Ryman, Rebecca

by Olivia

  "You consider the narrative concluded?"

  "Irrevocably! I am the wife of another man, Kinjal. That he chooses not to live with me is irrelevant. I still wear his ring, bear his name, enjoy his material possessions. Besides," she paused, "He . . . despises me." She could not bring herself to say Raventhorne's name.

  "Jai did not know the truth, Olivia."

  "He condemned me without ever trying to find out the truth!"

  Kinjal laughed with indulgent amusement. "You wanted him to know the truth yet you dreaded that one day he would! How can you have it both ways, Olivia? And in your strange irrationality you still punish him by denying him his son?"

  Olivia swivelled to face her. "I have spent two long years unraveling my miserable complications, Kinjal," she said fiercely. "As far as it can ever be cleared, I have cleared my conscience. And I have honoured my debts, especially to Freddie. I no longer owe anyone anything except," her throat constricted, "you. For what is owed to you I can think of no recompense, and to offer any would be an insult. I have valued your judgement and your advice and your help more than I can ever express in words, Kinjal. That you must already know. But, I will not consider complicating my life again no matter how persuasive your arguments. I cannot, Kinjal," she concluded quietly, "I cannot."

  Kinjal allowed the silence between them to remain undisturbed for a moment, then sighed her resignation. "Very well then. No, Jai is not dead. At least, his body lives. For his spirit I cannot vouch. He too has been to bid us farewell. It seems we are to be abandoned very thoroughly."

  Something small, a twitch more than a spasm, nudged Olivia from within. "To bid you farewell?"

  "Yes. He too sails away soon. On his beloved Ganga. I don't know for where. Perhaps he does not either. Men of the sea return to the sea when they are done with their lives. The ocean is Jai's oyster. He will go wherever the wind blows him, I presume."

  They were taking a final stroll in the herb garden, drenched in the evocative scents of mint and marjoram and sharply pungent cloves. In the whitewashed temple with its crowning trident, offerings were being prepared for vespers, the soft bells already tinkling. It would soon be Dassera again. And then would come the immersions.

  "Yes. He is good at renunciations," Olivia murmured, her eyes far away on the death throes of the sun and the orange inferno that marked its funeral procession below the horizon. She plucked a sacred tulsi leaf and bit into it. It tasted tangy and cleansing. "He will leave without even looking back over his shoulder."

  "There is not much for him to look back upon."

  "No. Nor for me," Olivia pointed out with an unfeeling smile.

  Kinjal did not share in her smile. Instead she halted in her steps and faced Olivia with solemnity. "You have been luckier than Jai, Olivia. You are strong. Your resources have regenerated you. He is crippled by his weaknesses. In the ultimate analysis, it is you who are the survivor, he the victim. And it is you who have won."

  Won? Yes. She had won. All that she had set out to achieve. But then why was the taste of victory on her tongue so unsweet? Olivia said nothing.

  "Jai sails but he is not yet gone. He has returned from Assam where he has been all this while and is now at his house by the river." Kinjal caught Olivia's arm, the plea in her night-dark eyes very eloquent. "Let Jai see his son once more before you leave, Olivia! By returning him when he need not have, Jai deserves some gratitude, even if this paltry crumb!"

  Olivia took a deep breath and then shook her head. "No, Kinjal."

  Then it was time to return to Calcutta.

  There were cabin trunks scattered all over the house. Lists of their contents had already been compiled for the insurers but they still had to be sealed, numbered and labelled. Olivia tackled the boring chores without enthusiasm. Part of herself, she felt, had been left behind in Kirtinagar. Her sense of bereavement was so acute that she seemed able to do nothing right. In her disjointedness she labelled all the trunks Lulubelle, unaware of the error until it was pointed out by Arthur Ransome, and the rectifications made messes and took hours more to complete. Her list of provisions needed for the voyage Olivia mended and amended so often that Willie Donaldson could not make head nor tail of it. And then, when she discovered that she had accidentally thrown out all the lists of trunk contents over which she had laboured for days and that everything now needed to be unpacked, relisted and repacked for the insurers, Olivia's nerves revolted. She dumbfounded both Ransome and Donaldson by bursting into tears and running out of the room, sobbing hysterically.

  There were only three days left before the George Washington was to sail.

  "Blue Vanda, lady memsahib . . .?"

  Olivia did not remember the flower seller until he suddenly spoke to her. It was her second to last day in India, her last ride in the early morning. Tomorrow the stables were to be cleared, the carriages dismantled and the parts oiled for safe storage, the horses all dispatched to their new homes. Olivia was to be escorted to the docks by Ransome, Donaldson, Lubbock and some of the staff from Farrowsham. Her baggage was finally at the wharves awaiting Customs clearance and loading aboard the American clipper.

  Olivia was startled by the approach of the flower seller. She looked around and realised to her surprise that she had somehow arrived at the flower market. The stalls were laden with saffron marigolds, once again in full season. Columns of wild orchids hung by green tendrils and awaited to be implanted in host tree branches. The man held out a gnarled hand around which were twined trailing blue-mauve blossoms. "Another blue Vanda, lady memsahib?" he repeated, smiling persuasively.

  Yes, she remembered him. Another ghost, another re-enactment! She was not surprised that he recalled her visit more than two years earlier. Not many Europeans chanced upon this little cranny of a native bazaar. Those who might would certainly be remembered. Besides, that day she had been with someone whom the old man had known well. In answer to his request she shook her head and tried to move on, but somehow she couldn't. Her feet remained where they were, her eyes glued to the flowers trailing from his fingers.

  "The other one, it grows well?" he asked. His skin still looked like crushed brown paper, even more so as he smiled.

  Olivia tore her eyes away from the blue malignance, her mouth suddenly running dry. "No. It died."

  He clucked in sympathy. "Then you must take another to replace it." Before she could refuse, he had thrust the vine into her hand. She gave a small cry, recoiled and dropped it. Hurt, the old man got up to retrieve it from the ground, then parted its flowers to show her the stem. "See, memsahib? No thorns, not one."

  Feeling silly and ashamed, Olivia quickly took out a coin from her purse. "I'm sorry. I ruined your flowers. No, of course there aren't any thorns, I was merely startled. Please do let me pay for these, at least. They're lovely but I cannot use them. I leave for my own country soon."

  He was unconcerned with her affairs, wholly engrossed in smoothing out the wounded petals. He waved aside the coin she offered. "I cannot take money from you, lady memsahib. You were brought here by Chandramani's boy." Olivia looked blank, so he explained. "The man white people sometimes call Kala Kanta."

  "That was his . . . mother's name?" she asked, taken by surprise.

  "Yes."

  "You knew her?"

  "Oh yes. She was my sister's child. Poor, misguided girl! She died very young, very young." He clucked absently and replaced his orchids.

  In her sudden confusion at the information, Olivia recalled that he had spoken in Assamese to Jai Raventhorne and there had been affection in the ancient eyes. Raventhorne had not told her that the man was his uncle. But then, he wouldn't have, naturally. "That name ... Chandramani," she asked, feeling dizzy and steadying herself against his wooden stall, "it means 'jewel of the moon,' doesn't it?"

  He nodded in confirmation. "Jewel of the moon," he repeated sorrowfully, pointing towards the sky. "But Chandramani never shone, the unfortunate girl, she never shone."

  I must stop this, Ol
ivia thought in her stupor, I mustn't linger here! But she still could not move. "Tell me about Chandramani," she heard herself persist.

  "There is nothing to tell." He shrugged and settled back on his haunches. "She died many years ago."

  "Where, here in Calcutta?"

  "Oh yes. She could not be taken back by our people."

  "How did she die?"

  He shrugged again. "No one knows. Save for the boy. They took away Chandramani's shine, the sahibs did." He spat expertly in the drain. "It was after she died that the boy walked all the way back into the hills, back to his grandfather. But he never spoke of Chandramani, not even to her father. Heart-broken, her mother had already died grieving for her daughter who would never return home." He stopped and squinted at her. "Lady memsahib wants to know all this, why?"

  She did not hear his question. Like a marionette speaking in another's voice, she said mechanically, "Yes. He was about ten years old at that time. But your people could not have known him."

  "No." He looked at her curiously. "Nor did they recognise him by his appearance. His was a sahib's face, it was not one of ours. But there were other means of identification. He had some of Chandramani's jewellery, although at that time his memory had failed him and he remembered little about his mother or her death. Our elders considered the matter. As always, they were wise and just. It was Chandramani who had sinned, broken tribal law. The child was blameless. He had been rejected by his father's people. He could not be abandoned. The boy's grandfather, a widower now, took him in with joy and loved him, as we all did. But then his grandfather too died and on the very day of the cremation, the boy again vanished. He was always a strange, secretive one, always, and his memory was still not fully repaired. Now, of course, it is all changed. He is a big man. He is Kala Kanta . . ." He stopped to smile and savour a moment of quiet pride, then peered at her short-sightedly, trying to focus her face. "You know him well, lady memsahib, to ask all these long-forgotten questions?"

  With a slight jolt, Olivia returned to the present. Picking up the reins of her horse, she finally forced her feet to move. "No. I do not know him well. I was merely indulging my idle curiosity."

  He watched her as she hurried away and wondered why the history of a stranger asked for out of idle curiosity should bring grief to the lady memsahib's eyes.

  That night Olivia had another nightmare, her most frightening yet. She was walking across the surface of the moon. Beneath her feet, it shone with translucent light. In hand she was carrying a red velvet bundle. Suddenly, the bundle started to move and then to wriggle and squirm frantically. She laid it down, opened it and saw that it was full of scorpions, each one with its tail upraised and ready to sting. Before she could pull away her hand, they had covered it with their crusty bodies and turned it bloody and swollen with their poison. She woke up screaming, fighting them off, and found that she was drenched with sweat.

  It was no effort to recognise the significance of the nightmare. It was a reminder of what had to be done and had not been. It was also a reminder of Kinjal's damnably accurate contention; no, she had not paid all her debts. One remained. Jai Raventhorne had indeed returned her son when he need not have. For that, at least, she would always have to owe him.

  Two polished brass carriage lamps burned low on either side of the mahogany front door. The brass knocker, also burnished, was in the shape of a tiger's claw. In its ridged surface Olivia could see her face and it looked distorted, as in a trick fairground mirror. Her hand rose and then dropped again. She shivered and closed her eyes. Silently, she hunted for some helpful prop, some added strength to perform her final mission in Calcutta. She would again be crossing over an uncharted sea, but this, her most feared crossing yet, she knew that she could not, must not, evade. Somehow she had to navigate this last course, somehow. Taking courage from a long, deep breath, she raised her hand again. This time it did not falter.

  Before the echoes of her knock had died away, the door slid open on oiled hinges and Bahadur stood before her. Trained never to betray surprise, he only dared to widen his eyes for a barely perceptible fraction of a second. Then, as usual, he bowed low and folded his hands in greeting. Wildly, Olivia prayed that Jai Raventhorne would not be home, that he had left instructions to deny her entry, that he had already sailed away on his Ganga. But before she could nerve herself to ask the question, Bahadur had already given her the unwanted answer.

  "The Sarkar is by the river with the dogs."

  He opened the door wide but Olivia shook her head and stepped back. She indicated that she would prefer to reach the embankment through the garden path and would easily be able to find her own way there. She walked down the path slowly, preparing herself for the ordeal ahead. Above her, as she strolled, tall casuarina and neem trees danced in random rhythm. The hand of the moon was on her neck and it felt pleasantly cool on her burning skin. In her nostrils the dankness of the Hooghly was strong and, like all smells, it immediately evoked associated remembrances. Olivia recognised some of the constellations overhead, the clusters of low hanging stars, even the wisps of cloud—all familiar faces in the sudden crowd of memories. Time unwound. It was these very configurations that had ordained her escape from the burra khana that long-ago night. Escape! Had she actually ever seen it as that? Around her it was dark, but that flawless inner vision of hers—that traitor!—was like crystal, clear in its image after image of a night that belonged to a previous incarnation.

  On the embankment she neither saw nor heard the dogs. Perhaps he had already gone away somewhere by another route? But in that hope too she was disappointed. She saw the white blur of his shirt exactly where prescience had informed her it would be—on those steps by the river. Olivia's breath quickened even as her feet halted. Greedy swallows of air revived her lungs, dispelled her panic and reconstituted her intentions. She had come tonight only to repay a debt, no more, no less. Noiselessly, she slipped behind a bush to give herself time to regularise the erratic gasps of her breath. He lay sprawled across the length of the step, head cushioned on cupped palms, fingers clasped. He stared intently at something, perhaps the opposite bank or the horizon or the silver fringe of a rising moon—it was difficult to tell. Olivia stood and observed him, the moments pulsing by in units of eternity. They were separated by only a few steps, but even those were like symbols of infinity. Sheltered by the bush, Olivia struggled to mentally formulate what it was that she had come to say, but then, all at once, it was he who spoke first.

  "You should have told me."

  Slowly, he sat up but he did not turn to look behind him because, like a jungle animal, he had perhaps caught her scent on the wind. Or maybe because he had never needed eyes to see her. Or because she was expected. He had known that she would come tonight.

  She negotiated the flight of steps to walk into his range of vision, her breath once more even in its cadence. "I could not. I feared that you would want to take him away from me."

  He still did not look at her. "Oh yes, you feared rightly!"

  Olivia sank down on the step above him, his face well within her sight so that she could examine his expressions. "You could have kept him."

  "Yes."

  "Why didn't you?"

  "Why is still your favourite question!"

  "Then humour it." She was shocked at how ill and wan he looked.

  "My motives are immaterial. You have your son. Be content in that."

  No, she could not be content. Not until she had forced him to verbalise a renunciation as final as that with which he had once sought to disclaim her. "Did you not want to?"

  At that he laughed, an empty little sound. "You wish to vindicate your conscience at the expense of mine—is that it? You still want to have your cake and eat it!"

  "My conscience needs no vindication," she retorted sharply. "You returned to me what is rightfully mine!"

  "True. Nevertheless I will vindicate it." He swung his legs to position himself at the far end of the steps that divided them. "No
, I did not want to keep him. Not even I, in all my reprehensibilities, could condone wilfully depriving a child forever of his mother."

  He spoke with immense bitterness, and in his lie Olivia felt stirrings of the pain that had recently also been her own. She did not wound him further by challenging his lie. "In that case I misjudged you. I owe you an apology. And some expression of gratitude."

  "Is that why you have come? To apologise, to offer thanks?"

  Was it? "Yes. It was an undeserved misjudgement. I did not think I would see my son again. It was what you had threatened."

  The swift intake of his breath was harsh. "You owe me nothing. Your misjudgement is not undeserved, neither is your mistrust. In my arrogance, I expected far too much." As he turned finally, the moon touched his face; it was gaunt, hollow cheeked. "I never thought to consider why you had married Freddie," he mused wonder-struck. "I never even thought to consider that!"

  Olivia wanted to get up and walk away, but she could not; there was more to be said. She was trapped by her own intentions. In this final encounter with which she completed her odyssey, she could not leave her pieces unspoken. She gritted her teeth and stayed where she was. The silence was shattered by the barks of the returning dogs. Accepting her as a familiar presence, they came bounding down the steps but with no aggressive overtures. Animals too have memories, after all, which endure well.

  "Don't move. They will not harm you." He uttered the warning mechanically, then recalled that once before he had sounded the same caution in the same place, and again he soured. "How different our histories might have been had I walked the dogs in the opposite direction that night!"

  "They would have been no different. Fate is spiteful enough to have ensured that we would meet in another time, another place."

  He stilled with the force of her cynicism. Already dull, like burnt-out ashes, his eyes dimmed with aches that were involuntarily shared. His tongue too seemed to taste the acrid flavours on hers, his vision also bedevilled by those same phantoms that floated in hers. "Yes, your spiteful fate more than mine!" He was ravaged, the despair also shared. "You were cursed to meet me anyway."