The Venus of Konpara

by John Masters

  ‘I do not recognise that,’ she said apologetically, ‘I have not read enough in English.’

  ‘Walter Pater, on the Mona Lisa,’ he said.

  ‘Oh. Perhaps that explains why I cannot really be jealous of Mrs Kendrick. It seems important, but not to Mohan’s love for me, or mine for him. Besides, it is she who has more right to be jealous of me, and yet I know that she is not. She came to the bungalow to see me, full of jealousy. When we had met and looked at each other, there was none - though we both knew everything.’

  Smith said slowly, ‘I do not think any woman in the world will be jealous of you, Rukmini, whatever you do. You do not take, you give. No woman can know you without feeling pride in being of the same sex. You are the apotheosis of woman.’

  ‘Mr Kendrick thinks so,’ she said. ‘I feel his eyes on me when he is sure no-one notices. I feel the turmoil of his heart, hating me and desiring me at the same time. He is a desperate man. If someone does not help him soon . . . ‘ She did not finish the sentence, and Smith said nothing. Charles Kendrick’s tortured impotence was like a miasma hanging over Konpara and all the human relations being formed there. He knew what was in Rukmini’s mind - or, rather, in her deep sense of tragedy and her deeper sympathy with every human need; but there was nothing he could say or do.

  She stirred and said in a changed, more matter-of-fact tone, ‘Have you noticed the names of the places here?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes. None of them are quite ordinary. The pit’s real name is Devi-ka-garbha, ‘the womb of the goddess.’ The rock at the end of the Dobehari Ridge is actually called Indra’s Rock, but the Rainbow Fall here -’ he indicated the splashing water beside them - ‘is also connected with India, for - ’

  ‘Indra-dhanus,’ she said, using the Hindi word for ‘rainbow.’ ‘Indra’s Bow. And Dobehari means ‘noon,’ the time of the height of the sun, Indra’s sun.’

  Smith said, ‘I have tried to work out some connection between them, but have not succeeded yet.’

  ‘Nor I,’ she said. ‘But I think we should not forget these names. They were not given to the places unless, in the minds of those who named them, they were linked with Indra ... and so perhaps with Indra’s heirs, the Suvalas.’

  ‘I agree,’ Smith said. ‘We shall go wrong in our search if we try to think of it solely as a scientific problem.’

  ‘Yet,’ she said eagerly, ‘this statue was not made by a scientist, but by an artist An Indian artist’

  ‘Aryan or Dravidian?’ he asked, smiling.

  She laughed lightly, then became serious.’You remind me. The Buddha which was discovered this afternoon has nothing to do with Indra, so it cannot belong here in Konpara.’

  Smith said, ‘That is what I have been thinking, but hardly daring to accept’

  ‘It is so,’ she said decisively. ‘We may be able to prove it... One day in January my troupe was performing at a little village below Deori. The snake charmer wished to visit a shrine in the jungle, and I went with him. You should go there, at once. Do you know the Gurgaon Steps?’

  ‘On the Deori River, about twenty miles below the city?’

  ‘Yes. Climb the escarpment on the right bank immediately opposite the steps. A footpath runs along the top. Go east and after four or five miles look out for a very overgrown path leading down to the right, away from the river. Another two miles or so and there is a small, deserted shrine in the jungle. That is the place.’

  Smith said ‘What am I to look for?’

  ‘You will know.’

  He glanced at the sky. He would start at once. And it would be a good idea to take someone with him. Mohan - he was the only one not deeply involved, in a personal way, with the search for the Venus. Perhaps this would draw him in, and so closer to Rukmini.

  He told her of his thought, and she said at once, ‘Oh, yes!’ and leaned forward and kisssed him. Then they set out walking fast, for Cheltondale.

  Chapter 11

  Mohan ran through the jungle at Smith’s heels. It was very hot even at this hour, a little after four in the morning. Soon full daylight would begin to spread over the hills across the river.

  Smith set a terrific pace. Mohan wished he had not suggested running, confident in his ability to run Smith off his feet, and looking forward to the chance of doing it. Now he would like a rest, but his pride kept his mouth shut, while the breath, whistled in his nostrils and his lungs were ready to burst. He kept his eyes fixed on the small of Smith’s back. Smith and Rukmini had been alone at the pool together. His grandfather would have invited Smith to a feast and put ground glass in his food. His father would have had Rukmini’s nose and breasts cut off. What should he do? Institute, legal proceedings in a proper English manner? For alienation of affection of a concubine? Challenge Smith to a duel? The sights of an imaginary, rifle, aimed at that back in front of him, slowly came into focus. The imaginary trigger was under his finger.

  Smith stopped, breathing slow and deep. ‘This must be the place where we turn off,’ he said.

  The dawn was upon them now, and they stood near the edge of the escarpment. To the left the land fell away in a thousand-foot sweep into a broad valley of dense jungle, To the right the escarpment curved off into a tangle of gorges, cliffs, and flat-topped kopjes of traprock. The shrine was somewhere down there. Smith said, ‘If Rukmini’s suspicion is true, there might be a man or two guarding the shrine to discourage investigations. We’d better go carefully, though I’m afraid we’d have to be ghosts to go unseen if it’s a Gond on guard.’

  ‘But why should... ?’ Mohan began. He stopped, for Smith had raised a finger to his lip and was staring over his shoulder at something behind him. Mohan turned quickly.

  A tiger came up the steep escarpment out of the valley. It was a large male, and carried a full-grown buffalo cow in its mouth, its jaws meeting in the middle of the cow’s back. The tiger trotted slowly up the steep slope, its head raised high, so that only the buffalo’s head and forelegs trailed along the ground on one side, and its hind legs and tail on the other. Mohan felt a queer tightening in the pit of his stomach. He had seen tiger once or twice, as a child, when he had been taken out in the howdah of an elephant on a formal hunt in the valley. From up there the tigers had looked like no more than big cats that had strayed into the tall tiger grass by mistake.

  This was different. He and Smith were strangers and this was no cat but a god who owned the escarpment, the jungle, and the rising dawn. Mohan’s muscles ached with a kind of puny exhaustion as the tiger gathered its hind legs and scrambled up a steep rock, the half-ton buffalo cow firm in his jaws. Now he was on the same level as the two humans, and he saw them. A deep rumbling roar grew in his chest and Mohan’s legs jerked. He wanted to run, above all he needed to run, hurl himself over the escarpment and down, as fast as muscle and acrid fear could take him, to the hazy blue valley below. Smith’s arm was on his and the fingers tightened slightly. The tiger, motionless, the buffalo held steady, stared at them for a long time. The subterranean rumble slowly died away in his throat, and he turned and walked into the jungle, continuing his journey.

  Mohan found his whole body shaking. Smith stared after the tiger and, when all sound had died away, said in a low voice, ‘We have been lucky.’

  Mohan wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. ‘If he’d come for us...’ he began.

  Smith shook his head. ‘Lucky to see him,’ he said. ‘In our civilisation it is the most we can hope for. In older ones there can be a closer relation between man and the other animals. The Gonds, for instance... they can still understand tigers.’

  ‘But they kill tigers sometimes,’ Mohan said ‘And tigers kill them.’

  Smith said, ‘I do not mean anything against the laws of nature, anything magical. I mean that they can live on that plane of life, like deer or antelope. Tigers kill those, too - but they understand each other.’

  He turned down to the right, moving as fast as the overgrown state of the trail would allow. Mohan followe
d, and in the exertion soon stopped trembling.

  Forty minutes later, the sun a line of yellow fire along the crest of the eastern hills, they were working carefully through dense jungle in the bottom of a shallow valley. Twice Smith stopped and bent to examine the ground.

  At last he pointed, and Mohan saw the tumbledown shrine. The roof was still in place, broken in one corner. The stone platform beneath had been wrecked by ten generations of’ neglect, and torn up by the roots of trees. A loose, fallen arm of creeper, two inches thick, that had recently been cut off with an axe at the lower end, lay across the platform. That was all - that and a vaguely man-shaped discoloration of the back wall, and the clear marks where stone feet had stood, heels to the back wall. A statue had stood here.

  Smith examined the area for a hundred yards in all directions, and returned, saying, ‘Nothing. And I think that no one is here.’

  Mohan said, ‘What does it mean?’

  Smith said, ‘It means that some people went to a lot of trouble to move the statue that was here. And they did it in secret. It means, as Rukmini told me at the beginning, that we six who are searching for the Venus of Konpara are not working in a vacuum. Another world is observing us, just as we observed the tiger...’ He shook his head and said with sudden vehemence, ‘And, like the tiger, if we were not so cut off, so isolated in our civilisation, we should do more than see. We would understand . . . We’ll rest, down by the river, and then go back.’

  Chapter 12

  At the Buddha Tumulus Charles Kendrick kept a suspicious eye on Rukmini. She must know where Mohan and Smith had gone, but was pretending she didn’t. She ought to have told him about their absence before he rode down to Deori this morning. As it was he knew nothing until he had returned half an hour ago.

  Kendrick stood in the shadow of the Konpara Cliffs; Rukmini knelt beside the trench out there in the sun. Foster stood in the trench. Beyond them, the bodies of the labourers shone dark and wet as the picks swung.

  Kendrick saw Mohan and Smith first. They were walking fast along the cart track. He watched them suspiciously. They had recently washed and changed, but Mohan looked tired. They must have gone a long way. By heaven, suppose Smith were in Prithwi’s pay? He had had all the opportunity in the world to kill Mohan... Better stop thinking like that, or he’d be suspecting everybody. Why not? How many friends did he have in the world?

  Rukmini saw them coming then, and ran to greet them. Kendrick went out to join the group. Before he could ask a question Foster scrambled out of the trench, calling, ‘Look here! There’s something funny here... Oh, Smith, you back? Well, listen. You know you left a note that Shahbaz was to get the men on to digging straight down to find the depth of the soil before we reached bedrock, here at the tumulus?’

  ‘Yes,’ Smith said.

  Foster was hot, dirty, and excited. ‘The villagers’ trench was two feet deep. After another three feet we came to debris, pieces of rock of various sizes - that stuff.’ He indicated the pile of stones. ‘Most of them have got the marks of chisels on them. The marks are worn by age, and by the earth chemicals, but you can’t mistake them.’

  He showed them a stone in his hand. The stone, red-brown in colour, bore a long broad score on one side. Smith turned it over; the other aide was a clean break, the rough grain of the fractured surface clearly showing.

  Foster said, ‘This is red sandstone. I thought first it came off the cliffs’ - he jerked his head, indicating the cliffs - ‘but it can’t have. Because these cliffs are traprock.’

  Smith said, ‘Very interesting. Well discuss it in a minute... We too have made a discovery.’

  Mohan cut in. ‘Somebody put the Buddha in the earth here recently. It came from a shrine thirty miles away.’

  Kendrick’s nerves began to tingle. He must control himself, must control himself. ‘Are you sure of this, Smith?’ he asked in a steady voice.

  ‘Morally, yes,’ Smith said. The stripe of discoloration on the statue is as near proof as we shall get It was caused by a creeper that had grown across it, which had to be cut off before the statue could be moved.’

  ‘I thought that earth came off easily,’ Foster muttered. ‘But everything was wet...’

  Mr Kendrick said, ‘You realise that this theory carries wide implications, Smith?’

  ‘I am aware of them,’ Smith said.

  ‘Someone’s trying to lead us up the garden path,’ Foster exploded.

  ‘Or to help us,’ Rukmini said. ‘That is possible. It has led us to a new discovery here - these chipped stones.’

  ‘How can it help us to attempt to deceive us?’ Kendrick said. ‘Where’s Huttoo Lall?’

  ‘He’s here,’ Foster said. The headman had suddenly materialised, though no one seemed to have seen him coming.

  Kendrick turned on him. ‘What’s the meaning of this? Where are those men who claimed to have discovered the Buddha here? Bring them at once. They must be the criminals.’

  The headman’s face showed great distress. ‘It is possible, sahib,’ he said. ‘But - with respect - not certain... Originally the trench was dug to one foot. The criminals, whoever they are, could have brought the statue here, dug down a further foot or two in one place, laid the statue in the hole, and replaced the earth to the original depth.’

  Foster said, ‘They’d have to know that the channel was going to be deepened to two feet, and pretty soon.’

  The headman said, ‘We were running water through the channel for a few days last week, just after Smith Sahib came, when it was still at one foot’

  Jim Foster said, ‘That’s why the dampness and looseness of the earth round the statue didn’t make me suspicious.’

  Mr Kendrick interrupted. This is a serious matter, Huttoo Lall. I expect your full co-operation in bringing the culprits to book.’

  The headman said, ‘I will do my best, for this causes shame and disgrace to all of us. But, sahib, it is an act of madmen. The process of reason cannot always catch the mad.’

  Mr Kendrick said, ‘Return to Konpara and start inquiries at once. I want to see those men who found the Buddha myself - and anyone else who can throw any light On the matter - as soon as you can find them.’ He turned to the others, ‘If you will be good enough to come to Southdown now. These matters had better be discussed in private.’

  He led the way along the track, walking fast with head bent to avoid conversation, his mind racing. Things were happening without his consent, without even his knowledge - Mohan going off in the middle of the night, unknown men bringing the Buddha from far away and planting it under the Konpara Cliffs. He must regain control, or he would be lost.

  At Southdown they gathered in the drawing-room. Barbara joined them, unbidden, from her workroom. Charles Kendrick faced Smith. ‘Why was the Buddha placed where it was found? That is the first question we must answer.’

  ‘To earn the reward,’ Foster said at once.

  ‘The people of these hill villages are very honest about money,’ Rukmini said. ‘That wasn’t the reason. Did they do it to lead us to the tumulus? Because someone thinks we will find more there?’

  Smith shook his head. ‘Why couldn’t they just say so? No, I’m afraid it’s the opposite - to lead us away from the cricket pitch.’

  ‘But why?’ Mohan asked.

  No one answered. Very interesting, Kendrick thought. Somebody knows that there is something near Cheltondale, and does not want it to be found. He said, ‘The next question is -- who?’

  Smith said, ‘That will be almost impossible to answer until we know why, and vice versa. I don’t think that Huttoo Lall will learn anything in his investigations. If he does, of course, it will be easy. But supposing he is met by silence, ignorance?’

  Barbara Kendrick said suddenly, ‘That will be it. Darkness and silence. It will be like night in the jungle, when you know something is moving, but not what, or where, or why.’

  Kendrick found a tolerant smile, and said, ‘We had better leave that subject unti
l after Huttoo Lall has reported to me.’

  Smith said, ‘Deceit, with intent - what intent, we don’t know - against a person or persons unknown. Remanded for further investigation.’

  ‘Which means,’ Rukmini said, ‘until something else happens.’

  Smith said, ‘I would like to make one suggestion, sir - that we walk very gently in our investigations. We don’t know what’s at the bottom of this mystery, but I have a feeling that our only hope is to gain the confidence of whoever is concerned. If it’s fear that’s making them act, and I suspect it is, then fear of us won’t prevent them, but understanding might.’ ‘Of course,’ Kendrick said coldly. ‘I do not need instructions in the handling of natives.... The next point is, what is the meaning of today’s discoveries in the tumulus - the debris, the worked stone?’

  Jim Foster said, ‘That stuff is red sandstone. If it’s from this area at all, it must come from south of the Deori River. The river’s the dividing line, pretty near exactly. Basaltic trap on the north side - the tumulus, the Konpara cliffs. Sedimentary overlay of red sandstone on this side, the south - the Konpara and Dobehari ridges, and the pit.’

  ‘How much of this worked stone debris is there?’ Smith asked.

  Foster said, ‘It’ll take a lot more digging to be sure, but we can guess. I think the whole tumulus is made of debris, from a depth of five feet on down. The top five feet is soil, deposited by rain and so on.’

  ‘How far down?’ Smith asked.

  Foster said, ‘We don’t know yet - but suppose the whole place was flat whenever that debris was dumped there. Since then, five feet of soil have been deposited on top of the dump of debris. So there’ll also be five feet on top of the original level of the earth outside the dump. So the height of the tumulus above the rest of the ground - six feet - is the actual height of the debris that originally made it’