The Sandalwood Tree (23 page)

“I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“Not at all.” His compact features loosened in a gentle smile. “What can I do for you?”

I wanted to ask him why we have to die, and what we should be doing in the meantime. Instead I said, “I came about the Urdu translation.”

“Oh, right. That was interesting.” He put down the paper sack and dusted his hands. “It recounted an incident of suttee in 1858.”

“Suttee?”

“The practice of widows being burned alive on their husbands’ funeral pyres.”

I shuddered. “I thought that had been outlawed.”

“Yes, it was, in 1848, I think. But … well, it goes on to this day.”

Goose bumps rippled up my arms. I tried to block the image, but in spite of myself I visualized Martin’s corpse blackening and shriveling on a high pyre. I knew, without a doubt, that I would never join him in the flames, and I was absolutely sure he wouldn’t want me to. I said, “Why would a woman do that?”

Harry hesitated. “Tradition and a sense of destiny. Widows who sacrifice themselves to honor their husband’s memory are considered courageous martyrs.” He reflected a moment. “Women from every caste commit suttee, although, strictly speaking, one does not commit suttee, but rather enters into it, as into a state of grace. Of course, the motives are not always so high-minded. Sometimes, if the widow is facing a life of beggary, well … Gandhiji says poverty is the worst form of violence.”

I wondered whether the widow climbed onto the pyre quietly or whether she recklessly threw herself into the flames. Might she be forced or drugged? Would she be overcome by smoke, or would she scream when the flames touched her? I didn’t want to think about it. I said, “What has this to do with Adela Winfield?”

“Apparently, Miss Winfield witnessed the suttee.”

“Why? Whose cremation was it?”

“The record only tells of Miss Winfield being present. That was the strange thing. Indian women are not even allowed to stand near the pyre. So an Englishwoman witnessing suttee would have been extraordinary.”

“I can’t fathom it. Deliberately burning to death?”

“There are things worse than death.”

I became aware of the Buddha watching us. “Because you reincarnate?”

“No.” He shook his head decisively. “The point of reincarnation is to evolve far enough so that you no longer need to reincarnate.”

“You aspire to oblivion?”

“I would say it’s more like peace.” He hesitated. “Oh, but I’m
being a bore.” His squashed little face broke into a smile. “Can I do anything else for you?”

Was he dismissing me? I shook my head. “You’ve been very kind.”

“Then I must say goodbye. I’ve wasted enough of everyone’s time at the ashram trying to be something I’m not. I leave next week to join Gandhi in Calcutta. It’s time for me to get on with it.”

My heart sank. “Isn’t Calcutta dangerous?”

“Life is dangerous.” He inclined his head as if indulging a child. “But what kind of world can we make if we seek only personal safety?”

A
fter I put Billy and his shoebox to bed, Martin came home from the Club, and I stood on the verandah, watching him maneuver the Packard into the old stable. The rain began to fall as he walked across the compound in the twilight. He came up the steps and shook his head like a wet dog, and when he pushed his glasses up on his nose, I regretted having cut him off when he had tried to talk about his dream. I met him at the top step and kissed his cheek; he flinched, and looked confused.

Inside, he changed into dry clothes and put an Ethel Waters record on the turntable, “Stormy Weather.” The chorus—a sad slow lament about lost love and endless rain—hit me like a slap in the face.

He stretched out on the sofa, but when I lay at the opposite end and playfully tangled my legs with his he got up and sat in the wingback chair. The house held on to the day’s humid heat, and we listened to the rain pound the house while Ethel pined for her man; watery sheets of gray and green, closed in on all sides, trapping Martin and me in a hot, sticky center. The song finished as the rain let up, and a woman’s haunting voice reached us from someone
else’s godowns. I much preferred her sacred raga to Ethel’s sorrow, and I said, “I like this place.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It gets under the skin.”

“Tell me about your dream,” I said. “The good one.”

He got up and put on another record—Duke Ellington’s “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be.” He said, “I don’t remember it really, just that
feeling
. I was playing the piano, and I felt … the way I used to feel, before Elsa.”

“It means you can still feel joy.”

He tipped his head to one side. “Well, I can dream about it.”

“No, you felt it. If you forgive yourself, it will come back.”

He gave me a withering look. “Have you been reading Robert Collier? Rah, rah, you can do it, and all that jazz?”

“Don’t mock me.”

He heard the edge in my voice and we fell silent until the record ended. The needle began to scratch and I said, “I can’t stand this.”

He said, “I’ll change the record.”

“I’m not talking about the record.”

But he got up and went to the phonograph anyway. He said, “I told you about the war. Isn’t that what you wanted?” He lifted the needle, replaced it carefully in its cradle, and then picked up the album sleeve.

I said, “I want you to stop punishing yourself.”

“You’re imagining things.” He slid the record into its sleeve and examined the cover, the Duke suave and cool at his piano.

I sat up on the sofa and stared at him. “You want to punish yourself, but you’re punishing us. You have to stop being angry.”

“You make it sound simple.”

“Maybe it
is
simple.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“But—”

“OK. Enough.” He put the album down. “I think I know where Spike is.”

“What?” I knew he was dodging the conversation, but suddenly I didn’t care. “Spike?”

“I always ask the families I interview if they heard about the incident. One of them knows the boy who did it.”

“Where is Spike?”

He lit a bidi and sat down. “The family’s name is Matar. But they live in a very dangerous area.”

“No kidding.” Sarcasm made my voice flat.

“It’s treacherous. It’s a bustee where Hindus and Muslims are packed together in the worst conditions. You don’t want to go there.”

“You mean
you
don’t want me to go there.” All the old combativeness was right there, near the surface, ready to rush out,
whoosh
, just like that. But I remembered the corpse …
we don’t have the time
. Martin pushed his glasses up on his nose, and that simple, familiar gesture cut through my anger and touched me.

He said, “That’s right. I’ll handle it.” He raised a palm to hold off my objection, and I felt an opportunity for us to do something together slipping away.

I said, “Let me go with you. Please. This is important. I won’t talk; I’ll do whatever you say, but let me do this with you.”

Martin took a long drag on the bidi and exhaled like a gasket letting off steam. “The father’s a drunk, and the mother runs a small black-market operation. She scavenges bidis and yarn, whatever she can get, and sells them door-to-door like a box-wallah. Sometimes she gets a deal on shawls or something special from up north, but she never gets ahead because her husband spends the money on arrack as fast as she makes it. They’re basically destitute and they live among people just as badly off who don’t get along. You can’t march in demanding things.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that. We’ll be nice. They’re poor? We’ll pay them.” I reached for him, but he moved back in his chair. I said, “None of it has to be like this.” I thought of the dead woman
buried in flowers and the quote from Rumi about choosing darkness or light. I thought about Felicity and Adela choosing to live on their own terms, choosing joy. I said, “We can choose, Martin.”

“Choose what?”

“We can choose how we meet each day, just that day, and those choices, those days, they add up and they
are our lives
. But someday we’re going to die. We don’t have the time to be … like
this
.” I reached for him again and this time he let me touch his face. I wanted to tell him about the corpse, Mr. Singh, the monkey … I wanted to tell him about Felicity and Adela, long dead and everything but their stories gone with them. But it was too much. I wanted to kiss him, but I feared he might push me away. I said, “If we keep this up, we’ll lose each other.”

He laid his hand over mine. “If I lost you I wouldn’t want to live anymore.”

I met his dark eyes and saw my Martin—a
good
man. “We can’t go on like this.” I slid off the sofa to kneel before him, and relief washed through me when he stroked my hair with his fine, long-fingered hands. I said, “I can forgive you because you’re a good man. That’s why it’s killing you, because you’re
good
.” I moved closer to him and he sat very still. I said, “Don’t shut me out, Martin. Let’s start over by doing this together.”

Martin rolled the back of his hand down my cheek, the way he used to, and after a moment, he said, “OK.”

The next day was hot and close with heavy monsoon clouds bearing down to hold in the heat. Rashmi spread a sheet under the sandalwood tree and Billy and I sat in the shade to drink limeade. I wrote in my journal while the brain-fever bird made his annoying racket in the thickest part of the tree, where no one could see or shoot him. A pye-dog slunk by the low compound wall, whining for food, and I warned Billy not to touch it. In the hills, where
people raised sheep or yaks, dogs might be trained as herders, but in Masoorla and Simla dogs were simply disease-ridden nuisances.

Billy sat in the shade with me, whispering to his shoebox, and I thought about Martin, arranging the rescue mission for Spike, finding out exactly where the Matar family lived and how much we should pay them. We would bring fresh fruit for the family and toys for the little boy. I imagined both of us giving Spike back to Billy, and him getting rid of the sinister shoebox. I closed my eyes and leaned against the tree; drowsing in the heat, listening to the hum of insects, it seemed everything would be all right.

When an itinerant sweet-wallah came up the road calling, “Toffee! Toffee!” Billy jumped up, and Rashmi flew out of the house, bangles jangling. The sweet-wallah trotted into our compound with a cloth-covered tray on his head. In one hand, he carried a stand for the tray and in the other a pair of scales made of wicker and twine, with river rocks for weights. He was a small man with large brown eyes and a thin white beard, and he reminded me of a goat.

He set up his sweet stand in our compound and Billy and Rashmi deliberated over coconut toffees cut in diamond shapes, hard red candies that stick to the teeth, and fat twists of barley sugar. They made their selection, and I paid the sweet-wallah while they carried their treats to the sandalwood tree and sat down, sucking on sugary fingers.

As the sweet-wallah trotted away with his paraphernalia, a barefoot mango man, bent and hobbling under his load, made his slow way up the road. I shaded my eyes to watch him and saw, far in the distance, another bearer, shimmering in heat waves and dust, with a long wooden ladder on his head. So much had happened since I ordered it, I had almost forgotten about the ladder. I watched him come, remembering Adela, and Felicity, her lover and their baby. I glanced at the sandalwood tree and my heart leaped like Indian drums.