She had a dark, flawless complexion, and her huge dark eyes were carefully made up with a layer of kohl on the eyelids. The features were regular, with prominent cheek bones and a broad forehead. And in the center of that forehead was the thing that sent my mind reeling and spinning. The golden ornament was not the smooth metal bead that it appeared to be from across the square. It was a tiny beetle — an exact copy of the beetle that Leo wore on his tie clip at our final meeting in London Airport .
I paused in front of her, cleared my throat, and then indecision moved me on. What could I say to her? That my brother knew her, though I did not, and I wanted to ask what he had been doing in Calcutta ?
As my brain dithered, my legs carried me halfway around the plot of grass, back towards my bench. Instead of sitting down again I stood and watched. After fifteen minutes — endless minutes in which she did not register my presence by a look or a blink — an older man approached her. He came slowly across from the north side of the Maidan, helping himself along with a black wooden cane. I found his age indeterminate, anywhere from forty to seventy, and his loose white robe made it hard to tell if his left leg was crippled by age or by injury.
He came up behind her and spoke. I heard her laugh, and she turned her head as he moved around the bench to sit next to her. As they talked together her face lost its calm appearance. She laughed again, expression alight and animated, and after a moment she patted him on the arm with a small, shapely hand. Her fingernails were lacquered a purple-red.
Another few moments, and they both stood up quickly. She took his arm and they began to walk across the park, heading northwest towards the exit. The Maidan had become suddenly filled with people, thousands of strollers taking a midday break from the offices in Dalhousie Square . It would be easy to lose sight of the two of them in just a couple of minutes.
I hurried after them across the grass, panting more than the effort could explain.
“Excuse me…” My long legs brought me close behind them. “Excuse me…” I had thought of nothing to say to them after those first few words. More speech turned out to be unnecessary. They paused and looked back at the sound of my voice. The woman seemed politely interested and a little puzzled. But the old man gaped up at me and rubbed a wrinkled hand across his forehead.
“Sahib Singh!” His voice quivered. It was clear now that he was at least in his sixties — old for Calcutta . At his words the woman gave a strange cry, mingled disbelief and excitement. I could see just how good-looking she was, with superb brown eyes and white, even teeth gleaming from a luscious mouth. Her hand went up to her throat and she remained motionless for a moment. Then she spoke to me in a long, questioning sentence.
I shook my head. It sounded like Bengali, but though I had worked hard over the past few days to pick up a sprinkling of phrases I had nothing like enough to follow a spoken sentence.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t understand you. Do you speak English?”
She gasped at my voice and stepped closer.
“Ameera!” said the old man warningly.
She reached out her hand and placed it on my chest. I towered over both of them — neither was more than five feet tall. She stretched up to touch my face, while I stared down into those dark, jewelled eyes. Less than a foot away, they showed a hint of diffuse light in their depths, a cloudiness behind the pupils. While I was still struggling with the significance of that, she moved her right hand to run it inquiringly over my nose, lips, and chin, then fell backwards swooning into the arms of the old man.
I was feeling dizzy, too. At that soft, careful hand on my face, my heart leaped up to my throat, and the rhythm, “Over the hills and far away,” pulsated again inside my head.
I stood panting and helpless, watching the old man as he held the girl. Two powerful and conflicting urges conspired to hold me frozen: overwhelming physical desire, and the visceral urge that told me to flee and hide in the busy streets of Calcutta .
- 9 -
The house they took me to was smaller than Chandra’s, but still another impressive mansion. A structure of dark-red brick, it was surrounded by the now-familiar screening wall, and the garden within was laid out with scrupulous care. The beds of sages and flowering thyme threw back at me the perfumed mix that had first hit my memory on a London street.
The old man would not (or could not) talk to me on the journey. After two or three Bengali sentences in a voice that was at once angry and deferential, he had given up on me. He had accepted my help in getting the woman Ameera out of the Maidan, leaving me to do most of the carrying while he shooed away inquisitive onlookers and two Calcutta policemen, but his looks at me when we came to the carriage were angry and puzzled.
The ride in the closed, horse-drawn cab was short, only a few minutes of twisting and winding up narrow back streets. I already knew Calcutta well enough to realize that the horse was a sign of wealth, not poverty — a car would have been cheaper to maintain — and the houses that we passed confirmed the impression of ample money. By the time we arrived at the big double doors and had been admitted by a man with a heavy black mustache who stood guard in a little sentry box, the woman was awake again, sighing and fluttering her long eyelashes. I got out of the carriage first, ready to try and explain my presence and coax some English-speaking member of the household into allowing me to stay. It was quite unnecessary. The guard touched his hand deferentially to his brow, bowed stiffly from the waist, and motioned me forward toward the main structure of the house.
I stood in the entrance, wondering what came next. Ameera was led away through rustling curtains of silk by an older woman who bustled out of the house as soon as we entered the double gates of weather-beaten teak. She gave me one nod, then ignored me. After a couple of minutes, the old man who had been in the Maidan came in behind me and gestured to another inner room.
It was a study, panelled and lined with bookcases. The wall on my left was flanked by a long sideboard bearing a dozen full decanters of different colored liquids, and heavy armchairs and coffee tables stood in precise alignment on the hardwood floor. There were no rugs — I could see what a hazard loose rugs would be to a blind woman — and there was an exact orderliness to the furniture arrangement.
The man who had led me in had abandoned me at once. I stood for a while looking at the books but that quickly proved to be a waste of time. They were all in Arabic or Hindustani script. After a futile few minutes I stepped across to the sideboard and removed the stoppers from a few of the decanters: Scotch, rum, sherry. It seemed at odds with the eastern elements of the room. I ran my hand across the smooth wood of the sideboard. Everything was spotless, no mote of dust anywhere despite the absence of occupation.
I was still standing there when Ameera returned, alone. Her color was back to normal, a rich coffee-cream with a hint of pink behind it in her cheeks. She came in confidently, skirting a coffee table and heading straight towards me. If I had not seen the telltale cloud behind her eyes in the Maidan I would have sworn that she had normal vision.
A couple of feet away from me she halted and spoke again in Bengali. I shook my head, then realized that was probably useless.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t understand.”
Her shoulders slumped. “Leo-yo?” The word was musical and strangely accented. It brought the hair up on the back of my neck, and it wasn’t just her use of Leo’s name. I had found it, Leo’s eastern contact!
“Leo-yo,” she said again. “Please talk to me.” Her English was precise but not fluent.