The Glass Palace (31 page)

As for the ‘mystery' of his reluctance to leave New York, that had been very quickly solved. It turned out that he had an American fiancee, a woman by the name of Elsa Hoffman. He'd introduced her to Elsa and Uma had thought her to be a very pleasant woman: her demeanour was briskly good-natured, in the American way, and she was fine-looking too, with a gentle, heart-shaped face and long black hair. They'd quickly become friends, she and Elsa, and one day Elsa had confided that she was secretly engaged to Matthew. She hadn't told her family because she knew they'd disapprove and was afraid that they might try to send her away. And Matthew too was uncertain of how his father would respond—what with Elsa being a foreigner and a Protestant as well. Uma's feeling was that this was all that prevented Matthew from returning. If only Saya John were to drop Matthew a hint, that he had nothing to fear on this score, then it was quite likely that he would change his mind about staying in America . . .

By the time this letter was delivered to her, Dolly was perfectly recovered. She was so excited by Uma's report that she decided to go immediately to Rajkumar's timberyard, to give him the news. A hired gaari took her rattling down the
dusty, village-like roads of Kemendine, to the black macadam of the Strand, where cargo ships stood moored along the wharves, past the Botataung Pagoda, with its goldfish-filled pools, across the railway crossing, and through the narrow lanes of Pazundaung to the walled compound that marked the premises of Rajkumar's yard. Inside, a team of elephants was hard at work, stacking logs. Dolly spotted Rajkumar standing in the shade of the raised wooden cabin that served as his office. He was dressed in a longyi and vest, smoking a cheroot, his face and head powdered with sawdust.

‘Dolly!' He was startled to see her at the yard.

‘I have news.' She waved the letter at him.

They climbed the ladder that led up to Rajkumar's office. She stood over him while he read Uma's letter and when he reached the end, she said: ‘What do you think, Rajkumar? Do you think Sayagyi would disapprove—about Matthew's fiancee not being Catholic, and all that?'

Rajkumar laughed out loud. ‘Sayagyi's no missionary,' he said. ‘He keeps his religion to himself. In all the years I worked for him he never once asked me to go to church.'

‘But still,' said Dolly, ‘you have to be careful when you tell him . . .'

‘I will be. I'll go and see him today. I think he'll be relieved to know that this is all it is.'

Soon after this, Dolly learnt that she was pregnant again. She forgot about Matthew and Elsa and even Uma: all her energies went into making sure that nothing went wrong again. Seven months went quickly by and then, on the doctors' advice, she was moved to a mission hospital on Dufferin Road, not far from Kemendine.

One day, Saya John came to see her. He seated himself beside her bed and took her hand, pressing it between his. ‘I've come to thank you,' he said.

‘For what, Sayagyi?'

‘For giving me back my son.'

‘What do you mean, Sayagyi?'

‘I had a letter from Matthew. He's coming home. He's
already making the arrangements. I know it's you who's to be thanked. I haven't even told Rajkumar yet. I wanted you to be the first to know.'

‘No, Sayagyi—it's Uma who's to be thanked. It's all because of her.'

‘Because of the both of you.'

‘And Matthew? Is he coming alone?'

Saya John smiled, his eyes shining. ‘No. He's bringing home a bride. They're going to be married by special licence, just before they leave, so that they can travel together.'

‘So what will this mean, Sayagyi?'

‘It means that it's time for me to move too. I'm going to sell my properties here. Then I'm going to go to Malaya, to get things ready for them. But there's plenty of time yet. I'll be here for the birth of your child.'

Six weeks later Dolly was delivered of a healthy, eight-pound boy. To celebrate, Rajkumar shut down his yards and announced a bonus of a week's wages for his employees. An astrologer was called in to advise them on the child's names: he was to have two, as was the custom among Indians in Burma. After deliberations that lasted for several weeks, it was decided that the boy's Burmese name would be Sein Win; his Indian name was to be Neeladhri—Neel for short. The names were decided on just in time for Saya John to hear of them before leaving for Malaya.

Four years later, Dolly had a second child, another boy. Like Neel he was given two names, one Burmese and one Indian: they were, respectively, Tun Pe and Dinanath. The latter was quickly shortened to Dinu, and it was by this name that he was known at home.

Soon after Dolly's delivery Rajkumar had a letter from Saya John: by coincidence Elsa too had just had a baby, her first. The child was a girl and had been named Alison. What was more, Matthew and Elsa had decided to build a house for
themselves, on the plantation: the land had already been cleared and a date fixed for the ground-breaking ceremony. Saya John was very keen that Rajkumar and Dolly attend the ceremony, along with their children.

In the years since Saya John's departure from Rangoon, Rajkumar had spent a great deal of his time travelling between Burma, Malaya and India. As a partner in the plantation he had been responsible for ensuring a steady supply of workers, most of them from the Madras Presidency, in southern India. Rajkumar had kept Dolly abreast of the plantation's progress, but despite his pleas, she had not accompanied him on any of his trips to Malaya. She was not a good traveller, she had said. It had been hard enough to leave Ratnagiri to come to Burma; she was not in a hurry to go anywhere else. As a result, Dolly had never met Matthew and Elsa.

Rajkumar showed Dolly Saya John's letter, with the comment: ‘If you're ever going to go there then this is the time.'

After she'd read the letter Dolly agreed: ‘All right; let us go.'

From Rangoon, it was a three day voyage to the island of Penang in northern Malaya. On their last day at sea, Rajkumar showed Dolly a distant blue blur on the horizon. This grew quickly into a craggy peak that rose like a pyramid out of the sea. It stood alone, with no other landfall in sight.

‘That's Gunung Jerai,' Rajkumar said. ‘That's where the plantation is.' In years past, he said, when the forest was being cleared, the mountain had seemed to come alive. Travelling to Penang, Rajkumar would see great black plumes of smoke rising skywards from the mountain. ‘But that was a long time ago: the place is quite changed now.'

The steamer docked at Georgetown, the principal port on the island of Penang. From there it was a journey of several hours to the plantation: first they took a ferry to the road-and rail-head of Butterworth, across a narrow channel from Penang. Then they boarded a train that took them northwards through a landscape of lush green paddies and dense coconut groves. Looming ahead, always visible through the windows
of the carriage, was the soaring mass of Gunung Jerai, its peak obscured by a cloudy haze. It rose steeply out of the plain, its western slopes descending directly into the sparkling blue waters of the Andaman Sea. Dolly, now habituated to the riverine landscapes of southern Burma, was struck by the lush beauty of the coastal plain. She was reminded of Ratnagiri, and for the first time in many years, she missed her sketchbook.

This leg of their journey ended at Sungei Pattani, a district town on the leeward side of the mountain. The rail-track was newly laid and the station consisted of not much more than a length of beaten earth and a tiled shed. Dolly spotted Saya John as their train was pulling in; he looked older and a little shrunken; he was peering shortsightedly at a newspaper as the train chugged into the station. Standing beside him were a tall, khaki-clothed man and a woman in an ankle-length black skirt. Even before Rajkumar pointed them out, Dolly knew that they were Matthew and Elsa.

Elsa came up to Dolly's window when the train stopped. The first thing she said was: ‘I'd have known you anywhere; Uma described you perfectly.'

Dolly laughed. ‘And you too—both of you.'

Outside the rudimentary little station, there was a large compound. In its centre stood a thin sapling, not much taller than Dolly herself.

‘Why,' Dolly said, startled, ‘that's a padauk tree, isn't it?'

‘They call them angsana trees here,' Elsa said. ‘Matthew planted it, soon after Alison was born. He says that in a few years it's going to grow into a huge umbrella, casting its shade over the whole station.'

Now Dolly's eyes were drawn to a startling new sight: a motorcar—a gleaming, flat-topped vehicle with a rounded bonnet and glittering, twelve-spoked wheels. It was the only car in the compound and a small crowd had gathered around to marvel at its brass lamps and shining black paint.

The car was Matthew's. ‘It's an Oldsmobile Defender,' he announced. ‘Quite a modest car really, but mint-new, this year's model, a genuine 1914. It rolled out of the factory in
January and was delivered to me six months later.' He spoke like an American, Dolly noticed, and his voice bore no resemblance to his father's.

Theirs was a sizeable party: there was an ayah for Dinu and Neel as well as a man to help with the luggage. The car was not large enough for all of them. After Dolly, Elsa and the children had been seated there was room only for the ayah and Matthew, who was driving. The others were left behind to follow in a buggy.

They drove through Sungei Pattani, along wide streets that were lined with tiled ‘shophouses'—storefronts whose facades were joined together to form long, graceful arcades. Then the town fell away and the car began to climb.

‘When was the last time you heard from Uma?' Dolly said to Elsa.

‘I saw her last year,' said Elsa. ‘I went to the States for a holiday and we met in New York.' Uma had moved into an apartment of her own, Elsa said. She'd taken a job, as a publisher's proof-reader. But she was doing other things too; she seemed to keep herself very busy.

‘What else is she doing exactly?'

‘Political things mainly, I think,' Elsa said. ‘She talked about meetings and speeches and some magazine that she's writing for.'

‘Oh?' Dolly was still thinking about this when Elsa pointed ahead. ‘Look—the estate. That's where it starts.'

They were climbing steeply, driving along a dirt road that was flanked on both sides by dense forest. Looking ahead, Dolly saw a wide gateway, with a sign that arched across the road. There were three words inscribed on the sign, in enormous gold lettering; Dolly read them out aloud, rolling them over her tongue: ‘Morningside Rubber Estate.'

‘Elsa named it,' Matthew said.

‘When I was a child,' Elsa explained, ‘I used to live near a park called Morningside. I always liked the name.'

At the gate, there was a sudden rent in the tangled curtain of greenery that covered the mountainside: ahead, stretching
away as far as the eye could see, there were orderly rows of saplings, all of them exactly alike, all of them spaced with precise, geometrical regularity. The car went over a low rise and a valley appeared ahead, a shallow basin, cupped in the palm of a curved ridge. The basin had been cleared of trees and there was an open space in the middle. Grouped around this space were two ramshackle tin-roofed buildings, little more than huts.

‘These were meant to be the estate's offices,' Elsa said apologetically. ‘But we're living in them for the time being. It's very basic I'm afraid—which is why we need to build ourselves a habitable place.'

They settled in and later in the day, Elsa took Dolly for a walk through the rubber trees. Each tree had a diagonal slash across its trunk, with a halved coconut shell cupped underneath. Elsa swirled her forefinger through one of these cups, and dug out a hardened crescent of latex. ‘They call these cup-lumps,' Elsa said, handing the latex to Dolly. Dolly raised the spongy grey lump to her nose: the smell was sour and faintly rancid. She dropped it back into the coconut-shell cup.

‘Tappers will come by to collect the lumps in the morning,' Elsa said. ‘Not a drop of this stuff can be wasted.'

They headed through the rubber trees, walking uphill, facing the cloud-capped peak of Gunung Jerai. The ground underfoot had a soft, cushioned feel, because of the carpet of dead leaves shed by the trees. The slope ahead was scored with the shadows of thousands of trunks, all exactly parallel, like scratches scored by a machine. It was like being in a wilderness, but yet not. Dolly had visited Huay Zedi several times and had come to love the electric stillness of the jungle. But this was like neither city nor farm nor forest: there was something eerie about its uniformity; about the fact that such sameness could be imposed upon a landscape of such natural exuberance. She remembered how startled she'd been when the car crossed from the heady profusion of the jungle into the ordered geometry of the plantation. ‘It's like stepping into a labyrinth,' she said to Elsa.