Authors: Paul Scott
But with Lili sitting on my bed, wanting to comfort me but also wanting to chastise me for my absurdity, I was a child again. I wept and cried out, “I want him, I want him. Bring him back to me, Auntie. Please help to bring him back.”
She said nothing. Like Hari. For them I suppose there
is
nothing to
say. Nothing, that is, if they are intent on building instead of on destroying. Behind all the chatter and violence of India—what a deep, lingering silence. Siva dances in it. Vishnu sleeps in it. Even their music is silence. It’s the only music I know that sounds conscious of
breaking
silence, of going back into it when it’s finished, as if to prove that every man-made sound is an illusion.
What an odd concept of the world that is! We shall never understand it. They don’t really understand it themselves, I suspect. Is it to try to understand it that Sister Ludmila wanders the streets collecting the bodies of the dead and the dying? Is it just a concept that could be traced to some long-forgotten overwhelming, primitive experience of pain and suffering? I ask because it struck me, a few weeks later, when I knew I was pregnant and I asked Lili to send for Anna Klaus, that Anna stood on the same edge of reality and illusion herself, because she’d been deprived and had suffered and continued to live. She’s a great believer in anesthetizing the patient, a great giver of sedatives. I remember how she stood in my bedroom frowning her little professional frown as she sorted things out in her black bag. Such a wealth of compromise there is in a doctor’s bag! She seemed to be a long way away from me, and yet to be taking me with her—millions of miles away down long glazed white-tiled tunnels, subterranean passages of human degradation that were saved from filthiness because we northerners have learned how to make suffering aseptic and noncontagious. At first I had a silly idea she was preparing something for me to take to get rid of the child. I said, “What’s that, what’s that?” She said, “What a fuss! It is only to give you a quiet night. Expectant mothers must be contemplative. Like nuns.”
So I lay there, letting her get on with it. But suddenly I said, “What am I to do, Anna? I can’t live without him.”
She didn’t look at me. She was measuring the potion. She spoke to the medicine, not to me. After all, this was the one thing she could really trust, really believe in, really love. She said, “This you must learn to do. To live without.”
She handed me the glass, and stood by, until I’d drunk every drop.
APPENDIX TO PART SEVEN
Letters from Lady Manners to Lady Chatterjee
Srinagar, 31 May 1943
My Dear Lili,
I hope you’ve forgiven me for not accepting your offer to come up last month, and for the silence since then that has been broken only by my two telegrams. When I wired you a week ago I promised I would write. If you would like to, do come next month. I shall be on the houseboat.
I’m afraid there are going to be endless legal complications. Poor Daphne died intestate, so I think the money becomes subject to the statutory trusts, on the child’s behalf, unless the part of it which Daphne inherited from her mother is claimed by Mrs. George’s nephews and nieces. Mrs. George Manners had a married sister, someone Daphne used to refer to as Auntie Kate, who was killed in a road accident. The husband married again, but there were two or three children from the first marriage—cousins of Daphne’s with whom she remembered playing as a child. I expect if Daphne had died intestate but without issue the cousins would have had some sort of claim. I’m not sure what the situation is when the child in question is illegitimate. It will all have to be gone into and dealt with by the lawyers in London—which is where all the money is held anyway. Daphne was very careful with her small inheritance. She never touched the principal but drew on the income through the banks over here. Anyway, I have asked Mr. Docherty in ’Pindi to do whatever has to be done to start sorting things out—but it will take ages before we know what properly belongs to the child and even longer before we know how use can be made of it over here.
Meanwhile the responsibility for her is mine. When you come up, Lili, perhaps you will be able to say whether you think the child is Hari Kumar’s. I have a special reason for wanting to know. Not a reason
connected with any legal claim or criminal charge. There is no question of attempting to establish paternity. Mr. Kumar is beyond either our incriminations or our help,
and that is how I want it left.
But in giving shelter and affection to the child for Daphne’s sake—and for its own—I should be happier knowing to what extent one might do so in the belief that its parentage wasn’t surrounded by doubt as well as tragedy. I know I don’t need to tell you that I want your
opinion,
not your reassurance, and that if you don’t feel able to give one I shouldn’t want you to pretend, simply to set my mind at rest.
She is a sweet and pretty child. Her skin is going to be pale, but not nearly pale enough for her to pass as white. I’m glad. As she grows older she won’t be driven by the temptation to wear a false face. At least that is one thing she’ll be spared—the misery and humiliation experienced by so many Eurasian girls. I intend to bring her up as an Indian, which is one of the reasons I have called her Parvati. The other reason is that I believe this is a name Daphne would like. Parvati. Parvati Manners. Later she may decide to change that surname.
She was reluctant to come into the world but having done so seems equally determined not to let go of it. Dr. Krishnamurti has found a wet nurse, a pretty young Kashmiri girl who has lost her own firstborn and lavishes affection on Parvati. She’d make a perfect ayah but says she won’t leave Srinagar. She’s the wife of one of the boys who paddles the shikaras during the season and I’ve promised him employment as soon as I move down on to the lake. Perhaps I can persuade them both to come to ’Pindi in September. He looks a frightful rogue but they’re a handsome pair and she keeps him in order. It’s touching to watch them playing with Parvati as if she were their own. While she feeds the baby he stays nearby, on guard. He’s partly fascinated, partly embarrassed by the process, but intensely proud of his wife’s talent, and I suppose of the part he played in filling her breasts with the milk now given to someone else’s child. And I suppose they both see the money she earns as a compensation for their own loss; a gift from Allah.
It would please Daphne to watch them too. She only saw the child for a second or so. She was in labour for forty-eight hours. You and I have never had children so perhaps we can be classed as almost as ignorant of the process as men are—I mean anyway men who aren’t doctors. Dr. Krishnamurti was wonderful. Poor Daphne, to look at her you’d have thought her big and strong enough to have babies by the dozen, but the pelvis was wrong, and the baby was the wrong way round. He wanted
her to go into hospital and have it turned, but she refused. So he did the whole thing here, bringing up a couple of nurses and an anesthetist and loads of equipment. That was two or three weeks before she was due. He told me he’d turned the baby but that at the drop of a hat it could turn back again into a position that would lead to a breech delivery. He said he’d advised her to stand no nonsense and opt for a Caesarian so that directly it started the whole thing could just be got on with. But she refused. She had some idea that it was her duty to push the child out of her womb as nature intended. Krishnamurti and I have always been frank with one another. It’s sad to think all this awful business was what was needed to make us friends. At the beginning I told him what your Doctor Klaus confided to you, that Daphne’s heart was irregular. After examining her he told me it was nothing to worry about in itself, although he agreed that it was probably this irregularity that led to the doctors in London warning her off driving ambulances. It’s odd that she never mentioned it. Well, no, not odd. Typical. She always pretended it was her eyesight that caused her to be what she once referred to as “dismissed the service.” The point is, though, that the heart condition wasn’t a complication in childbirth, only what Krishnamurti called “a slight additional debit on the balance sheet.”
At one moment during that awful forty-eight hours I thought she wanted the child to die, or failing that to die herself. Since then I’ve changed my mind. She only wanted to “do it right.” The child did turn again. I suppose because it couldn’t get out. Krishnamurti had had the foresight to bring all the equipment back here. He turned the bedroom into an operating theatre. Poor Daphne wasn’t
compos mentis
enough to know what was going on. It was I who gave permission for the Caesarian.
So I have that on my conscience. She should have been in hospital. Krishnamurti took every care. But she died of peritonitis. For a couple of days afterwards I wouldn’t even look at the child. I’d seen it cut out. Krishnamurti let me watch. I was dressed up like a nurse in theatre in a white gown, with a mask over my mouth and nostrils. I needed to see this side of life. I’d never have forgiven myself for being too fainthearted to watch. When it began I thought I’d never stand it. It seemed obscene, like opening a can—which isn’t obscene but is when the can is a human abdomen. But then when the can was open and I saw what they were lifting out I felt I was being born again myself. It was a miracle and it
made you realize that no miracle is beautiful because it exists on a plane of experience where words like beauty have no meaning whatsoever.
It also meant absolutely nothing to me that the curious knotted little bundle of flesh that was lifted out of Daphne—perhaps prized is a better word because with their long rubber gloves on they seemed to have to search for and encourage it to emerge—was obviously
not
the same skin colour as its mother. The difference in colour was subtle, so subtle that were it not for one particular recollection I’d now be persuaded that the fact that the difference between them meant nothing was due to my failing to notice one at the time. But I did notice it. The particular recollection I have is of thinking, Yes—I see—the father
was
dark-kinned. But at the time this caused no emotional response. I noted it and then forgot it. I only remembered it when Daphne was dead and they tried to show me the child to take my mind off things. But that wasn’t the reason I rejected it. I rejected it because in the state of mind I was in I blamed it for killing Daphne. If anything its Indianness was what first made me feel pity for it and start thinking of it as “she.” I thought: Poor scrap—there’s not a thing she can look forward to.
I told you Daphne saw her for a second or two—between one unconsciousness and another. The nurse held the child close to her. She tried to touch it but didn’t have the strength. But she did smile. Which is why I really want you to see Parvati yourself and judge if there is any resemblance at all to Hari Kumar. I’m afraid I can’t see Daphne in her—but perhaps you will. Relatives are usually the last to see a family likeness.
Affectionately,
Ethel.
Rawalpindi, 5 Aug. ’47
My Dear Lili,
I have decided to leave ’Pindi. I refuse to live in a place whose people at the stroke of a pen will be turned into enemies of India—the country my husband tried to serve—and you can count on it that “enemy” isn’t overstating the case. The creation of Pakistan is our crowning failure. I can’t bear it. They should never have got rid of Wavell. Our only justification for two hundred years of power was unification. But we’ve divided one composite nation into two and everyone at home goes round saying what a swell the new Viceroy is for getting it all sorted out so quickly. Which of course is right. But he’s a twentieth century
swell—and India’s still living in the nineteenth century—which is where we’re leaving her. In Delhi they’ve all been blinded by him. I mean the Indians have. What they don’t realize is that he was only intended to be the glamorous dressing in the shop window—a window we’ve been trying to get up attractively ever since the war ended. Behind the window the shop is as nineteenth century as ever—albeit
radical
nineteenth century. The slogan is still insular. India’s independence at any cost, not for India’s sake, but for our own.
I’m going down to the Residency in Gopalakand to stay with an old friend of Henry’s, Sir Robert Conway, who is adviser to the Maharajah. The maharajahs are being sacrificed too—mostly their own fault, but the people who wield the knife are really the old Fabians and crusty Trade Unionists in London,
not
the Congress. Perhaps we can meet in Gopalakand? Little Parvati sends her love to Auntie Lili—and so do I.
Affectionately,
Ethel.
New Delhi, June 1948
My Dear Lili,
Can you possibly join me here? I’m at HH of Gopalakand’s town palace, such as it is. I’ve been under the weather and there are a number of things I’d like to discuss. I also want to show you—and give you if you’ll take them—certain items left by Daphne, writings of hers, etc., letters and a journal.
Under the terms of my new will I’ve made provision for Parvati and left money for the endowment of a children’s home, thereby carrying out a wish expressed by Daphne. I’ve named you as one of the Trustees and suggested that the home should be called The Manners Memorial Home for Indian Boys and Girls—which is a way of remembering my niece but avoiding the embarrassment that a name like the Daphne Manners Memorial Home might cause people who have long memories. I’ve suggested that the Home should be in Mayapore. One of the things we might discuss is the use of the site known as the Sanctuary. You told me last year that that woman’s eyesight was failing. If it is possible and practicable to use the Sanctuary as a base for the home, one of the provisions of the endowment should be that Sister Ludmila is entitled to continue living there in grace and favour, as it were.
When you’ve read poor Daphne’s journal—which I’ve kept to myself all these years, although I think you always suspected the existence of
something of the sort—you’ll understand better why my thoughts have run on these lines. The other thing we must discuss is Parvati’s future. I don’t want to sound morbid, but the time isn’t far off when my death will leave her alone in the world. I am still of the opinion that nothing should be done to try and trace the man you and I are both certain is the father. Each time you see her you say she looks more like Hari than the time before. This is a comfort to me because I know you are telling the truth and not just reassuring me; but it doesn’t persuade me that the poor boy should be tracked down and made to face evidence of his responsibility. I’m sure you agree. Without any difficulty I could have arranged for this to be done while he was in prison, and if he is still alive could still arrange it, I suppose, even though he must have been released two or three years ago. I think you are right to suspect that when his Aunt Shalini left Mayapore in 1944 she returned to her old home in the U.P. solely in order to set up some kind of household he’d have been able to return to when he came out—even if his sojourn there was not of long duration. Obviously someone knows the truth—probably that man Romesh Chand Gupta Sen. Your lawyer friend Srinivasan’s assertion—when he came out of prison himself and asked after Mrs. Gupta Sen—that Romesh Chand simply shrugged the question away and said she’d gone home to her village and that he’d broken off all connection with the Kumar family, probably amounts to no more than an attempt on the old man’s part to disguise the fact that he knew what had happened but didn’t care to say. My own belief is that when Hari was released he probably went to his Aunt Shalini’s but then took himself off elsewhere, perhaps even changed his name. A boy imprisoned for the reasons he was ostensibly detained for would not lack friends in the new India. My guess is he wanted none of them. He might be dead—a chance victim of that awful savagery—that Hindu-Muslim bloodbath last year that marked the end of our unifying and civilizing years of power and influence.