“ ‘Why three?’ Gouri asked, frowning.
“ ‘That was all that was allowed by the demons who guarded the cave, the sannyasi had warned,’ Gopal replied, and by his laugh you could tell he did not believe in such warnings. He went on to tell us that over the years the ruby-finder’s family had come upon one misfortune after another until they’d had to sell the other two rubies—but this one, the loveliest of them all, they’d held on to. Now, though, they faced disaster unless they sold this last one too—or unless the great-grandson could find the cave again.
“ ‘And can he?’ Bijoy asked eagerly, as though he really believed this story, which sounded to me as if it had been lifted from a book of old tales.
“ ‘He thinks he can,’ said Gopal. ‘His great-grandfather left directions, but he warned the family that the caves were cursed and the guardians easily angered. They were not to undertake such a journey unless the family were in the direst straits. But now they are, and the great-grandson is prepared to take the risk. What he needs, though, is a partner, a man of honor and adventure, a man who can raise the money needed for the expedition.’
“ ‘How much?’ asked Bijoy.
“I was surprised that he would even consider such a crazy scheme, and looking at Gouri, I saw that she was too. There was something else in her eyes which I’d rarely seen—fear. She crossed her hands over her belly—she was in her eighth month—and pressed her lips together to keep in all the things I knew she wanted to say.
“ ‘A hundred thousand rupees,’ said Gopal, his voice like a child’s who has run all the way home.
“ ‘A hundred thousand?’ Gouri burst out incredulously.
“ ‘Yes, I know it’s a lot,’ Gopal said. ‘It’s because he’ll have to pay the bearers extra to go into that forest—they believe it’s haunted. He’s willing to leave the ruby with us for surety—we can have it evaluated by any jeweler we choose. He says it’s worth more than what we loan him. On his return he’ll pay us back double the money.
“ ‘I told him I thought I could raise the money—but only if he let me come with him. If he let me get my own rubies. Then he wouldn’t owe me anything.
“ ‘We bickered back and forth, and finally we agreed that I’d go with him. I’d let myself be blindfolded the last part of the journey, and I’d bring back only one ruby. Even then, brother, a ruby like this one—can you imagine how much that would be worth? Enough for me to repay you—not that I ever could, in my heart—for all these years you’ve been taking care of me. Enough for Nalini and me to start a new life in our own home. Brother, please say you’ll loan me the money.’
“ ‘And Bijoy, my gentle, conscientious brother, who had never traveled more than a hundred miles outside of Calcutta, who had never expressed any desire of doing so, said, ‘I will if I can come with you. If I can bring back a ruby too.’
“Oh, chaos broke loose then, myself and Gouri crying, Are you mad? It’s some kind of a trick, can’t you see? And even if it weren’t, it sounds terribly dangerous. And Where will you get money like that, anyway, and How can either of you think of leaving at this time, there’s no more than a month left for the babies to come. Only later did I realize that Nalini hadn’t said a word.
“ ‘Please, Didi, Gouri, calm yourselves,’ Bijoy had said, and when I heard his voice I knew his mind was made up. Gouri must have heard it too, for she left the room then, weeping, though she’d never been one for tears, and took to her bed and did not come down for the night meal. But Nalini’s eyes shone as they hadn’t in a long while, and she ate well, and while she ate she asked many questions.
“News of all this spread like flames in wind—with servants, it’s never any other way. In the telling the ruby grew to be big as a pigeon egg, the cave became a treasure house of the jinns, and the stranger was a magician, a jadukar who’d mesmerized the two brothers, surely, for although Gopal Babu had always been crazy, Bijoy Babu had too much sense to believe such things. And yet, and yet—the eyes of the tellers would take on a faraway look at this point—what if there were such a cave, what if the brothers did bring back those rubies—and anyone could see that they wished they were going too.”
I think I understand how my father felt, and my uncle. And even my mother with her sudden-sparkling eyes (though always it is her I know the least, less even than the two men whom I have never seen). For each of them, in a different way, it was a last opportunity.
The cave of rubies would allow my father to redeem himself with his wife and his brother—yes, he too thought of Bijoy this way, he was surprised to discover, and not merely as the rich cousin to whom he was beholden. Ah, when did this change, which he had never intended, occur? When had he begun to love them both, to want them to look on him with admiring eyes?
For my uncle, the only son of the Chatterjees, trapped since birth in the cage of propriety, it was the one chance at a life of adventure. At a life which had seemed to him until now as remote and impossible, as holy—yes, that was the word—as that of fairy tale princes on a magic quest. How could he let it pass? His hand was steady as he signed the papers pawning the family lands—even their country mansion—to raise the needed money. When Gouri Ma protested, reminding him that the house had been owned by the Chatterjees for more generations than anyone remembered, he held her hands tightly and assured her he would get it back before the year was out. The hunger in his eyes stopped her from saying anything more. She knew what he was thinking ahead to: The way he would sit, years from now, in the purple Calcutta twilight, speaking of it all to his sons—and their sons as well. The look of wonder on the young faces, adoration such as he had never hoped for.
And my mother? Perhaps she longed for my father to succeed in something, so that she could see him once more as she had done, briefly, on that first evening by the glittering river. Perhaps a part of her longed to love him—for surely all women long to love their husbands—even while another part condemned him as unworthy of her love. Perhaps she wanted the father of her unborn son to be a hero. Perhaps this victory—so long awaited—over the fate which had doomed them to dependence would make it finally right, that decision she made early one morning, stealing from bed, leaving the shelter of her parents’ home for the sky that yawed and pitched above a creaking riverboat.
But maybe I am wrong. Perhaps she was thinking only of the rubies. Strings of rubies at her neck and ears, bangles studded with them, rubies encircling her slender ankles like the fire’s laughter, causing all the neighbor women to murmur their envy as she walked by.
“They left a week later,” says Pishi, “dressed in the clothing of adventure: khaki pants, thick leather boots like neither had ever worn in his life, round safari hats which Gopal must have seen in a movie. They took a taxi to Howrah station, not the house car, for their mysterious partner insisted that no one must see him. There must be no breath of gossip, it was a matter of his honor. He told them that his own family did not know anything about Gopal and Bijoy either.
“After the train journey they were to take the boat along the river and then into the swamps. Next they would hike into the heart of the jungle. The partner had arranged everything, proper equipment, tents, adibasi coolies to cook and carry for them. Beyond that they did not know, except that they were sure to be back in two weeks, long before the babies came. The ruby, which was indeed genuine, they left safely locked in the bank vault.
“For weeks we waited, fretting for news. Then one morning the telegram arrived. It informed us that the Sundarban police had found two bodies and the charred remains of a launch in the swamp. No, only two bodies, said the police when we telephoned them, though of course there might have been others, the crocodiles may have got to them first. They were a small police force out there in the backwaters, after all, with a large area to cover. No, it wasn’t a robbery, one of the men still had his gold watch and cuff links. In the other’s pockets were two plastic-wrapped moneybags. Possibly Bijoy had given his to Gopal for safekeeping—it was the k
ind of thing he liked to do. The bags held a few rupees and some papers with our address on them. That’s how the police were able to track us down.
“For weeks I would wake in the middle of the night, my chest aching with a sorrow so deep it was physical—as though someone had been pounding on my heart with a grain-crushing pestle. But even in my grief I realized that my loss was small compared to that of the two wives. Ah, I couldn’t bear to look at their faces as they took off their jewelry and put on widow’s white and wiped the marriage sindur from their foreheads as I had once done. Especially your Gouri Ma. I’d known her since she came to this house as a bride of seventeen. I’d held her and comforted her in the first homesick days when she wept for her parents, just as she would hold and comfort me a few years later after my husband’s death. I couldn’t stop thinking of the morning of the ill-fated journey when she had asked Bijoy, one more time, not to go. And then, when he said he must, she had said, ‘What if you don’t come back?’ He had laughed and touched her cheek and said, ‘Don’t be silly. I’ll be back before you even expect me.’ But Gouri had not smiled. She’d said, ‘But what if you don’t?’ And Bijoy, suddenly serious, had said, ‘Then I expect you to bring up my child as befits a descendent of the Chatterjees. Will you promise me that?’ And Gouri had looked at him with a sadness in her eyes, as though she knew already what was to come, and said, ‘I promise.’
“She never forgot those words. In the days after the funeral, she wouldn’t allow herself to break down as your mother did. When I tried to get her to weep, to let the sorrow out of her heart, she said, ‘I don’t have the luxury. I made a promise and I must use all my energies to keep it.’ That’s when she started going to the bookstore every day—the pawned lands were forfeit already—and when people, even her own relatives, said that it was a scandal, no Chatterjee wife had ever done such a thing, she looked at them with a hard face and told them she would do whatever was necessary to ensure her daughter’s future.”
We sit together, silent, pondering the mystery of the deaths, feeling once more their far, tragic reach into our lives. Finally, Pishi pushes herself to her feet with a sigh. The kirtan will start soon, and she must go. The past is the past, and regrets, as the priest at the temple said in his katha last week, imply a lack of piety, a resistance to God’s will.
“Wait,” I shout as she reaches the edge of the stairs. “You didn’t tell me the secret.”
“It was there in the story,” says Pishi. “One of them. If you didn’t hear it, maybe it’s for the best.” And she starts down the staircase with slow, unsteady steps, leaning painfully on the banister because lately her arthritis has been bothering her. But for once I do not care for her pain.
“It’s not fair,” I shout. “You tricked me.” Anger turns inside me like a broken spear tip. Ah, how helpless we children are, how dependent on the whims of adults. I’m shaken by the injustice of this, my life. And so I fling at my aunt the most hurtful words I can think of. “You broke your promise! I hate you. I’ll never trust you again.”
The footsteps pause.
“Very well, my poor Sudha,” Pishi says from the bend of the stairs, “so eager to lose your brief innocence, I’ll tell you what you want. Not because of your childish threats but because I am bound by the promise I made.” And sitting there in the gloom, her face turned away from me, her voice echoing eerily up the stairwell, she speaks the rest of the tale.
“It was the night before Bijoy and Gopal were to leave for the ruby cave. I was checking the house doors to make sure they were locked when I saw the light in Bijoy’s office room. I went to see why, and there he was, holding a letter. When he noticed me, he started putting it away, then sighed and handed it to me. It was from a man I didn’t know, a certain Narayan Bose. From his letterhead I could tell he was a lawyer. The postmark was from Khulna in Bangladesh.
“Khulna, remember, was the city our uncle, Gopal’s father, had gone to after that enormous fight with our grandfather. Gopal had grown up there—he often spoke with longing about his father’s beautiful home, seized by the rioters along with the rest of his property during the partition riots.
“ ‘I’d written to Narayan Bose to see if we could buy back my uncle’s house in Khulna,’ said Bijoy, and as he spoke I noticed how stricken his face looked. ‘I thought it would make Gopal happy.’
“Narayan Bose had written back that it was not possible to buy the house in question. The daughter of the original owner—and here he gave our uncle’s name—was currently living there with her husband and children. She had inherited the property ten years ago when her father died, as there had been no male heirs.”
“What do you mean, no male heirs?” I break in from the top of the stairs. “What about my father—”
“No male heirs,” says Pishi, staring woodenly at the wall. “And the daughter, the only child, had no wish to sell the house. It was probably a good thing, Narayan Bose wrote. The house had been broken into during the riots and parts of it set on fire. There were many other homes, far superior, that Bijoy could purchase for the same price.
“ ‘So he isn’t related to us at all,’ I said to my brother. My voice shook with rage, and my hands also, as I remembered how I had trusted Gopal—but perhaps even that name was a lie, made up for the benefit of his gullible ‘cousins.’ But it wasn’t just rage I felt. It was pain too. I’d loved your father, the way he would come and ask me for a cup of tea, Didi, you make the best cha I’ve ever tasted, the way he’d stop at the Paush fair to buy for me the syrupy nolen gur I particularly liked. I had loved—but what was the use of thinking of it, when it was all a lie.
“ ‘The cheater, the fake,’ I cried. ‘He should be whipped out of the house tomorrow, first thing. I’ll tell the gatekeeper myself. No. We should turn him over to the police. He deserves to rot in jail.’
“I would have said more, but the look on Bijoy’s face made me stop. I hadn’t known a man’s face could show such heartbreak. And I realized that however much I’d loved your father, Bijoy had loved him far more.
“We stood there, silently, for a long time. When the clock struck midnight we jumped, as though we were the guilty ones.
“ ‘What are you going to do?’ I asked, and Bijoy pressed his fingers to his temples and said, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know, I can’t think.’
“ ‘You mustn’t go with him tomorrow,’ I said. ‘He can’t be trusted.’
“But Bijoy fisted his hands and said, ‘I’ve got to find the ruby cave—for myself more than anyone else.’ And then he said, ‘Maybe I’ll talk to him when we’re alone on the river.’
“ ‘You mustn’t do that,’ I said. ‘He might get desperate and do something, who knows what. And you don’t even know how to swim.’ But even as I said it I felt I was being melodramatic.
“Bijoy must have thought the same, for he shook his head with a half-smile. ‘Oh, Didi!’ he said. ‘This isn’t the movies! What are you thinking? That Gopal will push me overboard and watch me drown?’
“He was right. Gopal might be a liar, a fortune hunter, but he was no murderer. Besides, Bijoy was the head of the family. I had to believe that he would know how to handle this situation.
“We did not speak of the matter again.
“Bijoy did pranam to me before he left, touching my feet for blessing, and asked me to keep a lamp lit in front of the gods in the puja room. I held him as I whispered prayers into his hair, and for a moment a forgotten memory surfaced, from where I don’t know: how, before I left for my husband’s house, I would rock Bijoy in my arms—he was just a few years old then—his little body slumping into sleep, the smell of his hair like melted sugar.
“I kept that lamp lit every day, I prayed each morning and night to Ganesh, remover of obstacles, and Kali, protectress against evil. But I couldn’t stop the arrival of that death-bearing telegram.”
How much time passes before I realize that Pishi is gone and I am alone on the terrace? Vaguely I remember her coming ba
ck up the stairs when the story had ended, with tears in her eyes. Her trying to comfort me, and me holding my body hard and stiff against her, shoving her from me.
Now you see why I didn’t want to tell you, Sudha.
Go away, go, leave me alone.
For how long did I cry, and when did the tears get used up? Now laughter is spilling out of me in great, bitter gusts, because the past is not reliable and solid, the roots of a huge banyan, as Pishi has always led me to believe. The past is a Ferris wheel like the ones at the Maidan fair. A giant Ferris wheel, spun faster and faster by my father until it careens out of control. Until it is wrenched from earth, flung into the emptiness of the hot yellow sky.
My father, the handsome rascal, the masquerader with the dangerous, diamond laugh, blown in on a bad-luck wind. Who took the lives of this household into his hands and with his thoughtless wanting broke them like rotted drywood.
And my mother, who—it comes to me now—is my other secret.
My beautiful mother with that haughty look always on her face. My mother hinting through a toss of her head, an angling of her elegant neck, how much better things had been in her parents’ household. My mother, who was really the daughter of peasants, washing soiled clothes by a muddy river, who thought to erase her ancestry with a clever tongue.
The shame of their lies floods my head with thick crimson. Shame and more shame because others had watched them masquerade, first with suspicion and then with knowledge. Pishi, and surely if Pishi, Gouri Ma too. Watching them and me, knowing us for who we were long before I did.
There’s a stabbing in my belly, again, again, so that I must double over with the pain. A cramp wrenches my whole body. Perhaps one can really die of shame, as the old tales say?