The Parasol Flower

by Quevillon, Karen;

  Laughter and some applause.

  What? George’s stomach heaves. He buckles, staggers sideways, rights himself. Retirement? Retirement! How could he have missed this fact?

  “And I’d like, now, to invite Resident-General Swettenham,” Finch continues, “to kindly introduce my successor.”

  Standing next to Swettenham at the front of the room is Arthur Effingdon-Watts, smiling like a Cheshire cat.

  George barks, loudly and involuntarily. The guests turn, amazed, in time to see him vomit into his hand and onto his shoes.

  August 11, 1896

  Dear Monsieur Godot,

  In anyone’s life there are stretches of bleakness. Of blackness, even. Yet I have lately thought to myself how grateful I am, knowing that I will be all right. Unlike others, I have art to help me through anything.

  Enclosed is a letter I received from the jury of the Kew Gardens Amateur Botanical Artwork Competition. I have sent it on to you for your impressions, of course, if you have any to offer, but just as much to get the blasted document out of my house.

  Does it sound prideful of me to suggest that the jury members do not understand my aims with this painting? I could easily admit I had not accomplished those aims, if only the aims themselves were appreciated. I agree, the composition is wildly imbalanced. I agree, the colour is displeasing and limited. The difference being, I suppose, that I had thought those choices were serving the overall effect, and that overall effect being neither childish nor obscure! And really, how could an effect be both childish and obscure, as the third juror writes?

  Possibly these sentiments are nothing more than sour grapes. Would I feel the same if I’d won the competition on the basis of some misapprehension about my work? Oh, how very challenging it is to perceive one’s worth objectively.

  I realize, now, that in some ways I have always been painting portraits, monsieur, even with these botanical subjects. How I wish I’d sent you one of the Strangler Fig studies for your ever-honest impressions.

  As ever,

  your student,

  Hannah

  July 5, 1896

  Regarding: Strangler Fig Upon Mighty Kapok, entry in the juried competition (Category of Women, Other)

  Dear Mrs. Inglis,

  Thank you for your entry in this year’s Kew Gardens Amateur Botanical Artwork Competition.

  We regret to inform you that your piece was not selected by our jury as a finalist. There was an unusual abundance of very fine entries in all categories this year. Notes from our three jury members, specialists in art appraisal, are included for your edification and in gratitude for your efforts. We hope you will consider submitting an entry next year.

  Sincere regards,

  John Simcoe, on behalf of

  Artworks Judging Committee, Kew Gardens

  - Composition wildly imbalanced. Work risks self-decomposing.AK

  - Colour range rather narrow; displeasing palette. JG

  - What is the interest here? Everything strikes the same childish note. EEM

  Hannah hardly recognizes the marketplace, deserted of vendors and customers. Well past nightfall, the area is layered with shadows, menacing enough that she hurries through them, swinging her umbrella. It’s proved useless, in any case, against these gusts of rain-soaked wind.

  She is emerging from illness, and the world feels ominous and slightly shimmery. For days, for lifetimes, there had been only the frames of dark and bright to dwell in, a drudgery in which the hours stacked upon themselves and expectations reduced and reduced—a slide toward nullity. All the while, the most meaningful and compelling ideas floated before her as she lay helpless. Now that she is upright, now that she has wormed her spirit back into its flesh, the ideas are congealing into blood and breath. Hadn’t she realized something about portraits? Something revolutionary and exciting about how she might paint portraits? There is so much to tell the sergeant.

  Hannah pulls her cloak further around her waist, re-cinching the tie, and mops cold drizzle from her face. She could have perhaps sent him a note. That said what, exactly? She needs to see Darshan to discern what there is to say within this abundance of feeling. As soon as she determined the colonel was attending that silly welcoming party, her evening took its shape and purpose. She lay in bed, thinking it through in all dimensions, pulling it toward her like a handle, until the front door closed behind George. Then she dressed herself hastily and clumsily, plumped pillows to lie under the blankets where she was meant to be sleeping, and snuck out of her own house.

  As for Darshan’s house, she deludes herself into thinking she will recognize it when she nears it. But the neighborhood is a labyrinth of alleys and thatched bungalows. A man pokes his head out of a window and Hannah seizes the opportunity.

  “Excuse me! Pardon me! Where does the police sergeant live? Di manakah,” she practically shouts into the man’s stern face. “Di manakah Sergeant Singh? Where?”

  Luckily, he has only to point. She hobbles away along this invisible trajectory until she is toeing the flooded ditch that encircles a dark bungalow. Could Darshan be asleep? Not a flicker of light from within. Hiking up her skirts she wades through the filthy water, hoping there are no leeches. At the side door, she knocks softly.

  The door swings open soon after to reveal Sergeant Singh standing barefoot inside the threshold, blinking and scratching his bare, hairy chest. He is wearing nothing but a pair of cotton pants that fall just above the knee; his long hair is tied behind him.

  “Mrs. Inglis!” he exclaims.

  “May I come in?”

  “Uh, yes. Yes! Come in, please.” He ushers her inside, looking her over with growing alarm. “What are you doing here? You are wet. Are you all right?”

  She swallows. “I’m ill. Though not very ill, I suppose. But when you’re ill, it always feels as if you’re very ill.”

  “Oh, I’m…I’m sorry for you, Mrs. Inglis.”

  “My apologies for calling on you so unexpectedly.”

  “No, no, please, come in. Sit down. No, no, wait there a moment. On the mat.” He dashes off even as he is speaking, returning in a minute or two with a glowing lantern in one hand and an arm full of towels and blankets. By then, she has shed herself of her sopping boots and raincoat. He hands her a towel to dry her skirts and legs then wraps a woolen blanket around her shoulders and guides her into the lounge. He’s put on a patterned kefti, the cotton Malay shirt that falls to the knee, but remains barefoot and bareheaded.

  “Malasa chai?” Darshan says, depositing the lantern on a table. “Indian tea. This is always good for a sickness. Clears the passages. Warms the heart.”

  She thanks him for the tea and tells him she is not congested. “It feels rather more like my future is unraveling.”

  “Tea is good for that as well,” he says. He heads to the kitchen, where another lamp soon bursts to life.

  “You’re in bed early,” she calls out.

  “I am an early riser, Mrs. Inglis. Five in the morning.”

  Hannah explores the lounge as he clinks and clanks with his pots, and the scents of vanilla, cinnamon, and other warming spices infuse the air. It is a simple home, furnished sparely, and neat as a pin. Along one wall is a low chesterfield draped with a bolt of gold fabric. Next to this sits a well-loved chair, its seams splitting a little along the arms. The sergeant’s pipe and tools are arranged on a side table. In another corner, a round prayer cushion. On the walls hang three portraits of the Sikh gurus, she supposes—bearded, beatific-looking grandfathers with cherubic smiles and knowing eyes.

  When Darshan finally emerges from the kitchen he is holding two beakers of milky tea. He sets them down on a bamboo mat on the table.

  “Sugar!” He points a finger in the air. “One moment.”

  Hannah sniffs, then tastes the brew. It is less like tea than warm spiced milk, but what doe
s that matter?

  “Try with some sugar,” he advises as he returns with the sugar pot.

  She takes a spoonful and stirs it in, observing the tiny tornado she’s set in motion. Before too long she must explain herself. After a few gulps of the fragrant tea she wants nothing more than to curl up under the woolen blanket and close her eyes. “Do you know,” she realizes, “I’d forgotten all about George’s ridiculous tiger hunt.”

  “Ah.” He regards his cup. “I have not.”

  “George doesn’t know I’m here.” Though this hardly deserves saying. They both know that if the colonel should find out she’d come, on her own, after dark…. “I’ve come,” she continues, “because Eva and I have fallen out, and I don’t suppose I will see you any time soon at Idlewyld.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” He sips, avoiding her eyes. “I was expecting as much, Mrs. Inglis.”

  “Were you?”

  He shrugs, looking oddly bashful. “Well. It has been some weeks.”

  Hannah’s mind vaults back to her confrontation with Eva, stitching details together: the thump behind the door—Hannah, it’s a fantasy!—a toothpick poking from Eva’s thin lips—equality of the sexes and the races—the overbearing, musky scent of the bunched flowers.

  “I’ve been ill,” she says, “and the worst of the monsoon…”

  “It is no criticism, Mrs. Inglis.”

  She’d heard nothing from Eva since their quarrel. Even in the unlikely event the Peterboroughs decided to shut down their laboratory, the damage to their friendship felt permanent. And the damage to the Malay women, what should she do about that? Here she sat in front of the chief of police, and still she said nothing! But what could be said or done?

  Darshan is looking at her warily. “Are you all right, Mrs. Inglis?”

  The administration itself had organized everything. The acts were plainly lawful.

  “There are…so many thoughts,” she murmurs.

  Composition is wildly imbalanced. Work risks self-decomposing. If she tells him about the Kew Gardens rejection, how can he possibly respond? With a meaningless platitude about her artwork? He’d never even seen the final Strangler Fig.

  “Darshan, I have to ask you...” She leans toward him, gripping the sofa. Her long hair, which in her hurry she did not bother to tie up, falls forward. “Oh, I’m such a mess!”

  “No,” he says softly. “Not at all. Take your time, Mrs. Inglis.”

  Gratitude ignites within her. Here is her sergeant, welcoming a confused, bedraggled woman into his tidy sitting room when he would normally be asleep. What does he get from associating with her besides a pain in the backside and the risk of public humiliation? Nothing. Except perhaps the same things as she has gained: some company in appreciating nature’s wonders. So much in life is better done on one’s own, she is coming to believe. However the appreciation part really does require others.

  “I am fond of you,” she says. “I think—I think you are my best friend.”

  He smiles and then the smile grows. Running a hand over the top of his bare head, he mumbles, “I’m glad, Mrs. Inglis. Yet, why do you look in pain?”

  “Because I have to ask you something rather difficult. And I—I hope you don’t think me the worse for asking it.” He nods, his eyes widening and his smile fading. “And so I’m just going to ask.”

  “Okay.”

  “The other day, Eva and I, we quarreled about you. Actually, never mind about Eva. None of that matters.” By now she is up and pacing under the watchful eyes of the gurus. “Darshan, have you invented the parasol flower?”

  He strokes his beard. His chest is heaving. “This is why you are here? This is the difficult thing you must say to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought…somebody had died! Or your husband had found out about us!” He looks embarrassed. “Or you came to tell me you were leaving for England. Something serious, madam.”

  “Well, I would consider it serious,” she says with feeling, “if it turns out that you have invented this parasol flower. And have been deceiving me all this time for…for degenerate purposes. That would be very serious to me, Sergeant Singh.”

  Color has crept into his cheeks. “And if I have been lying to you all this time, Mrs. Inglis, you would trust me now to tell you the truth?”

  “Well?” she demands.

  He sinks back in his armchair. Looking beaten, she thinks.

  “I do not have any ‘degenerate’ intentions toward you, Mrs. Inglis, and I never did.”

  “Then answer my question, please! Is the flower a fiction?”

  “I wish it were not.” He bites at a thumbnail.

  “You wish it were not. So you are saying the parasol flower is your invention?”

  “I told you: it is a local legend I’d heard of. I’ve never met anybody who has seen or smelled or touched one.” He looks up at her. “I made up the name, as you know. I made up some details. Who knows what color it is, or what it smells like.”

  “But there is none!” she exclaims.

  “No, probably not.”

  She watches him closely. “Why? Why would you lie to me?” Was Eva right about him? Her instincts tell her there is more to the story.

  He shakes his head, unable to speak.

  Guilty! Guilty as charged. She makes her way to the door of his bungalow and, with the room spinning, begins wedging her feet into her wet boots.

  “Mrs. Inglis. Please wait.” Soon he stands looming over her, hands on hips. “You are feverish. I am really worried about you like this.”

  “Are you? So you’re going to walk me home, then?”

  He draws a great breath and releases it. “You know I cannot do that.” If she’s not mistaken, he is almost teary. “The flower,” he says softly. “It was a beautiful idea. I thought simply, I want to share a beautiful idea with Mrs. Inglis.”

  “But I believed you! I believed it was real. I told Eva I was going to paint her a prized picture of it. And all this time, whenever I mentioned the thing, you must have been having a grand old laugh at me.” She could cry over it on the walk home. Please God, preserve her from falling to pieces until she’d left his house.

  “I’m sorry.” He catches her arm. “Truly. I never was laughing at you, Mrs. Inglis. It may exist, you know. We may find this flower.”

  “No. We won’t.” Marshaling the last ounces of her strength, Hannah shakes her arm free and glares at the doorknob until he twists it, releasing her.

  Thirty Six

  The kerosene is kept in the second shed, nearest the men’s quarters. Malu notices when she goes to fetch more butterfly poison. Kerosene is reliable and kerosene is expected: such useful words. In the cabin, Dr. Peterborough uses a kerosene lamp. The kerosene becomes her first discovery.

  He watched her strip off her clothes and climb onto the counter. For the first while, until her mind learned a trick of crawling out of her skin and going to sit on the roof, she had to concentrate all her energy on keeping still.

  “Don’t move,” he told her more than once, his face disappearing from view. “Just jotting something down.”

  Once, he left something inside her that felt like the blade of a knife. She dared to whisper, “It’s cold.”

  After, he helped her down to the bare floor, where a beetle scuttled quickly away. Under the counter, closest to the examination table, a plank of the cabin’s siding is cracked and broken away. Her eyes happened to follow the insect as it ran for the broken board.

  It is only later, when Malu is lying in her hammock thinking of the running beetle, that she realizes the loose board is a door. Sahib locks the proper doors and pockets the key. Yet with the beetle, she was lucky. The broken plank becomes her second discovery.

  The night after the photographs, Malu couldn’t concentrate on her letters. She dug her pencil int
o the paper and made a hole. Outside the women’s quarters, the others were teasing and quarreling and she got it in her head that she wanted some rice toddy, too. By then, none of the other servants except Manang would go near her, let alone share their toddy. When she approached, they turned away with their cups. On a whim she went to find sahib, wherever he was relaxing in the great house. If not toddy, the truth.

  She spoke up once she had his attention. “Please, sahib, when will you visit my mother? For treatment?”

  Only then did she notice memsahib was in the room as well, sitting in the other corner, reading a book. Malu curtseyed. “Good evening, mem. Sorry to disturb.”

  Memsahib smiled. “It’s fine, girl. You’re quite right, you deserve an answer.”

  “How about next week?” The doctor touched the rims of his spectacles. “Sunday? I assume you would like to be present?”

  “Charles,” the mem said, before Malu could answer. “Just tell her the truth.”

  “I can visit the girl’s mother,” he said in a quiet voice.

  “Charles, what is the point of all this, if not for the truth?” said the mem. She set her book down with a plonk. “Tell her the truth! Or I shall.”

  Sahib folded his newspaper and, glancing at his wife, made a very heavy sigh. “I’m afraid your mother’s condition is incurable.” He attached a long English name. “It’s not your fault, child. And I do regret…I regret not telling you sooner.” He glanced again at the mem. “But the fact is you oughtn’t to waste your money on ‘English medicine.’ You’re an enterprising girl. Use it to better yourself.”

  Malu kept looking down at her toes. She knew what “incurable” meant. What did it mean “to better herself?” How could she make herself better, without medicine, without Allah, without the comfort and the knowing of a mother? Some people were changeable, maybe, like light on water. Maybe those people could become someone better.

  “You’re an intelligent girl,” said the mem. “You deserved to know.”