The Luminist

by David Rocklin

  Her eyes gleamed with wetness and anger. She would make a good painting of light, he thought.

  Scraping the milk fat into a mold, she spread it with the knife until it was smooth, then placed it in a shaded corner, out of the coming high heat of the day. She stepped by him without a word.

  In the morning, she was gone.

  Pillars of Smoke

  EWEN CRIED AS IF FOR A DEATH. JULIA SAID NOTHING; it was only a maid. Charles rose and hobbled into his study, closing the door behind him. An English girl had chosen leaving over remaining. No doubt she would find placement in another colonial household. Certainly she lacked means to return home. But what would she say of them?

  What could she say that had not already been said, Catherine thought. The fashionable notion of a servant among the Directors’ wives was to let only their successful performance of tasks be noticed. The rest fell outside the sphere of appropriate women. Maids such as Mary belonged to the background of dinners, of children’s bedtimes and nursemaid needs. The event itself belonged to the proper women, the details to those with dirt under their nails and stooped postures.

  Between her and Mary there had been antagonism of a puzzling sort. The girl resented all she’d seen at Dimbola. Now, this. A fête for the man she most wanted to shine before, and no one to help.

  It was Friday. She came to Eligius in a panic.

  “I know someone who will work hard,” he said. “But I must speak to the sa’ab. To the governor as well.”

  He cleaned the house, went to market and reminded the butcher to be prompt. After, he stopped at the missionary’s pitiable pastoral and asked that word be sent to his mother in Matara.

  “You can’t go there alone,” the missionary told him. “Not now. If any of your own learn you’ll be there, I fear for you.”

  “I will be safe,” he said, and said no more.

  The next day, he left Dimbola for his village. At the lion’s mouth, he saw two pillars of smoke. Both were days away. One was white. As it rose above the furthest horizon of the ocean, the wind sifted it into gauze. Holland’s ship, perhaps.

  The other bloomed in the east, over the land. The green carpet of jungle was broken by a reef of smoke from the fire that raged below it.

  He wondered what fed it, to make it grow darker as it rose.

  ALL OF MATARA waited by the road as Ault slowed the cart to let Eligius disembark. “I’ll see to your mother,” Ault said. He walked down the road to Eligius’ old hut.

  Eligius let the villagers gather near him. Their rage coalesced into something communal. It didn’t take long for the man he sought to come.

  Chandrak walked towards the cart, a smile gathering at his lips. His rib cage filled with labored air. As the villagers stood nearby, watching intently, he coughed pink foam into his cupped palm. Starvation laced his torso. “So you’ ve come to make servants of us all. Who can blame you for leaving? We’re dying. But everyone talks about you. The boy who carved such a lofty place for himself among the colonials that the governor pays him visits. Not even his father could speak to him now.”

  “It is not that way.”

  “I’ll let Swaran know that I saw you. I’ll tell him the best of you died along with him.”

  “Eligius!”

  Ault stood at Sudarma’s hut, beckoning her to come. She emerged with Gita and climbed aboard the cart, her head bowed.

  “I have to go,” Eligius said. He took up the reins. “Let my mother and Gita leave with me. If you care about them at all, you will do what’s best for them. Don’t try to stop us.”

  “I remember you at the Overstone fields. You were weak even then. When you left for the colonials, I knew you’d never come back. I feared you wouldn’t find manhood, but never did I think you would turn your back like this. Remember, your back isn’t white, kutha.”

  He drew close. “As for Sudarma, she makes her own choices and she has chosen you. I am a man. I don’t need a woman’s protection. In the days to come, it would be better if I don’t see you again. But I will find you. Then will you have the courage to end things between us?”

  “I already have,” Eligius said.

  Women brought bread tied in cloth and water for Chakran. Children drew petals at his feet with sticks. A good luck prayer. The women glared at Eligius before returning to their cooking pots. Paltry curries dusted the air but conjured nothing of his days playing in the village streets.

  It was a strange thing, to wish that his childhood in this place could somehow be hurled under the cart’s turning wheels and crushed.

  “ Who was that man?” Ault asked as they rolled away from the villagers. “Didn’t he accompany you on the day you first came to me?”

  “He’s no one.”

  Ault gave his donkey a pat on the neck. “What news from your master Charles, then? What can he make of this business with Governor Wynfield’s doctrine?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He guided the cart and its cargo – his silent mother and a sleeping Gita – past fallen roofs of battered thrush, past fragments and families in awe that only one stricken woman and her baby had a destination.

  Ahead was a stand of intertwined neem. Eligius guided the old animal onto a path around it, towards the clearing on the other side.

  Ault chattered on. “I hear their maid has left them, in her first year no less. And this camera. Catherine’s sent word of it to the vicar, the lords of the court, all the great men, it seems. I wonder what her husband thinks of it.” He shook his head. “That such things should come to pass. Progress, I suppose.”

  Gita began to sob in her sleep. “She doesn’t know the feel of me,” Sudarma said. “These clothes are not what she usually touches.” She pulled at her servant’s smock with a sour expression.

  More neighbors gathered across the road behind them. The women brought empty baskets.

  “Your bruises are almost healed,” Eligius said.

  “Tell Gita about the clouds and the elephants. She’ll stop crying like you used to. Remember? You don’t believe such things anymore.”

  “I’m older, amma.”

  She shook her head. As if he was wrong.

  There was no smoke over the trees anymore. The colonials were protective of their holdings and quick to suffocate such things.

  “You’ll keep me informed of Charles’ progress,” Ault said. “Whether it’s a bill to be presented to Court or word of the next town to be levied. I wish to know.”

  Eligius flicked the reins, startling the weary donkey into a faster trot.

  “I’ll miss Matara very much indeed,” Ault said. “There were good people here. I’ll remember it fondly.” He put his hands over a careworn Bible. “Your father taught you to read there, outside your home. You never wanted to stay inside, he said, even in the rain. Always so restless!”

  “Must we talk about what was?” Eligius said. “It’s of no use to anyone now.”

  “You’ve never held your tongue with me, like I’ve seen you do with others. Curious.”

  Eligius turned to watch the villagers cross the road towards their hut. Children were faster; their mothers sent them first.

  “Perhaps you’re right to be bitter,” Ault said. “Sometimes it seems like there’s no kindness left anywhere. Hard men like Wynfield take what they want. Even in my line, it’s no different. As the Galle Face goes up, fewer of my countrymen need me. I’m left to the side with all of you. Another weak man crying out for fairness.”

  The rest of their hut came free in shreds of fabric, some tins of tea, cooking pots, the altar. His mother’s wedding sari dragged the hard ground behind the woman carrying it away. Tiny hands grabbed at its beads, tearing them loose to roll in the dust.

  Half of Matara’s dwellings had fallen to Wynfield’s soldiers. Like the craggy tops of sunken mountains, their points emerged from the dry ground.

  “People pass your kind by without so much as a glance.” Ault patted Eligius’ knee. “You should be thankful.”
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  They reached the clearing and the contingent of soldiers waiting there. One broke ranks. He guided his horse, a sleekskinned animal, to the cart.

  “Did you see the man speaking to me?” Eligius asked. “The crippled one.”

  “I saw him.”

  “He is the one.”

  The soldiers thundered past, through the trees and into Matara’s ruins. The villagers screamed. The sound of their flight fell under the percussive wash of the soldiers.

  “You succeed in surprising me,” Ault said.

  The sounds he expected came from the cart. A prayer of mourning. He gathered all of it – his mother’s voice, Matara’s fall – and put it into the empty cask where his heart had been.

  EWEN MET THEIR cart at Dimbola’s gate. He held an apron out to Sudarma. “Mother says to see that the baby’s quiet. She asked me to sit in the chair. Will you stay with me while I sit?”

  “Yes.” Eligius could feel his mother’s eyes on him.

  “I have to sit still.”

  “I understand. I will be there.”

  “Good.” He ran off towards the gazebo.

  Sudarma handed Gita to him, then fastened the apron around her waist. “Show me where to draw water. And the pantry.”

  “Mother, you understand why I had to do this. Don’t you?”

  “Am I to market as well?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me what else.” Her gaze fell on a brightly tressed peacock strutting across the yard. She pointed Gita’s attention to it.

  “You’ve no right to be angry,” Eligius said. “What else should I have done? Wait for the soldiers to bury you with your own walls? Wait for Chandrak to kill me?”

  “I hear the colonials’ homes have fine linen on their floors, as soft as sheep’s wool.”

  “I’ve told you. We move the rug with the sun to keep it from fading. We beat the dust from it.”

  “This will fall to me.”

  She walked ahead of him towards the house. He stopped her before she could enter the front door. “Enter in the back. So you are not seen unless called.”

  He despised her quiet gait. It was as if a feeble woman had donned a sari fashioned from his mother’s skin.

  He took her inside and showed her everything he’d ever seen Mary do. It surprised him how versed he’d become in the Colebrooks’ expectations. There was the rug, the gas lamps and hearth fires, the brandy and tobacco and the time to bear them into the study on a tray, with a blanket for the sa’ab’s swollen legs. He instructed her not to regard the sa’ab too closely. The old man was vain to the blood roses blooming along his shins.

  He showed her what to clear, and when, and with what utensil. He brought her to the well and the pantry, where she set to work on a dinner of lamb belly and boiled root vegetables. He showed her how to bake bread, though he didn’t know what Mary used to make it swell the way it did.

  Through it all, she said nothing. She served dinner and took the plates away. When he passed through with freshwater for the night’s laundering, he found the Colebrooks staring at their plates while his mother ministered to them as if she’d always been there. Charles leaned a little when she departed them, to see where she went.

  “I put Gita in my room and gave her a plume to play with,” Eligius told her at the end of her first evening. “She’s been quiet.”

  “I will have her back now.”

  “I want to show you something before you retire.”

  “It’s been enough for one day.”

  “Let me show you what I’ve done. Surely you’ve heard talk of the camera.”

  “I don’t know of such things.”

  “Isn’t that reason enough to come see?”

  “I don’t want to.”

  Hefting Gita in his arms, he walked to the servant’s door. She followed, only pausing to consider the paintings before continuing out to the yard, and to the door of Holland House. “The roof was as open as ours,” he said. “I put glass in the holes. I showed the memsa’ab where to find the sun in here. I made curtains and a lever.” He pulled on a dangling cord, opening the curtains across the ceiling to reveal stars pressed against the glass.

  He turned to show her the camera. “I thought it was a beast, but it’s wondrous.”

  She was already through the cottage door. Gita sat high in her arms, watching him as they returned to the main house.

  He fought the urge to chase after them. The notion struck him as distasteful. Things were different now.

  Julia sat in the gazebo, regarding Sudarma and Gita as they passed. “I require ink,” she called to him. “And some paper, and a way to hold them still in this wind.”

  “I will get them.”

  “See to your mother first. Then come out, Eligius. Bring something for me to write about, up close. Holland House will be the backdrop, but I need something of my own to gaze upon. Something right here.”

  He went inside the main house. The night was deepening around him. The smoldering gas lamps in the house pierced only as far as the edge of the porch.

  He took his mother to Mary’s quarters, then brought her the maid’s thin, stiff linen to fit over her straw mat. It was in all respects a marked improvement over their hut’s meager shelter, yet Sudarma looked around with a bitter, disapproving expression. She placed the sheet atop her bed and sat upon it. Gita crawled through the dirt on the floor, flecking her hair with it.

  “Do you require anything else?” he asked.

  “You are called. The mistress outside.”

  “In the morning, I’ll come wake you. I’ll show you where everything is to make breakfast. The food for the feast will arrive at dawn, and you’ll start cooking immediately. Some of it is being roasted by the butcher in a pit. There will be much to see to. I’ll help you as best I can.”

  “I know you will. I know all you’ve done is for us.” She was a storm of discontent. “I don’t want to die here. I don’t know these walls. Their stares are worse than I ever thought. I would never have sent you if I’d known what it was like to be looked at this way. Better the fields. I want to see my home.”

  “And him? You were lonely. It wasn’t like it was with appa.”

  She was silent.

  “He took a life and life has to be made whole. It’s done. Make a home of it here, mother. As I did. As I was asked to do. Our village is gone, don’t you know that? We are in their house now, and we have to make of these small corners something like a life. That’s all. Nothing else.” She nodded.

  Later, he thought, he might reflect on her in this moment. It was just a little nod of her head. A simple enough thing. But after a lifetime supporting unbearable burdens, the words that finally sank her to her knees were his.

  “If you go to your window,” he said, “you and Gita can see me. I’m not far away.” His eyes wandered. “May I take that?”

  “Go.” She went to the window.

  He took the battered diya and ran outside gratefully. There was wind, and the trees to give it voice.

  That evening, his mother sat at her new room’s window, facing the side of the yard and the jungle beyond. Her body was cut from candlelight. He couldn’t see her features but felt certain she was watching him.

  Julia wrote of Holland House as being much more proximate to the gazebo than it was in fact. When she began to shape the diya with her words, he told her it sounded so real that he wanted to pick it up from her paper and see the two of them reflected in its dimpled brass hide. She smiled.

  It was awhile before he glanced at the house again. By then it was late, and his mother was gone from the window.

  BEFORE DAWN, HE stoked afire in the oven and surrounded it with porous stones as Mary had done, to radiate heat to the ends of the oven’s crevices. It would stay piping for hours, and keep the meat and breads warm without burning.

  He slipped through the still house. The brisk air pulled his skin into a million tingling little knots. Outside, he surveyed the grounds, envisioning the
throngs that would descend on Dimbola in anticipation of Sir John Holland’s arrival. By then he would have staked torchiers along the path they would walk, to be lit when the humidity drew the insects.

  The smells of roasted pig, charred lamb and game hen filled the air long before the butcher’s cart sidled into view. Together they unloaded the cart and stacked the meats in the ovens. “I’ll wager you’ve never seen such food in this house,” the butcher said. “Nor will you again, unless your mistress charms her way to another suitor.”

  “Suitor?”

  “It’s what’s being said, boy. She cares little for her husband’s reputation or else she wouldn’t race the devil to outdo it. You wouldn’t know such things, but she’s a shame in polite society. Bringing her conquest over the ocean, no less.”

  “The man who comes is a teacher and friend. He comes for his own work. She has said.”

  “What would a servant know? My customers are her betters. I put my faith in them. Ah, I see I’ve troubled you.”

  “It is no business of mine.”

  “Do you know that my best customer now employs the Colebrooks’ girl, Mary? She asked me to send word to you. They are in need of a boy for their horses.”

  A servant who only performed one task? he thought.

  “Come to the market.” The butcher stepped up to his cart and took up the reins. “Ask for Seward. That’s me. I’ll get you to a paying house.”

  “What does it matter to Mary, what happens to me?”

  “I can tell you for a fact it doesn’t. But they’ll put an extra shilling in her pocket for locating a boy. And she’ll take care of me in turn.” He grinned. “I’ll be looking for you.”

  Eligius returned to the house. His mother was in the kitchen, staring at the ovens. “Baste them regularly,” he told her.

  “Our master and mistress were arguing.” She kept a hand on Gita, who crawled over the cutting block. “The master is upset at the cost of all this.”

  “He didn’t pay. It’s of no matter to us. It’s for you to cook this as if it were always here.”

  “How you’ve learned.”