Page 127 of A Thousand Painted Hours

I said, “And the stars will keep shining.”

“Long after we are no longer here to fight beneath them.”

“Or find joy in them.”

He looked at me, and feeling it, I turned my head. A faint smile lifted his mouth. “A good reminder. I am here now, under these stars, and you are with me.”

For a fleeting moment, I wondered if we were tempting ourselves too much in this exercise, but then he looked back up to the sky.

“Here we are,” I said, and let myself fly into the darkness lit by ten thousand stars.

—65—

Channan was deeply unwell for several days after the night of ten thousand stars. She sent word that I should explore as I wished, and eat well, and paint to my heart’s content. Tanveer had business in Lucknow and traveled with Gurdaya.

So, indeed, the palace was mine to explore. I wandered without restraint, finding vast empty rooms meant for state functions or balls, and intimate little parlors decorated with lush rugs and draperies. I got lost in courtyards and then could not find them again. I explored rooms where ceilings had fallen down and birds roosted. There were many cats of many colors. Some appeared to be pets, very friendly and companionable. I made particular friends with a hefty black beauty with yellow eyes and extra toes. Others were more like barn cats and not interested in human companionship. They skittered away if I came close. I began to carry small bits of meat in my pockets for them.

One afternoon, I sketched in the sunshine of a courtyard. Something about the sun on my feet made me think of my ayah with a sudden and piercing sense of longing. Was she still alive?

I paused my drawing, remembering. A cat came from a hidden place, pale yellow with long fur, and I sat up. “Topaz! Is that you?”

He turned toward me for a long minute, and we studied each other. Perhaps this was not Topaz himself, but a descendant. But I called him anyway. “Topaz, come here, kitty.Psh psh psh.” I held out my hand. “Do you remember me?”

All at once hemewped with excitement and trotted toward me, meowing all the way. He leapt up into my lap, and when I laughed, putting aside my sketchbook, he butted his head against my chin. “I am so happy to see you!” He purred and meowed an entire conversation. “You’ve grown into quite a big cat.”

I held him close and bent my face into his fur, thinking what a life of adventure he’d lived, from the killing fields of France to England, to the palace.

He followed me back to my room and jumped on the bed as if he belonged there, watching while I sketched a great rolling storm moving in with towers of clouds and lightning shooting across the landscape.

His presence seemed a little miracle. A small wonder, to be sure.

July 16, 1926

Talwarpur, India

Dear Mother,

I hope this finds you well and continuing the pleasure of your life in Taos. I write this from Talwarpur Palace, where I have come to paint a portrait of the maharaja and maharani, at the request of the maharani. It has been deeply enjoyable so far. Channan, for she has insisted I call her that, is a charming and gracious woman, and I am greatly looking forward to painting her.

I find myself coming alive in a way I had forgotten. Cairo is lovely, and I love the desert, but Egypt is not India. I wept when I saw Bombay from the ship. Every minute since has been more of the same joy.

Peter and I have struggled in our marriage, as I think you know. This time will give us an opportunity to—

I paused. What did I mean here? An opportunity to think things over? An opportunity to heal? No. What I felt in my gut was that I would never return. I would find some way to live in India. Gurdaya had contacts in the art world in Bombay, and perhaps I could make a living as an art teacher in finer schools, to supplement whatever I could earn from my paintings. Perhaps, if the commission of the maharani was beautiful enough, I might attract more such portraits.

—discover a new arrangement for ourselves. His shell shock combined with drink creates a violence that is untenable. I have tried to find solutions, but as long as he continues blunting his wounds with gin, I do not feel safe. While I have little hope I would be granted a divorce, I can choose to live apart from him. I know how fond you are of him, but please understand this is not something I have undertaken lightly.

Always your loving daughter,

Elsie

After three days, I was hungry for companionship and asked an older servant woman, someone who appeared to be in charge of things, if the maharani was too ill for company. She shook her head and gestured for me to follow her. I remembered the last time I visited the palace, there had been armies of servants in corridors and gardens, sweeping parlors and cleaning tiles and carting things from place to place with an air of purpose. Now I spied one girl in the courtyard, sweeping, and could hear the sound of people in the kitchen. A guard at the gate.

Very few.

In my girlhood, the palace had overflowed with people, the wives and all the children of Tanveer’s father, who had clearly not followed the usual Sikh practice of only one wife, but took four or maybe evenfive by the end. I thought of him at the ball in London, virile and charming, a man who’d made his own way, navigating between the Hindi and Muslim majorities in India, and manipulating the British as well, his small principality doing well over time. I knew from Tanveer’s letters that drought and plague had diminished the entire Punjab since the war, and when the population revolted, they’d been crushed by the British, more than once. The worst, of course, had been the attack at Jallianwala Bagh, but there had been others.

The emptiness now in the palace seemed lonely. I was quite sure when Gurdaya and her family visited, it could be as noisy and colorful as when Tanveer was a boy, but now it was so quiet I could hear my slippered feet on the swept floors.