Red Earth and Pouring Rain

by Vikram Chandra

  “I had better go,” I said. “I’m on the batting side.”

  “You better.” She smiled again, and I fled, searching for the door with scrabbling hands, for a last moment I could see the water like a sheet of some amazing new synthetic, and again the air conditioning chill rode up and down my spine, by the time I reached the bottom of the stairs I was moving slowly, like a man stricken by some disease of the bone. As I went out onto the patio the old waiter caught my eye and smiled, and his face looked almost naughty, as if we had shared some secret.

  Out on the field William James had been taking wickets, and as I came out he took another with a bouncer that got the batsman slashing wildly and caught easily in the slips.

  “Are you a heroic batsman?” said Ballard hopefully.

  “Not in the least,” I said. “Can I go last? But I do an okay off-break.”

  We scored twelve more runs and they got another couple of wickets, with William James adding one to his bag, and then, all of a sudden, I was in. As I walked out to the wicket, pulling on the gloves, the smell from them, slightly sweaty, leather, calmed me, and as I adjusted my cap and took my stance I was actually smiling. William James was a good ten yards beyond the bowler’s wicket, tossing the ball up and down, and even at that distance I could see his blue eyes. The umpire lowered his hand and William James ran in, his feet making hardly a sound on the grass, and I saw his arm come round, it was one of his fast ones, a little short of a length, and I stepped out to meet it and it reared up wickedly at me, I saw it coming and twisted my body aside but it caught me stinging on the side of the neck and dropped me back to my knees. They crowded round as I straightened up rubbing at my collarbone, it really wasn’t bad, thank you, just a snick, and we went on, but there was a red smudge on my shirt. William James was taking his long walk back to his mark, and I could feel my pulse thumping at the back of my head, he came in again running fast, and when he released the ball he made a loud sound, an explosive grunt with the effort of it, and I flinched and never even saw the ball, I held the bat out defensively but never found it, and he took my off stump out of the ground. We were all out for seventy-two, and as we walked back to the pavilion William James came over and patted me on the back.

  “Good effort,” he said, smiling.

  And then he walked ahead of me, there was a large damp spot between his shoulder blades, and his shirt was stretched tight over his back, and he was laughing, he was confident and a little swaggering and very handsome.

  Lunch was delicious, cold cuts and potato salad around a buffet table. I looked around for Amanda, but she was nowhere to be seen, and Jamie the waiter hadn’t seen her either, so I decided she had bailed out, maybe she was with Tom and Kyrie. I walked down the table piling my plate high —I felt limber and hungry. William James’s voice boomed through the room. He was laughing at something Ballard said as they went from plate to plate. I sat at a table with a white tablecloth and began to eat.

  “Here, son,” said William James. “Try some of these. Prime.” He was talking to Swaminathan, one of the Coasters, and he was holding out a plate of ribs. I had one in my hand, and they were good, but Swaminathan, who was thin and dark and very short, shook his head.

  “No, thank you,” he said. When we had been sitting out on the pavilion steps earlier that day, he’d told me that he’d just graduated from IIT Madras, and was now in the microbiology department at Rice. He had been in the States for maybe two weeks.

  “You sure? They’re good, good, good!”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a vegetarian?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.”

  William James shrugged and put down the plate, and he and Ballard walked past my table to one at the center of the room. As they went William James inclined his head to Ballard, and I heard him whisper, not too quiet, “No wonder you fellows thrashed them about for two hundred years.”

  “We got them out after all.” My voice was loud and it stilled all conversation in the room. My face was burning, and I had surprised myself more than the others. I mean I don’t know where it came from.

  “Well, yes, maybe you did, maybe you shouldn’t have,” William James said, settling into a chair and putting one leg over another.

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning look what it’s reverting to after the British left, the country.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Well, chaos, isn’t it?”

  I was so angry now I couldn’t speak for a minute, and to tell the truth I didn’t know what to say, but I felt like I wanted to scream. But finally I spoke, and my voice was ugly and slow, “You don’t know anything about it.” I enunciated each word, and as soon as I said it it was inadequate, it felt like I had said nothing.

  “Come on, chaps,” Ballard said. “No politics in the mess.” He took William James by the shoulder and turned him, and William James let himself be turned and he took up his fork, and as they began to eat there was a small smile on his lips.

  Swaminathan came and sat down next to me. The fork was shaking in my hand, and as I put it down on my plate it made a small clatter. Under the table Swaminathan put a hand on my forearm, and he held on until I stopped trembling, but even then I was unable to eat.

  * * *

  After lunch William James sent out the Japanese as one of the openers, and the other was the youngest of the Americans, a friend of William James who had only just taken up cricket. It was pretty clear they didn’t take the possibility of losing very seriously, and were sending out their fledglings, for practice I suppose. We began to play, and the main bowler on our side was an Australian who roughed up the ball quickly, while the Japanese fellow pushed forward with a straight defensive bat and the American drove into the covers. I was fielding deep-leg, and from where I was standing I could see William James lounging back in an armchair with a drink in his hand. He looked comfortable and relaxed. They scored twenty runs, and then Ballard gave the ball to Swaminathan, and Swaminathan walked over to the crease, rubbing the ball on his pants. His run-up was four steps, taken slowly, but the ball was a mean off-break that spun in viciously and took the middle stump from the Japanese. I ran over and thumped Swaminathan on the back, and he smiled a little shy smile and said, “Good pitch.” With the last ball of his over he had the new batsman swinging wildly at one that looped lazily in the air, bounced and turned, and careened off to the slips, with just enough of a snick from the bat’s edge to send the man back to the pavilion with a big fat duck.

  “Well done, Swami,” I said. “Good show.”

  “Indeed,” said Ballard. “Let’s see that off-break of yours.” And with that he tossed the ball to me.

  So I took the ball and walked up to the wicket, swinging my arm over, and the action was unfamiliar and stiff. I marked out a run, and the ground was edged by trees, and I thought, I’ve been away a long time. But I steadied myself, and the umpire lowered his arm, and I trotted up and tried it, but the ball was wide and the batsman (one of William James’s friends, a banker I believe) drove it confidently past me, to the boundary at mid-on for a four. He was pretty damn elegant about it too.

  “Never mind, yaar,” said Swami. “Get the length.”

  I did, too. I gave away another four runs at the end of that over, and then two or three more in the next, but after that I began to settle and I found that I could turn the ball, and I began to enjoy the effort, and it was nothing spectacular but I began to bother them a little. But Swami, he was performing wonders, he hung the ball so long in the air that it seemed to be gliding, reluctant to come down, and it floated and it dipped and it swerved along, and sometimes on the bounce he would spin it, turning it to leg and sometimes he would flip it with top-spin, and the wickets tumbled. In his third over he took one more, and in the next he got two. I just pegged down the batsmen from one end, and from the other he went through them like an executioner, all with a downward-looking smile and shy little shakes of his head. I could see William James
standing on the patio now, shading his eyes, and when the next batsman came out he walked with him a little way into the field, talking into his ear urgently.

  So we went on, and they got runs, mostly from me, but their middle-order batting pretty much collapsed, and we had them at sixty-nine for seven. William James still didn’t come in, I could see his point, he wasn’t going to be bothered to put on the pads for the likes of us, and they were only four runs away from victory anyway. The next batsman came in, looking grave, and as he marked his guard I tossed the ball to Swaminathan and chanted, “Bedi, Bedi, Bedi.” By now I loved the man, and I was calling him by the names of the heroes of my childhood. Bedi had been one of a trio of spinners, a heavy-set Sikh who bowled devious leg-spin that charmed the batsmen into error.

  But William James’s teammates were scared of Swaminathan now, and they were sticking to the crease, playing defensive strokes and refusing steadfastly to swing at the delicious-looking lobs he floated down the pitch. On the fifth ball of the over he bounced it a little short, and the batsman stepped out to drive but it rose suddenly, took the splice of his bat and went sweetly right back into Swaminathan’s hands. The next fellow who came in was young, sweating, and red in the face, and when I called to Swaminathan, “Prassana, Prassana, Prassana,” he looked at us suspiciously, as if we were plotting something unfair and probably unconstitutional. Prassana was a fat off-spinner, you remember, a South Indian who looked sleepy and harmless until his break caught you flat-footed and stupid. Swaminathan bowled, the hero at the crease stepped up to it quickly and let fly with a tremendous swing, he was tense and he wanted to catch it before it bounced and he was seeing visions of a triumphant sixer and strawberries in the pavilion, but it was moving in the air, it was zigging and zagging and performing mysterious perambulations, and with all his strength and his probably good eye he caught it only a glancing snick and it squirted to square-leg, where Ballard sprinted for it, but both batsmen were nearly half-way down the pitch and they decided to dash for it, the runner was safe but the other batsman was still a good two feet from the crease when Ballard tumbled the stumps with a clean and fast throw.

  So we had them, almost. Four more runs to make and one more batsman left, and it was of course William James. I could see him standing on the grass near the pavilion, his hands on his hips, and he still didn’t have his pads on. Behind him I could see his wife, the cool blond hair above a white dress. He turned around quickly, and I could feel his anger, and then we had to wait while he put on his pads. Swaminathan walked over and gave me the ball, and then he massaged my shoulders. He didn’t, of course, have to say that it all depended on me.

  William James came in, settling a blue cap on his head, it had a Confederate flag on it. As he went by us Swaminathan thumped me on the back, walked away, and then called back to me, “Chandrashekhar.” William James looked up, and his gaze was clear and icy, he looked from me to Swaminathan, and he was furious but collected.

  “Chandrashekhar,” I said, and William James glared at me, and I laughed. I mean he probably thought we were speaking to each other in some foreign language, or maybe practicing some kind of dark Oriental magic, because Swaminathan was now chanting, Chandrashekhar, Chandrashekhar.

  Chandrashekhar was my favorite of the spinning triad, the three gods of the slow ball. He was thin to the point of weakness, and as a child he had suffered polio, which had deformed his right arm, twisted it inwards, and so with it he practiced the art of deception, he bowled googlies, off-breaking with a leg-break action, and I remembered batsmen who watched his arm come round, and who confidently unleashed cover drives, only to find they had been fooled, what had looked like one thing had really been another, that Chandrashekhar’s thin twisted arm was capable of lying. But now William James was flexing his wrists at the crease, he meant to hit my delivery straight to the boundary, and Swaminathan was whispering, Chandrashekhar, Chandrashekhar, but I had never bowled a googly in a match, I didn’t have the crippled arm, and William James was watching the ball, his eyes were fixed on my hand, my grip on the seam, he was coolly analytical, he was going to know what I was doing as soon as I did it, before even, he had me down his eyes were telling me, he was going to count me and calculate me and predict me and knock me out of the park. He was shifting his weight on the balls of his feet and he wasn’t worried, no, not at all. So I took the ball and started my run, holding it behind my back, and I was saying as I ran, Chandrashekhar, Chandrashekhar, my arm came over and William James was watching, and instead of releasing the ball I dropped my wrist and held on and when I let the ball go my arm was turned, I could feel the wrench in my shoulder, the back of my hand was facing the ground, and it wasn’t much of a ball, William James came out to it hungrily, he was glad and happy and I could feel it, it dropped desultorily and he set himself for it and he swung, he was going to drive it over my head for a flight to the moon, he was going to murder it, but the ball hit the ground and he knew it was going to break to leg but it didn’t, it turned the other way and he swung through empty air and then he was looking around curiously above my head. He wanted to know where the ball had gone.

  “Chandrashekhar,” Swaminathan screamed, and there was a great shout of laughter, and William James looked around slowly and his middle stump was out of the ground and lying flat. After that I was surrounded by players patting me and hugging, and when I finally struggled my way through them William James was still staring at his stumps, he turned and looked at me with clear hatred. He pivoted on his heel even as I walked toward him, holding out my hand, and he stalked back toward the pavilion without a word.

  “Doesn’t like to lose,” Ballard said. As we walked off the field, me holding my arm, which was starting to ache, he went on, “Around these parts he’s known as a bit of a hanging judge. But he’ll come around.”

  I shrugged. I didn’t care whether he came around or not.

  Back in the building I shivered again under the cool rush of air, and I went looking for Amanda. This time I noticed a heavy brown door across from the dining room, and when I leaned on it it slid back smoothly into the wall. It was the library, dark and huge, with shelves rising two stories to the ceiling, and ladders here and there. There was a thick carpet underneath, and when I went in the backs of books glinted gold all around. I stood for a while, my hand on the back of a soft upholstered chair, and when I turned back to the door I saw Amanda, lying curled on a long couch, looking very small. I squatted down beside her and touched her cheek, and then I whispered, “Amanda, Amanda.” But she slept on, and when I leaned closer her breath was sour with alcohol, and her hands were holding each other in front of her face. I put a hand on her shoulder and shook her, but her head moved loosely on the couch and after a while I left her alone.

  Outside, as I was shutting the door to the library, I saw William James, and Candy behind him. He had changed into a dark blazer, and as he strode over to me the brass buttons shone in the light from the chandeliers. He reached forward and took my hand.

  “Good game, young fellow.” He was smiling, but his hand was tight on mine, and I could swear I heard a bone crack. When he let go the back of my hand was throbbing, and I put it behind and held on to my shirt to keep from rubbing it.

  “Yes,” I said. “Very.”

  “We’re going home.”

  “Amanda and I were planning to meet some friends for dinner.”

  “I see.” He gave me a long look and then he walked away. Candy waved good-bye from across the room, and I raised my good hand and waved back. I said good-bye then to Swaminathan and the others, and after a while I went outside, where it was getting dark, and I walked out to the pitch. My right arm was aching from the shoulder to the fingertips. It wasn’t that, though, that made my heart afraid, and I stayed outside because there was a breeze and it was soothing.

  “Hallo.”

  It was Ballard. He walked out to me and we stood together for a while. Then he held out something to me, and said, “Do you smoke?”<
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  “No,” I said, but I reached out anyway and took the cigar. He passed me a lighter, and after a while I got the thing lit and we watched the glow on each other’s faces.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Pleasure. Glad you played.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know,” he said, “I was born in India.”

  “Really? Where?”

  “Lucknow. We left when I was very young, maybe five or six. I don’t remember very much.”

  “Yes.”

  “But I remember a little.”

  So we stood out there for a long time and smoked, and our cigars kept going out so we passed each other the lighter, it was very quiet but for the crickets and far away, the birds, the wind smelled sweetly of some flower I didn’t know, and the moon came up suddenly and covered the field in a silver light.

  Later that night Amanda and I drove into the city and we found Tom and Kyrie, and with them White Eagle, they were sitting side by side on lawn chairs in front of the Hokaido, in the rock garden, drinking beer out of cans. Amanda had been quiet and dazed, she had shuddered at the darkness when we had come out of the clubhouse, saying, “But it was just light!” but now she sat cross-legged on the rocks and popped open a beer and started to look less dislocated.

  “We were going to go to NASA,” Tom said. “We were thinking about it.”

  “Why NASA?” I said.

  “Shuttle takeoff tonight,” Kyrie said. “We wanted to see it.”

  “There are no takeoffs from Houston,” Amanda said.