The Sleeping Dictionary

by Sujata Massey

  After the speeches were done, I flowed out to the street with thousands of others. I thought about how I’d been so sure that I loved Pankaj. As I’d thought before, it was more like a schoolgirl fascination with a flamboyant actor. And while I’d spent a lot of time at the Minerva and the Metro cinemas during my spying days, I had come around to feeling that I liked books better than films. Simon was safe and solid: a long novel that I was in no hurry to finish.

  Open cars holding freedom fighters and the INA veterans were slowly passing; I saw Supriya, but she was looking the other way, stretching out her hands so people could touch them. I wanted to speak to her, but I imagined it was unlikely to happen in such a crush. Then, all of a sudden, Sonali Sen Israni was at my elbow with her husband, Arvind.

  “Didi!” she said, tucking my arm into hers. “I’m so glad to find you. You must come to the party at my parents’ house.”

  “I’m not sure it’s a good idea. Your father—”

  “Baba isn’t angry anymore. He is so proud of Supriya that he tells everyone that he sent her off with his blessings! Please forgive him for being so cross with you! Won’t you please come back with me?”

  “Yes, we can toast to your marriage as well. I’m very happy about it,” Arvind said, with a grin that made his young face look even more boyish.

  “You know?” I asked, not understanding his reaction.

  “Yes, Pankaj told me some time ago. He hadn’t known that your husband did so much to shake up the viceroy and government about the famine. Mr. Lewes cared so much that he even sent a very long letter that was published in the Guardian.”

  “The Manchester Guardian?” I stopped dead, causing some people behind us to bump into me.

  “Yes, apparently his letter was quoted at a Parliament hearing in which some Labor politicians argued that Britain hadn’t effectively governed India.” Arvind gave me a pilot’s thumbs-up. “Congratulations, Kamala. You married your own freedom fighter!”

  “All you ever spoke about were his books!” Sonali added with a laugh. “You kept quite a secret about his character, didn’t you?”

  As I clasped her hand, I thought about whether Simon really had changed. Could this act, so quietly performed, exonerate his past doings with the Indian Political Service? I recalled how he’d confessed that he’d been passed over for a promotion. Perhaps his sending the letter was why. I was touched that he had not boasted to me about the letter. Maybe my husband was like a jasmine flower: tightly closed all day, but blossoming at night.

  SEN BOOKBINDING OVERFLOWED with well-wishers, and their table groaned with sweets, luchis, and so many curries. It was almost a prewar spread; I could only imagine that many friends had pooled resources for Mrs. Sen to offer such a feast. I was anxious, though, that the lady might not want me to take anything, because she might still be angry at me for not warning her about Supriya’s defection.

  Supriya was laughing and chattering with a circle of admirers when I came in; but she rushed over to me and said, “If it wasn’t for this woman, I would never have served.”

  Her words warmed me, but I shook my head. “That’s not at all true!”

  “Oh, but it is! Nobody in my family can keep their mouth closed; I could not keep a secret about going, so I told it to Kamala. If she had told my family, they would have shouted about it from the rooftops, and I would have been arrested at Howrah.”

  Pankaj always said that he would not have asked Supriya to do intelligence work; he’d said that the Sens could not keep secrets. The irony was that he would never know that keeping too many secrets had trapped me in a place I could never exit. As I thought about this, Mrs. Sen came out of the kitchen, wearing her usual white sari with a red border. Supriya’s mother had her eye on me and hurried over to catch me in an embrace.

  “We have missed you,” said Mr. Sen, coming alongside his wife and nodding at me. I saw he’d become grayer over the war years; what worry he had endured. “There are too many people about this place today, but you must come next week for lunch. No need to bring books.”

  “Masho, that is kind of you.” I felt myself tearing up because I was so relieved to be accepted by both of them.

  “Kind, nothing! I want to know how you like marriage.” Mrs. Sen twinkled at me. “And your mother-in-law? What does she expect of you?”

  “I like marriage,” I said, feeling suddenly shy. “And as of now, there is no mother-in-law. She’s in England, and we’ve never met.”

  “Perfect marriage!” laughed Sonali.

  Mrs. Sen pinched Sonali’s cheek. “Don’t let your husband hear you!”

  “He won’t. He’s chatting up Pankaj.”

  I had noticed Pankaj holding court across the room when I’d arrived; he had nodded toward me, and I had nodded back, but certainly not made any effort to speak with him. But now I saw him weaving his way through people toward our group.

  “Hello, Pankaj.” My heart was beating fast; I had no idea what he intended to say to me.

  “My dear Kamala!” Pankaj’s tone was solicitous. “I’ve been meaning to tell you I’m so very sorry about the last time we spoke. I didn’t know the whole story.”

  Was Pankaj sincere? It didn’t even matter, because I now viewed him as someone fettered by his mother and social obligations. Pankaj was brave when it came to incarceration, yet he seemed terrified to follow his heart’s desire. He was so very different from Simon—who really was the perfect husband for me, as Sonali had suggested. Feeling generous, I said to Pankaj, “That’s all right. Do not think about it any longer.”

  “How well you’ve been keeping.” His eyes glanced over my figure, and I wondered if he was looking for a sign of pregnancy. “You are still enjoying Calcutta?”

  “And what about me?” Supriya interjected. “Nobody asks me in that tone: How was Singapore? How was Burma?”

  “Ha-ha!” Pankaj said, his expression becoming livelier. “Do you mean you didn’t lounge under a coconut palm, Captain Sen, with a battalion of men serving you tea?”

  Supriya blushed and said, “Don’t be silly. I was a captain in the women’s regiment. We trained in both combat and defense missions. Netaji was most impressed with our unit—but the bloody Japanese would never let us get off the ground!”

  “What was it like working with the Japanese?” I asked, and then the conversation was off in a diverting direction. Supriya talked about how an armed women’s unit had arrested some robbers during a street incident in Burma; and how they had escaped the bombing of their dormitory by minutes. And Supriya had marched for almost a hundred miles on the retreat from Burma. Pankaj seemed to hang on to Supriya’s every word, as did the others. Supriya must have been an excellent officer, for her manner of speaking was both friendly and inspiring.

  I left the party shortly afterward with good wishes all around. The political talk left me somewhat encouraged, although Simon had told me that Britain would not give up India until the INA trials had been completed.

  As I turned into our street, I looked toward Middleton Mansions with pleasure. The rainy season had turned the new grass a rich emerald green, and the borders of striped crotons and cascading bougainvillaea showed the garden was truly being restored to its lovely former condition.

  I knew that Simon and the reverend were planning to see a long American film, so I was surprised to see someone standing near the front door. As I drew closer, it was apparent he was a tall Indian. His profile seemed vaguely familiar; then, as he moved slightly, I saw the back of a lady, much shorter and stout, wearing a pink day dress with a matching fancy hat. The lady’s shoulders were bent as if she were leaning down to speak to someone much smaller.

  They must have heard me open the gate, because the man and woman whirled about to look at me. And then I had to steady myself, for I recognized the woman’s plump face with its heavily rouged cheeks and small, mean eyes.

  It was Rose Barker from Kharagpur. And the man with her was Hari, one of the Rose Villa darwans. They had come
to my house. And even if I ran from them, they would find me again.

  My hands gripped the gate so tightly that the wrought iron spikes cut into my palms. I was so terrified that I could not bring myself to go forward, nor were my feet able to run. As I stood helplessly tied to the gate, the third visitor spun around to look at me. She was a child.

  A young girl.

  Suddenly, my hands weren’t frozen anymore. I pushed forward on the gate and walked toward the girl; it was as if there were a cord between us, pulling me to her. The child looked about nine; but I quickly realized that was because of what Mummy had done. Her hair had been rolled into big curls, and her tiny mouth was painted pink. Heavy mascara and kohl rimmed her eyes, which were lotus-shaped like mine, but an unusual greenish brown. I had never forgotten those eyes.

  She was Kabita.

  CHAPTER

  39

  All power on earth waxes great under compact with Satan. But the Mother is there, alone though she may be, to contemn and stand against this devil’s progress.

  The Mother cares not for mere success, however great—she wants to give life, to save life. My very soul, today, stretches out its hands in yearning to save this child.

  —Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World, 1919

  Good afternoon.” My words flowed mechanically as I inclined my head toward her darwan. “Hari. It has been a long time.”

  There was no point in pretending I didn’t know them. They had seen the way I gripped the gate and come forward as if in a dream. Behind my cold face, though, was the secret place where my joy had surged. Kabita was alive and standing in my garden. And she was regarding me with such curiosity, the way I used to gaze at Bidushi’s elegant mother.

  My lost child. My little girl. My love.

  “Where are your servants? Nobody was here to let us in!” Mummy said in her plaintive whine.

  She thought I would invite her in and serve her like a guest: what madness! I was grateful that Simon and Reverend McRae were still out at the film. They would never know about her, and neither would Shombhu or Jatin or Manik, because it was their day off. It was awful that she’d come to see me, but at least it was on a Sunday.

  “Hazel, this is Mrs. Lewes.” Rose pushed the child forward, and she fell into a wobbly curtsy. “I always thought you’d do well for yourself; but this is more than I expected.”

  As Rose’s tiny eyes raked over my moonstone necklace, ostrich purse, and handloomed silk sari, I remembered when she had me take off my clothes so she could judge whether I was worth hiring. But this time, her eyes did not linger on my breasts. She was looking at my rings.

  “I’m sorry, but nobody’s home to make tea. I can’t very well bring you in—” I smiled apologetically, playing the part of an elite lady. “Let me bring you somewhere comfortable.”

  “No!” Rose said sharply. “Not after four hours on the train and a hellish tonga ride of more than one hour! I must sit down.”

  Feigning enthusiasm, I clapped my hands. “Let’s have a treat at Flury and Trinca’s, then. It’s just around the corner. Have you heard of it?”

  “As long as it’s not far,” she grunted.

  She moved more slowly than I remembered; all those years of overeating and drinking had taken a toll. I wrangled all of us into a tonga and told the driver where to go. As we rode, I prayed that the driver didn’t understand much English, because Rose Barker was talking.

  “The girls saw your picture in the Sunday Statesman, opening a home for old men—how funny, given your past!”

  The society page photograph had been taken with Reverend McRae, when I had helped him open a nursing home for the elderly poor. I’d wanted to drum up donations, but now realized it had been a mistake to stand before the camera’s lens.

  “So you found me—but what about her?” I inclined my head toward Kabita, whose eyes were fixed on the spectacle of Park Street.

  “Oh, we found her much earlier. But it took hard work!” Mummy pinched Kabita, who yelped. Ignoring this, she said to me, “After you ran from Kharagpur, I asked Chief Howard to interview the girls on any possible thing they might remember. We tracked you to a school in Midnapore and learned about the school driver who’d been like an uncle to you. He lost his job on suspicion of aiding and abetting.”

  “That was wrong of them.” I felt hollow knowing that I really had ruined his life. I shut my eyes, not wanting to see Rose’s smug expression.

  “I found only the wife with Hazel in Midnapore, because your driver-uncle had already died at his next job—terrible accident, I’m sorry to say. Mother and child were very poor, so I gifted them with money each year.”

  Just as I’d been doing. With help coming in to them from two donors, it may not have seemed obvious to Hafeeza that I was Kabita’s birth mother. Perhaps she’d thought Rose Barker was the more generous and kind benefactress.

  “They were grateful to me indeed,” Mummy said, as if picking up on my bitter thoughts. “Naturally, Hafeeza sent word to me when she decided to move to her brother-in-law’s home. I kept sending money, of course, so I could keep a connection to Hazel. And how tragic that Hafeeza died from dysentery—it is like that with the poor, isn’t it? Half of that household died—but not our Hazel. Her uncle was very glad for my offer to house and school her.”

  Hafeeza dead! I didn’t know whether to believe it until I looked to Kabita and saw the way her lips trembled. A lump rose in my throat as I remembered the odd feeling I’d had in 1943 that something had gone wrong. Trying to keep my voice steady, I asked Kabita in Bengali how long ago her mother had passed. She couldn’t have liked the way Rose was talking about her as if she were as dumb as the mangy horse pulling the tonga.

  “Two summers ago,” she whispered.

  Few words meant less of a chance of crying; I knew this from my own life. Gently, I asked, “And are you now living with Mrs. Barker?”

  “Yes.” Now her tight little face relaxed. “It is very lovely there. “I sleep in the room with the nicest auntie. She has a funny name: Lucky-Short-for-Lakshmi!”

  “Lucky is my business partner now, but still learning. She will be well prepared after I leave.” Rose’s hand, an age-spotted, bejeweled spider, closed over Kabita’s tiny one. “Hazel is our little bud waiting to blossom. I wanted you to see her while she is still innocent. She will be too busy to travel later.”

  A fresh wave of fear and rage roiled inside me. Kabita was being trained to join the Roses, just as Mummy had always wanted. I couldn’t let this happen. I would have to flee with her now—

  No. If I grabbed Kabita out of the tonga with me at the next intersection, Rose Barker could call out to the constable directing traffic that I was stealing her fair-skinned child. Kabita would be afraid as well. And even if I did manage to get the two of us back to Middleton Street, they’d know where to come for her. And Simon would see all of them, and my whole past would become clear. These awful scenarios and a few more were racing through my head by the time we’d reached the famous confectionery. I dreaded going inside, but I could not leave Kabita.

  “Stay outside,” Rose said roughly to Hari, reminding him of the servant he still was, despite wearing city clothing. And this positioning was strategic: if I ran out with Kabita, he’d be there to catch us.

  Mummy was impressed with the sugary cakes in the display case. As she jabbed her finger toward the most lavish-looking ones, I bade her to follow me to a table, where we ordered several along with a pot of Darjeeling. Sitting down, Mummy kept Kabita closely at her side.

  I leaned over toward Kabita from my place on the table’s other side. “Please try the Black Forest cake. If you don’t like it, I’ll give you my palmier. Did you know that palmier means hand in French! Just as we call this our palm.” I lightly tapped on her pale pink palm, but she recoiled. I drew my own hand back, knowing I’d tried for too much; it would take a while for her to trust me.

  When the cakes arrived, Kabita stabbed at them with the fork I imagined
she was still learning to use. But an expression of rapture slid across her small face. She liked the Black Forest cake as well as the palmier and the rum ball.

  “You haven’t asked much about the girl,” Rose Barker said, licking whipped cream from the side of her mouth. She’d polished off half a piece of Black Forest cake very quickly and was eyeing an unclaimed raspberry tart. I was so unnerved by the situation that I couldn’t eat a bite; I was on the verge of retching.

  I did not want to talk about Kabita as if she were invisible, so I tried for something innocuous. Feigning a smile, I said, “Are you only calling her Hazel?”

  “Of course! It has always been her good name.”

  “My mother called me Zeenat.” Kabita spoke uncertainly, casting a glance at Rose, who frowned. Obviously she was not planning to sell her as a Muslim girl.

  “I can call you that if you like,” I said quickly. “Are you seven years old, then?”

  “Yes. Mummy gave my birthday party,” she answered in her halting English. “The aunties gave me three dolls and such pretty-pretty dresses.”

  The thought of them being able to spoil her—when I could not—made me jealous, and also angry about their techniques of manipulation. Reminding Mummy of her old policy, I said, “She will remind men of their own children, and make them feel guilty. She is too young to stay at Rose Villa.”

  “But Hazel’s excited to earn her own money—aren’t you, darling? All the more dollies and sweeties for you.” Rose Barker turned her sickeningly sweet smile from Kabita to me. “It’s because of the Independence. The English are leaving, and everyone says Indians prefer their girls very young. Her debut will be next year, I think.”

  I had brought my teacup up to my mouth; now it dropped, spilling tea across the table. “No,” I whispered, staring at Rose. “No!”

  Kabita gave a small gasp, put down her fork, and looked toward Rose. This made me want to collapse, but somehow I kept breathing.