He was the tiger killer. And yet, played for a fool.
Machu’s hand shook, a mere hint of a tremor, but that was all it took for the freshly sharpened blade to slice into his skin. He paused, shocked by the sudden sting after the epochal darkness of the past months. The fingers he raised to his cheeks came away stippled with blood.
The drums in the courtyard had been so loud that night that nobody had heard the gun go off in the attic. Devanna’s blood had soaked into the floorboards by the time they found him, a dark, mushroom-shaped stain that would cling to the wood even weeks later despite the repeated scrubbings with rock salt and linseed oil. A colony of ants had already been foraging in his shattered flesh, raising the hairs on the back of Machu’s neck even now, as he remembered.
Mercifully, it had been late, long after the crowds come to witness the ancestor propitiations had dispersed. The family had lifted Devanna’s body down to the inner courtyard, and there they had found, to their shock and horrified pity, that under the mess of blood and tissue, his pulse was still faintly beating.
It had been Machu who had raced to summon Dr. Jameson. He remembered little of the ride save the sweating flanks of the horse beneath his thighs and the fitful light of the moon, casting a dim light now and then along on the path. He had burst into the Jameson home, not even noticing the squawking watchman. Jameson had emerged purple with fury, his nightcap askew and the Remington rifle in his hand. He had swiftly calmed down, however, recognizing the Nayak’s name and prudently choosing the lure of handsome payment over a night’s sleep. Gathering up his bag, calling for his horse to be saddled, and throwing a coat over his pajamas, he had hurried out into the night after Machu.
He had shaken his head as he took Devanna’s pulse. “Yes, he’s alive. How, I don’t know. It’s a miracle. The bullet—one centimeter to the right and it would have gone through his heart.”
Many years later, Jameson, long retired to his village in England, would recite the story over and over to his cronies at the Flying Owl, none of whom even pretended to listen anymore. “Just like that. Bang! One bullet, through the heart, that’s the preferred method. Clean and quick, that’s what they believe. You see it so often in that pagan country, one might almost think it’s taught to them in the cradle. So this lad … barely whiskered, early twenties, no more, decides for some obscure reason that he too has had enough and wants to end it all. Sneaks up to the attic while the rest of the family is at yet another ungodly feast. Takes a gun from the rack, only”—Jameson would artfully pause to take a long swig of his ale—“only the poor sod chooses the one gun in the rack that listed to the left!”
“Some sort of ceremonial gun,” Jameson would explain. “It had once taken down a tiger, and was prized by the family despite its fatal flaw.”
They had transferred Devanna to the Mercara Medical Clinic, and through the bumpy ride and the next months he had held on.
Rumors had flown through the family. That girl Devi. The oracle had warned them, had he not, of an impending tragedy? She was at the root of it all, they were sure. Look at her poor husband, caught in a living hell, not even able to end his life honorably. Some wife she had turned out to be …
Machu had listened to them silently, unable to come to her defense without betraying her further. The words cold and congealing on his tongue. He had brought this upon them after all, this curse. He had broken a sacred vow, forsaken his dharma. And for what? To be the plaything of a married woman? To betray the trust of a kinsman?
He began to shave again, roughly, not caring about the cuts that appeared under the blade.
How old had he been the day of the cobra? Seven? Eight? His uncles had taken him on a hunt. It had not been going well; all they had to show for an entire day was a single gamy jungle fowl. They had pitched camp that night, sharing the few ottis they had carried with them and roasting the fowl on a spit, cursing at the stringiness of its flesh. They had started early the next morning, but nonetheless, it had not been until many hours later that they had spotted the bison herd. Silently, with the utmost care, they had begun to take their positions. Nobody had needed to tell him what to do, he knew instinctively to melt into the brush, watching as his uncles lined their sights. One of the bison glanced in their direction, peering shortsightedly toward them, and then lowered its snout again into the grass. His uncles motioned to one another. Soon.
He had taken his eyes off the bison for an instant, squinting at the sun blazing down on them through the jackfruit trees. A sudden hiss, like the exhalation of an irritable crone. A burn in his leg so sharp that Machu had shouted out in agony. The bison had whisked their tails and spun instantly around, thundering away in a flurry of hooves. His uncles lowered their guns and raced toward him. “Cobra! Watch out, careful!” they had cried as they speared the snake.
Machu had known that he had to compensate. “No, let me, let me,” he had insisted, gasping through the pain. He had barely been able to see, his hands slippery with sweat, but he knew that he had ruined the hunt. He knew that he needed to pay, that he alone now must kill the snake. He threw his peechekathi, the dagger flying in a single, graceful arc, slicing the reptile in half.
This will hurt, his uncle had warned, kneeling by his side. Machu had nodded, clamping down on his lower lip. Not a sound he had uttered as his leg was sliced open. Not even a murmur, all through the agony of the wound being squeezed until the black, poisoned blood had spilled and clotted down his leg. His uncles had packed gunpowder into the hole, then ignited it with a match to cauterize the wound, and still he had gritted his teeth and remained silent. “Truly not one word,” they had said admiringly of him that night at the Kambeymada house, thumping him on the back. “Can you believe this boy, not a sound!”
He had visited only once, nearly two months after Devanna was admitted to the Mercara Clinic. He went, drawn by his guilt and the unbearable absence of her. The November squalls were ended, and December was upon them with its fog-filled mornings and clear, crisp nights. In a couple of weeks, it would be 1901.
The clinic had been hushed, its antiseptic air catching at the back of Machu’s throat. The initial crowd of relatives had now been reduced to two young cousins stationed in Devanna’s room. The child was there, too, Nanju, toddling about while his mother sat by the bed, still as a statue. That neck, the curved elegance of it. The sound of Devanna’s breathing, a snuffled wheezing, like an animal might make as the life drained from its body.
She had looked up sharply. The hope flooding her face, the color staining her pale cheeks. “You came.”
He sent the boys out with a couple of coins. “Get yourself some sweets,” he told them. “I will stand watch for a while.”
“You came.” Her face was radiant. “I knew you wouldn’t leave me, that you would come.” Her eyes filling with tears, she shook her head, not yet noticing he had not said a word.
The slow, accusatory wheezing from the bed, of a man trapped between life and death.
“Take me away,” she said desperately. “Take me away, Machu, just … Let’s go away, anywhere, we will make it work, just the two of us.”
He had jumped at her touch. “Your husband is lying there.”
“No, you don’t understand.” She had reached toward him, trying to cup his face in her hands, and he had brushed them away. “He did this for me, don’t you see? I know Devanna, he was trying to right the wrong … he did this for us.”
A numbness was descending upon him. The sound of Devanna’s breathing echoing in his ears, like a trapped animal pleading to be set free. I am the tiger killer. The weight of the tiger settling into his bones.
“He knew? He knew about us?”
It was he who had killed Devanna, as surely as if he had pulled the trigger himself.
“Machu, you don’t understand.” Her eyes were ablaze, the words tripping off her tongue. “He was trying to set things right.”
Machu shook his head, trying to clear away the cobwebs. “He knew about
us. He found out the night of the oracle, did he not?”
“He wanted you and I to—”
“Enough. You married him, Devi. You chose HIM. And yet, I … You … we have done enough.” It hurt to breathe. “No more, Devi. We are finished.”
The last few hairs from his sideburns sailed toward the water and were immediately carried away downstream. His jaw itched. Machu slowly ran his fingers over the expanse of nicked, newly shaven skin. It was done. The solution had finally come to him that morning. The payment, the rightful dues, to balance this wrong.
No more the tiger killer, no more the chosen one. He had given away everything he had.
All he had ever been.
He washed his face, the water cool, soothing his skin. Do with me as you will, Swami Ayappa. But spare his life.
A school of tiny koilé rushed to the surface, gulping at the flecks of his blood swirling in the Kaveri.
The stupefied family clustered about him that evening. “But why?” the shocked Nayak asked him. “Why this foolishness? You are Kambeymada Machaiah. The tiger killer. Do you not know what an honor this is for the family? How could you spurn this?”
“It was the tiger who was the true hero,” Machu said tiredly to the Nayak. He gestured toward the tiger skin, now a little frayed about the edges but still hanging proudly along one wall of the inner courtyard. “I happened to be the one to wield the sword, but Swami Ayappa … he had already willed the tiger to be felled. I was but an instrument. A plaything.”
Chapter 20
The rains were early and especially perverse that year, washing away the first racemes of laburnums that had begun shyly to dot the hillsides. Clouds hunched beetle-browed over Coorg; nobody, it seemed, could remember when they had last seen the sun. There was hardly a break in the downpour; barely would a bedraggled songbird shake out its plumage and begin to warble, than the deluge would begin again. The placid rills that had skirted the fields were changed into swollen, roaring monsters, bringing down orange trees and vast tangles of pepper vines. Crocodiles began to frequent the streams; one was even found lurking in a paddy tank. Another, fully nine feet long, was shot and killed in the murky waters of the Kaveri; when it was dragged ashore and cut open, a woman’s toe rings and silver bracelet were found in its stomach.
Gundert’s arthritis acted up, an involuntary groan escaping his lips every morning as he got out of bed. At times the throbbing in his joints was so acute he could barely kneel in the chapel. The novices watched anxiously as he hobbled across the school, but he refused their offers to relieve his inflamed knees with warmed castor oil or poultices of sandalwood paste. The pain was welcome flagellation.
He had not seen Devanna again, not since that awful morning. Too exquisitely mannered to do otherwise, he had composed letters to both the Nayaks. He regretted his inability to attend the wedding, he wrote, but it was short notice and there was too much to be done at the school. And with that, with the final curlicued flourish of his pen as he signed his name to the letters, Gundert had called on all of his resolve to blank the existence of his protégé from his mind.
The years he had spent mentoring the boy, crafting him into the torch bearer he had believed him to be. The paternal proprietorship so blatantly evident every time he spoke of him, making the novices smile fondly behind their hands.
My Dev.
The unquestioning expectations placed on, reserved for, none but the most deeply beloved. Devanna’s ghastly confession, his blood turning cold as he had listened. You are not of me. You NEVER were, you could never be. A heartbeat later, a surge of rage, an all-consuming, blistering fury. Get out of my sight, he had screamed, GET OUT.
All of these things Gundert swept aside, like the brittle leaves of some discarded type specimen.
Once again, the Reverend buried himself in his work. Unsmiling, untiring. He sent letter after letter to the mission authorities, asking to be transferred. Until the day when a white-faced novice broke the news to him that Devanna had shot himself. The pain in his chest was so intense that for an instant, he was certain his heart too had stopped.
The mineral stench of the hospital in Madras swirled through the decades to swell around him. The sound once more echoed in his ears, of Olaf, coughing up unending quantities of blood. How Gundert had prayed then, prayed endlessly as he wiped the sputum from Olaf’s lips, swabbed the sweat from his ribs. Save him, Lord have mercy, save him. And still Olaf had coughed, chest turned concave from exhaustion, coughing to death in front of Gundert’s eyes.
“Reverend, did you hear what I said? Our Dev, he—” The novice started to cry.
Gundert blinked. “Let me … Leave me be, Sister,” he said. His voice sounded cracked to his ears, a rusted key turning painfully in its lock. He too, like Olaf, was gone. Gundert sat at his desk, looking blankly at the drive. His Dev. His fingers rose stiffly, automatically, to the silken cord about his neck. He slipped off the key, opened the drawer in his desk, pulled out the package of silk. He unwrapped the bamboo flower. So fragile, still perfect after all these years, such delicacy in the delineation of the stamen and pistil.
He rose shakily to his feet. The sleeve of his cassock caught his precious flower, spilling it from the desk. Gundert did not notice. He shut the door to his office, his breath coming in short, sharp bursts as he reached for a volume of poetry from the shelf. Slowly, like a struggling student in one of his own classes, he traced the words with his fingers as he read.
How stern are the woes of the desolate mourner
As he bends in still grief o’er the hallowed bier.
Dev was gone. He had shot himself. What was it about Gundert that whatever he touched, whatever he cherished, crumbled to nothingness?
As enanguished he turns from the laugh of the scorner,
And drops to perfection’s remembrance a tear.
My Dev.
The last rites. Gundert snapped the book shut as he remembered. “Sister,” he called urgently. “Sister Agnes, hurry, I must perform his last rites.”
It had taken the persuasive powers of all of the nuns to dissuade him. “No, Reverend, you must not. He isn’t a Christian—his family would take it amiss.”
Later, when the news arrived that Devanna was not dead—indeed, he was barely alive, but alive he miraculously was—Gundert rushed to the chapel and fell upon his knees. “Have mercy,” he begged, “spare the boy’s life. He has sinned grievously … but Lord, not again, do not visit this sorrow upon me another time. Take my life instead, I give unto you this service, all I possess.”
He knelt at the altar, blue eyes clouded with pain. “I… ” His voice failed him then, in the face of the enormity of what he was about to offer. “I promise…,” he started again, and faltered once more, the words choking his throat. Then, mustering up all the will he possessed, Gundert struck an exacting bargain with the Lord.
“I shall never speak another word to him,” he vowed, “not in all the years that lie ahead. I beseech Thee, in return, bestow Your mercy upon him.”
Slowly Devanna began to heal, innocent of the barters made on his behalf by the tiger killer and the priest. Mission-Devanna and Coorg-Devanna bought back from the Gods, both Christian and pagan. His breathing eased and the fever abated as the open lips of the wound began to pull together.
Dr. Jameson shook his head again in wonder. “A miracle, that’s what it is. That and the fact that the patient is young.” It appeared that the boy was going to make a full recovery.
Devanna regained consciousness one damp afternoon. The rain, pattering down on the roof. When would it end? So many days…He had to go and see Devi. When would the rains stop?
“Where … ,” he whispered, his tongue like cotton.
“Shhh, monae. Don’t talk, you need to rest, you’ve been very ill.”
Tayi’s wrinkled hands stroking his brow. His throat felt raw. “Devi … ?”
She was standing by the window looking at him. Those large, lovely eyes so dark, so riddled wi
th pain. Devanna blinked as he remembered. It has always been him. It was more than he could take, the despair in her voice. To know that he was responsible for placing it there. The solid weight of the barrel against his chest. He had had to maneuver awhile before he had got the gun aligned. The sound of the drums, the chanting from the courtyard.
Even at this, he had failed.
Devanna suffered a major stroke that evening. Jameson diagnosed a clot that had likely traveled to the brain. What a pity, he said, just when he was headed for a complete recovery. “I am truly sorry,” he told Devi, running up and down her with a practiced eye. Not bad for the youngster, to have snared himself such a bonny one. “I’m sorry, but your husband—one side of his body is paralyzed.”
The transfer order that Gundert had so petitioned the mission authorities for finally arrived; he quietly turned it down. “Mercara shall be my final post with the mission,” he wrote to the authorities. “I shall stay here as long as you deem it fit for me to do so.”
Fevers began to claim their victims, a life plucked here and there. Pallada Nayak collapsed in the paddy nursery where he had gone to survey the seedlings despite the remonstrations of his daughters-in-law. He had been shouting at the Poleyas, “Ayy, donkeys, do you have stones for eyes, cannot you see that the seedlings need more manure?” when, overcome by a fit of coughing, he had slipped in the ankle-deep mud and hit his head on the stones that edged the bank. He had never recovered, simply sinking deeper and deeper into unconsciousness. They did not tell Devanna.
Devanna’s condition gradually stabilized, and he was discharged from the clinic. Nonetheless, it was advisable, Jameson recommended, that he remain in the vicinity. “Just in case, you understand? Relapses are not uncommon.”
Kambeymada Nayak bought a house for Devi and Devanna in Mercara. It was a low, dark, unfortunately planned structure that had been built by a Muslim trader. The man had thriftily hoarded the coins he had earned, first from selling river fish, then from chickens and great, fat-streaked slabs of goat meat. His savings had been translated over the years into no fewer than three houses that he had built in Mercara and a thriving clothing store—fine wedding silks, cotton lungis, best funeral purpose muslin—in the heart of town. Although his talents did not, unfortunately, stretch to architecture, the house did have one redeeming feature—a set of large windows in the front room, set with imported embossed glass and boasting a panoramic view of the town. Devi hardly noticed, giving her new surroundings only the most cursory of glances as she admonished the men carrying Devanna into the house. “Carefully, go gently, carefully, he is an invalid.”
Tiger Hills Page 21
