Flood of Fire

by Amitav Ghosh

  Often it was Kesri who was called on to serve the visitors and light their hookahs. No one minded if he loitered, listening to what was being said: since he wasn’t available for recruitment, his presence made no difference. Bhim, on the other hand, was not allowed anywhere near the recruiters. That would have been as improper and unwise as for a girl to step out brazenly in front of a set of prospective in-laws.

  Ram Singh would start by questioning the recruiters minutely about such matters as the salary that was being offered and how regularly it was paid; how booty was divided and what sorts of battas – or allowances – were provided. Was there a batta for clothing? Was there a marching-batta? Or a bonus for campaigns away from the home station? Who provided the food when in camp? How large was the camp-followers’ bazar? What did it offer? Was accommodation provided in the home station?

  Only if these queries were answered to his satisfaction would Bhim be produced before the recruiter. And just as their mother always found a way, when the time was right, to present her daughters to their best advantage before the families of prospective grooms, so would their father do the same for his son. When the moment came he would send Kesri to fetch his brother. The boy would arrive with a plough slung over his shoulders, dressed in nothing but a vest and langot, so that his impressive physique was bared for the recruiter to see. Then, Ram Singh would ask him to groom the jamadar’s horse, which he would proceed to do with a will, thereby showing himself to be a well-brought-up, obedient boy who could follow orders respectfully.

  The jamadars were not the only ones to come looking for able-bodied youths: some of the recruiters were serving jawans, back on leave. Bringing in recruits was a way of earning commissions, so rounding up a few young fellows was a good way to make a bit of money.

  For Bhim and Kesri the younger soldiers were much more interesting than the grey-whiskered elders who usually came by. Some of the jawans were friends or acquaintances from nearby villages so there was no need to stand on ceremony with them; some even stayed the night and then the two brothers would lie awake till dawn, listening to their stories.

  One day a cousin from a neighbouring village came to visit. Although not much older than Kesri he had already spent a couple of years in Delhi, in the service of the Mughal army. This was his first visit home and he could not, of course, be allowed to leave without spending the night: the boys took their charpoys out into the courtyard and were soon absorbed in their cousin’s stories. He described Delhi’s temples and mosques, forts and palaces. When he and his company went on marches, he said, their unit was far outnumbered by their camp-followers. The bazar that trailed behind them was like a small town, only much more colourful. One whole section of it was given to naach-girls – and they were the most beautiful women that anyone had ever seen, from Afghanistan and Nepal, Ethiopia and Turkmenistan. Boys like Bhim and Kesri, he said, could not conceive of the things these girls could do with their bodies – no more than they could imagine a banana being peeled with the tongue.

  Of course it couldn’t be left at that. The boys plied him with questions and after a little bit of nahi-nahi and other pretences of modesty, he told them all they wanted to know and more – how it felt to have the contours of your face stroked with a nipple, and what it was like to have your instrument enveloped by muscles that could squeeze, pluck, and even glide, like the fingers of a musician.

  For Kesri this was dangerous territory, for one of the most important aspects of his regimen of training, as a wrestler, was the control of the inner workings of the body – especially its desires and their manifestations. To that end he regularly practised a variety of exercises, intended to prevent the loss, accidental or intentional, of his vital fluids. But that night his training proved unequal to the task: he woke suddenly to find that he had succumbed to a swapnadosha – a ‘dream-mishap’.

  As for his brother Bhim, he knew at once that this was exactly the brand of soldiering that would suit him best. With Kesri’s encouragement he went to their father the next morning and told him that he wanted to go to Delhi with his cousin. Ram Singh willingly gave him his blessings and promised to make all the necessary arrangements.

  Preparations for Bhim’s departure started at once and involved the whole family. Clothes were made, bedding and blankets were prepared, and an array of equipment was assembled – flints, powder, musket-balls for his goolie-pouch, and an assortment of edged weapons, long and short.

  Kesri, in the meantime, was busy ploughing the poppy fields. But try as he might, he could not stop thinking of his brother Bhim’s forthcoming journey to Delhi, mounted on a horse, with his weapons slung behind him and a fine new turban on his head. By contrast his own bare body, with a filthy langot knotted around the waist and flies settling on his pooling sweat, was a reminder of the lifetime that lay ahead of him, of trudging endlessly behind draught animals, jumping aside when they spurted dung in mid-stride, season after season, watching the crops come and go, counting it a luxury to snatch an hour’s sleep in the shade of a tree in the afternoon, and at the end of the day, struggling to wash away the mud that had hardened into a second layer of skin between his toes. And in the meantime Bhim would be going from city to city, filling his bags with booty, eating rich meats and fowl and revelling in the embraces of beautiful women.

  Abandoning the oxen in the middle of the field Kesri went to sit under a tree; tears trickled down his cheeks as he sat there, clutching his knees. That was how Deeti found him when she brought over his mid-day meal of rotis and achar: she understood without asking what the matter was; she stayed with him through the afternoon and helped him finish the ploughing.

  At the end of the day, when they were walking home, she said: Don’t worry, it will happen. You will leave too.

  But when, Deeti? Batavela. Tell me – when?

  *

  For several days after his unfortunate encounter with Mrs Burnham and her daughter, Zachary lived in hourly fear of being evicted from his comfortable new lodgings on the budgerow. It seemed just a matter of time before a khidmatgar arrived with a letter to inform him that his employment had been terminated because of his lapse from decorum.

  But as the days went by, with no dismissal, he decided that Mrs Burnham had perhaps decided to grant him another chance. Still, he knew he could not be complacent – occasional flashes of light in the mansion’s windows suggested that he was still under observation – so he went to great lengths to observe all the proprieties in matters of dress and deportment. When working in exposed parts of the boat, he made sure that he was clothed from neck to toe, no matter how hot it was.

  But other than this minor annoyance, Zachary was perfectly content to be living on the budgerow. His days were uneventful but not unrewarding: he got up early and worked steadily till sunset; when he needed help he called on the mansion’s khidmat-gars but mostly he was content to labour on his own. His quiet and frugal existence seemed to excite the pity of the household staff and they kept him supplied with leftovers – in fact he could not remember a time in his life when he had eaten so well and lived in such comfort.

  Best of all were the nights. The bed was itself like an embrace, soft and yielding, and the solitude and quiet were an even greater luxury. Nourished by the fine food and peaceful surroundings his imagination grew so vigorously concupiscent that it took no effort to summon Paulette out of the shadows and into his bed – and the pleasures of his trysts with her were so intense that he often sampled them several times in one night.

  One morning, while working on the foredeck, Zachary heard Annabel’s voice, calling from the shore: ‘Holloa there!’

  He raised a finger to his cap. ‘Hello, Miss Annabel.’

  ‘I came to say goodbye – I’m leaving for Hazaribagh today.’

  ‘Well, I wish you a safe and pleasant journey, Miss Annabel.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She took a step closer. ‘Tell me, Mr Mystery,’ she said, ‘you knew Paulette, didn’t you?’

&nb
sp; ‘So I did.’

  ‘Do you think you may see her again soon?’ ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I hope so.’

  ‘If you do, please tell her I said hello, won’t you? I do miss her so.’

  ‘So do I, Miss Annabel.’

  She nodded. ‘I’d better be off now. Mama doesn’t like me to talk to you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She says it isn’t decent for a girl to talk to mysteries.’

  He laughed. ‘Well, you’d better run then. Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  Annabel and Mrs Burnham left later that day and for a fortnight afterwards the Burnham mansion was silent and dark. Then suddenly the lights went on again and Zachary knew that Mrs Burnham had returned. A week later there was an explosion of activity around the house; khidmatgars, chokras, malis and ghaskatas went swarming over the grounds, stringing up lanterns and putting out chairs. One of the chokras told Zachary that a big burra-khana was to be held at the house to celebrate the Beebee’s birthday.

  In the evening a great number of gharries and coaches rolled up the driveway and the sound of voices and laughter wafted across the lawns until late into the night. Zachary sequestered himself in his stateroom and was careful to stay out of sight.

  The next day, at suppertime, the khidmatgars brought over a lavish spread of leftovers as well as a few bottles of beer. Along with the food and drink they also delivered a small parcel. It was accompanied by an envelope that had Zachary’s name written on it, in a steeply sloping scrawl.

  This was the first communication Zachary had received since his last encounter with Mrs Burnham: he opened the envelope with deep trepidation, not knowing what to expect. To his surprise the tone of the note was not just pleasant but almost cordial:

  August 30, 1839

  Dear Mr Reid

  I trust you have settled in comfortably and are making progress with the refurbishment. If you need anything I hope you will not hesitate to let the khidmatgars know.

  Since Man does not live by bread alone you are no doubt in need of some improving Literature to relieve your solitude. I have thus taken the liberty of sending you two books. I hope you will find them of interest.

  Yours &c.

  C. Burnham

  It was clear now that he had been granted a reprieve! With a groan of relief, Zachary deposited the note and parcel on the teapoy that stood beside his bed. Then he celebrated by opening a bottle of beer and proceeded to eat a hearty meal. Afterwards he went up to the deck above and summoned Paulette to sit beside him, under the stars. Her presence was so palpable that it made him long for the pleasures of his bed; he went hurrying back to his stateroom and tore off his clothes. Wasting no time, he parted the mosquito net and slipped between the sheets, pausing only to snatch up one of the stained and crusted doo-rags that lay strewn around the bed.

  He was about to snuff out the candle when his eyes fell on the parcel that Mrs Burnham had sent him. Reaching over to the teapoy, he tore off the parcel’s paper covering: inside were two books, of just the sort that he would have expected to receive from Mrs Burnham. One was a biography of a long-dead missionary and the other was a collection of sermons, by a Reverend someone-or-the-other.

  The books looked dull and Zachary was in no mood to read anyway: but just as he was about to put them away a little pamphlet tumbled out of one of them and fell on his chest. Picking it up, Zachary glanced at the cover. Printed on it, in bold, screaming letters, were the words:

  ONANIA; OR THE HEINOUS SIN OF SELF-POLLUTION.

  The title made him sit bolt upright: he wasn’t quite sure what the words meant but their very sound was enough to cause alarm.

  Opening the pamphlet at random he came to a paragraph that had been heavily underlined.

  Self-pollution is that unnatural practice by which Persons of either Sex, may defile their own Bodies, without the Assistance of others, whilst yielding to filthy Imaginations, they endeavour to imitate and procure to themselves that Sensation, which God has order’d to attend the carnal Commerce of the two Sexes, for the Continuance of our Species.

  His eyes returned, as if hypnotized, to the words ‘filthy imaginations’. A chill of shame went through him and he quickly turned the page, but only to arrive at another underlined passage:

  … the Crime in itself is monstrous and unnatural; in its Practice filthy and odious to Extremity; its Guilt is crying, and its Consequences ruinous; It destroys conjugal Affection, perverts natural Inclination, and tends to extinguish the Hopes of Posterity.

  He turned feverishly to another page:

  In Men as well as Boys, the very first Attempt of it has often occasion’d a Phymosis in some, and a Paraphymosis in others; I shall not explain these terms any further, let it suffice that they are Accidents which are very painful and troublesome, and may continue to be tormenting for some time, if not bring on Ulcers and other worse Symptoms. The frequent Use of this Pollution; likewise causes Stranguries, Priapisms and other disorders of the Penis and Testes but especially Gonorrhoeas, more difficult to be Cur’d than those contracted from Women …

  Zachary’s hands began to shake and the pamphlet dropped from his fingers. Reaching down, he pulled open his drawers and began to examine himself, looking for evidence of ulcers, stranguries and phymosises. What exactly they were he didn’t know, but amongst the wiry hairs of his pubes and in the wrinkled folds of the sac below, there was no shortage of troubling manifestations – pimples, white-heads, creases, and swollen veins that he had never noticed before.

  When had they appeared and what did they portend? He could not think and was grateful only that he could see no signs of incipient priapism. This was a disease he had often heard discussed among sailors: their name for it was ‘fouling the fiddle-block’, and he had heard it said that it could lead to terrible damage, sometimes even causing the head of the organ to erupt, like a boil or pustule. He could not imagine a more dreadful affliction.

  And then a thought occurred to him that was even more frightful than the spectre of disease: what if the pamphlet’s arrival was not an accident? What if Mrs Burnham had deliberately stuck it in the book, knowing that it would find its way into his hands?

  No, that was impossible surely? It was beyond his imagining that she would even know of the existence of such a book, let alone possess a familiarity with the matters that were addressed in it. Surely a woman like her, a memsahib of tender sensibility, the most sheltered of Burra Beebees, would not allow her eyes to dwell on a booklet of this sort? And even if she had, surely – surely? – she would not have considered sending the pamphlet to a man whom she hardly knew at all?

  For what could be the intent of such an act? What grounds could she have for imagining him to be an Onanist – indeed, of accusing him of it?

  To know something so secret, so private, would mean that she had looked into his very soul. And to see so deep into the head and body of another person was to take possession of them, to achieve complete mastery; he might as well be her dredgy now for he would certainly never be able to look her in the eyes again.

  And the worst part of it was that he would never find out whether she knew or not – a subject like this could never be mentioned between a mystery and his mistress.

  A terrible dread swept over him now and all thought of his anticipated tryst with Paulette was erased from his mind. He was filled instead with a self-loathing so acute that he could not imagine that such filthy temptations would ever well up inside him again. And if they did he would fight them; he would prove that he was no Onanist: of that he was determined – his freedom, his mastery of his very soul, seemed to depend on it.

  His eyes fell on the yellowing rags that lay around his bed and he shuddered. In light of what he knew now, they looked unspeakably vile, veritable founts of sin and contagion. He cast his hands around him until they fell on the rag he had brought into his bed, and he hurled it away with a shudder of loathing. Then he picked up the pamphlet and read it through one m
ore time, from beginning to end.

  Over the next few days Zachary wore the pages of Onania almost to shreds, reading the pamphlet over and again. The parts that made the most powerful impression on him were the passages on disease: every perusal deepened his apprehensions about the infections that were simmering inside his body.

  Until this time he had been under the impression that the clap was the revenge of the pox-parlour and could not be caught without actually thrusting your cargo through a hatch, no matter whether fore or aft: that merely winching up your undertackle with your own maulers could produce the same result had never entered his mind.

  On the Ibis he had seen the consequences of the clap on other sailors: he had listened to pox-ridden men screaming in pain as they tried to tap their kegs; he had viewed, with horror-struck curiosity, the fruit that blossomed on diseased beanpoles – the clumps of welts and boils, the dribbles of pus. He had also heard stories about how the treatment – with applications of mercury and even leeches – was just as painful as the disease. To spike one’s cannon forever seemed better than to take that cure.

  It had never occurred to him that his night-time trysts with Paulette might be leading in this direction. He had thought that his bullet-pouch was no different from his bladder or his bowels in that it needed an occasional emptying. He had even heard it said that coughing up your cocksnot from time to time was as much a necessity as blowing your nose. Certainly no one who had ever slept in a fo’c’sle could fail to notice the fusillades that shook every hammock from time to time. More than once had he been bumped in the nose because of an overly energetic bout of musketry in the hammock above. Just as he himself was sometimes shouted at, he’d learnt to shout: ‘Will you stop polishing your pistol up there? Take your shot and be done with it.’

  But he remembered now, with a sinking in his heart, that it was always the most trigger-happy gunmen who ended up with the clap. He himself had never been of that number – at least not until he fell under the sway of Paulette’s phantom. Now, as he battled the temptation to sink into her arms again, the very sound of the letter ‘P’ became unbearable to him – as did words like ‘gullet’ and ‘mullet’ and everything that rhymed with ‘Paulette’.