The Venus of Konpara

by John Masters

  Smith said, I’ll come down early tomorrow, and we’ll see what the three of us can do on the platform.’

  ‘I shall go out after the tigress,’ Mr Kendrick said. A thought seemed to strike him suddenly. ‘Ah, we must all put off work, even tiger hunting, until the day after tomorrow. I had almost forgotten. Tomorrow is the day of the cricket match, Mohan Singh’s XI against the Gentlemen of Saugor, down in Deori.’

  Mohan said shortly, ‘I cancelled it a week ago. We have more important things to do than play cricket’ ‘You should have told me,’ Mr Kendrick said angrily. ‘I’m sorry,’ Mohan said. ‘I forgot’

  Chapter 16

  The following day Smith reached the bungalow at eight in the morning. Rukmini flew out to the verandah to greet him. When they came in Mohan saw that Smith had already been at work, probably since dawn.

  Smith sat down and. accepted a cap of tea. After drinking, he looked at Mohan, and said, ‘Have you thought to wonder who was killed yesterday?’

  ‘It was a coolie,’ Mohan said, puzzled. ‘Not a Konpara man. One of the Nagpur coolies Foster brought in - the ones who live in the coolie camp.’

  Rukmini said, ‘Ah, what a fool I am! What were they doing up there?’

  Smith nodded. ‘That’s it. Those people, under Ahmed, were returning to the coolie camp from work at the west end of the pit - somewhere west of the scaffolding. I’m as slow-witted as any, because I’ve seen them going back nearly every evening, passing under the scaffold, and I’ve never thought to wonder what they were doing, until now.’

  ‘I know!’ Mohan said suddenly. ‘They’ve been digging trenches in the floor of the pit, directly under Indra’s Rock. I saw them, the second evening we were looking for the bats. A week ago.’ He remembered well. He had heard a coolie woman’s voice; and, a little later, Barbara Kendrick had come to him.

  Rukmini said, ‘I think we shall have to ask Mr Foster.’

  Smith said, ‘I took the liberty of inviting him to come here at half-past eight. I think he’s here now.’

  The major-domo announced, ‘Foster Sahib.’ The contractor clumped in, his brows set, the red hairs thick and wet on his forearms. He too had been at work.

  ‘You wanted to talk to me?’ he asked Mohan, with barely controlled belligerence.

  Smith said, ‘It was my idea, Jim. I wondered whether the excavations your people are doing under Indra’s Rock might have anything to do with our search.’

  ‘I thought that was it,’ Foster said. ‘Some busybody been telling you about it, eh? Well, it’s my mineral rights. I’ve got a right to look for minerals, haven’t I, under the contract?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Mohan said hastily. He wanted to make the fool understand that there was no quarrel between them.

  ‘I was looking for iron ore,’ Foster said. ‘Thought there might be a trace. There isn’t . .‘ He searched in the breast pocket of his shirt and drew out two small flat objects. ‘But they did find these. Two, three days ago.’

  Mohan turned the objects over carefully in his hand, while Smith and Rukmini bent to examine them. They were about three inches square, greenish in colour, and bore a design in high relief. The design on one included, across the top, some marks that might have been writing, and, below, the figure of a naked woman. She had a wasp waist, heavy hips, huge round breasts, and an exaggerated sexual cleft. The second object, otherwise similar, carried the device of a tree, a three-headed semi-human being under it, and an unmistakable hump-backed Indian bull.

  ‘They’re soapstone,’ Foster said. ‘No value.’

  Smith felt the pieces carefully between his fingers. ‘A form of soapstone,’ he said. ‘Steatite. See the holes in each end? These were brooches. I’ve seen something like them before - Assyrian seals of 3000 B.C.’

  Foster said, ‘The only other thing we’ve found is bones. Thousands of bones. So old that most of them turn to powder when they’re exposed to the air.’

  Mohan leaned forward. Why on earth had Foster said nothing about that? Rukmini’s eyes warned him to hold his tongue.

  Smith said, ‘I think we’d better have a look at the site, if you can spare the time to show us.’

  ‘Of course I can,’ Foster said. ‘Would have shown you before if I hadn’t thought it was a waste of your time.’

  Fifteen minutes later, having climbed down the scaffolding to the floor of the pit, they were winding in single file along a narrow trail through dense scrub. Soon Foster stopped and they gathered round him. ‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘I always wondered whether this reddish soil might be iron ore. So finally I put some fellows on to find out. The coolies have been digging trenches across this hump, and bringing me samples of the soil. Nothing doing, and they didn’t like finding the bones. I was going to stop today, anyway.’

  None of the scrub had been cleared. There were a few small random holes and two trenches running under the trees at the base of the pit wall. Mohan noticed that all the work lay in the semicircular area of a flat-topped hump, where the level of the pit floor stood several feet higher than elsewhere.

  ‘Smith’ he said with sudden excitement, ‘this is another tumulus!’

  ‘Very like,’ Smith said. ‘A little smaller, not quite so high.’ He glanced into a trench, Mohan beside him. Near the bottom, about five feet down, the colour of the soil changed sharply from reddish to pale grey. Here and there the shape of bones was visible, but not the substance, in the manner that burned ash holds its shape on the end of a cigar.

  Smith said, ‘The bones are about the same distance down from the present surface as the stone debris is in the Buddha Tumulus. We don’t know that the rate of soil deposit would be the same in both places, but the conditions are similar. They’re both under the north wall of a cliff, and each cliff is about a hundred feet high - the Konpara Cliffs there, the pit wall here.’ He bent back his head and stared up the face of the wall. ‘The centre of the tumulus appears to be directly under Indra’s Rock.’

  Rukmini said, ‘The. bones, Mr Foster - do they cover the whole of the tumulus, at that level?’

  Foster nodded, ‘As far as we can tell. In both trenches, at five feet, there are bones. I thought it might be a cemetery of some kind. To tell you the truth, that’s why I haven’t said anything about it, in case Mr Kendrick told me I wasn’t to dig any more.’

  Smith said, ‘Hindus have always burned their dead... since Brahminism began, at any rate. These could be enemies, slain in battle. Or, just possibly, a pre-Brahminical cemetery.’

  Rukmini whispered. ‘Look at the bones piled one on top of another. Think what it must have looked like when the flesh was on them.’ Her voice was low and bitter. Thrown down, spread out like so much manure...’

  ‘Thrown down,’ Smith said quickly. ‘That’s it. You remember my saying that there would be no point in moving the debris from the cave, to preserve the secret of it, unless the men who made it were also silenced?’ He looked up again at Indra’s Rock, That is where they were thrown from. This is their tomb. It’s only a guess, but I think it’s true.’

  They’d all land in one place,’ Foster objected. ‘The bodies would be piled up directly under the rock, not spread out as far as this.’

  Smith said, ‘There would have been executioners below, to drag the bodies away, and to ensure that all were dead. A few would survive, by a freak of their manner of falling, among numbers as large as this.’

  Rukmini turned. ‘I can’t stay here another moment,’ she muttered. She began to hurry along the path. Mohan ran after her. She broke into a run when he came close, and ran ahead of him, the low branches whipping her face and catching at her sari, until they reached the foot of the scaffold.

  ‘Rukmini,’ he said, ‘what’s the matter?’

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ she whispered fiercely. ‘Don’t touch me!’ She hurried up the scaffold and the ladder. When Mohan reached the top, she was gone.

  He ran up to Cheltondale. She was in the drawing-room, looking out across t
he roll of the low valley at the Rainbow Fall and the hanging arch of the rainbow. He went close to her and said anxiously, ‘Rukmini . .dearest ...’

  She said, ‘We must get some of the bones out whole. And send them to Calcutta, or Bombay - to find out whose bones they were. What kind of people. They can tell Especially if we find a whole skull. They - you - can’t have smashed every head quite to pieces - every man’s, every woman’s, every child’s. You’re blood-thirsty enough, but not efficient enough.’

  ‘Me? We?’ Mohan said. ‘What are you talking about?

  ‘Yes, you,’ she flared. ‘You, the splendid Suvala Aryans - murderers. Oh, I wish I’d been born English. What a joy, to order you about, treat you like scum. I’d like to have been the sergeant who pulled the cord and blew your grandfather from a cannon, there on the walls of his own palace!’

  Mohan cried, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

  She said fiercely, ‘Those bones are the bones of the slaves who made the cave. The cave is a pride of the Suvalas - Guardian of the Cave is your title, isn’t it? Who do you think it was who suffered, slaved, and died? My people.’

  ‘You are being silly,’ he snapped. ‘Even Smith says it’s only a guess, and even he didn’t say the bones were of your people. And it was a long time ago.’

  Her anger left her suddenly. She said wearily, ‘I am sorry. I was angry because, although it is a long time ago, that spirit still lives.’

  Chapter 17

  Ahmed, the foreman’s cousin, was thirty years of age, a tall, handsome man with a weak mouth. It was shortly after dark on April 29, a few days after the tigress took the coolie from the pit. Ahmed, hurrying through the jungle, not on a path, a bundle under his arm, wore a very different expression from the terror he had shown then.

  As he hurried along his mind raced. His eyes shone with a peculiar glow, and the focus of them kept slipping in and out, for sometimes he saw the ground under his skipping feet, and sometimes the trees and the rocks vanished and a vast glittering plain spread out before him, gold from end to end, and fine silks flowed like water through his hands, and women with flesh like silk beckoned from golden cushions. His lips moved all the time, though the small noises that escaped them made no sense. His face and forehead were damp, his stomach tightly contracted, and his hands trembling.

  He wore his Pathan clothes, of baggy white pyjamas, a long coat, and turban wrapped round a tall kullah. Under one arm he carried a bundle containing a loin-doth, a pair of Bundelk-hand-slippers, and material to make one of the untidy turbans the infidels of this part of India wore. He could not afford to be seen here in the local clothes, for everyone here knew him; once he passed over the hills, he could not afford to be seen in the Pathan clothes. They made him too conspicuous.

  He came to the edge of the fields bordering the Deori River below Tiger Pool and paused a moment to listen. Now it was full dark. He heard nothing and hurried across the fields towards the Buddha Tumulus. When he was very close he saw the man waiting with the cart, and the two bullocks.

  What a fool! All these black Konpara infidels were fools. This was the man who had taken a few minutes off from his work in the fields to look into the open trenches of the Buddha Tumulus; and had found, just under the surface, twenty bars of metal; and had come to tell him; and had told no one else; and who, by sheer chance, was normally the driver of one of the contractor’s bullock carts. What an idiot! Ahmed had told him to ask no questions, give no information, and take the bullock cart to the tumulus one hour after dusk. And here he was. The golden light shone brighter in an effulgence that almost dazzled Ahmed.

  The man rose and made a humble salaam. ‘Quiet!’ Ahmed whispered fiercely. ‘Let me have a look at these beasts. We have a long way to go’ He examined the cart, feeling the wheels and the axle with his hands, ran his hands over the backs and down the legs of the bullocks. ‘Good, good. We’ll load it now,’ he muttered. ‘Get down and pass them up.’

  The man stepped down into the trench with a spade and for a few moments worked steadily, throwing earth out from the trench on to the land. Ahmed looked round... no sound, no light except from the Rest House on its ridge. Red Hair would be having his bath. The other, Smith Sahib, was probably over at Cheltondale with the young Rajah.

  The man in the trench passed up a heavy bar of metal. Carefully, Ahmed took it, loaded it into the bullock cart, and returned. His breath came unevenly as though he were in the arms of a woman, as he knelt at the edge of the trench, where another bar waited. And another. And another.

  He counted twenty. At twenty the man below said, ‘That is all, master.’ Ahmed jumped down and checked. It was true.

  Twenty bars, at thirty thousand rupees each; He had done the sum a hundred times already: six hundred thousand rupees. Rs.6oo,ooo. Six lakhs.

  The man was throwing straw over the gold in the back of the cart. Could anyone be such an idiot? Was it really possible even for a black Hindu to see nothing beyond the end of his nose, to do this without thinking why?

  ‘Ready?’ he asked. His bundle was in the cart now, on top of the gold. He felt his waist. The knife was there, ready.

  A small sharp pain pricked the middle of his neck and he jerked his head impatiently. Biting flies, at this time of night! The voice of his elder cousin Shahbaz Khan whispered venomously, ‘Ahmed, my beloved cousin.’ The pain returned, but harder, and he fell to his knees.

  His cousin spoke to the villager. ‘Wait here. We must speak together, my cousin and I.’

  ‘Yes, master,’ the man said.

  The knife point pricked hard and Ahmed felt the blood flow down his neck. ‘Up!’

  He struggled up and stumbled ahead of the other, past the limit of the Buddha Tumulus, to the edge of a cornfield a hundred yards away.

  ‘Now, my beloved cousin,’ Shahbaz Khan said.

  Ahmed whined, ‘My noble cousin... ‘ turned, dropped to one knee, drew his own knife, and struck with the up-thrusting Pathan stroke, blade up, thumb up. The knife slashed soundlessly through the edge of his cousin’s coat. The other’s knife flashed up and cut his ear. Shahbaz Khan’s slippered foot kicked him under the wrist and his knife flew from his hand. Shahbaz Khan stabbed again. Ahmed writhed away, leaped back, and threw the older man down. Now he was half kneeling, half lying on top of Shahbaz Khan’s knife arm. They pressed face to face, snarling and spitting. Ahmed could not pry loose his cousin’s grip on the knife. Shahbaz Khan could not free his arm. For a minute they lay, panting and hating.

  ‘How much... is it?’ Shahbaz Khan gasped at last.

  ‘Six lakhs,’ Ahmed said.

  They lay silent, the sum bursting over them afresh in its hugeness, all lit by gold. ‘Enough for both’ the older man said. Ahmed hesitated. Three lakhs was not the same as six. .’I have the knife,’ his cousin said.

  ‘Throw it away,’ he said. Shahbaz Khan jerked his wrist and the knife flew a little distance off. They climbed to their feet, and both went to pick up their knives, and came close, but not too close. Shahbaz Khan said, ‘Do you think I am a fool, to believe you were going to Deori, wearing that expression? What was your plan?’

  ‘Go by the old jungle road over the hills to Vishnuswara,’ Ahmed said. ‘Bury most of the gold in the jungle. Take one or two bars to the Marwaris in Bombay. Come back for the rest when it was safe.’

  Shahbaz Khan stood thinking. ‘Red Hair will suspect at once,’ he said. ‘Should we not hide the gold near here, and wait till the end of the contract? Then we can leave, taking the gold, and no one the wiser.’

  ‘The man with the cart,’ Ahmed said.

  ‘He would not have reached Vishnuswara, in any case - would he?’

  ‘No.’

  Then the same here. He can vanish. The cart will be found, abandoned The tigress ate him.’

  ‘Yes. But I do not like to stay here. Too much can happen in the next four weeks. Red Hair can dismiss us. The gold can be discovered. Let us go to Vishnuswara.’

 
Shahbaz Khan thought. It was the best course. The black man would disappear. Ahmed, too, perhaps. Perhaps not. Not at once, anyway. First bury the gold Then lull him into security. The young were impatient. The gold ... hundreds of thousands of rupees! A golden brilliance illumined the darkness. Power, young girls, great feasts, a mansion in Lucknow.

  ‘Come,’ he said ‘We must move fast.’

  They returned to the cart, and told the man, ‘Move now. On the old road to Vishnuswara.’

  ‘Very well, master,’ the man mumbled. The bullocks leaned into the yoke and the cart began to move. Shahbaz Khan noticed; that the axle was well greased, and made no sound. The two men climbed on to the moving cart, and the cart, rolled slowly west and then northwest, climbing gradually into the trees that marked the line of the cultivated land.

  In the Rest House, Jim Foster finished tying his tie and brushing his hair, and surveyed himself briefly in the mirror. He didn’t wear a dinner jacket at night, because he wasn’t a pukka sahib, but he could make himself clean and put on a coat and tie. He poured himself a whisky, went out on to the verandah, sat down in one of the long-armed cane chairs, and sat staring moodily at the darkness.

  He thought of Barbara Kendrick. She was a lady, and he was not a gentleman. He was an ex-private of the Royal Engineers, who’d made himself what he was. She was married - to Kendrick. She was miserably unhappy. She liked him.

  He repeated that to himself. ‘She likes me. She likes me more than Mohan.’ Well, he’d shown Mohan where he got off, and the young fellow didn’t seem to bear a grudge. And now what?

  Barbara Kendrick was a lady... not just a la-di-da-lady, but someone you wanted to take your hat off to, to protect and look after, and speak gently to. She was a lady, and he was not much different from a thief. Those three gold bars in the trunk under the bed didn’t rightly belong to him. A crooked contractor could say so, a lying private could say so, but not a man whom a lady could... say it, damn it... could love.