The Empress of India

by Michael Kurland

  What was she thinking?

  How could she know all that, or any part of it, about this man she scarcely knew?

  She must keep her head firmly in control of her heart. If this was love at first sight, she wanted none of it. She would have to step back and take a long, hard second look before she allowed herself to be swept away.

  And yet . . .

  The moment was stretching on, and Peter was looking increasingly nervous. “Have I said something?” he asked. “Was I too forward? Shall I abase myself?”

  “No, no, not at all,” she told him, gathering her thoughts and putting them aside. “I was considering what to wear. I tend to stare off into space a lot, as you’ll see. Usually I’m considering what to wear.”

  “Say no more,” he told her. “My great-aunt Dorothea spends copious amounts of time considering what to wear, although she always ends up clad in black taffeta and a hat that resembles a blancmange. A black blancmange. Actually a noirmange, I suppose.”

  “I think it would be great fun to join the expedition to Elephanta,” she told him, “although I know nothing of it save that it’s an island. Is there actually an elephant?”

  “So I understand. Professor Moriarty, the chap that’s arranging this outing, says there’s a giant statue of an elephant. It would seem to be why the Portuguese named the island thus, although there are no actual living elephants. The local name for the island is Gharapuri.”

  “Gharapuri? That means fortress town, I think.”

  “If you say so,” Peter agreed. “Unexpectedly useful, learning a language with a military phrasebook. Although I don’t think there are either a fortress or a town on the island. Just a giant elephant statue. But since an elephant is pretty big to begin with, a giant elephant should be impressive. And then there are the caves, full of religious sculptures which were apparently carved out of the solid granite in the sixth century. Dedicated, I think, to the god Shiva.”

  “I tremble with anticipation,” Margaret said. “Give me a minute and I’ll be with you. I’m just about ready.” She withdrew inside the cabin and, true to her word, reappeared in just over a minute, adjusting an oversized straw sunbonnet to just the right angle on her head.

  “What of Lady Priscilla?” Peter asked. “Is she joining us?”

  “Lady Priscilla and her beau, a Lieutenant Welles, have decided to wander about in the bazaars of Bombay,” she told him. “A Mrs. Bumbery, a respectable lady who must be in her fifties, is to accompany them as chaperone.”

  “Ah, well,” said Peter. “If the respectable Mrs. Bumbery is in her fifties, then she will certainly countenance no sort of immoral behavior. But can you be sure that she isn’t merely forty-nine?”

  “What a shocking idea,” Margaret said.

  NINETEEN

  ELEPHANTA

  Oh busy weaver! Unseen weaver! Pause! One word!

  Wither flows the fabric? What palace may it deck?

  Wherefore all these ceaseless toilings? Speak,

  weaver! Stay thy hand!

  —Herman Melville

  Gharapuri Island is a slab of basalt roughly two miles square squatting in the Sea of Oman six miles north east of Bombay Harbor. Sometime in the fifth century, possibly during the reign of Chandragupta II, the greatest of the Gupta rulers, skilled artisans hewed a series of interconnected caves, both great and small, into the native rock of the island 250 feet above the sea. Pillars to support the caves’ high ceilings were carved in place. Images of the god Shiva in many of his aspects, warrior and farmer, creator and destroyer, corporeal and inanimate, male and female, were sculpted in high relief on all surfaces. Visually powerful and undoubtedly beautiful, the Gharapuri caves had for over a millennium evoked awe and reflection among all who visited.

  The Portuguese acquired the island from the Sultan of Gujarat in 1534, and found a giant stone statue of an elephant by the landing site. And so they renamed the island Elephanta, as though a thousand years of history could be blotted out with the change of a name. The elephant fell and broke into pieces when the British tried to ship it to England in the 1860s and by the end of the nineteenth century it lay by the shore in several great chunks.

  The steam launch Efrit was a side-wheeler with a mango-orange funnel, a cabin that took up most of the deck, and a great hoop of a wheel amidships on the port side, the like of which hadn’t been seen in European waters for a quarter century. She maneuvered among the dhows, ghanjahs, baghlahs, caïques, sloops, and assorted other vessels moored around the island and pulled alongside the dock. The deafening whine and clatter of her ancient walking beam engine died down, only to be replaced by a not-quite-as-loud hissing sound as the captain vented a great dollop of steam, a reflection of his joy at having made one more trip without mishap.

  Twenty-two people of assorted sizes, ages, sexes, and costumes came ashore and gathered about their de facto group leader and expedition organizer, Professor James Moriarty, at the foot of the steps going up the side of the hill leading to the caves. Shortly thereafter a squad of dhoti-clad native porters emerged from the innards of the boat, six of them carrying large wicker picnic hampers and two lugging a sheet metal camp stove suspended on poles between them. The squad started up the steps, accompanied by a small man in a brown-and-white-checkered suit. Right after them came three men from the Empress’s dining room staff, clad in oversized immaculate white jackets, carrying carving knives, whisks, ladles, serving forks, and other impedimenta of office.

  “Our lunch goes ahead of us,” Moriarty said, gesturing to the passing hampers and crew. “We shall follow shortly.” He took a breath and struck a lecturing pose. “Although this is known as the ‘City of Caves,’ there are but eight main caves on the island,” he told the group. “They form an intricate complex of courtyards, grottoes, shrines, inner cells. I have read intensively about them, and I’ll try to give you a brief explanation of what we see as we go along.” He adjusted his pince-nez and peered around the group. “I see there is a gentleman here who, by his native garb, is possibly better able to expound on the religious meanings of these images than I. Perhaps he would like to comment?”

  The small, dark-skinned man in the white kurta and dusky red turban performed a graceful half bow as the others turned to look at him. “I have the honor to be Mamarum Sutrow, a humble fellow passenger on this voyage of discovery,” he said in a high, clear voice. “By religion I am Zoroastrian, and know little of the icons of the Hindi gods, except that they express and represent deep religious and philosophical concepts encompassing history, art, and morality.”

  “Where is your colleague, Professor, ah, Demartineu?” Peter Collins asked.

  “He is upset of the stomach,” Sutrow explained. “He wished greatly to come, but felt not upworthy of the effort of such an expedition.”

  I see,” Peter said.

  “Poor man,” said Margaret. “This is certainly upworthy of anyone’s effort.”

  Moriarty clapped his hands together three times, in the time-honored way of dispelling demons and attracting attention. “Let us head up the path now and commence our visit to the caves,” he said. “I will not entreat you to stay together; you are not children, wander where you like. I will, however, remind you that the picnic lunch will remain with the main party. And when you hear the boat whistle in four and a half hours it would be a good idea to return to the dock with reasonable speed.”

  Margaret and Peter made their way slowly up the steps not talking, allowing other people to pass them on the way up. They found that they had a lot not to talk about. Margaret held Peter’s hand as they climbed the stairs and wondered about the rightness of things. She had held the hands of many a young man—well, fairly many, although she wasn’t sure what the standards were—and they had felt cold and clammy, those that didn’t feel hot and sweaty. But Peter’s hand felt strong and secure and friendly (friendly?), and it felt somehow right that she should be holding it. She had walked beside an assortment of young men and had felt, at best,
a vague sort of interest in those aspects of life, and physique, and attitudes, and thought processes that made them different from young women. But she felt an almost desperate desire to know all there was to know about this rather rabbit-faced young man who climbed the stairs beside her whistling “With Cat-Like Tread,” from The Pirates of Penzance.

  “They’re coming up!” Mummer Tolliver whispered, peering around the entrance to the cave and watching the tour group ascend the stairs. “We’d best hurry!” He turned around to see that the three porters with him had stopped what they were doing and were staring at him questioningly. “You blighters don’t speak English, do you?” Tolliver trotted back to where they were standing. “Silly me. Here, lets get this statue back into the corner there.” He made lifting-up and pushing-back motions with his hands. The native porters followed his mimed instructions and lifted the plaster-coated brass copy of the Queen of Lamapoor, currently known as the Lady of Lucknow, and thrust it deep into an otherwise empty niche along the wall of the cave. For one with a discerning eye for Indian art and artifacts, it was stylistically as different from the artwork surrounding it as a Rembrandt is from a da Vinci, but the closest one with such a discerning eye was in the Department of Antiquarian Studies at the University of Bombay, some fifteen miles away, and his opinion was not asked.

  “That’s perfect,” the mummer said, making the universal sign for “that’s perfect” with his hands. While the porters watched indifferently—they had long since stopped trying to understand why the crazy European tourists did any of the things they did—he scrambled up onto the ledge and took a small packet of quick-drying cement powder from one pocket and a vial of water from another, poured the water into the powder, and stirred it to produce a thick white goo. He tilted the statue and applied the goo under it and all around the bottom. Then he jumped off the ledge, produced a small brush, and brushed the floor, gathering up the dust into a small pan. He then blew the dust onto the statue. Although its pallid whiteness could not be totally disguised, this gave it a semblance of age and permanence. It looked different from the other images in the small cavern, but not quite an only-been-here-for-the-past-ten-minutes difference.

  “Now quick!” the mummer said, making a brushing motion with his hands. “Back to the main cave and let’s get busy helping the others unpack the lunch hampers and set up.”

  The visitors from the Empress straggled out along the steps going up to the caves, some 250 feet above the landing. A troupe of red-faced monkeys scampered over the rocks to chatter at them and demand back-sheesh as they arrived at the top. When no food or shiny playthings were offered, the monkeys scolded the arrivals and departed as they had come, except for two who settled, one on a flat rock above the cave entrance and the other on a stone post in the clearing, leaned back on their haunches, and stared at the visitors, immobile as graven images of their primal monkey god.

  Most of the Empress group went with Professor Moriarty into the central cave with the stone pillars and he gathered them in front of the twenty-foot-high three-headed statue known as the Trimurti. Moriarty lit the brass bull’s-eye oil lamp he was carrying and shone its beam on the heads, so far above their own heads. They represented, he explained, three major aspects of the godhead that was Shiva: Lord Brahma the creator, Lord Vishnu the preserver, and Lord Shiva the destroyer. This provoked a spirited discussion on how a god could be all three, and with three separate names at that.

  “Nothing will provoke such hilarity and disbelief in a man as another man’s religion,” Moriarty said dryly. “And that goes whichever man is considering the beliefs of whichever other man—or woman.”

  Margaret and Peter sat outside one of the larger caves, in the shadow of its high, vaulted ceiling, holding hands, ignoring the others, and talked softly about something they could never recall later. In a while, when the sounds of conversation from inside grew fainter, they stood.

  “Shall we walk?” asked Peter.

  “Let’s.” Margaret adjusted her bonnet and smoothed her skirt.

  They wandered through the hall, pausing to admire one or another of the carvings which filled the walls almost continuously, talking about this and that.

  “So you’re going to be in London for a while?” Margaret asked casually.

  “As far as I know,” he told her. And then, after an elaborate pause: “And you?”

  “My father will be going to Castle Fitzroberts, the Highland Lancers’ headquarters outside Kilmarnock. But he plans to spend a couple of weeks in London first, attending to family business. I’ve been thinking of asking him if I could stay on. My aunt Constance would be glad to have me, I’m sure. She has a house in Belgravia.”

  “I was thinking of taking some leave time after I report,” Peter said. “I have a month or so coming.”

  “Really?” asked Margaret.

  They stopped in front of a figure delicately carved in relief on the left wall. It depicted a smug-looking man dancing. He had a secretive smile on his face and an extra arm, which was stretched above his head holding what seemed to be a small person. Even with the third arm he looked realistic and energetic, as though he could dance off the wall and join them, if he chose. If, perhaps, he found them as interesting as they found him.

  “Striking,” Peter said.

  “Beautiful,” Margaret agreed. “But incomprehensible. You have the feeling with so much of this art that it is meant to convey some deep feeling, or relate a truly meaningful story, but it’s someone else’s story, and you aren’t meant to understand it.”

  “I do, indeed, have that feeling,” Peter agreed. “But I felt the same way for the whole week I was in Florence staring at a peck of Renaissance masterworks. I am resigned to accept the fact that I must merely enjoy fine art without hoping to understand it. And then there was the opera I went to. Tosca. I didn’t understand a word of it. It was as though it were in a foreign language.”

  Margaret suppressed a giggle. “Philistine!” she murmured.

  After a bit over two hours of exploring, examining, and contemplating the caverns of infinite delight and perpetual torment, abode of the masculine force and the eternal feminine, the living incarnation of Shiva, the perpetual inanimate and eternal avatar of the godhead, Moriarty and his followers returned to the main grotto to find the picnic hampers unpacked, six light tables set up and surrounded with canvas camp chairs, the serving tables pushed together and piled with provender of an Anglo-Indian sort: whole roast chickens and tandoori chicken, roast leg of lamb and roast lamb cubes on skewers, three different kinds of chutney, basmati rice with yogurt, pureed eggplant, nan bread, and more. Two servers with dazzling smiles stood behind the tables in their white aprons. A third was removing more platters of hot food from the camp stove even as the group formed into a line and reached for plates. A cool breeze blew in from the sea, and all agreed that tramping about in caves staring at stone figures can make pausing for food seem like an awfully good idea.

  General St. Yves and his two adjutants, Colonel Morcy, whose waist was larger and whose face was redder than when the trip commenced, and Major Sandiman, whose mustache was thicker and whose visage was more dour, sat at a table with Colonel Moran and Professor Moriarty, discussing Hindu art and other matters of mutual interest as they ate.

  Colonel Moran waited until what he judged was the proper moment in the meal to dangle the bait. When the pace of eating had slowed and the others were beginning to look restless, he began. “I understand that one of these caves has some carvings of a more, ah, if I can borrow a term, sensual nature,” he said, leaning forward and speaking in a confidential tone.

  “That’s so,” said Professor Moriarty, setting the hook. “The book in the ship’s library mentioned them. Without going into any great detail, of course.”

  “I wouldn’t mind taking a dekko at them, if it can be managed without offending the others,” Moran said.

  “It would be very interesting,” Moriarty agreed. “The carvings have a deep religious
significance, I understand, even if to our eyes they seem a little, well, risqué.”

  “Religious significance, you say?” St. Yves asked.

  “So I’ve been told.

  “Seems to me,” St. Yves commented, “that everything on this bloody subcontinent has a religious significance, even the b-bloody insects.”

  “I have had a similar feeling myself,” Moriarty admitted. “But it would certainly help with our understanding of the various peoples of India if we had a deeper knowledge of their traditional beliefs and religious practices.”

  “True,” St. Yves agreed.

  “After all,” Moriarty added, “despite the ‘poor benighted heathen’ image that the overseers of the British Raj try to project, India had a highly developed civilization back when the people of Britain were still painting themselves blue and worshipping trees. Our overlordship of India is the result of better guns, not a superior culture.”

  Moran gave the professor a quick warning glance. This was not the time for one of Moriarty’s little rants on the evils of modern society, or just who was calling whom uncivilized. “Perhaps we should go look at these carvings now, if we’re going to go,” he said, determined to get the conversation back on the rails again. “Then we can be back by the time everyone else has finished eating.”

  “It might be amusing,” St. Yves agreed, pushing his chair back. “Do you know where this particular chamber is, Professor?”

  “I believe so,” Moriarty said. “We’ll take a stab at it.” He relit his oil lamp and, with as little fuss as possible, the small group left their companions and headed back into the caves.

  The mummer joined the group as it left the large cave, and Moriarty introduced him to the others as “my friend Mr. Tolliver, a dealer in Indian curiosities.”

  “ ’At’s right,” the mummer agreed. “And the curiouser the better, says I.”