by John Masters
The man spoken to turned, nodded, and said, ‘I don’t know. She makes my loins tighten. So young! She is like our southern girls before they are blessed by children. Like a boy almost.’
Watching closely, William saw that a pair of travellers, on the far side of the speaker, turned to eye Hussein. One of the pair, a small man in his forties, with large bat ears and a sharp face, moved unobtrusively closer. After a minute William heard the familiar low tones. ‘Greetings, brother Ali.’ Then, in an ordinary voice, ‘She is too expensive for the likes of us, brother. Two rupees.’
Hussein laughed. ‘I must wait then, and curb my appetites. That’s what the maulvi says: “What the harlot gets, the servant of Allah loses.” Perhaps there are as lickerous girls farther north.’
He turned away as he spoke and moved up the street, William close at his side.
Everyone was talking, not loudly or in excitement, but giving out a continuous clatter of human voices. Lights shone everywhere, lined in rows along the balconies on the second storeys, grouped on the sills and projecting lintels of the doorways, in ranks by the fronts of the stores and houses. Glancing carelessly over his shoulder. William saw the lake and floating squadrons of lights on it, but he could not see the men who were the brothers of Ali. Up a side lane lights outlined the black loom of the local rajah’s castle, for they were in prince’s territory now.
He walked slowly with Hussein, and they talked as everyone around them talked. In this full-smelling noisy place he lost the last traces of his self-consciousness in his rôle. As he talked the right words came easily into his mouth, and as he walked his hands and feet and shoulders moved as Gopal the weaver’s should.
A high-pitched voice close behind him said, ‘Where is there a good place to eat in this town? We’re hungry.’
William twisted his head. The speaker was one of the pair from the harlot’s shop—the little one with the bat ears. The other was darker and taller.
‘Haven’t you eaten already?’ he said.
Hussein cut in, ‘I believe there’s a Mohammedan eating-house up this street, but I haven’t been here for some time, and things change.’
‘They do, more’s the pity,’ Bat Ears said. ‘Well, I’m a Hindu, and I see your friend here is too’—he jerked his head toward William—‘but I don’t think you’ll worry about that, will you? We won’t. Is this the place you mean?’
He led the way, as if he knew it, down a dark alley, through a half-open door, and into a dingy room. The four of them squatted on the floor in a far corner. The owner of the eating-house came and slammed down rice and lentils and cold curried potatoes before them, all mixed on brass plates. It was dark in the room, and the few other people there ate without talking.
When they had finished, Bat Ears leaned back on his hams and picked his teeth. His dark, ruminant eyes surveyed them from head to toe. Finally he said, ‘My name is Piroo. This is Yasin Khan.’ His tall companion smiled; he had a luminous, priestly calm and always moved slowly. Piroo of the bat ears continued without emphasis, ‘What are your names? Why are you not with a party?’
If he had been a yard away William would have sworn the man was not talking, just picking his teeth.
Hussein answered, ‘I’m Hussein. This is Gopal. He sprained his wrist. He couldn’t—work. He’s not quite better yet. Our party went without us.’
Again no one spoke. Piroo looked at them; all the expression had gone from his eyes, leaving them flat and lightless. Yasin Khan turned something over in his mind. William felt that of the two he was the most important, and waited anxiously.
Yasin Khan carefully put his thorn down on the earth floor. ‘We have some merchandise. Our Jemadar must decide whether he wants you, though. Come with us.’ He rose to his feet.
Each of the four paid his own share of the meal. They stepped out into the alley, turned left, reached the street, turned left again, and strolled down the hill. In the open country they did not speak to one another but loudly chanted a war song in unison, stopping every few minutes to shout together to frighten away wild beasts that might be following them. It was very dark.
A mile outside the town they came to a grove of trees, such as in India are planted everywhere for shade and for the comfort of travellers. The glimmer of white tents showed that some of the people staying here were rich. Several fires burned cheerfully, and men crouched round them, wide awake and talking. Piroo seemed to shrink in stature as he came to the edge of the firelight. Followed by the others, he crept mouselike to the centre of the grove and said to a man by the fire, ‘Lord, is your master the Nawab back yet?’
The servant growled, ‘What’s it matter to you?’
‘Nothing, nothing, lord, except that here are two of our friends—good, honest, strong men, who wish to join the Nawab’s following.’
The servant spat into the flames. ‘Every stray dog in the country attaches himself to my master’s train.’ He glared at William. ‘You needn’t think you’ll get any scraps of food from us, though.’
William joined his hands in wordless servility.
The servant said, ‘All right, all right! Don’t hang around here.’
William and Hussein touched their hands rapidly six or seven times to their foreheads and scrambled away. Piroo caught up with them. ‘We sleep over there.’ He pointed to a large isolated tree in the far corner of the encampment. ‘Find a place near us. There is room.’ Then, softly, ‘The Jemadar of our band will come in the night to you.’
William and Hussein lay down at once and rolled themselves into the thin homespun blankets each carried slung across his shoulder. The sounds of the camp died down, to rise again twice more as groups of travellers returned, singing and shouting, from the town. The Nawab came in drunk. They heard him yelling a bawdy song while his grumpy servant tried to put him to bed in his tent. They heard a shrill, brief curtain lecture, and knew thereby that at least two of the Nawab’s wives were on the road with him. At last all was quiet, and William fell into a fitful reverie.
He liked the roughness of the blanket under his chin. This life was real and complete to him; in these past few days he had become a part of the road, as much in place as its wayside trees and wandering beggars. The road itself moved, carrying him forward, unwinding a tapestry of India, outstripping the dusty, leaden-footed folios of paper that loaded him down in his office. Here on the road he knew people, and knew himself, and was a full man. He would be happy to spend the rest of his life on the road.
He thought of Mary, and the daughter she was going to bear him, and turned over restlessly. He was not here to enjoy the road but to seek out the Deceivers who ruled it.
On the last mist-devilled borders of consciousness he saw the tree overhead freighted with swinging bodies, and one of them was his own. From the height of a branch he looked down. He swung gently, and the land spread wider under his eyes, and the spacious fullness of power filled him and throbbed in his dangling wrists. The noose did not hurt his neck. He was a great man, and all travellers passing below looked up to him as a man, and bowed to him.
He awoke with a start and a small cry in his throat. A voice murmured in his ear, ‘Lie still. Is it indeed Gopal? After all these years? I am Khuda Baksh, now Jemadar of a band. Look!’
William peered up in the gloom at the outlines of a thin face and a small dark beard. He lifted up his arms automatically and said, ‘My friend!’ and hoped desperately that Hussein would say something. The Jemadar bent down and hugged him as he lay, pressing his beard into William’s face from the right and the left. William rolled over, and the Jemadar lay down beside him, holding one of his hands. Hussein did not speak.
The Jemadar said, ‘Twelve years, isn’t it? And you were a young man. What happened to you?’
William licked his lips. ‘Let’s talk on the road when we get a chance. We have so much to remember.’ He squeezed the Jemadar’s fingers. ‘But tell us how things stand here, so that we can play our part.’
‘You’re right, as usual. Yo
u always had a sound head.’ The Jemadar’s white teeth flashed three inches from William’s face. ‘Attend. I’m the Jemadar of the band. Piroo buys the sugar. Yasin Khan is the priest. They are our officers. We have a mixed Hindu and Mohammedan crowd. In this encampment here, now, there are nine of us and eleven beetoos …’
The Jemadar spoke rapidly, using many words of the Deceivers’ own language. William understood most, but not all, of what was said. Since leaving Madhya, Hussein had spoken mostly in this language to him. A beetoo was an outsider, an ordinary person, anyone not a Deceiver; just as Yasin Khan’s reference to ‘merchandise’ in the eating-house meant ‘travellers.’
The Jemadar continued, ‘There are four more of us on the road in front, whom we shall overtake the day after tomorrow. And six more coming up behind. I’m dropping off one of the men to tell those six to move faster, so that they also will come up with us the day after tomorrow—except the messenger, of course. He must not appear again. With you two that’ll make twenty-one for the job, against eleven. There’s a good killing ground—the Jemadar used the code word bhil—‘on this road two days’ march from here. Maybe we’ll do it there. Maybe the day after. There’s no great hurry.’
Hussein had talked like this sometimes, preparing him for what he would hear. But the thing itself, put out in matter-of-fact sentences, chilled the ground under William’s blanket and dried his lips. He muttered, ‘That is all clear.’
The Jemadar said, ‘Yasin told me about your wrist. You’ll let me know when you can work again, won’t you? What of your friend here?’
Hussein was awake. He said, ‘Strangler, second grade, nineteen expeditions, seventy-four, fit for duty.’
‘Good.’ The Jemadar rose and bent over William. ‘By our Kali, I’m glad to see you! There’s disaster in the air this season. I heard a rumour that two parties going south to a rendezvous lost their pick-axes.’ He shivered, squeezed William’s hand, and was gone.
Hussein muttered, ‘You got through that well. And you are Gopal now!’
William pulled his blanket completely over his head in the Indian manner. The suffocating cold under it clogged his throat.
Hussein’s numerous hints at the demon behind the curtain began to take shape. There was no clarity yet. Words were not clear, not spoken in daylight. But the truth was not in clarity. The truth was a bearded man lying beside him in the dark and whispering of death in an old, secret tongue.
Hussein knew the language well. He had been a Deceiver—‘nineteen expeditions, seventy-four.’ Seventy-four? Seventy-four. William ground his teeth together. It was impossible to understand Hussein or to trust him. Or not to trust him.
Beetoo—an ordinary person, hence, one about to die. He began to think of the man with the aching loins who had admired the young harlot in the window. He had seemed a pleasant enough fellow, cheerful and not too well off. If he was here, he was about to die. The Nawab whom William had not seen was here, and therefore about to die. The noises he had made on his return painted him so that his character stood out. He was youngish—from his voice; happily irreligious—or why should he defy the commands of his Prophet and drink strong wine? good to his people—the sullen note in the servant’s voice had changed to one of fatherly indulgence while he was putting his master to bed. And they were about to die, master and servant, killed by William Savage.
He was not going to use knife or rope or rumal on them. He was going to murder them with his voice, by not using it to say a word of warning. A shadow cast forward from that coming moment on to his spirit must have sent the vision of himself hanging by the neck. For the travellers, he was as much Death as the stranglers were. Back there in Madhya he had thought of this, but it was not like his anticipations. It was Death. What had Mary understood—everything or nothing?
‘A band of six murderers …’ Six? He remembered Hussein’s little laugh and stifled a groan at his own stupidity. This was so powerful it would need a squadron of cavalry to crush it. More—several squadrons. And the squadrons could do nothing unless a spy saw all, and remembered, and guided them.
Shivering in the three o’clock cold, the compulsion grew strong in him to run out in the grove and shout, ‘Save yourselves! These men are murderers!’
But he did not know, except for the three officers—Jemadar Khuda Baksh and Yasin Khan and Piroo—which would be murderers and which victims. If he shouted, everyone would yell and everyone run. The beetoos would run, but they could not escape death, because it was everywhere—four ahead, six behind, how many more ahead again?—and himself.
He could not lie still against the prickling intensity of his thoughts, and the leaves and tiny twigs crackled under him as he shifted restlessly. Hussein muttered, ‘Lie still, fool!’
The epithet stung him. He was a fool, and he could not afford to be. He must harden his heart. Tonight he would have to carry what he had learned in his head. Tomorrow it would go down on the water-thin sheets of paper in his scrip. Once a week he would bury the papers under a tree and mark the trunk. Everything would be there—names, minute descriptions, past histories and future plans, routes travelled, methods of working. Under the marked trees would lie such a wealth of evidence that no one, not Mr. Wilson, not the Governor-General, could ignore it. No one, ever again, would call him a fool.
In Madhya the myriad lights of Dewali twinkled along the streets. Sher Dil was a Mohammedan and did not allow any idolatrous lights on the bungalow itself, but the grooms and the tire-woman and the gardeners and the other servants had ringed their quarters, roof and floor, and made the compound a smoky labyrinth of gnomish lights.
In the bungalow Mr. Wilson stood in front of the fire-place in the drawing-room, his hands clasped behind his back. A log fire burned in the grate and warmed him. He twisted his fingers together, clenching and unclenching them, his head bent a little forward. Mary sat in a chair opposite him, a piece of sewing on her lap.
Mr. Wilson said, ‘Mary, you promise me you do not know where he has gone.’
Mary did not look up. ‘I have no idea where he is, Daddy.’ She bit off the end of a thread and pushed it carefully through the eye of the needle.
‘But—but you do not seem to care.’
She kept her head down. ‘I care, Daddy. I don’t have to burst into tears and have hysterics to care, do I? That won’t help.’
Mr. Wilson brought his hands forward and smashed his right fist into his left palm with sudden violence. ‘He is mad! He was under no disgrace. You heard what I said—you need not imagine that I failed to notice the open door.’ He gained control of himself. For a moment he seemed inclined to emphasize that he was an Agent to the Governor-General, but he looked at her, saw his daughter, and said quietly, ‘Do you think that he has done away with himself?’
Mary began to cry when her father changed the tone of his voice and did not answer.
Mr. Wilson shook his heavy head and looked out at the beautiful Indian lights, which floated so mysteriously through the raw night, though never moving. His face was grey and his eyes tired. He had ridden from Sagthali in triple stages, foundering two horses, after the incredible rumour reached him. He said, ‘We will return to Sagthali tomorrow. Then, if you insist, you can wait with me as long as—until… The poor fellow! I fear the worst.’
Mary kept her head down still. ‘I’m not coming to Sagthali, Daddy. ‘I’m staying here.’
Mr. Wilson exploded again. ‘You are not! Think of your baby!’ He looked at her. No sign of her pregnancy showed: it wouldn’t, of course—a first baby and not due for five months yet. She was very beautiful now. To clinch the matter he said, more calmly, ‘You cannot stay, because I have ordered George Angelsmith here. He will arrive tomorrow or the next day. The affairs of Khapa can wait for a new Collector. Here they cannot.’
‘I’m going to stay until my baby is born,’ Mary said quietly.
‘You cannot, Mary. Do not be ridiculous! What will people say if you live here alone with George Angelsmith.
Your poor mother——’
‘I am going to stay, Daddy. William may expect me to be here. From Madhya I can’t hear people’s gossip in Sagthali—and I don’t care, either.’
‘But Angelsmith——’
‘Mr. Angelsmith will not worry me,’ Mary said, stitching busily, the needle clicking against her thimble, her head bent.
Mr. Wilson was filled with a frustration he had not known since her mother left India to die. It had been frequent then, and just as mysterious. It was something to do with women, something to do with the baby, perhaps, and he could not be expected to understand. The power of his personality, the power of his office, became tangled and useless in his hands. He did not say another word but stalked heavily out of the room.
When he was gone Mary’s needle hand stopped its steady shuttling. She sat still, not moving hand or finger or head or eyes, seeming not to breathe.
Chapter Fifteen
The Nawab sang through his nose as he rode, his weak, handsome face altering with every moment. William and Hussein walked together, close on the offside of the Nawab’s horse, ready to run his errands and applaud his singing. The grove by Jalpura lay two marches behind them, the sun was low on their left, and the road ahead twisted by many channels through rock-strewn grassy jungle. Ridges of basalt rose up on either side, set back a little distance, for the valley floor was half a mile wide. A small stream meandered back and forth, accompanying the pathway and the travellers north. In places it gurgled beside the track, in places ran along the other side of the valley; for three or four hundred yards it would run level, slow and deep; then at a fault it would plunge over a ledge and for the next half-mile scamper down in angry shallows, turning the rocks in its bed slimy brown from the deposit of the soil it held in suspension.
The various groups, walking and riding, which composed the whole party of travellers, were now well spread out. In the mornings they started in a close bunch, like so many courtiers surrounding the Nawab’s horse. As the day wore on, and men and animals grew tired, they straggled. The party had increased somewhat in size too, in spite of the one young fellow who had stayed behind in Jalpura for another round with the bazaar harlots, he’d said. This midday someone had recognized an acquaintance among four travellers resting at the wayside. The four had joined the column to the usual accompaniment of curses and grumbles from the Nawab’s old servant. The Nawab himself had waved his hand largely in welcome.
