Now Motilal was really getting old. By next Dassera, he would be fifty-eight or sixty. And that awful asthma had grown worse than it had ever been. Night after night he had sat sleepless, smoking his hookah and waiting for the dawn to come, when it would suddenly grow less painful, and he would lie down to have a short nap. These sleepless nights had greatly weakened his already feeble nerves. He felt like beating everybody he saw, and lately there had actually been a boycott among his clients, because of his extreme irritability. They had all agreed — it was his rival Mohanlal of the little shop by the banyan who was behind it — they had all agreed that they would never go to him again. For three or four days, so few set foot in the shop that Beti, who had a vague feeling about it, went to ask Ananda’s stepmother and the short clerk’s wife as to why they had become so cruel towards her. They did not hide the cause, and assuring them that she would see that her husband would lose his temper no more, she came back and scolded him. He coughed away and listened, and sat as furious as ever. The parrot’s noise bothered him and the sight of his daughterin-law was unbearable. Sometimes he closed his eyes, and sat telling himself that the whole world wanted to kill him. Once he had threatened Ananda with his hookah for having touched the rice before he gave it. But Ananda had come to have a strange affection for poor Beti, and he always went to buy things there. And there was one little secret that nobody knew except Ananda, and Beti. On Saturday evenings, when Motilal was not there, Ananda always went into the shop and Beti would give him a handful of salted grams with such trust and tenderness! ‘That thing is an orphan,’ she would say to herself, ‘and I too have been an orphan.’ And in her heart she felt Ananda liked her. They were secret friends. But Motilal was never to know of it. Never.
Of late the transactions of Motilal had extended not only throughout Hyderpur but even to the districts. He had many friends amongst the clerks and secretaries and their bosses always wanted money, more money. The District Collector of Sundarpur had taken a loan of ten thousand rupees to buy his new car and pay off a few old debts. The King’s brother-in-law, who had just come of age to inherit his property, about which there was a lot of trouble, had borrowed twenty thousand rupees to pay his Bombay advocates. When he should win the case, which was sure, Motilal would get back the money, with twenty per cent interest. It was not known to many people, but it was a fact — there were documents to show it — that the great Prime Minister, having lost a great deal of money in a jute firm in Calcutta, had borrowed from him fifty, yes, five and zero, fifty thousand rupees at seventeen per cent interest. In a few months, that money with interest was to come back. There was but one sour unfortunate affair. A certain clerk whom he had known for years had duped him. That scoundrel of a fellow had taken him to a man who wanted only two thousand rupees. Yes, only two thousand rupees. He was, Motilal was told, a zamindar who owned many villages in Tikapur District. He lived in such a big house, with so many servants and cars, that Motilal was but too willing to lend the necessary sum of money. It was only for a short time. Six months at the most with twenty-two per cent. The agreement was duly registered, and Janki Ram — for that was the name of the man — thanked Motilal profusely for rescuing him from an old debtor. The next harvest would make him rich. But debtors are so cruel. They talked to everybody about your private affairs! A few weeks passed and somebody casually mentioned to Motilal the awful scandal of a fellow who had called himself Zamindar of Kotyapalli, and had suddenly disappeared from the city, leaving his cars unpaid for, his servants unpaid, his house rent unpaid. Hardly did Motilal hear this news than he fell on the floor, shrieking like a child, and tearing his hair in utter despair. Beti ran to him, and the whole quarter came to see what they could do. But there was nothing to be done. Days passed. Sometimes he would suddenly cry out ‘The Zamindar of Kotyapalli! Two thousand rupees at twenty-two per cent interest. Do you know him, brother?’ Or in the middle of the night he would wake up and going out into the street he would shriek out, as loud as he could, that the house was on fire, that the two thousand rupees had come back with a hundred per cent interest. More often he sat in the grocery, weeping and laughing, muttering things to himself in strange and different voices. But he was scrupulous as ever with his rice or salt, and weighed things exactly, nothing less, nothing more, just as though he were normal. He now stopped beating Beti and sometimes fondled her at unusual hours. He still hated Rati, but twice or thrice he suddenly embraced her and wept, crying what a sinner he was, what an old brute. But it was strange, very funny, as the short clerk’s wife told her neighbour, that he, it seemed, never spoke a word to his son. Even if Chota stood in front of him, he would coolly turn away and smile at the parrot or a client.
After he had ‘lost his head in the well’, as the people in the quarter said, he had taken to the strange mania of collecting bits of paper that blew in the street. Torn envelopes, cigarette boxes, bits of newspaper and even dry banana and banyan leaves that looked like paper. He collected them carefully, and bringing them home he would place them in a corner and ask his wife to admire his riches. Day after day he went out, and sometimes he even left his customers standing, and ran after a rag of paper that rolled down the street with the rising winds. Sitting in his seat, he would often say to himself, ‘I have paper. I have so much, so much paper. I am rich. If I should sell it I shall get money. Hè! hè! Money! Bank notes!’ Or he would shriek out in the middle of his meals that the Zamindar of Kotyapalli had come and brought him twenty thousand rupees, actually twenty thousand rupees. ‘How do you like it, Beti? Hè?’ ‘Very well,’ Beti would say, turning away her face. So that was what her husband had come to be.
One afternoon, while he was collecting his papers, a car ran over him and he was instantly killed.
Beti received ten thousand rupees damages and she was free.
Now that Motilal was dead, Chota had more responsibilities in the household. He had to look to the accounts, go to people and dun them for payments, sign and register new transactions, and in addition he had his usual provisions to buy in the Central Grain Market twice a month. Very often he came back at nine or ten at night, tired and breathless, his head all covered with dust and his eyes pale and lustreless, and Rati would serve him his dinner that was always kept ready for him in the corner. Of course they rarely ever spoke to each other, and if they had anything to say, it was always communicated through gestures or short-worded statements, muttered as though to oneself. Beti sat by him when he ate and talked about that day’s transactions. After dinner he would rest a moment and then go away to Venku, who had always a mouthful of curses to greet him with. He never gave her enough money and yet he would not let her go. That comic actor Mir Sahib was still asking her to come back to him, and Chota knew it was true. They had wrangles about Mir Sahib, who had once been actually found talking to her by the shop-window. In his fury Chota had beaten her, and she had run away to the other, free as a dog. Chota swore and spat in terrible rage. But there was nothing to be done. She had gone. And that’s that. He closed the shop and went home to eat. When Beti talked to him he flared up at her and asked her to mind her own business. Rati served. The soup was not hot, it was not. . ‘You daughter of a witch! You bloody whore!’ He kicked her so badly on the stomach that she fell on the floor moaning. This was the second time he had kicked her like that, the first time being some months ago when she was pregnant, and the child had died of it. Anyway it was not so great an affair now. Neither an operation, nor the police, were to be feared. Rati soon recovered and everything went on in the household as usual. Only, when he went back to the cigarette shop, it was still closed. That wretched woman had not only run away herself, but had taken his own son. Sour concubine! He felt humiliated, torn. The devout and suffering eyes of Rati seemed so comforting. Why did he think of her? He did not know. He ran back and slept with Rati. She was so happy. She had never been so happy with him. But she knew he would be cold again — the following morning.