Flame Tree Road (47 page)

It was an impressive road, man-made and purposeful: not like the fickle pathways in town, that changed directions with the rain and got bullied by groundcover. The road to my grandfather’s house was wide and tree-lined, with
Gulmohor
Flame Trees planted at regular intervals: exactly thirty feet apart. Their leafy branches crisscrossed overhead to form a magnificent latticed archway. On summer days the road was flecked with gold, and spring breezes showered down a torrent of vermilion petals that swirled and trembled in the dust like wounded butterflies. Rice fields on either side intersected in quilted patches of green to fade into the shimmering haze of the bamboo grove. Up ahead, the river winked over the tall embankment where fishing nets lay drying on bamboo poles silhouetted against the noonday sun.

I adjusted my eyes. Was that a man standing under the mango tree by our front gate? It was indeed. Even at that distance, I could tell he was a foreigner, just by his stance. His legs planted wide, shoulders thrown back, he had that ease of body some foreigners have. I was curious. What was he doing? His hands were folded together and he was gazing up at the branches with what appeared to be deep piety. Oddly enough, it looked as though the foreigner was praying to the mango tree!

The man heard me coming and glanced briefly in my direction. He must have expected me to walk on by, but when I stopped at our gate, he looked at me curiously. He was a disconcertingly attractive man in a poetic kind of way, with long, finger-raked hair and dark and steady eyes behind black-framed glasses. A slow smile wavered and tugged at the corners of his mouth.

When I saw what he was holding in his cupped hands, I realized I had misjudged his piety. It was a baby crow.

“Do you live in the Rai Bahadur’s house?” he asked pleasantly. He spoke impeccable Bengali, with no trace of a foreign accent. I figured he must be an Indian who probably lived abroad.

“Yes,” I said.

The man was obviously unschooled in the nuances of our society, because he stared at me candidly with none of the calculated deference and awkwardness of Indian men. I could feel my ears burning.

The crow chick struggled feebly in his hand. It stretched out a scrawny neck and opened its yellow-rimmed beak, exposing a pink, diamond-shaped mouth. It was bald except for a light gray fuzz over the top of its head. Its blue eyelids stretched gossamer thin over yet unopened eyes.

“We have a displaced youngster,” the man said, glancing at the chick. “Any idea what kind of bird this is?”

“It’s a baby crow,” I replied, marveling how gently he held the tiny creature. It had nodded off to sleep, resting its yellow beak against his thumb. He had nicely shaped fingernails, I noticed.

I pointed up at the branches. “There’s a nest up that mango tree.”

He was not looking at the tree, but at my hand. “What’s that?” he asked suddenly.

“Where?” I jerked back my hand and saw I had traces of the white rice paste still ringed around my fingernails. “Oh,” I said, curling my fingers into a ball, “that’s...that’s just from the
alpana
decoration I was doing at the school.”

“Are you related to the Rai Bahadur?”

“He is my grandfather.”

“Is this the famous English girls’ school everybody is talking about? What is the special occasion?”

“Today is the grand opening,” I said. “A Russian dignitary is coming to cut the ribbon.”

“Boris Ivanov?” he asked.

I stared at him. “How did you know?”

“There are not many Russians floating around this tiny town in Assam, are there? I happen to be well acquainted with Ivanov.”

I wanted to ask more, but refrained.

He tilted his head, squinting up at the branches, then pushed his sliding glasses back up his nose with his arm. The chick woke up with a sharp cheep that startled us both. “Ah, I see the nest. Maybe I should try and put this little fellow back,” he said.

“You are going to climb the mango tree?” I asked a little incredulously. The man looked too civilized to climb trees. His shirt was too white and he wore city shoes.

“It looks easy enough.” He looked up and down the branches as though he was calculating his foothold. He grinned suddenly, a deep crease softening the side of his face. “If I fall, you can laugh and tell all your friends.”

I had no friends, but I did not tell him that.

“There’s not much point, really.” I hesitated, wondering how I was going to say this without sounding too heartless. “You see, this is very common. Baby crows get pushed out of that nest every year by...” I moved closer to the tree, shaded my eyes and looked up, then gestured him over. “See that other chick? Stand right where I am standing. Can you see it?”

We were standing so close his shirtsleeve brushed my arm. I could smell the starch mingled with faint sweat and a hint of tobacco. My head reeled slightly.

He tilted his head. “Ah yes, I see the sibling,” he said.

“That’s not a sibling—it’s a baby koel.”

His face drew a blank.

“The Indian cuckoo. Don’t you know anything about koels?”

“I am afraid not,” he said, looking bemused. “But I beg to be educated. Before that, I need to put our friend down someplace. I am getting rather tired of holding him.” He looked around, then walked over to the garden wall and set the baby crow down on the ground. It belly-waddled into a shady patch and stretched out its scrawny neck, cheeping plaintively.

I was about to speak when a cloud broke open and a sheet of golden rain shimmered down. We both hurried under the mango tree. There we were all huddled cozily together—the man, the chick and me.

A cycle rickshaw clattered down the road. It was fat Mrs. Ghosh, squeezed in among baskets and bundles, on her way home from the fish market. She looked at us curiously, her eyes bulging slightly, perhaps wondering to herself:
Am I seeing things? Is that the Rai Bahadur’s granddaughter with a young man under the mango tree?
This was going to be big news, I could tell, because everybody in town knew that the Rai Bahadur’s granddaughter avoided the opposite sex like a Hindu avoids beef.

The cloud passed and the sun winked back and I hurried out from under the tree. To cover up my embarrassment, I launched into an involved lecture on the nesting habits of koels and crows.

“The koel, or Indian cuckoo, is a brood parasite,” I said. “A bird that lays its egg in the nest of another. Like that crow’s nest up there.” I pointed upward with my right hand and then, remembering my dirty fingernails, switched to my left hand. “See how sturdy the nest is? Crows are really clever engineers. They pick the perfect intersections of branches and build the nest with strong twigs. They live in that same nest for years and years.”

“Are their marriages as stable as their nests?” The man winked, teasing me. “Do they last as long?”

“That...that I don’t know,” I said, twisting the end of my sari. I wished he would not look at me like that.

“I am only teasing you. Oh, please go on.”

I took a deep breath and tried to collect myself. “The koel is a genetically aggressive bird. When it hatches, it pushes the baby crows out from the nest, eats voraciously and becomes big and strong. Then it flies off singing into the trees. The poor crows are so baffled.”

The man smiled as he pushed around a pebble with the toe of his shoe. He wore nicely polished brown shoes of expensive leather with small, diamond-shaped, pinpricked patterns.

“And what do the koels do, having shamelessly foisted their offspring onto another?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow.

“Ah, koels are very romantic birds,” I said. “They sing and flirt in flowering branches all summer long, with not a care in the world.”

“How irresponsible!”

“Well, it depends how you look at it,” I said, watching him carefully. “Koels sing and bring joy to the whole world. In some ways they serve a greater good, don’t you think? And getting the crows to raise their chicks is actually quite brilliant.”

“How is that?” he asked, looking at me curiously.

“Well, not all creatures are cut out for domesticity. Some make better parents than others. The chick grows up to be healthy and independent. In many ways, the koels are giving their offspring the best shot at life.”

“That’s an interesting theory,” he said thoughtfully.

He sighed and turned his attention to the baby crow. It lay completely still, breathing laboriously, its flaccid belly distended to one side, beak slightly open. He squatted down and nudged it gently with his forefinger. The chick struggled feebly, opened its mouth and uttered a tiny cheep.

“It’s still alive,” he said dispassionately. “So what do you suggest we do? We can’t just leave it here to die, can we?”

I shrugged. “It’s the cat’s lunch.”

He looked at me in a playful sort of way. “Please don’t say you are always so cruel,” he said softly.

I turned and looked out at the distant rice fields, where a flock of white cranes was circling to land. “I used to try and save baby crows all the time when I was a child,” I said. “But Dadamoshai said I was interfering with nature. He thinks we need more songbirds and fewer scavengers.”

The man stood up and dusted his hands, and then smiled broadly. “I just realized we’ve had a long and involved discussion and I don’t even know your name!”

“Layla.”

“Lay-la,” he repeated softly, stretching out my name like a caress. “I’m Manik Deb. Big admirer of the Rai Bahadur. Actually, I just dropped by the house and left him a note on the coffee table. Will you please see he gets it?”

“I will do that.”

“Goodbye, Layla,” Manik said. “And thank you for the lesson on ornithology. It was most enlightening.”

With that, he turned and walked off down the road toward the river. A thin sheet of golden rain followed Manik Deb, but he did not turn around to see it chasing behind him.

On the veranda coffee table there was a crushed cigarette stub and a used matchstick in the turtle-shaped brass ashtray. Tucked under the ashtray was a note folded in half, written on the bottom portion of a letterhead that Manik Deb had borrowed from Dadamoshai’s desk. The note was addressed to my grandfather, penned in an elegant, slanted hand:

7th April 1943

Dear Rai Bahadur,

I took a chance and dropped by. I am trying to contact Boris Ivanov and I understand that he is staying with you. Could you please tell him that I would like to meet with him? He knows where to get in touch with me.

Sincerely,

Manik Deb

I took the folded note and placed it on my grandfather’s desk on top of his daily mail. That way he would see it first thing when he got home.

* * *

Later that day, at lunch, I watched my grandfather carefully as he sat across from me. Had he read the note? Who was Manik Deb?

Dadamoshai took his mealtimes very seriously. He always sat very prim and straight at the dining table, as if he was a distinguished guest at the Queen’s formal banquet. Most days he and I ate alone. We sat across from each other at the long, mahogany dining table designed for twelve. All the formal dining chairs were gone except four. The others lay scattered about in the veranda, marked with tea stains, their rich brocade fading in the sun. My grandfather had a constant stream of visitors whom he received mostly in the veranda, and it was often that we ran out of chairs.

Dadamoshai had just bathed and smelled of bittersweet neem
soap. His usual flyaway hair was neatly combed back from his tall forehead, the comb marks visible like a rake pulled through snow. He was dressed in his home clothes: a crisp white kurta and checkered
lungi
, a pair of rustic clogs on his feet. His Gandhi-style glasses lay folded neatly by his plate. His bushy brows were furrowed as he deboned a piece of
hilsa
fish on his plate with the concentration of a microsurgeon. Unlike Indians who ate rice with their fingers, Dadamoshai always used a fork and spoon, a habit he had picked up from his England days. The dexterity with which he removed minuscule bones from Bengali curried fish without ever using his fingers was a feat worth watching.

“A man came by to see you this morning, Dadamoshai,” I said nonchalantly, but I was overdoing it, I could tell. I helped myself to the rice and clattered noisily with the serving spoon.

Dadamoshai did not reply. I wondered if he had heard me.

“Ah yes,” he said finally, “Manik Deb. Rhodes Scholar from Oxford and—” he paused to tap a hair-thin fish bone with his fork to the rim of his plate “—Bimal Sen’s future son-in-law.”

“He’s Kona’s...fiancé?” I was incredulous.

“Yes,” said Dadamoshai, banging the saltshaker on the dining table. The salt had clumped with the humidity. He shook his head. “That Bimal Sen should think of educating his daughter instead of palming her off onto a husband. With money, you can buy an educated son-in-law, even a brilliant one like Manik Deb, but the fact remains, your daughter’s head is going to remain empty as a green coconut.”

I was feeling very disconcerted. Bimal Sen was the richest man in town. The family lived four houses down from us, in an ostentatious strawberry-pink mansion rumored to have three kitchens, four verandas with curving balustrades and a walled-in courtyard with half a dozen peacocks strutting in the yard. The Sens were a business family, very traditional and conservative. Kona was rarely seen alone in public. Her mother, Mrs. Sen, was built like a river barge and towed her daughter around like a tiny dinghy. I remembered Kona vaguely as a moonfaced girl with downcast eyes. I knew she had been engaged to be married since she was a child. It was an arranged match between the two families, but I had not expected her to marry the likes of Manik Deb. It was like pairing a stallion with a cow.

“Is he Bengali?” I finally asked. Had I known Manik Deb was Kona’s fiancé, I would have avoided talking to him, let alone engaged in silly banter about koels and crows. My face flushed at the memory.