The Sleeping Dictionary

by Sujata Massey

  “Yes!” Bidushi straightened her shoulders and beamed. “Pankaj-dada told his parents he would never marry a girl who was uneducated. So my aunt and uncle quickly had to send me somewhere. My old governess said that I would be happy here, but I don’t like all these English girls pointing at me and not wanting to have their bed near mine. And I’ve forgotten all my English. When my aunt moved into the house, she stopped allowing my governess to come.”

  “Miss Richmond is a great teacher, and not every girl here is unkind,” I said, trying to raise her spirits. “There are some friendly girls, especially the ones who like games. You must learn badminton! You don’t need to speak much to play.”

  As I finished speaking, I had an odd feeling of being watched. Two English girls passed closely, their oxford shoes clipping the floor like horse hooves. The first girl, who was called Anne, narrowed her eyes as she looked at us.

  “There you have it,” Anne said in a brash, loud voice. “Wog-to-wog gossip! What is that, Hindustani or Bengali?”

  “Wogoli,” said her friend Beatrice. “Or should we say, Wiggly?” The two dissolved into snickering laughter.

  Inside of me, rage flared. I was accustomed to mocking words, but Bidushi was a princess who shouldn’t have to hear it. But I couldn’t speak back to an English student; it could mean being thrown out of Miss Richmond’s room for good. So I stuffed my upset into my imaginary cabinet, hoping that Bidushi hadn’t understood their teasing.

  Too upset to say good-bye to Bidushi, I bobbed down into a short curtsy and crept toward the door.

  “Just a moment!” Miss Richmond said in her pay-attention voice.

  My stomach was filled with a fluttering, as if one of the beautiful yellow butterflies from the garden were trapped within. If Miss Richmond told Miss Rachael I’d been speaking Bengali with a student, she might beat me. And Bidushi might get a black mark, which could mean she wouldn’t get pudding on Sunday or something even worse. But Miss Richmond’s first words weren’t addressed to me.

  “Bea and Anne, that’s enough, and you’ll have a reprimand if you do it again. Go!” After the two had left, Miss Richmond looked at Bidushi and said in soft, slow English, “I should remind you that Hindustani is not supposed to be spoken. You are here to learn our language. Were you told that upon arrival?”

  Bidushi remained silent, clearly not understanding or having no words to respond. And so, in her defense, I found my own voice: the English one I had practiced and practiced, but not yet used with an English person.

  “Memsaheb, I apologize. We spoke Bengali only because she knows so little English. Her English governess was sent away four years ago, after her mother died, so she has forgotten the language. I vouchsafe that Bidushi will try very hard to learn English here. Please permit her.”

  “Yes, but—vouchsafe?” Miss Richmond looked at me with an odd expression. “Who are you?”

  “I’m called Sarah, Memsaheb. I came to your room today to pull the fan.” Inside, the butterfly was going mad trying to escape.

  “Of course you were here; I rang for you. You are here quite often, doing that. It must be boring.”

  “Oh, no, Memsaheb! To be in your class is a joy.” My words might have sounded like flattery, but they were true.

  “Where did you work before you came here?”

  “I lived in a small village near the coast with my family, who are now deceased, God rest their souls—”

  Miss Richmond interrupted. “And were you schooled there in English?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then how did you learn the expression vouchsafe?”

  I was afraid to admit that I hunted many of her long and lovely words in the Oxford English Dictionary. It was probably against school rules for someone like me to pollute the dictionary with my touch. So I said, “In here, Memsaheb. You are a great teacher.”

  Miss Richmond was quiet for a moment, then said, “Sarah, speak some more.”

  “I’m very sorry, but I don’t know what to say.” My face was hot with shame, for I knew this conversation had gone on too long. I had not intended to call attention to myself, only to rescue Bidushi.

  “If you’ve been learning from me in this classroom, will you please recite something?”

  So I recited the part of A Room of One’s Own she had just read aloud to the class. Perhaps I had gotten a few words wrong, but at the end, Miss Richmond asked me some questions to see how much of it I’d understood. I explained the various themes and about my idea of keeping a cabinet in one’s mind. She nodded and said, “You understand everything, and your intonation is remarkable. And you must read plenty of books, obviously, to have followed all that figurative language.”

  “I do read,” I said cautiously, praying this would not lead to an inquisition about which books I had touched. “But my handwriting is not up to the mark.”

  “Handwriting can be improved—but, Sarah, you have a gift for language. You have given me an idea for Bidushi.” Bidushi had been looking blank, but her eyes widened at the sound of her name. Miss Richmond continued: “You shall become her special helpmate. An extra desk will be brought to this class and placed next to her. When Bidushi does not understand a word, she shall touch your desktop, and you may translate in Bengali—but in a whisper, so as not to distract the others. Please explain this.”

  I translated quickly for Bidushi, and her lips slowly curved into a smile. In heavily accented English, she said, “Thank you, madam!”

  “Oh, don’t thank me; it will be Sarah who deserves that.” Miss Richmond’s voice was brisk. “Now, Bidushi, shall we go into the dining hall? There are only friendly girls sitting at my table.”

  SUDDENLY, MY LIFE had become quite bright, with a girl just my age who shared my past. In A Little Princess, a novel that Miss Richmond always had the nine-year-old class read, the rich student called Sara, and the scullery maid Becky, were kind to each other. It was almost the same, except for the reversal in our names. And I was aware that, although I now tutored Bidushi, I still had to honor my other responsibilities. If the electricity failed, I rushed from my desk to the back of the classroom to work the punkah, causing giggles among the girls. But such nonsense paled in comparison to Miss Rachael’s anger at losing my hands for several hours each day. In retaliation, she set me to doing more in my reduced hours. But I hardly minded, because I adored helping Bidushi. Learning English was like catching fish without touching water, as Thakurma used to say about good things that came too easily. I wanted it to be that way for Bidushi, also; but it was not.

  “I cannot learn this language,” Bidushi whispered in our forbidden Bengali during the late-afternoon study period. “It is an embarrassment with my name.”

  Bidushi’s name meant knowledge; I thought how lovely it would be to have such a lofty name instead of Sarah, an old wife in the Ingrej Bible. But I could see that Bidushi felt too sorry for herself. I had grown comfortable enough to know that if I teased her, it might improve her outlook.

  “Oh, there’s no need to work at it,” I said lightly. “If you don’t care to please your husband and his English-speaking friends, he can return you to Johlpur, where you can speak Bengali with your dear aunt.”

  Bidushi made a face but did work harder. Together we recovered the long-lost vocabulary, and she learned enough new words to recount life when her parents were alive. What a beautiful world it had been! As a young child, Bidushi tottered around a lace-covered table until European lady guests reached down to take her up on their laps. She moved on to thirty-course dinner parties at which royalty and government officials mingled. All the while the jamidarni was schooling her in menus, jewelry selection, and sari draping: details of the Indian aristocratic life that I savored.

  Once she became more confident, I made Bidushi write her English sentences next to Bengali translations; I used this to help me learn the writing of Bengali, for up to this point I spoke my mother tongue but could not read or write. In this way, Bidushi taught me as much
as I taught her, without her noticing. I feared that if she knew I was so uneducated, she might treat me like less of a friend.

  Bidushi smiled and joked more as her English came along, although she retained a strong Bengali accent that the other girls mocked if the teachers weren’t listening. I’d hoped Bidushi would find solace with the two other Indian girls at Lockwood, but they walked past her as if she didn’t exist.

  “It’s because I talk with you, Didi, but I don’t care,” she said one evening in the garden, where we had gone for fresh air after studying inside. “I’ve never had a true friend like you, and those two aren’t worth two paise. The others, even less.” And then she told me something that I had not understood. Indian Civil Service and army officers did not send their daughters to our school, which wasn’t top-drawer. Lockwood was stocked with the daughters of ordinary merchants and missionaries and railway men, and a few wealthy Indians from nearby. Out of this mishmash, the girls built their very own caste system.

  Indians were, of course, at the ground floor. The Anglo-Indians, Armenians, and French socialized well together; but it was the girls from Britain and her colonies who were on top, though they occasionally warred with one another. The British called the Australians Aussies, and they in turn called the English ones Poms, which meant Prisoners of Mother England. When I learned this, I was quite relieved nobody knew my old village name.

  Bidushi did not call me Sarah, only the loving term didi, meaning big sister. It was ironic, because she was slightly older. But in many ways, she seemed younger; and as months passed, a feeling grew inside me that I was intelligent and had value. It was as if Bidushi’s affection and Miss Richmond’s expectations were making me into someone new.

  IN SHORT ORDER the weather turned from pleasant to sweltering. The girls played tennis in sleeveless white blouses and skirts that barely brushed their knees. Even Bidushi wore a tennis costume, and I silently cheered as she grew in skill enough to triumph over an English girl. I was happy for Bidushi, and the next time that we were taking our evening constitutional, I confessed that I wished we could always be together at Lockwood.

  Bidushi bent to snip off the blossom of one of the rosebushes and held it to her nose, inhaling deeply. “First, you’d have to change this place by sending away all the pale people with their unkind thoughts. And the hot air in this locality makes me feel ill from late morning into the night. I long to hear the sea again and feel the cool breezes.”

  “But Pankaj’s family doesn’t live near Johlpur—aren’t they in Calcutta?” I asked, watching Bidushi idly twirl the rose in her hand. If the gardener had seen, he would be angry; clearly, Bidushi wasn’t afraid of anyone.

  “Yes. The City of Palaces, as they call it! It’s going to be a terrible hustle-bustle there, with all the trams and cars, but the Bandopadhyays live in a very beautiful calm section. They call that place Ballygunge.”

  “What a lovely house name,” I said, spelling it out in my mind.

  “No, it is not like the countryside!” Bidushi said, casually dropping the rose to the gravel path. “Their bungalow has a number on the street—27 Lower Circular Road—and it is built with four levels, just like a tiffin container. Every bedchamber has its own bathroom with running hot and cold water. There is a large room just for parties, and in it a grand piano like the one in Miss Jamison’s parlor.”

  “The street a circle? And the house like a tiffin box. It is too much!” I spoke knowing that I would never see such a place, except in my mind. And for a moment I felt jealous.

  “But it’s really like that. I was there many years ago, visiting Calcutta, and Pankaj was describing it again in the letter he sent from England.”

  “What? He sent you a love letter?” I whispered the forbidden, racy words in English.

  “Go away!” She punched me lightly. “Nothing is bad about the letters he sends. But I cannot decide whether to write back. My aunt and uncle would be too angry.”

  “They are too far away to know what you’re doing.” I was thinking how much I would like to see one of those letters for myself. This year, I had begun to feel that certain parts of my body were awake and restless; the idea of Bidushi receiving inappropriate correspondence inflamed me.

  “I don’t know what to write to him. He is ten years older and so intelligent.” She looked at me anxiously. “Will you help me?”

  Warmth spread through me at her words; for this was exactly what I wanted.

  During the next day’s study hall, we finished Bidushi’s homework, and then she laid a delicate paper across her notebook for me to read. I inhaled the letter from Pankaj the way she had the rose; but to my surprise it was more friendly than lover-like, full of talk about his classes and the English weather and his longing to return to Bengal. I began work that day on a reply in Bengali and made several drafts, the last of which we both approved several days later. In five hundred words, I had created a humorous depiction of Bidushi’s school life, making observations about the English girls’ odd behaviors. I included questions about Pankaj’s daily life and Bidushi’s anticipation of seeing him, throwing in a few English phrases to show how worldly she had become.

  Bidushi copied my words into her own neat handwriting and posted the letter with the regular school-mail collection. Letters going overseas were very common, no cause for notice. However, letters to men outside of the family were forbidden, so we always put Miss on the envelope addressed to Pankaj. Miss Jamison, who checked over the incoming and outgoing student mail, couldn’t pronounce Indian names. We realized with great delight that she would probably never guess that Pankaj was a male name, especially since he’d got in the spirit and wrote his name on the back of the envelope as Miss Pankaj Bandopadhyay, Esq.

  The letters flowed back and forth, at least one per fortnight. By 1935, the correspondence between Pankaj and me posing as Bidushi became almost flirtatious. I was happy for Bidushi and proud of myself for engineering such a strong romance. I’d also gotten much better with my Bengali writing, although Bidushi was the one who always wrote, in her handwriting, the final version of the letter to be mailed.

  “If you give a beggar a pitcher, he will never stop drinking,” Miss Rachael said one afternoon when I’d come back from the study hall. “Your association with the Mukherjee girl is not good. And what would her Brahmin family think if they knew who was sitting so closely to her every day?”

  If the directress of housekeeping understood the extent of what was going on, she would have been even angrier.

  CHAPTER

  6

  February 14, 1935

  12 Milton Road

  Cambridge, England

  My dear Bidushi,

  May I call you dear? I have found myself struggling not to use endearments when I think of you. That is why I have enclosed this pendant. Your family will give you jewelry to take to our marriage, and perhaps not all of it will be to my liking. Therefore, this is my gift to you.

  Your most recent letter was my favorite to date. How your descriptions of the school setting and your teachers amuse a very bored and homesick student! You may not remember, but when we were small, I played school with you once when your family visited us. Of course, I claimed the right of teacher and used our darwan’s lathi to great effect as a pointer. Your mother took fright and brought you back to the other little girls who were making alpana designs on the veranda. But you were brave, and I believe you enjoyed playing my student, and I am pleased that you were willing to leave the comforts of your home for the rigors of school.

  I’d like to say that I am as happy in England as I was upon arrival three years ago, but that is not the case. The laws I memorize form a droning sound in my mind, rather like the Vedas Brahmin boys are forced to learn. And to what end? Indian lawyers are a penny for a pound in Calcutta, and the thought of serving at the pleasure of a white-wigged English judge does not appeal. If only I could combine law with nationalism. To take risks in the name of India’s freedom would be my privile
ge. I have doubts about the likelihood of what Gandhiji says about the British granting us self-rule. For England has built its wealth on our backs, and if that wealth vanishes, how can they survive in this new century? What is your opinion of Gandhiji’s hope?

  As ever, I am your devoted,

  Pankaj

  The day the envelope came, Bidushi took it to open with me on the evening walk. She jumped up and down in excitement at the gift, a ruby pendant that hung from a long, delicate gold chain. Lockwood girls could wear only religious medals or school rings; and even though Bidushi kept her collar closed to the neck, there was still a chance of discovery. Still, she demanded that I secure the clasp behind her neck.

  “What is wrong, Didi?” Bidushi asked, as if sensing something was amiss.

  “Nothing’s wrong. Ruby looks very well on you.” I was thinking that the gift had been given because of the sweet words I had written; but it wasn’t jealousy I felt as much as foreboding, an undefinable anxiety that had settled in the bottom of my stomach like one of the bricks in the school wall.

  “Why are you frowning, then?”

  If she were truly my sister, I would have put a black mark on her face to prevent the evil eye. That was how strongly I felt that she needed to be protected from whatever misfortune lay ahead. But I could not paint her with Hindu preventives in this place. So I said, “I only hope you won’t be caught.”

  “If I am, I’ll say wearing this is part of my religion.” Lovingly, she caressed the pendant. “And Pankaj is wrong in thinking my aunt will give any jewelry for my dowry.”

  “Don’t mind her not gifting you!” Privately, I thought Bidushi sometimes complained too much. “Your mother’s jewelry must be exquisite. Enjoy that when it comes to you.”

  “Oh, Auntie took it all as her own!” Bidushi’s laugh was brittle as a papadum wafer. “Anyway, I am pleased with this, but look at what he wrote, asking my opinion of Gandhiji. How shall I reply to him?”