The Folded Earth: A Novel (26 page)

twenty-one

I have that packet in my hand this afternoon as I lie in the sun and think about this soon-to-be-deserted house, which will keep its ghosts and stories for its next occupant. All the talk around me is of the future and of plans. I talk of neither. I no longer plan anything. I know nothing but the present, this day, this hour.

I open the thick packet. I have been through it many times these past few days. Now I know that Diwan Sahib was not playing a practical joke when he titillated scholars with rumors of love notes from the past. There they are: three sheets of yellowing paper, with a famous old handwriting that I recognize from signatures I have seen in print a hundred times.

The first letter is written on the back of the menu card at a banquet for a shikar party. Annotated with an “[em to jln]” in Diwan Sahib’s hand, it says:

We are twelve in our ladies’ carriage. It has sliding windowpanes and we had to climb in by a ladder. Does your hunting buggy have a ladder too? Do you know, mine has a secret chamber inside. One of the younger Begums tells me that in case of an animal attack, one must duck and slip into the chamber and make an emergency exit. But my only thought is that I should like to spend this entire shikar in a secret chamber with the one man in the world with whom I feel the deepest sense of peace and happiness.

The reply to it, marked “[ jln to em],” is on a sheet of paper that has a printed line saying, “first published in 1935,” above the handwritten lines in ink. This letter is on the back of the title page torn out from a book on the Himalaya.

Last evening, I was looking at you across the room, wanting nothing more than to talk to you but unable to be by your side, and I had a moment of piercing clarity about the days ahead, when you will leave India forever. You and Dickie, shaking the hands of a few thousand people, saying good-bye, going further and further away, and I, watching from a distance, and watching that distance grow until you are out of sight and I wander away.

There is a third note marked “[ jln to em],” saying only:

There is a dark red rose on the third bush beneath the window of your bedroom. It is so very fragrant, I thought you might want to come down to smell it for yourself tonight, after the banquet.

There is another sheaf of papers: manuscript pages from Corbett’s
Man-eaters of Kumaon,
with editorial markings all over them. There is also a handful of typewritten papers: the notes Corbett’s sister Maggie dictated to her friend Ruby Beyts. These are the papers that Diwan Sahib promised me when he was alive, though I did not believe in their existence then.

There are three things still in the packet. I know what to expect, but even so I feel a hollow nausea as I pull them out. There is a photograph, a letter in an envelope, and Diwan Sahib’s will.

I have studied the photograph so many times that now I think I know each tiny square of it. It is a black and white photograph of a group. There are men and women dressed in styles popular in the 1960s. They are sitting on easy chairs somewhere in the open. Tennis rackets of the old world, glasses and bottles strewn on the grass. The sun in their eyes is making some of them squint. Diwan Sahib is not squinting: he is looking at the camera, and his chin is raised; his face has a kind of triumphant elation. His eyes have that sparkle I knew so well, but otherwise he looks quite different: no wrinkles and no beard; short hair brushed back in a widow’s peak; a clear-eyed, handsome, young face. He has a toddler in the crook of his arm and his other hand rests on the head of a large golden retriever.

There are three women in the group, all in fashionable chiffon saris and sleeveless blouses. One of the three is not looking at the camera. She is looking at Diwan Sahib and the toddler with a hunger that leaps out from the picture even decades later.

I open the letter that is clipped to the picture. The envelope is addressed to Veer. It is in Diwan Sahib’s handwriting and I find it difficult to read despite knowing its words.

Dear Veer, my very dear Veer,

What I could not call you in my lifetime, I can say when wiped away by death: my son. I could not own you as my son. I tell myself there were reasons, and many times over these last years I have been on the brink of telling you and begging you, as an adult man, to understand why I did what I did. But I didn’t have the nerve—and after such a crime, what forgiveness or reparation? Things happen and deeds are done in a long life for which there are no explanations that will satisfy anyone. Anything beyond is wasted words.

I ask your forgiveness nevertheless.

In grief,

Your father,

Suraj Singh

The will is clipped to the envelope. Diwan Sahib does not repeat his revelation about his son Veer in the will, but its intention is to make amends, to take a step toward healing with the gift of an ancestral home, his son’s rightful inheritance. The will is in Diwan Sahib’s handwriting, and the signatures of witnesses flow across the bottom of the page. It has a date, it has everything that makes it legally valid. It is brief and clear:

I hold the will and letter up to shade my eyes and look at the jumbled shadows of the words through the sunlight. I think back to those early conversations with Veer when he told me in bitter tones about the way he was sent from the house of one relative to another as a child, parceled out between them on school vacations. How none of them ever had time for him. How he grew attached to one or two of them, and hoped they would announce all of a sudden that they were his parents. How, by magic, he would know where he belonged and would have a real home. How Diwan Sahib had imitated leopards and thrushes for him sometimes, but returned in five minutes to his gin and his women. How Veer had hungered for affection and never found any.

I put the papers down. How I had yearned to comfort Veer in his loneliness then!

I lie very still and listen to the barbets calling. They sit on the dahlia trees snapping the large flower buds between their beaks, like nuts they are cracking open as a snack. There are big yellow lemons warming and ripening on their stems. Unless the will is made known to the world, all of this—the house, the stream, my cottage, my garden, the spruce, oaks, rhododendrons, and deodars—all these will go to a stranger, some brigadier or colonel we do not know, after being in Diwan Sahib’s family for two generations.

But that is how it is with houses, and I have lost too much to care. I will find another and make it a home again.

I read the will once more.

I am balanced on the edge of a knife. I
am
the knife. I can do harm.

Diwan Sahib’s face appears before me, his white hair a mess, his beard overgrown, and he says, “Go on, what are you waiting for? You know what I’d do. Revenge is a kind of wild justice.”

I remember him at his fireplace, thrusting the pages of his manuscript into it, then throwing the photograph of his dogs into the flames, watching his life burn.

I think of Michael with his broken ankle, on a frozen slope by a lake filled with skulls, watching his friend being whited out in a blizzard, seeing him recede into the distance, calling him back, begging his help, losing his strength with every shout, knowing all the while that there is nothing ahead for him but a slow dying.

Slivers of ice clink in the corners of my heart. If I were turned inside out now, there would be frost and hailstones where blood and muscle were.

I hold the will and Diwan Sahib’s letter to Veer tight in both hands, and I rip the pages in half, and then the halves into quarters. The sound of tearing paper lacerates me. I notice the portion that has the words “Ranveer Singh Rathore, provided he undertakes . . .” and rip it into tinier and tinier pieces, until not an alphabet can be distinguished of the name.

I throw the pieces of paper in the air. The shreds that drift over me are almost indistinguishable from the white butterflies dipping over the wildflowers in this garden gone to seed.

The eagles are still watching me from the mile-high crook of a deodar tree. Around them the afternoon has begun its rapid wintertime decline and the sun’s long rays slide gently now, and give no warmth. I will need to get up from the grass before the chill seeps into my bones.

The eagles feel the change in air and light. The first of them flexes its talons like an athlete, spreads its wings, and leaves its branch. The other is still looking in my direction. Eventually it turns its basilisk gaze away and follows its mate. The day is over; they have to hunt for a perch to sleep on now. They are lifted higher and higher by air currents as they wheel and arc and sail toward the last hill of the world.

GLOSSARY

arrack
   liquor distilled from the fermented sap of toddypalms, or from fermented molasses, rice, etc.

babu
  suffix added to men’s names to show respect; bureaucrat

barasingha
  
Rucervus duvaucelii,
a species of deer with great horns, native to India and Nepal

Batasha
  crunchy sugar candy

beedi
  cheap cigarette made of tendu leaf and tobacco

beta
  affectionate term for male child

bhajan
  Hindu devotional song

bhang
  preparation from the leaves and flowers (buds) of the female cannabis plant, which grows wild throughout the Himalaya, smoked or consumed as a beverage

Binaca Geet Mala
   a popular music program on radio in the 1960s and ’70s.

biryani
  richly flavored rice cooked with meat, a specialty of Hyderabad

carrom
  a game similar to billiards, but played without cues on a lacquered plywood board, popular in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh

chacha
  uncle (specifically, father’s younger brother)

chadar
  long scarf

chaiwallah
  man selling tea

charas
  hashish handmade from cannabis, which grows wild throughout the Himalaya

chikoo
  
Manilkara zapota,
or
sapota,
a common soft fruit

chootiya
  strongly abusive word for fool

chota bachha
  small child

chote sahab
  young master

chowkidar
  watchman

coolie
  porter

darshan
  holy audience

dekchi
  a large cooking vessel

Deo Bhoomi
  land of the gods

Diwali
  festival of lights celebrated everywhere in India

dosa
  a pancake native to South India, made from a fermented batter of ground rice and lentil

dupatta
  long scarf worn by women

durbar
  court

firanghi
  foreigner

ghee
  clarified butter used in cooking and in rituals; also in cremations

gitti
  a game played with five stones, similar to jacks

gongura
  a sour, leafy vegetable found in South India

gutka
  an addictive mix of crushed betel nut, tobacco, catechu, and lime, sold in foil packets

half sari
  a full-length skirt and fitted blouse, combined with a long scarf, commonly worn by girls in South India

hawai chappals
  rubber flip-flops

hum
  we

jaggery
  solid molasses

jalebi
  a pretzel-shaped Indian sweet, both crisp and juicy with syrup when freshly fried

jhadu
  broom

kheer
  creamy rice pudding often flavored with nuts and cardamom

khidmatgar
  bearer or valet; a servant

kumkum
  colored powder used to decorate or anoint the forehead

kurta
  long shirt

kutala
  a digging implement with a curved blade

langur
  monkeys of the genus
Semnopithecus,
widespread in South Asia

machan
  improvised tree loft from which to hunt or watch animals

madua
  millet

mandi
  wholesale market

murukku
  a fried snack from South India

namaste
  common Indian way of greeting anyone, by joining the palms

nilgai
  literally, “blue bull”;
Boselaphus tragocamelus,
a large antelope

paan
  betel leaf folded with areca nut, tobacco, and other condiments, usually consumed after meals

paapam
  Telugu expression meaning “You poor thing”

pakoras
  vegetable fritters

papad
  poppadum; a thin, crisp snack, similar to a cracker

poori-aloo
  cheap, streetside meal made up of deep-fried Indian bread and potatoes

pugree
  turban

roti
  thin whole wheat bread baked every day, a staple food

sadhu
  wandering holy man, mendicant

sala
  bastard

salwar kameez
  combination of a long shirt (
kameez
) and loose trousers (
salwar
) commonly worn by Indian women

samosa
  deep-fried, triangular pastry filled with spicy vegetables

sanki
  half-witted

shikari
  hunter

sindoor
  the red coloring in the parting of a married woman’s hair

sola topi
  pith helmet worn in colonial times

thataiyya
  Telugu for “grandfather”

theek
  all right/well

tum
  you