by Damon Galgut
Morgan didn’t follow, even when the boy repeated the exercise the next day. It would have been too obvious, too dangerous, to take this sort of action. But he felt his inertia, then and afterwards. His lust was both humiliating and boring, but it couldn’t easily be quenched—not even by masturbation, rigorously applied.
The heat was conducive to such barren activities. On one afternoon he resorted to self-abuse three times, and still felt frustrated, as well as ashamed. There were days when the whole earth, pinioned under the white-hot sun, was as empty and aimless as Morgan’s mind. He felt a little ill with it, the inside of his mouth and nose dried out, his appetite shrunken. For hours at a time he seemed stupid to himself, even senile, unable to concentrate or remember. At night the sheets on his bed threw off sparks when he moved, and once even gave him a shock. This electricity, coming from nowhere, serving no purpose, was like the sexual charge that crackled around his idleness.
It became worse in May, when Bai Saheba’s child, another girl, was born. For fifteen days after the birth, His Highness had to sleep, with most of his court, in the compound where she lived. Morgan would go there in the evenings and stay the night and, on these journeys to and fro, the sais would cling to the back of the carriage and sing what sounded like love songs under his breath. He was singing to Morgan alone and, when he turned his head to look, the boy would part his lips suggestively and smile. It was intolerable! These images, these sounds, lingered in Morgan’s head through the hot nights that followed.
It was part of the ritual that mother and child were serenaded by an unholy din of fireworks and music, most of it clamorous and sore on the ears. The discord was like an echo of what was roiling inside him, but there was one particular night when he woke at three in the morning to a different sound entirely. Indian singers were accompanied by a lovely and simple harmony, and he fitted on his turban and rejoined the company. Under the brilliant white frieze of stars, he found himself remembering Mr. Godbole, who had sung unexpectedly to him on his previous visit. That moment, as well as this, was both small but exquisite, reminding him of the order that could lift unexpectedly from its opposite.
* * *
His room was flanked by an inner and outer veranda, and on the doorway from the latter a grass mat known as a tattie had been hung, which had to be sprinkled with water, so that the air which passed through it could be kept cool. A month after Morgan’s arrival, his servant Baldeo had come to look after him. As wizened and blackened as ever, still of indeterminate age, Baldeo seemed indifferent to the prospect of being reunited with his old master. Morgan had gone to trouble to arrange his appointment, but none of this effort had softened Baldeo’s feelings; he complained and muttered about every duty, and high on his lists of resentments was keeping the tattie damp.
Now it occurred to Morgan that it might be ideal for everybody if the coolie boy could be given this particular job. He spoke to the overseer downstairs, who managed to send the wrong boy. But after another conversation and a hint to the coolie himself, the next afternoon he appeared at the door, throwing his water.
Morgan waited for a moment when they were alone. Then he went out onto the veranda and pretended to inspect the activity. “No, no,” he said. “That isn’t how you do it.”
“No?”
“Let me show you.”
He drew close and took the cup from him. Then, inexpertly, he demonstrated how the water should be thrown. In the process, he let his wrist rub against the coolie boy’s wrist. It was a tiny contact, but it felt intense enough to strike a spark.
The young man smiled gleamingly.
His voice choked with fear and excitement, Morgan said, “Meet me tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“At seven-thirty. On the road near the guest house.” He couldn’t arrange an assignation at the palace itself. His Highness had told him he was building the palace in memory of his late father, and it would be too large a transgression. “Do you understand?”
“Seven-thirty,” the youth repeated, nodding. There was nothing more to say and after a few more desultory swipes with the water, Morgan went inside, where he was immediately convulsed with guilt. It was one thing to dream and imagine; it was quite another to act, and now he had acted. Or he had made his intentions clear, which was almost as bad. At the same time, inseparable from the sense of sin, he was jangled with anticipation.
Almost immediately, the punishment came. Scarcely ten minutes had passed when he heard a hissing, whispered conversation from the inside corridor:
“The Burra Sahib has given orders to come at night—”
“At night?” A second voice, incredulous.
“Yes, and he will give money—”
Morgan rushed to the door to listen. But the voices, jabbering in excitement, had already drifted away, merging with those of a larger group of workmen who were moving furniture in the State Drawing Room. That bigger conversation took on a note of outrage and he felt sure—he knew—that they were talking about him. The first two voices had been those of the coolie boy and Baldeo, he thought now; he had been undone by his servant, from whom no secrets could be kept.
It was terrible, terrible; everything he most feared was about to happen; he had drawn it down on himself. He had always known this moment would come. Soon afterwards there was a commotion downstairs and, feeling sick with terror, he staggered onto the outside veranda to look. He was in time to see Mr. Chavan, one of the senior clerks, jumping into a bullock cart and moving purposefully off in the direction of Bai Saheba’s house, with one backward accusing glance. He could only be going to report the matter.
The shame was, literally, indescribable; there were no words for a sensation one had never fully experienced until now. He wanted to die, to vanish; he wanted the fastenings to be unpicked so that he could be dismantled. He had been invited here on faith and trust, he had been given this appointment because he was Malcolm’s friend. And now he had brought disgrace not only on himself but on Malcolm too. Everybody would know; whisper would blend into whisper; it would carry, quite possibly, all the way to the heart of his life, in Weybridge. His mother would hear of it! The horror made him lame. How he wished he could spool time backward; how he wished he had never spoken.
There was nothing to do but wait. Despite the intense heat, he felt cold. In his mind he went back to his first visit to Dewas. He’d recently stayed with the Maharajah of Chhatarpur—that eccentric and likeable man who kept his own theatrical troupe of boys to perform his Krishna plays—and on that first evening, Bapu Sahib had shocked Morgan by making mention of this other Maharajah’s tendencies. The remark was something about him being less than a man, and it had been delivered with a smirk and a sneer. It was the facial expression, the tone, that had lingered more than the words, and at the time Morgan had felt disappointed in his new princely acquaintance. He’d thought then that their friendship would be a short one. Things had turned out differently, but the remark came back now with a venomous sting. If His Highness could speak that way—so contemptuously, so dismissively—of another Maharajah, how much more virulent would his disdain be for an inferior, such as Morgan was?
And now here he was, Bapu Sahib, Morgan could hear his carriage arriving downstairs. Perhaps an hour had passed since Mr. Chavan had hurried off on his mission. It was important to behave as he normally did, and he went downstairs to the porch to meet His Highness.
It was immediately plain that the worst had happened. Bapu Sahib’s manner was friendly but remote; there was an underlying cynicism to his friendliness. “Where have you sprung from?” he said in greeting—words that he had never used before.
Morgan muttered in reply.
His Highness strode briskly to a room on the ground floor, not one he usually frequented. This in itself seemed to betoken a shift in relations; perhaps something was about to be said. On the way they passed a boy painting the wainscot, an effete ch
ild who drew the Maharajah’s attention. Pausing briefly, he murmured to himself, “Everywhere . . . I cannot get away from them . . . ”, before marching angrily on.
What could this mean except damnation? Things were just as bad as Morgan had thought. Or perhaps worse: the Maharajah seemed determined to draw out the agony to its fullest extent. Another comment came a little later about intrigues in a neighbouring court:
“What is the use?” His Highness observed bitterly. “You cannot hide like that bird that pushes its head into the sand. You know which bird I mean—what is its name?”
“The ostrich,” Morgan said wretchedly. He knew he was being addressed directly.
“Exactly,” Bapu Sahib agreed. He let the moment linger. “The ostrich.”
But the most hurtful remark came much later, in the evening, before various assembled courtiers. The conversation was brought around by subtle degrees to a discussion of catamites. “I intend to drive all of them out of Dewas,” the Maharajah announced, with a cruel sweep of his hand. “Really, what is the good of such people?”
The other nobles nodded in agreement. Morgan stared at the tips of his feet. At this moment he could only agree with His Highness: there was no good in people like him.
That night he went down to Bai Saheba’s house as usual, to join the gathered throng. He sat at the right hand of his master, who ignored him, and in the faces of the people around him he saw awareness and disrespect.
Then the coolie boy came. Suddenly, among the watchers opposite, he was there, glowering sadly at Morgan. His gaze was filled with mute incomprehension: why had the Sahib not met him as arranged? He had gone, he must have gone, to the road near the guest house at seven-thirty, and waited in vain. Now he was here, staring his reproach across the crowded courtyard.
Morgan ignored him. On previous evenings the boy had sat here in the same courtyard, smiling, pulling down his dhoti to cover his legs, in order to make the Englishman aware of him. But tonight he did not exist—or he existed only as an absence, a blank space unoccupied by desire.
It was the same in the days that followed. As assiduously as Morgan had pursued him, he now un-pursued the boy, deliberately avoiding the rooms where he knew he was working, taking himself elsewhere when the time came for the tattie to be cooled. When he did see his tormentor, the boy always had a half-bemused, half-hopeful expression, still expecting a liaison to be arranged, or perhaps payment of some kind. He had the power to make a scene, so that even his silent waiting figure, loitering in the passage, or outside the garden after sundown, a whitish, accusing outline in the dusk, could strike dread into a soft English heart.
He lasted for four days. Then he went down to Bai Saheba’s compound just after noon. It was unspeakably hot—a good time for this discussion, because fewer people were around. Bapu Sahib was drowsing in a tin-roofed shed with a few unconscious courtiers nearby.
“May I speak to you, Your Highness?” It was the first time since he’d arrived that he’d fallen back on this formal mode of address.
“Yes, of course, speak.”
“I would prefer it to be private, if you don’t mind.”
The Maharajah stirred himself; he pretended to be puzzled. They crossed the courtyard to the shade of a tree and settled themselves at its foot.
Morgan hesitated only a moment. He had rehearsed what he wanted to say in advance and there was no point in delaying. Disgrace gave him a peculiar authority.
“My mind is clear at last,” he announced. “I feel I can now speak. I wasn’t able to before.” He drew a deep breath. “As I think you know, I am in great trouble.”
“Tell me, Morgan. I have noticed you were worried.”
He looked down at the ground, and his attention fastened on a line of ants, disappearing into a hole. This tiny, frantic activity, in the midst of such inertia, consoled him. He said, “I have tried to have carnal intercourse with one of the coolies, and it has become known.”
“With a coolie girl?”
“No, with a man.” His voice cracked, but he brought it under control. “You know about it, and if you agree I think I ought to resign.”
The Maharajah, frowning, straightened a little against the bole of the tree, then collapsed again. “But, Morgan,” he said. “I know nothing about it.”
The white centre of the day ballooned and spread.
“But I beg your pardon, that isn’t possible,” Morgan said.
“Oh, yes, yes, I promise you, this is the first I’ve heard of it.”
Morgan still didn’t believe him. It had been so clear and so certain. He began to ask His Highness about what he’d meant by his various remarks and moods over the previous days. But there were innocent answers to everything. The ostrich, it seemed, was merely a metaphor; the small boy painting the wainscot had irritated simply by being underfoot, nothing more. Gradually, despite his suspicion, Morgan began to realise that he’d made a huge mistake.
How absurd, how foolish he had been! All the signs and portents that he’d read, that he’d felt so sure about, suddenly took on a different, innocuous cast: everything could be explained. There had been no cynical knowledge. There had been no judgement. He had imagined all of it.
And in the same moment he knew that everything he’d feared was now about to come true. Not because it had been discovered, but because he had revealed it. No external agency had brought him low; instead, he had dealt the mortal blow himself. Even in his extremity, the irony wasn’t lost on him.
But Bapu Sahib didn’t seem outraged. In the same kindly, worried tone, he asked, “Why a man and not a woman? Is not a woman more natural?”
“Not in my case. I have no feeling for them.”
“Oh, but then that alters everything. You are not to blame.”
“I don’t know what ‘natural’ is.”
“You are quite right, Morgan. I ought never to have used the word.” Seeing tears well in his Private Secretary’s eyes, he went on hurriedly: “Now don’t worry—don’t worry. My only distress is you did not tell me before. I might have saved you so much pain. May I know all about this coolie now?”
Morgan told everything. He didn’t hold back. In the rush of confession, he volunteered all the tawdry details, including how he had resorted to his dirty trick for relief. And when he’d finished, Bapu Sahib exclaimed, “But you are in a very strong position.”
“Am I?”
“Yes, yes. I was afraid you had copulated, which might have caused difficulties. But you haven’t even kissed him. Now don’t worry.” His voice changed, thickening in collusion. “Only you must always come to me when you are facing problems like these. I would have found you somebody reliable among the hereditary servants and you could have had him quietly in your room.” Seeing Morgan’s expression, he waved a hand. “It’s true, I don’t encourage such people, but it’s entirely different in your case, and you must not masturbate, no, no, that’s awful.”
“What I haven’t said yet,” Morgan told him, “is that I’m so very sorry at having deceived you—”
He felt as if he was reconciling with his father—a father nine years younger than himself—and the emotion squeezed his voice into a sob. Bapu Sahib almost cried, too, but caught himself in time.
“Oh, devil! Don’t do that, Morgan. The only way with a thing like this is to take it laughing.”
Laughter didn’t seem possible in this moment. But the Maharajah was deflecting them away from embarrassment by brooding on possible candidates. “Hmmm, I don’t think you’ve seen that servant of mine, Arjuna. He is mostly at the Holy Temple in the Old Palace—very delicately formed, like a girl. Or there is a man in the kitchens . . . but he’s too old, twenty-eight. Wait, let me think. There is another boy . . . he is a barber, though he does that sort of thing, I believe. But the first thing now is to see that this business with your coolie is safe. I’m sure he meant to do you
no harm.”
* * *
The lightness that took hold of him in the days that followed gave him the illusion of weightlessness; the information his senses carried took on new poignancy. The hot, dry air was beautiful to him. He no longer felt parched and burnt-out by the light. Instead he could detect, deep inside, the impending monsoon. At night there were often electrical storms, great violent displays of wind and lightning, but the rain didn’t fall. And when the clouds blew away, the giant constellation of Scorpio hung brilliantly overhead. Never before had he experienced those cold points of light like shrapnel in his flesh; never had the sky cupped him so tenderly in its huge palm.
But like the promised rains, the Maharajah’s solution didn’t come. Soon after their talk, the servant-boy he’d mentioned drifted in for a visit. But he and Morgan didn’t take to each other: the boy seemed both arrogant and crushed at the same time. When His Highness asked how the meeting had gone, Morgan shook his head.
“You didn’t like him?”
“I’m afraid not, I very much regret . . . ”
Bapu Sahib waved his regret away. He seemed vexed for a moment, but his basic approach to this problem was good-humoured and soon, in a jolly mood, he told Morgan that he’d made enquiries and nobody in the court was aware of what had happened. Better still, the coolie boy was not from Dewas; he came from elsewhere in the Deccan, and would be returning there as soon as building work in the palace was over.
“But now tell me something, Morgan,” he went on. “I have been wondering. These habits of yours. Have you indulged them in other places?”
“Do you mean England? No, it wasn’t possible at home.”
“You have been in Egypt during the War. Did you, perhaps, learn these ways while you were there?”
