Red Earth and Pouring Rain

by Vikram Chandra

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Sorkar asked. ‘You’re jumping about the place like a gazelle.’

  ‘Nothing,’ Sanjay said, and sat down beside them and tried to burp harder than any of them, because he was afraid that he might start to hear whispers emanating from all the paper and print scattered around the house.

  ‘Good effort,’ Sorkar said after one of Sanjay’s burps. ‘Sturdy of will but lacking in stamina. Try again.’

  But all of Sanjay’s efforts were defeated by Sikander’s mighty and eruptive exhalations, which seemed to vibrate through his whole body before they burst from his mouth and sang through the air like a long blast from a sea-shell.

  ‘Astonishing,’ Kokhun and Chottun chorused. ‘Tremendous.’

  Sanjay stifled his resentment and a new-found distaste for gastric games, and applauded with the rest, and that night insisted on sleeping on the roof of the house, despite a slight chill in the air and the possibility of rain. After that evening he tried to avoid books, but was unable to keep away for more than a day: he sneaked peeks at the pages Sikander pressed, and the next afternoon guiltily picked up a text on gunnery, put it down again, then snatched it up and read ten pages, producing a perfect rattle and clatter of voices around his head as he blissfully consumed, from the paper, sentences he couldn’t understand. In a mood of self-disgust, he walked around the house with a fierce expression of determination on his face, prompting jibes from Sikander and attempts at purgative medication from Sorkar; this time his abnegation lasted all of three days, and then late one night he jumped from his bed, ran to the loading area where books and pamphlets waited, stacked and tied, for the delivery carts, and read all night by the light of a sputtering, clandestine lantern, until his head spun and his eyes ached, and when morning came he knew he was ensnared, trapped forever by words, and in the instant he realized this, as a flight of sparrows manoeuvred dizzily through the court-yard, he remembered his uncle Ram Mohan, and cursed heavily and vilely with new-found Calcutta sophistication: you cannot choose what you are made of, whether it is spittle or dust from the still-blowing winds of another generation, but what is worse is that one morning you come to know that your bones have ineluctably bred the same impermanences that should have died with your ancestors, the same hopes and despairs and loves and weaknesses, that you are forever trapped by their knotty lusts and ideals.

  So Sanjay learnt this early lesson of karma, and lived in Calcutta surrounded by voices from near and far; there were Punjabi women, Sindhi crones, Gujarati businessmen, Kashmiri intellectuals, and a myriad others in tongues he couldn’t understand, some that he had never heard before, and some that he was sure could issue from no subcontinental mouth, clicking and clacking phonemes and nasal syllables completely and utterly foreign. But since these voices —or secondary articulations, as he now thought of them —issued from books, from novels and chronicles and documents and manuals that provided a steady stream of coherent and seemingly relevant information, Sanjay decided that the bargain was an even one. To listen to the clear music of logic, he told himself, one must tolerate and acknowledge the noise of muddy chaos; white palaces must be built, unfortunately but necessarily, on stinking mud, he told himself, and went on with his reading.

  One day soon after, Sorkar waddled up to him, his hands held carefully over his stomach, exuding a kind of lardy politeness that made him difficult to see. ‘Sanjay, child, he wants you,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’ Sanjay said. The others, Sikander and Chottun and Kokhun, were drying their sweat or picking lint from their navels with an exactitude that suddenly reminded Sanjay of his father’s description of courtiers as he finished reading a new poem: as hugely courteous as great ladies with an unexpected harlot. So Sanjay burst out: ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘Mr Markline has sent for you,’ Sorkar said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t really know,’ Sorkar said. ‘The message just says that he expects to see you tomorrow morning at eleven at his house. You are to present yourself punctually, et cetera.’

  ‘Why me, what does he want from me?’ Sanjay said vehemently, conscious from the first instant that he was dissembling, because ever since the visit to the bungalow he had expected something of the sort, and indeed he had paraded his precocious English in the hopes of impressing the Englishman. The others shrugged and turned back to their work, leaving Sanjay to think about the impending encounter, and even more about the meeting in the past —when he reconstructed the event carefully, peeling aside onion-skin–layers of memory’s self-serving deceits, he seemed to remember straightening his back and neck, an attempt to imitate Markline’s erect posture and meet his blue eyes. All that night Sanjay tried to imagine himself in beautiful mirror-shined boots and a white shirt, the slim hard figure of a dark rider on some imaginary landscape; but in the morning he put on, eagerly and nervously, without needing Sorkar’s prompting, his white achkan and his best dhoti. He left early, and was at the Hooghly ghat a full half hour before he needed to be, but still the chattering of the boatmen and their slow luxurious passage across the river worked on his nerves like the long-nailed fingers of a sitar-player, until he finally snapped out a command to hurry, hurry.

  The boatman said something to the other passengers in Bengali, and they all laughed, while Sanjay looked down, his face burning; there was no change in the speed of the boat, but the lazy splash of the pole now kept time with a song sung by the boatman. The people on the boat hummed along quietly, settling back into their seats, and several of them still smiled as their glances drifted over Sanjay. One of them leaned forward: ‘It is a very famous song,’ he said, ‘about a young man driven mad by love, who hurries to his beloved’s side, facing immeasurable and unimaginable hardships.’

  ‘Why did he hurry?’ Sanjay said instantly, in spite of himself.

  ‘Because the beloved, after a lifetime of evincing distaste and rejection and harshness, was dying. And she called for him. And our young man loved her truly’

  ‘What nonsense,’ Sanjay said, and turned away pointedly. He tried to fall back into his previous state of anticipation and excitement, but for the second time in a few hours he thought of his father and his uncle, annoyed at the mixture of guilt and mild aversion this recollection squeezed from some unknown part of his soul: he realized suddenly that he had not seen his father-gifted Mir manuscript in weeks, and hadn’t the slightest conception of where it might lie, in the welter of paper and scrap that lined the press. What, what sensationalism, he thought, all this Mirism, why should love always be an agony, and then recognized with a pronounced internal lurch that he hadn’t written to his mother since when, one month surely and maybe two so then he turned his attention outward, to the water and the sun above. Observe, he told himself, observe and remember, for this shall be a momentous day in your life; but the water was flat and brown, the sky a huge washed-out blue, and the others on the boat were the usual collection of rustics, traders and nondescript types, squatting and jabbering, in short not at all the ilk of co-travellers that one wished for on a journey into the future. At the shore, the boat swayed away from Sanjay just as he leaped off, causing him to drop into a good three inches of water; dark, muddy stains stretched up his white dhoti, almost to his knees. All his angry wiping was useless, and so he walked up the slope, almost in tears, towards the green of the trees, the cotton sticking to his legs.

  At the house, this time, he was taken in straightaway to Markline, who was eating some brown object with a flashing knife and fork; as Markline sawed methodically at the meat on his plate, dividing it into identical brown squares, Sanjay stifled a quick upsurge of nausea.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said, as he had learnt from Etiquette for the Young Child.

  ‘Morning,’ Markline said. ‘Why do you wear that thing on your eye?’

  ‘I see doubly,’ Sanjay said.

  ‘Double. Have you seen a doctor?’

  Dak-tah? Daak-ter? Sanjay shifted, and felt water drip
from his knees onto his feet.

  ‘Doctor,’ Markline said. ‘Have you seen a doctor?’ He swallowed, then said slowly, ‘Doctor?’

  ‘O doctor, doctor,’ Sanjay said in delight, finally understanding. ‘Yes, yes, but they did nothing. Many hakims and vaids came.’

  ‘I meant a real doctor,’ Markline said. ‘Come on.’

  A closed carriage was waiting outside; Sanjay was motioned up, to sit between the driver and Markline’s major-domo, the tall, thin man who soon revealed his name to be Ardeshir, and then sat silently, his hands held together tightly in his lap. The driver too was quiet, and it occurred to Sanjay that all of Markline’s attendants were curiously unspeaking, but then he forgot all about this as they rumbled through the streets, causing people to break off conversations and gawk. Sanjay threw back his shoulders and affected a stare at something floating in the air perhaps a hundred feet away; the attention pleased him, but all too soon they were at a maidan surrounded by carriages. Markline leaped from the carriage, followed by Ardeshir, and was instantly lost in the crowds of firangis that eddied around the vehicle, filling the air with English too speedy and coloured by accents to decipher. Sanjay followed the driver to the other side of the maidan, where they squatted amidst others whom Sanjay recognized instantly as servants; he experienced a brief twitch of anger and shame, for a very quick moment thought of his mother, but then a bunched group of horses exploded onto the maidan, and the air was filled with cheers and shouts.

  The dust boiled off the ground, and the riders materialized and vanished into the yellow haze, slashing with sticks at a ball that ricocheted from one end of the maidan to the other; sometimes the whirling knot of men and horses followed the ball close to where Sanjay sat, and then for a few moments it seemed as if he was surrounded by screams and huge rolling black eyes, iron-taut horse muscle, yellow teeth, hooves, sticks hissing through the air and cracking against each other, shouts. Then all this would subside and they would vanish into the dust, leaving his heart thudding and thudding as if it wanted to crack his ribs, the wind whipping away the veil for a moment so that he could see, very far away across the expanse of pitted ground, the carriages in which the firangi women stood and waved handkerchiefs, hurrahing in voices that came to him subdued and yet sharpened by the distance, so that he was filled with a not-unpleasant but unfocussed nostalgia, as if he was longing for a memory he had never known.

  When it was over Markline came to the carriage caked with dirt, climbed in without a word and they were off; Sanjay realized that in all the time of the match he had never managed to make Markline out among the riders, that the sport accorded a strange anonymity to the players. At the house Markline pointed a finger at Sanjay: ‘Wait.’ He went into the house, came striding out a few moments later and without pausing threw a small rectangular object at Sanjay, saying ‘Here!’

  Sanjay flung up his arms, wanting for once in his life to make the catch, but the thing of course spiralled through and hit him on the chest painfully, so that his eyes teared and he had to scrabble in the twilight dust for it.

  ‘Read it,’ Markline said, already turning around and walking away. ‘And come back next week.’

  It was a book, and Sanjay peered at the title page, bringing the paper very close to his nose; it smelt like smoke, and the title was arranged very symmetrically in simple black letters: The Poetics of Aristotle.

  That week, Sanjay studied the book: the sense was clear enough, if limiting for the maker of art; there seemed to be an insistence on emotional sameness, on evoking one feeling from the beginning to the end of the construction, as if unity could be said to be defined as homogeneity or identity; there seemed to be a peculiar notion of emotion as something to be expelled, to be emptied out, to be, in fact, evacuated, as if the end purpose of art was a sort of bowel movement of the soul; but all this was reasonable, somehow, understandable, even if it violated all of the rules Sanjay had attempted to learn from Ram Mohan’s fragmented discourses; even as it was, it was comprehensible as an intellectual exercise, a system of belief, one darshana of the world. What was unearthly and frightening about the book was a voice that whispered from its pages, a voice that whispered and yet silenced all others, that left a silence in the printery-shop, in which it alone remained and spoke, spoke again and again one phrase: ‘Katharos dei einai ho kosmos.’ And even in the evenings when the book was shut, or at dinner, Sanjay could hear the repeated syllables drifting through the courtyards and flying over the walls, under the wind and the rubbing of branches; it went on, gentle and reasonable at first but then maniacal in its insistence, morning and night, katharos, katharos, until Sanjay pounded at his ears and pressed his head between his fists, unmindful of the pain.

  One morning, later that week, Sikander dressed and went to meet his sisters; he returned late at night looking exhausted. Sorkar sat him down to a large dinner and then herded him into bed, but as Sanjay lay awake long into the morning, listening to the constant whisper outside, he also heard Sikander breathing and knew he too couldn’t sleep.

  ‘How were they?’ Sanjay said finally.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your sisters.’

  ‘Fine. They were fine.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Tonight I keep on remembering them.’

  ‘Of course,’ Sanjay said. ‘You just saw them.’

  ‘No,’ Sikander said. ‘Not Emily and Jane. Them. Ma.’

  ‘And my uncle?’ Sanjay said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Listen, Sikander,’ Sanjay said suddenly, then stopped, embarrassed. ‘What?’

  ‘You know that book I’ve been reading?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s a book by a Greek.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘And when I read it I hear a voice.’

  Sikander turned towards him. ‘A voice? You mean a voice that says something?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Poor Sanjay.’

  ‘What poor Sanjay? I knew I shouldn’t have told you. Damn Rajput.’ Sanjay jumped from his bed and stood in the darkness, trembling.

  ‘I didn’t mean that way poor Sanjay,’ Sikander said, infuriatingly calm. ‘Sit. Sit, Sanju.’ Sanjay found himself soothed, as susceptible to the charm as always. ‘What does it say?’

  ‘I don’t know, it speaks in some other language, must be Greek. “Katharos dei einai ho kosmos,” it says. Katharos, katharos, all the time.’

  ‘A ghost, you think? A spirit bound to the book?’

  ‘No, something else. But that’s not the thing, not what scares me. What it is is that I think I know who it is, I don’t know why, but I recognize it, the voice.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘It’s Alexander,’ Sanjay said. ‘You know, the Great.’

  ‘Alexander the madman? The butcher?’

  ‘Yes, him.’

  ‘Did he write this book?’

  ‘No. I don’t know why I think it’s him.’

  They lay silent, then Sanjay said: ‘Where was she from, Ma?’

  ‘I don’t really know,’ Sikander said. ‘She never spoke about it. But she used to talk sometimes about a place called Ahwa.’ They could hear, now, from outside, the occasional call of a bird. ‘Sanjay, what were we made for?’

  But Sanjay had no answer to that; just before they dropped off to sleep, as the sun came up, Sikander said in a voice barely audible: ‘Find out what Alexander says, Sanju.’

  At the end of the week, Sanjay visited Markline again, and again he was taken to the polo match and its concealing haze, and then afterwards, at the mansion, on the porch, was engaged in conversation by the Englishman.

  ‘Did you read the book?’ Markline said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sanjay. ‘Cover to back.’

  ‘Good boy. Keep it and read it again carefully,’ Markline said. ‘Study it well if you want to be any kind of writer.’ He was sitting on a cane chair, drinking a whitish concoction from a glass, and now he leaned forward and jabbed Sanjay lightly on the chest with a stiff foref
inger, just below the place where the ribs met. ‘There is much in here,’ he said, jabbing again, ‘we need to get rid of, much stuff we need to scoop out and throw away. If you’re to amount to anything. You’re riding with a handicap, do you understand? All the weight of centuries of superstition and plain ignorance. I’ve read your great books, all the great wisdom of the East. And such a mass and morass of darkness, confusion, necromancy, stupidity, avarice, I’ve never seen. Plots meander, veering from grief to burlesque in a minute. Unrelated narratives entwine and break into each other. Whole huge battles, millions of men a side, stop short so that some dying patriarch can give a speech about duty, a speech that goes on for fifties of pages. Metaphors that call attention to themselves, strings of similes that go from line to line. Characters fall in love or murder, only to have their actions explained away as the results of past births. Characters die, only to be reborn again. Beginnings are not really beginnings, middles are unendurably long and convoluted, nothing ever ends. Tragedy is impossible here!’

  Markline seemed to become aware of his raised voice, his flushed face, and now he sat back abruptly in his chair, gulped down his drink. ‘Study it carefully,’ he said. ‘This book is the origin of all that is good in literature. It applies the principles of science to the art of the poet, and thus brings the realm of imagination under the clear light of natural logic. It enunciates principles that have been tested by time and have been approved by philosophy. This slim volume is worth whole libraries of the so-called great books of India. Keep it, young fellow, and study it.’