Nripesh sat absorbed, holding the letter. Sujata had written from the sanatorium—she needed money.
Truly, this patched-together life seemed reluctant to move forward, grown too weary to continue.
A terrible storm had swept through their lives the day they discovered that tuberculosis had made its home in Sujata's blood.
Nripesh could bear no more. Constant battle against poverty had left him weakened. Money—he needed money! He had just returned from Nabapallav Publishers. They were willing to print his book, but he would have to change his perspective.
No, he could never do that. Sujata's letter seemed to rise from its black letters and reach out to engulf Nripesh with both hands.
Brother!
Nripesh's intense meditation was broken. His younger sister Rina stood there with a steaming cup of tea. She asked, "What's wrong?"
"Nothing happened. They won't print it."
"Why won't they?"
Nripesh smiled slightly. "My perspective is too realistic—they don't want that much reality."
A little before evening, Nripesh reached the sanatorium. Sujata lay listlessly on a cane chair on the veranda. He couldn't bear to look at her. Her eyes were sunken, her hair had lost that sweet fragrance. Her hands and feet were stick-thin. The disease had stolen away even the last traces of her youth. After their son's death, Sujata had developed something like hysteria. The doctor had said she needed food and joy. But how could Nripesh provide those things? How much could he earn writing stories and essays for papers? He could have taken a job, of course, but Nripesh couldn't abandon his life's ideals and literary pursuits to become a self-satisfied Bengali.
Today he wondered: what good would this literature, this art do? Could these things give him bread for his hunger? Perhaps it was because of his whims that Sujata had been fighting death for a whole year now. The Sujata of two years ago floated up in his mind's eye—her dreamy eyes bright with happiness and joy.
"How are you?"
"Well enough. At least it's good that you remembered to come! Anyway."
"I think about coming every day, but I just can't find the time each day..."
"Why? Is there terrible pressure at the office?"
Nripesh understood that Sujata had thrown a cutting barb.
Nripesh smiled sadly. Then he said, "You know, Sujata, I don't have a job. And that kind of servility wouldn't suit me either. Still, if knowing this gives you pleasure in hurting me, then what else is there to say?"
"No, I truly didn't mean to hurt you." She pressed Nripesh's hand between her own thin fingers. The touch was so cold, without a trace of warmth.
Sujata seemed to crumple under a wave of exhaustion.
"Don't be angry, darling. I want to say a few things."
"Go ahead."
"I want to live, I want to get well, I want you, and I want to build a nest. Move away from this path of writing that will never earn you a decent living. You should get a job."
A job! Sujata, his life companion, was calling him away from the dream-scattered path of his whole life. A crushing blow seemed to plunge his path into darkness. He looked at Sujata once more. Those were the same penetrating eyes that had once driven Sujata mad with love. Was the disease taking Sujata's mind along with her loneliness-ravaged body? Perhaps so. Otherwise, even in all this poverty, Sujata had never once mentioned a job to him. Had the urgency to survive taken concrete form in Sujata today? How strange is the human will to live!
"That's not possible, Sujata."
"Believe me, racing against this death has left me breathless. Blow after blow has taught me this one truth—money is everything in this world, nothing is greater than money. Your art, your literature—their importance will be weighed on money's scales."
Nripesh protested, "I will try to make everyone understand through the compassionate touch of all my writing that money is needed by humans—to make humanity beneficial. Money cannot be seated above human hearts, aesthetic feelings, and ideals."
"Forget all that talk!" Sujata drew a firm curtain over this philosophical discussion. "They'll strike my name off. I'll need separate money for medicine. Isn't this a government hospital?"
"Let me live, I want to live for my daughter Minu. Without me she's helpless—my poor blind and mute girl." Sujata broke down in tears.
Nripesh met with the superintendent. At first he wasn't granted permission; only after much difficulty did he get five minutes. Nripesh asked directly: "So do you weigh medical care too on money's scales? Is there class division here as well?"
The superintendent removed his thick-lensed glasses and looked at Nripesh.
"What are you saying?"
"You're discharging my wife?"
"Yes. A letter is going to you. Our hospital is not a charity clinic. Even paying patients find it difficult to get beds here. You still haven't paid your dues."
"That's my inability, I admit. But does that mean you'll throw out someone on death's doorstep, someone who wants to live with so much hope and longing, who depends on you? Is there no such thing as a heart?"
"Tuberculosis doesn't cure without money. Go, arrange for money. I don't have time for useless chatter."
Nripesh left with a pale face. Money, money! The entire civilization seemed to be marching forward supported by money. Nripesh's hair was disheveled, his eyes bloodshot. His punjabi was dust-covered. As if he hadn't slept for days. Nripesh entered Nabapallav Publishers, where Nabakrishna Babu had his office. In his hand was a bound notebook, clean and gleaming, with "Bhranti" written in large letters.
Nripesh offered his greetings and sat down. He said, "I'd like to know your opinion about 'Bhranti' in a bit more detail."
Nabakrishna Babu looked at him sharply. Under that gaze, Nripesh felt terribly helpless. He said, "I've already given my opinion, Nripesh Babu."
"Still, if you could clarify a bit more..."
"I can't help but praise your writing. Excellent style. But the perspective needs to be a bit more refined; that is, you've tried to emphasize man's crude life, which won't sell in the market."
"No, I can't quite accept that. Today's civilization is held in the palm by power-hungry capitalists; their greed has created human humiliation and death. This is what I believe. That's why my art roars."
Rina came and stood there with a grim face.
"It didn't work out. My perspective is lacking."
"Why? What's wrong with your perspective?"
"I mean, I'm an extremist when it comes to art. No tolerance. The novel's story is good. But..."
Shaking her hair, Rina said, "What do they understand about art? All those rich people's flatterers..."
"No, no, don't say that, Rina. He's a double M.A. He used to teach English literature. He has quite a reputation in the market."
"Oh! You went to Nabakrishna Chaudhuri's place? You might as well have gone to a coal mine manager!"
Nripesh smiled slightly at his sister's words—that flickering, melancholy smile that had no value at this moment.
: You've given a fine analogy, Rina. Literature these days is something you can buy off the shelf, just like made-to-order clothes. Give your preferred measurements, cut and stitch to fit. What springs to life in an artist's inner courtyard can never see the light of day.
: But we need money. Read sister-in-law's letter. Nripesh read the letter and fell into melancholy silence for a while.
: Brother, why don't you take a job? The Gopalpur mill needs a private secretary. Nripesh let out a long sigh. Yes, he must survive. When he had dragged a lifeless girl into this whirlpool, surely he must protect her from every angle. He truly felt sorry for the poor thing. It was crushing poverty that forced her to endure today the death-agony of tuberculosis. What had become of her eighteen to twenty years of womanhood!
Nripesh's eyes welled up with tears, and Rina was astonished. Tears in her brother's eyes—something no one had ever seen in their lifetime. Thousands of torments, sorrows, hardships, even death had failed to draw a single tear from her brother's eyes. Sister-in-law certainly had power!
: I knew you would come, Nripesh babu.
: Yes, I've been forced to come. I desperately need money. I want to make an adjustment.
: Yes, your needs can be fully met quite easily.
A smile of self-satisfaction played at the corner of Nabakrishna babu's lips. Helpless Nripesh, like a poet cast out from the herd, seemed to have lost his way. Sujata's desperate will to live kept hammering at the door of his heart.
: Adjustment? Excellent! Where you've hinted at your story's hero rising up against the landlord, bring in tolerance instead. Say that civilization's squalor isn't the fault of the rich, but God's wondrous play. He is merely testing us. This poverty, this want, this suffering of the poor—the wealthy aren't to blame, birth itself is to blame, which is God's will. Then by His grace the storm will pass one day. The sun will rise not through rebellion, but through tolerance.
Nabakrishna babu kept fidgeting with a checkbook. And Nripesh's gaze was fixed on a picture hanging on the wall—a young deer, pale with terror, fleeing in panic. A fierce hunter with bow and arrow was chasing it from behind. The predator's two eyes blazed with cruel hunger. The picture was titled "The Hunt."
It struck Nripesh that all of literature was like a hunt for profit. He too was being violated in the hunter's hands, like that frightened fawn.