He stood transfixed for many minutes in the marvellously large conservatory, breathing in the colours of summer while it snowed outside. An ornate thrush flew up from under a lilac bush, burst into song. A jet-black squirrel with an impossibly long fluffy tail stopped on a patch of lawn, ran up a fruit tree. A colibri, throat iridescent scarlet, hovered at a mass of tubular yellow flowers that ranged up a wall and wrapped themselves around a column of one of the walkways — the hummingbird went from bloom to bloom and then disappeared under the eaves. Everywhere he looked Barnabas saw colours that flamed all the more for the pale oblique rays of the November sun. Drawn by the sound of falling water, Barnabas looked at the fountain to which all paths led. Its base was of white marble. Lapis lazuli dolphins leaped in the branches of a spreading oak tree carved of jade or malachite. The dolphins spouted water that ran along the branches and dripped like gentle rain into the basin. The colibri flew down, perched on the rim of the basin, dipped its sickle-beak. Two buntings with black heads and blue wings did the same.
White marble benches ringed the fountain, with more red carnations planted beside them. Gradually Barnabas became aware of a figure sitting on a bench on the far side of the fountain, obscured by the falling water. No one else was in the garden. He walked towards the fountain, his legs shaking. He ran his right hand over his palempore vest, took off his hat (almost dropping it), smoothed his thinning hair with the other hand, looked down to be sure his stockings were not sagging. He rounded the fountain and saw a woman sitting on the bench, looking away from him. He cleared his throat, and felt as nervous as he had when he scaled the wall to the garden in Bombay so many years ago. The woman on the bench raised her head with a start and turned to look at Barnabas, now fifteen feet away. They both gasped at the same time.
“Rehana!” whispered Barnabas, walking very slowly.
Under a blue silk headscarf showed glossy black hair in which silver threads were woven. Her eyes were black, her skin the most beautiful brown. From her ears hung silver half-moons, trembling. She clasped her hands in front of her, unclasped them, re-clasped them, but she returned his gaze. She said something in Yountish that Barnabas did not understand but took to be a greeting. He moved closer, his mind hurtling in doubt, hope, confusion. She held up her hand in a universal sign of halting, so he stopped just in front of her.
She stood up and he heard tiny bells tinkle at her wrists, saw the half-moons swing. Barnabas saw her lips tremble, her hands clasp and unclasp but he was the one who could not meet her steady gaze. Her dark eyes bore into his so that he almost quailed. He knew her but he did not know her. Rehana but not Rehana. His mind continued its frenzied racing, led by her eyes. Then she raised her right hand and pointed at him, her finger resting lightly but firmly on his vest just above his heart, and she said one word — as lightly but firmly as her finger pinioned him, and Barnabas almost broke at the knees. He held her gaze desperately as the one thing that could keep him standing. She kept her finger on his vest and repeated the word. Barnabas swayed backwards then, and sat down heavily on the bench next to hers.
“Father,” she said, in English, for a third time, and then sat down too.
Water fell from the dolphins. The hummingbird made its rounds of the yellow flowers. The black squirrel dashed across the lawn. For a long time, Barnabas and the woman on the bench beside his said nothing. She held him in her gaze though, so forcefully that he looked up and looked at her in earnest. He realized she could not be Rehana — she was the same age as Rehana had been when Barnabas had jumped over the wall in Bombay, twenty years earlier. She was Sally’s age. Sally’s age, Barnabas thought, old enough to be my . . .
He shook his head. But he remembered. He remembered the evening of the betrothal feast in the house of Adnan, the night before he and Sanford were to sail back to London. He remembered the magnificent food and the music and Adnan’s speech and his in return and Adnan’s wife Yasmin steering everything from behind the scenes. There was a young Sanford trying not to appear gluttonous as he gorged on the goat’s meat masala, the last he would get in its home country. There was Sitterjee, their Parsee friend, and old Muir, the resident Scots merchant whose brogue was so thick that few of the Indians understood him no matter how good their English was. He saw Rehana’s uncle, Mohsin, and his wife, Bilkees, smiling as they passed platters of food. Yes, he said to himself now in the winter garden, and after, what happened? The grand feast had ended, all the guests had gone, and he and Sanford had said a long farewell to their hosts. How Rehana had wept, and her mother, and Adnan (who would never have admitted it later).
Had it not been for Sanford, Barnabas would barely have made it across the alley to their lodgings. But he slipped Sanford’s eye later, and climbed back over the garden wall, where Rehana awaited him one last time. That night, faced with the ache of separation and emboldened by the promises made at the feast, they did what they had never done before and what young lovers do in the fit of passion in gardens under moonlight. Once only but it could have been enough — was enough if the young woman on the bench beside him spoke the truth.
The young woman picked up an object on the bench and handed it to Barnabas. As she did so, she said in lilting English, “My mother bid you take this and remember that you took her heart in a box just like this one.”
Barnabas felt the world spin as she gave him a sandalwood box that was the twin of the one in the partners’ office in Mincing Lane. He no longer doubted in his mind what his heart had already acknowledged. He had a daughter, whose mother was Rehana, and that daughter was sitting beside him. The smell of sandalwood rose up and he began to cry silently.
The young woman watched as Barnabas cried. Tears ran down her face as well but she fought them, wanted to hold them back. She clasped her hands hard together, sat up straighter than a spear, pinned Barnabas with her eyes. Her voice shook only a little when she said, “My mother said you would act this way if ever we met.”
Her tone cut through his tears. Barnabas set the box aside, feeling a sudden chill. He pulled out a handkerchief, offered it to her. She shook her head, so the half-moons flew. He used it on his own face. His astonishment was giving way to a fear he could not name.
“Father,” she said in an accusatory tone. “You have not asked me my name.”
Barnabas came back to his senses. “I am sorry,” he said. “It’s just that you seem more prepared than I for our meeting.” He realized how thin that sounded, and felt new shame added to his existing accrual of debt in that emotion.
With a small twist of her beautiful head, she said, “I am called Afsana.”
“Afsana,” murmured Barnabas. “Beautiful.”
“My mother hoped you would like it, having to choose it on her own,” replied Afsana. “But she did not hope for you to first hear it twenty years after my birth.”
Barnabas bowed his head. To this, he had no answer. Ten thousand questions flooded his mind, and as many answers for questions he assumed she would have of him, but he dared not ask his questions under the fierceness of her gaze, and she asked him nothing. They sat in silence for some time, with the sandalwood box between them like a challenge or admonition. Finally he said, “Where is your mother?”
Afsana could not hold back her tears any longer. She struggled to keep her body erect. Barnabas could not speak to comfort her. After a while, Afsana said, “My mother — Rehana — died five years ago, when I was fifteen years old. May Allah have mercy on her soul.”
Barnabas clung to the bench, as the garden whirled around him. He tried to focus on the carnations beside the bench, looking for land in a storm, but they were hard to see in the darkness. He wanted to beg forgiveness but could not find words that might encompass his guilt, much less expiate it. All those years in the office on Mincing Lane he had imagined reconciling with Rehana, he duly apologetic, she forgiving him after understandable first words of anger. Now he understood how shallow those maunderings were. Rehana’s anger, her rejection even, would have
been preferable to the finality and lack of recourse now available. He felt the nullity of cowardice blossom within him. He tasted the thin, sour ullage of the betrayal he had committed.
Looking at his daughter, Barnabas realized that Afsana had imagined this scene for years and knew there would be little he could say to still an anger built throughout a lifetime. He looked down at the palempore vest, with its glorious tree of life design, which had seemed so appropriate an hour ago, and cursed himself.
Afsana stood up and said, “My mother loved you to the end. She forgave you.” She said no more but looked at him with her dark eyes, and then turned and walked down the path leading to a door opposite the one through which Barnabas had entered.
Barnabas sat a long time on the bench with a ghost’s forgiveness and his daughter’s anger in his head. All he smelled, in the entire perfumed winter garden, was sandalwood. He did not leave until the sun had set completely.
Sally, Tom, and Fraulein Reimer had gone to visit Reglum in the military hospital while Barnabas had spoken with the Queen. The fraulein had insisted. In the hospital corridor, they met Dorentius Bunce, who had just been in to visit.
Dorentius smiled at them and said, “Reglum is well enough to challenge my citation of the paroemiographer Tassea Wamminax. He is wrong, of course, but then Oxonians so often are.”
Reglum smiled when Isaak came bounding into the room. “Our own tes muddry,” he said, wincing as he reached forward. “We could have used you against the Wurm!”
Sally cried out to see Reglum, both for joy at his lively demeanour and in pain at the sight of his bandages. “Oh Reglum,” she said but did not get much beyond that for a minute. She looked at his strong brown hand on the shining white linen, and at his fine nose, his hair (which she noticed had been combed very recently, as if Reglum had been expecting the visit), and she thought of the heroines in Fanny Burney’s novels, before she stopped herself by introducing Tom.
Reglum used his free hand to shake the hand Tom stretched out.
How alike, Reglum thought. Same quick eye, same cheekbones.
Dashing chap, Tom thought. Would make a fine brother-in-law. But wait, there’s that other fellow, the one on the East Indiaman, what’s his name again? James Kidlington, I think. Hold on, Kidlington is a thief who has been transported to Australia, so maybe I am to have a Yountish brother-in-law after all!
Fraulein Reimer stood silently until Reglum waved her forward. The fraulein said, “Kumsa-majirra’a-sasal. I am pained to give pain, and I beg your forgiveness.”
Reglum said in a grave voice, “Take comfort. My wound will heal but your sense of guilt will only fester if you do not remove it now. Please, do not feel guilt over your action, I beg you. Quite the contrary — you saved my life, and those of Sally and Tom, besides others.”
The fraulein bowed and said, “Sehr danke, mein Herr.”
“So, you see, I will be fine,” repeated Reglum. “Let us talk of other things, something happier. Theatre, for instance: I understand that you, Tom, are particularly fond of the stage. Thus, as soon as I am able, I propose that you, Sally, and I visit the Palliatum to see something. They are always doing farces and burlesques: you will understand without grasping all the Yountish — and, by now, Sally can almost translate better than I can!”
So, while Fraulein Reimer sat in a corner doing needlepoint, the three young people discussed theatre: whether there was a Yountish equivalent to Missus Siddons, whether Sisso-e-Haied or Pedrench Lorimate matched Marlowe and Shakespeare. Reglum told Tom and Sally about the pageants held at the kjorraw ceremonies during the solstices. They agreed to translate and stage Buskirk’s “Hero of the Hills” for one of the dinner-entertainments held by the Marines in the spring. They agreed that Barnabas would make the best Playdermon, the protagonist of the piece.
Reglum grew serious. “The events at the Temple . . .”
Sally walked to him, and put her hand on his good shoulder for a moment, saying, “Later, another time. We must make plans, but they can wait until you are better, Lieutenant Bammary.”
“What better time to make plans than when I am bed-bound?” protested Reglum, but he laughed.
Sally said, “I brought you two bound volumes of the latest Edinburgh Review. When you have finished them both, we will come back to visit, but not before.”
“I can read with exceptional speed, especially when need drives me,” answered Reglum.
Sally blushed a little, collected Isaak, and said her goodbye.
Looking as far removed from Playdermon as possible, Barnabas that evening said to Tom and Sally, “You have a cousin. Her name is Afsana.”
Sally put her arms around her uncle’s neck, while her mind leaped. Sally turned to Nexius and would not be put off by his evasions. She used Yountish when he pretended his English was insufficient. The Captain Emeritus yielded the story step by step under Sally’s examination.
Rehana had been ashamed and terrified when she learned that she was with child. Nearly three months after Barnabas’s departure, she revealed her plight to her parents. Her father, Adnan, had not said a word at first but went into the garden and had every tree and bush uprooted, every flowerbed ripped out. He threatened to cast her out but her mother, Yasmin, had prevailed upon him not to and, in the end, mother and father gathered Rehana to them. Still, such a violation would bring great shame on their house, most especially if Barnabas did not come back to Bombay. They could not now wait the eighteen months or more it would take for Barnabas to return to London, conclude his business there, and sail back to Bombay: the scandal would be upon them much sooner.
At that point, they turned to their mutual friend, Sitterjee the Parsee, for counsel. Sitterjee, the Yountish agent in Bombay, suggested they travel to Khodja relatives in Oman, away from prying eyes and wagging tongues in Bombay. The hope was to have the child there and reunite with Barnabas in Bombay, where the wedding would take place. A scandal it would be, regardless, having the child born before the wedding, but not the debacle that would ensue should Barnabas not return. Adnan and Yasmin seized on this as the only viable plan and sailed with Rehana to Oman, telling everyone that they were looking after their trading interests and would return in about one year. Rehana gave birth to Afsana in Oman, and awaited word that Barnabas was on his way back to Bombay.
Sally stopped Nexius at this point, and asked, “Why didn’t Adnan and Yasmin send a message to Uncle Barnabas, inform him that he was . . . that he would soon have a child?”
Nexius shifted in his chair, and said, “By the Mother, they wanted to. In fact, they did send such a message, but it was never delivered.”
Barnabas sat up with a strangled cry. Sanford put his arm around his partner’s shoulder.
Nexius continued, “I am truly sorry to have to be the bearer of this news. Please know that I was not part of this. I am a soldier, not one of the politicians. It gives me pain to cause you pain.”
Barnabas asked, “What happened?”
“The Learned Doctors ordered Sitterjee to intercept the message,” said Nexius. “He would not do that, said that was going too far, but the Doctors insisted. I admired old Sitterjee, a man of honour. He still refused. So the Doctors sent one of their own to steal the letter and destroy it.”
“Who? How?”
“A tough ship had arrived in Pash not long before your departure from Bombay back in 1793 by your calendar. The gateway was well north in the Indian Ocean in the 1790s, so the ship was not far from the Malabar Coast, within easy reach of Bombay. When he learned that Rehana bore your child, Sitterjee sent an alarm call on the ansible-box to alert the tough ship.”
“Why?”
“All our agents in Pash knew that the Learned Doctors were interested in those families with the special talent for far-feeling and the longing for places unseen. They had tracked Belladonna Brownlee in Edinburgh, then you, Barnabas, first in London and then in Bombay. Standing instructions to let the Learned Doctors know when one of you has a chil
d.”
Sally raised an eyebrow, and said, “So why the alarm call?”
Nexius said, “Huhn. Sitterjee later said he should not have sent it as an alarm, but at the time he was worried that Adnan might banish his daughter or that Rehana in desperation might . . . might commit suicide. Not like hatmoi. Here in Yount or there in Pash, the Mother can find you. Or the Father, if you wish. But suicide, the loss of both mother and child, that thought frightened Sitterjee.”
It was a while before Nexius resumed the story:
“Once the call went out to the tough ship, it could not be taken back, no matter how much Sitterjee might regret it.”
Like my scream that night in Cape Town, thought Sally.
“The tough ship brought the Doctors, who overpowered Sitterjee and his second thoughts.”
Sally said, “That’s the how and the why, Nexius, but not the who.”
Nexius said, “You have met him. Orgunonno Loositage. Of course, he wasn’t Arch-Bishop back then.”
“Oh, horrible, horrible, horrible,” said Sally.
Nexius spread his scarred brown hands in front of him and said, “Rehana thought the message had been sent. All she received from London was a notice, sent by Barnabas’s uncle via the firm of Muir, Graham, & Finlay, that Barnabas would not be returning to Bombay.”
Rehana did nearly commit suicide upon that news but stayed her hand for the love of her beautiful daughter. Rehana raised Afsana in Oman; Adnan gave control of his Bombay business to his brother, Mohsin, and stayed with his daughter and granddaughter. Afsana, extraordinarily intelligent, was considered a seer by the time she was ten. By the time she was thirteen, the local religious figures saw her as a danger, possibly a djinn. Her grandparents and Rehana decided to return to Bombay, where religious attitudes were more flexible.
The Choir Boats Page 28
