The Sandalwood Tree (3 page)

Spike, a stuffed dog dressed in cowboy gear, had been a gift for Billy’s fifth birthday in lieu of the real puppy he’d wanted. Pets had been forbidden in our Chicago apartment and Spike was a compromise. Martin and I splurged on the finest toy dog we could find—a pert Yorkshire terrier with uncanny glass eyes and a black felt cowboy hat. He was snappily clad in a red plaid shirt and blue denim jeans, and he wore four pointy-toed boots of tooled leather. Billy adored him.

But in Masoorla, the rootin’, tootin’ cowboy had come to represent the easy American life we’d taken Billy away from, and I couldn’t look at it without a twinge of guilt. India had turned out to be lonely—believe me, you don’t expect that in a country with almost half a billion people—and Spike was Billy’s only friend. He talked to the toy as if it was a real dog, and Martin worried whether that was entirely healthy. But I wouldn’t have taken Spike away, even if I’d known the trouble the toy was going to cause later.

I unfolded another page rescued from the wall; it was a water-stained drawing of a woman in a split skirt and pith helmet astride a horse. Martin had told me that Englishwomen rode sidesaddle in the 1800s, and I wondered whether this was some sort of cartoon, or was this woman, perhaps, one of those outrageous few who flouted society? I studied the drawing. She had a young face, thin and plain, and she smiled as if she knew something the rest of us didn’t. She held the reins with easy confidence. The brim of her
topee shaded her eyes, and only her knowing smile, her lifted chin, and that bold costume hinted at her personality. I unfolded a few more pages, all letters bearing different degrees of damage, but I made out a phrase here and there.

From … … Ad … Winfield
… shire … England
September 1855

Dear Felicity
,

… last night …                                    …a chinless little man …

                                        … bored …

                                                               … a good cry …

… duty to yourself …                          …. but your health …

… intrepid Fanny Parks … not consumptive …

… worry about you …

The letters were personal, and trying to fill in the blanks felt like peering into these people’s lives uninvited. I struggled with a brief pang of guilt before reminding myself that the letters were dated 1855, and the people concerned were long past caring. Still, I glanced at the back door. Gloomy Martin and lighthearted Rashmi would not have cared about the letters, but Habib was a sphinx-like Indian who spoke no English, and I never knew what he was thinking. I always felt a bit off balance around Habib, but he was a reliable cook, who hadn’t poisoned us yet with his incendiary curries.

In spite of my reluctance to trust the suspicious snacks on the train, Martin and I had decided to eat the native food in our own home. Indian cooks had long been preparing English meals—they smirked and called it invalid food—but Martin convinced me that it would be more interesting to eat curries than to teach an Indian how to make meatloaf. “Either you’ll give cooking lessons to a cook who doesn’t speak English or we’ll eat nothing but shepherd’s
pie and blancmange.” He grimaced. I knew he was right, and he clinched it with the very reasonable observation that “It will be the same ingredients from the same markets made by the same cook no matter how they are seasoned or arranged in the pot.”

Unfortunately, Habib’s curries were so hot that most distinguishing flavors were lost under the searing spices. Martin, the great promoter of eating local dishes, said the meals in our house were not consumed but survived. One night, he stared at his goat curry and rubbed his belly. “OK,” he said, sheepishly. “I know we agreed, but …” He sighed. “Does every meal have to leave blisters?” I nodded, sympathetic. At that point, we both could have done with a little English invalid food.

I tried to get Habib to cut back on the hot chilis with pantomimes of fanning my mouth, panting, and gulping cold water. But the silent little man with the skullcap and expressionless eyes only rocked his head from side to side in that ambiguous, all-purpose gesture that no Westerner can completely decipher—the Indian head waggle. It can mean “yes” or “no” or “maybe,” it can mean “I’m delighted” or “utterly indifferent,” or sometimes it seems to be an automatic response that simply means, “OK, I heard you.” Apparently, it was all about context.

I shuffled the letters, scanning another sheet of writing spoiled by time and weather, and I felt a spurt of irritation with both the letter and the place that had ruined it. I had hoped that cultural isolation would force Martin and me back to each other, but India had not brought us together. India had turned out to be incomprehensibly complex, not a wellspring of ancient wisdom, but a snake pit of riddles entwined in a knot of cultural and religious contradictions.

And speaking of contradictions, India seemed to make Martin simultaneously paranoid and reckless. He still never wore a hat and brushed me off when I offered him calendula ointment for his red, peeling nose. As a historian, he interviewed Indians about their forthcoming independence from Great Britain, which meant
walking through the native quarters of Simla and driving the open Packard over steep, rutted roads into the hills to visit remote villages. When I told him to be careful, he laughed, saying, “I’m a war veteran. I think I can handle myself.” He whistled as he left the house.

But every morning, when I made up our bed, I had to whisk flat the spider cicatrices in the sheet where he had bunched it during angst-ridden dreams. I didn’t know whether he was dreaming about India or Germany, but I knew he was not as relaxed as he pretended.

Another mark of his anxiety was his infuriating double standard. Even while he roamed the countryside at will, he warned me not to stray too far from home. That chafed. I don’t like being told what to do, never have, and I stood up to him. I stuck my chin out and told him we were in India, not wartime Germany, but he stuck his chin out, too, and told me I didn’t know what I was talking about. Any mention of Germany brought a dangerous edge to his voice so I pulled in my chin and let it go.

I unfolded the last sheets of parchment, and my breath caught. The innermost letter was intact. Several pages had been saved from the worst of the damp, every word preserved by the absorbent layers around it.

from The Pen of Felicity Chadwick
Calcutta, India
January 1856

Dearest Adela
,

Silly goose! By now you’ve received my letters from Gibraltar & Alexandria & know I haven’t perished on the high seas. I miss you terribly, but it is good to be back in India. How I wish you could join me
.

Arriving during the season has been a colossal bore—days spent in stuffy drawing rooms, endless dinners & dances with the same dreary courting
rituals between the same desperate women & the same lonely men, all of them becoming silly on Roman punch. I make a point of telling the stodgy gentlemen that I like to smoke & drink, & the bawdy ones that I’m devoted to my Bible studies. Does that shock you? Mother would be appalled, but thus far I have succeeded in avoiding any proposals so my plan is evidently working. Mother & Father are mystified by my lack of proposals & I keep silent, pretending not to understand it either, biding my time until we go to the hills in March. Then I shall escape to the freedom of mofussil—the wild countryside—all on my own. I’ve heard about an unspoiled little village called Masoorla & I smell freedom
.

I am happy to be back in India, but the multitude of servants who attend us every moment has resurrected an unsettling memory. One day, when I was six, I skipped into the humid cookhouse behind our home in Calcutta & saw Yasmin, my ayah, standing over a pot left to simmer. This was most surprising as Yasmin was a Hindoo & would normally not enter the cookhouse, which she considered unclean, the place where our Mohammedan cook prepared meat, even beef. Yet, there she was
.

I had gone into the cookhouse for a snack of guava chaat & caught her in the act of withdrawing her hand from a moonstone urn. She swivelled her head slowly & locked on to me, her chota mem—little lady—whilst she withdrew a pinch of ash from the urn. Some Hindoos sentimentally save a small amount of a loved one’s ashes, and I had last seen that moonstone urn in Yasmin’s hands a week earlier when she returned, weeping, from Vikram’s cremation. Vikram had been one of our many bearers, and I remembered seeing his body in the godowns covered with masses of marigolds and roses and ready for cremation. I gave Yasmin a questioning look whilst her hand hung poised over the stew pot with Vikram’s ashes pinched between thumb & fingertips
.

Knowing I would never betray her, my beloved Yasmin released Vikram’s ashes into the stew, & I watched them flutter into the pot, into our dinner. She smiled at me & I smiled back. Yasmin was the one who woke me with a kiss in the morning, & sang me to sleep at night. She gave me the patchwork quilt made of sari fabrics that I brought with me to England. It smelled of patchouli and coconut oil, like Yasmin, & do you remember how furious your mother
was when I hid it from the laundress? I could not lose those scents to lye soap; it would have been like losing Yasmin again
.

I watched Yasmin stir the desecrated stew with a long spoon, & then she gave me an affectionate wink & a handful of guava chaat
.

It was our secret & though I did not understand, I was happy to share it with her. After all, I was six & lonely & accustomed to not understanding. I did not understand why cows controlled the traffic in the street, or why Father donned a white kid glove to pinch the servants when he was displeased. Nor did I understand Mother’s practice of giving servants a large dose of castor oil as a punishment, or her rule that no servant could come closer to her than an arm’s length
.

Once, she forgot herself & made to steady herself on Vikram’s shoulder as she climbed into the palanquin, then, with a huff of disgust, she withdrew her hand as though from a flame & clambered in on her own. Vikram seemed oblivious, but Yasmin’s face had darkened, & a few weeks later, after his sudden death, Yasmin put his ashes into our food. I thought she was playing a joke on Mother
.

That evening at dinner, the bearer set down plates mounded with perfumed rice & partridge stew. Mother & Father spooned the defiled stew into their mouths & chewed dutifully. As always, Mother dabbed daintily at the corners of her mouth, & Father blotted his mustache with a stiff damask napkin
.

I recall pushing it around in my mouth, probing with my tongue for some gritty texture or aberrant taste, but there was none. I knew Vikram was in my dinner, but I was six & I didn’t mind. He had been one of my favourite bearers. I enjoyed watching him cavort in the garden, laughing whilst he juggled bananas with a bucked-tooth smile, his turban going askew. I don’t know why he died, but Yasmin told me he had become a dragonfly, & that she kept some of his ashes in the moonstone urn to keep her company. I understood only later that he was probably her husband
.

I ate my dinner & pondered what part of Vikram I might be ingesting. I thought of his pierced earlobe, his misshapen little toe & his hooked nose. It was possible that Yasmin’s pinch of ash had merely captured a bit of his shroud, but I hoped not. I wanted to eat something of Vikram because I missed him
.

Do you find me monstrous, Adela?

When we moved from our small house to the big one on Garden Reach Road, Vikram was one of the bearers who escorted Mother & me. I moved the curtain of our palanquin to inhale the street smells of India—smoke & spice & something else I could not identify—& for the first time, I wondered what comprised that distinctive odour. Later, standing inside the gate of our new house, I looked up at Mother & twitched my nose. She pursed her stingy lips & gave a wag of her head. “Squatting,” she said with a twist of distaste. “Women squatting in the dirt over their cooking.” She sniffed at the offending air. “You should understand by now that these people prefer to live in the street.”

But, Adela, it was not only the smell of food cooking, it was burning cow dung & funeral pyres—the odour of poverty & grief. I saw the biers trotted daily through the streets, laden with thin, brown corpses surrounded by fresh flowers. Father turned away from the funeral processions. “Poor wogs,” he said with a grim smile. “No point in their living terribly long anyway.”

Don’t you find that sad? They lived & died & we paid them no heed. We didn’t even notice them in our food. But they knew! Since I’ve been back in India, I’ve heard of cooks putting ground glass into the sahib’s food. They knew
.

I put Yasmin’s “joke” out of my mind until I came back to India & sat down one evening to a dinner of partridge stew. With my first taste, the memory of another stew seasoned with human ashes surfaced with visceral impact. I looked around the room & saw our bearers, one standing behind each of us, erect & impassive. One sees nothing in their faces, even when Father goes on & on about politics—the religious feuds & the malcontent sepoys
.

Well, Father can go boil his head. I love India & intend to live here on my own terms. I shan’t marry; I shall make myself useful. I have my annuity, & when we go to the hills I shall hire a simple bungalow near Masoorla. My Hindoostani is coming back, & I shall go so thoroughly jungli Mother will want nothing to do with me
.

I cannot wait!

Your sister in joy
,

Felicity

The letter had never been mailed. I laid it down, thinking … human remains in the stew? I remembered a
National Geographic
article about ritual cannibalism, which concluded that it was deeply spiritual, involving a belief in transferred power and continued existence. Only cannibalism for survival entailed reluctance or regret. Of course, Yasmin’s behavior didn’t exactly qualify as cannibalism, but something akin, for which I had no name. Apparently, human ashes in the stew were simply the Indian equivalent of a slave spitting into the massa’s mint julep.