Ryman, Rebecca (118 page)

They
laughed but with forced gaiety, knowing that all this would perhaps never be,
but it made the parting more bearable. Relentless in her silence, Kinjal had
still not answered Olivia's question until the eve of her return to Calcutta.
But then it was Kinjal herself who revived the subject, insisting that her own
question be answered with honesty.

"No,
it does not matter one way or the other," Olivia reiterated evenly.
"I ask only because he has become a habit to my mind. And however
pernicious, habits die hard. If these past few chapters of my life are to be
closed, as they must be, then I do have a right to know."

"You
consider the narrative concluded?"

"Irrevocably!
I am the wife of another man, Kinjal. That he chooses not to live with me is
irrelevant. I still wear his ring, bear
his name, enjoy his material
possessions. Besides," she paused,
"He . . .
despises
me." She could not bring herself to say Raventhorne's name.

"Jai
did not know the truth, Olivia."

"He
condemned me without ever trying to find out the truth!"

Kinjal
laughed with indulgent amusement. "You wanted him to know the truth yet
you dreaded that one day he would! How can you have it both ways, Olivia? And
in your strange irrationality you still punish him by denying him his
son?"

Olivia
swivelled to face her. "I have spent two long years unraveling my
miserable complications, Kinjal," she said fiercely. "As far as it
can ever be cleared, I have cleared my conscience. And I have honoured my
debts, especially to Freddie. I no longer owe anyone anything except," her
throat constricted,
"you.
For what is owed to you I can think of no
recompense, and to offer any would be an insult. I have valued your judgement
and your advice and your help more than I can ever express in words, Kinjal.
That you must already know.
But,
I will not consider complicating my
life again no matter how persuasive your arguments. I cannot, Kinjal," she
concluded quietly, "I cannot."

Kinjal
allowed the silence between them to remain undisturbed for a moment, then
sighed her resignation. "Very well then. No, Jai is not dead. At least,
his body lives. For his spirit I cannot vouch. He too has been to bid us
farewell. It seems we are to be abandoned very thoroughly."

Something
small, a twitch more than a spasm, nudged Olivia from within. "To bid you
farewell?"

"Yes.
He too sails away soon. On his beloved
Ganga.
I don't know for where.
Perhaps he does not either. Men of the sea return to the sea when they are done
with their lives. The ocean is Jai's oyster. He will go wherever the wind blows
him, I presume."

They
were taking a final stroll in the herb garden, drenched in the evocative scents
of mint and marjoram and sharply pungent cloves. In the whitewashed temple with
its crowning trident, offerings were being prepared for vespers, the soft bells
already tinkling. It would soon be Dassera again. And then would come the
immersions.

"Yes.
He is good at renunciations," Olivia murmured, her eyes far away on the
death throes of the sun and the orange inferno that marked its funeral
procession below the horizon. She
plucked a sacred
tulsi
leaf and
bit into it. It tasted tangy and cleansing. "He will leave without even
looking back over his shoulder."

"There
is not much for him to look back upon."

"No.
Nor for me," Olivia pointed out with an unfeeling smile.

Kinjal
did not share in her smile. Instead she halted in her steps and faced Olivia
with solemnity. "You have been luckier than Jai, Olivia. You are strong.
Your resources have regenerated you. He is crippled by his weaknesses. In the
ultimate analysis, it is you who are the survivor, he the victim. And it is you
who have won."

Won?
Yes. She had won. All that she had set out to achieve. But then why was the
taste of victory on her tongue so unsweet? Olivia said nothing.

"Jai
sails but he is not yet gone. He has returned from Assam where he has been all
this while and is now at his house by the river." Kinjal caught Olivia's
arm, the plea in her night-dark eyes very eloquent.
"Let
Jai see
his son once more before you leave, Olivia! By returning him when he need not
have, Jai deserves
some
gratitude, even if this paltry crumb!"

Olivia
took a deep breath and then shook her head. "No, Kinjal."

Then
it was time to return to Calcutta.

There
were cabin trunks scattered all over the house. Lists of their contents had
already been compiled for the insurers but they still had to be sealed,
numbered and labelled. Olivia tackled the boring chores without enthusiasm.
Part of herself, she felt, had been left behind in Kirtinagar. Her sense of
bereavement was so acute that she seemed able to do nothing right. In her
disjointedness she labelled all the trunks
Lulubelle,
unaware of the
error until it was pointed out by Arthur Ransome, and the rectifications made
messes and took hours more to complete. Her list of provisions needed for the
voyage Olivia mended and amended so often that Willie Donaldson could not make
head nor tail of it. And then, when she discovered that she had accidentally
thrown out all the lists of trunk contents over which she had laboured for days
and that everything now needed to be unpacked, relisted and repacked for the
insurers, Olivia's nerves revolted. She
dumbfounded both Ransome and Donaldson
by bursting into tears and running out of the room, sobbing hysterically.

There
were only three days left before the
George Washington
was to sail.

"Blue
Vanda, lady memsahib
. . .?"

Olivia
did not remember the flower seller until he suddenly spoke to her. It was her
second to last day in India, her last ride in the early morning. Tomorrow the
stables were to be cleared, the carriages dismantled and the parts oiled for
safe storage, the horses all dispatched to their new homes. Olivia was to be
escorted to the docks by Ransome, Donaldson, Lubbock and some of the staff from
Farrowsham. Her baggage was finally at the wharves awaiting Customs clearance
and loading aboard the American clipper.

Olivia
was startled by the approach of the flower seller. She looked around and
realised to her surprise that she had somehow arrived at the flower market. The
stalls were laden with saffron marigolds, once again in full season. Columns of
wild orchids hung by green tendrils and awaited to be implanted in host tree
branches. The man held out a gnarled hand around which were twined trailing
blue-mauve blossoms. "Another blue Vanda, lady memsahib?" he
repeated, smiling persuasively.

Yes,
she remembered him. Another ghost, another re-enactment! She was not surprised
that he recalled her visit more than two years earlier. Not many Europeans
chanced upon this little cranny of a native bazaar. Those who might would
certainly be remembered. Besides, that day she had been with someone whom the
old man had known well. In answer to his request she shook her head and tried
to move on, but somehow she couldn't. Her feet remained where they were, her
eyes glued to the flowers trailing from his fingers.

"The
other one, it grows well?" he asked. His skin still looked like crushed
brown paper, even more so as he smiled.

Olivia
tore her eyes away from the blue malignance, her mouth suddenly running dry.
"No. It died."

He
clucked in sympathy. "Then you must take another to replace it."
Before she could refuse, he had thrust the vine into her hand. She gave a small
cry, recoiled and dropped it. Hurt, the old man got up to retrieve it from the
ground, then parted its flowers to show her the stem. "See, memsahib? No
thorns, not one."

Feeling
silly and ashamed, Olivia quickly took out a coin from her purse. "I'm
sorry. I ruined your flowers. No, of course
there aren't any thorns, I was merely
startled. Please do let me pay for these, at least. They're lovely but I cannot
use them. I leave for my own country soon."

He
was unconcerned with her affairs, wholly engrossed in smoothing out the wounded
petals. He waved aside the coin she offered. "I cannot take money from
you, lady memsahib. You were brought here by Chandramani's boy." Olivia
looked blank, so he explained. "The man white people sometimes call Kala
Kanta."

"That
was his . . . mother's name?" she asked, taken by surprise.

"Yes."

"You
knew her?"

"Oh
yes. She was my sister's child. Poor, misguided girl! She died very young, very
young." He clucked absently and replaced his orchids.

In
her sudden confusion at the information, Olivia recalled that he had spoken in
Assamese to Jai Raventhorne and there had been affection in the ancient eyes.
Raventhorne had not told her that the man was his uncle. But then, he wouldn't
have, naturally. "That name ... Chandramani," she asked, feeling
dizzy and steadying herself against his wooden stall, "it means 'jewel of
the moon,' doesn't it?"

He
nodded in confirmation. "Jewel of the moon," he repeated sorrowfully,
pointing towards the sky. "But Chandramani never shone, the unfortunate
girl, she never shone."

I
must stop this,
Olivia
thought in her stupor, I
mustn't linger here!
But she still could not
move. "Tell me about Chandramani," she heard herself persist.

"There
is nothing to tell." He shrugged and settled back on his haunches.
"She died many years ago."

"Where,
here in Calcutta?"

"Oh
yes. She could not be taken back by our people."

"How
did she die?"

He
shrugged again. "No one knows. Save for the boy. They took away
Chandramani's shine, the sahibs did." He spat expertly in the drain.
"It was after she died that the boy walked all the way back into the
hills, back to his grandfather. But he never spoke of Chandramani, not even to
her father. Heart-broken, her mother had already died grieving for her daughter
who would never return home." He stopped and squinted at her. "Lady
memsahib wants to know all this, why?"

She
did not hear his question. Like a marionette speaking in another's voice, she
said mechanically, "Yes. He was about ten years old at that time. But your
people could not have known him."

"No."
He looked at her curiously. "Nor did they recognise him by his appearance.
His was a sahib's face, it was not one of ours. But there were other means of
identification. He had some of Chandramani's jewellery, although at that time
his memory had failed him and he remembered little about his mother or her
death. Our elders considered the matter. As always, they were wise and just. It
was Chandramani who had sinned, broken tribal law. The child was blameless. He
had been rejected by his father's people. He could not be abandoned. The boy's
grandfather, a widower now, took him in with joy and loved him, as we all did.
But then his grandfather too died and on the very day of the cremation, the boy
again vanished. He was always a strange, secretive one, always, and his memory
was still not fully repaired. Now, of course, it is all changed. He is a big
man. He is Kala Kanta . . ." He stopped to smile and savour a moment of
quiet pride, then peered at her short-sightedly, trying to focus her face.
"You know him well, lady memsahib, to ask all these long-forgotten
questions?"

With
a slight jolt, Olivia returned to the present. Picking up the reins of her
horse, she finally forced her feet to move. "No. I do not know him well. I
was merely indulging my idle curiosity."

He
watched her as she hurried away and wondered why the history of a stranger
asked for out of idle curiosity should bring grief to the lady memsahib's eyes.

That
night Olivia had another nightmare, her most frightening yet. She was walking
across the surface of the moon. Beneath her feet, it shone with translucent
light. In hand she was carrying a red velvet bundle. Suddenly, the bundle
started to move and then to wriggle and squirm frantically. She laid it down,
opened it and saw that it was full of scorpions, each one with its tail
upraised and ready to sting. Before she could pull away her hand, they had
covered it with their crusty bodies and turned it bloody and swollen with their
poison. She woke up screaming, fighting them off, and found that she was
drenched with sweat.