The Cat and Shakespeare by Raja Rao Read Free Book Online Page B

the bathroom. ‘Uncle is dead, Uncle is dead!’ shouted Shridhar in terror, running back to the garden wall. Govindan Nair, so I was told, jumped like a three-year-old heifer, washed his hands, and stood beside me. He touched me and felt my pulse. He carried me to my bed. Shridhar fanned me. His mother stood at the wall trying to learn what was happening. Govindan Nair jumped back across the wall. He says nothing more. What did he bring?—The chair was empty. Why are they all in the next room? I wondered. Shridhar suddenly came in, took a fan and started giving me breeze. From the window I could see Tangamma handing a tumbler of coffee—so hot, she had a towel around it—to Govindan Nair. ‘Sir, here is your nectar,’ he said. ‘Everybody has his nectar. Mine is tobacco juice, and yours the juice of a blackberry. At the ration department we are told we live on thirty ounces of rice per person. I solemnly declare, we live on nectar. Man does not live on terrestrial viands. He lives on the fruits of heaven.’ And he laughed as he propped me up in bed and, holding me with one hand, gave me coffee with the other. Shridhar was still fanning. Tangamma was standing by the wall playing with a trefoil of
bilva.
Where was I? Where was my wife? Does
bilva
make nectar, I wondered. I must ask Narayan Pandita Vaidyan. Suddenly I had to go to the latrine again. ‘The bowels are a tremendous responsibility of man, three hundred miles of guts hold a few handfuls of chemical compost. And this little chemical mixture makes or unmakes the stability of man. Funny, isn’t it?’ Govindan Nair said this, and stood by the door to the courtyard. ‘Call me, brother, when you want water. Water is our best protector against sin. To smell is sin. To do is no sin. To gulp is sin. To purge is bounty. To die is fanciful. Reality is when you die really. Shridhar’s death is my joke. When you fall unconscious they say you are dead. In fact where were you, brother, when Shridhar thought you were dead? Were you dead to yourself, my friend? You purge to live. You sleep to die. When sleep is life, where is death? Ha, ha, ha,’ he laughed, keeping me company from outside, while my bowels were pouring down hot liquid. I thought my guts would come out. There’s such innocence in a purged body. Disease is unnatural. Death is natural. To die rightly is to wake and find one has ever been being.
    Shridhar knew his father as he knew his textbook. (He always stood second or third in class. He was in the fourth form.) A cigarette was bought from the neighbouring shop, and a matchbox. Sitting by the window, Govindan Nair lit his cigarette, while Shridhar returned to give back the matchbox to the shopkeeper—then, coming back, he started fanning me again. I said, ‘I must build a house of three storeys anyway. My wife can hire out the first two floors if need be. It will be so much capital invested. A house of three storeys these days is a safe investment. How much would it cost? One can live on the third floor.’
    ‘Thirty thousand rupees, if there’s no inflation after the war,’ Govindan Nair declared. ‘Let’s begin buying this house, for the moment. A bird in hand is worth two in the bush. Govindan Nair in Trivandrum is worth two wives in Kartikura House. Isn’t that so, brother?’ he said, but looking towards the wall, he saw Tangamma hide her mouth with the palm of her hand, and laugh.
    I have developed a bad habit. I like women. Not that I like all sorts of women. I like woman, in fact. What is woman, you may ask. Well, woman is Shantha. Shantha is a school teacher in the Nair Society High School. She is fairly tall, and has delicate hands. I am not particularly tall or fair or good or bad. I am just a man. And Shantha is not just a woman, she is woman. I think often of the child she will bear forth (that is, when he will appear), and I cry with delight even before the time is come. Shantha lives with her mother and two brothers round near the