Veils of Silk (33 page)

He couldn't possibly share a bed with her any longer. He would have to concoct some plausible reason for sleeping separately.

The prospect did not enthrall him.

Wearily he perched on the windowsill and looked out into the softly rustling trees. How many other dark nights of the soul had he endured since returning to India? It seemed like dozens. The Black Well had been appalling, but there had been a certain bleak simplicity to life there. Now he must deal with the dreadful irony of the fact that he was finally capable of making love to his wife, but honor prevented him as thoroughly as disability had earlier.

Among all of his uncertainties, one thing was absolutely clear. He must find a solution to his dilemma within the bounds of the marriage they had made between themselves.

Ruefully Laura decided that it had been bad luck to congratulate herself on how well things were going, for the very morning that they left Hirsar, Ian had withdrawn into another dark silence. Though polite, he spoke scarcely a word all day to either of his companions. Laura regretted his remoteness, but philosophically accepted that life consisted of downs as well as ups. Soon his mood would lighten again.

Philosophy vanished that night when Ian's state of mind turned out to have deplorable repercussions. They had been invited to stay in the home of a prosperous landowner and the room assigned to Laura and Ian was the most comfortable they had seen since leaving Cambay. She changed into her nightgown and slid under the covers, feeling an unseemly amount of eagerness as she waited for Ian. She loved the quiet intimacy of the night. To sleep with another person required trust, and the hours they spent in each other's arms were weaving a bond between them.

But instead of joining her, Ian said, "I've been having trouble sleeping again, Laura. I'll make up a bed on the floor." He took a pillow and blanket and arranged them a few feet from the bed, then lay down.

"I'll be with you in a minute." Laura sat up and pushed the covers away. The prospect of lying on the floor was no hardship, for other nights she'd rested very well on the cold earth. What mattered was having her husband next to her.

Ian looked up, and something taut and unreadable flickered in his eye before his face shuttered. "You stay where it's comfortable. I think I'll sleep better alone," he said expressionlessly. "Good night." Then he wrapped himself in the blanket and rolled on his side so that he faced away from her.

At first she just stared at his uncommunicative back, feeling a ridiculous desire to whimper. Maybe
he
would sleep better alone, but she certainly wouldn't.

Quietly she lay back on the bed, telling herself that she mustn't take Ian's defection personally. He had improved so much in the last few weeks that it was easy to forget that it hadn't been that long since he had been enduring unimaginable horrors. The road to full recovery was bound to be a lengthy one.

In fact, when she thought about it, sleeping alone was more sensible than bumping elbows, and other things, in a crowded bed. Laura was a sound sleeper, but Ian wasn't. He probably found it disruptive to have her wrapped around him all night.

It was all perfectly logical. That being the case, why did she feel so much like hurling her pillow across the room?

The old merchant Mohan was dying. As the end drew near, his ailing body was taken outside so that his spirit could wing freely away to heavenly spheres when the time came. He was a wealthy man and his household was large, so as morning dawned, many women were keening their grief at his approaching death.

Yet the woman who had most reason to mourn was silent, for fear was greater than grief. Meera was Mohan's second wife, an expensive indulgence that the merchant had acquired to amuse his later years. She was of mixed caste and would never have been acceptable as Mohan's first wife, but she was beautiful, which was all that was required of a concubine. For three years she had been a pampered bride. Now, at the tender age of seventeen, she must pay a dreadful price for the benefits she had received.

Mohan gave a last, rattling sigh and then breathed no more. The chorus of female voices rose to a chilling, ear-shattering crescendo that announced the death of the master of the house. Meera began to weep for the loss of Mohan and his kindness, but even more she wept for herself, for within a few hours it was likely that she, too, would be dead.

Though the odds were against her, Meera had been a stubborn child, the despair of her mother, and she fought for her life against those who wanted her to die. No sooner had the death wail subsided than Pushpa, wife of Mohan's eldest son, said with false solicitude, "Come, Meera, you must prepare for
suttee
."

Voice wavering but determined, Meera replied, "I will not go to the pyre with my husband."

There was a horrified intake of breath from those close enough to hear. Pushpa said sharply, "You must! Your death will bring honor to the family. Your sacrifice will spare Mohan from any burdens on his soul."

"My husband was a good man and his soul does not need my sacrifice," Meera said rebelliously. "At this very moment, I'm sure he is in heaven with Ruppa, the mother of his sons."

Voice hardening, Pushpa said, "Do you wish to spend the rest of your life living behind a curtain with a shaved head and eating only a handful of rice a day?"

"Yes," Meera cried, "for at least I will still be living!"

Voices muttered disapproval. Someone said that she valued life too much, while Pushpa's husband, Dhamo, growled that he'd not support a useless woman for the rest of her life. "A husband is as a god to his wife," the Brahmin priest said persuasively. "It is right that you join your soul to Mohan's so that the two of you can spend eons together in your own paradise."

Stubbornly Meera said, "A widow must become suttee voluntarily, or it means nothing. I do not consent, nor would Mohan have expected me to." Her words were defiant, but as she looked at the angry eyes that surrounded her, she feared that her strength would not be enough to preserve her life.

Throughout the day, the men made preparations for the cremation ceremony while the women of the household did everything they could to coerce Meera into consenting to become suttee. To Meera they seemed like crows, anxious to feast on her corpse. Yet in spite of her exhaustion, she steadfastly refused to give in until midafternoon, when finally she faltered.

In a voice like poisoned honey, Pushpa said, "As Mohan's wife you have been treated like a high-caste woman, but if you refuse your sacred duty you will become an object of loathing. The very pariahs will avoid your shadow. You will choose such vile disgrace merely for the sake of a few miserable years of existence, when to become suttee will guarantee you bliss?"

Meera knew that the bleak prospect described by her stepdaughter-in-law was horribly likely. Dizzy with exhaustion and confusion, she raised a hand to her head, trying to clear the cobwebs that clouded her thinking. "Perhaps," she said hoarsely, "perhaps I should…" Then she thought of the flames. Terror gripped her, but it was already too late. Her gesture and stumbling words had been taken as the consent needed.

It was now the obligation of all good Hindus to ensure that she died at her husband's side.

Eyes covetous, Pushpa brought Meera's jewel box and set it down by the new widow. "Tell us how you want to bequeath your jewelry. I shall see that your will is done."

Meera lifted her numb gaze to her stepson's wife and saw that Pushpa was already wearing a pair of Meera's best earrings. A spark of angry defiance broke through Meera's resignation. She opened the box and began to remove the glittering contents. "I shall wear it all to the pyre."

A horrified murmur rose from the surrounding women. "But you can't!" one exclaimed while another mourned, "Such a waste."

Meera looked around and saw no sympathetic faces. "None of you were my friend in life." She clipped an exquisite
meenakari
necklace around her throat, then slid on heavy silver cuff bracelets. As she reached for a lotus blossom chain, she said flatly, "If you want my gold and silver, you
can dig through my charred bones for the melted fragments."

Fury rippled through the room. Pushpa raised a hand as if tempted to rip the valuables away, but Meera snapped, "Touch anything I wear and I'll curse you with my dying breath." No one else dared dispute her decision.

Passive as a doll, Meera allowed herself to be dressed in her best scarlet silk sari, the one she had been married in. All too soon, it was time to join the procession to the riverbank where the burning would take place. As she left her home forever, Meera dipped her hand in red paint and left a print on the lintel beside the faded marks of other hands. Dully she wondered if those long-forgotten women had become suttee willingly, or whether, like her, they had been forced.

As the sun dropped toward the horizon, Meera walked in the middle of the procession, surrounded so that she would be unable to flee if she chose to disgrace herself and the family. She would have run away if there had been any hope of escape, but there was no such hope. With her own eyes she had once seen a woman try to escape the pyre, only to be shoved back into the flames by her own son. No, there was no escape, and Meera was resigned to the fact that she must die. Who was she, a mere mixed-caste female, to rail against the unfairness of fate?

The pyre was made of stacked sandalwood that had been packed with oily, ghee-soaked cotton. It would burn quickly, though not fast enough to kill Meera without agony. Numbly she endured the ceremonies, knowing that she should be praying or even desperately savoring these last moments of life. But all she could think of was the fire. If a man's wife must die at his side, why did it have to be so painfully?

Then Dhamo was roughly pushing at her. Remembering that she must circle the pyre three times, Meera dutifully performed her part, though her feet dragged. The moment came for her to ascend the ladder to the top of the pyre. When she faltered, a hard hand shoved her upward. Curiously, Mohan's flower-decked corpse seemed welcoming as none of his family had. Perhaps it was right that she send her soul to join his.