British -- India -- Fiction; India -- History -- British occupation, 1765-1947 -- Fiction; Short stories, English
Trejago knew far too much about these things, as I have said. No
Englishman should be able to translate object-letters. But Trejago
spread all the trifles on the lid of his office-box and began to puzzle
them out.
A broken glass-bangle stands for a Hindu widow all India over; because,
when her husband dies a woman's bracelets are broken on her wrists.
Trejago saw the meaning of the little bit of the glass. The flower
of the dhak means diversely “desire,” “come,” “write,” or “danger,”
according to the other things with it. One cardamom means “jealousy;”
but when any article is duplicated in an object-letter, it loses its
symbolic meaning and stands merely for one of a number indicating time,
or, if incense, curds, or saffron be sent also, place. The message ran
then:--“A widow dhak flower and bhusa--at eleven o'clock.” The pinch of
bhusa enlightened Trejago. He saw--this kind of letter leaves much
to instinctive knowledge--that the bhusa referred to the big heap of
cattle-food over which he had fallen in Amir Nath's Gully, and that the
message must come from the person behind the grating; she being a widow.
So the message ran then:--“A widow, in the Gully in which is the heap of
bhusa, desires you to come at eleven o'clock.”
Trejago threw all the rubbish into the fireplace and laughed. He knew
that men in the East do not make love under windows at eleven in the
forenoon, nor do women fix appointments a week in advance. So he went,
that very night at eleven, into Amir Nath's Gully, clad in a boorka,
which cloaks a man as well as a woman. Directly the gongs in the City
made the hour, the little voice behind the grating took up “The Love
Song of Har Dyal” at the verse where the Panthan girl calls upon Har
Dyal to return. The song is really pretty in the Vernacular. In English
you miss the wail of it. It runs something like this:--
Alone upon the housetops, to the North
I turn and watch the lightning in the sky,--
The glamour of thy footsteps in the North,
Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!
Below my feet the still bazar is laid
Far, far below the weary camels lie,--
The camels and the captives of thy raid,
Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!
My father's wife is old and harsh with years,
And drudge of all my father's house am I.--
My bread is sorrow and my drink is tears,
Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!
As the song stopped, Trejago stepped up under the grating and
whispered:--“I am here.”
Bisesa was good to look upon.
That night was the beginning of many strange things, and of a double
life so wild that Trejago to-day sometimes wonders if it were not all a
dream. Bisesa or her old handmaiden who had thrown the object-letter had
detached the heavy grating from the brick-work of the wall; so that the
window slid inside, leaving only a square of raw masonry, into which an
active man might climb.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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