Browning Sahib

by Peter Corris

  We were haring along a narrow, rough macadam strip with a stream of other cars, taxis and a couple of buses. The motor traffic terrorised the horse-drawn, which fought back by deliberately going slow, especially around the bends. The jeep bounced over potholes and skidded in muddy puddles. I managed to take my eyes off the road to see how Da Silva was handling it. I nearly grabbed the wheel: he was ducking his head to light a cigar, steering with his knees and looking down towards his feet. I forgot about the hotel. Just arriving anywhere in one piece was the first problem.

  I've never understood tourists. After a short time, I've seen all the paddy fields, coconut trees and donkey wagons I need, and a very few temples and shrines go an extremely long way with me. You've seen one display garden, laid out in the eighteenth century by the Governor's wife, and you've seen them all, and tropical marketplaces are hot, dirty, smelly and filled with thieves the world over. Da Silva pointed out the sights to me as he drove—the fortress, Cargill's emporium, the Pettah, or old town, this Hindu temple, that Buddhist shrine, this mosque, that cathedral.

  'The black people are Tamils, the brown are Singhalese. I myself am of Portuguese descent with some Singhalese and Arab and German. I am a true citizen of this island.'

  The streets of Colombo were crowded with hurrying people of all skin shades. Generally speaking, the darkest were bent double under heavy loads and the lightest were stepping in and out of trishaws and taxis. It's the way of the world. There seemed to be vast throngs of children in the streets, attending small stalls, selling tickets for God knows what, playing in the gutters, minding children younger than themselves.

  I saw the British and Foreign Bank, a white edifice with an imposing set of colonnades, marble steps and brightly polished brass handrails. 'Busy place,' I said while we were stopped, waiting for a traffic cop to unsort the tangle at a three-ways.

  'But very poor. We need very much outside investment.'

  That's what everyone needs, I thought. Da Silva moved off and the motor noise made a reply impracticable. I just nodded drowsily. All I wanted was a long, cool drink and a sleep.

  I got both at Da Silva's bungalow in a suburb on the south-eastern fringe of the city. The house accommodated a lot of children and quite a few adults. I never quite sorted out who was who, but Da Silva's word was law. He introduced me to his wife, a matronly woman who kept her eyes lowered as she served us glasses of cordial. Da Silva had only to raise his voice once for a silence to settle throughout the place. I was too tired to care about the disruption I was causing. He showed me to a small room with a mat on the floor and a narrow, low bed. With pride he switched on the ceiling fan.

  'This will cool you,' he said. 'After you sleep we men will go out to eat and talk. I will drive you to your appointments tomorrow and we will leave at first light the next day.'

  Bossy type, I thought, but then I had the feeling that a trip up country would be welcome to him. Maybe he couldn't get any peace and quiet unless he had a visitor.

  As I crawled between the stiffly starched sheets I had a sudden surge of panic. I hadn't asked for any identification and here I was, with a possible imposter, stuck in a house, maybe under lock and key. I scrambled out of bed and checked the door. It was unlocked and I told myself I was being foolish. Still, I took my wallet out and put it under my pillow. In it was a fair amount of money, Pelham-Smith's cheque and the name of my contact—Mrs Tirrundrai in the old town. I was asleep under the slowly turning fan before I could give his domestic arrangements and my commitments any further consideration.

  That night Vasco Da Silva and I went out and ate curry and drank beer in a small, smoky backstreet restaurant where you sat on the floor. After my few days of abstemiousness the food and drink were wonderful. Da Silva admired my ability to eat the hottest of the curries.

  'Most Europeans can't do that.'

  'I've been around,' I said. 'I spent some time with a mercenary army in Mexico. They eat pretty hot food down there—dog and lizard and such.23 Doesn't taste nearly as good. I held up a piece of meat in a fold of chapatti. What is this?'

  'Monkey.'

  I switched to the vegetable dishes. The beer was a thin, sweetish local brew that I drank sparingly without ill-effect. Da Silva filled me in on what he'd been doing to further the art of the cinema. It turned out that he ran a couple of small movie houses and had dabbled in production himself with no great success. But it had put him in touch with some of the bigger players and got him the job of scouting locations and otherwise troubleshooting for overseas producers. He named a few films—two Indian and one French—that he'd had a hand in. I hadn't heard of them but that didn't mean much—I spent practically no time looking at Indian and French movies. Anyway, it seemed that he knew his business and I was beginning to have confidence in him, up to a point.

  'I'm not travelling in that jeep,' I said.

  'I do not understand, Dick.'

  'Tomorrow, while I'm conducting my business, you will find a better vehicle.'

  'The roads are rough . . .'

  I shook my head. 'Then they are the wrong roads. Vivien Leigh isn't going to travel on bush tracks. You're going to have to rethink it, Vasco. Better roads and better car. Okay?'

  'It will cost more money.'

  'That's not your problem. How much have you spent so far?'

  He shrugged and ate some curried monkey. 'I have spent very little.'

  'You haven't got the idea, my friend. Tomorrow we'll start spending it.'

  The children woke me up in the morning by running around the outside of the house, also under it and over the roof, shouting at each other. I'd slept well and was almost amused. Mrs Da Silva, who must have known every inch of the floor of her house intimately from the way she kept her eyes lowered, made us a breakfast of fruit, rice cakes and tea. I drank only as much tea as I needed to wash down a chloroquine tablet. Then we got into the jeep and jolted our way into the city. Da Silva waited while I opened an account in the bank and deposited Pelham-Smith's cheque. I couldn't draw on the funds for a few days, but I changed some English money into rupees and walked out with well-filled pockets. It was hot already and I took off my jacket. I was glad of the Panama and the sunglasses.

  'Where to now, Dick?' Da Silva asked.

  'I want to go to the Street of Gold, it's in the old town.'

  Da Silva's dark face, shiny with sweat and still covered with dark bristles, seemed to go pale. 'Where did you say?'

  'The Street of Gold. It's . . .'

  Da Silva waved angrily at a small boy who was touching the jeep's headlights. 'I know where it is. It's in the Pettah. But I cannot take you there. I will not do it. No, definitely not!'

  13

  It was time to put my foot down. I couldn't let him give me orders and deny me things, not if I wanted to run the show my way. 'Look, Vasco,' I said. 'I'm the boss here. Have you got that? I say what happens and what doesn't happen. Now you drop me by the entrance to the Pettah and take yourself off to find a better vehicle. Meet me in, let's say, two hours, and I'll come and have a look at your selection.'

  Sulkily, he started the motor and drove off in the direction of the old town. The previous day I'd noticed a collection of maps and brochures in a compartment under the jeep's dashboard. Maybe Vasco was doubling as a tour guide, using the company car. I found a map of the Pettah and studied it as we drove. The map was a crude, badly printed affair, but the Street of Gold was clearly marked and I didn't think I'd have too much trouble finding it. Vasco stared straight ahead, sucking on a dead cigar and driving with more care than usual. He was clearly worried and his concern communicated itself to me. He pulled up in a square where hordes of people were pouring in and out of the narrow street that led to the Pettah. I offered him a cigarette and lit him up.

  'Sorry if I was a bit rough. What's on your mind?'

  'The place where you are intending to go is dangerous. I feel responsible for you.'

  'I can look after myself. Why is it dangerous?'
/>   'It's full of Tamils. They are a difficult, unhappy people, especially at the moment.'

  'Yeah? Why's that?'

  'The police have just shot one of their leaders. A saboteur. Things are very touchy.'

  I paused, considering putting off my visit to Mrs Tirrundrai. But we were heading for the hills tomorrow, and it was important that I didn't look indecisive to Da Silva. I jumped out of the jeep. 'There's someone I have to see. I'll just be in and out. Meet me in that cafe over there. I'll buy you a beer.'

  He nodded unhappily and drove off. I slung my jacket over my shoulder and joined the crowd. I was suddenly aware of the dust, the heat and the smell of thousands of bodies. There seemed to be an impossible number of people jammed into the small space. Once I'd entered the stream it would have been impossible to turn back. I was carried along, past the street vendors with their piles of sugar cane, fruit and vegetables and the stalls selling live chickens and goats and masses of silvery fish, slithering about on beds of melting ice, into the heart of the bazaar.

  Once inside, the press of bodies eased a bit and it was possible to stop and take bearings. Remember, this was about thirty years ago and the mad tourist rush to every part of the world hadn't got fully underway. Nowadays, I imagine, there are lots of white faces to be seen inside the Pettah. Not so, then. I glimpsed a party of beefy, sweating men and women—Germans or Americans at a guess—being carefully shepherded by a guide in an immaculate white uniform, and a few other palefaces in ones and twos, gazing around them and fending off the shouting stall holders and lottery ticket-sellers.

  The noise and dirt got worse the further in I went. Refuse from the operations being carried on—sugar cane peeling, bread-making, wood carving, spice grinding—was simply dumped into the streets. It was pushed into piles by sweepers but not collected, and the feet of thousands of people distributed it over the whole place. Betel-chewers spat red muck everywhere and it was impossible to avoid getting it on your shoes and pants. It was incredibly hot and my shirt was sticking to me when I located the Street of Gold. I looked at the map and discovered I was at the wrong end of it. I tramped on down its winding length, past the stalls and shops—just shallow niches in a mudbrick wall, selling gold statues, rings, chains and bracelets, gold-hilted knives, boxes inlaid with gold and books printed on gold leaf.

  The sellers shouted, 'You buy! You buy!' I shook my head and kept moving. It was impossible not to notice how much darker most of the people were than the general run of citizenry in Colombo. Dark, and thin with it. The women were well swaddled up in long white dresses with wrappings over their heads and faces. They moved with an incredible elegance down the narrow, cobbled road, which was busy but much cleaner than the produce streets. The men, most of whom were bearded and none clean-shaven, wore long white shirts over ankle-length sarongs or loose trousers. Everywhere else in the town I'd seen the shaven-headed, orange-robed Buddhist priests, young and old, alone or in groups, begging, praying or meditating. There were none to be found here.

  The Tamil children, of whom there were scores, were curious about me, trotting alongside for several steps, gazing up at me with their huge dark eyes. The adults ignored me as I kept moving and rejecting the stallholders' invitations. I had a sense, not of hostility, but of apartness and separation. I was the wrong colour, the wrong size, wrongly dressed. Everything about me was inappropriate as if I was the only person in civilian clothes on a military parade ground. It was an eerie feeling, like in some dreams where you are suddenly unable to stop yourself from behaving in bizarre ways although you desperately want to remain unnoticed. I also had the feeling that I was being watched while I was being ignored. Very strange.

  I got to the end of the street, or at least to the point where it intersected with the Street of Silver. Not hard to determine. Down that way the intense light bounced off beaten silver bowls and trays and curved swords. The establishment on the corner was a proper shop, a separate mudbrick building, with a tin roof and window shutters propped open. It was given over half to gold and half to silver. A man standing outside looked at me without making the usual 'Come and buy' gestures. He was taller than the average Tamil, not much under six feet, but with the same build. He wore a shirt and sarong and his feet were bare. He was smoking a cigarette that looked extraordinarily white against his coal-black skin and beard.

  I wiped my face and hands and shrugged into my jacket. I slipped up my loosened tie knot and approached the man. 'Good morning.'

  A nod. Again, not hostile, but nothing like a welcome.

  'I'm looking for a Mrs Tirrundrai. I was told I could find her here. Is that so?'

  He didn't reply but flicked his cigarette stub away and reached behind him to draw aside a beaded curtain. The sun was beating down fiercely and I was glad to get out of it. I took off my hat, ducked my head, and entered the shop. The temperature and the light dropped abruptly and I had to remove my sunglasses to be able to see anything. The interior was gloomy and the goods for sale—inlaid chests, jewelled statues and ornamental weapons—only extended for a few feet inside. Beyond that were living quarters—a rug on the earth floor, a low table, wicker chairs. I blundered forward, thinking I'd be glad of a sit-down.

  Something white drifted in from the shadows on the left. I blinked, struggling to adjust to the light. The white shape swayed slightly in the way the slender Tamil women did and I caught a scent that nearly knocked me flat. I'd never smelled anything like it before—a mixture of oils and spices and flowers.

  'Sit down, Mr Browning, please. I am Mrs Tirrundrai.'

  I sat in one of the chairs and watched her glide into a part of the room that was illuminated by a chink in one of the window shutters. She was tall and slender, white-robed, with sandals on her feet and gold bracelets extending up both of her bare arms. She wore the Tamil head covering and all I could see of her face was a fraction of her forehead, arched brows, huge black eyes, a straight nose and her sculptured lips. It was all I ever saw of her features, but I remain convinced to this day that she was the most beautiful creature I've ever seen in my life.

  She floated into a chair across the table from me and adjusted the white scarf around her head. My chin must have been down near my chest and I suppose I was panting. She smiled, showing snowy teeth. 'I have been expecting you, Mr Browning.'

  'What? I mean, have you? How could that be? I only arrived yesterday . . .'

  'And stayed with Mr Vasco Da Silva and ate curry last night and went to the British and Foreign Bank this morning. Now you are here. How can I help you, Mr Browning?'

  That explained the sense of having been watched which, now I thought about it, I'd had several times since my arrival. I could have felt threatened, I could have got angry. I did nothing. Her extraordinary beauty and composure calmed me utterly. I wanted to smoke though. I got out my cigarettes and asked her if she objected. She waved her hand, the smell of flowers carried to me and the bracelets tinkled as she pointed to a small gold dish on the table. 'Please do.'

  'Mr Pelham-Smith asked me to see you,' I said, expelling smoke well away from her. 'He said you could put me in touch with Ranu, his son.'

  'Ah, yes. To what end?'

  'He wants his son to join him in England. To be educated there, and so on.'

  'I see. And did he tell you anything of the struggle here?'

  'Well, no, not really. I'm not much of a one for politics. Just trying to help a decent chap out, you understand.'

  'For a fee.'

  'Look here, Mrs Tirrundrai, that's none of your business. I don't want to be rude, but I simply agreed to make representations to this young man on his father's behalf. Nothing more.'

  Suddenly she clapped her hands and spoke rapidly in a language I didn't understand. Then she said. 'We will have some tea and discuss this further.'

  I didn't want tea but I did want the opportunity to keep looking at her with the chance that I might see a little more of that wonderful face. Someone scampered away to do her bidding. I did
n't blame them—I'd have done some scampering myself if she'd asked. I couldn't help wondering who Mr Tirrundrai was, lucky devil. I stubbed the cigarette out in the dish and leaned back in my chair. My eyes were thoroughly used to the light now and I looked hard at her, trying to guess her age. No luck. Like her muted voice, her half-concealed face was ageless. I felt a peculiar sense of calm in her presence and realised, almost with a shock, that my attraction to her had nothing to do with sex. Quite a change for the old Browning.

  A flunkey came in with the tea things and went through the boring business of pouring and moving cups and saucers around. The stuff has always tasted like boiled bark to me, right from the first when my father, 'Wild Bill', used to brew it up in the bush and make me drink it. He laced his with rum, of course. Since then, I've been forced to drink it in drawing rooms, railway trains, on boats and in bedrooms. Give me coffee any day. But it was close in the dark room and any liquid would be welcome. I sipped and tried to look as if I was enjoying it while Mrs Tirrundrai gave me a lecture on the sufferings of the Tamils of Ceylon. I can't say I took much of it in. The long and the short of it was that they'd been there a long time, were a sizeable part of the population and were being given a raw deal by the top dogs. When was it ever any different?

  My part in the 'discussion' was to listen and drink my tea, which I did politely, just for the sake of looking at her and hearing her voice—which was accented but not strongly. She made the words sound as if they should be pronounced that way and anyone who didn't was in error. I nodded and murmured affirmatively. She sat very still, using a minimal amount of movement to drink her tea. Her arms were exquisitely shaped and her hands seemed impossibly long and slender. After a while I found my nodding impossible to stop. I realised that I was falling asleep and that was the last thing I wanted to do. I tried to recall why I was there.