The Small Fortune of Dorothea Q (39 page)

R
ajan was alive
!

Rika threw herself onto her bed, just as she had so many years ago, and wept, just as she had so many years ago. But now she wept for joy, relief and gratitude.

If only she had known! If only she had not been such a coward, if only she had stayed: she would have spared herself so much heartache, so much pain! It would have been she who had gone with Rajan to America, she who would have held his hand through all the medical procedures. Well, Basmati too, of course, but she would have been there, at his side, helping him through.

But.

Had she not run away she would not have travelled South America. She would not have gone to India, stayed in that wonderful Ashram, learned all the things she had, turned her life around. She would not have married Eddy, not have had Inky.

She went to the window, and looked down. She saw it all, just as it had been that night; Rajan, the spike through his head, the blood. She saw it in her mind’s eye, without fear, without horror. Within her there was only calm.

She laughed to herself. What a fool, what a bloody fool she had been! Rajan had been alive, all the time, and she had conjured up some spirit-Rajan, some placebo Rajan; an imaginary voice, an imaginary anchor.

Rajan, an angel! A saint, up in heaven! What nonsense! Those voices she had heard, thinking they came from him! They came from her! They were the voices of her own strength, her own true self, her own guiding spirit! She had been listening to herself! Everything she had sought in that fake Rajan, had been right here, inside her! What a travesty! Yet, maybe, it had been necessary. Maybe she had needed that spirit-Rajan, a familiar image, a face, a form, to cling to, to keep her steady? But what did it matter. Here she was, and all was well. No fear, no horror, no Beast.

Everything was right, just the way it was. Everything had fallen into place. And Rajan was alive!

She turned away from the window and returned to the dining room.

‘When can we go and see Rajan?’ she said.

M
arion
, Gran, and I were sitting in the gallery drinking coffee and chatting when Mum returned. Ever since she had found out about Rajan’s survival something about her was different. I couldn’t put my finger on it. It was as if some hidden darkness had vanished from her spirit, and I suppose that’s exactly what had happened. The shadow of Rajan’s supposed death had left her. But now, as she returned from the Annex, she was different again. This time, it was not that something had left her. She had gained something: a sense of complete peace emanated from her. Peace, and a highly contagious exultation.

‘When can we go and see Rajan?’ she said.

‘Don’t you want to rest for a day?’ Evelyn asked. ‘Settle in? Get rid of your jet lag?’

‘No,’ said Mum. ‘I want to go today. Inky can stay if she wants to. I’m going.’

‘I’m coming too!’ I cried. What jet lag? I was energized as never before, longing for movement and adventure and discovery.

We had already learned that Rajan no longer lived in the old house in Waterloo Street; that had been rented out for several years. Rajan and Basmati had gone up to the County of Essequibo after his return from the USA, and were living on his grandparents’ farm on the Pomeroon River. So it was there we had to go, Mum, Marion, and I.

Of course I would go to the Essequibo!

I
t was a long trip
, and I discovered on the way just how Guyana got its name: the word ‘Guiana’ means Land of Many Waters, as apt a name as could be.

First we had to drive back up the East Bank of the Demerara River, the way we had travelled last night from the airport. As Georgetown straggled out, the car turned to the right and we found ourselves at the dock of a floating bridge, a pontoon bridge, as Marion explained, across the river. On the other side we drove for about an hour, up to a small town called Parika on the next big river, bigger even than the Demerara: the Essequibo.

At Parika’s wharf we climbed down some rickety stairs and into a small boat that slowly filled with other passengers; we were handed life jackets and a moment later we were speeding across the river, the boat almost upended as it tore across the water. It took a long while, as the Essequibo is twenty kilometres across at its mouth, and by the time we reached Supenaam on the far bank we were all soaked through, but laughing.

Then it was into another car, and a drive along the coast to Charity; up a little further, and we had arrived at Rajan’s home.

T
he farm was
a place of exceeding beauty, on the east bank of the Pomeroon River. We stepped from the taxi into a wide-open space covered with white sand and dotted with flowering bushes, hibiscus and oleander. At the centre was a large wooden two-story house, surrounded by banana trees. To the left, at the edge of the sandy area, was the rainforest, and before us, stretching off beyond the cleared space, coconut trees, tall palms reaching out into the distance. To the right was the river.

Beyond the main house was a cottage, painted a fresh cobalt blue with mango-yellow shutters and door, and mango-yellow railings on the wraparound veranda. Unlike the main house, which was on high stilts as tradition demanded, the cottage was built just a little above ground level. A short flight of stairs as well as a ramp led up to the veranda. A concrete path led up to the cottage.

‘Rajan’s brother lives in the big house with his family,’ explained Marion, ‘and Basmati. Rajan has a personal carer who looks after him, an Amerindian from a nearby village. He’s in the best hands he could possibly be.’

As we walked past the big house a couple of half-naked children ran out to greet us, laughing and grabbing hold of our hands. A woman’s voice called them back; I looked up to see her, in the window, smiling and waving to us and reprimanding the children to leave us alone. We continued on to the cottage.

Another woman a few years older than me, a baby on her hips, came hurrying down the stairs of the big house. She was an Amerindian, her long black hair falling in a silky sheet over her shoulders. She trotted up to us, smiling.

‘Come with me!’ she said, and led the way to the cottage. We walked up the stairs to the veranda.

‘He usually sits at the back,’ said the woman, whose name, we learned, was Rosa, and she led the way around.

Mum’s arms were folded over her chest and her face was a mask, unreadable. She seemed to have withdrawn into herself, like a turtle; her elation gone, to be replaced by trepidation. She said nothing as we followed Rosa around the corner of the cottage. Here, the veranda expanded, forming a little open-air room.

Three people were in the room. An Amerindian man sat on the floor cleaning a fish. A thin grey-haired man sat in an armchair, and a plump, much older, white-haired Indian woman sat next to him, leaning into him, an open book in her hand. She closed it, and a glance at the cover told me it was a book about birds.

The man looked up when we approached.

I had never seen a face like his. Was he a child or a man, or both? Indeed, all the beauty and purity and total guilelessness of childhood seemed to shine through the outer veneer of middle age. He was beautiful. No other word for it. His face shone with that subtle beauty that shines from within rather than from the symmetry of external features. For, while his features were indeed well balanced, they were marred by an ugly scar, a puckering of flesh on his right temple. And yet the overall impression was beauty, and that beauty turned to perfection when his eyes fell on Mum, and that shine turned to radiance, as if the form that enclosed him was but an effigy, and the real life lay beyond.

He spoke, or tried to speak, but those emerging sounds spoiled the first impression of perfect beauty, for they were guttural, ugly sounds, grunts rather than words. He held out both arms to her.

Mum simply cried out something indistinct, and fell to her knees before him. He leaned forward, she leaned up, and their arms encircled each other and pulled each other close. Mum buried her face in his neck, and she sobbed, great, heaving sobs that shook her body from top to bottom.

I wanted to cry too. Marion wiped tears from her eyes with the back of her hand, and turned away, as if it was all too much for her.

When they drew apart I saw the man’s face again, and his eyes were the only dry ones in the room, his smile the only one. Everyone else looked miserable. Especially Mum, when at last she turned around. Holding the man’s hand in both her own, she murmured:

‘Rajan, oh Rajan. All these years … I thought you were dead … I’m sorry. So sorry.’ she buried her face in his shoulder, drew back, and said again: ‘I thought you were dead, Rajan, I thought you were gone: Oh I wish, I wish – I’d have come back long ago. I’m so sorry.’

She looked now at the old woman.

‘Basmati? You!
You
could have written me, said something. Why didn’t anyone
say?’

That last word,
say,
was a cry of despair, an accusation aimed at all of us, at God, at the entire universe; a wail of utter desolation.

‘Now, Rika, don’t start blaming Basmati! It’s all your fault for not reading Gran’s letter! How could we know you hadn’t read it? When you didn’t reply we thought you couldn’t bear it, couldn’t bear the thought of him being – you know. Like this.’

She gestured towards Rajan, and Mum just hugged him again, and he hugged her back.

Marion continued. ‘You were married, with a young child. We assumed you had decided to put Rajan, the accident, behind you. Not forgive Gran, as we had all hoped you would.’

Mum looked down. ‘I know. It was my fault from running away in the first place. That was so … cowardly.’

‘Cowardly! I can’t imagine making my way
alone
through South America! At sixteen! And then to India!’ said Marion. She reached out to stroke Rika’s back. ‘You’re not a coward … that was terribly brave, in a different way.’

‘It was pure flight, Marion. It wasn’t bravery at all. I ran away.’

‘Why didn’t you stay, to check if Rajan was alive?’ I asked. Mum glared at me.

‘Inky! I was sixteen! Of course I assumed he was dead! He had a pole sticking out of his bloody head!’

‘But, Mum, there was a doctor in the house! You could have …’

‘Uncle Matt wasn’t a doctor to me. I was sixteen! Uncle Matt was just my beloved uncle, my Godfather, who came in his holidays bearing gifts and being nice to me. I never knew him as a doctor, not at all. Why would I think of him as a doctor at a time like this?’

‘But you could have waited for the ambulance?’

‘Ambulance? What ambulance? One of Mummy’s pet peeves was the unreliability of emergency services. People died every week because of ambulances never turning up. This wasn’t modern day UK, Inky. This was brain-drained Guyana of the late sixties. Nothing worked.’

She sighed.

‘To me, he was just dead. And there was only one thing to do: flee from that house of horror.’

‘Your parents must have been worried sick!’

Marion nodded. ‘Mummy was frantic, Rika. We were all frantic!’

A
nd at last
she was alone with him. Inside the cottage his room was large, light and airy, with windows on three sides. A glass door led onto the west veranda, overlooking the river and the small dock leading out on to the water. Two boats were moored to the dock. Rika imagined Rajan as a boy, living here, going to school by boat. Growing up, falling in love with Fatima. Learning the skills of gardening and farming, learning to scale coconut trees barehanded and barefoot.

Inside, the wooden walls were painted a paler shade of yellow; pretty landscape paintings, Guyanese art, hung here and there on the walls, with now and then a portrait. Her own portrait hung in place of honour, above the bed.

He sat on a Morris chair across the room from the bed. She walked across and pulled up a pouffe so to sit right next to his knees, placed her hands on his thigh. He turned to smile at her.

‘Oh, Rajan!’ she sighed, overwhelmed with sadness. He laid a hand on hers, then looked up to point at her portrait. Then he pointed to her.

‘You!’ he said. ‘Rika.’ His smile widened.

‘Yes. That’s me.’ She bowed her head and laid her forehead against his hand. And then it came. In a rush. All the mourning and the grief and the horror of the years gone by, mixed in with all the relief and the joy and the gladness and the gratitude of the now; it all passed through her in waves that swelled and surged, rose and sank. Her body heaved to the outpouring of all that she had pushed beneath the earth of her being; it shook as that earth quaked and gashed wide and all the pain found freedom and all the joy release.

Rajan placed a hand on her head. On and on rolled the waves, like the tide of an ocean coming from the dark, waxing and crashing on the shore of her awareness. It seemed to never end. She gave herself into it, let it happen. For too long, she had controlled this underground torrent. Too long she had held it back, and now there was no reason to do so. The Beast was free, and it was not ugly after all, not bloody and fearsome, but benign and transforming, taking with it the burden of the years as it escaped into the light.

Gradually, finally, the waves subsided until all that was left was an occasional shudder. Her face was still buried on Rajan’s thigh, his hand still on her head, like a blessing.

He spoke, a whisper.

‘Rika!’

She looked up, and met his gaze. She sat up then, straightened her back, still holding his gaze. Her hands on his thigh opened and his slid into them.

He was still smiling, but differently. It was a serious kind of smile, and it was centred not on his lips but in his eyes. They held hers.

She could not look away. In those eyes there was so much – so much – what? What was it in those eyes? Something simple and straight and so very eloquent. There was only one word for it: love. Love, unfiltered and uncontaminated.

Not the kind of romantic love she had seen in his eyes that last night they were together. No; this was a different kind of love; that of a brother for a sister, perhaps, or of the dearest kind of friend, a simple love that is complete in itself.

Within her something else heaved, and it was her own love, coming from a source deep inside herself and rising up to meet his own. And her love, too, was no more the love of a woman for a man. There was no desire in it, no wanting. Her love, too, was that of a sister for a brother, or for the dearest kind of friend. There was no passion in this love, rather a deep calmness and a sense of
coming home.

She was content.

And then the spell was broken, for Rajan’s smile widened and he let go of her hands and placed his on either side of her cheeks.

‘Oh, Rajan!’ she cried, this time in joy, and leaned into him and his arms pulled her close and then encircled her. She buried her face in his shoulder in an embrace that said all that need to be said, more clearly than the words they would never speak to each other.

L
ater
, she helped him into his wheelchair and pushed him down the ramp and into the garden. The concrete path led across the hot white sand between the houses and into the cultivated area of the garden. Rajan pointed and grunted to show Rika where to wheel him. He wanted to be taken among the rose bushes, and when they were there, he signalled for her to help him out of the chair. He stood on his feet, wavering a bit, and bent over to remove a pair of secateurs from a pocket in the chair; with that in his hand, he tottered forward towards a particularly flourishing rose bush. His legs seemed to be made of rubber; his knees gave but always he caught himself and though his movements were jerky, uncoordinated, he made it.

Rika was right beside him; she wanted to reach out to support him, but some instinct held her back. Rajan could do this. She watched, holding her breath, as he opened the secateurs. His right hand shook and jerked as he brought them up to the stem of a half-open rose, placed its stem in the V of the blade. Snip! His fingers closed over the handles and the rose bowed down towards him; he took it in his left hand.

Rose in the left hand, secateurs in the right hand, he waddled back to the chair, Rika at his side, longing to reach out to hold him steady, but holding back. With jerky, uncoordinated movements he replaced the secateurs in its pocket, took the rose in his right. He held it out to Rika, and the smile on his lips and in his eyes was brighter than the daylight.