As Sweet as Honey

PART TWO

Time Passes

But what after all is one night? A short space, especially when the darkness dims so soon, and so soon a bird sings, a cock crows, or a faint green quickens, like a turning leaf, in the hollow of the wave. Night, however, succeeds to night. Winter holds a pack of them in store and deals them equally, evenly, with indefatigable fingers. They lengthen; they darken …

—To the Lighthouse





28




She had dreamed of him again. Sitting jackknifed on the new bed she shared with Uncle Simon, her heart racing, my aunt Meterling woke with panic. For seven consecutive days, she had dreamed of her Archer dying in seven different ways. In her first nightmare, she pushed him over slippery rocks in water; in the second, he walked backward off a cliff. He clutched his heart only once, falling to his knees, wearing a yellow tuxedo; that was dream number six. In dreams four and five, he was shot by an assassin and stabbed by a knife. Only in the first was she directly responsible for his death, although in all, she was implicated. In this seventh, the latest, her hands slipped from his as he tumbled off the Middle Tower of the Tower of London.


All she told me years later was that she had nightmares; as always with my aunt, I embellish the stories. I was not there. Had I been there, I tell myself, maybe I could have prevented them, and though I had desperately begged at the time, the idea of sending an eleven-year-old to a foreign country while her own parents already lived in another one, and her extended family lived on Pi, was dismissed.

“I could be an opera girl!”

“What’s an opera girl?” asked Sanjay.

“An ayah.”

“You have to be old to be an ayah.”

That was true. One of Mary Angel’s cousins had an ayah because her mother worked, and that cousin was much older than me.

“But you don’t have to be old to be an opera girl!”

We knew of an American family that wanted to hire opera girls from Madhupur; they would pay for room and board in exchange for looking after children. Grandmother wrinkled her nose at the idea, and said these girls, whom she called O-pairs, would have no rights, and on top, would pine away. She used the Tamil phrase for “pine away,” but in English it sounded awful, like living in a tree without company or food.

I complained loudly, but I did not go to England with Aunt Meterling, and she continued to have nightmares. She told me how those first months had been when I was older, but I imagined what she chose not to tell. Isn’t that who we are at heart, a species that tells and doesn’t tell, keeps the heart and brain hidden, complicating our lives for the drama, so we don’t have to face the night?



In the mornings, my aunt read the newspaper with utter concentration while Uncle Simon played with the baby. A woman aged a hundred and one had died. My aunt had lately grown fascinated with obituaries. The newspaper reported it with a caption under a photo of the woman celebrating her last birthday, her mouth beaming, a paper hat on her head, with balloons and cake nearby, and a column describing her life. Does the life ahead seem longer when you are elderly? Or does it merely seem a continuation of what you know? If one were to sit and examine each decade, count the measure of one’s life, maybe it would seem long. “Every day, you know,” said the centenarian-plus to the reporter, “I wake up surprised I made it another day.”

The woman had been married to the same man for sixty-seven years. She had seven children, beginning in 1909, nearly all of whom were still living, plus sixteen grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. Meterling stared at the paper. Only a year ago, she, Meterling, was twenty-eight, pregnant and getting married. Now, she was a widow, wife, and mother. She looked out the window. There beyond the garden view was more of the English world, more dazzle, more drizzle, and black bare limbs trembling with raindrops. It was beautiful and it was England, and she, my aunt Meterling, was here. Despite the state of the world, despite the bombings near Underground stations, despite the unworldly ferocity of soccer fans, despite the fear of unexpected public violence—here was my aunt, in an England she still considered beautiful, new, and full of possibilities. But where were the sketch pads and easels, where was the travel that was to have lit her days, as Archer had promised her a year ago? They hadn’t known about Oscar, of course, they had merely planned around what they knew; but would she be as happy? I was convinced of my aunt’s ability for survival, provided she was looked after. As for the dreams of travel, they grew in me, like a seed sprouting in the stomach of a sage to turn into a tree as he meditates.

From the first, she liked the flat. She liked the cozy kitchen, with the clean-swept floor and a picture of a rooster on one of the walls. Because she had seen the photographs, she had not expected to be surprised, but she was, opening and closing the doors and looking out the windows, sitting on the plump gray couch the landlord had provided. It was semi-furnished, but she did not see any need for more furniture; freshly painted, it had an air of beginnings, new starts. It was so different from island homes, from her home. No dark, heavy colonial furniture or mirrorwork hangings, no twenty-five foot ceilings with metal fans, no wooden swing. It felt like the twentieth century, not the nineteenth. Spacious, bright, and, thankfully enough, she fit. Younger, she told me, she used to think of herself like Alice, who drank the bottle that made her arms and legs and head thrust out of the Wonderland house she was in.

She had seen so many illustrations of English homes, cottages with teapots and chintz, but the flat was streamlined, with a wall painted a light brown in the living room. Ceiling moldings from the Regency townhouse the flat was ensconced in remained to add character, as did the thick doors that led to the bedroom and to the garden. The kitchen opened onto the living room, and the bathroom, painted light blue, was off to one side. Because it was tucked under the main townhouse, it felt protected from the street it fronted. Cutting flowers from the fairy rosebush, which would brave on for another month, she could see people hurry past on their way to work. There was a bakery around the corner, and the sweet fragrance of buns and scones drifted delightfully, wending its way past an old plane tree whose mottled bark Meterling first mistook for disease.

The first day there, she drew out from the suitcase her Ganesha, carefully wrapped by Grandmother in an old sari, and a small silver Lakshmi and infant Krishna. She had told Simon that she needed to travel with her faith, to set up her shrine and not lose her connection to Pi. There was a bookcase in the kitchen, and there, she arranged the small statues. Grandmother had also packed her a silver diya lamp, and had even rolled some cotton wicks for it. They had landed at Gatwick on October 6th. From the plane, looking out the window, she was surprised to see how green England was. The grass seemed springy, freshly cut, verdant like spring. Where was Keats’s season of mist and mellow fruitfulness? She longed to see the apple trees as much as she longed to see snow.

Through customs and the taxi ride, Meterling held Oscar, and leaned into Simon. He narrated what they were looking at, but the words flew past her. She looked at the view, seeing Austen, seeing Dickens, seeing Eliot. It was only when they had stopped in a store to purchase milk, butter, coffee, and other sundries, that she spoke.

“Oil, Simon—we need oil for the lamp.”

At the flat, lighting the oil lamp, bowing her head, her palms pressed together, she prayed like Grandmother would for good fortune in these new beginnings. Then she put a small pot of milk on the boil, let it nearly boil over, and prayed for an abundant new start to their new life, an overflow of fortune. Simon made coffee, and they used the now-sacred milk to lighten it. Meterling gave a few drops of the cooled milk to Oscar as well. Their new lives in their new flat had begun.