by Irene Black
Or would she opt to take a boat along the backwaters? He could see her stretched out on the cabin roof, pointing out the emerald paddy fields and fringing coconut palms to the child. They would speak in hushed tones, in order not to disturb the cormorant drying its wings on a passing driftwood perch or the girl, waist deep among the water hyacinths, washing the baby in her arms. Oh please, please, not the backwaters. Finding her on that vast expanse of water would be impossible.
Ashok watched the motley crowd of dock laborers, smart secretaries in silk saris, travelers, chickens, goats, and bicycles scrambling onto the departing boats. No sign of Hannah. An hour had passed, and Ashok was still searching for inspiration. Where to now?
On the floor by the ticket window, an English-language newspaper had been dropped by one of the embarking laborers. Something about it caught Ashok’s attention. A headline on the front page proclaimed, “An Elephantine Feast for Foreigners.” A subheading in smaller lettering read, “Famous Author opens Gaja Mela.” Beneath it was a large picture of an elephant. A woman was lifting a child to the elephant’s mouth. The child was feeding it with sugar cane.
Ashok peered at it, momentarily stunned. No. It couldn’t be. Could it? He rescued the paper before it was trampled underfoot by the next hoard of ticket purchasers. The woman in the picture had her back to the camera, but the arm holding up the dark-skinned child was white. The hair, the figure, the familiar shalwar kameez. It was Hannah, he was sure of it. He glanced down at the accompanying article.
Tourists and Kochites alike thronged the stadium at the Maharaja’s College ground in Kochi yesterday for the Tourist Fair...
Ashok skimmed impatiently on through the article.
...was opened by a mass feast to the elephants in which the chief guest and foreigners took part...
Little Siddarth Petersen aged three from England was thrilled to be chosen to feed Ramdas, the giant tusker who was carrying the fair’s emblem. The picture shows Siddarth with his mother, Hannah Petersen, the well-known author. The pair are planning to continue their tour of Kochi tomorrow with a visit to Mattancherry synagogue...
“Yes!” Ashok said out loud. “Thank you, God.”
The ferry to Mattancherry headed out across the bay, where Lake Vembanad blended imperceptibly with the Arabian Sea. The water was dotted with islands and headlands, sequins on a shot-silk gown of turquoise-blue. Two pilot whales steamrolled through a tanker’s bow waves towards the open ocean. Ashok relaxed and felt a surge of excitement and optimism.
At Mattancherry, he scrambled off the boat and wove through a throng of predatory cycle rickshaws, ignoring their insistent offers to take him here or there for outrageous sums. He made his way up through Jewtown, aptly named judging by a name plaque that caught his eye—“J. Cohen, advocate and tax consultant”—displayed above a series of Stars of David along the whitewashed house wall. The street was shady and narrow, the white and ochre houses with wrought iron balconies, fancy window bars, and shutters as redolent of their Dutch and Portuguese ancestry as of their Keralan heritage. Little curio shops huddled beneath some of the window shutters.
The seventeenth century synagogue, nestling against a Krishna temple at the end of the street, looked unprepossessing. Blink and you’ll miss it, Ashok thought, thankful now that his search for Hannah four years earlier had led him there once before. He had come to the right place. He remembered the little clock tower. But the synagogue had been closed by the time he and Willi had got there. Now he stood outside for the second time, willing his heart to beat more soberly. He took a few deep breaths and talked his nerves into relaxing.
A few heavy drops of rain struck his face and quickly gathered momentum. In seconds, the sky was a vertical torrent, great cupfuls exploding on the earth like breaking chandeliers. On the street, black umbrellas started up, like a flock of startled crows. Ashok pressed against the synagogue wall, unsettled still further by the unexpected deluge.
An old man, skin the color of ochre houses and wearing a moneybag round his waist, appeared in the synagogue doorway. “One rupee, Sir—if you wish to go inside.”
Wordlessly, Ashok handed him the money. The old man moved aside to let him enter.
Ashok stood for a minute in the doorway, brushing the rain off his face and his hair. Then he stepped inside. He was dazzled by the crowded opulence of the interior. Red and gold predominated. A firmament of chandeliers swung low from the ceiling, reaching down to touch the golden rails of the bimah, the raised dais in the center of the floor. Gilded lamps reached upwards to the chandeliers. Red, silky curtains framed the red and gold carved doors of the Holy Ark. Only the blue and white floor tiles broke the pattern of red and gold.
At first, Ashok didn’t see Hannah. The bimah obscured his view of the far end. As he began to circle the room, his eye caught a movement through the bimah’s golden balustrade.
And then he saw her. She was crouched down by the steps leading up to the Ark and was talking quietly to the boy. Ashok caught his breath at the sound of her voice. Silently he moved closer. She had her back to him and was pointing to the floor tiles.
“Brought here all the way from China,” she was saying, “and do you know, Siddarth, every single one is different? Look. See that one? And that? Isn’t it lovely?”
“Uvly,” the child agreed.
For a moment, they continued to study the tiles in silence, each engrossed in the separate world that a particular tile evoked.
Ashok stood still, unable to move.
Then the boy, becoming bored with the game, turned around and found himself gazing straight into Ashok’s eyes. They stared at each other in shocked silence. The child’s enormous, dark eyes were unafraid, curious, profoundly perceptive. Ashok tried to smile at him, but every muscle seemed frozen. The child, still staring, reached out to his mother and gently tugged at her kameez.
Ashok saw Hannah stiffen, as if she had received a hidden message from her son. She got to her feet unhurriedly, still with her back to Ashok. For a moment, she paused rigidly, as if afflicted by the same paralysis that had stopped Ashok in his tracks. Then she slowly turned to face him.
And so they stood, unable to overcome the shock of their reunion or the chasm of time and space that divided them, until finally Ashok, mustering his inner strength, walked slowly up to her. No greeting. No show of any emotion. With outward calm, Ashok pulled two letters from his pocket, as if he were about to serve a writ. The letter from Priya. And a copy of his reply to her.
“I’ve come a long way, Hannah,” he said, still staring at her, “just to show you these.”
Hannah looked at the letters then back at Ashok. Bewilderment and disbelief still registered on her face.
He pushed the letters at her hand. “Read them.”
When she still did not move, he said again, “Read them, Hannah, read them.” This he repeated until finally, stunned beyond protest, she took the letters from him.
As she read, Ashok saw her face change from disbelief to shock; from shock to remorse; from remorse to sorrow.
Just as she finished reading the second letter, the little boy tugged at her kameez again. Shyly, he glanced at Ashok. “Is that my daddy?” he said.
A flicker of discomposure. Then Hannah’s face changed again; from sorrow to hope. “Yes, darling,” she said. “This is your daddy.”
Silently, gently, Ashok took Hannah by the arm, closing his other hand around the eager fingers of the child. Together they walked out into the rain.
Biography of Author
Irene Black was originally a research psychologist in England and Australia and at Yeshiva University, New York (where she worked on the Apollo Space Program).
After her two children were born, she stumbled into teaching, eventually becoming Head of Languages at a Surrey school. In 1999, a spinal injury forced her to give up this post, enabling her to concentrate on writing.
Since 1991, she has been a frequent visitor to India and has worked for periods of up
to eight months in Bangalore in the Indian state of Karnataka.
In her novels, she is interested in examining cultural identity. Born in the United Kingdom, she comes from an ethnically diverse background, with family spread across the world.
Her second "India" novel, Darshan was completed in 2011. She has an MA in South Indian temple architecture; in both Darshan and The Moon’s Complexion, she has drawn on her research.
Her short stories, articles, and poems have won major prizes and have been published in writing magazines, including Writers’ News, Writers’ Forum and The New Writer, as well as broadcast on BBC radio. She won first prize in the 2003 National Association of Writers Groups annual short story competition.
The Moon’s Complexion was first published as a paperback by Goldenford Publishers in the UK in 2005. 2011 sees the publication of her third novel, Noontide Owls, a Young Adult fantasy.
http://www.ireneblack.co.uk
http://www.thisthatfromireneblack.blogspot.com
http://www.myspace.com/ireneblack
PRINT NOVELS BY IRENE BLACK
Darshan: a journey (2008) ISBN-13 978-0-9531613-9-3
The year 1999 is drawing to a close and the advent of the new millennium harbours danger, even in Oxford, that most English of cities, where a naïve but spirited Indian student sets out on a physical and emotional quest to reassert her British identity. She is determined to find her estranged Welsh father and to escape the prospect of a safe but passionless arranged marriage in India.
Her turbulent journey takes her through three continents via a morass of perilous affiliations, betrayal and heartbreak before coming to a momentous conclusion
‘An involving story, beautifully told.’ Maggie Hartford, Oxford Times
Noontide Owls: a young adult fantasy for ages 9 to 109
The conquering forces of Shoog the Awesome have left the City after a hundred years.
Its inhabitants - Anvil People, Scribes, Timekeepers and Mariner Folk - are free again.
Will they join together to rebuild their devastated City?
Or will their liberty cause darker forces to leech out?
‘Mind boggling...lovely, weird, wonderful and most imaginative characters, each so distinct and special that they stay embedded in your memory forever. The creatures - birds and animals are so real that you can visualise them, like they really do exist. Each [chapter] ending is so real it brings a shiver down your spine… made me feel like reading on and on to find out what happens next. I could not put it down.’
Anjali Mittal, children’s author
PUBLICATION DATE: SUMMER 2011
Goldenford Publishers Ltd
Guildford
www.goldenford.co.uk
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Biography of Author