The Splendor of Silence

by Indu Sundaresan

  Raman spent the afternoon writing letters to various people. First, he had to let Colonel Pankhurst know at Delhi that a storm was about to thunder above their heads and that he might well be asked about these fictitious charges while he was visiting with the viceroy. Then, he wrote to the two other British instructors at the ICC on Jai’s behalf. He pointed out that there was absolutely no truth to Jai having any inclination toward homosexuality—Jai was married, had three children, and further, he was betrothed to another woman, Raman’s own daughter. I find this whole affair extremely repugnant and distasteful, Raman wrote, and feel somehow, that in asking Jai to leave the ICC, you are lending credence to the tantrums of the young maharaja of Kishorenagar. He is the one accused of, and might I add, convicted of these base habits. I would not give my daughter’s hand in marriage to a man with such proclivities, even talk such as this, of such unnatural conduct, is disgusting to me, Cameron.

  Jai had been hesitant about convening a White Durbar on that very night; it would be a hastily ordered affair quite simply because Jai was back in Rudrakot unexpectedly. But Raman had insisted upon it, knowing that this was not the time to run and hide their heads in a dark corner somewhere, but to let Jai lead the durbar, accept the obeisances, let everyone see that he was still ruler of his princely kingdom, glorious in his brocade and diamond sherwani in the light of the full moon. What of the special dessert served after the White Durbar, Jai had asked. Raman had looked at his watch and measured out a good twelve hours before the sweet was to be served, and had even arranged for the conservatory to be sprayed with water every two hours so that enough condensation could form on the roses to weave into the milk cream.

  And so Raman did not have a moment left in the day to see his children, to inquire after them, to find out how they had comported themselves in the last twenty-four hours, or indeed, what they had done with themselves on this day. When he walked down the aisle of the audience at the White Durbar, he finally saw Mila seated next to Sam, and his heart overflowed with love for his daughter whom he had missed in just one day of being away. Tomorrow, he promised himself, he would bring her into his office for a nice long chat. He thought she looked tired, but it might have been a trick of the moonlight. He hoped she was happy, for even if he did not know about her afternoon’s activities in the Lal Bazaar, he did know that Jai and Mila had dined together in the Blue Palace without Ashok being there.

  Raman came home and Sayyid opened the door to his master, much as he had done to Kiran an hour ago.

  “Are you still awake?” Raman asked. “You should have been in bed long before this.”

  “It is but a little wakefulness, Sahib,” Sayyid said. “Now you are home, now everyone is home.” Ashok was not in his room, but neither of them knew that yet.

  Sayyid helped Raman to bed, massaged his feet with warm sesame oil, covered him with a sheet, and was going to the door when Raman’s voice, half asleep, stopped him. “Is it too late to ask for the woman from the village?”

  “No, Sahib,” Sayyid said. He paused. “She waits downstairs. I asked her to come tonight in case…I felt you might want to avail yourself of her services.”

  “Send her in then,” Raman said. “Thank you.” He turned on his back and folded his arms behind his head as he waited for the woman. Tonight, exhausted as he was, he wanted a woman’s touch upon his body; he wanted to erase the day and start anew the next morning.

  And so fifteen minutes later, the woman, who had just one name that Raman knew of, walked down the corridor to be with him. She was dressed in a thick red ghagara and a sequined choli open at the back and tied with two strings. She wore anklets in silver, the chiming kind, but most of her footsteps were muffled in the folds of her skirt. And had she passed through the corridor just this way, no one in the house would have realized she was there. But Sayyid, who normally accompanied her, had sent her upstairs on her own, and she had forgotten which door led to Raman’s room. So she opened the door to Mila’s room first and saw the Japanese screen with its embroidered geishas blocking a part of the entrance and knew almost immediately that this was not the spare, masculine room that Raman occupied. She shut the door softly and then went across the corridor to the other side, opened Raman’s door, and let herself in.

  Mila wandered around in her room, pacing the floor from her bed to her dressing table and back until her head spun. She had returned from the White Durbar in the jeep with Sam, since her father had brought the Morris and come back in that. And during the drive they had not talked. Now she had begun to wonder why Sam Hawthorne was even here in Rudrakot. He had so many secrets from them, it seemed, and they knew so little about him. What had he done today, when she was away at the Lal Bazaar and at dinner with Jai? Why had he really taken Ashok to the political meeting at the house near the bazaar? Though concerned for her brother, all she had done was watch Sam’s hands on the driving wheel of the jeep, wished for him to talk with her and dispel this strangeness that had come between them. She imagined herself in bed with Sam, lying side by side, their arms touching. And an immeasurable longing ate away at her heart. What would it be like, she thought, to waken with him by her side every morning?

  They had broken away at the door to her room with a few niceties. Mila did not change when she went into her room, she just combed her hair, fanned it around her face, and stared for a long time at herself in the mirror.

  She stopped in the center of the room, a tingling running through her limbs, unable to keep still, frazzled from all the pacing. As she stood there, she heard the door to her room open and then quietly shut. Even in that brief space of time, the perfume of jasmine flowers floated into the room. Mila went to the door and opened it so that she could put an eye to the length of the opening. She saw the woman, or rather, only her back, the swirl of her ghagara’s skirts, the lush garland of jasmine in her hair, and heard the little tinkle of the bells in her anklets and the fall of glass bangles on her wrist as she opened Raman’s door and closed it behind her. Mila waited for five long minutes, but the corridor remained in semidarkness and the woman did not emerge from her papa’s room. And then, for the first time, she knew irrevocably that this was the first step toward adulthood—when the love of a parent, a child, a sibling was simply not enough. To be truly loved, to truly love, one must love an equal, share a proximity of skins, indulge a lover. She did not think, as she stood there, that this nameless woman would mean more to Papa than the engagement in the sexual act, for she had recognized also a furtiveness in her being here, and had seen from her gait and her clothing that she was from the village. But those five minutes at the door taught Mila more about her father as a man than she would ever have known about him otherwise.

  She went back into her room, crossed over the floor, and went out into the balcony. Sam’s door was open too. He had played a gramophone record, but it had wound down and come to the very end, and all she could hear was the scratch of the needle against the record, over and over again.

  Mila went to Sam’s door and parted the curtains. There was only one light left on in his room, a little, frosted glass lamp on his bedside table. The gramophone was near the door to the inside of the house. Sam sat on the edge of his bed, hunched forward, his elbows resting on his knees. He was clad in only his white pants and his chest was bare. His face was turned toward Mila, hair falling over one part of his forehead.

  “I hoped you would come,” he said, simply, and she saw in his eyes the fever of desire so strong that it brought a flush to his skin. His fingers twitched against his face and he could not keep his hunger from showing. He seemed to touch her from even that distance, reaching out across the span of the room to caress her waist, run the backs of his fingers under her arms, tug gently at her hair.

  “The meaning of my name, in full, Milana, is ‘to meet,’” she said. “Or in another conjugation it means ‘to find.’”

  “It seems appropriate,” Sam said. “Now I will not let you go, Mila. You must know this before you take
another step toward me, you must know this.”

  “I do,” she said and closed the door behind her.

  Sam rose, but he went toward the gramophone instead and plucked the needle’s arm from the groove it had made in the record. Then he put another record on the gramophone and held out a hand to her as the music began to play.

  “Mike and I have always liked Bing Crosby,” he said. “I was surprised to find his songs here.”

  “Why?” she said faintly. “We have everything. Ashok likes to dance to his songs.” She did not move but stood very, very still, her arms by her sides, the chiffon of her sari smooth against her hands.

  “I wanted to ask you to dance at the mela.”

  “I would not have danced with you there.”

  He nodded. “I know why now, but you cannot hide this…us…from everyone forever.”

  She came into his arms then, very correctly, as she had been taught by an early governess, a Miss Beasley. Mila had only danced with Miss Beasley and with Ashok, although he preferred to dance alone, in no style at all, just a rabid flailing of his arms and legs.

  Sam’s hold on her was nothing like Miss Beasley’s feeble clutch; his hands were warm, his shoulder muscles flexed as she caressed him and she had to look away from the fierce burning of his scrutiny upon her face. A heat flooded through her and her head drooped, too heavy for her neck. The gramophone scratched through the song.

  I really can’t stay

  But Baby it’s cold outside

  I’ve got to go away

  But Baby it’s cold outside

  This evening has been so very nice

  I’ll hold your hands, they’re just like ice

  Sam swung Mila around the room, the thick folds of her sari wrapping around his legs, her long pallu floating behind them both in a shimmering glitter. She had taken off her high-heeled shoes and Sam was barefoot too, so as they moved their feet made slapping sounds against the mosaic. They danced for ten minutes like this, barely touching each other, barely even breathing. Mila’s arm lay lightly upon Sam’s injured shoulder, her fingers linked with his, and his hand brushed her waist. They came no closer at all during the music until the gramophone lost its power and died down. Then Sam let go of Mila, took the record out, and put it away in its sleeve.

  He went to the bedside lamp and switched it off and they both waited until that first darkness faded and shaped itself around them in light and shadow.

  They kissed, and Sam ran his tongue over Mila’s face, raising such a hankering in her that she blindly moved her mouth until it could meet his. He undid her sari slowly and she stood where she was as his arms went around her once, twice, a third time, until the pleats had been pulled loose in the front and the sari lay at their feet like a blanket of diamonds. He was shaking with need, but he was gentle, taking off her blouse, cupping her breasts with one hand and then another, bending to kiss them. The frenzy came then upon them both and they fell onto the bed. Sam scrambled out of his clothes. He ran his hands over every part of her body, curving his palms around her feet, sliding them over her knees and her thighs. And where his touch went, his mouth followed until Mila pulled him up to her. Sam buried himself inside Mila as their mouths fused.

  Above them the ceiling fan shuddered and clanked, but its noise was not enough and Sam had to muffle Mila’s cries with the heel of his hand against her mouth.

  May 31, 1942

  Rudrakot, India

  Twenty-eight

  It was clear to me that Pauline never had any real love for me, and was marrying me simply to be raised…to European status. I ’phoned her father…and asked if I could call. I intended…the interview to last half-an-hour, it lasted six minutes. I…said, “I think Pauline and the two of you have been deceiving me all along…is there any [Asian] blood in you?”…her father flared into a rage…ordered me out of the house…and I had for one second a fearful sensation that perhaps I was wrong. I turned to Pauline and said, “Am I mistaken? Are you pure white?” She wouldn’t answer but looked away, and as I stepped to the door, she said, “You have insulted the whole family.”

  —Anton Gill, Ruling Passions: Sex, Race and Empire, 1995

  Does it hurt?” Mila asked, her fingers tracing the dark abrasion on Sam’s shoulder. She lay on the bed, naked and on her stomach, her hair falling around her to her waist. Sam lay next to her, also naked, his hands clasped on his ribs. He reached out and traced the arc of her buttocks, grasped a handful of her silky, sweet-smelling hair, kissed her bruised mouth.

  She smiled against his teeth. “I can see,” Mila said, her voice muffled by his skin, “that I will never get a straight answer to anything if I lie here without my clothes on.”

  He covered her mouth with the palm of his hand. “Never say that.”

  “Never wear clothes?”

  “Not around me, anyway.” He took his hand away and slid it behind her hair, seeking the nape of her neck. Sam pulled her down on him.

  The night’s heat had finally come to rest and become quiet, so it was cooler now, the very nadir the temperature would reach before it began to climb again. There were two hours left for the sun to rise, but Mila and Sam could already hear the birds beginning to stir in the trees outside. Mila knew she would have to leave Sam, and soon, before the servants awoke, or before Pallavi got out of bed. This was like a madness, a joyful intoxication where nothing mattered but Sam. Even as she kissed him, touched every inch of his skin so that her fingers would always remember what he felt like, buried her head in the crook of his arm so that she would never forget the aromas of his body, she wondered about where they would be five years from now. Ten years from now.

  “I could not live without you,” she said.

  His eyes were bright with amusement and glowed in the semidarkness like a sun-washed sky. “You will not have to live without me.” It was a simple statement, simply made, a token of Sam’s love for Mila. He could not imagine life without her either, but he had no idea that May morning how true this was going to be. He framed her face with his hands and her face was so small, his hands so large that his fingertips almost linked at the top of her head. Sam had to laugh at that, and Mila asked why, so he told her.

  She smiled. “You have not been concentrating on my head, Sam.”

  “No,” he said, “I was more interested in other parts of you. But I promise that from now on, I will interest myself in all parts of you.” Then he sobered. “I don’t do this,” he waved around the room and at them with one hand, “very often, you must know that, Mila.”

  “You do not take women to your bed?” she asked quietly.

  “No, not this easily. I mean for you to marry me, become my wife, have my children.”

  “Is this a proposal?” she asked, and at that moment, for the first time in quite a few hours, Mila thought of Jai. She had now received two proposals of marriage in her life and neither of them had been conventional…well, conventional in a Western ideal. In an Indian ideal, Papa would tell her whom she would marry, and she would marry that man and consider herself lucky if she were allowed to meet him before the wedding. A deep and aching sadness came over her when she thought of Jai. Sam rubbed at the lines that had formed on her forehead.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  “Jai.”

  “When will you tell him?”

  “When do you leave, Sam? How long will you be away?”

  Sam was silent for a long time; Mila felt something shift between them, and all the old questions came rushing back. She sensed, instinctively, with merely all the experience her twenty-one years had bestowed upon her, that he was an honest man, that whatever furtiveness he practiced now had put him under a great strain. That there was something hidden from them all was equally obvious. Papa knew too, or he would not have sent a telegraph to Calcutta on the very first day that Sam had come to Rudrakot.

  “Tell me,” she said now, placing a hand upon his heart. “Trust me, darling Sam.”

  So he told her, finally
unburdening himself of three days of guilt and pain. He told her about Mike, who he was in the Rudrakot Rifles, when he had disappeared, why he had been taken to the field punishment center.

  “I remember Michael Ridley,” Mila said slowly, her forehead patterned with lines of recollection, “although I met him only twice. I liked him. Are you sure that is why he has been interned at the center?”

  Sam stacked the pillows behind him on the carved wooden headboard and pulled himself up. “Vimal said that he was at the site of the schoolhouse the day it blew up.” He could not bring himself to say what else Vimal had said, but how did it matter, Sam thought miserably, if Mike had been there; he was as culpable as if he had lighted the fuse to the bomb. And yet his imprisonment at the center was nothing short of ridiculous; there had been no trial, no conviction, Mike had just disappeared. As he was going to disappear again, Sam thought grimly.

  Mila touched his face and tried to rub the scowl away. “Did you find your brother, Sam?”

  “Yes, the night we went to Chetak’s tomb.”

  “So that is where you disappeared to with Vimal.”

  “You knew?” Sam asked, surprised, for he had left her asleep and returned to find her still asleep.

  “I did not sleep that night, Sam.”

  “I leave tonight, Mila,” Sam said finally. “At midnight. Vimal is going to take me to the horse trader at the bazaar and help me get into the field punishment center again. He…knows the guards, and says that they will deliberately be lax for a few hundred rupees. I’ve already given Vimal the money. I will take Mike to Delhi and either hide him there or find him passage on a ship back home. He needs medical care and he needs our mother. And then, I have to go back to Assam.”