Waiting for the Monsoon Read online

  “Shall I ask the throat specialist to drop by sometime?”

  They hear screams from outside. An elephant trumpets. The man in the green turban runs to the window and then hurries back to the maharaja. He whispers something in his ear. Maharaja Man Singh stops coughing. After a quick glance to identify the source of the shrieks, he looks at the viceroy. Then he leans toward the man in the green turban and says something in a language the viceroy does not understand. The maharaja begins to cough again. As he struggles to suppress the coughing, he wheezes, “Would you like to shoot an elephant?”

  The viceroy swallows. “An elephant?”

  The maharaja motions toward the window, which is immediately thrown open. The sound of screaming enters the hall. From all directions men rush in, some of them carrying guns. The disciplined order that reigned supreme only a short time ago has disappeared, and servants are running and calling out. Still coughing, the maharaja motions to the viceroy to come outside with him. In the square in front of the palace an elephant is lashing about with his head and trunk. He is surrounded by men with sticks and ropes. The chair on his back has slipped to one side and a man in a long purple coat is trying desperately to hang on to one side as the elephant lithely flings his trunk backwards. Maharaja Man Singh is handed a spanking new hunting rifle, which he immediately passes on to the dumbfounded viceroy.

  Victor Alexander John Hope, the second marquess of Linlithgow and viceroy of India, regularly hunts in England, and has even taken part in the royal hunt. He considers himself a brilliant horseman and he is much enamoured of pheasants and hares. But the mad elephant fills him with fear.

  The maharaja begins to cough again. This time he seems about to choke. The viceroy grabs the gun.

  “Between the eyes,” the maharaja groans.

  “But the men around him?”

  “Aim between the eyes,” he pants, in between bouts of coughing.

  The viceroy looks through the sight. The man atop the elephant falls to the ground, and the elephant tries to trample him underfoot. The man’s long purple robe prevents him from rolling away. A small boy with a stick jumps in front of the animal, but he receives such a hard blow from the trunk that he flies through the air. The elephant turns around and flexes his trunk. Then he scrapes the ground with his tusks and sweeps the man away. The man’s coat is torn and his leg is hanging at a strange angle. The viceroy’s finger curves around the trigger. He sees only the wrinkled bulge between the two small eyes. The elephant raises his head again and tosses his trunk high into the air. He screams. The viceroy draws his lower lip into his mouth, narrows his eyes to slits. The moment the trunk comes back down, he shoots. The bullet whizzes through the air and enters the forehead of the elephant. It is as if the animal feels nothing: he bellows and trumpets. Turning around, he tramples the man again. A boy with a rope lashes the elephant and tries to pull the man to safety, but the animal sweeps the boy away with a single blow. Fearfully, the viceroy stares at the beast. He knows for certain that he hit the elephant squarely between the eyes. Next to him, the maharaja’s coughing fit continues. Between two attacks, he croaks, “Well done.”

  The viceroy is puzzled. The elephant turns in the direction of a man on horseback who is approaching from behind and, lowering his head, batters the horse, which starts to rear. The elephant throws his head and legs into the air. His trunk brushes the stars. The maharaja points. The elephant begins to wobble. He reels. He screams. He tries to find support somewhere. His knees are knocking. His head swings from left to right. He trumpets one last distress call and collapses, as if in slow motion. The ground shakes. The men rejoice. The viceroy looks proudly at the maharaja, who asks, still panting, “What did you say the name of that throat specialist was?”

  The viceroy turns to him in surprise. “The throat doctor . . . ? Oh, his name is Peter Harris.”

  1942 Queen Victoria College ~~~

  Dear Donald,

  I wish you a Happy Christmas. Did you get a letter from Father? I thought maybe he only sent one letter, and that it went to your address. If so, would you forward it to me? Everything’s fine at school. Since the war, there are a lot more children from India. Which is nice, since we all agree that it’s very cold here. After the summer vacation I’m moving to a small dormitory. They say it’s much nicer. And we get to stay up an extra half-hour. Have you asked if we could meet sometime? Mrs. Blackburn, our director, says that if the war doesn’t flare up again, we could arrange something during the summer vacation. Will you remember to send me Father’s letter?

  Bye,

  Your sister Charlotte

  1995 Rampur ~~~

  CHARLOTTE LAY ON her bed “smoking.” The fan above her head rotated, while outside the nocturnal crickets chirruped. All the windows and shutters were wide open, and on the desk stood a lighted candle, which illuminated some sheets of paper covered with calculations. A few crumpled wads lay on the floor. There was dance music coming from an old transistor radio, and her toes kept time with the music. In her younger years she would have jumped up and danced around the room. Now only her toes could not resist the temptation. She longed for the cool that night would bring, but it was long in coming. Her thin nightgown clung to her breasts, and there were drops of perspiration in the furrows on her forehead. “Dream wind” . . . the expression suddenly popped into her head. Dream wind . . . that was one of the winds the man on the boat had told her about. Auntie Ilse, the woman she was travelling with, had forbidden her to ever speak of him again or even think about him. As a six-year-old, she had done her best. But the image of him — his face covered in blood — still appeared in her dreams, and she often woke up crying. She thought of the doll she’d called her “lucky girl.” Auntie Ilse had thrown it overboard, because he had repaired it. Charlotte was not allowed to think about him, but no one said she couldn’t think about the winds. Lying in her bed in the cold dormitory at boarding school, she had tried for years to recall the long list of winds. She’d forgotten many of them, but she could still recite the most important ones. The soft wind and the hard wind. The warm wind and the cold wind. The morning wind and the evening wind. The quiet wind and the race wind. The summer wind and the winter wind. The northern, western, eastern, and southern winds. Her favourite was the dream wind. She looked at the figure of Ganesh, the god with the head of an elephant, which she’d bought years ago when she was feeling so terribly lonely. She had never understood what he meant by a dream wind, until this moment. She felt the beginning of a gentle breeze, starting in her toes, which were still keeping time to the dance music. Suddenly something swirled upward past her legs, her pelvis, her spine, and then her throat. She opened her mouth and felt the wind escaping. She was momentarily confused, thinking she was exhaling imaginary smoke, but it was a different air stream, a cool, sultry breeze. She put the cigarette back in the wooden box. A second gust of dream wind escaped. Charlotte sat up. She didn’t understand what was happening. Again she opened her mouth, wider this time. Holding her hands in front of her mouth, she felt the cool air passing over her skin. It gave her goosebumps. She pursed her lips and blew the cool wind toward her feet. The music on the transistor radio was interrupted by a news bulletin.

  She drew the mosquito net aside and got out of bed. On the radio a man announced that tomorrow the temperature would hit forty-two degrees. She sighed, and again a stream of cool air escaped. She walked out of the room in her bare feet.

  She held the lighted candle and a bunch of keys, which jangled softly. She walked past the large grandfather clock, which was ticking away, and went to the door of the nursery, where she stopped and listened. All was quiet. She walked over to the staircase on her tiptoes. The steps creaked and the creaking sound mingled with the singing of the crickets in the garden. The gigantic chandelier with holders for hundreds of candles hung in the spacious hall; it was years since it had been lit. She opened the door and went into the music
room. The windows were shut. Seeing that nowadays no one ever entered the room, it was better to keep them closed. She took one of the keys from the bunch and opened a cabinet. The cool breeze that had accompanied her until she got to the stairs was gone. A cold sweat covered her skin. It did not occur to her to return to the hall and call up the dream wind again. The candlelight slid across the floor. Startled moths, black beetles, and hundreds of ants had taken possession of the cabinet. Charlotte let the insects go — the house was full of them — and continued her search.

  A pile of photo albums lay on the top shelf; they were wrapped in plastic bags to discourage unwelcome guests. She ran her fingers over the spines as she tried to decipher the dates by the light of the lone candle. She pulled out an album dated 1936–1939, and turned to the table. But the piece of furniture that had always stood under the window had disappeared, along with the sofa her father had ordered from London. She swept the dust from a section of the floor, put the photo album down, and knelt in front of it. She removed the plastic wrapping. The cover was worn, the purple velvet now brown and threadbare. She opened the album.

  There was a photo of her mother in a floor-length dress, with a tiara in her hair, next to another woman, also wearing an evening dress. The caption under the photo read christmas at the club. She turned the page: her father with his shotgun, in uniform, one foot resting on a dead deer, behind him two young boys in longhis. The caption underneath, in the same handwriting, read our hero. Charlotte recalled the blond officer in 52 company who, after a few too many burra-pegs, almost proposed to her. He was the one who told her that it wasn’t her father who killed the deer, but two Indian boys. “With their bare hands,” he had added with a chuckle. The pages that followed were filled with photos of her mother in evening dresses or on the tennis court, and occasionally there were photos of her father with his men, in the mess or out hunting. She also found two of her brother, Donald. One, with Sita, bore the caption junior with the ayah, and the other was a formal portrait, of her brother together with her parents in front of the house, which had hung over her bed in England for years. There was no photo of her or the ship that had brought her to England. Charlotte could not remember ever examining the album so carefully. She had always assumed that somewhere there was a photograph of the large black ship. She took another album down from the shelf: the war. A beetle scurried away and moths circled the candle. These photos were much smaller, and featured men in uniform who meant nothing to her. They were seated around tables, smoking cigarettes, or shaking hands. And there was one of her father, which showed someone pinning a medal on his chest. Not until the last page did she find the sole photograph of herself, taken the year after the war. The caption read wedding peter harris and charlotte bridgwater october 1946.

  HEMA LAY ON his mat in the kitchen. He had collected kindling and lit the coals, since there was no more kerosene. He had already prepared the meal and done various other chores. It had been dark outside for hours. He looked hungrily at the small pan with rice, dal, and vegetables. He wondered why memsahib didn’t call him. In many of the houses at the bottom of the hill the lights were already out. Perhaps something had happened and she wasn’t feeling well. She was getting on in years, and such incidents were becoming more and more frequent. He jumped to his feet. Why hadn’t he thought of that before! Perhaps she’d taken a fall, hurt herself, and was unable to get to the bell. The bell had been out of order before, probably because the general gave the rope such an almighty jerk. Hema ran across the grass in his slippers, heading for the big house. The moon had just begun to rise. He could have kicked himself. He didn’t want to admit that he had fallen asleep, and he had no idea how long he’d been napping. Maybe she had called and he hadn’t heard her. Hema had been hired all those years ago because it said in his letter of reference that he never slept and always answered a call immediately. Since there were no longer any other servants and he was well over seventy, he often nodded off. His cousin on his mother’s side had told him it was simply part of growing old, but that was something Hema wouldn’t admit to.

  By order of memsahib the side door was open, because it was better for the circulation of air. The salon was empty, and she wasn’t in her father’s old study either. Hema rushed up the stairs, his knees creaking as loudly as the steps. He stopped in front of her door and coughed. He knew that she hated being disturbed. The thought that she might have fallen or had another attack of malaria — or something worse — made him knock softly on the door. Not long ago he had awakened her: she had merely fallen asleep, but he thought she’d stopped breathing. She was furious and told him never to wake her again. If she was dead, it wouldn’t make any difference anyway. With the image of her lying on the floor in the back of his mind, he knocked again. There was still no sound. He walked over to the old nursery. The door was locked. He took the key from the nail, inserted it in the lock, and cautiously turned the handle. He listened. It remained still. He carefully opened the door and crept in. He didn’t like the sour odour that hung in the room, but memsahib had forbidden him to open the large windows. Quietly he moved on. When he got to the balcony door, he inserted a small key in the lock and managed to open the door without a sound. Quickly he slipped outside, onto the balcony, and into the night, shutting the door behind him. By the light of the rising moon, he walked over to the window of Charlotte’s bedroom. All her windows and doors were wide open, and the curtains swayed slightly. He went down on his knees and crept farther. The bedroom itself was pitch black. He peeked over the edge of the windowsill and heard the whirr of the fan above her bed. No matter how hard he listened and strained his eyes, the mosquito net made it impossible for him to tell whether she was in the bed or not. By the light of the moon, he saw that there were crumpled pieces of paper on the floor. He crept to the door and stole inside.

  The fragrant scent of memsahib Charlotte permeated the room. Hema loved that scent, and he inhaled softly. On all fours, he moved closer to Charlotte’s bed. He had to take care not to disturb the wads of paper. If she woke up now, he was sure she would fire him. Without a sound he crept closer, taking care to avoid her slippers, and looked through the mosquito net. The bed was empty. He looked under the bed, behind the chair, and in the bathroom. There was no sign of an indisposed woman. He crept back to the balcony on his creaking knees, forgetting that he could just as well have gotten up and walked. Not until he reached the door of the former nursery did he grasp the doorknob and pull his stiff old body up to a standing position.

  Hema was not thinking of the pain in his back, his worn-out knees, or his torn nails. He was worried about his memsahib Charlotte. More and more often she was short of breath when she returned from the club: at her age, the cycle ride in the blazing sun was brutal. Why didn’t she just hail a rickshaw for a few rupees, like he did? The lunch he’d prepared had remained untouched. The doorbell rang. She said she wasn’t hungry. She told him to go ahead and eat, and save what was left. Hema had gone to the door. The caller was a man he had seen before. He had straight hair that hung over his eyes and he was wearing an expensive shirt. He said that his name was Arjun Soumitra, but Hema suspected that that was not his real name. Memsahib had told him to take the visitor into the salon. But Hema had left him standing in the hall while he hurriedly unrolled the large carpet. For some time the Persian rug had been kept rolled up in plastic behind the sofa and was brought out only when there were guests, which was a rare occurrence. He placed the table in the middle of the rug and ushered the man in. The man walked straight over to memsahib’s dresser and picked up one of the large bowls, which were her pride and joy. Hema had coughed discreetly, but the man continued to examine the porcelain. Hema wasn’t sure whether it would be right to leave him alone in the room. Just as he had been about to go and fetch memsahib, she walked into the room. She had greeted the man amiably and sent Hema out of the room.

  Noiselessly Hema made his way across the nursery floor, after which he locked t
he door and hung the key on the nail. He went down the stairs and halted in the middle of the marble hall. He listened and heard the house creak: no matter how hard he tried to combat them, more and more insects were gnawing their way through the dry wood of the walls and appearing in the most unexpected places. He heard sounds coming from the piano room. The door was closed, as memsahib had ordered. He knocked and walked in.

  Charlotte was standing on a wobbly construction consisting of a chair and a stool. She seemed relieved to see Hema. “Take a candle and give me a bit of light.”

  Hema, who was used to his employer’s whims and was much relieved that she wasn’t lying dead on the floor, picked up a candlestick and held it aloft.

  “Higher,” said Charlotte from her unsteady perch. She had a pair of scissors in her hand and she cut a gem from the red lampshade that hung from the ceiling. “The last one,” she said with a sigh.

  1936 Grand Palace ~~~

  THE LITTLE GIRL lies on the white table in front of him. Slowly her eyes close and her breathing becomes heavier. Every day for the past week Peter Harris has examined Chutki, the youngest daughter of the maharaja. Despite the fact that she continues to complain of a sore throat, difficulty in swallowing, and breathing problems, she is strong and healthy. He has studied all the possible causes, just as he would have done in his hospital practice at Long Millgate. There is no doubt that chronic inflammation of the larynx is the culprit. It is a miracle that it hasn’t spread to the bronchial tubes and the lungs. He runs the back of his tweezers over her skin, but the girl does not react. The chloroform has worked faster than usual due to the high temperature in the room. Back in the slums of Manchester, he always had a fully equipped operating room at his disposal, but here the drip hangs from the ceiling on a string and the operating table has been adjusted to the right height by means of blocks sawed to measure that morning. The maharaja would not allow him to take the girl to the hospital in Delhi, where he has worked for the past four months. Maharaja Man Singh, who is suspicious by nature, keeps walking in to see what the surgeon is doing with his daughter. Peter has forbidden him to enter the room during the operation, after delivering a lecture on bacteria and the risk of infection.