Teatime for the Firefly (19 page)

I knew what he was talking about, and I did not think it was funny.

He pushed back his chair. “I will have to go to the Forest Office in Mariani to get this permit business sorted out. But I will see you at lunchtime.” He wagged a finger.

“Promise you won’t run off on me now.”

After Manik went back to work, I spent the rest of the morning unpacking my suitcases and putting away my clothes in the new cupboard.

A skinny man arrived carrying a small cloth sack of tools. He introduced himself as the factory carpenter. Manik had sent him to assemble my grandmother’s dressing table, which was still lying in its dismantled state, sewn up in burlap, in one corner of the portico. When it was unwrapped, I noticed with relief none of the mirrors had broken. I figured I had had enough bad luck so far. In one of the drawers, I found a small safety pin that must have belonged to my grandmother. I opened and closed it, thinking she, too, had been a new bride once, a stranger in her husband’s home.

There was a knock on the door. It was Halua come to take the lunch orders. He rattled off the selections. We had a choice of egg curry, chicken curry, chicken cutlet, egg...

I stopped him halfway. I was quite familiar with the items. They were identical to the night before.

“Any vegetables?” I asked. “Why don’t you cook the pumpkin and green beans the coolies bought this morning?”

Halua’s eyes wandered.
Chotasahib
, he said, detested vegetables. He would not touch them.

Hmm, I thought grimly to myself. I would need to have a small talk with the
Chotasahib
about that. Back to the lunch menu—it seemed as if I was stuck with only the cluckable items, so egg curry it was.

Manik was forty-five minutes late for lunch. When he showed up there was a big ink blotch on his shirt pocket. He threw his mail down on the coffee table. A few envelopes slid off the edge onto the floor.

“That bloody Sircar!” Manik exploded. “He’s demanding to see the paw prints of the damn leopard. He says he can’t issue the permit otherwise.
Paw prints!
Like you can tell a man-eater from its paw prints! Then he makes me sign all these government forms—he can’t even explain what they are for. He only gave me the permit after I parted with my one and only bottle of Black Label.
Black Label!
Talk about casting pearls before swine. That was a wedding gift from Mr. McIntyre. But I didn’t have anything else.”

I pointed to his chest. “What happened?”

Manik stared down his shirtfront. “Bloody hell! I was in such a damn hurry to get out of the place, I forgot my pen cap. Anyway, how’s your day going?” he added flatly. He was faraway, and sounded as if he was talking to a hill. Then, seeing Halua at the door, he said, “Ah, I see lunch is served.”

So there we were again, Mr. and Mrs. Cluck sitting stiffly at two ends of the dining table. This was not at all how I imagined it would be. I wondered what Moon would make of my romantic, newly married life.

Halfway through lunch Manik said, “There’s something I have to tell you.” He hesitated, studying my face. “You are not going to like this, but I won’t be home tomorrow night.”

I stared at my plate. It was this other woman, I thought, my heart beating wildly. He was going to tell me about the OP he’d had all along.

“I have to take down this leopard,” Manik continued. “We can’t waste any time because it will be back. We can’t risk another attack. It’s not going to be easy, so I’ve enlisted Alasdair’s help. He is a crack shot. Never misses. Our plan is to build a
machan
up a tree. We will stay up on the
machan
tomorrow night and hopefully shoot the leopard.”

My relief was so great I actually smiled at my egg curry. Manik could be up all night on a
machan—
whatever that was—with Alasdair, just as long as he was not roosting with another bird.

“What’s a
machan
?” I asked, conversationally.

“A bamboo platform built up on a tree. About two meters off the ground. We tie a goat to the base of the tree with a metal chain. Shikaris don’t use rope because the leopard will just break it and drag the goat off into the jungle. Powerful, stealthy creatures, leopards are. If the goat is chained, the leopard is forced to eat it under the tree. Usually the animal gets sluggish after the meal and lies down. That’s our best chance of shooting it.”

“But the leopard could be anywhere in that jungle, and you could be waiting up the wrong tree?”

“We use trackers,” Manik said. “They are jungle experts, who intimately know animal habits and can identify the path the creature takes through the forest. They study pugmarks along the riverbed, claw scratches on tree trunks and flattened areas of brush where the leopard rests after a meal. Our tracker tells us we are looking for a large male leopard with an injured foot.”

A leopard became a man-eater only if it was injured or got too old to hunt, Manik explained. Humans were easy prey. Villagers and laborers often strayed near the edge of the forest to gather firewood, and this was when the leopard attacked. Sometimes the animal got very bold and came right into the labor lines to kill cattle or pick up a wandering child or dog. When this happened, the tea-garden management had a serious problem on its hands, like they did now.

“Our chances are better if we get a noisy goat that bleats loudly to attract the leopard. But the trouble is noisy goats don’t always do their job when they are supposed to.”

“Poor goat,” I said.

“Or we could use you,” Manik teased. “Chain you to the tree. Human bait works the best for man-eaters, you know. You bleat loud enough as it is. But the chances are I might pounce on you before the leopard does.”

That reminded me of our unfinished business. To cover up my nervousness I asked, “Are you going to use the old blunderbuss?”

Manik laughed. “Not a chance. Mr. McIntyre will lend me his .275 Winchester with five rounds. That’s a good reliable gun.” He studied my face. “Well?”

“Well, what?” I retorted. “You don’t exactly need my permission for anything, do you?”

“Layla, I was so worried having to tell you this.”

“What do you want me to say? I don’t like the thought of you up on a tree all night in the middle of the jungle. What if you fall? This
machan
thing sounds awfully rickety.”

“It’s quite sturdy, really. We shikaris use them all the time. The only danger is of falling asleep. You have to keep quiet and remain supervigilant at all times. It can get terribly monotonous. We rely on lots of black coffee and fags. That reminds me—I’m out of fags. Dammit.”

“There’s a pack in your underwear drawer,” I said absently.

He peeked around the vase of drooping zinnias and gave me a naughty look. “And what were you doing in my underwear drawer, pray? Next you’ll be wanting to know what’s inside my underwear.”

I was shocked at his impertinence. My ears burned in my head.

Manik got up from the table. “Well, let’s not keep you in suspense any longer, dear wife. Come, it’s siesta time.”

“What?” I exclaimed. “Don’t you have to go back to work?”

He stretched and yawned. “I go back to work only at three, my darling. Planters sleep between one and three. Napping is the civilized thing to do.”

“What about Mr. McIntyre?” Manik’s taskmaster boss did not seem the type to nap, even less likely, to let others nap.

“What about him? Mr. McIntyre naps. You think I could take off siesta time if he was working? Of course he naps. Mr. McIntyre naps. Mrs. McIntyre naps. Mr. and Mrs. McIntyre nap—very nicely together, I presume. Are you coming?”

“I don’t sleep in the afternoon,” I said primly, feeling that familiar little coil in the pit of my stomach.

“Tsk, tsk. What a pity. What will you do, my darling, while your husband gets his beauty rest? Gaze at my underwear? I must say I am completely wiped out.”

“I’ll read.”

“Suit yourself.” He shrugged, sounding indifferent. I had expected him to cajole me, maybe even beg, but then without so much as a toodle-di-doo, he headed for the bedroom and shut the door behind him.

I sat there blinking back my tears. Something was going horribly wrong in my marriage. We were five-day-old newlyweds, on the verge of sexual intimacy, and we were behaving like the two wrong ends of a magnet.

Opportune moments came and slipped by. The perfect moment had to be seized. Like when you boil sugar to make taffy, there comes a time when the sugar is ready to congeal. The temperature is perfect, the consistency right. Hold off for too long and the taffy turns brittle. It was beginning to happen to our marriage: we were overcooking our emotions. What I was sensing in Manik was impatience, almost boredom. We were becoming strangers.

All I really had to do now was march into the bedroom, fling off my clothes, get deflowered and be done with it. How long would the whole business take? I wondered. Five minutes, ten minutes at the most? How painful could it be? A tooth extraction without anesthesia. I could handle that. But Manik had not slept all night and had probably passed out by now. It would be awkward. Even hilarious. I could not risk that.

I sighed and went to the living room to find a book. I picked up
War and Peace
, still lying open on the ottoman, went back to the veranda and curled up on a chair. The afternoon was droopy and slumberous and the buzz of the bees dulled my mind. Then to my utter disgust, I fell fast asleep, right there, curled up on the chair.

I woke up to what sounded like a prayer bell in my ear. Manik was tinging the side of his empty teacup with a small silver spoon. He looked fresh and rested.

“‘I don’t sleep in the afternoon,’” he mocked. “You are a big fat liar. I sat here and drank my tea. You were snoring.
Snoring.
I could not believe my ears.”

“What time is it?” I was stiff and grouchy. I uncurled my legs, and they splintered into a million pins and needles.

“Ouch,” I grumbled. My head felt like a brick.

“Quarter to three. I’m off. I will be back six-thirtyish. Cheerio.” With that he thundered down the stairs without even a kiss.

So there I was on my own again. I pulled on my slippers and floated around the garden staring at the dahlias, especially the droopy ones, seeing nothing but sadness. Maybe I would die a virgin, I thought. Maybe this cigar was destined to remain unlit, and Manik Deb would go back to Auntie’s to smoke a bidi or two.

Back in the veranda, I made myself a cup of tea, picked up
War and Peace
and curled back on the chair again. But the page kept blurring with my tears, so I closed my eyes. I breathed in the scented afternoon to calm my mind. Wait, what was that? The sleepy hum of the bees had turned into a sharp
zzzt zzzt
noise. I opened my eyes, and to my shock, I saw a monstrous black-and-yellow hornet heading straight at me. I shot out of the chair and flapped at it with my book. The hornet whipped around and came right back. It landed smack on my neck, and to my utter disbelief, it crawled down my blouse and stung me right between my breasts.

The pain was intense and I shrieked so loudly that both Halua and Kalua ran out from the pantry in their undershirts. They saw the new
Chotamemsahib
flinging off her sari and tearing madly at her blouse like a madwoman. Thankfully, without too much disrobing, the hornet fell out with a buzzing plop on the wooden floor. Kalua jumped up and crushed it with his bare foot. It made a sickening crunching noise and left a yellow splat, big as an egg yolk.

That was it. I threw up my egg-curry lunch all over the veranda floor. The pain was like a burning knife tearing through my chest, the agony so terrible I thought I would surely die.

Halua and Kalua were beside themselves. They flapped around like agitated ducks, fetching water, fanning me with a newspaper and shouting at one another.

Halua went scooting off to fetch Manik. I sat with my head in my hands, in a daze. The pain was fast spreading all over my body, shooting spasms. I staggered to the bathroom to take a look. There was a big angry welt in my cleavage and it was swelling fast. I found some Dettol in the small medicine cabinet and dabbed a little on a piece of toilet paper, applying it gingerly to the wound. It stung horribly. Then, not knowing what else to do, I just crawled into the bed and lay down. Nausea came over me in big sweeping waves.

Manik rushed in, hair flying, glasses askew. His hair was tinged faintly blond with tea dust from the factory. He looked so horrified that I had to smile.

“Oh my God, Layla. What happened?”

“It’s not too bad now. The pain is less,” I said, lying through my teeth. Actually, the pain was worse.

“Let me take a look.”

“No, no, I am okay, really,” I said quickly.

“Layla, this could be serious. You could have an allergic reaction. If the stinger is still in there, you will need to take it out. That hornet is the most poisonous variety. I just saw it.”

“I feel much better. I put some Dettol on it.”

“Let me see.”

“No, no. I’m fine.”

“You are being ridiculous.”

“
You
are being ridiculous. I’m fine, really. Stop worrying.” The thought of my legally married husband seeing my bare breasts was worse than dying of a hornet bite.

“Dammit, Layla!” said Manik. He almost yelled. He sat on the edge of the bed and pushed up his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He looked very tired. “Please understand, I can’t leave you here and go back to work without seeing how serious this is. If the hornet stinger is still inside, the pain will be ten times worse tomorrow.”

“What is the worst that will happen? I will die.”

“Most likely,” he said dryly.

“You are joking?”

“Then stop asking idiotic questions,” he snapped back. “What I am telling you is this could become septic and quite serious. It is better to take out the stinger before the area gets too swollen. It is much harder to locate it if the skin swells up.”

“Then I will have bigger breasts,” I quipped, trying to make him smile.

“I don’t get to see those beauties anyway, so who gives a damn,” Manik said irritably. He was not amused, that was for sure. “Bloody hell, Layla!” he yelled suddenly, his eyes flashing. “Grow up, for God’s sake. I am getting fed up with your ridiculous, prudish behavior.”