The Ravi Lancers

by John Masters

  ‘Durbar is open,’ he said. ‘Let who will, speak.’

  A dafadar asked if anything could be done to lessen the number of fatigues. The men were not getting the rest they were surely entitled to when out of the line. One particular fatigue, of carrying heavy water cans up to the reserve trenches, was bhisti’s work, and took up scores of men’s time every night.

  Krishna said, ‘The colonel-sahib spoke to the general some time ago about this. Then, nothing could be done. I will look into it again.’

  Privately he thought, at least part of the heavy work load was due to stupidity on the part of the higher command. The ground sloped generally downward for a mile or two from the rear towards the trenches, and only three days ago he had suggested that semi-permanent piping might be installed to carry water forward ... to be told that when the army wanted the advice of a plumber they would ask one.

  ‘Next--you,’ he said.

  A young sowar wanted to go home.

  ‘But you have only just come, with the latest draft,’ an older man spoke up from the middle of the crowd.

  ‘I had a letter from my village,’ the young man said. ‘My brother was killed by a leopard, at the well.’

  ‘What village is that?’ a lance-dafadar asked from under the cherry trees.

  ‘Budhgaon, Tehsil Kangra.’

  ‘I know it,’ a rissaldar said. ‘There was a leopard there when I was a boy--a shaitan that killed many cows and took a baby.’

  ‘It’s son or grandson is there now,’ the young man said. ‘My brother is dead, and the fields will lie untilled.’

  ‘I have seen the letter,’ the head clerk said. ‘The postmark is of Jogindar Nagar, veritably.’

  Krishna Ram said, ‘You may go. The head clerk will make out the proper papers ... You! ‘

  A man asked whether they could not revert to the customary method of washing their whole bodies, as he was feeling unclean.

  A chorus of voices spoke out on the subject. A jemadar of C Squadron recited a hundred lines of the Ramayana in support of cleanliness, listened to with rapt attention by the gathered men. The Brahmin capped him with a hundred and fifty lines from an obscure Tantric hymn pouring curses on uncleanness of body. A pockmarked sowar from the Signal Section pointed out that though no one could call the weather hot, it was certainly much less cold than it had been two months ago when the order was made. A lance-dafadar said that no one in his squadron--B--had had influenza or feverish cold or pneumonia for over a month.

  Krishna Ram said, ‘Let all wash as they wish, whether piece by piece, or stripped to the loin cloth at the well or tap or bucket, as customary. But let any man who goes to hospital of a cold, beware.’ A lance-dafadar of the Machine Gun Section said, ‘Lord, when we came out of the battle of St. Rambert, bringing with us as many of our dead as we could find, they were buried in a common grave behind the trenches. It is our right and custom that the dead shall be burned. It is understood that the ashes cannot be scattered on a stream that will take them to Holy Ganga, but certainly the bodies should be burned, not buried, to hold the spirit under this foreign soil instead of releasing it to the air, that circles the whole earth, and might perhaps carry our dust to fall on Holy Ganga’s waters.’

  The quartermaster said, ‘Lord, I indented for wood, but was refused. The DAQMG sahib said there was a grave shortage of wood, and what he had was needed for revetting the trenches.’

  ‘I know,’ Krishna said. ‘I have written to the brigadier-general about this matter, and will speak also when I see him tomorrow. Meantime, the quartermaster, who can collect and hide many things in his store without the knowledge of anyone--even his commanding officer--may perhaps collect some wood.’

  ‘Yes, lord,’ Sohan Singh said, ‘I can do that. But it is not easy to transport, if we are moved to another part of the front.’

  ‘Do what you can ... Next.’

  A grizzled sowar said, ‘We have talked of death. I talk of life ... We are men far from our homes. It is proper that we should have the service of women from time to time. There are none, except some of the public sort even here in this village, as anyone can see who watches the gora log going to the houses at the end of the street in the afternoons and evenings. But it is forbidden to us of the rissalas and paltans to enter those places. What is to be done, before perchance some man deprived too long of what is his right, shall commit a crime against an honourable and proper woman of this country, while she is working in the fields perhaps, or taking a child home at night? Who then will be guilty of the crime, for surely it will not be he who assaults the woman, needing what a woman gives?’

  A man said, ‘Surely the public women of this place should be opened to such as us, for...’

  Krishna recognized him as a clerk from RHQ, a slight middle-aged man who had come to Ravi from British India a dozen years ago, and had been heard to talk of Swaraj and other dangerous subjects. The previous RM had threatened to have his ears cut off if he fomented any sedition in the regiment, and, as far as was known he had not. It was thought that he, like the wrestler, was in flight from the British, and did not dare to make trouble, for fear he would be handed back to them.

  Krishna cut in, saying, ‘Enough! This will be considered by me. Let there be no more discussion until I have spoken ... Next.’

  The regiment talked, comfortably squatted. A young sowar asked how to cure homesickness and an old one asked what he should do with some money he had taken off a German corpse.

  Sunset was the customary time to end durbar, and a man spoke hurriedly: ‘It is in my mind that after our time in the front line, and after the great victory of your highness at St. Rambert Ridge, it would be meet to hold a tamasha ... We have eaten what was given us, for we are soldiers, but it was not our food and many are always hungry. Can we not fill great tuns of rice, and make mountains of pakka chupattis, full of ghi, and goats let there be...

  ‘Ai, ai, yes! ‘ the men murmured.

  ‘And music, and dance, and a play that we may watch...’

  Krishna Ram said, ‘It shall be so. As soon as it can be arranged.’ The men clapped and a loud shout of approval rose. Krishna said, ‘Durbar is ended.’

  Major Bholanath barked, ‘Attention! ‘ His palms joined, Krishna bowed to the men and they to him. He walked quickly away across the field, through the dusk to his billet, his suite following respectfully ten paces behind him.

  An hour later he was sitting in the one comfortable armchair in his billet room, drinking, two hurricane lanterns burning, one on the table and one on the window. Hanuman announced the adjutant and quartermaster, Dayal Ram and Sohan Singh. Dayal Ram saluted as he came in, Sohan Singh made a low obeisance, touching his hands quickly to Krishna Ram’s feet and then to his own forehead. Krishna said, ‘Wait a minute.’ He was sitting in his stockinged feet, riding breeches and shirt, a British warm thrown loosely over his shoulders. Now he stepped up on to the bed and squatted there, his feet tucked under him. ‘Be seated,’ he said. Sohan Singh squatted on the floor, and Dayal Ram took the armchair. Going back to type, Warren Bateman would say, if he could see them now, Krishna mused; but he was really more comfortable this way; he had only told himself the chairs were more comfortable under the influence of Mr. Fleming, and his desire to become English.

  Hanuman brought titbits on a metal tali and set the bottle of brandy close to Krishna’s hand on the bedside table. Krishna poured a glass for Dayal Ram, but Sohan Singh refused, making a namasti and shaking his head. Business began, all conducted in Hindi.

  ‘Highness,’ Sohan Singh said, ‘if I may take a thousand rupees out of the imprest account, I can arrange a place where public women can be made available to our men. There are enough women here who need the money ... or the men.’

  ‘That is beyond doubt,’ Dayal Ram said with a lazy, half-satisfied smile. ‘Plenty would give money.’

  ‘Ah, to a young bull like you, perhaps,’ the quartermaster said, ‘but, on demand, our men will have to pay.’
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br />   ‘What do you need the thousand rupees for?’ Krishna asked.

  ‘To prepare a house or two--or perhaps a barn or cowshed. To buy some medicines ... your highness knows that some of these Fransezi women suffer from the sickness ... To pay any Military Policeman who might come across what we are doing.’

  ‘And there will be nothing in your accounts?’

  ‘Nothing, lord. In a month or two there will be a profit, perhaps five hundred rupees a month.’

  ‘What would you do with that?’

  ‘Buy necessities that are not in the ration ... More money for tamashas when we are out of the line. There will be more bribes.’ Dayal Ram said, ‘Have you spoken to the doctor? These whores will have to be inspected, or we will start getting a number of venereal cases, and the general will ask questions.’

  Sohan Singh popped a sweetmeat into his mouth and chewed appreciatively. ‘Ai, your highness will make me fatter than ever. The Doctor-sahib will inspect the women as often as necessary--twice a week, he said--and he will see that no case of venereal disease is reported in the sick states. He will treat them in the RAP.’

  Krishna Ram considered a moment, while the two staff officers talked of other matters in low voices. This was all against rules and regulations. It would involve several officers in lying, and the falsification of books and accounts, for he’d have to invent some reason for drawing the thousand rupees out of the imprest. It was indefensible ... but it seemed to be necessary. The men--not all, but many--badly needed women. The army was doing nothing, because of British puritanism and because of their feelings against allowing Indian troops to couple with white women. But why should Indians suffer for the guilts and fears of Europe? Why should they not seek solace from the bloody battlefield in European yonis?

  Dayal Ram said, ‘The men need it ... It’s only been their discipline that’s kept them out of trouble so far. And a lot of these women throw themselves at your head. Not as much as the English ladies, though.’ He drank and smacked his lips. Krishna took another drink of his brandy. ‘Tell me,’ he said on an impulse, ‘what happened on that leave of yours?’

  Dayal’s handsome face lit up eagerly. He leaned forward. ‘Highness, the English are different from what they pretend to be. The women certainly ... and, I think, the men, too. The women present a front so cold, so stiff, and formal ... but only approach them and they are as hot under their skirts as the loosest women in Basohli. As soon as I reached London, I found out how to work the telephone and then rang Lady Harriet Symonds. I asked her if she would do me the honour of dining with me ... at the Savoy. You know my father is giving me a very big allowance and I can afford it. She suggested instead that I go to her house, to see what I looked like, I suppose. After two drinks she became, well, affectionate ... you know, sitting close to me on the sofa, looking at me with her eyes big and her eyelashes fluttering. We were in the drawing-room, with butlers and servants about. Then she suggested we go for a drive. I can’t drive, of course, but she did. It was a Rolls Royce. She drove me up to a park, Hampstead or something, and stopped. It was dark. She just turned, lay on my shoulder and put her hand ... right on my prick! ‘

  ‘Ai, ai!’ Sohan Singh crowed. ‘I would have to wrap a twenty-rupee note round it before a woman would lay her hand to it.’ Dayal’s rapid Hindi continued. ‘For a time I couldn’t believe what was happening. A peer’s daughter. A noblewoman. An Englishwoman ... But by then my prick was as stiff as a pole and she undid the buttons and then crawled on to me. She was pulling at her skirts and petticoats. They wear more than our women do, prince--you know--but nothing delays them getting their slit bared when they want to ... She lowered herself greedily on to me and I thrust up into her. She was as hot and wet as a Basohli whore in Holi. I was so excited I came at once. Then we stayed quite a time and I made love twice more ... And every day of my leave. And she introduced me to two other young ladies, and they, too, both came to me ... Englishwomen are--pfft! ‘--he made a gesture of dismissal--’no different from whores.’

  ‘Not all,’ Krishna said, a touch of stiffness in his voice.

  Hanuman was setting up a hookah on the floor. He handed the mouthpiece to Krishna as the adjutant said, ‘By God, English men know how to make themselves comfortable, but they can’t satisfy their women. Perhaps they don’t try. I think I’m going to live in London after this ... if I survive.’

  Krishna drew on the hookah pipe. Hanuman put more charcoal in the bowl. Yes, Krishna thought, one side of London would attract Dayal Ram, and vice versa ... with his unearthly good looks, and no coward behind it. The class of women he had met--the ones seeking sensation in a specially European way--would seize him as harpies seized sailors, or as the gods took what they needed from earth. He happened to be rich, but women like Lady Harriet would keep him anyway, either directly, or by having their fathers or husbands give him jobs. And now he had enjoyed the sexual favours of European women. Why should he be alone in that position?

  He turned to the quartermaster and said, ‘Very well, Sohan. You may proceed with your plan.’

  ‘Thank you, lord. I am sure Your Highness is making a wise decision.’

  The quartermaster began to talk about accounts, and Krishna Ram thought, all that he tells me will be the truth, for I am a prince of the blood; but it will not be the whole truth. He will do what he says he will do, for the regiment, but there will be an extra hundred or so rupees a week for himself; and with that he will start a business buying grain at Amiens and selling it to the government or the dealers for twice what he paid for it, and the profits will go to London to buy shares in arms companies, steel works, banks...

  The two left, as they had come, and a few minutes later Hanuman announced Captain Pahlwan Ram and Lieutenant Puran Lall. Krishna took another drink of brandy. He had eaten a number of parathas and sweetmeats, and now would eat some more with the new visitors. There would be no formal dinner in the mess tonight, as there was when Warren Bateman was present. This was how they used to live in Basohli before they were embodied into the Sirkar’s army, and it came more easily to them. But it did not allow for horseplay and games in the mess.

  He looked down at Puran Lall, squatting beside the bed, and said, ‘Are you going to eat in mess tonight?’

  The young man shook his head, ‘No, highness. I am having some food sent to my billet.’

  Krishna said, ‘You should go out more. It is unhealthy for a young man like you to sit in your room like an old hermit on the mountain.’

  ‘There is nothing to live for, now that Ishar is gone,’ he said.

  ‘Not even to kill Germans?’ Krishna Ram said.

  ‘A little, highness. I tried at St. Rambert to hate ... like the Scottish sergeant told us ... but it was not the Germans that I hated.’

  ‘The English?’ Pahlwan Ram suggested softly.

  ‘A little ... not Bateman-sahib, of course ... some of the sort one meets in the base areas, yes. But there is something else wrong with me, too, and I do not know what. Perhaps it is myself that I hate, because I am alive and Ishar dead.’

  He sat, his face closed, neither eating nor drinking, occasionally taking a puff at the hookah for another fifteen minutes--then he left.

  Krishna Ram looked at his watch, to indicate to Pahlwan Ram that he was outstaying his welcome. But the brutish lieutenant said, ‘When will Bateman-sahib be well again?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Krishna Ram said. ‘I had a letter from him in hospital two days ago. He was making a good recovery and said he’d be going to Shrewford Pennel, that’s his home, in a week or so, and hoped to rejoin in another month after that.’

  Pahlwan said, ‘And he will come back to us ... or to a regular regiment?’

  ‘I don’t know. To us, I hope.’ As he said it he wondered whether he meant it. Pahlwan Ram detected the doubt and said, ‘The regiment would wish that he did not return...’ He went on quickly, before Krishna Ram could tell him to be quiet: ‘He is English, lord, and though he shares our
tongue he does not share our hearts. You are our lord and prince ... All trust Bateman-sahib with their money, their food, their clothes--but what do these matter to a Rajput? They would trust you with their souls ... This war is going to destroy us, highness.’

  ‘You take good care it won’t destroy you, I notice,’ Krishna said. He recognized that his own voice was blurred.

  ‘This war is nothing to do with us,’ the lieutenant insisted. ‘It is turning the sowars into Christians with brown skins, instead of what they would be, Hindus, servants of the Sun. It is only you who can save us, and Bateman-sahib knows it. He will kill you, highness ... if you don’t see that he dies first.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ Krishna snapped. ‘He does not want to kill me.’

  ‘Not you, as prince, but what you mean, what you are ... for until that is killed, or conquered, he will never...’

  Krishna said, ‘Enough! I wish to be alone.’

  Pahlwan Ram rose quickly. ‘As the prince pleases.’ He bowed out.

  Krishna sat moodily, cross-legged, on the bed. The CO had been gone barely three weeks, and the regiment was already full of intrigue, backbiting, slander, defalcations of money, cheating with accounts. Yet ... yet ... He poured another drink, recognizing in the blurred outline of the door and the swing and dip of the lights that he was quite drunk. What was the evil in Warren Bateman, then? There was something but he could not see exactly what through the pleasant fumes of the brandy.

  I thrust up into her. She was as hot and wet as a Basohli whore in Holi.

  He swayed forward, Dayal Ram’s words slithering lasciviously through his mind. His penis began to stiffen. By God, he wanted a woman. An image of a woman with white skin kept trying to form in his mind, but before the face took shape he dismissed it with violent shakes of his head and a physical gesture with his hand, as though brushing something away and out of the room. Images of woman, unfaced now, returned more strongly, the triangle between the legs, two swelling breasts, the velvet feel of the skin on the thighs. His loins hurt with a piercing pain.