by Threes Anna
“Those are the secrets of India,” Peter says.
“No, it’s superstition,” Charlotte retorts.
“It’s one of the things that make living in India so special,” he says. “Nothing is what it seems, everything turns out differently than you expected.” He walks over to where she’s standing and takes her hand. His forefinger strokes her ring finger. “If my afternoon at the hospital goes the way I hope, then I’ll be home early and we can finally buy our rings.” He embraces her in an effort to banish her worries.
“You’d better go.” Charlotte pushes him away. “Otherwise you’ll be late and I’ll never get my ring.”
SHE CASTS A worried look at her watch. Peter should have been home by now. Perhaps an emergency has come in? Or the operation has lasted longer than expected? The newspaper is lying next to the chair, but she hopes he won’t try to read it before they leave for the jeweller’s. Her hand feels bare without a wedding ring, and the ladies at the club look askance at her ringless finger. Even among the servants she senses a certain disapproval. She reaches for the newspaper and impatiently swings her foot up and down. An article in bold letters on the front page catches her eye:
WAR HERO HONOURED
Lieutenant Colonel Victor Bridgwater was this morning awarded the Distinguished Service Order, one of the highest military honours, reserved for soldiers who have displayed exceptional courage in defence of the British Empire during encounters with the enemy. Lieutenant Colonel Bridgwater received the award for his uncommonly brave opposition to the Japanese in the Burmese jungle.
Her father a war hero? What does she actually know about him? She has no idea what he did during the war, where he was stationed, or who his enemies and friends were.
Peter comes into the room, smiling. He kisses her and apologizes for being late.
Charlotte proudly presents him with the newspaper. “Look! My father is a hero.”
Peter starts to read. She sees how he stiffens, how the smile disappears and a grey pallor comes over his face.
“What’s wrong?”
He shakes his head. He tries to smile, but the grimace that appears on his face is bitter and hard.
“It’s in the newspaper . . . ,” she says with a questioning look.
The soft gleam in his eyes fades. His lips tighten.
“Then it must be true, mustn’t it?”
He nods.
THEY’RE SITTING OPPOSITE each other at the table. Her plate is empty. His plate is untouched. She looks at his hands, on either side of his plate. They’re twitching slightly. The absence of his little finger is something she has hardly noticed — until now. The wound is redder and swollen. It is as if something has taken possession of him. Something she has no knowledge of. She must write to her father, ask him what on earth happened during his time in Burma. Otherwise, she realizes, she’ll never wear a wedding ring.
1995 Rampur ~~~
“I’M LOOKING FOR something small, more like this house.” Charlotte stood in the middle of Sita’s living room and looked around. Never before had she examined the house, which she knew so well, in such detail. The moment her father signed his name on the document, it was as if everything had changed. The barren trees were less barren, the heat was less intense, she had a biscuit with her tea, and even her lovesickness seemed less impossible. “Maybe I’ll leave Rampur.”
“Where would you go?” Sita was slicing a tomato, and the dal bubbled behind her, filling the house with a delectable smell.
“I don’t know. Maybe a place where the sun doesn’t always shine.”
“Are you staying for dinner?”
“I have to get back. Donald’s daughter is visiting.”
“Yes, so I’ve heard. Everyone’s talking about her. I thought: another guest for dinner. You won’t forget to eat?”
Charlotte hugged the tiny woman whom she considered her mother, friend, and sister all at once.
“Mama?” called a cheerful male voice.
The two women stared at each other as if they’d both been stung by a wasp. The intimate atmosphere between them vanished. They both spun around with a jerk and looked at the door. Parvat came in, wearing his light-brown uniform with the gleaming metal buttons, kicked off his boots, but forgot to remove his yellow helmet.
“Aunt Charlotte!” he said in surprise.
He knelt down in front of her and respectfully touched her feet. Then he hugged Sita. Charlotte would rather have had a bear hug, too — his big body pressed against hers, so she could let him know how much she loved him. He opened the fridge in search of something to snack on, but his mother was already preparing a plate for him.
“You’ll have to wait a bit for the paneer.”
“Are you staying for dinner, Aunt Charlotte?”
“No, I should be going. My niece is here.”
“Yes, so I’ve heard. The guys at the station think that the wind started to turn when she got here. They say it’s going to rain.”
“Wouldn’t that be marvellous!”
“They say she brings luck.”
Could Issy really bring luck? Charlotte wondered as she climbed the hill leading back to the big house. It was true that her father had finally signed the power of attorney document, and that Hema went around whistling despite the suffocating heat, and that she felt younger than she had in years. Even the apple tree seemed to anticipate the arrival of the monsoon. She walked past the mali’s shed and turned the corner. At the bottom of the steps she saw a long line of parked cars, including the 1957 Ambassador belonging to widow Singh. The front door was wide open. Even from a distance she could hear the wrangling. She ran up the broad stone stairs two steps at a time, noticing the chips and cracks.
In the hall, halfway up the stairs, stood the wife of Nikhil Nair in a bright pink sari, visibly agitated and dripping with perspiration. From her elevated position she spoke to the women, gesturing in the direction of the closed door to the music room. Everyone nodded, and there was a forbidding mumble of agreement. In the hall Hema looked around in a panic, uncertain what to do with the tray filled with glasses of water. He finally picked up a glass and emptied it in one gulp.
“It’s just like a real strike, isn’t it?” said a voice coming from the drawing room.
Charlotte looked into the room. On the floor, next to the socket, sat Issy, surrounded by a pile of plugs and leads. She grinned at her aunt.
“Let’s break open the door!” cried the wife of Nikhil Nair, waving her hands in the air.
“Has he run off?” squeaked the portly wife of the manufacturer of coconut oil.
“He’s barricaded the door!” blared widow Singh, who was not asleep for once.
“We don’t have to take this lying down!” screeched the wife of Adeeb Tata, who despite her expensive Parisian dress had also delivered a length of silk to the interesting tailor everyone was so taken with.
“My gold brocade dress . . . ,” wailed the wife of Ajay Karapiet, who for several nights had dreamt of tripping the light fantastic in her black pumps.
Even the wife of Alok Nath raised her voice, although her contribution was drowned out by the desperate cries of the others.
Charlotte went to the door of the music room and pushed down on the handle, but the door did not open. She knew for certain that she had not given him the key. It was still on her own key ring, and since the last of the rubies on the lampshade had been sold, it was no longer necessary to lock the door.
Where are you? she called in her thoughts, but the ladies were making so much noise that she couldn’t hear a thing.
The wife of Nikhil Nair beckoned her. Charlotte had no intention of obeying the summons, and remained near the door of the music room. She called: Can you hear me? What’s going on? Answer me!
“We want the key!” shouted the
wife of Nikhil Nair.
Charlotte strained to hear if an answer was forthcoming, and failed to see the furious looks launched in her direction by the portly pink woman descending the stairs. Taking steps that were far too big for her sari, the wife of the district director of the Eastern Indian Mining Company headed straight for her target. Her forehead was wet and circles of perspiration were forming under her arms. The ladies of the Tuesday-morning club made way for her.
Wheezing from the exertion, she stood before Charlotte and held up her hand. “Do you have the key?” she demanded.
“Of course I have the key,” said Charlotte amiably. “This is my house and I have keys to all the rooms.”
“Then open this door!”
“No, I don’t intend to open the door. I’ve rented out this room.”
“To a swindler!” she shouted back.
“Yes, to a swindler!” echoed someone from the back of the group.
“To the tailor who for weeks has been working day and night for all of you.”
“The ball is tomorrow! We want our clothes!”
“And we want them NOW!”
“I still have to pick out my shoes.”
“I don’t know which necklace goes with my dress.”
“I can’t buy my earrings yet.”
“I want to choose a new colour of lipstick.”
“At the fitting my collar wasn’t quite right.”
“I can’t remember the colour of my dress.”
HE WAS ALMOST finished. The crushed mimosa leaves had been sewn into the hem of the dress destined for the wife of Nikhil Nair. The flowers of the teak tree had only been found early that morning and ironed into the shoulder pads of the blouse he’d made for the secretary’s wife. He’d cut the leaves of the cinnamon tree into thin strips and sewn them into the seams of the gown he made for the painfully shy woman. The mixture of dried forget-me-nots and marigolds was destined for the dress of the woman who’d lost a son, while the bust of the wife of the coconut oil manufacturer was sprinkled with ground petunia seeds. All he had to do now was to sew the stamens of the wild orchid into the neck of the dress he’d made for the wife of Ajay Karapiet. He heard the pounding on the door. He tried not to listen to the chaos in the hall, since a mistake could have disastrous consequences for the wearer. He had shoved the cabinet in front of the door when he heard the women storming up the staircase. He was surprised when the manoeuvre proved successful. There were so many cobwebs behind the cabinet that it looked as if hadn’t been moved in the last hundred years. In the hall outside, the shouting grew louder, and the cabinet shook from the blows that rained down on the other side of the door. Now and then he heard Charlotte’s faint voice. He had to finish the very last seam. Like all the others, it was executed lovingly and with great precision.
CHARLOTTE STOOD IN front of the door with her arms outstretched. She was determined that they would not enter the music room, but she wasn’t sure how long she could keep up the barricade. The perspiring women clearly had no plans to leave.
“We’re going to call in the police,” shouted the wife of Adeeb Tata, a distant cousin of the fabulously wealthy Ratan Tata. The fact that she had not yet paid for the fabric was conveniently forgotten.
“They’ll arrest him and return our property,” the wife of Nikhil Nair predicted. She held her arms close to her body, since the wife of Ajay Karapiet had whispered in her ear that she had sweat stains under her arms.
Charlotte searched desperately for a solution that would prevent things from escalating still further. “Have you knocked on the door?”
The women looked at each other. The wife of Ajay Karapiet shook her head, abashed. One by one, they all lowered their eyes. Except for the wife of Nikhil Nair, who couldn’t bear being corrected. She mopped her brow and rapped briskly on the door.
The door swung open and Madan greeted them with a welcoming wave of his hand.
Even by the light of the lone bulb, the room was a fairy-tale palace. On the walls hung the most gorgeous gowns. The women were overwhelmed by the sight of such beauty. There were sighs of disbelief and admiration. Madan took the gold brocade gown from the wall. The wife of Ajay Karapiet began to glow with pleasure: it was as if she were already wearing the dress. With a flourish, he flung it onto the table, where it came to rest in graceful folds. Charlotte thought she saw the radiant woman perform a pirouette. They all held their breath. Madan took the tails of the skirt and folded them inward. The wife of Ajay Karapiet could feel his fingertips running across her skin. He wrapped the garment in crisp paper and handed it to her with a bow. She looked at him admiringly, and clutched the package tightly to her bosom. She was sure she could smell wild orchids.
Next Madan picked up the gown ordered by the woman whose husband owned the coconut mill. She, too, underwent a metamorphosis when she saw her dress: it made her bosom seem to rise upward and outward, becoming infinitely more attractive. He wrapped the garment in paper and presented it to her. She clasped it in her arms as if it were a newborn baby.
One by one, Madan brought the gowns down from the wall and wrapped them carefully in paper. Sometimes a moan or murmur was heard, or a muffled sigh of longing, but otherwise everything was deathly quiet.
Without a word, the women departed, anxiously clutching their new garments to their chests or hiding them in the folds of their saris, since no one wanted the others to see her gown beforehand.
They faced each other. Except for the cabinet, which was still at an angle, there were no traces of the recent turmoil. The sewing machine was on the table with his scissors beside it, and on a chair against the wall lay the pile of fabrics that had belonged to Charlotte’s mother, carefully folded, with the scarlet silk on top.
To Charlotte, the fabric was as intensely ablaze as her heart.
To Madan, the material was bleeding as profusely as his heart.
“And that’s the material you’re going to use for my dress, right?” Issy was standing in the door opening and pointing to the red fabric.
Charlotte looked from Issy to the length of silk. Was this why she had risen at daybreak to mow the lawn, rejected suitors deemed unsuitable, reluctantly spent her childhood at boarding schools in the cold English climate, and been locked in a closet for sampling her mother’s perfume? Why she had spoon-fed her father and wiped his bottom after he pooped, read edifying books forced upon her by Reverend Das, repaired and remodelled all her dresses until they wore out, turned penny-pinching into an art form, searched for her mother’s hand in the folds of her skirt but seldom found it, sold her grand piano and made do with an imaginary keyboard, buried her husband next to her mother, written to her brother for years without ever receiving a reply, taken all the burdens on her own shoulders without ever a thank-you? Why she had allowed herself to be swindled by second-hand dealers who paid next to nothing because they knew she had to sell, listened to the eternal gossip dished up by the wife of Nikhil Nair so as not to be alone, run a household without the necessary personnel, devoted her youth to a man who was damaged by the war, refused invitations to parties because women didn’t go to parties on their own, and after the one time she did go to a party, given birth to her child in a bleak convent in the Himalayas, so that no one would know about it, had a son who didn’t know she was his mother, and for years spent every Monday afternoon playing with him like a doting auntie? Why she had never cried because a Bridgwater doesn’t cry, suffered hunger pangs so that others could eat, rolled the carpet out and back up a thousand times so it wouldn’t wear and become less valuable, cared for her father alone because he’d driven all the nurses crazy, lost her pension because no one told her that it would be frozen if she gave up her British citizenship, never known love and for that reason was the object of gossip and slander, cycled to the club in the heat, stopped smoking because people held that women shouldn’t smoke, fallen in
love with impossible, unobtainable men, which was why she had to lie to be believed, peered in from the outside because she didn’t dare to enter, endured endless floods of abuse and tried not to be hurt, stolen from her father because he no longer understood her, and suffered guests she hadn’t invited? Was that why she was resigned to the fact that everyone had forgotten her?
“No,” she said, “the red fabric is for my dress.”
1977 Hyderabad ~~~
THE RAIN IS pouring down. Madan doesn’t like rain. People walk fast and don’t give anything. In the past few years he’s learned a lot about begging. And yet he calls himself not a beggar, but a tailor. All the money he doesn’t need for food is set aside, so he can buy his own sewing machine. Whether he’ll actually make it is something he prefers not to think about. Every morning he wakes up with the thought that it may be his lucky day. After all, he has already managed to buy a new spool with what he’s earned by begging.
An umbrella comes sailing by — no doubt swept from someone’s hands by the heavy rain — and he just manages to grab it. No one is looking for the umbrella, so he holds it above his head. Actually, he should try to find a more sheltered spot, since the rain is now bucketing down. He watches as the churning water seeks a path to the drains, which are becoming clogged by the accompanying rubbish. Madan crosses the street. The water comes up to his ankles now. He feels his slippers being snatched from his feet, but he grabs them in time, and wades farther in his bare feet.
The banknotes that he’s collected in all these years are safely stored in three small plastic bags tied around his waist. There is also a piece of paper that says that he is looking for work, as well as the snippets of paper, now pasted together, that bear the address of Dr. Krishna Kumar. Not that he will ever go back there, but he cannot bring himself to throw the paper away. It is one of the few things from his past that he still has.