The Dancer and the Raja (10 page)

“When I saw myself reflected in the mirror, I thought it was a dream, because I looked a picture!”

“You look like the Virgin!” her maid tells her.

Lola still feels homesick. In fact, her mistress's wedding seems to affect her more than the bride herself. She keeps bursting into tears.

“If only Doña Candelaria could see you now … I hope you'll be very happy and that the Lord above will protect you from all evil!”

Anita too is on edge. She only hopes she will not have to regret anything, but her maid's crying upsets her and forces her to question what she is doing. Deep within she feels a tidal surge of different, contradictory emotions struggling with each other. To soothe her soul and fight her desire to cry she shuts herself in her room and kneels down to pray to the Virgin to which she is most devoted, the Virgin of La Victoria, the patroness of Málaga.

It is five in the morning when they knock on the door. There is no more time left. Anita crosses herself and comes out of the room, and the ayas guide her downstairs. In her way of walking there is a reminder of the horses sewn up and sent back into the bullring. But this time the ring is a splendidly lit hall full of people, mostly Indians, in gala dress. Even the servants are wearing magnificent uniforms. Downstairs the raja is waiting for her, having arrived in a golden carriage pulled by four white horses.

“You look like a goddess,” he says, at the same time as he covers her face with the veil of the sari, adding, “I mustn't see your face until the ceremony is over.”

In her diary, Anita would write, “It was the first time I'd seen him dressed and armed as a Sikh. He was wearing a sapphire blue velvet tunic embroidered with silver, jodhpurs and a white collarless shirt fastened with beautiful sapphire studs. His turban was salmon-pink, the colour reserved for the royal family, with an enormous brooch of emeralds and diamonds. A magnificent curved, Sikh sword hung from his belt, with a handle of silver and precious stones.”

He was not supposed to see the bride, and they placed necklaces of tiny pearls across his forehead like a little, beaded curtain. This ritual, an inheritance from Islam, has its explanation in the popular custom of the young couple not knowing each other when they marry or not even having seen each other before, as the wedding is always decided and organized by the families. Traditionally in Islam, the first meeting face-to-face occurs at the end, once they are married. It can be a moment of pure magic, or quite the opposite: a rather unpleasant surprise. But this is not the case of the prince and princess of Kapurthala, who walk hand in hand toward the
shamiana
under the crossed sabers of the palace guard and to the sound of Mendelssohn's “Wedding March” played by the state orchestra. Inside the tent, on one side are the Indian aristocrats and ministers, wearing very elaborate clothes. On the other, the meager British colony in Kapurthala; that is, the English governor (the representative of the Crown in the Punjab, perhaps the only man to hold more power than the raja himself), with his chest covered in medals; and the doctor and the civil engineer, accompanied by their lavishly dressed wives, who look at Anita with a mixture of disdain and compassion. Mme Dijon, with an elegant green dress and hat to match, gets up to go over and kiss Anita.

“Quel beau destin le vôtre…”
(“What a wonderful destiny you have”) she tells her, giving her a wide smile.

Her words touch Anita's heart. Her eyes fill, but she does not want to wipe them in case she spoils her makeup.

Two elderly Sikhs, with mauve-colored turbans and long white beards, like mythical characters out of an Oriental tale, accompany the couple to sit on luxurious, embroidered cushions, just behind some enormous scales. Anita thinks they are priests, but there are no clerics in the Sikh religion. They are members of the faithful who care for a book with thick parchment covers, the
Granth Sahib
, the Sikh Bible, a collection of the teachings of the great gurus—the great masters—of that religion born there in the Punjab, to fight against the castes and anachronisms of Hinduism and Islam. The book is the center of all the Sikhs' religious activities: they baptize their children before it, they get married before it, and when they die, the members of the dead person's family read whole chapters from it aloud.

Accept this book as your master

Recognize all humanity as one

There are no distinctions between men

They all come from the same clay

Men and women equal

Without women no one would exist

Except the eternal Lord,

The only one not to depend on them …

Anita's diary would reflect her impressions: “As I understood nothing at all and my face was hidden by the veil covering it, I looked closely at everything to take it all in and tell those back in Spain all about it.”

The first rays of the sun turn the inside of the
shamiana
pink. When the prayers are over, one of the old Sikhs comes over to indicate to the couple that they can carry out the most important rite of all from the point of view of their religion. The couple stand and, with hands joined, go four times round the holy book. Then the old man invites the bride and groom to see each other “officially.” Slowly, each of them moves aside the other's veil with their free hand. The raja's happy face appears before Anita's almond eyes, who feels her heart thumping. Then the music sounds and the guests burst into applause. Amid chanting and good wishes, the couple approach the sacred book again. The raja asks Anita to open it three times in a row, and he opens it the fourth time. The first letter of each page makes up the new name of the bride, a purely Sikh tradition according to which all married women are called
Kaur
—“princess”—and they add the result of the consultation of the book to this name. Anita gets the letters that make up the word
Prem
—“love.”

“Prem Kaur, that will be your new name. ‘Princess of love …' Not bad!”

Anita seems satisfied with her new name, which is now being passed from mouth to mouth outside the tent, like an exhalation, into the nearby villages, along the roads, across the fields, and even into the city. The most extravagant of the rites is the last one. It is a rite of Hindu origin, adopted by the Moghul emperors of India and finally by almost all the princes of the subcontinent. The raja sits on a cushion on one tray of the scales. On the other, a Sikh places gold ingots until it balances his weight. That gold will be used to buy food to be distributed among the poor; that is the way the monarch has of allowing all his subjects to join in his joy. They do the same with Anita, who thinks,
Not very many people are going to be able to eat my food, because I only weigh fifty-two kilos
.

That afternoon, from the height of her splendidly caparisoned elephant, when Anita enters the city to meet her subjects, she cannot help but remember that day in Madrid when she saw Queen Victoria Eugenie in procession after she married Alfonso XIII. Anita had a glimpse of her own future then, like a fleeting glimmer that she immediately banished from her mind. However, as in the most extraordinary of dreams, that vision has materialized. The girl, who is still not yet eighteen, looks at the spectacle wide-eyed and with a calm she has not enjoyed in the recent days. People she has never seen before bow to greet her and laugh enthusiastically for her and pray for her. The flowers, the perfumes, the music, the faces full of emotion turning toward her … How amazing it all is!

The procession of elephants goes into the city and is welcomed with thirteen cannon shots, the number of salvos designated to the raja of Kapurthala for his loyalty to the British Crown. The English have found an original way to set the protocol for the number of salvos fired for princes. The nizam of Hyderabad has twenty-one cannon shots. The emperor King of England has a hundred and one. The nawab of Bhopal gets nine.

The reception is held at nightfall on that intense and exhausting day in the old palace of the raja where his adopted mother resides, in the center of the city. The myriad of guests enjoy the most exquisite dishes of Punjabi cuisine, such as partridges with coriander, cubes of chicken with ginger or pieces of white cheese with spinach. Other buffets offer European food and all kinds of alcoholic drinks. After greeting the guests, the raja asks Anita to go upstairs with him. It is the first time Anita has been into a
zenana
,
³
as they call the parts of the houses and palaces reserved for the women. Anita is in the dreaded harem, as Doña Candelaria called it. The raja hugs the eldest of the ladies with great emotion. She is his adopted mother and she brought him up since his real mother died when he was a baby only a few months old. Among the ladies of the court Anita recognizes the ayas who came to get her ready and dress her.

“They will teach you everything you need to know to become a good Indian princess,” the raja tells her.

Other women surround the Spanish girl immediately, all of them very beautiful or looking as if they had been in the past. They form a circle around her and look at her with great curiosity, making comments about her sari and jewels. The raja makes the introductions:

“Anita, this is Rani Kanari, who has been to Europe several times with me.”

Both women try to exchange a few words, but Rani Kanari's English is even more rudimentary than Anita's. Another two of the raja's wives greet her shyly. They are Indians from the Kangra valley, a lineage that goes back to the
rajput
,
⁴
pure-blooded Hindus. They do not speak a single word of English or French.

“Anita, let me introduce you to Harbans Kaur, maharani number one; that is her title. She is my first wife.”

The girl bows her head respectfully before an elegant, middle-aged woman, who does not, however, give her even the slightest smile. Anita feels a shiver run down her spine. She does not need to know the local language to guess she is standing before an enemy. When the raja turns round to speak to other guests, Harbans Kaur stands staring at Anita's jewels and, with a challenging look, allows herself to touch the pearl necklace, to feel the brooch of rubies and the diamond earrings. Then she pulls on a little gold chain that is barely showing out of her corset. It is the chain that holds the cross the Spanish girl always wears round her neck. The maharani laughs and leaves her standing there, turning back to her companions and the other wives, who are still involved in their comments and gossiping about “the new girl.”

When there is a space around her and she is left alone, Anita feels afraid—and wounded by the insult of the first wife. Although Mme Dijon has always told her about the “raja's women,” the young Spanish girl has not realized what that meant until she came face-to-face with them. Suddenly she thinks that each of those women has had a day like this, that they are her husband's wives, and that she is the fifth. Overcome with grief, she leaves the room looking for a place to hide and dry the tears that disfigure her face as they make her makeup run. Mme Dijon, who has witnessed what happened, goes out after her, chasing her down a long corridor lit by candles placed in little niches in the walls; she takes her by the arm and manages to pull her into a little balcony whose latticework allows them to see what is going on outside without being seen. Anita's body trembles like a reed with the shaking of her sobs. In the background the sounds of the party can be heard.

“Don't let them spoil the happiness of this day, Anita. You have to understand that for them this wedding is an insult, because you are a foreigner and because you are young and pretty. Each of them is twice your age. They are jealous and afraid of you …”

“Afraid?”

“Of course. Because they think you have stolen the raja's heart away from them, which is true …”

The Frenchwoman's words manage to calm Anita, who gradually recovers her composure.

“In this part of the world,” Mme Dijon goes on, “having several wives is normal. Tradition dictates that the men have a duty toward them and must look after them always. That is what the raja does … I always thought they'd explained that to you.”

Anita shakes her head. Mme Dijon continues.

“The important thing is not the number of wives, but being the one that really matters … Do you remember the story of the emperor who built the Taj Mahal?”

Anita nods as she blows her nose in her handkerchief.

“… He had many more wives than the raja has, but he loved only one of them. I can assure you that he loves only you.”

“I don't want to end up in a place like this …”

Mme Dijon smiles.

“Don't be silly, you'll never end up in a zenana … with your temperament! You'll live as you do now, in European style. He promised you that and he is a man who keeps his word. Listen to me, Anita: as long as you can make him love you, you'll be the real maharani of Kapurthala, even though his other wives don't like it.”

Anita's face lights up with a slight, melancholic smile, as though she were aware that the fairy tale is over. Now she has to face up to life seriously.

Thanks to the skillfulness of her companion, the little drama Anita is going through passes by unnoticed by most of the guests, including the correspondent of the
Civil and Military Gazette
, the newspaper of Lahore, which in its edition of January 29,, 1908, would publish the following article for posterity:

“The young bride is of the most perfect and refined kind of beauty, and looked magnificent in a crimson sari edged in gold. The jewels she wore were extraordinary for their splendour. The wedding scene was of the most picturesque owing to the magnificence of the clothes worn by the guests. The festivities were celebrated with great
éclat
.”

²
Shamiana: a tent, generally of embroidered material, which is used for celebrations in India.