The Twentieth Wife

by Indu Sundaresan

  Then, that first year of the marriage, after Ali Quli’s return, Mehrunnisa’s monthly blood did not come. The sight of food made her nauseated; the smell of champa flowers made her gag; headaches pounded her brain. She slept only little, in brief snatches during the day. Then one day, as she sat in a warm bath, the water pooled crimson around her body. The pain from that miscarriage had been like being pulled apart by elephants, slowly, limb by limb, until only a numbness was left.

  The shame of it stayed with her longer, as months went by and she did not become pregnant again. Once, Ali Quli had said to her, “It is because you are unfaithful to me. Do you think of another man?” Mehrunnisa had stared at him in shock. Was it true? Did thoughts of Salim take away her body’s ability to nurture another man’s child? But she did not think of Salim. At least not all the time. Not every day. Now and then, when she was tired, when her brain would disobey her, she thought of him. Of the first meeting in the Empress’s gardens, of the second at the bazaar. Of the third . . . the kisses . . . the last time she had seen him.

  “Beta.” Asmat put a hand on Mehrunnisa’s shoulder and turned her around. When she saw the tear on her cheek, she wiped it away with the end of her veil. “It will happen, beta.”

  Mehrunnisa forced a smile to her face. She did not want pity from anyone, not even Maji. These last four years, they had all pitied her—Muhammad, Abul, Khadija, Manija. Muhammad and Abul both had children. Khadija, married only six months ago, was already pregnant, her body rounding in anticipation of the child. “I think,” Mehrunnisa said slowly, wanting to wipe away the sympathy in Maji’s gaze, “I think it will happen soon, Maji.”

  Asmat touched her daughter’s face with gentle hands. “How long?”

  “Two months.”

  Asmat laughed, put her arms around Mehrunnisa, and kissed her. “You did not tell me. Why did you not tell me? We must celebrate.”

  “No, Maji, please,” Mehrunnisa said, drawing back, worry drawing lines over her forehead. “Not yet, not so soon.”

  “Why? This is a time to be joyous. A marriage in the house, another grandchild—what more could I ask for? We must tell your Bapa.”

  As Asmat raised her hand to beckon to Ghias, Mehrunnisa stopped her. “No, Maji. I do not want to tell anyone yet. We must wait. I would not have told you—”

  Asmat dropped her hand and looked at Mehrunnisa. “Not even me, beta? How can you not tell your mother? Does Ali Quli know?”

  “No.”

  “Why?” Asmat asked. Then she said again, “Your husband must know. This is not something to hide. It is an occasion to rejoice. A child in the family, perhaps even a son. Your husband must know.”

  Mehrunnisa shook her head, wishing she had not told Asmat. How could she explain her fear? How could she say that every day she watched for blood, that she took short baths in clear water and never looked down, not wanting to see the water color?

  “I cannot tell him. Not yet.”

  Asmat turned from her daughter and filled in another leaf, moving away as she did so. “Mehrunnisa, Ali Quli must know of his child. Your husband must always know more than we do, for you belong to him now, not to us. It is his home you grace, your every thought must be of him. Just as I think of your Bapa.”

  “But we are not like Bapa and you, Maji,” Mehrunnisa cried out, her voice trembling. “This is a different marriage.”

  “Yes, I agree to that. But it is a marriage. There is no way out of it. Perhaps your Bapa and I did wrong in the early days. Perhaps we should have married you to another man, one who would have understood you better. But there was little we could do in the face of a direct order from the Emperor. At least Ali Quli has not gone in search of another wife. In that he is like your Bapa.”

  Mehrunnisa stared at Asmat, treacherous tears filling her vision again. “Bapa never married again because his world is filled with you, with us. I matter very little to Ali Quli. I take up very little space in his world. Why do you defend him? It is me you must worry about. You are my mother, not his. Have you given me away so completely to him that you care no longer about how I am?” Even as the words escaped her, Mehrunnisa knew she should not have spoken them. Asmat bent down over her work, not looking at her. Her eyes were closed as though in pain. Mehrunnisa wanted to apologize, to wipe away that pain. She did not believe that she was lost to her parents. She knew that they thought of her all the time, more than her husband did. But they had to present a face, even to her. Asmat had already broken several rules of etiquette by speaking as she had about Ali Quli, speaking—four years later—of Ghias and Asmat’s regret at having married Mehrunnisa to Ali Quli. Such matters were simply not discussed. If fate had decreed a marriage, then the marriage would be feted and celebrated and would survive, no matter what.

  “I wish,” Asmat said softly, and Mehrunnisa leaned over to listen to her mother. “I wish for a child for you, Nisa. Because you want a child. Because it will make you happy. If I could stop other women from asking you constantly why you do not have a child, I would. If I could somehow fill your lap with a child, I would.”

  “Maji, I should not have spoken as I did to you.”

  “No.” Asmat shook her head slowly. “That is all right, beta. But—” She looked at Mehrunnisa again, her expression calm. “When you go home tomorrow, you must tell Ali Quli. He should have been the first to know. There must be no sense of impropriety in what you do, Nisa. No one should be able to point a finger and say that what you did was wrong. Appearances must be maintained at all costs.”

  Mehrunnisa sighed. There were always strictures in society: how one must live, eat, even what to talk about and what to keep silent on. When she had been younger it had been easier, sheltered as she was under Bapa and Maji. But now, as a married woman, she came under very close scrutiny. Even as Mehrunnisa was thinking this, Asmat said again, a smile lighting up her eyes and spreading laugh lines around her mouth, “But there is going to be a child. We are like two old women with imagined fears. Be strong, beta. Perhaps even I do not understand what anxiety you undergo, for I have not experienced this. But I will pray to Allah for the life of your child, for the happiness it will bring you.”

  “Don’t tell Bapa, Maji,” Mehrunnisa said quickly.

  “He will understand, beta. Whether you want me to tell him or not, he will understand. And one day, just as he now holds Arjumand, so too will he sing your child to sleep.”

  They both looked to where Ghias sat. He was asleep now, leaning against the pillar, his granddaughter sprawled over him. The day’s work and the night’s tranquility had crept over both of them. Mehrunnisa bent down again, glad her mother did not fuss over her, for if the unthinkable happened, she would be ashamed of the fuss. She was glad Asmat did not insist she stop painting the rangoli, or go and lie down. When her hands and her mind were busy, she did not have time to think—of what might have been. Maji had always been practical. There was too much else to do to spend hours in idle contemplation of how life could have turned out, if not for this or for that.

  The next morning dawned too early for Mehrunnisa, who slept for only a few hours. She and Asmat worked steadily through one more pahr of the night: three hours. Long before that, Asmat rose to wake Ghias, take Arjumand from his arms, and usher them both to bed. When she came back, the two women finished the rangoli in silence. Every now and then, Mehrunnisa saw her mother look at her with concern when she put a hand to ease the strain on her back, or sucked on a tart wedge of dried mango Asmat had brought for her from the kitchens. When they were finished, the whole courtyard was ablaze in color. “Now sleep, Nisa. You must be tired, and with you the child will be tiring too,” Asmat said. Then she drew Mehrunnisa into her arms, and they stood there for a while, Mehrunnisa with her head against her mother’s shoulder. She could smell the wilted jasmine flowers in Asmat’s hair and hear the steady beat of her heart, and she felt a comfort she had not felt in a long time.

  When Mehrunnisa left her father’s house, the milkman was
at the front doorstep with his cows. Her veil pulled over her head, she stopped to watched as he massaged a cow’s engorged udders, then showed his terracotta pot to the maidservant. When the suspicious servant had peered into the pot to ensure that there was no devious half inch of water at the bottom to increase the volume of milk, he put the pot between his knees, spoke softly to the cow, then with practiced hands squeezed the udders. As the milkman and the servant talked, Mehrunnisa slipped away from them and walked back to her husband’s house, four male servants a few steps behind her.

  Maji said Ali Quli must be told, so she would do so. For all that she was tired from the previous night, for all that her back ached and a sour taste tinged her tongue, Mehrunnisa felt an easing inside her. Talking with Maji had abated her fears. Now things would be different. Ali Quli and she would have a child, this child that was inside her. The questions about her would stop. Ali Quli would be proud of her, and together they would make a home. Not like Maji’s and Bapa’s, but a home nonetheless. Now she would no longer have to watch other women with their children and feel as though the ache would consume her. She too would have a child, so she could grow old and fretful and have that child indulge her whims. Mehrunnisa laughed. The sound was like water in a stream, a happy sound.

  When she reached her house, she went through the courtyard to Ali Quli’s room. Qasim, his manservant, lay snoring across the front of the door. Mehrunnisa bent and shook him by the shoulder.

  He woke with a shout from an unfinished dream and stared at her. “Sahiba, when did you come back? The Sahib does not expect you. I will let him know—”

  “No need,” Mehrunnisa said.

  “But, Sahiba . . .” Qasim scrambled to his feet and hopped around like an injured cat. “It is best . . .”

  By then Mehrunnisa had thrown the door of Ali Quli’s room open. She stopped abruptly. Ali Quli slept in the bed in the center of the room, his leg thrown over a slave girl, one arm encircling her, his chin buried in the curve of her bare shoulder.

  Mehrunnisa felt as though she had been shot at with a matchlock, a huge part of her blown apart at the sight of her husband with the slave girl. Ali Quli woke then, slowly, and looked at Mehrunnisa standing at the door to his room. He slapped the slave girl on her rump to wake her and said, “Get out.”

  The girl woke, saw her mistress, hurriedly pulled on her choli, and fled out of the room, slipping past Mehrunnisa with downcast eyes. When she had gone, Mehrunnisa slammed the door on Qasim’s curious face.

  Ali Quli propped himself on an elbow and said, “She was just a slave girl, Mehrunnisa. Be thankful I do not take another wife.”

  “And when would you have time for another wife, my lord?” Mehrunnisa asked, bitterness staining her voice. “When would you see her? When would you talk to her? Another wife would take too much time away from your campaigns. She would be demanding, want new clothes, want you to admire her in them.”

  “As you do.” Ali Quli sat up on the bed, pulling the blue calico sheet over his hips.

  Mehrunnisa slid down the door to the floor and put her face in her hands. “I ask for so little from you. But this, in my own house—this is too much. I do not complain when you go to the nashakhana or visit the nautch girls. Why in my own house, in the bed I have slept in?”

  “A bed that is not fruitful,” Ali Quli yelled, rage suffusing his face. “How dare you talk to me like this? Question my motives? I married you because I was ordered to by Emperor Akbar. Does he now have to order you to bear a child?”

  Mehrunnisa looked at him, struck dumb by his words. But I carry your child. I come to tell you the news that I carry your child, and I find you in bed with another woman. Why did it hurt so much? She knew of his dalliances with the nautch girls, knew that sometimes he even took the slave girls of the house into his bed, but this was the first time she had actually seen it. Maji said she must tell her husband. Even Maji could not want her to tell him under these circumstances.

  “I’m sorry,” she said slowly. “Perhaps it is better you have another wife.”

  Ali Quli laughed as he lay back on the pillows and put his arms behind his head. Behind him the sun streamed through the latticework frame of the windows. He watched her distraught face through half-closed eyes. “Perhaps I will.”

  A fighting spirit rose in Mehrunnisa. His mockery was too much for her. This was the first real conversation they had had in four years, almost the first time they had talked for so long. She said, her words brittle, “Would you like me to choose her for you, my lord? What is it you want? Long hair, a slim body, eyes a poet would laud? A good family? Perhaps her father should be an important minister at court? Surely an alliance like that would bring you good fortune.”

  Ali Quli whipped out of bed, tying the ends of the sheet around his waist. He strode over to Mehrunnisa and grabbed her face in one of his large hands. His face close to hers, his morning breath souring the air around them, he said in a hoarse whisper, “You talk too much for a woman, Mehrunnisa—as if you were a queen, as if you expected to be a queen. Yet where is the gold in your veins? Who are your ancestors? What lands did they conquer? Where are the monuments to their lives, the tombs of their deaths? And who is your father? A Persian refugee. A man who fled his country with the clothes on his back, shredded by the time he got to India.”

  Mehrunnisa wrenched at his hand with both of hers, but he held her too tightly, his grip bringing an ache to her jaw. It was difficult to talk, but she managed a few words. “You are also Persian, my lord. Do not forget that. If my father found refuge in India, so did you. Under the same circumstances.”

  “But I am a soldier, Mehrunnisa. I fight in battles. I kill other men. There is iron in my blood. And what is your father? Nothing better than a lowly vakil who works with numbers.”

  Mehrunnisa mustered all of her strength and tried to push Ali Quli off. But he was much stronger. Suddenly, just as suddenly as he had leaped from the bed, he let go of her face and sat back. Their knees now touched. Mehrunnisa rubbed her cheek, knowing his fingers would have left their mark on her skin. She could not go to Manija’s wedding—people would talk. Maji and Bapa would be deeply concerned.

  “My father is the Diwan-i-buyutat—the Master of Works in charge of the imperial buildings,” she said, “not some lowly vakil. You know that. It is because of his position at court that you enjoy privileges. A raised mansab, command of an army division—all these are because of him.” She knew she should not be talking to him like this, that women did not talk to their husbands thus. Maji never had to Bapa, at least not in Mehrunnisa’s hearing. But at this moment she despised Ali Quli, cringed at the thought that she was carrying his child, never wanted to see him again no matter what recriminations it brought upon her. How dare he insult her Bapa? Who was he to insult her Bapa?

  Ali Quli made a sudden movement with his hands, and Mehrunnisa cowered, hating that she did so. But he had never yet hit her, and he did not now. “I know you think you married beneath yourself,” he shouted. “Your Bapa and Maji think so also. Because I came here without a family, because the Khan-i-khanan’s wife had to stand in as a mother for me during the wedding ceremony. Because I was a safarchi to the Shah. A table attendant. For four years I have withstood this treatment from your family.”

  “Bapa and Maji have never said a word,” Mehrunnisa cried.

  “They did not need to. Their mannerisms, their looks, their actions around me speak volumes. Yet, who are you, Mehrunnisa? You behave as though you were royalty. But what silks and velvets covered your mother’s bed when you were born? What trumpets played and cannons boomed the news of your birth? What bawarchis sweated over chulas to make delicacies that sweetened the mouths of people who came to ask after your birth? What beggars did your father clothe and feed as an indication of his joy at your coming? What can you claim of these festivities? A bare tent, a winter storm. A mother who almost died giving birth to you. A father who decided you would be better brought up by someone else.” />
  Mehrunnisa stared at him for a long time, the pain of his words searing through her as if her skin had been slowly set on fire. Somewhere through that agony she realized how ironic it was that his words were almost poetic when he was most angry. When she spoke, her voice was toneless, devoid of energy. “Why don’t you divorce me, my lord? All you have to do is say talaq, talaq, talaq in front of two witnesses.”

  Ali Quli shook his head. “No. Your father, though I think of him only as a vakil, still has some use. It would seem that being Ghias Beg’s son-in-law commands respect. So,” he leaned forward and touched her face, gently this time, “it is not as easy as you think. Nothing in life is. We will be married for the rest of our lives, my dear Mehrunnisa. Think about it: for the rest of your life you will be nothing but the wife of a common soldier. Pray Allah I get a promotion soon, or you will never be able to hold your head up in your illustrious family.”

  With that he rose from the floor, bent to move Mehrunnisa to one side, opened the door, and left the room, calling out as he did, “Qasim, get my chai ready.”

  Mehrunnisa sat still, looking down at her hands. She had not had the opportunity to tell Ali Quli why she had come to his room so early in the morning. Around her she could hear the household stirring as the maids drew water from the courtyard well, as the sweepers swept the stone corridors of the verandah. She had no feeling any more, no sorrow, no heartache, just a dullness.