Free My Lady of the Bog by Peter Hayes Page A

that manufactures motor cars; and whose home in Mombasa is tastefully done in rattan and vrai bamboo with zebra throws and wildebeest heads, and pictures of an adorable, adolescent Vidya and the twin boys standing on a reviewing stand beside Lady Mountbatten in the African sun. Yet, if one ventured deeper into the house, one came across a grand amma sitting on the floor, chanting in Hindi before a p ū ja displaying the family deity, Kali, who brandished a sword while dancing on the body of her dead husband, Shiva, amid a welter of kumkum , smashed coconuts, burning camphor and sacred leaves.
    At one point I followed Vidya out onto the balcony. The sunset over the River Thames, the soaring steeple of Christ Church and the unexpected lowness of the railing—or maybe it was the odor of Vidya’s perfume, my manic mood or the three big whiskeys I’d just gulped down—made me nearly pitch into the street before steadying myself and ducking inside.
    “Arranged marriages,” someone clucked over dinner. (It was the crone who’d disparaged Vidya’s outfit.) “I didn’t know such things were permitted nowadays.”
    Vidya stiffened, as if a rod were lengthening in her spine. “Actually, it’s quite civilized. Much more civilized than basing it solely on passion, don’t you think? Look what happens. The passion fades, the marriage founders. And then it’s the children who suffer.”
    Everyone nodded over their mulligatawny. For how could one not, without seeming to favor the suffering of children? Jai, who had spent a lifetime defending his culture, nodded proudly.
    Mrs. Vidya Prasad, I remember thinking, was going to make one hell of a faculty wife.
    Most of the Indians I had known before Jai were physicians, newsstand owners, or computer engineers who had turned their backs on “superstition.” What was different about Jai is that while he was a thoroughly modern fellow who dressed like a preppie in Gap work shirts, chinos, and kelties by Cole Haan—or, this evening, in a white silk Bijan tux that had cost some body three or four grand—he truly believed in the wisdom of the culture that had raised him.
    Which was why he’d submitted to the apparent lunacy of an arranged marriage, I suppose; though I was beginning to think, gazing at Vidya, that his submission had the lunacy of genius.
    Several times over dinner, I tried to get him to talk about the book. He wouldn’t. In this way he was your typical Eastern trader. You couldn’t just pay him and walk off with the goods; that would have been too simple and insulting. Instead, you had to sip endless cups of steaming chai , chatting about everything under the sun but the one thing you were interested in before you could begin to get down to business.
    When I pressed him on it, Jai demurred. “You don’t really want to talk shop tonight, do you, Xan?”
    “Shop? We’re speaking about what could be one of the more significant archeological discoveries to come out of England in years.”
    “Oh, it’s that, all right!”
    I looked at him, at once heartened and maddened. “Can’t you at least give me a hint?”
    But Jai was as indifferent to my desire as the Lord Buddha was to his own. He only smiled graciously and shook his head.
    “When?”
    “Later. Now I have guests.” And he returned to his soup and Beaujolais.
    With the appearance of the duckling, brilliantly spiced with ginger and soy, the discussion moved to other ancient traditions such as the svayamvara , in which suitors vie for the princess bride’s hand. Everyone agreed it was “gender-empowering.”
    “And then there’s human sacrifice,” I said, unable to resist lobbing a verbal grenade.
    “Well,” Vidya said, “and what’s wrong with that?”
    There was a dumbfounded silence, in the midst of which I raised my eyes. “You can’t be serious, Miss Vidya,” I said.
    “Oh,” she laughed, “Americans . You think if everyone has enough to eat and a decent education , they’ll behave like