THE PALACE OF THE MAHARAJAH, all gleaming marble, stood in a Garden of Eden where time did not exist, the climate was always gentle, and the air carried the scent of gardenias. Water from the fountains ran along sinuous canals among flowers, golden birdcages, white silk parasols, and majestic peacocks. The palace was now owned by an international hotel chain that had had the good judgment to preserve the original charm. The maharajah, ruined, but with dignity intact, occupied a wing of the building, protected from the curiosity of outsiders by a screen of palms and purple bougainvillea. In the calm of the afternoon he liked to sit in the garden and have tea with a girl who had not yet reached puberty, and who was not his great-granddaughter but his fifth wife. That interlude was assured by two guards in imperial uniforms and plumed turbans, with scimitars at the waist. In our profusely decorated suite, worthy of a king, there was not one inch where you could rest your eyes. From our balcony we had a view of the entire garden, which was separated by a high wall from the neighborhoods of the poor stretching as far as the horizon. After traveling dusty roads for weeks, we could rest in this palace, with its army of silent employees to carry our clothing to be washed, bring us tea and honey cakes on silver trays, and prepare our foaming baths. It was paradise. We dined on the delicious cuisine of India, which Willie was already immunized against, and fell into bed disposed to sleep forever.
The telephone rang at three in the morning—the time indicated by the green numbers on the travel clock glowing in the darkness—waking me from a hot, heavy sleep. I put out my hand, feeling for the phone, finding nothing, until my fingers touched a switch and I turned on the lamp. I didn’t know where I was, or what the transparent veils floating above my head were, or the winged demons threatening me from the painted ceiling. I was aware of moist sheets stuck to my skin and a sweet scent I couldn’t identify. The telephone kept ringing, and with every jangle my apprehension grew; it had to be something calamitous to justify the urgency of calling at that hour. Someone died, I said aloud. Be calm, be calm, I told myself. It couldn’t be Nico. I had already lost a daughter and according to the law of probability I would not lose another child in my lifetime. And it wasn’t my mother, she’s immortal. Maybe there was news about Jennifer. Had she been found? The continued ringing guided me to the far end of the room, where I discovered an antiquated telephone sitting between two porcelain elephants. From the other side of the world, with the clarity of an omen, came the unmistakable voice of Celia. I couldn’t find the strength to ask her what had happened.
“It seems that I’m bisexual,” she announced in a quavering voice.
“What is it?” Willie asked, dazed with sleep.
“Nothing. It’s Celia. She says she’s bisexual.”
“Oh!” My husband snorted and fell back to sleep.
I suppose that Celia called to ask me for help, but I could think of nothing magical that would help at that moment. I begged my daughter-in-law not to rush and do anything desperate, since we are all more or less bisexual and if she had waited twenty-nine years to discover that, she could wait until we returned to California. A matter as important as this should be discussed within the family. I cursed the distance that prevented me from seeing the expression on her face. I promised that we would come back as quickly as possible, although at three in the morning there wasn’t much we could do to change our airline tickets, a process that even by day was complicated in India. The call had killed any chance of sleeping, and I did not go back to the veil-draped bed. Neither did I dare wake Tabra, who was in a different room on the same floor.
I went out on the balcony and waited for morning in a polychrome wood swing with topaz-colored silk cushions. A climbing jasmine and a tree with large white flowers were releasing that courtesan’s fragrance I had noted in our room. Celia’s news had produced a rare lucidity. It was as if I could see my family from above, floating overhead. “This daughter-in-law of ours never fails to surprise me,” I murmured. In Celia’s case, the word bisexual could have several connotations, but none would be without pain to my people. Hmmm. Without thinking, I wrote my. . . . That’s how I feel about all of them; they all belong to me: Willie, my son, my daughter-in-law, my grandchildren, my parents, and even my stepchildren, with whom I lived from skirmish to skirmish . . . they’re all mine. It had been an effort to bring them together, and I was prepared to defend that small community against the vagaries of fate and bad luck. Celia was an uncontainable force of nature; no one had any influence over her. I didn’t ask myself twice whom she had fallen for, the answer was obvious to me. “Help us, Paula, this is no joke,” I begged you, but I don’t know whether you heard me.