My Brother

I stood panting and helpless, watching the old man as he held the girl. Two powerful and conflicting urges conspired to hold me frozen: overwhelming physical desire, and the visceral urge that told me to flee and hide in the busy streets of Calcutta .

- 9 -

The house they took me to was smaller than Chandra’s, but still another impressive mansion. A structure of dark-red brick, it was surrounded by the now-familiar screening wall, and the garden within was laid out with scrupulous care. The beds of sages and flowering thyme threw back at me the perfumed mix that had first hit my memory on a London street.

The old man would not (or could not) talk to me on the journey. After two or three Bengali sentences in a voice that was at once angry and deferential, he had given up on me. He had accepted my help in getting the woman Ameera out of the Maidan, leaving me to do most of the carrying while he shooed away inquisitive onlookers and two Calcutta policemen, but his looks at me when we came to the carriage were angry and puzzled.

The ride in the closed, horse-drawn cab was short, only a few minutes of twisting and winding up narrow back streets. I already knew Calcutta well enough to realize that the horse was a sign of wealth, not poverty — a car would have been cheaper to maintain — and the houses that we passed confirmed the impression of ample money. By the time we arrived at the big double doors and had been admitted by a man with a heavy black mustache who stood guard in a little sentry box, the woman was awake again, sighing and fluttering her long eyelashes. I got out of the carriage first, ready to try and explain my presence and coax some English-speaking member of the household into allowing me to stay. It was quite u

I stood in the entrance, wondering what came next. Ameera was led away through rustling curtains of silk by an older woman who bustled out of the house as soon as we entered the double gates of weather-beaten teak. She gave me one nod, then ignored me. After a couple of minutes, the old man who had been in the Maidan came in behind me and gestured to another i

It was a study, panelled and lined with bookcases. The wall on my left was flanked by a long sideboard bearing a dozen full decanters of different colored liquids, and heavy armchairs and coffee tables stood in precise alignment on the hardwood floor. There were no rugs — I could see what a hazard loose rugs would be to a blind woman — and there was an exact orderliness to the furniture arrangement.

The man who had led me in had abandoned me at once. I stood for a while looking at the books but that quickly proved to be a waste of time. They were all in Arabic or Hindustani script. After a futile few minutes I stepped across to the sideboard and removed the stoppers from a few of the decanters: Scotch, rum, sherry. It seemed at odds with the eastern elements of the room. I ran my hand across the smooth wood of the sideboard. Everything was spotless, no mote of dust anywhere despite the absence of occupation.

I was still standing there when Ameera returned, alone. Her color was back to normal, a rich coffee-cream with a hint of pink behind it in her cheeks. She came in confidently, skirting a coffee table and heading straight towards me. If I had not seen the telltale cloud behind her eyes in the Maidan I would have sworn that she had normal vision.

A couple of feet away from me she halted and spoke again in Bengali. I shook my head, then realized that was probably useless.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t understand.”

Her shoulders slumped. “Leo-yo?” The word was musical and strangely accented. It brought the hair up on the back of my neck, and it wasn’t just her use of Leo’s name. I had found it, Leo’s eastern contact!

“Leo-yo,” she said again. “Please talk to me.” Her English was precise but not fluent.

“I am Leo’s brother,” I said, slowly and carefully. “Not Leo. My name is Lionel.”

“Brother?” Her face changed expression again, from sadness to worry and confusion. She came nearer and touched her hand up to my face. This time she was more thorough, ru

“Leo-yo. You have been hurt.”

“Not Leo.” I took her hands gently in mine. She looked up at me patiently, her eyes wide and opalescent. “Ameera,” I said. “Please believe me. I am not Leo. Leo had a brother, I am his brother.” As I spoke I winced at my use of the past tense for Leo, but Ameera’s English was not good enough to catch it and read its significance. Her face remained perfectly calm.

“Ameera,” I went on. “I would like to talk to you. About my brother. About Leo.”

The long eyelashes flickered, and the lids covered the cloudy beauty of her eyes. She was looking down, her hands ru

“I understand,” she said at last. “You told me this. That there might be a time when you could not know me, you warned of hidden times. But here… where only we are here, after so long…”

Her voice trailed away sadly, and I swore under my breath. If only she could see… It was hard to believe that those dark orbs were unseeing. What could I do next? This was supposed to be the place where I would meet all Leo’s eastern contacts — but where were they?

“Ameera, whose house is this?”

She looked surprised, her lips parting to show pearly teeth with slightly prominent canines. “House? This house? Leo-yo, you know it. This house is your house, as it has always been — what else? We have waited for you here, waited and waited… Chatterji said you would not come back, you would never come back. When he saw you in the Maidan, he did not believe it.”

I was hardly listening. Leo’s house. I knew he had been in the east for years, and he hated living in hotels. But why had he never mentioned it to me?

“Now that you are here,” Ameera was saying, “it will be a tandoori meal. Shamli has been told, and Chatterji will get the chutney you like. In one half of an hour it will be ready to eat.”

She reached confidently across the sideboard and picked up a decanter and a glass. She removed the stopper, sniffed to make sure, and poured. It was a fine oloroso sherry, Leo’s favorite. Should I try and explain to her again? I sipped, watched as she replaced the stopper and set the decanter back in its exact place, and caught a hint of the delicate perfume she had applied since we reached the house.

Suddenly I had a visceral understanding that she had been Leo’s mistress. If I closed my eyes I saw images of dark, flawless skin beneath the modest clothes. The contours of her figure glowed with secret oils, familiar to me as no woman had ever been familiar. I took a bigger gulp of sherry.

“Ameera.”

“Yes, Leo-yo?” Still she refused to accept me as myself.

“There are many books here. Where are the other books and papers in this house?”

“Many places.” She was confused. “You know it. In this room, in the bedroom. There are books everywhere.”

“Did you ever hear anyone talk about T.P.? As someone’s name?”

“Teepee?” Her voice was bewildered, “Never. Who is Teepee?”

“I don’t know — it is a bad person. How about Belur? Do you know about anything called the Belur Package?”

Now she hesitated, “Belur is a common name in the south of the country. But what is in the package?”

“I don’t know.” I would try Chatterji and the others, if I could find an interpreter, but I sensed that there would be no success. Leo’s secrets were well-kept. He would not have told these people what he kept hidden from me.