalita said, “It distresses me to see a fine flower bound up among so many common blooms and leaves. To tie everything together by force with a string in this way is nothing short of barbarism.”

Saying this, Lalita freed all the flowers from their bonds and arranged them separately here and there about the room; only the two roses she carried away in her hand.

Satish came running and said, “Didi, where did you get those flowers?”

Lalita did not answer his question, but said instead, “Will you not go to your friend’s house today?”

Binoy had been far from Satish’s thoughts until that moment, but at the mere mention of him he leapt up and said, “Yes, I shall go” — and at once grew restless with eagerness to be off.

Lalita held him back and asked, “What do you do when you go there?”

Satish answered briefly, “We talk.”

Lalita said, “He gives you so many pictures — why do you never give him anything?”

Binoy would cut out all manner of pictures from English papers and the like, and set them aside for Satish. Satish had begun a scrapbook, pasting these pictures into it with glue. The craving to fill its pages had grown so strong in him that whenever he laid eyes on a fine book, his heart would itch to cut the pictures out of it too. For this rapacious tendency, his elder sisters had made him suffer no small amount of scolding.

The notion that there existed in the world such a thing as an obligation of reciprocity now presented itself suddenly before Satish, and he grew quite troubled by it. It was no easy matter for him to sever his attachment to any of the possessions he had accumulated inside his battered tin box. Seeing Satish’s worried face, Lalita laughed, pinched his cheek, and said, “Never mind, never mind — you need not think so hard about it. Very well, give him these two roses.”

Seeing the problem resolved so easily, he brightened at once. And taking up the two flowers, he set off then and there to discharge his debt of friendship.

He encountered Binoy on the road. Calling out to him from a distance with cries of “Binoy Babu! Binoy Babu!”, Satish came up to him and, hiding the flowers inside his shirt, said, “Can you guess what I have brought for you?”

Having made Binoy give up guessing, he produced the two roses. Binoy said, “How splendid! But Satish Babu, these are not your own to give. I do hope I shall not end up in the hands of the police for receiving stolen goods?”

Whether the flowers could properly be called his own suddenly gave Satish pause. He thought for a moment and then said, “Of course they are — Lalita Didi told me to give them to you!”

The matter was settled there and then, and Binoy, promising to come to their house in the afternoon, bade Satish farewell.

Binoy could not shake off the pain of Lalita’s sharp words from the previous evening. He was rarely at odds with anyone, and for that very reason he never expected so stinging a blow from any quarter. Until now, Binoy had always seen Lalita as a figure trailing in Sucharita’s wake. But just as an elephant prodded by the goad has no opportunity to forget its mahout, so for some time past Binoy had come to be in precisely that condition with regard to Lalita. How to please Lalita even a little, and thereby find peace — this had become his chief preoccupation. When he returned to his lodgings in the evenings, her words — so fiery, edged with caustic laughter — would ring through his mind one by one, driving sleep away. He would marshal every sort of argument in his mind against the charge: ‘I am a mere shadow of Gora, I have no independent substance of my own — Lalita despises me on these grounds, but the claim is wholly untrue.’ Yet none of these arguments served him in the least. For Lalita had never made this accusation against him openly — she had never given him the opening to contest it. He had so much to say in his own defence, and yet, unable to make use of any of it, his resentment only deepened. Finally, when even after his capitulation the previous evening he found Lalita’s face unrelenting, he returned home quite beside himself. He began to wonder inwardly: am I truly so deserving of contempt?

It was for this reason that when he heard from Satish that Lalita herself had sent him the two roses through the boy’s hands, he felt a surge of joy. He thought: it was because he had agreed to take part in the performance that Lalita, pleased, had sent him these roses as a token of reconciliation. At first he thought, ‘Let me leave the flowers at home’; then he considered, ‘No — let me offer these flowers of peace at my mother’s feet, and thus make them sacred.’

That afternoon, when Binoy arrived at Pareshbabu’s house, Satish was with Lalita, reciting his school lessons. Binoy said to Lalita, “The colour of war is red, and so the flower of truce ought to have been white.”

Not understanding his meaning, Lalita looked at him in puzzlement. Binoy then drew a cluster of white oleander from within his shawl, held it out before Lalita, and said, “However beautiful your flowers may be, they carry in them the tint of anger. My flowers cannot rival them in beauty, but they have come before you acknowledging, with the gentle white hue of peace, their own humble station.”

Lalita flushed to the roots of her ears and said, “What flowers of mine are you speaking of?”

Binoy looked somewhat abashed and said, “Then I have misunderstood. Satish Babu — whose flowers did you give to whom?”

Satish burst out loudly, “Why, Lalita Didi told me to give them!”

Binoy. To whom did she tell you to give them?

Satish. To you.

Lalita flushed scarlet, struck Satish on the back, and said, “I have never seen such a blockhead as you. Did you not wish to give Binoy Babu flowers in exchange for his pictures?”

Satish, bewildered, said, “Yes, yes, that is so — but was it not you who told me to give them?”

By quarrelling with Satish, Lalita only entangled herself more deeply in the web. Binoy now understood clearly that the flowers had indeed come from Lalita, but that she had intended to act anonymously. Binoy said, “I will relinquish all claim to your flowers — but even so, there is nothing amiss in mine. On this auspicious occasion of the resolution of our dispute, these few flowers —”

Lalita shook her head and said, “What dispute are we speaking of, and what resolution of it?”

Binoy said, “So it was all an illusion from beginning to end? The dispute was a mistake, the flowers likewise, and the resolution a fiction? It is not merely the silver seen in the shell that was an error — the shell itself was an illusion? That matter of the performance at the Magistrate’s house —”

Lalita said, “That was no illusion. But what quarrel is there about it? Why do you suppose that I stirred up a great battle in order to persuade you to agree, and that I became fulfilled the moment you consented? If you feel that performing is wrong, why should you agree to it because of anyone’s word?”

So saying, Lalita walked out of the room. Everything had gone contrary. Today Lalita had resolved beforehand that she would acknowledge her defeat to Binoy and entreat him not to take part in the performance. But the subject arose in such a way, and reached such an end, that the outcome was precisely the opposite. Binoy concluded that the agitation born of his long resistance to the performance still persisted in Lalita’s mind. He thought she was still unsettled because, while he had outwardly conceded, inwardly he remained opposed. That Lalita had been so wounded by all this caused Binoy genuine distress. He resolved inwardly that he would not refer to this matter again, even in jest, and that he would carry out the task with such devotion and skill that no one could accuse him of indifference.

Since morning, Sucharita had been sitting alone in the privacy of her bedroom, trying to read an English religious work entitled The Imitation of Christ. She had not joined in any of her usual daily duties. Now and again her mind would drift away from the book, and the words on the page would become shadows before her eyes — then in the next moment, angry at herself, she would force her attention back to the text with renewed resolve, refusing to be defeated.

At one point she heard, from a distance, a voice that seemed to be Binoy Babu’s — and she started at once, set down the book, and felt her mind grow eager to go out to the front room. Angered at herself for this eagerness, she sat back down in her chair and took up the book again. Fearing that sounds might reach her ears, she pressed both hands over them and tried to read.

Just then Lalita came into her room. Sucharita looked at her face and said, “Tell me, what has happened to you?”

Lalita shook her head sharply and said, “Nothing.”

Sucharita asked, “Where were you?”

Lalita said, “Binoy Babu has come. He would perhaps like to talk with you.”

Whether anyone else had come with Binoy Babu — this question Sucharita could not bring herself to ask aloud. Had someone else been there, Lalita would certainly have mentioned it; and yet her mind could not be set at rest. No longer attempting to restrain herself, she went toward the front room on the pretext of attending to a guest who had arrived at the house. She asked Lalita, “Will you not come?”

Lalita said with a note of impatience, “You go — I shall come presently.”

Sucharita entered the front room and found Binoy in conversation with Satish.

Sucharita said, “Father has gone out — he will be back shortly. Mother has gone to the teacher’s house with Labanya and Leela to learn the verses for your performance — Lalita would not go on any account. She said before leaving that when you came I was to keep you here — you are to be examined today.”

Binoy asked, “Are you not a part of all this?”

Sucharita said, “If everyone becomes a performer, who will remain in the world to be the audience?”

Baradasundari was in the habit of leaving Sucharita out of such matters as far as possible. Hence, this time too, no call had come for her to display her talents.

On any other day, when these two found themselves together, conversation never ran dry. Today some hindrance had arisen on both sides, and no talk would take shape however they tried. Sucharita had come resolved not to bring up the subject of Gora. Nor could Binoy broach Gora’s name as easily as before. The thought that Lalita — and perhaps everyone in this house — considered him a minor satellite revolving around Gora made him hesitate to speak of Gora at all.

It had happened many times before that Binoy would arrive first and Gora would come later — thinking that the same might happen today, Sucharita remained in a state of half-anxious alertness. She felt a dread lest Gora should arrive, and an equal anguish lest he should not.

After a few disconnected words with Binoy, finding no other recourse, Sucharita took up Satish’s picture scrapbook and began discussing it with him. Now and then she would find fault with the arrangement of the pictures and scold him, rousing Satish to indignation. Satish grew thoroughly exercised and began arguing at the top of his voice. Meanwhile Binoy cast his eyes at the rejected cluster of oleander lying on the table and, in shame and vexation, thought to himself that at the very least, for the sake of courtesy, Lalita ought to have accepted those few flowers of his.

Suddenly, the sound of a footstep made Sucharita start and turn around — she saw Haran Babu entering the room. Her start had been so plainly visible that Sucharita’s face turned red. Haran Babu sat down in a chair and said, “Well, has your Gour Babu not come?”

Irritated by this superfluous question of Haran Babu’s, Binoy replied, “Why? Is there some need of him?”

Haran Babu said, “You are here, yet he is not — that is rarely seen. That is why I ask.”

Binoy felt a surge of great anger within him — to prevent it from showing, he said curtly, “He is not in Calcutta.”

Haran. Gone on a preaching tour, I suppose?

Binoy’s anger mounted, and he made no answer. Sucharita too said nothing and rose and left. Haran Babu followed swiftly after Sucharita, but could not catch up with her. He called from a distance: “Sucharita, I have something to say.”

Sucharita said, “I am not well today.”

And as she spoke, the door of her bedroom fell shut.

Just then Baradasundari arrived and called Binoy into another room to rehearse his part in the performance — and not long afterward, the flowers were no longer to be seen on that table. That night Lalita did not appear at Baradasundari’s rehearsal either, and Sucharita, folding The Imitation of Christ in her lap and drawing the lamp to a corner of the room, sat gazing far into the dark night beyond the door for a long while. Before her, as if in a mirage, there seemed to appear some unknown and wonderful land she had never before seen; between that land and everything familiar in her life until now there lay somewhere a profound and absolute estrangement; and so the lights glowing in its windows frightened the mind with a mystery of distance, like stars strewn across the darkness of a midnight sky — and yet she felt: ‘My life is trivial; what I have known with certainty all these days is full of doubt, and what I do each day is without meaning — there, perhaps, knowledge will be made whole, action will become worthy, and the fulfilment of life will be within reach. Before the unknown gate of that wondrous, unfamiliar, and terrible land — who has brought me to stand here? Why does my heart tremble so, and why do my feet, on the verge of stepping forward, remain thus rooted in stillness?’