Waiting for the Monsoon (40 page)

Sometimes, in the morning or afternoon, or just before they finish work, boss Chandran sits down next to him, picks up the piece of cloth where Madan keeps his needles, and inspects them. If a needle is blunt or rusty, he pulls it out, muttering that only good tools produce good work. Then he takes one of the good needles, threads it with red thread, and sticks it into a piece of cloth. This is how he teaches Madan the various stitches: the open hemstitch, the invisible hemstitch, the scallop stitch, the three-cornered stitch, and the blanket stitch. Madan also learns that each fabric requires a different stitch. Without a word, Chandran hands the cloth back to Madan and watches to see whether he can duplicate the stitch. If he's successful, Chandran tells him what it's called. If not, Madan has to unpick both his own work and that of the weaver and wait until the next time Chandan Chandran sits down beside him to demonstrate the stitch again.

It's quite an honour that he has been allowed to enter the attic room. He had only been there once before, with Subhash. One day he did climb up the ladder just to enjoy the scent, and noticed that there was a lock on the door. No one ever told him who had the key.

“This scent promotes perseverance,” Chandan Chandran says in his pleasantly low voice, as he takes a handful of small, dried orange flowers from a bottle. Madan holds out his hand and Chandan Chandran places a few in his palm. Madan presses his nose into the flowers, but the scent is not as strong as he expected.

“First they have to be crushed and soaked. Then you immerse the fabric in the water.” He crumbles a few of the flowers and holds them up to Madan's nose. “Calendula. The farmers call them marigolds.” Then he takes a large bottle with a stopper from the shelf behind him, and opens it. “
Jasminum
,
or jasmine, stands for purity. The leaves have to be boiled with the fabric. Purity is a powerful force, one that's often undervalued. Exercise great caution.”

Madan doesn't understand why he should exercise caution with a handful of sweet-smelling flowers. After each monsoon the entire neighbourhood is filled with the scent of jasmine, and everyone is happy. Men who were grumpy during the hot months start smiling again and bring bowls full of petals to the temple. Children who were cranky because it was too hot to sleep race around as if reborn, and women who accepted without complaint the conduct of their unpredictable spouses and unruly children are regenerated by the first drops of rain, like flowering sprigs.

Chandan Chandran empties a small bag of short brown needles into his hand. “These are from a cactus. They promote wealth.”

For Madan, money is just as foreign a concept as dates. The word “wealth” calls up visions of apples, pears, or bananas. When Chandan Chandran says that these small spines have to do with riches, he simply nods. In jail, he only got to eat after Ibrahim had given him a wallop, or after he was ordered to sit on the shit bucket so that the murderer could eat without being inconvenienced by the stench.

His boss pulled a lemon out of his jacket pocket. “The
Citrus limonia
promotes chastity.”

“Chastity” is another word that means nothing to Madan, but the sour taste of a lemon and the expression on the face of the weaver makes it clear. He remembers Brother Francis praying in front of the wooden man on the cross, and the vinegary smell of the washhouse where the brother dropped to his knees.

The man with the ponytail gets up and searches among the bottles and bags until he finds what he's looking for. “These are from the
Passiflora
, or passionflower,” he says in a calm voice. His open palm holds white and bluish purple stamens. “These can evoke silence.”

Silence is something that Madan can relate to. Not the silence in his head — there he's always talking a mile a minute — but he has a desire to pronounce words, to construct a sentence, to tell a story. One night, when Subhash and the moon were asleep and the city around him had descended into such repose that even the rats had gone to ground, he got up and walked over to the very edge of the roof. Using the air he managed to squeeze out of his lungs, he opened his mouth and tried to form a sound that resembled the attractive low timbre of Mister Chandran's voice. What came out was a shrill, piercing scream, so blood-curdling that any living creature that heard it awoke with a start — the birds in the trees, the dogs on the street, the rats, the mice, and even the ants and the beetles. Subhash, who had also been startled out of his sleep, told Madan to come and lie down because he'd heard the shriek of an evil spook. Madan returned to his mat and resolved that he would never again utter a sound.

“The
Rosa
, or rose,” Chandan Chandran says softly, nodding toward the red flower in his hand, “calls up love.”

Madan sees a smile appear on the weaver's face. The serious, earnest expression has disappeared. Madan puts out a hand, and the rose falls into his palm. He doesn't know whether it's the scent or the colour of the soft, velvety petals, but he's aware of something happening inside his heart. He closes his eyes and remembers his sister in her blue jacket; he feels the hands of the blond woman caressing him and the kiss she gave him; he hears loving words and smells sweet scents. He thinks of Abbas taking a bite out of a big apple. Could that be what the weaver meant by love? He knows that the men who work at the weaving mill sometimes talk about love, but Madan has never seen those women, and he doesn't know whether they're real or exist only in the imaginations of the men. When he opens his eyes again, Chandan Chandran has exchanged the rose for a tiny bunch of blue flowers, without his noticing.

“The
Myosotis
, or forget-me-not, is a token of lasting remembrance.”

The flower in his hand is tiny, insignificant. And yet the sight of it is accompanied by an unexpected wave of sadness that takes possession of his adolescent body. Most of his memories are painful, and yet the rose awakened thoughts of the past that did not make him feel lonely. But now, with the tiny flowers in his hand, all those feelings have been turned upside down, and he remembers how he wandered barefoot among the legs of a whooping, ecstatic mob of men. The fear and the loneliness. The pain and the blood. The hunger and the thirst. He sniffs the flowers, which seem to be saying, “We haven't forgotten.” He doesn't know whether it's the scents that overpower him or the memories, but Madan feels the strength draining from his body. He hears Mister Chandran's words fade away, as the carousel of scents impose themselves and he can no longer distinguish between them. He sees Mister Chandran's hand coming in his direction, and then everything begins to revolve before his eyes.

Then he is lying alone on his mat. He hears the hum of the looms, and the forget-me-nots are lying next to his head.

THEY ARE SITTING
opposite each other, but not a word has been spoken since the train left the station. Charlotte stares at the landscape racing by without seeing the farmers bringing in the harvest, the women doing the laundry, or the mountains that rise in the distance. Sita stares at the marbled wall of their carriage, where she keeps discovering new shapes: a face without eyes, a groping hand, a woman with long, flowing hair . . .

Everything has gone differently from what had been agreed. During Charlotte's first conversation in the hospital, the nun told her that the baby would be taken away immediately after birth, as there were enough young parents who wanted to adopt a child. Charlotte did not look at the baby because she was afraid she might want to keep it.

While Charlotte lay on the bed with her legs wide apart and her eyes shut tightly, Sita took the dark-skinned baby from the arms of the nun. The former ayah didn't understand how the fair-skinned woman whom she had more or less raised could have given birth to such a dark child. After the umbilical cord was cut, Sita left the room, carrying the damp little creature in her arms. She was followed by the nun, who told her to take the baby to Ward
4
. In the corridor the baby began to cry and Sita felt her breasts contract violently in a frantic attempt to produce milk. She walked past the door with the number four on it, straight to the simple room that Charlotte had rented for her. The nun asked where she was going, and Sita replied that she and she alone was going to adopt the boy. She went into the bathroom, washed the baby with warm water from a flask, and laid him in her own bed. She used the spencer and the scarf that Charlotte had knitted for her as blankets. Then she returned to Ward
4
and announced that she had come to sign the adoption papers. Twice the nun asked her whether the mother had given her consent, and twice Sita nodded her head. She didn't understand what the form in front of her said, and it was only after the nun pointed to the line where she was supposed to put her signature that she wrote her name, in an unsteady hand. These were the only words she knew how to write. When the nun asked her what the boy's name was, she replied “Parvat,” or “mountain.” She asked for a bottle of milk and then returned to her room.

Not until two weeks later, when the taxi arrived to take them back to Simla, did Charlotte discover that Sita had the baby with her. The tiny Indian woman, who had been her confidante for as long as she could remember, did not reply to her questions. The baby was tightly wrapped in a cloth, barely visible within the folds of her clothes. If it hadn't cried for a few minutes as they were getting into the car, Charlotte would probably not have discovered the child until much later. Her attempts to catch a glimpse of the infant were unsuccessful, as Sita had covered the child with a cloth.

The train gently rocks and sways. The baby is still asleep, hidden among the folds of Sita's clothes. The two women avoid each other's eyes. Charlotte is angry and Sita is afraid. Then the baby starts to cry. Sita conjures up a bottle of milk, which she has warmed up between her thighs, from under the folds of her clothes. The hungry baby lets out a protracted howl, and Charlotte, whose breasts are still tightly bound, feels a rush of milk that she has not experienced before, not even when she heard the cries of one of the babies in Ward
4
, waiting for their future parents.

There is no trace of accusation or reproach in Charlotte's voice, rather something akin to surprise. “It's my child,” she says.

Sita looks nervously at the woman across from her. She sees that her previous anger has given way to curiosity, evoking a faint smile. She nods timorously. The earrings that Sita has worn since her wedding night sway slightly. Then, without further hesitation, she brings the baby out from under her shawl.

Charlotte stares in amazement at the dark-skinned child. “Is that my child?”

“Yes, a boy.”

Charlotte watches breathlessly as the woman who was her surrogate mother for so long routinely pushes the pacifier into the mouth of the baby, who immediately begins to suck. His black eyelashes, his black hair, his dark eyes, his brown skin: nowhere does she recognize herself. Until she looks at his tiny hands, which aimlessly clench and unclench to the rhythm of his feeding. The hands are just like her own, with the overly long thumb and the short middle finger. She studies the face: the chubby cheeks, the sucking lips, the swallowing motion, the sighs, the tiny hairs on the forehead, the skin so unmarked and flawless . . . And to think she carried this child inside her all those months! Although she knows that the baby's father is Indian, she never stopped to think during all those long months that the child might be dark-skinned. He looks nothing like the Eurasians she knows who — depending on their background — either loathe or love their fair skin, their eyes, their nose, their hair, and their name. What will Father say when he hears? And her brother? And the members of the New Rampur Club? Her personnel? Reverend Das? The tennis ladies? The man she buys her apples from? People are reluctant to deal with someone of mixed blood. Like the timid woman at the library who bears the name Johnson, after the soldier who impregnated her mother. And the owner of the garage, who pretends he's British but is ridiculed because he's only a half-caste. The headmistress of the domestic science school, who wants her children to study in England, which she regards as their native country, but cannot get a visa for them. The pedicurist who spent years trying to change her name and now suddenly wants her own name back. The tears that have waited for this moment are waved aside. What will happen to this child when she is no longer able to protect him, when he is old enough to make his way in the world? Will they taunt him because he's a bastard, dark instead of blond, fatherless, and without rights? Will people at cocktail parties call her a whore, like the railroad director's daughter, who had a relationship with a man from Kerala? Will she be disinherited, like the woman who ran away with a famous poet from Calcutta? Or poisoned, like the girl who planned to marry a teacher from Orissa? Should she move to England? To America? To Africa? Where could they be happy, without having every move they make censured?

The suitcase she packed that morning to take back to the big house on the hill is lying next to her. If the journey goes as planned, they will be back in Rampur in two days' time. She breaks out in a sweat. She wants to snatch the child from Sita's arms, tear the bindings from her breasts, and suckle him. She wants to comfort him, tuck him in, protect him, and never let him go. She'd like to put him back inside her, to undo everything that had happened, to go back in time, to obliterate her shame. No one must ever know that he is her child. It's as if she has forgotten that she gave her baby up for adoption two weeks ago. Suddenly she realizes that her son can be happy only if she is not his mother.

“When did you and your husband last make love?”

Sita looked up, shocked by such a direct question.

“Did you and Deepak make love the last time he was home on leave?” Charlotte persisted.