The Splendor of Silence

by Indu Sundaresan

  Jai did not intend to marry any of the Kurvi girls, but well aware of this history, he still demanded, and got, three photographs of each of them—one full length (to check for deformities), one seated, and one close up. Even though they were blessed with a minor amount of pulchritude, Jai had already decided against an alliance with Kurvi, for two years ago, when Mila was nineteen, he had fallen in love with her and could think of no other woman as his wife, not even the one he currently had.

  Raman and Colonel Pankhurst were understandably thrilled by the offers of friendship from Kurvi, for management of the land around the boundaries between two warring kingdoms had been a difficult task for them and for Kurvi’s political agent. They cajoled and pleaded with Jai to let the maharaja at least come for a visit, whether it led to a marriage or not—there was no sense in saying no this early in the negotiations. Jai agreed, with a great deal of reluctance.

  Arrangements were made for the maharaja of Kurvi and his 150-strong entourage to be housed in the hunting lodge that Jai’s foster father had built on the outskirts of the town of Rudrakot, four and a half miles from the fort and the palaces where Jai lived in his own stately splendor. The maharaja came by train, even though his kingdom and his palaces were only a day’s ride on horseback and eight hours by car and jeep. The Kurvi maharaja wanted his own bogie, much like Jai’s, shunted onto the Rudrakot train and wanted to travel in style, much as he had heard Jai did. He also wanted his bogie to rest in the train yard in Rudrakot, so that all the citizens could marvel at the green-and-gold embellishments and the pure brass fittings and bars of the carriage windows.

  For four days after his arrival, Jai waited for the maharaja of Kurvi to pay a call upon him. He did not come. Raman and Colonel Pankhurst, in their official capacities as diplomats of the Indian government and of Rudrakot, went over to beg and beseech and importune with the maharaja, and finally realized that he was waiting for Jai to come and pay his respects to him. The hunting lodge in Rudrakot, Jai’s hunting lodge, had become, temporarily, the maharaja’s property and it was here Jai had to visit since he was younger and Rudrakot was a smaller kingdom than Kurvi. This went back and forth for another week, while Raman and Colonel Pankhurst began to grow weak with fatigue from all the running trips from the palaces to the hunting lodge and back. Finally, they all reached a compromise. The distance between Jai’s palace and Jai’s hunting lodge was measured and found to be four and a half miles. Diwans, ministers, and sycophants paced this off on each side until an exact midpoint was found, and here, eleven days after the maharaja of Kurvi had first set foot upon Rudrakot soil, Jai and Kurvi met. Then, Jai took Kurvi back to his palaces so that the official visit could begin.

  The whole incident had vastly amused Mila and Ashok for months and Kiran too, when she had written to him in England about it. They had all laughed at Jai and the maharaja, and Mila had been concerned that Papa had been too harried and too ill rested during the whole of the official visit. To her surprise, Jai had laughed at himself too. He had the capability of being self-deprecating and honest about himself, and had admitted that the whole exercise had been one steeped in silliness and idiocy. But Mila had known, even though Jai had said nothing and neither had her father, that it was the appearance of anything remotely like impropriety that had to be battled, whether it was silly or not. She had asked him once why he had not married one of the princesses of Kurvi, and he had said, “Because I am in love with another woman. If I take another wife, it will be her and no one else. If I had known I would be in love with her, I would not have married my first wife.”

  Mila stood fifteen feet away from Jai in the front driveway of her father’s house, and waited for Jai to come up to that imaginary line between them and meet her halfway. Ashok had begun to accompany Jai when he turned to him, put a staying hand on his arm and said, “Wait, Ashok. Please,” and sauntered toward her, the swagger stick tucked under his right arm, his hands in his pockets. With much the same attitude, outwardly, as he had employed with the maharaja of Kurvi, but the difference was—and Mila was well aware of this—that Jai had not cared about Kurvi, but he cared about her.

  Now Mila knew that she was the woman Jai loved. His offer of marriage had come, scrupulously, after he had asked Raman for permission two months ago, after he had received his king’s commission in the army. He had said nothing of love at the time he made the declaration, but an anxiety had assailed him, and his gaze, normally bold, had dropped to the points of his shiny boots. “Will you be my wife…sometime in the future, whenever you want?” She had said yes, because his offer was irresistible, because she had been wondering if she would ever meet someone she would want to marry so much that nothing else would matter in her world, and because, after all, she had known Jai since she was seven years old and she had been in love with him, in some fashion or the other, for that long.

  He came up to her now and stood staring down at her. His hands moved, only once, to brush against her hair and follow its lines down to her waist. “It becomes you,” he said. The same words Sam had used a few hours ago.

  Jai shook Mila’s hand and held it for a long while. He would not lean in to kiss her on the cheek or put his arm around her. Doubtless, there were people watching even this encounter, Sayyid and Pallavi, the other servants.

  Mila was equally formal. “How was your visit at the ICC?”

  A fine spasm of pain flashed across his eyes. “All right. I will tell you about it later. Will you have dinner with me tonight?” Jai turned to look toward the house. “Ashok can come too, as he always does, to be a gooseberry between us, because your papa will not let us dine alone. Will you come?”

  This last was said almost hopefully, as though he was afraid of a negative response, and Mila’s heart went out to him. “Yes,” she said.

  “Thank you.” Jai let go of her hand and walked back with her to the Hispano-Suiza. “I will send the limousine for you. Remember, tonight is the White Durbar—”

  “I will wear white,” Mila said. “Thank you, Jai. I must go in now, we had to spend the night at Chetak’s tomb because of the dust storm, and so we weren’t able to return yesterday evening.” She fumbled over her words, smitten with pain again, thinking that if she could only cleave herself in two, then all of her would be satisfied. It was impossible to think that she was in love with Sam Hawthorne, and yet there was nothing about him that she did not like; his presence made her yearn for the comfort of his arms, he listened as she talked, even about the most inane things, and in the end, her attraction for him, if it could be called by so mild a word, was indefinable. She was almost embarrassed by her desire for him, by how much she had been lost in his kisses, how fascinating were the lines of his mouth, his face, and the bones under the skin on his chest. And yet here was Jai whom she loved for who he was, because he was charming and could be funny (though not very often, because his sense of duty often overcame any humor), because he loved her with a devotion that she would not find anywhere else, in any other man. Perhaps not even Sam Hawthorne.

  Mila was miserable. She dragged her steps up the three short stairs to the front door and turned to Jai to say good-bye, her voice broken and laden with tears that she could not shed yet. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I am tired, and hungry.”

  “Yes,” Jai said. “Do go in, my darling. Tell me, was your guest, this Captain Hawthorne, with you last night at Chetak’s tomb?”

  Mila nodded.

  “I’m glad to hear that; you must have been safe.”

  She went into the house and up the stairs to her room, thinking that perhaps if Sam had not been at Chetak’s tomb, she would have been safer. At the landing, she looked out as Sam came up the driveway and met Jai. The two men shook hands and spoke before Sam also came into the house and Jai got behind the wheel of the Suiza and drove away. When Mila heard Sam’s footsteps on the stairs, she slipped into her room, but held the door ajar a few inches so that she could see him pass by.

  By the time Mila left for the
Lal Bazaar, later that afternoon, she had made two decisions that she intended would hold good for the rest of her life. But nothing could be held true for the rest of one’s life, every coveted thing in the end was maya, illusion, a myth, and this the great sages of India had always understood—little was real. We were put on this earth transitorily; we deposited our genes in offspring; deluded ourselves that we would be missed when we were gone; pretended that money, wealth, titles, and land were to be desired. But every such thing was ephemeral, prone to change. The only reason to live was love.

  That afternoon, Mila thought about Jai’s love for her as unconditional, but also capable of outrageous jealousy and demanding assertion. She was aware of his devotion though. If Mila had wanted or indicated a need for anything—jewelry with rubies and diamonds, silks spun so thin as to be made of cobwebs, wines and furniture from the reigns of dead French kings—Jai would have acquired it for her somehow. Instead, he would come to visit her with a rose from his famous conservatory within the fort, or a silver dish with one slice of rabadi in it, layered with sweetened cream, flavored with golden strands of saffron, drizzled with a dusting of finely ground pistachios. He had invested thought in every gift, knowing somehow that she would not, could not accept an exorbitant gift from him before marriage.

  When she had finished her bath and sat on her bed eating her lunch from a thali she had ordered from the kitchens, Mila read through all of Jai’s letters. Before that, when he had not yet declared his intentions, there had been no question of a correspondence between them, and even so, Raman had hesitatingly given his permission, wishing within himself that they were already married so he would not have to meditate over the propriety of this. In each of the letters—and there were only eight, a restrained eight—filled on four pages with handwriting reduced to a tiny scrawl, Jai had included a gift. A champa flower he had plucked and pressed in his copy of The Memoirs of Baron de Marbot; the leaf of a mango tree; the wispy seeds from a dandelion glued to a sliver of parchment; a sketch of the horse he had given her, Ghatoth. It was a funny name for a horse, taken from the name of the demon king Ravan’s brother from the Ramayana. Why, Mila had asked once, would he name his horse for a demon? And Jai had replied, Do you remember what Ghatothguch did for six months of the year? He slept, Mila replied. And when he woke up, he ate a lot. Right, Jai had said, running an affectionate hand over the horse’s glossy rump, this Ghatoth likes to eat and to sleep, but he is gentle, unlike his namesake. It still astonished her that Jai loved what he loved so passionately, that he had watched and learned of the horse’s personality before naming him.

  He had called her darling when they parted earlier that day, and it was the first time Mila could remember him employing that word. He had always used her name, or come up to her elbow to say something; once he had bent close enough to her ear so that she could feel the warmth of his breath upon her skin.

  Jai had kissed her four times. Despite all of Papa’s injunctions, it was easy enough to find solitude for an embrace. Ashok had to be with them at all times, and Jai was not above bribing him with what was most denied to him—cigarettes, a ride in the Suiza, a walk in the corridor that led to Jai’s zenana for a possible glimpse of the ladies who kept purdah, the veil. Before the first kiss, on the verandah leading out to the enormous indoor swimming pool in Jai’s Neel Niwas, the Blue Palace, Mila had been afraid, knowing what was to come, yet not sure if she wanted it. But Jai had been so gentle, he had kissed her hand first, then the inside of her wrist, the curve of her elbow, touched lightly upon her collarbone with his warm tongue before working his way up to her mouth. She remembered the smell of him, the feel of his mouth on hers, the absolute fit of her body against his. He had been considerate, loving. But none of the four kisses had compared to the explosion of love and lust Mila had experienced with Sam.

  But how could it be? Mila thought over and over again all through the afternoon. With Jai, there were little histories that went back in time and built upon each other to form an entire whole, with Sam, there was no history at all.

  When the household descended into its midafternoon slumber, Mila slipped out of the house and rode her bicycle, under the frenetic blaze of the sun, to the Lal Bazaar. Sam Hawthorne was a fantasy for her; Jai was real, and here, where her life lay. It was a blessing that he had returned from the ICC now, for they would be together more often and she could keep Ashok away from Vimal by asking him to come to their dinners and outings. These were Mila’s two decisions—she would only visit with Jai, and she would take Ashok with her and keep him by her side also. Having made up her mind, the only feeling of unease that remained in Mila was because she had neglected her duties in the Lal Bazaar in the past few days and a letter from Father Manning had come yesterday to lie on her bedside table and reproach her.

  Father Manning was the only British Catholic missionary in Rudrakot, or rather, he had remained, in his semiofficial capacity, well after the Catholic Church had pulled its mission out of the kingdom. The reasons had been varied, but mostly because Rudrakot was too small a state to require the ministrations of both the Catholic, and the Anglican church, represented by the vicar and Mrs. Sexton, and all of their good deeds liberally forced upon the poor. Father Manning had chosen not to leave when the two other missionaries had departed, for in the time he had been here, thirty-five years, his soul had melded into the light and heat of Rudrakot. He loved its people—the children of the bazaar; the women with torn spirits who used their bodies as barter; the old, toothless men nodding in the sunshine; the young, brash men who teased him for no cause at all. Father Manning, born George Manning, had no family left in England he could even remember—his parents were dead; his sister had faded into a life of comfortable domesticity and still advised him irregularly on how to deal with the “savages” he worked amongst; the church had loosened its ties upon him when he had refused to leave the kingdom.

  The mission house was a senescent building tucked behind a chai shop and a brass and copper shop, with a narrow alley leading to the gate of the house and the inner courtyard within. It was the same mission house the church had used, and when he was left on his own, for just a brief while, Father Manning had worried about finding rent for the place. He had mentioned this, casually, to the chai shop owner, Ramu, during his morning cup of chai, which he always, companionably, drank with the young man. By afternoon, four hours later, one of the little vagabond boys of the bazaar had come up to Father Manning and thrust a gunnysack in his hand. Inside was crammed a khazana of money—soiled and damp rupee notes, glittering anna coins, and even the odd British shilling. Just enough, to the last anna, for his monthly rent and food for the kitchens.

  The mission house, fittingly called Prem Nivas—the Abode of Love—was always rife with the rich sound of children’s laughter, their sometimes frightened cries at night, the soothing croon of Father Manning’s bedtime songs. Almost all children of the women of the Lal Bazaar found their way at some point or other during the night to Prem Nivas, honing in to the shelter of his home. Each evening at twilight, Father Manning would drag out fifteen jute-knitted charpais into the courtyard under the emerging stars and wait. And each evening, as their mothers went to work, the children would leave the brothel houses and come to the Father. At night, if one of them had a fever, it was Father Manning who would stand vigil by their bedsides, dipping cloth towels into the water from the courtyard tap and laying it on their foreheads to bring down the temperature. In the morning, he wakened his brood with a touch, a word, a smile, a tickle under the ribs for the littlest ones and fed them khichdi and a dry potato curry—the only things he knew how to cook.

  The gunnysack money came every month to Father Manning, but he always needed more for his children. There were school uniforms for those whose mothers did not mind a little learning, lunch boxes, slates and chalk pieces, medicines from the bazaar apothecary whose generosity had already been stretched beyond enduring in the cause of these children. So Father Manning taught ex
tra lessons of mathematics and English to the more privileged children whose parents lived within the Civil Lines in Rudrakot. And there, five years before, he had met Mila because he had gone to Raman’s house to tutor Ashok and, incidentally, Vimal.

  A year ago, one of the women from the Lal Bazaar, who was really a child herself, perhaps not even sixteen years old, had come in copious tears to Father Manning about having been defrauded by a traveling cloth merchant who had given her back less change for a transaction. He had taught her numbers then, how to add, and subtract, how to ask for the correct change, how not to be cheated in the future. The very smallest of the children who slept in the courtyard of his mission house could now calculate those numbers in their heads—without the aid of their fingers and toes—and the prostitute’s ignorance deeply saddened him. He accosted the madams of the white side of the bazaar and the black side of the bazaar and pleaded with them to allow him to teach the women, but they were adamantly against it. A man, even though he called himself a man of God, could not be allowed into the brothels under any pretext without paying the requisite fees. Finally Father Manning saw Mila ride past him one day on her way to the Rifles regiment’s maidan for her daily ride on Ghatoth, and asked her if she would mind teaching the women some basics—the letters of the English alphabet, a few Hindustani words, some mathematics and numbers.

  Mila always rode her bicycle carefully, keeping her legs well away from the pedals and her sari border away from the greasy chain. Pallavi had clucked with irritation, shouted, and wanted to know where she disappeared to in the afternoons every now and then, and why it was necessary to ride the bicycle instead of taking the jeep. At this last thought, Mila smiled and wiped her forehead under the brim of her sola topi. Pallavi never wanted her to drive the jeep because she thought that was unwomanly, but at least the jeep had some status, whereas if anyone saw Mila cycling through the bazaar, they would not stop to consider that this was the political agent’s daughter. And that was exactly why she took the bicycle. She pedaled furiously as she broke out of the trees in the Civil Lines and into the flat expanse of land that led to the stand of trees that shaded the two regiments. As she neared the trees on the farther side, she heard the squealing slowness of the chain and felt it yank at the border of her pink cotton sari. Mila reduced her speed, groaning, and pulled at her sari border gently, hoping to release it before it became more entangled. After a few tugs, the sari came loose, and there was only a small smudge of grease at the bottom, hardly visible at all. She continued on, thinking of Pallavi’s next complaint, that she could very well wear her jodhpurs if she had to use the bicycle, again a departure for Pallavi, but in this one instance, Mila could not enter the Lal Bazaar in anything other than a sari, her head covered and bowed, so as not to attract attention from any lascivious man on the street.