The Moon's Complexion Read online

  The Moon’s Complexion

  by Irene Black

  First published in Great Britain in 2005 by

  Goldenford Publishers Limited

  The Old Post Office

  130 Epsom Road Guildford

  Surrey GU1 2PX

  Tel: 01483 563307

  Fax: 01483 829074

  www.goldenford.co.uk

  © Irene Black 2005

  Cover design by Penelope Cline from a photograph by Antony Black

  This ebook edition 2011

  The right of Irene Black to be identified as the author of the work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Goldenford Publishers Ltd

  Guildford

  www.goldenford.co.uk

  THE MOON’S COMPLEXION

  Irene Black

  ‘I challenge anyone to put this book down. … The Moon's Complexion's combination of cliff-hangers and carefully-observed descriptions of Indian traditions, food, temples and landscapes becomes utterly irresistible. The whole novel pulsates with Black's love of India; … her academic interests work their way quietly into the novel, providing a well-studied backdrop to the action. A thoroughly unusual novel that will appeal to anyone who's interested in India or just enjoys a skilfully constructed page-turner.’

  Sophia Furber, Editor; Review in The London Student Newspaper

  ‘[The] fictional characters come over so believably. Very, very good writing. And what an ingenious twist. It's something that I'm sure no reader will guess yet it is perfect. The beauty of it is that it's not overdone and therefore all the more powerful. Added to that is the fact that the settings are mainly exotic and the details incorporated are clearly authentic.

  Jenny Hewitt, editor and reviewer

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would like to thank the many people who have helped to bring this project to fruition. These include friends in India, who have vetted and advised on the Indian content, members of Guildford Writers’ Circle, the editorial staff at Goldenford Publishers, Betty Dobson, who edited the ebook for the American market, and, above all, my long-suffering family, especially my husband who, having read the manuscript, was moved to write the poem in Chapter 20.

  All the characters are fictional. The following places are figments of my imagination:

  The hotels and restaurants - the Krishna, the Pandava, the Chamundi, the Resident’s Palace, the Seagull, the Madras Plaza Hotel, the Osman, Uma’s, the Red Fox public house, Blue Heaven

  The bookshop - Asian Books

  The institutions - Queen Anne’s Hospital, the Shanti Sagar Hospital, the East River Psychiatric Center, the Biotechnology University (South Indian University of Biotechnological Advancement), Ashley House School

  The village - Burfold.

  The Bandipur bungalows are real, but their numbers are not.

  The civil unrest in Karnataka caused by the Cauvery River Water Dispute is an actual historical event that took place during December 1991.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Biography of Author

  Chapter 1

  Ashok had come home to Bangalore to find a wife. Or to put it more precisely, Dr. Ashok Rao, newly qualified consultant ophthalmologist at Queen Anne’s Hospital, London, had been ordered by his mother back to Bangalore for purposes of matrimony.

  It was December 1991 and exactly a month since his mother’s letter had arrived at his Richmond flat.

  Now that your sister’s marriage is arranged, she had written, time is for you also to settle down. Not wait for Priya being married. Your sister is strong-headed. She will not consent before she is graduating. You are already nearly thirty, and now you are a qualified consultant. You must come as soon as convenient.

  The rest of the letter was filled with news from Bangalore and had immersed him in the sunshine of his native city. When he had finished reading, he had placed the letter in the rack on the kitchen table. Then he got ready to leave the house. As he turned up the collar of his overcoat and stepped out into the clawing November drizzle, he reflected that his mother was right. She had mirrored his thoughts, despite the cynicism of disbelieving friends, the perpetual students from his Oxford days, who still regarded themselves as carefree and without responsibility. Ashok had rocketed up the career ladder and had achieved the almost unheard of status of a consultancy before he was thirty, while his friends were still struggling young lawyers, scientists and doctors who couldn’t even envisage “settling down.”

  But over and above all that, it was hard for his English friends to stomach the idea of an arranged marriage. Ashok, though, could slip easily across the cultural divide. India, England—worlds apart, but nevertheless both part of Ashok’s world and combining to furnish him, perhaps, with broader insights than those of some of his acquaintances.

  In any case, his friends had missed the point. Once he had listened to his heart and not his head. He’d learned his lesson. It had taken five years for the pain to cease, and had left him steeped in remorse. Now he sought a surer, steadier road. It hadn’t been a case of capitulating to his parents’ wishes.

  The family house in the Malleshwaram suburb of north Bangalore had weathered his absence without protest. Apart from the appearance of a few new appliances, nothing had changed. The jumbled papaya and banana plants were still locked in battle over the limited space in the small walled garden, where orange, pink and purple bougainvillea rambled in tousled abandon over the front wall into the lane. The old mango tree still hung on bravely to its corner at the back. His mother’s collection of garden pots, with their assortment of mysterious plants grown from pips, stones and cuttings, still gave the whole scene the sense of a gloriously chaotic jungle, in the middle of which two elderly coconut palms, heavy with fruit, stood sentry.

  From outside, the house had a shoddy, crumbling appearance, which belied the comfortable interior. The excesses of the tropical climate saw to it that creeping mold and lichen quickly obscured the line between nature and the hand of man. The house was similar to the others in the lane, each like some eternal ammonite, set into the rich earth, which seemed to Ashok to have crept up into the once white walls, as if they were the ruins of an ancient forest hermitage. Every time he returned home, Ashok understood what was absent from the clearly delineated, clinical, hygienic world he had left behind in England.

  In the West, nature was an enemy to be tamed and feared. Here, back in India, there was no sharp, dividing line between man and the environment. Here he was part of nature, part of the earth, part of the gnarled old mango tree. He was kin to the butterfly that alighted on the arum lily, the ten-centimeter millipede plodding across the lane, the gecko lying in wait under
the eaves. Despite the excitement of his family at his return—the many questions, the tales to tell—the serenity of the place enveloped him, obscuring the rigid urgency of English life. This time, more than ever before, he knew that England was a phase. His sojourn there was transitory. Today or tomorrow, this year or next, India would claim back her lost son.

  * * * *

  It had all been fine until she saw the black-robed figure.

  Newly arrived from England, Hannah Petersen had plunged with enthusiasm into the fevered atmosphere of the back streets of Hyderabad. She was excited, and at last carefree, despite the sensation that she caused as she strode through the morning market crowds.

  She was a head taller than most of the men, let alone the women, and her feral halo of auburn hair blazed in the sunlight. She felt like the bobbing red balloon she had seen in an advert to promote some faceless English new town. It was fitting. The whole of England seemed faceless in the light of the color and vitality here. She was doing her bit for the homeland: promoting the old country by turning herself into an advertisement. The thought made her smile, and her smile brought smiles in return. Hannah was charmed. The attention was friendly and curious. Not like…

  She shook the memory from her mind.

  So many faces. Grizzled old men in turbans, large-eyed urchins, sinuous rickshaw peddlers, women with quicksilver eyes and flowers in their hair. A photographer’s paradise. Theoretically, this job should be easy, much easier than her usual form of journalism. But how could she hope to achieve any natural portraits? As soon as she got out the camera, everything stopped. Market stallholders held up yard-long gourds or plump melons and stood to attention. People called to her from shed-like shop entrances. “Photo, here please! Photo!”

  No point in trying. Now was not the time. She was late enough as it was.

  So where, in this pungent chutney of a city, was the damned taxi office?

  Mr. Reddy, the receptionist at the Krishna Hotel, had told her it was near the Charminar, an ancient Islamic arch that dominated the old town. Although she had never been to the East before, Hannah trusted her sense of direction. She had given herself what she hoped was plenty of time en route to explore the maze of alleyways.

  She felt at ease for the first time in a year. Warmth stirred within her that was not entirely due to the weather, echoes of long ago, the Friday warmth of grandmother Rosen’s kitchen after a tortured week at school. As if the pragmatism inherited from her Danish father had been punctured by the awakening of a more mystical heritage that surely still lingered in the genes passed down to her through her mother. Within her Petersen body, her Rosen ancestors were calling to her. Hyderabad felt somehow familiar. It held no threat. The city was vibrant, quivering like a wakeful stallion. Yet there reigned beneath the bustle of frenetic activity and the clamor of competing motor horns an undercurrent of self-assurance and control.

  A group of children ran up to her. English Pen? Your country coin? A good opportunity to shed some of the loose change she had been dragging around since England. She might as well be distributing the Crown Jewels. Each penny was received with cries of joy and scrutinized. She remembered the children she’d known in Belfast, innocence eroded by bombs and guns. Long may these Indian youngsters delight in pens and foreign coins.

  After twenty minutes, Hannah realized she was lost.

  She stopped by a pair of giggling girls in bright saris, who sat on the pavement weaving garlands of jasmine and marigolds. “Charminar?”

  A flurry of gestures and shouts answered her. “Charminar! Charminar!”

  Hannah nodded her thanks and turned down the bazaar-like side alley the girls had indicated. Too narrow even for a cycle-rickshaw, crammed with shops selling colorful lac-bangles, wares spilling out onto the streets. She threaded her way through the handcarts and shoppers, plunging, it seemed, into ever more chaos.

  By now Willi would be waiting at the taxi office. Hannah felt bad about being late for the Dutch girl. She’d only met her yesterday. A lucky encounter. Just the sort of pick-me-up that Hannah needed in her jetlagged state. It would be fun to drive to the fortress together—if she ever managed to find her way out of here.

  “Charminar?” She confronted a dhoti-skirted lad, who had stopped to gape at her, a tray of deep-fried pakoras piled on his head.

  “Char-min-ar,” he stammered, seemingly mesmerized by Hannah’s eyes. Like moss through a Polaroid filter, Maighréad had once said. The boy pointed vaguely, and Hannah turned down an even narrower alleyway that seethed like a dark snake, the heat oppressive, unable to escape.

  Something made her glance back. A black-robed figure sliced through the crowds like a cormorant through restless waves. The shrouded woman was enigmatic, and somehow splendid, but the sight threw Hannah. She felt a rush of disquiet as she contemplated the woman’s fate. Dominated and discounted, no doubt, like Maighréad had been. Funny that. It had been some years since she’d let the thought of Maighréad trouble her, and now she was pushing her way back into Hannah’s mind for the third time in less than twelve hours.

  Hannah clenched her fists as she fought the bitterness evoked by her reflections. And there was something else. Not panic, surely? She dismissed the idea, pushing away her momentary weakness. Yet suddenly images that minutes ago had seemed friendly and unthreatening jumped out at her like monsters in a 3-D horror film. Women invisible behind the veil like prisoners…men concealed behind beards and moustaches. As though they had something to hide.

  Lighten up, she told herself, as she had done so often lately. You’re tough, the very exemplification of solid, common sense. You have a reputation to live up to. Don’t let yourself down with all this imaginative nonsense. Don’t let last month color your perceptions. It’s over. You’re free.

  Besides, she told herself, glancing once more at the shrouded woman, you’re not at home in Burfold now. You know nothing about that woman’s life. Stop sitting in judgment.

  A gaggle of men standing outside a chai-stall nudged each other and pointed as she passed. She stopped and turned to them, determined to shake off her distrust of their bristly, mustachioed faces.

  “Charminar?”

  The men looked at each other and exploded simultaneously into instructions. Hannah couldn’t understand a word, but she got the message. She was going the right way. She squeezed through the crowds, brushing against strangers, beating back an increasing sensation of claustrophobia. She bit her lip and cursed her thumping heart.

  One incident last November…that was all it had taken to defeat her. One incident against a lifetime of others that had left her undamaged, if not unchanged.

  In Belfast she had seen bombs explode around her, had watched good friends die, had been threatened herself on countless occasions. She had shed her tears and despaired, but she had coped. After her book Crying Shame had been published, the threats had increased for a while. She had managed her fear. Then New York: facing the abusive reaction of the East River hospital management when she’d openly confronted them with evidence of an insurance scam; she had wallowed in the excitement of it.

  Why wouldn’t it let her be, this demon?

  At last she spotted the four turrets of the Charminar at the end of the alley and hurried forward. She found herself on a wide if no less crowded street winding around the obstacle of the great Islamic archway that stood in the center in a state of splendid decay. Through its open curves, she saw a painted sign on the other side of the road: M Suresh, Taxi Hire. Dodging cars and carts, bicycles and buses, animals and autorickshaws, Hannah maneuvered her way across.

  In front of the taxi office, half a dozen assorted street vendors selling tacky plaster copies of the Charminar had found a victim.

  “Only look, Madam. Very cheap.”

  “Real marble, lady, no fake.”

  “Ten dollars only. No? How much? You say.”

  In the middle of the mayhem, a luminous yellow head bobbed up and down in apparent agitation, and a shrill Dutch
accent pierced the air. “Oh, go away. No! Please. I do not want. Leave me alone.”

  As Hannah approached, the men immediately turned and started on her. “Only look…”

  Ignoring their entreaties, she brushed them aside with a sweep of her hand. They wandered off, muttering.

  Willi stared at her. “How did you do that?”

  Hannah merely shrugged. It felt good though: a timely return of the trouble-shooting instinct that had so often saved her in the past.

  You can be a right snooty bitch, Maighréad had told her. Hannah never meant to be snooty. It was a case of self-preservation. It had hurt at the time that Maighréad had been taken in.

  She gave Willi a warm smile. The cloud that had threatened her mood earlier had disappeared. Once more she felt comfortable with her surroundings.

  England was simply an unpleasant memory. She was in India now. Maighréad, hopeless dreamer that she was, would have said it was destiny.

  Destiny. Was he part of her destiny, too, that familiar stranger who yesterday had briefly touched her life? Perhaps they had been destined to meet. Perhaps they were destined to meet again.

  * * * *

  Sitting barefoot on the long, low settee in the reception room on the first floor of the house, Ashok wiled away each morning, talking to his father. Srinivasa Rao’s sharp brain had not suffered noticeably as a result of a recent stroke, but it had left his speech a little slurred and robbed him of some of the energy that had previously kept him going all day and for most of the evening. Srinivasa quizzed Ashok endlessly about developments and changes in British Law. Before his stroke had forced him into retirement, Srinivasa had been a clerk at the City Law Courts, and he still retained a keen interest in legal affairs. In collaboration with Mr. Jagannath, a barrister in Mysore, he had recently begun to document the history of the legal system in India. It was a work to which he devoted every possible moment and all the energy that his physical limitations allowed.