Waiting for the Monsoon Read online

  THE SECRETARY OF the club had told Madan that he would be working in the big house on the hill, beyond the main road. He had left his bicycle standing against the wall of the New Rampur Club, in order to take a midday nap like everyone else. But the gardener made it clear to him that only club members were allowed on the grounds, so Madan got onto his bike and pedalled off at a speed that suggested that the broiling sun didn’t bother him.

  The last part of his journey, up the slightly sloping hill, was tough, but the colonial house with its thick walls and closed shutters beckoned. Madan loved houses — after years of sleeping on the street, in constant fear of being robbed, he found that he slept differently with walls around him. While he was on the street, he had never dreamt. He slept only a few minutes at a time and woke often to check on who or what was there before dozing off again. With walls around him, sleep took him to unfamiliar lands and people he didn’t know. At the bottom of the stairs he leaned his bicycle, with the sewing machine on the back, against a small column that had lost its statue, and walked up to the large door.

  From a distance the house had looked quite distinguished and prosperous, but now, as he went up the stairs, he saw that the marble steps were cracked and there were chinks in the walls. He pulled the bell and heard it jingle inside. Madan liked bells and closed doors. They, too, gave him a sense of security. He knew that somewhere in the house a servant would awake from a dream, unable to fathom why anyone would be ringing the doorbell at this time of the day. It would be a while before it dawned on him that it was the doorbell that was ringing, so Madan pulled it again, to wake the servant from his dream. After a while he heard a shuffling sound and the door opened.

  He started. Before him stood a small white woman with grey, curly hair. Her eyes blinked against the fierce glare, she was barefoot, and she had apparently just been awakened from a deep sleep. She was fragile and pretty, almost as if she were made of glass. Beckoning, she told him to come inside quickly.

  Madan had never been inside the house of a white person before and he wasn’t sure what to do, but the woman was already shutting the door again, so he stepped over the threshold.

  SLOWLY, AMONG THE flecks of light in her eyes, the figure of an Indian man took shape: he was forty or thereabouts, and his hair stuck out in all directions. His forehead was sweaty and there was dust from the roads clinging to his face. He was wearing a magnificent green shirt. He didn’t look at all like the men at the bank or like the court usher. She wasn’t expecting a buyer out to make a killing, and the man didn’t have a basket of fruit or other wares with him. He couldn’t be a servant or a coolie who worked for one of the club ladies, since they were always simply dressed and never came to the front door. He held his right hand over the left and stared shyly at his shoes.

  “Would you by any chance be the tailor?” she asked suddenly.

  Madan nodded, still staring timidly at the ground.

  “It’s not this door,” she said in a clear voice. “You have to go down to the kitchen. There’s a room prepared for you.”

  Madan knew English, but the woman spoke much too quickly, so that the only word he caught was “tailor.” She walked down the marble hall to a small door near the stairs; opening the door, she beckoned to him. She went ahead of him in the direction of the outside door. At the end of the corridor, the blazing sun shone through a windowpane. Madan saw the female contours of her body through her thin clothing. He quickly cast his eyes to the floor, feeling as if he’d been caught looking. The woman pushed open the glass dividing door and walked into a little hall, where a bucket and a broom stood.

  “Hema!” she called in the direction of a small building he hadn’t noticed while he was cycling up the hill.

  HEMA, TOO, WAS rudely awakened from his afternoon nap. He was at a wedding feast and was just about to bite into a crisp pastry when he heard his memsahib’s voice. He sat upright, and heard his old bones creak. He crawled from his mat and went to the door. Outside he saw her walking with a man. A man who had a light tread and was wearing a magnificent green shirt and white trousers. Who was he? Hema had never seen him before. He wasn’t from the bank: he knew all of them. Suddenly Hema felt a pang of anxiety. He must be another buyer. Memsahib wanted to sell the stove, and from then on he’d have to cook over coals, or — even worse — the man had come to buy the whole house . . .

  They entered the kitchen. “This is the tailor. Will you show him his room?”

  This man could not possibly be a tailor. Sanat, the old darzi, and the darzi in his native village never wore such beautiful clothes and didn’t walk the way this man walked. The motions of his hands were strange, too. As if he were constantly smoothing something. Hema was overcome by an uneasy sensation.

  “Welcome,” he said amiably in the local language as he opened the door.

  1947 New Delhi ~~~

  THE SITTING ROOM is muggy and, in her recollection, much warmer than it used to be in the big house on the hill. After spending the morning at the hospital, Peter is napping on the sofa under the window, as he does every day after finishing lunch and reading the newspaper. Charlotte, who regards afternoon naps as something for old people, usually sits outside on the veranda with a book. But today it is so hot that she has been driven indoors. She looks at the man she is doing her utmost to love. Above his head hangs the crystal chandelier with the red stones. The sparkling rubies scatter tiny droplets of light that pass across his face. His hair is stuck to his forehead and his breathing is deep and irregular. Charlotte wishes she could look inside his head to find out what he’s thinking, what he feels and dreams. They have been married for six months and still he has told her nothing about the wound on his leg or his missing finger. She knows that he was born in Manchester, that he went to university in Leeds and then returned to Manchester, where he completed his doctoral research in the back streets of the city, that he left for India immediately after getting his degree, that he worked in the same hospital where he is presently employed, until the war, when he was called up and sent to Burma. Peter refuses to talk about the war. The only thing she has ever gotten out of him is that he was in the jungle for a while and that he never wants to go back.

  His fingers flex in his sleep, as if he is trying to grasp something. Charlotte goes over to him and, very gently, places the back of her hand on his forehead. He starts, and his fingers begin to move faster. Quickly she withdraws her hand. Then his feet also begin to twitch.

  “Hush, my darling,” Charlotte whispers, “it’s me.”

  He awakes with a cry and stares at her, panting and distraught. His hands are clenched into fists and he’s trying to swallow. She strokes his hand. The panting subsides and a spasm of fear passes over his face.

  “Did you have a bad dream?” As always, she waits for the moment when he will tell her what happened in his dream. He doesn’t know that she watches him for hours on end while he’s asleep, that she sees how he waves his arms and kicks his legs about, shouts and cries. Charlotte has never before seen a man cry before. Her father taught her that crying is a sign of weakness and that one must never shed a tear in the presence of others.

  “My father is going to be in Delhi next week. And he’s finally coming to see us.” Peter’s muscles immediately tense under her caressing hand. “Don’t you want him to come?” she asks in surprise.

  “Of course I do,” he says. He gets up, in order to escape the touch of her hand.

  “But if you don’t want him to?”

  “Why should I not want him to come?”

  “I got that impression.”

  “No, of course not. When is he coming?”

  “He didn’t say.” Charlotte looks at Peter.

  He pours himself a glass of whisky and finishes it in one draught.

  ~~~

  THE TABLE IS set with the Wedgwood service, a wedding present from the maharaja, an
d the cook has done his very best. Peter is slicing the roast beef. A good piece of roast beef is not easy to come by in a country where beef is seldom if ever eaten.

  “You ought to have that knife sharpened,” says Victor.

  Peter nods and goes on slicing. The warm juices flow from the meat onto the wooden plank.

  “A knife like that will ruin the meat.”

  Charlotte looks at her father, who, from the moment he walked in the door, in uniform and with a swagger stick under his arm, has provided a running commentary on everything his son-in-law has done. Peter, who is wearing civilian clothes, goes on slicing the meat without looking up. The silence is uncomfortable and Charlotte casts around for a neutral topic of conversation.

  “You were in Burma, too, weren’t you?” her father says out of the blue.

  Charlotte sees how Peter stiffens. He tries to continue, but the knife sticks in the meat.

  “What unit were you with?”

  “The fourteenth,” Peter murmurs.

  “So,” says Victor, with a look that says nothing but suggests a great deal. “Did you cross the Irrawaddy River, too?”

  Charlotte, who is just as interested as her father, looks at her husband. She sees the colour drain from his face as he stares at the roast beef in front of him with fear in his eyes. Very slowly, he nods.

  The old man stares into his son-in-law’s face, which he has not seen since the meeting in the hotel room and the accelerated wedding ceremony. He is searching for something he recognizes.

  Then Peter puts down the knife, turns his hand, and shows Victor the missing little finger.

  Now it is the old man who turns pale.

  “Will you have some roast beef?” his son-in-law whispers, and holds out the platter with the sliced meat. His hand is shaking. Victor cannot take his eyes off Peter’s mutilated hand.

  “It’s really excellent beef, Father,” Charlotte says, when she sees that her father has not served himself.

  ~~~

  Dear Donald,

  I wish you a happy birthday and hope that this year it’s really going to work out and you can spend your vacation here. I’ve talked it over with Father, but he’s afraid that you’ll miss too much school if you take two extra months off. I told him that a lot of children whose parents live in India take longer vacations, but he still didn’t think it was a good idea. But I’m not giving up. It can’t be good when you never get to see your family. Later, when we have children, I’m never going to send them to boarding school. Not even if they turn out to be really difficult children. Here in Delhi everything is much bigger than in Rampur. The roads are wide and there are lots of big buildings. Would you do me a favour and have your picture taken? I guess you forgot. I’ll enclose some extra money in the envelope. Part of it is for your birthday and the other part for the photo. I would love to see you again. I think that Father would, too, so could you have two prints made? Sometimes I can’t even remember what you look like. When I went away, you were a year old, and now you’re thirteen. Maybe I won’t even recognize you when I come to pick you up! I hope we’ll soon be seeing each other.

  Your sister Charlotte

  1995 Rampur ~~~

  ALONG WITH THE ironing board, the wife of Adeeb Tata had left behind a list with the names of all the women who wanted to make use of the services of the new darzi. Naturally, the name at the top was that of the wife of Nikhil Nair. Charlotte knew that she had drawn up the list and passed it on to the wife of Adeeb Tata.

  She called Hema and asked him to send the tailor to her. He stood near the door, his head bowed slightly. “What’s your name?” she asked.

  He took a business card out of his chest pocket and handed it to her. Charlotte had never heard of a tailor who presented his card at the first meeting. Wholesale buyers had cards, and businessmen, and the men at the pawnshop, but not artisans or manual workers. It was a simple card bearing the text:

  MUKKA — TAILOR

  “Mukka. Is that your name?”

  Madan shook his head no.

  “Can you read? What a stupid question: of course, a tailor with a card can read.”

  Madan shook his head.

  “That’s all right,” said Charlotte, relieved that there was at least one thing about this man that was normal. She took the list and began to read out loud. “You’ll start with Mrs. Nair; she lives behind City Hall in a big house with a red front door. Then you go to Mrs. Singh; she lives two streets behind Mrs. Nair. There’s always an old Ambassador parked in front of the house, with her chauffeur. After that, you go to . . .”

  Madan listened to the warm, soft tones of the woman’s voice. He didn’t know her name, since she hadn’t introduced herself. He peeked at her face from under his eyelashes: she was wearing reading glasses, and she moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue while she read from the piece of paper.

  And again it was there, his first memory, which kept returning at the strangest moments. For a long time he had thought it was a dream, but the emotions and the images that he saw before him were so lifelike that he had concluded that they must be real. He was in pain, a lot of pain, and he’d fallen asleep. At the very moment he woke up and opened his eyes, he looked straight into the face of a white woman, a beautiful woman, who was like a princess. He felt her warm arms close around him, and her red lips had kissed him. She had smelled like jasmine.

  “Can you remember all that?” Charlotte asked.

  Madan’s daydream evaporated. He hadn’t caught a word of what she said, and had no idea where he was supposed to go. But he nodded.

  “You start with Mrs. Nair in the house with the red door. You show her the list, and she’ll help you with the rest.”

  Madan stood up, took his leave with the usual slight bow, pressing his hands together in front of his chest, and departed.

  THE HAND-SEWING machine, a heavy black Singer, was sitting on the table in the middle of the room. Next to it lay a large pair of scissors and a piece of chalk, as well as a small bottle of sewing-machine oil that the darzi had used that morning. On the floor lay a sleeping mat and a sack with a few clothes. Hema stood next to the ironing board. He looked around the room, which was otherwise empty. The man hadn’t uttered a word, merely nodded or shaken his head when he asked him a question. Hema had hoped that something of the old atmosphere would return to the kitchen, now that he was no longer alone. But he felt uncomfortable in the company of the darzi, whose name he still didn’t know. Not that the man bore him any ill will. On the contrary, he was quite friendly and smiled the whole time. But Hema was always eager to hear stories and gossip from other cities and villages.

  The bell rang. Hema hurriedly put his beedi out in the ashtray, a habit that memsahib did not approve of. Then he picked up the bowl of yogurt and walked over to the big house.

  Madan rang the bell next to the red door. A uniformed servant opened the door. He gave the man his card. The man read it, glanced up at him in surprise, and let him in. The hall was full of antique furniture, each piece with its own pink satin cushion. Madan waited by the door as the servant disappeared behind one of the hanging carpets. The house was delightfully cool inside. On a small table next to the door there was a silver vase with a few flowers. Nearby stood a candelabra, also made of silver. He heard someone walking upstairs. Next to the candelabra lay a silver comb. Madan could not keep his eyes off the precious objects. He thrust his hand deep into his pocket and stared fixedly in another direction. A plump woman in a bright pink dressing gown entered the hall. She was holding his card in her hand. Her eyes went from him to his card and then back to him.

  “Can you hear?” she asked, after some hesitation, but in a loud voice.

  Madan nodded

  “Oh, thank heavens.” Then she turned and started down a hallway, saying, “Follow me.”

  The room t
hey entered was spacious and even cooler than the hall. On the table lay a length of pink Chinese silk.

  “I want this made into an American evening gown,” said the wife of Nikhil Nair in a loud voice.

  With a thrill Madan picked up the material and ran it through his fingers.

  AFTER THE SALE of her china service, Charlotte had filled the empty spot in the sideboard with the unread books from Reverend Das. She shook her head in irritation. No matter what she tried — rearranging the sideboard, having tea, tallying up her loans, thinking about the monsoon that should already have started, or about her father — her thoughts kept returning to the silent tailor. The telephone rang and the widow Singh asked her what time the darzi would be at her place, since she wanted to play mah-jong at the club. She’d only just hung up when the wife of the police commissioner was announced and entered the room carrying an ironing board. The woman looked around inquisitively. Charlotte had told her that there was already an ironing board, and that the tailor was doing the rounds of the houses, taking everyone’s measurements.

  “My place as well?” asked the wife of the police commissioner, and hurried back to her car.

  Charlotte had barely closed the door when the telephone rang again.

  “My, what a strange man,” said the wife of Nikhil Nair. “But I’m glad he can hear.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Charlotte.

  “Because he’s dumb.”

  “Dumb?”

  “Yes, didn’t you know?”

  “No,” said Charlotte in amazement.

  “It’s on his card. Mukka means “the mute.” But he can hear. Did you notice how he handled the material? I’ve never seen anything like it, they say that the blind have extra senses, maybe he does, too, now if only he knows something about sewing, I have a very costly length of cloth, you’ll keep an eye on things, won’t you, he seems quite respectable, but you never know, and it is already half a metre shorter than it was . . .”