by Threes Anna
The clergyman had been carrying a pile of books the last time Charlotte ran into him. He had tried to interest her in the story of a woman of easy virtue who became a missionary in Africa. She told him she only read real literature, which prompted an interminable oration on the importance of devotional reading material, and he wouldn’t let her go until she promised him she would read it. So Charlotte accepted the book he handed her.
“Very interesting.” She turned it over and skimmed the back cover.
The clergyman looked at her red fingernails. “What did you think of that other book?”
“Quite unusual.” It was none of his business that it was still lying — unread — in a pile of books in her living room. “If you don’t mind, I came for the Tuesday-morning talk. I think they’ve already started,” she said as she tried to walk past him.
Reverend Das nodded but did not step aside. He pointed to the plaque above the door. “Your father . . .”
Charlotte looked up at the row of names on the wall. Her father had prided himself on the fact that he had financed the construction of the library, and she was glad he had never seen how dilapidated it had become. The clergyman moved closer to Charlotte; she tried to step back, but the table with the women’s magazines was in the way.
“Mrs. Bridgwater . . .” He was wheezing slightly. “I am collecting money for the restoration of this library. You do know that we have an extensive collection of religious books here?” He pointed to the high shelves behind her, full of books that for the most part hadn’t been borrowed. “I thought it would be splendid if . . . as a kind of family tradition . . . out of respect for the work your father did back then . . . you could make a donation.”
The then minister had paid a visit to Charlotte’s father shortly after the death of Mathilda Bridgwater and asked him if he would consider building a library in memory of his wife. The military man had stared at him for a long time with a hard look in his eyes — it was so long that the clergyman began to feel uncomfortable and finally mumbled that a bookcase would also be very much appreciated.
Victor Bridgwater approved of the idea of something to do with books, since his wife had died holding Gone with the Wind in her wasted hands. He muttered that he would support the new library provided that all the religious books were kept on the topmost shelves. The minister was euphoric. He was unaware of the fact that those shelves would be so high that no one could reach them, and his entire collection would remain unread.
“I’ll give it some thought,” said Charlotte, after a slight hesitation. The minister stepped aside, and she entered the room bearing the sign ladies club.
1934 Rampur ~~~
THE MUSIC REACHES her from below. Charlotte is squatting next to the large standing clock, which has just struck nine. All of the candles in the enormous chandelier above the stairwell are alight. Below, in the marble hall, the British officers who are stationed at the army base nearby are arriving. They are in gala uniform, each with his wife, attired in a magnificent ball gown, on his arm. The Indian servants are wearing brand-new uniforms: yellow jackets and navy blue trousers with gold piping. The door of one of the bathrooms opens and a woman with elaborately coiled blond hair steps onto the landing. She’s wearing dangling earrings and her lips are deep red. She giggles when an officer with a chest full of medals offers her his arm and leads her down the stairs. Charlotte hears her father’s voice behind her and slips back into the nursery. She closes the door, careful not to make any noise. On a mat next to her bed lies her ayah, Sita, sound asleep. They played together all day, but while she was singing a lullaby for Charlotte, the young Indian girl fell asleep herself. Charlotte creeps past her. The balcony doors are open. She glances over her shoulder, but Sita doesn’t stir.
Peering over the balcony, Charlotte sees the driveway, which is illuminated by torches, and shiny automobiles parked next to the house. On the broad flight of stairs leading to the front door, men in blue jackets and gold caps are stationed on either side of the red carpet. They are carrying plumes, which the guests pass under, and just before the guests go through the door, two servants throw rose petals before their feet. The sweet scent rises to the balcony. Charlotte wishes she were already grown up.
Behind her she hears her father’s voice again. She ducks down, but then realizes that he is in her mother’s bedroom, next to the nursery. Charlotte crawls over to the open window and looks over the windowsill and into the yellow room. Her mother is sitting at her dressing table, wearing a long, pale green dress and a gold tiara in her hair. She’s painting her lips red with a brush.
“Mathilda, you look perfect.” Her father, in full regalia, is standing near the door. He taps his sable against the sole of his boot. There is a medal on his chest.
“Almost, Victor, almost,” her mother says with a smile as she carefully alters the contour of her lips. “Do you like this colour?”
“It’s the same colour as the uniform jackets of the Irish Guards.”
“Yes. Scarlet. Would you hand me my black gloves?”
“These?”
“No, Victor, the long ones.”
He tosses them to her.
“Ah, my gallant knight.” She smiles and pulls on the close-fitting gloves. Then she stands up, walks over to her husband, and puts out her hand. It seems to Charlotte that he is about to salute, but then he takes Mathilda’s hand and leads her out of the room.
Charlotte waits until her parents are gone and then creeps through the open balcony door into the room. Once before, during a violent thunderstorm, when Sita was spending the night with her own family, Charlotte sneaked into the yellow room. Her mother didn’t wake up, and Charlotte fell asleep pressed against that warm, unfamiliar body, longing for Sita’s arms around her.
The room smells sweet. There are dozens of bottles on the dressing table. Charlotte picks up a small green one, pulls out the stopper, and puts it to her nose. Then she closes her eyes and inhales the pungent scent. It smells like her mother after she returned from Delhi wearing the blue sun hat. She picks up another bottle and opens it: this one smells like her mother about to leave for church. The next one reminds her of a garden party, and a pink bottle smells like her mother decked out in her jewels. Being a grand lady is the best thing there is, she decides.
Suddenly she’s jerked from the stool. She sees her father’s image in the mirror, next to her own. She hadn’t heard the door open. He picks her up and carries her over to the large wardrobe. He opens it, shoves her inside, closes the door, and turns the key. Charlotte hears the bedroom door open and shut. She sits there, surrounded by her mother’s sweet-scented clothes. She starts to cry. Sita, please wake up and let me out. I’m afraid.
1935 Rampur ~~~
AT THE BOTTOM of the stairs stands a chest. It’s been there for weeks. No one dares touch it, since Major Victor Bridgwater is away and the chest arrived the very day that Mathilda delivered her first son. She has been able to leave her room the last few days, but she hasn’t given orders for the trunk to be moved. Although the unwieldy wooden object is sitting smack in the middle of the hall, no one has complained. For the first few days the servants would sneak a look at the object on their way upstairs with clean nappies and hot compresses, curious about the seals and stamps on the cover and convinced that it must have something to do with the newborn baby. But ever since Charlotte told Sita, the nursemaid to whom she confides everything, that it contained a machine that can take over their work, everyone is afraid of the trunk.
The old butler, bearing a large teapot on a silver tray, sees one of the sweepers shoot past the trunk at a considerable speed. “Stop!” he orders.
The mehtarani, a young woman in a colourless sari, gives him a guilty look.
“Why haven’t you swept the dust from the trunk?”
“But, sir,” the woman whispers, “then he’ll break loose!”
“Who?”
“The iron beast, sir.”
Although he would never admit it, the butler is also afraid of what’s in the trunk. He heard it from the bobajee, who had heard it from his masalchee, who talked to a coolie who’s acquainted with a friend of the coolie of the principal official at the post office: the trunk contains a machine that can walk and talk. The coolie saw how the official opened the trunk to verify that it contained exactly what the customs papers said it contained. He recounted how his boss had uttered a cry and slammed the lid of the trunk down, after which he ordered it to be transferred as quickly as possible to the general, who is actually only a major.
“There’s dust on the chest. Memsahib is going to complain.”
“I have three small children,” the mehtarani wailed. “The youngest is not even weaned.”
“If you don’t dust the chest, you can leave.”
“I’ve worked for the general for five years, and I’ve never forgotten a single corner. I even sweep under the low cabinets every morning, and on the day my father was cremated I came to sweep and also the day after I had my last baby. How many of the other sweepers can say that?”
“Dust the chest.”
“It’ll be my death, sir,” she blubbered. “Can’t we do it together?”
“I don’t sweep. Butlers never sweep.”
“But please, sir, couldn’t you stand very close to me while I do it?”
“Memsahib just called. I have to go upstairs.”
The mehtarani begins to sniffle, wringing the broom made of dried grass between her hands.
“And don’t break the broom.”
“What’s going on?” Mathilda looks over the balustrade at the two servants standing next to the chest.
“Nothing, memsahib, nothing.”
“I thought I heard someone crying.”
The butler, a middle-aged man who previously worked for other English army families, has been with the Bridgwaters for the past six months. He looks up. “No, memsahib. There’s nothing wrong.”
The mehtarani runs from the hall with her head down; the butler smoothes the pleats of his uniform.
“Oh, that’s all right then. You know I can’t abide the sound of crying.” Mathilda turns to go back into the nursery, where Sita is changing the baby’s diaper, but before she enters the room, she calls out, “And will you see to it that the chest goes to the shed? My husband is coming home tomorrow to his son, Donald.” She stresses the word “son.”
The butler stares at the chest, which is as tall as he is and resembles an upright coffin. There is lettering on one side, but he has never learned to read. He thinks of his father, who after the Great War was given the task of capturing a tiger for the London zoo, along with a Scottish officer named Macintosh. It wasn’t difficult to find a tiger and kill it. Macintosh had already killed some forty tigers. But this one had to be taken alive. They built a chest and set a trap. With the raging tiger in the chest, they drove to Bombay, where they were to deposit the beast in the hold of a ship. During the five-day car journey to Bombay, his father lost first his forefinger and later his entire right hand, because Macintosh refused to help him feed the animal. The butler looks at his own attractive hands with their long fingers. . . . Not a scratch to be seen.
THE ENTIRE STAFF is assembled in the kitchen, a stone building with a roof made of palm leaves. Forty Indian men and women, each and every one in uniform, are packed together in the narrow space, looking at the butler with shocked faces.
“Anyone who’s afraid can leave now,” he says.
No one moves a muscle. The servants are terrified of the butler. Everyone knows that he comes from heroic Kashmiri stock and that an English zoo once named a tiger after his family. But they are also struck with fear when they think of the general, who is arriving home tomorrow.
“Pick up the poles.”
The servants walk back to the house carrying the long poles. The butler, a worthy descendant of his forebears, has explained to them how they are to transport the chest. They will lay the poles on the ground, tip the chest over using another pole, and then carry it to the shed as if it were a stretcher.
“Quiet now, or you’ll wake the baby.” The butler opens the door.
In the hall stands Victor Bridgwater, his swagger stick still under his arm. Next to him stand his five-year-old daughter, Charlotte, and his wife, Mathilda, with the baby in her arms. The chest is open.
“General! You’re here already?” the butler stammers, surprised that he didn’t hear him coming.
“With my hands still covered in blood!” Victor booms. “What’s the meaning of all those poles? Is this how you protect my son?” He laughs heartily and turns to his wife. “Your troops would appear to be more competent than mine, Tilly.”
Mathilda glances uneasily at the group of dark-skinned men and women holding their sticks, relieved that her husband has returned just in time. But why are all the servants suddenly carrying poles? She clutches her newborn baby tightly to her breast.
Victor pushes the lid of the chest aside and says, “Have any of you ever seen an electric lawnmower before?”
~~~
THE GENERAL IS standing at the top of the stairs. The toes of his boots extend over the edge of the top stair. At the bottom, Sita is holding the howling infant in her arms. Next to him stands his wife, Mathilda. Charlotte, who spent all afternoon playing with Sita and her dolls, slips noiselessly over to her mother’s side and searches for her hand, which she holds hidden in her skirts. Excruciatingly slowly, her father’s white-gloved hand goes up. He points his swagger stick at the outer door, where the butler is standing with an umbrella. Everyone stares at the motionless stick. The only sounds are the crying of the baby and, in the background, the monotonous strokes of the sweepers’ brooms in the salon.
“But, sarkar . . .” The words issue haltingly from Sita’s mouth as she gently caresses the wailing baby. “Chota-sahib is so little.”
The swagger stick seems to grow larger. Sita, in her faded sari, walks hesitantly toward the large grey pram with its hood and lace trim, all the while comforting little Donald with her caresses. The baby stops crying. The young woman, still a girl herself, transfers the baby to her other arm. Charlotte’s sigh of relief is audible. She knows that Sita will protect her little brother, as she has always protected her. Outside there is a loud thunderclap and the sky breaks open. The baby starts to cry again. Charlotte finds her mother’s hand and squeezes it hard. There is no response.
The swagger stick motions briefly in the direction of the pram and then points again to the outer door. Sita puts the baby in the pram. He starts to cry even harder. She goes to pick him up again, but a sound from the top of the stairs stops her. The butler opens the outer door. The rain pelts down on the tiles. Sita rocks the pram gently back and forth, in the hope that the cries will subside, but the opposite is the case when a flash of lightning illuminates the hall, followed by a deafening peal of thunder. For the second time, Sita slowly pushes the pram with the screaming baby outside. As the first raindrops hit the hood, she stops.
“The middle of the lawn,” orders the general.
The girl cautiously pushes the carriage down the stairs. She tries to cushion the jolt at each stair, as she used to do with Charlotte, but the child’s cries grow even louder. Once on the path, she looks back. Behind her the door is already closed. In despair, she walks onto the grass; the rain is pounding down with tremendous force. She slides the baby as far under the hood as possible, so that he doesn’t become soaked, but on the inside the sound of the rain must be deafening. In front of the salon window stands the broad figure of the general, who has just returned from a mission during which he made short work of a group of Indian protesters whom he regarded as mutinous slaves. Sita stops in the middle of the lawn. She bends over the pram and tr
ies to quiet the baby. She knows that she must now leave him alone, otherwise the general will come storming outside and she will lose her job. She caresses the child once more and pulls the sheet over him as best she can. The lashing rain continues unabated. She walks away, leaving the pram in the middle of the lawn. Out of sight of the window, she crouches down near a bush full of winter roses. She hears the cries over the peals of thunder.
Charlotte runs back to the nursery. Looking out the window, she sees Sita sitting next to the bush, not far from the lonely pram, ready to jump up at any moment. “Don’t cry, don’t cry,” she whispers to her baby brother. “If you go on crying, he’ll leave you out there for hours, just like he did with me.”
1995 Rampur ~~~
ALL THE WOMEN gazed in bewilderment at the secretary of the New Rampur Club. No one said a word. Only once before had he walked into their midst unannounced, after Mr. Chatterjee — the owner of two fashionable ladies’ apparel shops in the town centre, but a poor tennis player — hit the ball straight through the windowpane of the “Ladies Club.” Now the secretary was standing before them again, wiping his brow, while the women stared at him. The ceiling fans were going at full speed.
“Are you sure?” The query was launched suddenly from a corner of the room.
The secretary nodded. He was surprised by the identity of the speaker, seeing that the wife of Alok Nath, the goldsmith, invariably spoke in an inaudible whisper because she thought it sounded aristocratic.
“What?” said the widow Singh, who was sitting next to the wife of Alok Nath and was awakened by the unexpected sound of a voice next to her.
“That’s impossible! Quite impossible! On my way to the club I dropped off a very expensive length of pink Chinese silk.” The corpulent wife of Nikhil Nair, district director of the Eastern Indian Mining Company, was on her feet, glowering at the secretary. “He walked out to the car with me to get the material, and there was nothing wrong with the man.”