by Threes Anna
Mrs. Blackburn walks into the room with a large book under her arm. The girls stop chattering and get to their feet. When the headmistress sits down, the girls follow suit. The teacher places her hands on the book and looks at her pupils, one by one. She smiles, but her fingers are drumming on the book. The girls are as still as mice. Again Charlotte’s gaze wanders to the window. She is witnessing a miracle, one that’s totally new to her. It’s more magical than the fireworks during Diwali, and more exciting than the Holi festival of colours. Behind her, a buzz of activity is audible as a cook wearing a starched apron comes in with a steaming pitcher and begins to fill the beakers. Mrs. Blackburn puts her purse on her lap and begins to search for something inside.
“They’re not here,” says the headmistress.
“What?” asks the cook.
“My glasses.” Then she looks at the girls opposite her, who try to avoid eye contact.
Outside, it’s bitterly cold. Inside, the room is filled with the aroma of hot chocolate.
Iris sees the longing in her friend’s eyes and gives her a nudge. “Do you want to go?”
Charlotte nods dreamily.
The girl sitting next to Charlotte notices and she starts nodding, too.
“You?” asks a classmate with her hair in a bun, sitting on the other side of the girl.
“Does she want to go?” her neighbour, a girl with a ponytail, asks the girl with the bun.
“No, not me. She’s the one,” says Charlotte’s neighbour.
“Ma’am! Charlotte wants to go!” calls out the girl with the ponytail.
Charlotte hasn’t the faintest idea what the question is or why everyone is pointing at her.
The headmistress comes over to Charlotte. “I’m glad you’re willing to go. Just run over to my house and ask the housekeeper for my reading glasses. I left them lying on the hall table.” She holds up a monocle, and then turns to the rest of the class. “I’ll make do with this, for the time being.”
The girls laugh.
Charlotte is standing on the doorstep in front of the huge old door and she stretches out her hand. The snowflakes fall onto her palm and immediately melt. She licks up droplets of water. It tastes like ordinary water. She puts out her hand again, higher this time. The flakes on her hand melt, but those on the sleeve of her grey coat don’t. She inhales the air. The lantern illuminates the entrance, but the path in front of Albert Hall is invisible.
Cautiously she places one foot on the virgin snow. She can feel the cobblestones underneath the layer of white. One step at a time, she follows the hedge in the direction of the school building. She can just make out the contours. The night seems brighter than usual. The flakes that blow into her face feel cool and wet. She sticks out her tongue and tries to catch them. They blow into her eyes and stick to her eyebrows. She keeps walking, occasionally looking back to see what’s happening to her footsteps. The hedge is no longer there, and she has no idea whether she is still on the path. The headmistress’s house is on the road behind the sports field. Since she can no longer distinguish the path, Charlotte decides that she might as well take the shortcut over the hill and along the park until she gets to the tennis courts. She is struck by how quiet it is. There’s no one outdoors and the only sound is the crunch of snow under her feet.
She starts up the hill. She almost loses her footing with every step. She didn’t expect it to be so slippery. She has to use her hands to make any headway. The snow is cold, but that’s the only way she can continue climbing.
At the top of the hill there’s a strong, cold wind, and flakes of snow blow straight into her face. Her hands and feet are ice cold. Charlotte remembers the story about her grandmother, whose feet were frozen during a snowstorm, and who died without anyone shedding a tear for her. Would the girls in her class cry if they found her dead in the snow? Iris would, she hoped. But she wasn’t sure about the others. Provided they were able to find her, that is. She sees that the snow has now covered everything. She wishes she had the big clock with her, just like her grandmother. Then she could hide inside it, to get out of the snow.
Charlotte starts down the hill; she falls, slides, scrambles up, stuffs her hands into her pockets, but has to take them out again to get back on her feet. She can’t see a thing. The world around her is white and black at the same time. The other girls are drinking hot chocolate and listening to the story of Mary and Joseph in the stable. Charlotte has no idea where she is and doesn’t know whether to go right or left, forward or backward. She’d like to find a spot and stay there, but the thought of her grandmother’s blackened frozen feet and her death, propels her onward. She peers ahead, but the snow that blows into her eyes is piercing.
Then she bumps into something. A tree, a pole, a wall? It turns out to be a tree, which means she has reached the park. She must take care not to go into the park but to follow the road leading to the tennis courts. She trudges on, one step at a time. Her hands and feet are numb. If only she’d followed the path with the lanterns. She shields her eyes with both hands and peers into the distance. A light is burning. She begins to run in that direction, but the first long stride sends her sprawling, and she hits her knee on a branch hidden under the snow. She cries out, but there’s no one to hear her. She slips and slides toward the light. Sometimes it’s there, sometimes it disappears. She rubs the snow out of her eyes. She totters. The smell of a smoking chimney comes wafting in her direction. That means she’s close to a house and warmth and people. She sees a lighted window. She pounds on the door with both fists. She hears someone coming. The door opens and a pair of hands pull the snow-covered girl into the hall and close the door behind her.
Shocked, the woman looks at the blue lips and red eyes of the unrecognizable child. “What on earth were you doing outside alone?” she says sternly. “Have you lost your senses?”
Charlotte feels the warmth of the hall and the woman’s hands as they unbutton her coat, and she smells the aroma of stew. She thinks of her grandmother, whom she never knew, and her father, who always said, “A true Bridgwater doesn’t cry.” Suddenly she realizes that her father has no idea what snow is like, and cannot understand how much it can hurt. And that he couldn’t know that his mother didn’t cry, because he was still a baby when she died. “I came to get Mrs. Blackburn’s reading glasses,” she sobbed.
1946 Bombay ~~~
HE LOOKS LOVINGLY at the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. Since the day before, they haven’t spoken a word. They have only made love. Peter feels that he has known her for years, that there is no need for her to speak, to tell him who she is, why she is here. Her long hair glides over her shoulders as she looks up at him and smiles.
She strokes his leg. There is a large scar below his knee. With her fingertip she gently traces the ragged, swollen line of the poorly healed wound. She senses that it is a miracle that he still has that leg, that it is painful, that he doesn’t want to talk about it, that she mustn’t ask him any questions, that he will tell her about it when he’s ready.
There is a knock at the door. They look at each other questioningly. The magic of the past night is suddenly gone. Shyly, Charlotte wraps a bath towel around her naked body. She pulls the curtain aside. The morning light, which for hours has been trying to creep into the room, finally appears, making a sparkling entrance. Quickly Peter draws the sheet over himself. Charlotte walks to the door. She looks back at him, smiles, and turns the key.
The door is pushed open, knocking her backwards. She immediately recognizes the uniformed figure who steps into the room.
He looks at her, is momentarily at a loss for words, and then recovers himself.
“Charlotte?”
She nods.
“How you’ve grown.”
She is conscious of her breasts and thighs, which are still fiery. “Did you get my note?”
Now he is the
one who nods. He doesn’t know what to say. His daughter is not the girl he expected to find. Before him stands a beautiful woman. She looks like Mathilda, the same eyes and narrow lips. For an instant he thinks that he could fall in love with her if he didn’t know who she was. Charlotte runs a hand through her hair, just like her mother used to do, and smiles shyly. How beautiful she is! Then he takes a step forward, into the room, and his eyes go to the bed. His mouth falls open and his swagger stick shoots upward. Suddenly, from nowhere, the adrenaline races through his body. He searches for words, drops of saliva appear on his lips, his nostrils flare.
Charlotte pulls the towel around her tightly, and a cold shiver passes from her feet and up her spine, leaving behind a trail of gooseflesh. The overpowering scent of their lovemaking fills the room, and vague memories of long ago fill her with dread. The light, which a moment before had come dancing into the room, shines hard and ruthlessly. The bed is a tangle of pillows and sheets. The floor is littered with garments. At her father’s feet lies the captain’s cap. She knows intuitively that he has to control himself to keep from trampling on it.
Peter, naked and vulnerable, looks at the man standing in front of him. Even without the lieutenant colonel’s uniform he would have known instantly that the soldier with the swagger stick was her father. He pulls the sheet up to his chin. He can’t take his eyes off the man by the door. He knows for sure that he’s seen him before, but can’t remember where. Then he feels a sudden stab of pain, and beneath the sheet his whole body convulses. He gasps for air.
The father and the daughter do not notice. They see only each other.
Victor looks at the fine hairs on her neck, damp with perspiration, and is aware of a rutting smell combined with the intoxicating aroma of his daughter. His blood charges through his body. He hears his own breathing and feels sweat on his palms.
~~~
THEY HAD GOTTEN up early, put canteens of water in their backpacks, and set off up the mountain. Seldom did they spend more than a half-hour together: the duration of the evening meal. Victor looked at his father’s back, and saw his large steps. When he asked his father if he could slow down a bit, the answer was, “We’re not a couple of old ladies.”
They were standing close to the edge; below them was the abyss. The toes of William Bridgwater’s boots extended over the edge — an edge so sharp that it seemed to have been sliced off with a knife. They surveyed the panoramic view and the clouds above.
“Son,” his father said after a while. “This is the mountain.”
“Which mountain, Father?”
William spread his arms wide, as if he was showing his son his future land. “The mountain that was the death of your mother.”
Victor looked around. It was an ordinary mountain, no steeper or more terrifying than other mountains.
“We loved each other, Elizabeth Charlotte Elphinstone and I. We were made for each other.” His father’s personal revelations made Victor feel uncomfortable. He wanted to walk on, but it was clear that his father expected him to listen. “Did I ever tell you that we weren’t married? That we simply did not have time to get married? And yet God knows that she was my wife, and that I have always been faithful to her.”
Victor, who had just turned sixteen, had shaved that morning, for the very first time. He looked at his father and saw that there were tears running down his weathered face.
“She was beautiful . . . so beautiful . . . my dear Elizabeth . . .” William Bridgwater turned to his son. The tears were flowing even faster now. “Son, if you hadn’t been born prematurely, she would have lived.”
Victor thought he must have misunderstood his father’s words. Until then he had assumed that his mother had died of cholera, malaria, or some other deadly disease. His father never talked about his mother. Victor knew only that the grandfather clock had belonged to her and that she wanted him to have it.
His father looked up at the sky. The sun was just emerging from behind a cloud. He let out a bestial howl and jumped.
Victor saw him take off, like an elegant swimmer diving into a river: his arms straight in front of him, alongside his head, and his legs extended. The wind froze the echo, which seemed to last forever. Until the body dashed soundlessly against a rock, rebounding in silence into the depths, leaving behind a faint, red trail and coming to a stop hundreds of metres below.
After a half-hour it had still not moved. Victor turned around and walked down the path.
~~~
Victor looks from the naked man under the thin sheet to his daughter and says, “You’re getting married today.”
1947 Ganga Yamuna Express ~~~
Dear Donald,
I have wonderful news to report. I’m married! The fact that you’re only now hearing the news isn’t strange, since we didn’t have a party. We’ve only known each other for a short while, but Father thought it was better to get married right away. My husband’s name is Peter Harris. He’s a surgeon and he also fought in the war. It’s lovely to be back here, although I’m still not used to the heat. It’s a shame we couldn’t see each other before I left. I had hoped so much that we could meet, but the man I talked to on the telephone said that the road to your school had been washed away. Didn’t that mean a lot of inconvenience? Now that you’re twelve, do you get to transfer to a smaller dorm, like I did back then? Or don’t they have them where you are? Right now I’m sitting in a first-class train carriage. It’s a real luxury, and servants come by to ask if there’s anything you want. I had quite forgotten what it was like to have servants around all the time. At my school we had to make our own beds. Do you have to do that where you are? Shall I ask Father if you can come to India this summer? Maybe we could pay for the trip. I’ll talk it over with Peter. Could you have a photo of yourself taken? All I have is that photo back when you were really young. I want to show Peter who my brother is, although I don’t really know either, since it’s been so many years since I last saw you. Father hasn’t changed at all, except that he’s a bit older and has more stripes on his uniform, but he’s still wearing the same boots. Peter and I are going to live in New Delhi, since that’s where he works, in a hospital. I’ve never been to Delhi, but it’s supposed to be a really beautiful city. It’s not easy to write when the train’s rocking back and forth, so I’ll close now.
Bye-bye,
Your sister Charlotte
1995 Rampur ~~~
A PICKUP TRUCK was heading up the driveway. There was a table in the bed of the truck that looked exactly like the one Charlotte had sold four months earlier. She didn’t recognize the man at the wheel, and waited in the salon for Hema to come and tell her who he was. The truck stopped near the entrance to the kitchen; the driver hopped out and went inside. He re-emerged about ten minutes later, together with Hema. He lifted the table out of the truck, leaned it against the outside wall, and drove off. Hema went back into the kitchen. Charlotte picked up the phone and called him. She was not used to things happening without her knowledge.
“Who was that?” she asked Hema when he walked in.
“Mr. Sukumar. With a table.”
“I didn’t order a table.”
“You didn’t, memsahib?”
“No. Why should I buy a table if we don’t need one?”
“He said, ‘Table for memsahib.’ I thought it was okay.”
“Well, it’s not.”
The phone rang and Hema answered it. “Mrs. Nair,” he said with his hand over the receiver.
Charlotte sighed and took the receiver.
“Has it arrived?”
“What?”
“The table.”
“Oh, did the table come from you?”
“No, it’s not mine. I borrowed it from the wife of the chief of police. She has generously offered to lend it to you temporarily.”
“I don’t
need a table.”
“No, but the darzi does.”
Charlotte was about to protest, she wanted to tell Mrs. Nair to mind her own business — and that she had plenty of tables — but then she realized that she had sold almost all of the tables in the house.
“You don’t mind, do you?”
She asked herself how the wife of Nikhil Nair knew that there were no longer any large tables in the house. What else did the woman know? Now she understood her husband’s interest in the clock, and her proposal to have the darzi live on Charlotte’s premises. “No,” she said, “but I haven’t decided if I want the darzi to work here.”
The wife of Nikhil Nair sighed. “You’re not going to leave us in the lurch, are you? You can’t do that. Where else can he go? We’re counting on you, and so are the Wednesday-morning ladies and the ladies who play tennis on Friday. And it appears that the ladies who seldom come to the club also want new evening dresses. The organizing committee called me especially to let me know. It’s unthinkable that the celebrations can’t go ahead because there are no accommodations for a simple darzi.”
“I don’t think that would happen,” said Charlotte, who considered the wife of Nikhil Nair a difficult person who always exaggerated. However, she added, “But very well.”
The wife of Nikhil Nair cheered, and in the background Charlotte heard the wife of Ajay Karapiet call out, “Hurrah!”
“On one condition.” Charlotte tried to make herself heard. “That people don’t come to the house. That would be much too upsetting, you must understand that.”
“Yes, yes, of course. We won’t disturb you, quite understandable. We’ll be no bother to you. No bother at all,” the wife of Nikhil Nair assured her, and hung up the phone.
1995 On the way to Rampur ~~~
IF HE HAD known that his name was Madan and that his parents would not have parted with him for the world, he would never have been cycling to Rampur with a sewing machine on the back of his bike. His tires were almost flat and the bicycle pump he had borrowed and forgotten to return was broken. The road to Rampur was full of potholes. It was used by hundreds of trucks, which sent clouds of diesel exhaust fumes billowing into the air, as well as by ownerless cows that chose to relax and chew their cud on the cracked asphalt, rickshaws carrying women who were busily fanning themselves as they headed for the market, taxis whose drivers couldn’t advance a single metre without honking their horns, men pushing handcarts piled so high that they couldn’t see the road in front of them, cavorting children, buses determined to pass every vehicle ahead of them, old people sauntering in the direction of the temple to say a prayer, mopeds so heavily laden with buckets and tubs that the drivers were invisible, goats — as well as chickens, crows, and rats — searching for something tasty in the omnipresent street litter, open car windows and drivers seeking a breath of fresh air. And cyclists like Madan, who had piled all their earthly possessions on the back of a bike in the hope that they could earn more in the next town. The car wheels often grazed the colourful wares of the street vendors. It was a question of give and take. The road belonged to everyone.