The Peacock Spring

by Rumer Godden

  ‘Alix got her decree—’

  ‘The day you gave her the ring,’ Una finished for Edward.

  ‘You guessed—’

  ‘That wasn’t difficult. We don’t have many diamonds in our family, do we? Certainly not brown ones.’ Una said that for Alix; it meant, ‘Don’t think I am won over. I’m not.’

  ‘The term of waiting has been shortened, owing to my circumstances,’ Edward went on. Then, almost pleadingly, he asked, ‘Couldn’t you be a little happy for us?’

  How can I? Don’t you know anything? thought Una. Yesterday, it would have driven me to despair; now it hardly seems to concern me – or does it? A thought had struck her that made her start; the Tagore Prize, and she asked anxiously, ‘When will it be?’

  ‘In about five weeks – the fourteenth of April is the first possible day. Next day is Baisakhi, the Hindu new year, a new beginning. We will have a honeymoon later when I go back to Japan.’

  ‘That will suit me very well.’ Incautiously Una had said it aloud and, ‘What do you mean?’ asked Edward.

  ‘I mean you won’t be needing me any more. I – can go back to school,’ and, to head them off, Una said, ‘You see, I know quite well why I am here. It was inconvenient at the time but I bear no malice.’

  ‘Of all the chits!’ exploded Edward, but for a moment Una beamed at him. ‘I hope you will be wonderfully happy.’ The beam faded. ‘Oh, Edward, don’t, don’t …’ she could have cried, but he had got up. ‘I must go to the office. Goodbye, you impertinence.’ He bent and kissed her, then kissed Alix, who rose. ‘I will see you to the car.’ She doesn’t want to be alone with me, thought Una but, when Alix came back, Una was drinking coffee, calmly eating buttered toast. ‘I must say,’ said Alix, ‘that, as Edward says, you are loyal.’

  To him, not to you, and Una said, ‘Alix, from now on you will do exactly as I wish.’

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘You would like me to show Edward my back? Tell him about those bottles?’ and Alix was silent. ‘For one thing we shall give up the pretence of any schooling,’ said Una.

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘You will take Mouse for yourself.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘And keep out of my way.’

  ‘Very well.’

  Una ordered Alix, ‘When you go to see your mother or if you ride,’ – Alix now sometimes rode with Edward in the early mornings or, if he were too busy, exercised both horses in the evening – ‘you can drop me in the Lodi Gardens. The rides are dusty now. I should rather walk there.’

  From the first time she had walked in them, Una had loved the Lodi Gardens; to her they were the most beautiful of Delhi’s flowering parks. She had been there with Edward, Alix and Hal, now and again with Bulbul and Som – they liked to walk out after dinner. ‘I must have some air,’ said Som. Paths of paved stone wound under the trees, beside water channels that opened into a pool with a fountain; the breeze scattered spray from its tall plume far across the lawns.

  Even birds seemed peaceful there, waterbirds quietly wading, parakeets and mynah birds quiet too; and the peacocks kept their trains folded, the feathers glinting green and bronze while their necks shone unbelievably blue as they pecked and scratched. It seemed an unique place for a friendly – or loving – stroll and, ‘You can fetch me on your way back,’ Una told Alix.

  ‘But walk there alone?’

  ‘Heavens! Haven’t I been in the country nearly two months?’ And Una was not alone. There were hidden walks and oases of bougainvillaea so dense ‘that no one could see us there, or hear if we talk quietly,’ said Ravi.

  ‘You are running a risk if you want to keep this secret,’ said Hem.

  ‘You can keep watch for us.’

  ‘Thank you, bloody no!’ Hem was often disagreeable these days.

  ‘A pity when we are so agreeable,’ said Ravi.

  All the same, Hem kept watch for them. ‘Una … Ravi … The Misra’s sweeper is walking their poodle,’ and Una, alone, would stroll past, taking the sweeper’s salaam, patting the poodle, though she did not lose sight of Ravi, waiting among the trees. When it was safe, Hem would tactfully disappear while she walked with Ravi; and into Una’s mind would come a picture of herself in class at Cerne, serious pale Una in Cerne’s green jersey and pleated skirt, and here was this nymph, her thin dress blown against her bare legs by the breeze as she walked hand in hand with Ravi in his deep blue kurta and fine-white-muslin salwar pyjama. It seemed to make it more real that they should walk here in daylight. ‘One day we can walk as we please. No one need keep watch,’ said Una, yet she wondered if ever again she would know a spring like this – spring not only in the world, thought Una, spring in me.

  There were some pale trees with delicate mauve and white blossom. ‘Kachnar,’ said Ravi, ‘but you must never plant one near a house or it will steal its soul.’ Una treasured the things Ravi told her about trees and flowers, though she knew he had learnt them from Ganesh or that old gardener of the Bhattacharya’s. ‘Never pick flowers in the evening. It is cruel to pick them then – they are going to sleep.’ ‘I wish you were a flower,’ said Ravi. ‘I would be cruel and pick you and keep you all night.’

  ‘Oh Ravi! Ravi!’

  Then, suddenly, one evening when she and Alix had just come in, Edward arrived home early. ‘The conference is closed. We leave tomorrow,’ he said.

  ‘What a tour!’ said Lady Srinevesan. ‘You lucky, lucky child. I wonder how many Indian girls have ever been asked to go on a tour like that,’ but, ‘You must remember,’ said Una, ‘When you rank as a child, you are ordered, not asked.’

  Lady Srinevesan’s eyebrows lifted. She made no comment but said afterwards, ‘I took a mental note of that.’

  ‘Imagine!’ said Edward in the Kailasa temple at Ellora, ‘imagine those stonecutters digging out this enormous cave from above on the hill, working their sculptures from top to bottom with those primitive chisels.’ The temple was wider than the Parthenon, half again as high, and even the accustomed Edward was awed. Over the gateway, the architect had left an inscription: ‘How did I do it?’

  ‘You don’t care in the least how he did it, do you?’ said Edward and, though Una could feel his disappointment in her, she could not answer, ‘I do.’

  ‘Ellora? Ajanta?’ Una had asked it almost stupidly. ‘What are they?’

  ‘You know quite well.’ Edward was impatient. ‘Temples, enormous temple caves, carved straight out of the rock, Buddhist in Ajanta, but some at Ellora are Hindu or Jain. Then I thought we would fly down to Cochin,’ he had said. ‘It’s a fascinating old port; and drive up to the wildlife sanctuary. The charm of the sanctuary there is that you go by water, not by car, and can glide close up to the animals. I shall have to pause in Madras for work but you shall see some dancing. We shall make a detour back through Delhi to reach Agra on the twenty-ninth because that is the night of the full moon. Then Fatehpur Sikri. Then we’ll stay at Varanasi – Benares – on our way to Darjeeling and Hal. Which will you find more important,’ Edward bantered, ‘Hal or the Himalayan snows?’

  ‘But this will take a long time,’ Una had stammered. ‘Won’t Alix … ?’

  ‘Alix wants a little time for herself. It seems this home her mother is in hasn’t proved satisfactory.’

  ‘No.’ Una could imagine that.

  ‘She wants to settle her in another and better one in Naini Tal. I can help her there – then I’m giving her a fortnight in Paris. She will need more clothes.’

  Una’s lips twitched. A poor and starving country. I am here to organise relief … clothes must be inexpensive. ‘I hope you have given Alix plenty of money,’ said Una. Edward did not take in the satire.

  The time in Delhi, those six short weeks, had passed in a flash; this month was endless. Ajanta; Ellora; Cochin; Periyar; Madras. They were simply steps in a pilgrimage of exile to Una. ‘Would you like to go home?’ asked Edward in despair.

  ‘No.’ Una could not help winc
ing as she said it; Ravi had given her a snub. ‘It’s a good thing you are going,’ he had said, cheerfully matter-of-fact. ‘It will give me a chance to finish my poems. They have to be in on the twenty-fifth.

  ‘Finish them without me?’ As soon as she made that protest Una knew it was stupid. ‘I am the one who writes the poems,’ said Ravi.

  She had comforted herself by sending postcards to Hem. Hemango Sharma, All-India Institute of Medical Sciences. ‘Though really they were for Ravi,’ she was to tell him.

  ‘I knew that, but you might have had the sense to send them in envelopes. I was thought to have a rich tourist woman infatuated with me.’

  ‘Oh!’ That thought had not occurred to Una. ‘Did it send you up or down?’ she asked.

  ‘On the money side, up; in regard, down.’

  ‘Poor Hem!’ But she did not sound contrite, merely amused.

  So they came to Agra. ‘I wanted to be here for this moon, Budh Purnima,’ said Edward. ‘It’s said to be especially bright at this auspicious time, perhaps a promise moon. That would be fitting for me, I hope,’ and Una silently added, ‘For Ravi and me, too.’

  Edward would not let her visit the Taj Mahal until he was sure the moon had risen above the dome and, as Una came out on the entrance steps, it seemed to her as if the whole Taj soared into the sky. The cool lustre of minarets and dome seemed as high above the garden, where water channels glimmered and there were walks, lawns, cypress trees, as the Emperor and his queen had, in their lives, been above even the noblest of men and women. ‘Well, Taj means ‘a crown’,’ said Edward.

  Youths and girls, Indian and Western, were gathered on the entrance steps, silently looking; even their transistors were hushed; it was only the middle-aged who talked, they and the storytellers above on the wide terrace, a man or a boy, standing in a ring of pilgrim villagers or people from the bazaar, and skilfully telling, ‘in couplets,’ said Edward, listening, ‘and wonderfully embroidered,’ the love story of Shah Jehan and Mumtaz Mahal, Pearl of the Palace, and how she had followed him in every battle he fought until she died bearing his fourteenth child, and how he had loved only her until death laid him beside her, under this marvel of beauty he had built for her. Inside, under the dome, visitors thronged reverently round two inlaid marble oblongs, guarded by fretted marble screens, but the real tombs were in a vault far below; no touch or footstep must profane the royal sleep and, ‘Edward,’ said Una suddenly, ‘I’m glad I came.’

  ‘And I’m glad to hear it,’ said Edward. ‘I was beginning to feel I was dragging you round in chains.’

  Standing on the terrace, they listened to the storytellers; they had had to take off their shoes and to their bare feet the marble was still hot from the day’s sun, yet a breeze blew from the Jumna river. ‘There is always this breeze like a whisper in the Taj,’ said Edward, and then, from under the dome, came the sound of a flute, silver-toned, unearthly, enticing yet pure as all flutes are, perfectly fitting the night. Edward and Una stood entranced together, as they had been long long ago, thought Una and, in this moment, Edward did not mind that it was the cool small hand of his daughter he held, not Alix’s; nor Una that it was Edward’s not Ravi’s.

  The sound stopped as if the flute had been snapped in half. There were cries and angry shouts, a rumpus under the dome, and then they saw two of the guards roughly impelling a young man across the terrace; he still clutched the flute, silver in the moonlight, but his long dark hair was tousled over his face as he struggled, the muslin of his white shirt torn, his feet stamped upon, as he was jostled and hustled down the steps. ‘But why? Why?’ cried Una. ‘He was only playing. Edward, stop them! Why don’t you stop them?’

  ‘I expect,’ said Edward, ‘they think he profaned the tomb.’

  ‘But he didn’t. It was beautiful. He meant it as a tribute. I’m sure he did,’ and it was when the flute song broke that everything broke, thought Una afterwards; until then there had been no uglinesses. When they came out of the Taj Mahal gatehouse Una heard a monkey-man’s drum.

  Edward had stayed to talk to the entrance guards, perhaps about the young musician, and she walked across the courtyard to where, among a group of men, the rough nasal voice was chanting or singing as a pair of monkeys capered in the moonlight. There were the same guffaws and shouts of laughter she had heard round the monkey man in Shiraz Road, but this time she was close enough to see why. The little female, when she was jerked, obediently held up her tattered quilted skirt, but her eyes were darting backwards and forwards looking for nuts or fruit; only when the male approached her did she squeal into life, trying to escape from her string, but the man held her. The male monkey circled round her, gibbering, walking on the backs of his front paws. The laughter rose as he closed in. As Una stood unwillingly mesmerized, there were cries of ‘Shabash! Shabash!’ as he sprang, ‘Shabash!’ and, ‘Come away at once!’ said Edward behind her.

  On the way back to the hotel, ‘Those monkeys seemed to be acting a play,’ said Una; she tried to make her voice normal, which was not easy; she still seemed to hear the monkey sobs. ‘What would it have been?’

  ‘Something from the Ramayana, or the story of Radha and Krishna.’

  ‘Krishna?’ Krishna of the flute, the tender love play? ‘Oh no!’ cried Una. Now the flute seemed to be sobbing too.

  ‘They often take one of the great epics for this kind of travesty.’ He spoke lightly but Una forced herself to ask, ‘Edward, why did the female monkey squeal so when … when the male took her?’

  Edward’s ‘Never mind’ was short and Una hardly knew what made her go on.

  ‘I want to know. Should it have hurt so much?’

  ‘Perhaps he was a big monkey.’

  ‘He was – and she was small. She screamed but he went on. It was …’ Una shuddered.

  ‘The man probably gave the male monkey bhang or some such drug to make him randy. Now, that’s enough,’ said Edward.

  It was enough. Una was sick.

  ‘But why let it upset you so?’ asked Edward when, spent and white, she was in bed.

  ‘They were … perjuring themselves.’ Una could explain no more than that.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The people and the monkeys.’

  Edward became matter-of-fact. ‘Monkeys can’t perjure themselves. They can’t speak, you silly billy.’

  ‘That’s just why.’ Once more Una retched. ‘They were helpless.’ They did not know what a show they were making of themselves, helplessly twirled on the end of a string, beaten and drugged into making their pitiful tricks that started automatically at the signal of that nasal chant, the beating drum.

  ‘The man ought to be prosecuted,’ said Edward.

  Next morning Una was sick again.

  ‘I think Agra must be the smelliest city in the world,’ she said as they drove through the streets.

  ‘Wait until you smell Calcutta,’ said Edward. ‘There—’ but, ‘Don’t,’ said Una hastily. ‘Open the car door …’

  ‘I told you when you came,’ said Edward when the retching was over. ‘You mustn’t be squeamish if you live in India.’

  ‘I know but I keep heaving,’and, too, Agra was hot. Una felt curiously limp and when, on their last day, there was a city electricity cut that meant no air conditioning, no lifts, toiling up to the fourth floor, she felt as if her legs were paper, and when she reached her room her face was green-white, her hair soaked with sweat. Am I going to be ill? Yet, next morning, driving out at dawn to Fatehpur Sikri, she was radiantly well.

  They were so early that, in the deserted sandstone city, there were only workmen collecting tools and baskets. Una and Edward picnicked among the bougainvillaea, sitting on the steps of Jodh Bai’s pavilioned palace. ‘She was Akbar’s chief Hindu wife,’ said Edward, ‘daughter of the Rajah of Amber who gave her to the Emperor as a truce. Akbar had a chief Muslim wife as well and a Christian one; he is said to have had five thousand women in his harem.’

  ‘Not as many as Kri
shna,’ said Una.

  ‘But these were historically real, and not one of them,’ said Edward, ‘could give the Emperor a son until he came here to this hill where a saint called Salim was living as a hermit. Salim told Akbar he would have three sons and, sure enough, Queen Jodh Bai produced Prince Salim, later called Jehangir, and soon there were two other little princes. Come, I will take you to the Saint’s mosque and tomb, if you have finished eating all the oranges.’

  ‘It’s only oranges I want to eat,’ said Una. ‘Oranges and oranges.’

  In honour of the saint, Akbar had moved his capital to this beautiful small city he had built on the hill; it had kept an air of completeness though it was given over to tourists, workmen, ‘and peacocks,’ said Una; the peacocks were so tame they came near for pieces of bread and fruit, gazing at Una and Edward from bright eyes oblonged with white, ‘as if they were decorated,’ said Una. They walked proudly, lifting their feet, but when they scratched the dust for insects the feet became usefully mundane. There were still elephant lines, camel stables, stables for more than a hundred horses – their sandstone tethering rings were still on the wall. Edward showed Una the treasury; the mint; the small palace of Birbal, Akbar’s astrologer and favourite storyteller; the audience halls, a debating chamber ‘for men of every religion’, and, for lighter moments, the parcheesi pavement where the ‘pieces’ were dancing girls, and the open pavilion where Akbar took his exercise playing blind man’s buff with the court ladies. Una bought a postcard for Hal, and for Hem one of the tower the Emperor built for his especial elephant. In those days punishment was often being trampled to death by an elephant, but this elephant was so wise he could sense innocence and, ‘If he refused to trample, the victim was freed,’ said Edward, and, ‘This is the pigeon post office. Akbar used to send his messages by pigeon post.’ What a perfect way to send a letter to Ravi!