Oleander Girl (8 page)

Sleep, Cara. I’ll take care of you.

S
tillness has invaded 26 Tarak Prasad Roy Road, the stillness of a fairy tale where dark magic has cast the kingdom into a waking dream. In all the fifty-five years Sarojini has lived here with Bimal, she can’t remember feeling adrift like this, not even after Anu’s death. The others, too, seem to be lost. Cook stands at the kitchen karhai, staring at the potato curry until it grows charred. Bahadur watches the gardener boy overwater the oleanders, but where are the succulent curses into which he would usually have launched? And Korobi, who has not been to college since that night of death, spends her days in bed, leafing through the musty books she has taken from her grandfather’s library. The household has given up on breakfast, even the sacrosanct cup of morning tea. If Rajat, who comes by each evening, hadn’t insisted on having dinner here, that meal, too, might have disappeared.

If it weren’t for Rajat, what would have happened to them? Sarojini wonders in gratitude. Each evening he enters the house brisk as a sea wind. He plans the next day’s menu and gives Bahadur shopping instructions. He checks whether the utility bills have been paid, whether Sarojini has enough diabetes medicine. He cajoles the women into walking around the garden with him. Best of all, he doesn’t try to fill the silence with small talk.

The newspapers that Bimal Roy scrutinized each morning have piled up, unread, on the drawing-room table. Cocooned in shock, the household
remains ignorant of the Godhra riots and their aftermath, raging along the western edge of the country. Even if they had known, would the incidents have penetrated their numbness? The sorrows of others seem so distant compared to our own.

Among all this torpor, Sarojini alone cannot seem to rest. She opens the doors of spare rooms she has not visited in years. She peers into the dark, cool pantry that smells of palm-date molasses, which Bimal had loved. Tonight, once the rest of the household has collapsed into sleep, she goes into the bedroom she has shared all these years with Bimal, removes his clothes from the almirah, and searches under the newspapers lining the shelves.

Sarojini knows, guiltily, that Rajat would be upset if he knew what she was doing. He has asked her to stay away from this room, to sleep with Korobi. Much as she loves Korobi, Sarojini dislikes this arrangement. The girl is a restless sleeper, kicking her own pillows off the bed and then reaching for Sarojini’s, jolting her from uneasy dreams. Once awake, Sarojini cannot fall asleep again because the room is too quiet, devoid of Bimal’s disruptive snores.

There’s nothing under the lining. A disappointed Sarojini turns, then catches her reflection in the floor-length, oval mirror. It startles her: a woman so colorless that she is almost transparent. White sari, bereft of the bright borders that she has always favored. Bare forehead, wiped clean of the vermilion of wifehood. Bare wrists, ears, neck, the jewelry jumbled into a drawer until someone—but who, now that Bimal is gone?—remembers to take it to the bank. Out of old habit the woman in the mirror pushes phantom bangles up her arm, then shakes her head with an embarrassed laugh.

If Sarojini stands in front of the mirror long enough and unfocuses her eyes the right way, the woman’s image fades. Instead, Bimal appears in front of her. Sometimes he is knobby and querulous, as in recent months, waiting for her to peel him his after-dinner oranges. Sometimes he gives her a lopsided, newly married smile that takes her breath away. Today he is dressed in a cream kurta with an elaborate paisley design. When she sees that, Sarojini begins to shake. That was the kurta he had worn the night their daughter died.

What’s the right thing for me to do now, Bimal? Should I tell Korobi?

She wants a sign to guide her. But his face is frozen into the shocked expression it wore eighteen years ago. His eyes are furious with loss.

The truth is like a mountain of iron pressing on my chest. Still, I’m willing to bear it. If only I could be sure that it’s the best thing for Korobi—

He had thrown away the kurta after that night, in spite of its having been one of his favorites, and expensive. He wouldn’t even let her give it to Bahadur.

Tell me! All my life you insisted on making the decisions until I forgot how to think for myself. And then you leave me like this?

Tears fill her eyes. That’s always been Sarojini’s problem—she cries when she gets angry. When, having blinked away the wetness, she looks again, the mirror holds only her bleached, blanched self.

An unexpected by-product of Rajat’s nightly visits to the Roy household is that Asif has struck up a friendship with Bahadur.

At first Asif had looked upon the Nepalese gatekeeper with disdain. Dozing by the gate in a frayed khaki uniform that had not encountered an iron in years, the old man clearly belonged to that obsolete generation of retainers whose dowdy servanthood was their entire identity. His face wreathed in a gap-toothed grin, he salaamed Rajat entirely too many times as Asif pulled onto the gravel driveway. Bahadur embodied everything Asif detested about working for the rich, everything he was determined to avoid. So he would give a curt nod in response to the old man’s effusive greeting, refuse his offer of garam garam chai with spices from Kathmandu, put on a pair of fake Armani sunglasses, and pretend to sleep. Through the rolled-down window, the scent of the tea, brewed with generous helpings of milk and sugar on a kerosene stove outside the gatehouse, assailed him. A nice, hot cupful would have improved the quality of these boring, mosquito-infested evenings. But Asif didn’t believe in being obligated to people unless he liked them.

One evening Bahadur knocked apologetically on the windshield. Would Asif mind moving his car? Bahadur needed to take the family vehicle out to make sure everything was working right. Asif reversed the Mercedes, scowling to make sure the old man registered his irritation. But when he saw the car Bahadur brought out of the garage, he couldn’t help loping over.

“You have a Bentley! How old is it? Looks like an antique.”

Bahadur scratched his head. The car had already been in the family when Bahadur was hired—what was it?—forty-four years ago. He didn’t get to drive it for a long time, even though he had a license from Park Circus Auto School. The Roys—richer then—had a chauffeur just for the Bentley, a military-looking Sikh whom everyone called Sardarji. He drove old Tarak-babu wherever he needed to go. If Bahadur wasn’t on gate duty, he would sit up front with Sardarji, jumping out to open the door. When Tarak-babu passed away, Bimal-babu, too, insisted on being driven only by Sardarji. Relegated to taking Sarojini-ma shopping in a cumbersome Ambassador, Bahadur began to despair of ever being allowed to handle the Bentley. He confessed that he would wish for it at night: just once to feel that steering wheel in his hands, that accelerator under his foot.

And it did happen, but not the way he had wanted it. When Anu-missybaba died, Bimal-babu went a little crazy. He cut himself off from his friends and sent Sarojini-ma and Korobi-baby to the village home, along with Cook and Bahadur. By the time they returned, the other servants—including Sardarji—were gone. Bahadur was put on double duty, both gatekeeper and driver. But guilt (had he wished this tragedy into being?) kept him from enjoying his elevated position. The first time he drove the Bentley, to take Sarojini and Korobi to the doctor, his hands shook so badly that he almost landed them in a ditch.

Asif wasn’t interested in this ancient ramble, but he loved the Bentley. He’d never seen an old car that had been taken care of with such diligence. When Bahadur, noticing how reverently Asif ran his hands over the car, asked if he would like to drive it, Asif was ambushed by a boyish delight he hadn’t felt in years. Seconds later, they were on the street, Asif pressing cautiously on the accelerator, Bahadur urging him on.
The car ran as smooth as—Asif couldn’t even imagine a simile for it. When they returned, he asked Bahadur, a trifle shyly, if he might take him up on that offer of chai. Soon they sat on the porch of the gatehouse, sipping, fanning themselves with old copies of the
Telegraph
and cursing the mosquitoes.

Over the next nights, they shared dinner—the dal and coarse chapatis that Bahadur cooked, the fancier meal that Sarojini sent out to Asif. They told each other about their faraway homes near Kathmandu and Agra and commiserated on the vagaries of fate that had landed them here; they described their loved ones—a son in Bahadur’s case, a dead sister in Asif’s; they fantasized about returning to their families, rich and plump, though they knew they probably never would; they listened in consternation to Bahadur’s small transistor as it spouted news about the continuing massacres in Gujarat; careful not to offend each other’s religious sentiments, they discussed the tragedies, concluding that it was madness. Ultimately—because that’s what servants do, sooner or later, willingly or otherwise—they talked about the people who controlled so much of their lives.

Thus Asif learned that the Roy household was in trouble. The family lawyer was closeted for an entire morning with Sarojini, emerging frazzled, his thinning hair limp over his sweaty forehead. Sarojini-ma wasn’t sleeping well. Often, late at night, she went into Bimal-babu’s bedroom. Cook said she’d taken to talking to herself in there. They were afraid Ma was losing her mind, and then what would happen to the lot of them?

Asif, too, had news to offer: the Bose household was facing its own challenges. They didn’t discuss it in front of the help, but servants always know. The expensive new American gallery they started just a year ago in New York was having money troubles. Something significant, otherwise why would Rajat-saab have sent his beloved BMW back to the dealer? And Pushpa, Memsaab’s maid, who was sweet on Asif, told him the phone rang at the oddest hours, early mornings, or during dinner. If Pushpa picked it up, there was only a click.

Tonight Asif says, “I think it’s Rajat-saab’s old girlfriend, Sonia.”

“What does she look like?”

“Expensive. Too thin, though those people think that’s glamorous. Foreign-bought clothes, showing legs and all. Eye makeup that makes her look like a witch—but one of those enchantress witches. When he was with her, Rajat-saab acted like he was half-drunk all the time.”

“I’ve seen a girl like that outside our gate,” Bahadur says, startling Asif into sitting up straight. “She was driving a little foreign car, silver color.”

“A Porsche. Yes, that’s hers all right.”

“She stared at the house a long time. I got up to ask if I could help her. But she turned those eyes on me. And then she roared away so fast, she frightened all the street dogs.”

Driving Rajat home, Asif considers telling him about Sonia. Then he remembers what Pia-missy said after she met Korobi for the first time: “A.A., I think Korobi-didi is a good person. Her face has a shine to it.” That was enough to put Asif, who believes Pia to be rather resplendent herself, squarely on Korobi’s side. No, Asif’s not going to say something stupid that might start Rajat thinking about Sonia again.

In the backseat, Rajat closes his eyes and sighs. He looks tired. Cheering up this household day after day is taking its toll on him.