Waiting for the Monsoon (12 page)

The maharani takes the child in her arms and pulls aside the swaddling cloth. “A son,” she says, and her lip trembles. Her glance goes from the little penis and the rust-coloured scrotum between his legs to the tightly closed eyes and balled fists. “You, my son, will never find happiness.”

The baby opens its mouth and begins to wail.

HEMA SWEPT THE
area adjacent to the kitchen where the
bobajee
and his wife had lived. The room had not been used in years: the windows were grey with dust and the shutters were jammed. Memsahib never entered the servants' quarters, and this building was exclusively his domain. He knew that rooms that weren't visited regularly contained secrets. Every time he pulled aside a chair or box, he expected to find a snake or a scorpion, but the only inhabitants were a colony of giant ants that had set up house in the wall under the window, black and green beetles in the cabinet, and the pink dust larvae that had almost devoured the mattress. He dragged the remains of the mattress outside, threw burning coals onto it, and covered them with an old newspaper. The mattress immediately caught fire and the entire nest was exterminated. He swept the beetles outside and poured boiling water into the ant nest. The insects ran off in all directions. Hema, a devout Hindu and strict vegetarian, abhorred this massacre. In the past the
mali
had carried out such chores, but now they were among his duties. Hema was pleased that someone was coming to live in the servants' quarters, even though it was only a tailor, who did not fall under his jurisdiction. He missed the responsibility and the prestige he had always enjoyed. Being boss over a household that didn't include other servants was like being “a farmer without land,” the neighbours' butler had once said to him. The arrival of the tailor would mean more visitors, although he understood from his memsahib that she was not planning to receive any of the ladies in the big house. That would entail too much commotion. He washed his hands under the faucet, filled a bowl with yogurt from the refrigerator, stirred in some sugar, and took it with him to the nursery.

CHARLOTTE PUT DOWN
the telephone. The wife of Adeeb Tata was leaving for their summer house in the hills this weekend. She wanted to deliver an ironing board for the
darzi
before she left this evening. If at all possible, the members of the club all moved to the high hills in the summer, to escape from the blistering heat. As this was something Charlotte could no longer afford to do, she spent many hours a day lying listless and bathed in sweat on her bed in the darkened house. Every morning, after sunrise, Hema closed the windows and shutters, so that the all-devouring sun could not enter the house. Charlotte watched the hypnotic rotation of the fan above her head. Her thoughts turned to the aged
punkah-wallah
she used to have, who had to wave his
punkah
without a break. He often fastened the string to his big toe, and sometimes he fell asleep. If the general caught him sleeping, he knew he was in for a rude awakening. He'd threaten the man with immediate dismissal, whereupon the slightly built Indian began to pull the cord as if possessed, and the room gradually became cooler. But after lunch, when stomachs were full and the temperature reached its zenith, everyone fell asleep, including her father and the
punkah-wallah
. Her eyes closed and the memories became dreams.

From a thousand metres under the surface of the sea, a sound came bubbling up, a sound that awakened her. It was a while before she realized that she was not inside a submarine, and that the doorbell was ringing. She listened, wondering who was crazy enough to be standing at her front door and ringing the bell at this time of day. The wife of Adeeb Tata would never come before dark. The doorbell sounded again. Despite Hema's reputation, she suspected that at this particular moment he was fast asleep, like everyone else. With a sigh, she crept out from under the mosquito net. The heat had taken over the house and now lay over her like a clammy blanket. Her limbs failed to respond, as if bewitched by some magic formula. Slowly, she made her way to the staircase. The clock ticked languidly, and even the wooden banister was sweating.

When Charlotte put her hand on the door handle, every fibre in her body seemed to shout,
Don't open the door! Don't open the door!
She turned the knob and, with an effort, pulled open the creaking door.

The bright sunlight blinded her and the scalding air billowed into the house. She was about to slam the door when she saw the contours of a body. Her reaction was totally opposed to her own rules — never invite a stranger into the house — but she said, “Come inside. Quickly!” She took a step backwards, into the shadow. The figure on the doorstep, who by that time must have been almost charred, stepped inside. She slammed the door. She couldn't see the person she had just let into the house. It was dark in the hall, and the glaring sun had left flecks of white light in her eyes.

THE SECRETARY OF
the club had told Madan that he would be working in the big house on the hill, beyond the main road. He had left his bicycle standing against the wall of the New Rampur Club, in order to take a midday nap like everyone else. But the gardener made it clear to him that only club members were allowed on the grounds, so Madan got onto his bike and pedalled off at a speed that suggested that the broiling sun didn't bother him.

The last part of his journey, up the slightly sloping hill, was tough, but the colonial house with its thick walls and closed shutters beckoned. Madan loved houses — after years of sleeping on the street, in constant fear of being robbed, he found that he slept differently with walls around him. While he was on the street, he had never dreamt. He slept only a few minutes at a time and woke often to check on who or what was there before dozing off again. With walls around him, sleep took him to unfamiliar lands and people he didn't know. At the bottom of the stairs he leaned his bicycle, with the sewing machine on the back, against a small column that had lost its statue, and walked up to the large door.

From a distance the house had looked quite distinguished and prosperous, but now, as he went up the stairs, he saw that the marble steps were cracked and there were chinks in the walls. He pulled the bell and heard it jingle inside. Madan liked bells and closed doors. They, too, gave him a sense of security. He knew that somewhere in the house a servant would awake from a dream, unable to fathom why anyone would be ringing the doorbell at this time of the day. It would be a while before it dawned on him that it was the doorbell that was ringing, so Madan pulled it again, to wake the servant from his dream. After a while he heard a shuffling sound and the door opened.

He started. Before him stood a small white woman with grey, curly hair. Her eyes blinked against the fierce glare, she was barefoot, and she had apparently just been awakened from a deep sleep. She was fragile and pretty, almost as if she were made of glass. Beckoning, she told him to come inside quickly.

Madan had never been inside the house of a white person before and he wasn't sure what to do, but the woman was already shutting the door again, so he stepped over the threshold.

SLOWLY, AMONG THE
flecks of light in her eyes, the figure of an Indian man took shape: he was forty or thereabouts, and his hair stuck out in all directions. His forehead was sweaty and there was dust from the roads clinging to his face. He was wearing a magnificent green shirt. He didn't look at all like the men at the bank or like the court usher. She wasn't expecting a buyer out to make a killing, and the man didn't have a basket of fruit or other wares with him. He couldn't be a servant or a coolie who worked for one of the club ladies, since they were always simply dressed and never came to the front door. He held his right hand over the left and stared shyly at his shoes.

“Would you by any chance be the tailor?” she asked suddenly.

Madan nodded, still staring timidly at the ground.

“It's not this door,” she said in a clear voice. “You have to go down to the kitchen. There's a room prepared for you.”

Madan knew English, but the woman spoke much too quickly, so that the only word he caught was “tailor.” She walked down the marble hall to a small door near the stairs; opening the door, she beckoned to him. She went ahead of him in the direction of the outside door. At the end of the corridor, the blazing sun shone through a windowpane. Madan saw the female contours of her body through her thin clothing. He quickly cast his eyes to the floor, feeling as if he'd been caught looking. The woman pushed open the glass dividing door and walked into a little hall, where a bucket and a broom stood.

“Hema!” she called in the direction of a small building he hadn't noticed while he was cycling up the hill.

HEMA, TOO, WAS
rudely awakened from his afternoon nap. He was at a wedding feast and was just about to bite into a crisp pastry when he heard his memsahib's voice. He sat upright, and heard his old bones creak. He crawled from his mat and went to the door. Outside he saw her walking with a man. A man who had a light tread and was wearing a magnificent green shirt and white trousers. Who was he? Hema had never seen him before. He wasn't from the bank: he knew all of them. Suddenly Hema felt a pang of anxiety. He must be another buyer. Memsahib wanted to sell the stove, and from then on he'd have to cook over coals, or — even worse — the man had come to buy the whole house . . .

They entered the kitchen. “This is the tailor. Will you show him his room?”

This man could not possibly be a tailor. Sanat, the old
darzi
, and the
darzi
in his native village never wore such beautiful clothes and didn't walk the way this man walked. The motions of his hands were strange, too. As if he were constantly smoothing something. Hema was overcome by an uneasy sensation.

“Welcome,” he said amiably in the local language as he opened the door.

THE SITTING ROOM
is muggy and, in her recollection, much warmer than it used to be in the big house on the hill. After spending the morning at the hospital, Peter is napping on the sofa under the window, as he does every day after finishing lunch and reading the newspaper. Charlotte, who regards afternoon naps as something for old people, usually sits outside on the veranda with a book. But today it is so hot that she has been driven indoors. She looks at the man she is doing her utmost to love. Above his head hangs the crystal chandelier with the red stones. The sparkling rubies scatter tiny droplets of light that pass across his face. His hair is stuck to his forehead and his breathing is deep and irregular. Charlotte wishes she could look inside his head to find out what he's thinking, what he feels and dreams. They have been married for six months and still he has told her nothing about the wound on his leg or his missing finger. She knows that he was born in Manchester, that he went to university in Leeds and then returned to Manchester, where he completed his doctoral research in the back streets of the city, that he left for India immediately after getting his degree, that he worked in the same hospital where he is presently employed, until the war, when he was called up and sent to Burma. Peter refuses to talk about the war. The only thing she has ever gotten out of him is that he was in the jungle for a while and that he never wants to go back.

His fingers flex in his sleep, as if he is trying to grasp something. Charlotte goes over to him and, very gently, places the back of her hand on his forehead. He starts, and his fingers begin to move faster. Quickly she withdraws her hand. Then his feet also begin to twitch.

“Hush, my darling,” Charlotte whispers, “it's me.”

He awakes with a cry and stares at her, panting and distraught. His hands are clenched into fists and he's trying to swallow. She strokes his hand. The panting subsides and a spasm of fear passes over his face.

“Did you have a bad dream?” As always, she waits for the moment when he will tell her what happened in his dream. He doesn't know that she watches him for hours on end while he's asleep, that she sees how he waves his arms and kicks his legs about, shouts and cries. Charlotte has never before seen a man cry before. Her father taught her that crying is a sign of weakness and that one must never shed a tear in the presence of others.

“My father is going to be in Delhi next week. And he's finally coming to see us.” Peter's muscles immediately tense under her caressing hand. “Don't you want him to come?” she asks in surprise.

“Of course I do,” he says. He gets up, in order to escape the touch of her hand.

“But if you don't want him to?”

“Why should I not want him to come?”

“I got that impression.”

“No, of course not. When is he coming?”

“He didn't say.” Charlotte looks at Peter.

He pours himself a glass of whisky and finishes it in one draught.

~~~

THE TABLE IS
set with the Wedgwood service, a wedding present from the maharaja, and the cook has done his very best. Peter is slicing the roast beef. A good piece of roast beef is not easy to come by in a country where beef is seldom if ever eaten.

“You ought to have that knife sharpened,” says Victor.

Peter nods and goes on slicing. The warm juices flow from the meat onto the wooden plank.

“A knife like that will ruin the meat.”

Charlotte looks at her father, who, from the moment he walked in the door, in uniform and with a swagger stick under his arm, has provided a running commentary on everything his son-in-law has done. Peter, who is wearing civilian clothes, goes on slicing the meat without looking up. The silence is uncomfortable and Charlotte casts around for a neutral topic of conversation.

“You were in Burma, too, weren't you?” her father says out of the blue.