When Maan was found innocent and finally set free, his thoughts turned once more to his old teacher and erstwhile friend. But again he was not certain if seeing him was a good idea, so he wrote a letter first. He received no reply.
When a second letter was neither replied to nor returned, Maan decided that at least he had not met with a refusal. He went to Rasheed’s address, but Rasheed was not there any longer. He spoke to the landlord and his wife, and told them he was a friend. He sensed that they were not very pleased. He asked them what Rasheed’s new address was, and they told him they did not know. When he said that he had written two letters to Rasheed recently and asked them where they were, the man looked at his wife, appeared to come to a decision, fetched them from inside and gave both of them to Maan. They were unopened.
Maan had no idea whether Rasheed had got the money he had sent. He asked the landlord when exactly it was that Rasheed had left, and whether any earlier letters had been received. They replied that he had left some time ago, but he could not get them to be more specific than that. They appeared to be annoyed, but whether at Rasheed or at him, he did not know.
Maan, worried, now asked Pran to trace Rasheed through either the History Department or the Registrar’s Office. Neither knew his whereabouts. A clerk in the Registrar’s Office mentioned that Rasheed had withdrawn from the university; he had said that he refused to attend lectures when he was needed to campaign for the sake of the country.
Maan next wrote in his rather blunt Urdu script to Baba and Rasheed’s father, asking for news and for Rasheed’s latest address. Perhaps, Maan suggested, the Bear might know where he was. He got a short and not unsympathetic reply. Baba said that everyone at Debaria was very pleased with his acquittal and sent their respects to his father as well. In addition, the Bear and the guppi had both requested him to send Maan their regards. The guppi had been so impressed by reports of the dramatic scene in court that he was thinking of retiring from his life’s vocation in Maan’s favour.
As for news of Rasheed, they had none, nor did they have any address. The last they had seen of him was during the campaign, when he had antagonized people still further and harmed his own party with his wild accusations and insults. His wife had been very upset, and now that he had disappeared she was distraught. Meher was fine, except — and here Baba grew a little indignant — her maternal grandfather was trying to claim that she should come and live with her mother and baby sister in his village.
If Maan had any news of Rasheed, Baba said, he should inform them as soon as he could. They would be very grateful. For the moment, sadly, even the Bear had none.
18.32
Saeeda Bai had left the court after her brief appearance, but she knew within half an hour of the verdict that Maan was safe. She gave thanks to God for preserving him. That he was lost to her she had the wisdom or experience to realize, but that his youth would not be spent in imprisonment and misery was a stifling weight off her heart. She saw Maan with all his faults, but could not cut him off from her love.
Perhaps this was the first time in her life that Saeeda Bai herself had loved unrequitedly. Again and again she saw Maan as she had first seen him: the eager Dagh Sahib of that first evening at Prem Nivas, full of liveliness and charm and energy and affection.
Sometimes her mind turned to the Nawab Sahib — and to her mother — and to her own younger self, a mother at fifteen. ‘Do not let the bee enter the garden’—she murmured the famous line—‘that the moth may not be unjustly killed.’ And yet the strange and tenuous links of causation could act beneficently as well. For out of the shame and violation of her youth her beloved Tasneem had been born.
Bibbo rebuked Saeeda Bai for spending so much time these days looking into space. ‘At least sing something!’ she said. ‘Even the parakeet’s becoming dumb by example.’
‘Do be quiet, Bibbo!’ said Saeeda Bai impatiently. And Bibbo, glad to have elicited for once at least some reaction from her mistress, kept up the attack.
‘Give thanks for Bilgrami Sahib,’ said Bibbo. ‘Without him where would all of us be?’
Saeeda Bai clicked her tongue and made a gesture of dismissal.
‘Give thanks also to your mightiest admirer, who has spared us his attentions of late,’ continued Bibbo.
Saeeda Bai glared. The Raja of Marh had been apparently dormant only because he had been busy with his plans to consecrate his temple with the installation of the ancient Shiva-linga.
‘Poor Miya Mitthu,’ murmured Bibbo sadly. ‘He will forget how to squawk, “Whisky!”’
One day, to stop Bibbo’s inane prattling, which was more painful than she intended, Saeeda Bai told her to fetch her harmonium, and let her fingers move up and down the mother-of-pearl keys. But she could not control her thoughts any more than she could in her bedroom, where the framed picture from Maan’s book looked down at her from the wall. She called for that book now, and placed it on the harmonium, turning its pages one by one, pausing less at the poems than at the illustrations. She came across the picture of the grief-stricken woman in the cemetery.
I have not visited my mother’s grave now for a month, she thought. In my new idiocy as a rejected lover I am neglecting my duties as a daughter. But the more she tried to avoid thinking of herself and the hopelessness of her love for Maan, the more it oppressed her.
And what of Tasneem? she thought. It was worse for her, Saeeda Bai reflected, than for herself. Poor girl, she had become more silent than that godforsaken parakeet. Ishaq, Rasheed, Firoz — three men had come into her life, each more impossible than the last, and in each case she had let her affection grow in silence, and had suffered their sudden absence in silence. She had seen Firoz wounded, her sister almost strangled; she had probably heard, though her strange silence gave no indication of it, of the rumours surrounding herself. What did she think of men now? Or of Saeeda Bai herself if she believed what she heard?
What can I do to help her? thought Saeeda Bai. But there was nothing to be done. To talk to Tasneem about anything that mattered was not within the bounds of possibility.
Though it was evening, and the first few stars had begun to appear in the sky, Saeeda Bai began to hum to herself the lines of Minai’s poem announcing the arrival of dawn. It reminded her of the garden in Prem Nivas that carefree evening, and all the grief and pain that had intervened. Tears were in her voice, but not in her eyes. Bibbo came and listened, and Tasneem too walked quietly up from her room to hear what had become so rare. She herself knew the poem by heart, but, entranced by her sister’s voice, she did not even murmur the words under her breath:
The meeting has dispersed; the moths
Bid farewell to the candle-light.
Departure’s hour is on the sky.
Only a few stars mark the night.
What has remained will not remain:
They too will quickly disappear.
This is the world’s way, although we,
Lost to the world, lie sleeping here.
18.33
Rasheed walked along the parapet of the Barsaat Mahal, his thoughts blurred with hunger and confusion.
Darkness, and the river, and the cool marble wall.
Somewhere where there is nowhere.
It gnaws. They are all around me, the elders of Sagal.
No father, no mother, no child, no wife,