Amitav Ghosh - The Glass Palace

‘The girl I spoke of last night — the girl in the Glass Palace?’

‘Yes?’

‘That was her — Dolly, Miss Sein.’

Uma felt the breath rushing out of her body. She rose unsteadily to her feet, and stepped through one of the French windows into the garden. ‘Come, Mr Raha.’ Without waiting for him, she set off across the freshly cut lawn. The malis were busy sweeping the cut grass to take home to their cows and goats; they looked up and salaamed as she swept by.

Rajkumar caught up with her at the bottom of the garden, just as she was opening the wicket gate. ‘This must seem very strange to you.’

‘Yes. It does.’

She led him to the earthen seat beneath the peepul tree. The Kajali river shone like glass in the valley below. ‘Please sit down, Mr Raha.’

‘I didn’t know I would find her here,’ Rajkumar said. ‘Not for sure. This was just a place to begin — a way of settling a score with myself. As long as there existed a place where I could make enquiries, I had to come. I had no choice. I was sure that I’d find the matter settled: she would be married, I thought, or carrying someone else’s child. Or dead, or turned into something unrecognisable. That would be that, the sight of her would wash the memory from my mind, set me free. Then I walked into your house last night, and there she was. I knew her at once: her face, her expression. And then the matter was indeed out of my hands, but not in the way I expected.’

‘And you’d only seen her that one time?’

‘Twice. In Mandalay. But if I had met her a thousand times it would have been no different. I know that. I am sure of that. When I was very young, I used to work on a boat, a Chittagong sampan. This was a long time ago, even before I went to Mandalay. One day we were caught in a storm. We were on the open sea and the storm came up very suddenly, as they do off the coast of Bengal. Water began to pour into the boat, over the stern. I was roped to a mast and given a bucket to bale with. Soon the sky grew so dark that my surroundings became invisible, except by lightning. During one of those flashes, I noticed something. It was an animal, a small, green-backed turtle. It had been washed aboard by a wave and had somehow got itself caught in some netting. It was just beyond my reach, and the waves were hitting the boat so hard I didn’t dare undo my rope. We were both bound in our places, the turtle and I. At every flash of lightning, I looked up and there he was. And so it went, through that long, long night: the animal and I, watching one another, through the waves and the wind. Towards dawn the storm abated. I undid my ropes and unloosed the turtle from the net. I can see it clearly to this day. If you were to set a thousand turtles in front of me now, they would not be as real to me as that one animal.’

‘Why are you telling me this, Mr Raha?’

‘Who else can I tell?’

‘Tell Dolly.’

‘I tried to. Last night. I saw her going into the garden and I doubled back after leaving you.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She was determined to be angry — just as she was at dinner. She found fault with everything I said. She told me to go back. She would not see me again. I stayed up all night, thinking what do I do next? In any other place, I would have had people to turn to: my friends would have learnt her mind from her friends. I would have asked someone to speak to her family. Then I would have gone myself to meet her father. We would have discussed money, settlements. Things like that. I would have had some help. People to speak for me.’

‘Yes.’ Uma nodded. ‘There would have been intermediaries. Go-betweens. People who can explain us better than we can ourselves.’

He was right, she knew — that was how these things happened: someone carried word from one mouth to another and so it went, whispers travelling like tendrils along hothouse trellises. That was exactly how it had happened in her own case: one night, a gaari had come clattering into the paved courtyard of their family home in Calcutta — the house to which her father had given the name Lankasuka. There was a loud banging on the front door, downstairs. It was late, after dinner. Her father was in his study, busy working on his treatise on temple architecture. Her mother was preparing to go to bed. ‘Someone must have died,’ her mother had declared. ‘There’s only ever bad news at this time of night.’

Uma and her little brother had gone running to the veranda that overlooked the courtyard. One of their aunts was standing by the door downstairs. ‘Has someone died?’ Uma had shouted.

‘Died?’ Her aunt had burst into laughter. ‘No, you silly girl. Let me in.’

Uma and her brother had listened at the door while their mother conferred with the visitor. They heard them mention the Collector’s name and recognised it: they’d read about him recently, in newspapers and magazines. He was known to be a brilliant man. As a student, he’d done so well at Calcutta University that the well-to-do families of his neighbourhood had pooled their resources together to send him to Cambridge. He’d returned a minor hero, having been accepted into the grandest and most powerful imperial cadre, the Indian Civil Service.

It transpired that he had seen Uma at a puja : she’d been sixteen at the time, a schoolgirl. On his return from Cambridge, he’d made enquiries about her. His family was none too pleased: they’d had proposals from all over the city and thought they could do much better. But he persisted, insisting that he didn’t want a conventional marriage. He’d be working with Europeans: it wouldn’t do to have a conservative, housebound wife. He needed a girl who would be willing to step out into society; someone young, who wouldn’t be resistant to learning modern ways.

‘And he’s asking about my Uma?’

Her mother’s incredulous shriek had resounded through the house. Uma was by no means the best-looking or the most accomplished girl in her circle: she could neither sing nor sew; her hair wasn’t quite straight and she was thought to be too tall to be graceful.

‘My Uma?’

Her brother had backed away from her, his mouth falling open in disbelief. ‘You!’ To tease him she’d said: ‘Well, he can hardly marry you .’ He’d burst into tears, as though that were exactly what he’d been hoping for.

‘Why me?’ Uma had asked the question over and over again, of all the usual intermediaries and go-betweens. ‘Why me?’ The most that anyone had been able to tell her was: ‘He thinks you’ll be quick to learn.’

Their wedding was unlike any other. The Governor came, and many English civil servants and army officers. Instead of a shehnai there was a military band from Fort William.

When they were alone, in the flower-hung bedroom of the first night, they’d both sat a long while silent on the bed, held still by shyness, he no less than she. They’d listened to the voices of their friends and relatives, clustered round the closed door, laughing, making the usual ribald jokes. At last, to her relief, he’d begun to talk: he’d told her about Cambridge, about the cobbled streets and stone bridges, about concerts he’d attended. He’d hummed a tune: it was by his favourite composer, he said. She liked the liveliness of the tune and asked: what is it called? He was pleased that she’d asked.

‘It’s from “The Trout”,’ he explained, ‘by Schubert.’

‘It’s nice. Hum it again.’ She’d drifted off to sleep, waking hours later to his touch. The pain was not as terrible as she’d been told — not much worse than going to the doctor — and the room was very dark, which made it easier. When her mother asked the next day, she was embarrassed that she didn’t have a fearsome story to tell, like everyone else.