Flowers in the Blood (4 page)

I learned how my grandfather had agonized over how to help his daughter. Unable to withstand her screams and prayers to die rather than go on, he had dosed her with opium drops. Even afterward, during her long period of recuperation, he had continued to medicate her so she could sleep while her lacerations healed.

“Did she return to Theatre Road?”

“Of course. The Sassoons said a child should be raised in the home of the father and a wife must follow her husband's family's wishes. A Baghdadi girl does not run to her parents when she is unhappy.”

“I thought Dadi Sassoon died before I was born and Dada Sassoon followed when I was a baby. Couldn't she have returned to you then?”

“She did not enjoy living alone or managing a large home, but we told her she had her duties.” Nani sighed. “That was our mistake. There is a fine line between doing what is right and doing what looks right. If your grandfather or I had known the consequences . . .”

“Was it a mistake to let Mama and Papa have their way?” I asked. “Who can know? We even might have made that same match for her if Ephraim hadn't wanted to bring another doctor to Calcutta. But my belief that arranged marriages are, if not superior, then at least as workable, was strengthened by Luna's experiences. What did she understand? How could she choose? She loved Bellore, she was impressed with the Sassoon name, she wanted to be married because Bellore was. At least her father and I might have selected someone who better understood her nature.”

 

The arrest of Nissim Sadka for my mother's murder gave a provocative focus to every conversation. Even if I were nearby, voices would merely lower, not cease. Alternating between fear and a hunger to know more, I pieced together snippets from various sources and in the process learned that in order to cajole an adult into telling a child about a forbidden subject, the child must follow this rule: never ask a direct question.

I began my probe with my grandmother. Sitting at the parlor table doing my schoolwork, I had completed a page of difficult sums when I mustered the courage to mention the unmentionable. “I don't think Uncle Nissim is a bad man.” His name rolled off my tongue like a bitter root.

Nani, who had been embroidering a cushion, put down her needle. “The authorities think he is.”

“Mama liked him.”

“He may have pretended to be kind, but some believe he hurt your mother.”

“No, he did not.”

Nani paled. “Why do you say that?”

“He liked Mama. And he liked me too.”

“Sometimes friends become angry with each other.”

“Uncle Nissim once shouted at Mama, but that doesn't mean that—”

“No, of course not, but sometimes if a man drinks too much or overindulges with . . . well, never mind. When did they argue?”

“I don't remember.”

“He came to visit often, didn't he?”

“Yes, every few days.”

“Did he have supper in your mother's room?”

“Sometimes.”

“Is that where they argued?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what they talked about?”

“No. I only heard loud voices.”

“Did he strike your mother?”

“No!”

“He stayed until after you had gone to bed, didn't he?”

“Sometimes.”

“Did he visit with friends, other men or women, or alone?”

“Mostly alone.”

At so young an age I would not have questioned my mother's propriety. When her husband was away, the downstairs rooms were rarely used and she often entertained instead in the dark coolness of my father's bedroom. I had sensed a logic to this. When my father was home, we were a more social family. The public rooms were suffused with light, music, conversation. The Sassoon relatives came and went freely. Mama wore elegant gowns, organized feasts. When my father was away, she withdrew upstairs and her friends visited her there. Besides, how could anything have been amiss when the servants were about? Except during the coolest weather, the blind punkah-wallah fanned her while she had guests, while she ate, even while she slept.

Frequent visitors included her best friend, Aunt Bellore, her three daughters, and members of their social set and their children. In the hot weather, mattresses covered with thick layers of carpets would be laid out on the upstairs veranda. During the day Jonah and I might frolic there. After sunset Mama would sit outside alone or with her companions laughing and trading short breaths from the hookah.

Nani's dark opinion of Mama's favorite companion altered my perception of Mama's activities. Indeed, I would soon learn Nissim Sadka was a rather unsavory character with questionable associates. Sadka, whose father had once been in service to the King of Oudh, was the lifelong friend of another Jew, Moosa Chachuk, who was rumored to have provided services as an assassin against the enemies of the King of Oudh. Chachuk had degenerated into a pitied alcoholic who lived near the Radha Bazaar in rooms for brethren down on their luck. Moosa, and several other men in similarly reduced circumstances, worked for Nissim as carpenters. A few days after Sadka's arrest, Chachuk was also incarcerated, as he was thought to be either an accessory or the one who committed the crime.

Only a month before the murder, Sadka had made a visit to Grandfather's clinic. Dr. Hyam repeated the story many times in the following weeks, then again in the courtroom. I recall him relating it to Aunt Bellore's husband in the Raymonds' garden a few days after the first arrest.

“This man Sadka asked for me before consulting-room hours. Apparently one of his Hindu workmen had sustained a nasty wound to his hand the week before, and Sadka said the poor man was terrified that he might lose several fingers. I told Sadka to bring the fellow around immediately, for the whole arm could be lost to gangrene if he delayed. Nobody ever appeared.”

“So what is the connection?” Uncle Samuel asked.

“I don't believe there ever was a man with an injured hand. Sadka's chief concern was the anesthesia. He persisted in asking how it was done, what the name of the chemical was, and even how much was required to deliver 'a small man unconscious.' When I said 'chloroform' to him, he asked me to write the word so he would not forget it.”

“Have you told this to the inspector?”

“Certainly.”

This unusual word, “chloroform,” which sounded to me like the name for a pretty English girl, was heard again in the next few days. Inquisitive about this new person, I asked Yali. “Who is Miss Form?”

“Who?”

“Chloro Form.”

“I have no idea,” she said, dismissing me.

I thought better of questioning my grandparents. When I pumped Dr. Hyam, he laughed with his head thrown back. “She's not a person, she's—I mean, it's—a medicine. We use it to help people sleep when they need to have cuts sewn. Why?”

“I heard it mentioned,” I said, smarting from my stupidity. After that I was alert anytime the word was used. This is how I learned Sadka had acquired a considerable quantity of the drug. The chemists Messrs. Smith and Stanistreet in Dalhousie Square reported they had sold a one-ounce vial of chloroform to Moosa Chachuk on the fifteenth of September, two weeks before the murder. The next day, another firm in Lal Bazaar was asked for the same amount by Nissim Sadka. Because he was unknown to the proprietor, he refused to sell it to him. Nevertheless, the firm of Scott Thompson and Company in Old Court House Street complied. Armed with this information, police inspectors questioned Sadka's employees.

Terrified of being implicated, his manservant, Arup, supplied the evidence that led to his master's arrest.

Dr. Hyam reported this confession. “Arup says that Sadka and Chachuk took breakfast together the day before the tragedy. Sadka ordered Arup to accompany Chachuk to the market and make whatever transactions his friend desired because 'Jews could not handle money that day since it was Succoth, the Feast of the Tabernacles.' At Moulali, in Lower Circular Road, Arup used his master's money to buy a twelve-foot bamboo ladder for five
annas.
After selecting a box of matches at Tiretta Bazaar, Chachuk told Arup to have a coolie deliver the ladder to his house by evening, since it was needed at a carpentry job the next day. Arup identified this as the same ladder found in the garden at Theatre Road.”

The final piece of evidence, an empty chloroform vial with a wrapper from Smith and Stanistreet, also discovered in the garden, led to the arrest of Moosa Chachuk, who protested he had been at home with three men—including Nissim Sadka—on the night of the first of October. Unfortunately for Chachuk, the third man's name could not be recalled and he could not be located.

Other proof emerged. One rubber shoe, spotted with blood only on the outside, had been discovered under my father's bed. The inside was clean, an indication the shoe must have been on the murderer's foot. Arup confirmed the shoe matched a pair that had belonged to his master.

Once this much was known, once the men were jailed, the gloom in my grandparents' house dissipated markedly. Yali asked me if I still wished her to sleep in my room. I did. Grandmother asked me if I was ready to increase my lessons. I was. Aunt Bellore came to tea and asked if I wouldn't feel more at home in Theatre Road.

“No! No shutters!”

“What is this business about shutters?” she asked in a disgruntled tone.

“The bad man came in through the window.”

Aunt Bellore looked meaningfully at my grandfather. She knew he did not like having me drawn into the matter.

“No, he didn't,” my grandfather said soothingly.

“Yes, he did.”

“Then how do you explain the shutters being latched from the inside?” Aunt Bellore asked in an exasperated voice.

“I closed them,” I responded, startling them both.

“Don't tell tales,” she chastised angrily.

“But I did!” I shouted. Why wouldn't anyone believe me when I was the one who was there?

“When did you do this?” Nana asked.

“I heard them banging. That was what woke me. So I went in to latch them. After that—”

Aunt Bellore placed her hand on my shoulder. “When you looked outside, did you see anyone moving about?”

“No.”

“Did you hear other noises?”

“No. It was quiet in the house.”

“Nothing outside?”

“No.”

“Has anyone else asked you about this?”

“No.” I sniffed. “So that's why I want to stay here.”

Nana gave Bellore Lanyado a warning glance. “And so you shall, until it is entirely safe to return home” was his final word on the matter.

 

I was soon to learn that “safety” was a relative word. Another disaster would send us back to Theatre Road sooner than my grandfather could have anticipated, but this time its origin was natural, rather than man-made.

Calcutta is situated south of the Tropic of Cancer on the left bank of the Hooghly River, sixty miles from the sea. Constructed on the eastern side of the Indo-Gangetic plain, the city lies only twenty feet above sea level and is prone to flooding whenever it rains heavily. The region has three predominant seasons: hot, wet, and cool. The hot weather arrives at the beginning of March, bringing scorching temperatures that often exceed one hundred and ten degrees. During this period, heat prostration, breathing difficulties due to the swirling dust, dehydration, and stomach ailments tortured Grandfather's patients. By the time the monsoon sweeps through the region in June, it is a great relief, even though the daily downpours flood the streets with more than ten inches of rain each month. The high humidity combined with temperatures hovering in the nineties makes it impossible to exert oneself even slightly without becoming bathed in perspiration. In that season my grandfather would treat collapses, fungal and skin eruptions, pestilence from sewage leaking into water supplies, and diseases borne by the increased population of insects. Just after the cyclone season, typically taking place in September, the air becomes drier. If no tropical storms develop, this is a most agreeable, trouble-free time of year. The “cold weather,” lasting from the beginning of December to mid-February, brings a welcome respite, with pleasant days and nights rarely lower than fifty degrees.

By the first of November everyone had concluded that it was too late in the year to be concerned about a cyclone. As if in perverse response, barometers around Calcutta began to drop. Aunt Bellore began insisting, because of a twinge in her shoulder, that a huge storm was on the way.