The Dancer and the Raja

by Javier Moro

  “We have to scare them, that’s the only way they will give the baby back.”

  Anita thinks for a moment. There is someone who has always been attentive and helpful toward her, someone without whose good offices she would not today be the maharaja’s wife. Perhaps Inder Singh, the captain of the guard, the impressive Sikh officer who one day went to her flat in Madrid to see her, would do her that favor.

  Inder Singh works in the palace, but he lives in a village, in a big single-story house with his wife, his two children, and his parents. Bibi and Anita make use of a ride out to visit him one evening. They find him in the porch of his house, drinking tea, wearing slippers, and dressed in a lunghi and a T-shirt. Even like this, relaxed, he has an air of cultivated elegance. The women explain the story to him with all the details and he listens to them carefully. He knows about the problem of unpaid dowries among Hindu families. He is aware of the “domestic fires” because he has read about them in the Civil and Military Gazette, to which he is a subscriber. He is prepared to intervene. Does Sikhism not urge its followers to fight discrimination against women? He is a practicing Sikh, who does the walk around the Golden Temple once a month accompanied by his family. Does the sacred book not say that if an opportunity to do good presents itself, one should seize it? There is a single doubt in his mind.

  “Does the maharaja know?”

  Anita bites her lip. She hesitates a moment before she answers, but then she says, “Yes, of course.”

  And so, the next day, Anita and Bibi, escorted by four armed and uniformed guards bearing lances with the triangular pennant of Kapurthala at their tips, and Inder Singh leading the way looking as usual like as a great lord, arrive on horseback in Dalima’s village. This time the children have a huge surprise. For two strange women to come is unusual, but for the soldiers of the maharaja’s personal escort to come is quite an event. There is great nervousness in the house of Dalima’s ex-husband. “Can they have come to arrest us?” they seem to be wondering. Their looks of fear are the confirmation that the special effects are working. They hand over the little girl without a word, with no opposition and without a struggle, with surprising parsimony, as though they had been expecting this moment. Their calm and impassiveness leave the two women perplexed.

  “Instead of fighting to keep the child it’s as if they are getting rid of a dead weight,” says Anita.

  “One less for them to have to find a husband for!” says Bibi. “That’s how these people think.”

  Two days later, when Dalima sees her daughter come into the hospital room followed by Anita, her face lights up with the first smile she has managed to give after everything that has happened. It is the smile of someone who knows they are going to survive and who, after reaching the depths, is again emerging slowly back into life, because that is a mother’s duty. The wheel of karma turns for all, slowly and inexorably.

  20 Tuberculosis.

  21; Members of the merchant caste, usually well-off.

  34

  Anita is far from thinking that Dalima is soon going to repay all the care she has lovingly given her, and more.

  At first, when she feels the first pains, Anita thinks she might be pregnant again. She feels sharp pains that hit her by surprise and leave her exhausted. It is easy to attribute them to the incipient heat wave. In India, the doctors call the summer, including the monsoons, “the unhealthy season.” It is when infections spread, ailments appear, and pains spring up, as though the heat were the catalyst of all the enemies of the human body.

  Dr. Warburton has retired and gone back to England; now it is Dr. Doré, a Frenchman, who is in charge of caring for the health of the royal family of Kapurthala. The doctor has no doubt about his diagnosis: Anita has cysts on her ovaries. It is not serious, but he does not advise operating. They will be reabsorbed in time.

  The sudden pains that Anita suffers in her stomach, accompanied by a fever some days in the evening, leave her depressed. She has neither the desire nor the strength to ride her horse or to play tennis. But the worst thing, what causes great emotional stress, is that lovemaking has stopped being a source of pleasure and has become a source of pain. She cannot even bear a caress in “the house of Kama.” At first she tried hard to pretend. Her groans are similar to those of love, but they are pure suffering. Her eyes search for the fob watch that always lies shining among her husband’s clothes scattered across the floor, as though the fact of being aware of the time and speed of their lovemaking might alleviate the pains. But she ends up sweating and panting, with her insides feeling raw, locked inside herself and holding back her tears. The “love of the lotus” position, or the “phases of the moon” that the maharaja likes so much, becomes agony for her. She dares not confess her pain for fear of losing her privileged position in her husband’s life, for fear of falling out of favor. Then she becomes an expert at avoiding encounters, at inventing excuses, and she takes the initiative in order to pleasure him quicker.

  One day, suddenly, the pressure disappears and he stops seeking her out. He’s noticed something unusual in me, she says to herself. Can it be that I no longer please him? Her fear seems familiar to her; it is the same fear she felt in Paris, when the maharaja delayed his return after leaving her alone there for a year. It is a trace of ancestral women’s wisdom, that fears that the star may go out when the body begins to wither. The fear of becoming a flower that only lasts a single day. “Dr. Doré told me it is best for you not to make love.” Thus, with that simple phrase, which she could well have said herself, her husband frees her from the slavery of pain.

  “Just for a while,” Anita adds.

  She is counting the days until the annual move to Mussoorie, to the mountains, where they usually spend the four months of the summer at the magnificent Château Kapurthala. She hopes the change of air will put new life into her. The journey is a real logistical operation, since the seat of government of the state also moves there. It is a move comparable with that of the government of the Raj once a year from Delhi to Simla, but on a much smaller scale. The head butler makes sure everything is in order because it is usually necessary to rent some additional houses in order to be able to accommodate so many people. This year, for the first time, Anita has to share the château with the other women. Although the place is big, it is still a terrifying experience. The heat wave is expected to be so intense that no one wants to stay in Kapurthala. The luggage takes up several carriages because they are also taking with them the best horses, the dogs, and some of the more delicate birds that are unable to bear the heat of the plains, such as the maharaja’s Japanese pheasants, which travel in special cages, each with its keeper.

  In Mussoorie there are no cars and the traffic consists exclusively of horses, rickshaws, and pedestrians. Anita and the maharaja sit in their dandy (a chair carried by porters) and are carried by four uniformed servants along the path that goes up the mountain. Little by little the magnificent view of the towers appears, the slate shining in the sun and the roof typical of French castles. Château Kapurthala is the most important building in Mussoorie. The crystal-clear air and the rhododendrons in flower evoke an eternal springtime.

  But Anita’s mood is melancholy and autumnal. Her constant pain prevents her from enjoying the carefree atmosphere of this holiday resort. She is no mood to attend any of the masked balls and, if she accompanies her husband to some dinner or reception, she does it to keep up with her role as a wife. But she has no appetite, she feels listless and wilting. He is patient and understanding, as usual. He has not even reproached her for organizing the rescue of Dalima’s daughter, or for having involved Inder Singh, making him believe he approved of the idea. As soon as he found out he wanted to tell her off, irritated by such boldness, but as the damage was already done, he opted to say nothing. Avoiding direct confrontation—whenever possible—is one of his characteristics.

  Another feature of his character i
s his insatiable hunger for a social life, and Mussoorie in summer is one long party, only comparable to Simla. The summer tennis tournament is a sporting event of the first order and the rides on horseback are magnificent. The sumptuous dinners allow him to meet new people, and the masked balls are the ideal scene for a seduction, or for being seduced. A harlequin and a fairy with a hood, a ghost and a witch with a broom, a dandy and an Amazon … The costumes hide British officers, high-ranking civil servants, English ladies, high-society Indians, including maharajas and maharanis, who fully enjoy this atmosphere of flirting. Some of them end the party in a corner of the garden; others go on until dawn. In such frivolous and exciting waters, a showy character who loves lechery, like the maharaja, can easily fall into temptation: “He met her at a dinner in Bhupinder Singh of Patiala’s mansion, which the maharaja attended alone because Prem Kaur, his Spanish wife, was convalescing,” recounts Jarmani Dass, who at that time was his field assistant, but who would become the prime minister of Kapurthala. “He immediately liked her and was looking at her for some time and then, as soon as he could, he began talking to her. The Englishwoman was accompanied, perhaps by her fiancé or her husband, but, as she was mad about riding, the maharaja was able to entertain her for the whole evening.” He ended up lending her two horses, one for her and the other for her husband, a loan that she accepted enthusiastically. But after two weeks he ordered the horses to be brought back, and, just as he had expected, the Englishwoman went to beg him to lend them to her again. The maharaja agreed, but set one condition: that she should go with him to a masked ball that a friend of his, the raja of Pipa, was going to hold. She agreed. “They were dancing together all evening and, in the end, the maharaja spent a wonderful night with her,” Jarmani Dass would later say. Then it became known that the maharaja had given her a couple of his best horses and some jewels. From then on they were lovers for many summers.

  Anita is too tired to suspect her husband’s affairs. Through the servants’ network, the news soon comes to Dalima’s ears, but she does not open her mouth. She is putting all her efforts into getting her mistress back to good health. Anita is languishing and hardly even enjoys playing with her son like during other summers. Ajit, now five, is a happy child, surrounded by little friends and cousins. He moves freely all round the palace, and he is always welcome in the zenana when the maharaja’s wives have a tea party or celebrate the birthday of one of the children. The fact that Harbans Kaur makes war on Anita does not mean that she dislikes her little boy. On the contrary, she is always affectionate to him since, when all is said and done, he is the son of her lord and master.

  From that summer of 1913, in Mussoorie, Anita notices changes in the maharaja’s behavior. She blames herself, attributing it to her poor physical and emotional health, to the weight of the five years of marriage and the constant pressure she is under from the family and the English. Although she always says it does not affect her personally, she thinks it must have an effect on her husband. He must be tired of having to defend me all the time, she tells herself, of having to fight for me. That is how she interprets the request the maharaja makes to her once they are back in Kapurthala and his birthday is approaching. “I would prefer it if you did not attend the puja,” says the raja, “to avoid tension with the family. Apart from Ratanjit and Gita, this year Baljit and his fiancée will also attend.” The family has joined together in a bloc, and this time the maharaja prefers to give way in order to keep the peace.

  “You’ll soon be getting rid of me, like just another concubine …” Anita tells him.

  “Don’t be silly.”

  While the family is gathered round the priests, she spends the birthday sitting in a corner of her garden in the palace, writing in her diary “after what he said yesterday, I feel a little upset.”

  In spite of the idyllic beauty of the palace, of the fawn that wanders round the park, of the Abyssinian sheep that graze a little farther off, of the laughter of her son playing with other children in the garden and the water that gurgles in the fountains, Anita feels overcome by a feeling of sadness, as if she guessed at the fragility of everything around her and felt that it might not last. It is an insidious feeling, which emerges when she discovers the changes in her husband. She finds him more and more evasive, distant, and easily exasperated. When they are together, he is no longer the quiet man he was before, but he is more like a caged lion. Anita begins to suspect something. What does he do out of the palace so long? Who does he see? Deep inside, she is convinced that her husband is seeing his concubines again.

  With this prospect and unable to move or do any sport, or even go for a walk, life in Kapurthala is very tedious. The little boy does not require constant care as he did in his early infancy, and although she takes care to teach him Spanish, he has his own tutors and an English nanny for other subjects. There are always children in the palace, whether they are the children of ex-concubines or of civil servants, so Ajit is never alone. They get together and play with the dogs and the fawn, or they have fun with the parrots in the aviary, because the park is an inexhaustible source of entertainment. They know the palace like the back of their hands and, when they are tired of being outside, they go down to the basements to ask for a pencil or paper, or ribbon to play with, and the workers, who really spoil them, always give them whatever they want. They like to get lost in the depths of the building, to go to the boiler room, always full of mystery, or visit the storerooms with bottles of champagne, vodka, or gin, the cellars full of the best French consommés and the clothes storerooms, warm and perfumed, where the maids set out the bed linen, which they then place in different cupboards according to the number of the room. When there are receptions and balls, they escape from their bedrooms to spy from behind the balustrade in the Durbar Hall on their uncles and relatives dancing to the sound of the orchestra. They run the risk of becoming very capricious, as the maharaja’s other four sons have been. One summer, when they were twelve and their father left them alone in a palace on his lands in Oudh, they went out hunting and set themselves to shooting anything in sight. One night they ordered the servants to bring them food and alcoholic drinks to a room whose floor was covered in mattresses, as they had seen their father do. When one of the English nannies found out about it, she ordered the food and drink to be sent back under the threat that she would tell the maharaja everything. The children were furious and said they were going to sack her.

  “No, darling, you can’t sack her,” another nanny, who was Indian, told them. “Your parents hired her and you can’t sack her.”

  “Well, then I’m going to shoot her,” said one of the sons decisively.

  “You won’t get anywhere by doing that, darling …” the aya went on to soothe him.

  That is how capricious the maharajas’ children were.

  Anita is determined her son will not end up the same way. But it is difficult to prevent it because of the numerous absences caused by her frequent trips. Every time she comes home, she finds he is a little wilder than before she left. The Indian women, Dalima included, are too soft and permissive with the children of their masters, perhaps due to a primitive fear, inherited from the law of karma, which makes them think that one day those children could become their masters and hold power over them or their families.

  The wedding of Baljit to a very highborn Indian girl is not such an ostentatious event as that of his older brother Ratanjit, but even so it is celebrated with a party for two thousand guests. Anita is in charge again of organizing the preparations. She has gradually recovered her health, just as Dr. Doré had predicted, and she again has the strength to struggle with all the details. But she does not have the same enthusiasm as for the previous wedding, when she hoped her status in the family would change. Now she has no illusions. India is a compartmentalized and stratified country in which everyone has a specific place. Except for her, living in a kind of social limbo. She expects nothing of Baljit’s wife. She is a
Rajput girl from the hills, chosen by the maharaja for the nobility of her birth. But she is a very shy young woman, intimidated and with no English. She will end up happy inside the four walls of the zenana joining in the chorus against that Spanish woman. Anita does not think much of the future of the newlyweds as a couple.

  The gods think the same, judging by the sign they send on the first day of the celebrations. The fireworks that are set off from a site too close to where the elephants are housed cause so much panic that the pachyderms pull on their chains and break them. In the stampede, three keepers are trampled to death. Although the effect of the accident is minimized in the palace, in the streets the people are frightened because several of the animals have run away. The state director of stables organizes a proper beat and gets them back, much calmer now, one by one. According to the people, it is a bad omen for the young couple.

  Anita is responsible for another incident, with no great consequences, which becomes known all over India. Her husband, ever solicitous, has asked her to do all she can to satisfy the tastes of his most important guests, in this case the new governor of the Punjab and his wife, Lady Connemere. This lady is known for her unlimited love of the color mauve and he himself, in a gesture of great courtesy, intends to wear a turban of that color in her honor. Anita redecorates the suite for the governor and his wife, ordering printed bedcovers in lilac tones, curtains to match, and she even gets hold of English wallpaper, the latest in home decoration, with floral motifs in shades of blue and purple. She fills the vases with violets and, the height of refinement, she has the idea of changing the white toilet paper for a lavender-colored one. After numerous investigations, she finds there is no paper that color in India. As there is no time to order it from England, she has the idea of asking for the services of the railway company, whose sophisticated facilities in Jalandhar are known to perform miracles. And in effect, they manage to dye several rolls of white paper purple. Satisfying the little obsession of the governor’s wife gives Anita great pleasure.