Before the Rains

by Dinah Jefferies

  A pitiless cloud of black smoke rose into the air and with it a smell Eliza knew she would not forget as long as she lived. The wind got up and the flames leapt higher, swirling and dancing as they carried the girl’s screams up into the blue, blue sky.

  Eliza staggered backwards and then began to run wildly from the terrible scene. And when the girl stopped screaming, all Eliza could hear was the crackling of the fire. In deep shock she doubled over, and with tears blinding her she felt Jay’s arms around her, pulling her further from the smell of burning flesh.

  ‘You shouldn’t have seen this,’ he said.

  She twisted away from him and began to beat him on the chest with her fists. ‘Why did it have to happen? Why?’

  He held her again, only tighter this time, and she saw that one of his hands was burnt.

  ‘You’re hurt.’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘I saw what you tried to do.’

  He shook his head. ‘I was too late. I had hoped to talk them out of it. They had hidden the girl. I thought I had time.’

  He put an arm around her shoulders and helped her back to the motorcycle.

  As Eliza climbed up into her seat, her heart still pounding to the beat of a drum that had surely been calling the woman to her death, she wept. Then, as it passed a little, she gazed at Jay, whose arms were folded on the handlebars with his forehead resting on his hands. There was such a bursting pain in her chest that she knew her own voice might take over from where the frantic, screaming woman had left off.

  ‘She was so young,’ he said.

  Eliza didn’t reply, but gulped at air in an effort to breathe normally.

  ‘We won’t go home. I think I’ll take you to my palace. It’s only an hour from the Juraipore castle but there’s more privacy. We’ll be able to talk in a way we could not back at the castle.’

  ‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ she managed to say through subdued sobs that very quickly began to erupt again.

  ‘There’s a great deal to say, but first you have to deal with the emotion of witnessing such a thing. I have seen it before.’

  They didn’t speak during the journey and, after about an hour, they arrived at what she immediately could see was a palace of faded beauty. He took her through a large gateway set into a long high wall, and into a beautiful area surrounded by buildings of golden stone on three sides, with doors on two sides facing into the courtyard.

  ‘Servants’ quarters, stables and store rooms,’ he said.

  On the side opposite the gateway a colonnaded veranda stretched the length of an ancient two-storey building. It was clear there was water here too, because, unlike everywhere else she had been, the courtyard was remarkably green and what looked like pink and red petunias spilled from tubs placed around the edges. A tall yellow flowering tree with long leaves stood in the middle, providing a vast amount of shade to the two benches beneath.

  ‘It’s Siamese cassia,’ he said when he saw her looking. ‘They can reach a height of sixty feet. This one is not quite that yet. We use this kind of tree for furniture and crafts. There are more in the gardens beyond,’ he said, pointing at somewhere beyond the colonnade.

  As they walked through the building and along an open gallery and terrace at the back to an exterior staircase, Eliza could see the extensive gardens and what looked like an orchard. The scent of grass drifted across and she breathed in the green freshness of the air. Though she still had no idea how she would ever process her disgust and horror, it had been a thoughtful choice to come to this quiet retreat. She stopped for a moment to gaze into the distance and saw that the land right at the back sloped gently downwards.

  Jay showed her to a first-floor bedroom. ‘When it is cooler and you are ready, join me on the terrace below.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘Until later.’

  Eliza lay down on a bed that could not have been slept in for some time. She could smell mothballs, but also some kind of perfume that reminded her of Laxmi. Perhaps this had been Jay’s mother’s room at some point? There was a small drawing room attached too, which Jay called a dari khana, with a large rug on the floor and several cushions. Eliza tried to think of other things but all she could hear were the woman’s screams, over and over in her head. A stranger in a strange land, she had hoped that coming here would help her find her feet but, in fact, she was sinking further out of her depth. This was not a comfortable world for her, for any woman, she thought, and couldn’t help wondering if she was even safe? She was a widow too. How must it feel to be put to death in such an agonizing way: the searing pain, the dread, the raw cruelty more awful than she could ever have imagined?

  As the brightness of the day faded and the sky turned lilac and then pink, she went in search of Jay, eventually finding him nursing a whisky and slumped in a wicker chair on the arched terrace or gallery at the back of the building, this one smaller and more intimate than the colonnaded walkway at the front. With a dejected air he ran his hand over his head to push the dishevelled hair from his face. When he rubbed his forehead she could see it was smeared with black from the fire.

  ‘We used to live out here, most of the time,’ he said, and waved a bandaged hand at the area beyond. ‘Drink?’

  While a butler fetched her a drink, she sat in a chair opposite Jay. As darkness descended, the moon was rising and casting a silvery light over the garden, from where night-time scents of earth and some kind of intensely aromatic stocks infused the air. She felt as if she could lose herself in its gentle warmth, but then Jay began to speak.

  ‘A couple of weeks before my grandfather died, my grandmother stopped eating and drinking. She looked after her husband and nursed him, but late one night I heard her chanting “Ram-Ram” repeatedly. He had just died and she had already announced that she was going to commit suttee when he was cremated the next morning. She believed it a dishonour for a wife to outlive her husband.’

  He pocketed a box of matches that had been lying on the table, got to his feet, and picked out a taper from a metal box attached to the wall. He pulled out the matchbox, struck a match and lit the taper. As he touched the taper to a couple of lamps fixed to the exterior wall, the smell of burning oil filled the air. The light flickered and Eliza watched the trail of smoke for a minute or two.

  ‘You were there?’

  ‘I’d gone there with my mother because she knew her father didn’t have long. After he died my grandmother washed herself and put on her wedding clothes, then sat with my grandfather’s body for the rest of the night with only the howling of the city dogs for company. When the sun rose her devar arrived, her husband’s brother, who was going to perform the last rites. When a sati goes to the pyre she is accompanied by crowds of people and they had already started gathering.’

  ‘You saw all this?’

  He had been gazing out into the darkness but now he turned back to look at her, his eyes sombre, the light gone, but with his lips twisted in a grim smile.

  ‘She had sent for me, but my mother intercepted the message and ordered me locked in my room. My mother didn’t approve, but I had to see so I climbed out of the window. I loved both my grandparents.’ He paused and swallowed visibly before resuming. ‘Sometimes they tie the women down. Not my grandmother. When I finally arrived the flames were raging and I couldn’t even see her – but I could hear her. She was chanting “Ram-Ram”, right up until she died. People still worship her to this day.’

  Eliza fell silent for a few moments. She gazed at the chiselled angular lines of his face, seeming more full of shadows in the lamplight, and could see the grief and shock still etched there. How had she not spotted it before? But then he hunched his shoulders and sank into some kind of internal silence, bending his head and gazing at his hands. She could see the muscle in his jaw working. What an awful thing for a child to witness; it must have broken him, just as her father’s death had broken her.

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘I was thirteen. It was a week before my fourteenth bi
rthday. It happened during the school holidays or I’d have been in England.’

  She watched him with tears moistening her eyes, full of pity for the child he had been. ‘And I don’t suppose you told anyone when you went back to school?’

  He shook his head and looked back at her. She felt as if she was seeing right into him and he into her. Then he glanced away.

  ‘They already thought of me as a savage or a pet. My grandmother adored her husband and was devastated by his death, but apart from my mother nobody tried to dissuade her. Her brother-in-law was only worried that if she did not go through with it she’d bring shame to the family.’

  ‘Why do women allow it?’

  He shrugged. ‘A few still see it as the ultimate form of womanly devotion and sacrifice. She wanted to be with her husband in the next life, so for her it was the only way.’

  ‘But it’s a crime against women.’

  He looked at her again, with such sadness in his eyes she longed to comfort him, but still she had to speak.

  ‘What if there is no next life, Jay?’

  He sighed deeply but held her gaze.

  ‘Women are of so little value?’ she said.

  ‘Those who wish to become sati speak of it as a voluntary act of devotion. You and I might say they have been brainwashed. They have certainly internalized the old beliefs. The choice was to be burned or regarded as a failed wife.’

  ‘With no coercion?’

  He snorted and finally looked away, and for a moment she felt as if a spell had been broken. ‘Oh yes. Priests who receive something of value from the women’s possessions encourage them. The relatives of both families who want their jewellery encourage them, and in some cases the women have to be drugged with bhang, marijuana to you, or opium. Or tied to the husband’s corpse with cords, or otherwise weighted down. However, even though life as a widow is hard, many did try to run away. And if they did they brought disgrace on their entire family.’

  ‘The pull of life stronger than family ties or any promise of immortality?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But some truly believe. Like your grandmother?’

  ‘I think so. To some it is, and was, a deeply spiritual choice. Hard to understand, isn’t it? But it happens for many reasons, not always coercion or religion, and sometimes a depressed or despairing woman uses it as a means of straightforward suicide, which of course is illegal.’

  ‘It seems bound up with this idealized version of how a woman ought to be.’

  ‘It’s not so different in your culture, though less extreme of course.’

  ‘We don’t burn women.’ Despite the misery stamped on his face, she gave him what she realized must be a sharp look. ‘And female infanticide doesn’t happen in England.’

  ‘Not now maybe, but go back in time. Did you know that after the British outlawed suttee here there were more cases than before?’

  She shook her head and there was an uncomfortable silence for a few moments.

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘Tell Anish and then Chatur, both of whom will do nothing. And I’ll speak to Clifford Salter too. The British might chase up the culprits but they’ll get nowhere. The villagers will close ranks.’

  ‘But you could identify them.’

  ‘The British won’t take it that far. They know it still goes on.’

  ‘Why is it that all over the world women are, and have been, so badly mistreated?’ she said, feeling such a sense of anguish she hardly knew how to deal with it.

  He shrugged. ‘It’s the age-old question. I don’t know the answer.’

  Eliza became aware of how far out on the edge she could end up here, but, at the same time, if she was going to stay, she also felt a growing need not simply to judge India, but to better understand it.

  Night lay over the garden like a blanket. She could see nothing, but listened to the creaking of branches and animals shifting in the undergrowth and hesitated for some minutes before she opened her mouth, scared that, if she made the wrong move or said the wrong thing, the foundations of her life might crack open. In Jay’s sad eyes, she saw herself, and because of that she wanted to give him something of herself. She had always believed that if she didn’t speak of her father she could protect herself, but she had been living behind glass that she realized might now be about to crack.

  Eventually she broke the long silence and looked straight into his eyes. ‘My father died when I was ten,’ she said, as her heart began to hammer.

  ‘I’m very sorry to hear that.’

  She could see in his eyes that he meant it.

  ‘I witnessed his death too.’

  10

  Eliza opened her eyes on a gilded morning, the air so sweet and fresh she could almost persuade herself it hadn’t been real, that it had only been a nightmare mercifully dissolved by daylight. But for the smell. She had fallen into bed the night before, still dressed; now she tore off her clothes, where the smell of human sacrifice still clung, and found a robe in a tall dark wardrobe. Wrapping it around herself, she went to the terrace in search of Jay.

  Out there the day was so still that not even a leaf was moving, but still the scent of aromatic herbs drifted across from where they seemed to be growing, and the scent of jasmine and something like honeysuckle infused the air. She noticed that the arched arcade that lined the terrace was the colour of sand and was shimmering in the sunlight. The evening before she hadn’t noticed the colour.

  ‘If only it could always be like this,’ she said, as she saw Jay following the butler, who carried a tray of what looked like coffee.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Peaceful.’

  He stared into the sky as if looking for an answer and then glanced at her.

  ‘It’s where my heart is,’ he said, his eyes glowing with feeling. ‘It’s where I come when the world feels impossible. And, as it happens, where I was born.’

  ‘Was the room I’m staying in your mother’s?’

  He nodded as they looked at each other. ‘We all of us have broken hearts. You, me, Indi. It’s what unites us.’

  As he sank into thought she could believe what he’d said. With stubble on his chin, he was still dressed in yesterday’s clothes, smelling of dirt, sand and smoke, and though his face was clear of black smears, he looked somehow lost.

  ‘You need fresh clothes?’ he asked. ‘I certainly do.’

  She nodded.

  ‘I can sort that.’

  ‘I need to wash my hair too.’

  Eliza, unlike Clifford, increasingly did not think that the British in India had been sensitive to the customs of the native races. But up until now she had believed the British had right on their side, and yet if they were just going to turn their back on such horrors it made them culpable too. They had certainly overreacted when subduing rebellions, and really, what right did they have to be there at all? This awful thing made her feel sick to her soul. Misogyny had many faces in different parts of the world, but nobody deserved to be burned alive, cooked as if they were nothing but meat. Nobody.

  She gazed out at the beautiful tangled garden and felt its calmness and tranquillity. It was wild and it was wonderful, with pathways still kept clear and flowers – climbing roses, jasmine, she knew not what – all tumbling in profusion. Though it wasn’t hard to see how it could be made even more magnificent, with perhaps the vista opened up in places. It was clear there was water somewhere too, and perhaps the slope of the land had something to do with it.

  She decided to ask.

  ‘Some of it is rainwater, collected in small tanks. There are small rivers or nallahs which flow in the rains and we have wells here. But we need to do more by constructing dams, tanks and bunds. Basically we need irrigation works, but I’m not sure what I can do.’

  ‘Don’t you want to make a difference to people’s lives?’

  He frowned, but her last thought had struck her with force.

  She carried on thinking about the water. There might not be a
nything she could do about the treatment of women, but it made her feel better to think of other ways to help people.

  ‘There must be a way to help the people.’

  ‘I do everything I can, employ only locals, allow them to come for well water in our courtyard, but it’s up to my brother to make the taxation fairer and he will not.’

  ‘But what about irrigation?’

  ‘Well, as I’ve said –’

  She interrupted. ‘Surely you could build some kind of system,’ she said.

  ‘I have looked into it.’

  ‘But here. It’s the perfect place. On your own land, where it slopes you could dig out a lake and maybe others beyond.’

  ‘You must think I’m made of money? I own this bike, but Eliza, the car is my mother’s. I have this beautiful old place I can barely afford to restore and a fairly generous living allowance, but it would never stretch to funding an irrigation project.’

  ‘Then raise the money. Where there’s a will …’ She paused for a moment but couldn’t stop herself. ‘Do you even see the poverty of the people?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘No, Jay. I don’t think so. You see what you want to see, but I’m going to develop yesterday’s photographs and you’re going to look at them with your eyes wide open. You won’t be able to ignore it so easily when you see things in black and white. It’s time to take action. Do something.’

  ‘You sound like my friend Devdan.’

  ‘Well, if his aim is to do something about the inequalities here, then I’m with him. You have water here. So start here.’