by Anita Desai
While they draped themselves across the sofas and couches after a practice session in the grand salon upstairs with its painted ceiling and its long tapestries, exhausted and hungry and unable to see why they were not being served their dinner, only Laila was aware that at the moment Signora Durante was scuttling about the kitchen downstairs, her silk pyjamas stained with grease and badly inflamed burn marks on her wrists and arms, crying to Gianni, ‘Gianni, Gianni, the eggplants are burnt! Oh, how could you let them burn, Gianni? My God, do you know what I did to obtain them, Gianni?’ and Gianni, phlegmatically stirring a huge pot of soup that he had sprinkled liberally with cayenne pepper, was saying, ‘Calm yourself, my dear, calm yourself. If they are hungry enough, and you say they are very hungry, they will eat burnt eggplants and even burnt shoeleather.’ ‘Ah, Gianni, how can you say such things? Don’t you know they are Brahmins, Indians of the highest caste, from Benares, the holiest city in India? You are not to mention shoeleather to them, Gianni.’ Signora Durante wailed and wrung her hands so that Gianni was left to carry the dishes up to the dining room and set them out on the long oak table under the chandeliers, then light tall blue candles in the pewter stands, bring chairs down from the salon to make up the necessary number, and finally bang at the gong to announce the meal. He wiped his brow with a corner of his apron: he had worked for this moment since daybreak, only to save Signora Durante from shame.
‘Signor! Signorina!’ he called down the stairs, and when they entered made an expressive gesture of his hands and only Laila saw the mockery and sarcasm.
Only she noticed the consternation on his face and Signora Durante’s when they realised that the musicians for whom there was not room at the palazzo and for whom rooms had been found at a more modest establishment whose patron did the washing for Signora Durante, nevertheless intended to stay for dinner. Their appetites were already notorious, as were their eating habits.
Still, after a glance at the Signora’s stricken face, Gianni obligingly dashed off to the kitchen and returned, bearing on one hand an immense oval silver tray on which he balanced a small bunch of grapes and a few oranges which were multiplied by reflection, and in the other a lute which he proceeded to strum once he had placed the fruit before the musicians. Almost as if he were enjoying himself, he began to prance around the table in an improvised dance and to make up a song that sounded so full and rich in tone that it made the carved rafters ring and Signora Durante turn rosy with gratitude and pleasure as she stood ready to serve her guests. What was more, Gianni’s dance distracted them from the burnt eggplants, the less than sufficient soup. Clapping their hands in rhythm to his tune, they began to laugh and Signora Durante was able to feel, for a moment or two, the gratification of a great hostess who has given pleasure, has somehow contrived to give pleasure to her guests. In an excess of emotion, she caught Gianni by his sleeve and, linking arms, kicked up her slippered feet and did a little impromptu dance with him.
Only Laila noticed how Krishna looked away, embarrassed: obviously, in his country white-haired ladies did not cavort to music. The musicians exchanged contemptuous looks with each other.
Laila noticed because she belonged to neither one party nor the other, only watched and watched to see where she might go.
Laila slept in a long narrow room that ran like a passage outside the larger, square room shared by Sonali, the leading female dancer of the troupe, and old Vijaya who sang the songs to which the dances were danced. Sonali might have been her daughter, more likely her younger sister, or possibly a distant relative, or no relation at all – Laila could never make out. What she clearly saw was the deep intimacy between the two who spoke to each other in low, cryptic tones and passed a silver box of betel nuts and spices back and forth between them, sharing its mysterious ingredients. Old Vijaya would help Sonali tie on her anklets, fuss over her costume, tie the blouse strings at the back and comb out her hair with long, loving strokes of a large, clumsy comb, then twist and wind it about in intricate chignons held in place with ornate pins. Their relationship seemed almost animal in its comfortable silences, its mutual attentions, its undertones of an invisible and complicated liaison.
In the long narrow room with its uncurtained windows, Laila slept beside the two younger dancers of the troupe, Chandra and Shanta. They were quite clearly sisters but not because of any such intimacy or familiarity in their behaviour. On the contrary, their impatience with each other and the quick tempers with which they responded to each other were what gave away their family relationship. When they spoke, they seemed to quarrel, their voices were so high-pitched and agitated. Although they did help each other dress and would paint each other’s hands with henna patterns and feet with red alta and would comb and braid each other’s hair, there was a perfunctoriness about their actions, and often open animosity. They reminded Laila of her cousins in Paris.
All of them moved together in a web; only Laila was outside it.
The older women woke first and came to the young girls’ bedroom before daybreak, in the dark, calling them to practice. There was scarcely time for a toilette; the drummer was already tuning his drums in the salon, and Krishna was seated on the parquet floor in the lotus position, beneath the unlit chandelier, his eyes closed and his hands placed precisely on his knees, palms upturned, in the meditative pose, having already performed his salutation to the sun and his repertoire of yoga exercises.
Hurriedly tucking the end of her practice sari in at her waist, and bending to strap on the heavy anklets, Laila would take up her position beside the other dancers. When old Vijaya beat her wooden thatakalli upon the floor and burst into a wailing song, Krishna rose and called out the tala to which they first moved their eyes, then their heads and necks, finally their hands and feet till their bodies were moving in unison, and the dance began to throb in them, faster and more inviting with every beat. Now Laila began to feel she was at last doing what she was meant to do, had come here to do, had been called upon to do. Throwing back her head, and then her shoulders, her feet were now performing what was asked of them by the music, her face what was asked of it by Krishna.
In the small room to which the Signora had moved, giving up her own to Krishna, Gianni sat up on the bed and struck his head with his fists. ‘Crazy!’ he shouted. ‘Crazy! This house has gone mad – dancing at night when the whole of Venice lies asleep!’
The Signora made soothing, placating sounds with her lips, patting the warm pillow beside her with a begging hand, but her head, too, ached. Once she had even ventured to ask if Krishna could not postpone the lesson by an hour or so.
He had gone quite mad then. His eyes had flashed and his teeth ground in a pantomime of rage – only a dancer could express rage so, and the Signora, trembling, had to admit it was quite spectacular. He had swept out of the room and in his anger begun to fling his belongings into a leather trunk, crashing each one in with maximum effect. While the Signora stood wringing her hands, he had shouted ‘Why should I stay? How can I stay where my art is not understood, not even tolerated? Where my music is thought of as noise, my dance a nuisance to the royal highness asleep in her bed? Do you know what I and my dancers create while you sleep? Do you have any idea who you are housing under your roof? But we will not stay another day – another minute –’ and in went the shoes, the fine Venetian leather shoes she had bought him only the other day, and the handsome fur hat he had picked for his American tour, and the silk scarf, and the bottle of perfume, of talc, of oil – she screamed when it broke and threw herself on the floor to save his feet from the shards. Deliberately, he trod on them so they might be cut. ‘See, see!’ he howled at her.
In Paris, Sonali had danced the leading role – Radha to Krishna’s Krishna, Sita to his Rama, Parvati to his Shiva. From the way they performed together it was clear they had danced these roles over and over till they seemed two limbs of one body. In Venice, too, in the big salon during the practice sessions, Krishna performed these dances with Sonali and Laila watched
, watched intently, copied, copied exactly, every gesture she saw, standing aside alone, without a partner. Then, quite casually leaving Sonali’s side one day, he beckoned Laila forwards and instructed Sonali to guide her through these roles. Standing to one side, he beat the tala with his hands, calling out the rhythm, and watched Laila obey with a look of approval, of pleasure and satisfaction that spread across his face in a slow, wide smile. Sonali’s face settled into the stillness of carved stone but her limbs continued to move with precision, with accuracy, and now and then she called out an instruction of her own, harshly.
Then Krishna stepped forward and began to perform with Laila what he had previously performed with Sonali. Now behind her, now beside her, he enfolded her in his arms, helping her to feel what was required of her by the music and the song. The others fell away, moved to the walls where they leant, watching, one foot resting against the other, while Sonali stood beating the tala, Vijaya sat singing of love and ardour, and Krishna danced the divine cowherd, the godly flute-player, the darling trickster, and Laila was the lover and devotee, plucking lotuses to weave into a garland for him, adorning herself to please him, or weeping and pining for him under a tree.
Finally Krishna tore his eyes away from her to call ‘Come, all of you, form a ring around Laila, dance with her.’
Signora Durante, coming in from the market, or the laundry, or the kitchen, stopped in the doorway to watch. A bag of vegetables, or a stack of sheets in her arms, she stood by a great mirror with a convoluted gilt frame, and watched the dancers assume the poses of shepherds and dairy maids, pounding the parquet floor with bare feet made heavy with rows of bells on their anklets, twisting and turning around each other in the attitudes of pursuit, escape, desire and possession. Incense was lit in the tall silver holder, the air misty with its smoke, and combined with the watery sunlight of Venice outside, her salon was transformed into a musky Oriental grove. Signora Durante breathed in the air deeply, her chest rising and falling, but then the music stopped, the dancers, abandoned by its rhythm, stood still. Only Krishna continued to dance around Laila, demanding that she continue too, and now the two danced alone, in silence, and it was clear Krishna could not bear to have her stop, that he danced for the sake of seeing Laila dance, that he could not have enough of her dancing limbs and her intense face and the charming gestures she had been taught and that he now watched and guided, drawing them from her as earlier the music had done.
At last Signora Durante could bear it no longer. Setting down her parcels, she began to clap and cry ‘Bravo! Bravo!’ as loudly as she could. But her voice was not steady, and she bent to retrieve her parcels and hurry off with them, not able to bear the sight of Laila with her long black hair in a sinuous pigtail down her straight back, Laila’s tiny blouse no more than a scrap of gold brocade with a silk sari caught between her legs and draped low on her breast where a gold pin held it. Even worse, the passion that glinted and shifted about in Krishna’s eyes as he struck the pose of the divine flautist and had her circle him once more, gloating to see her in his spell.
Making her sit on the kitchen stool and bringing a napkin out for her face, Gianni said to her, ‘You could ask them to leave, my love. It is your own house, after all, and they are here only because you are so good, so good –’
‘How could I ask them to leave if I am so good?’ the Signora cried. ‘You are so foolish, my Gianni. Can one be good and also unkind at the same time?’
‘You can manage it, Gabriella, if anyone can!’ Gianni declared, trying to brush her hair away from her wet eyes, and she was obliged to push his hand away, he was so silly.
He had served her with exactly that tenderness as a waiter in Florian’s where her eyes had first been caught by his deft hands, the flourish with which he twirled his tray and set dishes before her. Her eyes and her sapphires had all flashed their appreciation at him.
She already knew Krishna then. She told Gianni about her visit to India, her enchantment with the city of Benares, the music and dance with which she had been entertained in her friend Rani Chunni’s palace. She showed Gianni the silks and shawls she had brought back with her. Lovingly she draped him in first a mango-green silk, then a saffron yellow one with a purple and gold border, and clapped her hands as he swept about, wearing them as cloaks or as skirts. ‘Like Krishna himself!’ she cried. ‘My little Venetian Krishna!’ He had had no idea what she meant then.
Now she pushed his hand away, and the wet napkin, then blurted, ‘How can I bear it?’
She beckoned to Laila as Laila walked past the kitchen door, barefoot but with her anklets ringing. Laila stopped and looked in at her and Gianni sitting by the kitchen table. She placed her hands on her hips and stood in a dancer’s stance. Her face still streamed with the perspiration of her exertions, but she stood quite calmly, almost regally before them.
It was the Signora who flushed and began to pull at a thread in her sleeve, nervously.
The silence went on for too long: something had to be said.
‘You come from India?’ the Signora asked at length, both her face and her hands twisting in embarrassment.
Laila gave her head a shake. ‘No. From Paris.’
‘Ah, you are French?’
Laila shook her head again.
‘No? But you live in France?’
Again, Laila shook her head.
‘Then?’
Laila stared at the woman, wondering what she wanted of her. What was she being told? Why had she been called? There must have been something hostile in her expression for Gianni rose and came to stand by the Signora, protectively. He was much smaller than she however, a small man dressed entirely in black, his pale triangular face ending in a small, trimmed beard. He ran his fingers over his beard now and Laila saw the light of a diamond ring travel back and forth as he stroked it. She had seen the ring on the Signora’s hand the other day. The two of them, they make a pair. What did they want of her?
The Signora pulled now at a pink and orange scarf around her neck. Her face too was pink and orange, pulpy and fruity.
‘You will go on tour with them?’ she asked at last, miserably.
Laila swung away from them. Her hip jutted out in that faintly insolent way they had noted in the Indian dancers; now this girl had learnt their tricks. She swung her hip as she walked away, saying, ‘If Krishna wants.’
‘And – Sonali?’ the Signora cried after her.
Sonali followed the instructions given her by Krishna, to teach Laila. Taking a place beside Vijaya on the rug, she sat crosslegged and called out the tala, interrupting herself now and then with a piece of advice on a stance, a pose, a beat. But she did so perfunctorily, without any interest in how her instructions were carried out. She watched, but with a face as expressionless as wood. Sometimes she fell silent altogether, leaving the dancer to perform to the music without any instruction at all. She huddled inside her shawl and crouched by Vijaya, growing more and more impassive.
To begin with, Krishna did not seem to notice. He was on his feet, moving from one end of the salon to the other, guiding the dancers, dancing first with one and then the other, and mostly with Laila. Eventually all the others became observers, he and Laila and their dance a private affair between them, and most certainly the centrepiece.
Laila in love, in the old, dark house with its heavy oak furniture, its faded tapestries, its unlit chandeliers, and the water lapping at its walls. The house and the lagoon seemed to sigh, to grumble and watch with foreboding. Laila was aware of that hostility – it was directed at her from every face, every mirror, every corner and window. Yet she could barely restrain herself, when walking down a shadowy whispering corridor or waiting in a solitary corner, from leaping in the air, performing a swirling dance of joy. Her skin tingled with the recognition of Krishna’s love, with her awareness of it. He looked towards her continually. When that look was directed at her, or when she stepped into the circle of his arms that urged her to move in time with him, and felt hi
s hand cover her arm, or waist, she felt encircled by his adoration. His eyes went liquid with love, his touch transformed her into his princess, his beloved, his goddess, whatever role she was dancing. She could hardly tell them apart. Dance and love, they came to be one in this old dark house in Venice. She could not tell one from the other: they were twined together and shimmered the way the light shimmered upon the Canalezzo, on the swooping gulls, the gliding boats, and she was being woven into that fine, silken, precious weave.
She could not have described her love, nor did she have any words for Krishna. Slightly giddy, slightly faint, it seemed to her that he, the dancer, the male physical presence, was also the figure she had first seen in a volume of paintings in Madame Lacan’s shadowy bookshop. He was also the god she had studied in the books she drew off the shelves there. He was also the country and the art and the religion that had become her obsession there. When she danced with him, she wondered if she was not already transported to it.
Had there been someone who knew how to question her, she might have explained, ‘Krishna is my country and my religion.’
One day Krishna said, ‘This afternoon we will have a dress rehearsal. Come in your costumes. Sonali, give Laila the jewellery. Paint her hands and her feet for her. I want every detail exactly as it will be on stage. Quickly. Go and prepare. Sonali, help Laila.’
And Sonali lifted her costume out of her trunk and brought it to Laila. She helped her dress. She fastened her necklace around Laila’s neck and put the earrings into her ear lobes, and pinned a pendant to her hair. She went through all these motions without a word, but when she felt Laila trembling at her touch, her mouth twisted wryly.