Read Online Out of India by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala - Free Book Online Page A

going?” and then she stroked the shirt he was wearing, saying, “I think it is time you had another new bush shirt.”
    â€œA silk one,” he said, which made Durga smile and reply in a soft, promising voice, “We will see,” while poor Bhuaji stood by and could say nothing, only squint and painfully smile.
    One day Bhuaji went upstairs. She said to Mrs. Puri: “Don’t let your boy go downstairs so much. She is a healthy woman, and young in her thoughts.” Mrs. Puri chose to take offense: she said her boy was a good boy, and Durga was like another mother to him. Bhuaji squinted and laid her finger by the side of her nose, as one who could tell more if she but chose. This made Mrs. Puri very angry and she began to shout about how much evil thought there was in the world today so that even pure actions were misinterpreted and made impure. Her two daughters, though they did not know what it was all about, also looked indignant. Mrs. Puri said she was proud of her son’s friendship with Durga. It showed he was better than all those other boys who thought of nothing but their own pleasures and never cared to listen to the wisdom they could learn from their elders. And she looked from her veranda down into the courtyard, where Govind sat with Durga and was trying to persuade her to buy him a motor scooter. Bhuaji also looked down, and she bit her lip so that no angry word could escape her.
    Durga loved to have Govind sitting with her like that. She had no intention of buying him a motor scooter, which would take more money than she cared to disburse, but she loved to hear him talk about it. His eyes gleamed and his hair tumbled into his face as he told her about the beautiful motor scooter possessed by his friend Ram, which had many shiny fittings and a seat at the back on which he gave rides to his friends. He leaned forward and came closer in his eagerness to impart his passion to her. He was completely carriedaway—“It does forty miles per hour, as good as any motor car!”—and looked splendid, full of strength and energy. Durga laid her hand on his knee and he didn’t notice. “I have something for you inside,” she said in a low hoarse voice.
    He followed her into the room and stood behind her while she fumbled with her keys at her steel almira. Her hand was shaking rather, so that she could not turn the key easily. When she did, she took something from under a pile of clothes and held it out to him. “For you,” she said. It was a penknife. He was disappointed, he lowered his eyes and said, “It is nice,” in a sullen, indifferent voice. But then at once he looked up again and he wetted his lips with his tongue and said, “Only twelve hundred rupees, just slightly used, it is a chance in a million”—looking past her into the almira where he knew there was a little safe in which she kept her cash. But already she was locking it and fastening the key back to the string at her waist. He suddenly reached out and held her hand with the key in it—“Twelve hundred rupees,” he said in a whisper as low and hoarse as hers had been before. And when she felt him so close to her, so eager, so young, so passionate, and his hand actually holding hers, she shivered all over her body and her heart leaped up in her and next thing she was sobbing. “If you knew,” she cried, “how empty my life has been, how lonely!” and the tears flowed down her face. He let go her hand and stepped backward, and then backward again as she followed him; till he was brought up short by her bed, which he could feel pressing against the back of his knees, as he stood, pinned, between it and her.
    She was talking fast, about how alone she was and there was no one to care for. Yet she was young still, she told him—she invited him to look, look down into her face, wasn’t it a young face still, and full and plump? And the rest of