The Lily Hand and Other Stories Read Online Free Page A

something like that, and she knew that they stood on different ground. At that tone in his voice, patient and tolerant though it was, she remembered how much more congenial, on board ship, she had found the Indians than her own countrymen, and how the missionaries, in particular, had clung together in a close little clan, and mixed less than anyone aboard with their different fellow-creatures. She remembered to detach herself from her own prejudices, to distrust her own reactions; she reminded herself that she was the creature of her own upbringing and environment, however carefully she tried to stand apart from them. She saw that all that dismayed her here was at least in part her own creation. And she was willing to wait, to continue an alien, to be rejected, to be exploited, if that was the necessary reverse of all that delighted her, the occasional acceptance, the unexpected communication, the momentary belonging.
    â€˜If you want someone to take you about while I’m busy in the clinic, mornings,’ said Andrew, placidly unaware of any disquiet in her, ‘you might do a lot worse than Subramanya. He knows everybody in the village, and quite a lot about the dig too.’
    She took him at his word; and in the few days of her stay she thought much of the light-boy, and spent a good part of her time in his company. With this child, at least, she had no doubts of her welcome, or of the reason for it. He enjoyed her as she enjoyed him. It might be only the courteous brushing of fingers, but at least they touched.
    When he invited her into his home she entered with reverence. A small, bare, clean living room, one shelf with a faded wedding photograph, an asthmatic wireless set, a low mat bed covered with a threadbare rug; and behind a drab curtain, the tiny kitchen hot from brazier fumes, a stained clay oven, and two garish pictures, one on either side. Rachel put off her shoes at the doorway and made her ceremonial ‘Namaste’ to a thin, worn woman who was Subramanya’s mother. Like the field workers of the south, she wore no blouse under her sari, and the folds kilted almost to her knee. She had nothing to offer but a glass of water. Rachel drank it and thanked her, aware of a special and undeserved happiness.
    Not until she was waist-deep in the sea that afternoon, braced against the rough waves, did she realize what she had seen in the kitchen. On one side a cheap, highly-coloured paper print of Christ, soft-faced and appealing; on the other a doe-eyed, tender-mouthed Krishna, blue-tinted and womanish, with his flute at his lips.
    And she had seen no discrepancy, no contradiction. They were so profoundly alike that there was no distinguishing between them except by the blueness and the beard and the flute – superficial differences by any measure. The very same too beautiful, effeminate, sentimental art, the flowery beauty that poverty and deprivation and wretchedness need. Necessarily, a distant, hampered and imperfect view, perhaps the buckle of a sandal, a little-toe nail, but still a particle of the god. Of God.
    Rolled in the ultramarine shallows, refreshed and languid and at ease, she found no fault with this dual vision. All the pantheon of India had begun to fuse into a unity for her. All the pantheons of the world.
    She did not realize how strong a tide was carrying her, she went with it and was content. She watched Shantila dance, and listened to Subramanya’s monotonously-sung accompaniment, and learned to distinguish abhinaya , the mimed interpretation of ballads and songs, from the stylized movements of pure dance. Classical Indian music as yet only confused and excited her, but the popular music of weddings and folksongs she found astonishingly approachable. And how quickly, how very quickly, someone else’s fairies and gods become one’s own, familiar and dear. She had only to watch Shantila cross her ankles and poise her lifted fingers on the invisible flute, and Lord