A Moment Comes

by Jennifer Bradbury

  Manvir starts to pull away.

  “Son—” Papaji grabs for his hand.

  “Take Anu back to the Britisher’s house,” Manvir demands. He has never spoken to Papaji this way.

  “Son,” my father repeats, this time a warning in his voice.

  “It will be safer there for her,” Manvir explains, his voice softer. “Behind the walls, she is safer. We know what is happening to girls all over the Punjab. We cannot protect her here until the borders are closed. Until every Muslim is shut away on the other side.”

  “No!” I say, my own tears starting to fall. They will not need me much longer. The family will leave as soon as the work is done. “Don’t send me back,” I say. “Not now.”

  I look at Biji, whose eyes are clamped tight, like when she has one of her headaches, and she tries to blink away the light, tries to turn day into night to ease the pain. She will not take part in the argument between my father and her son.

  Manvir is resolved. “There is no need for you at home,” he says, “particularly now. And Uncle’s money is no doubt gone with him. The little you earn is even more important—”

  Papaji looks at my brother as if he is a stranger. “How do you speak so?” He tilts his head to the side, face ashen. “Our blood is spilled upon a rail bed, and you talk of money?”

  “I talk of living!” Manvir shouts. “And living is both the best revenge and the best way to honor those who are gone!”

  I take a deep breath, shudder, and realize that he is right. But I also know that there is the hint of more than this kind of revenge on his mind.

  “Anu will return to that house. She will stay as long as they will allow her to. Until it is safe,” Manvir repeats.

  Father doesn’t even protest this time.

  “Manvir . . . ,” I begin. I want to tell him about Tariq. About his stares. But what would I say? What harm has he really done me? And what harm could he do in that place, of all places? Biji and Papaji have enough to worry about, enough heartbreak to mend without me giving them more to fear. So I don’t tell.

  “Take her back,” my brother repeats, edging away. Papaji lunges for him again.

  “Where are you going?” he asks.

  Manvir hesitates, his voice is even, factual, and it chills me to hear him. “Our people have been slaughtered. And now we must avenge them.”

  Suddenly I think of my cousins. Little girls. Half my age, Biji said. Perhaps they were excited to ride the train on this journey, as I was excited the day I rode in the car. It makes my insides twist and roll to think what might have happened to them on the line to Amritsar, only a hundred miles or so from the home they left behind.

  When I think of them, part of me does want to send Manvir out to avenge our people.

  But then another image breaks in. The sight of all those Sikh men raiding the market that day across from the Darnsleys’ house. Their kirpans raised. Those were our people too. Our people who slaughtered merchants. Robbed stalls. I know the old men in the gurdwara—the ones who loosen the belts that hold their ornamental kirpans when they sit down to eat langar—they like to go on about the proud tradition of the Sikh to defend the defenseless.

  But what happened in the market, was that defending someone? Is what Manvir means to do now defending anyone?

  I study my brother again. His face is empty, like the engraving of the British king on a half-rupee coin—expressionless, unmovable. But there is something in his eyes.

  Fire.

  And I think I can almost hear his mind moving. Not just moving but planning.

  Biji’s voice breaks in, steadier than I expect. “But when will it be safe? When will it stop? Why will it end when there are borders to separate us? Why?”

  And even Manvir, who seems to have all the answers today, has no answer for this. Instead, he turns and joins the army of men pouring into the street.

  CHAPTER 19

  * * *

  MARGARET

  I’ve been at the harmonium now for over an hour, my legs growing stiff from sitting cross-legged for so long. I’ve set it up in front of the window to try and catch a bit of the breeze as I play. My left hand works the bellows while my right hand climbs up and down the keys. The notes may be Chopin’s, but the sound is anything but. Anu told me that the harmonium is used in her temple, and I can imagine it right at home in a worship service. There’s something even more meditative about it than the piano, the way the notes slide into each other, the steadiness of the sound.

  It certainly helps me think.

  I’m tired of trying to translate the sheet music I brought with me to the harmonium. It’s more fun to just play the tunes I remember, to adapt them by ear. For the last half hour I’ve been trying to piece the melody to “But Not for Me” from that Judy Garland picture I saw last summer. I keep playing the same phrase over and over, but I’m not getting much closer.

  I don’t mind. It passes the time.

  Nearly a month has passed since the riots in the market across the street. The violence ebbs and flows at random, like the sudden downpours of rain that come nearly every day now. But they are brief, the relief from the heat fleeting, as if the real monsoon is still waiting for something.

  Father and his colleagues have been sending frenzied telegrams, shouting into telephones riddled by terrible connections. And as near as I can tell, it’s the same elsewhere as it is here. Not in the south, mind you. The south of India might be a different planet. But all over Punjab, and in the east, near Calcutta where East Pakistan will be born, things are the same.

  The boundaries are nearly done. I’ve seen the lines on Father’s maps, watched them shift over the last few days, studied the lines that have been rubbed out, the ghostly marks still there like fading scars as new lines are drawn.

  Father and the other cartographers and civil servants have been hurrying. No one wants to wait to find out how long it will take for the people to tire of attacking one another, before they come after the remainder of those who’ve been withholding their independence all these years.

  Despite my brainstorm about going to an orphanage, Mother has now abandoned her schemes to improve me through social activism. Angry mobs scare her as much as the threat of cholera, and these riots hit a nerve with her. She’d get this way at home, too, when the bombs fell. They could hit the other side of London and she’d be fine, but when they were close, she’d keep us bound up in the house for days. Apparently she’d have me alive and soiled rather than dead and redeemed. That’s something, I suppose.

  But I still do what I can. She’s not so scared that she’s banned me from the garden, which means I can still sneak out to leave my little presents for the boy. The other afternoon he waved and bowed to me from the rubbish heap. And one morning I found a beautiful little bouquet of flowers, shaped a bit like daisies but a screaming shade of pink, in the same spot where I’d left a little pot of cooked rice and chicken the night before. I put them in water but they wilted inside the house before the day was out.

  Anu hasn’t left the house lately, not even for her Sunday afternoons off. These days her family comes here, standing at the gate with her, or picnicking in a corner of the garden for a while before parting again.

  But even when they visit, there is a sadness about her that troubles me. I’ve heard Mother and Daddy whisper that she’s had some family tragedy. I overheard them talking about it a week or two ago, but when I walked in and asked what they meant, Mother got quiet and Daddy just said they were talking about what a pity it was Anu had that scar on her face.

  I tried asking Anu myself what was wrong, why she didn’t go home at the weekend anymore. She pretended not to understand my question, though I’m sure she did. She just didn’t want to tell me.

  I didn’t push the matter. I was worried about her, but I was dead distracted, too.

  With Tariq. My hands fall still for half a second. Then I break into the second act of Tristan und Isolde. Wagner’s perfect on the harmonium, all those
tritones and the unfinished cadences. They sound even more romantic, even more longing on this thing.

  Oh, Tariq. When I think of him, picture his face, I get all woozy and fluttery inside—as I used to when I thought about Alec. He’s so gorgeous. And so tragically serious all the time. Like Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre, only without all the money or the shouting or the bossing me around, the way Edward did with poor Jane.

  But also like he can’t quite figure out what to say to me.

  I bungle the third phrase completely, but I keep playing.

  We have our secrets, Tariq and I. I’ve taken to edging nearer the house when I go out to have a cigarette, just so I might see him as he comes and goes on his errands for Daddy. Just so he has a chance to see me smoking the Luckies he gave me. They still haven’t run out. A couple of times a week, I’ll find one or two new ones.

  And then there’s the book.

  That book.

  I found it right after he and Daddy left for the north. Robert Browning. It made me blush, to read just the cover. Men and Women. Alec never would have bothered with poems.

  I play a little louder, give up the bellows for a second to tinker with the stops in the middle to see if I can pull a little more soul out of the instrument.

  I knew Browning from school, of course. And the first poem in there was a torcher, for certain. At least the title was. “Love Among the Ruins.” Even though the ruins in the poem were likely in Italy or some other place, I couldn’t help thinking it wasn’t a bad description for what India was crumbling into.

  It spooked me, honestly, how bold a declaration it seemed.

  But then the rest of the ones in there were confusing. Frustrated artists, dark towers, mad-scientist Arab doctors, and more. I read them all, poring over them, wondering as I read each one what he’d meant in giving them to me.

  I was all set to ask him about it when he came back. And then I surprised him and Anu in the hall.

  There was something in the air that afternoon. A charge. Like a bomb about to go off.

  I’m playing too fast. I rein the tempo back in.

  Since that day, he’s gone out of his way to be kind to me. Almost bashful. Before, he ducked in and out of my father’s office, always eager to return to his side, completing whatever errand Daddy assigned him as quickly as possible. But now—even as Daddy’s work reaches fever pitch—he lingers. Takes his sweet time in the corridors, or in the courtyard, and often it feels he is looking for me.

  But not always. His eyes still pull toward Anu. But then, everyone’s do. . . .

  And after all, it’s not her he’s giving presents to.

  But still.

  It’s funny, all this. The way I’m holding back.

  Being careful.

  Wary.

  This feels different than it did with Alec.

  I botch the trill, go back and do it again.

  Maybe I’m just older.

  Wiser.

  I didn’t worry about scandal before, or second-guess myself.

  Bells, falling for a boy was loads more fun when I wasn’t so barking suspicious.

  Because I am, I realize. Falling. For him. And how could I not? Wise or not, careful or not, he’s something . . . something worth thinking about.

  I slide from Wagner into a bit of “April in Paris.” I play it nearly all the way through before a noise behind me shakes me out of my trance.

  Tariq is standing there, looking caught out. He’s about to put something on the small table by the door, but he withdraws his hand, holding it up to his chest quickly, gives that little bow. He’s wearing the same sort of outfit he always does, the long kurta, this one in sort of a pearly gray, over the pants that taper and gather at his calves and ankles.

  This is the first time I’ve caught him in the act of delivering one of his little gifts. He’s getting bolder. Finally.

  “So sorry to bother you,” he says, smiling. It’s a nervous smile, but still a cracking good one. His hair is longer, curling more at his ears and his temple. It suits him. I wonder if my own hair is as frizzy as it usually is by this time of the afternoon.

  “It’s all right,” I say, twisting around and folding my knees together, sitting up a little taller.

  He swallows. “You play very well.” He jogs his head to the side, in that way they do here. I still don’t know what the gesture means, but he seems sincere.

  “I’m no great shakes,” I say.

  “The music you play is very beautiful,” he speaks slowly, clearly, tamping down his accent.

  I smile. “I wish I knew some of the local things.” I fiddle with the stops. Why am I so nervous? “I’ve even tried to find some things on the wireless.” I point toward Father’s office where the radio is. “But I can’t seem—”

  “There is no harmonium on the radio,” Tariq breaks in. “It is against the law to broadcast it.”

  “Against the law? How can you outlaw an instrument?”

  “A few years ago all the people with the Quit India movement worried that the harmonium was too Western. It was brought here by . . . by . . . ” He pauses, rolls his hand in the air, searching for the right word. After a tic he snaps his fingers. “By the missionaries a century ago.”

  I look down at the instrument. “Too Western?” I repeat, incredulous that the very thing that seems like the voice of this place had been brought here by Europeans.

  “The ban is only on the radio, Miss,” Tariq says reassuringly. “And no one takes it too much to heart. The harmonium is too common to truly forbid.”

  “Well,” I say, fiddling with the stops on the front of mine, eyeing the pearly elephants inlaid on the red lacquer. It looks a far cry from what a missionary might have hauled over from the continent, and I wonder how long it took this thing to evolve into its present form.

  I hear Father cough loudly in the next room. Tariq starts, as if remembering himself. “I have dispatches,” he says, patting the satchel he wears over his shoulder. “Excuse me?”

  I shrug. “Cheers.”

  He nods back. “Cheers,” he repeats, placing the little object in his hand on the table by my door. He bolts out of the room and down the stairs.

  I’m desperate to see what he’s left me this time, but I don’t let myself rush there. Instead, I turn back around, floating in the wake of the longest bit of a waffle we’ve exchanged yet. Granted, the history of the harmonium wasn’t the most romantic of topics, but I don’t care. I slip back into “April in Paris” and try not to watch the window—I don’t want him to think I’m too keen.

  But I can’t help it. I can’t stop peeking out . . . looking for him in the courtyard below. My fingers miss the eighth note when I see Tariq wheeling his bicycle to the front gate, glancing over his shoulder, and waving up to me. I look down just in time to avoid him catching me watching, but I’m grinning like a fool as I play the next measure without giving in to the need to know if he’s still looking up at me. When I finally glance back, there is Anu rounding the corner of the house, her arms laden with a basket full of wet laundry.

  Tariq watches her for a tic before he pushes down hard on the pedal, launching himself out into the street and the shadows of the afternoon sun. But only for a moment. Good.

  I abandon the song, the harmonium wheezing into silence as Tariq disappears into the street. On the table next to the door is the bit of waxed paper he left. I pick it up, unwrap it, and find a small square of chocolate, the first I’ve seen since we arrived in India. I inhale the scent of it and smile. Chocolate was still hard to come by even at home when we left. I have no idea how he got this, here of all places. It’s already starting to go a bit runny at the edges, the lump softening in the heat, so I pop it into my mouth whole. I don’t know if it’s because it’s been so long since I had any or if it really is made differently, but it doesn’t taste like any chocolate I’ve ever had. A bit saltier, but smoother, too. It melts on my tongue too quickly, leaves me wishing for more.

  The flavor l
ingers in my mouth as I head over to Father’s study. He’s leaning back in his desk chair, eyes shut, rocking slowly back and forth, the spring squealing pitifully with each bounce. The brass fan hums at his feet, tilted up, but his hair stays plastered to his forehead by the heat. The open collar of his shirt flaps in the breeze.

  He looks older than he did two months ago when I arrived. He was thinner then, but now he looks knackered. The last ten days or so, with the riots and the hurried work to complete the maps, have taken their toll.

  My foot squeaks on the polished tile.

  “Meggie.” He doesn’t open his eyes.

  “How did you—”

  “You have a way of appearing as soon as I send the boy away,” he says, now looking at me with a smile.

  I blush, collapse in the chair, hope he chalks it up to the heat. “I find it so dull,” I confess. “If only Mummy had let us go see about the orphans.”

  “Things didn’t work out the way your mother anticipated,” he concedes. “Though they rarely do,” he adds, smiling more to himself than to me. “But not to worry, we’ll be going home soon.”

  I sit up. “How soon?”

  He smirks. “I’ve just sent Tariq to the courier. He’ll hand off my final reports and they’ll go to Radcliffe. But they’re a formality, really. The borders have already been decided. Independence in Pakistan comes tomorrow, here in India on the fifteenth. Then Mountbatten will publish the boundary a day or two after that.”

  “We’re leaving,” I say quietly. When I got here, I couldn’t wait to go home, but now . . . now. I’ve barely even seen India, barely seen what it’s really like. Apart from that day in the market with Anu, our one trip to the camps, and what I’ve been able to see from inside this house, I haven’t seen anything.

  But that’s not what really bothers me about leaving. I’m thinking that it seems far too soon to go now that Tariq is warming up to me.