by Gay Courter
“They know, everyone knows,” Nani said, sobbing. “They even brought in the hookah and witnesses swore they had seen her smoke from it.”
I did not understand my grandmother's horrified expression. My mother's routine was hardly a secret. The silver-inlaid hookah was always in place by her chaise. Her partaking had seemed as natural as sipping water or wine.
“Who spoke against Luna?” Nana choked.
“Several friends of the family and Bellore Sassoon were sworn in.”
“Hypocrites. All those d-damned Sassoons!” he sputtered. “You would think that a family who has built their fortune on the buying and selling of opium would not condemn one of their own for using their product. A cigar, a brandy, a pipe of opium. What's the difference to them?”
“Don't you see? In order to wipe themselves clean of any blame, they are attacking us,” my grandmother said slowly.
“Us!” Nana exploded. “Who was the cause of her loneliness? Not us. What about Benu? How did he think a woman as lovely as his wife would occupy herself for most of the year without a husband? If he had been by her side—”
“They referred to your medical practice,” my grandmother replied evenly. “Several men testified you prescribed opiates freely. Bellore Sassoon swore you gave morphine to Luna during and after the births of her children.”
There was a long silence.
“If it had been up to me, I could have regulated her better,” Nana sighed. “Benu gave her access to any quantity she desired. He thought it would keep her content. And in a way it did. It also attracted the wrong sort of friends to Theatre Road ...”
Their voices trailed away. I sat in my niche thinking it over. Opium . . . Mama . . . the wrong sort of friends. The story was a tangled skein that could never be unraveled and yet the silver hookah with its sweet, fruity smoke had somehow been the root of this misery. A door creaked. It was too late to get out of the way. My grandmother left the room dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. Fortunately, she was far too disturbed to have noticed me trembling in her wake.
The next evening, I took my hiding place with less concern. The adults were far too preoccupied to care for my whereabouts.
“Preliminary arguments have been completed,” Nani reported. “The worst is over. At least they seem to be focusing on the love affair more than the opium.”
“Lima wasn't the criminal!”
“I know. If Benu was here, he would defend her,” my grandmother said, but without conviction, I thought.
“What happened?” my grandfather ordered. “Tell me exactly what was said.”
“At the end of his arguments, the advocate-general suggested the motive for the murder.”
“Yes, what then?” Nana demanded.
“He said, 'As the French say, “A woman may be satisfied with only one husband, but never with one lover.” 'I don't recall his exact words after that, but he suggested that Sadka's awareness that he might not have been the only man Luna invited to her bed had driven him to desperation.”
“Do you think that is true?”
“Yes, I do,” Nani muttered. “They brought enough witnesses to support the theory. Benu's servants, most especially the blind punkah-wallah, recalled several angry conversations between the lovers.”
“What would the Bengali servants know? Luna and Sadka would have spoken in Arabic.”
“They understand more than you think. Besides, from the tone, the servant had the impression Luna was telling her visitor that she never wanted to see him again.”
“When was that?”
“He claims it was a week before her death, and the counsel for the defendants did not refute this. The man stood up and said, 'Yes, Nissim and Luna may have disagreed—all men and women do. What else is new in the world?' Instead they developed long lists of the men who may have visited Luna while Benu was absent. Every servant was interviewed about her guests. Even the mehtar was interrogated.”
“The mehtar!” Nana raged.
I understood his fury. How could anyone take the word of one of the lowest classes of Hindu, a man who cleaned the toilets and performed the most menial tasks, on so important a matter?
“And the durwan,” Grandmother added with more respect. The durwan was the gatekeeper, whose job it was to monitor comings and goings in the house. Ours was a heavy, dark Hindu man with a frightening face and a gentle disposition whom we trusted with our lives. He insisted that Sadka was the most frequent male visitor and that he had been there many times that week. Under cross-examination he described how he had let Sadka into our home at eight on the evening of her death and how he had seen them out on the upstairs veranda, where memsahib smoked her hookah while the punkah-wallah fanned her. Of course, the prosecutor asked how he knew they were on the veranda when a durwan is normally down by the gate.”
“Exactly.” Nana coughed. “What did he reply?”
“He said the voices were so loud, he came around the side of the house to see if something was the matter.”
“What did he say he overheard?” Nana asked impatiently.
“He could not be exact, just loud words.”
“That proves nothing.”
“I suppose you are right.” Nani sniffed and blew her nose. “The testimony of the blind punkah-wallah was more damaging. I don't know how she could have been so indiscreet! Did she think the man was also deaf and dumb?”
“Well, abdalak'—Grandfather used a soothing endearment—”it doesn't matter what they say about Luna. The guilt of the men has been proved by many facts and much evidence. They bought the chloroform with no reasonable explanation why they should require the substance. They purchased the ladder and matches. The ladder was abandoned in the garden, and marks made by the same ladder were found on the garden wall. One of Sadka's shoes was discovered beneath Luna's bed with traces of her blood on it. Chachuk's servant admitted washing his master's shirt and fez because of bloodstains. Scratches on Sadka's knees and Chachuk's wrists correspond to either a struggle or scaling a wall.”
“What about Sadka's story that another man committed the murder?”
“They have established nothing on that point.”
“I suppose you're right,” Nani said, though her groaning belied the words.
By then I thought it prudent to disappear, and missed whatever might have been said afterward.
The Sunday before the summing up, no visitors came to the house. The weather was cool and bright. I wandered through the somnambulant corridors until I found my grandmother in my mother's old bedroom. She wiped her eyes as I came toward her. “May we go to Aunt Bellore's house today?”
“That is not possible,” my grandmother said in a thick voice.
“Why?” I persisted.
“It wouldn't be proper,” was her curt reply.
I went to my grandfather's room. He was snoring in his chair. Upstairs, Jonah and Asher were taking a long nap. In the outer building the borchi, or cook, had undertaken to clean the choola, a large rectangular brick structure set against one of the walls. Coals were being raked into a basket, and ashes flew everywhere. A few large flakes landed on my dress. When I brushed them away, an oily smudge remained. The borchi apologized profusely and tried to clean it up, but the stain soaked in.
In my room I changed into a fresh dress, lay down on my bed, and stared at the ceiling. I had not been able to sleep in the afternoons since the funeral. I wandered down the hall and into my mother's dressing room. Mama's clothes had been packed away in metal trunks. The dressing table remained with a silver brush-and-comb set laid out as usual. Also intact were her two shelves of books. The spines were organized by color. In the green section I recognized Lorna Doom. I opened the book and stared at the illustration opposite the title page. A woman's arms were reaching out through a barred but open window, clasping the hands of a man. His walking stick rested against the rude stone wall of the house; his straw hat lay upside down on the ground. The words underneath read, “So I got the other hand.” Ever since I had l
ived with my grandparents, my studies had progressed. By the end of that year I could read anything, even newspapers. Curious about the picture, I opened Lorna Doone. The print was tiny; the words were too difficult. I pulled down a volume of poetry from the blue section. With the white spaces of the margins and between the stanzas, the lines appeared simpler. I carried the book to the end of the hall. The door to my father's bedroom was ajar. The shutters were hooked open. Wide slashes of sunlight streaked across the room, marking the pattern of the panes on the polished floor. The platform bed had been dismantled. The mattress was standing against the wall. The personal effects of both my parents had been removed. No longer was this the darkened den where my mother spent her lonesome days. Nor was it the gloomy hell of the last evening of her life. For some reason there was a bouquet of roses in a cut-glass vase on the marble table beside the chaise.
I dared myself to step inside. My footsteps echoed as I made a tour of the margins of the barren room. Tentatively I touched the velvety petal of one red rose and stared out the window on the north side. The mali clipped untidy stalks of grass one by one. Pleased by the gardener's attempt at orderliness, I sat down on the edge of the chaise longue. I leaned back. Lifting my legs, I stretched out full. The cushion was wider than I remembered. My elbows could not reach the armrests. I opened the book and turned to a poem. William Wordsworth. The title was simple: Lucy. I could read every single word of the first two stanzas.
She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove;
A maid whom there were none to praise,
And very few to love.
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
Keeping my finger at the place, I glanced at the bunch of roses. Who had placed them, there? A servant? My grandmother? I recalled the scent embedded in Mama's satin robe: mostly roses. Had she always kept bouquets on the table? I closed my eyes, trying to remember if. she had. Then, irritated that I could not picture roses or my mother, I forced myself to focus on the printed page.
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and O,
The difference to me!
“The difference to me ...” I whispered in awe, and, shivering, pulled my knees up to my chest. The simple words had magnified my longing. Swept up by the conflicting sensations that eddied about me, I did not hear the first footsteps coming down the corridor. Nor did it occur to me that whoever it was—probably Yali—might be disturbed to find me there. So when I looked up and the form in the doorway adjusted itself through the mist of tears that had caused me to stop reading, the shock numbed me.
My father had returned.
Slowly he walked toward the chaise. Even then I knew he must have been thinking about my mother and not me. In the distance I could see Yali backing away. Sunlight from the window streaked his face so half was darkness, half squinted in brightness. He shielded his eyes and awkwardly sank to his knees.
“Dinah.” His voice was huskier than I recalled.
I had done something wrong. I should not have been in my mother's place. I should not have been reading her book. To make amends, I flung my arms about his neck. He lifted me up. Nuzzling my cheek, he swung me around. My feet swirled out and knocked over the vase of roses.
The clatter of glass caused me to cry out.
I slipped from his arms and ran from the room. Halfway to the hall I turned back for a split second. My father was bending down, gingerly picking up the thorny stems of the fallen roses.
3
The last day of the trial I awoke to the gurgling and hissing of water pipes. Because pressure in Calcutta was so low that water could not rise above the ground floor, we had on our roof a cube-shaped reservoir that was pumped full every morning. When I opened my eyes, though, the world was still dark. Why would the tank be draining so early?
Yali stroked my shoulder and told me I was to have a bath.
“But I had one last night,” I said groggily.
“Yes, Dinah-baba, but the sahib says—”
The sahib . . . ?
My father! I sat upright. I had not seen him since I had run from his bedroom the night before. He had dined with his brothers, and I had been put to bed before his return.
Yali undressed me and carried me to the nursery bath. She lowered me into the copper tub. “No!” I leapt out. On summer days the water from the tank ran unbearably hot, but this time of the year the temperature was so chilly I felt as if I had been pierced with needles.
“Dinah-baba . . .” Yali coaxed in her singsong voice.
I shivered. “Too cold.”
“You must. I will wash you quickly.”
“No!”
Yali picked me up and dunked me, soaking even the crown of my head. I came up sputtering and would have cried out another protest if the shouting hadn't stilled me.
“You cannot do this!” echoed down the corridor. I could not determine who was speaking.
“I most certainly can.” The reply was the gruff voice of my father.
“Benu, I implore you, how can I make you see?” Nani was less strident, more recognizable in this plea.
“Don't you think I know what is best for my own daughter?”
“No, you don't. You have been away most of her life. You were not here when this happened. She has just begun to recover from the shock. Who can tell what this might do to her?”
“This is precisely what she needs. Once she sees the resolution with her own eyes, she can put the unpleasantness behind her.”
“Please, Benu, won't you at least wait until Mordecai gets here? She trusts him. Perhaps if he explains it to her—”
“I can explain it better than the good doctor, thank you.”
“You haven't been there. Every day curious crowds pack the room. And those two men in the box are so close you could touch them. A courtroom is no place for a child.”
“I have made up my mind.” A door slammed.
Not a ripple disturbed my tub. The only sounds were the pings of water droplets dripping from my hair onto the metallic rim. Yali waited a few beats before scrubbing me roughly with a cloth. Selima brought me a banana and a cup of warm milk.
“Drink before you are dressed,” Yali said.
I did as I was told. Selima shook out my white starchy petticoats and knickers. After I had eaten, she affixed the straps at my shoulders and waist. Normally fidgety at times like this, I remained immobile. My white dress was lowered over my head. Yali tied my sash.
Selima redid it to her satisfaction. “Now she is ready.”
Yali took my hand. “Where am I going?”
“The sahib wishes you to join him for his chota hazri.”
“Where am I going after that?” I asked curtly.
“With your father.”
“Yali!” I complained, but she would tell me nothing more.
My father was taking his “little breakfast” on a small table set up by the windows in the hall. “Dinah!” He stood up as I appeared in the door, as though I were an important lady entering the room. I didn't move. “Come, I will pour you some tea,”
“I had milk upstairs, Papa.”
“Then come and sit with me.”
Yali pushed me at the base of my spine, and I edged forward involuntarily. Papa pulled out a chair for me. Still reluctantly, I fussed with my petticoats as I positioned myself on the chair.
He in turn sat down and beamed at me. “What a pretty girl you have become.”
I looked away, out the windows at the silver cast in the dawning sky.
“You will spend today with me.”
I did not respond.
He waited for a beat. “Won't you like that?”
“I think so, Papa.”
Hearing a scraping sound, I looked across the table. My father had lathered a slice of toast wit
h more butter than Yali would ever have permitted. He passed it across to me. “Thank you, Papa.”
We both munched quietly for a long while. From time to time I glanced up at the stranger who was my father. He was a tall man, the largest of the Sassoon brothers. His head was unusually elongated, or perhaps it only seemed so because there was a great deal of flesh showing from his high polished forehead to the V of his pointed beard. His eyes were small dark beads set under drooping lids. Without asking again, my father prepared a cup of tea for me with three sugars and a third of a cup of milk. I took a few sips to help me swallow the bread, leaning across my saucer so as not to soil anything. My father's gaze continued to unsettle me. I thought his limbs were bonier than I recalled. When he had been talking, the gauntness was not as noticeable, but when he stared at me, his demeanor took on the same threatening aspect that had sent me running when we were reunited the day before.
He replaced his empty cup with a clatter. “Dinah, you do know what is happening today, don't you?”
“Well . . .”
“There is a trial—”
“Yes,” I cut him off. “Dr. Hyam told me about it.”
“I see. Then you know that today will be the last of it.” As he stood up, Abdul, his bearer, who had been waiting in the shadows, rushed to brush the crumbs from his waistcoat. “We will leave in half an hour. You may go to say good morning to your grandparents for a few minutes, but you mustn't stay long. They are quite . . . ah, tired. Taking care of everything while I was away has been too much of a strain on them. Now that I am home, they can return to Lower Chitpur Street.”
“I don't want them to go, Papa.”
“And why is that?”
“I shall be lonely without them.”
“We must think of their feelings now.”
“T want them to stay with us.”
“That won't be possible, Dinah.”
“But, Papa—”
He came around to my side of the table, took my hand, and pulled me to my feet. “Now that I am home, I will care for my own children.” Realizing that he was speaking too stridently, he lowered his voice. “Now, do as I say.” He looked away from me to the view across the garden. The sky was a muted pink and orange with a golden band at the bottom, like the border of a Brahmin's sari. “Today will be one of the most important days of your life. Today you will see evil punished and goodness restored.”