The Grammarian Page 6

  FOR ANJALI, HAVING guests was always painful; to each new person who saw her she knew she inspired a new pity, or shame or disgust. Each felt she was a source of ridicule or pain. Frequent though guests were in their home, she never stopped feeling the intrusion. Her father would often receive business associates, aunts, uncles, cousins and distant relatives. Of the relatives she had her favorites, but most it seemed reserved their smiles for her sister, who would flutter into the receiving room with a tray of filled teacups. The formality of manners required in the presence of strangers made home less homelike, and the putting on of formal airs, especially in the presence of Europeans, exhausted her. In the company of her father’s Indian friends, a “namaste” and a smile were usually enough; sometimes they would ask her how she was, but nothing much more. Around Europeans she was required to answer questions too. With white guests, she was expected to talk about the weather and her studies and interests, all with a rather feigned deference to their station and race, and more often than not, the fact that they were men alienated her further; few white women called upon her parents, as many of the wives of the Englishmen remained at home in cold, stony England, or at the very least passed most of the year with their children in the hill stations, where the weather and climate were said to be more suitable for European ladies.

  HERE, AS NIGHT fell, the garden’s night bloomers opened like shy children, surreptitiously, and the scent of flowers fell over the home like a velvet curtain. The floor, the walls, even the sheets emanated the long-held heat of day, like an angry woman opening a tightly clenched fist. Kanakadurga had gone to bed; Adivi and Anjali were reading the paper, Lalita was overseeing the servants as they completed their nightly chores, Mohini was embroidering handkerchiefs. Adivi had offered him an after-dinner drink, but Alexandre made his excuses and declined, too tired. “You girls get ready for bed!” Lalita shouted at no one in particular. “Go! Anjali! Mohini! Get up, go! Anjali! What did I say?!”

  Lalita took a softer tone than her husband with Anjali, and Alexandre imagined it difficult for Lalita to see a daughter with an old woman’s gait, who walked with a cane and sighed when she bent to sit or rose to stand. From a distance, she seemed a brightly dressed elderly lady, taking her afternoon tea, and sometimes Alexandre was surprised when she would turn her head and he would see the profile of a girl.

  AS THE SKY was blanketed in midnight blue, and the stars pushed from within it, bright like bits of glass, Alexandre took out the journal he had kept on the train, filled with notes on Telugu etymology and syntax, interesting idioms and sayings. Describing languages was like pinning down a butterfly; just at the moment it was caught, it fluttered its wings, already escaping. Elegant translations, for the complex words, for the higher concepts, were few and often cumbersome. Alexandre saw a moth buzzing about the kerosene lamp and inhaled deeply of the oily, addictive smell.

  He knew what drew him to this discipline of linguistics. He supposed it was, in some ways, only his interest in all things, all aspects of learning—but language was the most fundamental. His colleagues in mathematics would disagree with him. His children, waiting for bedtime stories, would not. He found that to understand language, like philosophy or religion, but unlike physics or biology, was to understand something profoundly human and close to the heart.

  He felt that there was no place more right in this world to study the profound and sacred than India. He feared that France too soon would loose her foothold in here; but before that, he would have his speech samples, his lists of Dravidian family trees, his register of sounds.

  To an observer, he was sure he seemed less a scientist than a scribe: a glorified gossip, an eavesdropper. But still he thought there was art in it; there was affection and care administered to the languages he worked with. He strived to describe the full richness of their sounds, the complexity of the meanings of the words, the modes in which they were acquired, their ways for describing time and space, for setting the world into sense.

  He would start with the basics, addressing the linguistic structure of the Telugu family, and began to write:

  FAMILY TERMS IN TELUGU

  Bharta

  Husband

  Bharya

  Wife

  Naanna

  Father

  Amma

  Mother

  Koduku

  Son

  Kutaru

  Daughter

  Annayya

  Older brother, also older paternal male cousin

  Akka

  Older sister, also older maternal female cousin

  Thammadu

  Younger brother

  Chelli

  Younger sister

  Mamayya

  Maternal uncle, also father-in-law

  Attamma

  Paternal aunt, also mother-in-law

  Pethnaanna

  Older paternal uncle (lit. “older father”)

  Chinnananna

  Younger paternal uncle (lit. “younger father”)

  Peddamma

  Older maternal aunt (lit. “older mother”)

  Pinni

  Younger maternal aunt

  Tata

  Grandfather

  Nainamma

  Father’s mother

  Ammamma

  Mother’s mother

  Manavaralu

  Granddaughter

  Manavadu

  Grandson

  Menalludu

  Nephew

  Menakodalu

  Niece

  Bava

  Older brother-in-law

  Maridi

  Younger brother-in-law

  Vadina

  Older sister-in-law

  Maradalu

  Younger sister-in-law

  Alludu

  Son-in-law

  Kodalu

  Daughter-in-law

  HIS STOMACH FELT full but not overly so, and Alexandre felt good and languorous, tired but glad, knowing he would sleep well tonight. He felt easy in his body for the first time since getting to India—finally, he was done traveling. At least, for the time being. He set his pen down and leaned back. Alexandre could feel the weight of muscles and bones. He felt again planted in his body, he felt human again reconstituted all the way to his fingertips and toes and even the tips of his ears.

  He reached for the pictures in his pocket of Matthieu and Catherine in their white baptism dresses and began to fall asleep in the safety of knowing that his children were succumbing to sleep as they too gazed upon the same rotund and pearly moon. Alas. He blew out the oil lamps by which he read. He was tired now and needed sleep.

  There is no sleep like that of the weary traveler—all the muscles succumb, the heart slows its pace, there is no need for a comfortable bed or fine linens—though he had both. And so he slept, deaf to all noise, blind to the nightly movements of the heavenly bodies, dreamless, half expecting to wake up next to his wife in his bed in Paris.

  IN PARIS HIS family lived in the fifth arrondissement, near the university, and he walked to his office in an old medieval building. The architects of those buildings could scarcely have imagined the languages taught and studied in them now. Early in the day the sun poured down over the imposing, grey structures and they seemed briefly less serious than they otherwise did. The mornings had always been his—in Paris he woke early and walked to the small café on the corner, arriving with the first-shift waitstaff, who greeted him with the strange mix of gentle good humor and aloof familiarity. The cold metal of the chairs, the smooth tables of finished wood, ink stains on his fingers from an unwieldy newspaper—how great the quotidian and daily gift of morning. He could scarcely understand why anyone would choose sleep over sunrise, over an endless violet sky. But as he so dearly loved coffee in silent solitude, he was glad so many did.

  He chose the day and the sun.

  5

  ALEXANDRE WOKE UP, feeling still dizzy and not entirely sure where he was; his body felt like a leaden weight and he tentatively
stretched his fingers. The sun was out and he couldn’t tell what time it was, and though he knew he was in a home, when he closed his eyes he could still feel the rocking of the train. He heard wrestling in the trees and the sound of clinking dishes and footsteps. He smiled for a moment, feeling very anxious, understanding he was not at home, not his home anyway; he blinked away a haze of confusion and realized he was in India, in Adivi’s house, and he reached for his silver cigarette case and lighter. He sat up in bed and smoked, wondering if anyone else was awake, and if so, how exactly he should enter the main house. He looked through swirls of smoke, wondering exactly how to make his entrance, and wearily eyed his bags. After a few moments, he slowly stood up, his legs trembling slightly as he found his balance. He stood, realizing that he had a pounding headache like those he sometimes got from oversleeping. Touching his temples, he kneeled by his luggage, carefully loosening the buckles and zippers and pulling out a white shirt and dark trousers. He splashed his face in a basin of cool water left by his bedside; he undressed and noticed on his white chest and arms a few angry red mosquito bites. He dressed and raked back his dark hair with a wet comb. He grimaced: his stomach ached dully from all the travel.

  Alexandre put out his cigarette and blinked into the mirror. He looked older than the last time he’d had a moment to examine his face. The little lines around his eyes and mouth looked deeper. He had taken his beauty for granted most of his life. But as he disliked vanity in men, he tried not to pause in front of mirrors too often. Standing in front of the mirror, he felt embarrassed that he noticed his aging and even more so that it bothered him, making a small vague feeling of panic in his chest. Alexandre sighed and wondered if he should put on shoes—the family went barefoot in the home, but it made him feel awkward and informal to walk around that way. After a few moments’ consideration, Alexandre chose to defer to the native custom. Alexandre, feeling oddly vulnerable and childish in his bare feet, tentatively opened the door of his room.

  In the courtyard, two female servants, with their tattered saris tied between their legs, swept the stones with twine brooms and soapy water, their bright white teeth gleaming in contrast with their sun-blackened faces, their cracked heels and spaced-out, almost simian toes. They chatted with each other, laughing, telling vulgar jokes and the gossip from the nearby villages they were from. The thin hair of one was coiled into a bun; the other wore a large, silver nose ring. They had a look about them, as if they smiled a lot. Seeing them, Alexandre hesitated for a moment, at once aware of the superiority of his station with regard to theirs and yet feeling like an invader. Noticing him, the servants turned and smiled silently; Alexandre smiled, feeling strange, and looked down at his hands. His eyes darted around, looking for any of the Adivis, until one of the maids pointed at the dining room and said, “Mr. Adivi.”

  Alexandre nodded his thanks and smiled, relieved. He had long prided himself on his manners and his ability to say and do the right things, even at times when others didn’t, and he realized how irritated he was in that strange moment. His education and comportment failed him—he wondered if the maids thought him a fool. But they—uneducated and lower class as they were—had no standing to judge him. He shrugged it off.

  THAT MORNING, ALEXANDRE had Subba Rao go into town to a store where last month’s European papers were sold. Adivi had put the servants at Alexandre’s disposal, and they catered to him while the house busied itself, not just with the normal daily tasks but with wedding preparations. The cook was preparing to go to the market and shyly addressed him in her lower-class Telugu, “Sir, Miss Mohini has asked for shrimp for dinner and Miss Anjali has asked for squash. Is there anything you would like?”

  Alexandre smiled and told her he’d be happy with whatever she bought.

  He read the newspapers in the evening: there was a September issue of Le Journal. On the cover was another story about Hiram Bingham’s discovery of that ancient South American town thousands of feet above sea level. Lautens closed his eyes, sipping coffee.

  BINGHAM HAD, BETWEEN schooling at Yale and a research post in Bolivia, heard of Vilcabamba—a mythic town of the South Americas—mentioned in the yellowing originals of the first European diaries written on that southern continent. It was said to be the last foothold of the old empire, at once so vast it had had in its hold all that is Ecuador, Peru, Chile . . . it ended only when the sea began. Pizarro’s men had killed in a fraction of an hour all Emperor Atahualpa’s mightiest men—men whose bodies had generations before adapted to the place’s thin air and could, without great effort, run the endless, rugged coastline of the empire. Atahualpa crushed underfoot the Bible offered him by Pizarro. He and his men would not convert even under threat of Spanish swords. He cried, “I am no man’s tributary!” and moments later, his men around him dead and dying, the weary emperor was imprisoned by the Spaniards and bargained for the mercy of strangulation with roomfuls of gold and silver. The last of his few living soldiers raced up the treacherous South American hills carrying their wives and children where European legs could not go. They went to Vilcabamba, and there lived out the last years of empire unmolested and undiscovered by Pizarro’s men.

  Bingham’s colleagues in Incan and Mayan studies in North America had humored him, had heard the name in passing. But they were men of science, and the quest for this South American Atlantis was of little interest to them. Years passed, but Bingham soon found himself again in Bolivia and Peru. Wandering the ancient Bolivian back roads, short of breath for the sheer altitude of the place, he saw it, shrouded in grass and vines, as if nature had conspired to hide it. He and his men were eight thousand feet above sea level and in front of his eyes was a seamless meeting of the red earth and blue sky. Vilcabamba—Machu Picchu, as it would be called. The city in the sky. Bingham and his team hacked at plants. But before doing so marveled at the patience of grass—how the tenacious growth of hundreds of years could conceal all the glory of man’s great achievement of the city. Monuments of stone and cement emerged—the stubborn vines clinging to them like jealous lovers, the sun showing on buildings it hadn’t touched in hundreds of years. The buildings were so austere, as if no humans had ever inhabited them. There were none of the human signs—no bones, no tools or etchings on walls. The sky was so clear, like only a mirror that may shatter and fall into the ancient city.

  Bingham had family money and a European education; he had seen the ruins of Greece and Italy, the Taj Mahal, the Great Pyramids of Giza. And yet, under the vast blue sky, gasping for breath in the under-oxygenated air, sweating under the South American heat, Bingham was at a loss for words, and, mouth agape, he took in the marvel in silence, his European eyes the first in four hundred years to set sight upon the great old metropolis.

  Alexandre wondered: how many lost cities were there, nations buried or sunken? How many languages died up there in the mountains of Peru, or drowned under the torrents of terrestrial tide, our ancestors ill equipped against the sudden crashing down of water walls?

  ADIVI ASKED THE cook to make some coffee and later remarked that he would like to have gulab jamun for dessert. Dinner was Adivi’s favorite meal, a time for him to assert that paternal force as the head of the family that he felt his due and right. He liked the ritual of it, and the formality—that the whole family ate together, unlike the casual and scattered breakfasts and lunches. He liked the line made by his daughters and wife and mother from his position at the head of the table. He sat smiling at the table, calling to the cook to ensure that she was able to get good shrimp at the fish market. The cook called back, assuring him she had gotten to the market early and had gotten the best pick.

  “Good,” said Adivi, contentedly waiting for his family as he skimmed through the paper.

  The familiar feeling of his heart being squeezed set in when Adivi saw his daughter Anjali. The feelings of pity and fear aroused in him by his daughter’s sickness and that absurd limp and the lack of beauty had his paternal love in a clawed grip. He tried to approach h
er again and again with love, after feeling awash in the guilt that his disgust aroused, but it always failed. His love was aroused always by pride, the kind of pride he felt in his wife’s grace and elegance or in Mohini’s beauty and that virtue that wore itself so proudly on her person. He felt it not vain but honorable that his clothes and family should all reflect a sort of virtuous propriety, and though he couldn’t fault Anjali for her deformity, any disruption in that appearance grieved him deeply, and this was an affliction he could not rid himself of, not even for his daughter.

  And Alexandre felt ashamed of Adivi, because Adivi reminded him of himself. Because when his daughter was a baby, she too had been very sick, and Alexandre had that thought that horrible thought that he was sure might keep him from heaven: when it was quite uncertain that Catherine would live, he thought simply, “We could still have another baby.” And he felt such shame that he had thought his baby replaceable. He might be able to have another child, and perhaps even another daughter, but if she had died, he’d never have Catherine back.

  ALEXANDRE CONTINUED TO write about Telugu nouns with a quick guide on forming the possessive:

  POSSESSIVE FORMS IN TELUGU

  My tiger

  Naa pulli

  Your tiger

  Nee pulli

  Your (pl) tiger

  Mee pulli