Flowers in the Blood (5 page)

In a few days her predictions seemed on target. Even Nani complained of strange chest-crushing sensations. The next morning Yali woke me and asked me to stand in the courtyard and raise my hands.

“Can you grasp it?”

“What?”

“The thick air.”

“No, you're silly.”

“Remember the feeling, then. It's like a panting beast. You will know its breath when it comes again.”

I pondered this during the morning while devilish squalls blew sheets of rain across the Hooghly River. Sudden gusts tore shutters from houses and crushed rickshaws against buildings like flimsy toys. Between the slashing torrents were periods of relief when no rain would fall and the air would ripple with an eerie crackling sound. Nani put me to bed during one of these lulls.

Yali woke me in the middle of the night. Her soft voice made a queer echoing sound in my room. As I swung my feet around, thinking she wanted to take me to the toilet, she pushed me back. “I must carry you.”

Thundering volleys cracked in the hellish sky. Dr. Hyam arrived with a bullock-cart that could carry only our family. The durwan helped the ayahs and other servants climb onto the flat roof above the kitchen and wrapped blankets about them. In the splintering light of the storm I rolled away, waving and calling to Yali.

Eventually we arrived at the house where my father had been born— now the Lanyados' residence—which was built on higher ground. In the rain, which poured off the roof in liquid sheets, Grandmother carried Asher. I took Jonah's hand. Dr. Hyam lifted Grandfather inside. We were not the only refugees from the storm. The entire Sassoon clan had united there.

The next morning, I surveyed the filthy ribbons of water that snaked through the district. A sea interspersed with queer concrete islands sprawled from the Hooghly. The city seemed an aquatic burial ground. The Maidan, Calcutta's vast park, rippled with swirling eddies. I thought about transformations, how quickly everything that has been an accepted part of one's life can be altered by a single event. A mother's death leaves a child awash. A cyclone does the same to a city. Children splashed in the turgid water. Stranded families huddled on the few raised porches.

Oblivious of the turmoil, the sun shone. I could not find my clothes, so I went in search of Yali. Aunt Bellore stopped me before I could reach the kitchens.

“Where's Yali?”

Aunt Bellore gave a massive groan. “Look around you! Confusion. Upset. So many to feed, to care for. I can't keep track of everyone's servants, can I?”

“I need a dress.”

“You can borrow something of Sultana's.” Aunt Bellore had three girls. Sultana, her oldest, was nearly my age, but much smaller.

In the nursery Aunt Bellore had me try on several dresses. “I can't believe how much bigger you are than Sultana. You certainly won't be turning out like your moth—” She caught herself. Piqued, she gave me a robe. “Try this. Just tie it loosely at the waist.”

“No. Yali will do it. Where is Yali?”

“She has gone to find her own family.”

“Liar!”

“Dinah!” Aunt Bellore slapped my cheek. “Mind your words.”

“Liar!” Blinded by tears, I ran to find Nani.

Yali did not return to the Lanyados' house. After the flood dissipated, the Raymonds' house was declared uninhabitable, but my father's residence in Theatre Road was undamaged.

My grandfather took me on his lap in his rolling chair. “Dinah, would you rather stay with your Aunt Bellore or with us in Theatre Road?”

I touched the cheek that my aunt had slapped and replied without hesitation, “Theatre Road, Nana.”

 

The prisoners were to stand trial at the next criminal sessions, in December. As the day approached, everyone kept asking whether my father would arrive before the trial.

“Better that he stays away” was Nani's attitude.

Nana disagreed. “He should see justice done, or else he will question forever the way the matter was handled.”

With no knowledge of my father's whereabouts, the trial began on Monday, the second of December, 1878. Moosa Chachuk was charged with the willful murder of Luna Sassoon, and Nissim Sadka was arraigned as his accomplice. The suspects were tried before Chief Justice Sir John Neville and Sir Peter Grant, the second justice. Mr. Gardner, the advocate-general, conducted the case for the crown. Mr. Hicks defended Sadka, while Mr. O'Reilly defended Chachuk. My grandfather was well enough to attend the sessions, fully expecting that by the end of that week the men who had taken his daughter's life would be pronounced guilty and would face their just punishment. In the beginning, my grandmother could not bring herself to visit the courtroom.

After the first day of the trial, Uncle Saul, my father's eldest brother, and Aunt Bellore and her husband, Samuel Lanyado, escorted Grandfather back to Theatre Road. Uncle Saul took my father's place in the drawing room—in our family it was called the “hall.” Grandmother poured tea. Asher and Jonah were brought in for a few minutes. I was permitted to remain for some chutney sandwiches.

Aunt Bellore clucked her tongue when she saw the short hem on my dress. “We'll have to see you have some new ones ordered. After this is over, I'll have the dressmaker in for the girls.”

Uncle Saul tapped his foot.

“Dinah, why don't you go upstairs with the boys now?” Aunt Bellore asked in a honey-smooth voice.

I looked to Grandmother for confirmation that I might stay.

“Yes, Dinah,” Nani said, meaning I had to do as I had been told.

I walked over to my grandfather and held his hand. He patted mine. I took this to mean he had championed my cause.

Uncle Saul was glaring.

Nana gave me a squeeze. “G-go now . . . later . . .”

I turned away as slowly as I could. Out in the corridor I made a loud clomping sound, then removed my shoes and slipped into the serving pantry, where a door had been left slightly ajar. I pressed my back to the wall and breathed silently.

“The advocate-general's implications about the fact that the participants are Jewish are bothering me,” Uncle Saul bellowed.

“What would that have to do with the case?” Grandmother asked.

Nana answered in short, stuttering phrases: “The advocate-general was t-trying to justify . . . that Ch-Chachuk would not act alone . . . t-to help prove that . . . S-Sadka had the m-m—”

Uncle Saul filled in for him. “A motive. Or vice versa. We do not yet know which one committed the violent act. The problem seems to be that if Nissim acted in a frenzy of passion—a crime that might receive a lesser sentence than premeditated murder—then he would not have organized the murder and brought in a second to assist. The sum of the early evidence—why, the chloroform alone—leads us to think it was planned in advance.”

Nani spoke slowly. “What does being Jewish have to do with it?”

Uncle Saul tried again. “I believe the advocate-general reasoned that if Sadka selected someone to assist him in a premeditated crime, the accomplice would—as he put it—'be of the same creed, inferior in position, but strong and accustomed to violence, and desperate—for either money or acceptance.' “

“An excellent description of Chachuk—after the fact,” Uncle Samuel remarked. “I wonder if he would have come up with that argument if Chachuk had not been implicated.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Aunt Bellore agreed.

Through the cracked door, I could see Uncle Saul pacing. “All that aside, I thought the advocate-general's arguments were laid out with excellent logic,” he continued. “He mentioned the need to silence the victim and the knowledge that the men had acquired chloroform recently. He introduced the purchase of the ladder and matches, both needed to scale a wall at night.” He paused. “As the evidence is developed, each point should be proved beyond a doubt.”

“What about Dinah?” my aunt mumbled.

My heart pounded as I strained to hear the whispers that followed. Maybe they would listen to me at last.

“. . . testify ... not a child . . .”

“. . . but the shutters . . .”

“. . . shouldn't be necessary.” Uncle Saul's statement ended on a peremptory tone, and I could hear the scrape of chairs against the hard floor. They were probably getting ready to leave.

“At least this should be over in short order,” I heard Aunt Bellore say as I tiptoed away in case anyone came looking for me.

The second day of the trial, the family was less ebullient. They were also more careful about closing doors and excluding me. Later I would learn the accuseds' lawyers had begun to discuss the circumstantial nature of the evidence, the lack of eyewitnesses, and the fact that Chachuk and Sadka claimed they had people who would substantiate testimony of their whereabouts that evening.

Concerned that the men might possibly be acquitted, Nani steeled herself and accompanied her husband on the third day. When they returned, she went directly to her room, and I was permitted to greet her for only a few moments.

“Nani!” I cried when I saw her flushed and trembling. “Are you ill?”

“No, dearest Dinah, just tired.”

“Where are Uncle Saul and Aunt Bellore?”

“I asked them not to come today because I will be retiring early. Why don't you go in to see your grandfather for a few minutes before you have your supper?” She gave me a limp hug. My mother's former servant, a plump Bengali woman who rarely spoke, brought her some fizzy tablets and pushed me out the door.

When I went to Grandfather's room, which previously had been a day nursery on the ground floor, I found him trembling in his chair. His eyes were weeping continuously. Whatever had happened in the courts that day had sucked dry his reservoir of strength. Dr. Hyam was giving him an injection in his thigh.

“What's that?” I asked as I watched with more curiosity than horror. “Something to make him more comfortable,” the doctor said softly. When the hypodermic was withdrawn, I threw my arms around Nana. “Is that better?” Nana made a feeble attempt to reach over and pat me. His palsied fingers ruffled my hair and glanced off my cheek.

Short, heavyset Dr. Hyam sat with a sigh and waited until the medicine began to work. Grandfather's head lolled to the side and his limbs twitched intermittently.

I touched his cheek, his lips, his pulse, in a pantomime of Dr. Hyam's usual actions. “He will rest now,” I pronounced.

Dr. Hyam stood up and left the room. “Come with me, Dinah,” he said as I lingered behind.

I rose to my feet, but on my way out the door I fingered the vial of medicine that had calmed my grandfather. “Laudanum” it said, but I misread the label as “Loudanum” and wondered how something with “loud” in it had quieted him so quickly. Next to it was another with a milky liquid. I touched it, and its label rolled into view. Chloroform! I lifted it and twisted the cap. An acrid fume stung my eyes. That had been the aroma about my mother's face that terrible morning.

 

The next day Grandfather Ephraim was confined at home, and my grandmother went to court in his stead. After that, the Sassoons visited no longer. When Nani returned, she would tell her husband what had happened. Huddled in the alcove outside their door, I listened to her explanations, trembling first at the idea of being caught, second at the revelations about my mother.

“They know, everyone knows,” Nani said, sobbing. “They even brought in the hookah and witnesses swore they had seen her smoke from it.”

I did not understand my grandmother's horrified expression. My mother's routine was hardly a secret. The silver-inlaid hookah was always in place by her chaise. Her partaking had seemed as natural as sipping water or wine.

“Who spoke against Luna?” Nana choked.

“Several friends of the family and Bellore Sassoon were sworn in.”

“Hypocrites. All those d-damned Sassoons!” he sputtered. “You would think that a family who has built their fortune on the buying and selling of opium would not condemn one of their own for using their product. A cigar, a brandy, a pipe of opium. What's the difference to them?”

“Don't you see? In order to wipe themselves clean of any blame, they are attacking us,” my grandmother said slowly.

“Us!” Nana exploded. “Who was the cause of her loneliness? Not us. What about Benu? How did he think a woman as lovely as his wife would occupy herself for most of the year without a husband? If he had been by her side—”