The Dancer and the Raja by Javier Moro Page A

either side of her to the waiting room. Anita turns her head, seeking a familiar outline, but she cannot see anyone. She is surrounded by unfamiliar faces, by people who never stop placing garlands round her neck, garlands that pile up and almost threaten to block her view. A shower of petals welcomes her as she goes into the waiting room, where she finds herself facing His Highness’s top officials and members of the local government. What should she say? What should she do? There is a moment of perplexity because no one moves in the crowded hall, until a woman comes up to Anita to help her free herself from the weight of the garlands. In relief, the Spanish girl looks round and then she sees him, standing behind the door, looking at her with his eternal smile. The raja has been watching her reactions and has laughed a lot at the Spanish girl’s spectacular arrival.
    â€œAltesse!”
    Anita just wants to throw herself into his arms, but she restrains herself. Has she not heard Mme Dijon say a hundred times that education means controlling your feelings and mastering your passions—and, at the same time, making as little noise as possible? He seems to be in the same frame of mind because he cannot take his eyes off his beloved. He eats her up with his eyes and, if he could, he would take her in his arms. But India has turned Puritan and it is not acceptable to show your feelings in public. Even now, at the beginning of the twentieth century, a strict Victorian mentality holds sway over people’s customs. Far off now are the days when the Europeans first arrived, when the libertine atmosphere of India scandalized religious people and attracted good-for-nothings. Anything went in those days: a white man could be circumcised in order to marry a Moorish woman, a European woman could live with a native, they could convert to Hinduism, Sikhism, or Christianity, and an Englishman could have children with a bibi (a native woman), European women could smoke a hookah or wear the kurta … The time of the marquis of Wellesley is long past. After being in Calcutta only a short time, having been named governor general in 1789, he sent a letter to his wife, a French lady called Hyacinthe, asking her for permission to take a mistress: “I beg you to understand that the climate in this land has so aroused my appetites that I cannot live without sex …” he wrote to her in a letter. By return post, the most elegant Hyacinthe answered: “Copulate if you feel absolutely forced to, but do it with all the honour, prudence and tenderness that you have shown with me.”
    Those were other times. Now, the morality imposed by the colonists looks down on matters of love and sex, especially when they are between men and women of different races, religions, or social class. For that reason no English official has gone to welcome Anita, a Spanish dancer , as they were already describing her in the official reports, whose existence neither she nor the raja even suspect. Not even an army man from the cantonment, or a single one of the officers resident in Kapurthala, is there. It is clearly an insult to the raja, who is unaware that the news of his imminent marriage has caused an uproar in the Indian Political Service, the viceroy’s diplomatic corps, whose agents represent the British Empire in the Indian principalities. To the upper spheres of colonial power, the wedding is a scandal.
    â€œHow was the journey?” he asks as they greet the army officers and high-ranking civil servants who wait in line for the new couple to pass by.
    â€œI was so desperate to get here … I’ve kept a diary as you ordered, and when you read it you will be able to see how it seemed to me to go on forever because …”
    Anita is about to blurt out the only thing that really matters to her at that moment, but this is not the right place. She has to take on a role, smile and nod slightly to the raja’s