—51—
I sent for my paints and other supplies.
Opening them, smelling the oils, made my heart sing, and I bustled about with purpose, setting up an easel left over from my girlhood in the sunny window, where I could paint as many still lifes as I’d like.
On the table, I set out charcoals and paper for Tanveer, but he did not use them.
He had grown well enough to take up long walks, much as I had done when I first arrived here, following the public footpaths for miles and miles. It gave him both physical and mental vigor. The fresh air and sunshine worked their own magic.
Slowly he began to talk to me again. Not about anything of his experiences, but about the walks and what he saw. He saw bluebirds, he said, and sat under a willow tree with fingers trailing in the water. He wanted to know the names of the grasses.
Sometimes, at evening, we ambled the back lanes companionably and came back to drink chamomile tea I made from flowers in the garden.
Topaz followed us around, disinclined to wander far.
I read aloud, or Tanveer did. Nothing in Urdu, for my books were back in London, and his were lost somewhere in the trenches.
We found some enjoyment in Shakespeare’s comedies, and he proved to be a good mimic.
We had moved upstairs, to my room, where the bed was more comfortable.
He no longer needed my help with his dastaar, morning or night, but sometimes he asked me to brush his hair.
I wanted to wrap it around my wrists, my neck.
I wanted to lean into that place below his ear, the tender spot on his neck.
I did not.
When we first moved upstairs, he asked if it was too much to ask that we continue to sleep together.
The unspoken chasteness was there. “I don’t mind,” I said.
I found peace in the stolen time, however it had happened.
Peace in the feeling of him close by, the sound of his breathing, the way he always turned to me in the night and pulled me close to his body and we spooned as if we were lovers.
Well, we had been, and learned it then.
His nightmares lessened. His body was healing.
His mind and soul were still desperately injured, and I didn’t know how to help.
July 10, 1917
Taos, New Mexico, USA
Dearest Elsie,
It took over a month for your letter to arrive here.
Thank the heavens that Tanveer survived such terrible wounds, and how very wise of Gurdaya to alert you.
I dearly love the boy and wish for him to thrive.
I have enclosed two recipes for teas to help heal bones’ internal wounds, and one for a poultice should the wound show signs of festering.
Washing it once a day preemptively would be a wise choice.
You will find the herbs all in jars in the pantry, clearly labeled, but if you should run low, you can find them in the medicinal garden I planted toward the back of the second avenue.
It is in full sun there and surrounded by a wicker fence.
I’ve drawn references for each. They will not be hard to distinguish, and should all be readily available.
Even after years of neglect, I suspect they will be growing vigorously.
While I am relieved Tanveer has survived, I cannot help but express concern over your tending him.
Is there no other place for him to go? I suppose there is not, but I well remember the state of my daughter’s heart at the end of his last visit to England—and before that, when we left India.
You are raw with the losses of war and will be vulnerable to your old feelings.
Protect yourself, my darling. He means quite well, as do you, but I fear this episode will only lead to more suffering for both of you.
In other news, I am settled in Taos, New Mexico, which is a landscape that would take your breath away.
Towering red rocks and impossibly deep canyons, and a sky so blue and endless I feel I could fly right away.
I understand why so many artists are drawn here, and I hope this war will someday end and lead you here to visit me.
It would excite your imagination deeply, I know it.
I remain quite smitten myself with Garvey. It is such a delightful adventure to follow him out west, giving me the opportunity to see things I never dreamed I would see at such a late date in my life. To find love after forty, and travel across America, imagine! The wonders of life.
I love you very much, Elsie. Send me a painting or two.
Mother
In late July, I made a pudding with the blueberries ripening in the Moores’ field, sweetened with honey and covered with cream.
The day had been hot, and the rooms inside the house were muggy and still.
We carried our bowls outside to the terrace and sat in the still evening.
Gold light slanted through the woods to the west, like fingers poking through branches.
A pair of sparrows whistled somewhere close by. Crickets whirred in the grass.
“It is so quiet here,” Tanveer said.
“Mmm. Peaceful.” And then I worried it was the wrong word to use, but pushed forward. “Not like the trenches, I suppose.”
“Sometimes it was quiet there.”
He finished the berries and set the bowl aside. I found my gaze on his hands, folded calmly, the length and grace of his fingers, the oval nails, and I wished I could reach for them.
Unexpected emotion rose in my throat, fierce and insistent.
“I hate that there is this gulf between us, Tanveer,” I said.
“All of our lives we’ve been able to talk, and now you’ve gone somewhere else.
” I blinked, irritated with the tears welling up at this burbling truth.
“I miss you, and you’re sitting right here. ”
He did not reach for me, only looked up to the treetops. After a long moment, he said, “Do you know the story of the Battle of the Saragarhi?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“In my father’s youth, there was a skirmish at Saragarhi, on the outskirts of the Afghan border. Twenty-one Sikh soldiers squared off with ten thousand Afghan tribesmen, and decided to fight to the death rather than surrender.”
I listened.
“Of course they were all martyred, but they fought so bravely that even the British honored their sacrifice, and their bravery was held up as an example of Sikh mightiness, and what a good soldier would do for the empire.”
He paused so long that I thought he’d finished. “As a boy, I imagined myself as one of them, taking down a dozen Afghans with my sword before we all fell to the glory of battle.” He tapped his chest. “I believed in that bravery, that glory. The fierceness of battle, the lions of the Punjab.”
I remembered, suddenly, Tanveer the boy slashing the air with swords made of tree branches, leaping to the top of rocks to fight off his invisible enemies. “I remember your tree swords.”
He looked up at me, surprised, as if he’d forgotten I would know such a thing.
“Yes.” He shook his head. “I went to France because I was proud of my warrior heritage, proud of the grand deeds I have heard about all my life. I believed that if we could turn this tide for the empire, we might truly win independence at last.”
A pinch ached in my lungs. Above us, a blackbird called out its sweet song, and another answered deep in the forest.
He continued, “The Sikhs I fought with in France did not die in honor. We did not give our bravery to any great cause. We swam in the mud, mud layered with the dead, for the very people who are going to destroy my people.” He looked at me. “Why did we do that? Why did I do it? I knew better.”
His eyes burned. I placed my hand on his arm, lightly, and did not look away.
“There was no honor in that slaughter, Elsie. Maybe there never is. Maybe the battle cry is a lie. It serves no purpose but building the fortunes of men in castles far away.”
I hardly knew what words to choose to allow this boil to continue to drain. I chose no words, only my hand, steady on his arm.
“I do not know how to move forward from this, from what I saw, the things that haunt me. I cannot bear to tell you, to put those visions in your mind, but I feel the poison of it in me.”
“You are a storyteller, jaan. Perhaps you should write it all down.”
“And then what?”
“Perhaps nothing. Perhaps you’ll burn the pages when you’re done, and let the alchemy create something . . . else. Maybe a world that’s better.”
He looked toward the rooftops again. “I will consider that.” His hand turned, palm upward, and I reached over to place mine against his. He closed his fingers over mine, and then surprisingly, lifted my hand to his lips and pressed a fervent kiss there. In Urdu, he said, “I miss you, too, Elsie.”
I kissed his hand in return, and then we sat in a quiet evening that was slightly less lonely, side by side.