—71—
When I think of that time now, the whole of that fall and winter and spring, it is contained in a globe of golden light, filled with happiness and laughter and making love, painting and building our strange little family, for it was not only Tanveer and me, but Channan, too.
Her health improved and I taught her to watercolor.
She taught me needlepoint, which I loathed.
I worked on their portrait sometimes, and at others, I painted canvas after canvas of a new kind of landscape—sere and rich at once, the combination of shape and harshness and brilliant sky that spoke to me now in a new voice.
Tanveer took me to Nainital, and we drove the streets we’d roamed as children.
I saw my old house, and his, which the family still owned and rarely visited.
We hiked the trail to our pond but found the waterfall had ceased and so it had gone stale, covered with algae.
Gingerly, and then with more vigor, we embraced the new life we’d found, surprisingly, after so much loss and strife. Both of us became more fully ourselves within our intimate connection. I painted. He wrote.
For as long as I live, those nights we slept side by side, entwined, dreaming together, will remain among the best moments of my life.
Gurdaya came to visit with her tumble of children, and stayed for three weeks.
Tanveer and I attempted discretion, but in truth, we were so gilded we left pools of light wherever we stepped, and she soon guessed the truth.
Once she understood Channan had given her blessing, she accepted it with her usual practicality.
“I used to see you sneak into the forest,” she said.
But she did warn us to be careful, considering the unrest in the whole of the Punjab that winter.
We saw it in the village, too, a fight over an irrigation ditch turning suddenly ugly, a man beaten to death.
Accusations of favoritism over the gurdwara, too, and the maharaja’s interest in restoring it.
He had to hold a durbar to air the complaints after the festival of Guru Nanak Gurpurab, when a Muslim group protested the apparent favoritism of the maharaja giving more attention to Sikh matters than to those of the Muslims or Hindus.
When a rumor surfaced that the maharaja had taken a British mistress, Channan held a festival for the village children, at which she and I worked side by side to dispel the gossip.
The rumbles were everywhere, and I did not leave the grounds of the palace without Tanveer. We insulated ourselves, our little family, in the crumbling old palace.
It was early in January that I realized I’d had no menses for nearly three months. I was certain it could not be a child, not after all these years. I was past thirty and had never been pregnant, not even to lose it.
But the evidence mounted. My breasts grew larger.
My hips softened. Some afternoons, I slept for hours on end, lost in a narcotic, dreamless sleep.
And then, my belly began to swell, ever so gently.
Beneath the loose tunics I wore, it did not show, but I was sure Tanveer would notice sooner or later.
A disaster, which I had foolishly not considered how to plan for.
One night as I padded toward the bed, he stopped me and placed a hand over my belly. “Are you with child?”
I burst into tears. “I don’t know how to tell!”
He pulled me to him, and I fell on his shoulder, weeping as if the world would end. “I did not think it possible!” I cried. “It is such a terrible complication.”
“Terrible?” He laughed. “I can’t think of anything that could bring more joy.”
“But what of the villagers, the gossip? Won’t it be dangerous?”
He moved his hands over my belly. “No. It must appear to be Channan’s child. She will be overjoyed.” He paused, hand over my stomach. “I have so longed for a child, Elsie.”
I pressed my forehead into his neck. “Our child.”
Gently, he spread his fingers, looking, and he whispered, “A baby.”
The next day we found Channan in her room, sitting in a sunny spot with Topaz on her feet.
She looked wan, as often happened, and I hesitated, suddenly afraid this evidence of our congress would be a bridge too far, that she would resent me at last. Tanveer sank next to her, took her hand, kissed her forehead. “We have news.”
The blaze of hope on her face was unmistakable. “A child?”
I moved close, and cupped my hands in a semicircle to show the growing mound. She lifted her hand and touched it, just as Tanveer had. She had tears in her eyes as she looked up at me. I pressed my hand over hers. “Our child. All of us.”
She kissed my hand. “I have prayed for this.”
The palace announced the happy news that the maharani was, at long last, going to bear a child.
She took to her bed, as if to protect her pregnancy, and I stayed hidden, as well, and draped when I emerged into the palace.
Only Sughra was allowed in her rooms, and she alone knew the truth.
She had been loyal to Channan since she was a child, and could be trusted with the secret.
Near the end of my confinement, Gurdaya arrived with her midwife and servants who had no connection with the locals and took over the supervision of creating an environment supportive of a new baby.
Kirandeep was born at the end of May, a healthy, robust baby boy. When I had been patched up and cleaned and dressed in fresh clothing, Gurdaya placed him back in my arms. “I will fetch Tanveer.”
In the quiet, he looked up at me, as calm as his father, his eyes a rich amber beneath an astonishing thatch of hair. His nose was squished from birth. He took my finger in his tiny hands, and made a soft mooing sound.
My entire being filled with a kind of blaze, a ferocity of love that was larger than the earth, the skies, all of creation, a son born of love and generosity, a being so beautiful I could not imagine how I could even begin to capture him on canvas, a merging of Tanveer and myself, the most miraculous expression of all. “You are perfect,” I said.
Tanveer came in quietly and sat on the bed with us. “Look at his tiny fingernails,” he whispered, alight with wonder. “And his eyebrows!” He kissed each tiny finger, and Kirandeep regarded him solemnly. “Welcome.”
I do not think it would be possible to feel more love than I did in that moment.
“A son,” he whispered. “A new generation.” He took my hand and kissed my palm. “We are now truly woven into a new being.”
“Truly.”
His eyes shone. “What a blessing!”
We stayed where we were, admiring every inch of Kirandeep’s tiny self, wrapped in a joy that had no equal, not ever in the history of the world.