East Into Upper East. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

the jeweled buttons. But more and more he preferred to stay at home and cultivate his own interests. He tried his hand at translating couplets of Urdu poetry—purely as an amateur of course, he wasn’t a poet, he wasn’t a scholar; and when collections of these verses were published by real poets and scholars, he was content to admire and retreat, claiming nothing more for himself than the pursuit of a hobby. And as with all hobbies, this one could be taken up and put down at will, which suited him for he liked to spend his time in his own way. He lay under the ceiling fan, thinking about translating Urdu poetry and reading English detective stories. With the cessation of imports, he could no longer cultivate his taste for fine wines so he took to stronger drink—whisky and vodka.

      His daughter Monica became his most constant companion. By this time she was old enough to be aware of the increasing tension between her parents. There was a quarrel now every time Sumitra wanted Harry to accompany her to one of her important functions. She no longer coaxed, she begged, and then she commanded, and then she remonstrated: didn’t he realize that this was her work, her contribution to her country? That made him laugh: oh yes, wonderful contribution, to flirt around in her sari and jewels, like a professional—if he didn’t come out with the word, she challenged him: professional what? What? And she stood demanding an answer, and he said, Courtesan. It amused him the way she went wild. They no longer shared a bedroom but they had a connecting dressing room, and with her gorgeous brocade sari half tucked in and half trailing on the floor behind her, she stamped up and down between their two bedrooms, reproaching him with the difference between her sense of duty and his utter lack of responsibility. He hummed to himself, and the more she worked herself up the calmer he became. Once he playfully trod on the sari trailing behind her so that she tugged it furiously from under his foot and it tore, and she sat down on the bed and burst into tears and he did not comfort her.

      She accepted her fate and went everywhere by herself and he accepted his and stayed home and drank and read and played snakes and ladders with Monica. Later he taught Monica whist and contract bridge; by this time she was at college—she read history and international affairs—but she spent all her evenings with her father and they ate their dinner together, usually the two of them alone while Sumitra was needed elsewhere. And she was really needed—even Harry admitted it, that she was there to lay down the social and cultural guidelines of her newly independent country. An official car and chauffeur were at her disposal and stood parked in their driveway. Sometimes she had to go at dawn to the airport to receive and be photographed with some foreign cabinet minister and his wife; later in the day she took the wife shopping for Indian handicrafts. She had become an arbiter of taste, an expert on all aspects of Indian culture. Almost singlehandedly she revived cottage industries to export the best in Indian textiles and craftsmanship. She was the chairwoman of a committee to rename New Delhi streets, which had once commemorated English statesmen and soldiers such as Lord Kitchener, in honor of Indian freedom fighters; also of another committee appointed to take down statues of Queen Victoria and arrange design competitions for sculptures of Mahatma Gandhi.

      She and Harry had settled down to a sort of brother and sister relationship. He mocked her work—of which however he was also quite proud—and the busier she was the more languid he became. He drank steadily—only vodka now—and this wrapped him in a pleasant haze, which made him very tolerant. She saw to it that he always had clean linen; he had taken to wearing only Indian clothes, fine white shirts with embroidery at the shoulders and neckline. Before leaving for her many duties, she arranged her household and ordered the day’s meals for her husband and daughter. These two remained very close, and Sumitra was aware that this was partly the result of an alliance against herself. When Harry mocked Sumitra—he imitated the way she posed for the photographers while garlanding a VIP—Monica laughed loudly in her mother’s face; and she too mocked her, not in the good-natured way that Harry did but bitterly. She blamed her mother for many things. Later, whenever Kuku spoke admiringly of her grandmother’s achievements, Monica would pull a face: “She did it for herself,” she told Kuku. “To show off and be admired by people; by men,” she said.

      In her mid-thirties, when she met Lieutenant-General Har Dayal, Sumitra was even more attractive than in her youth. She had become elegant and worldly, befitting the part she played on the national stage. She rustled around in her brocades with masculine purpose and feminine grace; there was a somewhat set expression about her mouth now, which may have been the determination of a busy woman, an almost public personage, but also an indication of some disappointment. There was no one really she could open herself to fully: husband and daughter had ganged up against her, at best indifferent if not contemptuous of the great role she played. As for those among whom she played it—the politicians and higher bureaucrats—they were not of her background, not of her education, not of her class. There was no one, she felt, who understood her: except her husband, and he wilfully misinterpreted her. So she was ready for Lieutenant-General Har Dayal when he entered: for not only was he, like her husband, a man of education and refinement, he was also, unlike her husband, an important person—in fact, a sort of national hero. He was a career officer, among the last batch of Indians to be trained at Sandhurst where he had acquired the manners of a British gentleman. At the same time he was an Indian aristocrat, a minor raja in a minor state, not more than a large landowner but with an ancestral habit of command. He was of the traditional warrior caste and looked like a warrior: tall, broad, upright, manly and shining in his uniform. And he had just won a border war against a neighboring enemy country and had been decorated with the highest award for gallantry. Now he had been brought to army headquarters in New Delhi with a view to succeeding the present commander-in-chief.

      Meanwhile he was an honored guest—an indispensable ornament like Sumitra herself—at all receptions and banquets for foreign dignitaries. He knew how to behave: to make conversation in English, to use the right cutlery, to let ladies precede him through a door. The Indian politicians still tended to rush in first and even to jostle and push their way to the front at the buffet table, so that Sumitra had to be on constant guard: it was mortifying to see a plate being snatched from the French ambassador’s wife by the Minister for Trade and Commerce. Sumitra and Lieutenant-General Har Dayal became allies, each signaling to the other to prevent or make up for some breach of manners; sometimes both rolled their eyes in mock despair.

      Lieutenant-General Har Dayal—or Too, as he came to be known to Sumitra and her family—had been married for many years and had teenage children at boarding schools. After the first few months in New Delhi, his wife, unable to stand the sort of official life they led, had gone back to their estate. Theirs had been an arranged marriage and, like him, she was of a minor royal house of the warrior caste; she rode horses and hunted tigers and was more at home in deserts and jungles than in political drawing rooms. So Too was mostly alone, and lonely; and Sumitra was also lonely. It was easy for them to come to an understanding, not so easy to become lovers. At the conclusion of the social events at which they met, they were driven home in their respective official cars; and although no family members lived with him, he was surrounded by his family retainers. However late it was, his batman waited up for him, to take off his boots and help him change for bed; and in case Too wanted anything at night, he slept outside his door on a little string cot, the way he had done throughout their army years together.

      By the time Sumitra came home, her husband Harry was asleep. His drinking made him breathe heavily, even snore, which disgusted her so much that she tried to wake him; but he only grunted and turned over onto his other side, his long nerveless arm flung out on the sheet. She shut the two doors of their connecting dressing room, and lay in bed thinking of Too. In the course of their evening together, they had managed not only to exchange glances but also surreptitiously to brush up against each other, the lightest of contact—of arms or hands—setting up a conflagration of nerves. It was fearful, painful, but also so exquisite that they kept finding opportunities to do it again. It was strange how they managed to contrive their understanding; neither of them had experience of secret affairs, they were innocent except in marriage. But it may have been that both had an ingrained habit of secrecy—of snatching moments of privacy out of communal living among family members, and the ever present family retainers, wakeful in service.

      Night after night she lay in bed, longing