The Splendor Of Silence (49 page)

"I hoped you would come," he said, simply, and she saw in his eyes the fever of desire so strong that it brought a flush to his skin. His fingers twitched against his face and he could not keep his hunger from showing. He seemed to touch her from even that distance, reaching out across the span of the room to caress her waist, run the backs of his fingers under her arms, tug gently at her hair.

"The meaning of my name, in full, Milana, is 'to meet,' " she said. "Or in another conjugation it means 'to find.' "

"It seems appropriate," Sam said. "Now I will not let you go, Mila. You must know this before you take another step toward me, you must know this."

"I do," she said and closed the door behind her.

Sam rose, but he went toward the gramophone instead and plucked the needle's arm from the groove it had made in the record. Then he put another record on the gramophone and held out a hand to her as the music began to play.

"Mike and I have always liked Bing Crosby," he said. "I was surprised to find his songs here."

"Why?" she said faintly. "We have everything. Ashok likes to dance to his songs." She did not move but stood very, very still, her arms by her sides, the chiffon of her sari smooth against her hands.

"I wanted to ask you to dance at the mela."

"I would not have danced with you there."

He nodded. "I know why now, but you cannot hide this us from everyone forever."

She came into his arms then, very correctly, as she had been taught by an early governess, a Miss Beasley. Mila had only danced with Miss Beasley and with Ashok, although he preferred to dance alone, in no style at all, just a rabid flailing of his arms and legs.

Sam's hold on her was nothing like Miss Beasley's feeble clutch; his hands were warm, his shoulder muscles flexed as she caressed him and she had to look away from the fierce burning of his scrutiny upon her face. A heat flooded through her and her head drooped, too heavy for her neck. The gramophone scratched through the song.

I really can't stay

But Baby it's cold outside I've got to go away

But Baby it's cold outside

This evening has been so very nice

I'll hold your hands, they're just like ice

Sam swung Mila around the room, the thick folds of her sari wrapping around his legs, her long pallu floating behind them both in a shimmering glitter. She had taken off her high-heeled shoes and Sam was barefoot too, so as they moved their feet made slapping sounds against the mosaic. They danced for ten minutes like this, barely touching each other, barely even breathing. Mila's arm lay lightly upon Sam's injured shoulder, her fingers linked with his, and his hand brushed her waist. They came no closer at all during the music until the gramophone lost its power and died down. Then Sam let go of Mila, took the record out, and put it away in its sleeve.

He went to the bedside lamp and switched it off and they both waited until that first darkness faded and shaped itself around them in light and shadow.

They kissed, and Sam ran his tongue over Mila's face, raising such a hankering in her that she blindly moved her mouth until it could meet his. He undid her sari slowly and she stood where she was as his arms went around her once, twice, a third time, until the pleats had been pulled loose in the front and the sari lay at their feet like a blanket of diamonds. He was shaking with need, but he was gentle, taking off her blouse, cupping her breasts with one hand and then another, bending to kiss them. The frenzy came then upon them both and they fell onto the bed. Sam scrambled out of his clothes. He ran his hands over every part of her body, curving his palms around her feet, sliding them over her knees and her thighs. And where his touch went, his mouth followed until Mila pulled him up to her. Sam buried himself inside Mila as their mouths fused.

Above them the ceiling fan shuddered and clanked, but its noise was not enough and Sam had to muffle Mila's cries with the heel of his hand against her mouth.

May 31, 1942

Rudrakot, India

Chapter
Twenty-Eight.

It was clear to me that Pauline never had any real love for me, and was marrying
me
simply to be raised to European status. I 'phoned her father and asked if I could call. I intended the interview to last half-an-hour, it lasted six minutes. I said, "I think Pauline and the two of you have been deceiving me all along is
Th
ere any Asian blood in you?" her father
flared into a rage
ordered me out of the house and I had for one second a f
e
arful sensation that perhaps I was wrong. I turned to Pauline and said, "Am I mistaken? Are you pure white?" She wouldn't answer but looked away, and as I stepped to the door, she said, "You have insulted the whole family."

--Anton Gill, Ruling Passions: Sex, Race and Empire, 1991

*

D
oes it hurt?" Mila asked, her fingers tracing the dark abrasion on

Sam's shoulder. She lay on the bed, naked and on her stomach, her hair falling around her to her waist. Sam lay next to her, also naked, his hands clasped on his ribs. He reached out and traced the arc of her but- tocks, grasped a handful of her silky, sweet-smelling hair, kissed her bruised mouth.

She smiled against his teeth. "I can see," Mila said, her voice muffled by his skin, 'that! will never get a straight answer to anything if I lie here without my clothes on."

He covered her mouth with the palm of his hand. "Never say that."

"Never wear clothes?"

"Not around me, anyway." He took his hand away and slid it behind her hair, seeking the nape of her neck. Sam pulled her down on him. The night's heat had finally come to rest and become quiet, so it was cooler now, the very nadir the temperature would reach before it began to climb again. There were two hours left for the sun to rise, but Mila and Sam could already hear the birds beginning to stir in the trees outside. Mila knew she would have to leave Sam, and soon, before the servants awoke, or before Pallavi got out of bed. This was like a madness, a joyful intoxication where nothing mattered but Sam. Even as she kissed him, touched every inch of his skin so that her fingers would always remember what he felt like, buried her head in the crook of his arm so that she would never forget the aromas of his body, she wondered about where they would be five years from now. Ten years from now.

"I could not live without you," she said.

His eyes were bright with amusement and glowed in the semidarkness like a sun-washed sky. "You will not have to live without me." It was a simple statement, simply made, a token of Sam's love for Mila. He could not imagine life without her either, but he had no idea that May morning how true this was going to be. He framed her face with his hands and her face was so small, his hands so large that his fingertips almost linked at the top of her head. Sam had to laugh at that, and Mila asked why, so he told her.

She smiled. "You have not been concentrating on my head, Sam."

"No," he said, "I was more interested in other parts of you. But I promise that from now on, I will interest myself in all parts of you." Then he sobered. "I don't do this," he waved around the room and at them with one hand, "very often, you must know that, Mila."

"You do not take women to your bed?" she asked quietly.

"No, not this easily. I mean for you to marry me, become my wife, have my children."

"Is this a proposal?" she asked, and at that moment, for the first time in quite a few hours, Mila thought of Jai. She had now received two propos,. als of marriage in her life and neither of them had been conventional .. . well, conventional in a Western ideal. In an Indian ideal, Papa would tell her whom she would marry, and she would marry that man and consider herself lucky if she were allowed to meet him before the wedding. A dee
p a
nd aching sadness came over her when she thought of Jai. Sam rubbed at the lines that had formed on her forehead.

"Tell me," he said.

Jai."

"When will you tell him?"

"When do you leave, Sam? How long will you be away?"

Sam was silent for a long time; Mila felt something shift between them, and all the old questions came rushing back. She sensed, instinctively, with merely all the experience her twenty-one years had bestowed upon her, that he was an honest man, that whatever furtiveness he practiced now had put him under a great strain. That there was something hidden from them all was equally obvious. Papa knew too, or he would not have sent a telegraph to Calcutta on the very first day that Sam had come to Rudrakot.

"Tell me," she said now, placing a hand upon his heart. "Trust me, darling Sam."

So he told her, finally unburdening himself of three days of guilt and pain. He told her about Mike, who he was in the Rudrakot Rifles, when he had disappeared, why he had been taken to the field punishment center.

"I remember Michael Ridley," Mila said slowly, her forehead patterned with lines of recollection, "although I met him only twice. I liked him. Are you sure that is why he has been interned at the center?"

Sam stacked the pillows behind him on the carved wooden headboard and pulled himself up. "Vimal said that he was at the site of the schoolhouse the day it blew up." He could not bring himself to say what else Vimal had said, but how did it matter, Sam thought miserably, if Mike had been there; he was as culpable as if he had lighted the fuse to the bomb. And yet his imprisonment at the center was nothing short of ridiculous; there had been no trial, no conviction, Mike had just disappeared. As he was going to disappear again, Sam thought grimly.

Mila touched his face and tried to rub the scowl away. "Did you find your brother, Sam?"

"Yes, the night we went to Chetak's tomb."

"So that is where you disappeared to with Vimal."

"You knew?" Sam asked, surprised, for he had left her asleep and returned to find her still asleep.

"I did not sleep that night, Sam."

"I leave tonight, Mila," Sam said finally. "At midnight. Vimal is going to take me to the horse trader at the bazaar and help me get into the field punishment center again. He ... knows the guards, and says that they will deliberately be lax for a few hundred rupees. I've already given Vimal the money. I will take Mike to Delhi and either hide him there or find him passage on a ship back home. He needs medical care and he needs our mother. And then, I have to go back to Assam."

"Who are you, Sam Hawthorne?" she asked then, sketching the lines of his eyebrows and the bones beneath his skin. Then, not waiting for his response, she went on, "I will tell Jai tomorrow that I cannot marry him." She bent her head. "He will be disappointed."

"I know," Sam said. "I'm sorry sorry for him, not for us. We are meant to be, my love."

"Will you be careful tonight? Are you in any danger?"

Sam shook his head slowly. "I do not think so. I don't believe that anyone will care if I take Mike away from the field punishment center. If they do " He did not finish that sentence, but said instead, "But there is, should be, no danger."

"I will miss you," Mila said, already feeling an emptiness take over her heart at the thought of Sam's being away at Assam. But these were times of war, and any man in uniform, any man at all, had no control over his own life; everything was dependent on the vagaries of the army. There were more questions within her--where they would live, when they would marry, what would happen next, but she did not voice any of them yet, for it was too early to think about a future that seemed so distant. "Will you write to me?"

"Yes," Sam said, and it was a promise he would keep, though Mila would never see any of his letters. "I will send you my address when I get back to Assam. I will have to go back into Burma at least once, Mila, if not twice." He hesitated. "I can say no more than that."

A breeze lifted the curtains of the room on the side of the back balcony and brought with it a thin dusting of dirt. The gritty sand swirled around the room and came to rest upon Mila and Sam on the bed. She ran her fingers through Sam's hair and shook out the dirt, looking deep into his eyes as though she was memorizing every detail of his face so that she would never forget this moment. "A dust storm comes," she said softly.

"Again?"

"Now we will be beset by dust storms until the monsoon rains. They herald the rains."

"When will this storm hit us?" Sam asked, turning away toward the windows where the curtains now lay quiescent, hanging straight down in still folds of cloth.

"In a few hours. Wait for that moment during the day when all becomes quiet, when it seems as though everything is dead, and just after that the storm will come."

"Spend the day with me," Sam said, recklessly. He still had to go and see Vimal in the bazaar, pay for the horses, make preparations for the rescue. There were too many details he had not considered, and yet he could not help wanting these precious last hours with Mila.

"I cannot," she said. "I have too much else to do. I must talk with Papa, see to Ashok " Here she paused and Sam waited, but she said nothing more.

When she left, Mila kissed him once, twice, a third time when she had reached the door to the balcony and had to return for that third kiss before she stepped out to go to her own room.