“We must teach Sarala to read and write,” the wife told the sister one day. Turning to the maid, who was combing out her hair with long, sweeping strokes, she asked, “Would you like that?”
The maid’s face was that of someone who, after being in a dark room all her life, sees a window opening and the brilliance she’d only heard about till then pouring in. “Oh yes, Didi.” Then her voice faltered. “But do you think I can?”
“Of course,” said the wife. “You’re a clever girl.”
“But Dadababu—he may not like it. I don’t want him to be angry with you.”
The wife did not deny what the maid said about the husband, and the sister, surprised, thought, She knows more than I realized.
“Dadababu need not know,” said the wife after a moment, smiling again. “It can be our secret.”
And so the lessons began.
The wife bought the maid a slate and chalk and a primary reader, and in the hot hushed afternoons when she couldn’t sleep (for she was increasingly uncomfortable nowadays with the great growing swell of her belly pressing up into her chest, making it hard to breathe), she taught her the Bengali alphabet. The sister would sit in one of the cushioned chairs in the dim bedroom, smelling the damp grassy odor of khush-khush screens lowered against the heat, and watch as the wife helped the maid shape the letters. She would look at her sister’s fingers—fragile, almost translucent—curving over the maid’s sturdy dark ones, she would listen to her soft, clear voice enunciate the sounds—cha, la, bha, sha—and the maid’s faltering echo, and love for her sister would sweep through her, ferocious as a fire or flood. But beneath the love would be a prick of apprehension, a voice in her heart saying, Where will this lead?
News traveled, of course, in spite of the closed bedroom doors, as it always does in a house full of servants. Down to the kitchen, in jealous whispers, then up again to the old aunt, who had her informers. And the aunt, who had never really liked the wife in spite of her many kindnesses (or perhaps because of them, for that is how the human heart sometimes works), who had often complained to her friends—other old women living in bitterness on the charity of relatives—that she was too modern and uppity and not a fit daughter-in-law for the Bandopadhyay family, said casually one night at dinner, “So now you’re teaching that woman to read and write.”
“Yes,” said the wife. Her voice was composed enough—experienced in the ways of large households, she must have expected this to happen sooner or later—but a slight flush tinged her cheeks.
“What’s this now?” said the husband. When the wife explained, his lips pressed together in displeased thinness. “Don’t you think you should have asked me before you started all this?”
“When,” said the aunt, “did she ever ask anyone.”
“I didn’t think you’d be interested,” said the wife. “It is a small thing, after all.”
“Small things lead to big problems,” said the aunt.
The sister felt the rage rise in her like a wild wind, but she bit down on her tongue to keep herself quiet. Anything she said, she knew, would only harm her sister’s case.
“Aunt’s right,” said the husband. “Things like that give ideas to the lower classes, especially the women. Makes them want to rise above their station.”
“Next she’ll be asking for a higher salary,” the aunt began. “Then more vacation time, then …”
For the first time the wife interrupted. Speaking only to her husband she said in a clear voice, “They’re so exploited, our people, because they’re illiterate. The women most of all. And Sarala—she’s such a smart girl. It would be a great pity to waste her intelligence. I know your grandfather would have felt the same way.” Her eyes were like diamonds, with a chiseled spark to them.
Faced by that resolute shine, the husband seemed at a loss for words. Finally he said, “Oh, very well, go ahead. But you remember what we told you, Aunt and I. You watch out for that maid.”
Later in private he told the aunt, “We don’t want to upset her, not at this time. I’ll take care of things later.”
The maid was as good at the lessons as at everything else. Soon she learned her letters and was able to decipher simple words. After a while she could even read a few nursery rhymes aloud to the little girl, who was quite excited by this turn in events and annoyed the old ayah terribly by saying that she liked Sarala better and wanted to play only with her.
Writing came harder. Callused and unschooled, the maid’s fingers found it difficult to form the twists and turns of the sha, the sharp angles of the ra, the tight curls of the la. But she wouldn’t give up. Every night on her way to bed the sister would see her sitting under the corridor light outside the storeroom, head bent in concentration, wiping, with the edge of her sari, the erratic, disobedient lines that slashed the slate again and again.
Finally one day the maid presented to her mistress the slate across which was written, in crude and barbaric letters, yes, but clearly enough, her name. The wife stood up and pulled her close for a hug, saying, “Sarala, that’s beautiful, I’m so proud of you.” The slatted sunlight from the window illumined the faces of both the women, the tears glistening on their lashes, and the sister, whose eyes had filled too, felt blessed, as though for a moment she had been allowed to look into the heart of grace.
The next morning, after the black Studebaker had disappeared with the husband down the newly washed driveway that smelled of lemon blossom, the wife called the maid into the bedroom and opened the mahogany almirah that held her clothes. She pulled out the bottom drawer, which was filled with colorful silks, and the scent of sandalwood from the sachets that nestled between the saris filled the room.
“I want you to choose a sari—any one,” she said to the maid. “It’s my gift to you for learning so well.”
The maid shied away, a scandalized look on her face, for the saris were expensive and far above her station. The sister, who had been sitting on the bed, watching, drew in her breath in sharp dismay, for it seemed to her that the wife was making a serious error.
“Go ahead,” said the wife encouragingly. Looking at the maid’s expression she added, “Don’t worry, these saris are quite old, and Dadababu thinks they’re dreadfully out of style. I’ll probably never wear any of them again. So no one should mind.”
The sister stared at the wife’s face, wondering if she really believed what she was saying. Plenty of people, she knew, would mind. Her sisters enormous innocence made her feel at once sad and envious.
“Didi,” she ventured, “I don’t think it’s such a good idea. Perhaps instead you can give her …”
The wife whirled to face her with unusual anger (though the sister could see, even then, that the anger wasn’t directed at herself). “These saris are mine,” she said. “From before marriage. No one else has the right to say what I should do with them.”
The sister realized that she had made a mistake in judging the wife as too innocent.
After much persuasion, the maid timidly picked out one of the simpler pieces, a saffron silk with a thin gold border worked in the shape of peepul leaves.
“Good choice,” said the wife approvingly. “Saffron is one of my favorite colors, too. Here, see, it has a matching blouse. Go wash up and put it on so I can see how it looks on you.”
The sister’s brief hope that the unfortunate sari would lie at the bottom of the maid’s box until her sister forgot about it died. She tried again to stop her, to say that perhaps another day would be better, but the wife, her face like marble, turned from her and said, “Now.”
So the maid went and put on the sari. Perhaps she had intended at first merely to show herself to her mistress and then, using the excuse of work, change back into her regular clothes. But when she felt the silk against her skin, softer even than the petals at the heart of a lotus, something seemed to come over her. She searched in her box till she found a bro ken piece of mirror and held it up for a long moment to see how the fabric glowed like d
awn against her ebony skin. Then she combed out her hair and tied it into a braid that swung against her hips. And finally—can you blame her? she was not much older, after all, than the sister—she went into the little girl’s room and took some of the homemade kajal that is believed to be good for children’s eyes and applied a tiny bit of the lampblack to her lashes.
“You look very nice,” said the wife when the maid knocked shyly on the door. “You should always wear your hair like that.” She was lying on the bed, which was unusual for her this early in the day, with her swollen feet propped on a folded quilt. Against the pillowcase embroidered with turtle doves her smile flickered tiredly, as though she’d been pushing an enormous weight uphill. “I think I’ll rest for a few hours now. Maybe you can bring me up a little sweet yogurt for lunch, Sarala. And if you”—turning to her sister a trifle apologetically—”could supervise Khuku’s bath and make sure she takes her nap, you know how naughty she can be sometimes. …”
“Of course I will,” said the sister with a reassuring smile as she drew the curtains. “You just rest and don’t worry about any of it.” But inside she was thinking how her sister didn’t look well at all, how as soon as he came home she must ask her brother-in-law to send for old Dr. Hazra. She was also thinking of a tactful way of telling the maid to take off the saffron sari and tie her hair up the old way, but before she could find the right words the girl had run down to the kitchen to fetch her mistress a glass of cold pomegranate juice.
In the kitchen the cook’s jaw dropped as the maid entered, and the bearer-boy who ran errands pursed his lips in a low whistle as he watched that braid swing against the slim waist. The ayah, who was squatting by the door chewing paan, drew in her breath so sharply that a sliver of betel nut caught in her throat and she coughed and coughed until the cook hurried over and thumped her on the back.
The maid hid a triumphant smile and went about her task in her usual reserved way, peeling pomegranates and crushing the pods in the juicer until a deep red liquid filled a glass.
The ayah, who had recovered by now, stated acidly that it was well known that when ants grew wings, the time of their doom had arrived.
The maid filled the glass calmly with ice chips, not letting a drop of juice spill to the silver tray on which it sat, but when she left her chin was up just a bit straighter, her braid swung a little more than before, and she continued to wear the saffron sari (which she had been intending to put away) for the rest of the day.
Later the sister would think back to this day as the highest point on a wheel—the wheel of luck, perhaps, or karma, the moment of balance when everything was as perfect as it can be in this flawed world. Perhaps, by its very nature, such a time cannot last but must topple into darkness as the wheel continues to turn. But the sister blamed the sari for what happened next, that ill-fated sari around which wisps of disaster (which might otherwise have dissipated) coalesced and took shape. The sari that burned through the afternoon like a taunt to the gods with its thoughtlessly cheerful tint, its gay, gold palloo fluttering behind the maid as she played tag with the little girl around the tall oleander bushes.
Darkness was falling—suddenly, violently, as it always does in the twilightless tropical evenings of Calcutta. Smoke from the charcoal chula the cook had lit in the backyard hung in the air, heavy, acrid as a premonition. The wife slept on, stretched unmoving on the high white bed like someone drugged or dead. From her own bedroom window the sister crinkled her eyes through the purplish haze to see the two figures weaving among the bushes, a flicker of burnished gold, then her niece’s child-voice rising querulously as her pursuer caught up with her, No, no, I don’t want to go inside yet.
The sister was about to call down an admonition when she noticed the husband—the chauffeur must have just let him out at the front porch—walking toward the two of them. The maid and the girl, their backs toward him, were busy arguing. So the sister was the only one who noticed how his gait took on the predatory lope of a wolf—or was it a jackal? Before she was able to force a cry out of the dry tightness of her throat, his arm was around the maid’s waist, pulling her hard against him. Shock stiffened the maid’s body for a moment. Then she was struggling, pushing fiercely, mutely at the husband’s chest, while the little girl tilted up her curious head—her large luminous eyes so like her mother’s—to watch them.
He let her go at once, of course. From where she gripped the edge of her window, the sister could hear the laugh low and deep in his throat, the smooth murmur of his words as he bent to pick up his daughter. She knew what he was telling her as he stared after the disappearing figure of the maid. A mistake. I thought it was your mother.
It was certainly not impossible. It was almost dark by now, and the maid had been wearing the wife’s sari. But the sister stood at the window for a long time after, her head against the bars, her eyes squeezed shut, feeling the cold rust fleck off on her forehead, the thick, muddy fear clog her heart.
The next day the wife was worse. Her face was the color of chapati dough, and the flesh around her eyes was soft and puffy. She complained of a dull ache low in her abdomen, and when the aunt suggested a poultice of warm turmeric, she didn’t say no. Watching her lie there submissive and motionless, eyes closed, while the aunt rubbed the yellow paste on her belly, the sister thought for a moment, She’s dead. And though she tried to pluck the bad-luck words out from her mind, they wouldn’t go.
“I want to call the doctor,” she said.
“What for?” said the aunt. “This poultice is the best thing for pregnant women—didn’t I tell you how my sister-in-law …”
“Where’s the number?” the sister asked. “You’d better wait till Babu comes home and ask him if he thinks it’s really necessary,” said the aunt.
“The number,” said the sister, leaning over the wife, and the wife lifted her hand to point at the bureau and let it fall heavily again.
When she finally got through to the doctors office, the sister found out that he couldn’t be reached—he was at the hospital performing an operation. She had to be satisfied with the assistant’s assurance that he’d written down everything she’d said, and that the doctor would come over as soon as he could, probably sometime that night.
The sister stood outside the wife’s room for a while, biting her Up, listening to her sister moan. It was a low, hopeless animal sound that distressed her more than the sharpest cry of pain would have. She finally decided to call the brother-in-law, although yesterday she had thought she would never be able to speak to him again. But the operator at his firm informed her that he wasn’t back yet from lunch.
“Choto-didi.” It was the hesitant voice of the maid. “Do you think I might have the afternoon off?”
The sister looked up at her distractedly. Even through her worry, a part of her mind was pleased to note that the maid had gone back to her usual mode of dress. Her hair was pulled back more tightly than before, making the edges of her eyes slant slightly upward, giving her face a quality of alienness. She was surprised, though, that the maid would choose this day to want to go somewhere. It wasn’t like her. The other servants were always manufacturing elaborate excuses for why they must have a day off, but the maid had never asked for a vacation since she’d been hired, so that the sister had supposed that she didn’t know anyone in the city.
“I guess it’s all right,” she said. It would have been more correct for the girl to ask the aunt for permission, but she couldn’t blame her. From the bedroom she could hear the old woman’s nasal voice telling the wife that a glass of black tea with a sprig of tulsi seeped in it would be just the thing for her cramps.
“Be sure to come back fast,” she said over her shoulder as she hurried to protect her sister from more of the aunt’s home remedies.
“Oh yes, Choto-didi, I will.”
Only later, when the wife, fretting, asked, “Where’s Sarala? I want her to rub my legs,” did the sister realize that she had forgotten to inquire where the maid w
as going.
The maid didn’t return till the shadow of the peepul trees slanted shivering across the lawn to the veranda, where the family was having evening tea and biscuits. The wife, claiming she felt a little better—though her face still looked drawn, with dark half-moons under the eyes that gave them a bruised look—had joined them. (“Told you that turmeric poultice would take care of your cramps!” declared the aunt.)
The husband thanked the sister for having called the doctor. “You did the right thing. I don’t want to take any chances with your sister’s health.” He wore, like always in the evening, an immaculate kurta, white as just-picked shiuli flowers and fastened with gold buttons that shone. When he leaned forward to touch her hand—but lightly, respectfully, with a brother’s touch—his eyes, too, shone, and with such sincerity that for a moment the sister believed she had imagined yesterday’s episode.
That was when the maid came hurrying down the drive, holding a packet in her hands. She stopped when she noticed the husband sitting there. The sister thought she saw a brief tremor run through her body.
“Sarala,” called the wife. “Where have you been?”
“I went to the Kalighat temple, Didi, to offer a prayer for you.” The maid held out a crumpled banana leaf with some flowers and kumkum and a graying sweetmeat. “I brought you some prasad. Mother Kali, she’s very powerful—she can cure anything.”
“Thank you, my dear.” The wife’s eyes were warm as she took the package and touched it to her forehead.
“I’ve nothing against Kali,” said the husband, not looking at the maid as he spoke, “and it was a nice thing for the girl to do. But I don’t think you should eat any of that stuff.”