Flowers in the Blood

by Gay Courter

  I crawled back into the wreckage of my sedan, propping the broken supports so they formed a rude shelter that would protect me from the blazing sun. An hour must have passed before the need to urinate overwhelmed me. My arm, if I held it perfectly still, throbbed, but did not shoot excruciating barbs down my left side. I thought I could get to the side of the roadway. The movement made the pain more severe, but I gritted my teeth and found I could tolerate it. Crouching in the high grass, I relieved myself, but as I stood up, a shooting pain caused me to lose my balance. I toppled to the left, slamming my arm into a clod of earth. The blow felt as if I had been impaled by a hot iron, and I screamed. A quiver shot up my spine as I waited to be saturated with pain again. The absence of the sharp sensations was even more unnerving. With a guarded movement I touched my elbow. As long as I held the arm to my chest at a particular angle, there was a deep soreness, but nothing like the searing torment I had felt before. I found a seat on a slight rise above the road and tried to figure out what I must do.

  The bearers had cried, “Thugs!” What did it mean? Bewildered, feeling abandoned, I began to cry.

  When I became thirsty I rooted around in the palanquin to see if any jugs had been spared. Remarkably, a small one had been cushioned enough so only the lip had cracked. A full cup of liquid remained, which I drank down at once. I debated pulling the litter to the embankment, but decided against it for two reasons: I would be harder to spot, and even more pressing in my mind was the thought that beasts lurking in the forest would prefer me under the trees than in the clear. Many times during the paddle-boat journey we had spied tigers along the riverbank, particularly in the twilight hours. They slipped between the trees, revealing a shock of tail, or glint of eye, or sinuous ripple of body, never the whole flank of cat. I recalled that tales of tiger shoots had been a favorite among the passengers, and I hoped they were lapping up the river waters and not foraging inland that night.

  As I was trying to push thoughts of tigers out of my mind, a rustle in the bushes on the opposite side of the road froze me. A pair of enormous eyes glinted. “Missy-baba . . .” came the whisper. A terrifying moment passed before I realized that tigers did not speak. I focused on the short, muscular man who stood before me. He was one of the bearers who had bolted. He said he would take me back to the opium factory. I did not think the gomastah would be particularly pleased to see me again, so I pointed in the direction we had been going.

  “Too far for baba-log, little people.” He touched my sore arm, causing me to leap in pain.

  “Ail” I cringed.

  He apologized, then scooped me into his arms, cradling me like a baby the whole way back to the refinery.

  The bearer talked excitedly to the gomastah and his wife, boasting of how he had saved me from the thugs. The woman was wearing a pale violet sari that flattered her luminescent skin. Seeing me frightened and in pain, she caressed my hair and cooed to me as she would to an infant. When I was calm, she had me stand before her while she ran her fingers lightly down my dislocated arm. Delicately she pressed around the elbow joint, then walked her fingers down to my wrist and up to my shoulder. Then she went to the shelf over a charcoal stove and poured hot water out of a brass bowl. She filled this with an aromatic oil which she warmed over the coals. After dipping her hands in the glistening pool, she dabbed the back of my hand, my inner arm, my elbow. The pressure of her massage unexpectedly increased, but before I could back away in protest, her fingers worked in unison to crack and snap my joint. I felt as if I had been lifted from the floor by some unseen force, then lowered harshly. I blinked, gasped, and dared to glance at my injured arm. It looked normal! Tentatively I moved it to the right and left. I grinned at the kindly woman, who lowered me onto a mat and offered me a platter of steaming vegetables, puffed bread, and cups of sweet tea.

  While I ate, the gomastah discussed what they should do. I understood enough of their language to realize they were anxious to be of service to me. With their tampered opium exposed, they faced ruin— not only for that season, but perhaps forever if they lost their license to process for the government. Here was a way to win my father's silence and gain back their good name.

  Very quietly they questioned me about what had happened, the woman speaking to me, then relating my words to her husband, who remained at a distance so as not to frighten me further. They seemed agitated as I described the blow to my father's neck and shoulders and his swift disappearance. The gomastah called in the bearer to ascertain where the incident had occurred, then ran off to rally laborers for a search.

  I sipped tea and watched the antics of a baby beginning to walk while the woman again massaged my sore arm with the warm, perfumed oil. I fell asleep on a charpoy—a rude cot—awakening to a familiar voice. Mr. Joseph had come for me.

  “I became worried because I knew your father would not be late for the seder,” he explained. He and his eldest son had ridden out by horseback and had become even more alarmed when they found my palanquin in the road.

  “Papa is missing!” I sobbed.

  “No, he is with my son David. The thugs left him only a mile from Monghyr.”

  “What is a thug?”

  “They belong to the thuggee sect of religious criminals who are devotees of the goddess Kali. Posing as traders or pilgrims, they have been known to join wayfarers they intended to rob or—” He caught himself and did not explain that thugs almost always killed their victims, usually by strangulation with a knotted silk handkerchief.

  “Is Papa all right?” I asked impatiently.

  “He was hit with one blow and his satchel was robbed, but once he was free, he was able to walk toward town for help.”

  As the gomastah began babbling about the miracle of being spared by a thug, Mr. Joseph hushed him quickly, saying, “These men only wanted coins or valuables, and they got what they required.”

  After the gomastah's wife had bound my arm to my chest so it would not shake as we rode, one of her servants, a boy my size, brought over something swaddled in his arms. He unwrapped a cotton binding to reveal pointed ears and soft, trusting eyes. “Shareef,” he said, touching the animal's velvet black nose. “If s gentle.” Holding it tightly, he lifted its arms to reveal a transparent membrane and grasping feet. It was a flying squirrel.

  I dared to stroke its soft fur and was thrilled that it did not squirm away from me.

  “For you,” the boy said as he placed the bundle in my arms.

  “Dhanyabad,” I gasped in thanks. “I shall call him Shareef.” I beamed up at Mr. Joseph, who seemed anxious to be on his way.

  The gomastah's wife bent to me and whispered, “You please tell your honored father what we have done for you tonight so he will look upon us with kindness.”

  I nodded. She lifted me and my furry treasure into the saddle in front of Mr. Joseph. I waved farewell with my good arm.

  When we arrived at the Joseph house, my father came out to greet me. His head was swathed in a bandage, his eyes bloodshot and blackened. “Dinah! Thank God you are safe!”

  “The gomastah took care of me and his wife fixed my broken arm,” I blurted in a burst of prompted loyalty. “And look what they gave me!” I held out Shareef for his approval.

  “What is this?”

  “A flying squirrel.” I showed him the folded skin that stretched out to form its wings.

  He shrank back.

  “It is ever so quiet. Say I may keep it!”

  My father's gaze met that of Mr. Joseph. The latter shrugged as if to say it would be impossible to deny me anything after what had happened. “I suppose so.”

  “I'll take good care of him, I promise.”

  As Yali took the animal from me, Papa folded me in his arms. “Come, now. You must wash up and get ready.”

  “For what, Papa?”

  “It is Passover, remember?”

  Even though it was late, the Josephs escorted us to the table, and the seder, the ancient celebration of deliverance from bondage, commen
ced.

  In between the familiar courses there was hushed talk of what had happened.

  “I bet they were surprised when they realized they had attacked a Sassoon,” Mr. Joseph whispered.

  “I think that was the point,” my father replied. “They never meant to harm either of us. They were merely protecting the gomastah.”

  “How is that possible? There was not enough time to instigate a plan. You yourself said it happened less than an hour after you had words with the gomastah.”

  “The gomastah must have known the moment I selected out those four balls for testing that he was doomed. The boiling, refining, and smoking process took several hours. That gave him plenty of time.”

  The men nodded sagely at each other. The incident was part of the cost of their trade.

  The lesson in panic, deceit, and retribution had been well-learned. I have never discovered—nor, so many years after, has it been possible to ferret out the answer—whether or not the gomastah's opium was boycotted that year or afterward. Somehow, though, I believe it was not.

  7

  By the time we entered Calcutta—this time by rail—I had accumulated only sixty-four names for the Ganges.

  “I need forty-four more.”

  “Which is your favorite?”

  “Bhinna-brahmanda-darpini, taking pride in the broken egg of Brahma.”

  “That is wonderful,” Papa said, laughing.

  “Now, how shall I get the rest?”

  “Keep asking. Keep listening,” was all he would say. He turned away, only slightly, but I remember feeling a chill come between us that I had not sensed since I had questioned him too closely about my mother.

  Suddenly I did not want the trip to end. I moved closer to him on the seat and laid my head on his arm. Did I imagine him stiffen? Was this how it was going to be from now on?

  Despite my sadness, the last minutes of our closest moments together drew to a close as, three months after the start of the journey, my father and I emerged into the chaos of Calcutta's Howrah Station. I was taller, browner, and in many other ways a changed child from the frightened, angry daughter who had walked up the Lord Bentinck's gangplank. The station's waiting rooms and platforms were smothered with humans engaged in every activity from sleeping to cooking to eating to wandering about in random patterns. Abdul organized a file of porters to carry cases of opium samples and our personal effects. The most precious souvenir, tiny Shareef, never left my side. The Josephs' sweeper had made him a home in a basket with a tight lid, which I insisted on carrying myself. Yali went ahead to locate a rickshaw for Papa and me. Once outside, I caught sight of Howrah Bridge, where a mass of men and merchandise in bullock-carts, buffalo-carts, gharries, rickshaws, and palanquins jolted over the humps where the pontoon sections were joined.

  Soon my world would be narrowed to the houses in the Jewish districts bounded to the north by the old Jewish quarter around the synagogues—near my grandparents' house on Lower Chitpur Street— and the mansions of the Sassoons and the wealthier merchants who had established themselves along the opulent streets south of Park Street and east of Chowringhee Road. I didn't care. I was home.

  The servants went to open Theatre Road while Papa and I were welcomed at Kyd Street.

  “How dark you are,” Aunt Bellore exclaimed. “Doesn't your father know about bonnets or topees?” She looked sternly at her brother. “How tall you've grown! You must be a head above Sultana already.” She thumped Shareef's basket. “Let the bearer take that.”

  I grasped it tightly.

  “What do you have in there?”

  I looked at Papa with beseeching eyes.

  “Leave her be. It is only a pet she received from a friend.”

  “Bizzoonah!” Aunt Bellore cried, using a superstitious oath. “It may carry the evil eye into this house.”

  “I did not know my sister adhered to the ways of the ignorant ones,” he replied scornfully.

  “I won't have a filthy animal in the house!”

  “Bellore, please, after everything—”

  “She cannot always have her way.”

  “Just this once,” my father pleaded. “We'll be here only a few hours.”

  Bellore thrust her bosom forward and padded away angrily.

  I ran off to the nursery, where I showed my brothers and cousins what was in my basket.

  “Does he really fly?” asked Cousin Abigail.

  “Not like a bird.” I demonstrated by setting him on the top of the pole that held up her mosquito netting. Shareef glided halfway across the room and landed at my feet.

  Jonah rushed behind him to see if he would fly up. “Don't scare him,” I admonished. “He can't flap his wings, he just uses them like a sail.” I picked up my pet and stroked him until the thumping in his breast diminished.

  “Let me hold him,” Cousin Sultana demanded. She plucked him from me and nestled him in her lap. “What does he eat?”

  “Berries and nuts . . . insects too, but only if they are alive.”

  “Ugh!” Sultana and Lulu made faces. Abigail brought over a red grape and tried to shove it in his mouth. Shareef sniffed, but did not eat it. She kept pushing it until it burst and the flying squirrel began to lick it off her finger.

  “He bit me!” she shrieked, causing her ayah to come running.

  Seeing the finger dripping with the sticky grape juice, her ayah sent for Aunt Bellore.

  “He will have to go,” my aunt said when she saw Shareef quaking in his basket. “Your father has no sense allowing you to have an animal that carries diseases.”

  “He didn't bite Abigail.” I looked pleadingly up at my father, who stood in the doorway surveying the scene.

  In response, he came forward to examine Abigail's finger. “She's fine.”

  Aunt Bellore shook her head. “Benu, you should not indulge the girl.”

  Papa grinned conspiratorially at me and my fear for my new pet vanished.

  It seemed his benevolence was extended the next day as well, when he permitted me to spend the afternoon at my grandparents' home. I was dismayed to see Nana had deteriorated. He barely spoke, and he hardly seemed to understand the tales I told him.

  “Did you do your lessons?” Nani asked as we sat under the banyan tree in the small garden.

  “Yes, Nani. I finished my books the first month.”

  “Now, what are we going to do to keep that mind of yours occupied?” she asked, passing me a dish filled with jelebis.

  “Papa said I might go to a real school.”

  For a moment she looked doubtful. At that time there were no Jewish schools in Calcutta, although learned men in the community gave religious instruction to children, mostly boys. There were many British schools, but only a few Jewish families allowed their sons to attend these. “I'll see what I can find,” she promised.

  I can't recall spending more than a few minutes with my father in the subsequent days. He would rush off to his Clive Street offices or to visit friends, with no more, than a brief farewell. Fortunately, the second week after my return, I was permitted to join the classes of Mrs. Hanover, a Christian missionary who had managed to attract more than a hundred students from the Jewish community by promising not to inculcate them with Christian beliefs. I found the lessons ridiculously simple, but enjoyed the companionship of the other children. Still, I was bereft that my father never returned home before I was put to bed. I was expected to take most meals with my brothers in the nursery and follow the same routine as before our journey together, but I resented having to eat with the babies. Even worse was having to sleep alone.

  One evening, while my father was dressing for dinner, I sat in his chair, examining his collection of stiff collars. “Where are you going?” I asked petulantly.

  “To your Uncle Reuben's house. It's his birthday.”

  “Why can't I come?”

  “There will be no children.”

  “There were no children in Patna or Monghyr or—”

  �
��That's enough, Dinah.” He stared at me with a coldness I had not seen in many months.

  I ran to my room, closed my door, made certain the tattie mats covered the windows securely, and let Shareef out of his basket. I lay down on my bed and allowed the flying squirrel to walk over me. Shareef crouched by my pillow and, licked the tears that streamed down my face. What had I done wrong? Why didn't he like me anymore?

  Yali tiptoed in to check on me. “What is the matter, Dinah-baba?”

  I turned my back to her.

  “Tell me,” she pleaded with her soft doe eyes.

  “Why doesn't Papa want me around?”

  “He does want you here. Why else would we be living in this house?” she replied simplistically.

  “He is never home.”

  “He goes to the office, he sees his family, his friends.”

  “But in Patna—” I sniffed.

  “That was different. A man needs to be with other men and women.”

  And women! Patna! I remembered the woman in his bed. Was that what this was about?

  My tears flowed even harder. “I wish we could go away again. Then he wouldn't need anyone else.”

  “Don't talk nonsense,” she said in a distressed voice. “You are his little girl. Nothing can change that.”

  “Then why, when he is home, does he prefer to be alone?”

  “A man needs to rest after work. You'll see, in a few weeks everyone will have their holiday and everything will be sorted out.” Yali's tone was more wistful than convincing, but I tried to believe her.

  Then, as if to prove her wrong, the first week of June my father left us at Kyd Street while he went off to Darjeeling to escape the heat. “Why won't you take us with you?” I had asked, since many families went to that hill station for the hottest months of the year.

  “You would not want to miss school, would you?”

  “We have a long break.”

  “The boys are too young.”

  “I could go with you.”

  “No, Dinah. This is a trip I must take alone.”