Читать книгу Teatime for the Firefly - Shona Patel - Страница 8

CHAPTER 2

On the day of the school inauguration, Boris Ivanov donned a magnificent Indian kurta made of the finest Assamese Mooga silk, custom tailored to fit his six-foot-four, three-hundred-pound Bolshevik frame. He gave a rousing speech, and just as he was walking across the stage in his fancy mirror-work nagra slippers—which any Indian will tell you are notorious for their lack of traction—he inadvertently stepped on a fallen tuberose. His foot made a swiping arc up to the ceiling and the nagra took off like a flying duck. Boris Ivanov yelped out something that sounded suspiciously like “BLOOD!” I later understood he had yelled “Blyad!”—a Russian expletive—before landing with a thundering crash that sent quakes through the room. A horrified groan went up in the audience; small children shrieked, and in the middle of it all, I saw fat Mrs. Ghosh roll her eyes heavenward and whisper to her neighbor that this was allokhi—a very bad omen indeed. Just as well Dadamoshai did not hear her, because he would have flattened her out for good. My grandfather had very low tolerance for “village talk.”

Boris Ivanov was forced to change his itinerary. He had planned to leave for Calcutta the next day to visit Rabindranath Tagore’s famous experimental school in Santineketan. Instead, with his leg cast in plaster, he moved into Dadamoshai’s house as our guest and stayed with us for three whole weeks.

He accepted his fate cheerfully and slipped into our life with barely a ripple. He was a big, bushy man, bearded and baritone, who spent long hours reading and writing on the veranda with his plastered leg lying on the cane ottoman like a fallen tree trunk. Most afternoons he dozed in the plantation chair with the house cat draped over his stomach, his snores riffling the afternoon. He woke up to drink copious amounts of tea with four heaped spoons of sugar in each cup, blissfully unaware that it was wartime and sugar was in short supply. He spent the rest of the evening contemplating the universe.

The veranda was the most pleasant room in our house—open and airy, with soft filtered light creeping through the jasmine vines. Dadamoshai’s big desk sat in one corner against the wall. On it were his piles of papers weighted down with river rocks and conch shells. His blue fountain pen sat snugly in its stand, right next to the chipped inkwell and a well-used blotter. There was a calendar with bird pictures on the wall, busy with notes and scribbles on the dated squares.

A door from the veranda led to Dadamoshai’s study. It was packed from top to toe with books of all kinds: art, philosophy, religion, poetry and all the great works of literature. Here The Communist Manifesto leaned comfortably on Homer’s Odyssey, and the Bhagavad Gita was wedged in by Translations from the Koran. Just as comfortably inside Dadamoshai’s head lived his thoughts and ideas—separate skeins interwoven with the gentlest compassion and wisdom to form his rich philosophy and outlook on life.

Boris Ivanov was writing a treatise titled Freedom and Responsibility, a rather obtuse and philosophical work full of difficult arguments. He spent long hours debating ideas with Dadamoshai on the veranda. India was on the cusp of her independence after more than two hundred years of British rule. A great renaissance was sweeping through our nation and many social and educational reforms were under way.

Many people considered Dadamoshai a great scholar and independent thinker, but others saw him as a blatant anglophile and called him an English bootlicker. He was unabashedly Western in his dress and liberal in his thoughts. He lived frugally and thought deeply. He did not take siestas in the afternoon and cursed fluently in seven languages.

Dadamoshai believed that women were not given a fair chance in our society, largely due to their lack of education. Why were Indian boys sent to study at the finest universities abroad, he argued, while girls were treated like some flotsam washing in with the river tide?

Traditionalists accused Dadamoshai of rocking the social order and luring women away from their jobs as homemakers. What good would it do for women to bury their heads in math and science? Or, for that matter, to go around spouting Shakespeare? Pots and pans would grow cold in the kitchen and neglected children would run around the streets like pariah dogs.

In many ways, Dadamoshai saw me as the poster child for the modern Indian woman. He gave me the finest education and taught me to speak my mind. I was free to forge my own destiny. Sometimes I struggled to stay grounded like a lone river rock in a swirl of social pressures. But in truth, this was the only option I had.

* * *

Miss Thompson, my private English tutor, lived in a small primrose cottage behind the Sacred Heart Convent. A spry woman with animated eyes, she had about her a brisk energy that made you sit up and pull in your stomach. Her father, Reginald Thompson, the former District Magistrate of Assam, was Dadamoshai’s predecessor and mentor. Dadamoshai had seen Miss Thompson grow up as a young girl.

I was Miss Thompson’s first Indian student. Ever since I was seven, I took a rickshaw to her house three days a week. After my lessons, I would walk over to Dadamoshai’s office in the old courthouse where I’d sit and do my homework, surrounded by the clatter of typewriters and the smell of carbon paper until it was time for us both to come home.

Miss Thompson was a stickler for pronunciation. She made sure I enunciated each word with bell-like clarity with the stress on the right syllable. I learned to say what, where and why accompanied by a small whoosh of breath I could feel on the palm of my hand held six inches from my face. It was Miss Thompson who instilled in me my love for literature. She encouraged me to plumb the depths of Greek tragedy, savor the fullness of Shakespeare, the lyrical beauty of Shelley. As I grew older, I saw less and less of her, until our meetings became just the occasional social visit. She had more Indian students now, she said, thanks to Dadamoshai’s flourishing girls’ school.

I decided to drop by and see her. She was usually home on Tuesday mornings, I knew. I arrived to find a rickshaw parked outside her gate and an elderly servant woman sitting on the porch. Miss Thompson must be with a student, I imagined. Young girls were never sent out unchaperoned in our society. Dadamoshai, on the other hand, always insisted I go everywhere alone. This raised a few eyebrows in our town. I was about to turn around and walk away when Martha, Miss Thompson’s Anglo-Indian housekeeper of sixty years, called out to me from the kitchen window. She said Miss Thompson was indeed with a new student, but asked me to wait as the lesson was almost over.

I sat on the sofa in the drawing room. Through the slatted green shutters a guava tree waved its branch and somewhere a crow cawed mournfully. Nothing changed in Miss Thompson’s house. Everything was exactly where it was the very first day I walked in ten years ago. The small upright piano with a tapestry-cushioned pivot stool, the glass-door walnut curio cabinet with its fine collection of Dresden figurines I knew so well, the scattering of peg tables topped with doilies of tatting lace. On the wall were faded sepia photographs of Reginald Thompson in his dark court robes, his pretty, fragile wife who’d died young and Miss Thompson and her sister as young girls riding ponies.

Voices trickled in through the closed door of the study. I heard a timid, female voice say something inaudible, followed by Miss Thompson.

“Breeze. Lengthen the e please and note the ‘zee’ sound. It is not j. It’s z. Zzzz. Make a buzzing sound with your lips. Like a bee. Breezzzze. Breezzzze.”

“Bre-eej,” the girl repeated hesitantly.

I could just see Miss Thompson tapping the wooden ruler softly against her palm, a gesture she made to encourage her students, but it only intimidated her Indian girls, who saw the ruler as a symbol of corporal punishment.

“Breeze,” Miss Thompson said patiently. “Try it one more time.”

“Brij,” said the girl.

“That, dear child, is j like in bridge. You know a bridge, don’t you? The letter d coupled with a g has a j sound. Bridge. Badge. Badger.”

Badger! My heart went out to the poor girl. How many Indian children were familiar with a badger? A mongoose, yes, but a badger? I only happened to know what a badger was because, thanks to Miss Thompson, I had read The Wind in the Willows as a child. British pronunciation was completely illogical, I had concluded a long time ago. I remember arguing with Dadamoshai why were schedule and school pronounced differently. If schedule was pronounced shedule should not school be pronounced shoole? Dadamoshai said I had an intelligent argument there, but there was really no logic—besides, the British were not the most practical-minded people in the world. Americans were much more sensible that way: they said skedule.

There was silence in the next room, then a rustle of papers. I heard Miss Thompson say, “Never mind, dear. I think we’ve practiced enough for today. Now, no need to fret about this. It will come. Pronunciation is just practice. After all, your mother tongue is very different, isn’t it? I understand the letter z doesn’t even exist in your language, so how are you expected to say it?”

A chair scraped back. “Thank you, Miss Toomson,” a high girlish voice replied.

There were footsteps, and Miss Thompson held the door open. “You are most welcome, Konica,” she said. “I’ll see you next Tuesday.”

I had expected a small child to walk out of the study; instead it was a grown woman dressed in an expensive pink sari with gold bangles on her wrists, her hair oiled and fashioned into a formal bun. She looked strangely out of place in Miss Thompson’s modest English home.

“Oh, Layla! What a lovely surprise,” cried Miss Thompson, seeing me. The girl looked up and our eyes met. “I will be with you in just a minute, dear. Let me just see Konica to the door.”

Konica? Kona Sen!

Kona’s bangles chinked softly as she walked by with mincing steps. Her eyes stayed on the floor the entire time; she did not glance up even once as she passed by me sitting on the sofa.

I must have looked pale and in need of fortification, because Miss Thompson said, “You look exhausted, dear. Let’s have a cup of tea, shall we? Martha, some tea, please!” she called toward the kitchen then turned to me. “That was Konica Sen. She lives on Rai Bahadur Road, same as you. You must know each other?”

“I don’t think we’ve actually been introduced,” I said vaguely. “I’ve seen her around of course.”

“Her father came to see me. Mr. Sen is anxious Konica improves her spoken English. She is getting married soon, you know. The boy is Indian but has lived in England all his life. He walks and talks just like an Englishman, Mr. Sen said. The young man has joined the civil service in Calcutta. Konica will live there after they are married. Her father is worried she won’t be able to mix in her husband’s social circles if she cannot speak English.”

My brain was still unscrambling from the shock of seeing Kona. Did she recognize me? It was hard to tell because Kona’s face was expressionless, like a boiled egg. It did not give out much.

“To tell you the truth, I would have never taken on a new student her age,” Miss Thompson continued. “It’s an uphill task to teach spoken English to someone who comes from such a traditional Indian family. Learning to speak a language, as you know, calls for a lot of oral practice. Nobody in Konica’s family speaks English. Even her father can barely get by.”

“Ah, here we are...thank you, Martha,” she said as Martha, old and bent, hobbled in to set the tea tray down. Turning to me, Miss Thompson added, “I know Konica is having an arranged marriage, but I don’t understand why Mr. Sen would get his daughter married to someone she can’t even talk to.”

“He does speak good Bengali, you know—”

“Her fiancé does? Oh, so you know this young man, Layla?”

“No, no,” I said quickly. “I mean he probably speaks Bengali. If he is an Indian educated abroad, I am sure he is bilingual. Most of them are.”

“I hope so for Konica’s sake. The poor girl. Her father said to give her plenty of homework. ‘Mastering a foreign language is not a matter of homework, Mr. Sen,’ I told him. It’s a matter of practice.”

“She can practice her English with her fiancé, I suppose,” I said. Just thinking about Manik and Kona cozying up together triggered a stab of jealousy.

“I suppose so, dear. I am not sure how often they meet or how much they talk to each other, really. It’s all very formal, this arranged marriage. More between the two families, really.” Miss Thompson paused thoughtfully. Suddenly her face lit up and she clapped her hands. “Why, I just got me a grand idea! Why don’t you help her, Layla? She can practice speaking English with you. You are both the same age—I am sure you will find plenty to talk about. How very fortunate you are neighbors! May I suggest this to Konica’s father, if you don’t mind?”

“Yes, of course,” I said numbly. What else could I say?

Miss Thompson looked very pleased. “So that settles it, then,” she said. “Now tell me about yourself. The Rai Bahadur says you want to become a teacher? Marvelous! I am so proud of you, Layla. You were born to follow in your grandfather’s footsteps. I know he is counting on you to take over his school someday. You will do a brilliant job.”

“I hope so,” I said absently. All I could think of was how Kona had chinked past me with her musical bangles and the faint scent of jasmine that trailed softly behind her.

Of course, I knew I would never hear from Kona or her father, but how could I ever explain that to Miss Thompson? Although the Sens lived just a few doors down from us, our families always avoided each other. Dadamoshai was openly contemptuous of Mr. Sen’s narrow-minded politics, and the Sens probably thought my grandfather a loose cannon and disapproved of how he was raising me. They were both ideologically different—in fact, polar opposites.

Dadamoshai had plenty of inherited wealth but gave it all away to charity and chose to live like a monk. Mr. Sen, on the other hand, came from a trader class and had risen from frugal means to become the richest man in town. The joke in town was that he had built an entire mansion with bricks he pilfered from a construction site during his constitutional walks. This, of course, was just a manner of speaking, but he was known to be an unscrupulous businessman who accumulated his wealth slyly and at the expense of others.

But at the very heart of the matter the fact remained that I was an inauspicious child. Bad luck was viewed as something contagious in our society. It was believed one person’s luck rubbed off onto another. This was the reason why I was never invited to social functions like weddings and births. At funerals, on the other hand, I was always welcome.

Miss Thompson continued to puzzle over why her “grand idea” never took root. She mentioned that Kona’s father said he would practice speaking English with his daughter if that was what was required. Miss Thompson did not have the heart to tell him it would do no good. Mr. Sen’s own English was pretty dismal, she said, but she did not want to offend the poor man, so she let it pass.

Perhaps the best way I could have explained it to Miss Thompson was this way: Kona and I were like two separate rivers flowing side by side, but our geographies were so vastly different it was certain we would never meet. Hers was a course, smooth and predictable, leading straight to the ocean, while mine was uncharted and unknown, only to be determined by the invisible landscape of my destiny.

* * *

Sister Cecilia, the chinless nun with bristling whiskers and an ashen complexion to match her habit, was in charge of a small library of the Sacred Heart Convent. She beamed seeing me, hopeful perhaps, I was leaning toward the fold. Unmarried and educated, I was, after all, a perfect fit for the convent. Why else would I be at her library every Tuesday to immerse myself in Bible studies? Little did Sister Cecilia know I would have headed for the same bookshelf by the window had it contained books on amoebic dysentery. Besides, my aspirations were far from holy.

The Sacred Heart Convent stood opposite Miss Thompson’s house. The shelf filled with books on Bible studies was by the window from where I could get a clear view of Miss Thompson’s front gate and see Kona every week. I only caught a brief glimpse of her as she emerged from the house and stepped into the rickshaw. I noticed how she waited demurely for the rickshaw to be brought up to her. How she stepped up daintily on the floorboard, arranged her sari pleats nicely and sat with her hands folded primly on her lap. I tried to see her through Manik’s eyes. She was very feminine and walked on delicate feet, I decided. I imagined she had beautiful, long hair, luxurious even, when left open. Maybe Manik liked demure women with long hair, delicate feet and gold bangles that chinked softly, and a soft voice that chinked softly, too. Not someone brisk and angular, full of inflamed opinions and sharp of speech. Which man liked an argumentative woman? It was grating and unfeminine. I began to steadily loathe myself.

I peeked over the top of The Book of Job I was holding. Sister Cecilia caught my eye and gave me an encouraging smile. I closed the book and slid it back into the empty slot on the shelf.

“Thank you,” I said to Sister Cecilia as I walked toward the door.

“See you again soon,” she called back in a cracked old voice. “God bless you, my child.”

I wondered what Sister Cecilia would say if she found out my real reason for coming to the library? She would be terribly disillusioned, no doubt. Not only was I pretending to be holy, I was secretly coveting a man who was formally betrothed to another. But thankfully, Sister Cecelia would never find out, because I, Layla Roy, was the self-proclaimed mistress of deceit.