The Luminist (25 page)

He left the cover of the trees. “Amma, we have to go back before they accuse you of stealing food.”

Hari and two other boys appeared. They crossed the clearing to take the food from her plate. He watched them, feeling sick with the sight of them. They were emaciated and in the plain expansion of their protruding ribs, he could see that they would do anything to eat, to get what they did not have. They would kill.

Hari lay his banyan limb on the ground. “The men in the fields and the Britishers' houses all talk of the fine things you've
learned. Then they sing in mourning for Chandrak. They do this every day since the soldiers hung him on your word.”

Hari's face was no longer that of the boy struggling with the colonials' words. His haunted expression was no different than that of Chandrak by the fire, bottle in hand.

“Bring the machine to us,” Hari said. “It has parts of glass and wood. It sounds very rare and valuable. It will fetch a high price.”

“No.”

Other feral boys emerged at the far side of the clearing. Sudarma moved toward them. Eligius held her back by the arm.

“Remember how afraid you were in the field, with the soldier?” Hari asked. “You cried. You ran. Now you're more afraid to be a man and stand against these people. Forget what you think we will do to you. Do you understand what they do? How they take our land and push us all into the sea?”

“The only beatings I have ever taken,” Eligius said, “are from a man like you will become. I will not steal. Chandrak was a murderer. So are you.”

Hari's club came down with enough force to drive both Eligius and Sudarma to the ground. She absorbed the brunt. Her palms split open where Hari had brought the club to bear on his intended target, the top of Eligius' head.

“You shame us all!” Hari screamed. “You are worth nothing!”

He raised the club again. Eligius closed his eyes.

“Don't.”

Catherine and Julia stood at the edge of the razor grass, with Sir John. Sir John's pistol was level, its hammer cocked. The barrel pointed at Hari.

“Careful, old man,” Hari said warily.

“I am old, true enough. But I assure you, the gun is quite new.”

“Leave this place!” Catherine stepped in front of her daughter. “I will call the authorities!”

“You be assured, we will be back.” Hari slipped into the far trees. “Dimbola will not be safe. There are so many of us and so few of you.”

Julia came to Eligius' side. “I heard you call in the jungle.”

“Is my mother all right?”

“Her hands need attention,” Sir John said. “We must get her back.”

“They wanted me to steal the camera. I told him no – ”

“I heard you.” Catherine took his hand. She and Julia helped him rise. “Every word.”

Her eyes glowed softly in the starlight. Something about the long road that light traveled, from the southern skies to her, to him, made him terribly sad. He fell sobbing into her arms. Julia's hand alighted on his back and remained.

Sudarma walked ahead, with Sir John. At the sound of her son's cries, her shoulders fell a little, but she never turned.

 

GOVERNOR WYNFIELD CAME at midweek with the sergeant of the newly-installed Port Colombo garrison. They took statements from Sir John, Julia and Catherine about the men. No one mentioned Sudarma.

The sergeant came to Eligius last. “You, boy. Do you have anything to add?”

“They threatened to come here. I believe they could. They're angry.”

“I suppose you wish to plead the case of these boys,” Wynfield said.

“There will be no pleading from me.”

After they left, it fell to him to beg forgiveness for his mother's judgment. Sudarma had stolen, he implored Catherine, but out of fear and obligation to feed starving faces she'd known from birth, not a desire to add herself to Ceylon's growing restlessness.

“I hold your word in my hand,” she finally said, “that you will be responsible for her. The next transgression and I will
have no choice but to say goodbye to you both. And you know how I loathe goodbyes.”

After the jungle, Eligius' life at Dimbola took on new configurations. While his mother cooked, he ate in the dining room, listening to Catherine and Sir John regale each other with tales of Paris, of gaily dressed people strolling boulevards alive with perfume and music, of boats as intimate as a wedding vow floating through a city constructed of light. Nights were speckled with candles and torches and hissing gas lamps. By day its buildings made gossip of the sun, passing it from window to brass balcony to the street, each adding to the light a bit of itself: hues, density, a stroke from the palette of shadows that only a city of cobblestone and metallurgy could possess.

“That's where you must find yourself,” Sir John told Julia one night. “If you truly intend on writing, that is. There you'll see artists simply daub their brushes in the air and put the light on canvas and paper.”

“Now, Sir John,” Catherine said, “answer this question. Why do you encourage Julia to cross the ocean to write, which surely men do, yet you express misgivings for my pursuit?”

“She walks in others' well-trod footprints, Catherine. You could be first. There is a difference to men.”

“Yet you help me.”

“I'm not one to let social convention stand in the way of learning. I intend to publish our progress, and have a name for it. Photography. We shall see if we can't arrest beauty, as you so eloquently put it.”

“Do you think I do this only to make beautiful portraits, John?”

“I've offended you.”

“No.You've underestimated me. I may have no voyages to my name save that which brought me here. But I know things no man can know. In this world, the babies we women raise are yours, the ones we bury, ours. Our losses to bear, and we're expected to bear them quietly and properly, with only our
memories to see us through. I am your equal, and Charles', and any man in this one way. Men grow ill in the name of their work, just as I surely will in mine.”

Sudarma returned with a plate full of food. “The sa'ab still hasn't eaten.”

“What is he doing?” Julia asked.

“Writing.”

Julia cast an imploring look at her mother. “Chase these portraits if you must, but if you wish to arrest something of value, arrest him before he is no longer here.”

A tear threatened her eye, but she tilted her head in the defiant gesture that Catherine knew well.

She rose and went to the study. After she was safely away, Julia turned on Sir John. “My mother's correspondence with you set tongues wagging. He's disconsolate. She, distracted. It falls to me to state these matters openly.”

“I assure you, I have an abiding respect for your father and no desire to romance Catherine.”

“Would that you could convince the gossips of Ceylon otherwise.”

“Young lady, it occurs to me that it's your tongue that's taken up this issue most forcefully. I've heard nothing from anyone save you, and that includes Charles himself.”

“Only the women speak up in this house, sir. My father prefers to write. How quaintly quiet.”

Sir John slapped the table and laughed heartily. “Is every woman in this house dead set on having her say? Eligius, be grateful your mother moves through her tasks with the good sense to be silent.”

Sudarma passed through the dining room, her bandaged hands hanging limply. Eligius watched where she went. “A woman's words are only valuable to babies in my world, sa'ab.”

“Now you've seen another world,” Julia said. “What do you prefer, I wonder.”

There was only the smallest hint of play in her voice. “In
my world,” he told her, “I would never hear words like these. I would never see what I've seen. Amma, are you finished for the night?”

When she didn't respond, he left for the hall of paintings and his mother's room. Sudarma stood at the window, staring out at the trees swaying in the dark while Gita cried. “She won't stop. I've nothing to give her.”

He lit his battered diya. The flame fluttered in the mirrors of Gita's eyes. Softly, he began to hum to her. It was an old song, nameless so far as he knew. He pressed the tune into her ear, and soon its sound washed her mewling under.

“I used to sing that to you,” Sudarma said. “To calm your fears.”

“I remember.”

“There was a time when I worried about all the things you feared. Now I hear you sing it to her. I wonder what Gita fears.”

“No matter. Do you have all you need?”

“Yes.”

“I have no choice but to do this, mother. You shouldn't have taken from them. It puts us at risk.”

“They don't know where else to go. They would never hurt me, Eligius.”

“No. Only me.”

He closed her door and locked it. Outside, he slid a rusty bar through two slots, sealing her window. She gazed at him through the glass, unmoving. Held.

He walked away before she could fade.

Topographies

OVER THE COURSE OF FEBRUARY AND MARCH, CATHERINE and Sir John experimented with various chemical combinations. They used guncotton to bathe the plates in silver salt. They lacquered skins of collodion onto them and potassium mixed with oil of lavender to lend flexibility. They conversed in drams and durations. Light and shadow became their accomplices. Around a meal or in sleep, there was always a part of them not present; they were pacing the floor of Holland House before Sir John's star maps, lost to all save the glass and the chemical sea from which their obsession might rise, and remain.

Sir John taught her and Eligius how to grind and polish glass for lenses. They reconfigured the camera's plate holder with a spring-loaded trap of imported rosewood. For the collodion and silver salt, Eligius constructed vertical baths so the plates might be coated evenly. On his own he experimented with mirrors and angles. By spring he'd created his own topography of the light's possibilities in Holland House.

It was time to try again.

The morning she chose was cloudy, so Eligius lit candles and placed them in constellations around Holland House. Imagining how they would throw their light once the curtains were closed over the windows and across the ceiling glass, he brought in mirrors. In the corner of the room he fashioned a tiny warren of dark gingham, with an opening at the top to let the heat escape.

She expressed awe at his ability to visualize the light's path. Even he was a little mystified by it. It had always been a part of him, a good part he hoped would never fade. If anything, working with her had honed his abilities even further. He felt important in his role. She could not conjure her images without him, and told him so.

The Wynfields arrived at mid-morning, interrupting their preparations. Their carriage pulled to the gate just ahead of a long column of British soldiers on the march. The soldiers continued on, pausing to bow their heads at the disembarking family.

Eligius met them. “I wish to see Charles immediately,” the governor said.

“I'll ask him to come out.”

“Is he so unwell that he cannot take the breeze these days?”

“We are hoping he gets better, sa'ab.”

Wynfield brushed past. “And what of your mistress?” He pointed to Holland House.

“Get my wife some tea. I will see myself to your sahib.”

George exited the carriage last. He opened the gates and strode onto the grounds as if he owned them.

Eligius escorted the Wynfields to the main house. The governor headed for the study, closing the door behind him.

“My tea,” Lady Wynfield said.

He knew Catherine and Sir John were setting up the camera and would have need of him. Circumstances would not wait for long.

“I will make it.” Sudarma stood in the hall. “He has work for the memsa'ab. I will see to any need you have.”

Grateful, Eligius ran out to the yard. Julia and George were in the gazebo. George was speaking to her sternly. She sat with her head bowed as George wagged a disapproving finger at her.

Her writing implements were near; perhaps, Eligius thought, George was critiquing her. But Julia wasn't answering back. Her passivity disquieted him.

Catherine and Sir John were positioning the camera when
he entered Holland House. “Tell her it's time,” Catherine said. “This cannot wait.”

“She's coming,” Sir John said. “Young Wynfield is escorting her.”

“How chivalrous,” she said dryly.

Julia crossed the yard as if she'd just awakened from a broken sleep. George linked his arm in hers. “You should be proud of your lovely daughter,” he said. “She is to be my next portrait. I've put off all other commissions for her.”

“If you wish,” Catherine said.

“In point of fact, the theme of this portrait is love.” He took Julia's hand and kissed it. “We begin immediately. I shall insist on a dress suited to the theme. Julia, see to it.”

“Yes.”

“ Till tomorrow, then.”

Julia took her seat. Hot blush decanted her cheeks.

Catherine peered through the camera lens. Julia sat at its center, yet scarcely occupied the frame.

Eligius moved candles closer to her until a pale shadow rippled the door behind her. “Did he hurt you?” he whispered as he arranged the candles in a circle.

“What would a servant do about such a thing?” Julia's eyes found something within the years-old shadow on the wall; the memory of a portrait.

He lit the last of the candles. Catherine selected a glass plate. Under her watchful gaze, he held it steady as she lacquered collodion onto the glass and slid it into place.