Fountain

The fountain was first and the house came later. I sculpted three statues for that fountain. The first was a woman sitting in the water, an arrow held in her right hand. Her left hand cupped her collarbone where a wound wept water endlessly, spilling over her fingers and across her knees and away.

The second statue was of a father bent over a child, shielding the child’s head from the rain with his hands, only the rain fell from the father’s weeping eyes, dripping from his chin, falling onto the child’s shoulders, which were drawn and taut with tension.

The third statue I never finished, for it was meant to be a sculpture of Leena, who never stayed still for very long and soon disappeared altogether. I relied on impressions I took of her in passing, and those rare moments when I could cajole her into sitting for me. Then I was able to get the form of the sculpture done, one foot dipped in the water, the other leg folded on the lip of the fountain, the torso bent, her hands wringing the long braid of her hair into the basin. The water was meant to come from her hands and the end of her braid, but it remained unfinished, the face unrecognizable, one leg raw stone, the other one finished but left underwater for the minnows to nibble and the moss to climb. The water never came out of her hair, and my memory of Leena’s face never felt strong enough to set into stone. I promised myself I would finish it when she returned.

#

Soldiers often came to our house and our fountain to receive telegrams and water their horses. The telegrams came to us because the telegram office was far away in town and the fortress where the soldiers watched the valley was much further, and the house and fountain stood more or less in between them, close enough for the boy from the telegram office to get there and back before the sun got too hot.

Leena taught the girls English as well as spycraft, and the girls became very good at opening telegrams and translating words such as “RESUPPLY” and “SKIRMISH” and “CASUALTIES”. Leena had been very keen on making sure the contents of each telegram found their way to the rebels sleeping in the hills behind the house. Though I was headmistress, I pretended not to know of such things. I don’t know which of the girls took telegrams to the rebels after Leena disappeared. Aarti, perhaps, or Saryu, who could run very fast and climbed rocks fearlessly.

When the soldiers came to the house, I would hand them the telegrams, perfectly re-sealed. The soldiers thanked me for the water from the fountain and the shade of the trees, and complimented me on the design of the garden. When the soldiers came, I made sure to drape cloth over Leena’s face, to keep her unformed face from their view.

#

Before she disappeared, Leena had a talent for knowing when a man would die. Let me explain. Despite its unfortunate proximity to the war, the house was still a school of some repute where parents sent their daughters to learn good Christian values. Though the success of this endeavor varied from girl to girl, it was still ostensibly prohibited to engage in such activities as fortune telling and magic, though I turned a blind eye to the seances the girls would sometimes do in the night, hoping to reach one of their lost sisters or fallen brothers.

What Leena did was different. She had an intuition, a crystalline view of the truth. She would speak to a soldier and a cloud would cross her eyes. She never told them outright, but word passed along as it often does, and soon the men began asking her whether they would die soon. The power of knowing one’s death was too strong. Many came to her, and would leave either relieved or ruined, hanging limply in the arms of his fellows as they took him away, like someone already dead.

#

After Leena disappeared, I went myself to the hills to the rebel camps to ask after her. I took Saryu with me, who had grown up in this part of the country and was familiar with the hills. Against the pale sunbleached rocks, the white cotton kameez we wore rendered us nearly invisible, and I thought surely we would catch the rebels unawares until Saryu tugged at my sleeve and told me that they were watching us. Then the sweat began to drip down my neck.

I was glad I took Saryu with me. She confidently led us through all the labyrinths the hills had to offer until at last, the view of the valley spread below us, we came across the rebels. They were not surprised in the least to see us.

I had brought two offerings: telegrams and tea leaves, but the greatest offering was Saryu, who ran immediately into the arms of her uncle, scrambling up onto his shoulders like a monkey, immediately softening the stern face of this warrior.

I gave Saryu’s uncle the telegrams and the tea, which he thanked me for. He thanked me also for taking good care of his niece. He told me he had heard all about the three statues overlooking the fountain. He was sorry to hear that the third was unfinished. He said this with sudden gravity, and my heart sank.

Then you know where she is? I asked.

He nodded. He told me that Leena had indeed come through the rebel camp. Quite calmly, Leena had told Saryu’s uncle that she had seen her own death. The next morning she went further into the hills to seek it. No one had seen her since.

Then she has returned to God, I said, and against her uncle’s shoulder, Saryu began to cry. Both of us knew that Leena had never once been wrong about death.

#

After Saryu and I returned to the house, I went to the garden and sat by the fountain until I nodded off to sleep. A sharp pain woke me — Leena’s statue had cracked at the waist and fallen onto me, her head in my lap, her elbow wedged so deeply into the stonework by my waist that I had to call for the groundskeeper to help lift it off of me, and by then my fingernails had cracked and bled, scraping at her shoulders, trying to free myself from her weight.

#

Later, the rebels would come across a cave hidden high in the hills where Leena had stayed for a while. She had been taking meticulous notes on the soldier’s movements in the valley. The rebels found her notes, and were able to intercept and ambush a patrol party meant to rout the rebels from their camp.

It was likely that one of these patrol parties, in an early foray into the hills, had found Leena. Mistaking her for a rebel, they killed her. Of course, it was impossible to know exactly how she had died, though my thoughts conjured many vivid possibilities. Either way, she left the small sanctuary of her cave one day and did not return.

Not long after the rebels found Leena’s notes, the soldiers abandoned their fortress in the valley, choosing to regroup with the rest of their army by the coast. Many of the girls in the house, Saryu among them, saw this as a victory. Other girls were scared. For as long as they had lived, there had always been soldiers in the valley.

#

I had no body or grave to carve a tombstone for, so I finished Leena’s statue instead.

I have little memory of that night. I set lanterns in the garden to give me light to see by and I worked until dawn, until my arms could not lift a cup of water to my lips and I plunged my face into the fountain to drink from that instead.

It took all my courage to finally look at the statue in the light of the morning. Of course, it looked nothing like Leena. It didn’t even look like a memory of Leena. In her hands, her braid looked like a weapon. Her shoulders were streaked with the gouges of my nails. Her eyes were accusations.

What I had done was unforgivable. Rather than face her, I veiled her once again.

#

Many girls didn’t return next term — Leena’s death had shocked and upset the parents. An English gentleman named Mr. Bishop took her place as the school’s English teacher. He was unfriendly and watchful, and soon after he arrived, I told Saryu that she should no longer visit her uncle in the hills lest she be reported. Whether she listened to me, I do not know, but at least Mr. Bishop’s suspicions were not raised.

By that time, stories were already circulating about the penal settlements. Stories of people who sailed across the black water to the Andamans and rarely returned.

I must have heard these stories. They must have crossed my path, even in the relative isolation of the fountain and the house. However, it never occurred to me to hope that Leena might still be alive. I had mourned her; I had butchered her memory in my hands. If I opened my heart enough to look for her alive only to be disappointed, I think it would have broken me entirely. In this way, I failed her again.

#

It was Mr. Bishop who first remarked on the neglected state of the garden.

Yes, it had fallen into disrepair. The groundskeeper did what he could, but the maintenance of the fountain and its garden had always fallen to me, and lately I had been lax, focusing instead on my duties as headmistress.

It sets a poor example for the girls, Mr. Bishop told me. It is our duty, after all, to tame the jungle, not let it lay root and encroach on our havens.

Supercilious, pestilential, hated man! If Leena were alive, she would have mocked this gora until there was nothing left, but I had always been made of lesser stuff.

That evening, after the girls had gone to their rooms, I took a machete into the garden and cut down all I could, whether weed or not. I drained the fountain and took down the vines that had crept up the statues. I left behind the mat of dried vegetation that had draped itself over the third statue’s face, obscuring her features. By midnight, I had thoroughly mutilated the garden, and over breakfast the next morning, Mr. Bishop made sure to tell me that he already thought it looked much better.

#

Saryu came to my office one afternoon with her head hung in shame, a telegram in her hand. It was open.

It’s addressed to you, ma’am, Saryu said. But the girls and I thought it was meant for soldiers, so we opened it.

I couldn’t help but laugh, and Saryu, relieved, laughed with me. I could not stop thinking about how proud Leena would have been. It must have been the same for Saryu, for by the time we had gathered ourselves, there were tears in both our eyes.

You may as well read me what it says, I told her. Your English reading must be exceptional, after all these telegrams.

Still grinning like an imp, Saryu read aloud the telegram, and her expression soon grew solemn. The telegram gave the name of a hospital in Kolkata. It listed the address, the ward, the room, and the name of the doctor. It did not say the patient’s name, and I did not let myself wonder.

#

I took the next available train to Kolkata. Fortunately, I had a cousin with whom I could stay in the city, but rather than go straight to her home, I went directly to the hospital. Upon showing the nurses the telegram, I was led to a room filled with beds. The occupant of each bed had a similar story, one that none of the nurses or doctors were willing to share. Several of them were suffering from malaria and scorpion stings. Others were recovering from severe starvation.

I saw Leena’s face first as a stranger’s, then as a ghost’s. With recognition came guilt, a typhoon that knocked me to my knees. I took her hand, which was barely more than skin and bones. As an unmarried female convict, she was expected to marry one of the male convicts on the island and assist with the maintenance of the settlement. Instead, she had gone on a hunger strike. After her recovery on the mainland, she was to be sent back to the Andamans. She had been sentenced to eight years of transportation.

This she told me, her lips barely moving, afraid to be overheard.

Why didn’t you say in the telegram that it was you? I asked.

I was afraid you wouldn’t come if you knew it was me, she answered with a wry smile. I know these things have always been difficult for you.

What things? I asked.

Leena did not answer. Her eyes were on the policemen watching her from the door.

I thought you saw your own death, I said. You’ve never been wrong before.

I wasn’t wrong, said Leena. I did see my own death. I saw myself die if I did nothing.

I told Leena how the girls were doing, about Saryu’s bravery, about awful Mr. Bishop. I told her about what I had done to the garden, the mess I had made of her statue, which didn’t even look like her. The body, coiled as if to spring into an attack. The hands clenched into fists as if to strike. The hatred in its eyes that I had done my best to douse. It was the statue of a fighter.

Who, then, does she look like? Leena asked.

Like me, I answered. She looks like me.

In that case, Leena said, I have a favor to ask.

#

I visited Leena as often as the policemen would let me, but her strength returned quickly — too quickly. At last, they took her away from the hospital and back onto a ship that would bear her back to the Andamans.

I left the hospital with a stack of papers hidden beneath my clothes.

The radio station operated out of a bungalow hidden behind a temple, impossible to find unless one knew where to go. Leena told me that it had moved many times, forced to do so every time the origin of its broadcasts was discovered.

I was greeted by a young woman, Usha, her hair in a long neat braid, looking like any other promising student. She told me she was working on her masters degree in law. The radio station was hers, a way to beam resistance past the ears of an empire. She reminded me a little of Saryu.

She began the broadcast by reciting a ghazal by Muhammad Iqbal. Then she turned the microphone to me.

I cleared my throat. I said, my dear friend, who will go unnamed, has been charged with conspiracy and sentenced to imprisonment in the Cellular Prison in Port Blair. She has spent forty-two days on hunger strike, in protest of the conditions there, conditions which are unknown to many of you listening. Even now, she is being transported back across the black waters to serve out the rest of her sentence. I may not see my good friend for many years. Before she was taken away, she asked me to pass along a message to you all.

These are her words.