—15—
The maharani, Tanveer, and Gurdaya returned to Nainital with our party to take up residence for the hot months. We played cards and drank chai and made up word games.
Tanveer and I became split beings—the selves we had been as children, all the days we had been together over years, best of friends, sparring intellectually and rambling through the forest like little animals, and the new selves we had discovered, the parts of us that had blended with our kisses in the tiger shed, and only wove more tightly together with each moment we spent in secret, exploring this new and dazzling thing.
It was not as easy to escape alone together as it had been. My mother only allowed the three of us to go together, and blocked any suggestion of Tanveer and me on our own. It wasn’t seemly, and I did know the eyes of the village always watched us.
But we found ways. When the three of us hiked up to the pond, we waited until Gurdaya napped and slipped away into the trees, where we kissed ourselves into a fever.
My skin felt as if it would melt right off my bones, and my fingers were greedy for the feeling of his body, the muscles along his shoulders, the tensity of his slim waist. We slid and twisted around each other until we had to halt or burn to cinders.
The rest of the time, when we played games with our mothers, when we all ate together in the hot evenings, telling stories, we were only ourselves, our secret connection hidden and humming at a frequency only we could hear.
In the hottest days of August, a summer virus swept through the village.
It was not fatal, but entire households were stricken, servants and families alike.
For a time, the maharani’s household servants held strong, and Tanveer and I were pressed into delivery service, carrying jugs of soup to leave on the doorsteps of households laid low by the virus.
Including both of our own, in the end. Gurdaya and our mothers fell ill, and our servants. Tanveer and I kept up our deliveries, fetching food from the market to bring to the sick, making sure water jugs were filled, that the cool breezes could be captured.
In the still of the afternoon one day, we sat in the courtyard beneath the shade of the laburnum tree, tossing rocks in a desultory contest to see who could hit a crack in the pavement. “It’s so hot,” I whined, pushing hair off my head. “I wish we could escape to the pond.”
Tanveer straightened, hands on his thighs as he looked around to the empty grounds. “Who will know?”
I widened my eyes. “Is it terribly wicked, do you think?”
“Terribly.” A tiny smile belied the word.
“Then we must. Let’s pack a picnic.”
We filled a basket with a flask of lemonade, bread and butter, the last of a batch of shortbread baked before this Great Summer Flu of 1911, and a pile of apricots. I donned a hat to protect my face, and we set off in the heat.
We barely talked until we made it into the trees. As we dived under the shade, we talked about the book we were currently reading together, Silas Marner. “I suggest we read in Urdu next,” Tanveer said.
“I am not proficient enough,” I protested.
“It will be good for you,” he said with a grin. “It will give us much to discuss in our letters.”
A pain threaded between my ribs. I tried to keep my voice neutral. “When do you return to school?”
He reached for my hand, laced his fingers in mine. “Three weeks’ time.”
I leaned into him momentarily. “I shall hate it.”
“As will I.”
“No,” I said, straightening. “You’ll be engrossed in your studies and polo and your friends.”
He met my smile with one of his own. “I shall. But I will also miss you terribly.”
I took a breath. “I’m weary of the things I study in school—I can read on my own, and study languages, and study history because I find it interesting.” I swung our hands. “I wish I enjoyed classwork as much as you do.”
“But your path is clear.”
We had to pause speaking for a bit as the trail traveled uphill for a long stretch. We picked our way through tree roots and over rocks. Overhead, birds called and shouted. A breeze stirred the leaves around us. “What is my path?” I asked at the top of the hill.
“You’re a painter,” he said with a quizzical shift of his brows. “Of course.”
A swell of longing moved through me, a life of canvases and exploration, something freer than I could see from here. “If I were a man, perhaps. I do not see how it is my path as a female.”
“Don’t you?” He regarded me calmly, his posture as straight as it had been since we were children, the square shoulders of a person who knew what he was about. “What else could it be?”
A thousand things rose in me, visions of the future bending and swirling—a painter, a mother, a wife, his wife, perhaps, which would not be impossible, only difficult.
“A mother?” I said quietly. “A wife?” For no reason I could name, tears stung the back of my eyes, and I looked away to hide my emotion.
“And only that? Leave painting behind forever?”
“No! Both, all.”
He measured me for a long moment, and I felt suddenly ridiculous.
I regretted coming here with him, regretted the foolishness of my longings, regretted how stupid I had been to spin a possible future with Tanveer.
I did not realize I’d been doing so, but it humiliated me that the thought had not even crossed his mind.
I flung his hand away and marched into the forest, breathing hard as the shadows moved over my head. I could not halt the tears that streamed down my cheeks, but I would not let him see.
My ears roared with my foolishness. At the pond, I halted, breathing hard. It had been several seasons since we’d come here. The beauty caught me, the glimmering water, the green and yellow ripples over the surface, the sound of the waterfall tumbling into it. All I wanted was to dive in.
I kicked off my shoes and sat down on a rock to peel away my stockings, reveling in the cool air on my toes, then shed the top layer of my clothing, a light muslin dress, and without looking at him, waded into the cool water.
When it reached my hips, I plunged in wearing my shift, gasping at the immersion of cold, the fingers through my scalp.
I broke the surface and looked back toward the shore. He stood on the bank.
“Shall I stay here?”
I shook my head, and watched as he placed the basket on the ground, and took off his sandals and his tunic, then his thin undershirt, and the layers covering his hair, which was tied high on his head.
He was no longer a boy, and his torso was defined by the muscles he built riding and playing polo, his shoulders strong and round, his belly lean. Clad in his shorts, he moved to the water and waded in, our eyes engaged every second of the journey.
He dived and surfaced near me. For long moments, we treaded water face to face. My foot brushed his shin. His hand brushed my arm. “Why are you so angry with me?” he asked.
“Not angry. Embarrassed.”
“What? Why?”
I moved until I could set my feet against the bottom of the pool. Sunlight warmed the top of my head, caught like stars in his eyelashes. “All I want is to look at your face forever.”
He swam closer. “That would never be enough for you.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
His smile was tender. “Because I know you.”
I looked away, again feeling tears rise in my eyes.
“Elsie.” He touched my outer arm. “What is it?”
“It’s so humiliating that you have not even considered the possibility of a future for us. I have fallen in love and thought you had, too”—the tears poured from my eyes, tripling, quadrupling my humiliation—“and I find that I’m a foolish caricature of a swooning miss.”
“Is that what you think?” He captured me when I would have fled again, catching my legs with a hooked knee, my shoulders with his arm.
Our chests met, and I still refused to look up, aching with emotions roaring through me like the waterfall behind us.
And yet, his body was warm, his palm hard on my neck and ear. “Look at me,” he said very quietly.
When I raised my eyes, he wiped my tears with his fingers. “You are my life,” he said in Hindustani. “I love you, and you are the other half of me. Never doubt that.” His head moved slowly. “But marriage between us would be a terrible punishment for you.”
“I don’t believe that.” I lifted my arms, pressing myself into him. “It would not be a punishment because I would be married to you, who knows me, who would be my equal, and would allow me to be your equal.”
He closed his eyes. “That is a dream, Elsie.”
I pushed him away from me. “You are so . . . arrogant!” I splashed away, struggling for the words. “You are not my father, or yours, and you are as young as me, so what makes you think you have the answers?”
“I do not think I have all the answers,” he said, hands on his hips.
“I only know this. I will not subject you to the life I see the women in my world living.” He shook his head, fierce.
“Do you think you could be happy dressing for court and managing the affairs of the women? You would hate it.” His eyes were suddenly too bright, his voice raw as he continued, “Do not think it is because I would not give all I am to make it so. I can barely countenance the dream, it is so painful to know we cannot achieve it. But Elsie, you are my soul. I vow it.”
In his words I heard his truth, and I swam toward him, wrapping my arms and then my legs around him as I kissed him. “I know,” I whispered, tasting his lips, pressing kisses to his cheeks, his chin. I spoke in Hindustani, to please him, “You are my soul. My world. My heart.”
He wrapped me in his embrace, hard, and we kissed as if the act would hold the sun in its orbit, deep, deep, our bodies aching to become one thing.
Which we found a way to do, backing out of the water, shedding the last of the garments between us, until we were skin to skin, sliding and tangling, hands and lips exploring, and it was exactly why we had come here, to be alone and explore each other completely.
When he was over me, in me, he grasped my face, and I held his gaze, and so in the oldest way we became one flesh, at least for a little while.
I had seen his face a thousand ways, but forever I would remember the expression when we had finished and he paused, still buried in my body, and whispered in Urdu, “Tum merī jān, merī zindagī ho.” You are my soul, my life.
I clutched him close to me. In the same language, I said, “Hamesha. Hamesha.” Always. Always.
After a time, we pulled undergarments over us, but wove our legs back together while we ate, replete and starving.
He offered a bit of biscuit, and I gobbled it with my lips, making both of us laugh, and we could not help dipping into a kiss, over and over.
I tasted sugar on his lips, and licked it playfully.
He captured me in return and kissed me deeply.
“Are you all right?” he asked, biting a fat apricot.
“Yes.” I inclined my head. “Are you?”
He grinned. “Yes.”
I said slowly, “I do fear that we shall injure each other somehow with all this.”
“As do I. You are where I feel most myself. Without our connection, I should feel unmoored.”
“How will we preserve it?”
For a long moment, he looked out toward the water, and I wondered what he saw there.
Then he looked at me and took my hand. “I shall always do my best to help you be happy,” he said at last, and pressed a kiss into my palm, as if for safekeeping.
“If you vow the same, we will take care of each other forever, and always be—what we are, no matter what else happens.”
“Our own sacred invention,” I said. “Not siblings, not just friends, not only lovers. I vow it, too.” I pressed a kiss to his palm.
“True friends are one soul in two bodies.”
“Yes.” I leaned in to kiss him, lingering in the taste of sweetness on his lips, refusing to imagine a time in the far distant future when I would not be able to indulge my longings so easily.
Unfortunately, it was much sooner than either of us knew.