Holder of the World - Bharati Mukherjee [52]
Hannah felt called on to defend her mastery of the premises. “There are no ghosts on my roof, I assure you.” But she knew that hauntings were for blistered, sunlit tropics as well as for dark woods near Salem. That’s why she had Bhagmati sleep on a pallet in the middle of the balcony, just outside her bedroom door.
The sinister talk of the roof, however, reminded her of her first day’s unpleasantness, the touch of madness that she had experienced and that she dared not share, not even with Gabriel lest Gabriel challenge the Chief Factor to a duel. “And what of Mr. Prynne? How do you judge his acumen?”
Martha stiffened. “Mr. Prynne is the very model of a Company man. He dedicates himself entirely to profit.”
“But he is selfless,” Sarah protested. “If he dedicates himself to turning a desert into a garden of riches, it is for our welfare and not his.”
At that very moment, the tinkle of Bhagmati’s bangles alerted Hannah to one of her servant’s silent communications. She seemed to understand English, but did not speak it, nor did Hannah speak more than a word or two of the local languages. But through her eyes, and her body, Bhagmati communicated. Some guest was downstairs. That guest was Indian and male, therefore not to be shown upstairs unless specifically invited.
“Who could it be?” Hannah turned to her guests. “An Indian visitor?”
Martha Ruxton rolled off the cushions to her feet. Again, for an instant, the freckles flared. “I thought you might profit from acquainting yourself with the trader Pedda Timanna.” She led the way out of the overdecorated room.
The Englishwomen were now in a group walking to the archway that opened on the balcony. It was a radiantly bright, Mughal evening, the moon lighting the sky like a blue-gray curtain. The trees and outlines and vague shapes of Englishmen stood out in black profile against the late twilight.
“A horrible man,” Sarah Higginbottham cautioned.
Martha laughed. “But he too turns deserts into gardens of riches.”
The visitor was the small-headed trader who had recovered the Legges’ missing trunk on the day that the Legges had disembarked at Fort St. Sebastian. On that first, confused morning, Hannah had read arrogance and insubordination in his halting the contact of Gabriel’s fist with the umbrella bearer’s face. Now, two years into her Indian years, she felt a certain admiration for the wizened man who sat in his palanquin outside her door, still borne on the shoulders of two old men shorter than himself.
Pedda Timanna brought his hands together and bowed his head to each of the ladies. And to Hannah’s surprise, Martha Ruxton reached into a small purse and extracted five heavy pagodas, as much money as Hannah had seen at one time. And Pedda Timanna slid open a small drawer built into the footrest of his palanquin and dropped, one by one, a diamond, two rubies and an emerald into the pink, soft waiting hand of the fort doctor’s wife.
Martha turned toward Hannah, suddenly an older, worldly-wise expatriate. Even her voice was deeper, and resonantly resolute. “My advice to all English wives in this cursed land, Mistress Legge, is this. Let your husband provide you all necessities. You provide yourself the amenities. Acquaint yourself with a trader.” She held the diamond up to the moon. “Jewels travel with ease.”
It was not a simple matter of profit for Martha Ruxton. Hannah guessed Martha was a voluptuary.
NO, I DO NOT think the diamond that passed from the richest trader to the sharpest buyer was the Emperor’s Tear. This was a provincial gem, a Coromandel beauty, a Burton-to-Taylor bauble. There is no evidence that the Emperor’s Tear was ever out of Emperor Aurangzeb’s clutches, and he was waging border wars against Raja Jadav Singh a few miles to the north and west. But the fate that brought Hannah Easton to India and, finally, briefly, put her in contact with India’s most perfect diamond, so improbable in its Brookfield origins, had already consumed 99.9 percent of the distance between them, and she was only twenty-seven years old.
I am thirty-two