“Don’t,” Sabitri said. “My driver will be here any minute.” But her voice shook, and she did not pull her hands away.
His words surrounded her like a dust storm. She could see Bela staring at him, openmouthed. Once in a while, she picked bits out of the roaring: Crazy with worry locked up at my uncle’s not even a phone ran away but they caught me taken straight to the wedding hated her for it hated them all—
In the early months of her marriage, if Rajiv had come to her, she would have walked out with him. Even if he had not told her all this. She would have lived as his mistress, not caring if she blackened her family’s name beyond all salvaging.
Granddaughter, here is my most terrible secret: even after I gave birth to Bela, I would have done it.
She shook her hands from his grip. It was easier than she’d expected. He was a weak man, after all. She wished to say, You could have found me, if you had really wanted to. But it no longer mattered. Better to say, I love my husband. Because that—she was surprised to discover it—was the truth. How long had it been true?
Finally she walked away in silence, Rajiv no longer worth wasting words on. Her chest was full of the new truth’s brightness. Emerging into the hot yellow sunshine was like being born. Under her fingertips her daughter’s shoulder bones were fragile, magical wings.
There was the car, waiting, with someone in the back seat. Bijan. Her heart flung itself around her body. How long had he been there? What had he seen?
But Bijan was exuberant with success. The morning’s meeting had gone excellently. He had negotiated a better deal than anyone had hoped. A significant bonus would be forthcoming. He had decided to celebrate by taking the rest of the day off. How would they like a trip to the Grand Hotel for ice cream, and then the zoo? He sat in the middle of the car like a king, his arms around them, beaming beneficently at his beautiful girls. Bela was telling Bijan about the dirty staircase and strange old lady who kept touching her hair and how hungry she was because the lady didn’t give them anything to eat, didn’t share even one of Mamoni’s delicious sweets. She might just starve to death before they reached the Grand. Sabitri rested her head on Bijan’s shoulder, weak with relief, and smiled at Bela’s theatrics. The child had widened her eyes and slumped on the seat, saying that she had to have three scoops of ice cream. Could she? Could she, please? How blessed Sabitri was to have this family. From this moment on, she was going to be the best wife and mother to them.
“Yes, you can have three scoops,” she said. “Just don’t throw up afterwards.”
It was the happiest moment of her life.
She wants to write all this to Tara, but she is so tired. Her fingers are cramping. They’ve been cramping for a while, she realizes, even the fingers of her left hand. It’s almost dawn, the jackals long vanished, a couple of overeager roosters beginning to crow. She must lay her head on the table; it’s grown too heavy to hold up. She places her cheek against the gouge and remembers, suddenly, its genesis. Bela had slashed the wood with her favorite Parker fountain pen, which Sabitri had saved for months to gift her with when she entered college, ruining both pen and table. This, because Sabitri had insisted that Bela stop seeing the man she was in love with, a man who would later entice her into running away to America. Who would not let her see her mother again. A man who—Sabitri had known this in every vibrating nerve of her body—was utterly wrong for her.
“Your father, Tara,” she whispers. “That was him. And now he’s abandoned you both, hasn’t he? Is that why you’re dropping out of college? Why you won’t talk to him?”
Oh, this mess, it’s beyond her powers to fix. She longs to close her eyes; she’s finding it hard to focus. Who is that in a dark corner? Is it her granddaughter? And behind her, could that be Bela? Shadows with blank ovals for faces, waiting for her wisdom—as if she had any to give! Or was it her dead baby, the boy she had named Harsha, bringer of joy, hoping he would buy her a second chance? But no. He had left her long ago.
Sleep. She hungers for it with her entire being.
But first she must write something, because finally she knows what she needs to say. She forces her hand forward, grasps the pen.
But that moment in the car wasn’t the happiest moment of my life. Just like it hadn’t been so on the starlit terrace with Rajiv. My happiest moment would come much later. After Bijan’s drinking problem, my widowhood. After baby Harsha flew away. After all my troubles with your mother. I had opened Durga Sweets by then. How Leelamoyi would have writhed in rage if she knew that she’d been the one to plant the idea in some secret chamber of my being! It had been tough going, the first few years. But with the help of Bipin Bihari—ah, what a support he had been—I’d finally managed to turn the store into a profitable concern.
One day, in the kitchen at the back of the store, I held in my hand a new recipe I had perfected, the sweet I would go on to name after my dead mother. I took a bite of the conch-shaped dessert, the palest, most elegant mango color. The smooth, creamy flavor of fruit and milk, sugar and saffron mingled and melted on my tongue. Satisfaction overwhelmed me. This was something I had achieved by myself, without having to depend on anyone. No one could take it away. That’s what I want for you, my Tara, my Bela. That’s what it really means to be a fortunate lamp. . . .
In the car, Bijan asked Sabitri, “Do you feel better, now that you’ve seen Leelamoyi?” She could feel his breath, warm on her hair. “Will it help you forget?”
The solicitousness in his voice brought her close to tears. She nodded, unable to speak.
Bela said, “There was a man, downstairs. He kept crying and kissing Mamoni’s hands. Mamoni, why was he kissing your hands?”
Bijan pulled away his arm and sat up straight. In the dead silence that took over the car, Sabitri was aware of the driver’s curious eyes in the rearview mirror.
“Just someone I knew long ago,” she said, speaking to Bijan. “He doesn’t even live in this house anymore. I hadn’t expected to see him. We met by the merest chance as I was leaving. He means nothing to me.” The words tumbled out of her too fast. She knew she sounded guilty, even though it was the truth she was telling.
“I understand,” Bijan said. He looked coldly at her sari, her jewelry. “I understand perfectly.”
“I love you, only you,” she cried, though she knew it was a major faux pas to speak in this manner in front of servants.
Bijan leaned forward. “Drive me back to the office.”
“Aren’t we going to the zoo?” Bela asked.
“You can go wherever the hell you want,” Bijan said to Sabitri. In the mirror the driver’s eyes widened because Bijan-saab never spoke like this. Sabitri guessed it would not be long before the rest of the servants heard about it.
They rode in silence. Near the Maidan they passed a herd of goats crossing the street; heat rose from their coats in shimmery waves. Sabitri had never seen such a sight in the city. For a moment, with a thin spike of hope, she thought she had dreamed it all.
When they had dropped Bijan off, Bijan now transformed into someone she did not know, Sabitri told the driver to take them home. She had difficulty meeting his eyes, but she forced herself.
“I want to go to the zoo!” Bela cried. “I want my ice cream. Why can’t we go to the zoo? Baba said we could. Why can’t we go?” She kicked the seat-back again and again. The noise thudded inside Sabitri’s head.
“It’s because of you we aren’t going!” she shouted. “Stupid girl—you’ve ruined everything.” The Bengali word for “ruin,” noshto, which could also mean “rotten,” or, when applied to women, “unfaithful,” hung in front of her, as visible as her future. Her hand arced through the air, there was a sound like something bursting, and Bela cried out in pain.
The first time you hit your child with all your strength, wanting to hurt, it changes things.
She feels that sting again now. It travels up her arm and lodges in her shoulder. The shock with which Bela had stared at Sabitri. The s
plotch blooming red on her cheek. The way she shrank back against the car door. Was that when the troubles between them began?
“I’m sorry, Bela,” she says. “Forgive me.” Words that all these years she hadn’t been able to speak.
The pain has taken up permanent residence in her chest. She must have dropped something with a crash, because here comes Rekha, rubbing at her eyes, then running forward with a cry. Sabitri tries to push the letter toward her. But she’s on the floor. When did she fall? Rekha shouts for the milkman, who’s rattling the door, to help her get Ma onto the bed.
Sabitri tries to tell her about the letter. It is the only thing that matters now. It must be put in the mail. It must. “Tell Bipin Bihari,” she whispers. She thinks of his dear face, calm and steady and attentive, even in the worst of her times. “He’ll know what to do.”
But Rekha does not hear. She is sobbing on the phone, urging Doctor Babu to get here fast. Something terrible has happened to Ma. The milkman lifts Sabitri up. Or is she flying? The bed is very soft. The pain is very large. She lifts her eyes, and there is Death in the corner, but not like a king with his iron crown, as the epics claimed. Why, it is a giant brush loaded with white paint. It descends upon her with gentle suddenness, obliterating the shape of the world.
The Assam Incident: 1963
Bela stands on the veranda, sweating as she watches Sabitri and Bijan—that’s how she’s been thinking of them lately, rather than as her parents—drive off in a cloud of orange dust into the Assam evening. It smells like thunder, but the sky is mild and pale. Nothing in this place is what she expects it to be. Why doesn’t the heat seem to bother Sabitri and Bijan? she wonders angrily. In the back seat of the ancient Ambassador the National Oil Company has provided for their use, along with an equally ancient uniformed chauffeur, they lean in to each other. Their faces come together like colliding planets, and they kiss.
Bela should be happy at this effort at intimacy. It is certainly better than the fights they had before they came here, Sabitri dissolving into tears, Bijan stalking out of the flat. Still, Bela can’t help feeling embarrassed—and a little worried. It’s as though, in this outpost surrounded by jungles and oil fields and (according to Ayah) all manner of bloodthirsty creatures, Sabitri and Bijan have decided that the rules they used to live by in civilization (Kolkata, to be exact) no longer matter. Bela guesses that Assam, too, has its rules, but no one has taken the trouble to tell her what they are.
Just before the car disappears around the bend of the bamboo forest, Sabitri turns and raises her hand. Is she waving at Bela? Or is she ordering her to go into the house? Ayah, who stands beside Bela, carrying the baby, tugs at her arm.
“Come inside, Bela Missybaba. Mosquitoes will be biting soon, big-big like elephants.”
Bela shakes her head. She can feel the prickly seeds of tears behind her eyes. They’ve been in Assam for three months, and still, each time her parents go somewhere, she’s certain that she’ll never see them again. There is no one to whom she can confess this new timidity, dizzying like the tropical fever she succumbed to during her first week here.
Bela knows that, at eleven, she’s too old for this ridiculous behavior. They’re only going to the club. It’s part of Bijan’s responsibility to attend official gatherings. They have explained this to her. Being the new manager of National Oil (Assam Branch), he needs to meet people, make the right impression, get the local big shots on his side. She knows also (though no one explained this part) that Sabitri must go along to ensure that he sticks to his tonic water so that incidents like the ones that got him transferred from Kolkata don’t happen again. They are responsible parents. When they return, they will come into the children’s room, no matter how late it is. Sabitri will touch their foreheads (always the baby’s first) to gauge if anyone has fever. Sometimes this wakes Bela up and she cannot fall asleep again, but she minds only a little. It is a price worth paying for the feel of Sabitri’s cool fingers trailing over her jawbone, so rare nowadays. For her warm, minty breath on Bela’s cheek.
“Come, come, Bela Missy, getting late, darkness coming. And after sun is disappeared, worse things coming than mosquitoes.”
Worse things feature prominently in Ayah’s stories. To keep them at bay, when she first started working for them, she put a little dot of soot on the baby’s cheek. “Bloody superstition,” Bijan said when he saw it. He wiped the mark from the baby’s face roughly with his handkerchief, making him cry. In the corridor, Bela saw Ayah’s face, hard and sullen. The next day, she put another soot dot on the boy, but on his back so no one except the spirits would see it. She looked at Bela, eyes squinted, daring her to tell. But Bela did not. Not yet, anyway.
“You go,” Bela says now. She pushes rudely at Ayah, surprising herself, because generally she is fond of the Assamese maid.
A haughty stillness takes over Ayah’s entire body. She hitches the baby higher on her hip, turns on her heel, and disappears into the house without a word. Bela feels ashamed, but not enough to follow her.
That is when she hears the man.
“Namaste, Miss Bela,” he says from the side of the veranda where thick hydrangea bushes give way to wild honeysuckle, where snakes may be hiding.
Bela spins around and there he is, a little blurred by her tears: tall, thin, dark as a burnt chapati. His cheekbones are craggy and crooked, as though they might have been broken and then put back together. The band tied pirate-style around his forehead shimmers in the last of the sun. His cloak—or maybe it is a large shawl—shimmers as well, and when he smiles, there’s gold in his teeth.
Her breath is a solid thing, stuck like a bone in her throat. “How do you know my name?” she manages to say.
“I know.” His eyes crinkle in amusement. “Your father is Bijan Das Babu, and the company has brought him here to help them put in better pipes to take our oil away.”
He bends forward slightly and Bela can see, for a moment, the oil rushing through steel tunnels, swirling black flecked with gold, rushing with a great roar that dies away, and then the tunnels are empty and then they, too, are gone.
The man steps out from behind the bushes and begins to walk toward Bela. The fear she had forgotten rises in her again, because only yesterday Ayah had warned her about the children-snatchers. “Always looking-looking,” Ayah said, “most of all for girl-children to sell. Fair-skinned like you, lot of money. Better watch out.”
Bela gathers her breath to push a scream out from the clogged tunnel of her throat, but the man shakes his head in such a knowing, indulgent way that she feels foolish. Besides, he isn’t carrying a giant-sized sack to put children in, as snatchers are supposed to. His hands, which he holds out in front, are empty and elegant and curiously smooth. Even his palms are unlined. As she watches, his fingers do an intricate dance like the leaves in the breezy pipal tree above, weaving a pattern of light and shadow.
“Who are you?” Bela asks.
The man bows, his long hair swinging around his glistening chocolate face, and Bela knows what he is going to say before he speaks. Then he reaches out and pulls something from under her chin. She gasps and he puts the coin on her palm, the silver dull and cold as though it hasn’t been touched by human hands in a long time. She sees the profile of Queen Victoria staring haughtily into the horizon, like in her history book. “How—?” she begins, but Cook is at the door, swatting at mosquitoes with his dish towel, yelling for her to come to dinner right now, food’s getting cold, and why is she standing outside at this time of evening, does she want to catch a fever again?
By the time she turns back to the magician, her palm is empty and he is gone.
“Do you believe in magicians?” Bela asks Bijan on the way to school. Immediately she regrets the question. She treasures this time, her only chance to be alone with her father. It is so peaceful in the back of the Ambassador, so silent. Also, he might respond with his own question: Have you made any friends at school? And then what would she say?
/> The morning breeze, still cool, sifts through Bijan’s hair so that for a moment he looks glamorous, one of those fathers who appear in advertisements for Cinthol soap, or Horlicks steaming in oversized glasses. Bela scoots closer until she can lay her head against the sleeve of his starched blue shirt. He smells of English Leather, wholesome and clean and reassuring, and as she breathes in the scent, she can almost believe that this is how he has always smelled.
Bijan smiles. “You mean the kind that draws rabbits out of hats? Like the one that came to Leena’s birthday last year? There’s nothing to believe. It’s all tricks, sleight of hand. But it was fun to watch, wasn’t it?”
Leena used to be Bela’s best friend in Kolkata; they had known each other since class one. After Bela left for Assam, Leena had written twice to her. Bela tried to write back, but she was struck by a strange paralysis. How to describe the riot around her: the night-blooming flowers with their intoxicating odor, the safeda tree with its hairy brown fruit, the oleanders with their poisonous red hearts? She wanted to tell Leena how much she missed her. At times her heart felt like one of the towels Ayah wrung out before she hung it up to dry. She wanted Leena to be here, to run hand in hand with her across a lawn so large it was like a green ocean. But what was the point of wanting the impossible? She never answered the letters.