The Sleeping Dictionary

by Sujata Massey

  Bidushi drew in her breath. “But you are so intelligent! I could not possibly order you to brush my hair or dress me as I would a common ayah.”

  “After you leave here, all I will do is scrub floors,” I protested. “If I’m lucky, I will get a few hours pulling the fans in the classrooms, like I used to do.”

  “If you came to Calcutta with me, you would never scrub floors. Pankaj’s family has sweepers for that. But . . .” Bidushi hesitated. “If you were my ayah, we could do some other nice things. A lady’s ayah sometimes accompanies her outside for shopping and so on.”

  “Nothing on this earth could make me happier.” A small bright hope flamed within me; it was as if Bidushi held one of the small clay lamps that Hindus light at Diwali in order to push away darkness and bad luck. “There is so much in the City of Palaces we could see together! Victoria’s Memorial, Chowringhee, the Kali Temple! Please tell them I don’t want money. Just a place.”

  “I want you to come, but I don’t know whether Pankaj’s parents will allow me to choose my own ayah.” Bidushi fell quiet after that and sat very still; so still that I had to reach out and slap a mosquito settling on her leg. “I shall ask Pankaj myself, but I will wait until after the first engagement ceremony. Otherwise his family might think me improper.”

  “Nobody would ever think you are improper,” I said, feeling a rush of gratitude at her promise. “And we will not behave like sisters before anyone’s eyes, I swear to you.”

  If anyone could get what she wanted, it was my sweet Bidushi. I told this to myself as we slowly walked back between the red and orange rows of geraniums and marigolds, back toward school and our uncertain futures.

  CHAPTER

  7

  The common people in Bengal, however, though they speak a very circumscribed language, do not so frequently violate the rules of Grammar as might be imagined. They are, it is acknowledged, ignorant of many refined modes of expression; and, as may be expected, rustic in their conversation: but they appear to surpass many other nations in correctness.

  —William Carey, A Dictionary of the Bengalee Language, 1825

  As spring turned to summer, Lockwood’s brick buildings turned into ovens. There was no relief for us servants, who had neither fans nor awnings to cool the rooms and halls where we worked. But the students and teachers suffered, too. Sports practice was shifted to the morning, and the girls were allowed to wear short socks instead of stockings and made to drink water every hour. To cool jugs of water and food, blocks of ice came from Kharagpur in large boxes packed all around with hay. How I longed to touch the ice, but if Miss Rachael caught me, there would be hell to pay.

  Pankaj would arrive in this humid Hades. He posted a letter to Bidushi just before boarding the steamer Percival saying he hoped to arrive by mid-June 1935. If Bidushi’s aunt and uncle permitted, he would call on her at school before the formal engagement ceremony.

  “They won’t allow it,” Bidushi said, pacing back and forth in the study hall. “They would never allow us to see each other before the wedding. But I suppose it is for the best.”

  “Why do you say that?” I didn’t understand the drop in her voice and her suddenly obedient words. I wanted him to come because I wanted to know the man who was my close correspondent. Did he have a mustache? Was he tall or short? Was his real voice as charming as his written one?

  “If Pankaj visited, it would disturb my mind so much that I could not return to studying.” Bidushi sank into her chair and grimaced at the pile of books on her desk. “I cannot fail my last exams. My school record will be used for the application for the Calcutta school where they want me to finish. And I might not be admitted.”

  “Of course you will! You’ve learned so much!” Yet I knew that academics were not Bidushi’s strength. Perhaps it was because of her long time at home without any teachers or because she had no joy sitting with her Lockwood classmates. She was afraid Pankaj would not think her intelligent. And while I knew she was clever, her cleverness was about wearing clothes and jewelry and setting a table: not sums or literary quotations or politics.

  Sometimes I thought, If only Lakshmi could work her magic to make the two of us one. This ideal young lady would be as fair and sophisticated and confident as Bidushi, yet also have my voice for English and my head for numbers. Melded together we would have four slim arms like a goddess, all the better for embracing the man we both loved! But it was sacrilegious to dream such things. There was no way to share Pankaj with Bidushi. If I could ride to Calcutta on her coattails, it would be the luckiest thing that ever could happen.

  With renewed vigor, I helped Bidushi review her academic subjects; I thought that if she could read with enjoyment, she’d have something to share with Pankaj. She would please him so much that he would gladly allow her anything, especially her request for me to become her ayah.

  For the next week, we spent all our study-hall time on books instead of letters. During our evenings in the garden, I spent the time quizzing Bidushi instead of falling into our usual chummy gossip. The readings were baffling for my friend, because Miss Richmond had assigned books by George Eliot and Charles Dickens that had English peasants speaking their language incorrectly. I had been at Lockwood long enough to know the difference, but Bidushi did not.

  Sometimes, it seemed like Miss Richmond was trying very hard to show the lives of poor people to her well-off students. The teacher was also quite interested in Indian writing translated into English. She had declared the Tagore translations I’d done “naturally poetic” and had asked me to work through the whole poetry anthology in advance of the next school year. At night, I would study these Bengali poems by the light of a jar filled with fireflies. Sometimes my eyes were so tired that I wanted to close them, but I reminded myself that everything I finished could be typed up the next day on Miss Richmond’s Smith-Corona, the promised treat she had begun allowing me. The typewriter was kept in her bedroom, which was rich with rows of books. Miss Richmond saw my interest and explained the organizational system, and soon I was shelving and dusting her books.

  Now that I was fifteen, Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, and the American John Steinbeck were some of the authors I read, at Miss Richmond’s suggestion. I was grateful for these recommendations and the other things the teacher gave me: old newspapers and magazines and stubs of pencils and paper scraps. She taught books that the other teachers in school thought were unsuitable, which made me even more interested in reading them, as well as the beautiful poems by Tagore.

  “Why are you still lingering? People are waiting!” Miss Rachael barked when she came upon me in the scullery using a handed-down notebook to finish a few more lines of a poetry translation.

  “Miss Richmond wants this.” My voice was short, because she had interrupted me when I was on the verge of finding the right word to finish a couplet.

  “Miss Richmond wants! Mukherjee-memsaheb needs!” Miss Rachael wagged her head back and forth. “Their wanting you is like pouring ghee on a fire.”

  “There is no fire.” Tired of her proverbs, I closed the notebook and got to my feet.

  “The fire is you, already too hot and proud. But after that Mukherjee-mem is gone, I shall give you duties building fires and collecting ash. It is what you deserve!”

  I regarded Miss Rachael’s flushed round face, thinking how different she was from my mother. I didn’t allow myself to think often of Ma, but now I remembered her praising me as I mastered my duties in the house. She always expected me to work hard and would have criticized me when it was due, but not given me work out of malice.

  “There is no reason for you to do anything with books or papers again. Here, give me what nonsense you were writing!”

  “No!” I reached out in vain as Miss Rachael’s rough hands opened the precious book where I had written pages of Bengali and English side by side.

  She tore out a page and held it up to me. “Good kindling for the kitchen fire, isn’t it?”

  Panic
and anger surged in me. As I struggled to keep my grasp on my writing, she hit my arms and then face. Still, I kept my hands on the notebook. I could not imagine coming up with the same words and phrases again to reflect the calm beauty of Tagore’s poetry.

  Behind me I heard the clearing of a throat. I turned and saw Miss Jamison, who had come in without being heard.

  “Stop it!” said Miss Jamison, who must have come from her sleeping quarters as she still wore her high-necked dressing gown. “If you spend time beating the girl, she cannot bring my tea or anyone else’s. I’ve been waiting ten minutes!”

  “Burra-mem!” Miss Rachael brought her reddened hands to her face, and her breathing slowed. “It is because of that lateness that I’m punishing her! Sarah is a very bad girl.”

  Miss Jamison shook her head at me and then, stern-faced, looked back at Miss Rachael. “Tardiness is a situation for reprimand, not a beating. This is a Christian school.”

  I breathed deeply and hugged myself. I was relieved that Miss Jamison had intervened, but I didn’t dare tell her what had really happened with the notebook. I wasn’t stupid enough to violate the servants’ code of silence.

  “Sarah, there’s something else.”

  I bobbed my head, wondering what punishment Miss Jamison was going to mete out.

  “The student whom you tutor in English took ill last night. Matron came to me and said she was asking for you.”

  “Miss Bidushi?” The aches in my body from Miss Rachael’s beating subsided as a strange new fear filled me.

  “Yes. Come along to the infirmary, and Nurse-matron will speak with you.”

  As we left, Miss Rachael made a parting shot at me in Bengali. “The best medicine is beating!”

  LOCKWOOD’S NURSE-MATRON WAS someone I didn’t know much about, except that she was a large Irishwoman with very pink skin that was always sweating, regardless of the season. Today, a thin cloth mask covered the lower half of her face. This was wet, too.

  “What is Miss Bidushi’s illness?” I asked.

  “I don’t really know; it could be anything,” she said in her rolling accent. “The fever hasn’t broken. She’s got the chills something awful, but I can’t wrap her lest I raise her fever.”

  I looked past the blue-and-white-striped mountain of Nurse-matron and toward the infirmary’s rows of beds, all empty save for one occupied by Bidushi. Nurse-matron’s mention of chills reminded me of my own episode with cholera. It seemed unlikely for Bidushi to have caught that disease, because all the students and teachers drank boiled water.

  I approached Bidushi’s cot. A mosquito coil burned nearby, its noxious perfume flung across the room by the whirling overhead fan. I put my hand on my friend’s cheek; it burned like fire. Underneath her closed lids her eyes were moving, dreaming about something that made her whimper.

  “I’m here,” I said in English, getting as close as I could given the mosquito nets guarding all sides of her cot. “What’s wrong, dearest? Where does it hurt?”

  She didn’t answer, although her eyes flicked open for a moment. Something was wrong with them. I realized then that this could not be an ordinary fever. My friend was deathly ill, and I could lose her.

  “Speak to her in Bengali,” Miss Jamison commanded from behind me. “Perhaps then she’ll hear you.”

  “Yes, madam.” Struggling to sound calm, I said, “Bidushi, I am worried about you. Please tell me what you are feeling.”

  I regretted my words for they were lost in a paroxysm; Bidushi shook and tossed her head from side to side so much that the front of her nightgown opened, revealing the ruby pendant plastered to her damp skin. Her eyes opened, and I could see only the whites that were not white at all, but a pale yellow.

  “God Almighty, is she epileptic?” Nurse-matron cried, pulling up the mosquito net as Bidushi’s body continued its sharp, fast vibrations. “Fetch a towel, girl!”

  I ran for the clean laundry cabinet and brought a cloth that Nurse-matron twisted and slipped inside Bidushi’s mouth. The violent shaking continued for another minute and then slowed until she was finally still. But not dead, I realized with gratitude, as I slipped my own hand over Bidushi’s hot, wet one.

  “Did you think her eyes looked yellow?” I asked Nurse-matron.

  “The girl may have the yellow fever and the jaundice. That’s more than I can treat; we must have a doctor come.” Nurse-matron gave Miss Jamison a look that said Do something.

  “Unfortunately, her guardians already made clear she cannot be examined by a male doctor.” Miss Jamison’s voice was grave. “Dr. Andrews from the Keshiari Mission cannot be called. There are Indian doctors in Midnapore, but I imagine they won’t allow them either because they are men.”

  “I would send for any doctor and not tell them about it. Surely they’d rather have a live girl than a dead one!” Nurse-matron’s eyes flashed as she straightened the sheet over Bidushi. I admired the Irishwoman for talking so strongly to the headmistress.

  “But there is also her fiancé’s family to speak with,” I said, remembering what Bidushi had told me about the Bandopadhyays’ modern ways. “She is to be married in a few months, and they are a very educated and modern family. I’m sure that her health is very important to them.”

  “Yes, I know about the forthcoming marriage.” Miss Jamison sounded thoughtful. “I suppose they might talk sense about the doctor to the Mukherjees. But I know nothing of their whereabouts.”

  “Her father-in-law-to-be, Mr. Bandopadhyay, is a lawyer at Number 27 Lower Circular Road in Calcutta’s Ballygunge section.” I said it swiftly, because I had memorized the address of where I dreamed of moving.

  Miss Jamison nodded. “If there is a telephone on the premises, I will be able to call. Otherwise, I shall send a telegram.”

  “May I please help with the feedings? And I should like to watch over the young memsaheb as much as I can.” I spoke pleadingly, for I could not bear to leave Bidushi when she was so weak and miserable.

  “It would be a bit of a help,” Nurse-matron said, patting me on the shoulders. “Our Sarah, she’s a good one.”

  “Very well then,” Miss Jamison answered with a thin smile. “Sarah shall temporarily halt her housekeeping duties. Use her as you wish during the day and have her sleep in the room at night.”

  I WAS ALLOWED to bring my sleeping mat from the lean-to and placed it on the cool floor near Bidushi’s bed. She slept quietly that evening, and the next morning her fever was gone. She was able to take water, weak tea, and dal soup, but nothing more.

  “I’m sorry,” my friend murmured as I wiped her hands and face clean with a damp cloth.

  “Sorry? I am so very happy to hear you speaking!”

  “Sorry for being weak like this,” she whispered. “We must prepare for the examinations. How many days have I lost?”

  “Just two,” I said, stroking back her hair. “And they are nothing to worry about.”

  Bidushi ate some more soup and was well enough to have a bath. The next day, however, the fever returned, and her body shook for hours. Although she did not hear or feel my presence, I washed her and put water to her dry lips. How ironic that she had lost her parents in a flood but now was struggling because of a lack of water inside her. I had to get the water down, I thought as I tilted the cup into her mouth. She was like a fading flower, and flowers needed water to live.

  The third day, Miss Jamison told Matron that the Bandopadhyays had found and spoken with a female physician, Dr. Sengupta, who could arrive tomorrow. I worried about that long delay, although Bidushi’s fever had again broken, enabling her to converse weakly and take more food and drink. Fever on, fever off; that was not the way cholera ran. Nurse-matron thought that her illness was starting to resemble malaria.

  THAT NIGHT, AFTER I’d lit the mosquito coils and begun to tuck the mosquito net around Bidushi’s bed, she whispered, “Sleep with me tonight.”

  “I will, dearest. My mat is here, and I will lie close by.” She didn’
t know that I roused myself several times each night to put my face close to the net, to hear that she was still breathing. But what I heard—the fast, ragged sounds—did not reassure me much.

  “No, inside the bed. Only you can stop Ravana from taking me tonight.”

  She was speaking of the demon king who kidnapped King Rama’s wife, Sita. The holy story of the Ramayana, so loved by children, must have begun to infuse her dreams. I said, “That cannot happen.”

  “I have not slept with another person since my mother, when I was small,” she said.

  “Soon you will lie with Pankaj on a bed strewn with rose petals,” I said, willing it to be true. If Bidushi survived to leave Lockwood without me, I would not be the slightest bit envious or resentful. Just glad she was alive.

  “Do not leave me, Didi,” she breathed. “Come inside my bed.”

  I wasn’t frightened of catching her illness, but I did not know what Nurse-matron would think. The school’s Indian servants would be shocked, because for a Sudra to lie with a Brahmin girl would ruin her chances for a good afterlife. I thought about this seriously.

  My friend moaned, and that decided it. I lifted the mosquito net enough to creep in beside her. How strange the bed was with its soft mattress covered with smooth white cotton. Under the sheet, we laced hands, and something jolted my heart. This girl, in the space of a few years, had replaced the sisters I’d lost, as well as my brother, parents, and grandparents. I clung to her because of my own longing, not just hers.

  “You must take care of Pankaj,” Bidushi whispered to me. “Will you promise?”

  “He will soon be here,” I soothed. “He is aboard the ship and will be in India soon.”

  “Write a good-bye letter for me,” Bidushi whispered.

  This was the wrong way for her to think. Without hope, she would not have the strength to live. “There is no need for a letter. The doctor is coming tomorrow. You will feel better once you have the proper medicine.”