Now the sister—she’d been too deep in thought earlier—could hear the rattling of the locked gate, the angry yells that grew louder even as she listened, and then a clanging, as of rocks being thrown. Soon they’d break the lock and be on them.
The sister stood up, her whole body trembling. She had to do something—and soon. But what? She tried to think of what her sister would have done—not the woman who now lay in the hospital as though at the bottom of a lake, with all that stagnant water pressing down on her, but her vibrant earlier self. She closed her eyes to remember the wife’s strong, sweet voice, the confident grace of her gestures, and when she opened them she told the darwan’s daughter to fetch the mali and the cook.
“Take Khuku to her room,” she said to the maid, “and stay there, no matter what.”
The maid stared at her as though she hadn’t understood.
“Go!” snapped the sister, suddenly furious with her, and the maid moved away, holding the little girl’s hand. There was something odd about her walk, but the sister, rushing to call the police, couldn’t tell what it was. Years later, as she watched a film about migrating birds, it would strike her that the maid had moved with the stiff gait of lost seabirds that find themselves in a landlocked field far from home.
The sister felt a little better after she had reached the police.
“They’ll be here right away,” she told the anxiously waiting mali and cook. “Now you come with me to the gate.”
The cook twisted the dishcloth hanging from his shoulder. “Don’t you think we should just stay in the house, Choto-didi, with the doors and windows locked? Don’t you think you should call Dadababu?” Oily drops of sweat beaded his upper lip and the sister realized that he too had never faced anything like this before. Curiously, it made some of her fear dissipate.
“No,” she said, answering his first question. (She wasn’t ready to deal with the second, which really meant why haven’t you called him.) “We must show them we’re not afraid. Now. Once they break in we won’t be able to control them, but if we act right away we still can.” She was surprised at how calm she sounded, how logical, as though she really believed in what she was saying.
The three of them made their way to the gate, and when they were there the sister saw that the massive iron sheets were dented by rocks and the wrought-iron carvings of spears hung bent in unnatural shapes, like broken arms and legs. She looked at the faces on the other side, seeing them piecemeal—the rotted, tobacco-stained teeth, the flared nostrils, the corners of mouths turned down in hate so strong that she could smell it as clearly as their sweat. The eyes glazed with the euphoria of destruction. They weren’t people, real people. Try as she might, she couldn’t put their fragmented features together to form an entire human face. The cold, quicksilver terror flooded her veins again, making her voice shake as she asked what they wanted, and from their wolfish grins she could see that they too sensed its presence.
“We want the girl. Give us the girl.”
“Her mother wants her back, and so does her man. You got no right to keep her.”
“Up to no good we hear, you folks. Taking advantage of a young girl like that.”
“All you rich people, all alike, think you own the earth.”
Clumps of onlookers had gathered at the edges of the mob by now, street vendors and sweepers, passersby on their way to work, servants from some of the neighboring houses. The sister searched their faces for support but found only elation at the prospect of drama, the rich folks finally getting what they deserve. She bit down on the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood, salty, metallic. The throbbing pain took away some of her fear.
“No one’s keeping Sarala against her wishes. She doesn’t want to go back to her mother, or her”—with a mental apology to the maid, she forced herself to say the word—”husband.”
“Sarala! Is that what she’s calling herself nowadays!”
“What’s this about her not wanting? Everyone knows a daughter belongs to her parents, a wife to her husband. Sahibi talk like this is what’s making our families fall apart.”
“Look, miss, you better not stick your finger in what isn’t your business. We got no quarrel with you. Just call the girl to the gate. We’ll take her and be off.”
“Shall I go get her?” whispered the cook.
The wife’s face floated into the sister’s vision. It was the palest yellow, as though, having been underwater a long time, it had taken on the color of lake sand. Strands of uncombed hair tangled around it like water weeds. The eyes were closed, in death or resignation.
“No,” she said. “No!”
An angry sound, half roar, half hiss, rose from the crowd, and they moved closer. Someone began to rattle the gates again.
“You’ll be sorry.” She recognized the mother’s voice, strangely happy, though in the melee she couldn’t find her face.
A clod hit her shoulder, and something else—hard, abrasive—struck her cheek. They were throwing whatever they could get their hands on—mud, clumps of grass, pebbles. She could hear the pounding of stone on metal as someone attacked the lock again. She put up an arm to shield her face and heard the sharp crack as the lock gave. Someone—the mali perhaps—pushed her out of the way against the hasnahana bushes as the gates opened and the crowd pressed forward with a cry of jubilation.
And then she heard the sirens.
“Imagine!” said the aunt at the dinner table that night. “The police and everything, in our compound. Vans, sirens, handcuffs. The whole neighborhood gathered around, gaping. What shame! In my seventy-two years I’ve never seen any thing like this. The hasnahana bushes by the gate all trampled—it’ll take years to grow them back. We should have got rid of that bad-luck girl a long time back, like I said.”
“We should have,” said the husband, fingering the strip of sticking plaster that ran down the side of his face. “I should have been firmer about it.” There were white lines around his mouth, thin, tight lines that the sister tried to decipher, but couldn’t quite. All she knew was that it wasn’t just anger, nothing simple like that.
“And have you seen the gate?” said the aunt. “Completely ruined. That ironwork was from your grandfather’s time. We’ll never be able to replace it.”
“Mr. Chowdhury from next door phoned this evening,” said the husband, “to ask me what was the reason for such disgraceful goings-on. Those were his words. I’ve never been so humiliated.”
The aunt clucked sympathetically.
“And worst of all, you’re hurt,” he added to the sister, indicating the bandage on her cheek. “I feel responsible for that.”
“Please,” said the sister through dry lips, for she could see where this was leading. “Don’t worry about me.”
“But think what might have happened if the police hadn’t arrived just then!” said the husband. He gave a shudder, as though even the imagining of such a possibility was too much for him. Then he turned to the cook, who had been listening avidly from the doorway, and asked him to summon the maid, and when she arrived he told her, in his kind, reasonable voice, that he appreciated her difficulties but had to think of the reputation and safety of his household. Surely she could see why he couldn’t keep her on. All of this was very bad for the little girl, who was already upset by her mother being in the hospital; the people next door had complained, and rightly, that events like this were intolerable in a neighborhood that had been written up in The Statesman as one of the best in Calcutta; and look what had happened to Chotodidi—attacked and maybe scarred for the rest of her life.
“I’m fine,” insisted the sister. “It’s only a scratch.” But no one paid her any attention.
“I have no doubts about your moral character,” continued the husband. “However, I have no choice but to let you go.
The maid did not weep or plead to be kept on. From her unsurprised face the sister could see that she had known—perhaps for a long time—that this was going to happen.
&
nbsp; “I’m sure you understand,” said the husband.
“I understand,” said the maid. There was something in her tone—an irony, perhaps—that made the husband lose his composure for a moment. But he recovered almost immediately and told her, in his customary benevolent tones, that of course she would be paid for the full month. And since it was dark already—he wasn’t an unreasonable man—she could stay the night, as long as she was gone first thing in the morning.
In the middle of his sentence, the maid left the room.
“What impertinence,” said the aunt. “Really, the lower classes today, I don’t know what they’re coming to. In my father’s day, a servant would have been whipped for acting like that. Why …”
“You can’t just send her away!” the sister cried. “It’s not her fault.”
“No one said it was,” said the husband. Beneath the softness in his voice lay a razor edge of warning.
But the sister continued, “Her life will be ruined if she leaves here—her mother’s bound to get hold of her again. And she was doing so well, learning to read and …”
“My first responsibility is the welfare of my family. That woman has caused nothing but trouble since the day she came.”
The sister tried to garner strength from her morning’s victory over the mob, to say something devastating that would make him choke on his hypocritical words. I know why you’re really getting rid of her. But she wasn’t ready for what such a comment might unleash. Besides, it was one thing to face a ragged bunch of intruders from the bustee and another to stand up against the suave power of her brother-in-law. Hating the conciliatory words even as she spoke, she said, “At least wait until Didi gets home—she was so fond of Sarala….” She noticed with dismay that she was speaking in the past tense, as though the maid were gone already.
The husband, who had also noticed the slip, gave a victorious smile. “All the more reason for her to go right now. We wouldn’t want your sister to go through another trauma right after she comes back from the hospital, would we? And you know just as well as I that your sister, dear woman though she is, is prone to get overly emotional.”
“Please,” the sister tried once more, because she had promised her sister. But she knew it was no use.
The husband held up his hand.
“Credit me with a little intelligence. I know what’s best for my household. You will agree that I’m still the head of this household, no?”
The sister felt as though a fist were squeezing her chest, leaving no room for breath. As she pushed away her half-eaten dinner and rose to leave, she heard the husband’s voice saying, from very far away, “If I were you, I wouldn’t agitate your sister by telling her any of this. In her unstable condition, something fatal may well occur. …”
And so the wife knew nothing of what happened until she came home with her new baby, who was born full-term and healthy—which was more than people had hoped for—and was, besides, a boy. She was swept up into a flurry of congratulatory visits and general jubilation. (Even the aunt had only good things to say about her ability to mother such a charming, bright-eyed son, and with so much hair, too, just like his father when he’d been a baby.) But one afternoon she called the sister into her bedroom, where the new air conditioner which the husband had bought for the baby hummed comfortingly, and asked her what exactly had gone on while she’d been away.
The sister looked away from the wife’s eyes, their dark, penetrating gaze, to where the baby slept. She stared at his dimpled knees, his little fisted hands that twitched from time to time, his impossibly tiny, perfect mouth that was puckered as though ready for a kiss. She loved him so much already that every time she looked at him she felt a tugging pain in her chest. He was so defenseless. Without a father, he would be more so. And Khuku with her luminous, wondering eyes—she would lose all chances for a good marriage if the scandal of a broken home stained her life. And the wife herself, what future was there for women who, no matter how pressing the reason, left their husbands’ homes?
The night the husband dismissed the maid, the sister ran from the dinner table all the way up to the storeroom, where the maid was gathering her things.
“You’re not leaving tonight?” the sister asked, distressed, and then, “But where will you go?”
“I’m not sure,” the maid said, and for the first time her voice trembled. In the passage light her face looked young and afraid.
“I’m sorry,” the sister said, clasping the maid’s hand in her own. “I’m really sorry. I wish I could do something.”
“Nothing to be done now,” the maid said, gently disengaging her fingers. And the sister realized that the maid knew that she knew, and that she forgave her for not accusing the husband, for not using his lapse to help the maid’s case.
“Tell Didi …” the maid started, then broke off, so that for a long time after the sister would wonder what she had wanted the wife to know. About the husband’s actions? About her own fidelity to the woman who had taken her in? About injustice and ill chance? Whatever it was, she knew she couldn’t tell it to her sister. But she did tell her the last thing the maid said, with a sigh, before she disappeared around the corner of the passage. I wish I could have seen her one last time.
“I wish I could have too,” the wife replied. She wiped her eyes with the edge of her sari and, leaving her sleeping baby, went to the storeroom which no one had entered since the maid’s departure. Following her, the sister saw something she hadn’t noticed that night. The maid hadn’t taken all her belongings with her. Piled neatly in the far corner of the tiny room lay the slate and chalk box and the readers the maid had studied with such passionate care. When the wife picked them up, the women noticed something else—at the bottom of the pile was the saffron sari.
“Poor Sarala,” the wife said after a long silence, smoothing out the delicate, crushed fabric. “Poor, poor girl.” She put the small pile back just as it had been and closed the door of the storeroom behind her. In the few remaining days of the sister’s visit, she did not mention the maid again.
It was over a year later when the sister returned to Calcutta, this time to pick out her wedding trousseau, for her marriage had recently been arranged. It was a good match. Her husband-to-be was an engineer for Ralli’s Fans and lived in a large company flat in Khiddirpore, a fairly decent Calcutta neighborhood, and owned his own scooter—all of which, everyone agreed, was a fine achievement for a young man not yet thirty. He wasn’t bad-looking either.
Perhaps it was the excitement of the coming wedding and all the shopping to be done, or perhaps the pleasure of seeing the children who crowded around her, the little one tripping over his feet in his excitement, shouting mashi, mashi. Or maybe it was the glowing joy with which her sister embraced her saying, “My dear, I’m so glad. He seems like a really nice man. Besides, we’ll practically be neighbors. We’ll be able to see each other all the time—I can send the car for you in the afternoons when the men are at work—and gossip to our hearts’ content. And our children can grow up together.” At any rate, the sister found herself enjoying hugely the visit she’d looked to with some dread. Even conversing with her brother-in-law, who was as debonairly charming as ever, was less difficult than she’d feared.
This night, for example, on their way to a housewarming ceremony at the new home of a business associate, he was jovially discussing her husband-to-be. The poor man had no chance, he said. She would control every waking moment of his life, and probably his dreams as well, just like her didi did with her husband. It was the fate of married men.
In the back of the car—it was a new one this time, a powder-blue Rolls Royce, because the husband had recently been made manager of his branch—the wife smiled and shook her head indulgently. She looked at her sister over the heads of the children, who were dressed, according to the husband’s instructions, in elaborate party clothes befitting his new position. “He likes to joke, your brother-in-law,” she said as she straightened the little boy?
??s silk kurta and tucked a curl into the girl’s filigreed gold headband.
“Dadababu.” It was the driver, sounding anxious. “There’s a michil up ahead. If we get caught in it, we’ll be stuck for hours.”
“Damn!” said the husband with a scowl. “These strikers and union-wallahs, always blocking the roads with their flags and their shouts, their unreasonable demands. Messing up the lives of decent folks. They should be thrown in jail, the lot of them, like when the British were here. Teach them a lesson.” To the driver he added, “Take another road, and make sure we get to the ceremony on time.”
“The only other way is through the mandi,” said the driver hesitantly.
“We’ll have to take it then,” the husband said, annoyed. He waved an impatient hand at the driver. “Go on, what are you waiting for?”
The sister leaned forward, staring, as the car turned sharply and entered an alleyway barely wide enough for a vehicle to pass. She’d never been in this part of the city. She noticed that the pavements were more crowded here, and with a different kind of people. There were, of course, the usual vendors who spilled onto the street with their wares of sweet-smelling jasmine garlands, colorful glass bangles, and hot onion pakoras. And the ubiquitous chai-boys hurried back and forth with racks of tea glasses from which steam rose and mingled with the vapor from the gas street lamps. But what about the men—large numbers of them, dressed in embroidered kurtas with glittering buttons, garlands wrapped about their hands—who sauntered up and down the street, seemingly going nowhere? And the women who crowded the balconies of the narrow buildings lining the road, their lips red with betel juice, thick lines of surma smearing their eyelids? They jangled their bracelets as they waved to the passing men and let the palloos of their gauzy nylex saris slide artfully from their bosoms. The sister’s cheeks grew hot as she realized who they were.
“Can’t you hurry?” the husband asked the driver in an irritated tone.