East Into Upper East Read Online Free PDF

Within a day or two, he realized that he was being treated as an honored guest. Regular meals were brought to him on a tray, and there was always someone hovering around to see if he needed anything; someone even brought him his cigarettes from the bazaar. He decided to treat the whole thing as a holiday—a well-deserved one, at that, for God knew he’d had a pretty rough struggle to keep himself going, while Farida apparently had experienced no difficulty landing on her feet. She was his wife, after all, and if good fortune had come her way it was no more than right that he should have some modest share of it.
    The days passed as evenly for him as they did for everyone else. The place had its own rhythm. It was a traditional sacred spot—almost as sacred as Banaras—and there were other holy people like Farida living there. They were Hindus and she was a Muslim, but that didn’t matter. Allah and Ishwar were equal here, and no one questioned which of them was responsible for the mountain peaks rising against the immaculate sky, or the sun that set in orange glory on one side and rose in pink effulgence on the other. Cymbals and temple bells rang out at regular intervals, and everyone hurried smiling to a variety of little white shrines and temples adorned with flags and garlands. Not Farid, of course—he didn’t go in for anything like that. Instead, he took little walks in the mornings and the late afternoons, climbing up a green path till he got tired and began panting, which was quite soon. At night, he slept on a string cot in his whitewashed cell. They had given him an old electric table fan, which kept him moderately cool, though he could have wished it made less clatter. When he got tired of the vegetarian meals theybrought him, he wandered down into the little bazaar at the foot of the hill and ate a meat curry at one of the stalls there and had some worldly conversation with the shopkeepers and customers. Once, he went into the town cinema, together with the other town loafers, and saw one of those long, loud Hindi films, which he enjoyed more than a sophisticated person like himself should have. Once a day, he visited Farida under her tree. When she asked him whether everything was to his satisfaction, he replied with a shrug that suggested he neither asked for nor got much. Altogether, he conveyed the impression that he was doing her a favor by being there at all.
    He was waiting for a showdown with her. He expected it. They had always had showdowns—explosions ignited by the fuel of their fiery temperaments. In their youth these upheavals had ended in excited lovemaking, but later, during the years in London, the showdowns had become a release from the tensions not of love but of failure and frustration. They lived in misery. Their flat was horribly cramped and always smelled of cabbage and mutton from their English neighbors’ cooking. (They themselves had given up on cooking and only opened cans and frozen packets.) The flat also held the odors of Farida’s scents and lotions and of the dregs of Farid’s drinks.
    It was no wonder that, in their last years together, Farida had gone away as often as possible. She told him she went to follow up useful contacts—though these were vague by now, for they no longer had definite plans but just lived on in the hope of something turning up. It was when she came back from one of those expeditions that they had had their final quarrel. He had been alone in the flat all weekend, drinking. His eyes hurt, his head felt huge, and now he lay on the bed watching her brush her hair in front of the mirror. He could see her smiling to herself in a secret, sensuous way. He began to taunt her, asking her questions about where she had spent the weekend and taking pleasure in trapping her in discrepancies. Actually, she wasn’t very careful about her excuses any more and presented them to him with a take-it-or-leave-it indifference.