The Dancer and the Raja (20 page)

26

There are so many servants and the gossiping is so intense that it is hard to keep one's intimacy and privacy. In the end, everyone finds out everything, thanks to the intricate communications network that the servants in the different palaces maintain with each other. In Kapurthala, everyone knows everything, even before it happens. Rumors have reached the faithful Dalima about the furious reaction of Harbans Kaur when she found out that Anita will take part in the birthday
puja
, one of the ceremonies the family considered intimate. That new imposition from the raja makes the animosity become more and more open. War between the weight of tradition, which his wives call for, and the sovereign's will. Which will be stronger, three thousand years of customs or the prince's love for Anita?

Anita would have preferred not to attend the ceremony, thus avoiding the awkwardness of being in a place where her presence raises hackles. She does not like to be the target of everyone's eyes and comments, especially knowing that are not going to be full of praise for her. In that war, she is the battlefield.

But she goes to the women's palace in the city center with her husband. This is a place where she has not set foot since her wedding. She walks erect, with a haughty gait, dressed as an Oriental princess in a sari that hides part of her face and adorned with the jewels the raja has given her. On her forehead she wears a splendid emerald cut in the shape of a crescent moon. “As you get used to everything when you live somewhere, I caught my husband's love for all those trinkets and gradually I made myself a collection of nice pieces of jewellery,” she would write in her diary. The emerald was the most recent of his gifts, a whim of Anita's, who feels that her jewels may be her only security. This stone was used to adorn the oldest elephant in the palace stables, until Anita noticed it when she attended her first parade. “It was a pity for an elephant to wear such a beautiful emerald, so I asked the raja for it.”

“Now you can say you've got the moon,” her husband told her when he gave it to her, wrapped in tissue paper on a silver tray carried by an old treasurer. “It's given me some trouble to get it for you.”

And it is true, it was not easy. Taking the jewel away from the elephant to give it to Anita has meant defying tradition, a gesture that has probably provoked an onslaught of rumors. But he has done it on purpose, to back his wife, in the full knowledge that everything he does is closely watched and commented on in detail in the court. “The raja has given her the elephant's moon!” The news has not taken long to spread. The underlying message implicit in his decision is to make it quite clear that he will do anything for his wife. More than a gift, it was a political act.

Anita, discreet and striking at the same time, follows his lead. For the birthday
puja
, she has taken great care with her dress and makeup. She wants to be resplendent, because subconsciously she knows that this is her best ploy. How can they deny the prince the pleasure of being with such a beautiful woman? What wife could be so cruel to do that? Anita is beginning to understand harem logic, which revolves around the welfare and pleasure of the lord and master.

The ceremony takes place with complete normality, in a hall whose rooms are decorated with pieces of mirrors that form the shapes of flowers. The light from the candles placed on little altars set into the walls is reflected in the thousands of sparkling little mirrors. The women have avoided greeting her, except for Rani Kanari, the only one who is always kind and nice to her. She asks after the baby, and Anita, who now understands a little Urdu, answers that she will bring him to see her one day. Kanari is still an attractive woman, in spite of the bags under her eyes and her face swollen from so many dry martinis. Sitting round the priest and the raja on silk mattresses covered with brocade cushions, and leaning back on big, red velvet cushions, the women read from the sacred texts and invoke the Almighty to ensure their lord and master enjoys a long life and prosperity. It is an image that evokes the domestic harmony worthy of a Moghul emperor, but, yet, in the depths of that apparently calm sea there are violent undercurrents and bitter feelings of neglect. The secretive looks, full of curiosity and resentment, that the women give each other are reflected in the little mirrors.
Today so young and full of life,
they seem to be thinking,
but what about tomorrow? What will happen tomorrow when that smooth skin loses its glow, when that porcelain complexion begins to show the ravages of age, when all that is left of the fire of love are the embers, if that?…
Harbans Kaur knows that it is a question of time: Anita will fall like an overripe mango. It is the law of life. She knows her husband, and she knows about his whims and his taste for lechery. She only hopes that while the idyll lasts with the foreign woman he does not overstep the mark.
What else can he have given her that we don't know about?
she seems to be wondering as she gazes at the elephant's crescent moon on the marble-white forehead of the Spanish girl.
Why is he determined to take her everywhere, to show her off as though she were a fairground animal? Doesn't he realize that he loses caste by behaving that way?
Harbans Kaur thinks in an old-fashioned way and, although it is true that her husband “loses caste” by behaving like that, that only occurs in the most traditional circles, among the age-old families that live in isolation from the world in the valleys of the Himalayas, in the mountains of the south, or in the desert in Rajasthan. India has changed, but the raja's wife does not know it because she has not been able to experience it. The only journey she has ever made in her life was the one she made for her wedding: from the home of her parents, in the depths of the Kangra valley, to the raja's
zenana
.

Harbans Kaur does not know that Anita attracts attention wherever she goes, that the princes fight to sit next to her at their dinners and to listen to her laughter, like that of a young dove, and some of them have even fallen for her charms, as the wagging tongues have it, referring to the nizam of Hyderabad. Her fame as a beautiful, graceful, and exotic woman precedes her in the neighboring principalities, which she and the raja visit in her first year in Kapurthala. Anita is the wife that many of them would like to have: young, amusing, and full of freshness. A friend and lover all rolled into one. The opposite of an old-fashioned Indian woman like Harbans Kaur, who is forbidden by the law of
purdah
¹¹
to mix socially with men that are not her husband.

Anita is quite uninhibited. She is not embarrassed to ask about what she does not understand, as she does with the nawab of a neighboring state, who welcomes the couple on a protocol visit at a banquet for seventy guests served on gold plates with gold cutlery.

“Your Highness,” she dares to ask the nawab, who has placed her on his right, far away from where the raja is sitting, “why do you serve roast pork and champagne if both are forbidden by your religion? Are you not a Shi'ite Moslem?”

Her manners, the accent in which she attempts to express herself in Urdu and the question, ingenuous but daring, make the nawab burst out laughing, and, surprised, he replies quietly in complicity, “Yes, Anita, but I exercise my power: I baptize the food and change the names. I call the pork pheasant and the champagne lemonade so I don't sin when I enjoy them.”

And the host, still laughing, orders the servants to fill the plates and glasses for him and the lady next to him. Like many of his ilk, this nawab is above good and evil. What do religious restrictions mean for sovereigns who believe they are of divine descent? Rites and prohibitions are for men, not for gods.

Bhupinder Singh, the Magnificent, maharaja of Patiala, is also sensitive to Anita's charms and, when he welcomes her at a party he throws in honor of the new viceroy and his wife, he behaves as though he has known her all his life. He wants to give her the highest honors and sit her next to him at his table, but the Englishmen responsible for protocol do not permit it. Bhupinder and Anita are the same age, and both are the target of English disapproval, Anita for having married a prince and Bhupinder for his reputation as a consummate womanizer. The erotic parties in his swimming pool have become famous even in England, and the rumors about the virgins from the mountains and the sex cult of the goddess Koul have the English very worried—to such an extent that they have postponed his enthronement “until he behaves better.” They fear that he may end up like his father, succumbing to bad influences and his love of alcohol and women. “When their paths become twisted,” says a letter from the governor of the Punjab to the chief of the Political Department, “the men in that family rush headlong towards their own ruin.” The English have decided to put the enthronement off for a year, until he is able to prove that he can run his state. Bhupinder has reacted by “being good,” and inviting the new viceroy, Lord Minto, and his wife to Patiala, as well as numerous other friends and princes, among whom are Anita and the raja. For her, Patiala is like Kapurthala multiplied by a hundred; the dimensions of the palace, “which is never-ending,” as Kipling described it, the size of the parks, the lake and the swimming pool, the hundred or so luxury cars, the wild animals chained up in the shade of hundred-year-old mango trees, and so on, arouse her admiration. It is the kingdom of disproportion and for that reason Bhupinder Singh, “the Magnificent,” is not out of place there. Quite the opposite, he is a character built for the palace where he lives.

Impressed by that “young man who is almost two meters tall, weighs a hundred kilos and wears brocade clothes and jewels to die for,” the Mintos are given a royal welcome with a parade of five hundred Sikh soldiers on horseback, with spectacular uniforms and equipment; with a polo match attended by ten thousand people; and with hunts and dinners celebrated in the palace. While walking round the lake, Lady Minto cannot help noticing the statue that Bhupinder has ordered placed in the park. It represents Queen Victoria with an inscription that says: “Victoria, Queen of England, Empress of India, Mother of the People.”

“One couldn't be more loyal,” says the viceroy's wife, thus beginning the process of rehabilitation of the unruly maharaja.

The English officers in charge of protocol do all they can to hide the Spanish girl and especially to keep her away from the high-ranking English ladies. Orders are orders. But so much zeal has a counterproductive effect: it arouses curiosity. It turns out that the ladies, who despise the Spanish girl and malign her with their words, are dying to meet her deep down, or at least to get a look at her. “What has she got for everyone to be talking about her? Can she be as pretty as the princes say? What can the raja have seen in that girl? Another one to follow in the footsteps of Florrie Bryan!” they say as they keep a sharp lookout for her. There are so many guests and Europeans working there that Anita is not affected by the efforts being made to snub her, observe her, dissect her, and analyze her. She ignores them because, deep within, she feels free. If this world were to collapse, she has another on which to rely: that of her family and friends in Spain. Thinking about them is the best cure for the feeling of loneliness that lies in wait for her, like a tiger on the branch of a banyan tree. Furthermore, the fact of knowing that she arouses such intense curiosity flatters her woman's vanity. Actually she likes being the object of so much attention. The ex-Camellia has something of a star in her.

And so she ignores it all and spends her time playing tennis with Sister Steele, the head nanny in the palace, a corpulent Anglo-Indian who is talkative and full of character. It is her job to struggle with the children that the eighteen-year-old maharaja already has by his four wives, not counting those he has had with each of the maids that attend his wives. There is also an Englishman whom they call Tweenie, a Rolls-Royce mechanic who lives permanently in the palace, and whose job consists of running the workshops where they service the cars that make up the prince's fleet. He is well known for the strength of his serve at tennis and for his addiction to tea: he drinks more than thirty cups a day. The official photographer, a German named Paoli, a taciturn individual with a crew cut and metal-rimmed glasses, walks around all day among the crowds of people with his enormous camera and tripod, taking pictures of the family and guests. But the most formidable of all is a Spaniard, Lieutenant Colonel Frankie Campos, a surprise that Anita did not expect to find.

“Call me Paco,” he tells her straightaway.

Paco holds the important post of nazaam lassi khaana, chief of the royal kitchens. The brother of a Spanish cardinal who lives in Rome, he is an amusing and practical man, but his bad temper makes him the terror of the kitchens. His blood boils easily. And that is not strange, since he has ninety-five cooks under his orders, who prepare meals for about one thousand people every day, in addition to the palace guests plus hunting lunches. And the meals have to be suitable for all tastes and religions: vegetarian for the Hindus, with meat for the Moslems, international cuisine for the Europeans, and so on. To all this has to be added the organization of the cooks who travel with the more orthodox Hindu princes, obsessed with making their food in a precise way in order to avoid contamination by coming in contact with an inferior caste. Campos then becomes a real military leader, working out strategies, dictating plans of action, and giving orders to attack. They say about him that if by chance he finds so much as a single hair on a plate of food, he compares it closely with the hair on the head of each of the kitchen assistants. When he finds the guilty party, he has them shave his head, even if the cook belongs to the kitchen team of another royal house. Diplomacy does not work with him.

Campos has landed in Patiala after having worked as a chef in the Savoy Hotel in London, a favorite among the maharajas. There he met Bhupinder and accepted the juicy contract he offered him. Married to an Englishwoman with whom he is still very much in love, he would suffer the greatest disappointment of his life when he found out that his wife had run off with an English soldier on the ship that was taking her to India to be with him. Since then Campos lives in the hope that she may turn up one day at his bungalow to ask his forgiveness. But he also suffers the anxiety of waiting for her to do so. As time goes by his character is changing for the worse, and his outbursts of anger sometimes lead to fits of crying that leave everyone dismayed.