by Gay Courter
“Two women in two years!” I overheard one Arakie say.
“At least Helene can enjoy some comfort,” her cousin added.
“Unlucky house, unlucky children,” another commented under her breath.
Despite these worrisome words, the clatter of the boisterous Arakies was a wonderful tonic. With a game or conversation or amusement always under way, there had been little time to reflect on the loss of my two mothers, my adored grandfather, my faraway father. Then one Sabbath afternoon—we had all attended services that morning, requiring eleven carriages, some making several trips—Aunt Bellore and her brothers Uncle Saul and Uncle Reuben arrived unexpectedly. Their interview with Helene was short and grim. By that evening I learned what had transpired: she had been ordered to leave before my father arrived a few weeks hence. The running of the house was to be taken over by my far-less-profligate Grandmother Flora.
I was so excited to have Nani back that I am afraid I did not show the proper appreciation or remorse I should have at Grandmother Helene's departure.
I have known indiscriminate women, have even been given that epithet myself by those who became jealous of my attainments, yet even today I believe Grandmother Helene was unfairly maligned by the Sassoons. Neither before nor after her daughter's death had she ever enriched her private purse. Her dress was modest and she took few personal belongings with her. If she fed too many people or overpaid at the market or purchased the finest food and beverages or indulged the servants with baksheesh or days off to visit their families, her motives had been benevolent.
“There is no point to life but to live,” she had said when I had asked permission to resume classes at the Jewish Girls' School after the mourning periods for Mozelle and my grandfather had passed. “What did my Mazal-Tob have? Less than eighteen years. She barely saw her daughter. Her marriage was so brief she hardly knew her husband. Should she have eaten fewer sweets? No! She should have eaten more! Did I indulge her shamelessly during the time she carried her child? No! I should have given more selflessly. Was the doctor right in refusing her the comforts of laudanum? No! She should not have suffered for a moment if there was anything in God's power to spare her.”
In the garden, I looked up at my father and wondered if Mozelle would be alive if he had been there. Seeing my tense expression, he took my hand and led me toward the roses. The older mali was clipping their stalks with shears while the younger lifted the thorny branches into the cart. “Papa, are you going to send Grandmother Flora away now?”
“Do you want her to stay, Dinah?”
“Yes. I am tired of people going away. Besides, she is lonely living by herself.”
“I know, Dinah. I am lonely too.”
He turned away and stared off into the distance, where Selima sat beside Ruby's carriage. Asher and Jonah were rolling a large ball on the lawn. “At least I have my children,” he said, pleasing me enormously. Papa did not need any more wives or mothers-in-law. Everything he required, he already had.
To prove this to me further, Papa did not return to China for the next two years. All his journeys to the opium fields were brief, and his brother Reuben went east in his stead. He took his responsibility as head of our household with utter seriousness. He did not revert to being the companion he had been in Patna, but he was in Theatre Road most every night. Grandmother Flora brought an order and peacefulness to the house that had never existed before. Grandmother Helene visited often, and the older children were permitted to go to her house whenever we wanted. I don't think there were better times for me, except those sublime moments in my mother's arms.
When I was almost eleven, Grandmother Helene prevailed upon my father to take us to Darjeeling. Though I was delighted not to spend another hot season in Calcutta, I was also a bit worried that our trip to Darjeeling might wreak new turmoil in our lives. For me the name conjured up the image of a bazaar where wives were bartered.
The carriage already had been ordered on the morning I woke with a rash. Nobody was allowed to see me until Dr. Hyam arrived. “Chicken-pox,” he pronounced.
“But the high fever, the unusual spots . . .” Nani fretted.
“No, no. Come, look . . .” He waved her to my bedside. “With smallpox the vesicles are depressed in the center, much like a navel. These are flatter.”
Nani sighed with relief. “I suppose she may not travel.”
“Absolutely not. She'd be miserable, and she's infectious. The other children must remain behind, just in case.”
“What about me? Am I in danger?” Papa asked.
“Did you have the pox when you were young?”
“We all did.”
“Then you will not contract it again. Why don't you proceed to the hills? I'll look in on the children every day.”
“No, don't go without me!” I protested, on guard against my father's meeting another woman.
They paid not the slightest attention to me. The heat at that ferocious peak of a Bengali summer caused my skin to swell and scab and itch in an agonizing succession of bumps. I spent days wrapped in a woolen blanket and covered by a linen sheet moistened with sulfur-brewed tepid water. My dreams were of soaring mountains, of fresh white snows, of climbing up and up, holding my father's firm hand. The Darjeeling of my febrile imaginings was a wonderland of jewel-tipped peaks, sugary frosts, peppermint winds, and nubile young girls being poked like melons by men searching for wives. When the fever broke and my worst complaint was the infernal itch, I was bound in a sheet lined with rice flour so I could not scratch. From a tray at my bedside I was dosed with an array of vile-tasting concoctions, including belladonna for headaches and aconitum for the fever. As I endured the cosmoline-lotion soaks and saffron-tea infusions, I berated myself for my lack of compassion for Mozelle's prickly-heat attacks. After the scabs began to form, then fall away, I was horrified to find the little pits that were left behind. Immediately my grandmother began giving me masks of mercurial plaster to avoid permanent pockmarks.
Grandmother Flora set amulets beside the pillows of the healthy children, but just when everyone thought they would be spared, Ruby came down with a horrid case. Pustules formed in her throat, around her eyes—which swelled shut—and spread over every inch of her chubby body. So sick was she that Dr. Hyam sent for Grandmother Helene, who tended her grandchild herself through two long nights of tantrums.
“At least I was quiet,” I bragged to Yali.
“You take after your mother; she takes after hers” was Yali's reply.
At the end of two weeks, Ruby's fevers and spots receded. In the meantime, Dr. Hyam checked Jonah and Asher daily. Pale and skinny Jonah, whose nose ran continuously and whose tummy was the most sensitive in the family, was in high spirits and looked as though he was healthier than ever. “Maybe they will skip this bout,” the doctor said as he left on Monday morning. “If the boys are clear on Thursday, you may leave.”
Thursday morning Asher blossomed. Jonah frolicked during his brother's illness, not succumbing himself until three more weeks had passed. By then we had missed almost the entire season in Darjeeling, but we sent word to Papa that we would soon be on our way. Father posted a letter with a separate card addressed to me: “Dearest Dinah, do not depart. Give this letter to your grandmother and tell her to await our return to Calcutta. Your loving father.”
Our return? I had expected it!
I knew what had happened when my father breathed the thin air of the high hills.
He had gone to the marketplace and had found himself another wife.
“She's black!” Nani gasped as she and I watched my father's arrival. I had been ready to rush out to meet the gharry, but she held me back.
“No, Nani, that must be the ayah.”
“Look,” she hissed, “there is but one woman in the carriage. Anyway, what ayah rides next to the man of the house, eh? An ayah would be sitting on the seat with the children.”
Any last hope crumbled as Father assisted the lady down with a tender maneu
ver. My stomach churned queerly. They paused together and took in the house, their eyes locked on the roof peak, then lowering—in unison—to include my grandmother and me. My father wore a gray suit. She was wearing a pale blue sari with a darker blue border shot with silver threads. Side by side they were the same height, both slender, with straight backs. They could have been brother and sister—if the woman's skin was not the caramel hue of the typical Indian. Gracefully she took his arm, and at the signal of her touch, he steered her toward us.
“Flora”—his face was impassive—”Dinah”—his mouth twitched—”I would like you to meet my wife, Zilpah.”
“Zilpah?” Nani's breathing came in small staccato bursts.
“Zilpah Kehimkar Tassie Sassoon,” said my father, as though he were making a point.
Unable to speak further, Nani merely nodded. I myself was unable to tolerate the sight of either of them and turned to watch the driver lift two boys out of the carriage. Their skin was a honey color—more like that of a Baghdadi Jew who had been too long in the sun.
My father beamed at the boys, waving them forward. Reluctantly they came and stood by their mother. “These are Zilpah's sons, Pinhas and Simon Tassie. Pinhas is almost the same age as Jonah, Simon as Asher.”
A cart drew up, filled with dozens of trunks and cases. “Shall we go in?” Father asked as he guided his newest wife ahead of my grandmother, ahead of me. Even the skinny boys were over the threshold before I was.
Zilpah had not said a word. She glided in my father's wake through the downstairs rooms. Nani disappeared, while I moved in their shadow, trembling as though I had taken a chill as he pointed out the features of the mansion. “. . . I've had the gardens redone . . .” he droned on, crediting Grandmother Helene's designs as his own. From the glacial expression on the woman's face, I could not tell if she was impressed with her new surroundings or merely bored by them. We ended up in the hall.
“Bearer!” Papa called. “Brandy and soda, burra peg,” he said, ordering a large shot. Then he leaned close to the woman's face. “Something for you, my dear?”
Her head tilted slightly, as though she was deferring to him.
“A chota peg, a little something to welcome you to your new home?” he coaxed.
Her black eyes glinted up at him as though he had offered her a jewel. I waited for him to ask what I might like, but he ignored me. When Abdul served them, my father saluted the woman. She raised her glass to his, all the while staring at him so raptly it seemed as though she feared that if she blinked, he might disappear.
I attempted to break this trance. “Papa . . .” My voice choked.
He turned. “Dinah!”
The warmth in his voice thrilled me, and I approached hopefully.
“Why don't you take your new brothers to meet the rest of our little family?”
Having not seen him in almost two months, I did not want to leave yet. “But . . .” I looked for a reprieve. He did not waver and the woman's eyes were filled with a determination that unhinged me. I fled from the room, not even looking back to see if the children were at my heels.
I found my grandmother prostrate in the nursery. Selima was bathing her face with wet cloths.
“Nani, have you taken ill?”
“No, no, Dinah-baba, don't worry yourself,” Yali muttered.
Seeing the horrified expression on my face, Nani pushed herself upright. “Zilpah Tassie. I should have known. I should have remembered!”
“Why, Nani, is there something wrong with her?”
My grandmother started to speak, then stopped herself. She took the glass of coconut water Yali was holding and gulped it down.
“I hate her already!”
“No, no—don't talk like that—hush!” Nani gasped between each phrase.
I thought I had the answer to this new puzzle. Since the circumstances surrounding my mother's murder, I had kept my ears open to the secrets that adults barely concealed. To know that other people had strayed made my own mother's disgraces seem less horrifying. Why, even my father was imperfect. Hadn't I seen him in bed with an Indian lady in Patna? That was what this was! No wonder she was silent around my father. No wonder she made no comments on the house. Papa had not married this dark woman. And if he hadn't, she was not my mother. If she was not really my mother, she could not tell me what to do.
The tingling down my spine decreased. “Don't worry, Nani,” I said brightly, “they are not really married.”
“Pu!” She spat. “You heard your father. He said she was Zilpah Kehimkar Tassie”—she gagged on the last syllables—”Sassoon.”
“Oh.” I blanched. “What kind of a name is 'Zilpah' or 'Kehimkar'?” I bit my lip. “She's not Jewish!”
My grandmother shook her head. “I would agree, but some would not.”
“Why?”
“She calls herself a Jew, but we know that the Bene Israel are impostors.”
“I don't understand . . .”
Nani smoothed her dress. “After I see to the other children, I will try to explain.”
Once she had satisfied herself the nursery tea was proceeding under the ayahs' jurisdiction, Grandmother Flora had our tray set up on a low table in the far corner of the room. Before she could begin, though, I blurted, “What does Bene Israel mean?”
“Supposedly 'Children of Israel.' “ She twirled a spoon in her fingers, then dropped it with a clatter. “They only claim to be Jewish. There is no proof they are.”
I bit into the buttery bread to keep her talking.
“These people tell a tale that has never been proved, something about Galilean Jews who came to India via Egypt. They contend a group of traders was shipwrecked off the western coast of India. They claim most of the travelers, and their possessions—including their Scrolls of the Law—were lost at sea. The seven men and seven women who survived came ashore south of Bombay, where they settled and began to press oil, a task they had done in Galilee.”
“How long ago was this?”
Nani pursed her lips in scorn. “Supposedly before the Maccabean War and the rededication of the Temple. That's why they did not even know about the feast of Chanukah—something they only learned about from a Portuguese Jew from Cochin who tried to teach them something of their own faith.”
I did some quick calculations. “Why, that's more than two thousand years ago. Maybe they aren't really Jews. Maybe they just think they are. She looks like any Indian lady to me.”
“Exactly.” Nani's tone was triumphant.
Suddenly the butter tasted rancid in my mouth, and several sips of sweet tea did not purge the acrid flavor. Had my father married an Indian by mistake?
“She must have been the wife of Jacob Tassie,” Nani said, musing.
“There's a Deborah Tassie at school.”
“The same family.”
“She is not dark-skinned.”
“No, they are also Baghdadis. I had almost forgotten about Jacob Tassie. I can assure you his mother kept the situation as quiet as possible. Jacob was an odd one from the beginning, always in some sort of trouble. Nobody was surprised he came to a bad end.”
“What do you mean?”
“He went up to Darjeeling and met Miss Kehimkar there. We had heard that her father was a military man who had been killed in a skirmish with some hill tribes, leaving her mother a small house, which she opened to Jewish boarders. Jacob Tassie visited there, then stayed on to help turn it into an even larger guest house, which became very popular with the younger set and perfect for Jacob, I suppose, since he enjoyed drinking with his guests. They had some children”—her chin nodded toward Pinhas and Simon, guzzling their tea—”then one day he dropped dead in the street. Some say his heart failed; others said he was wasted from the drink.” Nani grimaced. “At least he had the decency to keep her up in the hills and not try to make her the mistress of a house in Calcutta.”
For a long while I thought about my abruptly changed status and the confusion my father had pour
ed upon me. Ever since my mother's murder, we had lived on the fringes of the Calcutta Jewish community, hardly welcomed by even my father's own family. Now he had brought a new curse upon our heads, one my new friends would surely learn about. I squeezed my eyes shut. I hoped when I opened them I would find I was only dreaming.
Any chance of this was dashed when my father filled the doorway of the day nursery.
“My family,” he said, waving his hand as though he was introducing us to an audience. I followed his proud gaze to where the four little boys sat tossing grapes at one another. Selima was holding a sleepy Ruby on her lap nearby. “Do you think we will need another ayah?” he asked the woman who pressed against his side.
She spoke in a voice that was so different from what I expected, it shattered me further. “Benu, my darling, six are hardly more than four,” she said in a register almost as deep as a man's. “At least not when you have an almost grown girl who should serve her brothers and sisters, and four boys who will eat and sleep together.”
“And what do you think, Flora?” Papa asked respectfully.
Nani stood up slowly, avoiding my plaintive gaze. Making her way to the door, she spoke so close to my father's ear I could barely hear. “I think I shall not be needed in this house much longer.”
The woman in the sari stepped aside to let her pass.
“Don't leave us!” I begged Nani. “Besides, where will you go?”
“I have a home in Lower Chitpur Road.”
“I thought it belonged to Dr. Hyam now.” The doctor had married the previous year and had an infant son.
“I may stay there as long as I like.”
“What about us?”
“Zilpah can manage on her own.”
“You are leaving because you hate her too.”