The Dancer and the Raja (34 page)

44

The gay twenties. London is gayer, the Savoy is livelier, and the streets are fuller than ever. Women with their hair cut
garçon
-style can be seen, others smoking in public, and all of them with shorter skirts. There is a contagious air of freedom and ease. London has finally forgotten the war.

The first thing Anita does when she reaches England is to visit her son. She prefers to do it alone, in order to enjoy such a long-awaited moment.

“Ajit, darling, I was longing to see you …”

“You're very pale, Mother …” he says. “You aren't ill, are you?”

“No, dear, I'm fine …”

The idea that the inner turmoil she has been suffering is reflected in her face and that her son may guess at it fills her with worry. What will happen to Ajit if the scandal breaks? Will he reject his mother? Will he hate her? Will a boy of seventeen be able to understand what is going on? She wants to push these questions out of her head because they augur ill and make her feel ill at ease with herself. Once again she is overcome by a feeling of disgust at herself, the same feeling that has become so familiar to her in recent times.

“Uncle Kamal has been to see me,” Ajit continues, “and he's told me that he's going to stay to live in England.”

Anita's eyes shine.
Then it's true, he hasn't made me an empty promise, he's trying to find a way to stay in England,
she tells herself, with her heart swollen with mad hope. Kamal's message, which has come to her through Ajit, raises her spirits. Now she can see herself living in London, very close to her son. And with Kamal.

Am I going mad?
she asks herself later, when she goes back to the maharaja to accompany him on the usual string of social activities: the races at Ascot, the tennis championship at Wimbledon, strolls in Kew Gardens, tea at the mansions of aristocratic friends … Except for royal receptions, to which Anita is not invited, she goes everywhere with him. The maharaja goes to Buckingham Palace with one of his sons to see the wedding presents for King George VI and his bride, Elizabeth. The Duke of Kent shows them to him with such enthusiasm that it is as if he is the one getting married. As is usual when he is in Europe, the maharaja is radiant. The hectic social life is a reflection of the renewed esteem in which the English hold him. Nothing can make him happier in these agitated times. Today more than ever, the maharajas need the protection of the British.

Kamal is part of the maharaja's entourage, which is made up of some thirty people, as usual. They occupy the tenth floor at the Savoy. Anita and the maharaja sleep in rooms separated by a little sitting room and a corridor in what is known as the Royal Suite. Kamal has his own room, at the end of the passage. It is as if the customs of Kapurthala had been transferred to London.

But the nightlife is different. All over the city music clubs have sprung up where jazz, tango, Latin rhythms can be heard … There has never been such a variety as now. Anita asks the maharaja to let her go out with Kamal and his English friends to listen to music, almost as if she were a teenager asking her father for permission. The maharaja always gives her that pleasure, while he opts to stay in the hotel and go to bed early.

Anita spends unforgettable nights that remind her of her early youth, when she went out with friends her own age. At a club called the Fallen Angel, where five colored musicians play as if possessed by a strange kind of magic, Anita hears the best jazz in her life. This is a kind of music that moves her more than the tango now. The sad, languid Camellia has a blues soul, perhaps out of some strange premonition.

Neither she nor Kamal suspect that they are under the watchful eye of a faithful assistant of the maharaja's, a Sikh called Khushal Singh, who spends his nights spying on the movements in the corridor on the tenth floor of the Savoy. The last night, after they are back from the Fallen Angel, the assistant wakes the maharaja at half past one in the morning.

“Your Highness, it is time,” he says.

The maharaja gets up, desperate to find out and at the same time alarmed at what he is on the point of discovering. He wraps himself in a crimson silk dressing gown, puts on some suede slippers, and follows his assistant down the weakly lit corridor, walking without making any noise on the thick carpet. At the door to Anita's room, Khushal Singh makes a sign with his head, as though asking permission to go in. The maharaja nods. Inside, everything looks normal. The blinds are half down, as usual, because Anita has never liked to sleep in total darkness. She has always said it frightened her. At first sight it looks as though someone is sleeping peacefully in the rumpled bed, at least until Khushal Singh, with a decisive gesture, suddenly pulls back the sheets. The maharaja opens his eyes wide, as though trying to understand. There is no one in the bed, just a pillow placed in such a way to make it look as if there is a person sleeping there.
So it's true,
the maharaja says to himself; everyone's suspicions are about to be confirmed. Now he understands the distant, cold behavior of his wife, her lukewarm response when he dared to give her a kiss or take her hand, her faraway look … But there is worse to come.

Jagatjit feels his heart beating so strongly that he is afraid it will betray his presence as, now with hesitant step, he goes down the corridor, where his sons' rooms are. Khushal Singh points to Kamal's room. The maharaja puts his ear to the door and must be able to hear something on the other side, because he immediately makes a sign to his assistant, who knocks discreetly. After a moment that seems eternal, Kamal opens it a little and finds himself face-to-face with his father, too furious to speak, too wounded to react. Without a word, the maharaja pushes the door wide open. The bed is unmade. Anita is sitting on a chair in front of the dressing table, dressed as she was when he last saw her, a few hours ago, when she went to ask his permission to go to the Fallen Angel.

There is a terrible silence. Anita does not lower her head or look away, but remains looking at her husband with wide-open eyes, as rigid as a statue, in silent defiance. On the other hand, Kamal, with his head down and his shoulders drooping, seems flattened by the weight of his own infamy. The maharaja, thunderstruck by the blow that wounds him as a father and as a husband, does not take another step and stands there, livid. His gaze is burning, as if he wanted to set them ablaze with the fire in his eyes.

After an interminable silence, the maharaja turns to his son, without raising his voice. “Get out. I don't want to see you again. I don't know how I could have fathered such a treacherous son.”

“We were only talking for a while,” Kamal stammers. “We'd just got back … Don't think …”

“Get out of here. Do it before I have you thrown out.”

Anita closes her eyes, as though waiting for her turn. But she hears nothing: neither insults, nor any sound of a struggle. She can only hear Kamal's steps going away down the corridor, as though they were the beating of her heart leaving her. When she opens her eyes again, she is alone. The three men have left. They have not taken out a knife, as they would have done in Andalusia, she thinks. There have been no insults, no shouting, no violence, except for the contained fury of the maharaja. In the darkness, she can only hear the distant siren of a barge on the Thames, mixed with a trace of music coming up from the hotel bar, or perhaps from the street. Is the drama over? Is her crime, the furtive kisses, the nights in the temple of Kali, the cursed love that has consumed her for months going to end in such a feeble, ignoble, shameful way? Her husband has not even addressed her, in the height of contempt. And the silence that reigns all around her, a silence of ship's sirens and false peace, scares her more than the crime itself.

When she turns her head, she finds herself looking at her own image reflected in the mirror. She looks surprised to see herself, and she suddenly forgets Kamal and her husband, worried by the strange woman sitting opposite her.
I must be mad,
she tells herself. Her hair cut in the latest fashion seems obscene to her now, the wrinkles on her face look deeper than they usually do, the pallor of her lips surprises her, and her eyes look dead. How old she looks! And how ashamed she is of herself, what endless contempt she feels for herself! She does not want to lie, she would like to confess everything and be as free as a bird once and for all, but she is forced to defend herself like a lioness, she is forced to carry on with Kamal's lie, even if only to defend him.

When she is asked, she will say they wanted to go and have a last drink in the hotel bar, but as it was closed, they decided to talk for a while in his room, and that was all there was to it.

45

According to Jarmani Dass, a minister of Kapurthala and one of the maharaja's trusted men, present that night in the Savoy, “The maharaja did not sleep all night, and at dawn, he retired to his room and asked Colonel Enriquez, a British officer who had been the tutor of his sons and whom he kept in his entourage, to immediately prepare the documents of separation from the Spanish woman.” If it had not been for the intervention of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, a Moslem lawyer who would become the founder of Pakistan, and who is staying in the same hotel with his wife, Rita, it is very possible that the maharaja might have sent Anita back to Spain the same day with no money and no pension. But Jinnah and Rita are friends of the couple.

“Don't rush things,” the Moslem warns him. “It would be a scandal that would not only do harm to you, but also to the other princes. You're on the verge of doing something crazy.”

At about that time the case against Hari Singh, the maharaja of Kashmir, had just been heard. This shy, quiet man, married to an Indian woman, and the owner of a plane with silver-plated wings as well as pearls as big as quail's eggs, has behaved like a perfect fool when he fell madly in love with an Englishwoman who really only wanted to extort half of his fortune from him. During the trial, and to avoid scandal, the maharaja tried to hide under a false name, but the bloodhounds in the British press have revealed his true identity. His case has become the tittle-tattle of society, from London to Calcutta. The result is that he has been ridiculed and ferociously vilified, and the enemies of the princes are using the case to attack the prestige of all the maharajas. In addition, Jinnah warns him, in India it has just been discovered that the raja of Limdi, whom everyone congratulated for spending 150,000 rupees of the state budget on education, really used that money exclusively on the education of the Crown Prince. The state budget of Bikaner has also just been made public, revealing strange priorities: the prince's wedding: 825,000 rupees; public works: 30,000; palace repairs: 426,614 rupees. Given this situation, Jinnah warns the maharaja that another scandal in the House of Kapurthala would be damaging.

Jinnah continues to argue that neither the report from Khushal Singh nor the fact of catching them in the same room amount to reliable evidence that there has been infidelity.

“You have no right to divorce your wife, to whom you are legally married, without concrete, definite proof of her infidelity,” he tells the maharaja in Dass's presence. “She and Kamal are the same age, they are friends, they have been out together on several nights to listen to music with his old friends from Harrow, but that does not mean they have had an
affaire
. Besides, they deny it completely.”

“What about the pillow in the bed, to make it look as though she was asleep?”

“Foolishness … just to deceive the servants. She wanted to chat or have a last drink with Kamal; it means nothing more.”

Jinnah is skillful and manages to calm the maharaja, who deep down is wanting to refuse to believe what is obvious. The shock is so great that he fervently desires it not to be true. The doubt that Kamal has sown in his mind by denying he was having an
affaire
with Anita is like a hole in which he finds refuge. “They were fully dressed, and she was just as she was a few hours before, when she came to say good-bye. Can what they say be true, that they were chatting for a while in his room before going to bed?” The maharaja manages to believe the unbelievable because he has an innate fear of scandal. The fact is that the soothing influence of his friend Jinnah, together with the doubt sown in his heart, make him see everything differently the next day. So he does not take any drastic action, except to send his son back to India.

“I don't want you to set foot in Kapurthala again until I tell you,” he tells him. “You'll go to Oudh to live, and you'll take charge of family affairs there.”

Kamal does not rebel; he does not leave the room slamming the door. He does not argue. On the contrary, he behaves like a good Indian son, docile and submissive. Perhaps for the first time he has seen close up the possibility of losing his privileges and that has scared him … What would he do without his father's money, without the title of prince, without the pedigree that distinguishes him from other mortals and that allows him to be part of a world that he feels is his own? He would be a mere agricultural engineer with progressive, revolutionary ideas, just another member of the incipient Indian middle class who militates in the Congress Party. He would be a real man, living a life in accordance with his ideas. But that makes him dizzy. Nothing is more difficult than giving up privileges. Kamal is not made of the same stuff as his cousin Bibi Amrit Kaur, who has become Gandhi's shadow.

Before the young man leaves the room, the maharaja adds, “And you'll be married in September. We'll begin to prepare your wedding as soon as you get back.”

Kamal looks up and meets the haughty, cold gaze of his father. He is about to say something, but decides to keep quiet.

The maharaja returns to India with Anita two days later. She is melancholic and listless and rarely leaves her cabin during the voyage. She has been left without Kamal or Ajit and is going back to a big, empty palace to spend her life in solitude. She has saved her position and her marriage, but what does that matter now? She is going back to protect Kamal, and also for her son. Her body is going back, because her spirit seems to be floating somewhere, in a place that only she knows, far away from everything, where no one can touch her.

As soon as she arrives back in Kapurthala, Anita falls sick. Convinced it is an infection caused by the formation of more ovarian cysts, she stays in bed, prepared to have the same treatment as the other time. Dr. Doré had already warned her that it was a recurring illness, but she preferred to forget that. In spite of the devotion with which Dalima cares for her, Anita does not get any better. She has pains, vomiting, and constant nausea. Fat Miss Pereira, the new gynecologist at Kapurthala Hospital, comes to see her, at the maharaja's orders. She is carrying a case with a red cross on it and she is accompanied by a nurse. The words she says after examining her explode in Anita's head like a bombshell.

“You're pregnant,” she tells her in Portuguese with a strong Goan accent. “Congratulations! I'm going to give His Highness the good news …”

Anita is thunderstruck and pale. ‘Pregnant! Oh God no!'

“No, please don't tell him anything,” she asks as she is leaving.

“I have to, Madam … Don't you worry, and just rest as much as you can.”

Anita does not insist; she is aware that now she cannot stop the course of events. Now a scandal really is inevitable. Now she can no longer protect anyone, not Kamal, or her son, or even herself. Her own body has betrayed her. The only escape is to go on lying, to say she is pregnant by someone else to protect Kamal … But it would not do much good. She knows she is about to become the center of one of the biggest scandals in British India. How happy her enemies are going to be! Suddenly she is proving right all those who always saw her as just a Spanish dancer, a girl with no rectitude or moral sense, an opportunist. The whim of a cardboard prince that turned out as a frog: “Naturally, I always said so …” the English ladies will say. They have always looked askance at her.

But when has she ever cared about what people will say? Not ever, really, and that is why she has survived in such an unreal society. What seems worst to her is the harm the scandal is going to do to the maharaja, always so jealous of his reputation. It will cause irreparable damage; her husband will become the laughingstock of his rivals and will hate her for it. Now, seen through her misfortune, she realizes with unsuspected clarity that seventeen years of marriage leave a mark. Not in vain have they both avoided all the day-to-day misunderstandings and momentary quarrels, but they have also shared wonderful moments of marital complicity. These are the leftovers of love. That is why she feels infinite grief for her husband.

And so she waits for the maharaja to visit her, and she imagines him arriving at the door, beside himself, insulting her and threatening her as she deserves. But her husband does not come. The days go by and he does not come to see her. She only receives a visit from Inder Singh, the elegant Sikh gentleman, her old ally.

“His Highness has ordered me to tell you that from now on you will live in Villa Buona Vista, until the divorce papers are ready. I have orders to move all your furniture and belongings there.”

“I want to speak to His Highness.”

“I'm afraid he does not want that, Madam …”

The maharaja has never liked confrontation; in that he is like all Indians,
thinks Anita. But she is not prepared for things to end just like that, without a word. She waits until she is alone, and, at nightfall, when she knows the maharaja has finished dinner and is going to his rooms, she catches him at the top of the stairs, near his room.

“Your Highness …”

Jagatjit Singh turns round. He looks taller than before, more dignified and aristocratic if that is possible, wearing a navy blue turban and a shirt buttoned up at the collar. His dark eyes shine in the dark like beads of jet.

“I only wanted to tell you that …” Anita points to her belly as she stammers, “it isn't Kamal's. It's … it's an English officer's …”

The maharaja looks at her with a mixture of contempt and contained fury.

“Your words have no value for me. I will never be able to believe anything you say.”

“Your Highness, I swear to you …”

“Don't swear in vain. I have taken a series of decisions before our definitive separation. The first is that I do not wish you to live under the same roof as me. So you will move to the villa tomorrow.”

“You are punishing me with even more loneliness.”

“You punish yourself with your irresponsible, scandalous behavior, which is unworthy of everything I've done for you.”

There is a silence, which becomes as lengthy and thick as the warm air coming in through the palace windows.

“You are right, Your Highness … And although I know it's useless, I beg your forgiveness with all my heart.”

As though not hearing her, the maharaja goes on, in a slow but firm tone that brooks no possible argument, “The second decision is that you must have an abortion.”

Anita feels as though a knife is being stuck in her heart. Unable to say a word, she looks up at her husband, begging him, but she sees a stony, icy bulk. Getting rid of the child she is carrying, the fruit of the only love of her life, a complete love that has made her crazy: that is the real punishment. Nothing will be left of her passion for Kamal, except memories. Anita has no option but to accept it, with her heart broken, her soul wounded, and her body mortified. Life always makes one pay the price, and now she has to pay the price for all that madness and treachery.
It's only fair,
she thinks.

“I understand, Your Highness. And I obey your decisions.”

“The third decision is that you will leave India never to return. I have nothing more to add.”

“Your Highness …”

The maharaja half turns.

“I wanted to tell you that … I would never have broken my obligations as a wife if Your Highness had not first broken yours as a husband. I've felt very neglected. Nothing more.”

“There is no justification for what you've done. It's no good you making out you're the victim.”

The maharaja retires to his rooms. Anita, stumbling, leans on the teak banister of the stairs. Down below, in the entrance hall, are the portraits of the maharaja's sons. Dressed in gala uniform, Kamal seems to be looking up at her out of the darkness.

How far back it all seems in her memory …! Anita is once again in her old room at the Villa Buona Vista, where she spent such happy moments at the beginning of her marriage, where she discovered the sweetness of life in India and where she gave birth to Ajit. Now she is back, but beaten and humiliated, to get rid of the child she is carrying. She imagines all kinds of solutions to avoid having the abortion. She thinks about running away, about asking the British authorities for help, about reporting the maharaja's coercion … She comes to feel so desperate that she thinks about suicide as the best way to expiate her sins. This is not the first time it has crossed her mind. She has come to feel so closed in, so not the mistress of her own destiny, that she has felt like succumbing to temptation. But then she thought about Ajit and found the strength to go on.

Now she does not have the energy left to fight. Perhaps if she were morally in the right. But she is not, however much she tries to justify her actions. That is the worst thing, knowing herself to be guilty. Hating someone else is easy and can even be a relief. Hating oneself is much worse: it means unbearable suffering. She has the impression that she does not even deserve the air she breathes. If she does not deserve to live … why keep trying to stay alive? She has loved with all her strength, and destiny cannot be overcome. Then she realizes that she can only let herself be pulled along by the current and abandon herself in the arms of providence. “Let it be God's will …, I don't care whether I live or die!”

The dreaded visit from Miss Pereira occurs finally, after a few lonely, languid days that Anita spends on the veranda. It is oppressively hot, with a high percentage of humidity, the kind of heat that tires men out and exhausts the animals. There are no longer any
punkhas
in the house; her friends, the human ventilators, have been replaced by electric ventilators hanging from the ceiling. Kapurthala is always on the side of progress … The slow movement of the arms as they turn has a hypnotic effect, which is like a balm to Anita.

The doctor no longer has the chirpy voice and lively manner she had on her last visit. Miss Pereira is still just as nice, but her face is grave. She is repelled at having to carry out the maharaja's sinister commands, but who is she to argue with his orders? In Indian tradition, inherited from the Moghuls, abortion is permitted until the fourth month of pregnancy, although only in exceptional cases. From then on, the Islamic jurists of the Moghul Empire—the first to legislate on abortion—declared that the soul begins to envelop the fetus, and then it becomes a human being. Anita knows she is three months pregnant because she will never be able to forget that night of torrid lovemaking among the ruins of the temple of Kali. When she remembers that joy of soul and body, that spark of pure happiness, she feels consoled and tells herself that it was worth it. But when she thinks that the fruit of that passion is going to be sacrificed on the altar of social conventions, she can find no words to express her despair. She has played with fire, she has always known that, and now she has been burned. The goddess of destruction cannot be defied without punishment.