Tiger Hills

by Sarita Mandanna

  Appu began to feel light-headed, whether from the alcohol, the effects of his journey, or the newness of it all, he wasn’t sure. Struck by a sudden notion, he looked doubtfully at Ellen’s throat but no, she was unmistakably female. She leaned closer, and Appu started as the necklaces wound about her throat brushed against his shoulder.

  There was an acrid stink to the air. Someone had lit up a reefer. In der Luft, for sure, Appu thought, the smell of sex, and ganja fumes, that’s what floats in Berlin’s air.

  Suddenly he felt very alone, cut adrift in this shape-shifting city. Coorg, Avvaiah, Baby … they all seemed so distant. This was a different world. Downing his glass, he turned to Ellen.

  “I leave for Amsterdam in two days,” he said simply. “The Olympics. Come with me.”

  Ellen smoothed the newspapers in her lap, resisting the urge to use them to fan her face and squeeze some little breeze from the morning. The Olympisch Stadion was full to capacity. The stadium had been built especially for the Games with an unprecedented 34,000-seat capacity. For the hockey finals that were about to begin, not a single seat remained unoccupied.

  For days on end, the newspapers had been filled with accounts of the startling prowess of the Indian hockey team and its astonishing center forward, Dhyan Chand:

  Indians wear celestial blue jumpers with white sleeves, white Byron collars. Seen from above, they are Revue girls, but from below they are men of steel. When they play, their stick is in turn their spoon, their fork and their knife. At times it becomes their waiting tray as well. The Indian ball seems also ignorant of the laws of gravity.

  Appu shifted impatiently in his seat, drumming his fingers on his knee. Ellen grinned. He had been like a child all day, bubbling with anticipation over the match.

  He had told her the stories over and over, of how the Indian team had struggled to obtain permission to play. The British government had been reluctant at first, but then had realized that it would be a public relations coup of sorts, for a colony to participate in the Games. A testimony to the benevolence of British rule. The team had since played at the London Folkstone Festival the previous year, where they had won all ten matches. “Seventytwo goals they scored,” Appu told her. “And Dhyan Chand!” The slender Chand, it seemed, dripped glue from his hockey stick, so precise was his control over the ball. He had scored no fewer than thirty-six of India’s seventy-two goals.

  The team had continued their impeccable showing at the Olympics. Ellen even knew their score to date, so thorough had been Appu’s briefing: Played: 4, Won: 4, Goals For: 26, Goals Against: 0.

  “What’s taking them so long?” Appu complained, and she shrugged, smiling as she slipped her hand through the crook of his arm. He held his drink to the sun, the light turning the liquid into a dark, gently fizzing red. He took a sip and burped, the bubbles rising up his nose. “Sorry. Strange drink, this,” he mused. “I can’t decide if I like it or not. Still, the name has rhythm, don’t you think? Co-ca-Co-la.” He held the bottle up to the sun again, turning it this way and that, and then jumped to his feet with a sudden roar, nearly spilling the drink into Ellen’s lap.

  The gates to the ground had opened and the two teams, Netherlands and India, were filing out. “Come ON India!”

  A great cheer went through the stadium, followed by a thunderous round of applause. “COME ON INDIA,” Appu roared again. “DHYAN CHAND, Come ON Dhyan Chand.”

  Even Ellen could recognize the artistry of Chand’s game. He scored two of India’s three goals, taking the team to an elegant 3–0 victory. Appu leaped into the air at the end of the match. He jumped, he yelled, and he swept Ellen off her feet, scooping her into a bear hug and crushing her to his chest.

  They spent some days carousing in Amsterdam, then made their way back to Berlin. The first thing that Appu did was book them both a room at a hotel on the Dormendstrasse. They stood in the middle of the square, Ellen clutching her hat against the breeze and laughing as they tried to decide which hotel appeared to be the most appealing. “That one.” Appu pointed. “The one with the blue awning. Der … ” He squinted, trying to read its name. “Der Blaue Bast. The Blue … ”

  “Velvet,” Ellen chimed in, smoothing the hair back from his forehead. “Der Blaue Bast. The Blue Velvet.”

  She proceeded to introduce him to Berlin; they rapidly became a fixture at all the hot spots in the city. She had friends all over: raffish artists, struggling revue girls, officers of the Reichstag, Polish émigrés, and banking fat cats. Any number of them were always available to attend boxing matches and bicycle races, opening nights and petting parties, and spend drunken, raucous hours at the Spiegeltent and the Eldorado.

  Appu was welcomed into their circle with open arms. The 1920s had brought about a resurgence of interest in all things Eastern. The daily newspapers were filled with columns penned by expatriates from Calcutta to Penang, offering perspectives on everything from the Kamasutra to the Buddha. Herman Hesse had published his magnum opus, Siddartha, to widespread acclaim. Audiences thronged to the Wintergarten for hot dogs and cold beer and to marvel at Indian “holy men” reclining on beds of silver nails. Ellen’s friends had looked at Appu with genuine interest, quizzing him about life in India.

  “I sleep in a tree house,” Appu informed them gravely, “and my butler sends me my meals by means of a rope swing. When I need to step out, all I have to do is whistle and my pet elephant ambles right up to the tree. Dashed convenient.”

  Ellen kicked him under the table, but Appu continued unabashed. “Snakes? Of course there are snakes. I sleep with a knife by my side always. And there is the snake charmer who keeps a nightly vigil at the foot of our tree.”

  Tiger Hills Estate, Murnad, Coorg

  23 August, 1928

  My dear Appu,

  Where are you? We have sent you three telegrams and the lawyer tells me that all three have been forwarded to your hotel by the bank. But there is no reply from you.

  Avvaiah is wanting to know—when are you headed back? It is now more than four months since you left. Think about Baby. If not for us, you must show her some regard. You must return.

  Everything else is well. One of the coconut pickers fell while climbing the trees. Silly fellow broke his collarbone and fractured his ankle, but otherwise there is nothing to worry about.

  Really Appu, this is not right. Think of Baby. Every time I see her, she has only one thing on her mind. How is Appu, where is Appu, when is Appu coming back. Show some sense. Come home.

  Your loving brother,

  Nanju

  Ellen read the letter aloud to Appu, who was lying diagonally across the bed, his eyes closed.

  “Baby … your fiancée, I assume?”

  He said nothing.

  “The beetle-wing earrings. Are they for her, then?” They had picked out the earrings together, about a month ago, at a little boutique. They had been making their tipsy way back to the hotel after a champagne lunch, when the shop caught Appu’s eye. “A bauble for my lady,” he exclaimed, holding the door open and bowing as she swept in.

  They had examined row after row of jewelry and then Ellen’s gaze had fallen upon the earrings. “Why, how novel.”

  They were made from real beetle wings, the proprietress told them. She leaned forward, the lapels of her blouse falling open to reveal an impressive cleavage. “For you,” she murmured seductively to Appu, “I give a good price.”

  Appu had grinned but Ellen was unamused. “The earrings,” she snapped to the woman. “Pull out a mirror, I would like to try them on.”

  They were a cascade of iridescent, blue-green wings, laced together with thin gold wire. “Lovely … Like something from a fairy tale, Dags, don’t you think?”

  “Ja, ja,” said the proprietress. “Fairy earrings, for a fairy princess.”

  Ellen laughed, mollified by the flattery, then stopped. Dags was staring at the earrings, a distant look on his face. “Dags? Hellooo, Dags?”

  He looked at her, the express
ion already gone from his eyes, so fleeting she thought she might have imagined it. He reached for the price tag and shook his head. “Not nearly expensive enough for someone as priceless as you. Come, darling, we can do better.”

  She had hesitated and then tried on the gemstone-encrusted pendant he was holding out to her.

  He had bought it for her, the pendant, but he bought the beetle-wing earrings too; when she looked questioningly at him, he had lightly kissed her forehead. “For someone back home,” he had said insouciantly. “For you, however … ” He slipped the pendant and its chain from the box and fastened it about her neck.

  “It’s beautiful,” Ellen had said, her mind still on the earrings and their faceless recipient. She had looked down, trying to control the tremor in her voice, shocked at how upset she was. “Beautiful, darling, I love it.”

  “The earrings, Dags” she said again now, “were they for Baby?”

  Appu gently rubbed her leg. “Mmhmm … ”

  “Are you … will you be leaving, then?”

  He was silent for a while, then rolled over, scratching his stomach. He reached across her for a reefer. “Not just yet.”

  Later that week, they were out with a boisterous group, Appu as usual being the life of the party, when Jürgen Stassler pulled him aside. “You come from money, ja?”

  Appu raised an eyebrow.

  “You do not have to reply. It is evident enough from your manner of speech. Tell me. You have heard of Adolf Hitler? Are you interested in learning about his Youth Party?”

  Appu went along with Stassler to one of the meetings, as a lark. Stassler talked all the way there. “Germany was a proud country once,” he said. “One of the finest in Europe.” He gestured contemptuously at a whore leering at them. “Look at us now. A city of the desperate. Berlin is now an aging whore. Her legs, they are parted wide, her brassy charms wearing thin.”

  Appu was startled. Stassler was paraphrasing something that Ellen had said the previous evening, waving her cigarette about as she pontificated. “Berlin is an aging cabaret dancer,” she had said. “A woman ever so slightly desperate, but there’s an enduring magic to her tawdry charms. They still come by the hordes, her admirers, to dance to her tune and inhale her gold-dusted dreams.”

  “Well—” Appu began, but Stassler had stopped abruptly and was knocking on a massive wooden door. They were ushered in without fuss and pointed in the direction of a large, well-lit hall. The congregation was strictly male, youths aged roughly fourteen and upward. An officer came up to them and, pointing his riding crop at Appu, barked something in German. Apparently satisfied with Stassler’s response, he nodded and walked stiffly away. Someone stepped up onto the podium, and a hush fell on the room. The speeches began. Appu could not follow most of it, but every so often, an officer would grab the microphone and scream “Sieg!” into it.

  “Heil,” the crowd shouted in unison.

  “HEIL,” Appu roared along with them.

  “A drink,” Appu cried to Stassler when the speeches were over. “Brilliant stuff, this Youth Party. Heil! Didn’t quite follow what they were going on about but it sounded dashed exciting.”

  It was the Jews, Stassler translated for him over beers, them and their greedy, money-grabbing ways. He seemed to think that the Jews were somehow responsible for the postwar bankrupting of Germany. “They bought our land. The land that had been in our families for centuries. Sold in desperation, for next to nothing to these … these … foreigners.” Stassler spat out the words.

  Appu wondered idly how Stassler would react if he knew that Reverend Gundert had sold his lands and bequeathed the proceeds to a foreigner. “I say … ,” he began, but Stassler was ranting on.

  Ellen was troubled when Appu later recounted the evening to her. “Keep away from Stassler,” she said to him. “I don’t even remember how he became part of our crowd, but he’s always given me the creeps, the way he stares at me with those bulbous eyes.”

  Appu yawned as he unbuttoned his shirt. “Well, do us all a favor and bed him then,” he said lightly. He grinned, the dimple cutting a deep groove in his cheek. “Sex resolves a lot of issues. Forget Stassler, we should let you loose in one of those Youth meetings and let you work your magic.”

  Chuckling, he turned to fling his shirt on the sofa, and missed entirely the look of raw hurt on Ellen’s face.

  Chapter 36

  The proceeds from the will arrived in the bank account in Mercara, and Devi began to clear her debts. Devanna suggested that she buy back the two estates that had been sold, but instead she invested two-thirds of the capital with an insurance company in Bombay, and in a textile and tea conglomerate in Calcutta. “Those estates brought us bad luck,” she told him. “I don’t want them in the family. I will buy one more property, a good piece of land to bequeath to Nanju. But beyond that and Tiger Hills, I have learned my lesson. We will not be left so vulnerable again. No more coffee.”

  In preparation for the wedding, and as a surprise for Appu when he returned, Devi decided on a massive overhaul of the Tiger Hills bungalow. It would be transformed, with a new façade superimposed upon the present foundation; it would be the largest, most modern home in all of Coorg.

  The renovations were a source of endless gossip, both at the Club and among the Coorgs. An architect had been summoned from Bangalore to design the two-story structure. It was going to be built entirely from materials found on the estate. A vast kiln had been erected to make mud bricks. Masons had been employed from Kerala to develop a special wash for the walls with lime and the yolks of no fewer than twenty-eight thousand eggs.

  “Quickly, quickly,” Devi urged the workers. “My son will be returning soon; all of this must be completed by his return.”

  She began to hunt in earnest for a bride for Nanju. “Find me someone,” she urged her family and acquaintances. “The prettiest girl you can find, the kindest and the most accomplished, nobody but the best for my elder son.”

  Devi began to hum again as she went about the house, hopelessly out of tune, as always. Listening to her from the open windows as he pruned his bonsai, Devanna smiled.

  Devi nodded in satisfaction as she took in the new library. The renovations were nearly done, the piles of loose gravel removed from the courtyard, the walls lustrous with their wash of lime and egg yolk. “Never will be flaking,” the masons had assured her, “cent percent guarantee.” It was an ancient recipe, they explained. Rain or shine, not a flake or crack would appear in the wash. Devi ran her hand along a section of wall and her fingers came away clean. For once the masons appeared to be right.

  She had ordered the jewelry for the weddings, from the goldsmiths in Mercara and Mysore. Diamonds, of course, and the ruby adigé, the coral pathak, and the crescent-shaped kokkéthathi. There were Victorian cameo brooches, ivory hair combs, muslin saris so finely spun that they fit, all nine yards of them, into the palm of a woman’s hand, silk scarves (it was the rage these days for the young to tie an ascot at their necks above their saris), satin chemises bordered with lace, silk nightgowns, and handkerchiefs embroidered in the convents of Mangalore, each stitch so fine that it was impossible to tell which was the right side.

  For the boys, white and gold wedding turbans lined with silk, individual sets of fifteen shirts and five trousers each ordered from London, suits from Hardings and Sons in Bangalore, custom-made shoes from Connaught Circus, pocket watches encased in gold filigree, hair pomade, bottles of eau de cologne, silver-handled shaving brushes and, the coup de grâce, an order placed with the dealer in Bangalore for two brand-new Austins.

  Just last week, she had finally found an estate for Nanju. She had driven the brokers mad these past months, rejecting one estate after another. The soil on one property had felt too dry to the touch, and there was obvious waterlogging in another. The well had been inauspiciously dug in the northernmost part of another property, and in another the entire estate had been planted to the west. The property she bought had to be flawless.
It was for her eldest child, after all. And then finally she found it, a beautiful parcel of land in the south.

  Now all she needed was to find Nanju a bride and for that rapscallion son of hers to return home. She looked at the clouds drifting across the sky. Somewhere under the night-stained edge of that very sky, her child lay asleep. Iguthappa Swami, send Appu home. Devi leaned her forehead against the window. From here, she could see the mountains, their tops hidden from view. There, the mighty Bhagamandala and the Kaveri temple. She stared into the distance, a catch in her throat. It seemed like a different lifetime now, the Kaveri festival, climbing up to the peak … all of her life still lying ahead of her.

  She would go again, Devi resolved pensively. She would take her sons and their brides to the temple, seek Kaveri amma’s blessings once more.

  A movement below caught her eye, and Devi brightened as she spotted Nanju on the lawn. “Nanju,” she called, smiling. “Come upstairs, kunyi, I have something to show you.”

  They had not spoken again about his unexpected outburst, when he had questioned her for sending Appu to Germany. There was no question in Devi’s mind that she had made the right decision. Still, she knew she had ended up hurting him. He had said nothing more on the matter, hugging Appu fondly when he had left. Nonetheless, she had noticed how withdrawn Nanju had become over these past months, and she had been anxious to make amends. She beamed as he came up the stairs.

  “Avvaiah?”

  “Here.” She held out a sheaf of papers.

  “Oh, are we buying again?” He looked through the papers and whistled softly. “Six hundred acres? This is a large property.”

  “Yes. And it’s yours.”

  He looked at her, not understanding, and she laughed with delight. “Take a look at the papers, go on, see, the land is registered in your name.”