by Peg Kingman
Catherine nodded. After a moment, she said, “Do you know what became of the widow then?”
“There was no reason to keep track of her particularly,” said Mr Wade. “But I heard a while later that she had left India soon after, having gone into service as an ayah to a lady who was sailing for home with her infant.”
“For home?”
“Yes, a Scottish lady like yourself. I wish I could recall her name. Gordon, or Graham, it might have been,” said Mr Wade.
“Guthrie,” said Catherine.
“YES, IT IS true,” said Sharada, hours later, when Catherine asked her at last. All night, while Grace slept, Catherine had sat up in her nightdress—waiting, thinking, remembering—on the terrace outside her room overlooking the river. It was nearly dawn when Sharada crept in after the special puja in her father’s honour. The moon was an indistinct oval sinking westward behind the pale buildings of the city.
“It is true,” repeated Sharada.
Catherine felt herself trembling, of chill and fatigue and shock. And was there a tremor in Sharada’s hands, too, as she let down her shawl from her black hair?
“When I had been married for only seven months,” said Sharada, “my husband fell ill and died of—what do you call it?—the rage.”
“Died of rage?”
“No, no, la rage. He was bitten by a mad dog in the bazaar.”
“Oh!”
“The only treatment is excising the flesh in the region of the bite and cauterizing the wound with fire; and this must be done immediately at the time of the bite. But to this he did not consent, because of where the mad dog had bitten him, you see—it was upon the precious organs of generation, and we had yet no children…. After he was bitten, he was consulting of course the brahmins, and performing the puja they advised; nevertheless he became ill after four weeks. At first there was hope it was only a fever, for there was a fever in the town then. But soon we knew it was the rage. It was during that final illness, I think, that his brothers began to give me poison, but I can remember very little from that time. I am thinking it was the poison from the plant you call thorn apple.”
“Datura?”
“Kala datura, yes. I do not remember his death, nor the funeral. Those who nursed me afterward said my eyes were only black, all black. I could neither see nor walk. Nor could I feel the painful burns at first. Later, when the datura left my body, they gave me opium to dull the pain from the burns. It was your brother who brought the opium to my father’s house. He brought ice as well, a great kindness, for it eased my agonies.
“At first there was only his voice, speaking Hindi with my father, and with the attendants in my father’s house. I liked to hear the sound of his voice, though he did speak so oddly. I could not see then. Later, when my sight returned, I was frightened. So ugly! Excuse me, but so he appeared to me then, at first. So large and pale, like a rakshasa! Like a demon. Like a leper. It was the same voice, however. He would try to speak to me, but I was only turning my face to the wall and not answering him.
“He came every day and talked with my father. They talked about music, our music of India. Sometimes my father would play for him—and for me, I think, for my father knew that I was hearing and that the music was medicine to me. Medicine! My father was a master of not one instrument only, but of many, though he was most famous for his playing upon the vina, and he knew many hundreds of ragas. He had taught me also when I was a child to play upon the sarode, and I used to play music and sing for the Nawab of Oudh. But I have told you this already, memsahib.
“I heard them talking about music, talking and playing music. Your brother spoke with respect in his voice to my father, not like other sahibs. I could hear the courtesy in his voice. He addressed my father humbly, as a student addresses his master.
“Then one day my father played upon the shahnai, and your brother played the sur in accompaniment. The shahnai, you know, is a horn, like an oboe, with a powerful voice; and the sur, which accompanies it, plays the single tonic note. The next day Sikander brought an instrument of his own. He brought his bagpipe, and he played it for my father. Such a sound—like the shahnai and three surs together in one instrument! As loud as trumpets, a sound not meant to be played inside a house. Yet I thrilled to that sound. Your brother played for my father a composition not unlike a raga—very beautiful, very moving. It was not like the other feringee music I have heard. He was not like other sahibs. I began seeing that his hideous appearance was only an illusion, for no one could have played such music unless he was possessed of a fine soul, a fine courageous spirit.
“I suppose that was when my heart turned, and my spirit was reconciled to dwell in this body. I turned my face away from the wall and opened my eyes to this existence again. I rose from my charpoy. I regained the use of my limbs, and soon I was well enough to serve the refreshments when your brother came to visit my father. One day my father asked me to sing for them, and I did so. I sang a song of Meera’s.”
Sharada stopped, looking far away. Hearing, surely, that song of Meera’s. It was dawn now, the sun a bright disk rising behind the mist which lay on the water. Catherine only watched, waiting—not asking.
After a little while, Sharada said, “I remember one occasion when my father was explaining how ragas live in families, and Sikander said that this was very odd and unfamiliar, that European music was never thought of in this way. And my father argued that your brother was mistaken; and he proved him so by producing a book of feringee music ordered in just this way. Your brother became most interested, most excited, for it was a book of bagpipe music, not printed but written by hand. Curiously, the writer of the book was a man of the same name as yours: MacDonald. Joseph MacDonald. Your brother begged permission to copy the book, for he said it was a discovery of great importance. My father would not let the book out of his own possession, but he said that Sikander might come to the house and take a copy of it there.
“So that is what your brother did. Every day he was coming to my father’s house and copying the book, one page after another.”
“You drew the lines for him,” said Catherine.
“Yes, memsahib. And I played my sarode for him if he asked me. He liked to hear me play and sing. And he liked to talk to me. I liked his voice. He told me a great many things about his travels. Also about his troubles with the burrah sahibs. They were angry with him, and he was angry with them also. He laid his plan to prove them wrong.”
“Wrong about what?”
“They said no tea could grow in India; but he had seen the very tea bushes themselves growing wild in the misty hills above the Brahmaputra River. They said it was not pukka tea, but he knew that it was. He proposed to go there and make a plantation, but they would not permit it. The stupidity of the burrah sahibs was most provoking to him.”
“Yes, it would be,” murmured Catherine. “And so he planned…what? What did he propose to do?”
“Oh, memsahib, he did not like to speak of it; but he promised to tell me all, very soon. I knew only that he was waiting for the monsoon, and then he would put his plan into action.”
“Waiting for the monsoon?”
“And…and waiting for me. The monsoon came; it came early that year. He could have executed his plan, but he put it off from day to day, even after the rains came.”
“Why?” asked Catherine, knowing the answer.
Sharada replied proudly: “For me, memsahib! He wanted me to come with him. No, I said, no no no. Yes yes yes, he said.” Sharada gazed out across the river, her fingers twisting the corner of her shawl into a cord. A flight of early swallows emerging from under the terrace swooped low and fast across the gleaming purling river. “But one night, one night in the garden under the full moon, with the heavy rainclouds covering its face—at last, then, I said yes. Yes I will go with you. How could I resist that man? He said he would send for me; and I agreed to be ready to go with him, upon a moment’s notice. I waited for his summons. Oh, yes, memsahib! Anywher
e in the wide world I would have gone with him or for him. I waited only for his summons. The rains were very terrible that year; terrifying storms came. I waited, and the river rose higher and higher. But instead of his summons, there came out of the storm only the news that his house was destroyed and he was dead.” Sharada closed her eyes and drew a deep shuddering sigh, and another, before she spoke again. “I was destroyed also—destroyed. I, too, was drowned and smothered, my own breath stopped by mud. I laid me down once again on my charpoy and hoped to die. I ate nothing for a week, but still I lived. Then, remembering that I had a little store of opium laid by me, I ate it all, but still I could not die. This body would not die; still it breathed. Somehow I lived.”
Sharada fell silent. After a while, Catherine prompted her: “And later you became ayah to Mrs Guthrie.”
“Yes, memsahib, when her ayah would not go with her over the black water. I have told you this.”
“But why did you not resume your profession as a musician?”
“Oh, impossible, memsahib! For who would have me? A widow, an outcaste? I am the most inauspicious of beings. I bring only bad fortune to all those who are near to me. None would have me, excepting only the feringees who do not know. And as for going over the black water, I was bereft of caste already, a failed suttee; so going across the black water could make matters no worse. Or so I hoped at that time.”
“I do not believe you are inauspicious to me,” said Catherine.
“We are two widows, memsahib. Therefore we are fit company to each other, you and I. But as for Mrs Guthrie, did not she and her infant both die during the long passage? And leave me, the fool of fate, to deliver his parcel to you?”
“Aye, his parcel. Was that the very parcel which he made the old gardener carry through the storm, that last night, to the foreign lady in the town? Was that it, do you think?”
“I do think it now. But I did not know of its existence until I saw it among Mrs Guthrie’s belongings after we had sailed. It was a great shock to me, then, to see on it the handwriting of—of him! Of course I asked my lady about it. Oh, it is from that poor Mr MacDonald who was drowned in the floods, she said.”
“But Sharada,” said Catherine, “I do not believe he is dead.”
“Of course he is not dead! I know that now, miserable fool that I am! Now, now that I have gone over the black water to Scotland, and lived to return—and now that you, memsahib, have come all the way to India and taken me to see his house and his garden and his gardener in this very district where I began! Now, now I know that he did not drown. These two years I have grieved for him, and I did not know. But now I know that he toyed with me, he deceived me, he played his monkey tricks even on me, on me who loved him so wantonly, so well! He promised me, and then he broke his promise and he sneaked away—alive—not wanting me! And still, all unknowing, I was his creature, still delivering his errands for him.” Angrily she dashed at her eyes with the corner of her shawl. “And now you will dismiss me, memsahib.”
“Will I?” said Catherine. “Because of my brother?”
“Your voice is like his. Your face is like his. When I touch your hair…” said Sharada, but she could say no more, and turned away.
“I knew long ago that you had known Sandy,” said Catherine.
“How? How could you know this?”
“In Antwerp I heard you singing a tune of his,” said Catherine, and she quietly sang the first line of it.
Sharada closed her eyes. “He played it on his bagpipe. It is his own song?” she asked.
“Yes, he made it himself. We always called it ‘Port Alasdair,’” said Catherine. “‘Sandy’s Tune.’ But here is the strange thing, Sharada: he wrote out that tune and sent it along in the package you carried to me. It was tucked into his copy of that important and valuable manuscript of old pipe music which he’d had of your father. But he had put a new name to his own tune: ‘Fhathast Gun a Bhith Bàthte’ ‘Not Yet Drown’d.’ And when I saw that, I knew it was a message for me.”
“More bitter it is than the bitter melon, that to you he sent a message!” cried Sharada. “To you, so far away in Scotland, and only his sister! But to me, to me, his lover, his beloved, his own heart and breath—for so he called me, that deceiver!—to me, waiting and aching with longing in the town so nearby, he did not send. He sent—nothing, nothing. It was very terrible to me when I believed that he was drowned. But now! Now, memsahib, it is far more terrible.”
Scarred, damaged. Two inauspicious widows, fit company for each other.
UPON RETURNING TO Patna in late May with Lady D’Oyly, Catherine found Hector and Mr Fleming on worse terms than ever; and this despite the fact that Castor, formerly the slower and more sluggish twin, was now the distinctly faster ship, a result of Hector’s most recent modifications. “He says there is not time now to bring Pollux up to the new standard,” explained Hector to Catherine, coming in at last after yet another long and useless meeting with Mr Fleming. “If he would permit work to start instantly, there would be time. But we have wasted several days now arguing about it. The first of the opium auctions will be next week, and he wants both ships loaded and started down the river within forty-eight hours afterward. I could still do it; the work required would be easier on Pollux than it was on Castor. Of course it would, because the engine does not require to be reversed, and she’s got her gasket aft already. I know, I know, Catherine, that with these improvements Pollux will then perform even better than Castor does now. Look,” he said, spreading out his tattered drawings and pushing aside the crumbed plates at the table where Catherine had picked at a late supper alone while Hector and Mr Fleming had been arguing downstairs. “Look.”
“Oh, Hector,” said Catherine, “I am so very tired tonight. Lady D’Oyly has been exceedingly kind, but it is exhausting to have to respond graciously for so extended a period. I cannot look at these drawings just now with any understanding or intelligence. You must excuse me.”
He looked at her for the first time. “I am sorry, my dear,” he said unexpectedly. “And I have not even asked you about Ghazipur.”
“Let me tell you what I learned there,” said Catherine.
21
the whole Scope is perceivd
“And Mrs MacDonald, do bring your ayah one of these mornings,” Lady D’Oyly had said when they had returned to Patna. “I still want to paint her for my collection.”
Catherine sat in a low rattan chair in Lady D’Oyly’s salon, her perpetual canvaswork draped across her lap. She was engaged in unpicking the yellow hair of the lady in the needlework picture. It was a tiresome chore, but she was determined to give the lady russet-coloured hair instead; she had a skein of bright coppery silk for that. Grace was seated at a central table, occupied in looking through an album of small miscellaneous pictures, the work of various native artists of the district which interested Sir Charles. Just outside, Mrs Hill walked her fretful baby up and down the terrace.
Sharada sat for Lady D’Oyly cross-legged on a carpet, posing with a native stringed instrument held over her left shoulder. The instrument, called a vina, had belonged to Sharada’s father. This and a few other native instruments and books set aside in two trunks by an old household servant had made up Sharada’s patrimony.
Lady D’Oyly stood before her easel, her palette and brush in hand, with a muslin smock to protect her light gown. She sketched quickly, with the ease of long practice.
The salon was high and airy, with cool pale marble floors. Punkahs hung motionless from the ceiling. One long side of the room, the side that overlooked the river, was open to the outdoors, and tatties hung in all the openings between the columns but one; that mat had been taken down for the sake of the light needed to paint the ayah. Outside on the terrace, the tatty wallahs moved slowly among the strutting posing peafowl, bringing up their jugs of water to be thrown later onto the grass mats, whenever the hot afternoon wind should arise.
The other three walls of the room were hung with pict
ures, in two or three tiers up to the high ceiling. They were almost all Indian scenes, and many of them were the work of Sir Charles and Lady D’Oyly themselves. Occupying a central position on the long wall was a busy bazaar scene in oils; Catherine had recognised a particular quarter of the Patna bazaar itself. This, she knew, was Sir Charles’s work. It was competently done. Other framed sketches had been pointed out by Lady D’Oyly as the productions of her Calcutta friend and teacher George Chinnery. She and Sir Charles had acquired two of Mr Sinclair’s admirable river scenes as well; these stood now upon another easel in one corner of the room.
Sharada’s face was still. She was facing out toward the river, and the light fell across her face and her long elegant hands, at ease on the strings of the vina. She held the vina against her body as though it were her infant, so nearly her own self. For a moment she closed her eyes; her lips moved, and her fingers moved on the neck of the instrument, and a faint breath of sound came from the resonator gourds. “Do you know how to play it?” asked Lady D’Oyly.
“Oh, yes, memsahib.”
“Well, you may play us something, then, if you can do it without losing your pose.”
“I must be tuning first.”
“Tune it then.”
Sharada tuned meticulously, patiently, seeking resonances audible only to her ear. Then, seeming to collect herself, she struck the cascading notes of her scale. Again. Her face changed; her body changed.
Lady D’Oyly, suddenly remembering her brush, began to paint quickly, avidly.
Sharada closed her eyes and sang. Her pure voice was surprisingly low and husky. What did the words mean? Catherine felt certain that Sharada was singing of love, of bereft and hopeless love.