The Dancer and the Raja (31 page)

Days later, when the inhabitants of Aujla see the great Inder Singh appear in the maharaja's Rolls-Royce, many of them are frightened because they think they are seeing a ghost who has come from the other world. Others are convinced that the maharaja's supernatural powers have brought him back to life. Sitting in the porch of his bungalow, Inder Singh explains to his astonished neighbors all the details of his adventure, and they listen to him, engrossed. When he finishes telling the story, they all want to shake his hand or hug him as though to make sure they are not the victims of a hallucination. Afterward, they all celebrate together in a way never seen before in the little village. “I was given my first whiskey at the age of eleven,” Inder Singh's grandson would say, “the day my grandfather came back to the village after we all thought he had been killed.” To commemorate such a notable event, the maharaja adopted the custom of going to Aujla every year on that date to hunt partridges.

39

When her son, Ajit, goes back to England after the holidays in Kapurthala, Anita's anguish at the fact the child is traveling alone for the first time is added to her even greater loneliness. In order to keep herself going, she dedicates all her efforts to clothing and encouraging the troops. She hates this war, which is carrying off the youngest sons of India in another country's conflict. After what she has seen on the French front, it seems cruel to go on recruiting peasants who because they are going off to war believe they are taking part in a mythological epic like those their parents sang to them when they were little. However, all the Indian leaders push to go on helping England, including a lawyer who has just arrived from South Africa, a small, brave, indiscreet man, who lives like one of the poor and defends the homeless against the rich. Anita first heard of him from Bibi, who met him in Simla. His name is Mohandas Gandhi. In spite of being a fervent supporter of independence, he has declared that India would be nothing without the English and that helping the empire is helping India, and that Indians can only aspire to independence, or at least to self-government, in the case of an Allied victory.

Anita and the maharaja meet Gandhi that same year, at the inauguration of the Hindu University in Benares, the holy city on the banks of the Ganges. But what a disappointment! Invited by the viceroy together with the cream of the aristocracy for the three days of celebrations, the words Gandhi says in the university auditorium have never been heard before in India. Before a crowd of students, notables, maharajas, and maharanis—dressed in splendid uniforms—Gandhi appears wrapped in a piece of white cotton fabric. Of short stature, and with arms and legs disproportionately long in relation to his body, ears that stick out, a flattened nose and a thin gray mustache, and steel-rimmed glasses, he reminds Anita of an old, long-legged bird. “The exhibition of jewels you are giving us today is a splendid sight for the eyes,” the champion of nonviolence begins by saying. “But when I compare it to the faces of the millions of poor people, I deduce there will be no salvation for India until you take off those jewels and place them in the hands of those poor people …”

Anita puts her hand to her breast to make sure that her emerald necklace—one of her wedding presents—is still in place. Part of the audience is indignant. Over the murmurs of general reprobation, there rises the voice of a student. “Listen to him! Listen to him!”

But, judging they have already heard enough, several princes leave the hall. Anita and the maharaja, sitting in the viceroy's row, do not dare to leave. Much against their will, they stay to face the music.

“When I hear that some palace or other is being built somewhere in India, I know it is being done with the money of the peasants. There can exist no spirit of self-government, or independence, if we are stealing from the peasants the fruits of their labor. What kind of country are we going to build like that?”

“Shut up!” shouts a voice.

“Our salvation will only come from the peasants. It will not come from the lawyers, or the doctors, or the rich landowners.”

“Please stop,” the organizer of the event, an Englishwoman called Annie Besant, asks. She is known for her progressive ideas and is a founder of this first Hindu university in India.

“Go on!” shout some people.

“Sit down, Gandhi!” shout others.

There is a great commotion. For the princes and dignitaries there is no sense in staying there, putting up with the insults of such a little man. Beginning with the viceroy, they all leave the hall, while the students boo them so loudly it can be heard all over the city.

Until that moment, no one had dared to tell the princes of India the truth to their faces, just as it was. Gandhi is not yet a national figure. The hundreds of millions of Indians do not know him yet. But his fame is beginning to spread. Eternal India, the India that has always bowed to power and wealth, also adores the humble servants of the poor. Material possessions, elephants, jewels, and armies have managed to force India to obey; sacrifice and renunciation are going to capture her heart.

For Anita, after having seen him in Benares, Gandhi is “that madman.” Not so for Bibi, who sees in him the savior of the country, a man who is able to reach the soul of India by virtue of simple gestures. She has become one of his followers. “Those who wish to follow me,” says Gandhi, “must be prepared to sleep on the ground, wear simple clothing, get up before dawn, live on a frugal diet, and clean the toilets themselves.” So Bibi has said good-bye to the curls on her cheeks and has cut her hair, exchanging her beautiful silk saris for others of
khadi
, raw cotton woven by hand on a spinning wheel. She has said good-bye forever to playing bridge, and to the Swiss hairdresser who came every afternoon to do her hair in Simla, the evenings spent sipping sherry and vermouth as she spoiled her dog, a terrier called Tofa, giving him a couple of chocolates, always Swiss ones, of course. Now she has become a strict vegetarian and has set out along the paths of India, following her barefoot leader. They say that when he rests, he spends the evenings sitting by a spinning wheel spinning cotton, the symbol of a new India, ready to free itself of the yoke of the English—and of the elite of the Hindu Brahmins.

If for Bibi's family what has happened has meant a great upset, for Anita, the fact that her friend has converted to the nationalist movement has been a harsh blow. She is left even more alone, without the only friend she could count on. She thinks about Bibi every morning when she goes out riding, because she is the one who showed her the tracks, the villages, and the shortcuts she uses. Thanks to Bibi she knows what caste a man is and his religion from the way he rolls his turban. Although she does not understand the reasons that have led Bibi to make such an extreme decision, Anita has always thought that from someone as curious, as sensitive, and as extravagant as her friend, anything can be expected, except for her to stay quietly in her palace with her arms folded, waiting for a suitor to come and court her. Her parents, who did not want her to go and study in England because what they really wanted was to get her married, are now perplexed: Bibi is married to the cause of independence.

And what future awaits Anita in that ocean of solitude that Kapurthala has become for her? Will she stay with her arms folded in her palace when the war is over and she does not have to deal with clothing and encouraging the troops? Where can she find the strength to get out of bed every morning, now that her son is not here, or Bibi, and her husband is away more and more, with the whole family against her and the English too? Is it possible to live in a vacuum? To live in a place with only the hope of getting away from it? If at least she could have another child … but the idea of labor terrifies her, and she does not feel the same loving ardor as before in her husband.
What is the way out?
she asks herself, locked in her golden prison, envied by few, snubbed by many, hated by others.

One morning at the end of 1917, Anita wakes in her room to the sound of a familiar melody. The music is strident and badly played, probably by some musician from the state band.
Who could it be playing at such a time?
she wonders, stretching. When she goes downstairs, she realizes the music is not coming from outside, but from one of the rooms. Kamal, sitting on a sofa, is trying to play a tango on an old accordion.

“It could only have been you!” Anita says to him.

“I'm like the snake charmer … I play a tango and you come out of your hiding place.”

Kamal has returned to Kapurthala at his father's request, as he needs help dealing with affairs of state and matters arising out of the administration of the lands in Oudh. For Anita, this is great news. The always pleasant presence of Kamal is a balm against loneliness. At last someone to talk to like a normal person! And they have a lot to say to each other, because Kamal was one of the last to see Victoria.

“I've been weak,” Anita confesses. “I stayed in Argentina, listening to Carlos Gardel …”

“Wonderful.”

“Yes, but I should have gone to help my sister, even though your father wouldn't have been pleased.”

“Don't blame yourself for what has happened to Victoria. Even if you'd been in Paris, I don't think you'd have been able to change things.”

“Perhaps … but there's always a doubt in my mind.”

“Macías won't leave her in the lurch.”

“I hope to God you're right …”

Palace life in Kapurthala changes with Kamal's presence. The man is a volcano of activity, and his vitality contrasts strongly with the idleness and sluggish pace of matters are they are done traditionally in India. Very often his shouts of protest can be heard rising from the offices in the basement. As happened with Bibi at first, and as happens with many people, readjusting to life in India is not easy after so much time spent in England. Here paperwork is still done at the same leisurely pace as ever, and it does no good to get angry about it. Quite the opposite, you wear yourself out and do not get anywhere and just end up frustrated.

The India of 1917, Kamal finds, is even poorer than before. The shortage of food and the inflation caused by the war effort create an atmosphere of discontent and agitation among the population.

“I have the impression that our people have lost confidence in the white man they so admired,” Kamal tells his father. “The war has made it clear that Europeans can be as savage and wild as anyone else. And if the people no longer trust the Raj, they will also lose trust in the established order of things. The Indian principalities will be in danger.”

“You're exaggerating. The princes will take power if one day the English decide to leave, but that will never happen.”

“I don't believe you're right, Your Highness.”

“When the war's over, you'll see how everything goes back to the way it was before,” the maharaja concludes.

Deep down, Jagatjit Singh also thinks that something is going to change, but he is not thinking about the people, but about those of his own class, about the princes. All his efforts are aimed at the preparation of a summit of maharajas, to be held in Patiala at the end of 1917, to give a response to the offer the secretary of state for India announced in the House of Commons: London is prepared to take steps as soon as possible to prepare the transition to self-government in India. The princes have seen here the opportunity to recover their contribution to the war. They consider themselves to be “natural leaders” with the God-granted ability to detect “the deepest thoughts and feelings of the Indian people.” Consequently, they ask to be taken “much more seriously” as politicians and they demand “clearly defined participation in the administration of the country.” London is in agreement, but how to get the members of this aristocracy that is so out of the ordinary to agree on the form self-government should take? How to get more than five hundred princes to agree, some poor and some rich, some progressive and some feudal, and all of them imbued with the belief that their power comes from a divine order? It is impossible. Kamal, who attends the Patiala summit, realizes there is no way the princes can come to an agreement. There is too much resentment, envy, tension, and rivalry. The more liberal ones—Baroda, Mysore, and Gwalior—press for participation in a government assembly with the viceroy and for the principalities to create a federal chamber of representation. But a large number of delegates find that solution unacceptable and give all kinds of reasons. Kamal, who knows the mentality of the rajas well, knows that the reason for such a vehement refusal is none other than a refusal on the part of most of the princes to have to share a seat with members of the House—in other words, with plebeians. All those paper tigers have left is an outsized sense of pride, and that is not enough for governing India.

40

November 1918. The end of the war. Kapurthala celebrates in style, with fireworks and a huge reception at L'Élysée, attended by British officers and civil servants, as well as the maharaja's sons. They have all come back to India, after having carried out “a huge job of work to further the attainment of victory,” according to the maharaja's words.

For Anita, the end of the war is not the end of a chimera, but quite the opposite. The last she had heard, Victoria had returned to the little flat in Paris, and has been about to give birth. But she knew nothing more. The worrying thing is not that her husband, George Winans, has still given no sign of life, or that she needs money, because Macías has probably made sure that she has everything she needs. What really scares her is that another war has broken out in Europe, much more devastating and deadly than the one that has just finished. It is an insidious war, which has started among the Spanish soldiers fighting in Africa. The enemy is virulent, counted in billions and, furthermore, infinitely tiny. The “Spanish flu” virus, called thus because it was first diagnosed in Spain, is about to cause one of worst disasters in the history of mankind. The fastest killer that has ever existed will end up causing forty million dead, almost three times the number of victims of the war.

Anita is counting the days until she returns to Europe. She will go with her husband, who has been invited by Clémenceau himself for the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. But the waiting seems interminably long to her. She has nothing to do now in Kapurthala, except to console the families of the soldiers who have not come back. She feels that now her place is in Paris, with her sister. Since she found out she has gone back to the little flat with the children, Anita has not had any more news, even from Benigno Macías. It is as though the earth has swallowed him up.

The days before the journey are turbulent times in the palace in Kapurthala. It is the first time the sons have all been together again in a long time. Friction and fights are inevitable because each of them has evolved differently. Perhaps because he is not the direct heir to the throne, perhaps because he is a more modern man than his brothers, with a more open mentality and a better education, Kamal is convinced that the princes—and the English—have their days numbered. The matter is the subject of bitter family arguments. Ratanjit, the eldest and heir, thinks that Kamal has been contaminated by nationalist ideas. He comes to see his brother as a potential enemy, a rival who could represent a danger when he takes the throne. The maharaja, who can guess at Ratanjit's anxiousness to garner areas of power, finally bans him from affairs of state. He prefers his heir to do nothing until it is his turn, and for the moment he should enjoy himself, spend money, beget a son to ensure the future of the dynasty, but above all, he should not be a nuisance. The others are assigned tasks according to the ability of each of them. Premjit is charged with reorganizing the army, Baljit has to supervise the drainage works and water supply of the city, and Kamal, as an agricultural engineer, is given the administration of the lands in Oudh and the improvement of productivity of the countryside in Kapurthala.

A lover of riding, Kamal goes out every morning. He visits the villages, speaks with the elders and with the peasants, feels the mood of the people, and comes back with new suggestions for improving production. He manages to persuade his father to create the first agricultural cooperative in Kapurthala and a system of soft credits for the peasants. The reality is that in spite of the loss of blood caused by the war, Kapurthala is prospering in all areas. Without hurry, but continually, the income per capita has doubled in twenty years. The city is clean and attractive and is gradually beginning to look like its lord and master, whose obsession with putting up buildings inspired from different cultures has grown over the years. He plans to build a mosque in the spirit of the one in Fez, in Morocco, and a cinema with Doric columns in the purest Greek style. With the French palace and the Shalimar Park—so called in honor of the gardens in Lahore—Kapurthala is gradually accumulating a range of styles, a kind of
avant l'heure
theme park that exhibits buildings from all over the world and shows how cosmopolitan its king is.

But the war has also left a trail of human misery on the roads of the Punjab. One morning, during one of her morning rides, which are her favorite moments of the day, after crossing the river, Anita finds herself surprised by some ragged ex-soldiers who throw themselves at her horse and get hold of the reins.

“Get off,
Memsahib
, get off!” they shout at her.

Anita keeps her cool and faces up to them.

“Let go of my horse!” she shouts at them in Punjabi, brandishing her whip from side to side. She is not going to let Negus be stolen from her for anything in the world! The fact that a
memsahib
they thought was English is as indomitable as she is and speaks their language so well intimidates her assailants. And when on top of that she threatens to tell the maharaja in person, then the attackers, who are wearing tattered Kapurthala military uniforms, let her go. They thought they were stealing a horse from a European woman, not from one of the wives of their supreme commander.

Anita does not tell anyone about the incident because she knows that her husband will give her an escort and she does not want her freedom to be curtailed. She had already been warned anyway, because the
Gazette
is always reporting the news of thefts and robberies and publishing statistics that prove that crime in the Punjab has increased tenfold since the end of the war. The number of crimes was so insignificant that even multiplied by ten it is still laughable. But it is true that the prison has become too small and the justice system is threatening to break down because of the numerous soldiers who have come back from the fronts and who hold people up because they do not even have enough money for food.

In spite of the incident, Anita continues to ride every day. But she does not do it because of a need to be alone, as sometimes occurred in the past, or out of a desire to find herself, or simply out of a need to take some physical exercise. She is not aware of the reason that pushes her to do it, and even if she did know, she would not dare to admit it. The truth is that she does it because during her rides out she usually meets up with Kamal and then the day takes on another aspect. Being with him, so full of vitality, she forgets herself, as though her only problem—loneliness—had faded into nothingness. The young man shows her a country full of peasants who are desperate to rise out of their poverty.

“It is always said that we Indians are fatalistic, but it isn't true …” says Kamal. “If we get the chance to improve, we seize it.”

Kamal is the only one in the family who enjoys mixing with the people. His extravagance, very derided in the palace by his brothers and the members of the court, consists of staying out to sleep in the villages, in the hut of some poor peasant, whenever he feels like it. He says they treat him like a king, and that this is the fastest way to travel far without going many kilometers. He enjoys talking to them about planting and crops, fertilizers and pests; about the land, which is what he loves.

Perhaps because of that he is more direct, approachable, and sincere than his brothers, whose real vocation is centered on everything connected with luxury and pomp. The mere idea of mixing with those who are not of their class repels them. Kamal's sincerity and desire to introduce modern ideas, ideas that have arisen in conversations held with his friends in Harrow or Cambridge, do not fit in very well with the narrow society of Kapurthala. But he has a determined manner, an easy way with people, the eyelashes of a dreamer, and a ringing laugh that makes Anita sigh. With him, she laughs, feels, and vibrates like what she is, a woman who has not yet reached the age of thirty. In India she has had hardly any friends. How far away is that all too familiar feeling, a mixture of loneliness and boredom, when she knows she is going to see Kamal! How good it is to feel that complicity, to understand someone with no need for explanations, to feel good just because she has company! During the months before her trip to Europe, they see each other every day. For the first time in many years, and because Kamal has asked her, Anita has been to the women's palace to visit Rani Kanari. He is the only person who seems sensitive to the welfare of others, and the only one who seems to guess at the loneliness to which his mother and Anita appear to have been condemned. Anita invariably comes out of those visits to Rani Kanari with a hesitant step and a faraway look in her eyes. For a long time now Rani Kanari has chosen drink as her antidote for the loneliness of the
zenana
.

In May 1919, the maharaja, Anita, and their retinue arrive in Paris. The city, which still has a ghostly appearance, now has to defend itself from a virus that attacks its unprepared inhabitants with ferocity. From the horse-drawn carriage taking her to her sister's house, Anita can see the employees of the Ministry of Health going in and out of the doorways. These men are wearing white cloth masks over their faces. At the entrance to Victoria's building they have placed a sign saying that it is contaminated. But Anita takes no notice and rushes upstairs. When she reaches the landing of her sister's flat, she finds another tape across the door. There is no one there. The silence is terrifying. The birds no longer flutter in the stairwell, as though they had also fled.

In the never-ending moment it takes Anita to go down the stairs to the concierge's flat, she is suddenly overcome by the certainty that she will never see her sister, Victoria, again or have the consolation of her letters or enjoy the happiness in her laughter. With her heart clenched, not daring to ask but at the same time burning to know, she knocks on Madame Dieu's door.

“I'm the sister of …”

“I recognize you,” the concierge interrupts her. “Come in …”

The house is small, modest and dark. Even more hunched over now, Mme Dieu invites her to sit down on a sofa on which a cat is sleeping. And then Anita gets the worst news she could ever have imagined.

“First the third child died,” the woman says slowly, “then the baby, a few days after it was born. Both of Spanish flu. Victoria lasted two weeks. They say she also died from the flu, but I think it was sadness.”

Anita is silent, her eyes faraway and her tongue unable to move.

“Since her husband left her, she let herself go … She didn't take care of herself at all. When she came back from the country, after the war, she was like a skeleton. And then the flu came.”

There is a long silence, punctuated by the ticking of the clock on the wall.

“The flu is worse than the
Boches
,” the woman goes on. “I lost my daughter and a sister-in-law. And the authorities don't sound the alarm because they don't want to cause a panic. It's disgraceful.”

“Where are they buried?”

“Madame, they bury the dead very quickly to avoid the illness spreading. Your sister was buried in under twenty-four hours… She and the children are in the Père Lachaise Cemetery.”

“Didn't anyone go with them?” asks Anita, her eyes filling with big tears that roll down her cheeks.

“They don't let anyone go, Madame.”

“Wasn't there even a priest? … No one?”

“Yes, Madame, there was a priest. But there are so many people dying that they just quickly sprinkle some holy water over the bodies. They don't want to fall ill too, it's understandable.”

“Of course …” Anita makes an effort to hold back her sobs.

“Cry as much as you like, nothing helps as much as crying,” the woman tells her, getting up for a handkerchief. Anita cries silently. “But let me give you some advice, Madame … Get away from Paris as soon as you can. We're all damned here.”

Anita has the little consolation that the “Argentinian gentleman,” as the woman describes him, referring to Benigno Macías, had been visiting Victoria regularly until the end. He always came with parcels of clothes and food, and with news of a move to Spain he was organizing for Victoria and the little ones. But one day, just before Victoria fell ill, the Argentinian gentleman stopped coming.

Face-to-face with the horror of death, the same question comes back again and again to her mind. Why didn't she find the strength to face up to the maharaja, to interrupt that trip and come to help her sister? Tormented by the specter of guilt, she feels a rush of fury at herself for not having been able to be stronger at a crucial moment, and at her husband for not having realized how serious the situation was. She reproaches him mentally for his capricious old man's egoism, his demanding way, his paper prince's vanity that puts his desires above everything else. Instead of getting into the carriage waiting for her outside Victoria's house, she sends the driver away and starts walking along the streets, waiting for the fury to pass and only the grief to be left. Alone, facing her destiny, for the first time she becomes aware of the weight of the drama she caused when she was barely seventeen, and which will now be with her for the rest of her life. She prefers not to go back to the luxurious hotel in that state. She needs to calm down, to be herself again, but she cannot because something is missing from her life, something so intrinsic that without it she is no longer the same. A conversation in Kapurthala with Dr. Warburton comes back to her; the doctor had told her that amputees feel pain in the limbs they no longer have. That is how Anita feels without her sister, feeling her where she no longer is.

Seeing the lorries of the Ministry of Health pass by brings her back to the urgency of the present. She knows she is not going to come quickly out of the quagmire of pain that is holding her fast, but she is aware that she has to get out of the city as soon as possible. The concierge is right. However much she would like to let her suffering wash over her, she has to get away, even if only for the living who are left to her. She has not been able to help Victoria, but at least she will help her parents to get through their grief.