“I began to sing on the road. Every day I sang to cheer up my mother and father. They lost many friends, so did I. As we crossed the new border I was singing, and my voice got stuck at the border and because of that I always sing. If I had been chattering, I would always be chattering, and if I was silent, I would never have said another word. What we did at that border, that is how our lives continued, and what we didn’t do, we could never do again.”
It was time for Ravi’s show, and before she could shoo him away, he was gone and working the controls of the television. Bikram began to hum. It was an old tune from a movie she remembered watching as a young woman. “Mera joota hai Japani.” My shoes are Japanese.
Children’s Games
THE ORPHANAGE, BUILT ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF A RAJ-ERA hill station, had originally served as a sanatorium for injured soldiers who had survived the 1857 revolt. Some years before the end of the century it was converted into a private school for children of officials of the Raj. Finally, a Presbyterian minister from New Hampshire bought the failing school and transformed it in the early decades of the twentieth century into an orphanage and dayschool primarily for Anglo-Indian children. My own arrival, like most, was unheralded, and I retained few memories of those first days, another lost child among so many lost children.
The architecture was imported: a decayed Gothic hovering in the roofs and windows giving little inkling of utility or purpose. The buildings were arrayed along a ridge and not far from the school, the roads afforded lush views of the surrounding valleys. The moldering brown or dull orange of the stone took on the colors, in the late afternoon and twilight, of the rougher, darker ground, as though the architecture, in the morning and daylight, was an illusion that fractured, giving itself up with the dying sun as it returned to the singular entropy of the dirt’s crushed brown surface. Reverend Healdstone served as principal and pastor. He was a tall man with thick arms and in the afternoons I would hear the clack of an axe as he chopped wood, the sharp, dying rustle of branches as he scythed through encroaching brush. In the days of the hill station, an artificial lake had been dug on the far outskirts. It lived on as a swamp, filled in mostly, home to water snakes and insects of every variety, an ugly, unstable ground few dared approach, smelling of refuse and excrement, slushing underfoot if trudged across.
In the center of the courtyard a massive stone pillar lay on its side. Neither base nor top had survived and much of the decoration that had once been carved onto it had been lost or chipped away by soldiers or children. The inscription remained visible in areas and arrayed over its crumbling surface were several symbols whose menace invited attempts at interpretation: two dots became a face, a line became a knife, a circle was for us a decapitated head. There was a beauty to the decayed surface of the pillar, especially at certain hours, when the etched relief, made splendid in the slanting rays of the sun, took on the proportions of a grand history: now the dots were stars shooting through the sky, the line became a door leading to the hall of a great and glittering palace.
The teachers claimed it was erected by the great Emperor Ashoka, one of his famous pillars cut in the third century BC, inscribed with his laws and spread all across the land untold eons ago. Vines struggled up its sides and enclosed the soft grey stone under a mossy sleep while the climate nibbled at it through a slow mastication by the elements. I once discovered a history of architecture in the school library which contained a print of the pillar. In the drawing the pillar appeared much larger and no houses surrounded it yet. A man dressed in a dhoti stood idly by for scale and behind him trees arched to fill the landscape. The author claimed that though some had counted this among Ashoka’s pillars, he was certain it was not. The inscriptions dated from several centuries later. It was perhaps an imitation, though a good one, yet clearly not the real thing.
When I showed Mr. Babcock, the English and Latin teacher, the print of the Ashokan pillar and the author’s claim that it was a forgery, he laughed. He shook his head from side to side, showing all his teeth, and snatched the book away, looking at it first upside down then right way up, telling me it didn’t matter if it was a fake or not. He tossed the book dismissively onto his desk, sending up a cloud of dust. Everything in this godforsaken country, he said, was a fake! Even I was a forgery!
Mr. Babcock was a short, balding man and in the evenings, when I found him in his room or sitting on the verandah, he would be clutching a glass of beer or gin. He never showed his drunkenness. That was the single rule of the orphanage, its last redoubt against collapse: that as long as moral deterioration remained hidden, there lived a possibility of redemption. But few of the teachers were good at dissembling their carelessness and classes were odd affairs where a teacher would stand at the front and talk, often dictating, seldom checking work for accuracy, simply ensuring we had filled pages and not made too much noise.
Such freedom was a burdensome, agoraphobic freedom. We could do almost anything, but in a world bounded by the atrophied wills of our keepers, we found ourselves unmoored and without purpose. We were afraid to leave the grounds and we created tales of all the horrors awaiting us in the old lake, along the ridge, in the houses in the valley, the dark recesses of the town’s shops. Djinns mocked us from every gate and window. We looked to each other for structure and for boundaries to our actions and worlds and what felt like a natural hierarchy developed, or perhaps showed itself, freed of the imposed hierarchies of parents and teachers.
Those at the top were the orphans. We owned the grounds and the dayschoolers could never better our knowledge and sense of freedom among the buildings and fields. Among us orphans there were those who had been left by parents and those who had lived here since they could remember, who knew nothing or little of their past. These latter formed the apex of our hierarchy, its College of Bishops, its Senate, and here skin color, age and strength gave rise to our leaders. Those with the lightest skin, a skin almost European in tint, always occupied the highest rungs. My own skin was clearly brown, a light shade, and so though near the top (because I had no memories of any place other than the orphanage) I never found myself at the highest point of our invented mountain of souls.
The day Howard found a monkey’s skull reshaped our vision of him and of ourselves, it shifted the crustal plates of our small world at the orphanage. Howard was a tall, lanky boy who looked like he should already be wearing pants. Most years, he was at the top of our self-created hierarchy and swaggered about, amiable but fierce in his authority. We accepted his position without thought or protest, as though it was another game whose rules we had all agreed upon years ago. The skull was a brilliant white, the color of a newly white-washed wall with the paint still infecting the air around it with its burying odor. The teeth in the maxilla were intact, though the lower jaw was missing. The canines were a fabulous vision of our carnivorous selves and we mimicked them when he showed us this strange prize of a sortie out to the old lake. I thought of him stamping about in those noxious, forbidden tracts that held so much terror for us. It was a brave act and gave his find the aura of an object carried back from a forbidden expedition.
None of us had seen a monkey’s skull before and when he claimed it was the skull of one of our ancestors, a proto-human, Krishnanthropus he labeled it, we all believed him. “One of your ancestors,” he insisted in the sing-song voice of childhood certainty, “not mine. I don’t come from anything so low.” Howard said that anthropology, for this is what he termed what he was doing—a new word for all of us—was a hit and miss thing: you might be lucky to find a tooth, let alone a skull with its jaw. We applauded him and danced around him, making wild monkey noises, until Mr. Babcock, driven from his afternoon lethargy by our exuberance, demanded to know what all the ruckus was after. He was drunk and we all knew it and we laughed at him, right in his face, an incredible show of defiance, one we had never allowed ourselves before, and it pulled us all, I am sure, to the edges of our own possible worlds. Howard was the first to laugh, mimicking perfe
ctly Mr. Babcock’s swaying gait, his demand to know what was happening, his confusion, his annoyance at being disturbed. We all quickly followed, ourselves drunk on the sudden liberty of Howard’s capering free, while Mr. Babcock stood within our threatening circle, cheeks reddening, saying nothing, until that final retreat in which he walked drunkenly across the dusty courtyard, back to his rooms on the far side of the complex of buildings.
We were terrified for a night and day after waiting for the coming punishment, yet none admitted his fear. We issued empty threats, mocking Babcock and Healdstone—bravado all the way round, for every one of us awaited the coming punishment with unspoken terror. The night and day and the following night and day passed without reaction and only on the third day did we suspect they would not punish us. At first we celebrated this fact as our victory with Arjun dancing like a monkey and Howard claiming that now we were in control. But as the withholding of the punishment continued, carrying over from three days to a week and then two weeks, we felt a growing oppression, waiting there for us. In Healdstone’s every gesture during morning assembly we expected his violent reaction, and when every gesture admitted only his daily recalcitrance and disregard, our fear only enlarged. We felt it like a pressure growing, sitting over us, the certainty of a coming doom in this slow suffocation through our haphazard reprieve.
Neither teachers nor servants knew of Krishnanthropus. Howard kept his find well hidden. “If they get it,” he said, “they’ll take all the credit. I’ve written letters to scientists in Europe and America and even Africa. I’m sure someone will come soon.” The writing of letters was to us an incredible endeavor, almost Herculean, because it pushed us out into the world, the far wide world, and we believed we were not a part of it, that we lived on the fringes of its farthest periphery. What splendid arrogance on the side of Howard, an arrogance that awed us all.
He kept the skull secured in a place none could find, though twice we organized expeditions to search for it. He brought it out at night, displayed it on an unstable wooden table at the back of an abandoned room in what was once a prison. The skull would sit alone and we were required, if we wanted to view it, to bring a present or offering or garland. We carried sweets and flowers and comic books and fruit and toys and piled them up, Howard standing behind the table all the while, following us with his eyes. He said nothing as the procession of children pushed inside. Behind him, in niches in the wall, two candles burned and bathed us in their vacillating glow. After presenting our gifts we knelt, even Howard, and lowered our heads in obeisance to this strange god from whom we were all, or all except Howard, created. Thus the ceremony ended always in eerie silence. Nothing was ever said and the meeting was always brief. The next day we would see Howard walking casually with the comic book one of us had left fluttering in his hand, nibbling on the sweet some child had offered, quite openly and without comment, and we accepted it as his privilege: he was not descended from the skull, we were; he was its discoverer, the discoverer of our origins, and this placed a distance between him and the rest of us, only increasing our restrained admiration and fear.
Up to then, I had been the boy everyone knew could answer any question; it was me the others came to if they needed help with their French or Latin or geography or history. Howard was little more than an athlete and a poor student. But finding the skull and naming it, giving it a history, his letters to scientists, now made him preeminent amongst us, not only in physical activities but in everything. If anyone had a question, they turned to him. No matter if he didn’t know, he would make the answer up or say he would tell them later. If he delayed answering, he often came secretly to consult me and I could not help but tell him. We were all a little in love with him, with his white skin and brown hair that in the sunlight shone almost red or blond. He was seldom angry, even when he lost a fight to a boy he knew was weaker than himself. We believed this was magnanimity, a largeness of his person, we believed he had a right to beat up any boy he chose. It was taken for granted, something in the air we breathed; we could see how the teachers treated him. They never scolded him, even when he scored poorly on exams. If another student failed he might be sent to wash the walls of the kitchen, to give him time to think over poor study habits or lack of diligence, but when Howard failed, and he failed often, he was simply given a lecture, “This is not good enough, is it? Not your usual, is it? Well, better next time, eh.” And that was all, as though some divine dispensation was invoked over his every failure; and his successes were transformed into the equivalents of great military victories: a mediocre essay by Howard would be read as an example of brilliance, toward which we should all strive (even though in all likelihood I had written the essay and had deliberately dumbed it down).
One day Howard received a reply from one of the scientists. On the reverse of the envelope was printed a crown, the Royal Academy of something or other, and we were all impressed and a little terrified at its meaning. Not only had Howard dared to send a message out into the world, a bottle from our island of shipwrecked isolation, but he had received a reply. A ship’s sail cut across our horizon and we were all afraid of its imminent arrival, of the nearing end of our lost condition. He read it that night at a special meeting called in the prison. The skull rested in its usual spot, sitting on large, green leaves and surrounded by a mass of offerings almost hiding it from view. Up to now, no one had ever spoken at these meetings. There was a bond of silence born both out of a reverence and awe for the skull and a fear of being discovered. Even Howard appeared reluctant to break this tradition, as though words might shatter what tenuous web had been strung between us these past several weeks.
Arjun sat beside me, fidgeting and afraid. He was my closest friend among the boys and I knew he never enjoyed these meetings. He was afraid of the dark and of cramped places and was always the last to enter and the first to leave. It was a surprise to me that he could ever tolerate the library, but he would often scurry in, searching for some particular volume, and take it with him to read outside in the dusty courtyard. Howard’s silence lengthened. I could feel his nervousness growing and it infected me with a restlessness and a fear different from his. The candles stood behind him and what little light shone on his face was reflected light and so it was more a shadow with the vague inscription of eyes and mouth and nose, like a copperplate with an etched design.
In the letter the scientist thanked Howard for his note. His name was Dr. Wilson, a professor of dentistry. He said the skull described sounded more like a modern chimpanzee’s or baboon’s than any human ancestor’s, though if Howard wished, he could certainly send along a photograph. He would ask friends who knew about these things, charm-stones and bones. Had Howard read much about the Egyptians? There was a people, was there not, eh? The letter ended with a note saying that the world needed more such bully observant and intelligent boys like Howard, and when he grew up he should send along another letter. Maybe there’d be a spot in the school of dentistry.
I could not see Howard’s expression when he finished reading but I could guess from his faltering voice a growing and stiffening anger that held his body tight in the dim light of the old prison. Finally he bent forward and in that single bending forward was contained his defeat. He took the letter and tore it in two and then he tore these pieces again and again until only shreds survived. These he let drop through his fingers and to the floor and onto the table, some landing among the gifts piled up for our strange ancestor. We did not bow down. Instead, Howard, in a voice holding back a childish and compressed rage, said simply, “What can that old fart know? What can anyone know?”
Arjun was shaking. I could feel his arm pressed against mine. It was hot with sweat. I turned to look at him. His eyes were closed and his mouth was shut tight and his body dipped forward and backward with slight undulating motions like a cat drinking milk. He sprang up when Howard said we should go and was out through the door and lost in the night of the buildings and stars and trees and the intimation of a village
beyond. The night was cool, a conjuring blackness, and as I stepped briefly into it, the other children around me, I felt the sudden oppressiveness of their bodies surrounding me.
The following day, Howard came to see me. I was hiding in the library. I had found a book on London in the thirties, the London before the war, and I was dreaming of the Lambeth Walk and Knees Up, Mother Brown. I thought of myself traveling there, like Vasco da Gama on his voyage to India, slaughtering infidels along the way, being guided by the gods, and finding a land so strange, so different, a whole other world. It seemed like that to me, these creatures who did the Lambeth Walk, who drank pints and played billiards and darts, and offered as real a world to conquer as did the India of da Gama’s time. To me, England, France, the United States were all constituents of a single continent whose features I could not easily define, but within which Shakespeare lived alongside Hitler, The Beatles sang and Mozart composed, where George Washington daily crossed the Potomac and Coca-Cola was drunk in draft pints.
Howard said to me, “Something’s got to happen.” He was wearing a white shirt and black shorts and suspenders and the white of his legs and arms was stark and unmitigated in the dimness of the library as though he was a being visiting me from another dimension, from a heaven or a hell. He brought his face close to mine, ignoring what I was reading.
“Happen? What do you mean?”
“We have to do something for Krishna.” He called the skull Krishna now because when he tried to pronounce the whole name, he got it mixed up or confused. His voice was charged with an excitement I had never heard before in him and his breath tickled my cheek in quick, easy puffs. “We have to get the chaps together and do something. They’re already losing interest. You saw it last night. Some didn’t want to be there. They didn’t care.”
Good Indian Girls: Stories Page 17
