The Grammarian (13 page)

The heat made him verbose. And leaning back, he closed his eyes and let himself start at the beginning.

“I was not meant to be an academic. My father, Maurice,” Alexandre remembered his father’s stern countenance, “had taken on the family trade of banking, and he was known in the financial circles of Switzerland to be fair and exact in all things—repayment, punctuality . . . ”

“Banking is your family business? I can scarcely imagine you as a banker!”

Alexandre told Kanakadurga how the inexactitude of words proved too often troublesome for Maurice, and that Alexandre’s mother filled the silent void with her singsong voice and her penchant for detailed storytelling, her love of myth and folklore. Agathe Lautens, née Sauvageot, wove tales of her trip that day to the fishmonger, or the fruit vendor, how the tailor made a pass at her when fitting her for a new dress, or the baker threw in an extra roll, telling her she had a pretty smile.

“I, sometime around the age of nine, came to realize that this dear woman, my favorite woman, indeed, in all the world!” Alexandre nearly shouted, “she lived the vast part of her day inside her own head, concocting tales half the time and relishing their telling the other half. I did not dismiss her—the world being what it is, I found it not a wholly unintelligent plan to take leave of it almost completely. And that was my childhood . . . in a fashionable quarter of Geneva, with a woman with too many stories and a man with none at all.”

About him, a cacophony of French, German and Italian, and above them all—for his father’s word (once it was found) was to be the last in all matters—Maurice’s beloved numbers, making the world at once more pure and somehow less beautiful than his mother’s description. At mealtimes hers was often the lone voice—describing the preparation of the meal, and her favorite bits of it, answering her own questions
before husband or son would have a chance to reply, and inevitably afterward Maurice would disappear behind a newspaper, offering her only sympathetic grunts or monosyllabic sounds to show that he was listening, though he in fact heard nothing of what she said.

“I look like my Papa. We are similar in coloring and features, but he was a bit shorter.” Maurice dressed conservatively and well, in dark suits and well-kept hats. “My height I inherited from my mother’s side of the family. My uncles are like trees . . . ” He smiled to himself.

“What are you thinking of Alexandre?”

“I was just thinking of my mother putting on her lipstick. I was remembering her red, red mouth.

“Her eyes were cornflower blue. Her nose was sloped and was Maman’s own favorite feature, an affection she showed by complaining too often and too much about it.”

He mimicked her high voice, “‘Ah! But my little Alex! Look at Maman’s little nose! Too small,
n’est ce pas?’
And she would stoop low and tilt her head this way and that for me to admire—I was only to the height of her waist.” Recalling this he laughed, as did Kanakadurga. “And when, as would happen often, walking down the street hand in hand with my mother, some man would smile or whistle at Maman, she would bat her eyelashes and say, ‘Perhaps that man is looking at Maman’s funny nose! Your poor Maman with her silly little nose!’”

Alexandre would hear his mother’s murmurs through the wall his bedroom shared in common with his parents’ those nights. The next morning, with a full pocketbook, Agathe would let loose upon the shopping districts of Geneva and come home with tissue-wrapped parcels of feminine indulgences: a new scent, a silk scarf, a tin of expensive tea sprinkled throughout with the lush lavender of the French countryside.

In her rare moments of quite rumination, Agathe would recline in her favorite chair, full wine glass in hand, and bemoan her life, sprawled out languorously across the seat, her long legs bare to the wind coming through the open window, her face an expression of sensuality as if she had been seduced by the poetic tragedy of her own plight: that such a pretty and young woman should end up in this soulless business town, that she, Agathe Sauvageot, who as a girl had collected admirers like her girlfriends had collected seashells at the shore, should end up a banker’s wife, like so many other banker’s wives, in Geneva, with all its darkness and lifelessness, none of the Parisian glamour, or the Roman soul she felt her due and destiny. That she was forced to make extra money by sewing and darning the neighbors’ clothes—taking garments in if they were loose or making them larger if someone had gained weight, darning socks and repairing tears and rips in jackets—this could not be her life. Alexandre would, when the steam ran out of her oft-vocalized sadness and her eyelids would droop, cover her with the blankets he would pull from his parents’ bed, and would remove the wine glass from her hand carefully so as not to disturb her. Always that puckered red stain at the bottom, like a woman’s kiss fallen into the glass.

And then he would go to bed, kneeling first at the bedside with his hands clasped in prayer as his mother taught him.

Other times, he would see her praying, her small, female voice like a shooting star aiming at the ears of the mother of God. A grown woman clicking rosary beads by her bedside, her elbows pushed down deep into the bed, her knees on the bare floor. That tiny, silvery voice freighted with warmth and intimacy and always beseeching, beseeching, her cries no more sophisticated than a child on her father’s knee.

Alexandre, for his part, stopped praying, stopped falling to his knees before sleep by the time he turned ten. Rather, he would watch the night fall into his window, and from his bed, reach his hand out and gaze outside, holding the moon in the curve of his then-small hands, letting the silver light filter through his fingers and bear witness to his free fall into sleep.

He sipped tea, and Kanakadurga pushed a plate of sweets toward him. She had a quality of sincerity that made Alexandre like her more and trust her, despite their young friendship. This had caught him off guard—he was always wary of others, often preferring his own company.

“She was a much happier woman when she had more children. She is one of those people who needs the noise and the excitement of a full house. I have one brother and two sisters. My brother’s name is Matthieu; my son is named after him. He is five years younger than me; I am the eldest; Matthieu and the girls are much closer in age. All of my siblings live in Paris. My brother is a banker. He took over the family business when Papa died. After Matthieu is my sister Anne, and then Claudine: she is the baby of the family.”

“My sister Anne, she married a journalist. They have two children, twins actually, my nephews—Henri and Philipe. My other sister, Claudine—she is the beauty of the family. She just was wed last year to a stupid but handsome brute. He is a construction worker—our parents nearly fainted when they heard she was engaged. They eloped without notice one day, and Papa and Maman received a letter from Claudine announcing that she was now, in fact, married. This man she married, he says that one day he should like to start his own business building homes, but of course this will not happen . . .

“My mother cried for two days. She locked herself in her room and said she wouldn’t get out until Claudine broke the engagement; but Claudine is headstrong, like Papa, and wouldn’t do it. I saw Claudine a few days before I left for India. She had come to me bringing some sweets Maman had sent, as Claudine had been to Switzerland the week before. I realized then why she had gotten married to that idiot—she was nearly bursting—she was at least seven months pregnant.”

He saw Kanakadurga’s eyebrows lift frightfully high on her head out of the corner of his eye.

“I was angry but didn’t say anything—a woman no longer belongs to her father or brothers once she takes a husband, no? What was I to say? It was too late . . .

“My parents moved back to Switzerland after Anne’s wedding: they had always planned to, after Papa retired. They said they were happy; they wouldn’t miss Paris. France did not have the beauty, the quaintness of Switzerland, they said. Paris was becoming a den of sin, so much filth, so hedonistic; they were happy to leave. Maman had so loved living in Paris, but even she had tired of it by the time we were adults.”

A servant came in to clear empty teacups from Kanakadurga’s room.

“They had raised Parisians, despite their best intentions,” Alexandre laughed.

Having revealed so much of himself, he felt now weary, and waited some moments in silence.

At long last, he felt he was now allowed to ask some questions of Kanakadurga. “Kanakadurga Amma Garu, is it common in India for a younger daughter to wed before her older sister?”

The old woman’s face grew pained. She looked down and started speaking slowly only after many pregnant moments. “No, my dear Alexandre, it is not done. As you can see, Anjali . . . she has a problem with her leg. She had polio as a child . . . ”

“Yes, she told me the other morning . . . ”

“Yes . . . well. For this reason, however, my son has decided he would not seek a groom for Anjali. He does not believe he would be able to find any suitable man willing to marry a girl with such a disfigurement. Until Mohini’s marriage was announced, however, Anjali and I had kept up the hope—it was silly of course—that perhaps things would . . . ” the old woman searched for words, “well . . . take a different course . . . one that would see Anjali in a happy marriage to a nice boy.” She sighed. “It was a silly wish . . . my son and I, we have something of a difficult relationship when it comes to matters regarding Anjali. But of course, he is only doing what is practical. The years of my marriage were wonderful, Alexandre. We had become one heart. But I’ve lived too long to conflate marriage and happiness . . . I can’t help but feel that Anjali has been at once sacrificed and saved.

“I will not lie: I have always paid special attention to my granddaughter Anjali since she took ill. She is a sweet girl; she is far too quick and keen for her own good. It is a better thing, the ways of the world being what they are, for a girl to be beautiful, like Mohini. But my Anjali’s fast wit makes her good company for an old woman.” Kanakadurga smiled and put her head down. She took Alexandre’s hand. “You must be tired, Alexandre.”

7

O
UTSIDE
,
THE FEMALE
servants were cleaning the concrete pathways of the garden. The ends of their tattered saris were tucked up high into their waists, leaving their dark, ashen legs exposed below the knee; they held big, stainless steel jugs of water and brushed the concrete with coarse bunches of bundled straw and would then throw water on it, rinsing it clean. Peasants pushed their hands through the gates, their cupped palms outreached as they asked the servants for rice and milk. The gardener was watering the rose bushes and another servant was picking tomatoes and limes. The servants responded to the beggars with irritation. Though on the periphery of the household, the servants were protective of the propriety and the resources of their masters’ home. Because, perhaps, Lautens thought, while the difference in station between them—the servants and the peasants—was not so great, the difference was of such apparent importance to the servants that they looked upon those outside the gates with familiar disdain.

Alexandre stood in the corridor, looking out, a notebook under his arm and the copy of
L’Inde (Sans les Anglais)
that Madeline had given him. He had passed by Anjali’s room the other day, looking for her, and even though she was not in the house, he saw that her room was full of books and he thought she might be interested in this one. It would also serve as an introduction to French and she had expressed interest in learning his language. But now he could not find her. He
watched the women working, the way they bent from the waist. It seemed to him such a severe posture.