The Dancer and the Raja

by Javier Moro

  11

  The clock at the station in Jalandhar is about to strike ten in the morning when the train appears amid clouds of steam, its arrival announced by loud blasts of the whistle, generously provided by the engine driver. The station is small and is decorated with blue-and-white bunting. It is typical of a cantonment of the British army. Jalandhar is a poor little town, although since the railway was built it has been growing. The raja did not want the railway to run through the city of Kapurthala, a little farther to the west, because he was afraid he would have to go to the station every time some top British or Indian official passed through; that is, almost every day because the Punjab lies on the way to Central Asia. It seemed to him it would be a nuisance that would disturb his placid existence as monarch. So he used his influence to ensure the line ran through Jalandhar.

  As soon as the train stopped, an officer kitted out in the uniform of the Kapurthala army comes into the carriage and, after paying his respects to the distinguished passengers, begs them to be patient for a few minutes. The train has arrived early and a few minor details are still unfinished. “Is it all for me?” asks Anita, seeing four Indians unrolling a red carpet between two rows of palm trees forming an avenue.

  “Yes, Memsahib …” the officer replies. “Welcome to the Punjab.”

  As soon as she comes down the steps from the carriage, garlands of white flowers, which turn out to be a type of lily, are placed round her neck. Anita closes her eyes. Their fragrance brings back the memory of the tuberose perfume that the raja had brought back from London for her. “This is what Kapurthala smells like in winter,” he had told her. “If you like it, I would be pleased if you wore it.” For the rest of her life Anita would identify the smell of lilies with her early years in India. With that fragrance floating in the air, it is as though she already had her prince standing before her; but no, he is nowhere to be seen. Every couple of steps an Indian in a turban, a woman, or a girl gives her a garland of flowers and then places his or her hands together in greeting: “Namaste!” Everything is smiles and friendly looks mixed with curiosity. And music. An orchestra, hidden away in the station porch, plays the national anthem of Kapurthala, while a corps of soldiers from the raja’s guard march on either side of her to the waiting room. Anita turns her head, seeking a familiar outline, but she cannot see anyone. She is surrounded by unfamiliar faces, by people who never stop placing garlands round her neck, garlands that pile up and almost threaten to block her view. A shower of petals welcomes her as she goes into the waiting room, where she finds herself facing His Highness’s top officials and members of the local government. What should she say? What should she do? There is a moment of perplexity because no one moves in the crowded hall, until a woman comes up to Anita to help her free herself from the weight of the garlands. In relief, the Spanish girl looks round and then she sees him, standing behind the door, looking at her with his eternal smile. The raja has been watching her reactions and has laughed a lot at the Spanish girl’s spectacular arrival.

  “Altesse!”

  Anita just wants to throw herself into his arms, but she restrains herself. Has she not heard Mme Dijon say a hundred times that education means controlling your feelings and mastering your passions—and, at the same time, making as little noise as possible? He seems to be in the same frame of mind because he cannot take his eyes off his beloved. He eats her up with his eyes and, if he could, he would take her in his arms. But India has turned Puritan and it is not acceptable to show your feelings in public. Even now, at the beginning of the twentieth century, a strict Victorian mentality holds sway over people’s customs. Far off now are the days when the Europeans first arrived, when the libertine atmosphere of India scandalized religious people and attracted good-for-nothings. Anything went in those days: a white man could be circumcised in order to marry a Moorish woman, a European woman could live with a native, they could convert to Hinduism, Sikhism, or Christianity, and an Englishman could have children with a bibi (a native woman), European women could smoke a hookah or wear the kurta … The time of the marquis of Wellesley is long past. After being in Calcutta only a short time, having been named governor general in 1789, he sent a letter to his wife, a French lady called Hyacinthe, asking her for permission to take a mistress: “I beg you to understand that the climate in this land has so aroused my appetites that I cannot live without sex …” he wrote to her in a letter. By return post, the most elegant Hyacinthe answered: “Copulate if you feel absolutely forced to, but do it with all the honour, prudence and tenderness that you have shown with me.”

  Those were other times. Now, the morality imposed by the colonists looks down on matters of love and sex, especially when they are between men and women of different races, religions, or social class. For that reason no English official has gone to welcome Anita, a Spanish dancer, as they were already describing her in the official reports, whose existence neither she nor the raja even suspect. Not even an army man from the cantonment, or a single one of the officers resident in Kapurthala, is there. It is clearly an insult to the raja, who is unaware that the news of his imminent marriage has caused an uproar in the Indian Political Service, the viceroy’s diplomatic corps, whose agents represent the British Empire in the Indian principalities. To the upper spheres of colonial power, the wedding is a scandal.

  “How was the journey?” he asks as they greet the army officers and high-ranking civil servants who wait in line for the new couple to pass by.

  “I was so desperate to get here … I’ve kept a diary as you ordered, and when you read it you will be able to see how it seemed to me to go on forever because …”

  Anita is about to blurt out the only thing that really matters to her at that moment, but this is not the right place. She has to take on a role, smile and nod slightly to the raja’s ministers and the authorities who look at her with candid curiosity. It is her first official act. Because of the intensity of the looks, she can guess that her presence must be causing quite a stir in local society. They must all be asking themselves what the European wife of the prince will be like. Ever since Kapurthala has existed, it is the first time a raja has done anything like this.

  At the station exit a beautiful car is waiting for them, a dark blue Silver Ghost Rolls-Royce, a convertible launched in 1907, the flagship of the British car industry, considered the best car in the world. The prince takes the wheel. He likes to drive this recent acquisition in his fleet himself. He also has four other Rolls-Royces. The six-cylinder engine starts up with a smooth purr. The couple leave the station amid the admiration of the crowds. The Rolls heads down the road, which is no more than a dusty track where they often have to pass elephants, oxcarts, or even the occasional camel. After a few minutes they pass a group of policemen who salute as the blue car with the royal coat-of-arms goes past them.

  “This is the border … Now you’re in Kapurthala.”

  The road is lined with policemen posted at regular intervals, dressed in their blue-and-silver state uniforms. On the straight stretches Anita holds her flowery hat on with one hand so the wind does not blow it away. “Sometimes the car touched the dizzy speed of sixty kilometres an hour,” she would write in her diary.

  “Is there a date set for the wedding, Altesse?” Anita asks, shouting to be heard over the wind.

  “Don’t call me Highness. Apelle-moi ‘chéri’ …”

  “That’s right, I haven’t seen you for such a long time that I’d forgotten …”

  “There are still some preparations to be completed … I hope we can celebrate it in January … The astrologers will tell us the exact day. It has to be an auspicious day. You know, it’s the custom here …”

  Anita is bursting to tell him now, but she prefers to wait. For the time being, the drive absorbs all five of her senses and reveals to her the beauty of her new country. The villages, all exactly the same, look as they have come out of a fairy tale. At the entrance there is al
ways a pool where the women wash the clothes and the men bathe the work animals. The houses are made of mud with little yards full of dogs, goats, buffalo, and cows in the sun. The little children, barefoot and with their eyes outlined in kohl, stand as if paralyzed when they see the imposing vehicle, but they react immediately and charge after it in pursuit. On pieces of wasteland large buffalo slowly drag heavy millstones round and round to grind the wheat and corn. The women flatten their dung with straw and knead it into cakes, which they then leave to dry on the adobe walls of the houses. The villages smell of the smoke of those cakes, which, once they are dry, are used as fuel in the people’s homes.

  The road suddenly becomes wider. The large trees that line it were planted at the raja’s initiative, as he wanted to imitate the roads in France. It is his way of bringing a touch of Europe to his corner of the Punjab. In the distance a conglomeration of houses appears. Among them the red building of the Law Courts stands out, as well as the white dome of the Gurdwara (Sikh temple) and the slate roof of a huge French palace. This is the city of Kapurthala, the state capital.

  “Is that the palace you have built for me?” Anita says, pointing at a building that looks something like the Tuileries Palace.

  “I didn’t know you when I began to build it. The fact is I never imagined that this palace would be first lived in by such a beautiful woman, but now I can see that it is, that is has to be yours.”

  “Will we get married there, mon chéri?”

  “It’s still unfinished. I had to halt the work on it two years ago because there was a great famine and the people needed my help, but now I’m in a hurry to see it finished.”

  The city is small, with lovely buildings that show the raja’s taste for architecture, as many of them are his projects. It has fifty thousand inhabitants, mostly Sikhs. There is a large community of Moslems and another of Hindus, and minority groups of Buddhists and Christians. It is a miniature version of India, with the same melting pot of races and religions, living together since time immemorial. In fact, a branch of the raja’s family is Christian, converted in the mid-nineteenth century by English missionaries. One of the raja’s nieces, Amrit Kaur, is descended from that part of the family.

  “I want you to meet her. I’m sure you’ll get on well together.”

  The raja prefers not to stop the car in the city because he does not want anyone to see the bride before the ceremony, in line with Sikh beliefs. They go quickly past a school, the second in the Punjab after the one in Lahore. Now it also takes girls, quite a novelty in India and an initiative of the raja’s that caused many disagreements with the more fundamentalist groups among the Moslems. Opposite it are the stables with superb Arab horses and other stables with wide doorways where the royal elephants live. The raja avoids driving down the street where the bazaar is. It is full of stalls and shops that sell food, cloth, spices, and jewels, and it is swarming with life at this time of day. The palace where he resides now is at the end of the street, an old Hindu-style four-story building with bas-reliefs and murals painted on the front wall.

  “That’s where my two younger children live when they are in the city … And I’m living there too these days …”

  Anita does not ask if their mothers live there too. A shiver of unease runs down her spine when she thinks about all the things she does not know about her husband’s life. It is an indefinable feeling of uneasiness, a strange feeling, as if her fairy tale hid a bitter reality that sooner or later will blow up in her face. That is why she prefers not to ask. Now the important thing is to make the most of the moment. She knows she will not have to live in that old palace, like a “Moorish girl in a harem.” The raja promised her and there is nothing to make her doubt that he will keep his word.

  Her small palace is on the outskirts, in an idyllic setting. As they get out of the car the guards present arms in formal salute. Together, Anita and the raja make their entry into Villa Buona Vista, which he built as a hunting lodge and which looks as if it has been taken out of a postcard from the Italian Riviera.

  “What do you hunt here, chéri?”

  “Red deer, fallow deer, wild boar, and the occasional panther if we’re lucky. You don’t have to worry,” he adds when he sees Anita’s face. “The Villa is guarded day and night by armed guards.”

  Villa Buona Vista stands on the banks of a branch of the river Sutlej, which flows among reeds and stands of bamboo, poplars, and weeping willows, whose languid branches caress the silvery surface of the water. As its name indicates, the palace was modeled on the large traditional villas on the Italian Riviera and is yet another of the raja’s follies, so obsessed is he with Europe. The façade is ochre with white moldings, and the shutters were imported direct from Geneva. There are large windows that open onto an exquisite garden, with a Renaissance fountain and hundred-year-old trees. There are white and black poplars, neem trees, mango trees, and rubber trees, and their foliage hides the view of the two tennis courts and jetty. A rose garden like a jungle of white roses, flower beds of various lilies, meticulously pruned bushes, and a lawn with islands of palm trees among which waddle geese, families of ducks, peacocks, and cranes with long yellow legs make up the rest of this little piece of paradise.

  “After the wedding, we can live here until the work on the new palace is finished.”

  The inside is decorated like a European house. Anita jumps for joy when she comes across a bronze sculpture in the hall. In her diary she wrote: “I was very excited to see the bust of myself, for which I had sent measurements. His Highness had ordered it from a sculptor in London the previous year.”

  “I want to show you the house to see if everything is as you want it …”

  A piano stands in one of the sitting rooms with several armchairs and comfortable leather sofas. French Gobelin tapestries and classical pictures line the white walls. The dining room, done out in Napoleonic style, has a large mahogany table and glass cabinets filled with Limoges china and Bohemian crystal, Sèvres figurines and a collection of Fabergé eggs. Covered in a silk mosquito net that comes down from the ceiling, Anita’s bronze bed seems unreal in her room on the first floor, as if taken out of a dream. The raja has not missed a single detail: the photos that Anita had taken in Paris are framed in magnificent silver and ivory photo frames. Her dressing table is stocked with all kinds of perfumes and cosmetics, including the English tuberose perfume and, another of the raja’s favorites, the whole range of Bouquet Impérial from Roger & Gallet, the French perfumiers. The bathroom is all marble, with silver taps and running water. On her bedside table, a box of her favorite Belgian chocolates and a bottle of Évian. The raja has a train full of bottles of water brought from France every month.

  “Will you be comfortable?”

  Anita does not answer. She seems to be looking at everything as though she were in an enchanted castle. She goes over to him and hugs him.

  “I want you to rest well so you’re in top form on our wedding day,” the raja goes on. “Altogether there will be a number of days of celebrations …”

  “You’re right, mon chéri. I need to rest a lot … And do you know why?”

  “The journey went on forever … I should know!”

  “It isn’t because of the journey; it’s because I’m expecting our baby, Your Highness.”

  The raja smiles and his face seems to light up. He takes Anita in his arms, opens the mosquito net, and puts her gently down on the bed.

  “We have to celebrate this.”

  “Mon chéri, not now …” Anita murmurs. “Mme Dijon and Lola will be here any minute …”

  But the raja is not listening to her. He stands up and waves to a servant to shut the door. And then he turns round and takes her in his arms, covering her with kisses and murmuring sweet nothings that arouse feelings in her that she hardly knows exist. Her hair grips scatter, her petticoats slide onto the floor, the precious stones in the raja’s
rings look like lights on the bedside table.

  Anita Delgado is making the most of her fairy tale. Her desire is greater than that night in Paris, when she gave herself to him for the first time. Today she does so fearlessly, painlessly, with the joy inspired in her by the great adventure she is having.

  12

  Five months pregnant, the gentle curve of her belly is hardly noticeable but, just in case, she tells the Indian maid to pull the sari tight when she puts it round her. It is the first time she has tried one on, and it is her wedding sari. Four men have just brought it in a box. Anita is perplexed.

  “Is this my wedding dress?” she asks Mme Dijon, visibly disappointed. It does not look at all like the diaphanous white dresses that Spanish brides dream of. Actually it is not even a dress: it is just two pieces of material.

  “How do I put this on?”

  “Don’t worry. A servant’s going to come from His Highness’s mother to help you to dress.”

  Anita cannot see how she can wear this. The piece of cloth is six meters long by one and a half wide. She feels it with her fingers and looks closely at it. It is a piece of silk from Benares, poppy red in color, with huge roses embroidered on it in gold and silver, and edged with a silver band that is half a meter wide on one side. It is a very beautiful piece of cloth, easier to imagine on the wall of a museum than on a person’s body.