Red Earth and Pouring Rain

by Vikram Chandra

  The road we took then, Sanjay, was the longest of our lives; we said good-bye to our men, stanched their weeping and their talk of mutiny and left the camp. The direction we took was the only one open to us —we travelled towards the British; what I am is a soldier, and that was the only service available then, and now. But before we had gone far, distance hid our comrades from us, and the road narrowed between fields and groves of trees, and all was peace; I bid my friends to go on ahead, told them I would catch up shortly. I left the road, found a shade of mango trees, and leaned up against one of them; my legs gave, and I sat, my legs apart like a child, and then I dropped forward and wept, smearing my face with the dust of my country.

  So we went on towards the English. We had not gone far, the next morning, when disorganized groups of Maratha horsemen began to stream past us, replying to our shouts with only the cry that the English were coming, the English were coming. Then we saw Perron, hatless, fleeing down the road on a blown horse, and I ran out and caught his reins. It is all over, he said, all over, the English surprised us, flee, flee, and he was delirious with panic, his big yellow eyes rolling. But you haven’t fought them, I shouted, look, none of your weapons have been discharged, you have done nothing, and he would say only that they had come upon the camp unseen and unsuspected, it was all over. Come, we will help you, I said, make a stand here, rally your men, we will beat them, but he began to weep, it is over, it is over. So I let him go, and said to the others, come, we will go and rally, and we will stop the English, and I began to saddle my horse, and Chotta followed me, but the others looked on grimly, and by the time I had finished tightening the cinch-grips I was weary with hopelessness and rage: if we had been with our men that night perhaps there would have been no carelessness, no surprise, no panic, no unfought defeat. The bigotry of this European and his fellows lost the Marathas this battle, maybe this war, maybe their kingdom; he had looked at me and had not seen the soldier’s salt, the Rajput’s vow. What men are these, Sanjay? Truly we are in Kalyug. In the dust of that road, when everything fell apart, and I was alone under the great sky, far from my men, what I felt most was the meanness of an enormous trap closing slowly about me, its oily hinges and its power that somehow was crushing me flat. I am fearful.

  When we reached the English they kept us honourably, but more or less as prisoners; finally, a few days later, we were asked if we would serve with them. There was nowhere else to go, Sanjay, but still I hesitated, and then they said to me, your men, your old regiment, are here too, and will serve us. I said, let me see them, and they took me to my soldiers; in front of me, the English asked, will you serve with us, and there was no reply, only a muttering. Then the English said, we will let you choose your own commander, who will you have in command, and in a single voice they shouted, Sikander, Sikander, and in my ears it had the clang of a falling sword. Sikander, Sikander, my boys called, their lance-heads flashing in the sun, and I said, without thinking, it came from somewhere inside me, all right, we will wear yellow, and our motto will be, Himmat-i-mardan, maddad-i-khuda. And they called my name, Sikander, Sikander. And I said to the English, I will serve you. I will serve you, but not against my former master, Holkar, and they accepted; so now I take my regiment north to the doab, to pacify, to police, to guard Delhi. So I serve the English, Sanjay. Was I betrayed, or did I betray? As I sit here writing, it is the hour of cow-dust, and all around me I can hear the tinkling of bells; I am alone in my tent, inside its red walls, and I can hear the water of a stream close by. I remain, as always, your friend,

  Sikander

  As the days of Gul Jahaan’s pregnancy went by, her face became round, and Sanjay was busy bringing her the sweet things she wanted to eat: ras mallai, gulab jamuns, jalebis, and all the time the countryside was quickened into unease by rumours of war. When Sanjay told Sarthey that perhaps they should stay closer to towns, should even consider halting for a period, the Englishman only shook his head, saying that the work must go on. This work, which was not to be interrupted by the English war, was more than medicine; it included also the planting of certain iron rods in the ground, and their measurement with an instrument that Sarthey peered through, all this being duly noted on large sheets of paper. This systematic sketching, which paid particular attention to elevations, declensions, and water-courses, was sometimes interrupted by the sighting of a new species of animal or bird, which unfortunate creatures Sarthey invariably shot and pictured in yet another sketch-book. All this curiosity Sanjay regarded with admiration, with wonder at the Englishman’s voraciousness, his appetite for detail, but when Sarthey’s delving pierced through the surface, when it undertook to prick and slice open, Sanjay was unable to watch. The first time that Sarthey took a squirrel and spread it out on a flat board, Sanjay watched not knowing what was coming next: angle-pointed scissors that snipped an opening from the groin to the chest, metal pincers that peeled back the layers of fat to the packed organs in the belly, and a skilful extraction of a grey sac that contained white, half-formed shapes. At this Sanjay turned away, and afterwards, although he would carry the ruled rods, the measuring instruments, the sketch-books, and even the black leather bag with its rows of knives, he preferred to be excused when the cutting started. This Sarthey agreed to always with a patient shrug, as if to imply an adult toleration of childish squeamish-ness: ‘You are sentimental, my dear fellow’ was the usual comment, with which verdict Sanjay agreed wholeheartedly, but still he was unable to make his body acquiesce, to make his stomach understand what he could perceive to be the intellectual and whole truth.

  Seated away from the cutting table, Sanjay was given to thinking about his strange relation with the Englishman; should he confess —if that was the word —his true identity and his old encounter with the elder Sarthey? But more importantly, he was mystified by the friendship he felt for the Englishman: Sanjay, you who once cursed the race, why are you attracted to this man, why do you seek his company and inquire after his opinions? For this there was no answer; at night, lying by Gul Jahaan, his head pushed up to her stomach, it was difficult to think past his soon-to-be son, and the future was so powerfully illuminated by the impending birth that he thought it impossible to look beyond.

  Finally, the hour itself came near; it was summer, and even outside, under a mosquito net, the air was close, lying like a blanket over the face. Sanjay thrashed about on his bed, moving first one way and then the other, and finally he pulled off every piece of clothing except his neck-band; still, he found no sleep. So, getting up and pulling on his loose cotton pajamas, he walked some distance to a water-matka, and dipped his hand in the cool, clay-smelling surface, noticing how the moon swam in it, and for several moments he was preoccupied by the fragrance of the water and its cold, but then he turned around suddenly. There had been no sound, and there was as yet nothing to see, but he knew something was there; Sanjay stepped back into a shadow and waited. When he saw the dark figure he laughed silently: he recalled the posture from long ago —that it was Sarthey was clear from the height, but the furtiveness, somehow feline, was what he had seen in his childhood. Laughing, Sanjay began to follow the Englishman, wondering what sort of lover Sarthey had: a woman from among the maids, the servants? Or was it one of the hired soldiers from the escort? But it seemed a long way to go in the dark, and then Sarthey left the camp behind, and made his way along the little rivulet they had camped by; it seemed too much walking for a bath. Finally, Sarthey descended into the ravine cut by the water, and scrambled all the way to the bottom, where the reduced flow trickled along; and Sanjay lay on the bank above and watched while the other stripped off his suit and crouched in the course.

  In the white light Sarthey’s hair was black, and lay like a solid streak between the thin bones of his shoulders; Sanjay could see the narrow back and the delicate, descending chain of the spine. Sarthey was still, and then it became clear to Sanjay that he was holding himself with great force, so that beneath the rigidity there was a minute but rapid trembling.
He rose from the water, then knelt by the dark puddle of clothes, and drew something from it; Sanjay was unable to make it out until it spun above Sarthey in a dark line and fell with a crack. For a very long time Sanjay watched as the belt curved and made a sound like a thick piece of wood swinging into wet cloth, again and again, again and again, and when Sarthey’s back went black, when it glistened black, Sanjay crawled away and stumbled back to Gul Jahaan, and lay with a hand on her hip till daybreak.

  In the morning there was hardly a pause between the grey coolness and the white heat of the sun, and Gul Jahaan began to have her baby. Sanjay sat outside the doctor’s tent, cringing at every moan, but finally the screams subsided, and now the tent was glowing a rich orange, as if a fire were burning inside. A woman threw aside a flap and beckoned: ‘Come.’ Inside, Gul Jahaan lay in a sopping wet pile of sheets, her face a bright red and her eyes turned back, breathing in a rapid succession of pants, and over her leaned Sarthey, his face so vital with curiosity and inquisitiveness that he seemed happy.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ he said without looking up. ‘There.’

  His gesture was towards a cradle (once made to order in Lucknow) that stood in a corner, now blackened and charred but barely visible because of a yellow-white effulgence that made it hard to see; shielding his face with his fingers and half-turning from the burning light, Sanjay leaned and saw, in quick flashes, a perfectly-formed boy, beautiful beyond telling, but blazing with such inner heat that Sanjay felt it pressing against his face like fingers. When Sanjay turned back, the doctor pointed towards Gul Jahaan, and now she trembled as if in a fit of ague, all the cold damp cloths pressed against her were useless, and she turned her head towards one side, and died. Under the cloth of the tent the heat was ferocious, and Sanjay rushed out, but in all the land there was no relief, the deepest shade breathed an air full of dragging thorns, Sanjay felt each pulse of his heart throb in his head. Walking was cruel but he could not keep still for fear of madness, and so all day he stumbled from tree to building, hating the nameless, dusty town that went drudgingly about its business. All day Sunil walked after him, giving him water and trying to force him to eat, and when it was evening (he could not remember when the day had turned), Sunil led him back to the camp.

  ‘The child is safe, the child is safe,’ he was told as soon as they saw him. Indeed, the boy’s brilliance was much diminished: it was possible now to look directly at him, and although one could not sustain the gaze for too long it was feasible to touch his skin lightly. The women attending to him with buckets of water and muslin cloth murmured admiringly about the infant’s complexion, but Sanjay asked, ‘Where is Gul Jahaan?’ The doctor, they said, and Sanjay turned and ran, not knowing why but as if there was some urgency, towards the English tent; at the door there was some flurry as if to stop him, but he brushed by it, went in and saw, on a raised wooden table, a flat white figure, arms out and palms up, mouth slightly open. There was a vertical cut that ran from the sternum down to the pudenda, two flaps that opened outwards and raised away to expose the packed and distinct layers of the body, the surprising depth and width of the places where organs had been removed, namely two grey packets and a striped and red-stippled pocket that lay in an orderly row at the edge of the table, and even as Sanjay came in, Sarthey, leaning over and with delicate but sure prongs and scissors, came up with a large yellowish triangle. Sarthey turned his head slowly over his shoulder, still holding it, and in his eyes was the hard glaze of concentration, wide-pupilled, and his arms were wet to his shoulders. Extremely curious, he began, very curious, and then seemed to recognize Sanjay, upon which he straightened, my dear fellow, my dear fellow, but Sanjay was already out of the tent, running, and without pause he caught up the boy to his chest, ignoring the burning; he ran, and fled the camp of the English.

  Accompanied by Sunil, Sanjay rode to the east, his son slung to his chest in a thin cloth, and at every step he knew he was mistaken in his reaction, misguided. He had read of medical autopsies, and understood their purpose; he knew well the importance of scientific investigation, the necessity for dispatch and efficiency in the face of inexplicable phenomena; as he rode, Sanjay berated himself for his wholly sentimental and primitive reaction, the crass melodrama of his actions, but as long as his son lay like a huge knot against his heart he was unable to turn back. We will take him to my mother, he told Sunil, and she will look after him; and it was clear that care was essential: every day of riding through the hot dust brought about a cooling of the boy, a small but perceptible lessening of his fierce heat. In every town Sunil found a wet-nurse, but the child grew more ordinary every day, and it was clear to Sanjay that in this case the mundane was deadly, that the slow onslaught of normality was the coming of weakness and death. As the boy’s golden eyes slowly became dull and merely human, Sanjay wished and prayed for a resuscitation of the old miracle of hot light, even if that were to mean, for him the father, blistered skin, dazzled eyes and pain.

  Sanjay’s mother, seeing him, at first cried out and began to weep, but seeing the child she put aside in a moment all her grief and happiness, and set to take care of him with determination and snappy competence. Sanjay’s father merely smiled a smile shocking in its absolute toothless-ness; both the parents looked alike, he a little heavier and she thinner, so that the years had made them somehow sibling-like, brother and sister in their old age and love. They did not ask Sanjay about the years that had passed, but instead began to feed him enormous quantities of food and tell him stories about neighbours and friends he had forgotten quite completely; so Sanjay sat in his old house, now cracked and conspicuously sagging at the beams, and talked to his old parents, and felt his own cruelty to them like a steel bar in his throat. In this twilight, he remembered his childhood distinctly, with colour and smell and sound, but all the rest of his life seemed without shape and shadowy.

  The boy grew colder and close to death; Sanjay knew that when his fever went, if fever it was, he would die. Meanwhile the world was changing every day, the trees were smaller, the town every day seemed to sink a little lower into the mud, the days seemed longer and the boredom inevitable, and a quiet kind of terror drove ordinary people mad in the streets; that this was actually happening, and was not imagined, was so clear to Sanjay that in his letter to Begum Sumroo asking for help and magic he added a cautionary postscript ending: Is there madness in Delhi too? This question the Begum ignored, and answered succinctly only Sanjay’s query for strategic advice: if you want to defeat the Englishman’s power and save your son, she wrote, burn his books; and she added a flat and unequivocal postscript of her own: Convert; all this is useless; become what I have become; I call myself a Christian, but what I have really become is an English man.

  So Sanjay determined to save his child, and taking Sunil, he set out to ambush the foreigner and set fire to his books. The journey to the north was exhausting and long, but to find Sarthey was simple enough: he was camped outside Delhi, surrounded by a jostling crowd of supplicants. They waited until nightfall, and then it took no great skill to evade the two guards, or to cut an opening in the canvas tent, but once in they were overwhelmed by the number of books stacked on folding shelves and crated neatly in wooden boxes.

  ‘Which ones to take?’ Sunil whispered.

  ‘She didn’t say.’ Despite the darkness and the danger outside, Sanjay was battling an overwhelming urge to sit suddenly, to flop down and read and read, randomly and thirstily until he was sickened by surfeit. ‘Take as many as you can and let’s go,’ he said desperately, feeling his self-control waver. They piled books into two thick cotton sheets, made enormous and crude knots, and then stumbled out and staggered through the camp, burdened and clumsy burglars, blessed by some overly-kind thievery-goddess who led them to the perimeter and beyond. By lifting each pack together, by grunting and pushing underneath and using their whole bodies to lift, they managed to get the books onto the waiting horses; the horses blew and stumbled, and as Sanjay wa
lked alongside, a supporting hand on the bulky mass, it seemed that at every moment the tomes grew heavier. Although —scientifically speaking —Sanjay knew this to be impossible, he felt it so strongly that he stopped every half-hour to let the horses rest, against Sunil’s advice and increasingly urgent recriminations.