The Sleeping Dictionary

by Sujata Massey

  —Vijayalakshmi Pandit writing in Amrita Bazar Patrika, May 15, 1938

  The next morning, I boarded a tram that rattled and pitched its way out of central Calcutta north to College Street. A lively mix of people surrounded me as I looked away from a round baby who seemed to be the same age as my Kabita. It still hurt to look at babies, to remember all I had given up in order for us both to live.

  I gazed out the window, trying to distract myself with the view of North Calcutta. People were visible in the streets, sleeping, chatting, washing themselves, scrambling eggs, and frying puris. Children played on the curb, as if blissfully unaware that their homes had no walls or roofs. They did not miss what they had never known.

  I disembarked near Presidency College, slinging over my shoulder the heavy bag that held a few memoirs and histories all published after 1900. I hoped to determine the bookbinder’s skills before committing older, more fragile and valuable books into his hands. Mr. Abhinash Sen was recommended to me by librarians I had visited at both the Asiatic Society and the Imperial Library. He was supposed to be tops, yet not overly priced.

  Sen Bookbindery and Publishing was on a lane off College Street. The reception room was simple and clean, with an altar to Krishna in one corner and a framed picture of Gandhiji on the wall, draped with a fresh jasmine garland. I waited at the counter for some time before noticing a small silver bell. I rang it, and a thin young fellow in a wrinkled shirt and dhoti came out from behind a doorway. I told him I had come to see Mr. Sen with a half dozen books.

  “It’s Haresh you need. Wait. He shall come shortly.” And then the young man vanished.

  As I studied the price list for various services that was posted on the wall, the door behind me opened. I turned, expecting to see the missing Haresh but instead found myself looking at a pretty young woman carrying a large stack of books in her arms.

  “Hallo! Have you been waiting long?” she greeted me in Bengali.

  “Yes,” I replied, not hiding my irritation. “If you want books repaired, it may take a while! The fellow called Haresh is not here.”

  The girl’s brown eyes widened. “Oh, that crazy fellow is just across the street having his tea!”

  I did not hide my irritation. “Well, he may have all the time on earth to do his job, but I came from downtown and have been waiting twenty minutes already.”

  “That’s terrible! I will scold Haresh when he comes.”

  I looked at her in confusion, and she grinned, showing dimples on both sides.

  “Haresh works for my father. He’s good with the books but bad with his schedule. Father tolerates him because he is talented and has been with us so long. I’m the eldest daughter of the house: Supriya Sen.”

  “I’m Kamala Mukherjee.” I spoke hesitantly, for the Brahmin surname, especially, felt like a lie. “I am the clerk for a private library and have brought in some books.”

  She nodded, looking pleased. “I’m so glad you waited. Kamala-didi, you must come with me upstairs, it will be more pleasant than this room.”

  “That is very kind of you,” I said, surprised she was being so friendly.

  “It’s time for lunch anyway,” she said. “Will you eat with us? It will give you a chance to meet my father.”

  The last time a stranger invited me to eat with her, it was Bonnie, and that tea had brought on the lowest point of my life. As I hesitated, I saw Supriya’s lips tighten. I knew her family name was Sen, which put her in the doctors and writers caste that was just below my pretend caste. Maybe she thought I regarded myself above dining with her.

  I smiled and said, “I would like that so much.”

  Supriya led me up a narrow staircase to the residential quarters. Her mother, Mrs. Promilla Sen, immediately invited me to call her Mashima, or mother’s sister. But although I smilingly thanked her, I knew she could never have actually been my kin; her rounded figure, and the thick ivory bangles and fineness of her cotton Murshidabad sari made it clear that she was quite prosperous. There had been nobody like Mrs. Sen in Johlpur.

  Mrs. Sen—I had to remind myself hard to think of her as Mashima—bade me to sit down on a cushion and released a stream of questions. From which branch of the Mukherjee clan did I come from? Was I at Bethune College with Supriya? How had I learned about their business, and why was I so thin?

  I answered that my people were from the coast of Bengal and not connected to any of the important local Mukherjees. I’d been educated at a girls’ school in the countryside but left early due to the death of my parents. I had come to the city recently and taken a position organizing the private library for a senior ICS officer who also wrote essays about old Indian books. I chose my words carefully. If they learned that I was unmarried, with a child abandoned just a month earlier, they would no doubt throw away the teacup I’d drunk from and send me and my books packing.

  “To work for an Englishman must be loathsome!” Supriya said after peppering me with questions about my job.

  “Not at all,” I said. “I enjoy all the books, and Mr. Lewes is very polite and asks my opinions. It’s because he trusts me that I was able to investigate book restoration and come here. Truly, the only ones telling me what to do are the books! They have been neglected so long that they need a friend.”

  “Then it is like the romantic novel Jane Eyre!” Supriya declared. “Only instead of taking care of children, you have books, which are much more interesting.”

  At this, her mother scolded her, saying the windows were open and half the neighborhood could hear that the Sens’ oldest girl didn’t want children. But Supriya just laughed and asked me how much I earned per month. When I told, she shot a defiant glance at her mother. “Why won’t Baba pay me? I work hard organizing his accounts. Look at Kamala; how lucky she is! I should like to quit this family to become a working lady.”

  Before her mother could even answer, there was a sound of clattering on the stairs and more voices, female and male. Two young ladies came up along with a little boy in a sailor suit.

  Supriya quickly made introductions. “That’s my baby brother, Nishan. My younger sister, Sonali—she’s the one with specs and the serious expression—always picks him up at the Hindu School for boys on her way back from Loreto House. Now they’re home, we can call downstairs for Baba to come and eat. Bina, fetch him!” she directed a young maidservant.

  “And what about me?” The other young woman was unwinding a scarf from her head, revealing a long, lustrous fall of hair. “I’m the guest. You should have introduced me first!”

  “You are no guest; you are my third daughter.” Mashima pinched the newcomer on her cheek. “Kamala, this is our dear Ruksana Ali. Her father is the doctor who cared for us when he lived in our neighborhood. Now he is at Calcutta Medical College Hospital.”

  “Where Netaji was treated,” Supriya said. “Thank God he is off his sickbed and in charge of the Congress Party. Now we will finally have change in India; you mark my words.”

  “My family supports Krishak Praja, the Farmers’ Party,” Ruksana said to me. “Its leader, Mr. A. K. Fazlul Huq, could well be the governor of Bengal someday.”

  “Because he’s a Muslim, and there are so many more of you than us,” Sonali said mischievously.

  Ruksana’s eyes narrowed. “Mr. Huq is very good at building coalitions between all religions. And we have our choice. There’s the Muslim League party; we like this one better.”

  “Why be in a peasants’ party when you are so far from the country?” Sonali said.

  “It’s about landworkers’ rights. We should all be thinking about it,” Supriya interrupted.

  Mashima said in a placating tone, “Please, my daughters, don’t frighten Kamala with all your politics. She surely doesn’t care.”

  I had been following this conversation closely—how amazing to hear them talking about peasants having a voice in politics.

  “Ma, you must vote in the next election,” Supriya said. “I worry that our Netaji can’t sta
y in charge of control in Congress. His ideas about modernizing are so different from what Gandhiji advises. There’s a division of opinion inside the Congress Party that could ruin everything.”

  “But the men who will vote whether Netaji stays or leaves are the Congress ministers, not us,” Mashima demurred.

  “If you support the left-wing ministers, Netaji will get the votes from them to stay president,” Supriya pointed out. “Please, Ma!”

  “I will vote if Ruksana’s mother goes, too,” Mashima answered, beaming with the same dimples her daughter had. “Then both sides are fairly represented. Oh, I hear Baba coming! Now we shall eat.”

  Mr. Sen was somewhere in his late forties and the opposite of his wife: rail thin and short. He was dressed in a crisp white shirt and dhoti and had a certain formality. The kitchen maid served Mr. Sen first and then came to me and Ruksana before offering everyone else the fragrant fish-head dal, fried eggplant with neem leaves, potato curry, and mutton cooked with onions and rice. She ran around next with chapattis just hot off the griddle and urged me to try the homemade mango and lime pickles. Everyone ate as if such a lunch was an ordinary event. For me, it was a real feast made all the more special by the friendly family group.

  Afterward, we washed our hands at the small sink in the room’s corner. Then I laid the books on the clean table before Mr. Sen, who gently examined them, confirming what I’d thought. Several needed sewing, new spines had to be created for others, and for two, new cloth covers were in order.

  “When Haresh works, he works well. But I think he has a problem with tea. He is drinking it across the road many times a day. I have a strict policy, no tea in the workroom! It is too much of a risk for the books,” Mr. Sen declared.

  “I am very glad to hear it, because my employer’s collection is quite special. It must never be damaged.” I shuddered at the thought of anything going wrong. “Don’t worry, Kamala,” Mr. Sen said, looking at me with kind eyes. “And were you saying that you have more books to mend than these six?”

  “I believe there might be as many as three hundred needing repair, but the simple fixes I can try doing myself with a press. To you I might bring two hundred if . . .” I did not want to say, if your work is as good as I hope.

  “I will teach you how to do the easy repairs,” Mr. Sen said. “Supriya knows, too. Anyone who is careful can do it. But you were right to bring the difficult jobs here. And with such good business coming in the future, I shall offer you a professional discount.”

  I WAS EXCITED to give the news about Sen Bookbindery to Mr. Lewes; he arrived home late that evening, though, and bathed before dinner. When I finally saw him in the dining room, he had swapped his suit for a white Indian cotton one and tan cotton trousers. In these unconventional clothes, he looked rather appealing, and then I chided myself for the inappropriate thought. I was wearing, for the first time, the new horn-rimmed glasses that his optometrist had made for me. Mr. Lewes noticed the spectacles straightaway and asked if they had changed my reading comfort.

  “Oh, yes. But I must tell you about Sen Bookbindery. I met the whole family, and Mr. Sen is just starting with a few books. He seems trustworthy and will be giving a ten percent discount.”

  But Mr. Lewes shook his head. “Oh, don’t listen to that. Indians always say you’re getting a discount, when you’re really just receiving the inflated Ingrej price.”

  Automatically, my back tensed. “But I’m not Ingrej, and they are very kind people! I would like to give them the work.”

  “You don’t know the number of times I’ve seen Indians walk away with a newspaper for a paisa and I’m charged triple.” Mr. Lewes’s voice was bitter.

  “You’re right,” I said, deciding that he needed comforting. “I don’t know what happens to you. But I would be happy to buy your newspapers for you, if you think it would keep you from being cheated.”

  “That brings something up I’ve been meaning to ask about.” He cleared his throat. “Would you sit down, please? There’s plenty of food. Tell Manik to bring you a plate.”

  I hesitated because the request for me to sit with my employer seemed improper. But the food smelled awfully good. Per his request, I’d asked Manik to make Bengali dishes. He’d come up with tiny shrimp steamed with grated coconut and mustard seeds; spinach cooked with ginger, cauliflowers and potatoes; and a cholar dal with coconut. On the side were parathas and plenty of rice and, in the end, a frozen milk pudding with pistachios. To my relief, Manik had not considered this menu a nuisance; he’d rubbed his hands together and said the whole staff would enjoy eating whatever was left.

  “Please join me,” Mr. Lewes repeated, and I breathed in the table’s aromas with pleasure and sat down in the chair on his right.

  “Kamala, you know that I read in the evenings.” Mr. Lewes glanced toward the slim pile of newspapers between us. “I believe you review these same papers the next morning?”

  “I enjoy looking at the old papers when I take my meals,” I admitted. “I hope that’s all right?”

  “It’s fine! But I would like to learn a bit more about the newspapers printed in local languages. Which ones do you think are the best?”

  “The Hindu and Bengal Today,” I answered, then hesitated. “But there’s also an important Bengali Muslim newspaper called The Azad and another Muslim newspaper from Delhi called The Star. And of course, most Hindu gentry read Ananda Bazar Patrika, the new Bengali paper published by the founders of the English-language paper, Amrita Bazar Patrika.”

  “As you know, I already take Amrita Bazar Patrika as well as the Times of India and the Statesman. I’d like to add these five other papers you’ve mentioned, but I would naturally need translation assistance. I don’t suppose you’d consider reading the papers to me? In translation, of course.”

  It was odd to have such a request rather than a direct order. It also felt strange to be looked at so intently. Still, translating five newspapers was a lot of work. Warily I asked, “But when could you hear the translations? You leave around seven and aren’t usually home before six.”

  “You could stay a little longer, perhaps eating dinner with me while we go over the papers. It will save you the cost and trouble of finding a meal near your hotel.” Mr. Lewes’s angular face held an emotion that I’d not seen since leaving Rose Villa: not outright passion but rather a kind of deference that came with asking for their most precious fantasy.

  Did Mr. Lewes want me? Over the past month, he had been cordial but had not touched me or said anything out of order. Perhaps his strange expression was solely because he was in love with the written word, something that was quite understandable and would make me feel all right about sharing more dinners with him. I had no intention of any kind of involvement with an Englishman beyond the professional, especially with the reality of Pankaj alive and well in the city.

  But perhaps he yearned for a window into reading Indian languages. I remembered being ten years old and seeing my first books at the Keshiari Mission Hospital; I’d envied the nurses and Dr. Andrews for their ability to read and write. Mr. Lewes was undoubtedly struggling with the same longing, believing that Bengali and Hindi could open truths about India that he didn’t know. And would this be such a bad thing for an Englishman?

  “Yes,” I said, smiling to make the uncertainty fade from his eyes. “Of course, Mr. Lewes! That kind of help is something I can easily give.”

  CHAPTER

  22

  APPEASE: . . . 2.a. To pacify, assuage or allay (anger or displeasure).

  —Oxford English Dictionary, Vol. 1, 1933

  By late 1938, the newspapers became the bookends of my day. A newsboy brought them every morning and I looked them over to decide which to share with Mr. Lewes over the evening meal. I’d become concerned by news of the greater world. In China, the Japanese army had taken control of Canton. In Europe, Herr Hitler had annexed Czechoslovakia and then Austria. Would Mr. Chamberlain’s document of appeasement only lead to Germany taking mo
re countries? Journalists’ opinions were divided. It all seemed so far away, like the mythical stories Thakurma used to tell. But nonetheless frightening.

  India had its own brewing war. Verbal battling was on between older congressmen and the young, left-wing party members Sonali and Supriya Sen knew. I translated a dizzying amount of articles and editorials, even some originally in Urdu, which was my weakest language. Mr. Lewes seemed fascinated, asking many questions and making notations of my translations. Despite my desire to remain coolly professional, I was inwardly proud that because of my languages, I had knowledge and skills that he, a Cambridge-educated ICS officer, could not begin to approach.

  As October turned to November, the sun sank earlier, and my transportation to Howrah each evening became chancy. I never knew who might come up behind me on the tram and bus or follow me when I disembarked and ran in the dark toward my shabby hotel. My anxiety grew about walking at night, so one evening, as I’d finished reading The Hindu and Mr. Lewes looked poised to ask for more, I said, “Sir, it’s growing quite late, and the buses become scarce. May I please translate that one tomorrow?”

  “Goodness—it’s almost ten. How I’ve kept you talking. Please, Kamala, eat something before you go.”

  But there was no time to eat the chicken curry and rice that had grown cold on my plate. I stood, telling him that I needed to hurry for the tram.

  “Are you still in that hotel?” He frowned. “I’ve hoped you might find a boardinghouse nearby.”

  “I can’t be admitted to those places,” I answered, unable to mask my irritation. “Especially not in the White Town. It would be different if I were enrolled in a college with a father who could vouch for me.”

  “Why can’t he?” Mr. Lewes’s eyes were keen. “Don’t tell me you had an argument and ran away.”

  “Oh, no. He’s deceased.” I was about to add, in a cyclone, but cut myself off. If I said that, it might bring him closer to understanding that I was really a peasant. And he would ask me what I’d done with myself for the last eight years.