Waiting for the Monsoon

by Threes Anna

  THEY WERE SITTING next to each other on the bottom step. All the remnants had been folded up and were in one big pile, with the scarlet red silk on top. For the first time that night, their thoughts were calm. There was no sense of shame. The uncertainties and unasked questions had disappeared. And the fear had gone. What remained was an openness they both experienced as blissful. The clock struck six. The last candle was still burning, and Charlotte blew it out. The sun was already above the horizon and would soon banish the memory of the night. Their eyes radiated joy. She smelled his scent and he hers. They looked at each other without blinking, aware that if they closed their eyes, the moment might simply disappear. They knew they had to say goodbye but tried to prolong the present. It mustn’t end yet. She could imagine how his body felt, his face, his skin. He saw the colour of her eyes and her lips. His hand reached out to hers. Her fingers were extended. They wanted to be together forever.

  A click. They heard the personnel door open. Their eyes gleamed.

  “Hello? Is anyone here?” It was the voice of an Englishwoman.

  They looked at each other in surprise. Only Hema, Madan, and Charlotte used the side door. Visitors always came to the front door.

  Are you expecting anyone?

  Charlotte wanted to answer his question in the negative, but her thoughts were spinning. She had expected Hema to bring the tea, which they would drink together. Then they would take the pile of fabric to the music room, and she would watch as he made her scarlet red dress. She had decided that she would never again be led by the glances of outsiders or by the foreign tongues that had determined her entire life and had brought her nothing but loneliness. She would no longer allow herself to be held back by shame, fear, or principles. She would hurt no one. She would go away with him, quietly. Leaving cowardice behind on the doorstep.

  He heard her thoughts. Her release from fear had carried him along, raised him up, to a sensation that was new to him. His hesitation lay on his wings, ready to shake off, to fly away, to overstep boundaries, to go to places that had walls they could demolish brick by brick. It was the sparkle in her eyes and the laughter of her soul that had given him the courage to stand beside her, and he had done away with his shyness in her presence.

  “Hal-lo!” said the voice impatiently.

  He sensed that the courage that had seemed invincible was beginning to fade. He heard her thoughts becoming confused; she raised questions and barricades that had not existed a moment before.

  Charlotte walked over to the side door and saw a young white woman, still a girl. She had a green fluorescent band over her red hair, which was sticking out in all directions. She was wearing a blue jacket and baggy, bright yellow silk trousers with an embroidered design, and dangling earrings.

  “Are you looking for someone?” Charlotte asked.

  “Yes, you.” the girl said.

  “Me?”

  “I’m Issy.”

  “Issy?”

  “Didn’t you get my letter?” She heaved a sigh. “Nothing works here. I tried to call, but the thing doesn’t work.”

  “Letter?” said Charlotte, who in the past few weeks had received nothing but bills and letters from the bank, and had no idea who the girl was.

  “It’s awfully hot, isn’t it? Do you have anything to drink?” She kicked off her shoes. “The trains here are fabulous. I travelled first class, I had to promise Daddy, since anything can happen in second and third class. I had a real bed and I slept really well, and at the station they knew exactly where I wanted to go. All I had to say was “Bridgwater House” and the rickshaw brought me here, but I think he took a detour since I’ve already seen half the city. Everything is so cheap, how do people make a living here? I don’t understand why Daddy left, a person can easily live on a pound a day and that includes two hot meals, even though in this heat I’m not allowed to have ice cream, because Daddy said that even he doesn’t do that when he’s in India, they use dirty water, he says. I’ve already had diarrhea, the first couple of days, the man at the hotel in New Delhi even called a doctor and he gave me some medicine and it was gone in no time. I’ve got medicine for malaria as well, Granddad got malaria, too, during the war, it must be a horrible disease since it stays with you all your life.”

  “Are you Isabella, my niece?”

  “I don’t answer to that horrid name anymore.” The look on her face and the gesture of contempt spoke volumes. “My new name is Issy.”

  Madan, who until then had been out of her field of vision, had picked up the pile of fabric and was heading for the music room, with his head bowed.

  “Hi!” she called out and then, in a lower voice, “Is that the butler?”

  Charlotte wanted to say that he was the man she loved, the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with, the gift that had unexpectedly been thrown into her lap, and that her life had begun last night. But she said nothing. Madan, who was used to looking away when he saw a woman he didn’t know, especially a white woman, was blissfully happy until he heard her say, “No, that’s Mukka. He’s the tailor.”

  “Oh, he can make something for me, too. Everything is so frumpy here, this is all I could find. In my travel guide it says that you should buy all your clothes in India because everything is so cheap, but they don’t tell you that everyone walks around in tent dresses or saris. I’ve been wearing the same clothes for two days. Can I go to the toilet? The one in the train was filthy and there was no toilet paper anywhere, would you believe it — the first-class carriage has clean sheets but no clean WC. I had to hold my pee all night, at one point we stopped at a station and I was going to go behind a hoarding, but what if the train left without me? Did you know that men and little kids all pee alongside the rails?”

  I’m going to get back to work.

  I didn’t mean to say that you’re the tailor.

  I know.

  I didn’t mean it like that.

  I know.

  It just came out.

  I know.

  “Well . . . ?” The girl looked at her aunt.

  “What?”

  “The WC.”

  Charlotte showed her the door to the guest room. The girl pattered off, now clearly desperate, and shut the door behind her. Charlotte turned toward the music room, but that door had also closed. She wanted to go after him, hear him say out loud that that night had not been a dream, but the closed door told her: DON’T.

  HEMA CAME OUT of the kitchen building. He was carrying a tray with the tea. It was later than usual because he’d had to filter the water, which was full of sand. But he was in no hurry. He hoped that when he entered the house everything would be back to normal. Walking up the path to the side door, he saw a bright yellow rucksack leaning against the house. He hadn’t heard or seen anyone. He wondered whether it contained yet another selection of accessories that each of the ladies of Rampur hoped would make her outfit just that bit more attractive or unusual than those of the others. He pushed the door open with his foot, as he always did: the worn spot at the bottom of the door was clearly visible.

  Although the lengths of fabric had disappeared, he knew that he hadn’t dreamt the whole thing. There were candle stubs all over the place and blobs of melted candle wax on the marble floor and the stairs. He sighed. It had been a short night for him, too. Unable to get back to sleep, he had started to worry about how best to dispose of the remains of the nocturnal festivities.

  He was about to go upstairs when he heard memsahib call out to him from the drawing room.

  She was holding the photo that had stood on the mantelpiece for years.

  “We have a guest!”

  “A guest?”

  “My niece from England is here!”

  “Your niece?”

  “My brother’s daughter.”

  “Here?”

&nb
sp; She pointed to the little girl in the photo, who had braids and was holding an enormous ice lolly. Hema had looked at it countless times because it was such a sweet, comical photo.

  Suddenly he started fussing around. “Where is she?”

  “In the guest room, freshening up. She’ll be down in a little while.”

  “I’ll go get some more cups,” he said, and hurried off. At the back of the kitchen cabinet there was a lovely little cup — he would get it for her.

  “Not yet?” he asked when he came back with the teacup, which was decorated with a dancing Mickey Mouse. “Maybe she’s fallen asleep.”

  “You can pour my tea,” said Charlotte, she was very thirsty, “and take a cup in to the darzi.”

  Hema did not feel like bringing the darzi a cup of tea, and he went on putting the cups and saucers on the table, along with the sugar pot that memsahib never used but that he always brought with him, and then he polished the spoons once more on his apron. He heard unfamiliar footsteps in the hall. He picked up the teapot and turned around respectfully. The white woman who walked in was just as naked as the women in the photos in the magazine he bought once when he was far away from Rampur. Long strands of wet hair hung alongside her neck, and she was wearing a mini shirt and an even tinier pair of knickers. Her shirt was wet due to the water dripping from her hair, and he could see her nipples through the fabric. He saw her navel, too, and her long white legs. The teapot fell to the floor with a crash, and the hot water spread in all directions. Hema called out that they mustn’t panic, that he was going to fetch some cloths, that they should be careful not to step on the shards and the spilt tea because they might hurt themselves. His heart was pounding like mad. Was this the little girl with the pigtails?

  “Auntie, thanks for running the bath for me, it was just what I needed after such a long trip!”

  1963 Madras ~~~

  MADAN IS SEVENTEEN years old when he rings the doorbell at the house of Dr. Krishna Kumar. There is nothing to indicate that there is a doctor living at this address. It’s an ordinary house with a bell. As he withdraws his finger, the door flies open.

  “So you’re Mukka? I’m Dr. Krishna Kumar.” A bald man wearing glasses with thick lenses is looking at him with a friendly smile.

  Madan begins to beam. From the moment he got off the train, he’s been nervous. How is he supposed to explain to the doctor that he wants to be able to talk, that Chandan Chandran sent him, that he’s never been to a doctor, and that he has no money?

  The man, who had obtained a doctorate with a dissertation on a problem related to the textile industry, holds the door open for him. “From what I hear, you have a feel for it.”

  Madan has no idea what the man is talking about, but he follows him into a large room, filled with dark antique furniture, where it smells of mothballs and beeswax.

  “Is that all you have with you?” the doctor asks.

  Madan nods.

  Dr. Krishna Kumar takes a small box from one of the overcrowded cabinets. “If it turns out you’re really worth it, as my respected colleague has assured me, then I’ll pay you well. He knows that I only accept the best of the best. He told me on the telephone that you know all about fabrics and thread, you’re a quick learner, and in your whole life you’ve never once talked nonsense.” He laughs heartily at his own joke.

  Madan laughs, too, although he has no idea what thread has to do with medical science.

  The doctor opens the box and takes out a shiny sewing-machine bobbin. “This is your bobbin. As long as you work for me, I don’t want you to use any other bobbin than this one. And I don’t want you to use more thread than you need. That means that when you wind up your spool, you’ll have to make an exact estimate of the amount of thread you’ll need for the entire garment. Is that clear?” The doctor looks at him sternly, and then he starts to laugh again. “I’m not saying this because I’m a penny pincher, but because I demand precision and craftsmanship.” He hands the spool to Madan. “I’ll take you on for a week on trial, without pay. I know you have a lot to learn, but a week is long enough for me to see if my esteemed colleague was right.”

  MADAN IS SITTING on a stool in the middle of a room, with a bobbin in his hand. He is dejected. In front of him is a large, black treadle sewing machine, painted with graceful letters, and in a corner of the room there’s a sleeping mat. What he would really like to do is simply leave, now that he knows for sure that Dr. Krishna Kumar is not a real doctor. But because boss Chandran gave him the special letter, complete with address, and also telephoned, Madan does not leave. Perhaps another doctor will come by, or maybe Krishna Kumar has a brother who’s a doctor? Or a cousin?

  On top of the sewing machine lies a length of black silk, along with a spool of white thread and a pair of scissors. No one has entered the room after a quarter of an hour, and his feet unconsciously begin to experiment with the treadle. The machine is very much like the one that Ram Khan had, except that it’s newer and looks nicer. The room also reminds him of the crate he was kept in, especially since Dr. Krishna Kumar locked the door on his way out. Madan is disappointed and he doesn’t understand why he has to sit here, but he’s glad there’s no one around to ask him questions or give him orders. He watches the sewing machine needle go up and down, faster and faster, depending on how hard he pushes down on the foot pedal. He picks up the silk cloth and slides it under the presser foot. The material moves forward, driven by the foot. But since there’s no thread in the bobbin, this does not produce a line of stitching.

  It is the combination of Ram Khan’s flood of abuse while he was threading his machine and Subhash’s eternal chatter about machines and mechanisms when all he wanted to do was sleep that prompts Madan to wind the white thread onto the bobbin, open the slide plate, and try to work the spool into the hole underneath. He makes several attempts, but it isn’t until his foot accidentally comes down on the pedal and the needle shoots upward that the spool drops into its slot. He looks up with a sense of satisfaction, but there’s no one there to see his triumph. Again he thinks about the doctor who isn’t a doctor at all and he begins to suspect that a real doctor will never come. With a jerk he pulls the fine thread from under the foot, something he often had to do for the far-sighted Ram Khan. Although he has no direct experience, he knows that with this machine it is possible to make something truly beautiful. He unfolds the length of silk. It’s not large, but he knows that it is expensive material. He doesn’t touch the scissors. He only wants to feel how the machine sews. He wants to see how the needle goes through the material and forms a straight line with the thread. Again he places the material under the presser foot and then lowers it. Using a treadle sewing machine requires a certain amount of skill, that much is clear to him. The thread has formed loops and what a moment ago was a pristine length of silk has become shoddy work by a third-rate tailor. With a dexterity born of practice, Madan carefully unpicks the thread and starts all over. As he slides the piece of silk under the presser foot for the fifth time, he realizes that he must keep up the speed, and that the wheel, which is driven by the movement of his foot, must not be allowed to stutter, but must continue at a constant pace. His first evenly stitched white line appears on the black silk beneath his fingers. And again he looks up from his work with a sense of pride, only to realize that no one is watching. His stomach growls: he’s had nothing to eat since the evening before. He sews another line and another. The lines become straighter and his stitches more even. When the spool is empty, he winds it up again and goes on sewing, one line after the other. In the beginning, the lines sometimes wander slightly, but gradually they become straighter and straighter. After a while, he rotates the material a quarter turn and goes on stitching lines. Although he hasn’t planned it, he has produced an exact copy of the black and white checkered material that the daughter of Chandan Chandran was wearing.

  It must be evening by now, althou
gh no daylight enters the room. The growling of his stomach has abated, along with the sense of hunger. Madan strokes the blocked material in his lap. The tingling in his abdomen, which disappeared when he got on the train, has returned. It is as if his fingertips can feel the girl’s skin through the fabric, the curve of her throat, the dimple in her neck. He knows that Chandan Chandran has long since arranged a marriage partner for her, and for his other children. And yet he cannot forget her. The girl has awakened something in him that refuses to go back to sleep. He feels how the swelling increases, under the piece of cloth. His breathing accelerates. He’s afraid to touch the cloth. He doesn’t even want to look at it, for fear the agitation that has taken possession of him will be visible to others. Why won’t it go away? Why does his willy refuse to listen to his pleas? Madan is afraid to move, hoping that the unwelcome guest will retreat and disappear into the shadows. But the organ in question has its own rules: it remains erect, and proudly lifts the checkered cloth. He knows that the only solution is to take it in his hands and release its charge. But the thought that any minute Dr. Krishna Kumar could open the door and witness the act leaves him without the will.

  You have to help me. You always come up with a solution. Think of something. Something I can do. I can’t get her out of my head. I didn’t intend to make the cloth like that. It just happened. I wasn’t thinking about her. I was watching the needle, which pierced the cloth, over and over. It was as if I was piercing something myself, as if there was something that I was penetrating. I couldn’t stop it. I had to penetrate it. Pushing the needle through the cloth. I wanted to make a line. A sharp line, and I wanted it more and more. I wasn’t thinking of her. Honest. It wasn’t until the pattern was finished that I saw it. It happened without my wanting it to happen. As if she’d cast a spell on me. That’s not possible, Abbas, is it? She can’t have done something to me that will never go away? Tell me that it’ll go away, that I won’t always be the way I am now. I want to be ordinary again. I can’t stand it that each time I think about her, everything in me changes. If the doctor suddenly walks in, he mustn’t see me like this. No one must see me like this. It’s bad enough that Subhash caught me. People already think I’m strange. I know they talk about me and point at me. It’s only when I’m very, very quiet that I’m allowed to exist. I don’t want this feeling in my belly. It scares me. I want to be ordinary, just like everyone else. I wish I could speak.