The Venus of Konpara

by John Masters

  Barbara, looking down the ridge, said calmly, ‘A lot of men are gathering on the common grazing land beyond the village.’

  ‘They’ve lost their leader.’ Mohan said. ‘We’ve got a few minutes before another takes his place.’

  ‘They’ve started from the rock,’ Jim cried. ‘They’re coming!’

  Now Mohan saw two hurrying figures for a moment. Then the storm hid them. A moment later he saw them again, running down into the valley. He watched carefully to see whether they were being followed in the rear or on the flanks, although he did not think it likely. The attack on the rock was to have come from this ridge. The villagers were gathering for it now. The headman had come up to reconnoitre.

  Smith and Kendrick were much closer. Thousands of tons of topsoil from the Deori Valley flew past in solid carpets, ten feet thick. The wind tore at his grip and it was hard to breathe - but Rukmini was in the cave, and alive. Otherwise, why would they have put a man on guard outside it?

  Smith and Kendrick reached the ridge. Heavy drops of rain began to fall. Jim yelled exultantly, ‘It doesn’t make a bit of difference now, except that we can have a drink. There’re a couple of old kerosene tins in the wreck, Mohan, Put ‘em out to collect water.’

  They hurried to the cave mouth. ‘Get the headman in!’ Mohan shouted.

  ‘I’ll stand watch at the entrance,’ Smith said.

  The rain turned from drops to a thunderous torrent, like the breaking of a dam. Behind Barbara, and Kendrick, and Jim Foster, and the inert body of the headman, Mohan crawled into the tunnel. As he passed Smith, the latter murmured, ‘See that no harm comes to Huttoo Lall.’

  Chapter 30

  Kendrick had some matches, which had not exploded during the fire, Mohan waited impatiently in the black tunnel, the shallow, irregular breathing of the wounded man loud beside him. A match scraped, and its tiny light burst out in overpowering brilliance. He had to close his eyes for a moment. When he opened them the hurricane lantern had been lighted. Its glass was cracked in two places. Who had had the sense to carry that through the fire? Smith, of course.

  Kendrick seemed to have reached some understanding with his inner confusion. His voice was firm, though a little too loud in the confined space. ‘How long is this stretch? Forty paces? This is where we shall hold them, then, if they come. Everyone move round the next corner. The lantern will have to be at the comer, where it can shine down this stretch. Foster, tell Smith to stay at the entrance until he is actually driven in. When that happens, he is to come back as fast as possible until he is past the light Mohan, help me move Huttoo Lall.’

  ‘I’m going to look for Rukmini,’ Mohan said.

  ‘In a minute,’ the Resident snapped.

  Barbara picked up the lantern. Mohan and Kendrick raised the wounded man. Their shadows slanted grotesquely across the ceiling, and fled slowly ahead of them down the long slope of the passage.

  Keadrick said, ’What’s that?’

  They set the wounded man down. Mohan knelt. A neat stack of yellowish blocks lay ranged against the tunnel wall in six rows of five, except that the top block of the row on the extreme right was missing. Twenty-nine bars of gold. Nearly a million rupees. Mohan lifted a bar. It bore the mark of the trident, the bull’s head, and the four small bows - the same device as on the bar found under the ‘planted’ Buddha, and the bars the Pathans had tried to steal. The Archivist said that was the mark of the Suvala who’d been defeated and exiled in 147 B.C. Obviously all the bars bearing that mark had come from this sheltered hiding-place.

  They bent again to the headman. The light showed that the floor was smooth, with a slightly curved indentation in the centre, such as might have been made by thousands of feet, over many years. At the corner the tunnel turned right, and, after five paces, left again, then continued its original course. In that short angle they set the headman down.

  Kendrick said, ‘Sit down. We have a long time to wait. I shall turn the light out in fifteen minutes, and thereafter only use it if we are attacked.’

  Foster came down the passage carrying a heavy kerosene can. He set it down and Mohan saw that it was full of water, the water black with ash and dirt ‘It’s raining like blazes,’ Foster said. ‘Running off the rock ridge like a stream, so the tin filled quickly. Smith doesn’t think we should try to fill it again. You can’t see even three yards outside now.’

  Kendrick nodded. ‘You’ve drunk? And Smith? Very well, Now the rest of us.’

  They drank, in turn. Mohan said, ‘Now, I’m going to find Rukmini.’

  Kendrick said quickly, ‘You can’t take the lantern. Or the rifle.’

  ‘I’m not taking anything,’ Mohan said, ‘but I’d like to see round the next corner. Bring the lantern that far with me, Jim.’

  Foster picked up the lantern at once. Kendrick hesitated. ‘Hurry then.’

  Mohan set off, Foster beside him. As soon as they passed the corner Mohan whispered, ‘See that no harm conies to the headman, Smith said.’

  ‘Oh,’ Foster muttered. ‘Why... who? Does Smith think he’ll help us?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just stay close to him... All right, turn back now.’

  ‘Good luck.’

  Total blackness enfolded him. Mohan walked slowly on, and down, one arm outstretched to his front, one touching the side wall. Three times he came to right-angled corners, but each was always followed at once by another to the left, so that the direction remained constant From the position of the doorway and the original turn to .the left, he thought he was heading towards the Dobehari Ridge somewhere near Cheltondale - but under it, for already he must be a hundred feet lower than the entrance.

  Two hundred paces. The air current blew steadily and gently into his face, cool but thick with a smell of wood smoke. Three hundred paces.

  Three hundred and twenty-seven. Three hundred and twenty-eight.

  He stopped, ‘Light,’ he whispered, then remembered he was alone. He crept forward, round two corners. The light grew strong in his eyes, a yellow glow illuminating everything as clearly as the sun. The floor in front of him ran level for ten paces, and there a huge stone plinth across the ceiling marked the point where the tunnel entered something much larger.

  A woman lay against the wall under the plinth. Her legs were towards him, wearing Rukmini’s familiar slippers. The pale blue sari was raised a little over the carelessly flung legs, showing a length of calf. A big square can, which Mohan recognised as his reserve can of gun oil, stood at her head, and beyond that a hurricane lantern, its wick low, burned steadily.

  She was breathing evenly. Mohan walked very carefully down towards her. Beyond the plinth the ceiling was higher. Many pillars cast long shadows, and in the farther darkness pillars and walls and ceiling seemed to join. He knelt beside her. She looked extraordinarily clean, her face shining like a golden moon. Of course, she had disappeared before the fire.

  ‘Rukmini,’ he said softly.

  She stirred, opened her eyes, and sat up. She looked at him as though she did not know him, and said, ‘Am I alive? Is it you, Suvala?’

  He held her tightly. ‘Are you hurt? Did they bring you here?’

  She said, ‘Yesterday, because the tigress had attacked you and I felt real, helpless fear, I saw the rainbow, for the first time, as my ancestors saw it I knew at once, then, where the cave was. Last night I spoke to you. You know what you said. This morning - how long ago was it? - I expected to die here. If I found nothing here, I could not face you or the world again. If I found the Venus-Queen here, I would take my rightful place beside her, and join her, soon, in death. It would be better than the half-truths of life... Mohan, have you seen the caves?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  She stood up slowly, holding on to his shoulder for support ‘You shall see them, now.’

  He said, ‘We must go back and tell the others you’re safe first. Can you walk?’

  ‘Yes ... Why are you so dirty?’

  Mohan told her quic
kly about the fire, the continuing attempt on their lives. She listened intently and, when he had ended, said, ‘Huttoo Lall is in the tunnel, too, then? Good.’ She picked up the lantern. ‘I emptied out your rifle oil and filled the tin from the lanterns in the house. Leave it there. We shall be coming back.’

  They started up the sloping tunnel. At a hundred paces the yellow light shone on the white skeleton of a large snake; and forty paces farther, upon the skeleton of a tiger. ‘Those, too, I would have joined,’ Rukmini murmured. They have been here a long time.’

  The light from the other lantern shone dimly round a corner ahead. Something must be happening. Kendrick had intended not to use it except in emergency. Mohan quickened his pace. They turned the corner.

  Barbara Kendrick’s face lit up with joy, and she rushed past him. Rukmini, smiling, received her in her arms. Kendrick and Smith and Foster were on their feet Huttoo Lall lay on his back, his eyes open.

  ‘Is it safe farther down?’ Kendrick asked at once. Is anyone there?’

  ‘It’s safe. No one there.’ Now Rukmini was clinging to Smith, and his arm was round her shoulders. Mohan heard a heavy sound of thudding from ahead, but Rukmini was embracing Foster and the tunnel was full of love, all but one smiling, and Mohan felt light in the head and wanted to sing.

  Kendrick said, ‘They’re doing something on top, near the entrance. Digging, and using crowbars. I think they’re going to blow the tunnel in, about thirty feet back from the entrance. I brought Foster back. We don’t know what’s happened to the dynamite in Foster’s explosive store.’

  ‘The store was burned down,’ Foster said. ‘I saw that when we passed the coolie camp.’

  Smith said, ‘We must assume they took the dynamite first. Several of them know how to use it They intend to wall us in. Then, when a party comes out from Deori they’ll say that we must have been burned in the pit, which is filling with water and will be impossible to search.’

  Mohan said, ‘We have a few days. They can’t flood us out quickly. They have no means of making poisonous gases. Fire can’t affect us, nor smoke, even if they could make sufficient’

  Kendrick said, ‘We’ll go farther in. That digging is too close.’

  Mohan stooped to pick up the headman’s legs. The dark eyes flickered momentarily across his face, and then reverted to their frozen, upward stare. ‘He’s conscious,’ Mohan said. ‘He knows what’s happening.’

  Kendrick said angrily, ‘I’ve tried to make him talk, but he will not.’

  The slow return down the tunnel began. At last they stopped under the plinth where Mohan had found Rukmini.

  ‘What’s that?’ Kendrick asked suddenly, pointing to the rifle-oil can. Rukmini told him and he muttered, ‘Is it full? If we use only one lamp, that ought to give us nearly forty hours of light Turn the other lantern out. We may need the wick.’

  ‘Not yet, please,’ Rukmini said. ‘I am going to show you the caves.’

  ‘I don’t want to see them,’ Kendrick said violently. ‘I wish we’d never started this senseless search. It was your idea... How did you get in here?’ he finished suspiciously.

  She said, ‘I went to the caretaker’s hut I knew he had no woman. It was about one o’clock in the morning. I imitated the, voice of the headman’s wife - it is easy; she has a hoarse voice and uses a strong dialect - and whispered at the door that Huttoo Lall wanted to see him at once. He came out soon, and I called to him from a little way down the path to hurry. Then I crouched in the bushes till he had passed - and went into the hut. The cave mouth was hidden behind a charpoy upended against the back wall, in the corner. Of course, I knew he would find out someone had been there, and guess it was I, when he learned that Huttoo Lall had not sent for him.’

  Kendrick said, ‘If you’d told us, instead, none of this would have happened.’

  ‘Yes, it would,’ she said calmly. ‘The plan of the fire was ready, and they only had to make a few changes to use my disappearance. Perhaps they would have said it was you who were in the pit Mr Kendrick, and had discovered the cave... You were down there before the others, weren’t you?’ Kendrick did not answer. Rukmini said, ‘Will you come and see the caves now?’

  ‘No!’ Kendrick shouted. ‘I don’t want to, and I warn you, whatever is in them will make no difference to your position.’ He subsided. ‘The rest of you go. I’ll keep watch here, and look after the headman.’

  Rukmini said, ‘We must take him with us.’

  ‘Why?’ Kendrick snapped. ‘What good will that do?

  ‘Much, perhaps.’

  Kendrick turned his back and stalked away from them a little distance up the tunnel, the rifle under his arm. Again, Mohan wished he could get hold of that rifle. The Resident’s bursts of temper were becoming more unreasonable every hour. Kendrick turned again, glowering; ‘Go on, then,’ he said. ‘I shall wait here, on guard.’

  Rukmini bent over the headman and spoke in a low yoice, in Hindi. ‘My friend, you must walk between us. We are going to enter the caves that you and your people have guarded so faithfully.’

  A small moan escaped the headman’s bloodless lips.

  ‘Lift him,’ Rukmini ordered. They raised him carefully to his feet and put one of his arms round Barbara Kendrick’s neck, the other round Jim Foster’s. His feet moved slowly, dragging, between theirs. Smith carried the lantern. At Rukmini’s side Mohan passed under the great plinth.

  Chapter 31

  A giant figure sprang slowly at him out of the opposite wall. Human, it had four arms, each brandishing a mighty weapon. Its advance was supported by an army of beast-men with the heads of elephants, tigers, and bulls. Rukmini said softly, ‘Indra’s army... the fathers of your fathers, Suvala.’

  Mohan saw then that the giant figure was not really large, but perhaps only five feet tall, and the others much smaller. In the distance, hewn without perspective and larger than the rest, the whole groups was commanded by a tall, handsome figure wielding a huge bow.

  They moved slowly into the great hall proper, which Indra and his army guarded. Scores of pillars marched away into the darkness, and every wall, every pillar moved and pulsed with a living creation of stone. The figures leaned out of the stone over them. Here a long-haired naked woman died under the trampling hoofs of advancing horsemen. Here again, the same scene, again, and again. Again and again the woman died, from decapitation, from a sword thrust in the belly, from arrows, from being cast off a high place. Here white bulls, sacred bulls, died under the axe, and there horses and elephants. Death stretched fifty feet along one wall, where countless captive men and women knelt, and the arrows flew into them. Here Indra strode in triumph through clouds, the great bow in his hand and skulls below his feet. The stone pillars were carved and shaped as though they had been made of wood, and on them proliferated the tortured images of slaughter and sacrifice. Blood dripped from the cold stone, and, most horrible of all, the expressions of the warriors were calm and lovely as they killed and burned - for there were houses burning, and great temple-like buildings on fire.

  ‘See - your fathers, and mine,’ Rukmini whispered.

  Everywhere the sculptors had shown an essential difference between the killers and the killed. The defeated masses were small and squat, their faces sometimes exaggeratedly simian, sometimes beautiful, but always different, with their broad cheekbones and square shapes, from the tall, straight-nosed, lank-haired heroes who destroyed them and their works.

  They moved on. In a far, dark corner the light shone on the broken-off point of a sword, lying under a pillar. The metal was dull, but not rusted. Near by a stone warrior’s nose had been broken off - the only damage they had so far found to the sculptures - and several square feet of the stone floor were darkly stained.

  ‘Here the impious sons rose against their father. Nor stayed the king his hand inside the holy place,’ Rukmini said. Two hundred and sixty-five years before Christ. Perhaps they were the last people to come here.’

  Barbara Kend
rick said, ‘This is a hall of death, like Chaucer’s Temple of Mars. “There saw I first the dark imagining of felony, and the compassing.” ‘

  ‘It is not death that is terrible,’ Rukmini said. ‘It is cruelty - human felony, as your poet said. The Hall of Human Felony . . .‘ She turned quickly to the headman. His breath was coming in short, ugly gasps, and the eyes were bolting from his head. ‘This is only the first hall, father. There are two more, which tell a different, better story.’

  The lantern light shone on another doorway, marked like the first by a heavy plinth. They passed through.

  In shape this hall was a duplicate of the first: the same size - sixty feet square; the same forest of pillars; the same vivid creation of life in the stone. Mohan braced himself for further pain. The ancestors of whom he had been so proud were brutal, murderers, rapists, and pillagers.

  Gradually he relaxed. The world of this hall was a world of peace. The scenes were fewer and larger, giving an impression of immense space and even height, as though the sky were the ceiling of the cave. The carved figures stood or lay or moved amid a deep, surrounding calm. The women were naked or wore slight, ornamental draperies, which twined gracefully from slender waists about their long legs. Always the round breasts were uncovered. The effect, was not religious in a priestly sense, but as though the peace of God informed each moment of the lives of the people. And this God bad sent emanations of himself, that could be comprehended because they were in human or half-animal shape, who brooded, smiling slightly, over the various scenes. The smaller people were here again, not suffering death now, but at work in menial positions. Mohan noticed a tall lady completing her toilet, standing by a carved tree. Three women of the defeated race knelt at her feet, washing them, and adoring her; and a nurse held the tall woman’s child on her hip, the child shown as large as the nurse.