The Splendor of Silence

by Indu Sundaresan

  “Are you all right?” he asked, in a low voice.

  She shook her head briefly, tears filling her eyes, but she said, so that Ashok could hear, “We are fine, Sam.”

  He caressed her shoulder, and, greatly daring, wiped the tears away with the back of his hand.

  “Papa prays,” Ashok said. “Perhaps for us all.”

  Sam leaned beyond the rise of the balcony’s wall, cradling his right arm with his left, his palm supporting the elbow. His shoulder hurt, and he had almost forgotten this until reminded as he climbed the wall of the field punishment center and not since then again, but Mila’s tears, her unnamed sorrow, brought the ache back. She was in pain, and so Sam was too.

  At that moment, Raman glanced up from his meditations near the well, his lower garment of a white veshti clinging to him from his early bath, his body beginning to quake from a sudden, unnatural chill. Mila and Ashok both ducked briefly beyond his gaze, behind the low parapet, wiped their faces, and reappeared with watery smiles for their father. But he was not looking at them.

  Instead he said, his voice somber, “Will you come to see me in my office, Captain Hawthorne, later today? I have news from Calcutta that I would like to discuss with you.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sam said. “When?”

  “Before you leave the house, please.” With that, Raman, still shivering in his damp skin, wrapped a cloth towel around his upper body.

  Before Mila could even begin to ask Sam what that meant, why Papa seemed so distant with him, what had he done, Pallavi’s door opened and she stepped out into the balcony.

  She said, her expression hardened and angry beyond anything Mila had seen before, “I want you to take a bath and then come and see me, Mila. Ashok, get to your room and do the same, you are no longer a child and do not need to hang on to your sister like this.”

  “Pallavi!” Ashok began to wail, but she cut him short.

  “Now!” she said. She did not look at Sam, did not even acknowledge his presence, but she said in very clear, grammatically perfect English, “We need our house to be our house now; visitors tend to overstay their welcome.”

  The first hailstones began then, pelting out of the sky like a sprinkling of flung pebbles and then cannonading down upon them in ten seconds, until everything was blurred into a thick sheet of ice formed over many months of winter somewhere up north, near the arctic. The hailstones were enormous, the size of a ripe chikku fruit, perfectly round and incredibly painful when they made contact with their skins.

  It was the first of the catastrophes that would come upon them all on that day, and there was nothing they could do to stop them. They would all be deluged with disasters, all of them—Mila, Sam, Ashok, Raman…even Kiran.

  And none of this would have happened, my dear Olivia, if Sam had not come to Rudrakot. This I firmly believe. Although that searing pre-monsoon heat was already upon us all, had left us limp and irritable and unreasonable, it was a state of mind we were familiar with, after all. If that spark, in the form of your father, had not come upon the aridity that surrounded us, we would not have been set to flame. And we were burned beyond recognition. It would be many years before we could talk of those four days in May, many years before I could consider them with something akin to equanimity.

  So many years before I could pick up my pen, write to you, and tell you all of this.

  Thirty

  On the boat, I had made friends with an Englishman…After Port Said, he had a worried look…He said…last night those senior chaps got hold of me, and they said: “Look, we’re just telling you this for your own good, that when you get to Calcutta and take up this job, you musn’t be very friendly with Indians…this young Indian…might have been at Oxford and the rest of it, but still you had better be careful.”

  —Zareer Masani, Indian Tales of the Raj, 1987

  Will you have some more pink champagne?”

  “No, thank you, Your Highness.” Sam sat back in the chair and bumped his head against the head rest with its carved head of a lion, its mane flowing with careful etching, its jaws open in a frozen, unheard roar, teeth filling its mouth. The rest of the chair was upholstered in silver and blue, its feet ended in claws clutching wooden balls.

  The whole room was fantastic, it was an indoor-outdoor room, and Sam could hardly have considered it a verandah, in the manner of the verandahs he had seen so far during his stay in India. The room was constructed around the outer wall of a white marble palace perched on the lake at Rudrakot, and just beyond where Sam and Jai sat, he could hear the soft lapping of the water against the foundation, gentle, soothing, in an ageless rhythm. The sun marched sentinel above them somewhere, already tilted toward the west, since it was late in the afternoon, but the skies were clear, a blanched blue, no hint of the morning’s dust storm remaining in the air. The room’s walls were painted in blue to mimic the sky, and on this background were drawn coconut trees with ridged trunks and ripe coconuts hanging from between their lush leaves, thick grasses hiding the ears of elephants, monkeys swinging from vines, brilliant butterflies swooping across the land. The room’s walls were also hung with mirrors with no frames, so that they seemed to be an unending reflection of the mural.

  On his way in, Sam had almost tripped over two magnificent stuffed lions, with two perfect gunshot holes in each of their ribs, the only place where their skins were broken. He waited for the servants to bring in the silver tray with two glasses of pink champagne before he asked the man seated in front of him, “Are there lions at Rudrakot, Your Highness?”

  Jai took a sip of his champagne, put his glass down upon the carved teak table between them, and said, “But of course, Captain Hawthorne. I shot these specimens,” he said, waving a lazy hand behind him, toward the door, “myself, in my hunting forests. I would take you on a shikar if you were to be here longer.”

  “But I can’t be,” Sam said. His glance swept away into the waters of the lake and then upward to the breathtaking marble ceiling with its carved lotus flower in full bloom. The light reflecting from the lake tumbled in a waterfall across the lotus and surged through the whole room in a burnished glow that seemed to touch both of them.

  “Yes,” Jai said reflectively, stirring the fizzing champagne in his glass with his right index finger and then putting that finger into his mouth, “it is indeed a pity that we cannot keep you here longer than tomorrow as our guest.”

  His voice reflected none of this professed sorrow, and Sam wondered if Jai knew already, without being told, that Mila belonged to him. Under normal circumstances, under any other circumstances, Sam would never have considered the word belong in talking of, or thinking about, the woman who was to be his wife. He had always thought that if he were given the blessing of such an incredible love, then he would worship the woman who bestowed it upon him, and so he still thought. But he had become arrogant, a fine skin of pride blanketing him as he sat in one of Jai’s numerous palaces in the kingdom of Rudrakot—this one on the banks of the lake, so pendant over the water as to actually be floating on it. Sam could not give Mila all of this, perhaps not even a fraction of this, well, there was no perhaps about this, for Sam was just a professor of South Asian languages at the University of Washington in Seattle, and Jai was a bloody prince with a kingdom. For pity’s sake, as Mike would say.

  Jai had accosted Sam at the outskirts of the Lal Bazaar as he had just finished negotiating for the hire of two horses and a bale of cotton wadding with which to muffle the sound of their hooves as they fled out into the desert. The horse dealer had barely melted away into the bazaar, his smile yellowed, his eyes aflame with greed, fingers still running over a quarter of the agreed-upon amount of rupees (Sam knew better than to give him the whole before he got the horses), when a blue-and-silver Daimler hissed to a halt next to him, the darkened window was rolled down, and Jai slanted his head through the opening to say, “What a coincidence, Captain Hawthorne. I too was on my way to buy some cotton baling. Do come, have some champagne with
me, and escape from our heat for a while. I promise not to ask what you intend to do with all of that cotton.”

  Sam reddened, not happy at the invitation, but hardly knowing how to say no to the prince of Rudrakot. “Thank you,” he began, “but—”

  “Oh, but I insist,” Jai said, and his chauffeur glided out of the car and opened the door for Sam in what seemed like one smooth movement and Sam found himself in the car next to Jai with the newspaper-wrapped cotton on his lap. The car took them away from the road that led to the fort and toward the Victoria Club instead. There they branched away again and sped along the side of the lake, coming to a halt, finally, in front of a massive marble-and-red-sandstone palace, which Jai introduced to Sam casually as, “One of my hunting lodges.” There were guns, muzzle loaders, swords and shields, battle-axes, and gold-and-pearl-handled whips on the wall. The mural in the verandah room, jutting out onto the waters of the lake, was copied in every room Sam passed through. The heads of chinkaras, the local gazelle, nilgai, the blue bulls, and tigers adorned the walls. The floors were dazzling and impeccably clean and the rooms were cool, picking up moisture and vigor from the lake even under the heated midday burning of the sun.

  So Sam thought that at least, at the very least, Mila belonged to him, throwing himself back to his adolescence with its willful and unreasonable competitiveness.

  He was beginning to think that everyone except Mila abhorred him in Rudrakot and he thought back to his morning’s talk with Raman in his office. The summons at the well, and there was really no other word for it than that, had been unmistakably grim and Sam had gone to see Raman with a leaden heart. The political agent had a white-and-blue telegraph sheet in his hand.

  “It says here,” Mila’s father had said, “that you are an OSS officer, Sam. What exactly is that?”

  Sam was silent for a long while and when he raised his face to Raman again, his gaze was level and met the older man’s without any embarrassment. “I’m not sure what you are talking about, Mr. Raman. I am with the U.S. Army, in the Third Burma Rangers.”

  “Just that?” Raman said wryly.

  “Just that, sir. Nothing more.”

  “I fear,” Raman said wearily, brushing sleep out of his eyes, “that you have come to us under false pretenses. You refuse to admit it, but I too have my resources in Calcutta; I know partly who you are…not completely. I’m sorry, but I must ask you to leave my house, and if possible at all, leave Rudrakot.”

  “I hope to be able to explain, Mr. Raman,” Sam said quickly. “I cannot, just right now.”

  Raman shook his head. “That is not good enough.”

  Sam had left the office torn in two directions, by his duty and by his heart. He was sworn to secrecy by his government, and even though Raman had, most astonishingly, ferreted out the existence of the OSS by some means or other, Sam could not have talked to him about it. Now he was being ordered out of his house, but he would return for Mila, and this man would be his father-in-law. One day he would tell him all the secrets, reveal everything that had forced him into deceit, beg forgiveness. He could not bear the thought that Mila’s father would dislike him so much. But for now that had to be the case, and Sam loathed the creature he had had to become and could not wait to crawl out of this skin and into a more honest, open one when this damn war ended.

  Jai hummed a little tune and Sam watched him warily. They had barely spoken in the drive over to the hunting lodge, and Sam knew that this invitation was no offer of friendship. And he knew too that there could be no friendship between them. Jai would grow to detest and abominate Sam in a few short hours, and though Sam would be well on his way to Delhi by then, he would return to Rudrakot to take Mila with him.

  “You are very kind to bring me here, Your Highness,” Sam said finally, putting down his empty champagne glass. “But I really must leave.”

  Jai did not answer for a while, and when he did it was with an immovable expression. “I think you have been in India long enough to know that we are—and by this I mean all of us, the British of us, the Indians of us—an inflexible, rigid people, rife with prejudice.” Sam opened his mouth to dissent, but Jai put up a hand. “I am not asking for an argument.” His tone became gentle, rueful. “Forgive me, I am used to giving orders and at times I forget that I cannot order everyone around. What I mean to say is that I do not make this statement for us to contest the veracity of it, instead I mean it as a truth.”

  Sam bent his head to look down upon his hands linked in front of him. “I will agree with you then, but I fail to see how this has anything to do with me.”

  “Yes,” Jai said. “Yes.” His brows came together on his forehead and he rubbed one side of his face as though he was in pain. “Forgive me,” he said again, “I am not quite sure why I said that, if only to assert that we—the British and the Indians—have never really cohered with each other. You see, the color of our skins is an insurmountable barrier to any sort of friendly intercourse.”

  Sam searched hard in Jai’s face for the knowledge of Mila’s love for him, or any slight suspicion, and saw nothing. Yet the prince was troubled, anxiety marring his eyes, his fingers interlocking with each other and then coming apart. He did suspect, Sam thought, but in some buried part of his brain, and he was not cognizant yet as to why he disliked Sam. Perhaps they could have been friends too, Sam thought, but not now, not anymore. He could not sit any longer and deceive Jai, and so, very firmly, he rose to leave.

  A man came in then, dressed in a black suit with a light blue tie—the color of Rudrakot, Sam realized, the regimental colors of the Lancers, the hues of last night’s White Durbar, more blue than white, the tint in the upholstery, the paint on the Daimler. The man hesitated at the entrance to the room and coughed.

  Jai beckoned with one hand and the man leaned to his prince’s ear and talked for a very long while. Sam watched as pain and sorrow crushed Jai’s face and his body shook with some emotion.

  “What happened?” he asked, dread filling him.

  Jai, white about his mouth, rose from his chair. “You should not have taken Ashok to the political meeting at the Lal Bazaar last night, Captain Hawthorne. You have betrayed the hospitality of the man who extended the use of his house to you, who allowed his children to reach out in friendship to you.”

  “What happened?” Sam asked again.

  “There has been a bomb blast at the residency and a boy was found on the ground near the car where the bomb was put, crying over the body of his cohort. The two boys went there together this afternoon, Ashok and Vimal.” Jai’s voice grew harsh. “You see, you see now why you should never have let them get close to each other? One of them is dead because the bomb blew up just as they were installing it in Pankhurst’s Daimler.”

  “Which one?” Sam asked faintly, pain shredding his heart. Oh, my darling Mila, he thought, what have I done? How could he have even known that last night would lead to this?

  “The nationalist boy, Vimal. Ashok has been arrested and is in jail now. I have to go and get him out.” Jai rubbed his forehead. “Try to get him out, and this is not going to be easy. He will be tried and hanged.”

  The news of Ashok’s arrest reached Jai first, barely twenty minutes after it had happened, for Rudrakot was Jai’s realm and he knew of everything that happened within the boundaries of his kingdom, just as he had known that Sam had taken Ashok to the political meeting last night.

  In her bedroom, Mila lay on her bed on her stomach, her face turned away from Pallavi, who was seated in a chair beside her. They had been talking too, for two hours now, since Mila had woken. She had not allowed Pallavi to corral her into an argument earlier, and, pleading fatigue instead, Mila had slept away the morning. She knew that all that had done was delay her talk with Pallavi.

  Now she lay with a pillow smothering her face, hiding her from Pallavi’s fiery gaze. Mila had been crying for such a long time that she felt empty and drained of anything, for everything Pallavi had said was true. She had seen
Mila emerge from Sam’s room earlier that morning, had seen upon her body the languor of a woman who had been loved by a man, and Pallavi had been horrified. How could you do such a thing, she had asked, repeatedly. And Mila had responded doggedly to that with, I love him, this is no bad thing, Pallavi, do not demean me or Sam with your prejudices.

  “What do you know of love?” Pallavi had shouted.

  More than you, Mila wanted to say, but knew she could not hurt Pallavi so, even now, when they were in strife, for she spoke not from jealousy or spite but from a real concern for her.

  “You cannot betray Jai,” Pallavi had said.

  But Mila believed that Jai would not want her, like this, with her heart in another man’s keeping. It was not a concept Pallavi was even willing to understand; to her, Mila had made a contract with Jai. What would her papa think, Pallavi asked next. To these last two arguments, Mila had no response, for they were the truth. She could not bear to think that Papa would hate her, or even that Jai would hate her. She knew they would both be shattered. Last night she had felt as though things would work out after all. Oh, Sam, she thought miserably, what have we brought on ourselves?

  At the thought of Sam, there came to Mila another moment of clarity and she returned to her belief that they were meant to be together, that no matter how much her relationship with Sam hurt people’s sensibilities, those who loved her would understand, would be supportive. Much as she herself was of Ashok. Alone, she could never have come to such a decision, not because she was intrinsically timid, but because she could not have justified such happiness for herself at such a seeming cost to the others she loved. But Mila had Sam, and with him, anything was possible. She let Pallavi shout for as long as she liked, even let her own tears flow and sheltered her heart.