Every other Wednesday afternoon, the Ideal Mobile Circulating Library came to the house on a Yamaha motorbike; the librarian-cum-driver of the bike, after pressing the bell, would untie a metal box of books strapped to the back of his motorbike, and place it on the back of the car for her to inspect. Mrs. Gomes peered at the books and picked out a couple. When she had made her selection, and paid, and gone back inside, George went up to the librarian-cum-driver, who was retying the box to the back of his Yamaha, and tapped him on the shoulder.
“What sort of books does Madam take?”
“Novels.”
The librarian-cum-driver stopped and winked at him. “Dirty novels. I see dozens like her every day: women with their husbands abroad.”
He bent his finger and wiggled it.
“It still itches, you know. So they have to read English novels to get rid of it.”
George grinned. But when the Yamaha, kicking up a cloud of dust, turned in a circle and left the garden, he ran to the gate and shouted:
“Don’t talk of Madam like that, you bastard!”
At night he lay awake; then he wandered about the backyard quietly, making no noise. He was thinking. It seemed to him, when he looked back on it, that his life consisted of things that had not said yes to him, and things that he could not say no to. The SSLC had not said yes to him, and his sister he could not say no to. He could not imagine, for instance, abandoning his sister to her own fate and trying to go back and complete his SSLC examination.
He left the compound and walked up the lane and along the main road. The unfinished cathedral was a dark shape against the blue coastal night sky. Lighting a beedi, he walked in circles around the mess of the construction site, looking at familiar things in an unfamiliar way.
The next day, he was waiting for her with an announcement:
“I’ve stopped drinking, madam,” he told her. “I made the decision last night-never another bottle of arrack.”
He wanted her to know; he had the power now to live any way he wanted. That evening, as George was out in the garden trimming the leaves on the rosebush, Matthew unlatched the gate and came in. He glared at George, then he walked away into the backyard, to his quarters.
Half an hour later, when Mrs. Gomes needed to be driven to the Lions Ladies’ meeting, Matthew was nowhere to be seen, even after she yelled into the backyard six times.
“Let me drive, Madam,” he said.
She looked at him skeptically. “Do you know how to drive?”
“Madam, when you grow up poor, you have to learn to do everything, from farming to driving. Why don’t you get in and see for yourself how well I drive?”
“Do you have a license? Will you kill me?”
“Madam,” he said, “I would never do anything to put you in the slightest danger.” A moment later he added, “I would even give my life for you.”
She smiled at that; then she saw that he was saying it in earnest, and she stopped smiling. She got into the car, and he started the engine, and he became her driver.
“You drive well, George. Why don’t you work full-time as my driver?” she asked him at the end.
“I’ll do anything for you, madam.”
Matthew was dismissed that evening. The cook came to George and said, “I never liked him. I’m glad you’re staying, though.”
George bowed to her. “You’re like my elder sister,” he said, and watched her beam happily.
In the mornings he cleaned and washed the car, and sat on Matthew’s stool, his legs crossed, humming merrily, and waiting for the moment when Madam would command him to take her out. When he drove her to the Lions Ladies’ meetings, he wandered about the flagpole in front of the club, watching the buses go by around the municipal library. He looked at the buses and the library differently: not as wanderer, a manual worker who got down into gutters and scooped out earth-but like someone with a stake in things. He drove her down to the sea once. She walked toward the water and sat by the rocks, watching the silver waves, while he waited by the car, watching her.
As she approached the car, he coughed.
“What is it, George?”
“My sister, Maria.”
She looked at him with a smile, encouraging him.
“She can cook, madam. She is clean, and hardworking, and a good Christian girl.”
“I have a cook, George.”
“She’s not good, madam. And she’s old. Why don’t you get rid of her, and have my sister over from the village?”
Her face darkened. “You think I don’t know what you’re doing? Trying to take over my household! First you get rid of my driver, and now my cook!”
She got in and slammed the door. He smiled; he was not worried. He had planted the seed in her mind; it would germinate in a little time. He knew now how this woman’s mind worked.
That summer, during the water shortage, George showed Mrs. Gomes that he was indispensable. He was up at the top of the hill waiting for the water tanker to come along; he brought the buckets down himself, filling up her flush and commodes so she did not have to go through the humiliation of rationing her flushes, like everyone else in the neighborhood. As soon as he heard a rumor that the corporation was going to release water through the taps for a limited time (they sometimes gave half an hour of water every two or three days), he would come rushing into the house shouting, “Madam! Madam!”
She gave him a set of the keys to the back door, so that he could come into the house anytime he heard that the water was going to be on, and fill up the buckets.
Thanks to his hard work, at a time when most people couldn’t bathe even once every other day, Madam was still taking her twice-a-day pleasure baths.
“How absurd,” she said one evening, coming to the back door with her hair wet and falling down her shoulders, rubbing it vigorously with a white towel, “that in this country with so much rain, we still have water shortages. When will India ever change?”
He smiled, averting his eyes from her figure and her wet hair.
“George, your pay will be increased,” she said, and went back inside, closing the door firmly.
There was more good news for him too, a few evenings later. He saw the old cook leaving, a bag under her arm. She looked at him with baleful eyes as their paths crossed, and hissed:
“I know what you’re trying to do to her! I told her you’ll destroy her name and reputation! But she’s fallen under your spell.”
A week after Maria joined the household of 10A, Mrs. Gomes came to George as he was tinkering with the engine of the car.
“Your sister’s shrimp curry is excellent.”
“Everyone in our family is hardworking, madam,” he said, and got so excited he jerked up his head, whacking it against the hood. It stung, but Mrs. Gomes had begun to laugh-that sharp, high- pitched animal laugh of hers-and he tried to laugh along with her while rubbing the red bump on his skull.
Maria was a small, frightened girl who came with two bags, no English, and no knowledge of life beyond her village. Mrs. Gomes had taken a liking to her, and allowed her to sleep in the kitchen.
“What do they talk about, inside the house, Madam and that foreign woman?” George asked her, when Maria came to his one-room quarters with his evening meal.
“I don’t know,” she said, ladling out his fish curry.
“Why don’t you know?”
“I wasn’t paying attention,” she said, her voice small, scared, as always, of her brother.
“Well, pay attention! Don’t just sit there like a doll, saying ‘Yes, madam’ and ‘No, madam’! Take some initiative! Keep your eyes open!”
On Sundays, he took Maria along to Mass at the cathedral; construction stopped in the morning, to let people in, but as they emerged, they could see the contractors getting ready to resume work in the evening.
“Why doesn’t Madam come to Mass? Isn’t she a Christian too?” Maria asked as they were leaving church.
He took a deep breath. “The rich do as they want. It’s not for us to question them.”
He noticed Mrs. Gomes talking to Maria; with her open, generous nature, which did not distinguish between rich and poor, she was becoming more than just a mistress to Maria, but a good friend. It was exactly as he had hoped.
In the evenings he missed his drink, but he filled the time by walking about, or by listening to a radio and letting his mind drift. He thought,
After that, he figured, it would be time for his own marriage, which he had put off so long, out of a combination of bitterness, poverty, and shame. Yes, time for marriage, and children. Yet regret still gnawed at him, created by his contact with this rich woman, that he could have done so much more with his life.
“You’re a lucky man, George,” Mrs. Gomes said one evening, watching him rub the car with a wet cloth. “You have a wonderful sister.”
“Thank you, madam.”
“Why don’t you take Maria around the city? She hasn’t seen anything in Kittur, has she?”
He decided that this was a clear opportunity to show some initiative. “Why don’t we all three go together, madam?”
The three of them drove down for a drive to the beach. Mrs. Gomes and Maria went for a walk along the sand. He watched from a distance. When they returned, he was waiting with a paper cone filled with roasted groundnuts for Maria.
“Don’t I get some too?” Mrs. Gomes demanded, and he hurried to pour some nuts out, and she took them from his hands, and that was how he touched her for the first time.
It was raining again in Valencia, and he knew he had been at the house almost a year. One day, the new mosquito man came to the backyard. Mrs. Gomes watched as George directed the fellow around the gutters and canals in the back, to make sure not a spot was missed.
That evening, she called him to the house and said, “George, you should do it yourself. Please spray the gutter yourself, like last year.”
Her voice became sweet, and though it was the same voice she used to make him move mountains for her, this time he stiffened. He was offended that she would still ask him to perform such a task.
“Why not?” She raised her voice angrily. She shrieked, “You work for me! You do what I say!”
The two of them stared at each other, and then, grumbling and cursing her, he left the house. He wandered aimlessly for some time, then decided to visit the cathedral again, to see how the old fellows were doing.
Nothing much had changed in the field by the cathedral. The construction had been held up, he was told, because of the rector’s death. It would start again soon.
His other friends were missing-they had left the work and returned to the village-but Guru was there.
“Now that you’re here, why don’t we…” Guru made the gesture of a bottle being emptied down a throat.
They went to an arrack shop, and there was some fine drinking, just like in old times.
“So how are things with you and your princess?” Guru asked.
“Oh, these rich people are all the same,” George said bitterly. “We’re just trash to them. A rich woman can never see a poor man as a man. Just as a servant.”
