A House Called Askival

by Merryn Glover

  As his eyes adjusted to the light, James took in the room. In the floor was an earthen hearth where damp pine twigs spat and hissed over a bed of burning coals. It was not enough to warm the hut, but only to infiltrate it with grey smoke that coiled like ghostly snakes across the thatch and walls. A blackened pot sat on the hearth and Bim’s elderly mother lifted the lid to pour tea leaves into the boiling milk. She squatted beside it, an old shawl wrapped around her head, a bidi glowing in her fingers. Her laugh was a phlegmy cackle and revealed a black mouth with two teeth jutting out like tree stumps. Bim sat cross-legged on a straw mat talking with Stanley in a low voice, his gesturing hands throwing shadows on the wall behind. His other buffalo had just died, cutting his milk sales by half, and the hail storm last week had all but destroyed the crop. Aziz knelt on the other side of Stanley, listening with furrowed brow to the flow between Hindi, which he knew, and Garhwali, which he did not. In the corner of the hut, Bim’s wife sat on the only bed, paralysed from the waist down, rarely speaking, but always watching, her eyes wild and sad. In another corner there was a dented tin trunk, and behind the fire, some planks balanced on bricks that held a few pots and plates, some greasy milk-powder tins and a brass water jug. Clothes hung from a wire strung across the ceiling, and on the wall was a framed picture of the goddess Laxmi, daubed with rice and tikka powder and garlanded with marigolds that had withered to brown knots. Curvaceous and smiling in her pink sari with gold coins spilling from her palms, she was every bit the goddess of wealth.

  Bim’s mother poured the tea into three tin tumblers and passed them to the guests, bent double as she shuffled, her hands like claws. When the boy in James’ lap asked for some, she cuffed him round the ears and the others laughed.

  ‘You can have some of mine,’ James whispered in Hindi as he held the cup by its rim and blew across the top. The tea was too sweet and the milk burnt, but it warmed him and there was enough for all the children to take a noisy slurp.

  After the three from Askival had drunk their tea and refused the offer of a meal they rose to take their leave, with much bowing and joining of palms. James peeled the little boy’s hands off his own and promised he’d be back, as Stanley pulled two packets of biscuits from his rucksack and gave them to Bim. The children crowed and jumped for them while Bim laughed, holding them high. James stepped out into the cold night, his insides twisting with helplessness.

  They spent the night in the vacant chaan next to Bim’s. One wall had collapsed and the thatch at that end sagged like a hammock, tufts of it spilt across the floor, where weeds had taken root. The wind blew through the hut and into their bones, smelling of dank earth and rotting thatch and making the old door rattle. As Stanley lit two small candle stumps and James swept aside the goat droppings with a twig broom, Aziz unpacked their meagre supper. Cold chapattis, a tin of luncheon meat, three small hard apples and a clutch of his home-made Graham crackers. It was an affront to him to serve such dismal fare, but Stanley had insisted upon it. They would be spending the night at Bim’s, he had explained, but, Number One: could not eat with the family as they didn’t have enough for themselves, let alone guests, and Number Two: could not possibly sit in the hut next door cooking up their own hot meal as this would be adding insult to injury. Imagine those starving little kids smelling Aziz’ curry while their tummies rumbled! Aziz suggested they cook enough for everyone, and Stanley said Yes, but on the second night, when they returned with the kill. It was customary after a hunt to share the meat with the villagers. So Aziz had been forced to accept these terms, but still cringed as he set out the food. His only comfort was the cloth he laid down first, which smelled nice and was printed with flowers.

  James slept badly. His sleeping bag was thin and the floor of the hut hard and uneven. Despite crawling into the bag with all of his clothes on, he spent the night clenched with cold, his hands thrust between his thighs, feet like rocks, ears numb. But more than that was the fear. The last few hunting trips he had bungled things. Missed animals completely, or worse still, wounded them. He had seen the disgust in his father’s eyes, the way his big hand curled into a fist and then scraped against his bristly chin. Stanley had grown up shooting things. He claimed he couldn’t even remember his first rabbit, but their number was legion. And there had been fox and coyote and elk and even bears. His first deer was when he was eleven. James was fourteen and still hadn’t shot anything bigger than a bird.

  He was woken by his father’s hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Come on, Jim-Bob,’ he was saying. ‘Up now.’

  It was utterly dark and cold. James’ muscles ached and unfolding himself was like bending metal.

  ‘Chai babu,’ said Aziz, appearing from the black with an enamel mug.

  ‘Shukriya ji,’ he murmured, feeling the warmth seeping through his body.

  Stanley had an open Bible on his knees. By torchlight he read aloud the allotted chapter for the morning – the story of Hagar fleeing into the desert with her son Ishmael. Aziz knelt beside him with hands folded in his lap and brows knotted in concentration, bowing his head when Stanley prayed for the Almighty’s providence for the day.

  After devotions and cold chapattis with peanut butter, they packed their bags and prepared the guns. James pieced together his sleek .318 Westley Richards deer rifle, running his fingers over the polished wooden stock and feeling the power of the thing resting in his hands. His father had bought the gun for his birthday last month from Colonel Bunce who, at seventy, was scaling down his shikar exploits, and it was the finest thing James had ever owned. Stanley’s gun was an old Remington. It had been passed down through his family for generations, gathering stories as thick and odorous as the grease that he now rubbed across it. Along with the usual tall tales about grizzlies and stampeding bison, there were the legends from the Civil War and the story of his great-grandmother using it to protect runaway slaves.

  James didn’t know how many of these stories his father believed, but he clearly relished the telling. These were the few times Stanley seemed to loosen up and laugh a little. There would be a spark in his eyes and a dimple would appear in one rough cheek, almost as a sign that here was the chink, the soft spot, the clasp to an inner man who so rarely escaped. And James would sit by, face shining, full of laughter and questions, longing for the moment, if the crack should widen, when he could leap inside.

  Head brimming with the gun smells of oiled wood and burnt powder, James pulled on his rucksack and followed Stanley out of the chaan, Aziz behind. Outside, the dark was just beginning to soften, but they still needed torches to see the narrow path. They walked in silence, the beam of James’ torch playing over his father’s heels, the cold air a cloak. The gun was heavy and awkward to carry, his fingers going numb on its icy metal. Slowly, things around began to take shape, a boulder here, a tree there, the hulk of his father’s body ahead.

  They moved from the path up a tiny goat trail to a patch of scrub where they pushed their rucksacks into the thicket and settled down, screened by the bushes, guns across their knees. Opposite was a rocky cliff, its contours and boulders becoming sharper with the growing light. They sat in silence, waiting and watching, James feeling the cold steal over his body, the tiredness dragging on his eyes. Birds twittered and whistled and the shades of grey around began to blush with colour as if the birds were calling the day into being. Just when James thought he would never move again there was a skittering of small rocks on the cliff. He brought his gun up sharp and felt his father stiffen, though Stanley’s rifle remained on his lap. A pair of ghoral appeared, moving with light ease, their grey-brown coats almost invisible against the rock, small hooves sure and quick. Then they stopped, as if sensing something, and the front goat turned her head, revealing the white fur at her throat. It was the perfect target.

  James’ shot rang loud and foreign in the hush of dawn, like a puncture in the sky. The goat fell, the other fled and Stanley roared.

  ‘YES!’ he cried, leaping to his feet and shak
ing his gun in the air. ‘He’s done it! Thank you GOD, he’s done it!’

  James felt a dam-burst of joy. He shakily lowered the rifle and looked up at his father, whose face was splitting open. Stanley hauled him to his feet and crushed him in an embrace that was clumsy and smelled of canvas and damp wool. It was the first time they had hugged since James first left for Oaklands, aged four.

  At their side, Aziz was dancing. Hooting with glee, he was whirling on the spot, clapping and twisting his hands, and flashing all his pearly teeth in a rapturous grin. He too caught James in a great hug, though it couldn’t be more different from Stanley’s. Smelling of last night’s smoke and the ever-present blend of coconut oil and spice, it felt as easy and warm as a blanket, for Aziz hugged him every day.

  Stanley laughed and said they’d better find the beast before the flies did, and the three took up their packs and scrambled down to the base of the cliff. The ghoral was lying on the rocks beside a small stream, its legs stuck out at strange angles, its white throat gashed red. They decided to gut it back at Bim’s, so Stanley tied the hooves together with vine and lifted it onto James’ shoulders. It was a heavy and awkward yoke, but one he had longed to bear. On the steep walk up to the village, Aziz insisted on taking a turn and as James looked up and saw the body lying across his shoulders it reminded him of the picture in his children’s Bible of Jesus carrying the lost sheep.

  Except the Good Shepherd’s creature had just been saved.

  Long before they reached Bim’s village, the children spotted them and came pelting down the path, yelling. They jumped to touch the ghoral and flung their arms around James when they learned it was his, but their speed and their cries had another source. A leopard had killed Bim’s last buffalo.

  Back in the village, Stanley sat on the front step of the hut as Bim told him the story and wept. He had taken the buffalo up to a high field early that morning and left it to graze, but when he returned, it was dead, the leopard’s mark clear on its throat. The man wiped the tears with the back of his hand and shook his head, his body slumped, voice a high-pitched, nasal lament.

  In front of them, Aziz and James butchered the goat, a crowd of children gathering around, quarrelling over the scraps. The sounds of knives hacking through bone were punctuated by snatches of Aziz’ song, which was little more than a sorrowful repeated phrase, like a wail of wind down a pipe. It cut into James, along with Bim’s cries and the mingled smells of soil and blood and excrement and the sight of the goat’s severed head at his side, with her glassy stare and poking tongue. He turned from her face and sunk his cold fingers into the warm wet of her belly and drew out the intestines. The boy who had sat in his lap seized them with a yelp and ran his hand down their slippery length shooting faeces at his sister. His grandmother scolded him and confiscated the entrails, adding them to a platter already loaded with the dark, glistening pieces of kidney, heart and liver. She would also keep the hooves, the skin, the head, the bladder and the bones. Everything was precious.

  When the butchering was done and a cat and two dogs were licking the scraps off the ground, Aziz began chopping vegetables as Bim took Stanley and James up to see the buffalo. She was lying in a field beside a stretch of forest, her eyes bulging as if caught in that first fit of terror, her torn throat a mass of flies. They stood in silence at her side. From the village they could hear the dogs fighting and more distant, the repeated whoop whoop whoop of a river mill.

  ‘Leave it here,’ said Stanley at last. ‘The leopard will come back tonight to eat and we’ll deal with it.’ Bim lifted his hands in a gesture of assent and hopelessness. James was transfixed by those hands. Their skin was cross-hatched with a thousand lines, each a seam of dirt; the palms were calloused as the buffalo’s hide, yet marked by unhealed cuts and the swelling of splinters; all the fingernails were broken, some black, one missing. Bim’s life was written across his hands, but it was like a fortune told backwards: the story of his past so deeply inscribed that it was impossible to see a future.

  The three of them built a machan in the nearest tree, a make-shift platform on which to sit and watch, and then Bim led them back to his chaan. It was only mid-afternoon, but the sky was growing dark and an icy wind rose from the gully. The trees on the opposite slope were waving their branches like shipwrecked passengers and the air smelled metallic. As clouds massed overhead there was a rumble of thunder and the first spitting of rain. Hard as arrows, it pelted through their clothes, and as they started running, it turned to hail. Lashed with ever bigger stones, they fell wet and breathless into the door of the hut, the ground behind turning white, the last shreds of the crop flattened into the mud.

  Inside, the air was thick with smoke and the aromas of curry. Aziz was kneeling by a pot on the stove and delivering swift instructions to Bim’s mother and one of the older girls. On the bed, the younger children sat like crows and watched, firelight in their hungry eyes. Their mother did not appear to have moved since the day before, but she was smiling.

  Bim poured out home-brewed liquor from an urn in the corner and tried to press it on his guests. All refused with pained apologies till he finally shrugged and gave some to his mother and his wife. Then he sat nursing his own dirty glass between his knees, sipping and talking and pushing away the tears that kept running down his face.

  ‘What have I done?’ he asked, over and over again. ‘How have I angered the gods? What must I do to appease them? How will we live?’

  James shifted in his damp jeans and wished his father would say or do something that would help. There seemed to be little.

  At last the meal was ready and they all fell upon the food in relief. The children were like vultures and their grandmother barked at them to slow down, but they ignored her. James ate slowly, complimenting Aziz on his cooking but struggling to enjoy it.

  When they were finished, he and Stanley re-assembled their guns, letting the children stroke and hold them before they loaded the ammunition and stooped to head out the door. The storm had passed but the night was still cold and banks of cloud hid the stars. They crunched across the ghostly carpet of hail and up through the fields to the forest. The buffalo lay like a dark boulder, one silhouetted horn rising in salute. They climbed onto the machan and sat in silence. James wriggled his toes in his shoes and pushed his hands into his armpits, feeling the bumping of his heart. Stanley barely moved. It was a long wait. The night deepened, the clouds slid away and a weak moon rose above the ridge.

  Just when James had grown so stiff and cold he thought he would die, there was a low growl behind them. His hair stood on end. He took up his gun. They heard the leopard growl again as it moved right under the platform and over to the buffalo. It was hard to see it in the darkness, little more than a shape of deeper black sliding through the shadows. A few feet away, it turned and went back into the forest. James tried not to make the slightest move, controlling his breath so as not to hiss. Twice more the leopard came out, once circling the buffalo, but each time slipping back into the trees. Finally it moved to her side and sniffed around the bloodied neck. James could just make out the line of its body, but could not tell if it was crouching or lying. Then they heard it growl again and the sound of tearing flesh as it savaged the buffalo’s throat.

  James’ guts turned to water. He felt Stanley raise his gun and did the same. They waited, their eyes boring into the dark, seeking out the leopard’s shape, searching and probing. If they missed, the startled beast could easily leap to their platform, ravenous and enraged, a rippling cannon of teeth and claws. James heard the click of Stanley’s safety catch and the holding of breath.

  There was a shot and a wild scream and the leopard flew towards them and James fired and Stanley fired again and the scream died.

  They held still. All was silent.

  James was panting, the sweat pouring down his sides, hands starting to shake. At last Stanley moved.

  ‘I think we got him,’ he whispered, and James was shocked to hear a tremor in his
voice. They turned on their torches and shone them on the ground below. The leopard lay at the foot of the tree, long and sleek, as if caught mid-bound.

  The shots woke the sleepers in the chaans, and they came running, Aziz with a flashlight and Bim with a flaming torch, a couple of children scampering beside. At the sight of the fallen leopard Bim danced and sang, his breath high with spirits and sorrow, his face lifted to the moon.

  The next night, as James lay back in his bed at Askival, he was woken by the cry of a leopard in the forest. It was far down the slope below the house, a distant, chilling howl that seemed to rise out of death itself. Then another voice joined, and another and another, and they rose in pitch and fury, getting higher and closer, till the trees around the house were ringing with their unearthly screams.

  EIGHT

  To Ruth, arriving at Shanti Niwas in the dark and rain with her father, the singing inside sounded like an angel. But when she walked through the door it stopped, and it was the smell of the cooking that caught her like an ambush.

  In the centre of this swirling, seductive aroma was a plump man in a floral apron, laughing. He wiped his hands and held them out to her, damp and stained yellow with turmeric. His grip was excited and squeezing and left her own hands smelling of garlic. Everything about him shone. The glossy black curls that bounced with the nodding of his head, his creamy skin, slick with sweat and oil, the white teeth, the Gandhi glasses, the eyes brimming with light.

  Iqbal.

  James stood smiling from one to the other.

  And now, with her bag across his shoulders like a sack of grain, the incongruous man was ushering her up to his bedroom. Most pleased to have vacated it for her, he hoped she would approve. She did not, and fought the arrangement fiercely on the landing, but he merely laughed at her protests and refused to give way.

  ‘I will be at bliss on the camp bed in Doctor-ji’s room,’ he beamed. ‘And the Rani Ruthie cannot sleep on the sofa!’ He wagged his finger.