Teatime for the Firefly (20 page)

I sighed, unbuttoned my blouse and unhooked my brassiere. “Okay, go on, then, take a look.” I shut my eyes tight with embarrassment.

Manik adjusted the glasses on his nose, leaned down and studied the bite. I peeked out of the corner of my eye. He looked very much like a doctor. Serious, intense and clinically detached. He smelled good, too. Tea dust, clean sweat and skin. He ran his finger lightly over the welt.

“There it is. I can feel the stinger. I can get it out. I know how to do this. Wait, I will be back.”

Halua and Kalua must have been hovering outside the door, because I heard him tell them everything was all right and to go home.

Manik returned a few minutes later and my eyes almost fell out when I saw what he had in his hands. It was a butter knife and half an onion.

“My God! What are you going to do?” I exclaimed, sitting up in bed. Suddenly aware of my nakedness, I grabbed my sari to cover myself.

“Lie back down, Layla. It’s a very simple procedure. I know how to do this.”

“Do what? Kindly explain, doctor....”

“Trust me, darling.”

“Not with a knife and an onion. Looks like you plan to make a stir-fry out of me.”

“Maybe later,” he said, “but first I must try and get the stinger out. Lie down, will you? You can usually locate the stinger with a blunt, flat surface. A butter knife works fine. I am going to run the blade lightly over the skin to find it. Then I will just pull it out. Simple. You will need to put some onion juice on the wound to bring down the swelling.”

It sounded convincing, so I lay down.

Manik pushed his glasses up on his forehead. He ran the butter knife slowly over the area, first in one direction, then the other, while I tried to peer down my chin to see what he was doing.

He frowned. “Can’t see the damn thing, but I can feel it, all right.”

Then he looked me. “I have to do this the unconventional way, Layla. Bear with me.” Without explaining any further he bent down and ran his tongue over the welt between my breasts very slowly. I could hardly breathe. He focused on a spot. Then, using his front teeth, he gripped something delicately and pulled it out. He transferred it from his tongue to his fingernails and held it up for me to see.

“There. It’s out.”

“Where?” I propped up on my elbows. I squinted, trying to see what he was holding between his fingernails, but I could see nothing.

“See that tiny curved, hairlike thing?”

“Where?”

Our faces were inches apart. Since he was such a handsome doctor, who had just saved my life, I had to thank him. So I leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth. Then, if that was not bold enough, before I could help it, I kissed him again. Slowly. Oh, it felt so good. I had the hardest time pulling away. Manik looked slightly cross-eyed.

“Layla?”

I did not answer. I just lay down and shut my eyes tightly, shocked by my own brazenness. My head was thundering, and I thought,
Oh my God, what am I doing? I think I am going to pass out.

He bent down and brushed his lips gently over the welt, right between my breasts. Back and forth.

“Does it hurt much?”

I felt a deep warmth course through my body. The sensation was almost unbearable.

When I opened my eyes, he was looking at me. I realized his eyes were not black at all, but a very dark, rich, molten brown. He looked dead serious.

“So what will it be, Layla?” I felt his warm breath course down my neck. “Yes? No? Maybe?” he asked slowly, softly.

I barely heard his words. I waited for the familiar trip-up, the eventual shutdown. But nothing like that happened. All I felt was the most powerful longing, torrential and searing.

“Tell me.” He breathed his words into my mouth. “I need to hear it from you.”

“Yes,” I whispered, and closed my eyes. This time I had not one iota of doubt.

Dear Mr. McIntyre,

My wife, Layla, has been stung by a hornet of the most venomous variety (Vespa Mandarinia or Giant Asian Hornet). She is doing poorly and needs my attention.

I would be grateful if I could be excused this afternoon. The water-pump estimate is not due till Wednesday, so I still have a few days to complete it.

Unfortunately Layla will have to decline Mrs. McIntyre’s invitation to tea tomorrow. She has asked that I convey her regrets. She is looking forward to meeting her as soon as she is better.

Sincerely,

Manik Deb

Mr. McIntyre sent back a note excusing Manik for the rest of the day. Audrey McIntyre sent us a delicious Dundee cake and a sweet commiserating note via her driver. Kalua and Halua were banished from the bungalow for the day. The chicken cutlets prepared for our dinner were sent home with them.

We stayed in bed for the rest of the day. For Manik’s entertainment, I wore Mima’s Goldilocks apron and served him Dundee cake. We lopped off big pieces with the butter knife and fed them to each other. The knife was discovered buried in the covers, aimed straight at Manik’s back.

“This could have been fatal, you know,” Manik said, brandishing the knife. It flashed in the dark. He ran the blade softly over his lips. “But I would have died a very happy man.”

“I would surely have died a virgin if it had not been for the hornet.”

“Damn hornet—” Manik scowled fiercely. “It had no business getting inside my wife’s blouse before I did. It deserved to get squashed.” He propped up on his elbows. “Here, pass me that onion, will you? You need to rub some juice on the bite. It will really help with the swelling, believe me.”

“I’d rather swell than smell.”

“Onion-flavored breasts would be an interesting variation to my diet.”

Manik sang “You Are My Sunshine” softly as he ministered the onion. My husband could carry a tune and had a nice singing voice, I discovered. I lay in bed feeling like the one and only sunshine in Manik Deb’s life. I knew I could make him happy, gray skies or blue, and nothing in the world would take me away.

CHAPTER 20

It was barely
murgi-daak
when Halua marched right into our bedroom with the morning tea without so much as a teeny knock, making me desperately scramble for the cover sheet.

Manik took Halua outside to instruct him of his new protocol. Henceforth he was to knock on the door, remain outside and enter only when permission was granted. Halua looked bewildered. Nobody had ever asked him to knock before. He was used to barging into the bedroom. He looked at Manik with hurt eyes as though he was being scolded and nobody loved him anymore.

Ten minutes later, Manik was pulling on his clothes for
kamjari
. He laced his boots, and I sat next to him on the bed, my head leaning on his shoulder, my arms entwined under his shirt, enjoying the delicious warmth of his bare skin. My husband, I discovered, was a noisy morning whistler with a penchant for bouncy military tunes. Today it was Colonel Bogey’s march.

“Why do you have to go so early?” I grumbled.

He buried his face in my stomach and blew Colonel Bogey into my navel like a trumpet.

“Stop!” I cried, squirming.

Suddenly he was serious. “How is that bite coming along? Here, let’s take a look.” He pulled off the sheet covering my body. He kissed the welt between my breasts with great tenderness. Then seeing me naked, he was hopelessly distracted.

“You naughty, naughty girl,” he said, jumping to his feet. “I am going to report you to Mr. McIntyre for getting me late, wife.”

“I’ll see you at breakfast, then?”

“Yes, Mrs. Deb. Breakfast is called
chota hajri
around here. After that I can show you around Aynakhal if you are feeling up to it.” He paused at the door. “We will stop by the hospital to see the boy.”

“What boy?”

“The one who was attacked by the leopard. Poor fellow, they had to amputate his leg yesterday. We can also go and see the
machan
being built in the jungle. The laborers are working on it today. Wear your Bata boots, darling—you will need them. Big leeches and whatnot in the jungle. Snakes, too. Cheerio, lovely wife!”

With that he clomped off and thundered down the stairs. I heard the jeep start, then roar down the driveway. The front gates squealed open then clicked shut. Manik was gone.

I lay in bed. The small scrabble that started in my stomach was turning into a claustrophobic dread. I had forgotten all about the leopard hunt. Was Fate waiting to deal her final blow? The thought of Manik up on a bamboo platform in the dark jungle with a man-eating leopard on the loose had all the makings of a catastrophe. All I could imagine were guns misfiring, Manik falling off the
machan
, the leopard choosing him over the goat. Unchained and wounded, Manik would be the perfect meal served on a platter. The leopard would carry him off into the jungle to relish him at leisure, and I would be left lonely and forsaken in this old bungalow.

For all his charm, Manik had a reckless streak that worried me. But was it not that same free spirit that had attracted me to him in the first place? Closing my eyes, I crushed my face into his pillow, remembering the passion of the night before. His mouth had explored my body, arousing me gently as if from a deep slumber. We woke in the morning, our limbs still entwined. Manik was gone, yet he was everywhere. I could still smell him on my skin. He had ingrained himself in me forever.

Suddenly I was overcome with self-pity. A tear leaked out of the corner of my eye, and I watched it spread on the cotton pillowcase. What kind of husband was he? Running off and risking his life without a single thought for his new wife? Was I that unimportant? A devious thought crept into my mind. Maybe I could seduce him. Distract him; make him forget about the leopard hunt. But would he succumb? Something told me otherwise.

Manik was married to his job for three years before he was married to me. He had left his virgin bride on the brink of being deflowered to take care of his
Mai-Baap
duties. Talk about job commitment! How many men would do that? Tea companies were very clever, I decided. It took three years of intense brainwashing to make a tea planter, and the training was carried out in isolation without wifely distractions. It was almost like indoctrination into the priesthood. Cloistered. Intense. Focused. The difference was, with tea planters, celibacy was discouraged and marriage held at bay. They figured it took three years to cook the goose. Between the time I met and married Manik Deb, he was a fully cooked goose. It was just my luck, because this goose was now going to be fed to the leopard.

* * *

When Manik returned, I was sitting on the veranda with a boot on my lap wondering how to thread the laces through the complicated eyelets.

“Here, let me help you,” he said, pulling up a chair. Just the nearness of him made me light-headed. Manik lifted my foot onto his knee and hummed happily as he pulled on the monstrous boot and laced it up with military efficiency.

“Hup, two, three, four!” He pulled me to my feet, drawing me into an intimate embrace, followed by a scandalized look. “Shame on you, Comrade!” he scolded sternly. “For your unprofessional behavior you will do double time.” With that, he grabbed my hand and galloped me down the stairs.

* * *

Manik let me steer the jeep as we drove down the hill. A family of golden langurs with coal-black faces loped across the road with long swinging tails. One big fellow sat down in the middle scratching his head. I veered off the road to avoid him, almost landing us into the bushes. Manik grabbed the steering wheel out of my hands just in time.

“Never give way to monkeys,” said Manik, straightening the wheel. “They are canny creatures and jump out of the way an inch before you think you are going to run them over. It’s a game they play. Especially that one. That big male monkey.”

He pulled over and we traded seats. The whole pack was back in the middle of the road watching us. “That one walks with a limp,” I observed.

“I know. He probably got kicked by the wife. Or several wives.”

“For good reason, too, no doubt.”

Manik grinned as he turned toward a dirt road. He jerked his thumb in the opposite direction. “Factory, office, manager’s bungalow, staff housing, that way. Hospital, tea plantation, river, this way.”

We drove past a long
bamboobari
with paddy fields on the other side. The ground was being tilled for the new planting season and plow marks furrowed the earth. A young lad traipsed along the narrow dividers separating the fields. He wore a conical
japi
sombrero, his arms draped loosely around a bamboo pole slung across his shoulders. A small pariah dog with a curled-up tail ran ahead on dancing feet.

“Who owns these rice fields?” I asked.

“Our laborers do. They cultivate their own rice. They raise their own cattle. Besides the tea-growing areas, the
bamboobari
, forests, rivers, everything—” Manik waved his hands expansively “—belongs to Aynakhal. The tea garden covers over two hundred hectares.”

The plantation area was divided into two out-gardens, Manik explained, manned by separate Assistant Managers. He was in charge of one, Larry Baker the other. The division under his jurisdiction bordered the thick forestland between Aynakhal and Chulsa Tea Estate.

“Aynakhal is so big. I had no idea.”

“You had no idea your husband was such a big shot, either.”

“That’s true.” I smiled. He sure talked like one.

Manik raked his fingers through his hair. His hand draped easily over the steering wheel; he hummed softly and tapped a beat. I smiled. Still Colonel Bogey. He was such a funny, handsome man.

“Koilapani River.” Manik pointed to a slice of water between two embankments with a rope bridge slung across. We drove past what looked like a brick-making facility.

“The river clay makes good bricks,” said Manik. “They are sun dried and pit fired in this plant. Mr. McIntyre set up this brick plant to build better housing for our laborers. He’s very farsighted that way. Excellent manager. Not many tea gardens have their own brick-making facility. But theft is a problem. The laborers sell off bricks to Mariani locals for booze, so we have to keep an eye on them.”

A parade of mud-caked water buffalo ambled ponderously down the middle of the road. They were massive beasts with short powerful legs, flat, wide foreheads and impressive forward-curving horns. A bare-bodied youth in ragged shorts clucked and yelled “Hoa! Hoa!” and swatted the buffalo with a bamboo stick to move them to the side of the road. As we inched through the sea of buffalo, the stench of putrid river mud filled the car. To my disgust, one buffalo stuck its ugly, wet nose into the car and snorted a big whoosh of snotty breath straight at me.

“Eeesh!”
I cried, clutching Manik’s arm.

Manik grinned. “Sorry, that was unexpected. Now you know why most wives run away from the tea gardens.”

The jeep rattled over the rope bridge. I watched a fisherman standing in the river as he cast his net expertly in a graceful, sweeping arc across the water. The water shimmered with small diamond patterns as the net hit the surface. The fisherman gathered the folds and pulled the net toward him slowly, pausing with each draw.

On the other side of the bridge were long rows of huts with tiny yards and crooked cowsheds. They were the labor lines, Manik said, where the tea pluckers lived. Women sat on mud stoops tossing waves of rice on bamboo trays. Chickens pecked at husks on the ground and potbellied children, naked as baby birds, ran up to the dusty road to jump and wave.

“This is where I was the other night,” said Manik.

I stared at him. “You walked all the way here from the bungalow?”

He turned to grin at me. “Don’t be silly! I only walked to the factory to pick up the jeep from the workshop.”

“Oh,” I said. So he did take the jeep after all. Maybe Manik was not as reckless as I imagined.

“Here’s the infirmary,” said Manik, pulling into a small whitewashed building with a red-painted cross on its tin roof. A clump of sick laborers huddled around the veranda: men with bandaged limbs, bowlegged rickety children, gaunt women with infants drooping over their arms like half-empty sacks of rice. A round-faced man in a spotless white shirt was dispensing medicine over a counter through an open window.

“That’s Baruah, our Compounder Babu,” said Manik. “He runs this place. He takes care of broken bones, animal bites, gives shots, pulls out babies. He does whatever it takes to keep people alive. Running a hospital in a tea garden is rather like working in a combat zone. There is some calamity or the other, always.”

Baruah ran out from behind the counter to greet us. “Good morning, sir!” he cried. “Madam...” Then, overcome with shyness, he stood there and fiddled with his stethoscope.

The sick laborers milled around us, hacking, coughing. Runny-nosed children reached out to touch my sari. A skinny nurse in a papery white uniform peeped at me from an open door. I was suddenly aware of the duffel-size canvas boots under my sari, but nobody seemed to care.

Baruah led the way to the dormitory. There were thirty beds in all, each one occupied. My heart sank when I saw the boy lying in the corner by the window: a small crumpled body, one leg a thick-bandaged stump that ended at the knee. His eyes were closed; his hands, clutched into tiny fists, rested on his chest. A group of relatives squatted on the floor around his bed. Seeing Manik, they rushed forward and threw themselves at his feet, wailing. I heard the words
bachao
and
baag
. They were begging Manik to save them from the leopard. One woman clutched my feet and wet my canvas boots with her tears. Three children dead already, she wailed. The boy is her only son. The patients in the other beds lifted their heads; some held out imploring hands and others, deathly ill, turned feeble, yellow eyes in our direction.

It finally dawned on me the monstrous responsibility that lay in Manik’s hands. The laborers entrusted him with their lives. He was their
Mai-Baap
. They treated him like a god. I watched Manik’s face as he listened. I saw the solemn dignity of his stance, the gentle compassion in his eyes. He reminded me of Dadamoshai. Manik, I realized, was not only handsome and smart. He had integrity, courage and leadership. He was the kind of man I was proud to spend the rest of my life with. Whether I would, only fate could tell.

* * *

Manik left for the leopard hunt at dusk, and I spent another fitful night in Aynakhal. Only this time I did not sleep but sat up in bed, all night, fully dressed. Halua, Kalua and Potloo were camped out in the porch downstairs. I heard them talking softly in the night and caught whiffs of bidi smoke that wafted up to my bedroom window. Manik had instructed the servants to stay in the bungalow. He did not want me to feel frightened and alone. But I was more lonely and frightened than I had been in my entire life.

Murgi-daak
was followed by a bleary dawn. Halua arrived with my second pot of morning tea. I looked at the clock. Seven o’clock! Surely the hunt was over? Was it possible the leopard was still prowling around in the daytime?

I decided to consult Halua. Oh no, memsahib, Halua said. Leopard only came at night. Had
Chotasahib
ever been on this kind of
machan
hunt before? Yes, he replied, but mostly in Chulsa with Alasdair Sahib so he did not know when they got home.

I fretted. So where was Manik? I could feel a pounding headache coming on.

My only consolation was Alasdair was with Manik. Good old Alasdair. I hadn’t seen him since arriving at Aynakhal, but I remembered his kind eyes and calm voice. There was something solid and trustworthy about the man.

A small crowd of laborers had gathered outside the gates. Squatting, chatting, smoking bidis, they looked suspiciously cheerful. Halua informed me they were there to celebrate because the hunt was going to be successful.
Chotasahib
had very prudently chosen a Thursday and the
machan
was built facing an easterly direction. It was all very auspicious.