It had been a productive morning, Devanna recalled, despite his own fall. The Reverend and he had been exploring the low-lying hills to the west of Mercara. They were returning with masses of promising plants when, with a great thunking of bells, a herd of cows had appeared round the bend of the trail. Heads lowered, they cantered in front of a skinny cowherd who was clearly in a rush. “Come, Dev,” the Reverend had said, amused, “let us move aside before we are trampled.”
Devanna had slipped on the loose gravel. Luckily he had fallen forward onto his hands and knees, and apart from a nasty-looking scrape on one knee, he had been all right.
Still, the Reverend had been concerned. They were at least two hours from the town, and it did not take long for cuts to become infected here. He cleaned the wound as best he could with his handkerchief. “Do you have any water?” he asked the cowherd who, quite forgetting his earlier hurry, had halted to observe the proceedings.
The boy shook his head, the bubble of green snot protruding from one nostril threatening to shake free at any instant. He had bent to examine Devanna’s wound, and then, abandoning his cows, had raced into the adjoining thicket.
He reappeared moments later, carrying in his grimy hands five bulbs yanked freshly from the soil. “Wild turmeric!” the Reverend had exclaimed. “Of course. It is a natural antiseptic. Why did I not think of it?”
“Jeder Jeck ist anders,” he had said ruefully, as the cowherd smashed the turmeric bulbs against a rock and smeared the paste onto his protégé’s knee. “Every lunatic is different. Never forget, Dev, that every idiot is special, and might yet surprise you.”
Turmeric! Devanna thought to himself now, jolted from his reverie. Mightn’t that work against the coffee borers? And what if he bolstered this with leaves from the neem tree, another natural antiseptic? Devanna devised a paste of turmeric and neem that the workers applied to each infested coffee branch. They watched the plants anxiously for the next two days, but there seemed to be little change. The third morning, the workers called excitedly for Devi. She hurried into the estate. Around each treated coffee bush, there lay what appeared to be fat white droppings. “What … ?” Devi bent down, peering through her glasses. “That boy,” she said, to no one in particular, “he has gold in his brains, that’s what.”
The turmeric paste had achieved the impossible, poisoning the larvae until they had tried desperately to crawl from their nests, collapsing at the base of the plants. A huge sense of relief surged over Devi. The crop that year would be saved. She looked up at the cloud-crowded sky. “We will be fine.”
She ordered two chickens to be cut that evening, grinding the coconut herself for the curry.
The estates steadily recovered. Devanna, however, found little comfort in the role he had played in salvaging them. He limped miserably about the garden as news continued to drift in from Mercara and the mission. The Reverend was withering away; it was as if he had lost the will to live.
Call me to you, Reverend, Devanna begged silently, send me a sign. Please, just the smallest sign you have forgiven me.
It was Appu who found the bamboo flower.
Egged on by his cronies at the Club, Appu had discovered a voracious appetite for the hunt. They would drive into the jungle, armed with new smooth-gauge rifles, with cheroots tucked in their shirt pockets and silver flasks of brandy to celebrate the kill. Nobody was surprised when at this sport, too, Dags proved to be a natural.
They had left Tiger Hills early that morning, but the hunt had yielded little except two meager waterfowl. Appu impulsively decided to change the hunt into an overnight affair. “It’ll be fine sport, chappies,” he said. “Let’s leave the car here, the terrain’s too difficult for a vehicle in any case. We can camp somewhere, and continue the hunt tomorrow. Mother has packed enough provisions for an army—we’ll have more than enough food for the night.”
He sent two of the servants back to Tiger Hills to inform them of the change in plan. Then, shouldering his rifle, he plunged into the jungle. Buoyed by his assurances and confident stride, the hunt party straggled behind him, but despite a crashing in the undergrowth that suggested a wild boar, they found little to show for their labor. They camped, before it grew too dark, by a clot of bamboo where the servants built a large fire and set about roasting the fowl.
Appu awoke early the next morning. A band of sunshine, still tentative in its assault, had nonetheless managed to slip through the tree cover and now shone directly onto his eyelids. He muttered under his breath, turning his head, but his sleep was broken. He lay there for a while, and then sighing, opened his eyes. It was then that he spotted the flower, protruding from a slender shoot of bamboo. Rolling to his feet, he crouched before the bloom, using the blade of his pocket knife to push the petals this way and that. The flower was massive, larger than anything he’d seen. And the perfume …
With a deft movement, Appu sliced the flower from its stem and wrapped it in his pocket square. It would be a handy trifle at the Club later that evening, he thought, a gift for one of the pretties.
“Come on, you lazy arseholes,” he hollered, kicking over the embers of the campfire, “time we got out of here.”
They were nearly ready to leave when Appu thought of Devanna. Mightn’t the flower interest the old man, too? Going back to the bamboo, Appu tugged repeatedly at it, finally managing to yank it from the soil, a single, barely opened bud shivering on one of its nodes.
When he arrived at Tiger Hills, he found an irate Devi waiting for him at the gate. She had barely slept from worry. All night in the jungle, had he gone mad? Was he trying to send her to an early death? Just because his father had been a tiger killer, did Appu think he too could saunter into the jungle as he pleased? Had he not heard that a rogue elephant had killed one of the workers on the neighboring estate not two weeks ago?
“Come, Devi, he’s returned safe and sound,” Devanna began, trying to deflect her anger, and then he stopped cold, staring at the plant that Appu casually held out to him.
The flower lay upon its shroud of white silk. Devanna longed to reach out and touch its faded petals, but he knew the Reverend would not approve.
“Maybe you, Devanna,” the Reverend was saying, “will be the one who will help me find it.”
“The bamboo flower,” Devanna whispered hoarsely. “Reverend … the sign … ” He smiled then, a smile of such absolute happiness that it dissolved the shadows from his eyes.
The palsy in his hands was even more pronounced than usual as he prepared a pouch filled with earth and gently placed the root of the plant into its temporary home. Along with the plant, he enclosed a note, one that would need no explanation, containing only three words.
He sent the driver to the mission, with express instructions to hand the plant to a nun and make sure that it got to the Reverend. He could barely focus that afternoon, halfheartedly weeding the garden before giving up and limping back and forth along the drive, waiting for the summons that would surely come.
The nun who opened the door of the mission had obviously been crying. The embarrassed driver looked at the floor as he held out the plant. She accepted it mechanically, tears streaming down her cheeks when he explained that his master had sent it for the Reverend. His master had told him to wait for a message, he said.
“Tell him … tell Dev … not good … ” She broke down again as the driver shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, unsure how to respond. The nun shut the doors, and not knowing what else to do, the driver retreated to the car. He waited there for an hour, and when nothing else was forthcoming he revved the engine and turned back toward Tiger Hills.
The nun took the plant into the Reverend’s room, wiping her eyes. “Reverend?” she said. He had suffered a third stroke sometime during the previous night. When the nuns came to bathe him that morning, they had found him in a deep coma, his head still tilted toward the gates.
“See, Reverend, our Dev, our little Dev has sent you something.” She opened the note, h
er brow furrowing in confusion. “Bam … bambusa … indica … olafsen,” she read laboriously. “Bambusa indica olafsen,” she repeated, wondering what it meant. The comatose priest lay still, the breath rattling in his lungs.
She placed the note on the bedstand, propping it against the lamp. She stroked the bud that Dev had sent; even through her puffy, swollen eyes, the nun could see how beautiful it was. Cutting it carefully from the stem, she went to the chapel, where she placed the bloom on the altar. “Lord, have mercy.”
The remainder of the plant—stem, roots, and all—she had the cleaning boy throw on the rubbish heap.
The driver returned to Tiger Hills. “No,” he said defensively, in response to Devanna’s frenzied questions, he was sure that there was nothing else. Yes, he had given the plant to a nun. No, there was no other message.
Gundert continued to wheeze in his bed. The bamboo flower bloomed in the dark, cool chapel, slowly unfurling until it was as large as a man’s fist. It perfumed the pews for days, and on the ninth day, when the bloom was just beginning to fade, Gundert died.
The church bells pealed out over Mercara, and eyes turned somberly in the direction of the mission.
He had been a good man, the Reverend. May his soul rest in peace.
Chapter 34
Reverend Hermann Gundert, 1840–1927, was buried in the Mercara cemetery. The cross that rose above his grave was as simple and unadorned as he would have wished. The eleventh day after his passing—coincidentally the very same day, the regulars would marvel later in the Club, that the Thames grew so uncharacteristically swollen with rain that it completely flooded the moat at the Tower of London—a vicious, unseasonable rain lashed all of Coorg. It rained that way for an entire week, so hard that bridges were washed away and snakes dislodged from their holes, an unceasing downpour that tore the heads of young paddy from their stalks and caused an epidemic of fevers to rage up and down the hills.
The rains were especially severe in South Coorg. Nanju caught a high fever from working around the clock in the estate, trying to lash together sheets of tarpaulin above the coffee, but his efforts were in vain. The wind whipped away the covering, and when the torrent finally ended, Devi’s estate, along with those of her neighbors, lay flooded in four and a half feet of muddy water.
However, what was worse, much worse, was the damage to the storehouse. Nanju had been so busy trying to shield the plants that he quite forgot to check the house containing the harvested coffee berries. Its roof had held for only a couple of days before caving in. When Nanju finally checked the place, the berries had been rotting in water for days, their surfaces coated with the black fuzz of mold.
Devi listened, stone-faced, as Nanju told her the extent of the devastation. There would be no crop from South Coorg that year. The buffer she placed her hopes on, the stellar crop that should have come from that estate, was no longer a reality. With the damage already caused by the borer insect, there was little left with which to pay back the bank.
After all the years of relentless hard work, despite all her planning, Devi found to her shock that she was ruined. The bank managers were sympathetic but firm. They had already refinanced her loans twice, they reminded her, and they simply could not do it a third year running. Besides, she was actually asking them for more loans so that she could tend to her flooded estate. No, it was simply not feasible. They could defer the interest on her borrowings, they told her, but unless she found a way to come up with at least a third of the capital she owed, they would be forced to foreclose.
The only concession Devi managed to wring from them was a brief window of time. “Fifteen weeks,” the bank manager told her, “and this is only because you have been a client of such high standing.”
It was drizzling when she left. She stood in the street, dazed from the conversation. “Devi akka!” A young couple crossed the street toward her, beaming. She watched as the husband placed a protective finger—anything more would have been inappropriate in public—under his wife’s elbow, holding the umbrella over her head as he guided her carefully through the mud. Devi felt a sharp, bitter pang of envy. Turning abruptly toward the car, she drew a deep breath.
She would find a way.
She devised a plan to sell the other two estates, but the prices she was quoted were ludicrous. Nobody wanted to buy an estate infested with the borer fly. She explained that they had the pest under control, it was this turmeric paste, you see, but the instant that potential buyers spotted the telltale holes in the branches, they backed off. The buyers agreed with her that the estate in South Coorg would have rich yields; not for another three years, however, they pointed out. The rains had washed away much of the fertile top soil; it would take careful nurturing, likely even expensive applications of jungle mud, before it began to yield anything.
However … the buyers turned their beady eyes toward Tiger Hills. Now that was a fine bungalow. And the gardens. Why, everyone knew about the gardens, from Mercara to Mysore. How much would Mrs. Devanna want for this property?
“More than you could ever afford,” Devi replied flatly. “Tiger Hills is not for sale.”
After waiting in vain for more reasonable prices to prevail, Devi let both the other estates go to a wizened old coffee magnate from Mysore. She pawned all her jewelry, keeping only her mother’s bangles and the tiger brooch that Machu had given her. Still their cash continued to dwindle until Devi finally had to stop all work at Tiger Hills. “Take a holiday,” she told the workers, “this is only a temporary stoppage.”
“But, akka, will you still pay our wages?” they asked, alarmed. Devi looked shamefacedly at the ground.
They let the servants go, everyone except Tukra and his wife, who wept when she counseled them to think about leaving. “Go where, akka?” Tukra asked tearfully. “This is our home.”
The fifteen weeks that the bank had granted Devi drew to a close. They sent an appraiser to value Tiger Hills.
“No,” Devi told the man. “This is still my home; I won’t have you here.”
“But, madam—” he began, and something in her snapped.
“Leave now,” she said, her voice hard. “Before I set the dogs on you.”
“You’re being foolish,” he warned. “Less than a week, that’s all, and I’ll be back. And then, madam, there will be nothing you can do about it.”
He was right, Devi knew. It was meaningless, her act of bravado. Three more days, that was all they had left, and then the bank would foreclose on Tiger Hills. Three days more before they were pushed from their home. She retreated to her bedroom and sank onto her bed. Tell me what to do, Machu. I have tried everything.
The curtains rustled impersonally and Devi began, at last, to cry. “I have failed you. I have failed us all.”
Two days later, Mr. Stewart came to visit.
He had taken the coach from Mysore to Mercara, he explained, and then a carriage to Tiger Hills.
Devi nodded. “The bank? You are with the bank?”
“Bank? No, madam,” he said puzzled, mopping his forehead. “Our firm is an independent one, in no way affiliated with a financial institution. Er … is Mr. Devanna home? I need to consult with him.”
Devanna reluctantly came out to meet him, but he had not come to tour the gardens nor to offer a price for Tiger Hills. “The will, Mr. Devanna,” he said. “I am here to discuss Reverend Hermann Gundert’s will. Did you not receive the telegram I sent you?
“The deceased,” he explained, as a bewildered Devanna shook his head, “had rather a lot of property in Germany. Black Forest region, rather picturesque, I am told. He left instructions in his will to liquidate the holdings.” Devanna looked at the papers the lawyer was holding out to him.
“You, Mr. Devanna, are named in the late Reverend’s will as his sole and unequivocal beneficiary.”
Devanna stared at him, stupefied. “I am … what did you say?”
“Reverend Gundert’s beneficiary,” the lawyer repeated patiently. “He has
bequeathed all he had, sir, to you.”
It had taken some time for the Reverend’s affairs to be put in order, he explained, or he would have been there sooner. He rustled through his papers. “The details are set out in these documents. A sum of one hundred and thirty thousand pounds sterling is to be wired to your designated account from the holding bank in Berlin. There is one thing, though. You”—glancing surreptitiously at Devanna’s cane, he continued smoothly—“or a person authorized by you must visit the bank in person before the monies can be transferred. Oh,” he added, “and here.” Reaching into his briefcase, he withdrew an oilskin packet. “The deceased also left this for you.”
Devanna nodded blankly, taking the packet.
Appu leaned forward. “Ours. You mean, all this money is ours, no strings attached?” His eyes were gleaming.
“Mr. Devanna’s, yes. It belongs to him to use as he deems fit. So, Mr. Devanna, if you would sign here … and here … wonderful. Well, I should get going, then.”
Devi saw the lawyer to the door and made her way back to the verandah, where the family sat stunned at the news. Devanna was staring out at the garden, turning the oilskin package this way and that. Devi ran the numbers through her head again. One hundred and thirty thousand pounds. One hundred and thirty thousand pounds.
It was enough to take care of all their financial troubles, with a great deal left over. Tiger Hills was safe—it was more than safe.
“Well … ,” she said shakily. “This … ” She began searching again for words. Then she simply threw her head back and laughed out loud. Nanju and Appu leaped from their chairs. Everyone seemed to be talking at once, and Tukra and his wife came rushing from the kitchen to see whatever was the matter.
In the melee that followed the lawyer’s visit, none of them noticed that Devanna had gone missing. He limped into the garden, clutching the oilskin package in his hands. His sole beneficiary. Him, the Reverend had named him his only beneficiary. He sat down on the wooden seat of the arbor. The Reverend had chosen him.
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