Tiger Hills

by Sarita Mandanna

  When it became obvious that there would be no changing his mind, a wailing, distraught Rosie collapsed into the arms of her mother. That good lady, of course, ran to her husband, and a horrified Devi rushed to Ooty to prevent her darling from being summarily expelled.

  It took a great deal of negotiating, a lot of string pulling and donating to the school, but finally, Biddies agreed to let Appu finish his year. A shaken Devi gave Appu an earful, refusing to be mollified even when he dimpled winningly at her and cracked a weak joke or two. Rosie was whisked back to Madras, and when she got her next period, her mother wept from relief. All things considered, the entire episode was hushed up rather well.

  It was only when Appu began his application to the KCIO program that the full repercussions of the previous term really came to light. When he wrote to Captain Balmer for a recommendation, the captain wrote a somber letter back, expressing his regrets. He had heard from Colonel Bidders about the unfortunate incident at the school. No doubt, there were always two sides to every story; however, under the circumstances, he could not, with a clear conscience recommend Appu. He was truly sorry—he had had high hopes for him, but as things stood … the KCIO program included a rigorous selection process, and it was certain that given what had happened, Appu would not be considered for admission. If there was anything else he could do for him, he would be only too happy to help. There were other fields besides the army.

  Devanna wrote to Colonel Bidders on Appu’s behalf, only to be met with a rebuttal. The boy had very nearly been expelled. It was only on account of his track record at the school in all the previous years that he had been allowed to finish. “I’ll have you know, sir,” the Colonel wrote, “that the cornerstone of the school is its unflagging commitment to the development of sterling character in our youth. I do not see, given all that has transpired, how you expect me to recommend your ward to the admissions committee of what is the most prestigious program in the army today.”

  Still Appu did not lose heart. It would all blow over, it had to. “Come down, Avvaiah,” he urged. “Talk to the headmaster, he won’t refuse you.”

  Devi went once more to Biddies, but to no avail. “He won’t budge, the old fool,” she said angrily to Appu. “You’ve brought this mess squarely upon yourself, Appu. The headmaster’s daughter?”

  Appu pushed a hand through his hair. “What does this mean? The KCIO program … ” It hit him then, at last, that do what they would, this time he was not going to get his way. The KCIO door had been shut in his face.

  Devi bit her lip, her anger dissolving at the stunned disbelief in his eyes.

  “Appu,” she said gently. “There are other things besides the army.”

  “There must be a way, Avvaiah. Maybe if you met Colonel Bidders, instead of just a letter—”

  “Appu. Listen to me. It’s done. Move forward.”

  “No.” His voice trembled. “The army. I have to get in.”

  “Why?” she asked softly. “Because of your father? No, you don’t. Your father joined the army because he had no other choice.”

  “He was a hero.”

  “He was a hero long before he joined. He was a tiger killer, Appu. A tiger killer.”

  She waited, but he said nothing.

  “Your father’s heart, even when he was far from Coorg, was always there. Tiger Hills—that is your legacy, Appu. And Tiger Hills you shall have forever. Forget this KCIO business. They don’t know what they are missing not to have my son.”

  “My father gave up his life in the army.” Appu’s voice was tight. “Captain Balmer wrote to me about how well he fought.”

  “He joined only because he had to,” Devi repeated. “His roots—”

  “Oh stop, for God’s sake, just stop, Avvaiah.” He whirled on her, cutting her short. “How would you know? You were not his wife, you are not my … ” He stopped short of saying it—you are not my MOTHER—but the word hung unspoken between them.

  Devi swallowed, trying to quell the bright stab of pain flaring within her.

  He saw her to the car and bent down to touch her feet. She hesitated a moment, as if wanting to say something, and then, changing her mind, she got wearily into the car.

  He waited as the car pulled away, and when it was finally out of sight he turned, squaring his shoulders as he stared at the red-bricked sprawl of the school.

  Chapter 33

  1927

  The banyan tree seemed blown from smoke and shadow, its contours blurred, watermarking the early morning mist. Charcoal and slate, Devi thought, the colors that lay between night and dawn. Cold fire, forgotten stone. Drawing the shawl tighter about her shoulders, she touched her fingers to her temples.

  This was usually her favorite time of day. When the garden lay half asleep, orchids secretly unfurling, the grass shivering and weighted with dew. The veera watching from the shadows as she silently walked the grounds. Machu’s presence seemed to be everywhere, there, just there, standing straight and tall among the trees, a fluid truth discernible among the moist, shifting shapes of the dawn.

  Today, though, a headache flicked cruelly at her temples, pressing needle-fingered through her scalp. She moved gingerly about the garden as the parrots in the banyan tree began to stir. Raising a hand to massage her forehead again, she turned toward the house. “Devanna,” she called fretfully, “Devanna.”

  “Zeuzera coffeae,” Devanna read aloud. “The coffee berry borer is the single most damaging pest to plague plantations across India, Malaya, and Brazil. Also known as the cocoa pod borer, the tea stem borer, and the coffee carpenter, the beetle has even been known to infect teak, eucalyptus, and grape. The newly hatched larvae enter the young twigs of a coffee bush, migrating as they grow to larger branches. As the beetle bores its way through the plant, damage is evidenced by holes mottled with frass—”

  Devanna paused to glance at Devi over the half moons of his spectacles. “Insect excreta,” he explained helpfully. “Now where was I … mottled with frass and characterized by overall brittleness and withering. Larvae pupate in the tunnels, with each adult female laying between 190 and 1,134 eggs. Serious damage results ultimately in the death of the coffee plant.”

  “All useful information, I’m sure,” Devi said tartly. “Now can you please come up with a solution?”

  She was worried for the coming crop. Coffee seasons alternated in quality; a bumper crop one year was typically followed by a lighter one the next. Usually even the lesser yields had been good, but Devi’s estates had faltered for the first time last season.

  The crop had been adequate, but not nearly enough to pay for the Strawoniser spray engines that she had installed after the previous harvest. The bank manager had been good to her, extending the loans for another year; however, Devi knew that the discussions would not go nearly as smoothly a second year running. She had crossed her fingers and waited anxiously for the blossom showers. The rains, thank Iguthappa Swami, had been plentiful, and Devi had heaved a sigh of relief. Still, unwilling to leave anything to chance, she had bolstered the soil in all three estates with a compost of manure and cuttlebone as an extra precaution. The coffee blossomed in profusion, thousands of the tiny, honeyed white flowers dotting the estates.

  And then, just when all was looking well, the coffee borers had struck.

  It had been just a couple of bushes at the periphery of Tiger Hills at first, their stems riddled with holes, the odd borer beetle hovering nonchalantly in the air. And then suddenly, in scarcely more than the blink of an eye, the borers were running rampant across the entire estate. It was stunning how rapidly the pests had bred, and it was not long before another of Devi’s estates was infected as well.

  So acute was the distress in the Bamboo district that already many of the European estates had embarked on the final, desperate step of burning down the infected bushes. She had heard that in some estates as much as fifty percent of the land had been cleared and replanted with “supplies”—immature coffee saplings. It was
a desperate step. The new saplings would take at least seven years to reach maturity and begin to yield. No, Devi thought stubbornly to herself, there must be a better way.

  She went over the numbers again in her head. Two of her estates, including Tiger Hills, had been infiltrated by the borers, which put just over half of her annual produce at risk. Luckily, the third estate, a sprawl of two hundred acres in South Coorg, had been unaffected. The beetle, it seemed, preferred the open stretches and rolling hills of the north over the thickset forests of the south.

  If the crop at the South Coorg estate was good, and they contained the spread of the borers in the other two properties, they could make it through the year.

  It would be tight for the next few months, but there were ways to cut corners. She would not hire the temporary pickers she usually called in to help; that would save some rupees. The family could help oversee the picking, especially Nanju and Appu. She would speak with Appu as well, to have him cut down his expenses … Devi sighed.

  It was over a year since Appu had come back for good. Devi bit her lip as she stared out across the lawn. That KCIO business … the very year after Appu had graduated from Biddies, two more Coorgs had been selected for the program. Appu had no doubt come to hear about it as one of the boys admitted was, like Appu, an alumni of the Presidency College in Madras. Appu, however, had said nothing; indeed he had never spoken of the army again. All the boy seemed interested in was his horse racing and partying, becoming ever more thoroughly entrenched in the local social scene while at college in Madras. Three years later, when he graduated, he had taken up an apprenticeship with a tea exporting company. Rapidly growing bored, he had tossed up the job not five months after he’d joined and had wandered back to Tiger Hills.

  Devi had not objected. Nanju had graduated from agricultural college some years earlier and had headed eagerly back for Coorg. She had assigned the South Coorg estate to him to manage. The boy was a hard worker and anxious to please. Appu will learn, she had thought. He would watch his industrious older brother and would soon tire of his own lotus-eating ways. To her chagrin, however, Appu had showed not the slightest inclination to anything more taxing than visiting the Club.

  She twisted her plait around her fingers, oblivious to the softness in Devanna’s expression as he watched from behind his book. At forty-eight, Devi looked to him even lovelier than before. The years had colluded to burn away the soft comeliness of youth, but in its stead they had laid bare a spare, whittled beauty. The hair that sprang free to curl about her temples had barely any gray, her skin, still supple as silk, despite the faint lines around her mouth. Her cheeks had hollowed, but this had only accentuated the bone structure of her face, with its promontory of proud, jutting cheekbones.

  “I don’t want to have to burn the infected plants,” she said suddenly to Devanna, almost pleadingly. “Find another way. There must be one.”

  He sighed and reached for his walking stick. “Let me look,” he said to her. “I have a book on ayurveda. Maybe … ”

  “Careful you don’t fall,” she said distractedly, as he hobbled across the verandah. “The tiles are slippery with dew.”

  Gundert’s senses had become so dim and unreliable that he did not realize at first that he had fallen. He had often, in recent days, found himself addressing shadowy figures that on closer inspection proved to be nothing more than a billowing curtain or a trick of the light. His hearing was failing too; Gundert knew from the way the nuns started when he spoke to them louder than he had intended. It was slowly giving way, this body, like a sack that had weathered too many seasons.

  Some weeks ago, he had woke smiling. Olaf and he were fishing by the village lake, searching for the fat bass that huddled beneath the stones. The water lapped warmly against his legs, making him smile.

  It had taken him some minutes to realize that it had been a dream, that it was not the lake of his boyhood but something else entirely that had made his legs so wet. He had pushed the blankets away with a cry of disgust, struggling to be free of the sodden sheets. His leg, unaccustomed to the hurried movement, had given way under him. Gundert had fallen to the floor, cracking his elbow against the table as he tried to regain his balance.

  He had gritted his teeth against the pain as he tried to hoist himself upright. The sheets kept slipping from his grasp until at last he had been forced to concede defeat.

  “Sister Agnes,” he had called, hating how his voice quavered. “Is anyone there?”

  They had bustled in, exclaiming in concern. They helped him into a chair, pretending not to notice the nightshirt that had ridden high during his fall, laying bare his shrunken thighs. “Please don’t worry, Reverend,” the Sister had said, briskly changing the sheets, “this used to happen to my uncle, too. Happens to a lot of us, what to do? Not to worry.”

  He had said nothing, breathing heavily as he cradled his aching elbow. His ankle hurt, too, but it was nothing compared to the unending humiliations of old age. Agnes bustled out of the room with the soiled sheets, still talking. “Just a minute, Reverend, and I’ll be back. We’ll get you back into bed in no time at all.” He was precariously close to tears.

  The mission sent a new priest to stand at the helm of the school, a robust, enthusiastic sort with large yellow teeth and a braying laugh that could be heard all over the school. The mission committee had sent an official to explain the replacement. “You have done well here,” the man had said, clapping Gundert on the shoulder, “but it is time perhaps for new blood, ja?”

  Gundert had braced himself for just this encounter, he had gone over in his head a dozen times how he would frame his arguments. When he opened his mouth, however, his voice sounded reedy, petulant. “New blood? Does the mission not see how many years I have spent here?”

  “Of course we do. You have done well,” the man reassured him, “but your work here is over. Go home. God knows, if I could, I would leave tomorrow.”

  Gundert had been unable to remember any of the rebuttals he had so painstakingly prepared. He sat distraught in his chair, and when the mission official took his leave, the man had clearly noticed the tremor in his fingers as they shook hands.

  They had let Gundert remain in his apartments for now, but it would not be long, he knew, before the request came, politely worded, for him to move. Nagged by a persistent fear that someone somewhere at the mission would seek to send him back to Germany, Gundert began to pray for release. Every day in the morning and at dusk, he limped painfully to the chapel where, clutching his rosary and prayer book, Hermann Gundert pleaded for benediction. “Enough,” he whispered. “Take me to you while I still have control over my senses.”

  He had been shuffling toward the altar when he had fallen again, tripping over a section of the jute linoleum that had mildewed and frayed along one edge. So befuddled was he by the sudden loss of balance, it had taken him some moments to realize that he was lying on the floor. A shooting pain swept up his lower back, and he fainted.

  The news of his fall spread like jungle fire, amplified by distance and third-party accounts, until people began to throng to the mission, convinced that the Reverend lay on his deathbed. Hans shuttered his trading shop and insisted on stationing himself at the foot of the Reverend’s bed, weeping noisily and blowing his nose as Gundert feebly patted his arm and tried to comfort him.

  The doctors pronounced the patient weak but essentially stable, however, and as the days went past, the stream of visitors trickled to a close. The nuns even managed to reassure a bleary-eyed Hans, and to the collective relief of the town, he reopened his store.

  Gundert remained confined to his bed. It was as if the fall had jarred something loose within him, as if overnight the iron resolve he had always managed to tap within himself had turned porous and weak. The doctors said he was lucky not to have suffered any broken bones, but nonetheless, it was a terrible effort to lift himself from the bed.

  “Aren’t you going to see the Reverend?” Devi asked Devanna. Sh
e had felt a pang of sadness when she had heard about the fall. Her own father had passed away six years before, unexpectedly, in his sleep. Devi had wept bitterly, yet she had been grateful that Thimmaya had been spared the abuse of old age. Poor Reverend, with only strangers to care for him. “Go,” she urged Devanna, “he will be happy to see you.”

  “No,” Devanna mumbled, clutching his book so tightly that the veins stood out in his wrists. The Reverend had made it abundantly clear that he wanted to have nothing to do with Devanna. If he wanted to see him, Devanna knew the Reverend would have sent for him long ago.

  Gundert’s health continued to deteriorate. He began to drift in and out of the past, conducting conversations with the ghosts that seemed to lurk in his room. It greatly upset the nuns, but Gundert had ceased to care. Could they not see his mother sitting there in the chair, knitting by the fire as she always did in winter?

  There, look, his father, fiddling yet again with his spectacles. Once or twice, he had almost caught sight of Olaf, there, just beyond the curtains, but no … not yet. Not yet.

  And there. The Korama, fiddling with Gundert’s desk. The priest chuckled to himself. The wily tribal knew, oh he recognized, all right, the value of the bloom that lay within. His thoughts drifted. How he had tried to find the flower. Over hill, over dale, through bush, through briar, through blood, through fire he had wandered … Not always alone, though. Dev … his Dev. Gundert turned his head toward the windows, lost in happier times.