He hugged the package to his chest for a long time before he could bring himself to open it. The first thing he pulled out was a book from the Reverend’s collection. Devanna immediately recognized the handsome cherry leather binding and the gilt-edged lettering along its spine. The thick, creamy pages reeked faintly of naphthalene, transporting him across the years. A sun-filled classroom. The guttural sound of the Reverend’s voice, bringing the words to life. Devanna swallowed, a catch in his throat.
The calotype lay pressed under the front cover. The two men within its frame stood beaming. One swarthy, the other slim and tow-haired, their faces alive with promise. Devanna picked up the calotype and then saw that a dedication lay beneath, on the front page of the book. It was a quotation from the Bible, inscribed in the Reverend’s precise copperplate. “Sons are a heritage from the Lord,” he had written, “children a reward from him.” Devanna’s eyes filled with tears.
One more thing lay inside the oilskin, a package of silk, soft and yellowing from the years. He unwrapped it with hands that shook. A dried flower, large as a book, thin as tissue. He traced the delicate stamens with his thumb, running his fingers back and forth along the parchment petals, and then Devanna began uncontrollably to weep. A faint, desiccated perfume rose from the bamboo flower. It lingered in the air; sweeter than a rose, richer than jasmine, with the musky undertones of an orchid.
Chapter 35
Nanju was apprehensive at the prospect of visiting Germany. First of all, he had only ever been as far as Bangalore. More important, he was anxious that everything with the visit go exactly to plan. After the debacle of the waterlogged storehouse, he was determined to do his mother proud.
Going to Germany would entail a journey by rail from Bangalore to Madras, then passage on a steamer bound for Europe, followed by rail or coach to Berlin. He had visited the mission library, where he found an old German-to-English phrasebook that was coming apart at the seams. “Guten Morgen, guten Tag, guten Abend, gute Nacht,” he mumbled to himself in his bath. “Wie heissen sie? Ich heisse Nanjappa, ich komme aus Indien.” He pored over the posters displayed in Hans’s store, advertisements extolling the pleasures of the Seine and the Rhineland. He even bought himself a new hat for the trip, a gray fedora in the exact style that the gentlemen in the posters so nattily sported.
So anxious was he to get everything right that it had not even occurred to him that Devi might choose Appu instead.
Dusk had fallen over Tiger Hills. Lizards were skittering onyx-eyed along the walls and across the ceilings, tracking the moths fluttering about the lamps. The family was gathered for the evening prayers. Devi rang the little brass bell, to dispel foul spirits who might be circling, and passed her palms over the flame of the prayer lamp. She dipped her forefinger into the crystal jar of vibhuti and dotted Appu’s forehead with it. “Swami kapad,” she murmured, as Appu bent to touch her feet. “God bless. Don’t forget the photographs, kunyi,” she added as he straightened. “You must get them taken tomorrow; the lawyers said they absolutely require those for the travel documents.”
Nanju was sure he had misheard. “Travel documents?” he asked, his eyes going from Appu to Devi. “What travel documents?”
“Swami kapad,” his mother said, as she blessed him. She sighed as she fastened the lid of the jar and returned it to the shelf. “The documents need to be in perfect order. So much paperwork for this boy to go to Berlin.”
Nanju’s voice sounded high even to his own ears. “Appu is going to Berlin? Appu?”
“Well, yes, someone needs to represent your father at the bank, remember?”
“You chose Appu? But what about me?” he asked, shocked. “Why not me?”
Devi looked at him, half smiling, half surprised. “It’s best that Appu goes,” she said. “You know he can handle all those white folk better than any of us.”
“I should go. I’m the older son, am I not? I should represent the family,” Nanju said tightly.
“Nan-ju. Come, what is all this?” She spread her hands before her. “You never even want to go to Bangalore, let alone on such a long journey. It didn’t even occur to me that you’d want to go to Berlin. Why didn’t you say anything to me before?”
“No harm done, Avvaiah,” Appu interjected lightly. “Why don’t the both of us go together?”
“Yes, very fine, and where’s the money for tickets going to come from? I’ve barely managed to scrape together enough for yours. Where am I going to get the money for the second? Until the bank releases the funds in Germany … ” Devi shook her head. “No, only one of you can go this time.”
“He’s my father,” Nanju said then. He turned to Devanna, his eyes full of mute appeal. “Appaiah is my father.”
“Oh, come now, Nanjappa,” Devi snapped, losing her patience. “Stop. If you are so keen, when the money comes in, I will send you abroad as well, wherever you want to go. This time, however, it’s your brother who is going to travel.”
Devi turned from him and, waving her palm over the prayer lamp, snuffed out the flame.
Devanna found him by the lotus pond. Nanju held his new fedora in his hands, mechanically twisting the brim back and forth between his fingers.
“Nanju,” he began hesitatingly. “Monae … ”
Nanju looked down at the hat. He ran a thumb over the silk lining, caressing the olive softness of it. “The floods,” he said to his father, “the damaged coffee. I know she is still angry with me. One thing she asked me to do, did she not? To look after the crop. And even that I couldn’t do. How can she entrust me with going all the way to Berlin?”
“No, it’s not like that. Your mother, she—”
“It doesn’t matter, Appaiah,” Nanju interrupted. He tried to smile. “Like she said, there will be more visits.” He rose abruptly and, with a small, indeterminate sound, flung the new fedora away from him. The hat soared into the air, a smudge of gray arcing against the night, and then it fell straight into the pond. It bobbed on the surface for a minute or two, as if still coming to terms with this abrupt change in circumstance, then sank burbling into the water.
Devi harbored no illusions about Appu. She knew that once he left for Europe, unless she gave him very good reason to, he would be a long while returning. So well did she understand her son that she knew perfectly well the hook with which to bait him.
Chengappa’s daughter, Baby, had grown into a spectacularly beautiful young woman. It must run in the Nachimanda family, people conjectured, for hadn’t Baby’s aunt Devi been one of the loveliest women of her time?
Despite her frequent visits to the Nachimanda home, Devi had not spent a great deal of time with her niece. It was only after Baby had finished her schooling and was back home once more that her aunt became truly reacquainted with her. Devi was visiting Tayi one afternoon when Baby came out with a tumbler of coffee. Even the normally critical Devi was taken aback by how pretty the girl was. “How she has grown!” she exclaimed after Baby had bent shyly to touch her feet and then disappeared inside the house. “Why, I remember her at Appaiah’s funeral, she was just a little child.”
Tayi coughed as she drew the blankets closer about her. “You forget how quickly children grow. Why, it seems like only yesterday that you were running about in the courtyard, streaked with dirt and getting up to mischief.”
Devi laughed. She reached for her grandmother’s hand. “And you are just the same. Always talking to me as if I were still a child. Tell me, Tayi,” she continued, “what do you think of Baby for Appu?”
“Appu? Don’t you mean Nanju? He is older, is he not? He should be married first.”
Devi sighed. “Nanju’s shown little enough inclination whenever I bring up the subject of his marriage, but it’s high time I found him a wife, I know. Still, it’s Appu who is my immediate concern. I want to get him betrothed before he leaves for Europe—we can have the wedding when he returns. That will give me plenty of time to find someone lovely for Nanju.”
Appu ha
d looked incredulously at her, just as she had anticipated. “Engaged? Come on, Avvaiah, have a heart,” he exclaimed. “I’m only twenty-four.”
“That’s all well and good,” Devi said, “but I’ve already confirmed the alliance with my brother.”
“What? Avvaiah! No, I will not be party to this, you cannot simply—”
She refused to listen. “Kunyi, just wait till you see her,” was all she would say.
His heart stopped. Appu was convinced that the first time he laid eyes on Baby, his heart actually stopped beating for a moment. Never, not at the Club, not in Madras, nor in Bangalore, nor in all of Coorg had he laid eyes on someone this exquisite. Her ivory skin was so translucent that when she lifted her glass to drink, he could almost see the water slipping down her throat.
Nanju stared alongside, equally thunderstruck. Baby sat before them in a sari of the palest blue, a coral sprig of wild roses in her plait. Just like a cloud, Nanju thought in a daze, or a pearl, wrapped in a light blue sea.
They sat as if turned to stone, gawping at her. “Wait till the fellows at the Club lay eyes on her!” “Such purity, such untainted innocence—even the flowers in her hair seem tawdry in comparison.” “Slender, too. I can’t wait to see what she looks like in a dress.” “Those eyes, Iguthappa Swami, those eyes.” “We’ll make a fine-looking couple, all right.” “Like a pearl, an incomparable pearl.”
“So, kunyi,” Devi asked Appu with a perfectly straight face. “Do you approve of my choice?”
Baby blushed and looked down at her feet, but there was a smile fluttering on the full cupid’s bow of her lips.
“Kunyi?” Devi asked again, her tone solemn but her eyes dancing. “Is something the matter? You do approve, don’t you?”
“Yes,” they both said then, Nanju and Appu together, still staring at Baby.
It was Appu who continued. “Yes. Yes, yes.”
Appu and Baby were formally betrothed to one another, Nanju watching silently as the village priest consulted his almanac and suggested the twelfth of November for the wedding date. Devi slipped the gold earrings from her ears, a pair of simple studs, the only jewelry she wore anymore apart from the tiger brooch. She put the earrings into her niece’s hands. “Here, kunyi. They belonged to my mother, your paternal grandmother. I don’t have much else to give you at the moment, but”—she pulled Appu’s ear as if he were a little boy—“after this fiancé of yours returns from Germany, there will be more. A lot more.”
As the date of Appu’s departure drew closer, Devanna tried speaking with Devi on Nanju’s behalf. Maybe it would be better if Nanju went instead of Appu …
Devi was incredulous. “Don’t you want this to go smoothly? You know Appu will be better at handling the lawyers and the white folk.”
Devanna then tried intervening with Appu, fiddling with the knob of his walking stick as he suggested that Appu might consider abdicating in favor of Nanju. But despite being starry-eyed over his fiancée, love—or lust—had not yet befuddled Appu’s judgment. “Not go! And miss the Olympics?”
He grinned. “I’m sorry, Appaiah, but nothing, and I mean no thing, could keep me from going to cheer on our team in Amsterdam. Come on, Appaiah. It’s the Indian hockey team. At the Olympics, for the very first time ever! I have to go.”
Appu left for Madras in April. The prospect of his departure threw Baby into such a black depression that she took to her bed with a fever, but not before sending three hundred and thirty-three holigés, each fried to perfection and wrapped painstakingly in banana leaves, as sustenance for the voyage. Devi insisted Appu pack them with the rest of his luggage. He did as he was told, giving away the hefty package to the first beggar he saw in Bangalore. How on earth did they expect him to carry holigés on the steamer? He could just see himself now addressing his fellow passengers. “I say, care for a holigé with your cigar, old chap?”
Still, touched by Baby’s intentions and even a little awed by the apparent intensity of her feelings for him, Appu placed an order for a stunning and ridiculously expensive pair of sapphire and black pearl earrings for her in Madras. “These,” he said airily to the proprietor. “Keep them on hold for me, I shall be wiring funds to you from Europe.”
He arrived in Berlin on May 18, 1928. Summer in Berlin was like a balmy November morning in Coorg. The city was at her best: the wide, tree-lined avenues, the flowering parks, and the vast, elegant sprawl of buildings displayed to advantage in the lambent light. It was the Jazz Age and the peak of the cabaret, the last full-blown hurrah of the Weimar Republic before Hitler would come to power. Olaf had looked to India for a jolt of excitement all those years ago, but had he experienced Weimar Berlin, he might never have left the country. It was a city of artists and intellectuals, of philosophers, wanderers, and fortune seekers, attracting from all corners of the developed world the bright, the damaged, and the most beautiful.
Revelers spilled from the cafés on every street corner, smoking and laughing, throwing handfuls of coins toward the musicians playing beneath the open windows. Appu stared openmouthed at the monocled, trouser-clad women strolling arm in arm down the streets and making no secret of their affection for one another. Posters beckoned from walls, fences, and lampposts. He could make out the word Kaberette again and again; the rest of the words he didn’t understand, but the illustrations on the posters told him all he needed to know. Couples of indeterminate gender lay entwined on park benches and pressed against alley walls. Appu colored as a woman caught him staring and winked at him over her paramour’s shoulder. He hastily looked away, then laughed out loud. Anything went in Berlin, it seemed, everything was acceptable.
“In der Luft,” people said wonderingly of Weimar Berlin; it was in the air, and Appu was at once caught up in its swirl.
He checked into the hotel that the lawyer had recommended, a sensible, no-frills place, but even the modest deposit required at the front desk all but exhausted the money Appu had brought with him. He hurried to the bank early next morning, where, after a weary, soul-destroying day of filling in forms, signing documents, and producing affidavits, the proceeds from the Reverend’s estate were finally released into his custody. He wired the funds home at once, after setting aside a thousand reichsmarks for his own enjoyment. Then, his shoes clacking against the marble as he raced down the steps of the bank, Appu set out to explore the city. “A drink,” he mimed to the hotel concierge, “I need a drink,” and that good man pointed him at once in the direction of the cabaret.
Appu sat in a corner of the smoke-filled club, mesmerized by the long row of dancers shimmying across the stage. He strummed his fingers on the table, keeping time, as the music rose to a crescendo. The girls stomped faster and faster, undoing bits and pieces of their clothing as they twirled. A bodice here, a garter belt there, their tiny skirts flying about their thighs. Appu watched breathlessly, the blood pounding in his ears. The orchestra came to a halt with a last, triumphant crash of cymbals, and he leaped to his feet.
“Bravo,” he roared, along with the rest of the crowd, “BRAVO!” The girls came back twice to take a bow, and when they finally left the stage Appu fell back into his chair with a guffaw. Clicking his fingers at the waitress, he ordered another drink.
“Do you speak English?”
The woman who spoke into his ear had chosen the brief lull in between acts to address him. Appu turned merrily toward her.
“I do indeed.”
She was an aspiring actress. “Motion pictures, darling,” she explained, blowing smoke rings into his face. “Lots of money to be made. I need one big break and then … ”
He laughed and ordered another round of drinks. “Motion pictures! Well, when you make it big, darling, I shall certainly come to watch.”
Ellen Antonia Hicks she said her name was, Lady Ellen Antonia Hicks, looking puckishly at him, as if daring him to question her statement. Appu bowed solemnly before her. “My lady Hicks. A pleasure.”
“From London,” she said to him
. “Five years ago.” She gestured about her. “Can you blame me for staying on?”
Appu looked at the elaborately dressed crowd, drinking, smoking, laughing, petting, as if without a care in the world. He grinned. “In der Luft, isn’t that what they say?”
He raised his glass to his lips, scanning the crowds again. A particularly comely face caught his eye, the oval cast of it reminding him, with a sudden pang, of Baby.
“Oh, I wouldn’t bother,” Ellen shouted in his ear. “That is no lady, my friend, but Baron Ludwig. Fond of pretty boys and silk lingerie.”
Appu blinked in shock as he realized she was right; the comely lass was no lass at all. “Everywhere.” Ellen pointed helpfully. “Him. Head of one of the largest banks in Berlin. And him. Officer of the Reichstag. Yes, all men.” She tapped a long, painted nail to her throat. “The Adam’s apple, darling, you have got to look for the Adam’s apple. No amount of makeup can mask that on a man. There, you see that gentleman? Now, he is actually a she.”
She took a drag on her cigarette. “Who is the cock, who is the hen? Where are the women, which are the men? What is taboo, what is a sin? Nobody cares, welcome to Berlin!”
“Sex.” The word gusted from her mouth on a cushion of air. Appu glanced at her lips, at the fire-red stain of them, then looked away. “Anita Berber used to dance not far from here you know, completely starkers, darling, to the strains of Debussy, Strauss, and Delibes. Snorting cocaine and morphine, having all sorts of very public affairs with men and women alike. Sex,” she repeated, pursing those soft, engorged lips. “Neither money nor social standing required, given freely and for gain. It is the great leveler in Berlin. Look.” She gestured about them. “The richest and most influential, rubbing shoulders with artists, homosexuals, and transvestites. Women dressed in men’s clothing, men haunting clubs and boxing matches in women’s garb, their makeup so perfect that if it weren’t for the Adam’s apple … ”
Tiger Hills Page 38