A Far Horizon (7 page)

At the mention of the Chief Magistrate’s name a shadow passed over Sati’s face. His tall, gaunt frame and expressionless face had made a fearful impression on her. At the time Mr Holwell had been a visitor to her mother’s house, Sati had been living there as well. Jaya had been ill at that time and unable to care for her granddaughter as usual. The Chief Magistrate had reminded Sati of the adjutant storks, watching her from his small grey eyes behind the beak of his nose. Rita had been sharp and impatient with Sati, unwilling to be burdened with her child when her house was filled by admirers. Sati had felt herself an obstruction, but to what she could not say. She always seemed somewhere she should not be, at home when she should be at play, at play when she should be asleep. The toothless crone her mother had kept as an ayah had pinched her relentlessly. And there were the visitors. Gentlemen from White Town and sometimes Black Town seemed always to be coming and going. Each night on her pallet Sati listened to the tread of their feet across the room outside and their voices mingled with that of her mother. The house was not large and the sounds that came to her contoured things she could not explain. It had been the silences that frightened
her most. Mr Holwell had stayed in her mind because of the manner in which he stared at her if ever she showed herself.

He had been there, she remembered, on her twelfth birthday. It was soon after that day that everything had started. Suddenly, objects in the room had moved about with a life of their own. A china ornament had flown past her and crashed against the wall. A book had lifted itself from a table. As she lay on her narrow pallet a hand had seemed to move across her body although she was alone. Then the voices began. Her behaviour became so strange that Rita soon returned her to Jaya. Her grandmother had at once called an expert on these matters. The holy man gave Sati a foul ash to eat and took money for some prayers. Afterwards he beat Sati with a bundle of twigs until she screamed for mercy. Eventually the priest announced that the spirit had departed. The voices stopped. For a long time there was nothing.

‘Did you see Mr Holwell’s house?’ Rita asked again. ‘You were so rude to him the other night. But he is a pig, he deserves it. All the time he was looking at me, seeing me like I was naked. He was so frightened by the things you said that he could not move.’ Rita began to laugh. Her open mouth, still full of
paan,
was like a bloodied wound.

‘I remember nothing,’ Sati replied. Even if she pushed back inside her mind, she came up against a curtain. Rita looked at her strangely and did not pursue the conversation. In the palanquin there was silence.

At this hour the narrow road was congested with Black Town’s traffic. Wide-horned buffalo laboured with carts piled high with vegetables and sacks of rice. A herd of goats on their way to the slaughterhouse trotted bleating amongst a detachment of sepoys off duty from the Fort William garrison. The soldiers pushed their way forward, battering the animals in their path with long wooden sticks. They stared into Rita’s palanquin and made coarse remarks, their eyes on her cleavage. She yelled at them in language learned from her mother, raucous as the street. Her own father had been a half-caste Portuguese sepoy, although she barely remembered him. The sepoys
stepped back in shock and then, recovering their wits, replied in like vein until the litter drew ahead.

Sati hid her face in shame, her knees drawn up beneath her chin in the cramped confines of the palanquin. She saw with relief that they had reached the bridge that would carry them back into Black Town across the Maratha Ditch. Soon White Town and its painful taunts would be left behind. To make the passage from Black Town to White Town across the wide bamboo bridge was to enter another dimension. However many times she made that journey, White Town still intimidated; its spacious tanks and park, its gleaming buildings set in huge gardens blazed with an unremitting glare that forced her to shut her eyes. Carriages and palanquins revolved through the streets, churning up dust, pushing her to the side of the road. Fashionable women in fashionable hats gazed at her dismissively. The blinding white walls of the town seemed only to echo the arrogance of its inhabitants. The place united to refuse her. Only the adjutant birds, perched in trees or massed on buildings, surveyed the town fearlessly. Beneath bald heads their beaks, three feet long over crinkled red chins, moved before them like swords. The birds had a presence that flattened all differences; they patrolled both towns as one.

Sati was bumped about uncomfortably in the palanquin as the runners negotiated the crowded bridge. She stared down at the slimy green water moving below, filling the Ditch like a sluggish reptile, and touched the amulet at her neck. Within it was an incantation to the Goddess, who must be awakened to guide her across this place of passage.

As they reached the other end of the bridge, Sati turned to stare at the retreating view of Fort William. The sad face of Emily Drake came before her again. The Governor’s wife had been displeased. For some reason Durga had deserted Sati just when she needed her most. She wondered if she would ever see the Governor’s wife again. Then the view of Fort William was suddenly lost and she was sucked into a different world.

J
aya shut the door of her hut and began the short walk to her cousin’s home. Govindram lived only a few alleys away, but his house was unlike much of Black Town. It was built on two storeys from small red bricks and faced inwards onto a courtyard. The house had been built with a loan from his master, the great merchant Omichand. It was one of the few
pukka
houses in Black Town and reared up amongst the mud-walled huts. It was not faced with
chunam,
as were the houses in White Town. Rain and humidity stained its walls, weeds lodged between the bricks, and upon the flat roof string beds could be seen. Goats grazed before its door. Govindram was a first cousin of Jaya’s, as close as a brother, and she spent much time in his house. Without him her fate would be worse than a widow’s. His position of importance in Omichand’s business gave him much influence in Black Town and gave Jaya in turn a vicarious standing amongst her many neighbours.

As she approached Govindram’s house she saw the gate was open. His wife, Mohini, stood outside, feeding the sacred cow led around all day for this purpose by an emaciated woman in a filthy green sari. Jaya stopped beside Mohini, who held a round tray piled with dry
dhal
and stale sweetmeats. Mohini took no notice of Jaya; she was absorbed in an argument over the price of a bundle of grass with
which to feed the animal. The cow-woman’s voice rose raucously. The grass was strapped to her back and trailed in long wisps about her. Since Mohini could not refuse to feed the cow for fear of the ill fortune that might ensue, the cow-woman had the advantage. But the day was incomplete for Mohini unless it rolled forward upon dispute. Eventually she turned with a nod of acknowledgement to Jaya, then yelled through the open gate to her husband.

‘She is here again. She is your relative, speak with her. I have no time to waste.’ Mohini pulled her sari further over her head so that her face was hidden.

Jaya ignored this rudeness and passed through the gate the
chowkidar
held open to face her cousin, Govindram. He rested upon a string bed in the courtyard, conversing with Sati, who sat
cross-legged
on a mat beside him.

‘I am just now hearing about Sati’s evening in White Town. Tell me why you permitted this disgraceful thing? They have tried to make money from her.’ Govindram greeted Jaya with a frown. Since he and Mohini had no children, they felt proprietorial towards Sati, who, at fifteen, was the age a grandchild might have been.

‘And why is she again dressed in your old rags? It is a shame to us all. Do I not give you enough money to clothe her? She should already be married with children about her,’ Govindram scolded.

Sati wore a loose gold-edged
kameez
over wide trousers. The outfit was clearly one from Jaya’s Murshidabad days, dug out of her old trunk. Sati’s situation irked Govindram. Most girls were married at seven, entered their husband’s home at twelve and bore a child before they were fourteen. Many girls of Sati’s age were already widows. Soon, without even marrying, Sati’s position would be the same as that of those discarded women. Govindram sighed loudly. He was a slight man beneath the bulk of his turban. A bushy moustache gave him authority, but he was younger than he appeared.

‘So why do you not do something then?’ Jaya retorted. The duty of wedding arrangements fell to Govindram as Jaya’s only male relative.
The shame of her granddaughter’s humiliating position was a weight Jaya had to bear every day. Her neighbours now openly wondered if Sati’s
ferenghi
blood might not offer hope of marriage to a White Town sahib. It was well known that White Town women married when well past their prime. No one expected Sati to find a respectable alliance in Black Town. It was murmured that if she remained with her grandmother, destiny would deliver her to one of Calcutta’s houses of ill repute. Jaya closed her ears to such whisperings and prayed harder to the Goddess.

Govindram sighed again and refrained from further comment. Given the reputation of her mother and grandmother, and Sati’s own hybridity, what family would accept her? Besides, she was as tall as a man and unusual enough in colouring to provoke all manner of unflattering comment. A good dowry would be persuasive, but who would provide it except himself?

Sati shifted uncomfortably at this conversation but could not share their concern. The thought that she might not enter a bridal chamber or that no man would lift her veil caused her no disturbance. She belonged to no one but herself. She knew instinctively that her path was not the path of others. Her bones were filled with memories that she must follow to their ends. She touched the amulet at her neck. The dark moon might hide its light but the Goddess would be with her. It was She who eased the way from one realm to the next, through the perilous passage of life to death to life again. Through Her all things were created and were again dissolved.

Govindram gazed at Sati with an expression of tired concern. Her Indian attire was proof that Sati resided at present with her grandmother. The frilled muslin and ribbons of European fashion had recently become her identity if she was resident with her mother. It embarrassed Govindram to face the child when she was dressed in the foreign manner. There was nothing about her he recognised then; formality immediately stiffened him. And Sati too, in those strange clothes, was distant and withdrawn. It was as if she were two people who must inhabit the same body.

‘He wishes to adopt me. I don’t want to live with them. I want to stay here.’ The words burst out of Sati.

‘Who wishes to adopt you?’ Govindram asked, his frown deepening.

‘Demonteguy Sahib,’ Sati answered, fidgeting with her bangles. The proposition of living permanently with her mother and Demonteguy filled her with unease. She would be forced to call the man ‘Father’. Although she thought rarely of her own father, the idea of Demonteguy taking on that role filled her with distaste. She had no memory of her real father, who had died soon after her birth. Yet the legacy of his identity now set her firmly apart. All her life she had glimpsed him only in fragments. The large houses of White Town conjured him up. Sometimes on visits to the settlement she passed men in dark hats spilling from important buildings and knew that she almost touched him. His voice issued from bawdy taverns or echoed in the sails of Indiamen anchored in mid-stream. Unexpected things blew the feel of him through her. His essence lurked everywhere, untouchable, his ghost fading even as it appeared.

His name was Joseph Edwards, and his marriage to her mother had been short. He had taken Rita to England on the ship he captained. She had lived for some time in a boarding house near the docks while the ship was reloaded with cargo. On the return voyage Sati had been born. Since a ship was no place for a baby, Edwards left his wife and child behind when he next sailed from Calcutta. Within hours a fever caught him and he quickly sickened and died. He was fed to the waves three days’ sail from the mouth of the Hoogly.

Govindram looked in enquiry at Jaya, who wore a dirty cotton sari, once white but now of an indeterminate colour, which she began to pull at in an agitated manner.

‘Is this matter of adoption true? How can such a man adopt her? Why should Rita now want her back?’ Govindram was puzzled. During Sati’s growing-up, Rita had wanted only freedom from the responsibility of motherhood.

‘It is true. You must give us your protection. That Demonteguy
has made Rita mad. You think without reason I would come here, to bear your wife’s insults? I have my self-respect,’ Jaya replied.

The shadow of the mango trees beyond the house had lengthened to embrace them. Upon a wall monkeys waited to swoop upon food; in the sky sharp-eyed birds wheeled constantly. Beyond the wall urchins climbed mango trees to pull at the heavy fruit. The smell of soil and plantains, of excrement and hot mustard oil frying in the cookhouse rose up to fill Sati’s nose. Thoughts of her father still occupied her mind.

She had only a single memory of him, woven for her by her mother. Rita had recounted the incident so often that it had entered Sati’s consciousness as her own experience. She was floating above the earth, held high in her father’s arms. Beneath her, spread upon the table, lay a map of the world. Her father had lowered her to the table and stabbed the map with a finger. Here, he had said, this is where you were born. His finger rested in the middle of an ocean, on a point where two lines met. To either side were continents where mountains, trees, people and histories massed upon the land. Her father pointed to a shape on the map that was her mother’s country and to the island that was his own. Big or small, these places were defined by boundaries. Then her father’s finger travelled back to her own source of being. No shape appeared to contain her. She stood alone, balanced precariously like a dancer upon the meeting of meridians. Beneath her father’s finger there was nothing but the waves.

For years she had grappled with the meaning of her birth, in the middle of nowhere, at the crossing of two lines. She had sprung to life in a dispossessed place, far from her mother’s great land and her father’s tiny island. The knowledge hung suspended in her, like a bat in a tree through the blaze of day. At some hour this knowledge would awake, to live a life of its own invention. For now, that moment had not yet come. She hung suspended still, birthed neither in one world nor the other, pregnant with herself.

‘Why are you sitting there like a blind creature? Go and help your
aunt. Just now she has gone to the cookhouse for refreshments‚’ Jaya interrupted Sati’s thoughts. She was anxious to be alone with her cousin.

‘I do not understand any of this,’ Govindram sighed when Sati had gone.

‘You do not understand because you do not listen,’ Jaya complained. ‘I told you everything last time I was here.’

‘Then explain again.’ Govindram spoke mildly. He reached for a box of
suppari
and chose a piece to chew upon.

‘I have made my will, that is the root of the trouble,’ Jaya burst out.

‘Can a woman make a will?’ Govindram looked at his cousin in surprise.

‘In White Town such things are done. I went to a lawyer and paid much money. He was a
choor,
but everything is written down; it is legal now. There is a seal upon it,’ Jaya replied.

‘You are not about to die. Why are you doing this? And what do you have to leave? A few trinkets?’ As far as Govindram knew, Jaya was destitute and lived on the charity he regularly dispensed.

‘You know nothing.’ Jaya ignored his question. ‘How can I be sure my time is not coming soon? At this age such things enter our minds.’

‘That is correct,’ Govindram sighed. ‘The one thing we can be sure of in this life is death.’

‘Keep it with you.’ Jaya pushed the heavily sealed document across the floor to him. ‘In this town there are no secrets. How Demonteguy and Rita came to know of my will, I do not understand. Maybe it was that
badmash
scribe at the lawyers who told them. I have left everything to Sati, that is the trouble. I have not left my things to Rita. Oh no, not with that husband beside her now.’

Govindram scratched his head beneath his turban and refrained from further enquiries about his cousin’s mysterious estate. Mohini returned to the courtyard with Sati. A servant followed with tumblers of sherbet and a plate of sweetmeats, which he placed before Jaya.

‘Eat,’ Mohini commanded.

Her sari had slipped and she pulled it forward again to cover her head in respect before her husband. It infuriated her that Jaya sat blatantly bareheaded before a male cousin older than herself. The end of Jaya’s sari lay draped about her neck where it had fallen and she made no attempt to retrieve it. The hennaed ends of her pigtail faded into a head of white roots. In old age Jaya had lost all sense of propriety, Mohini decided. The teachings of childhood had worked themselves loose and hung as slackly about her as the rolls of flesh upon her body. Once that body and that face had been blessed and cursed in equal part with exceptional beauty. Mohini shuddered to think of the life Jaya had led. She no longer felt envy, only distaste. If she had her way her door would be shut to Jaya, just as other relatives had shut it. Only her husband’s foolish sentiments forced her to keep it open. But she was fond of Sati. Mohini turned and walked off to supervise further household matters and Sati ran after her.

Jaya followed Sati’s departure with a grim expression. ‘I am bringing this lawsuit only for Sati’s sake. I have a right to appear in the Mayor’s Court. So many English husbands I have had. But that Hatman Holwell would not allow it.’

‘What lawsuit are you bringing?’ Govindram asked in sudden alarm.

‘Do you understand nothing? For the custody of Sati, of course. If Rita and Demonteguy get custody, how will Sati inherit my things? They will take everything from her.’ Her eyes brimmed with tears. ‘My daughter is not a fit mother. Everyone knows that. Sati is happy with me.’

Govindram remained silent. Some parts of Jaya’s tale began to clarify, yet he doubted she would be considered in White Town more suited to have custody of Sati than Rita. Whenever Govindram looked at Jaya now it was in fascinated horror that beauty could implode so conclusively. His own wife had merely faded and
thickened, the process so gradual that he only now and then looked at her in mild disbelief.

‘I knew no good would come from that marriage of Rita’s,’ Jaya burst out.

‘You encouraged it,’ Govindram reminded her.

‘That Demonteguy is a sahib. I too, you remember, only married English sahibs,’ Jaya argued.

Govindram refrained from reminding her that she had married common soldiers. One might even, he remembered, have been a sailor. And Rita’s father was a half-caste Portuguese. How many other uncertain liaisons there might have been between his cousin’s marriages he could not say. Such low-class men were not sahibs.

‘Yes, Demonteguy is a sahib,’ he sighed.

He had no wish to be reminded of Jaya’s life story. All her troubles since he settled in Bengal had come to rest upon him. As children they had played together, brought up for a time in the same house in Delhi. Their families were not poor, but neither were they rich. Large dowries were out of the question. Jaya’s great beauty had been used to secure her a widower husband of substantial wealth. The man had grown sons of Jaya’s age, any of whom would have been more suitable as a husband. Jaya did not see her bridegroom until her wedding night and was shocked at the wizened man who came to her bed. He resembled an old dog at the end of a long bout of mange. Nobody else seemed to feel this way. They spoke of Jaya’s luck at finding a rich husband. After the wedding, Jaya left with her husband for his home in Dacca.