The Splendor Of Silence (40 page)

He had called her darling when they parted earlier that day, and it was the first time Mila could remember him employing that word. He had always used her name, or come up to her elbow to say something; once he had bent close enough to her ear so that she could feel the warmth of his breath upon her skin.

Jai had kissed her four times. Despite all of Papa's injunctions, it was easy enough to find solitude for an embrace. Ashok had to be with them at all times, and Jai was not above bribing him with what was most denied to him--cigarettes, a ride in the Suiza, a walk in the corridor that led to Jai's ?enana for a possible glimpse of the ladies who kept purdah, the veil. Before the first kiss, on the verandah leading out to the enormous indoor swimming pool in Jai's Neel Niwas, the Blue Palace, Mila had been afraid, knowing what was to come, yet not sure if she wanted it. But Jai had been so gentle, he had kissed her hand first, then the inside of her wrist, the curve of her elbow, touched lightly upon her collarbone with his warm tongue before working his way up to her mouth. She remembered the smell of him, the feel of his mouth on hers, the absolute fit of her body against his. He had been considerate, loving. But none of the four kisses had compared to the explosion of love and lust Mila had experienced with Sam.

But how could it be? Mila thought over and over again all through the afternoon. With Jai, there were little histories that went back in time and built upon each other to form an entire whole, with Sam, there was no history at all.

When the household descended into its midafternoon slumber, Mila slipped out of the house and rode her bicycle, under the frenetic blaze of the sun, to the Lal Bazaar. Sam Hawthorne was a fantasy for her; Jai was real, and here, where her life lay. It was a blessing that he had returned from the ICC now, for they would be together more often and she could keep Ashok away from Vimal by asking him to come to their dinners and outings. These were Mila's two decisions--she would only visit with Jai, and she would take Ashok with her and keep him by her side also. Having made up her mind, the only feeling of unease that remained in Mila was because she had neglected her duties in the Lal Bazaar in the past few days and a letter from Father Manning had come yesterday to lie on her bedside table and reproach her.

Father Manning was the only British Catholic missionary in Rudrakot, or rather, he had remained, in his semiofficial capacity, well after the Catholic Church had pulled its mission out of the kingdom. The reasons had been varied, but mostly because Rudrakot was too small a state to require the ministrations of both the Catholic, and the Anglican church, represented by the vicar and Mrs. Sexton, and all of their good deeds liberally forced upon the poor. Father Manning had chosen not to leave when the two other missionaries had departed, for in the time he had been here, thirty-five years, his soul had melded into the light and heat of Rudrakot. He loved its people--the children of the bazaar; the women with torn spit-its who used their bodies as barter; the old, toothless men nodding in the sunshine; the young, brash men who teased him for no cause at all. Father Manning, born George Manning, had no family left in England he could even remember--his parents were dead; his sister had faded into a life of comfortable domesticity and still advised him irregularly on how to deal with the "savages" he worked amongst; the church had loosened its ties upon him when he had refused to leave the kingdom.

The mission house was a senescent building tucked behind a chai shop and a brass and copper shop, with a narrow alley leading to the gate of the house and the inner courtyard within. It was the same mission house the church had used, and when he was left on his own, for just a brief while
,
Father Manning had worried about finding rent for the place. He had mentioned this, casually, to the chai shop owner, Ramu, during his morning cup of chai, which he always, companionably, drank with the young man. By afternoon, four hours later, one of the little vagabond boys of the bazaar had come up to Father Manning and thrust a gunnysack in his hand. Inside was crammed a khafana of money--soiled and damp rupee notes, glittering arena coins, and even the odd British shilling. Just enough, to the last arena, for his monthly rent and food for the kitchens.

The mission house, fittingly called Prem Nivas--the Abode of Love--was always rife with the rich sound of children's laughter, their sometimes frightened cries at night, the soothing croon of Father Manning's bedtime songs. Almost all children of the women of the Lal Bazaar found their way at some point or other during the night to Prem Nivas, honing in to the shelter of his home. Each evening at twilight, Father Manning would drag out fifteen jute-knitted chatpais into the courtyard under the emerging stars and wait. And each evening, as their mothers went to work, the children would leave the brothel houses and come to the Father. At night, if one of them had a fever, it was Father Manning who would stand vigil by their bedsides, dipping cloth towels into the water from the courtyard tap and laying it on their foreheads to bring down the temperature. In the morning, he wakened his brood with a touch, a word, a smile, a tickle under the ribs for the littlest ones and fed them khichdi and a dry potato curry--the only things he knew how to cook.

The gunnysack money came every month to Father Manning, but he always needed more for his children. There were school uniforms for those whose mothers did not mind a little learning, lunch boxes, slates and chalk pieces, medicines from the bazaar apothecary whose generosity had already been stretched beyond enduring in the cause of these children. So Father Manning taught extra lessons of mathematics and English to the more privileged children whose parents lived within the Civil Lines in Rudrakot. And there, five years before, he had met Mila because he had gone to Raman's house to tutor Ashok and, incidentally, Vimal.

A year ago, one of the women from the Lal Bazaar, who was really a child herself, perhaps not even sixteen years old, had come in copious tears to Father Manning about having been defrauded by a traveling cloth merchant who had given her back less change for a transaction. He had taught her numbers then, how to add, and subtract, how to ask for the correct change, how not to be cheated in the future. The very smallest of the children who slept in the courtyard of his mission house could now calculate those numbers in their heads--without the aid of their fingers and toes--and the prostitute's ignorance deeply saddened him. He accosted the madams of the white side of the bazaar and the black side of the bazaar and pleaded with them to allow him to teach the women, but they were adamantly against it. A man, even though he called himself a man of God, could not be allowed into the brothels under any pretext without paying the requisite fees. Finally Father Manning saw Mila ride past him one day on her way to the Rifles regiment's maidan for her daily ride on Ghatoth, and asked her if she would mind teaching the women some basics--the letters of the English alphabet, a few Hindustani words, some mathematics and numbers.

Mila always rode her bicycle carefully, keeping her legs well away from the pedals and her sari border away from the greasy chain. Pallavi had clucked with irritation, shouted, and wanted to know where she disappeared to in the afternoons every now and then, and why it was necessary to ride the bicycle instead of taking the jeep. At this last thought, Mila smiled and wiped her forehead under the brim of her solo topi. Pallavi never wanted her to drive the jeep because she thought that was unwomanly, but at least the jeep had some status, whereas if anyone saw Mila cycling through the bazaar, they would not stop to consider that this was the political agent's daughter. And that was exactly why she took the bicycle. She pedaled furiously as she broke out of the trees in the Civil Lines and into the fiat expanse of land that led to the stand of trees that shaded the two regiments. As she neared the trees on the farther side, she heard the squealing slowness of the chain and felt it yank at the border of her pink cotton sari. Mila reduced her speed, groaning, and pulled at her sari border gently, hoping to release it before it became more entangled. After a few tugs, the sari came loose, and there was only a small smudge of grease at the bottom, hardly visible at all. She continued on, thinking of Pallavi's next complaint, that she could very well wear her jodhpurs if she had to use the bicycle, again a departure for Pallavi, but in this one instance, Mila could not enter the Lal Bazaar in anything other than a sari, her head covered and bowed, so as not to attract attention from any lascivious man on the street.

Father Manning's unusual request a few months ago had been surprising and somehow stunning, for too many reasons. Mila had heard of the Lal

Bazaar, of course, from Jai and from Kiran, but they were always vague about the specifics. She only realized what occurred there after the officer had exited Lady Pankhurst's bedchamber, buttoning the front of his coat. Mila was eighteen that year, old enough to have been married herself and to know what happened between a man and a woman. But she had kept herself deliberately obtuse, not curious, not even interested. The Lal Bazaar came as a shock when she passed through it. The women had called out to her, their language rich with phrases and sentences she could not understand; at times, she did glance at them furtively and saw strident mouths, brightly colored saris draped unbecomingly, manlike stances with legs apart, and a tautness to their bodies that came from belligerence. None of this was appealing and she kept her eyes from them as much as she could.

Father Manning was the first man to talk openly with Mila about the women of the Lal Bazaar, and it was with a great deal of embarrassment that she could even listen to what he had to say. They were poor, uneducated, in need of help. He asked her to teach in his stead since he--being a man--was forbidden to.

Why? Mila had asked. Why did these women deserve anything, need anything other than the life they had chosen?

Mila flushed with regret when she thought of this question now. Hers had always been a privileged life because Papa, though not rich, had access to the perquisites of the wealthy. They did not own their home or even the Morris or the jeep, but these would not so soon disappear from their lives; they were on extended loan until death. Mila had an almirah full of saris and pants and jodhpurs, shirts in silk, enough jewelry to weigh down two brides, and now, with her marriage to Jai, even all that Papa had given her would be inconsequential. For Mila there had always been a choice, even in the choosing of Jai to be her husband; it was not a decision Papa would ever have forced her into. She had thought that the women of the Lal Bazaar had chosen to do what they did. Father Manning had said simply that such a life was never a choice.

At one time, early in the days when Father Manning had given lessons to Ashok and Vimal, Raman and he would sit in the upstairs verandah under the jute matting and take their afternoon chai and scones together. Mila had listened in on these conversations too, intrigued, and most of their debates had been about religion. Raman talked of the philosophies of Hinduism, and Father Manning talked of his Lord Jesus Christ. They ha
d f
ound many similarities, many differences, much to ponder, even asking Mila what she felt or thought at the time. Until now, Mila's only encounters with missionaries had been the proselytizing type, with every conversation invariably ending in an exhortation to cleave unto their God or to disdain her own. But Father Manning had been content merely to discuss. He did not assert the superiority of his religion, why, he had even agreed that its policies of forcible conversion were unbecoming of Christian values. If it had not been for these series of talks with Father Manning on the afternoons of the tutoring sessions, Mila would never have agreed to visit the Lal Bazaar with him that first time.

Somewhere in the back of her consciousness was also the thought, never fully enunciated, that of all the British in Rudrakot, Father Manning was the only one who was not well, British. He did not consider himself a master, a member of the ruling race, did not attempt any condescensions. Father Manning had come to Rudrakot because of the empire, true, sent here to proselytize and protect a people considered to be in need of religious succor and reassurance, but he was not the empire.

Mila reached the edge of the bazaar, near the tailor's shop, and tucked her bicycle under the tattered tarpaulin awning that shaded him as he stitched clothes on an ancient, clanking Singer. He had an understanding with Father Manning that Mila could leave her cycle with him and he would look after it all afternoon. Then she pulled the pallu of her simple pink sari over her hair and walked into the bazaar, toward the section that housed the brothels, her head bowed, her steps measured, a cheap cloth shopping bag hanging on her bare arm. The man seated at the entrance to the brothel grunted at her, but Mila did not answer back. Her heart thudding with an unnamed fear, one she always experienced when she came here, she left her chappals inside the front door and then climbed the concrete stairs to the main corridor.

Rooms lined the whole length of the corridor, with most of the doors thrown open. Mila did not glance either to her right or to her left as she walked to the room at the far end, her skin bristling with discomfort and something so acute in her chest that it was almost painful. There was the smell of old, used perfumes; cheap attar; the lingering essence of sandalwood and myrrh. All the entertainment rooms were garishly done with toffee pinks, copper sulfate blues, and parrot greens on the walls, and covered with frescoes of dancing girls in tight bodices and Baring skirts. Th
e a
ccompaniments to the women's singing, the tabla, the harmonium, the violin, the sitar, sat in their cloth housings at one end. The mosaic floor was thick and padded, first with a layer of jute matting covered by a thin cotton mattress, this covered with a thick cotton sheet of the purest white. The nautch girls danced on this padding, performing for private audiences of soldiers from the Rudrakot Rifles regiment, who would be seated against one end of the room, under a satin and gold canopy, propped against silk bolsters and cushions.