When she woke up – if that’s the right expression which it isn’t – she smiled at me in welcome as if nothing at all had occurred. But, as always at such times, she was like a person who has just stepped out of a revivifying bath, or some other medium of renewal. Her cheeks glowed and her eyes shone. She passed her hands upwards over her face as if she felt it flushed and fiery. She has told me that, whereas it used to be very difficult for her to make the transition from samadhi back to ordinary life, now it is quite easy and effortless.
When I spoke to her about the woman who had so mysteriously followed me, she said “You see, it has started.” Apparently it wasn’t mysterious at all – the woman was a midwife marking me down as a potential client. She must have noticed me before and followed me today to check up on her suspicions. My condition would be perfectly obvious to her by the way I walked and held myself. In a day or two she would probably offer me her services. And now Maji offered me her own again: “This would be a good time,” she said; “8 or 9 weeks – it would not be too difficult.”
“How would you do it?” I asked, almost in idle curiosity.
She explained that there were several ways, and that at this early stage a simple massage, skilfully applied, might do it. “Would you like me to try?” she asked.
I said yes – again I think just out of curiosity. Maji shut the door of her hut. It wasn’t a real door but a plank of wood someone had given her. I lay down on the floor, and she loosened the string of my Punjabi trousers. “Don’t be afraid,” she said. I wasn’t, not at all. I lay looking up at the roof which was a sheet of tin, and at the mud walls blackened from her cooking fire. Now, with the only aperture closed, it was quite dark inside and all sorts of smells were sealed in – of dampness, the cowdung used as fuel, and the lentils she had cooked; also of Maji herself. Her only change of clothes hung on the wall, unwashed.
She sat astride me. I couldn’t see her clearly in the dark, but she seemed larger than life and made me think of some mythological figure: one of those potent Indian goddesses who hold life and death in one hand and play them like a yo-yo. Her hands passed slowly down my womb, seeking out and pressing certain parts within. She didn’t hurt me – on the contrary, her hands seemed to have a kind of soothing quality. They were very, very hot; they are always so, I have felt them often (she is always touching one, as if wanting to transmit something). But today they seemed especially hot, and I thought this might be left over from her samadhi, that she was still carrying the waves of energy that had come to her from elsewhere. And again I had the feeling of her transmitting something to me – not taking away, but giving.
Nevertheless I suddenly cried out “No please stop!” She did so at once. She got off me and took the plank of wood from the door. Light streamed in. I got up and went outside, into that brilliant light. The rain had made everything shining green and wet. Blue tiles glinted on the royal tombs and everywhere there were little hollows of water that caught the light and looked like precious stones scattered over the landscape. The sky shone in patches of monsoon blue through puffs of cloud, and in the distance more clouds, but of a very dark blue, were piled on each other like weightless mountains.
“Nothing will happen, will it?” I asked Maji anxiously. She had followed me out of the hut and was no longer the dark mythological figure she had been inside but her usual, somewhat bedraggled motherly self. She laughed when I asked that and patted my cheek in reassurance. But I didn’t know what she was reassuring me of. Above all I wanted nothing to happen – that her efforts should not prove successful. It was absolutely clear to me now that I wanted my pregnancy and the completely new feeling – of rapture – of which it was the cause.
1923
Satipur also had its slummy lanes, but Khatm had nothing else. The town huddled in the shadow of the Palace walls in a tight knot of dirty alleys with ramshackle houses leaning over them. There were open gutters flowing through the streets. They often overflowed, especially during the rains, and were probably the cause, or one of them, of the frequent epidemics that broke out in Khatm. If it rained rather more heavily, some of the older houses would collapse and bury the people inside them. This happened regularly every year.
It had happened the week before opposite the house to which Olivia was taken. The women attending on her were still talking about it. One of them described how she had stood on the balcony to watch a wedding procession passing below. When the bridegroom rode by, everyone surged forward to see him, and there was so much noise, she said, the band was playing so loudly, that at first she had not realised what was happening though it was happening before her eyes. She saw the house opposite, which she had known all her life, suddenly cave inwards and disintegrate, and next moment everything came crashing and flying through the air in a shower of people, bricks, tiles, furniture, cooking pots. It had been, she said, like a dream, a terrible dream.
What was happening to Olivia was also like a dream. Although no one could have been more matter-of-fact than the women attending her: two homely, middleaged mid-wives doing the job they had been commissioned for. The maid servant who had brought her had also been quite matter-of-fact. She had dressed Olivia in a burka and made her follow her on foot through the lanes of Khatm. No one took any notice of them – they were just two women in burkas, the usual walking tents. The street of the midwives was reached by descending some slippery steps (here Olivia, unused to her burka, had to be particularly careful). The midwives’ house was in a tumble-down condition – very likely it would go in the next monsoon; the stairs looked especially dangerous. They were so dark that her escort had to take Olivia’s hand-for a moment Olivia shrank from this physical contact but only for a moment, knowing that soon she would be touched in a far more intimate manner and in more intimate places.
The midwives made her lie on a mat on the floor. Since the house opposite was no longer there, she had a clear view through the window of a patch of sky. She tried to concentrate on that and not on what they were doing to her. But this was in any case not unpleasant. They were massaging her abdomen in an enormously skilful way, seeking out and pressing certain veins within. One of the women sat astride her while the other squatted on the floor. Their hands worked over her incessantly while they carried on their conversation. The atmosphere was professional and relaxed. But when sounds were heard on the stairs, the two midwives looked at each other in consternation. One of them went to the door, and the other quickly hid Olivia under a sheet. As if I’m dead, Olivia thought. She wondered who had come. Also she wondered what would happen – what would they do – if she did die there in the room as a result of the abortion. They would have to dispose of her body quickly and secretly. Olivia guessed that such a disposal could be managed without too much difficulty. The Begum would arrange about it just as easily as she had arranged for the abortion. Probably she had already thought about it and laid suitable plans.
It was the Begum herself who had come, with only one attendant. Both of them were shrouded in black burkas but Olivia knew which was the Begum from the deferential way in which the midwives treated her. She appeared keenly interested in the operation (such personal attention, Olivia thought; I ought to be flattered). The Begum watched from behind her burka as the two midwives continued their massage. Then one of them got up and went to prepare something in a corner of the room. Olivia tried to see what it was, and the Begum was also curious and followed to that corner. Olivia lifted her head slightly but the other midwife pressed it down again so she only swivelled her eyes in that direction. She saw the midwife showing the Begum a twig on to which she was rubbing some paste. The Begum was so interested that she put up the front of her burka in order to see better. Now Olivia was curious to see both the twig and the Begum’s face. She had forgotten what she looked like – that visit with Mrs. Crawford seemed long ago – and wanted to check up whether she had any resemblance to the Nawab.
The midwife with the twig came towards her, holding it. Olivia understood that it
was to be introduced into herself. The two women opened Olivia’s legs and one of them held on to her ankles while the other pointed the twig. The Begum also bent over her to watch. Although the midwife worked swiftly and skilfully, the twig hurt Olivia as it entered into her. She was unable to stifle a cry. Then the Begum bent over her to look into her face and Olivia stared back at her. She did look like the Nawab, very much. She seemed as interested to study Olivia’s face as Olivia was to study hers. For a moment they gazed into each other’s eyes and then Olivia had to shut hers, as the pain down below was repeated.
Beth Crawford did not allow herself to speak about Olivia until many years – a lifetime – had passed. I don’t know whether she thought about her at all during those years. Probably not: Great-Aunt Beth knew where lines had to be drawn, not only in speech and behaviour but also in one’s thought. In the same way she had never let her mind dwell on the Begum and her ladies once the half-hour of obligatory social intercourse with them was over. She had had no desire to speculate about what went on in those purdah quarters once she had left them behind and the European chairs were put away and the ladies alone again and at ease on their divans. Beth felt that there were oriental privacies – mysteries – that should not be disturbed, whether they lay within the Palace, the bazaar of Satipur, or the alleys of Khatm. All those dark regions were outside her sphere of action or imagination – as was Olivia once she had crossed over into them.
The only person not to be reticent about Olivia was Dr. Saunders. It was he who had found her out. The midwives at Khatm had done their work well, and Olivia began to miscarry that same night. She woke up Douglas who took her to the hospital, and early next morning Dr. Saunders curetted her. But he knew about Indian “miscarriages” and the means employed to bring them about. The most common of these was the insertion of a twig smeared with the juice of a certain plant known only to Indian midwives. In his time Dr. Saunders had extracted many such twigs from women brought to him with so-called miscarriages. Afterwards he confronted the guilty women and threw them out of the hospital. Sometimes he slapped them – he had strong ideas about morality and how to uphold it. But even he admitted that certain allowances might be made for these native women born in ignorance and dirt. There was no such extenuating circumstance for Olivia. “Now my young madam,” he said as he confronted her. The matron, a Scottish woman born in India – between them, she and Dr. Saunders kept the hospital clean and strict – stood grim-faced behind him. Both were outraged, but Dr. Saunders was somewhat triumphant as well, having been proved right. He had always known that there was something rotten about Olivia: something weak and rotten which of course the Nawab (rotten himself) had found out and used to his advantage.
No one ever doubted that the Nawab had used Olivia as a means of revenge. Even the most liberal and sympathetic Anglo-Indian, such as Major Minnies, was convinced of it. Like the Crawfords, and presumably Douglas himself (who allowed no one to guess his feelings), Major Minnies banished Olivia from his thoughts. She had gone in too far. Yet for many years he reflected not so much on her particular case as on its implications. It all fitted in with his theories. Later, during his retirement in Ooty, he had a lot more time to think about the whole question, and he even published – at his own expense, it was not a subject of much general interest – a monograph on the influence of India on the European consciousness and character. He sent it around to his friends, and that was how Great-Aunt Beth had a copy which I read.
Although the Major was so sympathetic to India, his piece sounds like a warning. He said that one has to be very determined to withstand – to stand up to – India. And the most vulnerable, he said, are always those who love her best. There are many ways of loving India, many things to love her for – the scenery, the history, the poetry, the music, and indeed the physical beauty of the men and women – but all, said the Major, are dangerous for the European who allows himself to love too much. India always, he said, finds out the weak spot and presses on it. Both Dr. Saunders and Major Minnies spoke of the weak spot. But whereas for Dr. Saunders it is something, or someone, rotten, for the Major this weak spot is to be found in the most sensitive, often the finest people-and, moreover, in their finest feelings. It is there that India seeks them out and pulls them over into what the Major called the other dimension. He also referred to it as another element, one in which the European is not accustomed to live so that by immersion in it he becomes debilitated, or even (like Olivia) destroyed. Yes, concluded the Major, it is all very well to love and admire India – intellectually, aesthetically, he did not mention sexually but he must have been aware of that factor too – but always with a virile, measured, European feeling. One should never, he warned, allow oneself to become softened (like Indians) by an excess of feeling; because the moment that happens – the moment one exceeds one’s measure – one is in danger of being dragged over to the other side. That seems to be the last word Major Minnies had to say on the subject and his final conclusion. He who loved India so much, knew her so well, chose to spend the end of his days here! But she always remained for him an opponent, even sometimes an enemy, to be guarded and if necessary fought against from without and, especially, from within: from within one’s own being.
Olivia never returned to Douglas but, escaping from the hospital, she went straight to the Palace. The last clear picture I have of her is not from her letters but from what Harry has told us. He was in the Palace when she arrived there from the hospital. She was so pale, he said, that she seemed drained of blood. (Of course she had suffered great blood loss from her abortion.) It isn’t so very far from Satipur to Khatm – about 15 miles – and it was a journey that she had been doing daily by one of the Nawab’s cars. But that time when she ran away from the hospital there was no car. Harry never knew how she came but presumed it was by what he called some native mode of transport. She was also in native dress – a servant’s coarse sari – so that she reminded him of a print he had seen called Mrs. Secombe in Flight from the Mutineers. Mrs. Secombe was also in native dress and in a state of great agitation, with her hair awry and smears of dirt on her face: naturally, since she was flying for her life from the mutineers at Sikrora to the safety of the British Residency at Lucknow. Olivia was also in flight – but, as Harry pointed out, in the opposite direction.
Harry left India shortly afterwards. He never had been able to decide what were the Nawab’s motives in taking on Olivia. In any case, the question – like the Nawab himself – dropped out of Harry’s view for many years. He was glad. When he looked back on his time spent in the Palace, it was always with dislike, even sometimes with abhorrence. Yet he had been very, very happy there. Back in England he felt that it had been a happiness too strong for him. Now he wanted only to lead his quiet life with his mother in their flat in Kensington. Later, after his mother died, his friend Ferdie moved in with him, giving up his job in a laundry in order to look after Harry. Ferdie also met the Nawab, but that was many years later by which time – Harry thought – the Nawab was quite changed. His circumstances were changed too, and when he came to London now, he no longer lived at Claridges but was quite hard up. Perhaps that was why he never brought Olivia, because he couldn’t afford it; or perhaps she just didn’t want to come. She never came to England again but stayed in the house in the mountains he had bought for her.
When I told Maji that I was leaving Satipur, she asked “Like Chid?” Chid’s departure back to England had amused her as everything else about him had always amused her. “Poor boy,” she said. “He had to run away.” Her broad shoulders shook with laughter.
I assured her that I was not running away but on the contrary was going further, up into the mountains. She was pleased with that. I then plucked up courage and asked her, as I had wanted to for some time, what she had been doing to me that day when she said she was giving me an abortion. To my relief nothing had happened – but I felt that, if she had wanted something to happen, her efforts would not have been unsuccessful. Wh
at had she done? I asked her. Of course she wouldn’t tell me, but from her sly laugh I gathered that she was not innocent. I thought of the way she had sat astride me, a supernatural figure with supernatural powers which it now seemed to me she had used not to terminate my pregnancy but to make sure of it: make sure I saw it through.
The rainy season is not the best time of year to go up into the mountains. There are always landslides and the roads become impassable for days on end. The mountains are invisible. One knows they are there – the ranges of the Himalayas stretching God knows into what distances and to what heights – one even feels, or imagines, their presence, but they can’t be seen. They are completely blotted out and in their place are clouds, vapours, mists.
Just above the small town of X, there is a handful of houses scattered along the steepest side of the mountain. Even at the best of times they are difficult to get to except by the sturdiest climbers; and now during the rains they are almost inaccessible. I have been told that, up till a few years ago, there were several other Europeans besides Olivia living in these houses. The Norwegian widow of an Indian historian devoting herself to sorting out her husband’s papers; a German turned Buddhist; and two ex-missionaries who had tried to start a Christian “ashram”. Now they are all dead and are buried in the old British cemetery on a plateau a few hundred feet down (there are British cemeteries everywhere! they have turned out to be the most lasting monument). Only the German Buddhist was cremated on the Hindu cremation ground, and Olivia. The ex-missionaries tried to raise some objection to Olivia’s cremation – they said she belonged in the cemetery, never having been converted to any Indian religion. But she had specifically requested cremation, so it was done. I presume that her ashes were scattered over these mountains since there was no one to take charge of them, the Nawab having died before her.
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