How much of this talk would have swayed the master is uncertain, for he was known to be a hard man, but his frightened young wife begged him to give the maid what she wanted. She worked herself into such a hysterical state that finally the master grudgingly said that the maid could come back—but she’d have to work in the cow-barn, and sleep in the quarters above the barn, and never show her face—nor her son’s—to him.
That’s how my mother hacked out a precarious foothold in a house that wanted nothing of either of us. Life wasn’t easy for her as she lived out her days above the cow-barn. The other maids taunted her, and the men servants seemed to think, now that the master had discarded her, she was fair game for them. To protect herself she developed a stinging tongue and a reputation as a witch-woman—but I knew there was never any truth to that. She was ferocious in her protection of me, making sure that I was clothed and fed and sent to school, that no one forced me to do menial work. The children who teased me for being a bastard didn’t dare to do so in her hearing. “You’re as good as the master’s daughter that everyone makes such a fuss over,” she always said to me. Still, she couldn’t protect me from the furious shame that filled me, nor the ravenous desire for revenge, especially after she died from a fever because no doctor would come to treat her.
I ran away from the cow-barn soon after, before the master had a chance to throw me out. Anger ate into me, anger that the world had cheated me of what had been my right. I spent my days planning vengeance—maybe I would burn the big house down, or abduct my half-sister and sell her to the flesh-merchants. But fortunately for me (for otherwise I’d have lived out my life in the city’s jail) the partition occurred. The master lost everything in the riots and fled with his family. And though I’ve heard the daughter came back, after things quieted down, all that was left of her father’s fortune by then was the ruined shell of the house I’d both hated and coveted.
The partition cut me loose from any ties I had in Khulna, and I decided to seek my fortune. I would become an adventurer. Why not? The revenge I hadn’t been able to wreak on my father I would exact on others. Somehow or other, the world would pay for what it owed me. That was the way I thought when I fooled your mother into marrying me and cheated my way into Bijoy’s house—and his heart. Except I hadn’t realized that he would find his way into my heart too.
When I finished my story Bijoy was silent for a long time. Then he put his arm around me. “You are indeed my cousin, whatever the world might say,” he told me. Though he said nothing more, I knew he felt for my childhood and forgave me my deceit. And that we would never need to bring this up again.
Something changed in me when Bijoy put his arm around my shoulder. The great burden of pretending to be someone that I was not fell from me, and with it a certain bitterness. If Bijoy could accept me in spite of my shortcomings, if he could see something worth loving in me, perhaps I could too. This would be the treasure—more precious than a hundred rubies—with which I’d start my new life.
As I thought this, the fever of discontent that had plagued me for so many years lifted from my heart, and I fell into a deep, drugged sleep.
I use the word drugged intentionally, daughter, for I am sure now that that is what Haldar did to us. I am not sure why he waited until this time to harm us—probably it was so that he could add our rubies to the three to which the ancient warning had restricted him. He must have put something in the mustard-fish, some paralyzing herb, perhaps, for though I wondered at the sounds I heard in my sleep—the engine starting, the waves increasing as the launch made its way to the middle of the river, the thud, the splash that followed it—I was unable to open my eyes. Even when I felt his hands on me, searching my waistband for the pouch holding the ruby, I couldn’t move. Only after he heaved me over the side of the launch into the water did panic break through my frozen muscles. The current was strong, and the bobbing outline of the launch was already beginning to recede. I searched the ink-black water frantically for Bijoy but saw nothing. I hoped the water had revived him, too—I didn’t know then that he couldn’t swim.
Finally I realized that if I was to get back to the launch, I’d have to stop searching and start swimming back. Already my tired muscles were cramping. It took me a long time to make it back to the boat. Luckily, Haldar was so certain of the effectiveness of his drug that he hadn’t bothered to take the launch upriver—if he had, it surely would have been the end of me. But perhaps luckily is the wrong word. Maybe it would have been better if I too had drowned that night like my brother.
I climbed up over the side of the launch as quietly as I could. Haldar was hunched near a lantern—gloating over the rubies, no doubt. I was on him before he had a chance to look up. I gripped him around the throat, but he was strong and slammed me into the deck. Then he threw the lantern at my face. I could hear the sizzling sound my flesh made as the glass broke. Pain exploded across my forehead, worse than anything I’d known. That’s when my hand found the grappling hook. I swung it at Haldar with all the rage of my misshapen, misfortunate life and heard him scream as it knocked him over the side.
I pause my reading here. My lungs have turned to stone—I cannot breathe. The fire, the burned face. No, it cannot be. But I must continue reading.
I had no time to think of what I’d done—but I wouldn’t have been sorry even if I had. The shattered lantern had started a fire on the deck. I tried to put it out but it was too powerful. The dinghy was my only chance. As I rowed away, I heard the launch exploding behind me, but I had no time to look. I maneuvered the dinghy toward the spot where I thought Bijoy had been thrown overboard. It was frustratingly slow—I wasn’t skilled at rowing and the current was strong. I searched and searched, weaving back and forth across the black water, swinging the lantern, calling his name, battling the pain that raked my face. But there was no sign of a body, living or dead. Finally, after the sun came up and I could see how fast the current swept past the prow of the dinghy, I gave up. I rowed the dinghy ashore and fell, unconscious, on the marshy ground. I had no money or papers—Haldar had taken them, just as he must have taken Bijoy’s. As for the rubies, they must have sunk, along with the exploded boat, to the bottom of the river.
I came to consciousness in a nearby village—the adibasis had found me and taken me there. Their ojha did what he could for me with root and herbs. It relieved the pain, but when I looked into a mirror and saw the gouges and scabs, the loathsome crisped-away pinkness, the monstrosity my face had become, I shuddered and flung the mirror from me with all my strength.
I should have contacted the police then, but I was too distraught to think straight. I’d killed one man, and if the police charged me with Bijoy’s death too, how could I prove my innocence? In one sense I was guilty of it—hadn’t I been the one to show him the ruby and tempt him to this ill-fated adventure? I couldn’t stand the thought of going back to Bijoy’s house, empty-handed, ugly beyond imagination, bearing the worst possible news, to face the condemnation in the eyes of the three widows.
So I disguised myself as a refugee—it wasn’t so far from the truth, after all—and made my way down to Calcutta by begging on the trains. I slept on the platform of Sialdah station and agonized over how I would approach the women, what I could possibly say to them. Then I saw the obituary in the papers—for Bijoy and for me.
The announcement gave me a strange sensation—frightening, almost—of having ceased to exist. But it also brought me a certain release. No longer father or husband or cousin, I felt I could once more invent whom I wanted to be.
Coward that I was, I told myself matters had been decided for me. It would be less painful for the women to believe that we had both died. Seeing me would only cause them to remember Bijoy and to regret that I hadn’t been taken instead of him. So I found a job in a car mechanic’s garage, wore a turban and grew a beard, took on a false name and learned to drive. The money was good, the labor punishing enough that I could sleep at night. Soon I’d saved enough to start a b
usiness in a new town, forget my past once and for all. I went—several times—but each time a restlessness I could not understand forced me to return to Calcutta.
Then one day I heard that the Chatterjee women needed a driver, and I found myself standing at the old gate which had closed behind me five years ago, offering to work for whatever they could afford to pay. That is how I became Singhji.
Singhji, I whisper. Singhji. It is a sound from a forgotten language whose meaning I cannot decipher. But there is more.
At first I kept my distance from the mothers and spoke as little as I could, afraid I might be discovered. But soon I realized that there was no reason to fear that. People rarely recognize things they are not expecting to see, even when they’re right in front of their eyes. And in many ways, I was not Gopal anymore. My frivolousness had been burned away in the fire that night, my vanity and my need to assume importance. What was left was regret, and the realization that through my own wrong choice my family was lost to me forever. The only way I could be with them now was as their servant.
Through the years I watched your mother and you, the two I loved most in that house. I was anguished by your mother’s bitter greed, because I knew the part I had played in changing her from the lovely young woman who had stolen my heart by the riverside. Watching you grow into a kind and beautiful girl, I felt exquisite joy—and sorrow too, because I would always be a stranger to you, unable to protect you from your mother’s broken dreams. I tried vainly to steer you toward happiness. I admired and anguished over the choice you made so Anju could marry the man she loved. Finally, before your marriage, I gathered all the savings I’d been accumulating since your birth for this occasion and mailed them to you.
But the shock in your eyes as you opened the package taught me that only the good are blessed with the ability to give. How painful it was for me to have to drive your Pishi to Kalighat and watch her give every paisa away to beggars. It was then I realized that, having given up my identity, I’d become like the viewer of a movie who weeps for the characters on the screen but cannot help them. Or was it I who was the character, trapped in the tale I’d fabricated?
On the way back from Kalighat, I gathered up my courage to ask your Pishi as casually as I could what this money was which she’d given away. She told me it was ill-gotten gains, belonging to a murderer who’d destroyed the Chatterjee family through his greed. I guessed then at the story she must have surmised for you out of half-truths, and was shaken at the thought of the hatred you must feel for me. On that day I promised myself that when the time was right I would tell you the whole story and relieve you of the burden of guilt and hate you’ve carried all these years.
So, Sudha, here is my gift, the only one I have left to give: You are not the daughter of a murderer—not in the sense you’ve feared all these years.
My one request is that you not tell the mothers who I am. It is too late for that to do us any good, and it will snatch from me the only comfort I possess: that of helping them through the twilight of our lives. And truly, Gopal died long ago, in that night of fire and water, and I am Singhji.
I wish for my granddaughter all the luck that passed me by. I am thankful that I was able to hold her in my arms these few months. I hope when she is old enough, you will tell her the story of her grandfather so she will not repeat his errors. I hope she will be able to love him a little.
I press my knuckles hard against my teeth and welcome the pain. I am caught between sorrow and relief and incredulity. Singhji—my father? I cannot even begin to imagine how he must have felt day after day, salaaming to the mothers and even to us, obediently following orders, the nobleman of an old tale, disguised as the servant. Only in his case, it was a disguise he would never be able to remove. A memory of eyes comes back to me as I think of my father: eyes in their scarred sockets gazing at me in the rearview mirror, noble eyes, sorrowful eyes, eyes enigmatic with a love he knew he could not express, nor I understand. If there is one thing his story has taught me, it is that when all the dross is melted away from the human heart, only gold remains.
Dayita gives a sudden wail, and thankfully I turn to tend to her. I take refuge in the simple acts of motherhood which allow me to push back the letter and its implications into that dark recess where I have stored all the experiences of my life which I have not dared to examine fully. I am afraid they will scorch me beyond recognition, like the girl in a story I once heard, who opens a forbidden door to find blazing behind it the chariot of the Sun God.
But here now is a wondrous thought that has just risen inside me like the sun after a stormy night: If my father did not kill Anju’s, then I need no longer carry the guilt which has been with me so long that I have forgotten it once was not a part of me. I need not pay her back with my life for the one her father lost. I examine this idea cautiously, gingerly, as one fingers a newly formed scab to test the healing underneath. And this is what I discover: My feelings toward Anju have not changed. If anything, they are purer, more intense because they are no longer dictated by necessity. I love her because I love her.
By now I have changed Dayita and burped her and rocked her back and forth, but she decides she does not like the airplane anymore. She makes her arms and legs as rigid as she can—it’s a new trick she’s learned, a most effective one—and screams until her face turns red and passengers crane their necks to see what I am doing to the poor child. I offer her my breast, but she refuses to let me off so easily. Finally, because I do not know what else to do, I begin to whisper a story into her ears. Amazingly, she starts to quiet—she is still crying, but they are soft sobs now. And that is how, poised in the sky between our new life and our old one, the life we cannot yet imagine and the one we’ve already begun to forget, I tell her a tale to make her heart strong, to graft her life onto. For of all things in this world it seems to me that that is what women most need. I tell her the story—once again—of the Queen of Swords. But as I speak it changes and is no longer the story I told Anju.
I tell her how the Queen of Swords was born an ordinary girl, I tell of her marriage and pregnancy, of how the palace guards tried to destroy the girl baby in her womb. How the unborn daughter gave her mother the courage to leave, gave her the flaming swords made of light so that none dared prevent her from going.
I tell her of the queen’s desperation, after her baby was born, when no one dared to give them refuge. How she wandered in many lands with her daughter, until finally she found herself at the ocean’s edge, with no place else to go.
“Then,” I continue, “she heard a voice saying, ‘Mother, don’t weep.’ She looked and it was her daughter, speaking her first words. The child knelt and touched the swords, and when she did so, they became as one and turned into a silver bird. Its eyes were made of rubies, and its wings shimmered like dual rainbows. The queen and her daughter climbed onto its back, and the bird began to carry them to a new life in a new land. We’ll be happy ever after, the queen wanted to whisper to her daughter as they flew, but she knew that was not true. Life never is that way. And so instead she held her daughter in silence, heart to heart, and as they traveled each heart drew on the other’s strength, so that when they reached their destination they would be ready.”
Dayita is asleep when I finish, her limbs loose and trustful. How wondrous the way her head fits into the crook of my elbow. I have a cramp in my arm but I do not set her down. I hold her like this for a long time, listening to her breathe. The main lights of the plane have been turned off, and in the shadows the ruby on her chest rises and falls with a tiny glimmer, like a bird’s eye.
I’VE ALWAYS thought of myself as an impatient person. It’s one of the things Pishi used to scold me about when I was a girl. But now I realize that all this time I never knew what true impatience meant. Even those ecstatic early days with Sunil were nothing compared to what I’ve been going through this week. I can’t sit still. I have no interest in food. But for the first time in my life I’ve been cooking feverishly unti
l the refrigerator is crammed with all the dishes I remember Sudha liking. Which is crazy because she can cook them ten times better than I can. I’ve also selected a few American dishes—spaghetti sauce, apple pie, potato salad—my repertoire is admittedly meager. It’ll be a good way to start explaining to Sudha about life in this country.
When I mentioned this to Sunil, he was clearly annoyed. “For heaven’s sake,” he said. “You’re not her teacher—or her keeper. She’ll learn on her own.”
I shouldn’t have brought it up—he’s been increasingly edgy and irritable whenever I speak of Sudha. And since I discovered the handkerchief I’m awkward too, so whatever I say comes out sounding stilted or overly enthusiastic. Still, once in a while, I have to talk about her when the longing to have her here shudders through me like the hot flashes that used to hit me in the first nights since Prem died.
(There, I can speak of it now, without feeling as though I’m sinking into quicksand, my mouth filling with mica and grit.)
The other thing I’m beginning to painfully admit to myself is that I’m a coward in the things that matter the most. I couldn’t tell Sudha not to come to America after I’d begged her to do so, but now I’m afraid of what her presence in my home will unravel. Nor have I had the courage to ask my husband whether that handkerchief, folded so carefully into the Kashmiri box, is the forgotten remnant of an old crush, or proof of a continuing obsession.
All these thoughts go around and around in my brain like the bullocks they use in villages to turn the water wheel. I’d go crazy, but fortunately I run out of time. The plane’s arriving this morning in an hour and a half—miraculously on time in spite of the heavy rains we’ve been getting since daybreak. I must be ready to leave in twenty minutes, Sunil yells from the other room. I pull a tray of chocolate chip cookies out of the oven—they’ve puffed up nicely and are only a trifle overdone. I take a last look at Sudha’s room. The monstrous black eyes of the Mickey on the crib mobile bore into me until I shut the door.