An Unrestored Woman (20 page)

“March?” Mrs. Chilcott said. “Did you hear that, Francis? There's so much to
buy
. How will I ever get to England and back by March?”

The conversation went on and on in this way. It wasn't until minutes later that Dicky noticed Arun standing very still. “Didn't I tell you to bring us nimbu pani? What are you doing, standing there? Hard of hearing?”

The sound of Dicky's voice was as if someone had knocked him against the wall. Arun shook his head awkwardly, shuffled into the kitchen, and collapsed in a corner, weeping. His mother ran to him. “What is it? What's wrong?”

Already his face was covered in tears. It was as though something had broken in him, as though something tucked behind the breastbone had shattered; something he had never even quite come to know, and had certainly never protected. His mother rushed to console him, not knowing what was wrong, and he managed to utter the words
nimbu pani
, and she understood only that much and left him, reluctantly, to prepare it.

That night he stumbled in the dark, unable to sleep. He walked around to the back of the house and looked out over the moonlit gardens. The damp shadows and pockets of blackness fit his mood. He drew blood when he pounded his fist against a stone bench. And the moon, what a traitorous moon: it was exactly the silver lilac of Lavinia's dress. He was walking along the garden wall at the side of the house when he noticed a small light, probably only a single candle, coming from Dicky's room. He was reading, Arun guessed, but then he heard voices. He crept along the wall and raised himself onto a ledge to see through the window. It was Mr. Reed and Dicky. They each had a drink in their hands, a whiskey maybe, and Dicky was walking around the room and Mr. Reed was sitting on the divan. Dicky was saying, “At the end of summer, I should say.”

“That far away?”

Dicky looked at Mr. Reed and then he crossed the room and sat down next to him. He rubbed Mr. Reed's thigh and placed his drink on the floor, next to the divan. Arun stumbled backward. He stood still and out of the window came a small moan, and then another. Arun ran to his quarters. His mother was asleep. He looked at her: tiny, helpless, marked by the meanness of life. A life spent serving people who were no better than dogs, a life of being ordered around by them, cleaning up after them, being told to bring them fucking nimbu pani. And his poor sweet Lavinia, adrift in this sewage. She didn't even know! And so it was that his mother's sleeping, servile face gave him courage: he would get Lavinia alone, that's what he would do.

*   *   *

He waited a week for the right opportunity. She had just returned from the club. Dicky and Mr. Reed were still there, and would be arriving shortly. The colonel and Mrs. Chilcott were in Delhi attending a dinner at the Viceroy's House. She was in the drawing room. Arun entered it with sure strides, carrying a pot of tea and biscuits. He set it down in front of her. She was wearing a white blouse and a dark brown skirt. Her hair was done up with a satin bow. Though the sleeves of her blouse were long, Arun was able to make out the peak of her shoulder blade through the fabric. It was scintillating, the height of some great mountain pass.

“What is it? What are you looking at?”

She broke his reverie. Arun looked away but he realized he had to say it, how could he go on living without doing so? “I am—” he began, and then he fell silent.

She stared at him above her teacup. “Well, what is it?”

Arun heaved up his chest and concentrated on her shoulder. “I am … I am loving you, memsahib.”

He dared not look at her but he felt a silence, unbearable in its weight, fall over the room. And then she broke it; she laughed. Not for very long, and not even very heartily. “How quaint,” she said after a moment. “Now run along. Quincy and Dicky will be here soon and they'll be famished. Tell your mother to set an extra plate.”

He turned to go but then he stopped. His eyes flashed. His body filled with something acrid. Searing. It was not that she'd been dismissive, it was not that she'd ordered him away, it was her laugh. So false, so unconvincing, so shabby; as if he were merely a child who'd done a little trick, and she only had to look up and feign amusement—and even then, not for very long—in order to satisfy him. He turned again and by now the rage was liquid, thicker than air. “Your Mr. Reed, memsahib, I must be telling you. He and Sahib Dicky—”

Her head shot up. “Don't you think I know that, you fool?” she seethed. Her face flushed redder than he'd known possible.

“But your marriage?” he stammered.

At this she was silent. The color drained from her face and there settled into her eyes a gray, stony light. “He's rich,” she said. “He could buy you. He could buy a hundred of you.”

“But, memsahib,” and here he reached out to touch her shoulder, the very tip, not really knowing what he was doing, only wanting to reach her in some way, to convey a thing he could not speak. But before he reached it she swatted his hand away. “How dare you,” she said. There seemed to be a slight struggle in her voice, the slightest hint of sorrow, but he knew it was for herself, not for him. “How dare you,” she said again.

*   *   *

His humiliation was, of course, expected. But what he hadn't anticipated was his anger. He could hardly breathe. For his love to be called quaint, to be swatted away like a fly, to not even be
acknowledged
. It was too much. He walked through the rooms and did his chores with a deep and disturbing stoicism. He spit in her teacup, he came into her underclothes, he squeezed a drop of blood from his finger into her mulligatawny soup.

His mother noticed his distress but could do nothing. “Why don't you go visit your sisters,” she suggested.

“Why?” he asked. “So I can see
their
servants' quarters?”

“It's our lot in life.” His mother sighed.

“Shut your mouth. It's no lot of mine.”

His mother was quiet for a moment and then she said, softly, “My son. Anger is a forest with no path.”

He smiled. “She will know me.”

“Who?” his mother asked. “Is this about chota memsahib?”

But he said nothing.

The true surprise came a week later when both Arun and his mother were dismissed. None of the Chilcott family was even home; they were told curtly by Mr. Chilcott's butler to leave the grounds of the estate by nightfall. “Hai Ram. What will we do?” Arun's mother wailed.

“Pack,” he said.

“But why?” she cried. “You did something to her. Did you do something to her?”

He left their room without a word. He walked along the Gomti for hours. They had a few rupees saved; he could leave his mother with one of his sisters and then look for work. He would find a job in Lucknow, close to Lavinia. Maybe even in the country club, where he could see her daily. What was he watching her
for
, he wondered, but the thought left him as soon as it had come. What did it matter? These days Arun's thoughts, disturbing thoughts, thoughts that twisted into themselves and made no sense, he was able to shed as effortlessly as dead skin.

When he returned to their room, late in the evening, he was nearly joyous. His anger had found its source: his own weakness. The river had refreshed him, and Lavinia was his, his, his, and always would be. But when he opened the door to the room he found his mother lying on the ground. Their few clothes, some pots, and his bedding were spread around her. She was lying next to the hemp rope bed on which she slept. “Get up, Ma,” he said, “I have a plan.” She didn't move. He took two steps, to the middle of the room, and realized her body was strangely still. Arun let out a cry and plunged to her side, but she was already dead.

*   *   *

Arun sat alone in the dark. The butler had come by earlier to ask for the key but he'd taken one look at his mother's body on the floor and said, “You can stay till morning.” Otherwise, no one came or went. He sat motionless; thoughts scampered through his mind like rats. Nothing settled, nothing stayed still. Not until deep into the night when he finally lit the oil lantern. He adjusted the wick and placed it on the ground next to him, between him and his mother. And that's when he saw it: that's when he saw the spider.

It—the spider—seemed to be staring at him. Well, it wasn't an
it
, he knew that much. It was a she. It was a female spider. And they stared at each other. It didn't take him long to realize what she had done; she had killed his mother. He could see the bite marks, the swollen upper arm. And he guessed at how it had happened: his mother had been pulling out a bundle from under the bed, a bundle they hadn't touched in months or years, and the spider had been dislodged by the disturbance and crawled onto her arm. It seemed to him—as they sat staring at each other—a perfectly reasonable thing to do. He might've done the same. In fact he felt a sudden kinship with the spider. He gazed at her with great regard, a kind of love, and he memorized the tiny details of her body—the thick yellow bands on her legs, the light underside of her belly, the stiff hairs covering her body—as if he were gazing into a lover's face.

When finally the spider began to crawl away, Arun watched it go and said, “Don't go too far.” He waited till she'd reached her web, in a far corner under the bed, and then he too got up and left. By now it was morning, and flies had begun to gather around his mother's body.

*   *   *

He returned a fortnight later. He knew where the opening was in the wall that surrounded the estate, and he only had to push aside a few overgrown bushes to find it. He also knew that Lavinia would be alone; Mrs. Chilcott had already left for England, the colonel had stayed on in Delhi, and Dicky and Mr. Reed never returned from the club before eight o'clock. It was now a little after two and lunch would've already been served; the servants would have retired to their quarters for the afternoon.

He found her in the sitting room, reading. She must have gone riding, he guessed, because she was wearing jodhpurs and a long-sleeved cotton blouse. The punkah above her head moved listlessly in the slight breeze, the windows were thrown open. The afternoon light made the room seem to sway, as if it were a cabin on a tall ship. He entered it noiselessly, crouched and careful on the wood floor. He had with him a large quantity of rope, a rag, and a knife, and this last he pushed against her temple and said, “Nothing doing, memsahib.” He then took the rag and stuffed it in her mouth and tied it behind her head. He told her to get up—the knife still grazing her skin—and pushed her out through the main hall and into the back garden, and then toward the servants' quarters, into the room he and his mother had shared.

The bed was pushed away from the wall and he shoved her onto it. He began tying each of her arms and feet to the bed. The first one—her right arm—was the hardest; she struggled, squirmed mightily, but he moved a knee onto her chest, and he pressed down harder until she looked like she might choke. By now he was besieged by her scent. They were so close his own pores seemed to emit it. Once he'd secured her to the bed he paused. He breathed deeply.

Then he knelt in the dark behind the bed and made sure she was still there. She was: her yellow-banded body was as exquisite as he remembered it. He looked into Lavinia's eyes, wide and fearful; he took his knife and sliced open her blouse at the shoulder. The fabric fell away and revealed to him that gentle curve, that lovely sea of cream on which he'd always sailed. He bent over it; his fingers hovered over its slight crest. He heard a groan and he rushed to console her. “Nahi. Nahi, memsahib. Not to worry,” he said. “
That thing
, that thing I won't do.”

He picked up the spider by the flat of his knife. He studied her. How beautiful, he thought, and then he thought, There is no end to the beauty and venom in women. Then he placed the spider on Lavinia's shoulder. The touch of the cold knife made her writhe but it was when she saw the spider that she leapt in terror, tugged against the ropes. Yelped with fear. But the spider held on, as he knew she would.

*   *   *

He went east. But first he locked the door of the room in which Lavinia lay. He walked along the Gomti. There was no one on the shore at this hour but he looked around, just once, before throwing in the key.

*   *   *

He arrived in Jaipur almost a month later. He'd walked most of the way. Sometimes there had been a bullock cart. A few miles of luxury on a freight train. But mostly he'd walked. He went to an ashram and bathed and ate a meal of dal and roti and potato curry. He heard from one of the other journeymen that the Palace Hotel was hiring, so he went the next morning to the hotel—a massive, glittering white building with blue shutters and bougainvillea—walked around to the back where the menial staff was congregated, and asked who he should see for a job. He was hired the following day as a cleaner, safaiwala, and all-around coolie.

It didn't take Arun long to note that most of the guests at the hotel were wealthy. He began, with this knowledge, working at his job quite earnestly and was soon promoted to the position of bellhop. After that it was only a matter of time—a week or so—before he opened an old British matron's luggage and found enough of what he was looking for.

He slipped the money into his bellhop's jacket, walked out of the main doors of the Palace Hotel, and headed east.

*   *   *

He paid cash for the Bikaner Rest House—a crumbling roadside stop that catered to lorry drivers—and renamed it Arun's Restaurant and Bar. He didn't care to change very much; he was happy with the low shack made of clay and jute, the walls hung with cinema posters. The only thing he added was a simple courtyard, facing the highway and cleared of scrub. He bought a few orange rattan tables and chairs, and planted a young khejri tree in the middle. He liked the way it looked: lonesome and emaciated, but alive.