The Cat and Shakespeare Read online

  Nothing is pleasanter than a doctor’s waiting room. You have the pleasantest thoughts because you know the doctor will say: ‘You have no disease. This is not pneumonia. This is a bad cold. This is not venereal, this is only the British bubo,’ etc.

  Before you had time to say Rama Krishna, there he was, Velayudhan Nair. They both entered a huge room, opening on the back yard where a lonely neem tree stood. There were many soldiers there, their hands tattooed; there were government officials in slick clothes; there were merchants and even some Communist leaders (who had just been let out of jail). There were bottles on the table. You could hear women’s voices from the other side of the corridor. How they shrieked or hissed, or you heard them sing. One or two of them came out in high-heeled shoes. Some were smoking and even speaking English. A girl came in—an Anglo-Indian no doubt—and spoke in Tommies’ tongue. The men who came out were adjusting their clothes and pulling their ties, and laughing. Some of them had their hands on their hair, quite thoughtful. Life looked gay and remote and not altogether comfortable. Life is like that. Life is a ration shop. The scale weighs everything according to the ration card. Where is your ration card, Sir? Green, red, or blue?

  Girls were obviously gathered at the back of the big room opposite. ‘This is Shiv Shanker Pillai,’ muttered Velayudhan Nair, introducing a sleek middle-aged man with an ochre shirt, a clean white elegant dhoti, gold-rimmed glasses—and to speak truly, a gentle, sweet-looking man. ‘He is in charge of the clinic,’ said Velayudhan Nair, and started smiling as if to himself.

  ‘If the patient could come in and choose his doctor, it would be nice. Like they say in America they have different doctors for different diseases, we have different cures for different horoscopes as it were, and diagnosed by experts. But let us go in.’

  Shiv Shanker Pillai opened a big door and Govindan Nair walked in. A large bed lay between the corner and the window to the right. There was also an office table and a chair. A gentle light fell on everything. Even pencil and paper were laid out on the table as if on purpose. ‘We write love letters here,’ Shiv Shanker Pillai joked. A girl came in from behind them, round, with nose ring and necklace, with black hair and a rich bosom. She was shy. ‘The patient may undress while the doctor is getting ready,’ said Shiv Shanker Pillai, and went out. He seemed serious in saying this.

  The rich bosom heaved. The choli came open. The girl started cooing and singing. She danced a mellow dance. Govindan Nair sat on the chair and looked at this with fascination. ‘What a beautiful woman you are,’ he said. ‘Beauty is the core of music.’ And she continued to dance. Govindan Nair did not get up. He drew the chair nearer as if to see more clearly. He said again and again, ‘You are beautiful, I can see.’ Then she stripped herself and lay on the bed. The gold necklace fell so curvedly about her breast. Her shape was comely, a little fat above the down of the belly. She had much pubic hair, he observed. So she did not shave those parts.

  ‘How many children do you have?’ asked Govindan Nair.

  ‘Two,’ said the girl, and added after a long pause: ‘My name is Lakshmi. Oh, my name is Lakshmi,’ she repeated, as if this would explain unsayable things.

  ‘Two—it means sixty-four ounces,’ he said, to prove he had understood.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked, playful, hoping he would come and caress her.

  ‘It’s just the worth of man plus man—at the ration shop.’

  ‘Why do you work there?’ she asked, sitting up. Her breasts drooped a little but were very rapt and succouring, beautiful. Govindan Nair had once wanted to paint.

  ‘Why don’t you work in one? We all live on rations,’ he said, smiling. ‘What is your salary?’ he asked.

  ‘Six rupees a day plus tips. Good men are good. Sometimes they even give me a necklace. Look at this one. A Seth from the north gave it to me. (He was a grain merchant.) I did not understand his language. He did not speak mine. But he came back after he had gone, and gave it to me and said: Be happy.’

  ‘Are you happy?’ asked Govindan Nair.

  The girl threw a bit of her sari over her body.

  ‘Are you?’ she asked.

  ‘Can’t you see I am happy?’

  ‘Where does it come from?’

  ‘Where does water come from?’

  ‘From the tap?’

  ‘And the water in the tap?’

  ‘From the lake?’

  ‘And the water in the lake?’

  ‘From the sky.’

  ‘And the water in the sky?’

  ‘From the ocean?’

  ‘And the water in the ocean?’

  ‘From the rivers.’

  ‘And the river waters?’

  ‘They make the lakes.’

  ‘And the tap water?’

  ‘Is river water.’

  ‘And so?’

  ‘Water comes from water,’ she said.

  ‘I am a kitten,’ he said.

  She seemed frightened. She covered her pubic parts with her sari.

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘I let the mother cat carry me.’

  ‘And so?’

  ‘And the river flows.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘The lakes give water to taps.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘Man is happy—because he knows he lives in a house three storeys high. When his woman is going to have a child, he will build a house two storeys high. He will marry her and build his child a house. The child, the child, he cries as if in tragic tenderness, the child will have a house to grow in. Oh, children need houses. And women need husbands.’

  ‘I had a husband,’ she said. ‘Yes,’ she insisted.

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘He died in the wars.’

  ‘Who killed him?’

  ‘The British.’ ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he would not shoot at the Germans.’

  ‘And how did you come here?’ he asked.

  ‘And how did you come here?’ she replied.

  ‘I came because I work in a ration office. I distribute physical happiness to him that wants.’

  ‘And not to her that wants?’

  ‘I have a she—and she wants it, and I pour it into her. To speak the truth, nobody can give. Only the mother cat can give.’

  ‘Give me!’ she cried.

  ‘Come tomorrow to Ration Office No. 66. I will give you a card, a family card. Between ten and five we are always there.’

  She sank back on the bed. Govindan Nair observed that she had flowers in her hair. She was gazing at the ceiling. Just a tear or two was dropping, marking her face with collyrium. She looked lovely with her well-knit limbs, her sorrow which heaved her breasts—there was such ovular pain where the centre of her body lay. He put his hand there and said, ‘Forgive.’

  His touch seemed magical. She flung up and put her arms around him, her breasts against his face. He bowed low, made a namaskar, and stood up. How can man make a woman suffer? How can anyone touch a body so smooth, a face so gentle, so helpless, the Seth’s necklace speaking a strange tongue against her imbibing navel? Her hair was so perfect.

  ‘The British did it?’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Man did it,’ she said.

  ‘May I go? he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, like a wife to a husband. Tenderly she rose, covered herself, and stood up like a daughter before a father. He turned as if to hide his emotions. Of course pen and paper were there. Everything was typed and ready. He signed the paper. Ration Shop Licence No. 9181 in the District of Ummathur. In the village of Udasekarapuram. Name of the holder: Prabhakar Pillai. Address: Main Street, Murtarakara. Valid up to August 11, 1944. Signed: B. Govindan Nair. The signature was clear and round as the eyes of a child. Lakshmi was dressed by now. She looked so clean, so like a Brahmin lady near the temple streets.

  ‘Your husband will come back,’ he said.

  ‘They shot him,’ she said.

  ‘No, they did not. I have the ration cards o
f all the soldiers. I have his name, I am sure, in the office. Our working hours are between ten and five.’

  ‘Bless me, as if I were your daughter,’ she said.

  ‘My sister,’ he said.

  And when she lifted up her face, her whole being was lucent. She was going to find her husband. Life is like that. You get what you want. But do you know what you want? ‘Do you really know? Mister, that is the problem,’ said Govindan Nair that evening to me. ‘You do not want to build this house. I really want to. Shantha will have a child. She is your wife. A wife must have a house. You have a son. I prophesy,’ he said, and jumped across the wall as if carried away like a kitten.

  I want to take you to London, will you come? I want to take you to Paris, Delhi, New York, will you come? Will you truly come? Don’t you hear the koel sing on the coconut tree, don’t you hear the anguish that wants to eat your heart, cut it and pickle it, and savour it, and say: Look what a good heart I have. I am a woman. And I have such a good heart. What will you give me in return, my lord? I should give you, woman, a house three-storeys high. Lord, may that rise. And do not forget the windows that go running along the wall towards the sea. I must have eleven windows on the sea. A window on the sea is a window on God. Buy me a plot and build me a house eight directions wide, and that will have a tamarind tree in the backyard for the baby’s hammock, a row of dahlias (like Europeans have) in a bed to the right, and a mango tree that will stretch and burden itself with such riches that, when the koel sings, we know its song will make the fruit ripen. For the woman with a womb that has grown round, what one needs is ripe, rich rasapuri mangoes. Cut them, peel the skins off and, Mother, give them to me on a silver plate. And one cup of milk immediately after.

  Oh, Shantha, how beautiful you look in your pregnancy. You look like Panchali herself.

  I am no Panchali or Damayanthi, Mother. I am just a woman. Lord, may I just be woman. Let me bear womanhood. He has given me his manhood that my womanhood be. If I were a queen I would build a wall of wattle round the garden and I would then hear the sea. The sea knows me.

  White is the foam that goes gathering along the sea, white as the skin of snake, with ripples and soughs, and the last song of despair. The sea lurches and tears from inside. O Sea, where will you take me? Will you take me to the nether world of the Nagas, and tie me a chignon wound into a big bun? I shall wear a large kumkum and my ear lobes will touch my shoulders. I want to hold my child so round he would kick ten distances long. I want to love. I want to kiss my child. Lord bear me and build me a house.

  Like a pirate on the high seas (at the time of the Dutch, so to say) is Govindan Nair. He can command a crew of ten Mophlas and in any language you like. He could put a bark on to the sea and say: Sea, take it, and the sea would heave and bear you to where the isles are. Truth goes over the sea, for the isles are to be blessed. The seagulls know that truth is a breath of Antarctica. Did you know, for example, that if you stand at the southern tip of Travancore and look down against your nose, straight down lies Antarctica, rich in its fissures of fishes? The fishes of Antarctica are made of gold. Gold is dug there. They discovered a tablet there some years ago which showed they probably wrote in the Dravidic tongue. Antarctica is our home. They used to grow pineapples there. You can find congealed seeds of the lotus in Antarctica. The bones of its people are all long and thin, un-Aryan—their heroes lie beside coconut shields made on tropical seas. I know whence they came. They came from Malabar. Malabar is Truth. Antarctica is only a name for Malabar. So we’ll go in catamarans and down the seas to where the isles lie. Let us go and quarry there. You’ll see stone there like ice frozen for a million years. It has the colour of human eyes. What a fine thing to build a house of eyes—of kittens’ eyes! Lord, the isle is far and I am a man. But, look, look, at the silver bark that stands. Truth goes on a ride. We’ll ride with Truth. Ancient temples lie there. Nobody worships there. The seas meet in Antarctica. Lord, help me build a house.

  That’s what Govindan Nair said coming to see me the next morning. ‘Mister, I had such wonderful dreams. I wanted to build you a house in ice and give you a garden. I want to give you a large tree at the back for the child’s hammock. And in front a mango for the pickles. Then you will hear a lot of birds. We’ll get a pair of peacocks too, and your child will dance. How do you like that?’

  Govindan Nair looked indeed as if he had ploughed the seas.

  At about nine o’clock in the morning, while we were sitting and playfully gossipping, what should happen but somebody knocked at the door. It was my fat landlord, a towel tied around his head (for he had a bad cold—it had rained a little during the night). He was smoking a cheroot. Morning and evening it never left him. His name was Murugan Mudali and as his name said, he tapped palm trees for toddy—huge lorries and bullock carts carried the white frothing, invigorating drink, and people sang praises of themselves singing songs, and they sang him out money with which he built these houses. He was not a bad man—he was a good man. He thought of the bathroom and the kitchen with such care, every housewife blessed him for it. He even ran a hotel—called the Madhura Town Hotel—and the inmates there spoke so well of the tap that ran with hot and cold water (unknown in Trivandrum, except at the Mascot Hotel, and that is run by the government). Since the war started, he had paid as much as thirty-seven rupees a yard for the Hume water pipes, and that is black-market price. He wanted to be just. He made his seventeen per cent profit—that is what his father and his father’s father had fixed in the good old times as decent income on any investment—and the rest he gave to you: ‘I spent fourteen thousand rupees on building Kamla Bhavan’ (which you remember is the name of the house I live in) ‘and, sir, take it for eighteen and three. It satisfied you and it satisfied me.’

  ‘Here are seven,’ said Govindan Nair as though he were producing the money.

  Usha, who had stayed on with me, was still fast asleep in my room. On hearing the sound of such large sums of money she woke, and came scampering to find out what was going on outside her dream. She knew her father lived in many, many worlds. So Usha said: ‘Father, who is this?’

  ‘Your grandfather,’ answered Govindan Nair, as if led by intuition. The Mudali was silent, and then with a sigh he wiped the lone tear at the corner of his eye. Why should one not be a grandfather? Is it so difficult a thing? Do not toddy pots get full in the morning, once you tie them to the tree at night? Why should not my daughter bear a child? A child, sir, a grandchild is what man must see to prove he dies well. The question, however, is, Can one die? Must one die?

  ‘This house will be yours, Usha,’ said Govindan Nair, and for some reason Usha started shrieking and said: ‘Mother take me away. Mother, I want to go home.’

  ‘What is your name, child?’ asked the Mudali.

  ‘Her name, sir, is Usha Devi—Usha Devi Pai,’ said Govindan Nair.

  And taking Usha on his lap, he added: ‘And she will be my daughter-in-law. Shridhar is seven years and eight months old. Usha is six years and two months old. That makes a nice match,’ said Govindan Nair, stroking her hair. ‘I’ve even thought of their horoscopes. She is Sagittarius and he’s Pisces, with Jupiter in the eleventh house. She will make him live long. I want a son that lives long.’

  ‘Are you an astrologer too, Mr Nair?’ asked Mudali. ‘If stars govern me, then I must know the stars. If the Travancore Police Manual governs all police officers (and the public), then we must know it too. Travancore is a paradise that follows police rules. If the ration department were under the police, there would be no corruption. We’ll build a house yet, sir. Then what is your final price?’

  ‘My price is always final.’

  ‘Oho, is that so?’ Govindan Nair spoke as if to himself. ‘If Usha becomes my granddaughter I will reduce it by five or six hundred rupees.’

  ‘If she lives in your house, she’s your granddaughter. So make it seventeen thousand.’

  The Mudali somehow consented. Once he gave his word he never changed
. So it shall be seventeen thousand. Meanwhile Tangamma was handing down coffee from the wall. It was hot, steaming hot. The Mudali preferred a smoke. When the last cup came, Usha stood under the bilva tree and Tangamma had to bend low to give it to the child. Shridhar still had the same fevers.

  ‘When Advocate Krishnan Nair comes, send him here.’ ‘He’s already at the house, reading his newspaper,’ said Tangamma.

  ‘Hey!’ shouted Govindan Nair across the wall. ‘Hey, Advocate, Advocate General, future Chief Justice, please come, sir. We are ready.’

  The advocate, impeccably dressed, came, down the wall as if he were coming to perform a marriage. He needed only the copper vessel and the sacred-bark bundle. Why, he even had the bundle. Didn’t you see it? Tangamma brought another cup of coffee. She bent down and gave it to Usha. Usha brought it and gave it to the Mudali. The cheroot smoked itself away. We lived in a sort of jabbering silence.

  Who was talking to whom? Who talked, in fact? Nobody talked, and we all understood.

  By now the cheroot was finished. The coffee, too, was finished. Govindan Nair produced a table, and the advocate took out and placed before us the three-hundred-rupee stamped document. He had written down on a piece of yellow notepaper all about the thirty cents of land in Puttenchentai belonging to Murugan Mudali, and situated in Plot No. 705, Survey number 4176, Municipal number 663. My name was mentioned as at marriage or funeral—father’s name, grandfather’s name. Usha Devi Pai was the chief character of the story, as it were. The house was bought for her and for seventeen thousand rupees. Including the yield of the coconut trees, etc., etc.

  Govindan Nair jumped across the wall and went to the National Typewriting Institute near the Post Office. Meanwhile the Mudali told me of his wife’s grandmother in Madurai who was a great lady and a beauty. They said she could stop a flood with a mantra, such were her looks. She spoke to the Goddess as if she had known her always. She spoke in classical Tamil. In some past life, so astrologers said, she was born a princess and was married off to the Chiefs of Madurai. She walked in the palace as if she knew all of it. From that came their love of houses. The grandmother and her spouse built and built everywhere in Madras, in Mysore, even in Ootacamund. The Mudali and his wife had no grandchildren, although their daughter had done every pilgrimage. She was thirty-seven and no children came. They never made a false statement; they always took seventeen per cent interest. Even so, no child came, and no dream came to make the child come. Sadhus had blessed, and some had even given coconuts with mantras. Nothing happened even after these many holy acts. Well, sir, that is as the Lord Subramanya wishes.