by Mary Finn
Meenakshi narrowed her eyes.
“It is the right choice,” she said. “Look again.”
We stood under the thatch awning for a while then and I saw Manik running along the paths and climbing the mango trees with the other boys, laughing as he went higher than anybody else. Then I knew Arjun’s offer was the right one.
“Now I am dadamoshay twice in one day,” Arjun called out when he spotted us. He rubbed his hands in pleasure. “To my own Anila and, as Durga’s extra gift, to this little fellow too, though he’s not my blood.”
Then there was my father. For all that he had done in error, nonetheless I heard that I must bring him back to the village where he had found my mother. Mr Walker’s words had taken root and my father was now a hero who would receive a welcome proper to his kind.
That was easy to say, I thought. I would not think about such a plan until I had found him.
The shadows were lengthening along the path to the river when Arjun finally came inside again and took my hand.
“I have a gift for you, Anila. Come with me.”
“I want Anila to come on her own,” he said firmly then, for the children were clamouring to follow us. And then, politely, he dismissed Mr Walker too. “It will not be for long, sahib, for I know you are keen now to make good time.”
He drew me out then into his little garden and I looked left where the river ran, and then right, up the winding path to the village houses. That was a much larger place than the miserable collection of huts where we had found Manik. It was full of life too. Men and women were working and sitting and talking, in the fields, outside the houses, under the trees, by the water. Human voices were carried on the air like birdsong, though there was plenty of that too because koels and hoopoes were calling from the trees and, as I looked up, a rope of geese passing high overhead snorted like pigs. Somewhere nearby there must be a field that had nothing but white flowers in it in autumn, the field of kash where my mother used to lie and look up at all the birds that had stories for her.
But I knew that I could not live here.
Perhaps if I were Manik’s age, or even the age I was when Mr Bristol had come boating up the creek all those years ago. But I had been changed too much by all that had happened to me in the city and by all the people I had met. Now there were oils and varnishes mixed into my life, plum-cake and Christmas songs, music on a keyboard and bound books on shelves. Even the city’s busy streets made a beat in my head, and the river that flowed past the white palaces was so very different from this one. The sight of ships heading south into the far world lifted my spirits. This world had stories much stranger than my own, this world that had swallowed up my father.
I will never know if, that day, Arjun had been tempted to break tradition and ask that I, rather than Manik, stay in his home. If he had been, he was also surely watching my face and reading my mind. He never spoke of it and I was glad for I would not have hurt him for the world.
“Your mother and your father, they loved each other? For all that they were so different?”
I looked at him, surprised.
“Oh, yes, they did.”
“And that is why, perhaps, she died, even though there was plenty of food and a strong roof and even her own lovely baby one with her. She could not understand why your father did not come back.”
He was puzzling it out for himself, I could see. He felt responsible for he had let her go with my father in the first place. My heart twisted as I saw the story he was making, reading it across his eyes, his brow, his mouth, as well as in his words. It was not a rightful story because he did not know all the circumstances.
He took my hand as we stepped past a cropped prickly hedge and down into a wide water meadow. There were a few buffaloes here but nothing else I could see, except some tall herons in the distance where the meadow turned to marsh. Or were they herons?
“Look, my girl, this is what I want you to see. Watch them as we move close.”
And as we did, I saw that the birds were not herons at all. Nor storks, which was my second thought, but a common city stork had none of this bird’s slender grace and beauty. Its body was grey and grey-white and made a curve down over its delicate pink legs so that the bird’s form was like a beautiful letter from the Persian books. Its head was a deep rose colour under a grey cap.
My grandfather pointed towards a group of four or five.
“They are this year’s young ones,” he said. “See how their heads are still pale and how they drop their feathers as Jonaki will lose her curls.”
There were fifteen birds in all.
Arjun stopped me when we were still a distance away. From the side of his mouth he made a strange call, high-pitched but soothing nonetheless. Then something extraordinary happened. As if they were dancers, the adult birds started to perform for us. First, they stretched their long necks to the sky as if they were saluting Surya. Then they formed pairs, bowed to each other and began to bend and sway in dainty steps.
I had to hold my mouth to stop my exclamations and my fingers tingled to draw what I saw. But the birds broke up their magic circle when one of the young birds who was not dancing decided it was time to sit down. He made it such a slow business, as if trying to remember the instructions for folding himself up, that his parents came away from the others to watch over him. They bent over and linked their necks to his when he finally sat as if they were proud of his work. I thought how lucky he was to have them.
It was only then that the tall birds became aware of us. They started telling each other the news and shifting and some made anxious little runs and looked back again to see if we had advanced.
Arjun had tears in his eyes too as we turned back towards his house.
“Your mother never saw these birds,” he said, and I knew that was true for otherwise they would have danced for ever in her stories.
“They first came here to our stretch of the river the winter after she left for the city with your father. The priests say that they are from the sacred places, that they bless young couples because of their own sweet bird marriages. This is the only village all along the river, as far as we travel, where these birds will come. You see, I think Annapurna sent them here. Another gift from Durga.”
I took his hand and pressed it between my own. There was nobody but myself and my grandfather in that water meadow and perhaps there was something of another world blowing in the sweet air around us.
We walked back in silence.
Everyone was outside Arjun’s house when we returned, everyone except Meenakshi and Jonaki, who was trying in her baby way to help her mother clear the remains of the great meal. I stayed behind for a moment as Arjun joined the others.
“May I give her something?” I asked Meenakshi.
She stared at me, not understanding. I reached into my bag and took out my mother’s fine scarf and one of the gold mohurs.
“This scarf was my mother’s. If you keep it for Jonaki there will always be a memory of her in the village. You can tell her whose it was. And the gold, that was a kindness from my friend Miss Hickey and I would like Jonaki to share some of it. For luck.”
Meenakshi was speechless. But Jonaki smiled at me with her baby pearl teeth and took the two gifts in her sticky hands. That woke her mother, who rushed to wipe them.
We all walked towards the jetty, where Hari stood on board our boat, ready to cast away the ropes. Once again I knelt to honour Arjun. But then Manik, poor thing, threw himself round my legs and cried, for he finally understood that he was staying and we were leaving. Benu crouched down and said something to him, and after a moment Manik loosened his grip. He went to stand with Arjun, took his hand and stood proudly with him. Meenakshi popped something into his mouth, a sweet or a fruit, and his little mouth closed over it.
“I told him he was to protect his new dadamoshay and that Madan and I would be back very soon to race him in his new boat,” Benu whispered to me, as we went on board the Hera. He went directly to take
his tiller seat and I noticed that his father did not call on him to help cast off, as was his custom.
What I saw then, for the longest time, as we set sail in the low evening sun, was the bright purple of my mother’s scarf, twisted round little Jonaki’s head and waving like a ship’s pennant in the breeze that was carrying us down to Calcutta.
NEWS
WHEN I WALKED INTO Mrs Panossian’s shop the day after our return to the city I confess that I felt as smug as the Female Quixote herself. Nobody could have better news to tell. All our adventures and excitements, these were my clutch of golden eggs.
I could count them off, right hand, left hand. Good things like discovering the incredible story of my father. Meeting my grandfather and walking in my mother’s world. And, every day we were away, learning the ways of birds, the sweetness of the river, the kindness of Madan, Hari and Benu.
And the bad things. Carlen. No matter that he’d been essential to me, or that his death had made him seem noble, Carlen still had the power to twist a knife in my belly. There was the terror of Manik’s life before we rescued him. And, though it must be counted in lesser degree, there had been the hardship of saying goodbye to Madan and Benu only yesterday, outside their riverbank home.
Oh yes, that was fresh in my mind.
While we waited for a carriage, Madan asked his wife, Aparna, to bring us some food. I offered to help but this tall woman, still pretty in her red-bordered sari, drew back and sucked in her breath so that she would not have to share the same air as me. When she brought out her bowl of spiced rice and hot brinjal slices she placed it farthest from me, the unclean spirit. She moved inside then, and I was sorry because she did not see what happened when the carriage came.
Mr Walker, Hari and Madan stood up but Benu stayed. He laid a folded leaf in front of me, tied up with a thin strand of rope as if it were a fancy box.
“For you,” he said. But he would not meet my eyes.
I opened the leaf flat on the stone. Inside was a page of my drawing paper on which the English letters A-N-I-L-A were written, as neatly executed as any script I had ever made. Sitting on the paper was a tiny pearl, the size of a nose-stud, a black pearl with a sugar sheen. It was beautiful.
“I found it in the river the day you found Manik,” he said. “I could not give it to you before even though you gave me your gift. But it was for you always. To remind you.”
He stopped.
“Benu, it is beautiful. When I see you again I will have had it made into a ring. I will always keep it. And your writing, you must…”
His face twisted. Then he was up on his feet and running away, to be useful with the other men. He stood back and did not catch my eye when everything was loaded on top and we gathered at the carriage door to say our farewells. That was as well because my own eyes were dangerously wet. But I was glad to see that Mr Walker sought him out and slipped some coins into his hand.
Madan clasped my own right hand in one of his and then took Mr Walker’s in the other. I wanted to touch his moustache, to reach up and stroke his shining head. If only Madan could be a maharajah of all the world, I thought. A child’s thought.
“We will hear from you again,” he said, simply. “We will hear good things.”
And so we had left them, left our river behind, even though we made our lumbering way beside it for the most part. When we reached the city’s broad streets the white world slipped back around us like a glove.
The little pearl had gone back into its leaf and joined the other precious things in my bag. I had it with me now to show Anoush.
The shop’s bell gave me away at once. I would have preferred to have stolen unannounced to the end of the counter where Anoush was sitting on a stool, head bent over the ledger and a long pen in her hand. There was nobody else in the shop.
“Anila! I can’t believe what I see! You’re home again, safe!”
She lifted the hatch in the counter and came out to me. She hugged me so hard that I could feel her laugh underneath like water on the boil. She smelt of lemons and ink.
“And I have so much to tell you! I can’t believe what I have to tell you,” she said. “My life has changed in just a few weeks. But you, look at you. You’ve changed too. I can’t say how exactly but it’s in your face.”
Gently, she touched my cheek.
“Anoush, I’ve found my father.”
She stepped back and her mouth made an O just like the little hallelujah boys of St John’s.
“Well, not quite, I’ve not come upon him yet but I know where to find him. All that is needed is to book a passage to Madras and Mr Walker is doing that right now.”
I tried to make my story brief, in case Mrs Panossian or the shop boys disturbed us. But that only served to leave Anoush with more questions, so then I had to start over again, and fill in the gaps until she was satisfied. One bearer came in with an order but he was gone in quick time and I could get back to recounting exactly how Benu and I had rescued little Manik. For after she had grasped the events concerning my father, this was the part of our adventure that thrilled Anoush most.
“And Manik is now with your grandfather. So, he is like a little brother for you.”
I hadn’t quite thought of that. Suddenly another notion came to my mind. Suppose my father had found another woman, perhaps even married one, since he knew no better? Then indeed I might have a little brother, or a sister. But Carlen hadn’t mentioned such a thing and if it were the case he surely would have, to plague me with more misery.
Anoush sighed with pleasure. She hadn’t noticed my silence.
“Anila, we both saved little boys by accident and look what has happened to us. Now I must tell you my news. I’m to marry. Look!”
She held out her left hand. A golden bronze stone set into silver made a star shape on her pale finger.
“To marry? But who, when? What happened? It’s only a few weeks since I saw you! Anoush, what do you mean?”
My friend was pink but she was not giggling in her usual fashion. She touched the star ring to her mouth as if to check it, as a blind person might, and then looked directly at me.
“It’s not a secret, so it doesn’t matter who interrupts us now. We marry at Easter. Do you remember the picnic we had on Christmas Day? The horseman who helped me up?”
I nodded.
“He so much wanted you to speak to him. He was tall and very pale and you made him a namashkar because you wanted him to know you were not English so he might add that to your limp and reckon all your disadvantages at once.”
That was what she had told me afterwards.
Anoush’s blush deepened.
“Yes, well, he came to the shop the next day because, remember, you shouted out my name and the Panossian name, and indeed he says Anila Tandy is responsible for everything since then! He came again the next day, and the next. And he was so pleasant always that in the end I said I would let him walk home to the Seropins’s with me. He bought me a new sari that day because he said it was his fault that my pink one was torn. It’s so beautiful, with gold thread, Anila, you will see it.”
Of course, Mrs Panossian detected something in the air, Anoush explained. Or perhaps Gabriel or Mesrop told her about the young officer who would be served only by Anoush.
“Mesrop was a little jealous at first, I believe. But Philip,” she blushed again, “his name is Lieutenant Philip Tilling and he is from the city of London, he has shown Mesrop so many new mathematical calculations that now I think Mesrop prefers him to me.”
“Anyway, one morning Philip came in and insisted on telling Mrs P what happened on the green and that same day Mrs Herbert – you remember, the little boy’s mother? – came in with a basket of English soaps for me and she added the family to the customers’ books. So Mrs P thought I was a kind of saint. And then Philip brought a buggy on the Sunday and we took a boat to the Gardens just like you did and that was where he asked me to marry him. Of course he had to ask Mrs P when we returned here b
ut she was not difficult at all, Anila. I couldn’t believe it. She said she was glad she had no longer to put effort into thinking about a match for me. But I never thought she did, anyhow. People surprise you, don’t they?”
She looked so eager and happy. I perched myself on the counter and smoothed down my cotton trousers as if I might iron them that way.
“He’s so kind, Anila. I truly believe we will be happy because I know that from the first he has known about my weakness. He says it makes him love me more. Look, my ring stone is only onyx. He says he will buy another later but I love this one, don’t you?”
She wanted me to say something but I was truly confused. Through my soft bag I felt my own little pearl, still wrapped in its leaf bag. I could not show her that now, it was quite another thing altogether, as unfinished as I was myself. My Anoush married? But yes, she was several years older than my mother had been when she left her father’s house. She was old enough to marry, nobody could say she was not.
“Anoush, anybody could see how that soldier looked at you that day. He saw everything good about you. I am very happy for you. It’s just such a sudden thing to hear about and now I wonder will you be moving away, to England perhaps. I couldn’t bear that.”
Anoush wrinkled her nose.
“Oh, but I won’t,” she said. “Philip has only just arrived here. He wants nothing more than to spend a very long time in India, he says. He loves it.”
Then she poked my knees gently with her ring.
“Anyway, look at you. You will probably be in Madras always now, by the sea, what with your father and the Hickeys. Oh, Anila, do you think you might come out with us on Sunday? To show Philip the little garden house, perhaps?”
Of course our peace could not last. The door from behind opened with a click and Mrs Panossian stepped through, her dress a full black sail.
I jumped down and did a namashkar for her.
“Anila! Well, you are returned to the city as a proven matchmaker if nothing else,” she said. “You have heard my young cousin’s news?”
She was smiling so broadly her eyes seemed to disappear into her cheeks.