Bhowani Junction

by John Masters

  Victoria said, ‘Darling, why don’t you keep the skin yourself?’

  I met her eyes and said, ‘I don’t want a damned moth-eaten spotted carpet on the floor or a pair of glass eyes on the wall. It is very proper, though, that you should have a skinned leopard beside your bed. You can warm your feet on him in the morning.’

  I lit a cheroot. The song of the villagers dropped to a low chant. A jug of toddy stood beside them, and they passed it round from hand to hand as they sliced and sang. I listened and thought from a few words I caught that they were singing about a battle. I asked Bhansi Lall.

  He said, ‘They are singing of Moslem times, Colonel-sahib. There was one terrible battle-fighting in those times.’

  The leopard’s carcass, white and bright light-red, lay out on the grass among the dark brown men. The bloody pelt hung loose, held to the body at a couple of places only. Several of the villagers were drunk. When the work was finished they began to caper about the grass, waving their knives and long-handled axes, their faces bright and their black hak streaming behind them. They looked like savages, but they weren’t.

  This was my India, not because of the capering or the drunkenness but because these people had no desire to become like me, nor I like them. There had been a place for me round such fires as this for three hundred years. The Ranjits and Surabhais, who were trying to change themselves, didn’t light bonfires and dance round them. They read Paine and Burke and spoke in English because the ideas they were trying to express did not exist in their own language. If I and my sort had an idea, it was to make Indian wood into better wood, not change it into bakelite. In general, though, our great virtue was not having an idea.

  It was a bad feeling to realize, as the villagers beat on drums and Manbir and I and Birkhe kept time with them, that Victoria must have an idea. Otherwise, why had she got herself mixed up with Ranjit? It wasn’t love for him, not on her part. It wasn’t lust. She had an idea.

  I gave her another drink from our whisky bottle. The bonfire roared, the villagers sang, and the sound of the cool water was drowned.

  ‘That was an old song,’ Kulloo the shikari announced. He stood before us, bowing slightly, swaying lightly. He carried a small jug of toddy in his hand and waved it rhythmically. He intoned, ‘Now we will song another song, about what our fathers saw in the Black Year.’ He bowed again and staggered back to join the rest.

  Bhansi Lall said importantly, ‘Black Year is meaning year of horrible Indian Mutiny, Miss Jones. That was incident when all peoples behaved most jolly indecently. One thousand, eight hundred and fifty-seven, Anno Domini.’

  I clapped my hands as the villagers sang. I felt as wild as a coot and more than somewhat drunk. The gravestone in the Bhowani cemetery said:

  Here lies

  JOANNA

  beloved wife of

  Captain Rodney Savage

  13th Rifles, B.N.I.

  May 10, 1857

  I’d been here before, but I didn’t live here. I only came here to work and fight and build, to dance and drink and fornicate.

  In the beginning, the villagers’ song exulted, and Bhansi Lall muttered, ‘These words are relating story of battle-fighting, shootings, and bloodstains.’ The song hushed, the capering stopped, and Bhansi Lall muttered, ‘Now they are mentioning that dead bodies of English ladies and gentlemen were found in bush, or down well of drinking water. These jungle people are most insanitary and wild, really.’ The song rose. ‘Further battle-fightings. They are recounting punishment of sepoys’ treasonable outlook.’ The song fell; the singers stood in a rough circle, and an old man recited. Bhansi Lall muttered, ‘Now words are in honour of Her Majesty Queen Empress Victoria, lately lamented. Words are implying that Queen Victoria was daughter of many gods and devils. They say good queen possessed eyes of purple hue and was standing nine cubits in stature—which is bloody lie, by God. They are most insanitary peoples.’

  Victoria muttered, ‘My head’s swimming!’ The music shrieked harshly, the bamboo flutes wailed, the little drums throbbed. When the villagers sat down to drink, only the drumming was kept up.

  My Birkhe beat cheerfully on a madal, which is a deep and narrow Gurkha drum. Manbir had another. We’d brought three out from H.Q. Company store. Manbir gave me one and said, ‘Beat, son.’ His face was flushed dull purple, and his green shirt glittered metallically in the firelight.

  He stood upright and said thickly in his horrible Hindustani, ‘Listen, villagers. That was a good song of yours, though I did not understand a word of it. Now I will sing you a better one, about our Gurkha war with the Chinese—oh, hundreds of years ago.’

  I jumped up and grabbed his arm and shouted, ‘No, father, don’t sing that. Let’s sing and dance the Pilgrimage of the Lord Buddha to Gaya.’

  He held on to my arm to keep himself from falling. He said, ‘All right, son. That’s a good idea. Birkhe, you come here with that madal. No, stand over there. Miss-sahiba, you sit here. Drink more whisky. My son and my grandson here can’t really dance at all, but they’re younger than I am. Now!’

  He stepped out into the centre of the clearing. The madals were hung on string round our necks so that we had our hands free to beat them at both ends. Victoria wrapped her arms round her knees and watched us.

  By God, we were good. At first all three of us stumbled occasionally, and twice Manbir tore a strip off Birkhe for beating the wrong rhythm, but we settled down quickly. It’s a long dance and a slow dance. The villagers and Kulloo and Bhansi Lall squatted round the edges of the clearing and clapped the time with their hands and never took their eyes off us. We three had been drunk and funny to begin with, and perhaps out of place because we came from mountains and seas unbelievably far from that jungle valley. But as the tale unwound, the place made room for us, as it had done for many like us before. The fire behind us didn’t the; the villagers fed it. Our madals throbbed, and soon Kulloo picked up the main theme that we sang and quavered it on his flute, and the trees soughed under a night breeze.

  The dance ended. Victoria sat expectantly, waiting for a crash, a pose, a last attitude and a rumble of drums—but of course it just died away and when Manbir and I went toward her I think she still wasn’t sure whether that was part of the dance. Then Manbir put one arm round me and the other round Birkhe, and I said, ‘You taught me well, father, didn’t you?’ and Manbir answered, ‘I taught you well. Back in Manali, when you were a recruit.’

  The villagers took their leave, some uproarious, some suddenly shy. Bhansi Lall shook our hands with great formality and waddled away, singing in a nasal tenor, for he too was drunk. He’d asked me a couple of times during the evening whether the rapscallion K. P. Roy, Esquire, had been laid by the heels. He hated K. P. Roy as only a babu can who’s had his precious regulations trampled on.

  Manbir and I sat beside Victoria for a while, all staring at the fire, then he and Birkhe went to their tent, and Victoria and I sat alone while the fire sank lower and lower and made no sound. Once or twice she glanced over her shoulder, and I said, without looking round, ‘I hope a tigress is watching. With her cubs. Will you come down to the river?’

  She walked slowly with me across the grass, holding my hand and twining her fingers in mine. There were marks on the grass, picked out by the dull fire and the thin glow of the hurricane lantern in the door of our tent—marks of blood and dancing feet and spilled toddy, and yellow hairs, and a sharp smell of meat and wood-smoke.

  I stopped on the top of the low bank above the stream, where the light met the dark. The water was black and the trees pale. She put up her other hand, turning to me, and gently stroked my face and laid her cheek alongside my cheek.

  I turned her so that the light from the fire, unseen itsetf but reflected down from the woven ceiling of leaves, touched her face. I put her there so that her eyes and the corners of her mouth would help me to understand the changeable, deceptive, compulsive twining of her fingers. Then I broke all physical touch between us and stood b
ack from her.

  Certainty was very near for both of us, but it wasn’t with us.

  I took her wrist and did what she had done to me once before. I turned it over and kissed the inside, holding my lips quietly there. She bent over my head, and her hair moved softly across mine.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Afterward I never could remember how the Sunday morning passed. I had a little surprise brewing for her, and I know we had to hang round until the time came. I think we all sat about in the camp for a while and then went out with the two shotguns. Birkhe and Manbir came too—in fact, surely, it had been their morning? I gave them the guns and myself trailed along behind with Victoria, throwing stones into bushes for them and picking up and carrying the game they killed. Oh, yes, I remember now. There wasn’t any game. There was a cocky-olly bird and a green pigeon. Old Manbir and young Birkhe stalked a bird that sat preening itself on a tree. They approached from opposite sides, took careful aim, and doubly blew the bird to pieces, and afterward whispered to each other in excited grunts. And Manbir let off both barrels at a fish in the pool under the railway bridge and drenched himelf from head to foot; but he got the fish.

  The other part of the day, the magic and decisive hours began after lunch. I glanced at my watch and asked her if she’d like to come for a stroll up toward the road. It would be a shame to spend this last afternoon pounding our charpoys, I said. I told her to bring her jacket. Obediently she stubbed out her cigarette and went along with me.

  I talked busily, pointing out the birds and naming the trees along the path, the same we had come bumping down on the G.S. bicycle, and I don’t think she suspected anything, not even when we saw the shine of chromium and glass through the trees near the end of the path. She said, ‘Look, Rodney, a car. Do you think—oh dear, do you think something’s happened, and it’s come to take you back?’

  I didn’t answer. When we stepped out on the road she saw that it was a Rolls-Royce station wagon. Mole was sitting in the driver’s seat. He’s slender, quite dark, and about my age. He was wearing a tan palm-beach suit and a panama hat. His chauffeur, in the Kishanpur yellow drill livery, was sitting beside him. The chauffeur whispered to Mole when he saw us, and Mole got out, not hurrying. He was standing by the bonnet and the huge glittering headlamps when we came up.

  I touched my hands five or six times to my forehead and said, ‘Salaam, Rawan-sahib, bahut bahut salaam!’

  He said, ‘Hello, Rod. And this is your beautiful lady?’

  I said, ‘Yes. Victoria, curtsy nicely to His Highness, Diprao Rawan, Rajah of Kishanpur.’ She caught the sides of her slacks curtsied, laughing up at him, and I was pleased with her. I said, ‘He is called the Rawan, but you did that so prettily that you may call him Mole. He’s an honorary brother of mine. Mole, this is Victoria, and you can damned well bow. “Where are your manners now, Master Dip?” ’ I spoke the last bit in a shrill, curt voice, and we both laughed. The old jokes are the best.

  ‘She was a terror,’ Mole said. He gave Victoria a bow, sweeping low his panama hat. ‘Victoria what?’

  ‘Victoria Jones,’ she said.

  He said, ‘Good. Hop in.’

  We three squeezed into the front seat, and the chauffeur sat splendidly alone in the back. ‘Look a little more dignified and acknowledge the salutes for me,’ Mole told him. The chauffeur grinned more widely and began to raise his hand to left and right to the peasants who salaamed as they saw the big car with the yellow flag on the radiator cap come racing down the road.

  ‘You never told me about this, Rodney,’ Victoria said reproachfully. ‘I could have got myself a little better dressed than this. Where are we going?’

  I told her, ‘Kishanpur. It’s only about thirty miles. Mole’s going to introduce us to some princely luxury. He’s going to show us how the idle rich live.’

  Mole said, ‘I’m not idle, and I’m not rich.’ He swung the Rolls on to the dusty shoulder of the road to rush past a string of lumbering bullock carts. ‘But I have to pretend to be, or the politicians would have nothing to rave about in the Monkey House. I’m richer than Rockefeller compared with these people, of course—but so are you, both of you.’ He took one hand off the wheel and waved it at a family of four standing open-mouthed on the roadside.

  ‘You won’t be for long,’ I said, ‘I hear that Congress proposes to nationalize the princes. They’re going to use you as travel agents in America, selling passages to India. Gandhi told me, last time I met him, that your post was going to be in Squedunk, Pa.—or is it La.?’

  Mole said, ‘Please, Rod, please let’s not talk politics for the moment. Did you get your leopard?’

  I said we had, and he asked me to tell him about it.

  I said, ‘Victoria, you tell him. My throat’s dry.’

  She told him, and the road flew back, and we came to the Kishan. It is a wide river, and we crossed on a ferry. To the right the heavy castle hangs on the far bank above smooth water. Mole said, ‘That’s where I live.’

  She cried, ‘Oh, it’s beautiful, and so big!’

  He said, ‘It’s in decay, but I have to live there. That’s where I belong. Wait till you see it.’

  The Rolls squeezed through the narrow turns into the entry port. We went into the courtyard and circled round the tinkling fountain. This the only part we keep open,’ Mole said. ‘Those rooms up there. The rest—even the outside walls are falling down.’

  We went in. It was cool in the long, high corridors, but I smelled at once the familiar mustiness, which hung everywhere, even under the lived-in smell of the rooms that Mole still used. Victoria sniffed surreptitiously, but Mole noticed and turned to her with his languid look and said, ‘Can you smell it too? Decay. Change and decay. What do you want to do till dinner-time?’

  I asked him if his wife was there.

  ‘No, she’s away,’ Mole answered. His drawl was extra languid, so I knew that Sumitra was still busy in France with a Russian count. There was a lot we didn’t have to explain to each other.

  I told him we’d like to wander round. I wanted to show Victoria the tapestries and the dungeons.

  He said, ‘You know your way. I have to work.’

  She walked with me round the castle. Afternoon passed into evening, and I found in the castle, as often before, mirrors for everything I was feeling. That day it was a place that agreed with me in wanting to fight, but sighed with me that it was no good fighting, and echoed my whispers—that it too loved her. My keenest memory is the sound of Victoria’s shoes in the long stone passages.

  ‘Why is he your brother?’ she asked once.

  I told her. ‘Because his great-grandmother and my great-grandfather tried to kill each other in the Mutiny. Her son became his ward. We’ve kept it up, generation by generation, ever since.’

  ‘What’s going to happen now?’ she asked.

  I didn’t answer her. That was a question. Instead, I stopped and knocked on a door and said, ‘Mole forgot to tell you that he does keep one other room open—this one. It’s his study. He’s not in.’ I pushed the heavy door open and stood aside. It was a light and luxurious apartment. An ormolu-encrusted table stood at the right of the room’s three wide windows, Isfahan rugs covered the floor, and there was a large divan under the centre window. A man sitting at the desk would look out across the river into British territory.

  I was looking out across the river, but I wasn’t seeing anything, not even Victoria right in front of me. I must have had a queer expression on my face when I realized that Victoria was saying, ‘What’s the matter, darling? What’s happened?’

  I jerked my shoulders to shake off the invisible Old Man hanging on them. I said, ‘History. That’s the trouble with it. Come on.’

  Dinner took us a big step to where we were going. I often wonder whether Mole knew exactly what he was doing to us that night. He has flashes of rare insight, but he doesn’t always care to act by the light they give him.

  We waited in the drawing-room for him, an
d then he swept in, shimmering in the full ceremonial dress of the Rawans, brilliant yellow with diamond necklaces and ruby rings and tight white trousers. I stood up and said, ‘Oh no, Mole! What do you want to do this to us for? Look at our clothes.’

  ‘Forget yourselves,’ he said, ushering us forward. ‘See only me and imagine you are mirrored in me.’

  In the dining-room the table was dark, the flowers lightly banked round it. He had golden champagne and three attendants in yellow, and the atmosphere was Europe mated with Asia. That’s what had made Victoria. But this was as strange and wonderful to her as—I was.

  I didn’t know when I’d see Mole again, so over the soufflé I asked him what his immediate plans were.

  He had only to say, I’m going to stay here, or, I’m going to shoot myself, or whatever the hell he had in mind. He said, instead, ‘I want to go away. I want to be out of here before Nehru sends a pair of earnest Calcutta B.A.s to tell me that I’m oppressing my people. I don’t want to meet them. I could only reply that they are quite right. And I have no more chance than the man in the moon of making them understand what this means—this.’

  He turned to the old fellow beside his chair and said, ‘Old friend, your time has come. Go and jump off the battlements on to the hard ground.’

  The old man’s expression did not change. He said, ‘For the honour of the Rawan! Is there time to make a prayer and say my good-byes?’

  Mole said, ‘There is time. This task that I give you is to be delayed until you see me break a promise. Then you are to jump, on top of me as I walk below, that I may the.’

  The old man inclined his head slightly and said, ‘For the honour of the Rawan!’