The Red Sari: A Novel

by Javier Moro

  However shy she was, it was impossible not to make friends at the age of 18 in a place like Cambridge, where one in five inhabitants was a student. There were students of every nationality and race and they did all kinds of activities during their free time, from sport to drama, as well as listening to live music or going on a picnic to the Orchard Tea Garden, public gardens in an idyllic spot that seemed out of a novel by Thomas Hardy and whose coffee-shop served delicious cheesecake. They were the ones who had given the city that cosmopolitan, lively and at the same time interesting atmosphere for which Cambridge was known all over the world. And many of them were like Sonia, that is to say foreigners with no family or friends. They needed each other.

  It was a German boy who spoke to her first in a restaurant where the food was decent. Christian von Stieglitz was an International Law student at Christ’s College, a tall, good-looking boy with intensely blue eyes and a roguish look. Half English and half German, he spoke several languages, although he had a preference for Italian and French. And for Italian and French girls, so … what better way to link the useful and the pleasant than by frequenting the language schools, full of pretty female students! That is how he met Sonia and convinced her to try the only place in Cambridge where you could eat decently. It was not very expensive, and neither was it far from the school. The Varsity was known for being the oldest restaurant in the city and was proud of having had Prince Faisal and the Duke of Edinburgh among its illustrious patrons, when they were students. Ten years earlier it had been bought by a Greek-Cypriot family and since then offered Mediterranean dishes to its numerous clientele, which included both dons and students. It was in an old building with a white-painted brick façade with two large square-paned windows in the upper floor. It was advertised by a discreet sign with black lettering. It was a narrow place and from the windows that looked on to the street you could see the buildings of Emmanuel College, another institution of great tradition where Mr Harvard himself had studied, and which served as an inspiration for him to found the university near Boston that bears his name.

  For Sonia it was a real revelation, and some comfort for her poor stomach. It was the closest thing to home cooking she had tried since she had come to the city. And so she soon became fond of mezze, the apéritifs that included dipping bread in tarama, a paste made out of fish roe and lemon, skewers of barbecued roast meat or the house speciality, baked lamb that melted in your mouth like butter. She also liked the atmosphere there. You could go to eat on your own at the Varsity and not feel lonely. More than once she must have passed a character who limped a little at that time and was always weighed down with books. He did research into cosmology at the university and years later his name would acquire world-wide fame. This was Stephen Hawking, and he was also a regular at the Varsity.

  Another character who frequented the place would leap to international renown for other reasons. Sonia had noticed him several times because, along with a group of noisy students, he occupied a long table near hers. “One of those boys stood out. He was striking in both looks and manners,” Sonia would say. “He was not as boisterous as the others; he was more reserved, more gentle. He had big, black eyes and a wonderfully innocent and disarming smile.”

  A few days later, while Sonia was having lunch with a Swiss friend at a corner table upstairs, she saw him approach, accompanied by Christian von Stieglitz, her German friend. After the usual exchange of greetings and jokes, the German boy said to her, “Let me introduce you to my flatmate. He’s from India and his name’s Rajiv …”

  They shook hands. “As our eyes met for the first time,” Sonia would say, “I felt my heart pounding.”

  Rajiv had been watching her throughout lunch, captivated by her serene beauty.

  “Do you like her?” Christian had asked him. “She’s Italian, I know her …”

  “Well introduce me to her.”

  The German boy was surprised because Rajiv was not a great one for the girls or a womanizer, but was rather distant and intimidated. “The first time I saw her,” Rajiv would say, “I knew she was the woman for me.”

  That same afternoon the four of them decided to go to Ely, a town twenty kilometres from Cambridge known for its superb Romanesque cathedral built inside the walls of a Benedictine monastery. They went in Christian’s old blue Volkswagen, whose roof looked as if it had chickenpox scars. The person responsible for that had been Rajiv: he had turned it over twice one day when he went out for a drive. Driving was one of his passions. As they had no money to take it to a paint and body repair shop to have it fixed, they had to get inside the vehicle and straighten out the roof by kicking it. Apart from that, the Beetle was the dream of any student because it meant having a private means of transport to escape from routine and discover the country at will.

  Nothing special happened on the trip to Ely, and yet it was the most special one Rajiv and Sonia made together in all their lives. The one they would never forget. It was a rain-free afternoon, and it looked as though the rays of sunlight caressed the moss on the walls and lit up the black slate roofs that were slick from the damp. Ely was a marvellous town known for holding the greatest collection of mediaeval buildings still in use in the whole of England. A magical place, where it was easy to lose oneself among the old houses and ancient gardens, where they enjoyed spectacular views over the English countryside from the top of the towers. Christian, who knew it well, acted as guide and showed them the prettiest and most romantic corners, like a magician pulling wonders out of his hat. It was a quiet afternoon, when Rajiv and Sonia talked little, allowing themselves to be lulled by a feeling of fulfillment that seemed to overcome them. “The love between Rajiv and Sonia began right there, in the cathedral gardens, at that precise moment. It was something immediate. I never saw two people connect like that, and forever. From that moment until the day he died, they became inseparable,” Christian would recall later.

  Can love arise in such an instantaneous almost insolent way? When Rajiv took her hand as they were walking in the shade of the ancient walls of the cathedral, Sonia had no strength to pull it back. She thought about doing it, but she did not. That warm, soft hand transmitted a feeling of immense, profound safety and, why not say it? pleasure. As though she had been waiting all her life for that enveloping contact. She could not pull her hand away, even though her conscience told her she should.

  In the days that followed, she tried to fight that feeling that set her heart pounding and caused her some anxiety because it was uncontrollable. She was determined to handle it, to not let herself be consumed by that fire that Rajiv’s smile had lit within her. Women do not give way to the attempts of seduction of the first man that comes along, that is what she had been taught since her childhood. And she had given way, even if it was just letting him hold her hand, walking along as though they had been lovers all their lives. Did one not have to hold back, hide one’s feelings, test one’s suitors? But everything that was supposed to be done ran afoul of that smile, that look from his velvety eyes, that tender voice that cracked because Rajiv was almost as shy as she was.

  “Do you want to come to the Orchard this evening?”

  “No thanks, not today,” she replied with a knot in her throat, unable to take her eyes away from his.

  “Just for a short time, and we’ll be back early …”

  She shook her head this time and smiled as though not to discourage him, because what she was really wanting to say was yes. Rajiv did not insist and stood there, not knowing what to do with his eyes or his hands, like an embarrassed child who does not know how to take a refusal. He was not the typical Italian suitor, more the opposite. He was a little clumsy around girls, but, instead of diminishing him, that increased his attractiveness. Rajiv had no guile or vulgarity; wordiness was not for him. He was a serious young man, and his smile seemed sincere. But for Sonia there was always the question … What if he just wants to take advantage of me?

  For a while she decided not to go to the Varsity a
ny more so as not to fall into temptation and meet up with him again. Better to take extreme measures. But then her life became as grey as it was before, a life without flavour … or colour. Could the attraction to that boy be so she would not be alone? she wondered in her freezing room as she bit into an apple. How can it be real feeling, if we have hardly spoken? How can you love what you do not know? All these questions piled up in her mind as she tried to convince herself that no, it could not be, her imagination was playing tricks on her, she felt nothing for that young man. Then, in moments of lucidity, she realized that he must be very different from her in everything. He was from another country … and what a country! Not from Europe or the United States, but a distant, exotic place about which she knew almost nothing… An Indian, no less! Of another race, with his skin quite dark and he probably had another religion, and would have been brought up with other customs, almost mediaeval. It would be crazy to fall in love with someone like that! she told herself then. Was the world not full of stories of Indians or Africans loved by European girls? Once they had them and took them back to their countries, the girls ended up as slaves. She suddenly saw herself as the passing fancy of an eastern prince, or something like that. Then, for a moment, she forgot everything and became herself again, an Italian student lost in Cambridge, wanting the holidays to come so she could go back home and put an end to the dizzying loneliness and uncertainty which, although she did not know it, was making her into an adult.

  But the memory of that smile did not disappear just because she tried to wipe it out, as though it might be enough to press a button to give orders to your heart. Rajiv’s smile slipped through the ins and outs of her mind and, when she was unaware of it, took a central place in her imagination again. Since it was much nicer to let herself be carried along by her daydreams than to fight the dictates of her heart, she finally gave free rein to her thoughts… What was there in that smile that seduced her like that? Was it the refinement of his way of expressing himself that touched her heart? Was it his oriental prince’s composure? Rajiv spoke with the best English accent, as though he had lived in Cambridge all his life. He was polite and gallant, and a little old-fashioned, qualities that were rare among the other students. Christian, who had known him for several months now, had just found out that he was the grandson of the man that used to be Prime Minister of India, and that is impressive, or at least it whips up your curiosity almost as much as the fact that Rajiv had not mentioned it sooner. If anyone asked him, Rajiv explained that his last name had nothing to do with that of Mahatma Gandhi, but he refrained from telling about his relationship to Nehru. What he most enjoyed about England, precisely, was the peace of mind it gave him to live anonymously. All of his life in India he had been the grandson of the first head of state of independent India, an icon venerated by millions of people. Now he could be himself, he wanted to enjoy it as much as he could.

  In spite of being who he was, he had no money to go out. He would have liked to invite her to one of the few night clubs where you could listen to live music. It was called Les Fleurs du Mal, but his budget did not stretch that far. Christian was surprised at the huge difference there was between the two large groups of Asian students in Cambridge, the Pakistanis and the Indians. The former usually had plenty of money and threw it away, but the Indians were always down to their last penny. The reason for this was the restriction the Indian government imposed on its citizens to limit the purchase of foreign currency. They were unable to change more than 650 pounds every time they went abroad. “The beauty of Cambridge,” Christian would recall, “is that it was a great leveler of social and economic classes.”

  Nightlife was practically non-existent because they closed the college gates at eleven o’clock. You had to go out in the daytime, and the amusements were very simple: going for a walk, punting on the River Cam, spending the evening in the digs of one friend or another… The second time that Rajiv asked her out, she accepted, and they were listening to music in the tiny student lodgings he shared with Christian and which was overflowing with friends and records. Sonia ended the evening with the certainty that Rajiv really loved her. It was a shame to see him so much in love and yet so unable to express his feelings. Sonia perceived that he was prey to a flood of feelings that stirred him up inside as much as it did her. That day they had not taken their bicycles because it was raining, so he walked home with her, quite a distance, because she lived closer to the centre. They were so absorbed in their conversation that they got lost in the deserted town as he opened his heart to her. He confessed that he loved living in England because he felt free for the first time in his life. He told her that since he was a child he had lived with an escort of security guards at home in New Delhi where his grandfather was Prime Minister. He told her he did not like to be recognized as the son of the family to which he belonged, because it limited his movements and his freedom, because he never knew who was really a friend, as people got close to him for ulterior motives just because of his closeness to power. He told her about the wonderful feeling he felt the first time he drove Christian’s Volkswagen and that it made him feel free, as he had never felt before. He also talked about the death of his father, which had happened four years previously. About the death of his grandfather the year before, which hurt even more because he had loved him as though he were another father. “Yes,” said Sonia shyly, “I remember that.” Sonia vaguely remembered having seen pictures of Nehru’s grandiose funeral, solemn and sad, on the news on television the year before.

  Rajiv talked to her a little about everything, mixing things up, pouring out memories and desires, longings and hopes, yearnings and sorrows in disorder. Sonia understood that, beyond the difference in race or nationality, that young man belonged to a world to which she had never had access, about which she had never had the slightest idea. More than the fact that he was from India, what separated her most from him was the circle in which he moved, as remote from the middle-class life of an Italian girl from Orbassano as the Earth from the Moon. They were separated by everything, and yet, and perhaps because of it, the attraction they felt for each other was even stronger. For him she symbolized everything he desired: to lead a normal life. She was not Indian and she was not English; she was not identifiable on any level of the social hierarchy. She represented the anonymity of the middle class; in other words, freedom, which is what a young man of 21 who had grown up in a gilded cage most desired.

  He told her about his passion for photography, for jazz musicians like Stan Getz, Zoot Sims and Jimmy Smith, although he also liked the Beatles and Beethoven. But his real passion was flying, and this had come about when he was fourteen and his grandfather Nehru took him for a ride in a glider. “The sound of the wind, the feeling of total freedom… takes you away from it all. I was hooked for life.” And the beauty of flying over the plains in the north of India, with their winding rivers, their little villages surrounded by green and brown fields where the tiniest piece of land was cultivated … As a result of that experience he became a member of the Delhi Flying Club and every time he came back on holiday, he went out in a glider for a spin to forget the world. Now he felt he wanted to try flying a proper plane and was toying with the idea of becoming a pilot.

  This young man opened the doors of an unknown world that shone like the stars in the heavens for Sonia. He was a warm-hearted boy, practical and at the same time a bit of a dreamer, but above all he inspired her with confidence. He talked very naturally and did not boast about anything because he did not need to. He was the opposite of boastful, the opposite of the typical Italian flirt that she knew so well. Walking along with him, it suddenly seemed to her that the streets were not the same as ever, that she was in another city much more beautiful than the one she had known until then. Rajiv made her dream, took her out of her shell and made her forget herself and the homesickness she had felt until then. That night, when he left her at her house, he clumsily told her he loved her, saying that she was the first girl he had rea
lly liked, and he hoped she would be the only one. He said it so honestly that it was hard not to believe him.

  But even so Sonia went on struggling to get him out of her head, because she was obstinate and because her heart went from one extreme to another like a pendulum, torn between reason and desire. Subject to a storm of contradictory feelings, she felt dizzy as though she were standing on the edge of a precipice, swaying and afraid to fall. What would I do in this boy’s world? What have I got to do with a spoiled child whose famous grandfather took him out in a glider? Why am I letting myself be dazzled? Sonia was proud that she had her feet firmly on the ground, and she did. But the more she became obsessed, the more distant she was with him, and that apparent coldness was for him a greater inducement to win her. The reality was that she thought about him day and night, as though he had become the very air she breathed. When she was not with him, she sought the company of girls of her own class just so she could talk about him and his overwhelming charm. The feeling that came over her served as a reason to learn English faster and better, such was her need to be good enough for him, and not to miss the nuances in conversation with Rajiv and his friends. There is nothing like love for learning a language properly! she said to herself in surprise when she noticed that she could suddenly understand a conversation, a newscast, or an article in the newspaper.