He paid, and offered his arm. She took it. Next to the Tanjore were the famed Narati Gardens, a park that was often used for films and weddings. It featured hundreds of varieties of flowers in continual, orchestrated bloom. The jasmine was heady. A few couples, just-marrieds most likely, walked hand in hand. Meterling was embarrassed, but there was still so much to learn about Archer. How had he been at school? Where did they go for vacations? What sports did he play besides the cricket he had told her about?
The cousin was patient, and told her as much as he knew. They had left the gardens and were going to get a milky drink for her and a coffee for him before they noticed the time. Meterling wondered that she didn’t feel tired, but happy, somehow. Still, she’d promised to be in before ten.
When he left her at the door, Meterling asked if they could talk some more the next day, and he agreed with a smile.
“I’m glad you came out to dinner.”
“I’m glad you asked.”
Not sure how to take her leave, she hurriedly kissed him on the cheek, and quickly went inside.
21
They spent the next weeks talking about Archer’s habits and his character. Meterling felt she knew more to tell the baby, and the cousin said he felt more settled with Archer’s death.
“It’s good to talk with someone who knew him now, not in the past as a boy. Susan won’t talk. She just went on holiday to Scotland, and refuses phone calls. She’s very upset, but can’t bring herself to accept it.”
“She must blame me.”
“She shouldn’t.” Simon hesitated. “This is unrelated, but Archer also had a heart condition.”
“He never told me!”
“That’s why he was at a desk job. He was supposed to lead a quiet life, which is hard to imagine.”
“He was dancing at the wedding, exerting himself, drinking—” Meterling faltered.
“And happier than I’d seen him in a long time.”
“I wished he’d told me. I could have done something.”
“He would have told you later about the heart. But no one can prevent an aneurysm,” said Simon.
They were quiet in their embarrassment. Simon wondered if their lovemaking had been too exuberant, if that was why Meterling was blushing so deeply. Then he wondered why on earth he thought that.
“Susan—she’ll be an aunt soon. I wonder if the baby will inherit her characteristics,” said Meterling presently.
“Stubborn, fiercely loyal, and smart. She’s head of her company, you know, and will probably receive an MBE.”
Meterling hadn’t known.
“I’m joking about the MBE. Their mother died young. She had just wanted both of them to settle down, have children—oh, God, I’m sorry—I didn’t mean—”
Meterling’s eyes had filled with tears. “No, it’s not that, it’s just that it’s all so confusing,” she sobbed.
And Simon, stricken, just enveloped her in his arms.
We came to like both Ajay and Simon-Archer more. We felt bad for Rajan, since there seemed some injustice there, but we couldn’t put our fingers on it. Ajay was smart, funny, and handsome, too, in a way. He seemed to be concerned for Nalani’s welfare. It could be a show, although I didn’t know how to put that into words. He always asked her if she was chilly, or needed water. He played with Scrap, who was larger now, with sleek fur, and a habit of needing her belly rubbed often. He drove well, too, and unlike Uncle Darshan never cursed at the other drivers. Was this what it meant when my aunties spoke of “suitable boys”? But did Nalani long for Rajan? She didn’t show it. A bride would be chosen for Rajan as well. It was just horoscopes.
Our family didn’t believe in horoscopes. Regularly we went to temple, and every morning we chanted at the kitchen shrine. We had favorite gods and goddesses. But we left some of the trappings behind, the ones that said sect must marry within sect. Uncle Darshan, especially, was vocal about modernity. He could, and did, orate at length about women’s rights, and the capacity of female brains. Aunt Pa sometimes rolled her eyes, because her female brain knew that brains had no gender, they were simply brains, and no one used his as much as Einstein had.
Rajan’s family did believe in horoscopes, and they were the ones to say no to Nalani. Theirs was an orthodox family that required the women in the household to isolate once a month, eat separately, and not let anyone, except for babies and toddlers, touch them. Auntie Pa wouldn’t explain why, but we found out from school friends that one day, both Rasi and I would bleed, and need some bandages, that it wasn’t that anything was wrong, but something that just happened. For months, I feared that day, expecting the worst, until I forgot about it. We couldn’t use something called tampons like my mother carried in her purse, because then we’d no longer be virgins, and being a virgin was important, like getting good marks at school.
Ajay’s family did not believe in the isolation laws, and were on the fence about horoscopes. They didn’t particularly want Nalani to work after marriage, but would not stand in her way. Nalani had decided to become a doctor, and after the wedding would go to medical school. She would have more degrees than Ajay, which only bothered Ajay’s mother, but Ajay’s father thought they would be lucky to have a first-class doctor in the family.
My parents were modern as well, but theirs was an arranged marriage. From America, they sent me photographs, taken in parks and from their car, and they looked happy. I had become so used to their absence. Sometimes I wished I could ask my mother things about marriage, about Ajay and Nalani, about all our strange old customs. In my letters to her, I usually said I was fine, the weather good, and what I was reading. She was a great reader herself, and sent packages of books for all of us to share. That was how I got to know Ramona the Pest, and The Four-Story Mistake, and Encyclopedia Brown. Sometimes a strange disquiet would come over me at bedtime, and perhaps that was when I missed my mother the most, but reading usually made the feeling go away.
22
How strange it is to record what I saw and knew at ten. There was so much I learned later. The Puranas advised that women marry quickly. The very sensual nature of a woman’s body was feared, and I learned it was not just that a man’s thoughts might be, well, inflamed, but that it was the woman’s yearning that was the trouble. Without marriage, sex was merely for pleasure, experimental, thoughtless. With marriage, it was for offspring.
Maybe that was why their families gave some destitute widows to brothels. She could be either virginal or experienced; either way, her body, if not her soul, was ready to be bought, as maybe it had in marriage. Perhaps a family had given a dowry of a milch cow to the groom. When the groom died, they lost the cow and gained a widow. Other widows seemed so taken with the idea of purity, wearing white, changing saris throughout the day, white for white, bathing several times a day as well. There was also the custom of madi, a holy cleanliness which pervaded a person after a bath, and after fresh clothes were donned, lasting until prayers were completed.
My own grandmother wore green, and her hair was silvery, thin, and long. She did not move in with Auntie Pa but kept the house my grandfather built for her. She tended the gardens, supervised the servants, heard the weekly discourses by visiting pundits at the local temple. She played Parcheesi in the afternoons, swept out the stray goats from the kitchen, and put up sour dried mango pickle in Ali Baba jars. The idea of remarriage to her would be preposterous, if not scandalous, and to be honest, I could not picture it, either. She had married young, at fourteen, and took up residence with my grandfather at seventeen. In the pictures, she looks skinny, with wide eyes, next to my grandfather, who wears a suit, and in later ones would sport a Nehru cap.
Her children came quickly after she turned nineteen: Tharak; Pa; Nalani’s mother; my mother; Sanjay’s mother. I heard there might have been a child who had died at birth, a son, but this subject really was off limits for us. In my grandmother’s day there could not be an intercaste marriage without extreme consequences. Couples fled the isl
and if they had money; some committed suicide. Some were killed in the name of family honor. As girls and boys went abroad for studies, they often chose their own partners. And of course, there had been a time right after independence when intercaste marriage was politically encouraged, but only for a short time.
Now it was month eight and a half. Soon, soon, said everyone. The monsoons would begin in September, but the intermittent rain had already begun. The cat played on the veranda, sometimes with string that I held above her quick paws. Sometimes she would meow silently, other times softly, or fiercely. She seemed to have forty different kinds of meows. I wondered if her heart opened like ours did to her, if she felt safer knowing her humans were inside, or if she felt that somehow, she was protecting her humans.
Meterling often met Simon for walks. At some point, hardly noticing, they began to speak of themselves.
Simon described the small garden he had in his London flat, and how the plants paid no attention to his ministering. Mostly, he put up his feet and read the Guardian.
“I was a regular twit growing up, you know. Mocking my elders, completely loafing off at school. I don’t know how I passed my A levels.”
He went on to Cambridge, and after obtaining a first in philosophy (“largely because I can memorize quickly, but the funny thing was, once I actually cracked open the books, and put pen to paper, it was as if I’d discovered a door I never knew existed”), he became an intern to a publisher’s associate. The firm published books on Italy. Once they did a book on coffee machines.
“Did you know Balzac was supposed to have consumed forty cups of coffee a day to keep writing?” he asked Meterling.
She smiled, and said, “I studied home science, learned a little economy, nursing, it was all included at my college. My father was brilliant, but I did not have that kind of ambition.”
“I can’t imagine you as being anything but.”
“That is because you are a kind man, Simon, and hardly know me.”
Her friends Chitra and Neela visited her too, bringing gifts. Chitra brought her twins, just two years old, and we played with them. They really were cute, their skin so soft, and they could be made to laugh so easily. All we had to do was cover our eyes and they would go off in a fit of giggles. Neela brought poems, and belly oil. With a twin each at our hips, Rasi and I stood at the gate of our compound, looking out. For a moment, I glimpsed my future, a young mother with a child.
“What do you want in your future, Meterling?” Simon asked her, a few days later.
“What an odd question. I want the baby to be safe, strong. I’ll always be protected here, with the family, but …”
“What?”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing a bit of those places I dreamed about as a girl. They are probably ordinary for you, but I’d like to see Paris, and Italy.”
“They are in no way ordinary. I will take you there.”
It was so simply said, with such quiet assurance, that Meterling saw it as a certainty, not a possibility. She was already in love with Simon. Now, they had somewhere to go.
They were walking in the Narati Gardens. It was Friday, and the grounds were still quiet. In the late afternoon, the weekenders would arrive. A light drizzle had just stopped; the rolling lawns were slightly wet. Their sandals made slight sounds as they walked. The rain had brought up the scent of the green around them, and the air felt washed. The baby kicked, and Meterling wondered if happiness could produce a premature birth. He seemed so eager to get out. She’d already shown us how his tiny foot pushed out at the skin, a sight that mesmerized us. She wished she could place Simon’s hand on her belly to let him feel the baby, and realized she wanted to feel Simon’s hand rest against her belly. She blushed.
Simon took her hand.
“Meterling, will you marry me?”
He said it quietly, not knowing her response. He had thought about it for weeks, even from the moment he first sat in the living room. He chased guilt and desire away, but companionship remained constant. They had been able to lift the burden of grief together, bit by bit, and with it, guilt for being alive when Archer was not. Meterling pressed his hand.
“I am pregnant.”
“I know.”
“And you would get both of us.”
“I know that, too.”
“I get moody.”
“I will hold you.”
“Tightly?”
“As tightly as you need.”
“Of course, I will marry you. I never thought otherwise.”
23
We worried Simon-Archer would take Meterling away. They would marry, and what then?
“A widow is supposed to die after her husband dies,” said Sanjay.
“That’s the stupidest thing you ever said.”
“That’s what they did in the old days.”
“We are not in the old days.”
Then, families sternly guided love, if love was even thought of as much as land, money, children. After Meterling told us she would marry again, the word leaked out. Some people thought it was scandalous. It was much too soon, and she was seen as fickle. Plus, widows didn’t often remarry. Some assumed the baby needed a father and thought Meterling was being pragmatic. Some thought a white man was most appropriate, since the baby would be half-white anyway. Some thought it was for the money. “What money?” asked Aunt Pa, rolling her eyes with anger, then with laughter. And that indeed was a sea change for Auntie Pa. To go from anger to laughter is like going from debt to understanding what debt is—that is, not just the money but also the value. The value of money, and the value of anger, she would tell us, is important to learn. More learning, we sighed.
I knew, more than even Rasi or Sanjay, that Meterling was in love with Simon-Archer. “It is as if I have come alive all over again,” she said, laughing, thinking I wouldn’t understand. But I did. I had seen Meterling fade a little bit every day after Archer’s death. And with the cousin, I saw her come back to bloom bit by bit.
It was like the dawn after the wreck. When something catastrophic happens, like a shipwreck, people gather together after the storm, assess the damage, blink into the light to grasp something that is too big to grasp at that moment, that first look. Some grab a cup of coffee from the folks next door; some squint at the way the shore is littered with effects without coffee. The deep sorrow, the deep pain overcomes, but then they begin to pick through what’s left, say prayers in thanks that it was not worse.
I saw them kiss. They melted into each other. At first, I didn’t understand what they were doing, but they fit. I’d never seen Archer and Meterling kiss like that. In fact, I’d never seen anyone kiss like that. But it looked just right. They looked just right.
His family didn’t agree, because it seemed unseemly. To throw himself away on a pregnant woman, an island girl, a brown-skinned widow, his cousin’s wife, for godsakes, said the distant relatives. As he expected, Susan was not supportive, although his parents were. His mother said she’d worried about the widow, and the child, but said they should wait, in deference to Archer. The adoption process could start immediately, however.
But Grandmother was upset. She did not think Meterling should remarry so quickly, although we knew of widowers who did, some within a month of the death. There were laws created specifically for the right of widows to remarry. They were instituted for the number of very young women, sometimes children, who were left widowed and unwanted. Their hair might be shaved off; they might have to forswear garlic and onion to spice their food, and wear only pure white; but that was only the beginning. They were to look as unattractive as possible, because men, it was said, lusted after widows like vultures swoop in on flesh left on the ground. Some widows spent their lives in cities by the rivers, waiting for death.
Aunt Pa kept saying ours was a progressive family; she thought Meterling should marry whomever she chose, especially now with a baby due. Yet Grandmother fretted. She increased her prayers. No horoscope had been drawn up for Archer
, and none was needed for Simon, if he was to be accorded the same respect. Yet, maybe a horoscope might help, but most of the family disagreed.
Nalani was happy for Meterling; glad the baby would have a father, and Meterling a husband. For thousands of years, brides were selected for grooms and vice versa; and traditions rooted in strong belief were slow to let go. Love marriages were looked at with great suspicion, for what did children know about what was best for them? And they were children, sad to say, in not-so-long-ago times, though householding would only begin after puberty. Even now, at weddings, silver toys are brought out as part of the ritual so the groom and bride were kept amused. Living in another age, I might already be bespoke at ten.
• • •
We began to call Simon-Archer “Simon.” He wanted Grandmother’s blessings on the union. He said that Meterling had already suffered so much that it would be cruel to cut her off from her grandmother. When the publisher of the Hindu long ago in India arranged for his widowed daughter to remarry, his relatives refused to attend the ceremony, which they thought scandalous. Grandmother was father and mother both to Meterling. So Simon began quietly to campaign for approval. Like Uncle Archer, he brought flowers and requested to see Grandmother. They sat down for tea, and first spoke about the weather. At last, he spoke directly.
“I will take care of her and Oscar for the rest of my days.”
“Do you too have his weak health?”
Simon offered to have a medical checkup.
“And if you have a child, what will happen to Oscar? Will he be treated like a stepson?”
“You know I would not do that.”
“But that’s it, Simon-ji, I don’t know you. Archer lived among us for many years. But you live in the UK, where you could have girlfriends and indecent clothing and rum punch. How do I know you won’t run off with a girlfriend when you get bored with Meti?”
Simon would object, promise, and the discussion would close until the next day.
As Sweet as Honey Page 9