ELIZA ESDAILE
Among the womenfolk who took care of the men at the Hooghly hospital, there was a pecking order, and Kajari Kaurá sat at the top of it. She was a woman of middle age who seemed to know everyone (and everything) about the hospital and the jail; she operated a sort of open-air kitchen along with her husband, Mádhab, which was busy from sunup to sundown. Native women fetched food to bring to the men recovering in the hospital or incarcerated at the jail, and part of the payment for her services was to offer up any tidbits of information about happenings in either. Kajari was a superb cook and amazingly efficient at news gathering—and dispensing: in the bargain, she provided information with the dal and chapatis.
She was unfailingly polite to members of the Society, though some of my colleagues were extremely short with her. We are all trained to that, are we not, Reverend? By being disdainful of those below us in station and deferential to those above us, we reassure ourselves of our position in society. It was clear to me that Kajari, whether or not she was a simple Bengali cook, had a particular place that I respected—even if others did not. Mrs. Shackleford understood it, as did I, as did her husband Mádhab, who seemed to defer to his wife more than any Indian man I ever met.
Mrs. Shackleford explained to me how Kajari came to have such an important role. It was because her husband, Mádhab, was the first patient whom Esdaile had treated with the mesmeric method. Mádhab had recently received a parole from Governor-General Lord Dalhousie, I am sure due in part to Kajari’s efforts—not that any English Governor-General would account that of importance!—and still bore the evidence of having been in irons for his crime. He walked with a sort of limp, but worked hard for his wife—carrying great sacks of rice and bushels of vegetables, bringing in a brace of chickens or a haunch of meat to be cooked, scarcely ever saying a word to anyone else.
To return to Kajari. She prepared our afternoon meal, which we ate in the shade of coralwood trees on a hill overlooking the river. As you must realize, no English person survives in India without learning to eat the native food. Some of the ladies complained, but I found it flavorful and filling. Kajari always made sure to fill my plate, and tell me that she had saved the best for me.
A week or so into our stay in Hooghly, she lingered as she served me and said in a sort of conspiratorial whisper, “You know, Memsahib, the Doctor Sahib seems quite taken with you.”
“Really?” She meant James; all of the assistant and sub-assistant doctors from Noboo down all called him Doctor Sahib. I hadn’t thought that he had even noticed me. “I’m—surprised. I should be flattered, except that I have hardly spoken ten words to him.”
“Sometimes only a single word is enough,” she answered, smiling.
I hesitated, considering a reply, but could think of nothing to say.
After I had eaten, I took my plates and tableware back to where she stood cleaning. She put her hand on my sleeve and said, “It is very important to take advantage of situations, Memsahib.”
“How do you mean?”
“The Doctor Sahib’s time in India is almost over,” she answered. “Soon he will return to his home, his Scotland.”
“He is a lucky man, Kajari. India is beautiful—but it is not home.”
“Not for you, either,” she said.
“No. No, of course not for me. But I cannot—”
“Who is to say?” she interrupted, touching my sleeve again. “Situations present themselves. The Doctor Sahib has lost two wives. One died on the way to India, the other while he was in residence here.”
“I hardly think—I mean, I do not think this matter even suitable for discussion. This is quite improper.”
“In India, Memsahib, a husband and wife sometimes do not even see each other’s faces until the day of marriage. Such situations occur—and they happen in your own land as well, do they not?”
“I suppose they do, for people of a particular class. I am not.”
“You are not what, Memsahib? Old enough? You are certainly of age, perhaps past age. Pretty enough? You are quite attractive. They all say so.”
I was not sure just who “they” might be, but I think that I bristled slightly at the notion that I might be the subject of idle talk among Indian servants.
“I do not like such gossip being spread, Kajari. I am not interested in marriage, and even if I were, I do not think that I am a suitable match for the Doctor Sahib—for Doctor Esdaile.”
This was the first I had heard of the idea, Reverend. I dismissed it at once. At the time, I thought it no more than what I said to Kajari—idle gossip, of the sort that one might expect in a society of women, or among servants; I made no connection between it and the voices I had heard in Calcutta and then in Hooghly.
But I should have. Oh, how I should have.
A single word, Kajari had said. The single word, of course, was yes.
A few days later—it could not have been long afterward—a few of our number were asked to assist in the women’s ward at the hospital. I was not terribly surprised when I was asked specifically to help.
Many of the women were suffering from the same sort of afflictions as the men, though they were sometimes located in different parts of the body. The most prominent difficulty was a sort of cyst, what was called a hydrocele—a malady common to that area of India: they grow hard and painful and are sometimes quite large. With the women, Doctor Esdaile found it convenient to have a female assistant on hand to reassure the patient. He found the members of the Society most helpful in this regard.
On one afternoon, I was sitting with a young woman and her older sister, who had some command of English, when James passed through the ward and stopped at the bedside.
“And how is Raji today?” he asked, bending down to take the young girl’s hand. She was afflicted by a hydrocele, a hardened sac the breadth of a hand, depending from the right side of her face; it clearly pained her greatly, particularly when she moved her head or spoke. Her sister held her hand, and Raji raptly fixed her attention upon the doctor’s face. The Doctor Sahib, who had always seemed unruffled, appeared distracted—perhaps by my own presence.
“She seems to be in great pain, Doctor,” I ventured.
“Ah, now that we will attend to straight away. I think Raji is due for a procedure early this evening, isn’t that right, Lekha?”
The older sister was also focused on him. “Yes, Doctor Sahib,” she said. “Raji is afraid, but I have told her that there is nothing to worry about; Doctor Sahib will take care of her.”
“Quite, quite so,” he said. “Of course we will.” He looked from Lekha to Raji and then back to me. “Just a little work and she will be just fine.”
Lekha smiled and told Raji in rapidly spoken Bengali what Doctor Esdaile had said; the young girl brightened, as if someone had told her that her fondest wish had come true—which, indeed, it might have done.
The tableau seemed to last several seconds: the older woman, the younger, myself and the Doctor Sahib, like a lithograph in sepia.
“Miss Weatherhead.”
I was not sure whether a few seconds or several minutes had passed. I looked away from the young girl in the hospital bed and at James Esdaile.
“I beg your pardon, Doctor. How may I help you?”
“May I speak to you privately for a moment?”
“Of course.” I rose and followed him along the ward to an area set aside with a small writing desk and two simple armchairs; he gestured me to one and took the other himself.
“I have noticed,” he began, “that you enjoy a certain amount of rapport with the patients.”
“I do my best, sir,” I answered.
“Sir.” He smiled at me. “Just Doctor is sufficient, Miss Weatherhead. Though I should like you to use my Christian name.”
It was actually quite a pleasant smile: recall, Reverend, that James was fifteen years older than I—a mature man of middle age, twice widowed and a Scotsman. I was quite prepared to be put off by my first impressions, and this desire for informality should have done even more to distance me—but somehow, it seemed all right.
“Mrs. Shackleford wants me to call her Georgiana, Doctor,” I said. “I confess that I have trouble with that, as well.”
“I understand. Georgiana Shackleford is a force of Nature. But you do not seem to be afraid of her, as some of your ladies are.”
“There is nothing to be afraid of.”
“From her? I daresay she is quite formidable when she is angry.” He said it like someone with an acquaintance with such matters. “I understand,” he continued, “that you are stranded, after a fashion, here in India.”
The change of subject caught me quite by surprise.
“My term of employment ended. I was working for—”
“Robert Heath. The one who ended his own life. Poor man, he thought he was all alone in the world. I know how he must have felt.”
And at that moment, Reverend Davey, I think I gained a glimpse into his soul. James Esdaile must have felt much the same way—alone: he was already preparing for the trip home, knowing that you were waiting for him, expecting him to deliver the statue into your hands or be punished or killed.
That is why he did what he did, sir. He was driven to it by despair. Does it excuse him? No.
Do I forgive him? Yes. Yes, I do. Even with what followed, I came to love him. My indwelling inhabitant never understood that—but I know he did.
Especially at the end, Reverend. Of that I have no doubt.
WILLIAM DAVEY
The lady ended the mesmeric trance by our agreed-upon signal, leaving the narrative with Eliza and James Esdaile sitting together in the hospital ward. It was not because she was distraught—quite the opposite: she seemed defiant and resolute, as if daring me to criticize.
She rang for tea. We sat and drank for several minutes, during which I remained silent. She was flushed, a stark contrast to the black of her mourning dress. Her eyes flashed with anger.
“I am sorry if I have offended you, madam.”
“You have not offended me in this interview, Reverend. Your offenses precede you—from the time James made his decision.”
“You are very loyal to his memory,” I answered. “And ready to criticize me and excoriate the Committee. But while I respect that loyalty, I cannot help but feel it is misplaced.”
“I fail to see why.”
“He betrayed you, Eliza. Whatever he did to introduce the chthonic spirit into your person—whatever promise he made, or it made, took away nearly eight years of your life from you and turned you into—”
“A monster.”
“Yes. Turned you into a monster.” I know that my revulsion was evident in my voice. “It should repel you to think of it. It should anger you—it should make you hate James Esdaile for doing it to you. I understand Christian charity—”
“Not from personal experience,” she interrupted.
“I can comprehend,” I said, refusing to rise to her comment, “how you might be willing to forgive. But forget? I cannot imagine how the memory of that imprisonment must haunt your rest and bring fear to you even in bright daylight. I cannot see how you do not hate James Esdaile.”
“As you do.”
“I did not and I do not hate him.”
“You delude yourself. Of course you did. He did not bend to your will as all of the other practitioners had done. At the moment of truth, he hesitated and judged that the statue he had been given was simply too dangerous for you to possess. That offended you, didn’t it?
“Even now, after all that I have told you, sir, you do not comprehend. He would never let the statue fall into your hands, or those of other members of your cursed Committee. Only with hesitation did he use the power it gave him to summon the spirit that possessed me. Imagine if you had that power.”
I started so suddenly that I nearly dropped my teacup on the floor.
“What did you say?”
“‘Imagine if—’”
“I beg your pardon. Before that. About the power of the statue. Did you say that he used it to summon the spirit?”
“Yes. Of course.” She answered as if summoning a stoicheion were the most natural thing in the world. “Why, how do you think it was done?”
“I assumed he performed the act himself or used some discipline he had learned in India.”
“Oh, he did. But it was the statue that gave him that capability—just as it had enhanced his ability to practice the mesmeric Art in the first place. But ultimately, he was not tempted strongly enough. By protecting him—from you and your kind—it assumed that sooner or later he would call it back to him. He would either prove strong enough to use it, or pass it to someone who would. Someone like you.”
“And did he call it back?”
“Not to my knowledge. Only he knew what was done with it—and he has taken the secret to his grave.” She dabbed briefly at her eyes, which showed genuine raw emotion. “He made an awful decision, but now he is dead. Not consumed, but just dead. He did what he did because it was necessary.”
“Even imprisoning you.”
“I am free now. And I am home. What is more, I am not without responsibility. At the critical moment, I accepted the spirit and made my own bargain—I spoke the one word of acceptance.
“You wish to make James the villain. He has much to answer for, Reverend Davey. But I know who the villain must be. He sits in my parlor drinking tea with me.”