The Dancer and the Raja

by Javier Moro

  The die was cast. The prospect of remaining alone, accompanied by Mme Dijon, a person with whom she could not communicate either, caused an outburst of anguish in Anita. The dresses the dressmaker brought were not enough to bring back her smile. She was in no state for dresses or hairdos. She was feeling the sting of destiny, and it hurt.

  9

  On the journey across the subcontinent toward the appointment she has with her destiny, the train that carries Anita leaves Bombay behind, one of the provinces that make up British India, and goes into the India of the independent kingdoms: Indore, Bhopal, Orchha, Gwalior … Names laden with history that mean nothing to her yet. They form part of the 562 independent states that occupy a third of the total area of India (among which is also Kapurthala). The other two-thirds of the country are subdivided into fourteen provinces—such as Calcutta, Madras, or Bombay—and each province is in turn subdivided into districts. This India is administered directly by the British: it is what they call the British Raj. The other is a kind of confederation in which the Indian princes have all the autonomy they need to rule and administer their states, but always under the guidance of the English, who constitute the supreme authority. The British Crown takes on the foreign affairs and defense of each state and administers a giant puzzle like this very efficiently. In principle it does not get involved in the internal affairs of the principalities, except to mediate when there are tensions or to topple some raja if he gets out of hand or his loyalty to the viceroy becomes questionable.

  The principalities are as diverse as those who govern them. On one hand, there is Hyderabad, in the south, a sovereign state that occupies an area as big as half of Spain. On the other, there are tiny kingdoms in the west only one square kilometer. On the Kathiawar Peninsula there are 282 principalities that together occupy an area like that of Ireland. Kapurthala forms part of the five principalities of the Punjab and is barely six hundred square kilometers. The English have managed to unify the subcontinent thanks to a skillful policy of alliances and the marvel of a modern invention, the railway. The master of every important station is usually an English employee who, in uniform just like at home, orders the trains to move or halt with his whistle.

  But every principality is still ruled, as it has always been, by local sovereigns who hold absolute power within their borders and who are known by different names according to their different traditions. The name changes just as the flags and police and military uniforms change, which Anita glimpses out of the train window. In the sultanate of Bhopal, an important railway junction where the train stops for several hours, the women rule, the famous begums covered from head to foot in burqas. “They look like ghosts!” says Anita when she sees an official photo hanging on the wall in the station. In the state of Hyderabad, one of the biggest in India and also a Moslem state, the sovereign is known as the nizam. In other Moslem states they are called mir, khan, or mahatar. The Hindus usually call them rajas, a word of Sanscrit origin that means at the same time “he who governs” and “he who has to please.” In certain places the term rao is used, such as in Jodhpur, or rana, as in Udaipur, which makes the young Spanish girl burst out laughing, “A rana is a frog! … I prefer to be the wife of a raja!” In olden times, those who were especially venerated had the prefix maha added, which in Sanscrit means “great.” So a maharaja is, literally, a great raja. Today the distinction of maha is only granted by the supreme authority, the English viceroy, to reward services to the Crown or the loyalty and importance of some sovereigns. The English do not allow the rajas to be known as kings, as they were in the past. In the British Empire there is room for only one king: the King of England.

  This does not prevent them from proclaiming the glory of their ancestry, like the maharaja of Udaipur, who believes himself to be a descendant of the sun, or the maharaja of Jodhpur, who believes in turn he is descended from the moon. Other more recent ones, such as the Holkar of Indore or the Gaekwads of Baroda, started out as ministers or generals and, thanks to their astuteness and the political power they managed to accumulate, ended up as sovereigns. They all belong to the select club of Indian aristocrats that Anita is about to join. Many of them are personal friends of the raja of Kapurthala. Some of them are educated and seductive, others cruel or ascetic, others very vulgar, yet others a little crazy, and almost all of them eccentric. The people adore them, because they see in their princes the incarnation of the divinity. Since the dawn of time, children in India have grown up hearing about the fabulous adventures of their heroic kings, embroiled in terrible struggles against vile despots. There are stories that speak of sophisticated palace intrigues, betrayals, and conspiracies, stories that describe the nighttime escapes of princesses in love, the erotic nights of the favorite concubines, the sacrifices of queens driven to despair … Stories that talk about vast wealth, of truly luxurious palaces and gigantic stables of horses, camels, and elephants. Stories in which the border between reality and myth is so blurred that it becomes hard to know where one ends and the other begins.

  And there are also love stories, like the one symbolized by a monument that Anita can see in the distance, from the train, which on its way north goes round the city of Agra, the ancient capital of the Moghul Empire. With minarets that rise into the sky and a dome of white marble where the sun’s rays blaze, the Taj Mahal evokes the grandeur of love and the futility of life. A mausoleum designed by a Moghul emperor called Shah Jehan to honor the memory of the woman with whom he one day fell in love, the Taj Mahal has a sense of serene majesty, a feeling of immortal beauty that leaves no one indifferent. “An emperor who fell in love with a girl and made her his empress … does it sound familiar?” Mme Dijon asks her wickedly. Anita smiles, thinking about the raja who is expecting her in a few hours’ time.

  “Go on, go on with the story …”

  “The legend goes that one morning, in the palace bazaar, as soon as he saw her, he set his sights on her. She was very pretty, like a picture taken from a Persian miniature. She was sitting at her stall, surrounded by silks and beads for necklaces when the prince came up to her. He asked her how much a piece of cut glass that shone on a pile of jewelry cost. ‘This? … You don’t have enough money to pay for it! It’s a diamond,’ she told him. The legend says that Shah Jehan gave her ten thousand rupees there and then, which was an exorbitant amount, leaving the girl speechless. Perhaps it was her self-confidence or her beauty: something in her had captivated him. He courted her for months and finally got to marry her. He gave her the name Mumtaz Mahal, ‘Chosen one of the palace’…”

  “And … ?” Anita waits impatiently for the rest of the story.

  “What else do you want to know? She became his empress and his adviser. She won the hearts of the people because she always interceded for the poor. The poets said the moon hid for shame in the presence of the empress. He discussed all matters of state with her and, when official documents were finally written out, he sent them to the harem for her to put the royal stamp on them.”

  “To the harem?” Anita asks, intrigued. “How could he have other women if he was so much in love with her?”

  “Emperors can have as many women as they like, but there is always one who steals their heart.”

  “Ah!” The girl from Málaga sighs, as though that explanation served to exorcise her fears.

  “After nineteen years of marriage, she died when she gave birth to her fourteenth child. She was thirty-four years old. They say that for two years the emperor remained in strict mourning, not wearing any jewels or sumptuous clothes, not joining in any parties or banquets and not even listening to music. For him life no longer had any meaning. He gave control of his military campaigns to his sons and put his heart and soul into building that mausoleum to the memory of his wife. It’s called the Taj Mahal, an abbreviation of the name of the empress. They say that on her deathbed she had whispered to him the idea of erecting a monument to commemorate how happy they had been together.
Now they are together still, in a crypt under the white dome.”

  It was still a paradox that the monument considered by the whole world as the supreme symbol of the love between a man and a woman had been designed and built by a man whose religion permitted him to share his love with several women. But as Anita now knew, love knows no frontier, or taboo, or race or religion.

  The emperor Shah Jehan found a little consolation in his other great passion, architecture. He was obsessed by building, as if having glimpsed how fleeting life is with his wife’s death, he also guessed how fragile his empire was. To counteract that, he spent his time raising monuments able to survive the storms of history.

  His yearning for eternity resulted in palaces, mosques, gardens, and mausoleums, which filled the cities in the north of India with glory and beauty. He changed the six-hundred-kilometer road that links Agra and Delhi and then Lahore, in the north, into a beautiful avenue bordered by trees. The railway follows that old road, worn down by the ups and downs of history. It is not so well looked after, and neither does it have as many trees as in the times of the Moghul Empire. But it is the great commercial route of India, the Grand Trunk Road, the one that Kipling made world famous in his novel Kim. At the entrance to the towns, long caravans form of oxcarts full of fruit, vegetables, and all the produce of the region. Anita finds the countryside almost familiar. This is the Punjab, one of the most beautiful and fertile regions of the country, a landscape of fields golden with wheat and barley, of flowering meadows surrounded by poplars, a waving sea of corn, millet, and sugar cane, crisscrossed by rivers with silvery waters and peopled by peasants in turbans who busily push their plows pulled by skinny oxen. The “granary of India” is so green that it reminds Anita of certain parts of France. The climate is benign at that time of the year and it is even cool at night.

  “We’re arriving,” says Mme Dijon, interrupting the girl’s daydreaming. “We’re going to put some makeup on you and do your hair like a real princess.”

  Anita is startled. The imminence of their arrival causes a mixture of anxiety and excitement. The questions come flooding back: Will he come to meet me this time? How am I going to tell him “Your Highness, I am carrying your child”? When shall I tell him? How will he react? What if he doesn’t like the idea?

  “Madame, how do you say in French ‘I’m pregnant’? Je suis embarassée …?”

  “No, not like that. You have to say: J’attends un enfant, Altesse. I’m expecting a baby.”

  “I’m expecting a baby … Okay,” Anita repeats looking at the countryside and stroking her stomach as though to confirm to herself that what is happening to her is true.

  Lola, her maid, appears with a lacquered wooden box that holds mother-of-pearl combs, silver brushes, and everything necessary to create a spectacular hairstyle, while Mme Dijon takes the dresses from Paris out of the cupboard.

  The first time she saw those dresses, in the apartment at the St. James & Albany, Anita stared at them as if they were working clothes. She was so upset and disconcerted at the idea of being separated from her parents that it was difficult for her to look closely at the superb creations by Worth and Paquin that the raja pulled out from their delicate wrappings of tissue paper, like a magician pulling doves out of his hat. Doña Candelaria stared wide-eyed, while Victoria, euphoric at such a display of haute couture, encouraged her sister, “Don’t be silly … You’re so lucky!”

  When Anita went into the bedroom to try on the dresses, she realized she had tears in her eyes. She stayed seated for a long time on the edge of the bed, waiting for the tears to pass. She needed to be on her own, even if only for a few minutes. Alone to drive away the fear of the unknown that plagued her now more than ever. When she had calmed down, she tried on the first dress, a long one with tight sleeves, and a high collar held up by stays and a very tight-fitting corset, and she stood in front of the mirror. For the first time she saw herself as a woman, not as an adolescent. She thought she would dress like that for the rest of her life, “like a lady.” As she turned round to see herself better, she began to realize that the dress suited her very well: the sleeves, the shoulders, the skirt … the cut was perfect. She began to see herself as pretty, and she liked that. Furthermore, the texture of the material made her feel as though she was encased in a velvet glove. But as her feet got caught up in the full skirts, she walked with difficulty. “I had no alternative but to go out into the sitting room,” Anita would write in her diary, “but I held up the dress in both hands in case I fell over.”

  “You are dazzling …” the raja told her with a wide smile of satisfaction, as she sat down on the first chair at hand in order not to stumble.

  The prince looked at her like a sculptor contemplates the statue he is working on. Seeing them all so amazed encouraged Anita, who began joking about the problem with the skirts and petticoats. The newly arrived hairdresser had to listen patiently to the raja’s instructions, since he had his own ideas, a well-defined sense of taste, and the whims of an artist. After all, Anita was going to be his creation. “The hairdresser put a lot of crêpe on me, a cascade of curls on my head and thousands of hairgrips. It all weighed a lot, and my two plaits could no longer be seen.” The result delighted her family and the raja. Don Angel wore an angelic smile, Doña Candelaria looked at her daughter as though seeing her for the first time, and Victoria rolled her eyes in pure envy. That girl no longer looked like the curtain raiser at the Kursaal. She was no longer a dancer at a café concert; she looked like a princess.

  Actually she was still a girl. When the raja said good-bye to her that day, he gave her a little net bag: “For you,” he said. When she opened it, Anita discovered it was full of louis d’or. She had never seen so much money at the same time. She looked up at her protector. This time she felt genuinely grateful. This present had nothing to do with the five thousand pesetas that the interpreter from the Hotel Paris had gone to offer her one day and that had so upset her. Her “Moorish king” was a real gentleman. The way he treated her family and the delicacy he showed toward her made him really praiseworthy. What a lot of water under the bridge!

  “What are you going to do with the money?” her sister asked when the raja went off to his apartment in the Meurice Hotel, two blocks from there.

  “I’ll buy myself a doll,” Anita answered promptly.

  10

  That man who so impressed and intimidated her became a kind of guardian angel for her and her family. Her early fears turned out to be unfounded. They did not have to hold hands like lifelong sweethearts. There was no embarrassing scene, no hard bargaining, no sexual advances, not a single note out of tone that might have sown some doubt regarding the raja’s behavior. On the contrary, the treatment he gave them was perfect at all times. He showed only courtesy, generosity, and elegance. Apart from settling the family in a luxury flat two blocks from the St. James & Albany, he got them a Spanish servant to cook them dishes from their homeland. For the Delgados he was “the prince,” the man who gave them enviable position and security in life and whose reputation had to be protected until death. From invitations to the theater so that the whole family could enjoy the best Parisian revues to the splendid jewels he gave Anita, all the raja’s gestures led to the conviction that he was deeply in love with the girl. However, it was a situation that was difficult to rationalize. He had fallen in love with a Spanish girl, when he was dazzled with everything French. He had fallen in love with a woman with no “pedigree,” when he was a man obsessed with his lineage, like any raja, and with castes, like any Indian. He had fallen in love with a woman who was almost a child and who would be difficult to fit into his life without causing friction and tension. He was so much in love that he spared no effort to prove his feelings. From his travels around the world he followed Anita’s progress very closely, through Mme Dijon. And he was always surprising her with his gestures, like touches of magic that added to the fairy-tale atmosphere: the bunch of
Muscatel grapes one morning at breakfast time, for example; the little bottle of olive oil to dress her salads; the splendid doll he gave her as a surprise; the fur coat and boots that arrived from the best furriers in Paris on the first day it snowed … Not to speak of the more sumptuous gifts. Before leaving France, he gave her two blue velvet boxes. In one there were two gold and emerald bracelets; in the other, a ring of platinum and diamonds.

  “Don’t take it off your finger; that way everyone will know you are engaged and are going to get married.”

  Then he kissed her forehead. That was his farewell. “You will lack for nothing, Anita. Learn a lot and fast so you can soon come and join me.”

  “I couldn’t say a word from the emotion,” she would recall in her diary. “I think I already loved him a little and I was sorry he was going away.”

  The raja wrote to her and sent her telegrams. One day, shortly after he had gone away, she received some flowers and chocolates sent from London, with a note written in Spanish: “Study hard and don’t feel sad.” Such consideration spurred Anita’s on, and she redoubled her efforts to master the language in which she could communicate with her prince. She dedicated herself fervently to learning English and French. She never missed a tennis or riding class, or a piano or drawing lesson, or billiards, a game very much in fashion in the society of the time. She also attended classes in protocol—they had already explained to her what it was about—in the home of the widow of a French diplomat. Those classes included “deportment, attitude, and good manners.” Anita got mixed up with the infinite number of rules: in France it was frowned upon to cut lettuce with your knife, you had to fold it with your fork, which meant an exercise in contorting the wrist that was almost impossible to carry out with dignity. Also in France it was considered bad manners to eat with one hand under the table, while in England you had to in order to be correct. Eating with your fingers was the worst thing of all, except in India, where it was appreciated that foreigners could handle their food according to the maxim of “when in Rome.” What a fuss! To say “Bon appétit” before each meal was considered vulgar everywhere, the same as thanking the servant or waiter after taking food from the tray. And no question of asking for the “loo” when noticing the playful pressure of some internal gas, but the “toilettes” or bathroom. Anita learned to peel fruit and prawns with her knife and fork, to curtsy according to the rank of the person to be greeted; she learned which words to use to congratulate someone or to give condolences, how to combine colors in dressing, how to avoid an excess of makeup, how to write invitations … In short, a whole language of gestures and phrases essential for becoming part of the worldwide Gotha. The day she discovered the function of the finger bowl with the little slice of lemon, she had such an attack of laughter that she had to go to the “toilettes” to wipe away her tears. But she did not want to explain the reason for her hilarity to the ambassador’s widow, because she felt a little embarrassed.