Rajmahal (25 page)

 

The ghosts knew both friendships spelled trouble for their Maudie. And the house was afraid its premonitions would prove right.

“It would be something if she at least stopped drinking!” said a dowager ghost.

“What do you expect . . . ?” began the
swadeshi
ghost, launching into its usual diatribe against Christians. But the house preempted any further discussion by dispersing the ghosts to distant corners of the premises as usual.

Maudie was a Roman Catholic and went to mass every Sunday with the Normans. She looked forward to the cheerful congregation, including the nuns, her old teachers. But as the pattern changed from a predominance of dresses to saris and the Irish nuns gave way to Indians, mostly strangers, the cheeriness faded. The day came when Maudie broke out of her habit. She had entered the church, dipped her fingers in holy water, knelt in the aisle and made the sign of the cross. A wizened old man whose embraces she had so far borne with stoicism, approached her with open arms. But that day, she shied away and hurried to her pew, leaving the old man scratching his head. The next Sunday she missed mass for the first time. Instead, she found herself growing curious about her environment, drawn toward the antithesis of her orthodox Roman Catholic conditioning, the idolatrous, pagan Hinduism and other “native” religions.

Durga puja
was on at the time. Throughout her life spent entirely in Bengal, this important Hindu festival had passed her by without arousing her curiosity. She had registered the presence of the ten-armed goddess, but though she was ignorant of the details, something of the mesmerizing sacredness of the occasion, the drumming with its frenzied climax when the processions of lorries converged on the river, the steely but smiling goddess images with all their finery being tilted into the water, must have entered her consciousness. When Mohini Mojumdar, her Rajmahal neighbor, invited Maudie to the family
Durga puja
, she promptly accepted.

“Ooh, I'd love to go! But I'm not a Hindu, you know, they won't chop off my head will they?”

“Of course they will,” said Mohini tartly. “Unclean, casteless Christian!”

Mohini had been Maudie's senior at school, and they both regressed to the girlish chatter which typified them as convent girls even at this mature age.

“I was just joking!” protested Maudie. “But I haven't been to a
puja
, really!”

“You'll go to hell my dear. Better not take the risk.”

“Come on!” said Maudie, ready to defend her religion, heaven and hell against the usual mockery of her Hindu friends. “What about y'all and your human sacrifices?”

“Ignorant woman!”

Maudie went to the
puja
dressed for the first time in her life in a sari, which thrilled the Bengali ghosts. She found herself riveted to the magic of the drummers'skill, their leaping, their muscular bare torsos and tightly tied
dhuties
, and the movement and rhythm they created out of the huge drums slung carelessly about their necks. The ringing in her ears intoxicated her.

“Look at Maudie,” whispered Mohini to her husband. “She's never seen anything like it. And she's lived here all her life!”

“She must have Bengali blood in her,” whispered back Proshanto Mojumdar. “Her ancestors are calling to her.”

Through the drumming Maudie was aware of the hypnotic quality of the central tableau, of Goddess Durga, her sons Kartik and Ganesh, her fellow goddesses, Saraswati and Lakshmi, her rampaging lion-steed, her spear pinioning the dark demon, and the lolling head of the buffalo trampled under it all. In spite of the elaborate iconography of violence and gore, the goddess and her cohorts were so celestially composed with their unfocused gazes and distant smiles, that they seemed to Maudie to create a center of utter grace and peace. She could have sat there forever, taking in the details, the colors, the frazzled hair of the demon, his blue chest bubbling with blood, the goddesses' raised leg in its powerful hold on her steed, the brocaded vestments. While Durga's acolytes performed mysterious rites, ringing bells, chanting, chipping little cymbals, and tirelessly offering up their devotions. It was only when some devotees began an awkward jig in front of the goddess, swinging incense censers that she snapped out of the spell.

When Maudie was going through her dilemma about a renewed sex life, which to her meant a second marriage, the pulls and counter pulls of her attraction to Robby Rozario were no different from her girlish crushes. She had accepted Anthony's proposal, because it had coincided with her current crush on him, and she anticipated a fairy tale ending. She had hardly changed, except that the sexual fantasies were more adult, experienced and explicit.

It occurred to her that “hope” was a silly word. Looked at objectively, it had always been silly and should be banned from the dictionary. She became critical of some of the superstitions she had taken on from her mother and deliberately cut her nails at night. “You'll never get married,” her mother had declared, “if you cut your nails at night.” “Who wants to get married again?” sighed Maudie, clipping away with uneasy defiance.

This signaled the banishment of Rozario from her hopes. Although no one else would fit her romantic ideal, it wasn't difficult to downgrade him. “He's just an ordinary accountant! How can I compare him to Anthony and the Police Service!” And then, there was the matter of Rozario's physical drawbacks, his lantern jaw and skinny arms. “Like Popeye the sailor without biceps!” Sometimes Maudie could indulge in mockery. But she couldn't fathom the depth and tenacity of “hope,” its rootedness in the mind without words. She thought she could be objective, understanding all, accepting all, making her own harmonious place in it all. But she couldn't stop “hope” cropping up like a prickly heat on the patina of her thoughts. The result, instead of exhilaration was a feeling of melancholy, signaling nothing but frustration. Was it because hope had gone?

And what of sex? Could she, should she, have sex without love? Would Rozario be interested? Poor confused Maudie, with all her introspections, losses, and exploitations by those she longed to trust. Surjeet Shona felt her mind had finally snapped. But still, why the terrible end? Was it the tenacious “hope” again, in the form of its deadly opposite “despair”?

Maudie had inherited secure British stocks from her parents and had no financial problems as a widow. Even so, her brother refused payment
when she entered his household. The Rajmahal sternly disapproved of her ingratitude, therefore, when she put her ear to the Normans' bedroom door. At the mischievous Amit Dhar's prodding, her paranoia increased, and when David and Doreen finally decided to move to Canada, she categorically refused to let go of the apartment. With lawyer Amit's connivance, she served notice that the apartment was her home and she was staying on. The Rajmahal was flattered but it couldn't stop its feelings of disquiet. It felt Maudie could become uncontrollable without her brother and his wife. David Norman couldn't believe his docile sister could suddenly expose such a vicious side in spite of their unstinting offer of a home with them in Canada!

“Where did we go wrong?”

“And after all these years. We took nothing from her, Dave!” Doreen wailed, deeply hurt.

They could scarcely afford the luxury of giving up the apartment to Maudie with the Malliks paying them the customary princely
salami
for vacating, an essential ingredient of their emigration budget. All three parties, the Normans, the Malliks, and Maudie, employed lawyers to represent their interests. Maudie of course had Amit to represent her. In the end, the situation was salvaged by compromise. One set, of bedroom, dressing room, and bathroom, would be modified and retained by Maudie. The modifications would be paid for by David Norman and the rent by Maudie. As with most compromises, no one was satisfied. The Malliks didn't like the split apartment and were nervous of a solitary and unpredictable Maudie. Maudie was sore she had been palmed off with a single room with ugly partitions in place of a fine palatial apartment. And the Normans had lost a big chunk from their
salami
.

“It's okay, Ma,” said Amit Dhar. “At least you've got rid of them, and gained a nice little apartment. Easier to look after, this size . . . ”

“Yes, but . . . ”

“And are you forgetting you have me?”

“Dear child! What would I do without you?”

Finally, after the labyrinth had been negotiated, observed fascinatedly by the ghosts and tentatively by the Rajmahal, new tenants moved into the major portion of the apartment.

“No more ready-made candy, eh?” David said unhappily to Doreen. “You'll have to make it yourself now, Dore.” While inside he thought, “I wish she'd come away with us. She's doomed. My sister's doomed.”

Maudie's room was hurriedly partitioned by a seven-foot-high wooden divider, which ruined the room, creating two disproportionately narrow areas. The dining and sitting areas were squeezed along one length, and the bedroom along the other. Although David insisted on leaving Maudie the grand piano, she soon lost interest in it, and all it did was shrink the space.

The room, not Maudie's original, had the worst location in the apartment. There was no veranda overlooking Chowringhee, and no attraction in the wall-eyed windows set too close to the next door mansion and looking down on a servants' passageway. The kitchenette, unaesthetically jutting into the sitting room was partitioned by another seven-foot wooden partition, allowing the free permeation of cooking sounds and emissions. The only luxury was a noble bathroom with an adjoining dressing room.

“I suppose the kitchen should have been sealed off to ceiling level,” admitted Amit. “And there's no servant's entrance, they'll have to come through the sitting room.”

 

The Rajmahal and the ghosts tearfully bid the Normans farewell and braced themselves for an unsupervised and increasingly drunken Maudie. In Canada, the Normans occasionally heard news of Maudie, but she would always refuse to answer their letters. And she would hang up the phone when they called.