The Sultan's Tigers

by Josh Lacey

  The same sights repeated again and again, fields and trees and oxen and cyclists, the monotony broken only by the occasional car careening down the road toward us, furiously hooting its horn, ordering us out of its way, then roaring past and leaving our little rickshaw in a cloud of dust. There was only one law on these roads: biggest is best.

  Uncle Harvey had been looking over Suresh’s shoulder, keeping an eye on the odometer, and suddenly announced, “We’ve gone eighteen miles. It should be soon.”

  Horatio had taken an entire morning to ride this route on his horse. Even in our battered, spluttering three-wheeled rickshaw, we’d done the same journey in less than an hour.

  We took a side each, Uncle Harvey on the left and me on the right, and peered at the landscape.

  Five minutes passed. Then another five. The road curved. And I saw what we were looking for.

  I nudged my uncle. “That’s it.” I spoke in a low voice, not wanting Suresh to hear me. “Look. Do you see?”

  Uncle Harvey crowded over to my side of the rickshaw and peered out of the open doorway. Together we stared at the hill. It was exactly as Horatio had described, a small, steep mound springing straight out of the dusty plain.

  Now we just had to climb up there, find the hole in the ground, dig up the tiger—and we’d be rich.

  Uncle Harvey waited for us to come right up to the hill, then tapped Suresh on his shoulder. “We’ll stop here, please.”

  “Here, sir?” shouted Suresh.

  “Yes. Here.”

  We glided to a standstill by the side of the road.

  Uncle Harvey and I stepped out. The heat was astonishing. While the rickshaw was moving, a breeze had been cooling us down, but stepping out of it onto the road was like putting your head in an oven.

  Suresh watched us curiously. He asked, “You will go where?”

  “Up there.” I pointed to the top of the hill.

  “Why?”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer, but luckily Uncle Harvey took over. “We want to see the view. Will you wait for us here, please? We won’t be long.”

  “You will leave your bag?” asked Suresh. “Is safe with me.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” said Uncle Harvey. He pulled a few valuables out of the bag, zipped it up, and dumped it on the back seat. “You’re not going to steal it, are you?”

  “No, sir!” Suresh looked shocked at the very idea. “I am your driver, not a thief! I will keep it safe for you.”

  “Just checking. See you later.”

  I thought about my bag, now in Marko’s possession. What was in there? Anything I needed? Clothes. Shoes. Two books. The charger for my phone. Toothbrush, toothpaste. The only thing I’d actually miss was my favorite T-shirt, a nice blue one with a picture of a skull on it. For a horrible moment, I thought he might steal it for himself, but then I realized it would be much too small for him. I was glad about that. There was something really gross about the thought of Marko wearing my best T-shirt.

  As we walked away from the road, Suresh squatted in the shade cast by his rickshaw and stared at us. I could imagine the questions going through his mind. What were we doing? Why would anyone get out of a nice comfortable rickshaw in the middle of nowhere and start climbing a hill at the hottest time of day?

  You just wait. We’ll be back with two million dollars.

  Obviously I didn’t say that. I just grinned at him and kept walking.

  Uncle Harvey set a brisk pace. His legs were longer than mine and I soon dropped behind. I had to climb the hill staring at his back, watching the first prickles of sweat appear under his armpits, then widen into puddles.

  The sunlight beat down on my face. I could hear my mom’s voice. Where’s your hat? What about sunblock? Haven’t you heard of skin cancer? Yadda, yadda, yadda. The same old stuff that moms have to say.

  Actually, if she had said all that stuff, she would have been right. I really needed a hat. And some sunblock. And, more than anything, water. The sun was slicing through my skull like a blowtorch, and soon I was sweating almost as much as my uncle.

  Forget it. We were almost at the top. Just a few more minutes. Then the agony would be over. A million dollars would soon make up for a bit of sunburn.

  Up we went, side by side, silent, neither of us wanting to waste our breath on conversation.

  Up and up and up.

  Up and up and up.

  We stumbled to the top of the hill, panting and sweat-sodden, and emerged on the summit, and found . . .

  20

  . . . nothing.

  The hilltop was flat and empty. There wasn’t the slightest sign that a shrine had ever been built here. Where had it gone?

  What had happened in the past two hundred years?

  According to Horatio’s letter, his shrine hadn’t been much. From his description, I’d imagined nothing more than a hole in the ground. But I couldn’t even see a hole up here.

  How would we find it again? How could we ever discover where it had been? Would we have to dig up this entire hill for ourselves?

  We didn’t even have a spade.

  “I guess we climbed the wrong hill,” said my uncle.

  “It might be the right one.” I was trying to stay positive. “It fits Horatio’s description.”

  “Yes, but so do they all.”

  “What do you mean, ‘they all’?”

  “Look.”

  Until that moment, all my attention had been fixed on the summit where we were standing, searching for the remnants of a well, a spring, a deep, dark hole that might have hidden a tiger for two hundred years. Now I looked around us.

  From the height of this hill, I could see the undulating landscape stretching in every direction. There must have been forty more hills almost identical to ours, and those were only the ones that we could see. If we drove up the road, we’d probably find hundreds more, valley after valley giving way to summit after summit, every one exactly as Horatio had described.

  I was daunted for a moment. I don’t mind admitting that. I had a few seconds of worry: Had we messed up? Should we have stayed at home? Was this whole thing a waste of time? What if the letters were forgeries? What if the whole thing was a trick dreamed up by Grandpa to steal a rich man’s money? Had we been stupid enough to fall for one of Grandpa’s cons?

  Then I told myself not to be such a loser. We had a whole week here in India. That was long enough to climb every hill for miles around. And if it was a con, who cared? Being here was still a lot more interesting than being with my family or going back to school.

  I turned to my uncle. “Shall we try the next one?”

  “Sure. Race you to the bottom.”

  21

  We drove north, parked the rickshaw, said goodbye to Suresh again, and climbed another hill. By the time we got to the top, I was drenched in sweat. It wasn’t the one we were looking for. We walked down, drove on, got out, climbed the next. Nothing. Then one more. Nothing. And yet another. Nothing there, either.

  Suresh must have thought we were insane, but he never questioned what we were doing, just did as we asked and drove us down the road till we told him to stop again, then sat in the shade of a tree and watched us struggle up yet another rock-strewn gradient.

  That hill, the sixth of them, was the most difficult so far. I don’t know if the slope was actually steeper or if I was just getting tired, but it was a real struggle to get to the top. And a bitter disappointment to find it empty. There was nothing there at all. Not even a tree. Just a few windswept shrubs, none of them hiding a hole or a pile of rocks.

  I stood beside my uncle, staring at the sunbaked view. The landscape seemed to stretch forever: hills and shrubs and trees and a single road zigzagging along the valley.

  “Ready for one more?” said Uncle Harvey.

  “Sure.”

  After six hills, neither of us had the energy for running. We trudged slowly back down to the bottom and found Suresh sitting under the shade of a tree. He held up a me
tal flask. “You want one drink?”

  “Yes, please.” I reached for the flask.

  To my surprise, Uncle Harvey stopped me. “You’d better not. You can’t drink the water in India unless you know exactly where it’s come from.”

  “I’m about to die of thirst!”

  “I’ll buy you a bottle.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I gestured at the empty plains surrounding us. “Where?”

  Uncle Harvey turned to Suresh. “Is there a shop round here? Or a restaurant?”

  “You want tiffin stop?”

  “Indeed we do,” said Uncle Harvey. “Do you know anywhere nice?”

  “I know very good place.”

  “Is it owned by one of your relatives? Do you get a commission for taking us there?”

  “No, sir! Just good food. Please to come aboard and we will go.”

  Tiffin was an Indian word for a meal. That’s what my uncle told me. He’d been to India many times before and knew all the lingo.

  We got back in the rickshaw and headed north.

  We’d stop for a quick lunch, Uncle Harvey said, then carry on searching for the rest of the afternoon, returning to Srirangapatna in time to find a hotel before nightfall. Tomorrow we would continue our search.

  “What if we haven’t found the tiger by the end of the week?” I asked. “Will we stay another week?”

  “You’ve got to go back to the States.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I do.”

  “What about you? Will you stay here on your own?”

  “I can’t go home without the money to pay my debts,” said Uncle Harvey. “I had been planning to spend this week trying to gather together a hundred grand, but I’m here instead. If I don’t get my hands on some cash, I might have to stay here for the rest of my life. Which wouldn’t be too bad, actually. I love India. I could join an ashram and spend my days meditating.”

  “What’s an ashram?”

  As we drove on, Uncle Harvey told me about Hinduism and Buddhism and all the different gods and religions that you find in India. He told me about sadhus, the holy men who have no money and no possessions, just their clothes, their sandals, and a walking stick. We would see one soon, he said. I would recognize them by their shaved heads. He might become one of them himself, he suggested, if he couldn’t find the money to pay off his debts: he would shave his head, swap his clothes for a yellow robe, and spend the rest of his life walking around India, begging for food and coins. To my surprise, he seemed quite keen on the idea.

  When we’d been driving for fifteen or twenty minutes, Suresh turned off the main road and rattled us up a dusty lane that soon led to what looked like a small town. Shacks lined the roadside and some kind of big building stood on the top of the nearest hill, looking down on us. It could have been a castle or just more houses, sheltering behind a high wall, protecting the inhabitants from attack. Chickens clucked and squabbled out of our way. A naked toddler giggled at us as if we were clowns putting on a show just for him.

  We pulled up at a small restaurant. Wooden tables and plastic chairs were laid out under a wide awning, providing shade from the hot sun. The place wasn’t exactly buzzing. An Indian family was sitting at one of the tables, the parents and three kids sharing a big spread, and a female backpacker was at another, a hippie in a pink T-shirt and baggy blue trousers. She glanced at us for a moment, then went back to her book. I smelled spices from the kitchen and realized how hungry I was.

  We sat by the door. Suresh went to sit alone at a different table. I felt bad. Why didn’t he join us? Shouldn’t we ask him over? Actually, maybe better not. He might ask too many awkward questions. He’d obviously been interested in what we were doing, but he’d kept his curiosity to himself, and it would be best if that didn’t change. Marko might be right behind us, and we didn’t want him to be able to discover what we were doing.

  “What do you want to eat?” asked Uncle Harvey.

  I didn’t have to think about it. I had the same whenever we went out for Indian or if Dad got takeout on a night when Mom was too tired to cook. “Lamb rogan josh, pilau rice, and naan bread, please. And some mango chutney.”

  “You won’t get that here.”

  “Why not? We’re in India, aren’t we?”

  “All those dishes are from the north. We’re in the south. It’s all masala dosas and idli sambas.”

  “It’s what?”

  “You’ve never had a masala dosa?”

  “No.”

  “You’re going to enjoy this.” He looked around for a waiter. Then he said, “Maybe we should ask her to join us.”

  I thought I must have misheard “her” for “him,” but when Uncle Harvey sprang to his feet and loped across the restaurant, I realized he had forgotten our driver. All his attention had been taken up by that backpacker with baggy pants and a silver ring through her nose. A few moments later, he was beckoning me over. He’d managed to convince the woman that we should join her table.

  Did he think she’d be useful to us? Did he hope she could help us find the tiger?

  No. He just liked her.

  My uncle could sometimes be a real idiot.

  The hippie stood up and shook my hand. Her name was Tanya, she said, and she was from Israel. My uncle told her our names, explained where we were from, and waved the waiter over to order a round of mango lassies. “You’re going to love this,” he said to me. Then he turned back to the hippie. “Tom’s never been to India before. This is his first time.”

  “Do you like it?” she asked in her heavy accent.

  “So far.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “Only Bengaluru and here.”

  “Why do you come here? To see the temple?”

  “We’re here because, um . . .” I looked at my uncle for help.

  “My nephew is doing a school project on Tipu Sultan and the Duke of Wellington. We’ve come on a research trip. We’re visiting all the places associated with Tipu and the battlefield where Wellington finally defeated him.”

  “Really? You’ve brought him all the way to India for school? That’s so wonderful. You must be his favorite uncle!”

  “I am. But I’m also his only uncle, so there’s not much competition.” Uncle Harvey grinned and the girl laughed. Soon they were chatting away like old friends. She lived in Tel Aviv, she told us, but she loved traveling around the world, seeing how different people lived. She and my uncle discussed the different places that they’d been in India, comparing their experiences. I listened but didn’t say much, having decided that my only possible role was stopping my uncle from saying anything too stupid, anything that might give away clues to our real reason for being here. I didn’t think Tanya was a spy or a friend of Marko’s. Even he wouldn’t be able to get someone here so quickly. But I still thought it would be best if she didn’t know too much about us.

  A mango lassi, I can tell you now, is a sweet, yogurty drink. As for a masala dosa, that turned out to be a large crispy pancake, rolled up and curled around a lump of vegetable curry studded with peas, potatoes, and tiny peppercorns. The only cutlery was a teaspoon in the spicy brown sauce that came with it. Uncle Harvey showed me how to tear off a chunk of the pancake with my fingers, wrap it around the vegetables, and dip it in the sauce.

  “Only use your right hand,” he said, winking at Tanya. “Indians keep their left hand for wiping their bum. If they see you eating with your left hand, they won’t come anywhere near you.”

  Tanya said, “What do you think of the food, Tom? Do you like it?”

  “It’s great,” I said. And it was: although it tasted nothing like any curry that I’d ever tasted before, the pancake was crispy and delicious, and the sauce had a great spicy taste that was milder and more interesting than curries at home.

  “Most of the Indian restaurants in the U.S. serve north Indian food,” said my uncle. “Their food is nice enough, but I prefer south Indian. You should sample as much as you can when you�
��re here. You just have to be prepared for the occasional dose of amoebic dysentery.”

  “Oh, I was so sick last week!” said Tanya.

  “What happened?”

  “It was my own stupid fault. I ate an ice cream. Everyone tells you, never eat ice cream. Whatever you do, never eat ice cream in India, you will be sick immediately. That’s what they say, right? But I was in a nice place, and it was clean, and I thought, Why not? So I spent the next twenty-four hours sitting on the john.”

  “Sitting?” My uncle shook his head. “You’ve got nothing to complain about!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “At least it wasn’t coming out from both ends at the same time.”

  “Oh, that’s terrible.” Tanya winced.

  “Would you mind?” I said. “I’m trying to eat.”

  Neither of them took any notice. I’m not sure Uncle Harvey even heard me. All his attention was focused on the girl. He leaned across the table and said in a low tone, “Have you ever been on a bus with dysentery?”

  “That’s the worst,” she replied. “I took this bus once from Srinagar to Delhi, and I had to spend the whole journey locked in the tiny toilet at the back . . .”

  And so it went on, Uncle Harvey and his new best friend trying to outdo each other with their tales of disgusting illnesses. I’m not squeamish, but all their talk about diarrhea didn’t do my food any favors. Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore. I picked up my plate and walked away. Rather than returning to our original table, I joined Suresh. He looked up, smiling. “You are ready for leaving?”

  “I wish I could say yes, but we might have to wait for Uncle Harvey to pick up that girl first.”

  “We must wait to get what?”

  “Nothing. I’m just joking. I should think we’ll go soon, yes. We want to climb a few more hills before it gets dark.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking, why are you doing this?”

  “I can’t explain. I’m sorry.”

  “No problem.” Suresh shrugged his shoulders. “I am only driver, there is no need to tell me.”