Flowers in the Blood

by Gay Courter

  She must have thought I was upset because my grandparents had packed and left the house that morning.

  “You will come to us as often as you like,” Nani had said as she kissed me on the doorstep.

  “In fact, you shall see us the day after tomorrow at services and then return home to spend the Sabbath with us,” Grandfather said with hardly a stutter. He had declined since his impressive recovery the day before, yet he seemed far better than he had in more than a year.

  The memory of their departure faded, replaced by the feel of Yali wiping my tears with the edge of her sari. She kept her cool hand on my brow until I calmed. Then Jonah poked his head in the door, dragging his favorite toy—an elephant on wooden wheels—behind him. Was that the sound I had heard?

  Yali shooed him away and washed my hands and face. Selima brought in tea and set it out on the table in my room. I could hear the creaking wheels of Jonah's toy as he ran down the halls and called, “Jonah, come have tea with me.”

  Grinning broadly, he pushed the elephant in front of him with his foot until the toy grazed my leg. “Akbar wants a biscuit.”

  “Very well, Akbar, you may have mine.” I broke off a piece, pretended to feed the elephant, then popped it into Jonah's nearby mouth.

  He took the seat beside mine and fingered the border on the cloth. The design was of elephants linked trunk to tail. Jonah named them. “Akbar, Zakbar, Flakbar, Nackbar, Hackbar . . .” He giggled.

  I was about to join his game when I heard the bumping noise again, I rushed to the door in time to see the durwan and the mali carrying Mama's chaise down the staircase. I followed them to the downstairs terrace, watching as they crossed the garden to a pile beside the far wall. Logs had been stacked in a neat pyre, like the ghats on the riverbank where the Hindus cremated their dead. On top was mounded the entire contents of my father's bedroom: the platform bed, the mattresses and coverings, the poles that supported the mosquito netting, the marble table that had held flowers and books. I watched, horrified, as the chaise was positioned precariously on top. No!

  I ran upstairs and threw open the bedroom door. Discovering only a few pieces of paper and cloth scattered about in the empty room, I looked back in the hallway. Outside my mother's dressing-room door, clothing and books were accumulating. Where was Papa? His dressing-room door was closed. I tried the handle, but it was locked. I banged on it. “Papa! Papa!” There was no response. Jonah came up behind me and joined in the noisemaking. “Papa, Papa, Papa!” he called cheerily.

  The door opened. “Hello, children,” Papa said in a smooth voice. He was dressed as he had been for the courtroom the day before. In fact, his clothing was so rumpled, he must not have changed. He stumbled backward and caught himself on the wall. His face was blotched with ruddy patches, his nose swollen and red, his lips oddly blanched.

  “Do you know what they are doing?” I asked, knowing full well the servants must have acted under his orders.

  “Yes, Dinah, it is for the best—a fresh start . . .”he mumbled.

  “No!” I sobbed as I tried to think of some way to deter him. I pictured Lorna Doone in flames. “Not her books—” I choked.

  His jaw clenched. His high Sassoon forehead rippled. For a moment his oblong face looked like a skull. “Books?” he said as though he was coming out of a daze. “Yes, you like books, don't you? Is that what this is about? You would like to have the books.”

  I had not thought this through, but it seemed wise to salvage whatever I might. I glanced into my mother's disheveled dressing room next door. “Please, Papa.” My mind raced. What else? “And the dressing-table set and—”

  He cut me off. “Take whatever you like, as long as it stays out of my sight.” He shooed invisible flies from his face. “I never wish to see anything that once belonged to . . .” He could not say the name. Then he spied my mother's inlaid hookah. Picking it up, he muttered fiercely, “Except this.”

  I did not use the door between the dressing rooms, but went out into the corridor and began to carry books to my room. The durwan followed and helped me layer them under my bed, ten high, five deep. When that area was filled, I had rescued most of them. Mama's clothing already had been removed from the shelves. I grabbed an empty hat box and swept her silver dresser set into it, hurrying in case my father changed his mind. Yali came in and saw what I was doing. From the drawers I salvaged two ivory combs, a leather pocket toilet case, an ebony traveling set, her collection of atomizers, three beaded chatelaine purses, embroidered silk handkerchiefs, pompadour combs, silk and ivory fans, neck ruffs, spools of fancy ribbon, hairpins, a box of buttons, two pairs of evening gloves. All were treasures to me.

  While I was busy, I noticed Yali removing several long flat jewelry boxes. “What are you doing?”

  “Taking these for safekeeping.”

  “Not to burn?”

  “No, no. Never!”

  I returned to my task. After stowing as much as I could, I went out on the upstairs veranda in time to see Mama's dressing-room furniture— her daybed, her wooden bookcases with the glass windows, her tufted parlor chair, even her dressing table with its dainty French legs, drawers with brass handles, and oval mirror that tilted—being added to the pyre. This last, unruly item caused the tower to shift. The dressing table slipped to the ground, shattering the glass. The mali replaced it at a lower level, then with the coarse broom he used on the paths swept the shards under the firewood.

  The servants milled around, waiting. The durwan watched the house expectantly. I sank to the floor of the porch so they would not see me as I peered through the railing. Father's bearer arrived and said a few words to the mali. He nodded and poured an oily substance made from clarified butter, called ghee, over everything. The servants looked up at the house again, waiting. At a signal, the mali lit the mound of Mama's earthly possessions. An enormous flame arched skyward. Soon the dusking sky was riddled with billowing smoke.

  A moment later the durwan rushed forward and, threw an object into the inferno. Its distinctive curve caught my attention. The hookah! I fixed my eyes on the sparks as they flew upward around the glowing torso-shaped metal. If only the monsoon rains would come and drench everything! But that could not happen, not in December. Sparks fly upward; rains fall downward. The contrasting images—and the finality of each—preoccupied me as I watched.

  “What shall we do, Dinah?”

  I jumped up from my hiding position. The whole while, Papa had been nearby on the other side of the veranda. He must have been the one who signaled for the conflagration to commence. I turned away from him.

  “Dinah!” He opened his arms to me.

  There was a loud whooshing sound. A long tongue of fire shot up to the sky, crackled like lightning, and was followed by a crunch and a tumble as some of the furniture shifted as it was engulfed. For a few seconds the hot light formed an outline around the delicate curved legs of Mama's dressing table. Some combination of smoke and firelight gave the spectral illusion of a human form staring into the broken glass. My stomach contracted as the vision was sucked away by a burst of wind. The fire, devouring its delicacies, burned on hotter, redder, almost bloody.

  Hearing my father muttering, I thought at first he was saying “Dinah” —but no, it was “Luna . . . Luna ...”

  Unanswered questions flickered like sparks in the firelight, glowing momentarily, then turning to crumbling ash. Why had Papa left us alone for so long, causing Mama to invite the wrong sort of friend into our house? Why had the men who had murdered her been set free? Why was Mama now being blamed for everything? Why had Papa stopped loving her because she was gone, and why had he punished me by sending my grandparents away?

  Feeling his hand on my shoulder, I pushed him away and backed into a cobweb in the corner. As I madly brushed the sticky fibers from my arms, my bitterness burned white as the coals forming on the firebed. He leaned against the rail, his chin sagging, his mouth agape. The spots on his face had enlarged into blistering blotches. His
upper lip twitched. “What shall become of us?” he asked, his voice trembling.

  Ever since the murder, I had held the elusive hope that when my father came home, he would somehow stitch the seams of our life back together and make our family whole again. This husk of a man was not about to perform any such miracle.

  “Now who shall take care of us?” he asked, looking up to the acrid cloud that hovered over our garden.

  I thought: From now on I shall have to take care of myself. Then I turned from the silhouette almost obliterated by smoke and abandoned him.

  The next day, I remained in my room. Papa did not interfere, for which I was both grateful and resentful. The day after that, I ventured as far as the nursery sitting room to play with my brothers, but I would not go downstairs for meals, even when told I was invited to dine with my father. On the third day, he came to my room. When I did not respond to his knock, he let himself in.

  “Dinah, will you come for a walk with me?”

  I kept reading the first of Mama's books that seemed meant for a child—Alice in Wonderland.

  “Is that a good book?” He came closer and looked over my shoulder at the illustration. “What a funny rabbit!” he said in a forced voice. “Dinah!” He stroked the top of my head. I shot up and away from him. Holding the book in front of me like a shield, I backed against the far wall. He rubbed the bump on the side of his nose and waited. I felt powerful, as if invisible claws extended from me into his heart. His chest convulsed, and he left. Good! I thought, vowing never to talk to him again. Why, then, did I feel more bereft than victorious?

  He did not approach me for the rest of the week, not even to take me to the synagogue on Saturday morning. The following Monday, renovations began on the upper story of the house. The veranda was to be extended, his dressing-room partitions taken down to make a new bedroom for himself, and a larger room carved for me from my mother's old bedroom. The corner room was shuttered, bolted, locked.

  I found the bustling activity a diversion in my self-imposed exile. Workmen scurried around, not caring if I crouched to watch.

  Papa came into the nursery and announced, “I have decided that Selima and the boys should stay at Aunt Bellore's until the work is completed.”

  “Am I going too?” I had spoken against my will. He had tricked me!

  “No.” His jaw clenched, frightening me.

  Was this a punishment for my muteness? I must have looked as crestfallen as I felt.

  “You don't wish, to stay here with me?”

  “I would like to go with Jonah and Asher.”

  “That will not be possible.”

  “Couldn't I go to my grandparents' house for a visit?”

  He crossed the room and sat on my bed. “No, Dinah. You mustn't bother them.”

  “They want me.” I stared at him accusingly—an expression I had perfected. Unexpectedly his face softened. This was more like the kind father of my memories, the father whose lips seemed to smile in repose.

  “I have a better plan.” He waited a few beats. “I need to do some traveling. Would you like to come with me upriver to Patna?”

  “No, thank you,” I said politely to ward off the scary face.

  “Why ever not?”

  How could I trust this man who had been absent so much of my life? The moment he had returned, everything had gone wrong at the trial, with my grandparents, and then the final insult, the destruction of my mother's possessions. What might he do if I displeased him someday?

  He gave me a fair chance to respond, then looked at me with a sleepy half-lidded expression. “Perhaps you will change your mind.”

  I forced my lips to remain immobile.

  “All right, Dinah, I will leave now, but if you decide you might like to come with me—”

  “I won't change my mind!”

  “If that is so, you will be the first woman on earth to be so steadfast.” His head tipped back, then flung forward like a rag doll's, and the noise was meant as a laugh, but it sounded more like a wooden wheel arguing with the road.

  The next week dragged by unmercifully, until a Sabbath visit with my grandparents. My grandfather did not leave his bed and his power of speech was diminished to a few grunts. My grandmother, on the other hand, was attentive to me. When I told her about my father's offer, I expected she would side with me.

  Instead she said, “You must do as he says. He means well.”

  “I don't want to go.”

  Nani was thoughtful. Then she spoke with deliberate pauses. “Benu has always tried to do . . . what is . . . correct. He is . . . confused, as you are . . . and your grandfather and I are.” Pain lashed her brow. She must have known that he had burned her daughter's possessions and had been attempting to wipe away his association with her family. She must have known how the Raymonds were perceived by the Sassoons and the rest of the Jewish community. Even so, she struggled to leave me with healing words. “Try to be . . . kind to him.”

  I was furious. “But, Nani—”

  She cut me off. “He is your father and he . . . cares for you.”

  Before I left, she gave me a few lessons, but these I completed in less than a week, and soon was left with time on my hands. There was little to do, no babies to amuse. The workmen's progress was of interest for but a few moments a day. Otherwise I stayed at the far end of the house attempting to read my mother's books. Laboriously I copied from the first chapter of Lorna Doone:

  Here by the time I was twelve years old, I had risen into the upper school, and could make bold with Eutropius and Caesar—by aid of an English version—and as much as six lines of Ovid. Some even said that I might before manhood, rise almost to the third form, being of a persevering nature; albeit, by full consent of all (except my mother), thick-headed.

  As I replaced my pen, wondering what it might be like to attend a real school, my father walked into the room and studied my penmanship from behind my chair.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  I did not look up. “I am going to school.”

  “Who gave you this to write?”

  “My teacher.”

  “Your Nani?”

  “No, my teacher.”

  Despite his attempt to speak genially, his tone became exasperated. “I do not recall hiring a teacher.”

  “I teach myself.” I tried to concentrate on the next line: “But that would have been, as I now perceive, an ambition beyond—”

  He lifted the pen from my grasp. “When we return, I will find you a proper school. Would you like that?”

  I still had not looked at him. “After we return?”

  “From our journey on. the Ganga.”

  My head spun around. His lips were pressed tightly; his eyes were clear, purposeful. Where would an argument get me? Besides, I was more than ready to be released from the boredom of the house.

  “May I bring some books?”

  “A few.”

  “And my paints?”

  “If you wish. Now, go upstairs to Yali. She is preparing your clothing. After you tell her what else to pack, we are going to your grandparents' for a final visit.” He grimaced as he saw the effect of his news. Large droplets skimmed my round cheeks, bounced off my chin, and puddled on my blouse.

  “Dinah, please . . .” He scrambled for his handkerchief and tried to dab at the flow, not daring to hold me.

  The crying brought relief. Suddenly my hostility toward him dissolved even though my bitterness did not disappear. It was as if it had been distilled into a fine elixir which I had bottled, corked, and left to be retasted at a later date.

  My father's voice was muffled, but I think he said, “What have we done to you?”

  5

  The day after my seventh birthday, a new phase of my life began. As my father and I wheeled toward the wharf south of the Howrah Bridge, we left the confines of my little world behind and I saw—as if for the first time—the city of Calcutta. At that time it was the second-largest city in the British Empire�
� “What Calcutta thinks today, the rest of the world thinks tomorrow” was its prideful boast—and in those days, before the capital moved to New Delhi, it was the most European of Indian cities. I was to discover far more than this, though. I was on my way to the vast countryside that is the true heart of India.

  A pang stabbed my chest as we passed the immense park called the Maidan—which means a flat, open space. I recalled Mama taking me to hear a band playing in the Eden Gardens section. She had danced me around in a circle, her body moving so sinuously that not only was I enthralled, but two British officers stood by utterly captivated. I saw them before she did, reached for her hand, and tried to follow her steps. She laughed at my clumsiness and turned around. The taller man caught her eye. She did not speak to him, but the intensity of their eye contact frightened me.

  “Mama, don't,” I begged.

  She turned back to the man, smiling conspiratorially at him. “Must do as she says.” Reluctantly she allowed me to pull her away from the imaginary harm.

  I glanced at my father, who was smiling blithely next to me as we turned in the direction of Clive Street so that he could pick up some documents at his office. Soon we headed toward the waterfront.

  At the wharf the British India Steam Navigation Company's steamer Lord Bentinck was waiting for us with a crew of beturbaned sailors standing by smartly. The craft was built like a wedding cake, with five decks, each smaller than the last, until the most diminutive, framed by intricate Indian latticework, crowned the top. Along the sides were two large paddle wheels painted yellow. My father had arranged for three cabins, one for himself, one for Yali and me, and a private sitting room where we could also take our meals.

  “Where will your bearer stay?” I asked after seeing the accommodations.

  “Abdul will sleep on deck outside your door.”

  This made sense to me, since a male servant had protected me every night since the murder.