Peacock in the Snow

by Anubha Mehta

  I paid and thanked the driver, slid out of the taxi, and started out on the long, red gravel pathway to the front entrance. A security guard in a khaki uniform stopped me. “Madam, this is private property.”

  “I am Mrs. Rajsinghania, the daughter-in-law….”

  He frowned, trying to remember a daughter-in-law in this house.

  “I live in Canada now; I am just visiting.”

  He looked at me more intently, as if searching for a passport stamp embossed somewhere on my body.

  “I lived in the east wing some time ago.” For some strange reason that satisfied him. He saluted and let me pass.

  There was not a soul in sight. Only an eerie silence. Even the wind was quiet. The front entrance seemed locked, so I followed the side path that led to the backyard. The hedges were trespassing on the main lawn. The grass was up to my shins and full of rotting weeds, garbage, and plastic bags.

  I reached the pond facing the French windows where Veer and I had sat every morning to feed our peacocks. An overwhelming nostalgia filled me, but it left me as soon as it had arrived. The old peepal stood strong but bent, its branches drenched in dry mud, its moth-eaten leaves perforated with the cruelty of neglect. The French windows were bound with rusting black iron grills and peeling paint. The cement pillars of the gazebo were chipped and broken, its roof rotting with the foul smell of green fungus from stagnant water, and our lily pond was nothing but a dry empty hollow.

  I reached the west wing, Gayatri’s home. The breeze through the soaring gulmohars started whispering. Her tall windows overlooked the spot that I was standing on below. Was she welcoming Sachin and me? Something caught my eye and made me look up at her window on the second floor. I could have sworn that I saw a movement inside, but the glass was stained with the remnants of time and dirt.

  I opened the urn with Sachin’s ashes. The breeze became stronger. I did not know the exact spot where Gayatri’s ashes were scattered I knew that her husband’s ashes were scattered somewhere here too.

  I found a quiet and clean corner and tilted the urn gently. The wind was waiting to receive the ashes. Another gust blew, and the ashes were scooped up in a gentle whirl and then scattered across the garden. I started chanting the holy mantra under my breath.

  I remembered where the garden shed was. It was still there, but it was only a sorry memory of what it used to me. The door was broken and the walls chipped. I found what I was looking for right away. The spade was small but sharp, despite the rust. I started digging a small hole, just big enough for the other two things I had brought with me. These items had to be buried here too. I laid the box with the peacock bracelets inside the small hole and then took out the diary. I gently pulled out the feather and carefully slipped it in my coat pocket. Then I laid the diary next to the box with the bracelets. I was down on my knees, and the wind was growling in circles above my head. But this did not bother me anymore. I was concentrating on the loose mud that I needed to cover the hole.

  And, so, it was done.

  My work here was complete. Three souls tormented in life and united in death. This had to be the end of their suffering and end of ours too.

  It was time to leave.

  Now I had only two tasks left. The first was to visit Veer’s mother. I picked up my bag and traced my way back. Just then, I heard someone calling out. I recognized the voice, but it was weaker, shakier. I turned around.

  Wrinkled and bent but with the same eyes, alert as a fiddle. She walked with a cane, her back arched like a bow and her head, tilted and shaking, was still covered with a Pashmina scarf as always.

  My heart leapt. Sheila! I had intended to save my visit to her as my last, most important, task.

  “Maya-Beti… Maya-Beti …. I knew it was you. I knew you would come,” she panted.

  I ran and hugged her. Thin tears were running down the deep cuts on her cheeks. “When the guard told me that someone had come from Canada, I ran to the peacock garden. I knew it was you.”

  I held her hand and led her to the open porch to sit on the broken cane settee. I continued to hold her hand and she stroked my head with affection. “How is my little Diya?”

  I opened my wallet and showed her Diya’s photograph. She gasped. “Oho, ho, ho … my little Diya. See how she has grown sooo beautiful!” She kissed the photo many times. And then she looked directly into my eyes. “So, Maya-Beti, I would like it back now.”

  I pretended I did not understand. I could not return it to her. Had she forgotten the condition that she had placed on it?

  “What are you talking about, Sheila?”

  “Ohooo, you cannot fool me, Maya-Beti. You cannot.”

  I kept quiet. She extended her palm as a gesture for me to place the feather on it. I panicked. “Sheila, I don’t have it,” I lied.

  She looked in my pocket right away. She really was a mind reader. But when I looked down, I noticed that in my haste to pull out the wallet with Diya’s photo, I had also pulled out the edge of the peacock feather. Its tail was hanging out. No, she was not a mind reader. She was just observant. I bent my head. “Sheila, I cannot give it to you.”

  She did not ask me why. She did not ask me anything. I knew she understood what that meant. I changed the topic. “Sheila, where does the big Madam live now?”

  “After the Master passed away the big Madam moved in with her sisters near the hills.” I knew that I would not have time to travel out of the city. I was eager to get back to Diya. She saw my face fall and said, “The big Madam is in Delhi for her niece’s birthday. I have also been asked to join them at tomorrow’s party.”

  As always, she knew exactly what I wanted to hear. I wrote down the address.

  We sat and spoke about things that had passed. “Bahadur is now the caretaker for the entire estate and lives with his whole family in the quarters at the back. The Master was very kind in his allowance to me.”

  “Sheila, how are Rosy and Umang? Are they still living in the west wing?”

  “Oohooo, so you don’t know?”

  “Know what, Sheila?”

  “Madam Rosy is now married to her friend Ramesh, and they have two children.”

  “What?”

  “It was actually Master Umang’s last wish before he too passed away a few years ago. He wanted Madam Rosy to be happy…. He was a kind soul,” she said, nodding.

  We both sat quietly on the porch of that deserted mansion, silently reliving the life and times, the rise and fall of the Rajsinghanias that the house had stoically witnessed. “So tell me, Sheila, who lives in our east wing?”

  “Nobody.”

  How the tables had turned! The only thing that remained constant was change. I got up to leave. Sheila’s gaze was piercing. She stumbled to get up, her knees stiff and painful, and I handed her the cane. She straightened herself slowly. “Maya- Beti, please give me the peacock feather. I have waited for it, and I want to die in peace.” It was the most direct thing that Sheila had said to me ever.

  “Don’t you understand that if I give it to you it will mean that everything is okay? Why don’t you understand this, Sheila?” I felt helpless, but I could not tell he what had happened to Veer. To my surprise she remained unmoved and persistent.

  “Maya-Beti,” she insisted, “please give me the feather.”

  Annoyed, I slid the feather out of my pocket and placed it in her open palm. Her eyes widened at the brilliance of its colours. Could she see something in it that I could not?

  Her figures stroked its eye and slid down to its quill as if releasing a spell. She inhaled deeply, balancing her weight on her stick and started to hobble back inside.

  “Sheila!” I called after her, still irritated and now confused by her behaviour.

  She turned around and gave me one last look. Her head was bent with the weight of the Rajsighania secrets that she would carry with her
to her grave. But under her pashmina scarf, her eyes still glowed with goodwill and hope.

  She said, “Maya-Beti, I have your feather now. Whatever reason you had for not giving it to me, will go away.”

  And as I watched her crouched figure disappear into the house, I realized something. Sheila had inquired about Diya, but not once had she asked me about Veer.

  In her own intuitive way, she already knew. She was a mind reader after all. She had been my guardian angel and I hadn’t realized it until now.

  I wanted to run after her, hold her, and thank her for how she had stood firmly for me like the bent stencilled tree braving the storm, the tree from Gayatri’s diary, the tree of the Inuit healer’s turtle-skin rattle.

  But the wind had started again. With a heavy heart, I left our old mansion, feeling that a piece of me was buried there forever.

  ***

  The next day, with a final gathering of my nerves, I went to pay my last debt. I knocked at Veer’s aunt’s doorstep, where his mother was staying. My heart pounded harder than the sound of a washer man beating clothes on the banks of a river. The door was opened by a slightly changed, but familiar face. It was Kitty, Veer’s elder aunt. She looked older but she was well-groomed as always. Her eyes grew wide, and her mouth gaped at me in astonishment.

  “Oh my God, it is Maya! Oh everyone, look who is here!” she shrieked, and her shouts brought out the other aunt, Minnie, and a few toddlers with their maids. It seemed like the entire household was at the door, all except Veer’s mother. I was pulled with excited hands into a long corridor and then straight into the living room.

  The large room was filled with more screaming children running around in circles, behind the curtains, and around the tables. There were some well-dressed, grey-haired men engrossed in conversations with crystal whiskey glasses pressed between their palms. There were waiters with round trays serving snacks and picking up dirty cutlery.

  My eyes searched frantically for her. I imagined that Veer’s mother would be the centre of some conversation. I walked to the adjoining dining room, which was just as crowded, but she was not there. Something caught my eye just as I was about to turn back. It was the back of a lone chair facing the window. I walked up to it to see who was in it. And there she was, sitting alone in a corner. I cried out, and, for the first time in my life, I hugged her. And for the first time since I had known her, she held my embrace.

  “Mom, how are you?”

  She looked at me blankly and said, “I am fine.”

  I opened my purse and handed her a photograph of our family together—Veer’s father, her, Veer, Diya, and me, taken when Diya was born. On the back it was signed, Happy Times by Veer. She held it between her fingers and looked at it for a long time.

  My tears were falling. I could feel her pain as a mother. I wanted to embrace her again but restrained myself for fear of rejection. Then she opened her lips to say something, but Minnie popped in behind us.

  “Oh, Maya dear, meet my son-in-law, Tittoo.” She proudly thrust forward a plump man with droopy shoulders and a paunch. He looked bored, but his face lit up when he looked at me.

  “Hello,” he hissed suggestively. I had to pull my hand back after the extended handshake.

  “You see, my dear daughter Tanya is very busy with her Tupperware business, so she could not come. You see, they both live in Enggglaaand….” Minnie gurgled as Tittoo retreated back into the crowd, and Minnie carried on. “I make sure to visit them every year. I like babysitting my grandchildren. You see, it gets so busy with my daughter and her children that there is no time left for Delhi… ha ha,” she chuckled affectedly.

  I looked at Veer’s mother and wondered whether she felt left out by her sisters now that they had their own families. I soon got my answer. Veer’s mother called to one of her nieces for a glass of water, but the girl was talking on the phone and was too engrossed to pay attention to her. In a room full of her relatives no one could hear her. I poured a glass of water from a nearby pitcher and brought it to her. “Mom, you are always welcome to come and stay with us in Toronto….”

  She smiled at me vacantly and then handed the photograph back.

  “It is for you, Mom. Keep it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I have Veer with me always.”

  “And I lost him long ago,” she said unexpectedly.

  I was taken aback. Today was really a day of firsts with her. It was the first time that she showed me a more vulnerable side of herself, her insecurities, and the demons that haunted her. She was human after all.

  “No, Mom, that is not true. You always meant the world to him, he always hankered for your approval, your blessing … and so did I,” I added revealingly.

  “Really? You?”

  “Yes, Mom. I never married for anything but love.” I found my voice cracking up. She was thinking about what I had said. “Mom, come with me to Toronto,” I continued. “We can live together, and I will look after you. I know Veer would have liked that….”

  She got up from her chair with great difficulty and asked me to follow her to the adjoining study. Her gait was slower than before, more deliberate. She opened a drawer and pulled out a sheet of legal paper and a pen. She switched on the table lamp and then handed me the pen. “Maya, if it is true what you are saying, if it is true you only married for love, then sign these papers to relinquish your share of Veer’s ancestral property.”

  I was taken aback. I would not have been surprised by this had my heart not softened, hoping for more from her. And this was fate’s way of teaching me a lesson, of scolding me for my naivety, for my believing that people change, that things can be different, or better. I started crying.

  She looked at me and repeated her request, as if convincing me that she was only being reasonable by asking this of me, based on what I had told her. “Well, you should sign these if you want me to believe that it was not for our wealth that you married my son,” she insisted.

  I picked up the pen and signed on the dotted line. Then I picked up my bag, wiped my tears, and walked down the corridor and out the main door.

  I was numb. But strangely, I felt free. A heavy weight had lifted from my soul. There were no more connections, no more debts, no expectations, and no more hurt. I was free of the mansion and free of its curse.

  I held my head high and turned it towards the sky. The sun kissed my upturned face.

  The image that flashed across my mind was an image that I knew would stay with me forever: Veer’s mother bent over our photograph, searching for something that was long gone.

  42.

  MY JOURNEY BACK was less painful. The streets were covered with layers of fresh snow. Wind chill warnings were blasting on the taxi radio, and it was threatening to dip down to minus twenty-five. We were officially in a deep freeze. And I was enjoying every moment of it. The taxi driver, an Indian Sikh who was masking his turban under a Toronto Blue Jays cap, tried to make conversation

  “So the weather must be great in India these days, right? Maybe it is the wrong time for you to come back?”

  I thought about what he had said and replied, calmly, “No, it is not the wrong time. It is the perfect time to come home.”

  He turned up the radio to mask the awkwardness of the moment, an awkwardness that only he felt. I smiled sweetly at him.

  I entered a cold dark house, turned up the heat, and put on a kettle. Then I collapsed in front of my multi-coloured living room wall, basking in the vibrancy of its shades.

  I wondered if Veer could hear me? Could he see what I had done to our house? Did he know that I painted this wall with the colours of our life, all the colours of our peacock. Veer?

  I woke to the kettle’s piercing whistle.

  I had to remember to call Diya, who was back at university for a few days. But first, I wanted my tea. There was nothing like a cup of
life-saving hibiscus and bamboo tea to help me pick up the pieces and the strength to enter my bedroom again.

  It was time to come to terms with the hardest part. My life alone.

  But I could not get over the feeling that there was something as yet undiscovered, something remaining, something missing. It was not over yet.

  What was it now? I had completed all my obligations, but maybe Veer still had one last challenge hidden for me?

  Absent-mindedly, I opened the top drawer of Veer’s desk. Then the second and then the third. Frustrated and tired, I sat down to look around me. The room was a mess. As always. Diya’s toys had been substituted by her scarves and slacks strewn over the divan. Veer’s cardigan was hanging on my side of the closet, and my shawl and a heap of other clothes were dumped in a pile partially hidden by a corner of the window curtains. A draught blew in from under the sill. I would have to fix that tomorrow or the presence of the lake would always be hanging over the bed. I reached for my shawl. And then I saw it. The small luggage that we had carried back from Tuktoyaktuk. Unmindfully, I opened it to take out the rest of my clothes. Jeans, shirt, another sweatshirt, and then something else. On top, lay the turtle-skin rattle from Anernerk, the Inuit man on the train.

  I knew then that this was the last missing piece. This was the piece that would lead me to answers. This was what would help me understand why all was not over yet. My finger, traced the etching of the resilient branches braving the storm on its handle.

  I grabbed a pen and started jotting down a plan.

  43.

  “MA, WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME that you were back?” Diya screamed with resentment on the other side of the phone line.

  It had taken me a week to finalize the details of my plans before I called Diya, and she did not like the fact that I had not called her right away, and the fact that I had a plan that I was keeping to myself.