The Grammarian

by Annapurna Potluri

  She drank her coffee quickly, anxious to be with Dr. Lautens in the wide world. She went to her room, smiling in a way she never had before, a wild smile that she could not control. With so many guests in the home, she could move surreptitiously. She put sandalwood-scented powder on her shoulders and collarbone and pinned jasmines to her hair, thinking briefly of that time when Dr. Lautens had told her about Aimé Guerlain, who re-created the fragrance of his first love’s skin and could capture the scent of a melancholy Paris twilight: he could make the smell of the silver mist in the purple sky, or the smell of wet flowers after a rain shower: that one was called Après l’Ondée. She had written the name down in her diary after he told her, and she wrote down too the story he had told her about Marie Antoinette being discovered in her coach by the French revolutionaries because the scent of her perfume had betrayed her: no one but royalty could afford the fragrance.

  Anjali then went to her grandmother’s room, knocking timidly in the early morning. “Nainamma! Nainamma!” she whispered, urgently. She heard a weak grunt of acknowledgment; she pushed the door through, beaming. “Nainamma! Dr. Lautens is taking me out! He wants me to go into the city with him.”

  “What for?” the old woman asked drowsily, her brow furrowed.

  “I don’t know. He says he has an errand to run—maybe to the news agents or the tailor . . . I’ll be back soon.” She turned to leave.

  “Anjali!” the old woman said in warning, her voice raspy, grabbing the girl’s wrist. But seeing so strong and rare an expression of joy on her granddaughter’s face, she said only, “Be careful.”

  They would be beyond the confines of this estate and all its stifling, all its spying, all its gossip. As she walked out of the house, she saw her mother in the kitchen. Lalita’s hair was ever-so-slightly disheveled, and she was talking to the servants about the wedding menu.

  Anjali continued on, and thought twice, before turning and saying, “Mummy, Dr. Lautens has asked me to—”

  Lalita turned, her face red with irritation. She put a ladle down and rubbed her eyes, “My God Anjali. Can’t you see I’m very busy right now? My goodness.” Lalita clutched her head, “Naaku cheppalenantha pani undi!” I have so much work.

  Turning, Anjali ran outside to meet the doctor.

  “I have called the carriage. Rajiv is waiting outside for us,” Dr. Lautens said, and as they rose up, he crooked his arm toward Anjali. It was a strange gesture, and as she steadied herself upon her cane, she looked at him quizzically.

  He smiled and taking the cane from her, offered her his arm. He beamed. She could see from his expression that he liked who he was in this moment.

  Anjali smiled, flattered and frightened at once. She was never without her cane. But she did not want to offend him. And she did want to touch him. She rested the cane against a chair, tentatively. She clutched the chair’s back as Alexandre moved nearer to her, and she imbibed the scent of musk and soap. He reached for her hand and looped her arm through his. She held to it tightly and fearfully, unstable upon her feet as she found a new balance. His arm was heavy and strong, his body warm and solid.

  Alexandre nodded to the guard to unlatch the gates. Anjali clutched Alexandre’s arm for life as he led her outside the great gates. The morning guard, Peter, was a man of the darkest skin with a bushy mustache. There were cracks in the skin of his hands. He was one of the lower-caste men who had converted to Christianity when the white missionaries went through the slums of the untouchables. He nodded to them, muttering in acknowledgment, “Miss Anjali, Dr. Lautens.”

  As they walked outside the gates, she delighted in feeling the burn of the eyes all around them, even those of the driver, who had known her for years as a proper girl. Their unvoiced accusations angered her, but she felt a great surge of pride at feeling the embarrassment unique to women. Never before had she been able to give the suggestion of impropriety.

  Outside, a thin fish vendor wearing only a lunghi was returning from the early morning market. Under his arm, three silvery fish wrapped in newspaper—taking home what he couldn’t sell. A blond street dog was trailing him, whining and whimpering, his ribs and hips jutting out of his skin and thin coat. The fishmonger waved at the dog dismissively, shouting, “Po!” Go, get out of here. But then Anjali saw him turn around and throw a fish at the starving dog, which attacked it with his snout and teeth, laying waste to it in minutes. And Anjali felt inexplicably light, as if a heavy hand had been lifted from her chest, so glad to see such goodness.

  As they sat in the carriage, Alexandre wore again his strange smile.

  “I hope you enjoy what I have planned, Anjali.”

  “I am sure I will, Dr. Lautens.”

  She did not recognize the curve of the road as they wove through the streets, but she lifted her face, imbibing the salt in the air.

  Before her, an expanse of blues and golds came into view, fairly sparkling. And Anjali smelled that ocean air, saw little plumes of sand rise up in the wind.

  Alexandre asked the driver to wait in the carriage. He kicked his shoes off, exited the carriage and came around to her side.

  Anjali followed his example and slid her sandals off. She leaned toward him and took his arm as before.

  They walked along the long stretch of sand, and she felt the sand against her feet, grainy between her toes and against the dry skin of her heels. The morning was cool, but the rising sun warmed them, and she could feel it bear down on the earth. She shuddered in the early morning breeze and held Alexandre’s arm as if it were more dear now.

  They stood for a moment, gazing out at the great, roaring blue and green and white ocean. He sighed deeply, and for a moment, she lost his gaze and saw that his mind was far away. For a moment she could not feel the strength of his body and thought she might fall as the waterline rushed up around her ankles. She felt fear in her stomach, and in the next moment, her vision was filled with the sky. Alexandre lifted her into his arms. She screamed even though she was smiling.

  He marched out swiftly in the sea. Alexandre laughed, and looking down at her exclaimed, “Anjali, today you will swim.”

  A cold, clear pool rose around Dr. Lautens’s legs, his pant legs pooling around his body as they moved deeper and deeper into the water. Anjali closed her eyes as the water washed over her again and again. She continued to scream in fear and joy and disbelief. They moved deeper and farther into the water, and Alexandre continued to laugh with such unbridled joy, in such hysterics, that he seemed a much younger man than he was, the cool water lapping at his chest, the fishermen in their boats laughing and pointing and yelling at them.

  The water was deep. It was rising up past his waist and up to his chest; he laughed, giddy from of the shock of the coldness of the water. She did too—it took her breath away and she gasped and sputtered and flailed, clutching Alexandre’s body for dear life, her legs and arms flailing.

  “Don’t worry, Anjali,” he laughed, “I’m here!” He yelled over the roar of the waves, laughing at the fear, panic and happiness in her face. “I’ll hold onto you! I’ll hold onto you!” She felt the warmth of his body as wave after wave crashed over them. Her skirts pooled out in the water, rising up to her knees, and she felt her skin tighten in the cold. Alexandre caught a brief glimpse of her deformed leg. Anjali’s hair came loose from its bun and spread like a dark cloud around her face.

  Dr. Lautens continued to hold her up. “Don’t struggle against the water, relax, let your body float,” he instructed her, remembering teaching his own children how to swim. “The water will support you—it will hold you up. And I am holding you also.”

  The gentle and amused expression on his face caused her fear to subside, and she could feel her muscles begin to relax, to move with the waves. She felt his large hands clutching her body, pressing his warmth into her through her wet clothes. She pressed down into his palms and closed her eyes and shouted and shouted again with joy. The water washed over her once and again and again, every time cleansing he
r as she floated as if sinless.

  Alexandre’s tunic clung to him, and his wet hair fell back over his head in slick, dark curls. His skin and eyelashes sparkled in the early light with drops of seawater, his eyes shimmering in amusement. He seemed to glow in the light, and she thought him never more beautiful than at that moment—alive and free in the water, his skin pale against the darkness of his hair, his body tall against the bright orange and gold of the sun moving up, steady against the horizon. He cradled her head in the crook of his arm as a groom might hold a bride or a mother her child.

  She looked up at the grand stretch of blue and gold sky, having never felt more joy, at peace with life, more full of hope for all her dearest held wishes. The fishermen continued to call out to them, their bodies ebony and midnight blue against the bright sunshine, their wooden boats covered with colorful sheets and their green and black nets. They yelled out to them, laughing at the ridiculous girl, in wet clothing no less obscene to them than nudity, the strange European man with her. She felt wonderfully outrageous. She couldn’t believe herself.

  He did not know why he did it; he only knew that not before in his time in India had he felt more himself, more free in this stifling land with its strict codes. He held the girl in his arms. He lifted her body into the sea and for a moment imagined releasing her.

  The morning sun bounced its light off their skin, and the sea and sand: everything was bright with the evanescing promises morning brings, and her skin shone gold as his did in silver, the water crackling with sun, the fishermen lifting up nets full of fish like bags of silver coins out of the generous and yielding ocean.

  When the girl’s hair fell out loose over the water she seemed for a moment lovely. He saw her for a moment as the girl she could have been, had circumstances and fate been different. Her expression was different, as if for the first time she had forgotten pain.

  She could feel the strength in his arms, his enormous strength written across his broad chest and the taut line of his lips, she could feel the sinews and the veins in his forearms and hands, she could feel the pulsing heat of his blood under his skin washed away again and again by the cold water of the sea. She felt as light as air, utterly weightless, her body trembling with joy and she wanted to put her head under the water so she could cry for all the joy, and love she felt at that moment. She thought for a moment of drowning so as to never have to live this life as before, because she now knew what it felt like to be awake.

  Dawn became morning and he carried her back to the shallows and they walked back to shore. She looked at him in his wet clothes. It was the first time she had seen the striking linear beauty of a man’s body and she blushed. They squeezed the water from their clothes and hair. He shook the sand from his pant legs.

  Rajiv, the driver, was leaning against the carriage smoking, wearing an expression of scorn. Alexandre turned to Anjali and raised his eyebrows mockingly. She smiled, as if they shared as secret.

  He helped Anjali back into the carriage and felt sad, knowing they would soon return home. Inside the carriage, she leaned her body weight against his for a moment before retreating to her side.

  Alexandre knew that soon enough, life would take him away from this place, that part of his duty of studying these languages he loved was sharing them with his fellow scholars—he would not have all his life to listen to the Indians barter at the vegetable stand in Telugu. But today he had brought a girl joy, and he would remember that. He would remember this morning, remember the exhilaration and the joy of those long, wet moments: the colors of blue and gold, and the sound of the mighty ocean, inhaling the ever-present perfume of Indian jasmine, so different from that of the Grasse jasmine his grandmother had once grown in her garden.

  He watched the villages pass them by, India in browns and the pastels of the sunrise, the whites of the men’s clothing.

  “Dr. Lautens . . . ” she gasped at last, as if she’d been holding her breath.

  He turned to look at her; her skin was glowing, her hair in wet tangles over her shoulders.

  She looked at him, her eyes wide with gratitude. She wanted to thank him, but could not find the right words.

  They sat there in the coach, no more than a mere foot apart. His affection for her was at once fraternal and fatherly and something else; what a failure of words, he thought. In Europe, he could affectionately clasp her hand in his, with its lunar transparency. He could perhaps look into that plain, dark face and see that sister soul in her.

  And yet, sitting next to her, in this stateless state, that nation without words that exists in the space between two people, how silly those things seemed: countries and maps and borders, empires and colonies, those absurd constructs of his world, that world of men, like the winnings of two boys playing a board game, moving toy trains and ships around the perimeter of a square. “My words are failing me,” he thought.

  “I thought it was terrible that a girl with such an affection for water should also be afraid of it; you spoke so poetically about the Ganges—the lotus flowers and the dolphins; it seemed a pity to me that it should be your only experience of being in water.” He looked at her with immeasurable kindness, a sort of sweetness that made her skin warm. He touched her hand lightly. “Well, you are quite safe Anjali; and I’m sure we needn’t tell your parents.” He smiled, his face the radiant and warm expression of his feeling that he had just done something terribly kind.

  They came to a stop, waiting for some cattle and their herd to cross the road, and Alexandre turned abruptly and took Anjali’s face in his hand. He looked at her, his face full of affection. He almost kissed her forehead, but he stopped himself.

  As they made their way back to the home, they spoke of the times and of the politics of the day.

  They passed the British administrative bungalows, the Indian soldiers acting as guards at the gates, the railway station.

  Alexandre motioned at the station halfheartedly. “Whatever you think of the English, they have given India the best railway system in the world . . . ”

  “There are things more important than trains,” Anjali replied.

  But her heart wasn’t in the argument, not then. She was too consumed with the sudden beauty of everything around her, that blue sky like the cobalt of her grandmother’s Krishna idol, the sun passing through the coach, shimmering through the branches and leaves of the trees that lined the roads, the pristine quality of the morning air. Anjali felt as if everything around her was blossoming. The light, the sea, the sky, the feeling of joy that was rupturing inside of her: the shimmering beauty of a new life made her heart ache—an utterly new feeling of girlish hope.

  They stopped talking until Alexandre said quietly, “We are home.”

  Alexandre looked hard at Anjali. He thought for a moment of saying that he knew it must be hard to watch her younger sister get married. But her face was so pure with happiness that he stopped himself and thought to let her have this moment.

  And Alexandre looked at Anjali and for the first time really thought about the difference between sadness as a state and sadness as a quality, and how as a quality it could change a girl and make her an old woman, make the very light shine less brightly off her skin so that she seemed to be older and less luminous than the child she actually was, and even the timbre of her voice was that grave and sometimes trembling voice of a woman who had seen at least eighty monsoons and eighty summers in this scorched-earth land that was India. For the moment she seemed like a girl.

  And this isn’t the way life is supposed to be, not this, this hopelessness, this girl on the outside looking in, and it broke Alexandre’s heart. For Alexandre, to see someone in such a state of sorrow left him only two options: he could look away, pretending he didn’t see, and allow her that privacy of heartbreak, or he could embrace her, and nearly against his will Alexandre momentarily enfolded her in his arms.

  Lautens turned and saw the house, looming at the end of the road. As they pulled up, he waited a pregnant moment, expe
cting Rajiv to open the doors. But Rajiv leaned back heavily into his seat and, turning, looked at Alexandre sternly.

  Alexandre grimaced in an expression of irony and then he smiled and released the door locks. He stepped out and reached back in for Anjali’s hand, helping the girl out. “Come,” he said.

  He could see her cane resting on a chair in the front garden. “Let me fetch that for you,” he said, and he walked over briskly to get it.

  Handing it to her, he held her arm as she steadied herself.

  “Dr. Lautens, thank you,” Anjali smiled an easy, glittering smile. “After we bathe, I can ask Mary to bring out lunch to the verandah, if you’d like.”

  Alexandre felt a sudden spasm in his chest. He saw in Anjali’s eyes a look he had seen so many times in his youth, before he met Madeline. Anjali’s eyes were bright with love; it was the last thing he expected from her. Alexandre hung his head for a moment, before answering coldly, “Actually, Anjali, I’m rather tired. I think I need to rest.” A cloud fell over Alexandre’s face as he turned on his heel in the direction of his bedroom.

  HE DECIDED HE would avoid her for the rest of the day, after which things could return to normal. She was a smart girl and would begin to understand things as they really were; she would shake off her infatuation. Had he been a cruel man, he might have handled things more directly.

  IF SHE HAD known men better, perhaps Anjali would have registered Alexandre’s look of dread. But her heart was soaring, so she took Alexandre’s claim of fatigue as the truth. She thought nothing of it. Watching Alexandre retreat, Anjali smiled deeply and felt her face get hot as she looked down and began to walk to her room, calling along the way toward the servants’ quarters, “Mary! Bring hot water for my bath!”

  Mary’s voice was caught in the echo of the marbled halls, “Yes, Miss!” Many of the guests had eaten lunch already and were taking naps; despite how full the home was, it seemed quiet for the moment.