The Dancer and the Raja (18 page)

The hours go by and the dry, burning air dries one's throat. Eyes sting as if they had dust in them. The garden and the fields are covered in a layer of yellowish dust, which the wind has brought from Tibet and the Himalayas. Thick clouds pile up on the horizon. As the sky becomes covered with a black mantle, the pressure becomes unbearable, but still the rain does not fall. These are dangerous days for children, because the risk of dehydration is very high. Anita is exhausted, with just enough strength to keep her baby moist all the time using a damp cloth. She has the impression she is living in a ship in the midst of a furious sea of dust. The nightmare lasts several days; suddenly, the wind stops and the mercury goes up again four or five degrees, throwing everyone into despair. It is like a kind of torture, wisely administered by the monsoon god, who cannot decide whether or not to drop his ballast.

And so three days go by on tenterhooks, until Anita hears a clattering on the roof as if someone were throwing stones on the tiles, but the shouts of joy that emerge from the rooms of her mansion, and even from the nearest village that can be made out on the other side of the river, give her back her hope that her time in hell is over. It is the first drops from the sky, so fat that they make a dull sound as they hit the roof. Suddenly, a thunderbolt shakes the villa, brusquely waking the baby, and all the tiles vibrate with a powerful shiver. “The monsoon is here!” she hears people shouting from downstairs. That first rain is of exceptional intensity. The noise of the water on the roof is deafening. After a moment, a tiny breeze comes through the curtain of warm water, bringing a cool caress. Anita and Lola rush into the garden. The raja has also come out and is opposite the fountain at the entrance, with his arms crossed, looking up and letting himself get soaked, his turban oozing water, and laughing up at the emptying sky. Behind the house, the servants also join in celebrating the downpour, jumping up and down and singing like children. It is as though all of a sudden castes did not exist, or the differences between masters and servants, between rich and poor, or between Sikhs and Christians. It is as though, suddenly, the people, so downhearted a few hours before, had come back to life. Even the palm trees seem to quiver with emotion. The explosion of joy runs through all the fields and cities of the Punjab. In the military barracks, the men run out naked to soak it up, dancing in the rain after having been paralyzed for so long by the heat.

When it stops raining, the steam rises from the ground and stops about thirty centimeters above it, covering some areas of the garden with wisps of white cotton wool. There is so much humidity that Anita witnesses a surprising phenomenon: the gardener puts his spade into one of these banks of steam, and a little white cloud of it can be seen on the spade. He picks it up and takes it to the other side of the garden, where he frees it by shaking the spade. When the sun comes out, Anita and the raja decide to go to the new palace, to check on any damage caused by the storm. On the way they see an extraordinary spectacle: columns of steam rise from the city of Kapurthala, which looks like a gigantic pot boiling. In the streets, the men take off their shirts, the women have a shower fully dressed under the spouts of the roofs, and swarms of naked children follow them shrieking with joy. When they get back, after giving the relevant instructions to the chief builder and having seen that the damage is minimal, they find the lawn at Villa Buona Vista green again as if by magic. Frogs and toads go croaking across the flooded paths. And the screams of Lola once again ring out through the rooms of the mansion, because the rain made all kinds of insects come back to life, including the big brown cockroaches that the girl from Málaga chases out of the corners with a broom.

24

After the relief of the rains, Anita realizes that it is still just as hot, although the heat is not dry anymore but damp. It rains every day several times a day, so you have to change your clothes often because they become soaked in sweat. Not even a shower or a bath can stop the sweating. The feeling of having damp hands is constant. A new word makes its appearance with the monsoons: floods. It is on the lips of the servants, who struggle with buckets to catch the water from the leaks, or with cloths to mop up the puddles. When she looks out over the terrace one morning, Anita sees the mansion is surrounded by water. The river has risen during the night and the gardeners move around the garden in the boats that are normally tied up at the jetty on the bank. They move the fawn, the peacocks, the cats and dogs, who look scared when they find themselves in an improvised Noah's ark. In the city, the downpours have damaged the electric power station, and the flooded roads prevent the traffic of oxcarts. The first consequence of all this is the increase in the price of certain products, like rice or potatoes, because of the difficulty of supplying them. These are days when Anita is witness to the special, intimate link that exists between the raja and his people. During their excursions by car or on elephant back, at the gates of the new palace or at the gate in the fence at the entrance to the villa, his subjects wait for their sovereign and approach him fearlessly saying Dohai, which means “My lord, I beg for your attention.” The peasants complain at the price of onions and about the problems caused by the waters. They speak to him, addressing him as “father” because in him they see the personification of the protective strength and benevolent justice of an ideal father. It is a curious relationship, a mixture of trust, respect, and familiarity. Sometimes a peasant stops him just to ask after his family or to talk to him about his own family. The raja laughs and jokes in Punjabi with him and does the same with the farmers, shopkeepers, or children, in an attitude that is far from the rigid style he adopts with the English, or even in the palace, with his own children, from whom he keeps a certain distance because in India “a raja is a raja, even for his family.”

The raja's children are roughly Anita's age and they are studying in England. The firstborn, and heir, is called Paramjit and he is about to come back to Kapurthala. When he was ten, the raja arranged his marriage to the daughter of a noble Rajput family from the principality of Jubbal. He has his children married just as he was married, mixing the blood of Kapurthala with the noblest and oldest of the Rajputs with a view to improving the caste. He is thinking of holding the wedding as soon as the young man comes back from England, just in case he is contaminated with European ideas and chooses a wife on his own. Because the raja, however open-minded and Westernized he may seem, is a conventional Indian deep down. As he knows that his son Paramjit is a weak character and has a tendency to melancholy, he is fairly sure that he will have no objection to the wife he has chosen for him. At Harrow, the prestigious British college where he is studying with his brothers and the sons of the British elite, he has an Indian classmate who will soon leave his mark on history. His name is Jawaharlal Nehru, and the boy would eventually become the father of the Indian nation. “He has adapted badly; he is always unhappy and is incapable of mixing with his classmates, who make fun of him and the way he is,” he would one day say of the Crown Prince of Kapurthala. In a confidential report, the Political Department of the Punjab does not hold back and describes him as follows: “The Crown Prince is irresponsible, not very interested in affairs of state, not at all concerned for the welfare of the people and obsessed with asking his father for money and spending it.” The raja's second son, Baljit, is more serious and a better student. The third, Premjit, studies in Oxford and from childhood has shown a strong inclination for a military career. Everyone agrees that the most brilliant of them is the youngest, Kamal, the son of Rani Kanari, who has studied at the prestigious Lycée Janson de Sailly in Paris, before he also went to Harrow. He is sociable, extroverted, a good speaker, and interested in everything; and he likes the countryside, horses, and politics. Anita is brimming with desire to meet them all; when all is said and done, they are … her stepsons! She laughs when she thinks about it. But at the same time she is secretly worried because she fears they may be influenced by their respective mothers and may not accept her either. Anita is beginning to see the vacuum to which she seems to be condemned both on the part of the British authorities and on the part of the raja's family.

In spite of the rigors of the climate, those early months of life in India go by in great happiness. When she recovers physically from the birth and begins enjoying the peace of mind provided by the faithful and affectionate Dalima, she rediscovers the pleasures of physical exercise, riding in particular. While the monsoons last, she goes out with her husband at four in the morning to gallop for hours. They cross paddy-fields and fields planted with beans and barley, and they inhale the inebriating fragrance of the mustard flowers, little yellow dots that stretch as far as the horizon. The long horse rides take Anita to places that she would otherwise never get to know. They visit villages where peacocks greet her with their cries and where the peasants, always solicitous and welcoming, offer them a glass of milk or a banana as they chat about their families or the state of the crops under the branches of a mango tree. When the weather improves and the heat gives way, she spends time on another sport that the raja has made fashionable in his state: tennis. There is a subtle competitiveness between the princes regarding sport: the maharaja of Jaipur is an expert polo player and attracts the best teams in the world to his state. Bhupinder Singh of Patiala has specialized in cricket and is managing to make his team top-class. No doubt influenced by the players he has met in France, Jagatjit Singh of Kapurthala has opted for tennis, a sport that he plays in his turban, long trousers, and an Indian shirt that comes down to his thighs. Before beginning the game, he exchanges his
kirpan
—the Sikh dagger—for a racket, pulls up his shirttails, and ties them round his waist. He is thinking of inviting the tennis champion Jean Borotra to give lessons in Kapurthala, where certain nobles of the court, members of the family, or anyone who likes tennis come to play twice a week. When the game is over, they sit down and have tea in a tent set up for the occasion and, if there is a well-known guest, the raja invites him to sit at his table. Those afternoons of tennis have done a lot to improve the level of the sport in the Punjab, which is producing some players of international standing. They are good for Anita to improve her style and also to meet new people, because the only requirement in order to participate is to be a tennis player. That is how she comes into contact with Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, an excellent sportswoman. Amrit Kaur, “Bibi” to the family, is a distant niece of the raja's, the daughter of the branch of the family that aspired to the throne of Kapurthala and questioned the legitimacy of the coronation of little Jagatjit; that is, the family that had converted to Christianity thanks to the good offices of some British missionaries and that the English, tired of their pretensions to the throne, had exiled from Kapurthala City and settled in Jalandhar, fifteen kilometers away. The daughter of a raja without a throne, Bibi travels in her own rickshaw pulled by four barefoot men wearing blue turbans and the Kapurthala uniform. She also likes to go alone, on horseback, with her tennis rackets in the saddlebags. She is always elegantly dressed and her hair is nicely done, with big curls over her cheeks, and she is known for her generosity. She has come back from Europe with her trunks full of sumptuous presents for all her nieces and cousins, including French dresses, cut-glass necklaces, fur stoles, and so on. Bibi enjoys enviable freedom in an atmosphere where it is practically impossible to obtain. That is why the women in the zenana look at her in suspicion, although deep down they admire her. She ignores all the rules and permits herself the luxury of doing something scandalous in public, something that has never been seen before, a real provocation: she smokes, using a long black-and-silver cigarette holder. The other women excuse her because she is a Christian. They consider her as half white, as though she came from another galaxy.

A feeling of friendship is formed immediately between Bibi and Anita. The Indian woman is one year older than she is and is Protestant—Presbyterian. She speaks French and English perfectly, plays bridge, and sings and plays the piano like a professional. Anita admires her because she represents everything she would have liked to be: aristocratic, rich, and free. Her father has the reputation of being “a pious Christian,” a man committed to the idea of an independent India, an attitude diametrically opposed to the raja's thoughts on the matter, so they have no relationship whatsoever. But Bibi does participate in palace life, especially when there is some reception or other that interests her, or to join in sporting activities. Tall, with big brown eyes, and somewhat ungainly, she is very fond of sport, which she has played assiduously during the years when she was a boarder at the Sherbourne School for Girls in Dorset. Apart from being the local tennis champion, she is an educated young woman, fun to be with, and very active. She has one foot on each continent, and her open mentality and lack of prejudice make her especially attractive to Anita.

The raja looks kindly on the fact that his wife has made friends with Bibi, because it is one way of counteracting the blockade set up by the women in his family and of breaking her isolation.

“But bear in mind that that branch of the family is contaminated by absurd, revolutionary ideas that I do not share at all,” he warns her.

She does not reply and pretends she has not heard him, but she knows all too well what the raja is talking about. Bibi uses expressions such as “India under the yoke of England” and is indignant at the ancient customs that belittle and affect women, such as arranged marriages between children, or the seclusion they are forced into. As a Christian, she has been lucky enough for her parents not to have forced her into a marriage, but even so, she says they keep trying to find her a suitable candidate. She does not want to hear of it. She has come back from England with her mind full of discontent and a desire to change the age-old mentality of her country. She dreams of going back to London to study at university. In Anita she has found a good listener so she can give free rein to her opinions. The long rides they take together in the afternoons are an opportunity for Bibi to show her friend the other face of India, the face she will never see if she remains locked up within the four walls of Villa Buona Vista. And so Anita discovers the India of the countryside and realizes in what poverty the peasants live, and she comes to feel for a country whose heart beats at a rhythm so very different from the one that beats in the upper spheres of society.

One afternoon, dressed for riding like an Englishwoman, with high leather boots and a black velvet riding hat, Bibi arrives sitting astride her horse. She is wearing a trouser skirt, an article of clothing that is still seen as shocking in Kapurthala, although in other parts of India it may have been accepted after the viceroy's daughters made it fashionable when they rode up and down the Mall in Simla wearing this innovative and scandalous garment.

“Today I want to introduce you to Princess Gobind Kaur,” she tells Anita. “You'll like meeting her. Why don't you take Negus and come with me? I'll take you to her palace.”

Negus is Anita's favorite horse, an Anglo-Arab as black as coal and with a coat that shines with silvery reflections; Negus represents freedom to Anita. Together, the two friends ride some twenty kilometers across the countryside, until they reach a village called Kalyan, on the other side of the Kapurthala border. They approach a mud hut on whose walls a middle-aged woman is laying out cow-dung pancakes. The woman waves effusively when she recognizes Bibi and they hug each other.
This can't be the princess,
Anita tells herself. But she is wrong. That woman, with her blackened hands, dressed in a sari that is dirty with mud and smoke, and without a single jewel, is Princess Gobind Kaur, a third cousin of Bibi's father. The man who comes down the track with a plow over his shoulder is her husband, Waryam Singh, an ex-colonel of the army of Kapurthala, ennobled because of his ancestors' glorious services.

“What about the palace?” asks Anita.

“We're in it,” answers Bibi, laughing and pointing to the mud hut.

India is surprising,
thinks Anita. Not too many years ago, Gobind Kaur lived in a palace six stories high in Kapurthala City, surrounded by all the luxury and sophistication that were due to her by virtue of her high birth. Married by force to a nobleman of great wealth and position, but who was degenerate, weak, and an alcoholic, Gobind was perfectly resigned to her fate, although she was bored to tears. One day Colonel Waryam Singh arrived at the palace to inspect the guard. It was love at first sight, and they soon became lovers. For a long time they saw each other regularly. He went into the palace through a basement that gave onto the street and spent part of the night with the princess. Until one day they were found out and had to flee. With no clothes, no jewels, and no money. Waryam Singh was publicly disowned by the members of his family and he was disinherited. They did not have to go very far away: they only needed to escape the jurisdiction of the government of the state of Kapurthala. They settled in Kalyan, on the other side of the border, in British territory. They live like peasants, although a little better because they can be certain that will never die of hunger. Both Bibi and other members of the family help them by giving them money. Thanks to that they have been able to buy their land. Bibi admires Gobind Kaur with all her heart. In India, a woman who gives up everything for the man she loves is so exceptional that it makes her a rara avis and a heroine. And if in Kapurthala no one speaks about Gobind Kaur because the scandal is still fresh in people's minds, the fact is that her story has traveled all over India and has been repeated in popular songs and rhymes.