Waiting for the Monsoon (41 page)

Sita remembers how dry she was when he climbed on top of her. She had forgotten his smell, and his hands had become rough. Not until he lay beside her, snoring, did she feel his sperm streaming out of her. She hadn't told him that she'd had no periods that entire year. What little intimacy they used to share had completely disappeared after he went to work in New Delhi. She was even surprised when he entered her. Although she had never shared the thought with anyone, she was convinced that he had found a replacement for her, and that it was out of a sense of duty that he returned to Rampur one week per year.

Charlotte can tell by the confusion on Sita's face that she had indeed been intimate with her husband. “From now on, this is your child.”

Sita, who has the adoption papers in her purse, nods her head.

“Don't ever tell anyone that you've adopted the child. Introduce him to your daughters as their little brother. And call Deepak to tell him that at long last he has a son. He will be proud and learn to love you again. As long as I live, I will support you financially. This boy must go to college, have a chance to become a doctor or an engineer if he wants to, but you must never tell him that I'm his mother. Never! Will you promise me that?” Charlotte was panting.

Sita doesn't understand why Charlotte is making a fuss all of a sudden. It is clear for all to see that he's her child. She nods, bends over him, and begins to sing softly: the nasal sound full of unintelligible words, which Charlotte knows so well. The baby falls asleep with his mouth open.

THE TEARS HAD
dried by the time the heat in Rampur took them by surprise. The chauffeur was waiting for her near the station. He had looked confused when not only the daughter of the house got into the car, but also the former ayah, carrying a baby. And he was further taken aback when the general's daughter told him to take the ayah and the baby home first, and to drive to the big house after they had been dropped off.

The fan is revolving above her head, and the windows are open. She longs for the cool of the mountains as she opens the suitcase, which Hema has placed on the bed. On top of her own things lies the little angora baby cape she knitted. Her fingers stroke the soft wool. She feels like jumping into the car and driving straight to Sita's house, but she knows that she has to control herself, that he is no longer her child, that she will never be a mother, and that the cape is much too warm for Rampur. She wraps the scarf in plastic, along with the angora cape, and shoves it onto the top shelf of the cabinet, so that it is out of sight. No one will ever wear them. Outside she hears the hum of the Lloyds and the panting of the
mali
as he pushes the machine forward across the lawn. She must ask him to pick some flowers for the dining room. The house is too quiet, too empty. She takes her pen and a sheet of paper and begins a letter to her brother.

Dear Donald,

I'm back home. I'll never forget the months I spent in the Himalayas. I have one of Father's paintings hanging over my bed, the one with Mount Everest. That way I'll never forget the beautiful mountains. The green grass in the pastures, the cool wind, and the snow. The power the mountain radiates is overwhelming. There is nothing in the world as beautiful, or exceptional, or gigantic. When I think about them, I almost feel like crying. Do you remember how Father never allowed us to cry? Not even when we were really young. Thinking back, I realize just how strange that was. All babies cry, because they're hungry or have cramps in their tummy. You probably don't remember when we were little and he put us outside in the baby carriage, in the pouring rain. One time when you were out there, it started to thunder and you kept on crying. Sita wasn't allowed to stay with you. I hid behind a bush so I could get as close as possible to you, without Father seeing me. Did you hear that she has a son? I would like to give her a present. In a magazine I saw at the station in New Delhi there was an article about a new kind of baby carriage that someone in England has designed. It's called a “buggy.” Do you think you could order one for me in London? It's made of lightweight aluminium tubing, and you can fold it up until it's quite small. The patent number is
1.154.362
. I think Sita will be very pleased with it. If possible, would you try to have it sent by airmail, since the boat takes such a long time, and I want her to have it as soon as possible? Do you think you can find the time? Is everything all right with you? Father is happy that I'm back. I think his nurses are happy, too. He's able to do a lot more than he could before I left. His left hip joint bends now, and he can almost sit up by himself. He won't ever be able to walk again, but you knew that, didn't you? I thought he might be angry because I stayed away longer than I had planned, but he hasn't said anything about that. He's been in the hospital for a year, and he says that now that I'm back, he wants to come home. Are you planning to come to Rampur? I can't very well leave here for the time being, and I'd really like to see you again.

Regards from your sister,

Charlotte

P.S. You won't forget the baby carriage?

THE CHANDELIER HADN'T
been taken down in years, but now it lay in the middle of the hall like a phantom ship, stranded and draped in cobwebs. Hema was on his knees, prying the hundreds of candle stumps out of their holders, one by one, with a small knife. He had closed the door to the music room because he didn't want the tailor to see him doing the work of an errand boy. With the tip of the knife, he carefully loosened each candle, trying to lift it out of its holder in one piece. Some of the candles were long enough to give a few more hours of light, while others would have to be melted down. Although he considered it menial work, he was happy to be sitting down for a while. Beads of sweat dripped from his eyebrows, and his shirt clung to his back. There was still some water left in the bath adjoining the guestroom, and he had managed to get a good price on drinking water, so he had lugged twelve full buckets up the hill. Tomorrow he'd ask memsahib if the tailor couldn't give him a hand. The man paid rent, but when the price was agreed, no account was taken of the possibility that they would run out of water.

The river that ran through Rampur had fallen dry. Only that morning Hema had seen dozens of women digging holes. They hoped to find water to wash themselves and their clothes, since the water that was sold at the roadside was too expensive for that purpose. The newsreader on Radio Rampur, unlike the BBC, was now saying that the monsoon was about to break, although the cloudless sky told a different story.

THE ELECTRICITY HAD
gone off for the fifth time that day and Charlotte was trying to generate a bit of cool air with a fan. In the suffocating heat of midday, the mere movement of her arm was more of an effort than was warranted by the faint breeze that it produced. One shutter was slightly ajar, but she was too listless to get up to close it. A narrow strip of sunlight bored itself into her bedroom and shone on the pile of fabrics. Her father had not mentioned the fabrics again. Since it was too hot to move about, he had been quite subdued the last few days, even when his yogurt and his tea didn't arrive precisely on time. She had yet to choose a piece of fabric for her own dress, and she did not look forward to taking it to the music room. She had pushed the cork back into the hole so firmly that she could only remove it with a corkscrew. She mustn't allow herself to think of him, for fear those same thoughts would come into her mind when he was nearby. She tried to shake her head in order to dislodge her worries, but the heat had taken such total possession of her that she was even incapable of moving her neck.

In the background she heard the zoom of the sewing machine. Apparently
he
was impervious to the heat.

The topmost piece of fabric was a gleaming length of pale pink silk: just the colour she would have chosen for a dress when she was a girl. But back then it had been decided that it would be nonsense for her to wear anything but her homely grey school uniform during those few weeks a year when there was no school. Now that colour — as well as the deep pink fabric underneath — weren't options, because the wife of Nikhil Nair always wore pink. Next came the purple, the colour of the cloth on the pulpit during funeral services, followed by yellow, which she immediately associated with the sun, heat, fear, sweat, and suffocation. She wondered how he managed to work in temperatures like this. The gold fabric was too shiny and the one with the silver embroidery was old-fashioned; the blue was ordinary and the white too virginal. She didn't consider black appropriate for a party, she already wore a lot of green, beige was uninteresting, red was common, and brown was dull.

The brilliance of the colours faded with the setting of the sun. Getting up from her bed, she walked over to the window and pushed open the shutters, in the hope of finding some relief from the heat. The moon had not yet appeared. Below, the sewing machine whirred busily. It took no effort to conjure up his profile: the straight forehead, the aristocratic nose, his lips and his chin . . . He had a noble quality, something quite patrician, she mused. Her thoughts turned to Parvat. She wondered if there were those who looked at him and had doubts about his origins. She picked up a pile of fabrics and walked out to the landing. The clock struck eight o'clock. If it weren't for the fact that her father refused to go to sleep before the stroke of ten, she would have sold the thing long ago. She put the other piles of fabric down on the landing. Since she couldn't come to a decision, it might be better if he made the choice for her. She paused at the door of the nursery, as she always did. She was about to turn away when she thought she heard something. Pressing her ear to the door, she listened. It was a muffled sound, one she couldn't bring home. She took the key down from the nail and opened the door. Her father was sitting in his wheelchair in the middle of the room. He was wearing nothing but his white underpants and his diaper, and his scars were clearly visible. There were wads of cotton wool under the bands on his arms and legs. His body was drenched in sweat. His face was also wet. Not with sweat, but with tears.

“Father! What's wrong?” she asked.

The pent-up sobs that had alarmed her turned into long wails. He opened his almost toothless mouth, sucked in air, and then launched a tearful moan into the air. She took the towel that lay next to him and dried his shoulders, his neck, his chest, and his back. The tears were streaming down his cheeks. She knelt next to him and very gently patted his forehead and his cheeks as he went on crying. Never before had she stroked him, not in the hospital when he was at death's door, not when he had an attack of malaria and lay in bed, delirious and with a temperature of forty-one degrees, not a while back when the doctor had come to tell her that he was very ill and would never get better. She didn't even know whether he had ever caressed her. When she was a baby, or later, when she was a toddler? She couldn't recall a single moment when he had displayed tenderness toward her. She put the towel in his lap and warily raised her hand. She didn't want him to sense that this was something she found scary, something that was strange. She brought her hand to his hair and brushed a lock off his forehead. Her hand went farther, over the crown of his head. His thin grey hair was sticky with sweat, but she did not find it distasteful. The sobs ceased and the tears ran from his eyes.

“Would you like something to drink?”

He nodded.

Charlotte picked up the bottle with the nipple and put it in his mouth.

Gasping, he sucked up the water.

“Is that better?”

“I'm evil,” he said, and began to sob again.

“Hush now, Father . . .” She tried to caress him again, but he pushed her hand away.

“I was in Burma.” His voice was unsteady.

Charlotte, like everyone else, knew that he had been in Burma. There was even an article about him in
The Times of India
, celebrating his acts of heroism.

“Did you know that?” he croaked.

“Yes, Father, I know. You were there during the war.”

“Yes, the war,” he repeated, twice murmuring the word “war” softly to himself.

He looked straight ahead. Silently Charlotte stood up and opened the windows and shutters. That modicum of cool that accompanied the evening drifted over the windowsill and into the room. She hoped that the electricity would soon go back on and the fan above his head would start working again, but the municipal officials who had to deal with the problem probably weren't suffering as much as they were. No doubt they were sound asleep beneath a gently humming fan, in an area where the electricity was still on.

“I lied.”

“Hush now. That was all so long ago.”

“It's not long ago! He still calls me that.”

“Who?”

“That butler. He calls me general.” He straightened his back. “I'm not a general.”

“I know.”

“You know?” He looked at her in surprise, as if he was seeing her for the first time. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“I brought you some water.” She picked up the bottle and pushed the nipple into his mouth.

He began to suck with relish.

She looked out the window, hoping fervently that it would begin to rain soon.

SHE GETS INTO
the car and tells the chauffeur to drive to Sita's house. But halfway there she orders him to stop at a pharmacy. She's forgotten to bring something for the baby and doesn't want to arrive empty-handed. She's already given him a blue sleeping bag, a polka-dot rattle, a stack of diapers from one of the most expensive stores in town, a teddy bear specially ordered from New Delhi that was bigger than Parvat himself, and a handmade mug with his name on it, and just yesterday she brought along a special baby cream for nappy rash. She blithely ignores the fact that it's too hot for a sleeping bag, the teddy bear takes up more room in the house than the baby, and Parvat doesn't have nappy rash. She walks into the pharmacy, buys an expensive imported baby shampoo, and has it beautifully gift-wrapped.