by Gay Courter
I remain your devoted friend,
Silas Luddy
My eyes brimmed. “Have you read this, Papa?”
“Can't you see it was sealed?”
“Must I show it to you?”
Nani leapt in. “Of course not!” Then, more wistfully, “Only if you wish to.”
“Who is Lucretia Mott?”
Grandmother Flora shrugged.
“Nobody I know,” Papa replied. “Why? Is she a friend of the Luddys?”
“I don't think so,” I said. Taking care not to soil the paper, I folded the letter and replaced it in its envelope. “You may send word to Zilpah that Mr. Luddy interests me,” I said flatly before dashing from the room.
I could not sleep that night. The words of the letter tumbled together, their meanings fragmented and exciting. As much as the letter introduced a man, it caused me to ask a hundred questions that would never before have occurred to me. Should I blithely accept the man on the faith of one letter and the recommendations of my parents? I was too intrigued to say anything negative, too frightened by the sheer force of a personality to know how to proceed. At dawn, drifting in my thoughts, the idea came: I would write a reply!
I took pen in hand and tried a few phrases. Everything seemed so stilted, so puerile compared with his felicity of expression. I reread his letter half a dozen times. The phrase “through life's offerings of prosperity and adversity” continued to intrigue me. Where had I heard that before? I pulled down my Latin books, leafed through them wildly, until the words lined themselves up for my approval. I began again:
24 August 1890
Dear Mr. Luddy,
My father gave me your letter and I will admit that, until I read it, I thought I could not even contemplate a union with a person I had never met. I continue to believe it impossible to make promises before we are able to speak to each other face-to-face, but at least your words have convinced me that many levels of compatibility might exist between us.
I have heard about your large library and your scholarly interests. I would hope we both might find more amusement in sharing these pursuits than in the more fleeting satisfactions of society. I have no qualms about living in Darjeeling. In fact, it is my fondest desire to visit the place I have heard so many people praise.
As Cicero wrote in Pro Archia Poeta, “These studies are a spur to the young, a delight to the old; an ornament in prosperity, a consoling refuge in adversity; they are pleasure for us at home, and no burden abroad; they stay up with us at night, they accompany us when we travel, they are with us in our country visits.”
I look forward to the day when we shall meet.
Your friend,
Dinah Sassoon
I had copied the quotation from Cicero in Latin, but had torn up the page and begun again when I realized he might not be able to translate it. After I had rewritten the letter, I decided that a man educated in England probably knew his Latin and that he might think I was patronizing him by doing the translation. I began the letter again, halting to remind myself this was not some childish contest. Mr. Luddy's words had been in English; so my words should also be. I settled on the first, regretting my penmanship was not an equal to his, nor my quotation as original. Still, I had established myself as having an interest, without agreeing blindly; and I had given him a window into my mind.
The final decision was the most difficult: did I give the envelope to my father or did I post it myself? To hand it to my father would show I trusted him to deliver it unopened, but it could also indicate that my father had required I write it—a message that would cancel my attempt at independence. To post it would mean I dared circumvent my parents and might show too much initiative for a girl in my position. Which would Mr. Luddy prefer? I searched his letter for a clue. “I especially admire . . . your high spirits” meant he would like to receive a letter directly from me, yet he also mentioned “the devotion you have shown . . . older members of your family,” which implied he liked a person to be respectful. My head pounded with the import of my decision, until “. . . overcome the sadness that has been a part of your short life . . .” popped out at me. This had to be his way of saying he knew about my mother and the disgrace, and he admired rather than thought less of me for it. I concluded I need not tread a line of prim propriety for his sake. Indeed, he might prefer me to act for myself. Eventually, and without total conviction in the soundness of my rationale, I sent the letter on my own.
13
Silas Luddy and his father came for tea the fifteenth of September 1890. By that time we had written a dozen letters back and forth. I knew the names of his cats and servants; he knew the antics of my sisters and brothers. He told me about the system he was working on to catalog his library, which had resulted in a preliminary count of more than seventeen hundred volumes. I tallied the ones I had inherited from my mother, offering to add her hundred and fifty books as my contribution to his collection.
The arrangement between my father and his father was that after we met, the wedding date would be selected. Zilpah planned the day with military precision. At exactly three in the afternoon the gharry which had been sent to fetch them from the station appeared. From an upstairs window I watched as a slender man in a tall black hat, followed by a balding man, his topee in his hand, stepped out.
“Let me see. What does he look like?” Ruby pushed me back.
“A mustache! Dinah, he will tickle you!” She ran off giggling.
Before I had a chance to wonder how I felt about the mustache, Yali was tugging me to the landing. I was to walk down the stairs and greet the Luddys in the vestibule. My sky-blue silk dress had full pagoda sleeves topped with large bows. The design had come from Grandmother Helene, who had asked if she might meet Mr. Luddy. “No,” Zilpah had replied, “the man is not on exhibition. Her parents and her grandmother are enough for any man to face.” However, when Grandmother Helene had asked to supervise my gown, Zilpah had deferred. What did she know of fashion? She wore only saris. Grandmother Flora would have been no help, since she still wore the traditional dress of the Baghdadi Jews. Because Grandmother Helene thought bustles were outmoded, her dressmaker had fashioned me a narrow bodice that fell smoothly without folds. “You have nothing yet to hide,” she said, by way of a compliment. She also told the dressmaker to keep the length demure but to be certain it cleared the ground, “since Dinah is apt to trip if she is excited.”
Making certain my fingertips brushed the banister just in case, I made my way down the marble staircase in the manner I had practiced: head held high, looking forward, not down at my feet or at my visitor. I paused at the bottom step and glanced over at my father.
“Ah, here she is now,” he said, trying to be nonchalant, but fooling nobody. “May I introduce my daughter Dinah? Dinah, this is Mr. Maurice Luddy.”
I curtsied to the father. His sideburns were snow white and his skin leathery from the high-altitude sun.
“And his son Mr. Silas Luddy.”
I turned in what I hoped was a graceful maneuver, but my heel caught in the crack between the tiles and I slipped slightly sideways. Catching myself in time, I offered my hand. Silas Luddy held it for a few beats—without either a clasp or a shake—before releasing it. His palm was cool. I concentrated on the length of his smooth fingers, the most elegant I had ever seen on a man. When I dared look up at him, I realized we were looking eye to eye. His gaze was riveted at the peaks in my sleeves, and his expression showed thinly veiled disgust. Suddenly I was as appalled by the frivolity of the dressmaker's concoction. Why, the bows were even higher than his shoulders! The color was garish next to the gray of his immaculate cutaway.
After we made our mumbled greetings, Zilpah led the tense group into the hall. She pointed us to pur seats and we behaved as dutifully as children on the first day of school.
Immediately my father feigned a riveting interest in the history of the tea business. “Am I right that it was once believed that tea could never flourish in India?”
he began.
“That's correct,” Maurice Luddy responded cheerfully. “As you may know, the first trials were grown at low altitudes, resulting in such a poor grade we thought the experiment a failure. From my travels in China, I thought tea was essentially a hill plant. Would anyone listen to me? Absolutely not.”
Zilpah interrupted long enough to offer him pastries. As he tasted several, he complimented her, “Splendid almond sumboosak, always my favorite. And may I say I heartily approve of the quality of your tea!” He winked before continuing, “Robert Fortune and I persuaded some Chinamen to assist in the—shall we say—quiet removal of several casks of seeds from Canton.”
My father nodded respectfully, as one smuggler to another.
“In the first batch of seed, forty-two thousand plants were successfully raised, two thousand of which were allotted to the Madras presidency and forty thousand to Assam. I told them it was ludicrous to waste So many in those intemperate locations.” Luddy guffawed loudly. “Eventually I was able to acquire twenty thousand for my experiment in the Himalayas.”
While the older men dominated the discussions, I took sidelong glances at Silas Luddy. He hardly moved a muscle, even to take refreshment. I had not expected such a grave, unemotional man. His face seemed so flat, so without lines or movement, I wondered if he ever laughed or cried. I had expected someone pensive, someone of a serious demeanor, but not this sculptured coldness. Particularly prominent was his mustache, which was so tapered at the edges it appeared a waxen addition. I supposed he was trying to offset his extremely wide lips, but for me the effect was to draw attention to rather than detract from them. As I studied his individual features, though, I found nothing unpleasant about them. His forehead was high, and his hair, parted exactly in the middle, was cut with such precision it might have been painted on with thick strokes of tar. His nose was straight and of a moderate length. The whole face was slightly wider on the left than the right, but had a generally oval shape, with a tapering at the chin. The neck was thin, with a prominent Adam's apple protruding above the collar. More notable than anything else was his skin tone. My father had described it as “ivory,” which was perhaps as apt a term as any, yet its cast had more ash in it—the color of stone.
I tried to imagine touching his face with my lips. An unexpected revulsion knotted my stomach. My mouth filled with saliva. Only a quick sip of warm tea relaxed my throat enough to prevent me from having to rush from the room.
The fathers continued endlessly discussing the specifics of tea cultivation, travels in China, and the difficulties in dealing with Indian laborers. I could not drink another drop of tea without the pressure on my bladder becoming painful, yet Silas Luddy looked as if he could sit in that same position the whole day without discomfort. The words in his letters had brought visions of someone taller, broader, pinker in flesh, softer in demeanor. I looked at his crumbless plate, the napkin folded neatly. How could I tolerate a man with so little animation, a man so pallid, a man who, if laid on his back, could be taken for someone dead? Once again I was struggling to swallow the bile in my throat, when the fathers rose in unison. As if pulled by an invisible string, Silas leapt up.
What was happening? Zilpah was saying something about the pleasure of meeting them . . . and my father was being told where the Luddys were staying . . . they were responding they would be seeing him the next morning . . . and then everyone was staring at me. I found myself standing as well, though I did not recall getting up. I
glanced down. My dress was crushed and looked even worse than before. The color did not flatter me. I swore never again to wear blue.
Thankfully, the women were not expected to see the Luddys off. As soon as the door to the drawing room closed, I said, “I am afraid I drank too much tea.” Using the servants' entrance, I made my way through the back of the house and upstairs to the bathroom. I splashed my sweating face with cool water, and without removing my dress, I fell upon my bed in a heap of hopelessness.
Nothing about Mr. Luddy appealed to me. Nothing! How could someone so charming on paper have had so little to say? Not ten words had been exchanged between us. And when he did speak, his voice cracked in pitch like a schoolboy's. Besides, I had looked preposterous in that frivolous dress. My movements had been jerky, awkward, and I had behaved like a mute idiot! Grasping the offending fabric in my hand, I twisted the slimy silk cruelly. By now he would be begging his father to rescind his offer. What would the elder Luddy say? The fathers had seemed pleased with the match. And Zilpah, who was thrilled to be getting rid of me, had glowed throughout the afternoon. What a victory for her to mate me with a half-breed whose only saving grace was a mind that—if I kept my eyes and ears closed—transcended his physical repugnance.
What could I do? What other choice did I have? Even Nani was sanctioning this union. I thought of myself isolated on some frozen Himalayan glacier, tormented by Silas Luddy's vacant stare, the howling wind my only companion, and I pounded the pillow in fury. Exhausted, I lay back and turned over on my side.
Zilpah peered in at the door. “Your grandmother would like to speak with you before she leaves.”
I wiped my streaked face with the back of my hand. “I cannot come down, not now.”
She replied in her most masculine register, “You are not pleased, is that it? Why? Doesn't Mr. Luddy speak as eloquently as he writes? Well, I am certain your letters must have flattered you as well.” She noted the alarm on my face. “Did you think we did not know about your correspondence?” She tossed her head. “Dinah, you have a history of secret letters.” Her reminder was thrust like a knife, and I flinched. “Your father encouraged Mr. Luddy to write to you the first time because we were certain you would reply privately—and so you did!”
She crossed her arms on her chest. “Don't look at me with those big cow eyes. We know you better than you know yourself. Unless you took the initiative, unless you participated in the game, we knew you would never accept our choice.”
“Choice? You call that a choice?”
“Dinah, when you come to your senses you will realize we are not Brahmins who sell their daughters in infancy without a care for their feelings.” She rushed on without taking a breath. “Through the difficulties in finding a husband, your welfare and your future happiness were paramount in every decision we made. You will never know how much it pained me when I had to advise you of the realities of your position in language you would never forget. Nevertheless, I did my duty. It is not easy to have to replace two mothers in a family. Nobody could have tried harder than I have.” At last she paused, refilled her lungs, and continued even more forcefully, “Whose idea do you think it was to look in Darjeeling after searching the gutters of Calcutta for any man who might have you?” She came over to my bed and peered down at me. “Now, stop behaving as though you were the most eligible Jewish girl in India and come downstairs at once.”
Traumatized by her outburst, I bolted up and backed away from her.
“Dinah, your grandmother is waiting.” Her nostrils twitched and her lips made that fishy movement I found annoying. “In her condition she can hardly climb the stairs, but that is exactly what she'll do if that is the only way to reach you.”
I felt as though I had been slapped. “I'm sorry. Tell Nani I'll be down in a moment.”
I found Grandmother Flora alone out on the terrace, her feet elevated by a servant. One look at my face told her everything she wanted to know. “Dinah, you don't like him.”
“It's not that . . . he was not what I expected—foolish of me to have had a picture in my mind . . . I suppose .I'll adjust, but . . .”I broke out in heaving sobs and fell into her outstretched arms.
With my face pressed to her soft bosom, I could hear the uneven flutters of her heart. “Don't worry, I am not going to refuse him,” I said without lifting my head.
“You think you should do as your father wishes.”
“I must. You know that, Nani.”
“You are the one who
will pledge your life to him.” She must have felt me shudder. Stroking my hair, she murmured, “He seems a kind, gentle, well-educated man. Already you have common interests. This glue will bind you more than any other aspect of marriage. Don't be afraid of the other, it is but a brief interlude between a man and a woman. If you took the time the average man and woman are married as an ocean, the moments of physical closeness are but a single bucket lifted from that sea. Most couples share so much more. Remember your Nana? I developed an interest in medicine and helped him in his consulting room. How much more we had to talk about then. If an association is limited to domestic matters, life becomes tiresome indeed. And I know you, my child—your active mind requires an intellectual companion. Didn't you tell me he was more than your match?”
“Yes, Nani, but I imagined there would be something tugging me toward him. If anything, I felt the opposite.”
“What else could you expect under those circumstances? You were not alone together for even a few minutes. What one says in the presence of parents is bound to be stilted. You told me his letters were appealing. By himself he surely would be quite altered from the stiff young man trying to make no blunders, in the same way you were the cornered prey trying not to anger your captors.”
I laughed at this image and sat upright. “I hope you are right.” Nani smoothed back my hair. “He didn't like my dress, did he?”
She tweaked one of my shoulder bows. “I thought you charmed him.”
“It was not to his taste,” I said, fluffing up the skirt. “Not mine either, but I was too afraid to speak against Grandmother Helene, who is supposed to know much more about these things than I do.”
“Further evidence of compatibility, perhaps?” Her eyebrows raised jauntily. “Both you and Mr. Luddy are practical people who are put off by frivolities.” Her voice lowered to a more serious tone. “I understand why you did not speak out on the matter of the dress, but in the future, if you keep your own counsel, you will make fewer mistakes. Dinah, you are a sensible girl. You must do what you think appropriate in every matter, even this one. If you don't feel you can marry Mr. Luddy, then put an end to this right now.”