The Choir Boats

by Rabuzzi, Daniel

  The moon rose, fuller and fuller, an old friend to ease Sally’s fears of dreaming and her frustration with the patterns in the stars. The moon illuminated the garden maze, the Doolhoff, behind the Gezelligheid. Sally thought for a moment that the pattern of the maze matched that of the stars centred on Adhara overhead, but then the pattern disappeared or the hedges moved or the moon shadows shifted, Sally was not sure.

  “‘You Moon,’” she said, quoting the great German poet. “‘Your mild eye gazes over my fate, as I wander between joy and pain in loneliness; what I know not wanders in the night through the labyrinth of the heart.’” The Mejuffrouw, remembering her own youth, put her hand on Sally’s shoulder and led the young McDoon back inside.

  The McDoons and Nexius grew ever more anxious to voyage on to Yount.

  “Still no word from the Gallinule,” Nexius announced glumly each day.

  “Wheat and whiskey!” said Barnabas. “And worse!”

  Sally was the only one whose sense of urgency was blunted. She spent most of her time with Kidlington, usually under the discreetly watching eyes of the British regimental soldiers standing guard around the Gezelligheid. Sally and Kidlington talked of everything. Sometimes the topics were intellectual: medicine, politics, the works of Erasmus Darwin or the postulates of Malthus.

  “I am not at fault, Tom,” she whispered to herself. “I do not tarry. The ship has not come.”

  One Thursday, Sally and Kidlington were in the Gezelligheid garden, in the swings attached to a yellowwood the Termuydens called “L’Escarpolette.” The sun washed the yellowwood and the jacaranda trees, and made Isaak glow as she pounced across the grass. Through a screen of flowering bushes could be seen one of the regimental guards.

  Kidlington sighed. “I am content, Mamsell McLeish. Here with you and in this place, I am held in a nutshell yet feel myself king of the universe.”

  “Hold, Mr. Kidlington,” said Sally, laughing. “You run too fast!”

  “No, I speak truly,” protested Kidlington. “Your presence is the cure for the canker of my discontent. I envy you McDoons, and would like nothing more than to be the most humble planet in your family’s solar system, the merest Uranus, a late-comer and outrider yet still held by your attraction.”

  “Really, James,” said Sally. “You are as florid as your Mr. Darwin’s Botanical Garden . . . or as this garden.”

  “Ah, Sally,” said James. “But it is you who blushes to match this flower.”

  They bantered along in this vein for a while, until Kidlington grew quiet. He tossed twigs for Isaak and Jantje to attack.

  “James,” said Sally on her swing under the yellowwood tree. “Where is your unbounded stock of wit and imagination?”

  “Sally,” he said in the most serious voice she had heard him use yet. “You have wrought me up to a significant matter. May I confide in you?”

  Sally stopped her swinging, and said yes.

  “I was only half in jest a while ago, when I said I envied you McDoons and wished to be your satellite,” said Kidlington. “You see, I too am an orphan. My father hanged himself for gambling debts, and my sweet mother died thereafter of grief. My brother and I were taken in by older cousins, where we got bed and board but little else. We each won scholarships, and came like a pair of Dick Whittingtons to London to pursue the medical profession. While we have prospered, ’tis true, or at least see the imminent possibility of advancement, we have had little — no, very little — of the conviviality and fellow feeling that so characterizes the McDoons. Oh, Sally, you must know that these past months with you have been the happiest of my life!”

  “James,” Sally said at last. “Why did you not share this with me before? I would understand. Planet? You have been our sun, shining forth upon us.”

  For once, her ready store of quotes and commonplaces failed her but her heart wrote him a sonnet. She held out her locket, which she kept in her lockbox since the attack onboard (having come to half-believe her own explanations to James) but which today adorned her neck for no reason other than because the sun was shining so. Kidlington unclasped the locket, and the two of them gazed at the images of Sally and Sally’s mother. Sally would have given Kidlington the locket, if he had asked. Kidlington did not. He reclasped the locket and handed it back to Sally. Their hands touched. The rest of the afternoon was spent on trivial talk, but all that time and every day that followed, Sally dwelt in Kidlington’s words of planets, loss, and finding.

  The “new” Kidlington, the one who spoke in serious tones about weighty subjects, was in evidence two weeks later at the Termuydens’ dinner table. Talk had turned to the condition of Cape Town society, and specifically to the fact of slavery. The Cape was full of slaves, based on skin colour, a situation that appalled the McDoons and Kidlington.

  “Thank goodness for Wilberforce,” said Kidlington.

  “True words,” said Sanford, pleased to find himself agreeing with the young man.

  “Quite right,” said Barnabas. “You Termuydens seem to be just about the only household who does not use slaves, but keep servants as a civilized person should do.”

  The Mejuffrouw said, “Thank you. We are considered . . .”

  “. . . eigenaardig en eigengerechtig,” said her husband. “‘Peculiar and self-righteous.’ Sounds better in Dutch.”

  “In either language, we are,” said the Mejuffrouw, laughing. Then she stopped laughing, narrowed her pelagic eyes. “The Gezelligheid can never use slaves. How could it?”

  Sally noticed that Nexius Dexius, who said little at the dinner table, had followed the discussion with deep interest. At one point he looked set to interject but satisfied himself instead by slicing his meat with restrained savagery. Nexius, an old warrior ever on alert, noticed Sally’s expression, and gave her the ursine equivalent of a wink before returning to the carnage on his plate. Mystified by this confidence, Sally meant to ask Nexius about it but forgot to do so because of what came next.

  As sweet-cakes and port were passed around the table, talk turned to Kidlington’s opportunities in Bombay. Even Sanford became animated as he and Barnabas gave the medical student advice and reminisced about their voyage to Bombay for McDoon’s uncle. “The Bengal, or even the Coromandel Coast, now, that is where the real fortunes are to be made,” said Barnabas. “But old McDoon had it in mind to assemble some cargoes in Bombay, and he had his best contacts with a fine agency house there.”

  “Finlay, Graham & Muir,” said Sanford.

  “Scots like he was . . . like me,” said Barnabas.

  “We sailed out in April of 1792, and were in Bombay a full year,” said Sanford. He looked across the table at Barnabas and said, with slightly more Norfolk in his accent than usual, “How young we were!”

  “Beans and bacon,” said Barnabas. “Young isn’t half the story! Peas newly popped from the pod is more like it!”

  “A full year in Bombay, sir,” said Kidlington. “Where did you stay?”

  “In lodgings not half so nice as these,” said Barnabas, raising his glass to the Mejuffrouw and Cornelius.

  “Really, you mustn’t,” said the Mejuffrouw, pleased despite her efforts to wave away the praise.

  The others raised their glasses.

  “Health and long life to our hosts,” said Barnabas, thumping the table with his free hand. “And three cheers for the Gezelligheid!”

  When the huzzahs had died down — and the port had been passed around again — Barnabas continued.

  “Finlay, Graham & Muir had a small set of rooms for us to let, which they had found through their friend, the Parsee merchant Sitterjee . . . that’s what you need to do, Mr. Kidlington, be sure to make the acquaintance of one of the leading Parsee houses. They speak superb English, know our ways better than anyone in India, and are trusted by all the other natives — Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, makes no mind. A good man like our friend Sitterjee will take care of redeeming your hundi, that’s what they call bills of exchange there. Anyway, to return to
your question, Mr. Kidlington, about lodgings. Sanford and I were in the eastern part of the Old City, just above the English Fort, could just peek out to see Butcher’s Island and Elephanta Island in the bay. Near Market and Dongri, fine old part of the city, where most of the Muslim merchants live.”

  Kidlington nodded again, especially as conversation turned to the cost of lodging and food. Sanford spoke to these topics as Barnabas drank his port and stroked his vest, a design with roundels and palmettes marred slightly by a gravy stain from the evening meal. As Sanford described how close the English Fort was to the address of Kidlington’s main contacts, Barnabas suddenly thumped the table again.

  “Sanford,” he said. “Do you remember the dinners we used to have at Adnan’s?”

  Startled by the interruption, everyone stared at Barnabas. Sally thought Sanford shot Barnabas a warning look. Barnabas plunged ahead. “Our closest native contacts, outside of good old Sitterjee the Parsee,” he said to the entire company by way of explanation. “Adnan, and his brother Mohsin were estimable merchants and sahukars, Muslims of the Khodja following.”

  A strange note entered Barnabas’s voice as he said, “These Khodjas lived, in fact, just across the alley from the house where our lodgings were. So we spent much time with Adnan and Mohsin. Business, yes, much business. Made us all richer than we had been, when we got the cargo home to London. But good company too. Do you remember, Sanford?”

  “Yes, Barnabas,” said Sanford, clearing his throat. “I do.”

  “Why,” said Barnabas, “remember the dinner parties? Almost as fine as the ones here at the Gezelligheid.”

  Sanford seemed pleased when Barnabas proposed another toast to the Termuydens. Once again the port went round as the cheers subsided.

  Undeterred, however, Barnabas returned to his story about the Khodja merchants.

  “Hara masala,” he said. “That’s what they called it, their special food. I am, of course, all for good plain English cooking, best in the world — begging your pardons, but I put it even above the Dutch — but my carriage towards food was altered, I must confess, when I tasted the hara masala.”

  Sanford sighed as well at the thought of Khodja cuisine.

  Reaching for the port again, Barnabas mused. “Remarkable stuff altogether, garlic, ginger-root — Sally, you would have liked that — and coriander seed, with those peppers . . . coconut all grated, and almonds . . .”

  “Goat’s meat,” said Sanford, despite himself.

  “Well,” chuckled the Mejuffrouw. “We shall have to serve goat at tomorrow’s dinner!”

  “What wine goes with goat, I wonder,” said her husband.

  “Such funny stories we use to tell and hear around the table at Adnan and Mohsin’s,” Barnabas ploughed ahead. “Sometimes Muir would join us. Remember Sanford, how Muir — he’s dead now, God rest his soul — would always talk about ‘casting bread upon the waters’? Only his brogue was so thick that Adnan and Mohsin thought he said ‘casting bird upon the waters,’ and imagined Muir was rattling on about duck hunting!”

  At this, Barnabas began to laugh, giggle almost. Sanford reached across the table to Barnabas. “Steady on, old friend.”

  “I am sorry,” said Barnabas, stroking his vest and peering down into his port. “I . . . well . . .” He looked with imploring eyes at Sanford.

  “Perhaps,” said Sanford, “we should conclude with the port for the evening.”

  “Quatsch,” said Barnabas, but he did not reach for the bottle.

  The small-cakes were gone, the candles burning low. The Mejuffrouw started to rise, when Barnabas said:

  “I almost took a wife once.”

  Everyone remained seated. The Mejuffrouw leaned forward with such alacrity that she almost knocked over the port bottle. Sanford shook his head slightly but, at the same time, clasped his partner’s forearm across the table. Sally held her breath. For Sally (and for Tom, had he been there), Barnabas’s celibacy was as natural a state as the tides of the Thames or Sanford’s precision with accounts.

  “Oh yes,” said Barnabas, looking into a candle, slowly stroking his vest. “Adnan had a daughter, you see.”

  Sanford started to say something, thought better of it. He continued to hold Barnabas’s arm.

  “Her name was Rehana,” said Barnabas. “She is the only woman I have ever loved. In a wifely way, I mean. Only she was not to be my wife.”

  The Mejuffrouw pulled in every word.

  Kidlington looked at Sally before he asked the question they all wanted to ask. “Sir, what happened? If I may enquire?”

  Barnabas looked away and did not seem able to speak. Sanford released Barnabas’s arm, sat up, and told the story.

  Adnan had been delighted with Barnabas and fascinated by British ways. He had even allowed his wife, Yasmin, to join the dinners from time to time. His brother Mohsin was of like mind (his wife was named Bilkees). Great friendship developed between the Khodja merchants and the men of McDoon.

  “Great friendship,” said Barnabas. “Damon and Pythias. Except that I was no . . .”

  “Do not admonish yourself, old friend,” Sanford said, then returned to the story. “We’d heard rumour, after several months of frequent visitation in Adnan’s house, of a daughter, but we had never seen her. Nor were we likely to — it is not their custom to bring forth their daughters to strangers, and we honoured that by not even asking after her presence.”

  “But,” said Barnabas, staring again into the candle, “her presence became known to me nonetheless.”

  “How, uncle, how?” Sally cried. She was aware of Kidlington’s eyes on her, and of the Mejuffrouw’s eyes on Barnabas.

  “I heard the most beautiful singing,” said Barnabas. “One evening, as we returned across the alley to our lodgings, a gorgeous melody sung by a woman came over the wall surrounding Adnan’s house. I could not resist my desire to see the singer. Sanford tried to stop me — good friend, my dear Sanford — but I found handholds up the wall, rested on a ledge, and peered over the top, down into a garden. And there she was. And there forever, from that moment, has my heart remained.”

  Barnabas paused again, gazing out over Sally’s head. Under the table, Kidlington touched Sally’s hand for a long moment.

  “She looked up and saw me there,” said Barnabas. “She told me once that she thought that first night she had conjured me forth with her singing! She sang and danced in the garden, around the fountain in the middle like . . . like an elfin queen in the moonlight, with her black tresses swinging behind her, and her arms outstretched before her. She was Sacontala, and I was the king who saw her in the forest, who fell in love and then . . .”

  Even the candles seemed to hold their breath waiting for whatever Barnabas would say next.

  “So began our courtship,” he said, with one tear coursing down his cheek. “Every night thereafter I would hear her singing, and I would come across the alley to the top of the wall. She would stand below me, half-hidden in the dark, and we would talk in whispers. She had some English, and I had some Gujarati and a little Hindi, so we communicated in our own private language. She longed to know who I was, what life was like outside her house, outside Bombay, and I longed to know who she was, what life was like inside her house.”

  The Mejuffrouw nudged her husband, who reached into his pocket and offered a handkerchief to Barnabas.

  “Thank you,” said Barnabas. “Finally I dared to come down into the garden. We trembled every second for fear of discovery, but we trembled more to be together.”

  As he daubed his eyes, Barnabas said, “I loved her. Rehana loved me.”

  Barnabas paused. Sanford said, “Our Khodja hosts did find out. Difficulty ensued. Adnan and Mohsin felt terribly betrayed, as if Barnabas had been a thief. At first they wanted to sever all connections. Sitterjee and the firm of Finlay, Graham & Muir intervened on our behalf. In the end, our business was allowed to proceed. Our cargo was assembled and we made ready to leave.”

  “
Adnan and Mohsin had come back to their senses,” said Barnabas. “Three days before we sailed, I asked Adnan for his daughter’s hand in marriage, having no real hope that he would accept my proposal. I do not know how it happened, but I guess that his wife Yasmin played some role in his decision, because he said I might marry Rehana, if I proved myself worthy.”

  The Mejuffrouw put her hands in front of her, resting on the table, fingertip to fingertip, and cocked her head forward, making her coiffure look like the prow of a ship bearing down on Barnabas. “Worthy in what way?” she asked.

  Barnabas laughed. “Adnan said I had already proven myself an able negotiator since I had managed to win both his wife’s heart and his daughter’s so that he, Adnan, felt compelled to accept me as a future son-in-law. Provided that I showed my true devotion and settled with Rehana in Bombay.”

  Sally felt dizzy. There would have been no Mincing Lane for her and Tom!

  “I would have had to become a Muslim,” Barnabas continued. “A condition of their faith, that’s as I understand it. Adnan could only allow the marriage if I agreed to become a Mohammedan.”

  Strange emotion crossed Sanford’s face but he said nothing. Sally thought this story far odder than reams of legend about Yount.

  “Would I have?” said Barnabas. “That’s your question, it must be. Well, yes, I would have, that’s how much I loved her. Wouldn’t have been the first Englishman to do so in India, not by a long straw. Think of all those John Company officials and generals who married Mughal princesses, why, half the nabobs had Indian wives, and they had to become Muslims to do so. A respectable practice, at least once upon a time, and in the eyes of . . . of those content in the knowledge of one God no matter how He might be worshipped.”

  Barnabas cast a glance at Sanford as he said this, a look of gratitude perhaps, before continuing. “Sanford remembers. I said I was fully agreeable to settling in Bombay, that I only needed to return with our cargo to London, sell this at a profit, and then sail back with both intent and means to set myself up in Bombay. It seemed that Finlay, Graham & Muir would take me as a junior partner if our business did well.”