The Sleeping Dictionary (39 page)

AFTER THAT INCIDENT, I did not feel the same inside the library. I felt stifled. I did not pause in my labors to browse; in fact, I did not crack open a book until the day I unwrapped a package from a Bombay bookshop. Inside the brown paper were two glossy new books, one
a guidebook by Joseph Summers called
Birds of the Nilgiri Hills
and the other
Female India
, photographs by Bernard Mulkins.

Bernie Mulkins: the lusty, dusty traveler who had arrived at Rose Villa and changed my life. Memories of that hard day returned as I paged through the glossy photographs. Here was Lucky-Short-for-Lakshmi with her face wreathed in cigarette smoke and a melancholic expression. When Bernie had focused his camera, I’d thought he was just after showing her womanly parts, but now I understood what he had also revealed was her loneliness. In Natty’s portrait, he had captured another emotion: avarice. Seated at a vanity while making up her face, the mirror showed her beautiful but cold eyes. The picture was so clear that I could make out all the various containers of whitening creams and nail polish on the vanity and a purse spilling over with rupees.

Bonnie had the most flattering photograph; she stretched over two pages with a regimental army flag draped over her hips. She was literally wrapped up in England, but making the kind of advertisement no British company would ever sponsor.

The book held pictures of poor Indian women, too: peasants who worked in the fields wearing saris without blouses and dark tribal women whose faces were only illuminated by the whites of their eyes and the sparkle of their nose rings. He had even photographed a young bride going off to her new household in a cart, her face wet with tears.

It was easier to look at the others’ pictures, but finally I took a deep breath and looked at my own. As he’d said, the picture did not reveal my face. Still, I could see the slight widening of my body, the evidence of how I was growing a child. I realized that all I might ever have of Kabita was this, a picture of my body with her hidden inside. A pang struck me, because I so wanted to see her as she had grown. But maybe it would be worse to see her. How could I see my child and leave her again?

Painfully, I dragged my thoughts back to the crisis at hand. Mr. Lewes must have bought the book in Bombay; but from its perfect
condition, I could see he hadn’t paged through it before the purchase. Still, he might think of looking through it one evening. I couldn’t throw it away.

If the book stayed, my picture within it could not. Even if Mr. Lewes couldn’t know it was me, I’d surely become obsessed with this physical reminder of my past. Without giving myself time to doubt the action, I took scissors and ran them along the book’s inside seam, so the page with my photograph came out. After I’d torn the paper into fragments, I realized I couldn’t throw them in the wastebasket, which would arouse suspicion I’d vandalized the collection.

So I wrapped up the pieces in a handkerchief that I tucked in my purse. It was only a short walk to the chai-wallah’s cauldron, and as I stood there, waiting for a cup, I let the pieces drop in the fire. By the time the tea was on my tongue, the shreds of my old life had curled into charred bits of nothing.

Still, I could not forget.
Females of India
was in the window of the Oxford Bookstore and was well reviewed in the English language press. As I sat each night translating the newspapers, fear steamed like the cup of tea at my side. What if Mr. Lewes asked whether a package of books had come from Bombay or searched for them himself? If he looked carefully, would he notice that a page was gone?

I had become so anxious that I wished I could monitor Mr. Lewes’s movements in the library. When the air-conditioning contractor began banging up the place, I gained the opportunity. I had emerged from my bath one evening and noticed a loose floor tile. As I bent to lift it out, I realized that the air-conditioning workers must have struck hard enough to crack the plaster between my floor and the library ceiling. The break was enough to offer a tiny glimpse into the library below.

As I knocked away more to get a wider view, I recalled the hole in the floor in Rose Villa. The girls had shown me something I hadn’t wanted to know about; whereas my desire to watch Mr. Lewes was quite practical. I slipped white paper over the hole so it didn’t show,
and then placed the tile back. It was very little effort, yet I was sweating from the realization of what I’d done.

Mr. Lewes would be terrribly shocked if he found out about the spy hole. Perhaps shocked enough to dismiss me. It would be my job to make sure he never found out.

MY DAILY HOURS in the library became complicated by the workmen, who filled the air with the sound of their saws and hammers. Because of them, I barely heard the telephone ringing one morning, but I got it just in time and found Supriya on the line. She reminded me that I had a finished order at the shop. Then she mentioned an upcoming political meeting at which Netaji was rumored to be making an address.

Thrilled to see the leader in the flesh, I said yes. I would go to Sen Bookbindery first, pick up the finished books, and then stop at the meeting on my way home. Mr. Lewes didn’t ask me to account for how I spent my time; he seemed most interested in the hours we spent together, over the newspapers.

I met Supriya, Sonali, Ruksana, Lata, and three others by the lush gardens bordering Government House. What a contrast our plain, homespun saris were to the bright flowers spilling through the wrought iron fence. Nevertheless, the guards watched us as if we were some kind of entertainment. Finding them just as funny, Sonali giggled and waved at them.

“There will be no more waving and joke making,” Lata cautioned as we approached the steps of the majestic, Greek-columned Town Hall. “Our group’s reputation is very important. Hundreds of freedom fighters will be here; we do not want them to think us silly schoolgirls.”

Supriya made a face at me; I knew she thought Lata was too stern. I winked back at her as we entered the wide marble hall. Supriya led our group up the stairs; the second floor was not as crowded, so we
went to take positions at the front of the gallery. As other ladies filled in behind us, I remembered my first Congress meeting in Kharagpur. Only this time I was witnessing history, passing binoculars back and forth with my friends to get an intimate view.

Onstage, one Congress politician after another came forward, each praising Netaji and calling for the community to unite behind him. And finally, Netaji strode out, his tall, lean figure dressed in a neat tan suit that almost looked like a uniform. When Netaji saluted the audience, the effect was as if a general had taken charge.

Netaji’s words rang out sharply about the needless division within the Congress Party. He said that history had proven already that India would not find its way to independence without leadership from the citizens of Bengal, a comment that made the audience cheer loudly. He declared it was the duty of every man and woman to fight as never before.

As Netaji’s voice rolled over me, I became aware that the hairs on my arms were standing. I was in the presence of a tremendous leader. When Netaji gave his blessings on the audience, the room erupted in thunderous applause. People in the hall below rushed the stage, trying to drape jasmine garlands over Netaji’s head. Then a young man began steering Netaji off the stage.

Something about the young man struck me as familiar. Still throbbing from the roar of applause, I turned the binoculars on his face. The man had spectacles just like Netaji but had a longer, handsome face with black hair waving back from the forehead.

I had not seen him since I was fifteen, but in the three and a half years that had passed, his features were the same. Here, at last, was Pankaj Bandopadhyay.

CHAPTER

24

KSHATRIYA:
a member of the military caste, the second of the four great castes or classes among the Hindus.

—
Oxford English Dictionary
, Vol. 5, 1933

P
ankaj’s time onstage was too brief. As he guided Netaji away from the audience, I realized how attractive he’d become with time’s passage—or was I looking at him with my experienced woman’s eye? I felt I knew his heart and mind so well, after having written him hundreds of letters—and receiving as many back.

In the infirmary, Bidushi had told me to take care of Pankaj. I wondered how she would feel about my speaking to him. As I moved through North Calcutta pursuing political activities, I would surely spot him again. But should I try to speak? He’d been angry with me all those years ago in the garden. If he recognized me now as Sarah from Lockwood School, he could ruin everything, and perhaps even have me arrested. But if he didn’t recognize me—it could mean a fresh start. My tasteful, Indian-woven saris, my posh Calcutta
manners, and my circle of intellectual friends placed me in a new league. And Pankaj was free; he was unmarried; and he was too great of a temptation not to think about.

ARVASH, THE SPRING season, was almost done. By day, I worked in the lovely, air-cooled library sorting through memoirs: various soldiers’ and missionaries’ accounts of a happy, exotic India marked by tiger shoots and rajahs’ feasts. But the papers I translated for Mr. Lewes at night were so different; filled with stories of anger, of people being arrested for civil disobedience. Netaji had been reelected as Congress president, which made me happy, but no Congress minister except his own brother, Sarat, would serve in his cabinet. Realizing he could not accomplish anything without friends, Netaji resigned the presidency in April. By May he’d formed a new party called the Forward Bloc, an effort to bring all left-wing elements of the independence movement together.

Mr. Lewes was very interested in Bengali opinions of the Forward Bloc. As he listened to my translations and made notes, I wondered if he wished this new, angry India would go away. I imagined his job would have been simpler one hundred years ago, when Indians were too frightened of their rulers to speak up and there was no Congress Party, Muslim League, or Communists.