The Dancer and the Raja (36 page)

“This is for you, Dalima my love,” Anita tells her, giving her a thick paper envelope. “It's your salary for the last months and a bonus. It's not much compared to what you deserve. Not much at all.”

Dalima does not want to take the envelope, but Anita insists and finally puts it in the bodice of her sari. Dumb with emotion, Dalima remains as though paralyzed while Anita hugs her tightly in her arms.

“Good-bye, Dalima. If you need anything, you can get in touch with me through the palace. They have my address and can write a letter for you. I would like very much to have news of you …”

Dalima stays still, as though dead but alive, in the midst of all the frantic activity on the docks. The cawing of the crows mixes with the cries of the stevedores and porters as Anita goes across the gangway. Before she goes into the depths of the ship, she turns to wave to Dalima for the last time. What she sees remains engraved on her memory forever. Her faithful maid takes the envelope she has just given her out of her bodice, opens it, and throws the notes into the sea, bursting into tears. Then, so people will not see her crying, she covers her face with her sari.

²⁶
Lentils, which are the staple diet of Indians.

EPILOGUE

“Who Will Dry Our Tears?”

Until the day she died, Anita Delgado kept the photo of Kamal on her bedside table, with his smooth features, his turban done up with a plume of feathers, and his jacket with medals from Kapurthala. It was the first and last picture she saw when she woke up and went to bed every day for the rest of her life. In spite of the fact that he was married in 1926, after Anita left India, Kamal continued to visit her secretly, taking advantage of his trips to Europe. They saw each other in Biarritz, in Deauville, in London, and in Paris. They were fleeting visits, like the tears of St. Lawrence, the remains of the fire of passion that had consumed them. Gradually those visits became less and less frequent, until Kamal stopped seeing her, because he fell in love with a French cinema actress who was only twenty. But in Anita's memory, Kamal was always the only love of her life.

Thanks to the generous pension the maharaja gave her, Anita did not have any problems in getting used to her newfound freedom, dividing her time between Paris, Madrid, and Málaga. Her strong personality, combined with her extraordinary, exotic past, made her one of what today would be called the jet set. The aura of the romance she had had with her husband's son added mystery and morbid curiosity to the character, but she did not talk about Kamal. It was a secret she shared with very few, and she wished to keep it jealously in her heart until the end, pretending it had never happened. But her close friends were not deceived because the photo on her bedside table gave her away. Having become a constant figure in the society columns of the 1920s, she lived to the rhythm of the annual migration of luxury birds: summer holidays on the Côte d'Azur, winter holidays in Switzerland, days in Deauville … She mixed with bankers and those with great fortunes, but she always preferred the company of writers, painters, artists, and singers, like her great friend Josephine Baker. Anita liked Bohemian life. The aristocrats belittled her—not only the English ones, but the Spanish ones too—because they always considered her to be a social climber in a world that did not belong to her.

Faithful to her Spanish and Andalusian roots, she never missed the San Isidro bullfights or the Seville Fair and on occasions even went on the Rocio pilgrimage, which she greatly enjoyed because she reencountered the most profound parts of her background. Horses, religious devotion, music, and dancing … what more could she ask for?

When she finally settled in Spain, she began to frequent the world of bullfighting and, according to the rumors—never confirmed by her—she even fell in love with Juan Belmonte, the great bullfighter from Seville, the myth of the Spain of the time. But she did not give much publicity to her love life, in case the maharaja reduced or canceled her pension.

Once adapted to her new way of life, Anita realized that she was not going to be able to forget India. The usual conversations at social gatherings in Europe, which were more gossip sessions, seemed insipid to her compared to the tales of tiger hunts or the stories of horse rides through the mountains in Kashmir that enlivened evenings in India. On the cold, foggy days that were so frequent in Paris or London, Anita remembered the crisp, bright air of winter in the Punjab; the pale green of the rice fields; her garden where the roses, lilies, and bougainvilleas grew in profusion and where the fragrance of violets perfumed the air. She remembered her rides in the country, “cow-dust time,” when the smoke rose from the little ovens in the villages, the great dusty plains, the cries of the birds and animals, the tinkling of the bells on the oxcarts, the sound of the rain hammering on the roof at monsoon time, and above all she remembered Dalima, the gracefulness of the Indian women, the beggars and holy men, the luxury and the great spectacles seen from the back of an elephant. Gradually she forgot the unpleasant side of India: the miserable way of life of the poor, the cruelty of the caste system, and the terrible poverty. She slowly forgot about the nights of anguish sitting by Ajit when he had a temperature, the loneliness of palace life, the tremendous heat, the fear of snake bites or of being poisoned, the fear of falling sick, the fear of India itself.

Her nostalgia was such that many years later, now an elderly lady, her two maids served dinner at her house in Madrid dressed in the same clothes as the servants in Kapurthala, and she obliged them to wear white gloves, even if it was the middle of summer. She appeared on the dot, but in a dressing gown and with rollers in her hair. She dined alone, engrossed in her memories of a fabulous life that would be no more.

Anita wanted to go back to India on several occasions, but she never got a visa from the British authorities. She never knew, either, that the maharaja was behind that persistent refusal. “His Highness is particularly anxious that Prem Kaur should not return to India because he says it causes upsets in his domestic circle, so we have requested the Foreign Office not to extend facilities for the Spanish lady to travel,” goes a letter signed by a certain M. Baxter, head of the Political Office of the India Office in 1937.

But the maharaja continued to see her assiduously every time he went to Europe. They ended up being good friends, maintaining regular contact and sending each other mutual news through Ajit, who frequently traveled between Europe and India. Even at a distance the maharaja would be present in her life until the end. The first telegrams of condolence she received when her father died in 1931, and then in 1935 when Doña Candelaria died, were from the maharaja. Faithful to the tradition of protecting the women in his life, Jagatjit Singh was always concerned for the well-being and safety of his Spanish rani. When the civil war broke out, he settled her and her niece Victoria in a hotel in Britanny, and later, when the Second World War was looming on the horizon, he organized the move of both of them to Portugal, through the British embassy, where they remained until the end of the conflict. As Doña Candelaria had always said: “This man is a real gentleman.”

Until the end of his life, the maharaja did not give up his determination to replace Anita with another European maharani. Sensitive and quick to fall in love, he was the ideal target for certain unscrupulous women who were more in love with his money than with his person. Arlette Serry was one of them. For two years she alternated between India and Paris, without ever committing herself, but without clarifying the situation either. The maharaja followed her like a lapdog. He spent long periods of time at the Pavillon Kapurthala trying for all he was worth to convince her to accept his proposal of marriage. His minister, Jarwani Dass, caught him one Friday night in the middle of his prayers, while Inder Singh, the captain of the guard, read paragraphs from the
Granth Sahib
out loud. When he was asked why he was praying at such a late hour, Inder Singh explained in secret that they were praying to the Almighty to give the maharaja strength and sexual vigor before he spent the night with Arlette. The next day Dass did not dare to ask if the prayers had borne fruit, but when he received a check for ten thousand francs from the maharaja without any explanation, he understood that God had listened to his master's requests. When he was satisfied with his sexual performance, the maharaja gave out money among his ministers, secretaries, assistants, and servants—in proportion to each person's position. Arlette, who was given wonderful Cartier jewels, took the lion's share.

But when the French girl got tired of bleeding him dry, she ran off with a boyfriend she had kept secret until then, the correspondent of an Argentinian newspaper in Paris. The maharaja was left greatly disappointed.

Shortly afterward he met another Frenchwoman in Cannes, a woman called Germaine Pellegrino who had it all: beauty, intelligence, and culture. Although from the start she warned him that she was engaged to none other than Reginald Ford, the heir to the American car company, the maharaja invited her to Kapurthala and received her with all the honors. They spent many hours talking about politics and history and became great friends. They continued to see each other in Paris, and the maharaja ended up deeply in love with her. “I want you to be my maharani” he dared to tell her one day. She gave every sign of being very surprised, half indignant and half outraged. “How is it possible, sir, if Regi is my fiancé?” she answered. “The maharaja was devastated at Germaine's refusal, and went through real agonies of love,” Jarmani Dass would tell. “He told me to do everything possible to convince her to marry him, or he would kill himself.” Dass was unsuccessful and the maharaja did not kill himself. He found out about the wedding of his beloved to Reginald Ford when he sent her, from Kapurthala, an antique pearl necklace of immense value as a birthday present. The note of thanks he received from Paris, signed by Germaine, said: “Thank you for the wonderful necklace, which I am delighted to accept as a wedding present.”

The maharaja finally managed to get married in 1942, to a Czech theater actress he had met in Vienna six years previously. Eugenie Grossupova was tall and blond, with big, blue eyes. Like Anita, she was from a poor family that desperately needed help to stay afloat. But her character was very different: weak, shy, and with no skills for mixing in society. Otherwise her story was much like Anita's, snubbed and despised both by the maharaja's family and the English. On the death of her mother, who lived with her in one wing of the palace, the woman had an attack of paranoia. She was convinced that her mother had been poisoned and that she would be next. The loneliness, the boredom, and her neurotic character finally drove her to insanity. She decided to go away to the United States, where she said her only living relative resided. She stayed in the Maidens Hotel in Delhi to organize the details of the journey, but the English put many obstacles in her path. The Second World War complicated everything, from obtaining a visa to changing currency. Falling prey to a nervous breakdown, on December 10, 1946, she took a taxi to go to one of the most emblematic monuments, the Qutab Minar Tower, which dominates the city from a height of one hundred meters. She went up to the top with her two poodles, then she picked them up and jumped.

The death of Tara Devi—the name Jagatjit Singh had given her when they got married in the Sikh religion—was just the type of news to excite the bloodhounds of the gutter press. The news came out on the front page of all the newspapers. For the maharaja it was another scandal, which was the source of all kinds of conjecture and gossip, and which finally sank him into a state close to depression. According to Jarmani Dass, he suddenly aged ten years: “What a difficult mixture, East and West, like water and oil …!” Dass would comment.

Tara Devi's death unleashed an exchange of letters between the maharaja and the British authorities whose tone was of an acrimony unknown until then. Jagatjit Singh directly accused the Political Department of having caused his wife's despair and held them responsible for her death. The reply of that department, in a confidential letter of December 19, 1946, signed by J. H. Thompson, the secretary, was not long in coming: “If there is any responsibility for the death of Tara Devi, it is yours alone. I would be remiss in my duty if I did not remind Your Highness that when a man of your age marries a foreign woman, and when that foreign woman is forty years younger than her husband, he is running a grave risk. That risk, which Your Highness ran, has had an unfortunate and tragic end. And you cannot blame the Political Department for that.”

At that time, the maharaja of Kapurthala was witness to the end of the world that he had known—and which coincided, furthermore, with the end of his life. As soon as the Second World War was over, the English announced the irrevocable decision to grant India independence. Although many of his colleagues never believed the English would break the historic agreements that linked them to the British Crown, Jagatjit Singh thought the maharajas would be left to their fate. Gandhi and Nehru had managed to galvanize the masses around the Congress Party, which had become a powerful organization that aspired to inherit the democratic government of a new India. After all attempts to agree among themselves had failed, there were difficult times ahead for the princes. The idea of giving up their sovereign rights or joining a democratic federation was still unacceptable to most of them. They found it impossible to make the leap from the Middle Ages into the twentieth century.

Looking back was more comforting than looking to the future. Jagatjit Singh felt satisfied with what he had achieved. He had managed to turn Kapurthala into a model state in miniature, well administered and with no corruption. He had managed to attract capital to set up three factories and get an incipient sugar industry going. The high level of schooling of the children brought him the congratulations of the Europeans. The crime rate was very low. He had never used his exclusive right to impose the death penalty. He felt especially pleased at his skill when it came to settling conflict between the different religious communities. He had become a real juggler, removing a Moslem minister here, placing a Hindu administrator there, that is, shuffling the members of his government so that everyone felt represented. While in other parts of the Punjab there were frequent disturbances, Kapurthala was an example of peaceful coexistence. The city, as quiet and clean as a European city, with numerous gardens and impeccable buildings, was a source of inspiration for architects and city planners who came from other areas of India. When a civil servant was posted to another state, he left Kapurthala convinced that the place he was going to was worse.

But what the maharaja was most proud of was the devotion his people showed for him. Every year, in March, in the festival that marked the beginning of the summer, he went on the back of an elephant to the Shalimar public gardens and met his people, answering questions, taking an interest in people, and enjoying the warm affection of his subjects. He liked to remember the Christmas festivities to which he invited a thousand or so children to give them parcels of books, or the constant visits to the law courts, the police station, and hospitals, visits that allowed him to closely monitor the heartbeat of his administration. It is true that he traveled a lot, but he always rejected the accusation of his watchdogs, the governor of the Punjab and the top British civil servants, that his travels negatively affected the efficient administration of his state. As he got older, the maharaja placed all the emphasis possible on making Kapurthala a beacon of public-spiritedness and culture. He wanted to gain favor with men and with God. He wanted to be remembered for what he was, a benevolent ruler, open and just.