The Sleeping Dictionary (57 page)

“Oh?” Mashima always said what she meant, but this time she was confusing me. “Did Supriya write to you from Singapore? I can’t imagine how, with the censors—”

“I am talking about the letter she left before going off on that mission! She wrote that she’d received your blessings, and we should keep you apprised of her progress. My question is, why? Why would someone I treated like a daughter send my firstborn on such a deadly journey?”

My hands flew to my face as I stuttered, “I d-didn’t send her. I warned her to think carefully, because of the danger—”

Mrs. Sen roared, “Then you should have run quickly to warn us so she could have been stopped!”

“Ma, please!” Sonali said. “Everyone in the locality can hear you. And nobody can stop Supriya when she wants something—you know that.”

Mrs. Sen shook a finger at me and said, “This year, we lost two daughters: one to marriage, and the other to Netaji! Now all we have is our little boy, who will likely give his life for India if the situation continues to be so deplorable!” She shot a pained look toward her son, Nishan, who didn’t look up from the sailboat he was building in the room’s corner.

“Stop, Ma!” Sonali interjected. “And, Kamala, I apologize. We are very emotional, all of us.”

“The important thing is that your sister is doing well,” Pankaj said firmly. “As I told everyone earlier, I heard Supriya’s voice on a radio broadcast. She is full of joy about the mission and will make us all proud.”

“So you’ve heard her speak!” I said, not surprised that Pankaj possessed one of the radio receivers that Japanese spies had distributed within India. Mr. Weatherington would have been wild to know this.

Pankaj got up from the bed and went to touch Mrs. Sen’s feet. When he came up, he said, “Mashima, if you blame anyone it should be me; I was the one who told her the route to get out of India. And I helped her with provisions and contacts along the way.”

Mrs. Sen blinked and then said, “Is it true?”

Pankaj nodded, and from his face I could tell he expected to be verbally battered as I just had been. But that did not happen. Mrs. Sen gave him a half smile and said, “If you told her the way to go, this meant you saved her life.”

Pankaj could do no ill, it seemed, but I could. Blood rushed to my face, and I did not know what to say.

“Kamala, I wish I could ask you to stay for tea, but my husband will be coming up to join—and he is not ready to forgive. Supriya’s
letter upset him very much.” Mrs. Sen was looking toward the door.

“Don’t worry! I will talk sense to them!” Sonali whispered as I gathered my bag to leave.

“I’m going as well. I shall walk with you to the tram.” Pankaj stood up, a lean shadow of his former self, and after touching Mrs. Sen’s feet again, followed me out.

“That was too difficult!” I said as we emerged from the building. “I now understand why I wasn’t invited to the wedding.”

“I missed you there. And I’ve also missed your reports that Bijoy would forward to me.” Pankaj was keeping a quick stride, as if we were just like anyone else walking toward the tram station.

Trying to push down my nervousness, I said, “You should have let me know your concerns through a letter or word of mouth. I’ve not sent new reports in some time because I’ve been running a rice kitchen.”

“So I’ve heard. But L is still living on the premises and working for the ICS, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” I said, realizing that now was the right time for me to explain the change in situation. “He’s stopped searching for freedom fighters. He’s only interested in the famine. If you knew all the things he’d done—getting free rice for the peasants, improving ambulance transportation—you would be amazed.”

“You sound as if you’re expecting applause.” Pankaj looked at me skeptically.

“He’s been through such a change,” I said. And as the words came out, I was back in the garden with Simon, remembering the pleasure of working together, and then the passion that rose so unexpectedly and could not be put down. “I spied on him before, yes. There once was every reason in the world to hate him. But it’s different now.”

“Just because our enemy says he pities the starving poor doesn’t mean he’s a new man!” Pankaj sighed. “He’s British, isn’t he? What is this nonsense you’re talking?”

I could not bear to reveal what had happened; but for Pankaj to hear the story elsewhere would be worse. Slowly, I said, “Another thing has happened to him. He’s fallen in love.”

At this, Pankaj exhaled loudly and gave a merry laugh. “Perhaps this explains the behavior change! So he finally met a memsaheb, eh? Is she a pretty young member of the fishing fleet?”

“Neither. She isn’t English.” I swallowed down my fear and said, “Actually, it’s me.”

“You?” Pankaj stopped short, and behind the gold-rimmed spectacles, his eyes widened. After a pause he said, “That must be hard. But be strong. I suppose it’s for the best.”

“What do you mean?” I was utterly confused by his reaction, but Pankaj had started walking quickly again, with almost a bounce in his gait.

“If he falls in love, he may want an affair with you . . . or even marriage.” Pankaj’s voice was calculating. “The latter would be the better situation, of course. As his wife, you will learn so many more secrets. He will take you to restaurants and clubs where you will gain information from his friends. Kamala, my hat is off to you. Now you can delve deeper into the Indian Political Service than anyone.”

“But I just said he isn’t hunting freedom fighters! I can’t report on him any longer.”

“Don’t tell me you’re in love, too?” Pankaj shot a bemused look at me. “Ah. What a quisling!”

Quisling
was the surname of the Norwegian administrator who had helped the Nazis easily conquer his country; since 1940, it was about the worst insult one could use. Shakily, I said, “I will never reveal anything about the movement—and you have no right to call me that ugly name.”

“If you marry him out of our own desire, it’s only because you’re immoral.” His expression was tight. “You could have been so much more of a woman, someone like—”

“Supriya!” I finished angrily. “Yes, you admire her for following
your directions to go overseas. But you didn’t want me to do things like that; you didn’t even want me to participate in street protests!”

“You were not needed there; and you’re not needed now.” Pankaj’s tone was frigid. “Honestly, I don’t think I can bear receiving another feverish note from you or tolerate the sight of you making eyes at me.”

“You think that I make eyes at you?” I repeated, feeling a slow burn start inside. Had I misread the times he had flirted with me, had complimented me, had gazed into my face? No, I had read him correctly then. The woman’s intuition that I’d honed at Rose Villa told me this.

Narrowing my eyes as I looked at him, I said, “You did care about me, Pankaj. You are only speaking rudely because you’ve been usurped. But it’s been years. Ten years of waiting, for naught.”

Pankaj stopped walking. He turned away from me for a minute. When he faced me once more, his expression was grave. “Ten years?”

“Yes; first we wrote letters to each other, and then you met me first when I was fifteen! But I was poor and invisible to you then, and after that you became so self-involved that your eyesight didn’t get any better.”

Pankaj was quiet for almost a whole minute, then spoke. “You say ten years—I suppose it could be true that you were somehow in league with Bidushi. There is something familiar about you.”

I waited for him to mention Lockwood, but he just shook his head and said, “You know that it could never be; my mother wouldn’t accept it.”

“What does she think about me?” I challenged, even though I knew the answer could be devastating.

“She didn’t think it right that you came to our home uninvited, and she knows that a woman sent a letter that got me in trouble at prison—and guessed it was you. She doesn’t like that you have no known relatives in the city.” He added, “When I marry, my bride will be approved by her, because we will live following my mother’s directions as long as she lives.”

“You said you would never wed.” I remembered how I’d wanted to change his mind.

Pankaj shrugged. “I was grieving for a very long time. But I realize that everyone around me is marrying. I don’t want to become a middle-aged man left by myself.”

I was irritated by his callousness, as well as my own stupidity at having wasted so much time longing for a pen-and-ink caricature of manhood. Feigning warmth, I said, “Pankaj-bhai, I know just who you should marry! Your mother might even approve.”

“And who is that?” He looked at me expectantly.

“India!” I flung my arms as wide as the world around us. “She’s not available yet, but any day her parents will set her free.”

“Very funny, Kamala!” He grimaced. “But really, you mustn’t go with Lewes. It would be a tragedy.”

I realized with a start that Pankaj was so upset that he’d forgotten and said the name aloud instead of the code word L—and that he wasn’t the kind of hero I’d once believed him to be. I gave him a cold look and said, “The tragedy would lie in continuing any associations with you. Good-bye, Pankaj.”

I saw a tram pulling into the stop and jumped aboard without checking its destination. I didn’t care that I had to switch at the next stop, because Pankaj’s shocked expression as I told him off was worth it. How could I have admired him, the man too weak to make a choice for himself? And even though I’d told him outright that we’d met earlier, he still couldn’t admit when—perhaps because the thought of a servant coming so close to his Brahmin self was too unnerving.

Pankaj had never been in love with me, nor I with him. Instead, we’d been a relationship of words—written and spoken, but naught else. Love, on the other hand, was a language that operated without words. No dictionary could explain it any better than the heart.

CHAPTER

36

RUMOUR:
 . . .
3. A statement or report circulating in a community, of the truth of which there is no clear evidence.

—
Oxford English Dictionary,
Vol. 8, 1933

I
t was too quiet at home. Jatin was not at the door to help with my bags; Shombhu was not singing as he set the table for dinner. Uneasily, I walked up the stairs, hoping nothing had gone wrong.

As I bent to step out of my chappals, I felt a hand slide gently over the strip of skin between my sari and blouse. A lingering caress, that reminded me of the night before.

“Simon!” I said, turning around with surprise. “You’re home so early. And where are the servants? It doesn’t smell like anything’s cooking for dinner.”

“I gave everyone leave. I thought I would take you to one of my favorite restaurants. They serve magnificent Chinese food on Park Street.”

I shook my head; as much as I didn’t want Pankaj’s words to have impacted me, they had. “I’m a little tired.”

“I’ll draw the bath,” he said, striding off toward his chambers.

“Simon, really, you mustn’t—” I saw the bed. It had been turned down properly, but rose petals were scattered across the coverlet and pillows.

“What’s wrong?” Simon inquired genially. “Isn’t that the Indian tradition for lovers?”

I was stricken with embarrassment. “Who did this?”

“Shombhu or Jatin, I suppose. Manik contented himself with using the last of the jaggery to bake us a cake.”

“Oh, no!” I sank onto the chaise and put my face in my hands.

“Sorry?”

Everyone would know. I wouldn’t be Miss Mukherjee, the library clerk, but Simon Lewes’s mistress.
“Sending the staff away early would have been enough to bring gossip! The fact that they’ve decorated the bed is even worse.”

“I think they’re happy, Kamala. Happy for both of us, hoping this is a start of a new way of living.” Simon crouched in front of me and took my hands in his. “Like I am. But from the way you’re talking, I’m not sure what you think.”

Pankaj had sad it would be a tragedy. And despite my defensive protestations, the sick feeling in my stomach told me he might actually be right. Stiffly, I said, “We were both very naïve. You can’t imagine what will happen when it gets out that you’re with me; you won’t be received socially, and your career will crash.”

“Both things have already happened!” Simon said, smiling. “Do I look frightened? Come, your bath is full. I won’t disturb you. I’ll just make tea.”

“Tea?” I almost jumped out of my skin. “You can’t know how!”

“I went to Cambridge. There I learned how to turn on a hob.”

I lay alone in his bathroom, in soft light, with the window open to the koel birds. From time to time, they chirped; I listened for their warning calls, but they did not come. They seemed to say
, Life is good; this man loves you.

Afterward, I wrapped myself in his dressing gown. The tea was waiting on the second nightstand that I remembered searching years before; the one with nothing inside it. But now I saw a small pile of my lingerie, my hairbrush and the novel I’d been re-reading upstairs,
Tess of the d’Urbervilles.