The Glass Palace. Amitav Ghosh
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Kanhoji tell you?’ Kanhoji was the elderly coachman who drove Uma around town.
‘Yes.’
‘I wonder how he knew about my secret tree.’
‘He said he’d heard about it from the herdsmen who bring their goats here in the morning. They’re from his village.’
‘Really?’ Uma fell silent. It was odd to think that the goatherds were just as aware of her presence as she was of theirs. ‘Well, the view’s wonderful, don’t you think?’
Dolly gave the valley a perfunctory glance. ‘I’ve grown so used to it I never give it a thought any more.’
‘I think it’s amazing. I come here almost every day.’
‘Every day?’
‘Just for a bit.’
‘I can see why you would.’ She paused to look at Uma. ‘It must be lonely for you here, in Ratnagiri.’
‘Lonely?’ Uma was taken aback. It hadn’t occurred to her to use that word of herself. It was not as though she never met anyone, or that she was ever at a loss for things to do – the Collector made sure of that. Every Monday his office sent up a memorandum listing her engagements for the week – a municipal function, a sports day at a school, a prize-giving at the vocational college. She usually had only one appointment a day, not so many as to keep her uncomfortably busy nor so few as to make her days seem oppressively long. She went through the list carefully when it arrived at the beginning of the week, and then she put it on her dressing table, with a weight on it, so it wouldn’t blow away. The thought of missing an appointment worried her, although there was little chance of that. The Collector’s office was very good about sending reminders: a peon came up to the Residency about an hour before each new appointment to tell Kanhoji to bring the gaari round. She’d hear the horses standing under the porch; they’d snort and kick the gravel, and Kanhoji would click his tongue, tuk-tuk-tuk.
The nicest part of these appointments was the journey into town and back. There was a window between the coach and the driver’s bench. Every few minutes Kanhoji would stick his tiny, wrinkled face into the window and tell her about the places around them – the Cutchery, the gaol, the college, the bazaars. There were times when she was tempted to get off so she could go into the bazaars and bargain with the fishwives. But she knew there would be a scandal; the Collector would come home and say: ‘You should just have let me know so that I could have arranged some bandobast.’ But the bandobast would have destroyed any pleasure she might have taken in the occasion: half the town would have gathered, with everyone falling over themselves to please the Collector. The shopkeepers would have handed over anything she so much as glanced at, and when she got home the bearers and the khansama would have sulked as though she’d dealt them a reproach.
‘What about you, Dolly?’ Uma said. ‘Are you lonely here?’
‘Me? I’ve lived here nearly twenty years, and this is home to me now.’
‘Really?’ It struck Uma that there was something almost incredible about the thought that a woman of such beauty and poise had spent most of her life in this small provincial district town.
‘Do you remember anything of Burma?’
‘I remember the Mandalay palace. Especially the walls.’
‘Why the walls?’
‘Many of them were lined with mirrors. There was a great hall called the Glass Palace. Everything there was of crystal and gold. You could see yourself everywhere if you lay on the floor.’
‘And Rangoon? Do you remember Rangoon?’
‘Our steamer anchored there for a couple of nights, but we weren’t allowed into the city.’
‘I have an uncle in Rangoon. He works for a bank. If I’d visited him I’d be able to tell you about it.’
Dolly turned her eyes on Uma’s face. ‘Do you think I want to know about Burma?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘No. Not at all.’
‘But you’ve been away so long.’
Dolly laughed. ‘I think you’re feeling a little sorry for me. Aren’t you?’
‘No,’ Uma faltered. ‘No.’
‘There’s no point in being sorry for me. I’m used to living in places with high walls. Mandalay wasn’t much different. I don’t really expect much else.’
‘Do you ever think of going back?’
‘Never.’ Dolly’s voice was emphatic. ‘If I went to Burma now I would be a foreigner – they would call me a kalaa like they do Indians – a trespasser, an outsider from across the sea. I’d find that very hard, I think. I’d never be able to rid myself of the idea that I would have to leave again one day, just as I had to before. You would understand if you knew what it was like when we left.’
‘Was it very terrible?’
‘I don’t remember much, which is a kind of mercy, I suppose. I see it in patches sometimes. It’s like a scribble on a wall – no matter how many times you paint over it, a bit of it always comes through, but not enough to put together the whole.’
‘What do you see?’
‘Dust, torchlight, soldiers, crowds of people whose faces are invisible in the darkness …’ Dolly shivered. ‘I try not to think about it too much.’
After this, in what seemed like an impossibly short time, Dolly and Uma became close friends. At least once a week, and sometimes twice and even more, Dolly would come over to the Residency and they would spend the day together. Usually they stayed in, talking and reading, but from time to time Dolly would have an idea for an expedition. Kanhoji would drive them down to the sea or into the countryside. When the Collector was away touring the district, Dolly would stay over to keep Uma company. The Residency had several guest rooms and Uma assigned one of these exclusively to Dolly. They would sit up talking late into the night. Often they would wake up curled on one another’s beds, having drifted off to sleep in mid-conversation.
One night, plucking up her courage, Uma remarked: ‘One hears some awful things about Queen Supayalat.’
‘What?’
‘That she had a lot of people killed … in Mandalay.’
Dolly made no answer but Uma persisted. ‘Doesn’t it frighten you,’ she said, ‘to be living in the same house as someone like that?’
Dolly was quiet for a moment and Uma began to worry that she’d offended her. Then Dolly spoke up. ‘You know, Uma,’ she said in her softest voice. ‘Every time I come to your house, I notice that picture you have, hanging by your front door …’
‘Of Queen Victoria, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
Uma was puzzled. ‘What about it?’
‘Don’t you sometimes wonder how many people have been killed in Queen Victoria’s name? It must be millions, wouldn’t you say? I think I’d be frightened to live with one of those pictures.’
A few days later Uma took the picture down and sent it to the Cutchery, to be hung in the Collector’s office.
Uma was twenty-six and had already been married five years. Dolly was a few years older. Uma began to worry: what was Dolly’s future to be? Was she never to marry or have children? And what of the Princesses? The First Princess was twenty-three, the youngest eighteen. Were these girls to have nothing to look forward to but lifetimes of imprisonment?
‘Why doesn’t someone do something,’ Uma said to the Collector, ‘about arranging marriages for the girls?’
‘It’s