The Henna Artist(82)

I straightened my spine. She was right; I could have made the first move.

I looked out the window. “I saw Manu out in the garden earlier.”

“I sent him there. No good both of us being sad together.” Her eyes sought mine. “He was so looking forward to meeting his child.”

“Shh.” I massaged the space between her brows.

“Manu told me Radha had a boy.”

We regarded each other in silence.

“He must be beautiful.”

I didn’t want to talk about him now. Kanta was in too much pain. Instead, I did something quite unlike me. I gathered a few tendrils of her hair in my hand and pulled them across my mouth like a mustache, exaggerating the pucker of my lips the way her servant, Baju, did.

“Madam,” I said, doing my best to imitate his village accent. “I escaped! I stole money from your saas’s purse to join you. Please not to tell her. She will most definitely jail me.”

She managed to smile through her tears, and put a hand on my head to bless me, a gesture usually reserved for elders and holy men.



* * *



After Kanta fell asleep, I went to the baby nursery.

Radha’s boy had all his fingers and toes, two legs, two arms. He was a beautiful baby. His skin was a delicious color: tea with cream. He even had a full head of wispy black hair. I stroked his silky cheek, ran a finger across his chubby ankles. I felt a magnetic pull to him. We shared blood. We shared eyes the color of the sea. We might even have shared family in a previous life.

“How is it that you don’t have children of your own?”

I turned to look at Dr. Kumar, who had just come into the room. I wasn’t sure how to answer his question.

He was looking at the pallu of my sari, worry lines crossing his forehead. “I’m sorry. It’s impertinent of me to ask.”

I looked down at the sleeping baby. Under his pink lids, his eyes made tiny, rapid-fire movements. He had only been in this world for one hour. I couldn’t imagine what he was dreaming about. One tiny fist opened, then closed, as if he were squeezing pulp from a mango.

“I have no husband, Doctor.”

“So you aren’t—forgive me—I thought it was Mrs. Shastri.”

I am divorced. It was official now, but the words wouldn’t leave my mouth.

“I was married,” I said. “Long ago.”

I wondered if Jay Kumar knew about Samir and me. But when I looked at his face, the eyes tilting down at the corners, I thought not. His question had been innocent enough.

I smiled. “Surely you must have a family.”

“I did. That is, when I was a very small child.” He put a hand out, palm facing the floor, to indicate how small. “Parents. No siblings. My parents, well, both of them died—car accident—when I was young...” His starched coat rustled as he removed the stethoscope from around his neck, and wound the tubing around the metal carefully.

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, it’s been ages. I was still in knickers. My late aunt raised me. Paid my way through all my schooling.”

A nurse came to check up on her tiny charges. Radha’s son rested in a corner crib, apart from the other newborns. Unlike the other cribs, his lacked the small card giving his family name. But his bed was clean, his cheeks rosy, his sleep restful. He was obviously getting excellent care.

“How did you end up in Shimla, Doctor?”

“Boarding school. The Bishop Cotton School for Boys. Then Oxford—where I met Samir.”

I realized I’d forgotten to send Samir a telegram about the baby. “You’ve informed the palace?”

“I’ll take care of it,” he said. “Haven’t found the time, so far, to complete their forms. Ten, twenty pages—down to the smallest detail. We must measure each fingernail. And every other body part.” He chuckled, glancing slyly at me.

I laughed.

He checked his watch against the wall clock. “It’s time for my clinic. Will you join me? There are some people I’d like you to meet.”

“Now?”

“No time like the present. Radha will sleep a few more hours.”

Radha’s son attempted a halfhearted croak and kicked. We turned to look at him.

“We’re still agreed that Radha is to have no contact with the child?”

He held his hands up in surrender. “The Sisters know. They have their orders.”



* * *



The tiny clinic was on the hospital’s first floor. The walls were painted toothpaste green. Half the chairs were occupied by local residents: women in dazzling blouses, petticoats the color of Himalayan wildflowers, headscarves adorned with orchids; the men in woolen tunics and drab suitcoats, their heads warmed by Pahari topas.

Dr. Kumar approached the pretty nurse behind the reception. “How many today, Sister?”

“Fourteen.”

He grinned, his chin dimpling. “Twice what we used to get.”

Ushering me into a cramped office, he indicated a chair for me. “My surgery,” he said. “Such as it is.”

His desk was littered with stacks of paperwork, prescription pads, an inkwell. An open medical textbook sat on top of the latest issue of Time magazine. On the wall: a photo of Gandhi-ji surrounded by leaders of the India National Congress. The scenery behind the Mahatma was familiar: Shimla in bloom.