The Grammarian Read online

  Bulky stewards, also in English costume, unloaded his cases. When he finally descended to the platform, the task of collecting his belongings and meeting up with Adivi’s servants seemed to have been miraculously worked out for him in rapid-fire shouting in native tongue between a man in a red European jacket on the platform and the train’s head steward, a man with a white cummerbund and black bowtie.

  Within seconds of descending the train, Alexandre felt that Indian heat no longer mediated by the enclosure of a train car, and he felt sweat trickling down his face and on his forearms and thighs; his clothes stuck to his skin and the ever-present dust clung to his face and in his lungs, a dry, spicy non-air that stuck in his throat. Feeling the dirt on his face and in his fingernails and nose, and sweat dripping off his chin, so many brown bodies, human and animal closed in on him, Alexandre felt nauseous and dizzy and, for the first time since his departure, a sudden and painful desire to return home.

  THREE INCHES, HELD between the tip of a girl’s index finger and that of her thumb, almost holding in her hand the roaring Atlantic sea, and the Pacific too, which moaned and thrashed like a temperamental god, and between: burgeoning concrete cities, fields of golden wheat, canyons, soaring mountain ranges, those ancient forests: the United States. A mere three inches between her fingertips. Anjali Adivi touched the tips of the map in the newspaper, a tiny dot in the state of California, indicating the town of Oroville, where white Americans had for decades moved toward the battering western ocean and the gold promised on its shores.

  All around her, her mother and the household servants were readying themselves for their guest.

  Oroville was where Ishi was found. He was the last of the Yana, who lived in the Sierra Nevadas, where once they ate fish and fruit. When the gold prospectors came, the Yana retreated to the cover of sylvan concealment. Ishi’s mother and all the rest of his people had died. Starving, his hair shorn in mourning, he stumbled down the foothills and into the white towns below the forests.

  It was morning in Waltair, and she was alone now. She could hear the servants in the kitchen preparing for the arrival of the academic.

  Anjali held the newspaper in her hands and felt a fast swelling of some powerful emotion: tears filled her eyes and she began, there, alone in the garden, to cry for Ishi, the last of his tribe. She imagined herself without family or friends or kindness, only an object of scientific curiosity. The last speaker of his language, the histories he would take with him, all soon to be gone with this single man; he would take with him the story of his people, and sing for the last time certain songs. He was the only one on earth to know his given name, this brown-skinned Calàf. Anjali’s lip quivered at the thought of that lonely man wandering from the forest to the foothills below, and to the scientists and museum curators who received him, and Anjali hoped Ishi would die soon.

  3

  “DR. LAUTENS?!” ASKED the man in the red jacket.

  “Yes?” Alexandre leaned in toward him, shouting to be heard over the Indians scrambling about him, collecting trunks and placing them atop turbans on their heads, shouting irritated orders to each other.

  “I am Subba Rao, Mr. Adivi’s personal butler. I have been sent to collect you from the train station. You will please come with me,” he said, his tone infinitely polite and deferential. Subba Rao then turned toward the men handling the luggage, his countenance changed suddenly, angry and aggravated, yelling in Telugu but peppering his speech with “Idiots!” a word that seemed much sharper with the twist of an Indian accent. The luggage handlers, men who waited in front of the first-class compartments for the descent of wealthy passengers, were not so well dressed, and wore short pants and shirtsleeves in military greens, dust and dirt on their hands and their bare feet, shawls wrapped about their heads to create a platform for the luggage they balanced there so effortlessly. They moved out of the airy stone train station, with all its chaos of passengers and beggars and vendors and station workers—thousands of people, it seemed, monkeys in the rafters, swiping bananas and bread from the food stalls, pigeons fluttering about, and to the surprise of Alexandre’s amused eyes, an actual snake charmer. He was an old man, dressed in filthy rags of white, sitting cross-legged, playing a sort of flute-like instrument of wood, in front of him a hemp sack from which emerged a regal cobra. The snake’s neck was engorged, moving with the man’s flute, immune to the sounds of barefoot street children, and it astonished foreigners, from whom the old man solicited coins after each short song.

  And the children. Subba Rao, with the same tone he had used earlier with the luggage handlers, tried to protect Alexandre from the tens of children who flocked around Alexandre, palms out.

  “Mister, money, please mister.”

  “Englishman coins please Sir.”

  “Sir money please.”

  “Just one coin Englishman!”

  “Sahib, please sahib!”

  Again Subba Rao fired off in his mother tongue with the colorful addition of English scolding and insults, pushing them away from him, yelling over his shoulder, again in polite deference, “So very sorry, Dr. Lautens. My most sincere apologies, Sir. The carriage is quite near, Sir.” Lautens felt a violent, frightened sympathy for these children, with their large, dark, sunken eyes, their scrawny wrists and hands thrust toward him, or tugging at his clothes: “Where do they go home?” he thought. “Who will watch over them, these small children?”

  He sighed with relief when Subba Rao pushed them away. And Alexandre turned and saw them behind them, a cluster of browns and reds and grasping hands.

  The coach was beautiful, of an old European style with handsome, large horses strapped to it, the carriage wooden and plush with red cushions and silk curtains.

  “You please sit inside and rest Sir, while we load the trunks,” Subba Rao said, his arm extended toward Alexandre to help him into the body of the coach. Alexandre sat there while the men loaded his belongings, and admired the station from the outside. The children had caught up with them, surrounding the carriage, their hands pushing through the curtains, Subba Rao yelling at them. When the luggage was loaded, and the driver swatted at the lead horses’ muscular rumps with a leather whip, the children ran after them for a few yards before the horses picked up speed. Subba Rao saw Alexandre looking backward at the children with naive sympathy.

  Waltair had strong Dutch tones, as per its history, and was lined with palm trees, which gave it an air both stately and exotic. The coach made its way through Waltair and Alexandre fished in his breast pocket for his cigarettes. The red, white and blue flag of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie had been taken down some one hundred years prior, when the British had annexed all the Dutch settlements in India. The VOC flag was replaced by the red flag of British India. Near the flagpole on Waltair’s Dolphin’s Nose—so called because that bit of land jutted out into the sea in the shape of a porpoise’s snout—was the Dutch-built lighthouse and fort.

  From Bombay to Waltair, Alexandre had been privy to so much impressive foreign architecture of late that he took in the fort in calm, studying the grandness of the place through swirls of cigarette smoke. Nearby, there was a cemetery. Thirteen Dutchmen who had lost their lives two thousand miles from the nation of their birth were buried on a hill overlooking the indifferent ocean that had brought them to India. Alexandre looked out upon the hill of Christian graves, deserted but peaceful, high above the city.

  He had sweated through his clothes and the cool sea wind felt good on his skin. Below the hill, on the beach, the washerwomen who wore their saris cinched around their knees were laying out sheets over the sand to dry. With the arrival of the British, the Dutch left Waltair, and the presence of the French in the surrounding areas had dissolved into small, disconnected pockets—Pondichéry, Karaikal and Yanam on the east coast, and Mahé on the west.

  The heat was more agonizing than any he’d felt in Bombay or the stops in between, and though the air was salty and the ocean near, the breeze did little to comfor
t him. The town, from first glance, was a medley of golds and reds, drier than Bombay, and dusty. The buildings were often beautiful and sometimes sat next to the straw and grass huts of the poor. Unlike the neighborhoods of Europe, poverty and wealth lived next to each other in India. The town’s structures were a riot of pastels, whites and ivories. Buffalo, goats, pigs, chickens, horse-drawn coaches, pedestrians, cyclists all convened on the roads of Waltair, together, like a great mass of mottled humanity and beasts great and small, all converging in the light of a late afternoon upon some point in the horizon.

  4

  ALEXANDRE HAD BEEN in England the year before the last, doing research in the libraries of Cambridge in summer and early fall, and while there met with English philologists, many of whom were at the forefront of Indian language studies, having at their disposal the conveniences of colony. Silk-bound copies of Schleicher’s maps of the Tarim basin, a handwritten note from William Jones. Love and life forgotten in that library to the comfort of a beloved and solitary labor of sound, word, syntax, grammar. The quiet comfort of study, half-empty cups of tea, hours of his life spent behind endless shelves of books. His stay in England was one of stately buildings, their medieval style so familiar to him, wildflowers, riots of yellow leaves in autumn, quiet reading rooms, outside their windows damp green grass, the sweet smell of rain in the air. His Cambridge colleagues, many of whom by virtue of their studies in religion, anthropology, history and of course linguistics had friends in this part of the world, had helped him fix his stay in India. It had taken three months of letters between Paris, Cambridge and Waltair to make the arrangements.

  Alexandre, the most promising professor in the Sorbonne’s philology department, was given a paid research sabbatical. His department had commissioned him to continue his interest in Dravidian studies, to write a grammar of Telugu.

  The world grew smaller through the reach of empire, and Alexandre was told that Indians were nothing if not hospitable.

  HIS KURTA DIRTY with the city dust, Alexandre arrived at the sprawling residence of the family of Shiva Adivi. Adivi was a man that Alexandre had been told was an aristocrat sympathetic to Europeans, a man with family money in fields of wheat and coffee, rice and fabric mills. And to own rice in south India was to own gold. It was the common starch of the land, and everyone, from street beggars to those with royal blood, sat down twice or thrice daily to a meal centered around a steamed vat of white rice.

  The home was a grand one of the old fashion with an inner court.

  It was from the coach that he descended, on the occasion of his thirty-fourth birthday, into the place where he planned to stay until he had a viable manuscript for his Parisian textbook publisher.

  When Lautens arrived at the daunting mansion—cut in white marble and with guarded steel gates—he was at once impressed and comforted. Subba Rao shooed beggars from the gates of the home as the striking white guest took in the house. Servants in red waistcoats and spotless white cummerbunds welcomed him and waited for instructions from Subba Rao before moving, then took his cases and called the family. His trunks being taken to what was to be his room, he sat on a stone bench in the garden to wait for Adivi and his family. Bougainvilleas climbed the pillars supporting the house in explosions of orange and pink. There were lime and guava trees, and tomato vines heavy with orange and red fruit. Organized squares of rose beds and jasmine were separated with concrete pathways that met at a semicircle of marble where stood a wrought-iron gate outside of which Alexandre could see the city.

  From some near corridor, Alexandre heard Subba Rao shouting commands in Telugu. Alexandre was gratified that he understood the order for coffee, and the female voice answering back in equal irritation. Alexandre rose when he saw the family.

  Adivi was a handsome man, with refined features and a strong nose and the full mustache preferred by the men—or was it the women?—of India, large piercing eyes with heavy lashes and a neat, stern mouth. He, too, was wearing a kurta, though his was much finer than Alexandre’s, cut from silk. Some varieties of silk here were so fine that they ruffled under the gentle touch of a woman’s hand.

  Behind Adivi, equally regal, stood four women: one old, in a simple white sari of cotton, with a look of benevolence and world-weariness upon her handsome face; the next, likely Adivi’s wife, a lovely woman in purple and blue, with a refined and womanly bearing and a long, aquiline nose; and lastly, two females not yet women, no longer girls—in those few, tender years after childhood. The first of these was a young woman of a beauty so intense that upon seeing her, Alexandre caught his breath. Her sister had the shadow of her father’s strong features though they did not suit a woman—she had an intelligent and suspicious air and was leaning her weight heavily on a cane.

  “Dr. Lautens, I presume.” Adivi held his hands up together in the customary Hindu greeting, his English refined with British tones.

  Alexandre mimicked the gesture, to which he too had become accustomed, and bowed slightly to the women. Then Adivi smiled widely and offered Alexandre his hand. Their palms met in a hearty shake. Behind them, near the gates, the servants continued unloading his cases from the coach. Subba Rao stood at the entrance of the garden, and Adivi told him to caution the other servants to be extra careful with Alexandre’s books. Bowing, Subba Rao left the garden area and walked toward the gates of the home. Adivi turned to his family, introducing him.

  “A great man of letters, Dr. Alexandre Lautens. Dr. Lautens, this is my mother—”

  “My name is Kanakadurga,” the old woman interjected. She smiled, proudly, broadly. Her English was fluent and deliberate. Hers was a bright and astonishingly open face, and Alexandre smiled, boyishly and unguardedly, as he looked at her.

  Adivi continued, “She is our daughters’ nainaamma, grandmother; it literally means ‘father’s mother’—we have this distinction that doesn’t exist in English.” Adivi chuckled, “In some matters we Indians are superior.” The old woman smiled sweetly and pressed her hands together. Alexandre had been told old women were referred to in Telugu as amma garru, “respected mother.”

  “Welcome, Dr. Lautens,” Kanakadurga smiled, and she walked toward Alexandre and took his smooth white hands in hers, which were wrinkled and the color of cocoa. “It is our family’s great fortune to have you here,” she continued as Alexandre blushed.

  “My wife, Lalita, and these are my daughters,” Adivi continued. Now closer than at his first inspection, he took in the beautiful girl’s face—the perfect gold skin, the large, dark eyes and delicate nose and mouth. About her face were thick knotted plaits of deep, inky black. “This,” Adivi cupped the girl’s face in his hands, his eyes warm with paternal pride, “is Mohini, my younger daughter . . . and this,” he continued, still holding his younger daughter’s face and motioning with his chin, “is my elder daughter, Anjali.” The women all pressed their hands together once more, and he stepped back. “Oh and this,” Adivi pointed to a sleeping sheepdog in the shadow of a tree, “is Byron.” Adivi’s mouth pursed as he heard harried clanging in the kitchen. “I apologize for the noise, Dr. Lautens, one of the peasant families nearby has had a death in the family, and my mother,” he gave a sidelong glance at Kanakadurga, “has asked the cook to send over some rice and milk.”

  Adivi came eye to eye with Alexandre and smiled deeply and warmly. “My home is your home, Dr. Lautens, my family is your family. Your presence here is a very high honor for us. The servants will show you to your quarters, and after you have rested, you will please join us for our evening meal.

  “Prithu!” Adivi called, and a boy servant answered from the outer corridor. The little boy listened to Adivi’s instructions in wide-eyed, emotionless silence.

  Prithu showed Alexandre to his room—it was splendid and simple, with a bed and dresser and desk made of teak, a deep and intricate rug in colors of burgundy and brown on the floor. The walls were left blank, which gave the room a light and spacious feeling. Alexandre lay down on the bed, stretching his
tall body for a few moments. He was grateful at last to have some moments of his own, and he splashed cool water from the stainless steel bowl on the desk onto his face and changed into a suit, unsure of what dress was expected of him and wanting to err on the side of formality.

  The servant child was waiting outside his room. Prithu’s eyes were large and dark and he seemed younger than Matthieu. He led Alexandre in silence to the dining hall.

  From the interior, the home was even more exquisite. The marble was cool to the touch and swirled in whites, creams, pinks and blues. It was wide and airy, the outside and inside not as distinct as in European homes. Still lizards clung to the walls. Rose and wisteria vines crept up the outer walls, palm trees yielding bananas and coconuts lined the property. The gardens were lush and fragrant. The home was furnished in a way that was at once minimal and decadent: all the pieces were exquisite, and so well fit their purpose as to leave need for little else. Mahogany and silk, a marble birdbath, the quiet and dutiful meandering of stewards and maids, some as young as Prithu, some as old as Kanakadurga . . . as dusk fell, the maids went about the estate lighting small candles in terra-cotta cups and swept small swells of dust off the marble floors and out into the garden with little, straw brooms held together with twine.

  The long dining room opened to the inner garden on one end, the kitchen on the other. It was manned by more red-suited servants, all of whom seemed to be under the authority of a white-clad chef in the European costume. The family was standing, waiting for him, the elder daughter leaning forward on her chair for support. Silver dishes from which emanated rich scents sat covered on a cart, over which the chef stood guard, waiting, Lautens presumed, for him to take his place at the end of the table opposite Adivi.