by Gay Courter
Sabbath prayers were said at the long tables set up in the hall as the Sassoon clan, along with Edwin and Esther Salem, sat down for the meal. After the final blessings, the guests left early. And then, at long last, Grandmother Helene and Zilpah put us to bed in the study downstairs.
When the door closed behind us, Edwin and I stood facing each other, standing farther apart than we had been since before he had slipped the golden ring on my finger. Walking over to an arrangement of blossoms in a Chinese urn, he plucked out a vermilion rose and handed it to me. A few loose petals that had burst open in the heat of the closed room fluttered to the floor. He untied the white velvet ribbon around the urn and pressed the nap to his cheek. “This is you,” he said obliquely. He pointed to a matching vase opposite, filled with white roses and decorated with a red ribbon. “Give me a flower and untie that ribbon for me.”
After finding him a tighter rose, I fumbled with the knot and gave the ribbon over to him as well. He held up both ends in his hands. “Like these ribbons, our lives have been a straight line since birth”—he tied one end of the red to the white—”until now.” He flicked the far ends. “But look, two free ends, each flapping away with the belief they can go their own way.” He handed me the white end and held on to the red himself. Then he gave a tug and my end flew toward him. “See! I caught you unawares, so you yielded to me. Another time I could fall in your direction. However, is this how we wish to live? Will the constant strain on the knot tighten it or break it?”
“Tighten it.”
He gripped the knot. “Indeed, it is firmer for the moment, but perhaps the fabric will weaken, then rip when we least expect it.”
“Edwin!” I laughed at his solemn expression. “What in the world are you talking about?”
“Wait. Let me show you something wonderful.” He wrapped the ribbons around his hand. “Watch what happens next. I could take the obvious approach by tying the loose ends together into a circle, a symbol, like the wedding ring, of the symmetry of marriage. But, with a simple twist we become unified within the curve of time.” He rotated the ribbon, then knotted the ends together. “Now find the end.” He placed my fingers on top and showed me that no matter how long I traced the track, it went on and on and on. “Now do you understand?”
“Yes, Edwin.”
“Do you understand that I have suffered during my life and in my previous lives for this moment of perfection? The ends are tied, first by the vows that joined our minds and second by the act that joins our bodies. From this moment on, you and I are united in perpetual rapture.” His mouth pressed mine while his hands moved across my body with an insistence I had never felt before.
“Nobody lives in ecstasy forever.”
“Why not? You know about Buddhism and the Noble Truths,” he said, finding the hooks at my waist. “Suffering may be universal, but it can be prevented and overcome. For as every drop in the ocean has the taste of salt, so does every word carry the flavor of Nirvana.”
My skirt landed among the petals and flowers on the floor. Then Edwin calmly undressed as well. We let our hands drop from each other long enough to facilitate removing our own undergarments. Edwin's muscular body shone in the light from the candles. I felt no shame as he cupped my breasts, then slid his hands across my hips and down my abdomen. I felt sorry for a bride who was fearful at this most exquisite of moments, and had a fleeting thought of gratitude for having been with Silas long enough to know what a man was like.
“Oh, Dinah, my most beautiful Dinah.” He placed the twisted ribbons over our heads. The circle or curve of time—or whatever—bound us at the shoulders. He pressed his loins against me and eased me toward the bed. “Now I will prove to you that we can live in ecstasy forever, or I will die in the attempt.”
Salt . . . salt in the sea and in tears and in the taste of Edwin's flesh. Salt . . . as in the waves that crashed over me the second time we coupled, this time with me pressing down on him and Edwin sucking my nipples hungrily while kneading my buttocks and pressing up into me with a thrilling, gentle probing that was quite different from his insistent plunging an hour earlier.
And then again, side by side but still as joined as the endless ribbon, we rocked back and forth and gave each other little nibbles and bites until the flurry of spasmodic bursts surprised us both. Perhaps we slept a few hours or perhaps the next hours only felt like a dream as we touched and licked and kissed and found new ways to elicit the same terrific trick of galloping pleasure.
Sunlight crept under the shutters. Blinking, I opened my eyes to see how we looked with my legs placed over Edwin's shoulders. His eyes were bolted closed. His fine jaw was set as he concentrated on his task. Distracted by how beautiful he looked, I watched with fascination as his hair draped across his face.
He kissed me and murmured, “I am not hurting you, am I?”
“No, no . . .” I lied a little, for I was becoming sore.
He collapsed on me. “Well, then you have outlasted me.”
I stroked his hot, moist back. “I wouldn't mind a rest.”
“We don't have to master every chapter the first day.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, the 'twining position,' the 'mare's position,' and what you just attempted, 'the rising position.' “
“Edwin!” I pummeled his buttocks and rolled him off me. “What are you talking about?”
He turned on his side and ran his fingers through my hair, spreading it like a fan on the pillow. “Do you think you are the only one who has ever read the Kama Sutra?”
I turned away from him.
“How lovely and pink you are!” He traced his finger along the lacy pattern on my chest as I attempted to hide my face under a pillow.
There was a knock on the door. “Yes?” he called gaily.
“Chota hazri, sahib,” Abdul said softly. “I shall leave it outside.”
Edwin pressed his ear to the door, and when he heard the steps retreat, opened it.
“Edwin!” I chided, for he had brazenly stepped out naked.
“Hungry?” He placed the tray on the table.
“Hungrier than I have ever been in my life!”
He poured the tea and smothered marmalade onto my toast. “That's good. You must gather your strength for what I have planned for today.”
“Where are we going?” I asked Edwin as we dressed each other before joining my parents and his mother in the dining room.
“I won't tell you even if you torture me.”
“I wouldn't know how to torture you.”
“Oh, yes, you have the ultimate power over me. Even one rejected kiss would be like a whiplash,” he said as he finished buttoning the back of my blouse.
“I could not refuse you even one kiss, so I suppose I shall never know.”
Side by side we ate at one end of the table. Deliberately we ignored the questioning glances of our parents. Benu worked hard to keep Esther Salem's interest in his conversation, while Zilpah concentrated on the other children. Fortunately, Abdul announced that our carriage had arrived before we had to join in any small talk.
“Are you going to the synagogue today?” my father asked.
I looked at Edwin for a response, but he gave an enigmatic smile.
Zilpah shot Benu a withering glance. “I'm sure the children would prefer to be alone,” she said, and told everyone not to bother to see us out.
The high step up to the carriage caused me to wince, but fortunately, Edwin did not notice.
“Where are we going?”
“You will see soon enough.”
“Anything will be better than having the entire community observe us. Besides, I could not bear the thought of you having to sit so far away from me today.”
“I know.” He kissed my neck, and a flash of pleasure shot through me like an arrow.
The day was cool and dry and sunny, the most favorable possibility in Calcutta's stifling repertoire. The mansions that gave the City of Palaces its name
gleamed in their fresh white coats of chunam, or lime, that erased the creeping green damp deposited after the monsoon. The boulevards were dry and sweet-smelling. The street sellers walked with a bounce in their step. The lawns of the Maidan stretched like an enormous green felt with strollers, sportsmen, and military marchers looking like pieces played out on an enormous game table.
The carriage turned to follow the banks of the Hooghly. Just past the walls of Fort William, a forest of masts came into sight. The flags of many countries rippled in the breeze like a flock of mismatched butterflies. There were Chinese ships with an eye painted on either side, clumsy country boats heaped with jute bales, and huge ironclad freighters with gaping holds devouring lines of freight-carrying coolies.
“Here we are,” Edwin said mischievously as we drew up to a budgerow wharf, where several barges were tied in a row. “Four o'clock,” he said to the syce, then took my hand.
We stepped over two barges to the one farthest from land. A turbaned man stripped to the waist bowed to us with his hands pressed together. “I bid you welcome, sahib, memsahib.”
I stood on the creaking deck, looking around with astonishment as two sailors cast off their lines and, wielding their huge oars, pushed us out into the current.
“Come see.” Edwin motioned toward the cabin that covered the back third of the boat. He pushed aside a curtain to reveal a large room surrounded by Venetian windows. Inside, silk carpets covered with huge pillows lined the room's perimeter. Bowls of fruit and flowers filled small tables nailed fast to the floor. Several large tiffin-carriers were set on hot braziers. Aromatic scents of cardamom and turmeric and clove mingled with the ripeness of the muddy ghat.
I reopened the curtain that served as the door and watched as the oarsmen's movements in unison with the flow of the river propelled us swiftly downstream. “Where are we going?”
Edwin gathered me to him. “To the end of the world.”
I looked at the curtain flapping in the breeze. “But the men—”
“Don't worry about them. They face backward, and I warned them that if they turned around, even for a second, I would not pay them. Besides, lying down, nobody can see in.”
In the wake of a steamer, the barge lurched, causing me to fall back onto a mound of cushions. In a split second Edwin was attempting to unfasten the tight buttons at my collar. “Bloody hell,” he growled when he could not undo even one.
“Your fingers are too thick.”
“Your clothes are impossible. I shall force you to wear saris from now on.”
“The Indians are much smarter than we are about many things,” I said as I hurriedly removed the blouse.
“Like the Kama Sutra perhaps?” He winked. “Now, where did we leave off?”
How swiftly he found his mark and how easily I found the rhythm! Now I understood everything: why men and women were kept separated, why young girls were married off, why parents did not trust their children, why chaperones were necessary. I marveled that a few vows had released me from the shackles that bound an unmarried girl and permitted me to embrace a sparkling world of pleasure. Was there ever anything so arousing as flesh pressing flesh? Dry flesh, moist flesh . . . my soft inner thighs next to his downy flank, his taut belly grinding against my softer one, his rippling shoulders and the long cords of his neck arching above me, his dazzling high brow, his warm mouth smiling, kissing, probing me in places I had never imagined I would find stimulating, let alone rapturous.
Later, we remained joined, with legs entwined like Hindu icons, and fed each other cool slices of fruit. We might have paused, but then a huge hull passed by. As the barge rocked in its turbulent wake, our satisfaction intensified and we made love once again.
At last we uncoupled. Edwin propped himself up on his elbow and peered out the window. “We are heading back to the dock.”
“Already?”
“It must be close to four. Anyway, it is not too soon for me.”
“Are you tired of me already?”
“I would need medical attention if we went on for another hour.”
“Me too,” I admitted shyly.
“Do you want to come back here tomorrow?”
“Can we?”
“I have hired the boat for the week.”
“Maybe we should rest at home for a day,” I said seriously.
As Edwin frowned, I suddenly had a flash. Before my marriage to Silas, Grandmother Helene had given me some salves that might help us in our current predicament.
“No, let us return tomorrow. And this time I will have a surprise for you.”
P A R T I I I
The Sowing
In the beginning the Lord of Beings (Brahma) created men and women, and in the form of commandments in one hundred thousand chapters laid down rules for regulating their existence . . .
—The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana
29
Cochin and Travancore, 1891-1892
At every platform, from Calcutta to Cochin, the dramas of farewells were reenacted for the audience of passengers inside the steamy train, who had taken part in a similar tableau and now watched with wearisome detachment as others took leave of their loved ones.
“You can tell a person's caste and religion from the manner in which he says good-bye,” Edwin told me in Kharagpur, the first stop en route to Madras.
We were looking down from our private salon, a luxurious and unexpected gift from my father. Usually leased to foreign potentates or to carry the wives of maharajahs, our private car had a large sitting and dining room, two bedrooms, a bath with a gilded tub; and at either end of the car, berths for servants.
“What do you mean?” I asked Edwin, wondering if he was like Silas in his desire to fill me with the knowledge he had accumulated about where we were and where we were going.
“Europeans pump hands, like those chaps over there.” He came over from his armchair to the sofa where I was sitting and pointed to an army officer and a gentleman in a white suit. A steam valve hissed and a momentary fog blanketed them. “Those must be Muslims, for they always embrace bosom to bosom,” he said, indicating an animated group at the far end of the platform.
“What about those two kissing?” I tapped the glass so he could see two women, probably mother and daughter.
“Hindus would never kiss in public, so they must be Anglo-Indians.” His last words were muffled by a whistle. The farewells, called out in a plaintive gabble of Hindustani, Tamil, and Telugu, became more frantic.
“What do the Hindus do?”
Edwin pressed his hands together perpendicular to his chest and bowed. “The namaste, what else?”
“Who cries?” I asked, recalling the many tears my six brothers and sisters, Zilpah, Grandmother Helene, and my father had shed at Howrah Station.
“Everyone cries the world over. No matter what caste, color, or race, humanity is the same at the core.”
Until that moment I myself had remained dry-eyed. Did that mean I was less humane than most, or did Edwin offer insulation from loss? Was I so content to be in his arms that I could shed my attachments like a snake slithering from its skin without looking backward? I clasped Edwin's hand and massaged his fine hairs with a deep circular movement. Next to his pink skin my hand seemed dark. I marveled at our differences, loving each one of his.
Bowlegged Hanif came into the room carrying a basket of fruit he had purchased on the platform. Esther Salem lifted a piece, sniffed it warily. “I suppose it will do.”
After he took them to the pantry, Edwin grinned. “What do think the chances are of Hanif getting together with Yali?”
Since Edwin had no servants of his own, my father had arranged for Abdul's son to accompany us to Cochin. And Papa had asked Yali to remain with me. “Last time I sent you off to Darjeeling without anyone to look after you. I will not make the same mistake twice,” he had said crisply. Even though I knew Yali could not have helped my problems with Silas, I was comforted to have her by my side.
&nbs
p; I understood what Edwin meant. He wanted the romance that bound us to infect the whole world. He had decided that Yali and Hanif could do nothing else but fall in love because they spent so much time in our proximity.
“Be sensible, Edwin. Yali is Hindu, Hanif is Muslim.”
“I will be pleased if they don't squabble all the time,” his mother interjected.
Edwin ignored her. “I refuse to be sensible, at least not until our honeymoon is over.”
“When does a honeymoon end?”
“When the children start arriving,” Esther Salem replied.
Edwin and I chuckled together. His mother had said: “Pretend I am not here,” but she was always interjecting comments into our conversations. Sometimes I felt she was waiting for me to loosen my guard and reveal something that would prove my perfidy. Remnants of suspicion, like sinews caught between the teeth, remained to be probed, but I determined to foil her at every turn. As the train lurched forward, we could see the outstretched arms and the yawning O's of the final cries of a few miserable wretches for whom the farewells had not been sufficient.
“How are you feeling?” Edwin whispered.
“Better,” I said with alacrity. The grind of metal on metal of the accelerating train made it harder for his mother to overhear us. “I hope I can tolerate it.”
“What? The train trip?”
“No, following Dr. Hyam's prescription.”
“Me too. All I have to do is look at you and—”
I hushed him with my hand when I saw his mother turn in our direction. As he kissed my palm, I wriggled away from him and crossed my legs primly.
“You winced.”
“Did not.”
He patted my thigh. “Maybe we should hold off altogether for a few days.”
“Are you looking for an excuse?”