Amitav Ghosh - The Glass Palace

When she picked up a pen to write back to Uma, she could think of nothing to say; there was something incommunicable about the quotidian contentments of her life. She could try, for instance, to write about how her friend Daw Thi had stopped by last Wednesday and how they’d gone to look at the new furniture at Rowe and Co.; or else she could describe her last visit to the Kyaikasan racecourse and how Rajkumar had won almost one thousand rupees and had joked about buying a pony. But none of this seemed worth putting down on paper — certainly not in response to such concerns as Uma had expressed. Or else she could write about her pregnancy, about Rajkumar’s happiness, about how he’d immediately started to think of names (the child was to be a boy of course). But she was superstitious about these things: neither she nor Rajkumar was telling people yet and wouldn’t do so until it was unavoidable. Nor did she want to write to Uma about this subject: it would be as though she were flaunting her domesticity in her friend’s face; underscoring her childlessness.

Two months passed without any further communication from Uma. As the days went by Dolly found herself less and less able to sleep. Shooting abdominal pains made her double over in bed at night. She moved into a room of her own, so as not to disturb Rajkumar. The midwife told her that everything was proceeding normally, but Dolly was not persuaded: she was increasingly sure that something had gone wrong. Then, late one night, the now-familiar pains changed suddenly into convulsions that shook the whole of her lower body. She realised that she was miscarrying and shouted for Rajkumar. He roused the household and sent people off in every direction — to fetch doctors, nurses, midwives. But it was too late and Rajkumar was alone with Dolly when the stillborn foetus was ejected from her body.

Dolly was still convalescing when Uma’s next letter arrived. The letter bore a London address and opened with profuse apologies and an implied reproach. Uma wrote that she was saddened to think that they had allowed so many months to pass without an exchange of letters. She herself had been very busy in London, she said. Mrs Dutt had helped her find accommodation — as the paying guest of an elderly missionary lady who’d spent much of her life in India. The arrangement had worked out well and Uma had not lacked for company. Shortly after her arrival, people had begun to seek her out: mainly former friends and colleagues of the Collector’s, most of them English. Some of them had known her late husband at Cambridge, others had worked with him in India. They had all been very kind, showing her around the city, taking her to events of the sort the Collector had liked to attend— concerts, plays, lectures at the Royal Academy. After a while, Uma had begun to feel as though the Collector were with her again; she would hear his voice describing Drury Lane or Covent Garden, pointing to the notable features; telling her what was in good taste and what was not.

Fortunately, she’d also kept up her connection with her shipboard friend, Mrs Dutt. It turned out that Mrs Dutt knew every Indian living in London, or almost. Through her she’d met many interesting people, most notably a lady by the name of Madame Cama. A Parsee from Bombay, Madame Cama seemed, at first glance, more European than Indian — in clothes, manner and appearance. Yet she, Uma, had never known anyone who spoke more truthfully or forthrightly on matters concerning India. She’d been kind enough to introduce Uma into her circle. Uma had never met such people — so interesting and idealistic, men and women whose views and sentiments were so akin to her own. Through these people Uma had begun to understand that a woman like herself could contribute a great deal to India’s struggle from overseas.

Lately Madame Cama had been urging her, Uma, to visit the United States. She had friends among the Irish in New York, many of whom, she said, were sympathetic to India’s cause. She thought it important for Uma to meet these people and felt that she might like living in that city. Uma was thinking the matter over quite seriously. Of this she was certain at any rate: that she would not long remain in England. In London she was haunted by the notion that the whole city was conspiring to remind her of her late husband.

Exhausted by the effort of reading this letter, Dolly dropped it on her bedside table. Later that day, when Rajkumar came home, he saw it lying there and picked it up.

‘From Uma?’

‘Yes.’

‘What does she say?’

‘Read it.’

Rajkumar smoothed down the page and read the letter through, slowly, following Uma’s cramped handwriting with his forefinger, asking for Dolly’s help with such words as he could not follow. At the end, he folded the pages and put them back on Dolly’s bedside table.

‘She’s talking of going to New York.’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s where Matthew is.’

‘Yes. I’d forgotten.’

‘You should send her his address. If she goes there, Matthew could help her settle in.’

‘That’s true.’

‘And if you write to her you could also say that Saya John is worried about Matthew. He’s been writing to Matthew to come home — but Matthew hasn’t answered. Sayagyi can’t understand why he won’t come back. Perhaps Uma will be able to solve the puzzle.’

Dolly nodded. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘It’ll give me something to write about.’ She spent a week composing a letter, writing out the paragraphs one at a time. She made no mention of her condition. Having said nothing about her pregnancy, it seemed out of place to refer to a miscarriage. She wrote mostly about Saya John and Rajkumar and posted the letter to Uma’s London address.

By the time Dolly heard back, Uma had already crossed the Atlantic; she was in New York, and had been there several weeks already. Again, she was full of apologies for not having written earlier — there was so much to write about that she did not know where to start. New York had proved to be all that she had hoped — a kind of haven for someone like herself, except that the shelter it afforded consisted not of peace and quiet but the opposite. It was the kind of place where one could lose oneself in the press of people. She had decided to remain here for the time being: even on the way over, she had known that this was a place that would be to her taste because so many of the other passengers were people who were tired of the ruthless hypocrisies of Europe, just as she was.

But she also had something important to report, on the very subject that Dolly had written to her about. She had met Matthew Martins soon after her arrival in America; he had come to see her, at the Ramakrishna Mission in Manhattan, where she was staying temporarily. He was not at all the person she had expected; his resemblance to his father was very slight. He was athletic in build and very good-looking, extremely urbane in manner. She had quickly discovered that he had a great passion for motor cars; it had been instructive to walk down the streets with him, for he would point here and there and announce, like a magician: ‘there goes a brand-new new 1908 Hutton’; or ‘there’s a Beeston Humber’ or ‘that’s a Gaggenau. .’

As for the ‘mystery’ of his reluctance to leave New York, that had been very quickly solved. It turned out that he had an American fiancee, a woman by the name of Elsa Hoffman. He’d introduced her to Elsa and Uma had thought her to be a very pleasant woman: her demeanour was briskly good-natured, in the American way, and she was fine-looking too, with a gentle, heart-shaped face and long black hair. They’d quickly become friends, she and Elsa, and one day Elsa had confided that she was secretly engaged to Matthew. She hadn’t told her family because she knew they’d disapprove and was afraid that they might try to send her away. And Matthew too was uncertain of how his father would respond — what with Elsa being a foreigner and a Protestant as well. Uma’s feeling was that this was all that prevented Matthew from returning. If only Saya John were to drop Matthew a hint, that he had nothing to fear on this score, then it was quite likely that he would change his mind about staying in America. .