*
And so it came to pass that Merrili the ex-demon was installed in Delia's warehouse. In the morning she asked him a lot more questions, fundamental things like address, age, occupation Merrili supposed it must be simple enough stuff but he could not answer. Delia decided that he was suffering from a condition she called amnesia, brought on by the shock of the attack. As this seemed to do as an explanation, Merrili left it at that. In his confusion during her interrogation, he even mispronounced his own name, so that from that time on, to Delia he was "Mel". There was little magic in that syllable, Merrili felt, but it would do.
Delia helped him to find work. On week nights he washed dishes in Purgatory's kitchen, and on Saturdays he helped behind the bar at happy hour. This was a great trial for him, for to be on his feet all evening was excruciating. But he hid his pain. He smiled and laughed with the customers. Everybody took to Merrili, for although he no longer possessed demonic levels of charm, he still had more than enough left over to make him a very socially adept human. As well as this, he was incredibly lovely to look at, by mortal standards. His dark lashes framed eyes that in some lights were a lively warm lustrous golden brown, and in others, amber, like a cat's. His lips were ruddy and plump and curved like Cupid's. His cheekbones were high and prominent, lending a certain dignified austerity to a face that otherwise might have been just a little too pretty. He was tall, but light and wiry with beautifully contoured muscles that were the envy of all the men who met him, and caused the women to want to touch him. All women except Delia herself.
Yes, they all fancied funny, handsome, mysterious Mel, Delia's amnesiac foundling - even those who already had men of their own. Merrili remembered the words of his sister. The human heart is a frail and unreliable thing.
They shared the housework, the shopping and the cooking, and after a month or so the new household of two was well established. Delia and Merrili became inseparable friends. It was only sometimes, at night, after he had done his shift at Purgatory and Delia had done her dance, that he became sad.
She would be curled up on the sofa with a book. He would sit as near to her as he could without causing her alarm, pretending to watch a late-night movie. He might reach out and hold her hand for a moment, and she would smile up at him. And he would ask the unaskable with his eyes, and she would reply with her own: You are my dear, beautiful, irreplaceable friend. How lucky I am to have found you. And then, perhaps if they had shared a glass of the sweet wine she liked to drink before going to bed, she might confide in him how badly she missed her lover, Bruno, whose home was on the other side of the world.
What kind of creatures are these, wondered Merrili, who would let mere geography stand in the way of what they thought of as true love? Still, aloud he sympathised, while inwardly cursing the Brazilian bastard to hell.
She told him how Bruno had found her and saved her that time at the airport, when there had been a terrorist bomb explosion. She had not even known Bruno was there that day. Then suddenly, there he was, a vision of splendour, brave Bruno rushing into that holocaust of fire and smoke. She would certainly have died, she told Merrili, had he not come. Merrili had to nod sadly, and agree, that yes, Bruno was certainly the best and bravest of men.
And since then, she told him, she and beautiful Bruno had re-established communication. They wrote each other funny letters - she showed Merrili one or two. He did not understand Bruno's humour. They often phoned each other and were in regular email contact. He was sweet and good, and she need only be patient. "One day," he had said to her, "we will work out a way to be together." And poor Merrili had to say, "Oh, how wonderful."
Delia took Merrili to parties and picnics and concerts and restaurants. He was sure that with time and patience she would come to see that he could be so much more than just a friend; that he was meant to be her lover, her warm, sweet, human lover who had sacrificed his home and the family he adored on the altar of his desire for her, and his desire to be like her, human and ensouled. A candidate for eternity.
Merrili knew that his hopes were not in vain. He knew that her love for Bruno was an illusory thing. He, Merrili, the ethereal being who had transformed himself from air and light to warmth and substance for her sake; he, Merrili, was the one who was meant for her. Did she not laugh and joke and play when she was with him? He knew that he made her happy. And whenever she spoke of Bruno, though her eyes were bright, her voice was full of anxiety. Yes, Merrili was convinced that it all just a matter of time.
And perhaps he was right. The problem was, he did not have that time. For one morning, when they were on their way out to meet up with a party of Delia's friends, another one of those envelopes with a Brazilian postmark was slipped through the letterbox. Delia snatched it up greedily and read it there and then, once to herself, then aloud to Merrili so that he could share in her joy.
The following week Bruno arrived. He moved into Delia's warehouse, into her room. He had taken a break from his work, and he had decided to spend it with his "little honeyeater". How this and other endearments tore at Merrili's heart! And now, instead of the two of them, there were three. That is, on good days, for much of the time, particularly in the evenings, Delia and Bruno would go out alone. Merrili would hear them returning after midnight, sometimes laughing, sometimes murmuring phrases he could not catch. At these times both voices were soft and very tender. They would retire to Delia's alcove at the other end of the warehouse, and Merrili would pull the blankets up over his ears to drown out the sound of their lovemaking.
A week later Bruno was gone, but Delia did not mind this too much. She had her assurance. She had her airline ticket. She had only to organise her affairs in her home town, which would take no more than a month, and then she would join Bruno in Brazil.
"You see," she explained to Merrili, her eyes glowing with excitement, "we have it all worked out! And guess what ? I want you to be my best man. Oh, I know women don't have best men, but for you we can surely make an exception. Bruno won't mind; he is the most kind and generous of men!"
Merrili agreed, yes, Bruno was kind and generous. "Oh, Mellie Mel Melon! Don't look so put out, you mustn't worry for me! Some marriages do work, you know. I've already looked over the pre-nuptial agreement - he's worked everything out in advance."
Her eyes were shining like those of a religious convert. Merrili had seen such people handing out books on the street. He had talked to them on more than one occasion, strange and fascinating creatures they had seemed. They all professed an absolute confidence in their convictions, but Merrili knew that behind this vigorous proselytising dwelt fear and uncertainty, else why would such people - and his Delia was one of them now - have to protest so much? He feared for her, indeed he did.
"In any case," she was saying, "we will have to make it legal, otherwise how would I get a work permit in Brazil? Mel - you must come too! You will, won't you? Say yes!" Merrili said yes.
"Oh, Mellie! This is so completely and utterly flawlessly excellent I think I might explode!"
That evening, after they had eaten, Merrili was feeling sad and hopeless. He went to bed early but he could not sleep. Instead he listened to her moving about the warehouse, going through her papers, her clothes, sorting out the useful from the useless in preparation for her big trip. After a while he heard her pour herself a glass of sticky wine, and go to the telephone. Soon she was talking to one of her friends.
"... So you think I'm silly to leave everything to join this man in a foreign place."
There was a slight quaver in her voice._"... Well, a_few misgivings maybe, but nothing that means ..."
"Oh look, I know, I know. Sure it worries me, I know it's hard enough for relationships to work out even under the easiest circumstances, and Bruno and I will have the usual problems, plus the language, cultural differences ... Oh, plenty ... Oh, god ..."
Merrili was frightened for her, but at the same time hope rose in his heart. But then she said, "What? Oh, yeah ..." Merrili could he
ar a little smile in her voice now. "... Oh, Mel - he'd be perfect. But I don't feel that way about him, simple as that. I mean, what can you do about that chemistry thing?"
A short while later he lost track of the conversation, for his heart was shrinking and shrinking. Soon there was nothing left but a cold, cavernous emptiness. How could so small a being as himself contain so much absence, he wondered, an aching nothingness wider than the Earth, broader than the sky where he had once lived in that castle of cumulus, with his father, his sisters, his brothers ...?
By the time he was capable of hearing again, Delia was saying, "You're right. I'm an idiot. It is perfectly obvious, isn't it? I've got no choice anyway. I love him. It's quite simple. Anyway, what's to stop us spending six months of the year in Brazil, and the other half of the year here? It'll work out, I know it will. I don't mind compromising, and Bruno is a man capable of great sacrifice!"
If only I could tell you what sacrifice meant, thought Merrili, you sweet, ignorant human. You irresponsible child. You foolish darling of my heart. And as he said this to himself, he felt that heart of his coming apart at the seams. If I still had my demon charm, you would not see this Bruno for my radiance. He would be a pallid thing, as bright as a heap of dead ash, as scintillating as wood. But there is nothing to be done. You have always seen me as a pretty friend, someone to play with while you waited for the real thing. While you waited for Bruno.
After Delia had gone to bed, Merrili rose from the twisted sheets. He went out the fire escape and climbed up to the roof. "And all that she said to her friend on the phone is right," he said aloud. "I am not the man Bruno is. I am not a man at all, and now I never can be. I will never have her love, and soon, very soon, I will die. And when I die it will be as though I never existed, for I have not earned myself a soul."
A cloud passed over the face of the moon, a great cloud whose edges glowed like molten steel. And obscured from mortal eyes from within this gloomy camouflage, he could just make out the stricken faces of his brothers and sisters: Bushel and Nick, Beatrice, Discretia and Indiscretia. They gazed down upon him in appalled sadness. "Oh, Merrili," they sighed together. "What you have done cannot be undone, and we are so very sad and so sorry. Oh, baby brother, there is no help for you at all ..." And their tears bathed the city in warm rain, and their grief was heard in the wind, and then they were gone, leaving Merrili to weep alone on the roof above the great city in the dark night.
On the departure date, Merrili and Delia took a taxi to the airport. She did not notice his melancholy, for she could only look ahead. The sad boy who sat next to her on the flight to South America was part of the present, and the present was simply something to be endured while her heart looked forward in joyful anticipation of her glorious future.
As far as Merrili could tell, the city they came to was a city like the one they had just left. It was bigger, and louder, and there were certainly more people, but it was just another town. Merrili wondered what it was that had so captivated him about the mortal world and the works of humankind, for nothing moved him now.
The band played beneath a magnificent canopy of red and gold and blue. There were dancers too, people of different colours wearing golden tunics and silver sandals, their hair set about with brilliant little birds and every kind of jewel. But none were so lovely as the dancing girl, Princess Delia, on the night he had first fallen in love with her, or on this day, the day of her wedding. Her mass of black hair was arranged in two cones, like a mediaeval lady. She was wearing a high-waisted dress of creamy lace, with long, close-fitting sleeves. She carried a bouquet of violets that matched her eyes, whose edges she had outlined in deep, dark blue. How those eyes of hers sparkled when she gazed into Bruno's face. Merrili now understood how futile his quest had been, for never, not once, had her face glowed with such happiness when she had looked upon him.
The priest mouthed the words that would symbolically join this couple together forever. Delia and Bruno signed the contract. Merrili knew that his life was over.
He left the wedding party and walked away into the darkening city. He gazed up into the blank, moonless night, then down to where, far below, the human traffic played and loved and hated and hoped and played some more. Soon, too soon, they would be consumed by the very passions that gave them life.
"Merrili, Merrili, look up! We are here!" Merrili looked up into the sky. The clouds parted and there, once more, were the faces of his brothers and sisters. "We have been to see Wherewithal," they called, "and he has given us the means by which to return to you your demon being!"
At first Merrili's spirits rose, but then he remembered from bitter experience that Wherewithal would not give anything away for free. "And what must I give in payment for this second lease on life?"
Her life for yours, Merrili!" cried Nick. "Here!"
From the sky there fell a little key. "This is the key to the bridal suite. You will need it," said Nick. "And also, this ..."
Merrili noticed a faint glow before him, a glow which gained in brightness as he watched. The light formed itself into the shape of a little knife. And now Beatrice's sweet voice rang out above the others: "Take this blade, Merrili!" And when he hesitated, they cried out in one voice: "Please! Take it!"
Merrili snatched the knife from the air. He felt its cool weight in his palm.
Then Beatrice was speaking again: "Before first light plunge it into the breast of she who has caused you and us all this grief! Her blood will fall upon you, and you will become again what you were. Her dying breath will waft over you and carry you back to us. You will be Merrili the trickster again, our little brother, our joy!"
"Her life is no great thing, Merrili," said Indiscretia, "for, after all, mortal existence is brief, no matter what. And then her soul will endure for all eternity. But for you, one life is all there is! Think on it, and you will see that you must do as we say!"
Mortal existence is brief, repeated Merrili to himself, as the great cloud rolled away, leaving him alone with the moon, the key and the dagger.
After a long time he made his way to the place where his princess and her groom were sleeping. He pressed his ear to the door, but there were no voices, there was no sound at all. He inserted the key in the lock and turned it very gently. He entered the room, and there, amongst disordered sheets and blankets, lay Delia and her husband. Her head lay on his shoulder, and strands of her fine, black hair made a delicate filigree pattern over his chest. Merrili reached over her to touch, ever so softly, a strand of this precious soft hair. "Already dead," he whispered under his breath. "Even as you live, your skin, your nails, your hair, all are dying on your body. You look so sweet and fresh, but already you are in a state of mortal decay."
Merrili's mind and body felt completely numb except for a single centre of sensation - the pain in his heart. The knife was light in his hand. He raised it above Delia's soft, unconscious body.
Bruno murmured softly in his sleep and curved his arm around her shoulder. His hand cradled one small, pink-tipped breast. A pale blue vein pulsed at her temple, full of miraculous life-giving animal blood. Blood to sustain her fragile mortal heart. "Sweet, fickle, human heart, my heart ..."
Merrili dropped the knife to the carpet, but stayed a moment longer to listen to the peaceful sound of their breath rising and falling together. Then he crept away and out into the grey dawn, which was already softening the black edges of the night. He knew that soon he would be gazing upon the last sunrise he would ever see. And as he thought this thought he felt the first deathly breath of dawn upon his brow. The touch was gentle. It did not hurt him at all. He felt his body as a fragile mass of loosely woven fibres which were softly, but very surely, unravelling. Softly and surely Merrili's flesh and the bones of his body were dissolving.
His brothers and sisters felt a light go out in their world when Merrili died, and the heavens became dark and the rain that was their tears fell upon the earth. When Merrili died, the shaman felt the flame that had inve
sted him with new vigour flicker and depart. His husk of a body hung in its tattered web as it had done before, and he cursed the stubbornness of the little demon, he cursed the waste. But when Merrili died, the energy that was his being did not dissolve into nothingness. It had go somewhere. Merrili was no longer a thing of flesh in human form, nor was he the entity of spirit-matter that he had been. He was something in between the two, something for which there is no name. Yet this nameless, weightless thing, this almost-nothing, was something, for nothing that ever existed in any world can ever truly cease to be.
Somewhere in a large Brazilian town the day dawned clear and bright upon an empty, rain-wet street. The source of brightness that had once been Merrili attached itself to a beam of light that, after a little time, penetrated the drawn curtains of the room where Delia and Bruno slept. The lovers lay within a cocoon of warmth and light.When Merrili died, Delia and Bruno awoke to a transformed world where there was no more uncertainty, no more anxiety about the future. When Delia looked into her lover's face, she knew that any fear, any last nagging residue of doubt had vanished.
At last, as a being lighter than light itself, Merrili had found his way into his princess's heart. At last Merrili was his own love. And he stayed there, at the centre of her mortal being, investing every day of the life she lived with her husband with the purest joy, the most constant love that it is possible for an unreliable human heart to feel.
First published by HarperCollins Publishers
Background to the story The Little Demon
The Little Demon is a homage to Hans Christian Andersen, a writer I loved as a child. Also I wanted to do a version of his The Little Mermaid because certain others had refused the fundamentally tragic nature of the story, possibly out of fear of upsetting or frightening young readers. While I don’t hold with gratuitously distressing children, softening the blow of the mermaid’s fate I feel does undermine the spirit of the tale.
Having said that, I should point out that in any case, unlike the original, The Little Demon is not written for children. It is just a fantastical story based in consensual, contemporary reality, for adults with a penchant for romantic tragedy.
Louise Katz has written novels, short stories and articles, and is the recipient of two Aurealis Awards for speculative fiction. Louise works at the University of Sydney as a writing teacher and is currently working on a fourth novel.
The Final Christmas
by Bem Le Hunte
August 14, 1947
“Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge…At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom…
“The appointed day has come – the day appointed by destiny – and India stands forth again, after long slumber and struggle – awake, vital, free and independent. The past clings on to us still in some measure and we have to do much before we redeem the pledges we have so often taken. Yet the turning-point is past, and history begins anew for us, the history which we shall live and act and others will write about…”
Even though Tulsi Devi had turned the wireless down to no more than a light crackle, the words spoken by the nation’s new ruler amplified in that room with the sheer nobility and passion of their message. Tears landed on her sari as she tried to picture Pandit Nehru speaking to the Indian Constituent Assembly, giving hope to the millions who sat outside under an August moon and looked up to see freedom in the stars beyond.
For a moment there was no fighting. Everything in the past was history, and everything in the future was a new land, awaiting its first pioneers. The bloodshed had been forgotten. The only thing worth remembering now were the heroes who had brought the country to this moment in time. Independence.
It felt like a moment cleaved from time. The British had finally gone. Yet there was nobody there with her to share this elation. Her seven-year-old daughter was fast asleep, because she had no stamina to stay awake until midnight, and her husband was asleep early, because he had no interest. For him midnight was simply the clock ticking over with the slow certainty that the country would soon be overrun by power-hungry politicians of its own making. As the nation experienced the exhilaration of freedom, Tulsi Devi remembered that she was the wife of a Colonel who had served in the British army, and as such could not lay claim to any of India’s newfound pride.
She thought for a moment if the Colonel’s ominous predictions could be fulfilled. What would their lives be like after the British? What would the next day be like and the day after that?
December 1946
Tulsi Devi had been meaning to say goodbye to Lily, the governess from her childhood, for many weeks. Photographs kept appearing in The Statesman showing the British packing up and boarding boats and trains. One week there was a photograph of an Englishwoman being carried onto a boat in a palanquin. The next week there was a photograph in The Statesman of a servant touching his English master’s feet goodbye. Was it already too late to say goodbye to Lily and Roy? The longer she left her visit to their house, the more concerned she became that she would be met with its new inhabitants.
Finally, when Tulsi Devi and the Colonel did go to say goodbye, Lily’s house was in boxes and her mind was already in England. Seeing this, the Colonel said:
“Where do you intend to spend Christmas this year, if I may ask?”
Where had he even imagined such a question? It had arrived like a bullet from a renegade soldier, catching Tulsi Devi off guard, because she knew him well enough to know what would follow.
“We have no plans this Christmas. It’s a bit difficult, because we’re all packed up to leave.”
“Well then we would be most happy to be your hosts on Christmas Day if you will allow us the honour,” he continued.
Lily agreed, seemingly delighted. “But please do not go to any trouble,” she insisted, without fully knowing the troubles that erupted in the wake of her words.“Christmas?” Tulsi Devi had said later to her husband, waving her arms around, pointing to the ornaments and paintings that had never once seen a Christmas celebrated in the Sundernagar house. “Christmas?” she repeated, as a question that could never have any answers. “What all are we going to give them for Christmas? What to celebrate? What are we going to cook?”
“Turkey,” the Colonel answered confidently. “The English like to eat turkey for Christmas. Or sometimes goose, or sometimes swan.”
“And where, if you please, are we going to find these birds? And who is going to cook them? Dhruv has never cooked meat in his life?”
“Then I will cook it,” came the Colonel’s reply. “And if I cook it, I will insist that we all eat it.”
“I will not touch it,” Tulsi Devi replied, for the first time in her life refusing one of her husband’s military-style orders.
“And you will insult your guests? You will feed them food that you would not eat yourself. For God’s sake woman, you will show some damned respect, if not for me, then for this Lily person.”
Christmas Day came closer and the Colonel visited the Officer’s Mess to try and order turkey. There was none to be found there, and so he started making inquiries through his contacts in Himachal Pradesh. Surely there was a turkey lurking somewhere, waiting for a high price before it lay its head down on the chopping block? Surely some peasant had been producing these damned creatures for the British to consume every year? He asked everyone, except, of course, Lily and Roy. Let them just come along on the day and see how he summoned the spirit of Christmas just like they did at the British Club.
The celebration of Christmas required a lot more than just a turkey. The next problem was the cutting of a Christmas tree. He would have gone north with an axe himself, except that the country was plagued with riots and civil unrest. “Wait and see,” he told Tulsi Devi, “after they’ve gone there’ll be nobody to control the rascals. They’ll give Jinnah his Pakistan and we’ll fear for our lives every time we step out of the house.”
With the land in turmoil there was nothing for it but to pay a handsome bribe – on this occasion to a bearer at the Officer’s Mess. “Take two days off work,” he told the man. “Bring me a tree with spikes down from the hills. And while you’re there, do one thing for me. Try and buy a turkey from some farmer.”
The singing of Christmas carols was another problem. Nobody knew any, not even the Colonel.
“Didn’t they teach you Christmas carols in the army?” Tulsi Devi asked.
“Do you think that the army was some kind of party?” he replied. “Who cares about singing? It’s not a child’s gathering. Let them sing some for us if they must.”
Their daughter, Rohini, was the only person who expressed an interest in learning carols. “Papa, I will arrange a choir,” she told the Colonel. “We’ll have a party and all of us will learn a carol to sing to the English people.”
So a party was organised and five seven-year-olds were taught to sing Silent Night, by a colleague of the Colonel’s who had served in a military band. “It’s just like the story of Krishna,” he told the children, whose mouths opened wide when they sang those unfamiliar words. “Just pretend you’re singing the baby Krishna to sleep.”
In spite of the difficulties, the Colonel was determined to make that Christmas his own personal farewell to the country he had served, as if the British had been his guests, and his alone, over the past two hundred years.
After plans for this farewell were in place, the Colonel decided that he would just have to relax, wait, and see how everything turned out. It’s just a party, he kept reminding himself. They have been guests of Tulsi Devi’s family for so long, they must know how we people are. When Tulsi Devi offered help, the Colonel refused, saying: “I will manage everything. Your job is to enjoy Christmas.”
Come Christmas Day, Roy, Lily and their daughter Juliet arrived punctually at noon. They had Christmas presents for everyone. Rohini was given a baby doll that drank from a bottle and wet her nappies – a doll that was so coveted it had to spend many nights away from home, wetting its nappies in strange beds all over Delhi. Next, Tulsi Devi was given a huge box of household ornaments that Lily and Roy had decided to leave in India, and the Colonel was given a small flame tree.
“I wanted to give you something that’ll stay alive and remind you of us for many years to come,” Roy said.
“There are so many things the British have given us to remember them by,” said the Colonel, shaking hands with Roy. “Your gift is most kind and we will give it pride of place.” All the time he was wondering how he could have overseen this exchange of gifts. He felt stupid and humbled by his lack of generosity and started to think about what they might be able to produce at the last moment as a Christmas present from their side. Unable to imagine anything suitably worthy, he decided upon a simple distraction tactic. “Have you seen our Christmas tree?” he asked.
“That’s the most enterprising Christmas tree I’ve ever seen,” came Roy’s reply.
“What does enterprising mean?” Rohini asked.
“It means ‘very pretty’, Tulsi Devi quickly whispered. Even she knew that it wasn’t a real Christmas tree – more like some dying branches hacked from a fallen Himalayan pine. She’d heard her husband shout abuse at the man at the gate who delivered that tree and the turkey the previous day.
Christmas lunch was served by Dhruv and another two chefs from the British Club who had been hired for the occasion.
“What an incredible spread of food!” Lily remarked. “Absolutely grand effort,” Roy added, and the two families tucked into the food whilst the servants watched, hungry for the Indian food they had cooked separately for themselves.
Tulsi Devi and Rohini discreetly took small pieces of the turkey and placed them under some roast potatoes on their plates. The Colonel braved the bird and took an extra large portion to compensate. As they tucked into the English food, Roy said, “we’re going to miss India. Really. It’s been such a privilege to work here.”
“But aren’t you excited to be going home?” Tulsi Devi asked.
“It’s not my home yet,” their young daughter Juliet said. “I’ve never been to England.”
“She’s in for a shock,” added Lily. “There’ll be no maidservants over there to clean up, no cooks, no nothing. Juliet will have to learn some independence.”
“We’re all going to have to learn about independence,” the Colonel added sagely. “And we’re going to have to learn that it comes at a price.”
There was an uncomfortable silence before the Colonel continued. “If they divide India and give Jinnah his Pakistan there will be bloodshed like this country has never seen before.”
“They won’t divide India,” Tulsi Devi interrupted, mostly through politeness to their guests. Yet she knew as well as the Colonel that it was only a question of time before some doddery English hand drew a line that would separate India from herself: create Pakistan and create huge upheaval in the process.
“It’s going to happen,” Roy spoke, quietly. “It’s been decided. But God only knows where the division will be.”
There was a knock at the door to break the awkwardness of their political discussions. Dhruv left the table and came back with a group of five giggling girls.
“The children are going to sing Silent Night, announced the Colonel, back in his festive spirit as the commander of events. “Come betis, sing for us.”
Silence.
“Come along now. Sing it for the nice people.”
“They’re shy,” Juliet said.
“This is why it’s called Silent Night, I guess,” Roy laughed.
“You must sing now children, come on.”
Lily started them off, Rohini joined in, and then all the children started singing self-consciously about heavenly peace and the night that a holy infant was born, not in India, not in England, but in some place that none of the children had heard of.
March 1947
“It is a fateful moment for us in India, for all Asia and for the world. A new star rises, the star of freedom in the East. A new hope comes into being, a vision long cherished materialises. May the star never set and that hope never be betrayed…
“We think of our brothers and sisters who have been cut off from us by political boundaries and who unhappily cannot share at present in the freedom that has come. They are of us and will remain of us whatever may happen, and we shall be sharers in their good or ill fortune alike…
“To the nations and peoples of the world we send greetings and pledge ourselves to cooperate with them in furthering peace, freedom and democracy. And to India, our much-loved motherland, the ancient, the eternal and the ever-new, we pay our reverent homage and bind ourselves afresh to her service. JAI HIND!
The Colonel turned the radio off. “Can’t they stop replaying that speech of his? Nothing has improved since this Independence business. As peace-loving citizens we should beg the English to return and restore some order to this place.”
Tulsi Devi continued eating her paranthas at the breakfast table. “It will settle down. It has to. How long can people carry on killing each other? Muslims against Hindus. Everybody against everybody else.”
“As long as people are leaving their homes and losing the people they love they will retaliate.”
Tulsi Devi couldn’t eat with her husband brewing up for an argument, and so she picked up the paper and pretended to read. Her eyes were tired from being woken too early by the morning call to prayer that floated out from behind the walls of the Old Fort where Muslims were temporarily being given refuge and protection. The wailing submission to divine forces had been so heart-piercing, so haunting, that she couldn’t help but pity the Muslims who survived beyond those walls, refugees in their own city.
Her tired eyes rested on The Statesman headlines. More killings, more unrest, more fear, more hatred. The Colonel, not wanting to discard his argument, stood behind her and looked over her shoulder, pointing to th
e pages of the newspaper. “See what I mean? This fighting is relentless.”
“It’s the fault of your beloved British,” Tulsi Devi responded with unusual pluck. “This business of a divided India was their idea. It was their good-bye present to us.”
“And what good-bye present did we give in return?” asked the Colonel, and both of them, without saying a thing, remembered Christmas Day and their inability to reciprocate the generosity of Lily and Roy.
“Look here,” Tulsi Devi said, pointing to a picture in the paper. An Englishman was standing next to a gangplank in Bombay with a coolie holding a peacock, its legs tied together for the journey. “This was a goodbye gift from a distinguished Indian to his English colleague.”
The Colonel looked at the picture closely and once more he thought about Christmas Day. He thought about the bearer who arrived the evening before with a bird of around the same proportions, diligently plucked so that it resembled a turkey in every way except for a few electric blue feathers on its neck.
Who knows what Lily and Roy would have thought if they’d known what they’d been offered to eat for their final Christmas in India? What would they have said or done? One good thing about Independence, the Colonel thought, is that nobody will ever have to find out.
The Final Christmas was first published by HarperCollins Publishers
Background to the story The Final Christmas
I wrote The Final Christmas as a literary accompaniment to a novel I published in 2000, The Seduction of Silence, a story of five generations of an Indian family. A spiritual and emotional journey that traversed 100 years, three continents, this life and the next, The Seduction of Silence flourished with untold stories that couldn’t fit between the jacket sleeves produced by HarperCollins and Penguin, my publishers. The abundance of excess narrative somehow demanded recording. The Final Christmas is just one of the stories that evolved out of my novel: it tells of how the British finally left India, having stayed as uninvited guests for over 200 years.
In The Seduction of Silence every character had a complex relationship with the British, and so in The Final Christmas, each of them translates Nehru’s triumphant ‘Freedom at Midnight’ speech to fit their individual ideologies. I hope you enjoy this short story, and if you do, I’d love to hear what you think of this and The Seduction of Silence, should you be willing to share your response at www.bemlehunte.com. Happy reading and thank you so much for sharing these stories with me!
Praise for The Seduction of Silence
“The Seduction of Silence is a work of persuasive imagination, of such scope, power and narrative charm that it does make you wonder, as with Salman Rushdie and Rohinton Mistry and others, whether all good modern writing has an essential connection with the Indian sub-continent.”
Thomas Keneally, Booker Prize winning author of Schindler’s List
“A splendidly conceived saga weaving the history of an entire culture into the portrait of one family: vivid, compelling, utterly fascinating.”
Kirkus Review, US.
“Passion, grief and glory infuse this novel, which is at once wholly original and yet squarely in the tradition of the great family sagas. In prose as vivid and arresting as a marigold, Le Hunte gives us five generations of seekers. Her account of what they find and what they lose is irresistible. I couldn’t put it down.”
Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize winning author of March
“This intricate tale moves across continents and time as it maps the reaches of the soul. Is Le Hunte an Anglo-Indian Allende? Or even a female Rushdie? You decide in a very worthwhile read.”
Helen Elliott, Vogue.
To buy a copy of The Seduction of Silence please visit www.bemlehunte.com.
Biography
Bem Le Hunte is Indian by birthright, British by descent and Australian by choice. She is the author of several short stories and three novels. The Seduction of Silence and There, Where the Pepper Grows have been published internationally to critical acclaim by HarperCollins and Penguin, and Father of all Stories (publication pending) forms part of a recent doctoral submission at the University of Sydney. It should soon be the inaugural e-published novel of The Royalties.
Conversation in the Desert
by Sue Woolfe
She only knew the desert in her country from postcards she’d send overseas to friends, when she wanted to seem interesting and exotic.
This is my country, she’d write.
As she belonged to the desert, as if she knew what belonging meant.
She was a child of migrants who’d settled here at various stages over a century, sheltering from who knows what deeds done against them. They’d been too traumatized to tell. But she’d only lived in the Europeanised, Americanised cities on the coastal rim, crammed with new settlers. She longed to be with people who deeply belong here, and had forever, so that something of what they are might help her belong more. Might help her come home.
One day the longing was too great to bear. It happened that she had a childhood friend who’d become a nurse for a tribe in the desert, hundreds of kilometers from the nearest town. In her twice a year e mails, Pat would apologise for being so seldom in touch; she was just too busy. Once she explained that she’d given up on her family and they’d given up on her, she survived on Timtam biscuits from the bush store and wore the same clothes all week.
Frances told her friend she was coming to look after her.
What language do they speak there? she wrote.
Some weeks later a tape arrived in the mail, with no accompanying letter, just a note scribbled on the back of a torn envelope saying that the language on the tape wasn’t quite the right language because it hadn’t been written down yet, but this was more or less the same. Frances listened to the tape every night, surprised that in a desert where surely everything was just sand hill after sand hill, the people had evolved such a complicated way to speak. But she wasn’t daunted. Then she took three months off work, bought a second hand land rover and drove for ten days. She was like a woman possessed.
She knew she’d reached the desert when the ground turned from black to the colour of sunsets, blushes, apricots. She left the tarred roads behind, often stopping to consult a map, often lost. There was never any one to ask. Behind her, dust rose like smoke. She camped at nights, lighting fires and heating cans of food. At first she was frightened of the heat, axe-murderers, dingoes, snakes, spiders, anything. She’d never been a brave woman, but she was in love with her mission. In early light the dust was mauve, the mulga trees were olive, the mountains were emerald green. By mid-morning the ground was red, the mountains Prussian blue. As she drove, yellow light moulded mountain ranges into hundreds of smaller hills, sometimes with gold outcrops that in another country from a distance she’d glimpse and think, Aha! A castle! But here there were no castles, no buildings, no sign that humans existed. Or were there? The thought crossed her mind that the people she was soon to talk to might be able to see such signs. Once she stopped for a break at a dried-up clay pan, with thousands, probably millions of small, almost perfectly formed hexagonal clay clumps like pieces of a giant board game. She’d pick one up and beneath it would be another, and another, all the same shape. She crouched alone in a space so vast and still that even a breeze seemed a dramatic act. After a while, she was ready to believe, like Pythagoras, that the purity of line of a geometric shape represents something fundamental and as yet unknown about the universe. Above her hung a low intense cloud, itself like a phantom mountain. She drove on, but when she looked in her rear mirror, she saw that the dust behind her was now rising like uncertainty.
Another night it rained, sweeping adamant rain that brought leaks to her tent. The next day was sunny and still again as if nothing had happened, but in a matter of hours, it seemed, there were William Shakespeare type neck ruffs of green lacy weeds around the roots of gaunt tree trunks so twisted with light, they seemed as graceful as ballet dancers and without weight. Only the heat seeme
d to hold them down. By early evening of that day she’d travelled beyond the mountain range and was in country so flat with trees so low that when she turned on her heel that night, she saw the entire circle of the horizon spinning by. She didn’t put up her tent but lay under the dome of stars, watching the trajectory of the Southern Cross move directly above her toes, then above her stomach, above her chest, above her head. Until dawn, the black sky was spangled all the way down to the ground, all around her.
People who live here must be wonderful as the night, she thought. She would soon talk to them.
After many wrong turnings, she found a notice announcing the community, and then a windmill, and now her heart was hammering with excitement. She found herself in a village that looked like any ordinary village, though the ground was the colour of tomatoes. She passed naked black children laughing and shouting at a burst water main, their teeth startlingly white, and there was Pat at her gate, her once black hair now grey, her once slender body now chubby, her face like the face Frances remembered, but her wide toothy smile now disappeared into bulging cheeks and many chins.
Look at you, Pat said, for Frances was city slim and elegant, though her glossy skin was dusted with red. Their friendship used to be edged with competitiveness. There was a touch of envy in Pat’s voice now, Frances noted with a small puff of satisfaction.
After they’d hugged and taken the bags inside the house and had a cup of tea, Pat said she was just about to drive around doing the evening delivery of tablets to people who might otherwise forget to take them.
Isn’t this after hours? Frances said.
Pat laughed at the notion, and Frances saw that her old friend was full of an energy that seemed to bounce off her olive skin. Even her graying hair curled energetically.
You can come but don’t get out of the car, said Pat.
Why ever not? Frances was eager to be introduced, eager to begin talking.
It’s uncouth. Evening is family time. And don’t look at them. That’s uncouth too.
Looking is uncouth?
Just glance up, and look down again. That’s their way.
They drove around the tomato streets, Frances sitting in the car trying not to look but peeking. The people were so dark-skinned that in the evening light they seemed like shadows or burnt tree trunks. They didn’t live in their houses but around them, sitting in groups on gaudy blankets in the dust, women cooking over a small fire, men in other circles gambling, children sometimes playing with each other, sometimes sitting quietly with the women. There were large flat boards on flour drums she first took to be tables and looked around for chairs, but then she realized that the boards were probably beds. So the people slept under the stars as she had, she thought. Television sets were flashing colours and mumbling English in some yards, but they seemed like guests everyone ignored.
Are people talking about me? Frances couldn’t resist asking as they drove to the next house.
They notice everything, Pat said. They seem to read people’s bodies.
That thrilled Frances. Surely they’d see how eager she was to talk with them.
She was ready to forgive the grubbiness of it all, the walls of the houses stained with greasy hand marks, the cars rusting and dismantled in yards, the litter of papers and plastic bottles blown against fences and trees. After all, she told herself to calm her nerves, they’d been nomads and probably never had to think about cleaning up, just moving on to the next camp and leaving animal bones and seeds and chaff to the wind.
But when Pat drove down a street of partially demolished houses with the walls ripped off and only rusty framework left standing for years, Frances struggled with disappointment.
Someone should clean this place up, she said as they drove to the next house.
She felt Pat stiffen beside her.
Not you, of course, Frances added.
Pat grabbed a new batch of pills and slammed the door behind her, her back protesting. Frances, chastened, listened to the way she spoke simple English to the people, with only a few words of their language. Sometimes she gently touched the forearms of the women, and often she held their babies. When she returned from her next delivery she had softened, Frances saw.
When a relative dies here, his house can’t be lived in because of his cranky spirit. It must be destroyed and the family must move on, said Pat, offering her this information in a conciliatory way.
She drove to the next patient.
I know the mess is awful but the whites here who run the services do nothing. The headmaster, for instance, says this is the most degraded people on earth, Pat said.
Why don’t they sack him? asked Frances.
These are a gentle people, said Pat. Not like a neighboring tribe. These people put up with a lot. They don’t do things white people’s way. And they’re pre-occupied with family, huge families, all needy, all hungry. Rubbish is the last of their concerns.
She swung into another street and laughed fondly.
Though an old man yesterday complained that his yard was messy. He said he’d have to move house. I thought he meant the way his yard was littered with rubbish. But he didn’t. They still track here. See how they’re all bare-footed? He meant there were too many footprints. He couldn’t tell who’d been in his place.
When she came back from her next delivery she said:
You can’t stay if you’re going to criticise. You’ve got to look below the surface.
That’s why I came, said Frances.
What are your plans? Pat asked as they headed back to her house. Besides being my servant, she added with satisfaction.
I’m going to have real conversations, said Frances.
For a difficult, frowning month, Frances kept house for Pat, shopping at the only store (she winced at the extortionate prices), beginning a vegetable garden because the store didn’t sell vegetables, and re-learning the language at the house of another white person, a Lutheran missionary, an earnest, patient man who spent long hours every day questioning people about exact meanings while he made them cups of black sugary tea. Frances had studied Italian and Greek at school and she’d learned her tape assiduously but the local language turned out to be very different. She wouldn’t let herself be deterred. This language was more demanding with many cases and an entire page in the missionary’s half-finished, often handwritten dictionary of the ways to say “we”(she counted thirty ways). She discovered that much of the time when she wanted to say that someone did something, she had to split the verb open like a New York bagel and fill it with a number of other words chosen from scores of possibilities that showed at what point the speaker was in a journey- and then she must finish the sentence. So, the missionary said proudly, for he’d spent several years working this out, there were sixty nine ways of splitting the word to hit.
You split it to say you’re hitting while you’re going down a hill, hitting while you’re going up a hill, hitting while you’re walking away from the hearer, hitting while you’re heading towards the hearer...
His voice trailed on and on as if they were both dreaming.
What if you’re not traveling? Frances asked, hoping for an easy way out. This new linguistic complication might put off conversation for weeks. After all, there are lots of things you’d do when you were stationery – like cooking! she told him.
Even if you’re sitting at a fire and talking about the kangaroo you caught, said the missionary in triumph, you have to split the verb.
To her it seemed like the way Latin might’ve ended up if the Romans had been nomads.
After another month she visited Pat at the clinic and sat in the waiting room to try a conversation. A beautiful young mother with her breast bared for her baby smiled at her.
What’s your country? the young mother asked in English.
I usually live in Sydney, Frances said in her new language and lurched to a stop.
You’ve got a beautiful country, Frances said after a while in the language.
The woman fell silent, looked away.
Frances tried again.
Your baby is beautiful too, she said in the language.
The woman smiled again, caressed the baby’s back, but still averted her glance.
Over dinner Frances tried to keep irritation out of her voice.
I was trying to make small talk, she said.
They don’t do small talk, Pat said. They say, those white people, always talking.
That’s alright, Frances said. Really, I’m not interested in small talk. I want deep, meaningful conversation. Big talk.
Pat smiled at the intensity of her friend. She’d always been like this, even as a child, insisting on her own way, refusing to play with other girls if they didn’t play what she wanted. She’d refused sometimes to play with Pat.
What’s important to them is being together, said Pat. Silent company. Marlpa, I’ve heard it called by another tribe.
She saw how Frances’ lips shut in a determined line.
One morning at the end of the second month Pat ran up from the clinic to tell her that some people wanted to go for a drive for bush oranges which were in season. Frances was in the middle of watering the vegetable garden; she was enchanted with the willingness of the green sturdy leaves to shoot straight out of the red dirt.
Almost as if they want to feed us, she told Pat. She’d never grown anything before. Perhaps she could teach the people and turn them from a nomadic culture to an agricultural culture. It might be good for them and at least inspire them modify those terrible verbs.
Now, said Pat because Frances hadn’t turned off the hose. They’re ready to go now.
Won’t tomorrow do? asked Frances. It’s going to be very hot soon. I was thinking of putting up some shade cloth for the spinach.
They don’t plan ahead here, said Pat patiently. She was used to her friend.
They want to do it now. Not tomorrow.
They have cars, Frances said. Why would they want me to take them?
There’s no money for fuel, Pat said, still patient.
How far? Frances asked.
Down the road, Pat said. Do you want to get to know them, or not?
Pat filled Frances’ car with people- a slender old man with a bare chest and a black plastic leg, his two wives, one much younger than the other, and his two sisters. One sister sat in the front and smiled and then looked away. Frances did the same. She cast around for something to say but all the words in her mouth seemed like small talk and dried up like leaves in the sun. No one spoke, so she put off her meaningful conversation for a while and drove. It had rained recently and the churned red road with recent wheel tracks looked like a child’s finger painting. When they came to a fork in the road, she turned to her companion. She had learned that the language didn’t have left or right, just north, south, east and west and she wasn’t exactly sure which way she was facing. But her companion didn’t speak, she just indicated the road with a graceful, economical gesture, her hand stretched out ahead with the fingers clamped together and slanting to the right. Frances drove for another hour.
Stop, one of the wives at last called in English from the back.
Frances stopped. Her companion was gazing out at the mulga. In the back, everyone else gazed in the same direction. It’s just undifferentiated trees, Frances thought impatiently.
What are we looking at? she managed to ask in their language.
No one answered her.
Rubbish, someone said in English.
Rubbish? repeated Frances.
These bush oranges rubbish, her companion said in English.
It came to France suddenly.
They’re not ripe? Frances asked in their language.
Her companion didn’t answer, but gestured onwards.
Frances drove. It was like city people going out for dinner to some distant restaurant because it’s had good reviews, she told herself. After another eighty kilometers, one of the wives called again.
Stop.
Frances again saw only undifferentiated mulga, but her companion indicated with her hand that Frances should start the car again.
Slow, said the woman in English.
They pulled up underneath two trees that Frances hadn’t noticed. She looked up. Green bulbous fruit hung high up like Christmas decorations.
Everyone clambered out. Frances, wanting to impress with her helpfulness, climbed up on the Landrover roof and threw the fruit down to waiting hands. This seemed popular. When there was no more to pick, she stood shyly amongst the seated group until one of the sisters patted the dusty ground. Frances sat then, trying to cross her legs like them though it hurt, and ate and told herself not to worry about how she’d wash the red dust out of her trousers. She was glad they weren’t her best cream ones. The oranges were not like anything she’d ever tasted. They were layered in flavour. At the first bite they tasted like mango and then as she neared the seed, like marzipan without sugar, with an aftertaste of kerosene.
Suck the seed, said her companion in English, breaking a long silence. Frances obeyed. The seed was almost bitter but she pretended to like it. Perhaps it was doing her good. She even threw the seeds down on the ground like they did, stifling her impulse to bury them so they’d grow for the future. She reminded herself that this was a language without a future tense that extended more than a few days. Besides, burying the seeds might make it look as if she was trying to do magic. She’d learned a little about their beliefs. She didn’t want to do anything uncouth. Everything must aid her towards having a conversation.
Beautiful food, she said in their language when she could bear the silence no more.
Everyone laughed, and looked away.
So she put off conversation for later in the drive.
She was expecting to re-trace their route but when they came to another fork in the road, her companion silently indicated another way. Frances hesitated, then did as she was told.
Stop, a sister called after a while.
Everyone climbed out except the old man who had fallen asleep, and they bent over bushes at the side of the road, gathering handfuls of long fronds.
What is it? Frances asked in language.
Bush medicine, said her companion in English.
Frances wanted to help, so she found identical bushes on the other side of the road and gathered a big bouquet of fronds. Soon the back of the car was littered. Frances lay her own bunch proudly on the dashboard for everyone to see. It might bring on a conversation.
What’s this for? her companion asked in English about Frances’ fronds.
Your bush medicine, said Frances, surprised.
Her companion reached over to the back, picked out from the pile one of the fronds and held it up to compare it to Frances’s fronds. The leaves were different.
No bush medicine, said her companion.
Frances laughed, and the woman smiled gently.
They drove again in silence.
Stop, someone called again.
Everyone clambered out except for the old man, who had taken off his black plastic leg and laid it across the back seat.
Frances again could see only mulga but the group was pulling at the trees and filling plastic bags with elongated green fruit.
Bush pears, said one of the wives in English to Frances who stood watching.
Soon the women ranged out of sight, coming back every now and then with plastic bags bulging with green pears which they emptied into buckets. Frances didn’t want to walk away from the car. The heat of the sun was beating on her head like a drum. She’d forgotten her sunhat. She shaded her eyes and circled a few trees because she wanted to show she was interested, but she could only find two pears. When one of the wives returned, bringing another bulging bag to the car and depositing it inside, careful not to disturb the old man or his leg, she touched Frances’ arm and walked some distance off. She lay down on the ground, patting it, indicating that Frances should come over and lie beside her. But F
rances didn’t want to rest.
Come, the woman called in English. Frances walked over reluctantly, half obeying the woman, half dazed by the sun. The woman patted the ground more emphatically. Frances sat down nearby, thinking that this wasn’t the right moment for conversation. She wouldn’t be able to split her verbs accurately, not in this heat. The woman banged the ground so hard, dust rose around her ample body. Frances didn’t like to sit so close. She hesitated, then thought better of it and wriggled over. But the woman still wasn’t satisfied. She insisted with her hand that Frances lie beside her rather than sit.
My mother taught me when she was growing me up, said the woman in English.
This seemed to promise the conversation at last, at least about childhoods, so Frances lay down. Only then did the woman raise her arm and point. Then Frances understood. From that angle, with the breath of the woman on her face, she could see pear vines as they twined from one branch to another high up in the tree against the blue, searing, endless sky.
From out of her pocket the woman fished a crumpled plastic bag and handed it to Frances.
Get some, she said.
The car by now smelled sweetly of plants but Frances barely noticed. She turned on the ignition key in a trance. Again she expected to retrace their route but again the woman beside her indicated another way. They drove cross-country far from the road, over spiky blonde spinifex and deep water course ditches, beyond an outcrop of orange rocks and then, suddenly in front of them, smiling at the sky, gleamed a narrow stretch of water. The women burst out of the hot car and waded in, fully clothed. They submerged themselves and then beckoned to Frances, who’d paused at the edge of the waterhole, just wetting her feet.
You too, said one of the wives in English.
She followed them in until she was waist-deep. The water was about the same temperature as the air, not cold as it would be on the coast but she didn’t mind. It was red with mud, but when she moved back to the shallows, her wet body discovered a breeze and almost sang in pleasure.
Beautiful, she said.
Everyone laughed and looked away.
She sank into the warm water then and let its soupy depths take the weight of her tired body. It was like yielding to a lover. It enfolded her. She turned luxuriously on her back and gazed at the torrent of blue sky and floated for a while in wonder. She turned again and buried her face in the warm wetness and almost slept. When finally she stood up, small animals brushed softly against her feet and legs but she didn’t care. The water and the women would look after her. For one of the first times in her life, she felt no fear. Afterwards she saw that the red mud had stained her clothes, but she didn’t care.
She drove back into the community when the moon was so high it had drowned the stars. She took the women and the old man to their house. They disappeared into the darkness carrying their fruit and medicine fronds without saying goodnight or thanking her, but by now she knew that was their way. Greetings and thanks are small talk.
Pat had cooked dinner for once. It was waiting on the table, covered with a freshly washed tea towel. Frances slumped in her chair. She couldn’t find the energy to speak, but she lifted her fork and toyed with the food to please her friend.
You’ve had a good time, her friend observed.
The conversation I came for, said Frances.
For more information about Sue Woolfe please go to https://www.suewoolfe.com.au
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