The Glass Palace (33 page)

Through the duration of Dinu's convalescence, Dolly never once left the premises of the hospital. She and Dinu had a room to themselves—large and sunny and filled with flowers. From the window they could see the majestic, shining hti of the Shwe Dagon. Rajkumar did everything in his power to ensure their comfort. U Ba Kyaw drove over at mealtimes, bringing fresh-cooked food in an enormous brass tiffin-carrier. The hospital was prevailed upon to relax its rules. Friends dropped by at all times of day and Rajkumar and Neel stayed late into the evenings, leaving only when it was time for Dinu to go to bed.

Dinu endured his month-long stay in hospital with exemplary stoicism, earning accolades from the staff. Although he had partially lost the use of his right leg, the doctors promised that he would recover to the point where a slight limp would be the only lasting trace of his illness.

On their return home, after Dinu's discharge, Dolly tried hard to revert to her normal domestic routines. She put Dinu into a room of his own, under the care of an ayah. For the first few days, he made no complaint. Then, late one night, Dolly woke suddenly, at the touch of his breath on her face. Her son was standing beside her, propped up on the edge of the bed. He had left his ayah snoring in his room, and crawled down the corridor, dragging his right leg behind him. Dolly took him into her bed, hugging his bony body to her chest, breathing in the soft, rain-washed smell of his hair. She slept better that night than she had at any time in the last several weeks.

During the day, as Dinu began trying to walk again, Dolly hovered over him, darting to move stools and tables out of his way. Watching him as he struggled to regain his mobility, Dolly began to marvel at her son's tenacity and resilience—at the strength of will that made him pick himself up, time and time again, until he was able to hobble just a step or two farther than before. But she could see also that this daily struggle was changing him. He was more withdrawn than she remembered, and seemed years older in maturity and self-possession. With his father and brother he was unresponsive and cold, as though he were self-consciously discouraging their attempts to include him in their exuberant games.

Dolly's absorption in Dinu's convalescence became so complete as to claim the entirety of her mind. She thought less and less about her circle of friends and the round of activities that had occupied her before—the gatherings, the tea-parties, the picnics. When occasionally a friend or an acquaintance dropped by, there were awkward silences: she would feign interest in their stories, without contributing a word of her own. When they asked what she did with her time, she found it hard to explain. So small was the span by which Dinu's successes were measured—an extra step or two at a time, a couple more inches—that it was impossible to communicate either the joy or the crestfallen emptiness that attended upon the passing of each day. Her friends would nod politely as they listened to her explanations and when they left she knew that it would be a long time before she saw them again. The odd thing was that far from feeling any regret, she was glad.

One weekend, Rajkumar said: ‘You haven't been out in months.' He had a horse running for the Governor's Cup, at the Rangoon Turf Club: he insisted that she go with him to the races.

She went through the motions of dressing for the races as though she were performing a half-forgotten ritual. When she went down to the driveway, U Ba Kyaw bowed her into their car as though he were welcoming her home after a long absence. The car was a Pic-Pic—a Swiss-manufactured Piccard-Pictet—
a commodious, durable machine with a glass pane separating the driver's seat from the interior cabin.

The Pic-Pic circled around the Royal Lake, driving past the Chinese burial grounds and passing within sight of the Rangoon Club. Now Dolly too began to feel that she'd been away a long time. All the familiar sights seemed new and startling—the reflection of the Shwe Dagon, shimmering on the lake; the long, low-slung building of the Boat Club, perched on the shore. She found herself leaning forward in her seat, with her face half out of the window, as though she were looking at the city for the first time. The roads around the racecourse had been sealed off by the police, but the Pic-Pic was recognised and they were waved through. The stands looked festive with pennants and flags fluttering above the terraces. On the way to Rajkumar's box, Dolly found herself waving to a great number of people whose names she had forgotten. Once they were seated, dozens of friends and acquaintances stopped by to welcome her back. She noticed, after a while, that Rajkumar was whispering their names to her, under cover of his programme, to remind her who they were—‘U Tha Din Gyi, he's a Turf Club steward; U Ohn, the handicapper, Mr MacDonald, the totalizator . . .'

Everyone was kind. Old Mr Piperno, the bookmaker, sent one of his sons to ask if she wanted to place any bets. She was touched and chose a couple of horses at random, from her programme. The band of the Gloucestershire Regiment came marching out and played a serenade from Friedemann's
Lola.
Then they started on another piece, with a great flourish, and Rajkumar gave her arm a sudden tug.

‘It's “God Save the King”,' he hissed.

‘I'm sorry,' she said, rising quickly to her feet. ‘I wasn't paying attention.'

At last, to her relief, the races started. There was a long wait before the next race and another after it was over. Just as everyone around her was becoming more and more excited, Dolly's mind began to wander. It was weeks since she'd been away from Dinu for this long—but of course he probably hadn't even noticed that she was gone.

A sudden outburst of applause jolted her back to her surroundings. Sitting next to her was Daw Thi, the wife of Sir Lionel Ba Than, who was one of the stewards of the Turf Club. Daw Thi was wearing her famous ruby necklace, idly fingering the thumbnail-sized stones. Dolly saw that she was looking at her expectantly.

‘What's happened?' said Dolly.

‘Lochinvar has won.'

‘Oh?' said Dolly.

Daw Thi gave her a long look, and burst into laughter.

‘Dolly, you silly thing,' she said, ‘have you forgotten? Lochinvar is your husband's horse!'

In the car, on the way back, Rajkumar was unusually quiet. When they were almost home, he leant over to slam shut the window that separated the driver's seat from the rear. Then he turned to look at her a little unsteadily. He'd been plied with champagne after his visit to the winner's paddock, and was slightly drunk.

‘Dolly?' he said.

‘Yes?'

‘Something's happened to you.'

‘No.' She shook her head. ‘No. Nothing's happened.' ‘You're changing . . . You're leaving us behind.'

‘Who?'

‘Me . . . Neel . . .'

She flinched. She knew it was true that she'd neglected her elder son lately. But Neel was filled with energy, boisterousness and loud-voiced goodwill and Rajkumar doted on him. With Dinu on the other hand, he was nervous and tentative; frailty and weakness worried him, puzzled him: he had never expected to encounter these in his own progeny.

‘Neel doesn't need me,' Dolly said, ‘in the way that Dinu does.'

He reached for her hand. ‘Dolly, we all need you. You can't disappear into yourself. You can't leave us behind.'

‘Of course not.' She laughed uneasily. ‘Where would I go if I left you behind?'

He dropped her hand and turned away. ‘Sometimes I can't help feeling that you've already gone away—shut yourself behind a glass wall.'

‘What wall?' she cried. ‘What are you talking about?' She looked up to see U Ba Kyaw watching her, in the Pic-Pic's rear-view mirror. She bit her lip and said nothing more.

This exchange came as a shock. She couldn't make sense of it at first. After a day or two she decided that Rajkumar was right, she ought to go out more, even if it was just to the Scott Market, to look round the shops. Dinu was already more self-sufficient; soon it would be time for him to start school. She would have to get used to being without him, and besides, it wasn't healthy to be always shut away behind the walls of the house.

She began to schedule little expeditions for herself. One morning she found herself stuck in one of the most crowded parts of the city, near Rangoon's Town Hall. Just ahead, at the intersection of Dalhousie Street and Sule Pagoda Street there lay a busy roundabout. An ox-cart had collided with a rickshaw; someone was hurt. A crowd had gathered and the air was full of noise and dust.

The Sule Pagoda was at the centre of this roundabout. It had been freshly whitewashed, and it rose above the busy streets like a rock rearing out of the sea. Dolly had driven past the pagoda countless times but had never been inside. She told U Ba Kyaw to wait nearby and stepped out of the car.

She made her way carefully across the crowded roundabout and climbed a flight of stairs. Removing her shoes, she found herself standing on a cool, marble-paved floor. The noise of the street had fallen away and the air seemed clean, free of dust. She spotted a group of saffron-robed monks, chanting in one of the small shrines that ringed the pagoda's circular nave. She stepped in and knelt behind them, on a mat. In a raised niche, directly ahead, there was a small gilded image of the Buddha, seated in the
bhumisparshamudra
, with the middle finger of his right hand touching the earth. Flowers lay heaped below—roses, jasmine, pink lotuses—and the air was heady with their scent.

Dolly closed her eyes, trying to listen to the monks, but instead it was Rajkumar's voice that echoed in her ears: ‘You're changing . . . leaving us behind.' In the tranquillity of that place, those words had a different ring: she recognised that he was right, that the events of the recent past had changed her no less than they had Dinu.

In hospital, at night, lying in bed with Dinu, she'd found herself listening to voices that were inaudible during the day: the murmurs of anxious relatives; distant screams of pain; women keening in bereavement. It was as though the walls turned porous in the stillness of the night, flooding her room with an unseen tide of defeat and suffering. The more she listened to those voices, the more directly they spoke to her, sometimes in tones that seemed to recall the past, sometimes in notes of warning.

Late one night she'd heard an old woman crying for water. The voice had been feeble—a hoarse, rasping whisper—but it had filled the room. Although Dinu had been fast asleep, Dolly had clapped a hand over his head. For a while she'd lain rigid on her side, clutching her child, using his sleeping body to shut out the sound. Then she'd slipped out of bed and walked quickly down the corridor.

A white-capped Karen nurse had stopped her: ‘What are you doing here?'

‘There was a voice,' Dolly had said, ‘someone crying for water . . .' She'd made the nurse listen.

‘Oh yes,' the nurse had said, offhandedly, ‘that's from the malaria ward below. Someone's delirious. Go back to your room.' The moans had stopped soon afterwards but Dolly had stayed up all night, haunted by the sound of the voice.

Another time she had stepped out of the room to find a stretcher in the corridor. A child's body had been lying on it, covered with a white hospital sheet. Although Dinu had been no more than a few feet away, sleeping peacefully, Dolly had not been able to quell the panic that surged through her at the sight of the shrouded stretcher. Falling to her knees in the corridor, she had torn away the sheet that covered the corpse.
The child had been a boy, of Dinu's age, and not unlike him in build. Dolly had begun to cry, hysterically, overwhelmed as much by guilt as relief. A nurse and an orderly had had to lift her up to take her back to bed.

Again that night, she had not been able to sleep. She'd thought of the child's body; she'd thought of what her life would be like in Dinu's absence; she'd thought of the dead boy's mother. She'd begun to cry—it was as though her voice had merged with that of the unknown woman; as though an invisible link had arisen between all of them—her, Dinu, the dead child, his mother.

Now, kneeling on the floor of the Sule Pagoda, she recalled the voice of King Thebaw, in Ratnagiri. In his later years the King had seemed more and more to dwell on the precepts he had learnt as a novice, in the palace monastery. She remembered a word he'd often used,
karuna—
one of the Buddha's words, Pali for compassion, for the immanence of all living things in each other, for the attraction of life for its likeness. A time will come, he had said to the girls, when you too will discover what this word karuna means, and from that moment on, your lives will never again be the same.