Ah, Mr. Majumdar, what would you make of this, the scandal to top all scandals?
“Sudha,” says Pishi urgently. “Pull yourself together. No one must know that your father has reached out for you from the darkness of the death world.”
A corkscrew of laughter is boring its way through me. What did she think I was going to do, shout it from the rooftops?
“You must decide what to do with the money.” Pishi’s voice is anxious.
It’s hard to focus on details. Finally I say, “Take it to Kalighat for me. Give it to the beggars. And have a puja done for my uncle’s soul.”
“I am so glad you said that.” Pishi lets out the breath she’s been holding. “It’s blood money, yoked to misfortune.”
“I have to go,” I say. I must be alone, must try to make some sense of who I have become today.
“Sudha,” says Pishi, putting out her hand as I stumble to the door, “Whatever your father did, it’s not your fault.”
But I shudder away. Words have no power to comfort me. To touch me is to be contaminated. Because once upon a time a man raised an oar and brought it down on another’s head. His rage is a river that runs through my body, and its waters are my blood. That is the blessing-gift my father has sent me.
IT’S HORRIBLY HOT in the wedding tent. I’m suffocating under the thick weight of incense and the wail of conch shells and the jabbering of wedding guests. The heavy gold and red Benarasi I’m wearing isn’t helping either. I’m standing right in front of Sunil, but I can’t see his face because the women are holding up a silk sheet between us. They’ll lower it only after the priest finishes the mantra he’s reciting to bring us good luck. It’s a thousand-year-old mantra from the Vedas and defines luck as cattle and horses and vassals—and the one hundred sons I’m supposed to present to Sunil. A wicked laughter’s beginning to bubble up behind my throat as I listen. I’ve got to control it until Sunil and I are alone. Unfortunately, that won’t be until the fire ceremony and the puffed rice ceremony and the bridal flower-bed ceremony and a hundred other such ceremonies are over. Still, when it finally happens we’ll laugh together, and it’ll be a better beginning to our married life than a hundred mantras.
The mantra’s very long, and the priest chants it in a singsong voice that makes me want to yawn. But it isn’t proper for brides to yawn, so to distract myself I watch my husband’s feet, the only part of him visible under the edge of the silk sheet. I admire the curve of his arches, the cleanly clipped toenails. Thank God his toes don’t sprout stiff black hairs like so many men’s do. (I’m an authority on male feet—in the last few days I’ve touched at least a hundred belonging to elderly relatives to whom I’m supposed to show respect.) At the end of the wedding I’m supposed to touch Sunil’s too, to acknowledge him as the head of our household. Maybe if no one’s watching too closely—or even if they are—I’ll tickle them instead.
Somewhere off to the side, Sudha and her husband are going through the same ceremony. I know I should be focusing on the silk sheet—my eyes are supposed to meet Sunil’s as soon as it’s lifted, for that’s the moment of auspicious seeing—but instead I crane my neck to look for Sudha. No luck. All I see is the flash and glitter of bangles and earrings, the bright stippled tints of a hundred silk saris. It feels as if all of Calcutta has crowded itself into the space between us.
If I could just see Sudha’s face, I’d feel better. Something happened to her yesterday afternoon after I lost my temper and stomped off. If only I hadn’t. Because when I came back she was lying on the bed, covered all the way up to her head in a thick bedspread though it was a hot day. I could tell she wasn’t asleep, so I pulled the cover off. She didn’t move. Her face was dripping with sweat and she kept her eyes closed until I shook her and called her name, and then she looked at me like she didn’t know who I was. It reminded me of the time when one of the maids had spilled a pot of boiling dal on herself. Huge blisters had sprung up on her arm, and Pishi had made her put it in a bucket of ice water until the doctor arrived. “Does it feel a little better?” she’d asked after a while. The girl hadn’t answered. She’d just stared at her with the same animal look of baffled terror.
Once I would have known, even without Sudha telling me, what the problem was. But recently it’s like a fog has drifted between our hearts. At first I’d blamed Sudha for it. I told myself she was purposely distancing herself so it wouldn’t hurt her so much when we had to say good-bye. But now I wonder, as I stare at my husband’s feet, if maybe it wasn’t just as much my fault because I’d been too drunk with my newfound desire to pay attention to her silent distress.
“Anju! Anju!” The women have let the sheet fall and are calling my name.
“Here’s her husband, right in front of her, and she’s dreaming about someone else!” one jokes.
I blush and raise my eyes to Sunil’s. He’s smiling, eyebrow raised. He’ll probably tease me about it later, too. Who was it you were thinking of so intently that you almost let the moment of auspicious sight pass? But when I explain my worries about Sudha, surely he’ll sympathize. I expect no less of a man who loves Virginia Woolf.
Now we exchange the garlands that Pishi has made for us. Jasmine and rose and night-blooming gardenia. I’ll never smell them again without feeling Sunil’s fingertips brushing my throat like a flame. The ends of our garments are tied together, and we walk seven times around the sacred fire. My hand feels so right in Sunil’s strong, warm grasp, like a nesting bird that’s found its home. “My heart is yours, as yours is mine,” I repeat after the priest, pronouncing each word as clearly as I can. “For seven lifetimes will I follow you to the ends of the earth.” Sunil’s hand tightens on mine, and I know he’s heard the conviction throbbing through my voice.
The ceremony’s going to continue for a long time—the putting of sindur on the woman’s forehead, the recital of more mantras, the official giving away of the bride, the recital of even more mantras. But as far as I’m concerned it’s done, because I feel joined to Sunil, for ever and ever.
We’re supposed to move to a different part of the tent for the next ritual, but I ask Sunil to wait a moment. I want to watch Sudha complete her seven circles around the fire. How beautiful she looks. More beautiful than she’s ever looked in her life, I hear the guests whisper as they admire the chandan marks on her forehead, the translucent flush on her cheeks, the way she lowers her thick lashes modestly as she follows Ramesh. But then they’ve never seen her bare-breasted on a stormy night, her soul flashing in her eyes.
At they walk, Sudha stumbles over the edge of her sari. Ramesh turns quickly to keep her from falling. But she has righted herself already and moves back just a fraction so his arm won’t touch her. Her face is a shell, with whatever had been alive inside scraped away. It frightens me. It’s as though I’m seeing the old tale enacted again—the princess of the snakes who has lost her beloved and been captured by the stranger-king. Now she has no other choice but to follow him to his barren kingdom.
A great sigh shakes me, all the way to the core of my heart. Oh, Sudha, why did you do this to yourself? And me, too busy with my own unforgivable pleasure, why didn’t I stop you?
Sunil mistakes the reason for my sigh.
“Yes, she’s lovely, truly lovely,” he says.
There’s nothing unusual about his words. All my life I’ve heard men—and women, for that matter—admire Sudha, often much more extravagantly. But there’s something in Sunil’s voice that makes me give him a sharp glance. “The loveliest of women—” he murmurs, very softly, then breaks off. He keeps gazing at Sudha—almost as if he isn’t capable of moving his eyes away. His face is naked and open, like a house with no curtains. And because I’m so deeply in love myself, I recognize exactly what I’m seeing in there.
A long time ago, in school, I’d watched a movie of a California redwood tree that had been struck by lightning. It hadn’t burned up, as one would have expected, or been charred black. From the outside, it looked
almost like the other trees. But one day a man leaned against it—and the tree crashed to the ground. When they looked inside, they saw that its entire core was hollow, and filled with ash.
I feel like I’m that tree.
I go through the motions of the rest of the ceremony. Sunil marks my forehead with sindur. I slip a ring onto his finger. We chant more prayers for conjugal bliss. When Sudha passes by us, following her husband with listless steps, Sunil’s voice falters as he says, “And I will protect you and treasure you and love you as my Lakshmi, my goddess of prosperity.”
How is it no one else notices this?
But of course I’m overwrought. Light-headed from the wedding-day fast, I’m reading too much into a glance, a pause. And even if I’m not, how can it matter? Sudha will remain here while Sunil and I go to America. After this night, he’ll probably never have the occasion to see her again. Even otherwise she’d never betray me, not in a million lives. Still, in spite of all my logicking, my mouth is parched, my fingers shake and spill things, and when we stand up, I too stumble and Sunil has to grab my elbow.
In the banquet hall, everyone mills around us, offering congratulations. The mothers weep a little as they bless the bridegrooms and kiss Sudha and me. Then we’re seated at the bridal table at the far end of the hall, the four of us facing the guests, Ramesh, then Sudha, then Sunil, then myself. Ah, what a comedy of errors, what a crooked quadrangle of love! Ramesh—the only one who’s in high spirits—asks Sunil a million questions about America. Sudha stares down at the traditional banana-leaf platter in front of her as though she’s never seen one before. A slight film of sweat adds a dewy glitter to her face. I watch my husband trying to answer Ramesh without looking at Ramesh’s wife. I watch him trying to be considerate to me, telling me, a bit distractedly, to have a little food, maybe a bite of the fish fry. Asking if I feel well. I sense that he’s distressed by the emotions that have swept over him like a flash fire. That he would like to behave honorably. And I—I’m so scoured by rage and helpless love and jealousy that I can’t trust my voice to make a civil response. Yes, for the first time in my life I’m consumed by jealousy of Sudha, sister of my heart.
After the meal, we stand up to leave our table, Ramesh, then Sudha, then Sunil, then me in the rear. Sudha pulls her handkerchief from her waistband to wipe her face, and when she puts it back, it falls to the ground behind the table. It’s the special handkerchief Pishi embroidered with good luck lotuses—I have an identical one tucked into my blouse. I’m about to alert her when Sunil bends to pick it up. I’m the only one who sees him slip it casually into his kurta pocket.
It doesn’t mean anything, I tell myself. He’s just waiting for the right moment to return it. But the rest of the evening a cold trembling takes over my legs, and the blood pounding in my ears seems to howl with derisive laughter. Fool, fool, fool.
How a single moment can destroy your entire life, crush all the happiness out of your heart if you let it. But I won’t let it! I can’t! It would bankrupt me—I’ve poured so much of myself into Sunil.
When Sudha and I are alone for a few minutes in the room where the women will come to dress us in our Bashar clothes for the long night of singing and jokes that follows the wedding, I ask her, “How does it feel?”
“What?” says Sudha as she pulls the heavy wedding garland from her neck wearily, letting it drop to the floor. “To be married?”
“No. To have my husband be crazily in love with you,” I say bitterly. But already I’m sorry for what I’ve said. Why am I blaming my innocent cousin for what’s not her fault?
“What are you talking about, Anju?” Sudha says, her voice anguished. I take a step toward her. I’m about to throw my arms around her neck and apologize. But she shrinks back and holds up her hands, as though she doesn’t want me to touch her. The look that flashes in her eyes is an emotion you can never mistake for anything else, especially if you’ve felt it yourself.
It’s knowing guilt I see on my cousin’s enchantress face.
Words crowd my mouth like gravel. I must spit them out. “Sudha, how could you do this to me?”
“Anju, no, wait,” Sudha cries. But I walk out of the room, lurching under the weight of the lesson I’ve learned less than one hour into wifehood: how quickly the sweetest love turns rancid when it isn’t returned. When the one you love loves someone else.
DOWNSTAIRS IN the Bardhaman house it is noisy with festivity, but upstairs where I wait alone it is quiet enough for me to hear the thick, faltering beat of my heart. I am sitting in the room that is to be mine from tonight, on the high, garland-twined bed which used to belong to my husband’s parents, and his grandparents before them. Still dressed in the heavy purple silk I’d worn for the bridal feast, I am sweating a little, but mostly I’m cold with fear. The warnings of the teatime aunties echo in my ears. Someone has laid out my night-sari—a lacy, diaphanous affair—helpfully on the bed, but I cannot stand the thought of undressing, cannot stand the thought of what must follow, a stranger’s hands groping over me in lust and ownership.
I had gone through the wedding ceremony in a fog of numbness. I wrapped myself in it gratefully as though it were a magic shawl that could shield me from my life. I stood and sat and stood again, repeating mantras, smiling when I was expected to. If I could keep myself from feeling what I was undergoing, I told myself, then it wouldn’t become real. At some point I would wake to find I had dreamed it all. But the shawl of numbness tore when Anju looked at me with loathing and accused me of snaring her husband. There is nothing now to keep me from the full, chill weight of my despair.
My bridal night. How often in the last year I had daydreamed it. The tenderness with which my husband would lift my veil, his lips on my shy eyelids like an invitation. The words of endearment with which he would unlock the secrets of my body. Now I dread those very things.
Ashok, what poisons are burning through your brain tonight? When I think of your letter, you too will be betrayed by those you love, black laughter wants to burst from my heart. Your curse has come true already, for isn’t the hatred in the eyes of my dearest cousin for whom I gave you up the worst of betrayals?
I hear footsteps on the stairs, the raucous laughter of the young men escorting Ramesh to the bedroom. He says good-bye to them and shuts the door. The sound of the bolt is like a bullet. As he walks toward me, I cannot stop myself from trembling. I clasp my hands tightly—I will not give him the advantage of knowing how frightened I am. He sits on the bed—but lightly, and not too close. We are silent—I am incapable of making light conversation, and he does not seem interested in it. When he leans over to take my hand, I flinch. Ramesh starts to say something, then stops. He works his fingers between my stiff ones and looks down at them, the dark and fair latticed together. “Do you find me so ugly?” he asks finally.
Astonishment makes me glance up into his eyes. It is not the question I expected my self-assured husband—for so he has appeared to me through the ceremonies—to ask. I can hear the disappointment in his voice, and the hurt. Somehow they lessen my fear.
Perhaps Ramesh was always conscious of his plainness, but these last few days must have been hard for him, with relatives exclaiming constantly over my looks. Many husbands would have grown irritated at so much attention being heaped upon their wives while they were ignored, but he’d been patient enough. Even when an old gentleman called me “the goddess Lakshmi come to earth,” the smile on Ramesh’s face hadn’t faltered.
But now the sadness in his words strikes a chord in me. Growing up my mother’s daughter, I know what it is to feel inadequate. I do not want to be the cause of someone else feeling that way.
If Ramesh had been a woman, I would have put my arms around him and assured him that the problem was not in him but in the unbearable situation in which I found myself trapped—and who but myself could I blame for that? But I cannot take the chance of him misunderstanding such a gesture. So I focus my gaze on my silver toe rings, their small faraway
glitter, and force myself to speak. “This is so new—I can’t—I’m sorry—” The words come out whispery and unconvincing.
But Ramesh gives a relieved laugh. “I understand completely. I don’t believe in forcing such things. I’d be happy to give you—us—time to get to know each other.”
We lie side by side after he switches off the lamp, careful not to touch. I’m tense all over, not sure I can trust him. I have heard too many stories from the aunties. But Ramesh talks in a slow, soft voice, pausing courteously from time to time for a response. He tells me about his work as an engineer, how much he loves it. How exciting it is for him to be faced with a problem to solve. The way he visualizes projects long before they come to pass, the lean, shining lines of a new track laid over terrain everyone else considers too difficult. The clean arc of a railroad bridge over a gorge that plummets into mists.
“There’s nothing like the sound a train makes as it passes over such a bridge—that giant, hollow, echoing sound. Maybe sometime I’ll take you with me so you can listen,” Ramesh says.
I nod. In the dim light that seeps up from the courtyard below, his eyes are still and shining, focused on my face.
“By the way,” he adds, very casually, “let’s not tell anyone about what we’ve decided tonight, okay?”
I want to laugh. It’s not as though I have an entourage of confidantes around me. But I know what he is really saying: If my mother-in-law knew of our platonic arrangement, we’d both be in a lot of trouble. Already I have overheard her telling several of the admiring relatives at the wedding about her hopes for the imminent birth of the handsomest children the Sanyal family ever saw.