by Mary Finn
That was true. He had taken to calling me “that little peppercorn”, though he was just as generous as before with paper and pens for me, and he would always ask to see what I had been drawing, after my mother stood up from her sofa and stretched her arms. But now these conversations came only after he had carefully turned the painting away from our view.
So, of the three of us who were not Hickeys, I don’t know which one was the most curious on the day of the unveiling. That was what such an event was called, Mr Hickey told me, and he had gone so far as to hang his best black cloak over the painting.
“Patrons. They do like a bit of drama, a fuss,” he said. But I could see he liked the same himself.
We were gathered in the painting room. Miss Hickey had called for lime juice and whisky and cakes with cream but they were to stand ready on the long sideboard until the unveiling ceremony was over. Mr Bristol was twittering like a brain fever bird but my mother held herself serene.
Mr Hickey began a little speech.
“Good afternoon to all of you,” he said, although he had greeted us already.
“You will think that I state the obvious when I say that the subject of my painting,” he bowed to my mother, “is a most beautiful lady. But I have discovered during these past few weeks that she is as delightful in her manner as in her face. That is not always the case.”
I wondered if everyone had noticed that Mr Hickey was finishing his sentences. That in itself was surely a tribute to my mother.
“I have learned much from her, for she is a lady imbued with the stories and traditions of her country.”
He fixed Mr Bristol with a keen look.
“I hope such things have been expressed in my work as well as every other quality that you might expect to find, sir. I might even remark that my subject’s daughter has done excellent duty as a painter’s apprentice and you may find some recording of that too.”
Mr Hickey cleared his throat. Now that he had launched himself on a sea of fine phrases, it seemed he had more to add. But Mr Bristol had had enough.
“Remove the cloth, Hickey!” he called out. “Don’t hide your talent from us under that black bushel any longer.”
He laughed but Mr Hickey did not. He stepped up behind the painting and very neatly lifted his cloak, putting it down on the worktable I had cleared for him.
We all stared at my mother in the picture.
Every part of her was there now, face, hands and feet, all her jewellery on and the little Lord Ganesha in her grip. There was no surprise any more for me to see that Mr Hickey had made her cheeks glow and her huge black eyes drink up the misty world beyond the marble columns.
What did make me gasp now was that Mr Hickey had painted something that was new in my mother, something I recognized now that I saw it underneath the fresh varnish. For I knew my dreams had been painting the same thing for me for some time now, over and over, in dark shades.
My mother’s gaze was fixed on another world, one where her gentleness and all her hopes would be rewarded at last. This terrified me because I saw that the painting told the truth. She was drawn towards a departure as some birds are, come their time, to find again the lake where they were born. It was no matter that I jumped up and down in front of her and with all my loudness tried to hold her back.
She was staring at the picture herself now with interest.
“Look, Anila,” she whispered to me. “Mr Hickey has painted your face in the little mirror. How clever he is to get us both into the picture.”
I went closer to look, though Mr Bristol clucked at me for standing in front of him.
She was right. The tiny hand mirror on the table by the couch was placed at an angle so that it might have caught my mother’s face. Instead my face was what you saw, young and bold-eyed, anything but faraway. What I thought was just as clever was that Mr Hickey had copied the design of my mother’s foot painting and used it to decorate the casing of the little mirror.
We were admiring these things when Mr Bristol spoke his opinion.
“A capital job, Hickey! You have outdone your last work in this line, no question of that.”
I could see Miss Hickey flinch at his words. Mr Hickey merely bowed his head but I could see that his eyes were cold. Mr Bristol’s praise was hardly praise at all. He saw little of the craft, or the many choices Mr Hickey had made to compose his picture. I was certain he could not see my mother’s soul beating on that canvas like wings.
Miss Hickey clapped her hands and called for the drinks to be handed round, and the plates of cakes and nuts. She herself served my mother to a glass of lime juice and bid her sit down to chat.
Mr Bristol had wandered away into the hall to see what he might see. I went to stand by Mr Hickey and the painting.
“Please may I ask you a question?” I said to him.
He looked startled.
“Yes, my dear?”
“Do you think my mother is sick?”
He passed the back of his hand over his forehead. Then he looked round, to see where Miss Hickey was, and my mother. There were drops above his lip but it was a cool day. We were at the start of winter once again.
“Anila, you must not read so much into what you see on a canvas,” he said slowly. “Painters are like poets. Seize an element and make of it something else. Play with it.”
He looked directly at me and those blue eyes did not shift at all when he answered.
“Truth is,” he said. “I feel sorry for your mother’s situation. Perhaps that’s what you are seeing. And saying. Our friend there, obviously, he won’t see that. Beyond his pale, such a thought.”
He shook his head and drew in a breath.
“But look out for her, all the same,” he said. “She is a sensitive lady.”
He picked my hand up and stretched my fingers out on top of his great ruddy ones.
“The talent you have in this hand, my dear. Must be followed up. I’ll speak to Bristol. You could pick up quite a bit from me, if I say it myself. Helena would be glad too. Of the company.”
He led me over to the seat where they were sitting, his daughter and my mother.
“Told Anila here they must come back. Regularly. She needs schooling. And you need the river air for your good health, my dear.”
He gave my mother a little bow and left us.
Miss Hickey was so pleased with this proposal that she produced little dimples I had never seen before. She pressed cakes on both of us and when we could not take another morsel she took us out into the back garden. My mother gasped when she saw the river. We showed her the crooked mynah and by the time we were called out front again, she had persuaded the bird to eat cake from her hand. Miss Hickey swore she was jealous and said that she would not deal again with the faithless creature, but her dimples were showing again so we had no fear for him.
My mother was quiet on our journey home, though Mr Bristol would not stop from wondering where he would hang the picture, and whom he would invite to see it, and whether or not he would permit Mr Hickey to place it in exhibition. It was travelling with us in comfort, having its very own seat, while we three sat squashed together facing it.
“To have society see you like this, that would be a fine thing, my dear,” he said to my mother. She stared at him without replying.
I knew how she felt about such exposure. But I also knew he was not measuring the expression on her face against the one that Mr Hickey had captured in the picture. He could not. He had no art to see what was under his nose, though that skill was what he most prided himself on possessing.
He may have been blind but I was helpless.
STAR-GAZING
MADAN TRUSTED THE TWO MEN he had sent to the village. But when they had not returned by nightfall he said such things I would never have imagined hearing from him. The ghatsmen had calculated how far it was and how long it would take to go back across the fields and creeks and Madan told us the pair should be well returned by the time we sat down to eat. Mr Wa
lker bought a huge bekti fish to treat us. But the men were not back and that most delicious of fishes tasted like paper in our mouths.
Now Mr Walker had to tend Madan’s worries as well as mine, and, of course, his own.
He sat with me on the roof of the cabin, fitting his telescope together. The moon was more than a half now and she was smiling down with all her growing strength, beaming at her own twin in the dark water.
“I was staring at Jupiter last night,” he said, “trying to see if there was a message up there in the sky for our saved little boy.”
I looked at him in surprise. Was Mr Walker a star-gazer then, like the star-chart makers in the bazaars? They claimed they could see our fortunes written above our heads in a script that changed each night.
“Some people say the stars and planets are lights for the gods,” I said. “but I think perhaps the gods made them for the night birds and animals. Not for us.”
In truth I found the night sky a lonely place, too big and too cold for human words and names.
“Look here,” he said, and he pushed the golden barrel into my hand. “It’s almost two centuries since the great astronomer Signor Galileo discovered that Jupiter had four moons of its own. But though I believe they are up there I’ve never seen one of them, not with these poor eyes of mine, anyhow. See what you can see, Anila.”
I put my right eye to the cold brass. The glass turned even the deepest black cloth of the sky into lace, fine white points that shimmered and bewitched the eye. Surely it was easier to find the great planet without an aid. My father had shown it to me long ago and had told me its name, Jupiter, king of the gods. My mother called it Brihashpati. Brihashpati had his own day, Brihashpatibar, which the English called Thursday. Until now however I had never heard of any moons except our own faithful one, which grew a hare’s face when she was full and fat.
I tried my left eye and now I found a difference in what I saw. To one side of the planet I could see a lustre point. It might have been a dim star. It might have been a chip of rock or dust trapped between the two glasses in the brass tube.
But down the length of this telescope that had travelled all the way from the city of London came a light of sorts. Perhaps indeed it was a moon shining down on its own great rock in the darkness.
If that, it was shining too on all of us alive on earth. Wherever my father was, it must shine for him as surely as it did for Mr Walker and me on the river, for Miss Hickey on the sea, for Anoush in the city.
I looked at Mr Walker.
“I saw something – a light so small.” I put my little fingers together to show him.
“Bless you,” he said. “Sometimes it is hard to believe when you cannot see. But you have always believed your father is out there in the world, Anila. I always found that striking when you spoke of him. Such faith. And I will tell you something else. One of those moons-in-hiding that only you can see tonight is called Ganymede. Ganymede was a servant to the gods but he began his story as a little kidnapped boy like our Manik.”
He stood up and gently took the telescope from me.
“So the stars seem good, Anila. You go to sleep now, in the cabin this time. I promise to wake you when there is news.”
But he did not have to.
I heard the soft tap that someone’s hand gave to the side of the boat and I heard people stirring and then the boat itself felt suddenly lighter as they left it. I parted the wooden slats and saw Madan and Mr Walker following two men away from the ghat steps into the shadows of a shabby godown set back from the river.
When I looked at that little midnight huddle I knew that Mr Walker would wait till morning to wake me, to better prepare me for bad news. I had to know now.
I felt all their eyes on me as I tiptoed up the steps, past men bundled up and stretched out asleep. I came to stand a little apart from the four, outside the godown. I couldn’t make out the expressions of the two strange men who stood with long shawls wrapped round their heads and shoulders. Madan was shaking his head slowly. Mr Walker was rubbing the old bite on his face as if he could erase all the bad things that had ever happened in his life.
“Ask Madan for his oil,” I said, for it was something to say. “It will bleed if you do that.”
Madan looked at me then and there was great sadness in his face.
“The sahib’s man is dead,” he said. “But so is the boy’s master. That is justice along the river.”
If Carlen had been content with killing the man he might have escaped easily, it seemed. He had gone to the brick house and shot the master in his sleeping room, for that was where the old man was found afterwards, kneeling on the floor as if begging for mercy. But then Carlen had gone through those miserable huts in the white light of the morning, waving his stolen pistol and forcing the village people out of their homes. Then he threatened them with punishment for their cowardice in permitting such things to be done to Manik.
The zamindar’s men had arrived in the middle of the day and had discovered Carlen at the tank, forcing the villagers to immerse themselves, one by one.
“He must have looked like a raving preacher,” said Mr Walker, sadly. “Trying to make them purge their sins. Anyway the new arrivals made short work of poor Carlen. It didn’t at all bother them that he was an Englishman. These two men did our respect of burying him, they tell me, when dark fell at last, and I know they must be telling the truth, because look here, Anila…”
Lying on his open palm was my little gold ring, with its hands clasped round the crown.
“I know it is poor consolation, my dear, given the secret that Carlen has carried with him to his grave. But think of this, Anila. When I get back to Calcutta and then to London I should find it entirely possible to trace where Carlen has been in the last few years, for I always took care to log the tasks I sent him on. Arising from his background, you see.”
He was pleading with me to have some hope. But I could see in his poor haggard face that he had little himself and also that his own heart was sore for a person and a part of his life that was finished. I had no words to help him there.
I left the group and walked back to the boat. But first, from the steps of the ghat I crouched down and washed my ring in the Ganga water, washed it clear of blood and hate.
I heard Mr Walker and Madan coming back on board and settling themselves on the deck. Or perhaps they were sitting up instead, as I was. I sat till grey light seeped through the cracks of the Venetians. When at last I could see the shine on the cabin’s polished cupboards and the soft cushions on the seats became crimson, not black, I reached for my bag. I wanted to look at my mother. Much much more, I wanted to hear her, I wanted her warm touch. But her picture would have to do.
There was a piece of lined paper folded round my mother’s portrait, the rough kind bazaar scribes used for their letters. There was writing on it, a small script, neat as a girl’s best writing, easy to read. It was addressed to me.
THE ANGEL
MR BRISTOL WAS NO HEMAVATI, that was for sure. But later that year when it became obvious even to him that my mother was not herself he first made huff and puff but the next thing he did was call a doctor to the house. At least he did that.
The doctor was English, quite an elderly man. He carried a hateful black leather bag that he snapped open on the bed so that it folded out like the wings of a great bat. I could see bottles and tiny silver knives set into a cloth inside it. It yawned open and the air from it smelt sweet and foul at the same time.
“She’s not sick with a fever or wasting away,” Mr Bristol said to the doctor. “Look at her, she’s a picture of health, and small wonder with the food they get in this house and no expense spared, ever. But she talks nonsense now, strings of rubbish. Other times she sits there as if she’s frozen. She hears nothing and says nothing.”
He looked at the doctor the way people look at priests in the temple.
My dear mother was lying in our bed and I sat on the floor beside it, holding her rig
ht hand. I tried to make her wash every day and old Rupa brought plenty of water to our room and sometimes stayed to help me, but today we had not yet got so far. I hated my mother to be seen by a man like this doctor, but especially when she was not clean. Mr Bristol was right however when he said she looked healthy enough. She did. Only her eyes and the way she beat her fingers in mine were worrisome. And, of course, her silence.
The doctor asked my mother to lean back against the cushions. Then he put his hands on her eyelids and pulled them up to stare into her eyes, his face just inches from hers. He felt all round her head, moving his fingers like a blind man over a child’s face. I bit my tongue because I knew my mother’s hair was dirty, full of yesterday’s oils and dust and flies. We had sat out in the garden watching the water fall in the fountain, my mother staring into it as if it was a new sight for her.
Then he asked her to stand but she stared at him and did not move. He sought my help then and together we got her legs from under the sheets and onto the floor ready to stand. We heaved her up and then he asked me to take away my hand.
“Walk a little,” he said to her, but she simply looked at him. I said it to her too, but in Bangla, and more sharply than I had ever spoken to her before.
She took one step but after that one it seemed that her bones simply turned to cotton because she fell over and stayed there on the gleaming wooden floor, lay just as she fell, with her legs twisted. Her eyes were fixed on the ceiling and did not even seek mine out. I could not bear it.
We got her back into the bed then, and the doctor looked grim indeed. He snapped his bat case shut and he ushered Mr Bristol out of the room. He closed the door.
It was a thick door, but I put my ear to the keyhole and heard what I could.
“Not good, impossible to say, possibly a bleeding stroke or… deadly anyway… Not long in my estimation. Best follow custom when it comes.”
