Maan nodded and he left.
2.11
‘Did you sleep well?’ asked Firoz, smiling at Maan.
‘Very. But you rose early.’
‘Not earlier than usual. I like to get a great deal of work done before breakfast. If it hadn’t been a client, it would have been my briefs. It seems to me that you don’t work at all.’
Maan looked at the two little pills lying on his quarter-plate, but said nothing, so Firoz went on.
‘Now, I don’t know anything about cloth—’ began Firoz.
Maan groaned. ‘Is this a serious conversation?’ he asked.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Firoz, laughing. ‘I’ve been up at least two hours.’
‘Well, I have a hangover,’ said Maan. ‘Have a heart.’
‘I do,’ said Firoz, reddening a bit. ‘I can assure you.’ He looked at the clock on the wall. ‘But I’m due at the Riding Club. One day I’m going to teach you polo, you know, Maan, all your protests notwithstanding.’ He got up and walked towards the corridor.
‘Oh, good,’ said Maan, more cheerfully. ‘That’s more in my line.’
An omelette came. It was lukewarm, having had to traverse the vast distance between the kitchens and the breakfast room in Baitar House. Maan looked at it for a while, then gingerly bit a slice of unbuttered toast. His hunger had disappeared again. He swallowed the aspirins.
Firoz, meanwhile, had just got to the front door when he noticed his father’s private secretary, Murtaza Ali, arguing with a young man at the entrance. The young man wanted to meet the Nawab Sahib. Murtaza Ali, who was not much older, was trying, in his sympathetic, troubled way, to prevent him from doing so. The young man was not dressed very well — his kurta was of homespun white cotton — but his Urdu was cultured in both accent and expression. He was saying:
‘But he told me to come at this time, and here I am.’
The intensity of expression on his lean features made Firoz pause.
‘What seems to be the matter?’ asked Firoz.
Murtaza Ali turned and said: ‘Chhoté Sahib, it appears that this man wants to meet your father in connection with a job in the library. He says he has an appointment.’
‘Do you know anything about this?’ Firoz asked Murtaza Ali.
‘I’m afraid not, Chhoté Sahib.’
The young man said: ‘I have come from some distance and with some difficulty. The Nawab Sahib told me expressly that I should be here at ten o’clock to meet him.’
Firoz, in a not unkindly tone, said: ‘Are you sure he meant today?’
‘Yes, quite sure.’
‘If my father had said he was to be disturbed, he would have left word,’ said Firoz. ‘The problem is that once my father is in the library, well, he’s in a different world. You will, I am afraid, have to wait till he comes out. Or could you perhaps come back later?’
A strong emotion began to work at the corners of the young man’s mouth. Clearly he needed the income from the job, but equally clearly he had a sense of pride. ‘I am not prepared to run around like this,’ he said clearly but quietly.
Firoz was surprised. This definiteness, it appeared to him, bordered on incivility. He had not said, for example: ‘The Nawabzada will appreciate that it is difficult for me. .’ or any such ameliorative phrase. Simply: ‘I am not prepared. . ’
‘Well, that is up to you,’ said Firoz, easily. ‘Now, forgive me, I have to be somewhere very soon.’ He frowned slightly as he got into the car.
2.12
The previous evening, when Maan had stopped by, Saeeda Bai had been entertaining an old but gross client of hers: the Raja of Marh, a small princely state in Madhya Bharat. The Raja was in Brahmpur for a few days, partly to supervise the management of some of his Brahmpur lands, and partly to help in the construction of a new temple to Shiva on the land he owned near the Alamgiri Mosque in Old Brahmpur. The Raja was familiar with Brahmpur from his student days twenty years ago; he had frequented Mohsina Bai’s establishment when she was still living with her daughter Saeeda in the infamous alley of Tarbuz ka Bazaar.
Throughout Saeeda Bai’s childhood she and her mother had shared the upper floor of a house with three other courtesans, the oldest of whom, by virtue of the fact that she owned the place, had acted for years as their madam. Saeeda Bai’s mother did not like this arrangement, and as her daughter’s fame and attractiveness grew she was able to assert their independence. When Saeeda Bai was seventeen or so, she came to the attention of the Maharaja of a large state in Rajasthan, and later the Nawab of Sitagarh; and from then on there had been no looking back.
In time, Saeeda Bai had been able to afford her present house in Pasand Bagh, and had gone to live there with her mother and young sister. The three women, separated by gaps of about twenty and fifteen years respectively, were all attractive, each in her own way. If the mother had the strength and brightness of brass, Saeeda Bai had the tarnishable brilliance of silver, and young, soft-hearted Tasneem, named after a spring in Paradise, protected by both mother and sister from the profession of their ancestors, had the lively elusiveness of mercury.
Mohsina Bai had died two years ago. This had been a terrible blow for Saeeda Bai, who sometimes still visited the graveyard and lay weeping, stretched out on her mother’s grave. Saeeda Bai and Tasneem now lived alone in the house in Pasand Bagh with two women servants: a maid and a cook. At night the calm watchman guarded the gate. Tonight Saeeda Bai was not expecting to entertain visitors; she was sitting with her tabla player and sarangi player, and amusing herself with gossip and music.
Saeeda Bai’s accompanists were a study in contrast. Both were about twenty-five, and both were devoted and skilled musicians. Both were fond of each other, and deeply attached — by economics and affection — to Saeeda Bai. But beyond that the resemblance ended. Ishaq Khan, who bowed his sarangi with such ease and harmoniousness, almost self-effacement, was a slightly sardonic bachelor. Motu Chand, so nicknamed because of his plumpness, was a contented man, already a father of four. He looked a bit like a bulldog with his large eyes and snuffling mouth, and was benignly torpid except when frenziedly drumming his tabla.
They were discussing Ustad Majeed Khan, one of the most famous classical singers of India, a notoriously aloof man who lived in the old city, not far from where Saeeda Bai had grown up.
‘But what I don’t understand, Saeeda Begum,’ said Motu Chand, leaning awkwardly backwards because of his paunch, ‘is why he should be so critical of us small people. There he sits with his head above the clouds, like Lord Shiva on Kailash. Why should he open his third eye to burn us up?’
‘There is no accounting for the moods of the great,’ said Ishaq Khan. He touched his sarangi with his left hand and went on, ‘Now look at this sarangi — it’s a noble instrument — yet the noble Majeed Khan hates it. He never allows it to accompany him.’
Saeeda Bai nodded; Motu Chand made reassuring sounds. ‘It is the loveliest of all instruments,’ he said.
‘You kafir,’ said Ishaq Khan, smiling twistedly at his friend. ‘How can you pretend to like this instrument? What is it made of?’
‘Well, wood of course,’ said Motu Chand, now leaning forward with an effort.
‘Look at the little wrestler,’ laughed Saeeda Bai. ‘We must feed him some laddus.’ She called out for her maid, and sent her to get some sweets.
Ishaq continued to wind the coils of his argument around the struggling Motu Chand.
‘Wood!’ he cried. ‘And what else?’
‘Oh, well, you know, Khan Sahib — strings and so on,’ said Motu Chand, defeated as to Ishaq’s intention.