by Gay Courter
“Remember what the doctor said.”
I blushed at the thought. Dr. Hyam and his wife had been invited to one of the last sheva berakoth dinners. When I greeted him on the terrace, he said, “Your grandparents would have been pleased with your young man.”
I beamed at this pronouncement. Then, because nobody else was nearby and there was no one else I could confide in, I asked, “Is it usual for a girl to have some difficulties?” His kind hooded eyes closed momentarily. I realized he must have been thinking that another problem, perhaps one similar to what had occurred with Silas, was distressing me.
“I would rather discuss this in my consulting room tomorrow,” he said, relieving me of an explanation when so many ears were nearby.
He was surprised when Edwin and I both arrived, and even more astonished that Edwin followed me into the consultation room.
“Now, Dinah, you had something you wished to ask me about—in private.”
As he waited for Edwin to excuse himself, Edwin cleared his throat. “Dinah and I are worried,” he began shakily, before his voice firmed. “You see, by the third time, we find it difficult to ignore the pain.” He bowed his head.
“The third time since the wedding?” Dr. Hyam asked.
“No, the third time each morning,” Edwin replied, smoothing his hair.
“Each morning?” Dr. Hyam echoed. “And what do you do when the pain persists?”
“Sometimes we cannot begin again until the evening,” I filled in with a whisper.
“You do not have to force a lifetime of love into the first week.”
“I suppose we will need to build up stamina,” Edwin replied stiffly.
“Any difficulty urinating?” Dr. Hyam asked him.
“Some burning, actually.”
“And you?” Dr. Hyam looked at me. I nodded. “Any embarrassment when you cough or sneeze?” I nodded again. The doctor stroked his beard. “I really should examine each of you, but: your symptoms are typical. All I can say is I am glad you came to me now, or you would have had a most unpleasant journey.” Shaking his head, he went to the next room, where he kept his medicines.
A few minutes later he handed me a tin of powder and instructed me how to mix the solution. “Dinah, you are to take this three times a day; Edwin, you are to take it morning and evening. Continue until the symptoms have been absent for three days in a row. At the first sign of recurrence, begin taking it again.” Then he gave us several salves. “Avoid spicy foods, peppers, curries, and the like. Have fruit as often as possible, and juice with meals. At least ten glasses of liquid a day.” He grinned at us both before pursing his lips and adopting a serious tone. “Most important is to give those delicate tissues a rest before you do permanent injury.”
Edwin blanched. “I did not know . . .” His chin dropped and he looked at me apologetically.
“Now, then, don't worry. You have not harmed each other yet, but from now on”—Dr. Hyam waved his arms as if he were conducting a symphony—”andante sostenuto, slowly, yet sustained.”
Edwin shrugged in my direction.
Dr. Hyam explained, “Once a day, until you are both completely healed. And . . .” He hesitated, then decided to speak forthrightly. “For the duration, remain in positions in which the husband and wife face each other. Do you understand me?” He looked at Edwin, who nodded that he did. “The female bladder is under too much strain if the man approaches the woman from behind. If either one worsens—and you must be honest with each other in the matter—you must refrain for at least three days. After that . . .” He threw up his hands. Seeing Edwin's rapt expression, he realized he had to be specific. “Twice a day—and by that” I mean once in the morning and once in the evening—is the pace I recommend. Many happily married men and women find satisfaction with only a few such occasions each week.”
When we were alone in the carriage, Edwin asked me if I believed the doctor.
“I suppose we should follow his advice.”
“About everything?”
“Until we are healed.”
“But not that nonsense about once or twice a week.”
“Of course not!” I protested, unable to imagine such a drought.
A few miles out of the station, Hanif served the slices of melon the doctor had ordered. Side by side on the sofa, we sucked on the sweet fruit, sipped several cups of tea, and watched the world drift by in a verdant blur. The train sped through a land that seemed to stretch to eternity. Now and then the window became a canvas for a sudden stand of trees silhouetted against the beige earth.
As the world darkened, the window mirrored the interior of the railway car more and showed less and less of the outside world. Still I was mesmerized.
“What is so interesting?” Edwin asked when I seemed intent on a monotonous landscape glowing under the light of an almost full moon.
“I see us,” I said, pressing my head next to his and admiring our double portrait. Just then a group of regular shapes emerged, as though they had been dropped by a child playing blocks behind the clouds. “What are they?” I pointed to the pyramids.
“The old Dutch tombs.”
“Where are we?”
“Balasore,” Edwin replied with a chuckle. “That makes three of us. You're sore, I'm sore, and Balasore!”
We both doubled up with uncontrollable spasms of laughter.
“What is so amusing?” Esther asked as she peered around from her seat.
“N-nothing, Mother,” Edwin sputtered, and fell into my lap with a contorted clutch of his sides.
Two days later we arrived at Shoranur, terminus of the rail line. The platform seemed to be nothing more than an island in a leafy sea. Buffalo-carts were hired for the grueling journey to Trichur. After that, there was an easier road to Ernakulam, across the water from Cochin.
While we waited on the ghat at dawn for Hanif to unload my trunks and cases, Esther Salem rubbed her back and groaned, “Isn't it time they extended the railway to the sea?”
“I didn't mind any part of the trip,” I said to Edwin.
“Nor I,” Edwin replied, kissing my cheek.
“What do you young lovebirds know of pain?” she asked crossly.
Edwin stifled a burst of laughter and went to arrange for the boats. When he returned, the sun had brightened to reveal the harbor. “That's Cochin.” He pointed across a wide canal. A few minutes later, the punt carrying the three of us pulled away from the loading wharf, and Edwin said, “Now you will see why they call Cochin India's tropical
Venice.” As we moved out into open water, he continued, “It's no wonder my family are traders. For thousands of years, this port has welcomed vessels from all over the globe. Traders following the monsoon winds across to India came from Rome and Greece, from Egypt and Arabia, and landed in Cochin, which was the hub of the spice trade and the easterly routes to China. Eventually it became the first Portuguese establishment in India.”
As the boat glided on the placid bay, I watched the gulls careen in the pink sky. “You do like boats, don't you?” I asked with a private wink.
“Some boat trips are more pleasurable than others,” he mumbled into the wind.
“What?” his mother called.
“Dinah was just wondering where we lived,” he replied.
“Our house is on Mattancheri, a district on the southern peninsula,” my mother-in-law explained. “It is faster to travel by water than to go around by land.”
“Are there ferries?” I asked to be polite.
“No, but there has been talk of establishing a regular service,” Edwin replied.
“Yes, and there has been talk of putting down a railway to the sea too,” said his mother sarcastically.
Turning down a less-populated canal, where the backwater banks were a thick tangle draping the water's edge, I felt as if I had entered a strange new land. Screw pines bordered the water. Rich green foliage formed a dense backdrop, and a belt of pendulous coconut palms fanned the sky. Here and there
whitewashed houses dotted the shoreline. Fruit trees offered shade at many of the doorsteps. Gardens were demarcated in tidy squares. A strong breeze whipped kites and clotheslines. I knew the Salems were not wealthy, but I supposed they owned one of these pleasant dwellings beside the sea.
By the time the boat came to a rude jetty, the sun had baked my arms and head. Dizzy, I stumbled ashore and followed Edwin into a narrow lane blocked by a barricade of horns. An odoriferous flock of rams, goats, even oxen swarmed to greet us. Mosquitoes circled ravenously about my ankles.
Edwin noted my slow progress. “It isn't far now.”
As we rounded another corner, the brightness and color of Cochin faded into the dun of ancient plaster. A few shafts of light spilled down a street so constricted two carts could not pass each other. A long row of three-story buildings made an enclave unto itself. The narrow windows of the stone houses, like those designed to retain heat in a colder country, gave the impression the inhabitants had something to hide.
In front of almost every doorway, bronze-tinged women sat on stools, sewing and gossiping while children played. Several of them had legs the size of tree trunks. At our approach the chattering stopped. Edwin waited for me to catch up and took my hand. To each woman he gave a small bow, greeted her in an unfamiliar tongue, and said something that included my name. Each woman rose and bowed to me. I nodded quickly and moved on., Esther Salem lingered at each doorway as she accepted the comments from her neighbors with a satisfied smile on her lips.
Just before the bottom of the dead-end street, Edwin indicated a building with a Dutch-style clock tower. There were Hebrew, Roman, and Indian numerals on the dial of the clock. “That is Paradesi Synagogue, where we worship. It was built in 1568,” he said proudly.
Compared to the splendid temples of Calcutta, it was a disappointment, but I said nothing.
Another woman with grossly distended legs braced herself against the wall of a gabled house across the street. “Welcome home, Edwin,” she said, kissing him.
“Thank you, Aunt Reema.”
“And this must be Dinah.” She reached up and patted my cheek before I had time to recoil. “What a beauty,” she gasped to Edwin.
“Yes, isn't she?” he gloated.
We waited in front of a dingy house with a large Star of David on the door. “Well, aren't we going to go inside?” Esther Salem asked when she arrived, panting.
Edwin kissed his fingers and touched the mezuzah before opening the latch. The thick wooden door grated against the tile floor with a teeth-jarring screech. His mother stepped forward, followed by his lame aunt, who had to hold on to the walls to remain upright. Then Edwin placed his arm around my shoulder and guided me into my new home.
30
Oh, Dinah-baba,” Yali wailed, “you cannot stay in this place!” She surveyed the small second-floor room that Edwin and I would share. One slender bed was draped with torn mosquito netting. Although the walls were freshly whitewashed and the floor matting new, it was less pretentious than Yali's quarters at Theatre Road. “What would your father say?”
I stepped into the hall and peered into Esther Salem's room. “I suppose she will offer us the larger bed,” I replied, my voice more tremulous than I would have liked.
“She will not,” Yali said with a finality that surprised me.
“Then Edwin will provide something else,” I responded hopefully.
“I will provide what, my darling?” Edwin asked from the top of the steps, where he was directing the coolies to stack my belongings.
I gestured to the dark furniture in his mother's room. “Are we supposed to sleep here?” I pointed to his old bed. “Or there?”
He placed his arms around my waist and hugged me to him. “We could fit anywhere.”
Yali turned her head.
“Edwin!” I pulled away, but his clasp tightened.
“Dinah will sleep in the room of your mother,” Yali said with as much authority as Zilpah would have mustered.
Edwin cocked his head to see if he had understood her Hindustani correctly. “Yes, a splendid idea.” He grinned like a schoolboy as he reflected on how this could be done.
“She won't like it,” I whispered.
“She will follow what I say in the matter,” he said in a testy voice I had not heard before.
How would the three of us live in such a tiny house? I wondered as I wandered around my new home. Downstairs there were three rooms: a modest living room, the size of the smallest parlor at Theatre Road, a dining room, and a pantry combined with a kitchen. The furniture was of bulky teakwood carved with flowers, birds, and animals in what I learned was the Indo-Portuguese style. Over the camelback sofa was a portrait of Mrs. Salem's father, a heavy-jowled man.
On the second floor were the two bedrooms, one primitive bath, and a sitting room under the gable that faced the street. Two sulky servants lived in a small godown at the far end of the courtyard garden.
“Where will our servants live?”
“We did not expect them,” Esther Salem replied irritably. “Arrangements are being made for Hanif to board with neighbors. Yali will have the attic bedroom where Hanna stayed as a child.”
“Isn't it hot up there?” I asked.
“It was not too hot for my daughter,” she retorted.
Esther Salem moved into her son's room without a word of protest, but her groans and sighs of the next few weeks were ample reminders of how inconvenienced she felt.
The first morning I awakened to a tapping on the window.
“The shutters! Close the shutters!” I cried in terror.
“Hush, there are no shutters.”
“What is that sound?”
“Look, darling.” He showed me the window, which had several wires pulled taut along the top of its frame. Wooden balls suspended from the wires trembled in the wind.
“Is that a decoration?”
“No, a practical way to keep the crows from flying into the room. We use swaying balls to confuse them.” He stroked my back. “Poor darling, do you feel better now?”
“I suppose so,” I said, kissing him to blot the dark sensations.
His hand flew up. “What's this?” he asked with alarm.
I looked down at my skin. Welts had appeared over my whole body. “I've been bitten. Insects adore me.”
“How clever they are.” He kissed a bump between my breasts. Then he pointed at a gap in the mosquito netting. “I didn't fasten my side tightly enough.”
“Do you think I could get sick from so many bites?”
“Dinah, really. You've lived in India all your life.”
“Never in Cochin. What if I become sick . . . like your aunt?”
“That's unlikely.”
“What is wrong with her and those other women with those huge legs?”
“It's called 'Cochin leg' here, but its medical name is elephantiasis because of the way it swells the extremities.”
“How do you catch it?”
“Some think it hereditary, or it might be acquired from impure water.”
“Not insects?”
“Who knows for certain?”
“Is there no medical treatment?”
“Nothing that cures it permanently.”
I shuddered.
“Now, don't worry yourself,” he said, and blotted my concern with kisses.
“What shall we do?”
“About what?”
“How shall we spend our days?”
“We do not have to decide everything the first morning. First things first.”
“What comes first?”
“We must get married,” he replied. “Cochin style. And then we shall see about the rest.”
After breakfast, we were summoned to his mother's bedside. “The trip exhausted me, and one never can sleep well in a new bed.” Edwin didn't comment. “I shall require help to arrange the ceremony.”
“When shall it be, Mother?”
“Next Tuesday. Reema will at
tend to everything.”
“Shouldn't Dinah have a say?”
“What could she know about our traditions?” She lay back on her pillow and stared at the mosaic images with Hebrew inscriptions on the ceiling.
“I will be happy to follow your mother's wishes . . .” I said sincerely, then added a tag, “. . . in this matter.”
I saw her mouth twitch.
“What is it, Mother?” Edwin asked as impatience crept into his voice.
“I would prefer Dinah to call me Mother too.”
Edwin looked at me with a hopeful expression. My stomach churned, but I did not want to disappoint him. “Of course I will . . .” He mouthed the word, but I balked at having her replace my mother in any way. Steeling myself, I said the word “Mother,” then hurriedly added, “Esther. Is there anything else?”
“Could Yali attend me for a few days? Just until I feel better?”
I looked away in case she could read my selfish thoughts. “Of course, Mother Esther.”
That afternoon Edwin took me for a walk around Jew Town. “Cochin's Jewish quarter was established shortly after the Dutch conquest in 1661, but the first Jewish settlement in this region was actually down the coast at Cranganore.”
“Oh? How long ago was that?” I asked.
“If you can believe the tales I heard in childhood, the first Jewish merchants were members of Solomon's Phoenician fleet almost three thousand years ago. Others believe we arrived at the time of the Babylonian captivity. At any rate, we know the group was well established when the King of Cranganore granted the Jews possession of Anjuvannam—the village mentioned in the copper plaques in the synagogue across from our house.”
“What are those?”
“I'll show you them on our way home. The point is, the king gave Joseph Rabban, head of a Jewish family, hereditary ownership of this territory and we have thrived here ever since. To my knowledge, the only time the Jews were treated miserably in India was under the Portuguese conquistadors.”
We had made our way down to the end of the street and were standing in front of an ancient building that looked like a square fortress. After Edwin tapped the gate, a durwan appeared and let us in. “Would you like to see the palace?”