stayed for dinner but left early and went home and to bed, sinking immediately into his usual deep sleep from which nothing could wake him.
It was the servants who were roused by Sumitra—first the armed Gurkha, whose rifle she contemptuously pushed aside, then the bearer, and finally the batman, whom she stepped over where he lay at the door of Too’s bedroom. She made a lot of noise and so did the dogs and the servants trying to stop her, but Too did not wake till she shook him hard by the shoulder: “What have you done!” she cried.
He started up at once, like a soldier in ambush ready to face the enemy who has taken him by surprise; but the enemy was Sumitra.
He sent the servants back to their posts, calming them with his own unruffled manner. It was more difficult to calm Sumitra, but he managed to persuade her to wait for him in the drawing room. He wore his robe over his pajamas and brushed his hair with his silver brushes, planning his strategy. By the time he joined her, he was ready with his defense but she launched out immediately: “I couldn’t believe my ears when he told me! After all I did, after all he did, pulling all those strings for you—”
His face darkened: “I want no strings pulled for me by a person like him.”
“Why? Because he’s not a raja—because he hasn’t been to Sandhurst and can’t speak your kind of English—all right, our kind—”
“No. Because he’s not a decent chap.”
Although he said nothing more, she knew what he was referring to. There was some scandal involving the Minister about contracts for army equipment, rumors of bribes taken—but good heavens, there were always rumors, always scandals, that was what political life was like: accusations and counter-accusations, intrigues and counter-intrigues.
It was useless to expect Too to have any understanding of these realities. She dropped the subject of the Minister and took up her own—and his: “As commander-in-chief you would be in Delhi all the time—we would see each other whenever we want . . .” But his face remained closed, his eyes fixed on some distant place above her head. She broke down: “What’s the matter? Ever since you’ve come back, it’s been like this—as if you don’t want to be back; as if you don’t want to be with me.”
He did not reply but began to pace the room in thought. It was a large room, with sofa-sets imported from England, hunting trophies on the walls, and family photographs in silver frames scattered over occasional tables. He circled it several times, but his pacing brought him nothing—he still had no idea how to deal with the situation.
Again it was she who had to take the initiative: “All that matters is that you should be here; near me; that we should be together. All right, refuse, if you don’t want to be the army chief, if you feel it’s not for you—”
“That’s right!” he exclaimed and stopped pacing, relieved to have this thought expressed for him. “It’s not for me!”
“Then what’s for you?” she said softly; she laid her face against his chest and stroked it with both hands. But she felt him stiffen. She stepped back to gaze up into his face, which remained closed against her. Her heart beat in anguish; her eyes swept around the room as though seeking some other help. She took in the photographs—most of them were of his children, his handsome young family of two girls and a boy, also some of his wife, who was very beautiful but had always remained cold to him, caring more for her own family, her sister and brothers, than for him.
Sumitra became desperate: “If you resign your commission, we could go away somewhere, you and I. Why not—look at me! I’m willing to do it, why not you? I’d arrange it, everything—we’d go abroad to some place where not a soul knows us and we need never come back here ever again—”
He groaned aloud. If she was desperate, so was he, and now he dared to say this much: “I need to be at home—no, not here but my home—yes, with my family and in my house and on my land and with my people—what shall I tell you!” He broke off, unable to continue and tell her what it was he intended to do.
He told Harry and Monica—but only just before he left. By that time Sumitra was away on one of her cultural relations tours—she had taken a group of potters and weavers to a symposium on handicrafts in Bangkok—so he was relieved of the necessity of telling her at all. She was only away for ten days, but by the time she returned, he was dead. He had been shot in the back of the head, ambushed by the outlaws he had gone to suppress. Harry read the news on the front page of the newspaper, which also carried a photograph of Too’s corpse. Harry hid it from Monica and broke the news to her himself as gently as he could. Both of them were devastated. They could not believe it: Too had left in such tremendous high spirits! He had himself asked to be sent on this expedition and had been looking forward to it as to a tiger shoot. And in a way it had been like a tiger shoot for him: this band of outlaws had for years been harrying the countryside—his countryside! his people!—pillaging, burning, raping, kidnapping, killing, worse than wild beasts. Worse, much worse than wild beasts! cried Too; and if he caught them—and he would catch them, he promised—he would shoot them in cold blood. “Killed while attempting to escape,” was the usual formula, Too told Harry and Monica with a chuckle. He would have them shackled together in a row and them one by one—bang! bang!
It was about this time that Monica had her nervous breakdown, which her daughter Kuku later diagnosed as due to a lack of sex life. Kuku, who had plenty of sex herself, ascribed most malfunctions to this cause; but at the time Sumitra must have come to the same conclusion, for it was around then that she had arranged a marriage for Monica with the ambitious young under-secretary Malhotra. This marriage had only lasted long enough to produce Kuku, and then Monica and her baby had moved in with Sumitra, who was by that time a widow. So Kuku, growing up with these two women, had from childhood been a witness to the fights between them. Monica, who continued to blame her mother for everything, was always on the attack, forcing Sumitra to defend herself. For instance, Monica blamed her for letting Too go on the expedition that had led to his death: “You could have stopped it,” Monica said.
“How? How? I was in Bangkok, I didn’t even know about it.”
“You could have got him some appointment to keep him in Delhi. You could easily have done it, you were in so thick with the Milkman. You certainly got everything out of him for yourself, though goodness only knows what you had to do in return.”
Once, when Kuku was about twelve, her grandmother told her about the Minister, “He was very kind to me.”
“But what did you have to do for him?” Kuku innocently inquired.
Sumitra shrugged: “I suppose I helped him to become the Foreign Minister.”
She always considered that he had done more for her than she had for him, and at a time when she needed it. After Too’s death, she had to contend not only with Monica’s nervous breakdown but with Harry’s increasing alcoholism. He began to drink the moment he got up and continued steadily until his servant helped him to bed at night. He and Monica no longer had their pleasant times together—it was as though, without Too, they had broken apart and each was locked up in solitary misery. Sumitra meanwhile was kept busier than ever, for it was the winter season and many important foreign visitors had to be entertained and taken to see the Red Fort and the Qutb Minar. It was always very late when she was at last driven home; but however late it was, Monica would be waiting up for her. She seemed to have spent the day brooding about her mother, whom she held responsible for Too’s death, Harry’s drinking, and Monica’s own inferiority complex and generally unhappy life. Sumitra, although exhausted after her long day, tried to calm her, and it always ended in the same way, with Monica’s ragé melting into tears and Sumitra tucking her into bed and tenderly kissing her goodnight. It was only then that Sumitra could go to bed herself and give way to her own grief, which she shared with no one.
After Too had refused the high command, the Minister and Sumitra did not mention him again between them; except on his death, when the Minister spoke some