The Sleeping Dictionary (54 page)

MR. LEWES DID not even go to church on Sunday. He appeared in the garden before noon, dressed in shirtsleeves and canvas trousers with an apron around his waist.

“I hope Manik won’t mind my small theft,” Mr. Lewes said, turning up the ends of the apron to show them off. “On which side of the serving station do you want me?”

“How about the right as usual?” At the dinner table, Mr. Lewes sat at the head and I was close on his left. In the garden, he’d subjugated his authority to me; it felt funny.

“Don’t think of moving that tureen; it’s too heavy.” Mr. Lewes went up the steps to load one of the tall brass tureens into his arms and came down carefully to rest it atop the rack I’d set over a paraffin candle.

“It’s almost time,” I said, looking at the people already queuing outside the gate.

“No bowls for them to use, ever?” he queried.

“They use their hands, as you’ve seen, or leaves from the trees.” I inclined my head toward the mango tree, which was almost
completely stripped of leaves and fruit. It had given all it could to the refugees, just as we had.

“I want to try phan.”

Shrugging, I said, “It’s just like the congee people eat when they’re ill. It’s not at all delicious.”

Mr. Lewes went over to the mango tree and brought back a leaf. I dropped a spoonful of phan onto it, and he brought the leaf to his mouth. After a moment, he said, “It’s rather bland. I wonder if it would be tastier with salt or sugar.”

“There’s a sugar shortage, if you hadn’t noticed!” I shook a finger at him, almost enjoying the way he was asking my advice.

“How about jaggery, the Indian sugar?”

“They are grateful for what we give. There’s no need to do anything extra.”

“But it’s Sunday lunch! Where does Manik keep his blocks of jaggery?”

“Third cupboard from the door, upper shelf. Use the round-topped silver key.” Smiling at his generosity, I untied the key ring I always wore from the waist of my sari and gave it to him. He returned a few minutes later with two cups of the golden-brown jaggery, which melted easily into one tureen of bubbling phan.

“This sweet pot is the one I’ll serve from; tell the children,” he said, as I went to open the gate and welcome the refugees in. I told them, and the young ones rushed to be in Mr. Lewes’s line. I was surprised how well he did; speaking the few words of Bengali I’d taught him.
Please take some. It’s sweet. Come back tomorrow.

Fortunately the adults were satisfied with the plainer phan. As I served them, they asked in Bengali who the saheb was. I realized then that they thought the property was my own, and he was the guest. During a slow moment, I told Mr. Lewes about the humorous misunderstanding. “I was worried you might frighten them, but it turns out they are only concerned whether you are the governor or my husband!”

“If you told them I was both—what would they say? Tell them,” he said with a laugh.

“I won’t lie to them!” I couldn’t say how much I regretted all the stories I’d told.

When the last refugee had eaten and trailed out the gate, I hung the
CLOSED
sign and prepared to take the empty tureens inside. But Mr. Lewes had already done the tureens and was blowing out the paraffin candles.

“The work is done. Thank you.” I ran damp hands over my hair, which was escaping its bun. I rarely thought about how disheveled the work over steaming tureens made me; but today, I was embarrassed.

“You’re very welcome. And you’re lovely,” he said, reaching out to take one of the curling wisps. My heart started hammering, as he held it for a moment. This could not be. Rapidly, I brought up my hand over his, to get him to release my hair, but all he did was put his other hand over mine. He stepped closer to me; so close that I could smell a hint of smoke and jaggery mixed with his scent.

We had never shaken hands. But today we had used our hands toward the same goal. What had happened in the garden was so unusual, that his holding on to my hand with both of his seemed like an extension of the dream.

From our joined hands, a shiver traveled up my arm and into my brain. This was the same feeling I’d had the night of the Christmas bombing, and the time before that at our cocktail party. As Mr. Lewes pulled me against him, I wanted to let the shivering continue: to lift my face to his, which was lowering with eyes closed.

It was too romantic; I felt as if I were in the cinema, watching the characters of a young Indian woman and an Englishman standing inside a walled garden bordered with flowering trees. They were so close; it was clear that they loved each other. But hanging over the wall was a chorus of mocking Indians and Britishers, ruining it.

This moment was dangerous, I realized with a jolt. It could undermine everything I’d worked for and ruin him, too. Panic flared within me; I turned my wrist, and his hands were gone. And so was I, fleeing through the garden and out to the street.

CHAPTER

34

When you are wise, you will know how much paddy makes rice.

Bengali proverb

W
hen I’d taken the library job, I’d privately vowed that if Mr. Lewes ever touched me, I would leave. But now I couldn’t imagine leaving Middleton Mansions and the life I’d built. Nor did I want to leave him. I felt—no, I couldn’t let myself remember what I’d felt in the garden. Desire. Affection. Reassurance. All in the space of his holding my wrist.

Trying to calm myself back to a normal state, I retreated to Bilgrami’s Classic Books, where I’d once gone hoping to sell my own treasured texts. It was still the closest bookshop in the area, and even though the windows were covered in blackout paper, inside it was neat and serene. I made my greeting to Mr. Bilgrami, who knew me well by now, and carried a stool over to the section where the children’s books were. I leafed through a few new boarding school novels. Angela Brazil and Enid Blyton’s innocent girls, caring only for each
other, their teachers, and field hockey, took my mind off the crisis. I remembered what my ideas of love had been like when I was at Lockwood. Pankaj had ruled my head and heart; now I was confounded by what had almost happened with Simon Lewes. That was his first name. I’d never said it aloud, but now I whispered it.

Simon
.

Several hours later, I walked very slowly home, dreading what lay ahead. But he was not in the flat. I found a key ring on the hall table with an envelope. Inside was his monogrammed card, scrawled with a few lines of his handwriting.

I have gone away for a while on business. I don’t know the return date. My apologies for this and everything else.

He had not even signed his name. I went into the library and curled up on the settee, reading the lines again. He was apologizing because he’d understood what had happened was wrong: the fru-ition of every cliché and stereotype about British men and Indian women, something we both had fought against so hard and for so long. I did not believe he had a business trip, because he’d never spoken of it. I wondered now if he would stay away until his emotions had calmed, or was he waiting to see if I would do the proper thing and quit working for him?

“The saheb went away on business yesterday afternoon. Delhi or Bombay, I imagine,” I told Jatin when he came to my room the next morning with bed tea. I was acting as if I was telling him news, but what I was really doing was fishing for information.

Jatin did not disappoint. As he put down the tray, he said, “That is strange. My cousin-brother saw him yesterday evening.”

Trying to sound calm, I asked, “At Howrah Station?”

“No. My relative is a waiter at the Calcutta Club. He said saheb was at the gentlemen’s bar upstairs, drinking too much whiskey. He could not have been traveling.”

I’d heard that the Calcutta Club had bedrooms for its members. A cold feeling descended on me as I realized that my intuition had been
correct. He did not think we could live under the same roof after the kiss. Yet he felt unable to dismiss me.

The following day the telephone rang. I answered and Mr. Lewes spoke without introduction. In response to my murmured greeting, he asked to speak with Shombhu. Feeling sick with worry, I gave the head bearer the phone. After a minute, Shombhu put down the receiver and said that the saheb had asked him to pack a second suitcase with a week’s worth of clothing and have it dropped off at the office.

“He’s going to Delhi, just like you said to Jatin,” Shombhu reported. “He does not know for how long.”

Delhi, my foot!
I thought. Mr. Lewes was such a creature of propriety; he would not let anyone think he was staying away from his flat for any reason but business. And then Reverend McRae decided to leave the flat, too.

“But why?”

“I’m invited to Dacca to help with famine relief there,” the reverend said over dinner on Wednesday, the third night since Mr. Lewes’s disappearance. “They’re very hard hit there. I’m sorry I won’t be able to lend a hand in the garden for a week or so.”

“Please don’t worry!” I reassured him, although the prospect of losing the reverend’s company made my spirits sink even lower. “I’ll ask one of the ladies who come regularly to be my helper for this time.”

“That’s a grand idea, empowering them to help one another. I may share this concept in Dacca.”

“First, let me see how it works.”

“Yes, yes, of course! And it’s a shame Mr. Lewes isn’t here—he would enjoy helping on the weekend. I think the rice kitchen’s made him into an even better man. Don’t you?”

I nodded, all the while knowing that Mr. Lewes would never return to the garden with me. But I would spend time there; and after the reverend departed, working with so many people kept me from feeling lonely. But when I cleaned up afterward, and I looked at my
hands, I remembered him touching them. I thought then: If only I had waited for the kiss. He would have left me anyway; but I would have known what it felt like.

As the week continued, my longing turned to anger. If Mr. Lewes really wanted me to leave, he should have sent a letter. But I didn’t want to go. Not because I felt duty-bound to spy on the British; but because if I left, the rice kitchen would close. The peasants’ needs were more important than a botched moment between two privileged people. And what of my lost little Kabita? If I had her with me, I would not be thinking of such selfish matters.

This attitude renewed my strength; and I began smiling and laughing genuinely again, as I spent hours with the people I was coming to know as well as those I’d grown up with in my small hamlet. And so the rice kitchen ran on until Friday. The feeding began as usual; at noon I was ladling phan with the assistance of a patron who’d become a friend: the Smiler, as I privately called the always-beaming woman of about thirty years, who had been prematurely aged by starvation. The Smiler had brought her five children to Calcutta, all of whom had survived the sixty-mile walk and were finally beginning to get flesh back on their bones. She told me that her smile had started the moment they’d entered the City of Palaces and had their first serving of phan.

“What is that?” the Smiler inclined her head toward the street, and a heavy, grinding noise.

“Soldiers, probably,” I said, looking past the gate as a long army lorry stopped right in front of the mansion block. From the sound of things, more lorries were behind that one.

Then I saw Shombhu running: uncharacteristic movement for such a stately man. He was followed into the garden by four constables and a dozen Indian Army soldiers. Trying to appear calm, I put down my ladle and asked the men their business. Instead of answering me, the soldiers shouted at the peasants to turn around and board their trucks. When people refused to leave, the soldiers picked up
their lathis. And now my anxiety turned to full-blown, heart-pounding fear.

“Stop it! What are you doing?” I cried out to the constable who seemed to be the boss of the group.

“We are obeying government orders.” He shoved a thin paper with smudged typing at me. Dimly I saw the words
relief
and
resettlement
.

“But this is an official government kitchen! These people are supposed to eat every day during these specific hours—”