Teatime for the Firefly

by Shona Patel

  Halua translated for me. In effect what the elder was saying was that the honorable and highly respected Chotasahib, God be with him, on whose care and protection they all depended, whose bravery was unsurpassed and whose fairness and judgment was acknowledged by all, may the spirits bless and protect him, and may the new memsahib have good health, escape the evil eye and be spared from cholera, influenza, snakebite and malaria, not forgetting rabies, dengue fever and other causes of sickness and death, and may she bear the Chotasahib numerous healthy male children.

  His speech was received with enthusiastic cheers, the equivalent of “bravo” and “encore,” I imagined. The old man was so exhausted when he finished that he broke into a hacking cough, his face turned purple like an eggplant and he sat down abruptly in the dust. The crowd then turned eagerly toward me and waited for a befitting response.

  I thanked them all, and did not know what else to say. Halua relayed back my words in what seemed like an illogically long speech. There were murmurs of approval and nods all around. Then people came forward and to my surprise started laying all kinds of things at my feet: four duck eggs, two guavas, a pumpkin, eggplants, a bunch of green beans, decorative baskets of assorted sizes, bananas, small bags of puffed rice and even a trussed-up, squawking chicken. The gifts kept piling up in lumps and bumps in ever-widening circles until I started feeling like a burdened goddess decked in marigold, rising from a sea of bundles, baskets, squawks and smells.

  I told Halua to thank them all but I could not accept these gifts. I got no further because Halua shook his head and clicked his tongue again. It seemed as though I had almost made my second social blunder of the day.

  “No, no, memsahib, you must take these gifts. It is the custom.”

  Manik had mentioned nothing about gifts in his note. So not knowing what else to do, I thanked them again, which Halua relayed back in yet another elaborate speech. Then I turned and walked back to the house.

  I wearily took off the marigold necklaces and sat in the veranda feeling tired and overwhelmed. I poured myself a cup of tea, which thankfully was still hot. The crowd began to disperse. Two small boys got into a scuffle. A mangy dog yelped when it received a kick. The last person to leave was a very short woman who lurked behind the hibiscus hedge. She had a round face and wore a green sari, wrapped in the regular way like town people. Then she, too, finally turned and left.

  Halua and Kalua went back and forth, ferrying all the gifts into the kitchen.

  I was just pouring my second cup of tea when a man in a khaki uniform sailed up the driveway on a bicycle. He salaamed and handed me a note. It was from Manik.

  Layla,

  We will have a guest for breakfast.

  Please inform kitchen staff.

  I will be home at 8:30.

  M.

  My goodness! The curtness of the note! I was so irked, I just told the man to go without sending a reply. I sat there, fighting tiny ant bites of annoyance. Anyone would think a new husband who had been up all night chasing a man-eating leopard would be running home to spend some private time with his new bride. But oh no. Not Manik Deb. I was obviously not high on his list of priorities.

  Our guest turned out to be an oily Indian government officer wearing a tan-colored safari suit. He had shifty eyes and terrible body odor. Manik introduced him as Mr. Sircar, the District Forest Officer in Mariani.

  Manik’s eyes were bloodshot; he was filthy and unshaved, and looked as if he had spent the night in the bushes, which was probably close to the truth. He excused himself and went inside to clean up while I kept Mr. Sircar company on the veranda. He was the most obnoxious man I had ever met. Mr. Sircar gave me a mind-numbing account of all the important forest-conservation programs he was managing in the state of Assam. He spoke in an imperious, oratorical voice, his eyes glazed over with self-adoration.

  Manik returned looking more human. Breakfast was a tedious affair. Mr. Sircar, having dumped on me his accolades, proceeded to treat me like a sack of potatoes, engaging only Manik in conversation. Why on earth were we entertaining such an odious character? I wondered. I soon found out.

  “So, Mr. Sircar, when do you think I can expect the permit?” Manik asked, spreading marmalade on his toast.

  Mr. Sircar was wolfing down a monstrous omelet, shoveling it into his mouth with two teaspoons.

  “Oh, the permit, you ask, Mr. Deb?” he said, chewing with his mouth open. “I have to use my considerable influence in this matter, you see? Getting a hukum from the government to shoot a leopard is no easy matter these days.”

  “We are talking about a man-eater, Mr. Sircar, not just any leopard. Two attacks in one month. You saw the state of that child in hospital today. We must put this animal down or we will have a labor riot on our hands.”

  “You are talking to a forest expert, Mr. Deb. Wild animals, as you know, will attack when threatened and confronted. One has to prove that this animal is a man-eater first.”

  “So, Mr. Sircar, are you saying this eight-year-old boy threatened and confronted the leopard to provoke the attack?” Manik chewed slowly, his eyes veiled.

  “The permit is difficult to get is all I am saying. If your English people had not gone around shooting animals randomly and recklessly for sport, this would not have been the case. The government has now become very strict. Very strict. Nowadays they want to see proof that the animal is actually a man-eater before they issue the hukum.”

  “So I suppose we should just wait for someone to get killed and eaten, then.” Manik was losing his patience, I could tell.

  “Let me see what I can do for you,” Mr. Sircar said, getting up from the table. He shot Manik a sly look. “Also please see what you can do for me, Mr. Deb, and thank you for the breakfast.” He burped loudly and patted his belly. “I am now fully fed up.”

  Manik gave me a wink behind Mr. Sircar’s back. “So am I, Mr. Sircar, so am I.”

  * * *

  “Bastard!” Manik yelled, slapping down his breakfast napkin on the table. “I hate that scumbag. Always playing hard to get. He is not going to budge an inch till we give him a bottle of Scotch.”

  “Why don’t you just kill the leopard? Why do you need a permit?” I asked.

  “You can kill an animal and claim self-defense, like I was planning to do yesterday. But to track it down in the jungle you need a permit.”

  I was suddenly tired of it all. Manik’s ranting and raving, the oily Mr. Sircar and the whole confusing welcome jamboree. And it was not yet midmorning. And here I was all chaste and waiting with my virginity on a silver platter.

  But Manik had other things on his mind.

  “Mr. McIntyre will kill me if I don’t get that permit,” he muttered. “That leopard will be back in the lines and create havoc all over again.”

  “And you, Manik Deb, as the brave protector of mankind, will leave your wife and run off toting your gun,” I added tartly.

  He quirked an eyebrow. “Oh, we are sizzling a little, are we?”

  “What is this Mai-Baap thing those folks were talking about this morning? Manik, you did not warn me there would be such a big crowd. There must have been close to a hundred people.”

  Manik looked mildly interested. “So, how did the greeting ceremony go?”

  “What is Mai-Baap?”

  He sighed. “Means mother-father. It’s the parental role management has traditionally played in tea administration. The laborers are simple people, trusting like little children. They expect to be taken care of. Fed, clothed, protected from harm. Managers are made to feel omnipotent, invincible. It’s a tall order. But we try not to fail them.”

  “How about playing Mai-Baap to your wife for a change? Did you for a moment think I might have been frightened all alone here in this big bungalow?”

  “You didn’t lose much sleep from what
I can tell. You look refreshed and very lovely. I don’t feel too lovely myself, I tell you.” Manik sighed again. He pushed up his glasses on his forehead and rubbed his eyes. “Layla, please try to understand. We have a crisis. If the laborers start a riot because of the damn leopard, the whole tea garden will come to a standstill. I am expected to take care of this because it’s my job. There is not much I can do about that, can I? As my wife, I expect you to be a little understanding. Besides, it’s not like this all the time, you know.” Then he grinned widely. “Hell, I will now have to bribe my own wife to get my permit!”

  I knew what he was talking about, and I did not think it was funny.

  He pushed back his chair. “I will have to go to the Forest Office in Mariani to get this permit business sorted out. But I will see you at lunchtime.” He wagged a finger.

  “Promise you won’t run off on me now.”

  After Manik went back to work, I spent the rest of the morning unpacking my suitcases and putting away my clothes in the new cupboard.

  A skinny man arrived carrying a small cloth sack of tools. He introduced himself as the factory carpenter. Manik had sent him to assemble my grandmother’s dressing table, which was still lying in its dismantled state, sewn up in burlap, in one corner of the portico. When it was unwrapped, I noticed with relief none of the mirrors had broken. I figured I had had enough bad luck so far. In one of the drawers, I found a small safety pin that must have belonged to my grandmother. I opened and closed it, thinking she, too, had been a new bride once, a stranger in her husband’s home.

  There was a knock on the door. It was Halua come to take the lunch orders. He rattled off the selections. We had a choice of egg curry, chicken curry, chicken cutlet, egg...

  I stopped him halfway. I was quite familiar with the items. They were identical to the night before.

  “Any vegetables?” I asked. “Why don’t you cook the pumpkin and green beans the coolies bought this morning?”

  Halua’s eyes wandered. Chotasahib, he said, detested vegetables. He would not touch them.

  Hmm, I thought grimly to myself. I would need to have a small talk with the Chotasahib about that. Back to the lunch menu—it seemed as if I was stuck with only the cluckable items, so egg curry it was.

  Manik was forty-five minutes late for lunch. When he showed up there was a big ink blotch on his shirt pocket. He threw his mail down on the coffee table. A few envelopes slid off the edge onto the floor.

  “That bloody Sircar!” Manik exploded. “He’s demanding to see the paw prints of the damn leopard. He says he can’t issue the permit otherwise. Paw prints! Like you can tell a man-eater from its paw prints! Then he makes me sign all these government forms—he can’t even explain what they are for. He only gave me the permit after I parted with my one and only bottle of Black Label. Black Label! Talk about casting pearls before swine. That was a wedding gift from Mr. McIntyre. But I didn’t have anything else.”

  I pointed to his chest. “What happened?”

  Manik stared down his shirtfront. “Bloody hell! I was in such a damn hurry to get out of the place, I forgot my pen cap. Anyway, how’s your day going?” he added flatly. He was faraway, and sounded as if he was talking to a hill. Then, seeing Halua at the door, he said, “Ah, I see lunch is served.”

  So there we were again, Mr. and Mrs. Cluck sitting stiffly at two ends of the dining table. This was not at all how I imagined it would be. I wondered what Moon would make of my romantic, newly married life.

  Halfway through lunch Manik said, “There’s something I have to tell you.” He hesitated, studying my face. “You are not going to like this, but I won’t be home tomorrow night.”

  I stared at my plate. It was this other woman, I thought, my heart beating wildly. He was going to tell me about the OP he’d had all along.

  “I have to take down this leopard,” Manik continued. “We can’t waste any time because it will be back. We can’t risk another attack. It’s not going to be easy, so I’ve enlisted Alasdair’s help. He is a crack shot. Never misses. Our plan is to build a machan up a tree. We will stay up on the machan tomorrow night and hopefully shoot the leopard.”

  My relief was so great I actually smiled at my egg curry. Manik could be up all night on a machan—whatever that was—with Alasdair, just as long as he was not roosting with another bird.

  “What’s a machan?” I asked, conversationally.

  “A bamboo platform built up on a tree. About two meters off the ground. We tie a goat to the base of the tree with a metal chain. Shikaris don’t use rope because the leopard will just break it and drag the goat off into the jungle. Powerful, stealthy creatures, leopards are. If the goat is chained, the leopard is forced to eat it under the tree. Usually the animal gets sluggish after the meal and lies down. That’s our best chance of shooting it.”

  “But the leopard could be anywhere in that jungle, and you could be waiting up the wrong tree?”

  “We use trackers,” Manik said. “They are jungle experts, who intimately know animal habits and can identify the path the creature takes through the forest. They study pugmarks along the riverbed, claw scratches on tree trunks and flattened areas of brush where the leopard rests after a meal. Our tracker tells us we are looking for a large male leopard with an injured foot.”

  A leopard became a man-eater only if it was injured or got too old to hunt, Manik explained. Humans were easy prey. Villagers and laborers often strayed near the edge of the forest to gather firewood, and this was when the leopard attacked. Sometimes the animal got very bold and came right into the labor lines to kill cattle or pick up a wandering child or dog. When this happened, the tea-garden management had a serious problem on its hands, like they did now.

  “Our chances are better if we get a noisy goat that bleats loudly to attract the leopard. But the trouble is noisy goats don’t always do their job when they are supposed to.”

  “Poor goat,” I said.

  “Or we could use you,” Manik teased. “Chain you to the tree. Human bait works the best for man-eaters, you know. You bleat loud enough as it is. But the chances are I might pounce on you before the leopard does.”

  That reminded me of our unfinished business. To cover up my nervousness I asked, “Are you going to use the old blunderbuss?”

  Manik laughed. “Not a chance. Mr. McIntyre will lend me his .275 Winchester with five rounds. That’s a good reliable gun.” He studied my face. “Well?”

  “Well, what?” I retorted. “You don’t exactly need my permission for anything, do you?”

  “Layla, I was so worried having to tell you this.”

  “What do you want me to say? I don’t like the thought of you up on a tree all night in the middle of the jungle. What if you fall? This machan thing sounds awfully rickety.”

  “It’s quite sturdy, really. We shikaris use them all the time. The only danger is of falling asleep. You have to keep quiet and remain supervigilant at all times. It can get terribly monotonous. We rely on lots of black coffee and fags. That reminds me—I’m out of fags. Dammit.”

  “There’s a pack in your underwear drawer,” I said absently.

  He peeked around the vase of drooping zinnias and gave me a naughty look. “And what were you doing in my underwear drawer, pray? Next you’ll be wanting to know what’s inside my underwear.”

  I was shocked at his impertinence. My ears burned in my head.

  Manik got up from the table. “Well, let’s not keep you in suspense any longer, dear wife. Come, it’s siesta time.”

  “What?” I exclaimed. “Don’t you have to go back to work?”

  He stretched and yawned. “I go back to work only at three, my darling. Planters sleep between one and three. Napping is the civilized thing to do.”

  “What about Mr. McIntyre?” Manik’s taskmaster boss did not seem the type to
nap, even less likely, to let others nap.

  “What about him? Mr. McIntyre naps. You think I could take off siesta time if he was working? Of course he naps. Mr. McIntyre naps. Mrs. McIntyre naps. Mr. and Mrs. McIntyre nap—very nicely together, I presume. Are you coming?”

  “I don’t sleep in the afternoon,” I said primly, feeling that familiar little coil in the pit of my stomach.

  “Tsk, tsk. What a pity. What will you do, my darling, while your husband gets his beauty rest? Gaze at my underwear? I must say I am completely wiped out.”

  “I’ll read.”

  “Suit yourself.” He shrugged, sounding indifferent. I had expected him to cajole me, maybe even beg, but then without so much as a toodle-di-doo, he headed for the bedroom and shut the door behind him.

  I sat there blinking back my tears. Something was going horribly wrong in my marriage. We were five-day-old newlyweds, on the verge of sexual intimacy, and we were behaving like the two wrong ends of a magnet.

  Opportune moments came and slipped by. The perfect moment had to be seized. Like when you boil sugar to make taffy, there comes a time when the sugar is ready to congeal. The temperature is perfect, the consistency right. Hold off for too long and the taffy turns brittle. It was beginning to happen to our marriage: we were overcooking our emotions. What I was sensing in Manik was impatience, almost boredom. We were becoming strangers.

  All I really had to do now was march into the bedroom, fling off my clothes, get deflowered and be done with it. How long would the whole business take? I wondered. Five minutes, ten minutes at the most? How painful could it be? A tooth extraction without anesthesia. I could handle that. But Manik had not slept all night and had probably passed out by now. It would be awkward. Even hilarious. I could not risk that.

  I sighed and went to the living room to find a book. I picked up War and Peace, still lying open on the ottoman, went back to the veranda and curled up on a chair. The afternoon was droopy and slumberous and the buzz of the bees dulled my mind. Then to my utter disgust, I fell fast asleep, right there, curled up on the chair.