by Javier Moro
The parcel has been placed in the sitting room and looks like a small coffin. It is a wooden box, nailed down and sealed, which has come from Spain. The butler is charged with opening it and does so making the pieces of wood fly. But soon the man drops the tool and goes running out, with one hand over his mouth. The parcel gives off a putrid stink, the stench of something rotten that hits you right in the throat. In a few seconds there is a revolution among the servants. They take off their turbans to put over their noses, and with the help of some other tools they manage to take the top off. Anita plucks up courage and begins to unwrap the bundle covered in paper and then cloth. She starts retching, and in the end she cannot finish what she is doing; when she sees some shiny, green maggots, she drops it and screams. An old servant takes the box out into the garden and begins to take out things he has never seen before in all his life, things that only Anita can recognize: a cured Spanish ham, two blood puddings from Burgos, and several cheeses from La Mancha, all full of maggots. It is not surprising it is all so rotten, bearing in mind the five months it has taken for the parcel to arrive in India. The parcel is accompanied by an affectionate letter from the Delgado family, who hope that these delicacies will allow her to eat better until she gets used to Indian food. Where do they think I live? Anita wonders, deciding to send them an urgent cable asking them not to send anything else because she is eating very well, “European style,” and even drinks French mineral water.
The letter also brings worrying news. At last her sister, Victoria, is announcing her wedding to the braggart, George Winans. Her parents have not been able to prevent it, and that in spite of them trying by every means to keep their daughter away from the American, by taking her to Málaga. But Winans turned up at the house one fine day, asking for the girl’s hand. When he was refused, the man made a fuss at the very door of the house, taking out a gun and threatening to commit suicide. In the end, because Victoria was very much in love, he got his way. Being a Protestant, he has agreed to the last condition set by her parents: to convert to Catholicism because, as Anita says in her diary, “… it was enough for my parents to have one daughter married to an infidel and they were not going to allow both their daughters to lose their faith.”
Victoria would marry in May, and it is a pity because Anita would not be able to attend. They were not able to come to her wedding, and she would not be able to go to Málaga for her sister’s. The world is too big and the separation from her loved ones is even more painful at important times like these, on those occasions that mark historical moments in families. How she would like to be able to count on someone from her family at the final difficult moments of her pregnancy! She has the raja’s company, always affectionate and attentive, and that of Mme Dijon, who is still hard at work, teaching her French and keeping her company. However, her maid, Lola, from Málaga as she is, and who she should feel closest to, makes her irritable. She is weak, always complaining, and makes no effort to adapt. She is more like a stone in her shoe than a help. Anita would willingly send her back to Spain, but she prefers to wait until after the baby is born. Apart from helping her to get dressed, Lola does nothing; on the contrary, she needs to be looked after constantly because something is always happening to her, although usually it is only in her imagination.
Then there is good Dr. Warburton, with his thick white mustache and top hat. He watches over her progress carefully and tries hard to prevent her feeling afraid of the birth. She has met the midwife, the Indian woman who has helped the raja’s other children to be born, and she reminds her of an Andalusian gypsy. But she cannot talk to her because of the language barrier. Anita feels surrounded, but by strangers.
Life in Buona Vista is extremely quiet, and even more so since the heat has come. Far behind is the crystalline, biting air of mornings in Kashmir, where they spent a few days on honeymoon in one of the palaces belonging to Maharaja Hari Singh, on the edge of the lotus-covered Srinagar Lake, the Venice of the East and capital of a state so beautiful that it seems impossible for someone to feel miserable there. Anita told the maharaja as a compliment, and he has told her she can consider that palace as her home. The maharaja, an Indian with the manners of a Roman emperor, reigns over four million Moslems in a land as big as Spain and as beautiful as Paradise itself.
It is an immense valley, emerald-green in color, framed by the eternal snow-covered peaks of the Himalayas and crossed by rushing rivers where kingfishers flutter before launching themselves at their prey. The meadows are full of mauve flowers and crimson tulips. Anita has seen more different fruits than in France: strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, pears, plums, and cherries so ripe that they burst at the first bite. She has never smelled such a variety of flowers as in the Shalimar Gardens and the effect at nightfall, lying on a deck chair with a cup of tea in front of her, was intoxicating. Those days were unforgettable, playing tennis, walking in the countryside, attending polo matches, and gazing at the sublime sunsets over the sparkling waters of the lake on board a shikara, little boats with the shape of a gondola that have names as affected as Lovers’ Nest or Sweet Spring Bird. For Anita, this has also been her presentation in society. Her behavior and her person have been the center of everyone’s attention. Resplendent in her Indian dresses, she has attended dinners at which other princes were present, such as the nizam of Hyderabad, who was extremely attentive and solicitous toward her at all times. That man, who was so small—he is one meter, forty in height—reigns over twenty million Hindus and four million Moslems in the biggest state in India. He is the richest prince of them all; they say that he keeps the Koh-i-Noor (Mountain of Light), a fabulous 280-carat diamond, which was the most valuable jewel in the treasure of the Moghul emperors, wrapped up in a page from an old magazine in his desk drawer, in his palace in Hyderabad. He lives in such fear of being poisoned that, during the dinner, Anita was able to observe how a servant of his tasted all the dishes on the menu before he did. The nizam, enchanted by Anita’s graciousness, has promised her a lovely jewel for when she and her husband agree to visit him in Hyderabad. The other princes and relations have also shown their admiration of the young Spanish woman and have praised the raja’s good taste, while the women, behind the lattices, have spent their time making dire predictions regarding the difficult future that lies ahead of her as “the fifth wife.”
The journey has been marked by an unexpected snub. The English resident10 has refused to receive the raja after he announced to him that he would be accompanied by Anita. It was an insult, and he has not been able to hide his irritation with the English “who stick their noses in where they shouldn’t.” For her it was a great pity, because she would have liked to see the residency gardens, famous all over India for the collection of roses with names as English as ‘Marshal Neil’ or ‘Dorothy Perkins’, which could perfume the air of a large part of the city.
Only two months ago they were in Kashmir and yet, it seems an eternity. Back in Kapurthala, they have gone back to the usual daily routine, which gets slower as it becomes hotter. Nobody does anything during the central hours of the day. Before the sun rises, Anita joins the raja in the morning puja, the morning prayer. He reads paragraphs from the Granth Sahib and Anita accompanies him, but praying to the Virgin and thinking about the saints because she keeps her faith intact. “I deal directly with God,” she told him on one occasion, and he understood that because he does not think much of ritual, so each of them practices religion in his or her own way. Together they make a happy couple, who seem to rise above the stumbling blocks of reality.
After prayers, the raja goes off riding and comes back before eight o’clock, when the sun is beginning to be scorching. He spends the rest of the time in his office dealing with matters of state with his ministers and advisers. They discuss the budget and study demands for power stations, schools, hospitals, or post offices, and he does this as an absolute monarch. The raja appoints and sacks ministers; elections are unknown in his land. When he finis
hes with affairs of state, he goes out to visit his other palaces.
In spite of how interesting her new life is for her, Anita still feels lonely much of the time. So much formality goes against her Andalusian upbringing. She is treated with such respect and with such distance that sometimes it is impossible for her to talk naturally. Furthermore, the pregnancy prevents her from moving around and condemns her to a sedentary way of life. The raja has advised her to learn Urdu so that she can communicate with the wives and daughters of the nobility or civil servants in Kapurthala. “Speaking a local language well will give you a less lonely and more interesting life,” he told her. So Anita stays in her room, practicing her French with Mme Dijon, learning Urdu with an old poet, sewing, mounting jewels, and going out when the arrival of some traveling salesman who might interest her is announced, like the Chinese cobbler, who places the customer’s foot on a sheet of paper in order to get the exact shape and two days later returns with an excellent pair of made-to-measure shoes. Or the shopkeeper from Kashmir, who fills the veranda with enormous bags full of silk underwear, papier mâché objects, and carpets. The snake charmer also comes by the villa to clean out the garden. He does it with his flute and takes away the snakes, charging one rupee per snake. Or the Hindu holy man—a man who lives alone in a little temple nearby, always naked except for a thin piece of cord that he wears round his waist and whose body is covered in white ash—who comes for water without daring to ask for alms.
At nightfall, Anita usually accompanies the raja to visit the work on the new palace, which will be ready next year. The palace already has a name: L’Élysée. It is much bigger than the villa, as it has a hundred and eight bedrooms. Anita likes to wander about in the gardens. She imagines herself on the terrace of her gigantic bedroom, watching one of the nannies pushing the pram with her baby. The raja has given her a part of the garden to plant and set out as she likes because she wants to make “a Kashmir garden.” As there are gardeners everywhere, it is not something that is going to tire her too much. That will be her corner and her place of refuge; her private piece of paradise.
Once back at the villa they find the bistis, water carriers who walk around the house with a goatskin bag on their shoulders, splashing water to keep down the dust. They also wet some thick blankets with which they cover the windows and doors. It is the war against the heat. The unforgettable perfume of evening comes into the rooms: a smell of grass and recently watered vegetation that mixes with the incense smoke, efficient when it comes to keeping the mosquitoes at bay. Some days an orchestra plays as they dine. Anita becomes familiar with the ragas and ghazals, poems in Urdu sung like love ballads. They are exciting because they all evoke tragic destinies finally redeemed by love.
Once in bed, when the nighttime temperature becomes intolerable, Anita leaves the marriage bed and does what she has been shown to do: she goes out to the terrace, rolls a wet sheet around her body, and lies on a fine wooden bed trying to get to sleep. She spends long hours awake without managing to sleep, not now because of the heat, but from fear. She thinks about the birth, the baby, and the diseases that carry people off from one moment to the next. In Europe she never thought about illness and even less about death. But here it is different. Anita found out that her English teacher, with whom she had only one day of classes, fell ill with the start of the heat and died suddenly. She was in class in the morning and being buried at night; just like that, suddenly. They say that with such heat they cannot keep the bodies. The speed with which death comes is amazing. It is so typical of India …! In the months she has been here, two servants have died from attacks of malaria. How can she not feel afraid?
She is very careful about what she eats, especially at that time of year. She tries to avoid meat since she saw the swarms of flies in the Moslem butcher’s shops in the center of the city. Before eating fruit, she washes it in bowls of water to which she adds a few drops of potassium permanganate. Mme Dijon has warned her to always do it herself, because the cook could forget and on the matter of hygiene one cannot trust the servants. It is a lesson that Anita was forced to learn a few days after arriving. She taught one of the cooks to make “Indian gazpacho” a local variation of the Andalusian chilled soup, made with soya oil and with a pinch of curry added to it so the raja would like it. One morning, as she went into the kitchen, she saw one of the fifteen kitchen assistants straining the gazpacho through a sock.
“What on earth are you doing?” she asked him in horror. “That’s one of His Highness’s socks!”
“Don’t be angry, ma’am, I took one that wasn’t clean,” answered the assistant without batting an eyelid.
Being pregnant means that everyone gives you lots of advice, and sometimes it is difficult to follow it all. The midwife has told her to avoid hot, spicy dishes because they might harm the baby. Dr. Warburton has told her not to ride, dance, or play tennis or badminton. He has read her a paragraph from Medical Treatment of Children in India, a kind of Bible for the English, which advises “keeping spirits calm and remaining of even humour, staying happy and well-disposed” while awaiting the arrival of the baby. But the doctor has avoided reading her another chapter in the book that gives a terrifying list of all the common ailments that children can suffer in India: abscesses, stings of wasps and scorpions, bites from wild dogs and snakes, cholera, colic, indigestion, and sunstroke. Not to mention malaria, typhoid fevers, and smallpox. To avoid all these misfortunes, the Sikhs hold a monthly ritual in celebration of the unborn child, in which a group of priests gather round Anita to pray.
On April 25 in the evening, she begins to feel the first strong contractions. There is feverish activity in the Villa Buona Vista. Servants, nurses, midwives, and healers go up and downstairs with a mixture of excitement and concern at the memsahib’s groans. The midwife’s intervention only manages to turn those groans into screams that cut through the air, laden with heat. Anita screams like a Moslem woman weeping for her dead. The baby is coming backward, and the midwife cannot turn him round, not even with the help of the nurses. At night Dr. Warburton arrives with another two doctors. Anita is still in pain and is bathed in sweat and tears, shaken by seismic shivers that seem to tear her insides. Her complexion has acquired a greenish-gray tone; she is exhausted and unable to speak a word. “The doctors came to fear for the lives of both mother and child,” Anita would say in her diary. “I did not cease praying to the Virgin of La Victoria, begging her to free me from a bad end.” She feels as though she had to pay for all the happiness life has given her, as though she had to expiate the sin of her extraordinary destiny.
Dr. Warburton and his assistants carry out skillful manipulations in order to try to change the baby’s position. It is not the first time they have faced a difficult birth, but this one is being especially complicated. The heat is unforgiving. “Seeing that things were becoming more difficult by the minute, I commended myself to the Virgin and promised her a ceremonial mantle if she granted me the grace to save my life and that of the child that was coming.” In the end Dr. Warburton manages to pull the baby out, covered in grease and blood and with the umbilical cord wound round his neck. “After several terrible hours that I do not want to remember, and half dead and in agony, I heard the baby crying and the ayas and servants running around announcing the good news.”
The raja, who had never so directly experienced one of his wives giving birth, also began to fear for Anita’s life. But his blind trust in the English doctors helped him to bear the anguish of waiting. Now he is so happy at the result that he gives the order to fire the city cannon in a thirteen-gun salute of honor, announcing in this way a holiday in Kapurthala. He orders his ministers to prepare the giving out of free food at the gates of Gurdwara, the main mosque and the temple of Lakshmi, in order to share that great day with the poor. Servants on the backs of elephants give out sweets and cakes to the children of the city. Finally, faithful to the tradition, he orders the gates of the prison to be opened,
giving the few occupants back their freedom.
9 The word punkha, which first designated the men who pulled the rope, has changed to also refer to the electric appliance, the ventilator.
10 The resident was the highest representative of the British Crown.
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In the wonderful Kamra Palace, the raja’s old palace, where his other wives live, behind the carved wooden doors and lattice windows, the news is not received with the same joy. Her Highness Harbans Kaur is very worried. The line of succession is not in question, because her son Ratanjit is the legitimate heir to the throne of Kapurthala; furthermore, if he did not become heir from force majeure, there are three others, including the son of Rani Kanari, which would guarantee a line of pure Indian blood. It is not that a wife feels necessarily humiliated or rejected when her husband takes another wife. In itself, the fact of marrying another woman does not cause antagonism, hostility, or jealousy among the other wives. But in this case, as Anita is a foreigner and in addition she has refused to form part of the zenana, there is much mistrust, to such an extent that Harbans Kaur has refused to recognize the Spanish girl as a legitimate wife.
The idea that the raja has fallen in love to the point that he leaves the palace and goes off to live with the “foreigner” in Villa Buona Vista is seen as an insult. It is not what is expected of him. It is true that Jagatjit visits them regularly and is concerned for their well-being, as reported by the doctors and ayas that go from one palace to the other. They lack for nothing, but that is not the question. He has spent months without spending a single night with his wives, or even with his favorite concubines. Months without sharing an evening with them and without spending time with his numerous family. The harem is languishing. Their lord, the soul that gives them life, is under the influence of a foreign woman who has stolen his heart, taken away his willpower, and has not even deigned to visit them once. This last is what hurts them more than anything else, because, according to tradition, the oldest women in the zenana take care of the new ones in order to make their lives more comfortable. All for the sake of better relations, since in the big houses there is no friction or jealousy, despite Her First Highness always enjoying a higher level of authority. With her refusal to form part of the harem, Anita has closed the door to a friendship with the raja’s other women, who feel belittled by a girl who cannot even boast of being highborn. They think that the fact she has shown not the slightest interest in them is proof that she also has no interest in the raja. Because they are his life and his real family, and Anita is only an outsider.