‘I don’t know about Saeeda Begum,’ said Maan, ‘but I doubt she wants Tasneem to marry you. As for myself, this is the first I’m hearing of it.’
A cunning look passed over Rasheed’s face. ‘Then why did you mention her name a minute ago?’
Maan frowned, trying to think back. ‘Saeeda Begum said something about some letters you sent her sister,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t advise you to write any more. They will only annoy her. And,’ he added, getting annoyed himself, but trying to control his temper — for he was, after all, talking to his teacher, young though he was, and one who had, moreover, been his host in the village—‘I wish you would not imagine that I am part of some plot.’
‘All right,’ said Rasheed firmly. ‘All right. I won’t mention it. When you visited the patwari with my family did I ever criticize you? Let us close the chapter. I won’t accuse you, and you will kindly not make these protests, these denials. All right?’
‘But of course I will deny it—’ said Maan, hardly even wondering where a patwari had entered all this. ‘Let me tell you, Rasheed, that you are completely mistaken. I have always had the greatest respect for you, but I can’t see where you have got these ideas from. What makes you think that Tasneem is in the least interested in you?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Rasheed speculatively. ‘Perhaps it is my looks, or my uprightness, or the fact that I have done so much in life already and will be famous some day. She knows I have helped so many people.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I did not invite any attentions. I have a religious attitude to life.’ He sighed. ‘But I know the meaning of duty. I must do what is necessary for her sanity.’ He bowed his head in sudden exhaustion and leaned forward.
‘I think,’ said Maan after a while, patting him on the back in a puzzled manner, ‘that you should take better care of yourself — or let your family do so. You should go back to the village as soon as the vacations begin, or even before — and let Meher’s mother take care of you. Rest. Sleep. Eat properly. Do not study. And do not exhaust yourself by campaigning for any party.’
Rasheed lifted his head and looked at Maan mockingly. ‘So that is what you would like?’ he said. ‘Then the path will be clear. Then you can farm my field again. Then you can send the police to break my head with a lathi. I may suffer some setbacks, but whatever I put my mind to doing, I do. I understand when things are connected with each other. It is not easy to dupe me, especially if your conscience is uneasy.’
‘You are speaking in riddles,’ said Maan. ‘And I think it is getting late for your tuition. In any case, I don’t want to hear anything more on this subject.’
‘You must confirm or deny it.’
‘What, for God’s sake?’ cried Maan in exasperation.
‘When you visit Saeeda Begum next, tell her that I am willing to spread happiness in her home if she insists on my going ahead with all this, that I will undergo a simple ceremony, but that any children I have in my second marriage cannot usurp the rights of the children I already have. And the marriage with Tasneem must be kept secret, even from the rest of my family. There must be no rumour — she is, after all, the sister of, well — I have my reputation and that of my family. Only those who already know. . ’
He drifted off.
Maan got up, looking at Rasheed in amazement and shaking his head. He sighed, then leaned against the trunk of the tree, continuing to stare at his former teacher and friend. Then he looked down at the ground and said:
‘I am not going back to Saeeda Begum’s, nor am I plotting against you. I am not interested in breaking anyone’s head. I am leaving for Salimpur tomorrow with my father. You can send your own messages to — to Saeeda Begum, but I beg you not to. I cannot understand a quarter of what you have been saying. But if you wish, Rasheed, I will accompany you to your village — or to your wife’s village — and make sure that you get there safely.’
Rasheed did not move. He pressed his right hand to his forehead.
‘Well, what do you say?’ asked Maan, concerned and angry. He had planned to go to Saeeda Bai’s before leaving. Now he felt obliged to mention to her his meeting with Rasheed and the disturbing turn it had taken. He fervently hoped that nothing harmful would come out of it, and he also hoped that it would not sour the evening of his departure.
‘I will sit here,’ said Rasheed after a while, ‘and think.’
He made the word sound actively ominous.
17.4
Maan had not been following Rasheed’s activities. He was troubled by his talk of the patwari, though now he did recall faintly that someone — Rasheed’s father or grandfather — had once mentioned something about a patwari to him. He knew that Rasheed had been moved to pity and indignation on behalf of the poorer people in the village; Maan’s mind went back to the old man, destitute and dying, whom Rasheed had gone to visit, and because of whom he had taken up cudgels against the elders outside the mosque. But Rasheed was so rigid, expected so much of others and of himself, reacted so much in anger and pride, hammered away so powerfully in every direction he turned to, that — apart from putting other people’s backs up — he must have worn himself out completely. Had he suffered from any specific shock that had caused him to crack in this way — to behave so sanely — at least at the beginning — and yet so deludedly? He still gave tuitions; did he still make ends meet? He was looking so poorly. And was he still the exacting, careful teacher, with his insistence on perfect, unbending alifs? What did his students and their families think of him?
And what did Rasheed’s own family think? Did they know what had happened to him? If they knew, how could they be indifferent to his pitiable state? When he went to Debaria, Maan decided, he would ask them directly what they knew and tell them what they didn’t. And where were Rasheed’s wife and children?
Deeply disturbed, he mentioned to Saeeda Bai some of the things that were on his mind. He could not understand how he had obtained either Rasheed’s hatred or his conditional forgiveness. The image of Rasheed and his wild imaginings would haunt Maan for weeks.
Saeeda Bai, for her part, became so concerned about Tasneem’s safety that she summoned the watchman and told him that under no circumstances was Tasneem’s old Arabic teacher to be admitted to the house. When Maan mentioned Rasheed’s belief that there was a plot to marry him against his will to the infatuated Tasneem, Saeeda Bai indignantly and with disgust in her voice read out a part of one of Rasheed’s letters, which certainly gave Maan the impression that the overwhelming weight of passion was on Rasheed’s side. He had written to Tasneem that he wanted to bury his face in the clouds of her hair and so on and so forth. Even his handwriting, about which he used to be so particular, had regressed to a scrawl under the force of his feelings. The letter, to judge from the excerpt that Saeeda Bai read, was alarming. When he added to this the whole bizarre conception of a plot with all its conditions and ramifications, about which Saeeda Bai had until then been ignorant, Maan could not help sympathizing with her agitation, her inability to concentrate on anything else — on music, on him, on herself. He tried in vain to distract her. So vulnerable did she seem to him that he longed to take her in his arms — but he sensed that hers was a volatile and explosive vulnerability and that he would be hurtfully rebuffed.
‘If there is anything I can do at any time,’ he told her, ‘you have only to send for me. I don’t know what to do or what to advise. I will be in Rudhia District, but they will keep track of me at the Nawab Sahib’s house.’ Maan did not mention Prem Nivas because Saeeda Bai was no longer persona grata there.