by Janet Sola
“This lady is Salena.”
“Namaste, Salena-ji. My name is Elena. Mera nama Elena hai.” When the words come out of my mouth, I feel as if finally I am becoming a little bit Indian. It’s a lovely feeling.
Salena tilts her head and looks me over from head to toe. Suddenly I feel self-conscious.
“Lakshmi.” She smiles and taps her gold tooth.
“She says you are the goddess of fortune.”
“Oh. I like that. I would like to be the goddess of fortune,” I say, playing along. “Good fortune or bad fortune?”
“Fortune. Goddess of wealth.” He looks at me with a sly smile.
“I wish. But she’s wrong, I’m afraid. You know I’m not wealthy, Sahil. Not really.”
“Wealthy, not wealthy, it does not matter,” Sahil says as we follow Salena on the pathway through the maze of huts. “This woman has no money, but she is happy. We can live here and be happy. We will have one child and you will write your writing and I will paint my pictures.”
“And we will grow our own vegetables to eat and milk a goat for our cheese,” I add. “For money, we will have a rupee tree.” I bat my eyes at him, but he looks quite serious when he replies.
“Do not worry about rupees. I am now a shop owner.”
“But what about your art?”
“I can be many things,” he says with a touch of irritation in this voice. Again, I catch myself at being the schoolteacher. If I love this man, I must trust him. To let him become who he wants to become. I don’t need to constantly impose my values on him. All I really need to do is to surrender to this moment with him, the moment that is now flowing forward so gracefully.
Salena glances at me with her bright eyes. As we weave our way through the village, I want to reach out and touch the baked clay walls, Salena’s wrinkled face, Sahil’s beard-stubbled cheek and feathery eyelashes. I settle for bending over and stroking the fur of a bleating baby goat. We reach a hut that is a little larger than the others and covered in a leaf pattern that looks freshly drawn in indigo ink. When I look more closely, I see the leaves are really the wings of birds connected to each other at the tips. “Sundara. Beautiful.”
“This is house of Salena’s uncle. We take tea here.”
A low opening serves as a door. We have to bend to go through it. Inside the air is cool, infused with the smell of the dry earth and spices. A shaft of light streams through an opening in the ceiling, softly illuminating the room. The hard-packed floors are swept bare, shelves hold red clay pots and dishes, an old kettle hovers over the hearth. Salena beckons to us to sit down on a low bench, then busies herself making tea.
From behind a curtain comes a low hum, broken by an occasional wheeze. I wonder if this is Salena’s uncle. Sahil, who can never sit still for a moment, follows Salena around and chats with her as she works. She pours, and he brings me a small clay cup and puts it in my hands. She cocks her head and looks at him with a puzzled expression on her face. I’m guessing it’s in wonder that a man would do so simple a thing as bring tea to a woman. But Sahil is no ordinary man. Now I’m convinced of that more than ever.
Salena disappears behind the curtain and soon I hear voices, hers a high pitched cascade of syllables, her uncle’s a cracked murmuring. A few minutes later, she emerges with an old tree trunk of a man, tall and thin and weathered, leaning on her. His full length lungi is tucked at his waist, his white hair hangs in long wisps on his yellowing shirt. He waves one hand out in front of him, feeling the air as if he were blind. Sahil rushes across the room to help. Together, he and Salena lower the man onto a cushion on the floor, where he takes a cross-legged pose and leans his back against the wall.
His features are sculpted, almost patrician, a narrow high-bridged nose, a high forehead, thin lips, palish skin. He blinks several times then narrows his eyes as if he’s trying to focus—not on anything in the room, but on something he has forgotten, something important. Then his gaze settles on Sahil.
“You remember me,” Sahil says. The old man doesn’t react. Sahil speaks in a louder voice. “Sir, you do remember me? When I am a small boy, sixteen years old, I am your student. You are good teacher, I am a bad student.”
The old man squints at him and murmurs a reply in Hindi. “He asks if I was the boy who liked to play tricks and paint on the walls.” He shrugs and smiles, then comes over and stands beside me. “This is the person we seek, the master painter,” he whispers. A moment passes before I can take in this information. When I do my skin tingles as if cold water were being splashed on it. I can hardly believe it.
“Are you serious? Was this your surprise?” Sahil inclines his head, a little bow to me. “I do not tell you because I do not want to disappoint you. While you are writing, I walk and talk to many country people. They tell me an old man who paints pictures lives in one village. This village. But I am not sure till I see him. Now I am sure.”
He turns to the painter again. “This is my friend from America. Miss Elena.”
“Namaste,” I say. I rise from my bench and fold my hands and bow.
The old man nods his head. I’m not sure what to expect after such a long time. The master painter was vague in my imagination, but a genius. I remember what Sahil said about him, he was one of the beautiful hunters of the world, possessed of a spirit that sought out new realms of consciousness. As creatures in the wild use all their senses to survive, often in elegant and amazing ways, so artists use their senses to create. And so we evolve. Perhaps he was that beautiful hunter at one time. Perhaps he still is, only that part of him is hidden.
I wait. He raises his palm and brings it down, a gesture I interpret as telling me to sit. From a clay bowl at his side, he picks up a wad of red leaves and stuffs it into his mouth. He chews for quite a long time. Eventually he spits a hunk of red mulch into a nearby pot.
“Betel,” Sahil explains under his breath. I’ve heard of it. It’s used like tobacco, but its acids eat away enamel. When the old man finally smiles, he reveals red-stained stumps where teeth should be.
“Miss Elena loves your painting very much,” Sahil tells him. In response, he mumbles something to Sahil, who nods and turns to me. “He says he is old. He forgets English. But this is not a problem. I speak to him for you.”
“Can you describe my lost painting to him? You remember. The shrouded figure under the tree, the smoking fire, the lion reclining peacefully. The bare hills in the background. Can you tell him what happened to it, how it disappeared?”
“Yes. I do this.”
Sahil speaks in Hindi and the old man listens, cupping his ear with his hand. But instead of replying, he continues chewing and spitting.
“Did he hear you?”
“Be patient Elena,” he admonishes me. “You do not understand India.”
Finally the old man stops chewing long enough to speak. Sahil translates. “Yes, he says he knows this painting. It is very special. It takes him a long time to make this painting. He says it is sad you have lost it.”
“What?” I’m taken aback. I try to picture that day when the crowd pressed in on me. I lower my voice when I answer him. “I don’t think I lost it. It was taken from me.”
“I tell him,” Sahil says and translates. The old man nods but says nothing. Except for the sounds of the slurping of tea, and intermittent wheezes and spitting, silence prevails. To break it I ask if it is possible to see some of his other paintings. There is more talk back and forth. “They are now in some other place, he tells me. He is very old now so he no longer paints so much.”
I can’t help but be disappointed. After all this time, he seems to be just a lungi-clad old man, like any other in this country, and a rather addled one at that. He’s getting a far off look in his eyes as if he is slipping off. But suddenly he reaches out to the bowl, revives himself with another wad of betel, and another round of chewing and spitting. He then looks directly at me, although his eyes seem so weak I wonder if he can really see me. He makes another utterance.
This time his voice seems to come up from someplace deep within him that he finds only with a great effort.
Finally Sahil turns to me again. “He says you have lost the painting.”
I don’t want to be argumentative by repeating that I do not believe I lost it, so I remain silent.
“He said you have lost it so that you can seek it.”
“Oh.” I take a deep breath and hold it, so I can absorb this. When I let it out, it’s as if a drop of clear water has landed on my forehead. If I had not lost the painting, I would not have taken the path that has led me to this place right here, right now in this room with the master painter and Sahil at my side. What he said is true in some way I don’t entirely understand yet. I have more questions, so many questions, but the old man is suddenly wheezing rhythmically and his head has fallen to the side.
“He has gone to sleep,” Sahil says. “He is very old and tired. He must rest. We speak with him in the morning.”
“In the morning? But we won’t be here.”
“It is not a problem. We stay the night here.”
“But I don’t have my things.”
“What things?”
“My nightgown for one thing. My toothbrush, for another thing.”
Sahil waggles his head. “Not a problem. For one night only. Sleep in your clothes. Use a twig and water for your teeth.” Sahil speaks to Salena. She nods. The two of them cart the old man, the long-lost master painter, back to his room. When she returns she speaks to Sahil. “Salena has another surprise for you,” he says.
Over the next hour, to my delight, Salena paints an exquisite design on the palms of my hands. Mehndi, she calls it. Working from my wrists to my fingertips, she swirls and squeezes a cone of henna dye as easily as my mother decorated a cake. Sahil has brought his seed and pebble game with him, and plays it with Salena as I wait for my hands to dry. When I wash them in a bowl of water, a deep red tattoo appears, a design that is like the one on the outside of the clay hut we’re in, birds and leaves that become each other, swirls and lacy patterns to the tips of my fingers. “Sundara. You are also the master artist,” I tell her. When Sahil translates for me, she waggles her head and laughs. Then she leads us back outside and along the village path to another dwelling. Blue waves and stylized fish figures decorate its entrance. “No one lives here now,” Sahil tells me. “It is for you.”
“For me? You want me to stay alone?”
“I visit until it is time for sleeping,” he says. “This is to be proper. We are very proper in Rajasthan,” he says with an expression so serious I know he’s joking.
At nightfall, a chill has set in. I breathe into my tattooed palms, warming them. My orange scarf is now a shawl I’ve wrapped around my shoulders. Sahil returns with some sticks he has gathered from the village woodpile, dry branches with dead leaves still attached, and starts to build a fire.
“I used to know how to do that,” I say, “when I was a girl scout.”
“What is this word scout?” I crouch near him as he stacks the sticks into a tent shape in the hearth.
“Let’s see. What is scout? Someone who ventures forth into the unknown first to see what is there so she can report back to the others.”
He is quiet for a moment. “I like this. Maybe I do this when I dive into the lake without a bottom. I can see if there is a big fish down there or a maybe a monster and I can report back.”
“Such talent as a story teller, Sahil,” I say, laughing.
“I have a better idea,” he says. “Maybe we are both scouts. We do not know what is waiting, but we will find out if we are not afraid.”
I reach out and take his hand. “I’m not afraid,” I say.
The fire catches and crackles. There is something I love about our conversations. They make me think about things like language that is part of us, yet something else too. Something that has an independent existence, almost as a living thing, a companion. I wonder if love is like that. It rises up within us, part of us but something else as well, something we want to reach out and touch.
The fire releases the aroma of dry wood into the room. I ladle water from a bucket into a kettle. When it’s boiling I pour it over herbs into clay cups for more tea. So much of the world can be made from clay—dishes, cups, even houses—I think, then say out loud to Sahil. He leans over to whisper inches from my ear. “Don’t forget what I say before. One child.”
He keeps bringing this up. At first I dismissed it, but now—with a little shock—it occurs to me that my period is late. I didn’t think much of it, because for the last couple of years, every so often that happened. What if . . . that would be alarming . . . and yet . . . . I take my tea to a stool and watch as Sahil feeds and stirs the fire. I take a deep drink. Maybe that’s what he was seeing in my glow. I have this blissful feeling, as if the tea I am drinking is turning to honey in my blood. A vision comes to me: Sahil and me with a beautiful child, a late child, a child I did not even know I wanted. The child does not look like me in spite of what he said. She has Sahil’s eyes, big and dark and luminous and joyous. And his playful, sometimes mischievous spirit. Sahil is chasing her around a meadow, making her laugh, as I look on. I am sitting on a stone wall, pen in hand, writing a book about all the animals of India, the cows, and the donkeys and camels, the turtles and the storks and the peacocks and especially the lions and tigers as there are so few of them left. The book is for our child.
Salena appears in the doorway. The spell is broken. She has come back with supplies: blankets for the bed, which is really just a pad on some planks, a bowlful of vegetables, carrots and potatoes. I murmur a namaste to her. “For curry,” Sahil says. He tells me he will show me how to blend the spices. He takes a stone bowl with a pestle from its place on the shelf, and opens containers of spices, fiery red, earth yellow, the colors of warmth, the eye of the tiger, sun on water.
After we cook and eat our meal, he tells me he will sleep elsewhere and return in the morning. “Proper,” he says, and kisses me on the nose before he leaves. As I drift off to sleep on the cot I think about him, his grace and patience in the way he brought me tea, planned this outing, his attention to every small thing, the way he enjoys making people smile, and his vision for his future. Is it our future? Yes, perhaps this is what the master painter meant, to lose something so you can find it. Sahil would be a good father. In this moment, hovering at the edge of dreams, it almost seems like a possibility.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
A Wild Ride
In the morning I brush myself off, run my hennaed fingers through my hair, and make my way to Salena’s hut. She grins at me from her crouch by the open fire. Sahil is there too. He slept on a mat outside he tells me, under the stars, and he hands me a twig, a young and supple one, with the leaves torn off. “For your teeth.” I take a cup of fresh water and go outside the hut and use it, feeling a little silly, hoping no one will walk by. Still, it works quite well. I use the rest of the water to wash my face and feel refreshed.
When I return, I ask Sahil to tell Salena I would like to help. She nods when he translates. “She needs water for washing and cooking,” he says. “The village well is low. You can get this water from the lake.” When he sees my puzzlement he adds, “We boil it.” Salena hands me a copper pot shaped like a slightly flattened globe. I have no idea how I’ll carry it when it’s filled with water.
“Won’t you come with me?” I ask Sahil.
“I stay here to help Salena. Here, this is better for you.” He takes away the copper pot and replaces it with a sturdy tin pail with a handle. I’m a little annoyed that he doesn’t offer to help, but I don't want to spoil our morning by being a bad sport. The path to the lake winds back through the village, across the road, and then down an embankment, perhaps a quarter-mile trip. Near the road, I almost trip over the baby goat, but this time the mother is here, registering her displeasure with a throaty baaaah. When I reach the edge of the lake, a half dozen women are filling their pots, chattering like so
ngbirds, their children playing by pouring water on each other. A few other women are beating their laundry on flat rocks in shallow water nearby, the familiar thwack refrain filling the air. The morning sun catches the women’s white teeth and dark eyes half-hidden under their veils of many colors. They regard me with a mixture of amusement and curiosity.
“I am a friend of Salena.” I smile and hold my palms together. They seem to understand this and nod. How many children do I have? they ask me with gestures, pointing to their own children, then to my stomach. None, I signal by creating a zero with my thumb and forefinger. But maybe one, I think. They make sad expressions. I wonder how old they are, with their sun-cracked skin, their missing teeth. Probably younger than I am.
Do they beckon to me, the women in the water? I’m not sure, but suddenly I’m up to my knees along with them, someone hands me a rope of clothes, and I start pounding. Thwack . . . thwack . . . thwack. What had this sound said to me the first time I heard it? Come out Come out. Now it says Stay here. Stay here. Raising my arms, lowering them, my scarf wrapped around my head to shield my face from the sun, I merge into the rhythm of the task. Time stills. I forget about who I am, where I’m from. One of the children pulls on my dress, and I remember I have to bring water back to Salena.
When I fill my tin pail and struggle to pick it up, the women laugh at me. One of them lifts her own hammered metal container to her head, so easily, so gracefully. She balances it on a kind of fabric wreath. I know that’s a feat quite beyond me. I thank the women, wave to them and start back. I try carrying the pail by switching the handle from one hand to the other, until the pain in my arms and shoulders makes me stop. Then I attempt to carry it with my arms wrapped around it, the weight on my chest, a maneuver so awkward I make it only a few steps. When I reach the road, I’m already exhausted. But I have an idea. Using my orange scarf again, I loop it through the handle of the pail. I lug the pail to a high rock. Then, my back to the pail, one hand holding each end of the scarf, I stand up. Now the pail rests in the small of my back, and the weight is more evenly distributed. I make the rest of the trip relatively comfortably. I wonder, if I lived in a village, if I could find all manner of innovative ways of doing things. What a clever woman this Elena is, they would say. Indeed, Salena and Sahil seem impressed with my contrivance. Salena fingers my scarf, as if noticing it for the first time. “Very bee-yoo-ti-ful,” she says in English.
