Waiting for the Monsoon (35 page)

THE WINDOWS WERE
wide open, and her fingers danced over the keys. Playing the piano blocked out all the thoughts, the worries, the brooding. Listening to romantic music, she was transported away from her bedroom . . . she was dancing off, out the door and into a celestial space filled with heavenly tones. On the edge of the night table her fingers played Mozart's love sonata, Schubert's
Moments Musicaux
,
Debussy's
Clair de Lune
, and Liszt's
Liebesträume
, one after the other. She could play them all from memory, and never once did she think about the day she sold her piano.

Sita had fallen to her knees, grasped the hem of Charlotte's skirt, and beseeched her. Parvat, who was much younger than Sita's other children, was suffering from a mysterious illness. Every evening for months, he had run a high fever, vomited all the food that Sita had prepared for him, and then become delirious until sunrise. At the break of dawn the fever would subside and he would be hungry again. During the day, the child was perfectly normal. He went to school and played with his friends. Until evening, when the sun set. Within five minutes his fever would shoot up, to a dangerous level. Sita sat up with him all night, positive that he wouldn't live until morning. There was no money for another doctor, and she had come to the big house on the hill to ask for help. Charlotte knew that her bank account was empty, but she also knew the value of her grand piano. She did not hesitate for a moment. That was the first time she called a dealer.

By sunset the piano had disappeared from the house and a medicine man from Calcutta was at the boy's bedside. Various herbs were immediately ordered and all objects made of copper were banished from the house. Charlotte never understood exactly what he had done, but two weeks later the boy had returned to normal, and life went on as if there had never been a problem. Except perhaps for Charlotte, who wouldn't admit how much she missed her piano.

Suddenly she was jolted out of her reverie. She became aware of a shrill, piercing sound. A fire engine sped by, its heart-rending siren going full tilt. The sound seemed to fill the night. She peered out the window to see if there was any sign of a fire on the horizon. All she saw by the yellow light of a street lamp was a line of people, all of them carrying buckets on their heads. These people were not on their way to the fire: like everyone else, they had no more water and were going in search of wells where they might find some.
If the monsoon doesn't come pretty soon, we're all going to die
, thought Charlotte.

Hema knew his mistress better than she knew herself. He had filled the tub in the nursery with water, as well as the one in the guestroom and the barrel outside the kitchen door. Charlotte had told him she would fill her own bath, since she would be busy in her bedroom all morning, but she had forgotten to do so. Hema had initially expressed his concern over the amount of water the tailor used, but it appeared that he succeeded in washing himself from top to bottom with a single bucket, a feat that had always been beyond Hema.

There seemed to be no end to the procession of people carrying buckets. Not only the reservoirs were empty, but also the river. The only water available was thirty kilometres away, where there was a small lake. The local landowner was selling the water at exorbitant prices, so they wouldn't be going there. All they could do was dig pits in the river bedding until they hit groundwater.

The siren faded into the distance. Charlotte forgot about the music and crept down the stairs as quietly as she could. She heard the whirr of the sewing machine coming from the music room.

She didn't take the path down to the road but went in the opposite direction, into the garden and past the apple tree. Outside it was just as hot as indoors. She noticed that it was much less arid than a few weeks before. It even occurred to her that there might be a new natural source on their property, but her father had explored that possibility on several occasions. The only well that had ever been dug had produced water that stank to high heaven. After two years, even the
mali
refused to use it, claiming that it “made the flowers sad.” The only good thing about the drought was that without rain, the lawn didn't have to be mowed and the Lloyds didn't have to be repaired.

She walked past the shed where the old
mali
had lived and down a gentle slope, until she came to a small, arid woodland at the bottom of the garden. When the rains came, these trees would be in flower within a week. Their honey-sweet scent would attract birds whose song would keep her awake for weeks. She made her way through the shrubbery. There was a path there that no one else ever used. She had to push away a branch, which was so dry that it snapped in her hand.

Anyone watching her would have noticed that she moved quite differently than she did during the day, when she went about her chores or visited the club dressed in a presentable outfit. Then she carried herself with a refined reserve that she had unconsciously developed over the years. She held her head ever so slightly to one side, and at each step she put her feet down so carefully that one might think she was afraid of falling into a hole. Now her gait was different, lighter, and there was eagerness in her step.

She arrived at the wall surrounding the garden, a wall that was as tall as a man. She always had to search for it, but then she placed her foot in a small hole in the wall. There were also hand holes in the wall that she'd made use of in the past. There was no longer any trace of her usual respectable gentility, and, puffing slightly, she climbed over the wall. It was clear that not only the heat but also her age had begun to take its toll: she didn't have the litheness she'd had in her younger years, yet she made it over the wall. Out of breath but determined, she turned onto a narrow alleyway that became a small road leading up a hill and away from town. Fifteen minutes later she arrived at a clump of trees that looked much less healthy than her own apple tree. Beyond the trees the road led down to an intersection, where a small house stood. She opened the door without knocking.

“Oh, it's you!” The tiny Indian woman rose from her chair to embrace Charlotte. “I thought you'd forgotten me.”

“Sita, I could never forget you.”

“It's been three weeks since I last saw you.”

“I've been terribly busy.”

“Oh, really? Have you eaten?” Sita put her hands around Charlotte's waist. “You're way too thin. Way too thin.”

“Ah, it's the heat . . .”

The former ayah opened the refrigerator and pulled out a whole battery of stainless-steel containers. “I have some shrimp curry and a piece of fried fish.” She removed the lid from another container and looked inside. “Oh, and these tomatoes are delicious!” She dipped one finger in the sauce and gave Charlotte a taste. She closed her eyes and smiled. “The chickpeas are too spicy for you, but you'll like the
aloo gobi
and the dal.” She had already filled a plate when she turned and asked, “You do feel like something to eat, don't you?”

Charlotte's mouth was watering. It was only then that she realized she was hungry. With her mouth half full, she gave Sita a rundown on the coming gala evening at the club, and recounted contritely how she'd forgotten to fill her bathtub. She also talked about Hema, who had been upset with her, about her father, who ate nothing but yogurt and yet was making plans to attend the gala at the club, about the puncture she still hadn't repaired, about the minister and the devotional books he tried to interest her in, about the coming renovation of the library, about the wife of Alok Nath the goldsmith, whom she could never understand, about the water jug that had been reduced to smithereens, about the old tailor who had died and the fact that the electricity regularly conked out while the thermometer registered forty-four degrees, about the special homemade cookies produced by the wife of Nikhil Nair, about the lengths of fabric that had belonged to her mother and that she had rediscovered in the wardrobe in the nursery, about the delicious tea that Hema made, and about the apple tree, the jasmine bush, and the roses that hadn't wilted, about . . .

“You're in love,” said Sita.

THE
DHOBI
HAS
left four freshly laundered and ironed pairs of pyjamas on the hall table; she'll take them up to her father later on. And the
mali
has left behind a bouquet of flowers. Charlotte knows that her father doesn't want flowers in his hospital room, so she puts them in a vase near the radio, which she has just turned on and then off again for the fifth time. She's still completely off balance, as are all the servants. Since the day of the accident, all the rituals and habits have been at sixes and sevens. The
mehtarani
, who normally works inside the house before moving on to his chores outside, absent-mindedly sweeps all the dust into the house; the
punkah-wallah
, who for years has followed her father around like a shadow, now dogs her footsteps because there's no one else around who needs the cooling breezes he creates. The cook has burned the evening meal for the third time, and the old chauffeur is smoking so much that the
mali
has asked permission to buy an ashtray, since all the cigarette butts are ruining his borders. The only exception is the new butler with the long name, whom for convenience's sake she has christened Hema. He is always on time, and the entire day he races up and down the stairs making sure everything is in order, which sets everyone else's nerves on edge. As if that wasn't enough, Charlotte doesn't feel well. This morning she's already thrown up three times, and if she's not in the bathroom because she has to throw up, then she is there because she has to pee.

“Charlotte?” She hears Sita's voice. Sita hasn't been employed by the family for many years, but she always drops by at the most impossible times.

“I'm coming!” Charlotte wouldn't shout a reply from the toilet to anyone but Sita. Although they may not see each other for weeks, their bond is very special. When she threw herself onto Peter's grave in total despair, Sita was there to comfort her, just as she had done throughout Charlotte's childhood. Sita was well acquainted with her father's dictatorial behaviour, her brother's indifference, the heartache of Peter's war trauma, and her unfulfilled yearning for a child. Although Charlotte often shared her longings and doubts with her, Sita never judged or condemned her. She listened and prayed that one day everything would be different.

Sita knocked on the bathroom door. “Is anything wrong?”

She wanted to reply, but a wave of nausea interfered.

“Open the door.” Sita, who's used to dealing with dirty diapers, wet sheets, and bibs full of puke, pulls open the unlocked door. She is startled to see Charlotte hanging over the toilet seat, deathly pale. She manages to cajole her out of the bathroom with pet words from her childhood. In the bedroom, she moistens a towel and pats Charlotte's face, which is bathed in perspiration. Then she unbuttons her soiled blouse, revealing two large, dark nipples which stare proudly back at her. Sita, who will be forty-six next month, has two married daughters who live with their in-laws, and a husband who three months ago paid her his annual visit. He's still paying off the dowry of the youngest daughter, so he has moved to New Delhi, where he has a day job as a rickshaw driver and at night works as a shoemaker in a factory. Sita looks her straight in the face and says, “You're pregnant.”

A deathly silence fills the room, but Charlotte is aware of a thunderous din in her head as she realizes what Sita has just said. In the midst of this deafening cacophony, there falls a brief moment of icy silence in which she says to herself that it's not true, that it cannot be true. But this is only because of her conviction that she would never bear a child. Slowly she lays both hands on her slightly bulging belly.

Sita looks at her with her usual humble expression. Charlotte knows she's now expected to tell her who the father is. The scent of tobacco smoke burns in her nostrils, a sweet taste returns to her lips, and she remembers the calluses on his fingertips, the passionate embrace, the candle that went out by itself, the call of an owl. As the sun rose she had walked home and in the garden she had picked a huge bouquet of flowers. There was no vase large enough to hold them, so she had put them in the water jug. She had had her morning tea and written a letter to her brother with an urgent request to call her. It was not until six weeks later that he had telephoned, by which time their father's condition was no longer critical and the nurses in the hospital were being driven out of their minds by her father's tirades. She hadn't even noticed that her period hadn't come, and she'd blamed her nausea on the fact that the cook was so upset.