Tiger Hills

by Sarita Mandanna

  He had left that morning for Kerala, Machu remembered, with grain for barter. “Why?” he asked, his voice flat as a stone. “Why did she want to send for me?”

  “I don’t know. She … ” Tukra paused. “No, no, Tukra is always talking nonsense, that’s what everyone says. Come, I will show you the estate. Please anna, don’t tell Devi akka I told you, I was never supposed to have heard. How Tayi cried that day, and Devi akka, so many tears…”

  Machu was gone.

  “Devi.”

  She stopped dead in her tracks, the breath knocked from her. It had been nearly four years since they had said a word to one another, even stood within speaking distance. The sun had deepened the teak of his skin into a deep, forest-tree brown. The old ache immediately started again, her hands clamoring to reach up, to touch, to feel, to lay themselves against his jaw. She curled her fists inward, the nails digging into her palms. “I heard you were back.”

  He was staring at her, a wildness in his eyes. “Why didn’t you wait for me?”

  “What?” His voice, his voice, a river stone, sun hot, skimming her skin. The strands of gray in the whorls of hair just apparent through the open neck of his kupya, the minuscule bump on each earlobe where the skin had grown over the pierced holes. The army did not permit earrings, she had heard. She swallowed, glancing about to see who might be watching. The alley to the bank was often crowded with people. She laughed, a small, skittering sound like a marble rolling across a floor. “How … how did you know I would be here? How long will you be in Coorg?”

  Machu smiled mirthlessly. “This time, you will answer me. Devi. Why didn’t you wait for me?”

  Devi shakily raised her hand to her face, as if to shield it from the sun. “Please, Machu. It doesn’t matter anymore. It has been nine years. You are married.”

  “Answer me,” he said, his jaw taut. “Why did you want to send for me before your wedding?”

  Her eyes grew huge with shock. “How? Who … how did you … ” She looked away, trying desperately to steady herself. A passerby called out to her in greeting but she did not notice. “How did you find out?”

  Machu stepped forward even closer, and her eyes filled with tears. “Don’t,” she whispered. The smell of him, of wood and musk. To touch him once more, just once more, time standing still, the feel of his arms about her again.

  “Answer me. For if you will not, I go straight to your family. Your father, your grandmother, your brother—I don’t care who, but someone will tell me what truly happened.”

  “No! No, not them, not after so many years.” She began to cry soundlessly, helplessly, tears slipping down her cheeks. She tugged at the veil binding her hair, pulling its ends higher so they shielded her face. “I wasn’t allowed to,” she said, and he had to strain to hear the words. “If … if you know so much, it won’t be long before you learn the rest. My son.” She began to shake. “My son, he… ”

  The dreadful words stuck on her tongue.

  “What? Your son what?”

  She lifted her tear-streaked face to his. “My son was not born of consent.”

  Machu went very still, his face white. “Your son was not … Devanna? Did he… Devanna?” He slammed a fist into the wall.

  “You will hurt yourself, stop, don’t.”

  He turned to her, his eyes stormy. “Why didn’t you tell me? Over and over I asked, ‘Why, Devi? Why did you not wait for me? Why, when there was so little time left to the vow?’ You knew how you were tearing me apart with your silence, and yet you did not say a word.”

  “Tell you, and then what?” she asked despairingly. “You would have wanted nothing to do with me after that.”

  “What?” Machu reached for her and then, remembering the very public setting of their conversation, drew back his hands and furiously raked his fingers through his hair instead. “How could you have thought that I would not have stood by you?”

  “Tayi … she said that … ” Her voice faltered. She shook her head, weeping soundlessly, a bottomless grief marrowing her bones. “It was too late.”

  “You … ” Machu ran his fingers through his hair and stared at her, then laughed hollowly. “All this while. For all these years, despite everything that has happened, despite Devanna’s blood that I believed stained my hands. No matter how far I have tried to go from you. No matter how I have tried to forget, or how much I deny it, I carry you within me like a hook in a fish. Like a bullet, Devi, a bullet that has worked its way permanently into my flesh. And yet you didn’t trust me enough to tell me?

  “For you, I would—” His face twisted. “Devi. I forsook my vow for you. For a few snatched moments with you, I forsook my God.”

  That night, the North-West erupted. An attack was launched on the army camp at Nowshera, the locals startlingly well equipped with Martini rifles and even grenades. War was officially upon them; the radios telegraphing with the news. Machu grimly threw his things together as his wife fretted. “Why must you go? You’re on leave, aren’t you? Why must you return, why now, when there’s so much danger?”

  “Don’t be foolish. It’s my duty.”

  “But what if … what if you told them that you simply hadn’t heard? It’s so far away, after all. Just tell them you did not hear the news.”

  Machu said nothing and continued to pack.

  She nodded then, trying not to cry. “I see how it is. You have to go.” She went to the prayer corner and, bringing out the sacred ash, dabbed some on his forehead.

  “Well, no matter then,” she said, attempting a smile. “Go. And return to us soon, even more of a hero.”

  Chapter 26

  The regiment marched relentlessly forward under the intense glare of the sun. Already, three soldiers had succumbed to the intolerable heat. It was becoming routine procedure to carry the collapsed men to the side of the road, where the medic would sprinkle such water as could be spared upon their twitching faces. He knew it would do precious little and yet he persevered, staying by the side of the dying men with his orderlies as the regiment pushed on. It was draining work. Barely would he catch up with the regiment than it seemed another soldier would fall, frothing at the mouth, his eyes rolling back into his skull. Even the pack mules and horses had been pushed to the limits of their endurance.

  Machu squinted tiredly at the sun. It seemed to blister the backs of his eyes, cauterizing all thought, all memory, in a haze of blinding white. Such fury. Surya the Sun God shoulder to shoulder with Agni, the God of fire. Mounted upon their war chariots and blazing forth in combined, diamond-armored splendor. Nothing, it seemed, could compare with the naked might of the Afghan sun. Heat seemed to radiate off every surface, from the corrugated mountainsides and the treacherous, stone-filled ravines, blazing from the bald, cloudless sky. A spark shot out from beneath the hoof of the horse immediately in front of his own and the animal jerked its head. “Hurrr … hurr … ” Machu stroked the sweaty neck of his beast, calming it.

  This was not the way to travel, in the oppressive heat of the day. He glanced behind him, wiping the sweat from his eyes. The regiment undulated along the trail in a long line of khaki and steel, as plainly visible in the chalky pass as bugs on a white bedstead. He looked about him uneasily, at the jagged spurs lining the pass, but the outcrops of rock remained deserted. For now.

  This was not how the enemy traveled. They used the coolness of the evenings and nights, moving swiftly through the familiar mountain passes under the cover of darkness. The regiment, however, was desperately short of time; Lieutenant Balmer had said as much when Machu had laid out the officer’s belt, khaki breeches, and pith helmet that morning.

  Machu had headed back to the frontier in a daze. Three days ago now, or was it four? He wasn’t entirely sure. The train had steamed north toward the frontier, carrying its load of troops, ammunition, and grain.

  He had stared out sightlessly as it sped through the countryside, the image of her fixed in his mind. That lovely face, tear-streaked as she had look
ed up at him, such despair in her eyes. “It was too late.”

  He had leaned his head against the bars of the metal-shuttered window. It doesn’t matter anymore, he had told himself. It cannot. He had thought of his son, and his wife. She was a good woman. He was lucky. Then why this pain, Ayappa Swami, why this grief like a red-hot hammer battering my insides?

  The train had charged forward, the insistent clank of its wheels the only constant in the formless, changing world pouring past its windows. Machu had shut his eyes, his face lined and drawn.

  Rules of conduct. They talked in the army of rules of conduct. But the truth was that there were none. Men made them up, these rules, to bring some semblance of order, a notion of control, to their lives. A compass by which they might map out their existence.

  Honor.

  Retribution.

  Redemption.

  Did any of these truly matter?

  His life seemed to lie about him in hollow disarray. All these years lived, the distance covered, the bridges crossed, the rivers forded. All of them, meaningless.

  The code of honor he had believed betrayed. The loyalty that was due a kinsman, the loyalty he had believed breached by his own hand. The crushing guilt he had carried all these years, so acid that it had corroded everything that had followed in its wake. All that he had forsaken, to make up for a crime he believed he had committed.

  Everything he owned, everything he had ever been.

  And all the while …

  Who was the true victim, who had truly been wronged, and at what price redemption? If he had but known what had really happened. If Devanna’s hand had fallen on any other gun. The only gun in the entire rack that listed to the left. The tiger killer’s gun.

  If only she had told him. If only he had believed what he had known all along, deep inside. Such guilelessness in her eyes as they had stood side by side on the Bhagamandala mountain, all of Coorg spread before them. You are mine, she had said to him. I will wait for you forever.

  The train rushed on, its wheels turning, clanking forward. The sound of its wheels seemed to him to contain but a single, insistent note. Mine, they seemed to lament. You. Were. MINE.

  He had joined the regiment at base camp. War was in the air, the adrenaline-charged musk of it, the mood of the camp severely changed since he had left. The wives were gone, dispatched immediately to safety as soon as the news of the insurgency had broken. Tension hung thick in the barracks, some men sitting lost in thought upon their bunks, still others pacing back and forth as they cracked overly loud jokes and boasted about the number of Afghans they would bag.

  It doesn’t matter, Machu wanted to say to them. None of this does. The glory you seek has no meaning. Who truly is the hunter and who the hunted? We draw our mortal lines in the dust, map our inconsequential battles. While the Gods watch amused, mocking us from the distant mountains.

  Even Lieutenant Balmer grew tense as they waited for the attack to commence, but for the next two days nothing happened. Only Major Climo seemed his usual brisk, unflappable self. The daily reconnaissances increased in number and frequency, the garrison and the trenches were fortified, but the pass remained deserted.

  And then the orders came. Afghans had collected in vast numbers at Mohmand, thirty-six miles to the north. Typical of their particular brand of gallantry, they had approached the native syces a couple of days ago, urging them to flee the mountains. Trouble was coming, they warned. They had no issue with the soldiers, only the white men who commanded them. Go, they urged, return to Hindustan; this is not your war.

  By the next morning, the hills around Mohmand were crawling with Pashtuns. Pennants of every shape and color fluttered from the rocks, still in the distance but edging closer. Telegraphs had spun urgently from the camp confines, seeking reinforcements, and in response the 20th Lancers had been ordered in immediately.

  The Lancers marched all day, their throats afire, their feet blistered and bleeding inside their boots. At last the sun began to slide westward. They reached the Mohmand camp shortly after sundown. The signs of impending battle were unmistakable. The pennants of the enemy surrounded the camp in a rough crescent, vast daubs of deep blue, white, and red across the dusty hills. The robes of the Pashtuns—the white of the tribes from the east, the blue of their neighbors, the red and the mustard of still more—announced the many thousands of men gathered for the fight.

  The bazaar in the middle of the camp had been leveled and the trees blown up, offering a clear line of sight. The garrison had been fortified with any materials to hand: logs, sacks of sand, even biscuit tins filled with dirt, shepherdesses and preternaturally rosy-cheeked milkmaids smiling seraphically from the lids.

  The officers of the 20th reported in and shook hands with their exhausted compatriots, cracking feeble jokes about the champagne they would pop once these upstarts had been taken care of and this tamasha laid to rest. It was forced laughter; the memory of the three men lost en route to Mohmand weighing heavily upon them. The volunteer officers, their noses peeling painfully from the march despite the broad pith helmets, laughed loudest of all.

  Battle plans were shared and vetted, and camp duties divided among the men. The soldiers who had been on guard duty for the past thirty-six hours were relieved for a few hours of sleep, and despite the grueling march of the day, the men of the 20th fell in to take their place.

  Slowly, the night deepened. A watchful silence enveloped the camp, interrupted now and again by the shuffle of the transport mules in their enclosure, or the uneasy whicker of a horse. Machu was on guard duty, stationed on a small outcrop of rock that bounded the camp to the left. The stars shone clear, casting a cold, precise light on the desolate landscape. The fires had died to a few glowing specks, while all along the boundaries of the camp, bayonet points glittered blue-white in the night. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” The hulking sikh soldier assigned guard duty alongside Machu cleared his throat and spat into the dust. “Pristine as a fucking virgin, that’s what this country looks like at night.”

  Machu nodded.

  “It is not like this in my village. Green. Very green. Wheat,” the sikh added by way of explanation, “we have wheat fields.”

  They were silent for a while and then Machu stirred. “I had an ancestor who lived, oh, I don’t know, maybe two hundred years ago. He was a great sportsman, a hunter without peer. Very tall. The family has preserved the tunic he wore. It barely holds together now, but it is there, in the ancestral home. In all these years since he passed on, not one other man has managed to fit into it. He was a fearless warrior, they say; they still talk about his feats during the wars we waged against Mysore.

  “This mighty ancestor, though, was only too human. Many years after his first marriage, when he was far past his prime and the age when these things are considered acceptable, he fell headlong in love with a young woman. He tried at first to stay away, telling himself he was being foolish.

  “But no matter how far he went, no matter how he tried to forget, the memory of her was burned in his flesh. Like a bullet that had wormed its way into his heart, like a hook that had pierced his gut.

  “Like the faint traces of snake poison he secretly believed still swam in his blood.

  “Finally, unable to fight this anymore, he did the only thing he could. He wed the lovely maiden, convincing himself that his first wife would understand. She would sympathize with his obsession, embracing the newcomer to her bosom like a sister.

  “Besides, he said to himself, he was the head of the household, was he not? Who was to decree how many wives he could have? Bolstering himself thus, he made his way home decked in his wedding regalia, his blushing bride by his side. And there was his first wife to greet him, standing on the steps of their home—arms akimbo, eyes flashing with fury, and brandishing a sword.”

  Machu grinned, his teeth gleaming briefly in the dark. “Our women, they are tigresses. No matter how our fearless hero begged, no matter how much he threatened or pleaded or how many
jewels he promised her, his wife refused to let him into the house. Finally, the hapless bridegroom had no choice but to build an identical home, right next to the first. It was there he housed his second family.”

  Machu paused, his eyes distant. “It all worked out eventually,” he added. “They lived harmoniously enough after that, or at least that’s what people say.”

  He tilted his head and looked up at the stars. “I am done with the army,” he said abruptly. “After this war, I am putting in my papers and going home.”

  “To your village, huh? Is it green?”

  “Lush. She is beautiful, sardarji, so beautiful, my heart aches each time I look at her.”

  The hour of the second watch began and the guards changed. Machu fell exhausted into his bedroll. He lay there for a moment, utterly still. He was going home. A gradual peace descended upon his drawn features. He shut his eyes and slipped almost immediately, and for the first time since he had left Coorg, into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  It felt as if he had barely closed his eyes when he was being roused again. It was time for the patrol. A handful of men under the command of Lieutenant Balmer were to go up to the pass that led to the mountains to find out how far the insurgents were from the camp. The sikh from the previous guard leaned forward as they assembled by the quarter guard. “I will rip their arses apart,” he whispered enthusiastically to Machu, stabbing his fingers into the air. “Let even one of them come into sight.”

  Machu grinned in spite of himself, the dimple flashing in his cheek. He glanced around at the rest of the men. One of the volunteers had been assigned to the party and was looking a little green as he turned toward the pass.

  They slipped from the camp under cover of this last hour of darkness. The stars were slowly receding, faint pinpricks of light in the purple sky. The air was cool, the final breath of freshness before the dust devils started to blow again, filling eyes and boots with sand.

  Machu walked steadily on in the fading moonlight, the stillness about him solidifying his thoughts. This was not his war. This was not his land. He would give in his papers, he thought again to himself. He had some money saved; they would get by. Devi … his heart quickened.