Pause. On both sides. He can’t hear her breathing. For all he knows, she might have gently put her receiver down on a table and gone away, while his words leak out into a spartan cell, institutional and characterless, and it is only the room that registers the immediate peeling off of a ninesquare inch area of skin, like the papery bark of an arbutus tree, the slow seconds of silence and awe watching this wonderful ruching and metamorphosis of blemish, then the deferred shock of pain.
Her voice returns. ‘Hello, hello? Are you still there? Hello?’
He doesn’t answer; instead, he replaces the receiver, but this time with infinite gentleness, as if he is cradling the head of a newborn, fragile as eggshell, so delicate, so vulnerable to hurt.
Outside, the wind is making ever more furious eddies and edgeless, formless pillars of rising and falling leaves, all atonal brown. At the lit display window of Blackwells, a shy, uncertain Mary looks down from her home in the shiny open pages of a luxury art book at some unspecified spot near his feet. One palm is outstretched and open, pointing downwards, as if she has just finished doling out some grace. He almost looks around him to see if it is still dispersed in the restless air around him.
V
‘Dighi Bari’,
Nawabgunj,
Bograh Distt
Bengal
October the 28th, 1902
Dear Violet,
I read with great regret and dismay of the troubles you are facing in your school. If the Bengali babu is not going to interfere in these petty racial squabbles and take immediate action against the separatist poison that is choking the country and which, I am sad to say, our countrymen are doing nothing to either allay or eradicate, instead strengthening it for their own petty political games, I am afraid, Violet, the only way to keep the school running might be to have Hindoo and Muslim girls attend on alternate days. I know it goes against our most fundamental principle of unity but we are both in agreement that the education of Indian women is of far greater importance than trying to solve their race wars, which we are too small to effect. If the Hindoo-Muslim animosity, which, I am reliably informed (and my readings seem to confirm, too), goes back centuries, deflects us from our true task, then we will have lost our battle in bringing the light of knowledge to Indian women. I only wish I could be there beside you at this hour of your need and help you in any way that you might require, or I, in my limited capability, can provide.
You ask of my news. I am very well here and derive considerable joy and pleasure from being part of the Roy Chowdhury family. I have already acquainted you with my accidental straying into the andarmahal last year, haven’t I? Well, since that time, I have not only been accompanied and given a ‘Grand Tour’ of the place by both Bimala and Mr Roy Chowdhury, but I am also invited there occasionally to tea and, on two occasions, to lunch. It seems that Mr Roy Chowdhury has talked sense into his widowed sisters-in-law — he treats them as if they were his own blood — and convinced them, with reason and arguments and affection, that having a Christian lady step into their quarters is not going to defile them or turn them into pariahs. I think curiosity, rather than instruction, has ultimately got the better of them.
Mr Roy Chowdhury has been open and frank about the rituals and observances his sisters-in-law practise, and has told me a considerable part of his, and their, family history. It appears that the older of the two widowed ladies, the one whom Bimala calls ‘Naw Jaa’, ‘jaa’ being the Bengali word for husband’s sister-in-law, was married off to Mr Roy Chowdhury’s brother, a good twelve years older than Mr Roy Chowdhury, when she was but a child of nine, the same age as the young Mr Roy Chowdhury himself at the time of this marriage. They grew up together, as two children, first as two friends in a family of adults, then the bond between them growing to that between a brother and a sister. When Mr Roy Chowdhury’s brother, the girl’s husband, died, leaving her a widow at the age of eleven, she had thrown herself into Vaishnavism as succour and consolation — shaving her head, observing extreme dietary laws, such as not eating or drinking after sunset, required by that strain of the Hindoo religion, immersing herself in fasts and prayers and rituals, seemingly in atonement for her sins, which, she was convinced, had caused her husband’s death. The bond between her and Mr Roy Chowdhury had only deepened although he had not succeeded in dissuading her from the more extreme aspects of her new religion. If she derives support or happiness from it, if it makes the burden of her tragedy easier for her, who am I to impose my will, he had said to me once, when I was expressing my reservations about the austerity of life for a woman so much younger than I am. Do you know, Violet, she feeds pigeons every morning, opening the shutters of the andarmahal verandah and throwing out handfuls of grain, in the belief that all those cooing birds are a collective incarnation of the little Lord Krishna?
The other sister-in-law, married to another of Mr Roy Chowdhury’s brothers, lost her husband after five years. It seems such misfortune dogs the poor women who marry into this family. She, too, is childless. The second brother’s death left Mr Roy Chowdhury as head of family, a role he fulfils with affection, love and a great deal of maturity, with conscientious attention to duty and to every member’s wishes and desires. It cannot be easy for him to sustain the roles of brother (for that is what he is to Bimala’s Naw Jaa), beloved brother-in-law and loving husband, all at once, certainly not when Bimala’s recent presence in the andarmahal has disrupted, I suspect, former stabilities and precedences. I am also of the opinion, and I haven’t mentioned this to anyone, apart from you, Violet, that Mr Roy Chowdhury’s gentle prevailing on the matter of Bimala’s introduction to the outside world, leaving her seclusion behind, has not been looked upon too kindly by the two other women. It must be difficult for Mr Roy Chowdhury to steer a balanced and peaceful path through a household of women.
But this is all idle surmise. I have more entertaining things to occupy my time here. Now that autumn has arrived, the fields are full of blossoming giant grass, which they call ‘kaash phul’ here. We, by which I mean Bimala, Mr Roy Chowdhury and I, sometimes go on boat rides on the Jamuna river in Shukshayor. The river is now quite mild, although a very brown colour, and the majhi sometimes sings as he rows us along, very plaintive songs in his cracked voice which make me feel extremely melancholic and long for something but I don’t know what. It is a very calm exercise: the boat moves along very slowly indeed on the surface of the water, rocking gently from side to side in such a manner as to induce sleepiness — I was afraid of this soft pitch and swell the first time — while Mr Roy Chowdhury reads poetry aloud to us: Keats and Wordsworth — his favourite — and at times Bengali poetry too. I too read aloud, but from Bengali books — even if I do say so myself, my proficiency in the Bengali language increases apace, thanks to Bimala’s expert guidance — graded books called
Sahaj Path
, which means Easy Reading, and simple folk tales written for children. Bimala is quite proud of her achievement in this reciprocal education of her tutor and companion. I can only wholeheartedly support this happy arrangement wherein I teach her English, among other things, and she instructs me in her language. I hope I’m not being immodest when I tell you that I can have a reasonable conversation with Bimala and her husband in their mother tongue, while Bimala goes from strength to strength every day — she read out ‘A slumber did my spirit seal’ last week, beautifully, I thought, only tripping up on the word ‘diurnal’ in the penultimate line, a word with which she is unfamiliar. We applauded heartily and she took great joy from this little achievement. It is such a sad little poem, we were quite overwhelmed, I can tell you, and I even thought I heard Mr Roy Chowdhury’s voice tremble ever so slightly as he explicated the meaning of the poem to Bimala.