The Lantern's Dance, page 10
Two days later, according to M. LaRue, a young “foreign” gentleman had motored into little Ste Chapelle during market day, asking the close-mouthed villagers about their resident Vernet.
And two days after that, in the wee hours of Monday morning, a “lascar”—though one without facial hair—broke in through the window, in search of something more specific than the merely valuable treasures in the sitting room.
I absently thanked the girl, handed over rather more francs than she had been promised, and went back to my coded journal.
Chapter Fifteen
Second Image
Sails
The next picture my memory gives me is of sails. This one, too, includes odours, in this case a mix of sea air and coffee, unwashed clothing and fresh tar, meat beginning to turn and the bake of hot canvas. Unlike the first image, this one is less a framed rectangle than a painted dome overhead, stretching to the horizon in all directions.
Uncle Christian and I were sitting in a quiet corner of the deck. He was drinking a cup of coffee and reading a book. I was watching the men scamper up ropes and spread out along the masts. The deck beneath us shifted then, like a carriage going around a corner. Soon after, as if obeying some invisible impulse, the shape of the sails changed, growing full. A tiny increase of pressure on my spine told me we had gained speed.
“Uncle Christian, what are the men doing?”
“Bringing us into the wind. The wind across the ocean moves in a direction, and the more sail it pushes against, the faster we go.”
“But we turned, too. Did the captain decide to go to a different place?”
“Clever child. It’s like this. Hold up your hand and blow into it. Now turn it to the side. Feel how much more of your breath you can feel when your palm is facing you?”
I experimented, and nodded.
“So, we can either sail in a straight line and go really slowly, because the wind is coming from the side direction, or we can zigzag—you know what ‘zigzag’ means?” I nodded. “We can zigzag and go this way for a while, then before we go too far out of the way, we turn back again. This back-and-forth is called tacking. Which, though it covers more distance, makes for faster speed in the end.”
I sat watching the sails. He went back to his book. The men around us chattered as they worked. Some were browner than most of the people I knew in France. Others were not quite so brown, although one of them, a friendly man who always said hello to me, was nearly as dark as ink. The brown ones mostly wore long shirts and had cloths on their heads. The not-so-brown ones didn’t use head-coverings unless it was a really hot day, and their clothes were different—more like the gardeners and working men wore at home. They talked differently, too; the brown men had one way of speaking, the lighter ones another, and though they could talk to each other—and the captain and mate could talk to them—they seemed to stick to their own skin colours.
“Uncle Christian, what language is that?” I had learned recently that people spoke using different words, one day when Papa had visitors I couldn’t understand. But the words these men were using did not sound like the ones Papa’s “Germans” had used.
“That’s English, because this ship happens to be from England. English is a language you will need to learn eventually, although fortunately for you, my own family—your new family—speaks French most of the time.”
“Do they also speak other languages?”
“Oh yes. Bengali, Hindi—English, too. A few other languages as well, some of us.”
“Can you teach me other languages?”
“You want to make a start? Certainly.” He closed the book around its ribbon and held it up. “Livre? Book.”
“Is that the Bengal?”
“Bengali—no, this thing in Bengali is called a bai. ‘Book’ is the English word. In Hindi it’s kitaab, in Latin it’s liber, or libro in Spanish, buch in German— What is it?”
I had started to giggle, my mind tumbling over the idea of so many identities for the same thing. “So many names!”
“It is a wonder anyone makes sense of anyone else, I agree. Even names—proper names. You know me as ‘Uncle Christian,’ yes? Well, my family knows me as Krishna.”
“Should I call you Krishna?”
“Not unless you’re used to calling your papa by his first name. How about Pitaji?”
“Uncle Pitaji?”
He laughed. “We can drop the ‘Uncle.’ Just ‘Pitaji’ is fine.”
“Can I have another name?”
“If you like. What about…let’s see. Loukya? Or how about Lakshmi? She’s a goddess, in India—one of the more amiable ones.”
“What does ‘amiable’ mean?”
“Friendly. Or easy-going. Her name means worldly wise, which would be appropriate for you.”
“Are there unfriendly goddesses?”
“Well, one wants to think carefully before naming a child for some of them.”
“I like Lakshmi.”
“So do I. Lakshmi it is.”
The men had finished up in the sails and were coming back down, reminding me of a monkey one of Papa’s friends had that stole a necklace and climbed up the curtains with it. The sails were filling with the wind. We had tacked.
“Pitaji, does the wind over the sea sometimes blow in the wrong direction? Can the ship still ‘tack’?” I knew that wind blew from different directions—one of the houses where Maman and I liked to walk had a weathercock on top, and the man who lived there had explained what it meant.
“It can sail completely against the wind, though it’s slow and a lot of work, so usually the captain bases his course on…You know, Mademoiselle Curious, if I’m going to explain the idea of trade winds and how the world’s weather works, we’ll need to ask the captain if we can borrow his globe, and I wouldn’t want to bring that up on the deck, in case it rolls off the side. Shall we do that another time, when it’s not so nice out?”
I nodded. The captain had overheard, and called down a question. Pitaji replied, and the two talked for a bit, and laughed like adults do over the heads of children.
“Pitaji, teach me some of that man’s words.”
“Who, Captain Lawson? Certainly.” So he did.
And that was how lessons worked with Pitaji, on the voyage and in the years that followed, lessons on language and technology, social customs and comparative religion and the workings of the world. By the time we reached Calcutta, I was chattering with the crew in several languages—English to the officers and some of the lighter-skinned crew, Hindi for most of the browner crew members, and French with the majority of passengers.
I don’t remember how old I was when I realised that Pitaji, the name I used for him after that day on the deck, meant Father.
Chapter Sixteen
This considerably more cheering section of the image-journal—and I was glad to have at least a first name for its author—had been briefly interrupted by the arrival of the photographer from Délieux. Although, having paid his respects, he was then taken away by the LaRues to be properly fed. He returned nearly two hours later, red of face and with both LaRues and Dot in tow. When I explained what I needed, they were all so thrilled, I might have invited them to step into a cinema screen.
The raising of fingerprints was clearly the most exciting event to have taken place in Ste Chapelle’s recent history. My audience of four gathered so ardently around the kitchen table that their own clothing was threatened by the ink I used to record the fingerprints of both LaRues, and then the charcoal dust I brushed on to the knife and torch with a soft, clean paintbrush from Damian’s shelves.
When I gently blew away the residue, there was a collective gasp of appreciation at the prints that appeared out of nowhere.
To my relief, the photographer knew his business well enough that I did not have to elbow him aside. When we had finished, M. LaRue pulled the cork on a new bottle of wine and we toasted the triumph of modern forensic science.
“Two prints of each negative,” I reminded the photographic gentleman. One for us, the other in case there was any interest from the local or Parisian policier.
My photographer hurried out, eager to see the images locked into his camera’s film, and necessarily taking the others with him. I dampened a cloth and wiped down all the peripheral surfaces, but before I returned the now-mottled torch and machete to their hiding place atop the cupboard—one never knew when something might go awry with film—I sat and turned the two objects around beneath the strong desk-lamp the photographer had used.
The torch was marked as one might expect of a metallic object kept relatively polished by being carried in pockets: a combination of sharp lines—a clear thumb-print over the switch, other crisp ovals where a right hand slightly larger than my own had grasped it—and indistinct blurs from the palm or where earlier prints had been rubbed away.
The black ovals on the long knife were less predictable. The grip, naturally, was a jumble of prints and palm-prints. The blade, less expectedly, also held prints: halfway up, along the blunt edge, he had grasped the steel with his thumb on one side and three fingers on the other. The angle made it clear: he had held the blade, manipulating the point of it between the two sides of the shutters, planting his index finger along the blunt spine as he probed upwards for the latch.
I also noticed a series of distinct marks, equally spaced, around the very end of the grip. It was an odd place to find fingerprints—in truth, only the rapt fascination of my audience had caused me to continue applying the charcoal dust past where I expected to find anything. Instead, there they were, five clear ovals, as if he’d dangled the knife for a moment, point deliberately downwards.
I frowned, wondering whether there had been any significance in that gesture. In the end, I returned the torch and knife to the cabinet top, checked the table and floor for stray charcoal dust, and went back—with less dread this time—to Lakshmi’s coded journal.
Chapter Seventeen
Third Image
The Dancing Lantern
Next comes a picture captured during my earliest days in Chandernagore, perhaps even the night of our arrival. I had been told that this would be my new home, but I was in a turmoil of confusion and unhappiness. Clothing that I’d rarely worn on the voyage had grown tight and short in the weeks since we’d left, and itched in the heat. The floor seemed to sway underfoot, the air smelled wrong, and I was fighting against the weakness of tears. The only thing I could cling to—literally—was Pitaji.
He sent the women away, not only those in saris but also the angry-looking one in the rustling vastness of a European skirt. She objected loudly—in French, though she was hard to understand, either because the shape of the words in her mouth was different or because her anger made her speech tumble and twist—but then a stern, grey-haired woman in a sari tugged at the loud woman’s arm, and we were left alone.
Pitaji sat down beside me on the bed. It was softer than the ship’s bed I’d grown used to, but no larger, with a curtain of fabric so thin I could see through it gathered up onto the bed’s high frame. He sat with me, and said nothing.
Looking back, it occurs to me how often he knew to say nothing.
The house was strange, like home but not. It was large, with very high ceilings, and around all the edges were long, narrow rooms—like hallways, except with shuttered windows on both sides, one side overlooking the garden, the other looking into rooms. The hallways had furniture, wicker chairs and carved wooden tables, as if people moved out of their dark rooms to sit closer to the light. When we came through the house, I had seen the courtyard at its centre, with a set of decorative metal stairs in one corner that went all the way to the roof. Everything smelled…warm. Like gardens on a hot, rainy day, mixed with the spices and the burning sandalwood that I had met first in Bombay, then in Pondichéry. The fishy smell of this house’s oil lamps was the only thing like home, although I was glad that my room’s light—my own room, right next to Pitaji’s and with only a door between us—was from a candle, rather than the lamp hanging on the wall.
As I watched, a lizard appeared, creeping head-first down the wall. I had met these on our first night in Bombay, and been alarmed, until Pitaji explained them. His name was Tikatiki, or Chipkalee, from the sharp little ticking sounds he would make, and his job was to keep the room free of insects. He would never bite me, Pitaji promised. Never.
Still, I kept an eye on Tikatiki as I leaned into Pitaji, whose comforting arm went around me, as it always did.
“Everything is new, my darling,” he murmured into my hair. “I know that. It will be difficult at first. But there will be things and people here you will come to love. I promise.”
“Tante Sophie doesn’t like me.” Tante Sophie was the angry lady.
“She doesn’t know you yet. Although it’s true, my brother’s wife is hard to please. However, Sophie is not as important in this house as your grand-mère, and your grand-mère likes you already.”
The stern, grey-haired lady liked me? She had touched my head, lightly, when we first met. Only much, much later did it occur to me how extraordinary this was, to welcome the illegitimate child of one’s elder son. Looking back, I can come close to sympathising with my aunt’s fury and my uncle’s scorn.
“Is she your mother?”
“She is. You can call her Daadi-ma, if you want.”
“Is she Indian?” She wore a sari, went barefoot, and had a tilak mark on her forehead like the servants, and was a little browner than Pitaji. On the other hand, her sari was silk and her hands were smooth. And she had authority: even the angry lady had deferred to her.
“She’s both Indian and French. Most of us in this family are both.”
“But not Tante Sophie?” She was the one in the rustling French clothing, and she had no tilak.
“Oh, her, too, despite the dress.”
There was some message there, some degree of tension in his throat—but I knew that when an adult spoke like that, they would not answer a question. Not even Pitaji, who tried to be mostly honest with me.
I set the thought away for future consideration. At any rate, I had another question.
“Pitaji, what is that?”
On the table beside the bed was a peculiar contrivance, a foot or so tall. It had a base like a lamp, but instead of a glass chimney or a silk shade, there was a wide metal hoop hanging from its top. Wasn’t that going to block all the light, I wondered? Only a small amount would come through the narrow slots cut into the metal. I knelt on the bed to look at it more closely. Inside the hoop was a piece of candle in a glass cup. At the top of the device, above the candle, was a circle of thin, tilted paddles. Like a tiny windmill, only lying flat, instead of standing upright.
“That is a thing for when you’re in bed. Do you want to get yourself ready, my Lakshmi? I’m afraid that starting tomorrow, you’ll need to submit to the ministrations of your ayah, but for tonight, we’ll pretend I’m still your nursemaid.”
I hurried to change into my cotton shift and splash my face in the wash-basin, then came back and watched him transfer a flame from the candlestick, which he then blew out.
I was right about the poor light this odd lantern gave: almost none, and that in narrow beams against the plaster.
And then I noticed that the windmill had begun to turn. Slowly, slowly—and somehow it was pulling the slotted lamp-shade along with it, like the skirts of a spinning dancer. At first, that seemed the extent of it, but as the shade picked up speed, the dancing motion smoothed out, replaced by a flickering vision—when I bent down to the level of the lantern’s shade, I saw a horse, galloping along inside the lantern!
I exclaimed and stretched out a hand, but Pitaji’s ring flashed as he reached out to grab my wrist.
“My heart, you may touch it, but first you have to absolutely promise me that you’ll never light this on your own.”
I considered this verbal contract. “Never?”
He laughed. “All right, my little lawyer, not until you’re, let’s say, ten years old.”
That was forever—but this was too compelling. I nodded.
“Say it aloud.”
“I promise, I won’t light the candle until I’m ten. Did you make this, for me?”
“I wish I could take credit, but no. It came from a country called China. One of Daadi-ma’s family was a trader there, her grandfather I think it was, and he brought it home. I spent many a feverish night watching it go when I was small.”
“How does it work?”
So he showed me, starting with the mechanism. The heat from the little flame rose into the windmill, whose angled blades pushed it around—like miniature sails, only metal instead of canvas. As it turned, four wires pulled the slotted shade with it.
Then the horses. He reached for the shade, using his thumbs to work free a strip of paper that rested along its lower edge. When the paper was free, he handed it to me and bent down to a box on the floor, pulling out another strip. While he was working this one into place, I looked at the one he had given me.
It had a series of drawings—each one, I saw, a little bit different from that on either side. In the first, the horse’s front foot was tucked up tight under its chest. In the next, the foot was going down. It continued to straighten, reaching for the ground, then touching down—and there the foot stayed while the horse’s body moved, shifting until it was above the hoof, then slightly ahead, and further yet, stretching the leg back. It finally lifted off the ground, then pulled forward until, in the last image on the strip, it was prepared to tuck up tight under the chest once again.
