An Atlas of Impossible Longing (9 page)

Every few months Digby Barnum went away for a week or two, maybe to the mines in the interior. Those weeks, in the afternoons, Mrs Barnum would leave the house alone and return in a different, long car, driven by a young man who could have been Tibetan. On one such night Kananbala watched as Mrs Barnum leaned through the car window and talked to the strange man before she began to walk towards her house. She happened to look across and saw an Indian woman's face drinking hers in at a window on the other side of the silent black road.

“How extraordinary,” she muttered, and yet, perhaps because she was only half English – the other half unknown – she turned again, and waved at Kananbala's dark, immobile shadow.

Kananbala had never in her whole life waved at anyone. She was confused about what to do. Her hand would scarcely rise. But in a rush she stuck an arm out through the bars of the window and awkwardly, like a child in a bus, waved as well.

The day after, when Mrs Barnum returned with the strange man, she pointed Kananbala out to him and he looked up and waved too, a wide smile crinkling his eyes. He and Mrs Barnum looked at each other and, laughing, Mrs Barnum said something to him in English. The night was still and quiet and Kananbala could hear each word, but she understood no English.

Mrs Barnum said, “Poor old thing, Ramlal says she's completely mental, babbles dirty words at people; fun, don't you think, darling? Would you like it if I did that to you?”

They laughed together and the man said, “Go on, say something, that'll be delicious.”

Mrs Barnum waved at Kananbala every night, whenever she returned from anywhere. Kananbala waited for her at the window. Barnum thought his wife very odd to get out of the car outside the gate, whatever for? Once, when he saw her waving upward after they had returned from a shopping expedition, he decided it was time to be stern. Larissa had no sense of propriety, really. What must the
servants think, their mistress waving at the local mad woman? There was something in all those things people said about mixed blood. The longer he was married, the more he felt sure of this.

* * *

The following week Barnum left on one of his long trips. Kananbala had got used to watching Mrs Barnum go out every afternoon and return every night, later and later, with her young man. It had been playful, all that waiting to see what new, subtly shimmering gown Mrs Barnum would be in each night, when she would arrive, and when she would notice her at the window and wave.

But tonight was different. Tonight Kananbala's throat contracted, her heart thudded and her fingers went cold as she watched Mrs Barnum and the young man returning in his car.

It was perhaps one in the morning. The night was luminous, with a great, wobbly, yellow egg yolk of a moon bobbing behind trees that swayed in the breeze. Kananbala leaned outside as far as her bulbous body would allow and waved with both arms when the car stopped and she saw them out on the road, a few yards from the gate of the Barnum house. She knew she had to stop them.

Kananbala had seen Mr Barnum that afternoon. He had come back before time and found Mrs Barnum absent. Kananbala had seen him drive off soon after he arrived, perhaps in search of his wife, and return without her. From a little after twelve at night, Barnum had been waiting outside the gate, concealed in a cascade of bougainvillea. Kananbala could see from the way he stood hidden that he intended to catch Mrs Barnum and her lover together and then … what? Kananbala stared mesmerised at the spot in the bougainvillea into which he had disappeared.

Mrs Barnum wondered why the Indian woman was waving with both arms. Then, with a happy laugh, she raised both her own in imitation. Her lover bounded out of the car and ran behind her. Kananbala saw his teeth gleam as he smiled. The road was bright with the moonlight, in which they had grown sharp shadows that followed
them. Mrs Barnum was giggling and making as if to push the clinging young man away. Her high heels clattered on the tarmac.

They reached the gate. He kissed Mrs Barnum's fingertips and murmured something that Kananbala thought the breeze floated towards her. She looked away in panic at the distant, dark outline of the fort and the shadowy bulk of the forest, wishing something would stop what she knew was going to happen.

Barnum stepped out of the leaves and orange flowers.

Mrs Barnum swivelled towards him. In a quick rattle, she exclaimed, “Darling … is everything alright? The Munby party … went on so long … ”

Mr Barnum pulled his hand out of his pocket, thwacked the side of his revolver into her cheek and snarled, “Shut up.” His wife stumbled back with a gasp of pain. Before Barnum could turn the gun the other way, Kananbala saw the lover leap on him. Mrs Barnum followed with a scream. Kananbala shut her eyes in terror and opened them a second later to see the lover diving back into his car, driving off. Barnum lay on the ground bleeding from his throat. Beside him, Kananbala could see the moon return the curved glint of a knife.

Mrs Barnum looked around, her moonlit face spectral. She tore off one of her long earrings and looked down at her hand as if surprised by it. Clutching the earring, she knelt by Barnum's side for a moment. Then she rushed to the gate and ran in.

Fortunate, Kananbala thought, that she does not let the watchman lock the gate the nights she is out.

The murdered man lay on the road, a dark, shining puddle forming beside his stomach as the owls resumed their soft night-time exchanges.

Kananbala lay down beside Amulya on the far edge of their wide bed and, trying to breathe as quietly as her panting would allow, in her head she began to make up a story.

* * *

The next morning Amulya was sitting at a table in the bedroom, drinking his first cup of tea and unfolding his newspaper, when Nirmal raced in.

Amulya looked over his newspaper with a frown.

“What is the matter, Nirmal, can't you walk? Must you always run? Who'd believe you're going to be a father?”

Amulya took a sip of his tea with a grimace, “This tea is overdone, it's bitter. Who made it?”

“Do you know, Baba,” Nirmal said, breathless, “there's been a murder in the house opposite. They think the woman killed her husband. He was left dead on the road last night, and she was sitting upstairs brushing her hair, as cool as you please.”

“What? Barnum?” Amulya exclaimed. “That can't be!”

“No really, Baba,” Nirmal said, “It's true. Haven't you looked out of the window at all this morning? There's mayhem. I saw some police high-up go in and there are three more policemen in the house, searching for the weapon.”

“Weapon? How was he killed?” Amulya asked, standing up to go to a window, curious despite himself.

“Knife,” Nirmal said with satisfaction. “In the stomach and ribs, apparently. The police are taking the lady away for questioning. She keeps saying she was out for the evening and when she came back she went straight upstairs, didn't know anything about this, hadn't expected her husband back for another week.”

Nirmal stood at another of the windows and looked out, his tall body in its thin, night-crumpled kurta outlined by the sun. Kananbala went and stood beside him. She noticed that her head did not reach his shoulders and looked up at Nirmal with a surge of pride and indulgence.

“Isn't it good riddance that man died? He was a real son of a pig,” she said to him, tender, confiding.

Amulya snorted. “He certainly looked like one! One bad Shaheb less! Maybe the woman will go away from this big house now and … ”

“Most likely they'll put her in jail. Or send her to the Andaman Islands,” Nirmal said. “The British have jails even for their own female
killers … and Mrs Barnum is only an Anglo … they really hate Anglo-Indians, don't they?”

“They do have special jails,” Amulya said. “I think they have special jails for British criminals … in the hill stations.”

“So their murderers are not troubled by the heat?” Nirmal laughed.

Amulya gave his son a disapproving frown and continued to look out of the window at the house opposite. A minute later, he put his glasses back on and returned to his newspaper.

Nirmal stepped back from the window. “The police are coming towards our house!” he said.

“I want to meet the police,” Kananbala announced.

Amulya put his glasses down with a clatter and abandoned the newspaper in a heap on the table. It fluttered across the room in the breeze. He returned to the window which framed the house opposite. It looked much the same except that the gate was open, and there were people going in and out of it. There seemed to be a dark patch on the road near the gate. It had been encircled with white. A lacklustre havaldar stood in the shade of the bougainvillea's orange bloom, drawing on a beedi. Something about the way the blossoms poked incongruously out from behind the havaldar's head, as if he were sporting a flower here and there, reminded him of another flower in a tribal girl's hair, the girl who had tried to make him dance in a forest clearing. He smiled to himself at the idiosyncrasies of memory, its insensitivity to the passage of time.

He returned to the present with a jolt: their own gate was opening and the person pushing it open was a policeman.

“Nobody is to bother your mother,” Amulya said to Nirmal. He turned to his wife. “You're not to talk to anyone, have you understood? Now, is my bath water ready or not? What has happened today? Is everyone stuck at a window?”

Not getting a response from either Nirmal or Kananbala, he went outside to the head of the stairs and yelled, “Shibu! Is anyone around? Bring my bath water. What a bunch of fools, something happens to a stranger and they forget everything else.”

Kananbala was peering so hard at an upper window in the opposite house that Nirmal said, “Are you feeling alright?”

“Babu, the police are here,” Shibu called out in a high quaver from downstairs a little later. Amulya gave up all thought of his bath. He smoothed his clothes and went downstairs to the drawing room.

* * *

The policeman had finished asking everyone questions, even Gouranga, who stammered that he was always asleep by nine-thirty and had seen nothing. The policeman tapped an impatient finger on the arm of his chair and with a preoccupied air refused another offer of tea, then called the servant back and said, “Alright, tea, bring me a cup, my throat's dry with all the talking.” He turned to Amulya, running his fingers through his sweat-damp hair. “Is that all? Is there anyone else in this house?”

“Only my wife, but there's no need to bother my wife, is there, Inspector Sahib?” Amulya said. “She is ill and never goes out. In fact none of us in this house have anything to do with those people.”

“Precisely, Amulya Babu, precisely!” the policeman said with new energy. “She never goes out and you said your room is right opposite that house. What does that make her?”

“What?” Amulya said.

“Makes her a witness. Bird's eye view. Ideal witness. We have to ask her if she saw anything.”

“But she is not well,” Amulya repeated, full of trepidation.

“No need for worry, Amulya Babu,” the policeman said, soothing. “We are human too. Give us a chance, we are servants of the state, doing our jobs.”

* * *

Kananbala looked at the drawing room with wondering eyes. It was perhaps a year since she had been in that room. It seemed dark, a little musty. It seemed to have many more cushioned chairs, heavy carved
arms poking out from the sheets that shrouded them. Why were they covered? she wondered. Were there no visitors at all? Did they never use the room? “Why the sheets?” she asked in a whisper, and Amulya said tersely, “Dust.”

She saw that the polished table-tops were dull with dust. What were her daughters-in-law doing?

Kamal steered her by an elbow into a chair. Kananbala's face was hooded by the aanchal of her sari. She took a quick look past its awning at the policeman.

“So Mataji,” said the inspector, “Did you see anything? Tell me everything. Even what you do not think important.
Especially
what you don't think important.” He turned to Amulya and Kamal: “One's work has over the years taught one that witnesses often leave out the most crucial detail. They cannot know what is useful for a police investigation.”

“Of course, of course,” Kamal said, crooking his thumbs through the striped braces of his trousers. “Witnesses have no sense of the value of certain clues.”

Kananbala tried to slow her thundering heart. After all her isolation, to have to speak before a stranger, and on something so important, something that might save her friend's life. She would surely get it wrong. Taking a deep breath, she said, “What would an old woman do lying? Yes, I did see something.”

“Go on, Mataji,” the policeman said with a warning look at Amulya.

“The poor man had just come back. He must have been tired, these British people work so hard. He had been away for several days.”

“How many?” the policeman asked, and turning to his deputy rapped out, “Noting everything, aren't you?”