The Grammarian (26 page)

Alexandre smiled, leaning back in his chair, letting the cool evening breeze hit his chest through his unbuttoned shirt. He was drunk too, and the whiskey warmed his body as he listened to Anthony sing half-heartedly. “Sorry Tony, I don’t know any English songs.”

“Well you are no fun Alex . . . oh, bloody hell I’m drunk. I should go to bed . . . ” he attempted to get up but, too inebriated to stand, fell back in his chair.

The two men laughed and Alexandre stood, his own footing unsure, as he went over to help the older man from his chair. Together, Alexandre supporting Anthony, they stumbled to the bedroom Anthony shared with Madhuri.

Alexandre walked Anthony down the hallway; the bedroom door was ajar and through his stupor Alexandre saw Madhuri in bed, turned away from them. He looked at Madhuri’s naked brown back, a mess of dark hair across the pillow. She didn’t stir as Alexandre helped Anthony remove his jacket and get into bed. Anthony lay back heavily and cupped Alexandre’s face in his meaty, pink hands and
pulled it to his own and kissed Alexandre’s cheek and grunted, “Good night, my boy.”

D
AYS AFTER
C
HRISTMAS
, Prithu arrived again at Davidson’s home. The housemaid, Sarita, greeted the boy and they spoke casually in Telugu. She called Alexandre to the sitting room, and as he came to the sitting room he saw Prithu smile for the first time as he spoke to Kumari from the doorway. Seeing Alexandre, the boy stiffened and looked at him wide-eyed. He told Alexandre he’d brought a letter from Kanakadurga. He thanked Prithu and found a few coins in his pocket, which he offered the boy. Prithu took the coins, examining them in his palm.

Alexandre took the letter to his room and sat in his bed as he read it.

Kanakadurga asked after his health and asked how his studies were going. She wished him a Merry Christmas and asked about his family. Kanakadurga told him that Mohini and her now husband had moved permanently to his family home in Bezawada. She was now expecting. “You may have heard that Shiva sent Anjali out of the home, Alexandre,” she continued. “I don’t want you to think it was your fault. A week after you left, Shiva found out that Anjali had sent an article to an anti-colonialist paper in America founded by some expatriot Indians living in San Francisco.”

A short missive to some mysterious street ten thousand miles away would bring every red-faced Englishman from fifty miles of their home angrily asking Adivi what the bloody hell his gimp daughter was up to. For Adivi, it was the last straw. He and Anjali had barely spoken since Alexandre had left, and the article, entitled “Free Women in a Free
India,” was as stinging an embarrassment as the morning she had spent on the beach with Alexandre. Kanakadurga was afraid it was her own fault that the girl had turned out this way; she kept nationalist newspapers in her bedroom. She had even kept in a journal some yellowed caricatures of Clive raiding Calcutta with bags of money strapped to the flanks of his horse. Some of the clippings were over fifty years old. Adivi deferred to no one, except occasionally his mother, whom he had exasperatedly tried to persuade to throw out the old papers a hundred times, but the old woman was stubborn and kept them in wax papers between her starched, folded saris.

T
HAT HOME
,
WHERE
Anjali grew up, was no longer hers. The day she left her natal house, she stood outside the gates and Peter shut them behind her. She clutched her small suitcase in one hand and under her arm held a gunnysack of clothes and a few bars of soap. She stood there, not sure in which direction to turn. She had lived in that home all her life, but the city outside of it was foreign to her and the men on the streets stared at her: this woman alone and crippled but groomed and dressed in a good sari. The only women in the streets were the old women who sold fruits and strings of jasmine for women’s hair. She bit her lip, she tightened her hold on her luggage and began to weep. She did not know where to go; she did not know how she would get there even if she did. Outside, alone, she was a rogue woman, no father, no family, no name. She turned back to the house and ran to the gate and looked into Peter’s cold, dark eyes. They were black like stones. He had been hired the month before she was born; he had played with her and Mohini when they were children. And as Anjali stood there she thought too of all the mendicant hands over the years that had been
pushed through the gates, which she had passively observed. Perhaps she should have chosen the local gesture—that quiet care of one neighbor for another—over the grand one, she thought.

“Peter, please, let me back in . . . ” she pleaded.

“Mr. Adivi says you are not allowed in.”

“Peter, please!” She felt ashamed by her fear.

He threw his baton against the bars, startling her.

“Peter, I order you to open these gates!” Anjali shook, her voice betraying her fear. Anjali stood outside the gates and began to cry from the very core of her being, her body convulsing with sobs as she looked from outside at the only home she’d ever known, her small hands rattling the gate as she held onto it, her hands cramping with strain. She’d only ever before looked out from there, and now was looking in. Her family, her home, all of it inside separated only by a wrought iron gate, but as impenetrable as a sea barrier or the snowy Himalayas.

“Get out! Get out before I call your father and he calls the police . . . ” He muttered under his breath, “whore . . . ” and sneered at her.

Kanakadurga closed the letter by saying, “I wonder if it is for the best, Alexandre. Sometimes I would weep, thinking about my granddaughter’s life as the spinster daughter of aging Anglophiles, living out her days in her natal home. She’d have to live through the deaths of everyone around her: myself, her parents. And she would be apart from her only sister. What a waste. It may seem trite, Alexandre, to those who grow up free, out of doors and cages, unfenced, that she, the daughter of a rich man, never experienced a fraction of the life in the doors of her father’s house that she will, now, when at long last she summoned the coach on that morning, in her briefcase the saris and the small amount of jewelry her mother would let her leave with.
There were few things in the world that were truly hers anyway. I did not want her to go and I wept. She was my grandchild, and the love of my life, but I was proud too. I knew she would live life. I knew her soul was too big for this place. I knew she would see this India that she and I were determined to see free one day. The India of buildings of brick and stone, temples, mosques, wild jasmine, the barefoot poor, the villages motley and wild beyond the kept gardens, the marble fortress that is our home. And I know that despite her body, Anjali is a soldier. My son and Lalita, they are impoverished souls. They acquiesce, gladly, to the expectations of their family and society. Appearances, money and beauty make them happy. They have no fight in them. But my Anjali does.

“I know she has gone to Hyderabad to stay with a woman named Sarojini Naidu, a poet who is also involved in the Home Rule movement.

“It has been, what? Nearly two months since Mohini married. My girls are gone, and everything is now shades of blue and grey.

“Perhaps it is my old woman’s imagination gone wild, but I swear to you, Alexandre, I am an older woman each day now; I can actually see myself age. Sometimes, if I look very quickly, if I glance, I see myself as I was when I was younger, and I’ll feel suddenly lighter, and then I look up and look closely and there I am: an old woman with lines around her eyes and mouth, whose skin is grey and whose hair is silver. Whose life will end soon. Whose son and daughter-in-law don’t trust her, and whose granddaughters are out of her grasp. I’m thinner now, and the skin on my jaw and arms seems to hang from the muscles and bones. Sometimes I feel as though I am only a grey shadow, so close to perishing, and missing my girl so much, that I am an apparition in white saris haunting the halls of the home that used to be mine.

“Mohini came to visit the other day. It is as if the lights have gone out in her eyes; Alexandre, it is horrible. She is older too now, and wears her bridal necklace with the same sorrow a prisoner wears his shackles. She told us that her husband is cold, silent, that he can take all the warmth out of a room. She is pregnant. And the thought of her in that state, I hesitate to admit, filled me with dread. She says he almost never speaks to her, that her life has become about seeing to her mother-in-law’s medical needs and making certain the servants are doing their jobs. They have money, of course, and standing, but there are things they don’t have. There are things I don’t want my granddaughters to know about in life, like loneliness. And now Mohini knows what loneliness is, especially that peculiar kind of loneliness that can attend a person who is not alone in a room. There is no love in that house. Now Mohini can disappear into walls.

“She asked her father if she can come back home. When Mohini asked her father, it was as if he had turned to stone. He said, ‘You will go back to your husband, and live with him as his wife forever.’ And I saw Mohini shiver as if a tiny earthquake had gone off inside, allowing the land to give way beneath her.

“Alexandre, I’ve missed you since you left. I treasure our friendship. You should know I am not well. This is not a tragedy. I am an old woman and I’ve lived a full life. Anyhow, Hindus don’t fear death, but I would like to see the New Year in. If I don’t see you again in this life, I want to thank you, not just for your friendship but for the help you’ve extended me. You know of what I speak. Happy Christmas, Dr. Lautens.”

Alexandre folded the letter and let his head hang down. He felt an unaccountable sadness wash over him. It wasn’t meant to have been
like this. He felt hot tears sting his eyes and suddenly he felt tired to his bones. He decided he wanted to leave India before the New Year. He wanted to leave it all behind. It was a decision as sudden as it was absolute. He would thank Anthony and Madhuri, pack his belongings and go home; the book would have to be finished from Paris, and if it were never finished, well, that was fine, and much better than staying in India. He leapt up from his desk and began packing frantically. It no longer seemed like much of a decision but rather the only thing to do.

M
ADHURI LOOKED RELIEVED
, as she fluttered about Alexandre in worried excitement, to hear the door open and Anthony call out, “Hello?”

“Look! Look at what he is doing!” she cried out, as Anthony walked into Alexandre’s room, guided by the sound of the commotion.

“What is this? What is going on?” Anthony asked, his eyes darting around the room.

Madhuri looked like a worried mother hen, hovering over her chick. “He says he is leaving! What is this?!” she asked, gesturing at the open suitcase on the bed, the stack of neatly folded shirts.

Anthony lightly put his hand on her forearm. “Alright, alright. Darling you take care of dinner, I will take care of this,” he said. Anthony closed the door after Madhuri, who walked out, tugging her hair anxiously.

“Is everything alright, Alex? This is a very sudden decision . . . ” Anthony asked.

“Yes, everything is fine . . .
Benga pettukovaddu
,” he said, looking at Madhuri, “it’s nothing.” He squeezed her small, brown hand and looked away from her, afraid he would cry. “It is just that, well, I feel
my work here is done. I’ve collected all the data I need to finish my book. I miss my children . . . I just feel it is a good time to go.”

“Madhuri tells me the Adivis’ servant came round and brought you a letter . . . has that have anything to do with it?”

“No, no . . . you’ve both been terribly hospitable, and I’d hate to impose any longer on your generosity. I just feel the time is right . . . perhaps I’ll get home before the last snowfall in Paris,” Alexandre swallowed hard and coughed to mask the falter in his voice. Alexandre looked only at the small pile of clothes on the bed, folding them impatiently.

Anthony sat silently, looking at Alexandre, waiting for the younger man to look at him. When Alexandre finally looked up, Anthony looked hard at him, his eyes narrowing in scrutiny, and for a full minute, he held Alexandre’s gaze.

Alexandre faltered; his eyebrows quivered, and he looked down.

Anthony coughed, “Well, Madhuri and I have enjoyed having you, Alex. You seem to have made your mind, but if there is anything I can do to persuade you otherwise, do let me know.” And he stood up.

Alexandre looked down again. He folded a pair of slacks, “Thank you Tony. But I don’t think I’ll change my mind.”

“Very well. At the very least I can help you with your departure . . . I’ll send out tomorrow morning for the passenger ship schedule. We’ll have to get the train schedule to Bombay also.” Anthony looked once more at Alexandre, lowered his head and left.

B
EFORE HE LEFT
the home, Madhuri gave Alexandre a sweet look of stern concern and kissed him on both cheeks.

“I told her that is the way the French greet people,” Anthony said, laughing sadly, his hand on Madhuri’s lower back.

“Thank you for your hospitality, Madhuri,” Alexandre said to her in Telugu. He gave her some money to pass along to Kumari.

The train would bring him to Bombay three days before the ship was due to leave. He did not send word to Kanakadurga that he was leaving, nor did he attempt to contact Anjali. Anthony took him to the train station in Waltair in a hired coach. As usual, the train station was chaotic and full of beggars and food vendors and station attendants, and watching the blurry brown mess of an Indian station, Alexandre sighed contentedly to himself, knowing he was at long last going home.