The Dancer and the Raja (32 page)

While Anita travels to Spain, the maharaja and his retinue arrive in Versailles in June 1919, as part of the delegation from the British government to attend the signing of the peace treaty between the Germans and the Allies. Arriving in that place that he has admired so much, and this time not as a simple visitor but as an agent of history, fills Jagatjit with pride and satisfaction. It is an honor he shares with Ganga Singh, the maharaja of Bikaner, and a restricted number of Indian princes, all more important than he is. But that is where his skill lies, in being treated like one of the great without really being one. He has managed to have the tiny state of Kapurthala talked about as much as the other much bigger and more powerful Indian states.

The staging of the ceremony is impressive. Clémenceau, the hero of France, sits between Wilson, the president of the United States and Lloyd George, the prime minister of England, at a table in the shape of a horseshoe, set out in the Hall of Mirrors, an immense room seventy-three meters long by ten wide, where King Louis XIV, the Sun King the maharaja so admires, used to receive ambassadors. The guests are sitting on stools.

“Have the Germans come in,” says Clémenceau solemnly.

There is absolute silence. Two officers of the German army, with their collars done up and thick metal-rimmed glasses, come in escorted by ushers. No one gets up to receive them. At a table under a Louis XIV standard that says “The King governs in his own right” the Germans sign the peace treaty in thick books, followed by the representatives of the Allied powers. The ceremony does not last long and when it is over, the crash of cannon and the roar of low-flying planes covers everything. The three great men, Clémenceau, Wilson, and Lloyd George walk together toward the terrace where they are acclaimed by a happy, wild crowd. For the first time since the war started, in 1914, the fountains in the gardens begin to work again.

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The maharaja is happy at the fact he can meet presidents and statesmen during the Treaty of Versailles celebrations, first in Paris and then in London. “Oriental magnificence and American comfort come together on the tenth floor of the Savoy, where the Maharajah is staying,” an English journalist writes. “When I asked him about the rise in the nationalist movement in India, the Maharajah replied that he does not like to talk about politics.” Jagatjit Singh prefers to list the decorations won by his men, to mention the promotion of his son Premjit to the rank of captain, and above all to comment on the extraordinary recognition implicit in His Majesty the Emperor's granting an increase of two cannon in the official salute of Kapurthala. In this way, his state rises in importance, going from thirteen to fifteen guns. A real honor! An honor that fills him with greater satisfaction than if he had recovered the money invested in the war. Because those guns are the indelible symbol of the superiority of his status among the Indian nobility.

Meanwhile, Anita is in Málaga, sharing her parents' grief. But she is not the person she was before. Until then, death for her was a misfortune that occurred to others, to other people's sisters, to the parents and children of other people, but not to her. That sudden revelation, together with the grief caused her by the loss of her sister, and the lack of someone on whom to unburden her conscience, leave her in a state of profound melancholy. Perhaps life is that, a continual saying good-bye to those one loves until one faces one's own death. A constant tearing apart. The war, with its cortege of death and destruction, has made her realize the fragility and brevity of life for the first time. She has not even been able to thank Benigno Macías for the help he gave Victoria, because he too has died, because of a leg infection after being run over by a military truck. The accident—as stupid as all accidents—took place very close to Victoria's house, probably the last time he visited her. The news has come to her from London, through the maharaja. Desperate, Anita seeks consolation in religion. Before a little altar made up in her room, presided over by an image of the Virgin of La Victoria and a photo of her sister and her nephews, images of Sikh gurus and a little bunch of sticks of incense, she gives herself up to grief, praying to all the gods and trying to make sense of life again. Motionless, with the rosary between her fingers and her eyes closed, she is far away, seeking words of consolation among everything she has heard from all the priests, pundits, mullahs, and monks that she has known during her life.

Anita remains in Spain as long as is necessary to make arrangements for her sister's two surviving children to be taken care of. She would like to take them back to India with her, but she knows she should not. Their situation is difficult enough without complicating it any further. So she leaves them in the care of her parents, although she promises to cover all their expenses. If she does not stay longer with her family, it is because a feeling of impotence at not having been able to do more for her sister and a feeling of guilt torment her. However hard she tries to get it out of her head, she still feels partly responsible for Victoria's death, and that hurts more when she is with her parents and the children. Besides, the maharaja is calling for her to rejoin him in London.

The first thing Anita does when she arrives in England is to visit her son in Harrow. The boy prefers playing the saxophone and listening to jazz to studying. He just manages to scrape through, so the maharaja threatens to move him to another school. Ajit is vehemently opposed because he knows another school will be even tougher. He misses the complacent, gentle lifestyle he had in India, and English winters seem interminable to him. His mother spends hours calming him down and consoling him, but when she says good-bye to him, her heart feels as if it is bursting and it is hard for her to hold back her tears.
What kind of life is this,
she wonders,
where no one in the family is happy because we all have to be apart and feel lonely?
As at other times in the past, she misses the simple life of a normal family, like the one she had when she was small. She likes to imagine what her life would have been like with someone like Anselmo Nieto, for example … Perhaps not as interesting, but happier in the end. Each of us has his own karma, as Dalima says.
Where will mine take me?
Anita wonders, feeling that thick, dark clouds are gathering on the horizon of her life.

Now all she can think of is getting back to Kapurthala. This had never happened to her before. And she never thought that something like that could happen to her. She has always felt she is living the life given her by her husband, as though she were the sovereign of a vast empire of happiness, but built by him and him alone. She has never really found her place. And yet now she wants to go back.

During that stay in England, Anita begins to feel frightened by the voracity of the fire that she herself has lit in her heart. The truth is that she is obsessed with Kamal. She wants to be with him not for pleasure or enjoyment, but out of pure, simple necessity. He has become like a drug for her. The love she came to feel for her husband was always cut off by the excessively paternal treatment he has always given her and has ended up putting an insurmountable distance between them. Kamal is direct, and so close that she can feel him from far away.
Perhaps I don't know how to be happy,
she tells herself.
I reject what I have and prefer what I don't have. Can that be a pure whim?

It is not a whim, it is love, she finally confesses to herself, frightened at the magnitude of her discovery and not wanting to think about the consequences. That overwhelming force that she always dreamed of experiencing is what is now sweeping her away and making her lose her head.
You're crazy!
she tells herself in her moments of lucidity.
I cannot allow myself to be carried away like this. Can I have lost my mind?
But then she lets her mind drift in the pleasure of the daydream, and she remembers Princess Gobind Kaur, whose boring life with her husband was turned upside down by the boldness and love of Captain Waryam Singh. How happy they looked in that hut, free from all ties to the world, only there for each other! She lets herself be carried away by the mad dream that Kamal can do the same with her, that there is always a way out for people who love each other. Impossible stories of love triumphing in adversity … Are books and songs not full of tales like that?

Yes, but in this case it is different. Kamal is not a stranger; he is the maharaja's son. That should be sufficient to keep her away from such a dangerous temptation. When she stops to think about it, she is convinced it is an offense against God, who has given her life, and at the same time it is a betrayal of her husband. Even worse, it is a betrayal of little Ajit. Then she pushes the memory of Kamal out of her head, because it is an incestuous love, impossible and headed for disaster. A source of misfortune, shame, and infamy.

But it is hard to control the beating of her heart as the train approaches Kapurthala, now back from Europe. She does not want to think about him and yet she can see him in his father's features, sitting opposite her. There is no getting away from it. When she spots Kamal on the station platform, in gala dress to welcome the maharaja with the Royal Guard, the members of the government, and the state orchestra, Anita tries to hide her emotion, but her eyes keep wandering to him, as though what she was seeing was not real. When he greets her, Kamal comes so close to her that she can smell his perfume on the breeze, as she responds to his greeting with a smile.

In Kapurthala there is another person who has been hit by the war and has been getting through her grief in silence. Gita's secret lover, officer Guy de Pracomtal, has fallen in combat on the Eastern Front in France. She found out when she received a letter with a worn Indian coin inside, a love charm Gita had given him in Paris. “We found it in the pocket of Guy's shirt when he lay on the battlefield, in the middle of 1917,” says the letter signed by Guy's brother. In spite of the sadness that has overcome her, now she knows she made the right decision to come back to India and marry Ratanjit. If she had followed the call of her heart, now she would be a poor foreign widow in a devastated country.

The horse. Galloping over the fields. Letting herself be overcome by the dizzying feeling of freedom. Dreaming of meeting Kamal in a village, on a track, at a meeting with peasants, in the palace stables. And finding him. Then feeling a subtle flame in her veins that runs all through her body. The dream becomes real, and life stops being a mass of questions without answers. It is as though everything had found its natural place. There is no need for words. It is enough to be lulled by the sweet feeling of being with him. The days are filled in this way with little moments, intimate treasures, more valuable to Anita that all the jewels of the maharaja and the nizam put together. But she is entering a tunnel with no end and perhaps no way out.

“I have some good news for you; look at this,” the maharaja says to her one day, handing her an official letter from the Department of Foreign Affairs of the government of India. Anita opens the envelope and the first thing she reads in bold type, is: “Recognition of the Spanish wife of His Highness the Maharajah of Kapurthala.” It is an official note that says that “His Excellency the Viceroy has decided to relax the restrictions applied to this ‘particular lady'…”

“Do you see what they call me … ‘particular lady'?”

Anita laughs and then goes on reading: “‘so that she may be received by all civil servants on all occasions as desired.' I don't believe it! What's got into their heads?”

“Go on reading,” the maharaja tells her.

“‘Except for the Viceroy and Governors and Deputy Governors.'”

“It's not such a surprise then!” says Anita, visibly disappointed. “They recognize me, but only a little bit, just in case it's catching …”

“It's a step forward.”

“A few years ago I would have been jumping for joy. Now, to tell you the truth, it doesn't matter so much to me. When is the viceroy coming?”

“On the fourteenth.”

“Don't worry,
mon chéri
. I'll make sure everything is ready.”

“Those who know you honor not only the efficient, progressive ruler in Your Highness, but also the good sportsman, the educated man, the generous host and heartfelt friend.” With those words the viceroy ends his speech after the gala dinner in the palace in Kapurthala, a dinner for which Anita has taken care of the tiniest details, but which she does not attend. Her husband has asked her not to, as a special favor, in order not to cloud the perfect relations that now exist between him and the English. Besides, the viceroy has come alone, without his wife, probably not to cause protocol problems. Twelve years after her marriage, Anita dines alone, in her room, as though she were a stranger in her own home.

Shortly afterward, the visit of Clémenceau compensates a little for the disappointment caused by the reception for the viceroy. “We had the enormous pleasure of welcoming this extraordinary man and his wife to our palace and enjoying some delightful weeks in their company hunting wild animals and birds,” writes Anita in her diary. At the welcoming banquet, the French hero is full of praise for Kapurthala, “the cradle of civilization in the East, as Athens was in the West.” The dignitaries and the maharaja himself are swollen with pride.

Visits, important people, social life … Little by little Anita feels less and less interest in a world that she understands will now never belong to her. She still does her duty as a faithful European wife who organizes everything, still accompanying her husband on his travels, but the delight and the magic have gone. Her heart is no longer in it. Relations with the maharaja are still cordial, but less and less intimate. For some time now they have stopped being inspired by the
Kamasutra
for their nights of lovemaking. For some time now there have been no nights of lovemaking. Anita suspects that he is seeing other women or ex-concubines, and she … She dreams of being as free as a bird, and she spends whole evenings looking out of the Moghul-style windows, those that face north, toward the foothills of the snow-covered Himalayas. She has no option other than to get on with her loneliness, because she can talk to no one of her true inner feelings—of her forbidden love. She thinks her faithful servant knows something, but she is not worried because Dalima is discretion and loyalty incarnate. And then there is Ajit. She has decided she will not go away from Kapurthala before her son is eighteen, of age, in case the other wives hatch a plot to disinherit him, or even worse, to get rid of him. Intrigue and diabolical machinations have always been the order of the day in the courts of India. Anita trusts no one and does not want to let down her guard. She realizes that as her relationship with the maharaja runs out of steam, Harbans Kaur is gaining ground, little by little. This, together with the more and more frequent fights among the sons, makes the atmosphere in the palace suffocating. The arguments between Ratanjit and Kamal are so violent that they often come to blows, and Japanese vases, Swiss clocks, and the occasional Louis XVI chair go flying through the air, arousing the anger of the maharaja, who does not know what to do to keep the peace in the family. His sons, especially these two, are different in every way. Or rather, they are as different as their mothers are.

The result is that several times Kamal expresses a desire to go away. Then Anita goes pale, her eyes cloud over, and she finds it hard to speak. She would also like to disappear, but with him.