Teatime for the Firefly

by Shona Patel

  “I hit it,” I yelled back. The bat was feebly stretching out a wing and giving tiny shudders. “I think it’s...fatally wounded.”

  “Good! Do you think you’ll be all right now?”

  “I think so.”

  I got out of the tub and toweled myself dry with one hand while holding the tennis racket in the other. The bat had righted itself and was giving tiny flutters. Not wanting to take chances, I upturned a tin mug over it. I changed into a fresh cotton sari, combed out my damp hair, put on some sandalwood lotion and got out of the bathroom as fast as I could.

  Manik’s cupboard door was ajar. I peeped in. There were mostly white cotton work clothes, Bombay bloomers and white bush shirts, starched stiff and neatly folded into separate piles. On the hangers were a few suits, dinner jackets and a metal tie rack full of ties. There was a drawer for his white underwear and another for his socks, the pairs all nicely matched, one foot curled into the other. Tucked in the back of the underwear drawer was an unopened packet of cigarettes.

  I appraised myself critically in the full-length mirror inside the cupboard door. The handloom cotton sari I wore was a creamy buttermilk color with a cucumber-green border. It was my favorite sari but now I was full of self-doubt. This was going to be the first dinner with my new husband. Would Manik like the way I looked? I could only guess. I twisted my hair into a casual hand bun and took one last look in the mirror before walking out of the bedroom door.

  Dinner was an oddly formal affair. The table was laid with a stiff white tablecloth with place settings at the two far ends and what looked like an excessive display of silver cutlery. Covered serving dishes were laid out in a straight line, right down the middle of the table. In the center was a vase with red zinnias, their heavy heads drooping sadly over the rim of the vase, as though they were weeping into the tablecloth. Manik and I sat like two lonely bookends while Halua came around and served us. Kalua, his twin, the cook, had fixed an impressive six-course dinner. An egg and chicken banquet.

  “I am afraid that’s all he knows how to cook,” Manik said. “Egg and chicken. He wanted to impress you, so I guess he made everything in his repertoire.”

  Kalua had prepared an egg curry, egg bhajia and a masala omelet. Then there was a chicken curry, a whole roasted chicken and breaded chicken cutlets. And for dessert, guess what? Egg custard. At the end of the meal, I imagined Manik and I would be clucking like hens.

  “Is this what you eat all the time?” I asked. “Egg and chicken?”

  “Yes. A different dish each day. Unless I shoot something...then we have jungle fowl, duck, pheasant, snipe or whatever I can get.”

  Still, a winged creature, I thought. How different could that be from chicken?

  “Sometimes venison or wild boar,” he added. I noted Manik had the uncanny ability to read my thoughts.

  “You don’t eat any vegetables?” I asked, trying not to sound too severe.

  “What’s that?” Manik laughed. “Honestly, I have not bothered. Most people grow their own vegetables around here.” He waved away the egg curry when Halua came around. “Which reminds me—Mrs. McIntyre, our manager’s wife, has invited you for tea on Monday. She has an impressive malibari. Don’t call her Audrey, by the way. Call her Mrs. McIntyre. Things are formal around here.”

  “I can see that,” I said. There was indeed a prissy kind of formality about everything. After his bath, I was surprised to find Manik all spruced up in white dinner slacks and a starched shirt. They were not exactly home clothes. Was it to impress me? However, something told me otherwise.

  “Is this how you dress for dinner every day, even if you are dining alone?” I asked.

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” said Manik. He looked at me and grinned. “There are many things you will find peculiar in tea culture, Layla. I did, too, at the beginning. The dress code, for example. The only time we planters wear casual clothes is for kamjari duty. Nobody cares what you wear for fieldwork as long as you do your job. At other times we are expected to dress formally even at home, and we are expected to maintain our distance with the servants at all times.”

  “That is rather strange,” I remarked. “It’s quite the opposite for Dadamoshai. He dresses formally to go to work and changes into his home clothes when he comes home.”

  “You see, we tea planters live such isolated lives,” Manik continued. “It is easy to become unkempt, slovenly, ‘go native,’ as the English say. This is frowned upon, because if you ease up on yourself, you ease up on others. You lose the respect of your workers and eventually you forsake your authority. So we are expected to keep a tight rein on our appearance and conduct. And yours truly, as the first Indian native in a managerial post, has to be doubly pukka.”

  Manik glanced around and dropped his voice. “Darling, all I want to do now is to be alone with you, but I have to wait for the servants to leave, the chowkidar to report for night duty and the generator to be switched off at the factory.” He winked at me. “I know you are excited. Hopefully you can hold out for another half an hour.”

  “Please speak for yourself,” I shot back. But I felt a small thrill: finally this was going to be our big night. After that everything would be all right.

  * * *

  After dinner I sat on the living-room sofa and watched a pale house gecko flick its tail and inch toward a moth on the wall. There were house geckos everywhere. I counted six in the living room, pasty albino-looking creatures that hung around the lightbulbs. They seemed very much at home, inside the bungalow.

  Halua went back and forth clearing the table. We could hear him clattering in the pantry.

  Manik flipped through the record pile. He paused at one, slid out the record from its jacket and blew off the dust. A few moments later, the lilting strains of Vivaldi’s “La Primavera” filled the room. He joined me on the sofa and put his arm around me. “You smell lovely,” he said, kissing my hair. His lips brushed my neck. “Very lovely.” He looked at his watch. “Half an hour before the lights go out. The factory generator shuts off at nine.”

  The mood was quiet, and light from the low-wattage bulbs floated around us in dim pools. Lulled by his voice, big waves of sleep crashed around me. My eyelids fluttered. I must have dozed off on his shoulder, because when I opened my eyes, I found myself snuggled into the crook of his arm, my bun loosened and my hair undone. With every tick of the clock the lightbulb was waning. The corners of the rooms started filling with deep shadows.

  Halua emerged from the pantry with a matchbox and lit two candlesticks stuck in chipped saucers. His face lit up with a ghoulish, half-moon glow. He placed one candle on the coffee table and the other on the bookshelf.

  Manik yawned, and stirred from the sofa. He got up and shut off the gramophone. “The generator has been switched off. Our bungalow is quite far from the factory. It takes a few minutes for the electricity to fade out over the power lines.”

  He turned, because Halua and Kalua were standing before us looking like a double vision. Kalua carried a kerosene lantern in his hand.

  “You may go now,” Manik said. “Salaam.”

  “Salaam sahib, salaam memsahib,” they chanted in unison. Then they ducked and bowed in that peculiar way of theirs before exiting the room.

  Manik blew out the candle on the bookshelf and picked up the one on the coffee table. He held out his hand to me. Then he tensed, listening. I sat up, as well. What was that? Voices. Several voices, all talking excitedly in a local tongue. A flashlight swung up the stairs. I recognized Potloo, the chowkidar, and there was a tall man with him. The man had a checkered blanket draped over his shoulders and carried a kerosene lantern.

  “Sahib?” Potloo called urgently.

  Manik was already out on the veranda. The man in the blanket talked excitedly and gesticulated with his hands while the flashlight swung in arcs. Manik spoke in a low voice.
Then all three of them went quickly down the stairs.

  I crept out to the dark veranda and looked over the railing. Several men were gathered at the foot of the stairs. As soon as they saw Manik, they all started talking at once. Kerosene lamps threw crescent patterns of light on the ground. Most of the men were barefoot. I caught a glimpse of their faces. They had flat tribal features. Laborers. I caught a word here and there: baag (tiger), khedao (chase), chokra (boy), khoon (blood). Something was wrong.

  Then Manik spoke at length to the man in the checkered blanket. He addressed him as “Jugal.” He appeared to be some kind of leader. The men salaamed and shuffled off in groups of twos and threes, their lamps becoming small dots of yellow along the dark driveway.

  Manik dashed back up the stairs. He almost bumped into me in the dark.

  “Oh! Layla! What are you doing out here?”

  “What’s wrong, Manik?”

  Manik threw up his hands. “There’s a leopard in the labor lines. It’s a man-eater creating havoc. It grabbed a child.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked in alarm, following him into the bedroom.

  “I need to go and see what’s going on. These animals can become very bold. The leopard is hiding in a cowshed. I’ll take this one down if I can.”

  Halua had placed a kerosene lamp on the dresser in the bedroom. Manik swung open the cupboard door and threw an old suede hunting jacket on the bed. He picked up his canvas boots from the shoe stand, sat on the bed, opened the bedside-table drawer and took out a flashlight. He shook it violently. It blinked a dim yellow. “Dammit,” he muttered, and fumbled at the back of the drawer, pulling out three batteries.

  “Please don’t go, Manik,” I pleaded. “It sounds so dangerous.”

  “It’s not really,” Manik replied absently. He changed the batteries quickly, tested the flashlight, placed it on the bed and laced up his boots quickly. He turned to me with a sigh. I was clutching his arm.

  “Of all nights, tonight,” he said wearily. He pushed his glasses up his nose. He saw my face and put his arms around me. “This is such bad timing, love, I don’t even know what to say!”

  “When will you be back?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “Oh, Manik! Please don’t go.”

  “This is a crisis, darling. Please understand. It’s my job.”

  I followed him into the guest room, feeling sick with fear.

  “Here, hold this, will you. Point the beam,” he said, handing me the flashlight. He cracked open his shotgun, popped out two orange shells from the chamber, then rummaged in a leather pouch and picked out two red ones, which he inserted in the empty chambers.

  “Please try and get some sleep,” he said, snapping the gun shut. He put two extra red shells in his pocket. “And try not to worry.” He held me close for a while, kissed the top of my head, turned and strode out onto the veranda.

  “Jugal!” he called, and a voice replied from under the portico. Manik and the man in the blanket hurried off into the night, swinging their flashlights. The gate latch creaked, and Potloo’s silhouette was framed in the yellow glow of the kerosene lamp. Manik said something to him. Potloo shut the gate and stood there watching until the flashlights disappeared around the bend in the road. He went inside his hut, and I saw the small square of yellow light appear in his window.

  All around me was the blackest, darkest night you can imagine. No moon in the sky. No sounds. Only the furtive rustle of the trees and a pack of lonely jackals howling in the distance. All the servants were gone. The rooms in the bungalow looked gaping and cavernous. The floorboard creaked as I walked back into the living room. I blew out the last remnant of the candle spluttering on the coffee table and made my way to the bedroom by the glow of the kerosene lamp coming through the open doorway.

  I sat on the bed overcome with desolation. An owl hooted in the tree outside. A deep dread filled my being. What if something happened to Manik? I was the bad-luck wife, after all. My husband had walked off into a moonless night to fight a man-eating leopard before we had even consummated our marriage. He did not even take the jeep.

  I wished Dadamoshai were here. Dadamoshai discouraged worrying about the unknown. “Worry is the most crippling emotion, Layla. It’s an impediment,” he’d said to me once. “It is an irrational fear of the unknown. Worry will impair your judgment. It will rob you of the ability to make things happen.”

  But I was completely powerless. The dark churning in my mind would not stop.

  CHAPTER 19

  I woke up in a panic. What was that noise? Birds. Hundreds of them. Sunlight slanted into the bedroom through the parted curtain. Manik’s side of the bed had not been slept in. Where was he? I was still wearing the clothes of the night before, but someone had covered me with a blanket. There was a note on the bedside table.

  6:10 a.m.

  Dearest wife,

  I did not want to wake you. You were sleeping so peacefully. I had a hellish night. The leopard got away. I have to be in the office early. Mr. McIntyre has called an emergency meeting. I will be home for breakfast at eight. You may see some people gathered outside the gate. They are laborers, to welcome you, their new memsahib. It is customary to greet them.

  M.

  Thank God he was alive! I sank back into the pillow, limp with relief. The time on my watch said six forty-five. I must have just missed him. I wish he had woken me up.

  I freshened up and changed. Halua was hovering outside the bedroom door. He stood up stiffly and salaamed when he saw me.

  “What time did Chotasahib get back?” I asked him in Assamese. The language spoken by the coolies was a peculiar mixture of several Indian languages, but mostly Assamese and Bengali. They seemed to understand both languages.

  “Two hours ago,” he replied. It was just after murgi-daak, the first rooster crow of early dawn. So that had to be around 4:30 a.m., he surmised.

  It was still dark when Chotasahib had returned, Halua said. There were several people with him. The young boy had been taken to hospital. The leopard had torn his leg off and dragged him halfway into the jungle. His injuries were very serious. Chotasahib had stayed for a quick cup of tea and rushed off again. He had not slept all night. Halua had been given strict instructions not to disturb me, but stay close at hand, in case I woke up. So here he was at my service, and would I like some tea, memsahib?

  Indeed, I would.

  “On the veranda, memsahib?”

  “Yes.”

  The sun had just begun to skirt the treetops. A blue-gray mist hung like a tattered veil over the hills covering the lake. The garden was bursting with birdcalls interspersed with the whoop of monkeys that crashed in the high branches in the forest beyond. Blue jays skimmed the eucalyptus branches in streaks of startling blue.

  A throng of people milled around outside the gates. Small children swung on the gate, peering into the bungalow, women sat on their haunches with their baskets on the ground and old men stood leaning on walking sticks.

  Halua arrived with the tea tray. The teapot was tucked inside a faded but clean tea cozy. There were two cups, a milk server, small sugar bowl and a tiny tea strainer sitting in its cradle. There were also four round Marie tea biscuits fanned out decoratively on a small floral plate.

  “Who are all those people?” I asked him.

  Halua looked surprised. “To see you, memsahib.”

  “Oh,” I said, remembering Manik’s note. This was quite a crowd. I felt nervous just looking at them. “Well, ask them to come in.”

  “No, no, no, memsahib.” Halua clicked his tongue sharply. “Coolie people don’t enter bungalow.”

  I was expected to receive them at the gate, it seemed.

  With some trepidation, I got up. The tea can wait, I thought. Let’s get this over with.

&n
bsp; I walked toward them. A small cheer went up in the crowd. Elders stood solemnly in the front lines; small children and riffraff were pushed to the side. As I came closer, I saw they were all dirt-poor. Most of them had bare feet or wore sole-bare sandals with missing straps, improvised by bits and pieces of rubber and rope. There were lots of missing teeth. They all seemed to be of the same ethnicity, ebony-skinned, flat-nosed with high tribal cheekbones and various tattoos on their arms and faces. The women had horizontal V shapes tattooed in the corners of their eyes that gave them a long-lashed look. They wore prominent nose studs, their ear tips clustered with a succession of tiny rings all the way down to the earlobe. Their hair was oiled, flattened and twisted into tight conical topknots that stuck out like anthills on the sides of their heads. Small children with round, tight bellies stared with big eyes. They wore amulets and magic charms and not much else. Even the sick and the maimed had shown up. There was a one-legged man and an old woman with a goiter the size of a grapefruit. A couple of mangy pariah dogs sat around scratching and yawning. It was quite a menagerie.

  Halua swung open the gates, and the crowd started babbling in a language I could not understand. Finally, a wizened old man with dim watery eyes and only two bottom teeth but a great deal of authority held up his hand imperiously to silence the crowd. A young woman with heavy pewter bangles stepped out and put a garland of marigold around my neck. She was followed by another, and yet another. Soon I had four heavy marigold necklaces around my neck. I felt as if I might tip over.

  The toothless old man launched off into an elaborate and long-winded speech. It was encouraged by appreciative nods and sounds of accord from the crowd. One curious word kept surfacing—Mai-Baap. Literally translated it meant mother-father. Halfway through his emotional speech, a small child began to squall and received a stern eye from the old man. The young mother, wearing a bright pink sari, clamped her hand down on the baby’s mouth, and the elder waited impatiently for order to be restored before he continued in his monotonous, singsong voice. I had no idea what he was talking about. I caught an Assamese word here and there but that was all.