The Sandalwood Tree (29 page)

Anasuya will return your letters, when the time comes, should you wish to keep them for your grandson
.

Respectfully
,

Adela Winfield

October 1858

Dear Miss Winfield
,

You may rest your mind in the matter of the child’s ayah. They will not be separated
.

You must not judge Makali too harshly. She could not conceive a child & she became bitter, feeling she had failed in a woman’s most important duty. Having no children, Makali had nothing to live for after Jonathan died. According to custom she could not remarry, she must shave her head, wear white for the rest of her life, & eat only bland foods. But all that was nothing compared to her melancholic nature and her disappointment in life. She
was a good Hindoo woman & she saw suttee as an honourable choice. She believed martyrdom would finally give her life meaning. I tried to dissuade her
.

I hope you will not hold her memory in contempt
.

In kindness
,

Charumati Singh

Mr. Singh put the letter down, his handsome face puzzled. He said, “But my great-grandmother did have a child. She had Grandfather. Oh, my God. Do you suppose …?” He picked up the next letter.

October 1858

Dear Mrs Singh
,

I hold no one in contempt. I wish only to die in peace
.

I am sending you the poetry your son wrote for Felicity in the hope that perhaps the child might know his parents by these poems. I beg you to see that he learns English so that he might read them. If nothing else, these poems will assure him that his parents cared deeply for each other, & that they did not regret his birth
.

Respectfully
,

Adela Winfield

October 1858

Dear Miss Winfield
,

Thank you for these poems, in which my son lives for me again
.

I have found Felicity’s papers amongst my son’s effects & will have all of them printed & bound for posterity
.

As for the child, his surname will be Singh. He will learn English, & he will know that his mother was Felicity Chadwick
.

In kindness
,

Charumati Singh

October 1858

Dear Mrs Singh
,

I have one last request. I have named him Charles William, names I believe his mother would approve, & I ask that you allow him to keep those names. However, I call him Charlie, & that is the name to which he responds
.

Respectfully
,

Adela Winfield

Mr. Singh gave a strange little cry. “Charlie? You didn’t say the child’s name was Charlie. Charles William Singh? That was Grandfather!” He sat back in his chair, as if pushed. “We used to joke about Charlie being an undignified name for a grown man, but he preferred it to Charles.”

“That means …” I let him finish the thought.

Mr. Singh laid a hand flat on his impeccably tailored chest. “Felicity Chadwick was my great-grandmother.”

We stared at each other, wondering at the unexpected ways people are connected and how we touch each other through space and time. It could almost make a person believe in … something. I said, “I wonder why your grandfather didn’t tell you.”

“I’m sure my parents told him not to. They always referred to Makali as my great-grandmother.” He glanced up at the domed ceiling. “But this explains Grandfather’s obsession with this ceiling and the time he spent making me study it. If you knew the hours we spent here … but they were happy times for us. He left those letters where only I would find them.” He stood up, saying, “I want to show you something.”

He pulled the heavy drapes closed over the bay window, and the room fell into darkness. Then he went to the bedside table, took a box of matches out of the drawer, and lit the oil lamp, which he carried purposefully to the middle of the room. He said, “Look up.”

I looked up and gasped. The domed ceiling had burst to life. The indigo background had disappeared and a thousand tiny mirrors reflected the lamplight, glittering and twinkling with the movement of the flame. I saw Ursa Major and Orion and in the center the disk of alabaster moonstone glimmered. It seemed that the roof had peeled away to display the cosmos, because it was too fantastic to be the work of human hands.

Mr. Singh’s voice came from nowhere. “We Sikhs worship one God, whose name is Truth. Grandfather used to say, ‘Gaze at the night sky and see the truth.’ He had always meant for me to discover the truth.”

I don’t know how long we stayed like that—lost in space. It might have been a minute or it might have been ten before he blew out the flame. As he pulled open the drapes he said, “It’s a recreation of a ceiling in the palace at Jaipur.”

“It’s breathtaking. Thank you.” The spectacle had reminded me of the ridiculously romantic night years ago when Martin and I had stood under the stars by the moon dial in Pulaski Park. That cosmos had been real, but our infatuation had not stood up to reality. This cosmos of paint and mirrors was an illusion, but there was more enduring reality under that ceiling than there had been in our moonlit park. All my sleuthing had brought me back to the beginning, but a new beginning. Our marriage could not be sustained by a fairy tale of young love; it had to be durable enough to survive life’s realities, or it must end before it dragged us into bitterness.

Mr. Singh smoothed his tie into the V of his jacket. We had shared an intimate moment, and I saw he felt it as well. He stared out of the bay window, possibly to avoid my eyes, and I said, “Are you married, Mr. Singh?”

His coloring warmed and intensified, and then he said, “Yes, Mrs. Mitchell. I hope you don’t think—”

“Not at all. That was too personal. Forgive me.”

He shrugged and his blush subsided. “Today we’ve shared more than facts. I’ve been happily married for many years.”

“Was your marriage arranged?”

“Of course. In a Sikh wedding ceremony we pray that we may always live as friends. I have been fortunate. My wife and I have become good friends.”

“I see.” How Indian to face reality head on and acknowledge the challenge right from the start. “So, in India, marriages are simply friendships?”

He smiled. “Only the good ones.”

Riding home, I tried to recapture the sense of awe I’d felt in the darkened bedroom, but it had already begun to fade. That is the nature of emotion. And then I knew how it must be: Martin and I had to forge a friendship that could survive the past and create a future worth living. As for Harry, it was time for me to get on with it. I would not join Martin in his suicidal hell, and I would not raise Billy in one.

The word “divorce” formed in my mind in bold black letters, an apocalyptic announcement of disaster. I loved Martin and I would always love him, but I would not let my life be a monument to his guilt. Like Felicity and Adela, I would choose joy, and Martin could join me, or not.

I checked my watch; the train for Lahore did not leave for another hour. I called out to the tonga driver and he pulled up on the reins. I said, “Take me to the train station.”

M
artin wasn’t there, so I waited. The train chugged in on screaming brakes, and the shifting tide of humanity, enduring and ephemeral, flooded the platform. Young men with hennaed hair hawked paan and tea; a man dressed in nothing but a handkerchief held by a thread around his waist stood with gold bracelets all the way up his outstretched arms, and a patient Indian cow with beautiful eyes meandered through the crowd.

Snacks and tea were bought and sold in a grand rush, displaced Hindus disembarked, and displaced Muslims climbed aboard, heaving trunks through windows and shouting at family members to hurry. Eventually the train huffed out of the station in an angry hiss of steam, and the hawkers sat on their heels to wait for the next one. In spite of his tan and bidis and kurta pajamas, I would have recognized Martin, even from behind. He simply wasn’t there, and I wasn’t sure whether to be worried or hopeful. I hailed a rickshaw to take me to the telegraph office, but when I got there Walker said, “He took the train to Lahore.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Well, he’s not here.”

I went home, because I didn’t know where else to go, and found him sitting in the wicker rocker on the verandah, watching Billy play tug-of-war with Pal. The puppy growled with youthful ferocity, small pointy teeth clamped onto the twig Billy jiggled, while Rashmi lay curled in a corner, napping. As I came up the steps, Billy said, “Mom! Dad’s waiting for you.”

“Oh?” I kissed the top of Billy’s head, and Rashmi sat up and yawned.

I stood there, uncertain, and Martin smiled at me. He pushed his glasses up on his nose, and my heart broke. I steeled myself for what I had to say—it would be the first time he heard the word “divorce” from me—and it took me another second to notice that he was wearing Western clothes. I said, “You’re not going to Lahore?”

“No.”

“But your thesis …?”

“I can write my thesis without Lahore. Hell, I can talk to the people coming and going at the train station right here.” He held his hand out, and I took it. He said, “I did go to the station, though, and I’m glad I did. Watching those refugees, I finally
got
it. They were all families sticking together through a civil war, and there I was sitting alone like a stupid martyr ready to sacrifice my family to my guilt. What a jerk.” He squeezed my hand and his eyes shone.

Rashmi saw us, our faces, and understood. She lumbered to her feet, saying, “Come, beta,” and she took Billy out to the compound with Pal scrambling behind.

Martin surprised me by pulling me onto his lap and wrapping his arms around me. He said, “Remember that night we went to the Club? You said something that stuck with me. You said, ‘All we really have are our stories.’”

I had been quoting Adela, but he didn’t know about Adela, so I just nodded, surprised that he had remembered my offhand remark.

He said, “I couldn’t stop thinking about that. I thought, yeah, that’s why I’m doing this, why I’m a historian. I’m going to tell the story of India at a turning point, and my story will be useful. It might even be important. But something kept bugging me.” He paused, searching for words. “Today I went to the bazaar for cigarettes, and while I was walking around the sun got to me.”

I opened my mouth, a sarcastic quip on the tip of my tongue, but he headed me off. “OK, I admit it. Sometimes I feel like my brain is frying. But I hate those colonial topees. So I bought a shawl and wrapped it around my head.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!”

His arms tightened around me so that I couldn’t get up off his lap. He said, “I know. I stopped to light a bidi and saw my reflection in a shop window. I didn’t recognize myself. I blended into the crowd and I knew then that you were right; I was looking for trouble.”

“Well, thank God for that.”

“But I went to the train station anyway. I was early and I sat there, with my head wrapped, smoking a bidi, trying not to think about anything, just watching the families coming and going. No matter how anxious they were, they had one thing in common—they were sticking together. If somebody got hurt or killed along the way, they’d know it. They’d be there to mourn together and comfort each other.

“And I was sitting there all by myself, dressed like a goddamn fool. I thought about someone having to tell you that I’d been killed in Lahore, how you might not even recover my body, what you’d tell Billy, and I was revolted by my own selfishness. Then I knew why your remark had been bugging me. The history of India isn’t my story.
I
am my story.
We
are my story. I unwrapped my head—it felt like taking a bandage off a head wound—and I came home.”

His eyes pulled me in—their earnestness—but the frantic edge was gone.
That
was my Martin, saving us with his courage and honesty.
What hubris to think that all I had to do was forgive him, offer myself, and he would be healed. It had to come from
him
, of course it did. And then I acknowledged my own part in the last two years—dismissing his fears, keeping secrets, sniping, nursing grudges. But Adela—Adela—had gotten through to him. I said, “I never stopped loving you.”