Mr Sampath-The Printer of Malgudi, the Financial Expert, Waiting for the Mahatma (20 page)

Your wife’s?’

‘We have accumulated a variety of silver things during our marriage, you know!’ he said with affected lightness. He remained moody for a moment. ‘That’ll help me face Somu’s conditions. After that I shall really be able to make a substantial deal. Our rotary is not so far out of reach, sir. I’m really grateful to you for introducing me to the old man; under him I have made tremendous progress in Sanskrit studies. Though it is so difficult to make him talk of his passbook, he readily opens his mind and soul to every spiritual inquiry. It is a pleasure to sit with him and hear him talk.’ He raised his voice and recited in fluent Sanskrit: ‘The boy is immersed in play; the youth, in the youthful damsel; the old, in anxiety; (but) none in the Supreme Being!’

‘Do you know, he gives six different interpretations for the same stanza?’

* * *

It was getting on towards evening, and Srinivas left his table to go home. There was a car waiting for Sampath downstairs. ‘I will drop you at home,’ Sampath said.

‘I prefer to walk home.’

Sampath got into his seat. ‘Boy!’ he cried, sitting in his car, and a servant came up, brightly buttoned, wearing a cap. ‘This is our old office boy – he has come back.’ The boy smiled affably, and Srinivas recognized the young printer’s devil of
Banner
days, transformed by an inch more of height and a white-and-green uniform. ‘White and green is our studio colour,’ Sampath said. ‘I’ve ordered even our paperweights to be made in this colour.’ The boy stood waiting. ‘Boy, is Master Ravi there? Ask him if he is coming home with me.’ The boy ran in and returned in a moment to say: ‘He is not coming now, sir. He says he has work.’ Sampath said gloomily: ‘That boy Ravi, somehow he is very reserved nowadays. He is aloof and overworks. I thought I might take him out with me and speak to him on the way and do something about that old man’s pet. Well, another occasion, I suppose. You see how smart that little devil is! I knew he would come back. This is only the beginning. I know that all the rest of my staff will also come back: I shall know how to deal with them. Well, good-night, sir; I will go home and take the wife and children for a drive. Your advice is very potent, you know.’ He drove away.

In Anderson Lane, Srinivas noticed an unusual liveliness. Groups of people were passing to and fro. They stood in knots and seemed deeply concerned. But Srinivas was absorbed in his own thoughts. He didn’t bother about it. The citizens of Anderson Lane had a tendency to get excited over nothing in particular almost any evening; but what struck him now was the number of persons from other streets who were moving about, and it made him pause and wonder. He found the crowd very thick in one place, in front of the house where his landlord had his room. Young boys chatted excitedly, old men, women, students and adults stood staring at the house. ‘What is the matter?’ he asked a young fellow. Three or four young men and an adult gathered round and started talking at once. The young fellow said: ‘We were playing cricket in this road. Every day we play here, our
team is known as Regal, and we had a match today with Champion Eleven …’ His voice was a high-pitched shriek. But a higher-pitched shriek of another was superimposed on it: ‘But we couldn’t complete the match. We could play only half the match today. We won’t take it as a draw.’ Yet another member of the team was eager to add, even before the previous sentence was finished: ‘The ball went through that window.’ And they looked at each other guiltily, twirling their little bats in their hands, and said: ‘The old man is dead.’ ‘Which old man?’ They pointed sadly at the landlord’s room. Srinivas ran in that direction. A constable was there on duty. He would let no one pass. Srinivas pushed his way through the crowd. The crowd watched him with interest. ‘He is his son,’ he heard someone remark. ‘No, can’t be; he has no son,’ remarked another. ‘They won’t let you go there,’ said another. Srinivas ignored them all and went on. The constable barred his way. The crowd watched the scene with interest. ‘Go back,’ the constable said. His face was lined with gloom and boredom. Srinivas did not know what to do. He said: ‘Look here, constable, I have got to go and see him.’

‘Our inspector has ordered that no one should be allowed to go near the body.’

‘Just let me. I won’t take even five minutes. I wish to have a last look at him. Wouldn’t you want to do the same thing in my place?’ There was such earnestness in his request that the constable asked: ‘Are you related to him?’ Srinivas thought for a minute and said: ‘Yes, I’m his only nephew. I live in his house. He is my uncle.’ And at the same time he prayed to God to forgive him the falsehood. ‘I can’t help it at this horrible moment,’ he explained to God. The policeman said, his face relaxing: ‘In that case it is different. I always allow blood relations to go and see, whatever may happen. The inspector reprimanded me once or twice for it, but I told him “Even a policeman is a human being, after all. Relations are relations …”’

Srinivas did not hear the rest of the statement. He went past him and stood in the doorway. The policeman came up, and the crowd pressed forward. The policeman said: ‘You should not go into that room, sir. You can stand in the doorway and watch. Don’t take a long time; the inspector will be back any moment.’
Srinivas stood and looked in. The old man seemed to sit there in meditation, his fingers clutching the rosary. His little wicker box containing forehead-marking was open, and his familiar trunk was in its corner. Dusk had gathered and his face was not clear. The boys’ ball lay there at his feet. Srinivas felt an impulse to snatch it up and return it to the boys, but he overcame it. He felt a silly question bobbing up again and again in his head: ‘Are you sure he is dead?’ he wanted to ask everybody. He felt he had stared at the body long enough. It seemed to him hours, but the constable said: ‘Hardly a minute; you could have stayed there a little longer. But what can you do? People must die, old people especially.’ Srinivas passed out of the crowd. They looked on him as a hero. They asked eagerly, thronging behind him: ‘What, sir, what?’ He didn’t reply, but went straight home, went straight to the single tap, which was fortunately free, took off his shirt, and sat under it and then went into his house. ‘A great final wash-off to honour his memory,’ he told his wife. She told him the rest of the story. ‘It seems they saw him bathe at the street-tap as usual and saw him go in at about eleven in the morning. But no one saw him again.’ His son, who had just come in from Ravi’s house, added: ‘We were playing against Champion Eleven, and some rascal of that team shot the ball in; they got up to the window to ask for it and called him to throw up the ball, but –’ he shook his head. ‘I came running home when I heard he was dead. I was the first to tell Mother.’

‘Your ball didn’t hit and kill him, I hope?’ said Srinivas with serious misgivings.

‘How could it, Father? We were playing the match with a tennis ball. It hits us so many times. Are we all dead?’ He added ruefully: ‘It was their batting, and they are claiming a boundary for it. Is that right, Father?’

The greater part of the next day Srinivas had to spend at the inquest. The
Panchayatdars
(a board of five) sat around a room, examining the post-mortem report. They summoned Srinivas because he had called himself his nephew. They took a statement from him as to when he had seen the old man last, and about his outlook and antipathies and phobias. They summoned Sampath
because he was often seen going there. He looked panicky, as if they were going to haul him up for murder. A statement from him was recorded as to why he visited the old man so often. He explained that he was his student and was learning Sanskrit from him. And then they set out a number of exhibits – a savings bank passbook, a piece of paper on which were scrawled 12 1/2 per cent, 5,000, and the name Sampath. He was asked if he had seen the passbook before. Sampath said ‘No’. He was asked to explain what he knew about the piece of paper containing his name and the 12 1/2 per cent calculation. He said that he was consulted by the old man regarding some investment calculations, and possibly he had tried to work it out. The
Panchayatdars
pried further and wanted to know what the investment was. Sampath, who had by now recovered something of his composure, answered: ‘How should I know? Occasionally my master would talk of investments generally, and work out hypothetically some figures. I don’t know what he had in mind.’ Two more witnesses had been summoned, the owner of the house where the old man had his room, and his son-in-law. They were questioned very briefly, and then the board adjourned for a moment into another room, and came out to say: ‘We are satisfied that … died seven hours before he was seen, as the doctors think. Death is due to natural causes, old age and debility.’

The sound of a car moving off reached Srinivas’s ears, and at the same moment he heard the cry on the stairs: ‘Editor! Editor! Editor!’ It was such an excited cry that he ran out to the landing. He saw Ravi at the foot of the staircase. ‘Editor! Editor!’ he cried. ‘Did you see?’

‘What?’ asked Srinivas.

‘Are you free? Shall I come up?’ Ravi asked. He climbed up in three bounds. Srinivas moved back to his chair and pointed the other to his usual seat. Ravi wouldn’t sit down. He was too excited. He could speak neither in whispers nor in a loud voice and struggled to find a
via media
and made spluttering sounds. He came over to Srinivas’s chair, gripped its arms and said: ‘She – she –’ He couldn’t finish his sentence. His face was flushed. Srinivas had never seen him so excited. He gently pushed him to a chair and said: ‘Calm yourself first.’ But Ravi was not one to be calmed. It didn’t seem necessary at the moment. He said: ‘Give me that sketch.’ He held out his hand. Srinivas took it out and passed it to him. It seemed to act as a sedative, and Ravi became calmer. ‘I can do it now; on a big canvas, in oils, if you like.’ Srinivas felt, amidst the various misgivings in his mind, that this was the moment he had been waiting for all his life.

Ravi was lost in the contemplation of the sketch he had in his hand. He was going into a sort of loud reverie. ‘Nobody told me she was here. I didn’t know she had come to the studio. How providential! Don’t you see the hand of God in it?’ Srinivas asked: ‘Did you speak to her?’

‘Yes, yes. I was in the office attending to those damned accounts. I heard footsteps and went on with my work, thinking it was just another of those damned visitors dropping in all through the day. I heard little sandals pit-patting: that itself seemed music to my ears, but as a rule I never look up. But the
footsteps approached and stopped at my table. “Accountant,” the voice called, and I looked up, and there she was. Oh, Editor, it was a stunning moment. I don’t remember what she asked and what I said: I fell into a stupor, and she turned round and vanished. I thought it was an apparition, but the office boy was also there, and he says that she asked for Sampath and went away.’ He was rubbing his hands in sheer joy and pacing up and down. Srinivas watched him uneasily. He felt he should tell him the truth and check him a little. ‘Ravi, are you sure she is the same?’ ‘What doubt is there? She gets a high light on her right cheek bone. That is the surest mark. Even if other things are a mistake, nobody can go wrong in this. I challenge –’

‘But she says this is her first visit to this town.’

‘She says that, does she? But I have seen her; I know her, that high light no one else can have.’

‘Did she recognize you?’ Srinivas asked.

‘How could she? She never knew me before. I used to see her every day and she might or might not have seen me. How can I be sure?’

‘But you have spoken a word or two to her and you used to say she gave you a piece of coconut and so on; isn’t that so?’

Ravi suddenly thrust out his chest and said, defying the whole world: ‘I said so, did I? I don’t care. What do I care what she or anyone says or thinks? It is enough for me. She is there. Let her not notice me at all. It is enough if I have a glimpse of her now and then. Mr Editor, you must help me. I will not do these accounts any more. I can’t. I hate those ledgers. I want to work in the studio now – in the art department. Please speak to Sampath. Otherwise, I don’t want this job at all. I will throw up everything and sit at the studio gate. That will be enough for me.’ He sat down, fatigued by his peroration. He added: ‘If you are not going to speak to Sampath, I will.’ He held the sketch in his hand. Srinivas gently tried to take it back. But the other would not let it go; he gazed on it solemnly, pointed at a spot and said: ‘You know how long ago I drew this? But you see that high light where I have put it. Go and look at her in the studio; that is her peculiarity. A human face is not a matter of mere planes and lines. It is a thing of light and shade, and that is where an individual
appears. Otherwise, do you think one personality is different from another through the mere shape of nose and eyes? An individual personality is –’ He was struggling to express his theories as clearly as he felt in his mind. He concluded with: ‘It is all no joke. High lights and shadows have more to do with us than anything else.’

Srinivas undertook a trip to the studio in order to meet Sampath, who seemed to be too busy nowadays to visit his office downstairs regularly. ‘Mr Sampath comes only at three,’ they told him. Srinivas sat down in a chair in the reception hall and waited. Girls clad in faded
saris
, with flowers in their hair, trying to look bright, accompanied by elderly chaperons; men, wearing hair down their napes and trying to look artistic; artists with samples of their work; story-writers with manuscripts; clerks, waiting for a chance; coolies, who hoped to be absorbed in the works section, all sorts of people seemed to be attracted to this place. De Mello had framed strict rules for admission which were so rigorous that the studio joke was that the reception hall ought to be renamed rejection hall. But hope in the human breast is not so easily quenched. And so people hung about here, without minding the weariness, trying to ingratiate themselves with the clerk and vaguely thinking that they might somehow catch the eye of the big bosses as they passed that way in their cars. The reception hall marked the boundary between two classes – aspirants and experts. But from what he had seen of those inside, Srinivas felt that there was essentially no difference between the two: the only difference was that those on the right side of the reception hall had got in a little earlier, that was all, and now they tried to make a community of themselves, and those here were the untouchables!

The afternoon wore on. The reception clerk scrutinized a leather-bound ledger, entreated a few people who went in to sign their names clearly and fully, threw a word of greeting at a passing technician, and after all this task was over, opened a crime novel and read it, lifting his eye every tenth line to see if there was anyone at the iron gate at the end of the drive.

The hooting of a car was heard, and he put away his book and said: ‘That’s Mr Sampath.’ And now there swung into the gate
the old Chevrolet with Sampath at the wheel and his cousin by his side. The clerk looked very gratified and said: ‘Didn’t I say he would be here at three o’clock? Shall I stop and tell him?’ ‘No, let him go in, I will follow.’ The car went up the drive and disappeared round a bend. Srinivas got up, and the others looked at him with envy and admiration. They reminded him of the alms-takers huddled at a temple entrance, a painting he had seen years ago, or was it a European painting of mendicants at the entrance to a cathedral? He could not recollect it. He went on.

He went to the rehearsal hall. Sampath said on seeing him: ‘Ah, the very person I wished to meet now. I’m putting my cousin through line rehearsals and she has difficulty in following some of the interpretations.’ She was dazzling today, clad in a fluffy
sari
of rainbow colours, with flowers in her hair to match. Srinivas thought: ‘Surely God does not create a person like this in order to drive people mad.’ She smiled at him, and he felt pleased. ‘Oh, God, don’t spare the use of your third eye,’ he mentally prayed. She had a fine voice as she asked: ‘How do you want Parvathi to say these lines?’ She quoted from a scene where Parvathi is talking to her maids and confesses her love for Shiva. She says: ‘How shall I get at him?’ and Shanti now wanted to know: ‘How do you want me to say it? Shall I ask it like a question or a cry of despair?’ It seemed a nice point, and Srinivas felt pleased that she was paying so much attention to her rôle. She spoke naturally and easily, without a trace of flirting or striving for effect. Srinivas said: ‘It is more or less a desperate cry, and that dialogue line has to lead to that song in
Kapi Raga
. Do you follow?’ She turned to Sampath triumphantly and said: ‘Now, what do you say? We’ve got it straight from the author!’ She said: ‘All day Sampath has been trying to rehearse me in these lines, saying that they are to be asked like a question. I have been protesting against it, and we did not progress beyond ten lines today. And he wagered ten rupees, you know!’ Sampath took out his purse and laid a ten-rupee note in her hand. ‘Here you are, sweet lady. Now that this question is settled, let us go ahead. Don’t make it an excuse for stopping.’ She picked up the ten-rupee note, folded it and put it in her handbag made of a cobra hood. Srinivas observed on it the spectacle-like mark; a
shiver ran through his frame unconsciously. He felt it incongruous that she should be carrying on her arm so grim an object. He asked: ‘Where did you get that? Is it a real cobra hood?’

‘Isn’t it?’ she asked. ‘I had gone to a jungle in Malabar once on a holiday, and this thing …’ She struggled to hide something and ended abruptly: ‘Yes, it was a king cobra. It was shot at once, and then a bag was made of it.’ She trailed off, and Srinivas did not like to pursue the matter.

Later, when she went away for some costume rehearsals, Sampath said: ‘My cousin married a forest officer, and they had to separate, you know, and all kinds of things, and then she became a widow. She feels somewhat uncomfortable when she thinks of all that, you know.’

‘Well, I didn’t intend to hurt her or anything. But I was struck by her bag because it seemed such a symbolic appendage for a beautiful woman and for us men to see and learn.’

‘Yes, yes, quite right,’ Sampath said. He was more keen on continuing his narrative. ‘They were in a forest camp. The cobra cornered her in her room, as she lay in a camp cot in their forest lodge and it came over the doorway, hissing and swaying its hood. She thought that her last hour had arrived, but her husband shot it through a window.’ Srinivas decided to turn the topic from the cobra. People might come in, and he might lose all chance of talking to Sampath alone for the rest of the day. So he at once said: ‘I came here to talk to you about Ravi.’

‘Oh! Yes, I wanted to speak to you, too. It seems he has not been coming to the office for three or four days now. What is he doing?’

Srinivas said: ‘He is prepared to work in the art section. Why don’t you take him in? We ought to do everything in our power to give him the chance, if it will make him draw pictures. It is our responsibility.’

In his habitual deference to Srinivas’s opinions, Sampath did not contradict him. ‘If I were free as I was before, I would do it before you finished the sentence. But there are difficulties. I’m now in a place which has become an institution.’

‘Look here. Are you going to take him in or not? That’s what I want to know.’

‘I will ask Somu. I don’t wish to appear to be doing things over his head. After all, he is very important.’

Of late, after the old landlord’s death, Srinivas noted a new tone of hushed respect in Sampath’s voice whenever he referred to Somu.

‘All right, talk to him and tell me. I will wait.’

‘Now? Oh, no, Mr Editor! Please give me a little time. I don’t know what he is doing now.’ Srinivas looked resolute. ‘Don’t tell me that you can’t see him when you like. Surely you shouldn’t tell me that.’ There was in his tone a note of authority which Sampath could not disobey.

‘Well, my editor’s wishes before anything else – that’s the sign of a faithful printer, isn’t it?’ he said and went downstairs. When he was gone his cousin came up. ‘I’ve finished the costume business,’ she said. ‘Where is he?’

‘I’ve sent him down on some business.’ This seemed to Srinivas a golden chance to get her to talk. But he dismissed the thought instantly as unworthy. He wanted at best to ask her: ‘I heard you were at the office yesterday,’ but he suppressed that idea also. He knew it would not be a very sincere question. He would ask it only with a view to getting her to talk about Ravi. But even that seemed to him utterly unworthy. He hated the idea of being diplomatic with so beautiful a creature. So he merely asked: ‘Do you like the part you are going to play?’

‘Really?’ she said. ‘I have got to do what is given to me, and I wish to do my best. That’s why I get into such a lot of trouble with Sampath over the interpretations. I like to give the most correct one. But we’ve so little voice in these matters: we shall have to do blindly what the director orders.’ During her costume trials she seemed to have disarranged her hair and
sari
ever so slightly and that gave her a touch of mellowness. ‘What a pleasure to watch her features!’ Srinivas thought. ‘No wonder it has played such havoc with Ravi’s life.’ She didn’t pursue the conversation further, but went to a corner and sat there quietly, looking at the sky through the window.

Sampath returned. He looked fixedly at his cousin for a second. She remained looking out of the window. He beckoned
to Srinivas to go out with him for a moment and told him, when they were on the terrace: ‘I’ve managed it.’

‘Thanks very much,’ said Srinivas. ‘You will see what wonderful pictures he will draw now …’

‘Well, I hope so, sir. But I hope he will not create complexities here,’ he said, glancing in the direction of his cousin.

Ravi’s new chief was the director of art and publicity, a large man in a green sporting shirt and shorts, who went about the studio with a pencil stuck behind his ear. He had an ostentatious establishment, a half-glass door, a servant in uniform, and a clerk at the other end of the room. He sat at a glass-topped table on which were focused blinding lights; huge albums and trial-sheets were all over the place. He wore rimless glasses with a dark tassel hanging down. He called this the control room; it was in the heart of the arts and publicity block, and all around him spread a number of rooms in which artists worked, some at their tables and some with their canvases and sheets of paper spread out on the floor.

Sampath walked in two days later, almost leading Ravi by the hand into the hall. ‘Well, Director of art and publicity, here I’ve brought you the best possible artist to help you.’ The director looked him benignly up and down and asked: ‘Where were you trained?’ Ravi was struggling to find an answer when Sampath intervened and said: ‘Wouldn’t you like to make a guess? See his work and then tell me.’