Zemindar

by Valerie Fitzgerald

  CHAPTER 6

  I had eaten little that morning and drunk nothing; the ride had been long and hot, and my emotions had been most savagely harrowed. So my body took revenge, and I fainted.

  I returned to consciousness in my own room, dark, cool and familiar, and lay for a moment savouring the sense of well-being my presence there brought me, but even as I struggled to open my eyes I knew there was something I must not think of, and fought against recollection.

  Kate sat beside my bed, waving a palm-leaf fan. Something damp, cold and smelling of vinegar lay on my brow. I raised my hand to remove it, and in that moment the full memory of the condemned girl’s eyes leapt at me. My hand dropped back on to the sheet and I began to cry weakly, shamed, fearful and full of helpless pity.

  ‘There now, woman dear,’ said Kate, taking the cloth from my forehead and wringing it out in a basin before replacing it. ‘You’ll soon feel better when you’ve had a bite to eat. You’ve had a dreadful experience, and what is really bothering you is that you could do nothing about it, isn’t that it?’

  I nodded, surprised to find that anyone else could resolve my feelings so easily and accurately.

  ‘Well, m’dear, that is always the hardest part of life, and the one thing we must learn to bear.’

  I watched her in silence, grateful for the kind lined face with its bright eyes so unsurprised by evil. I wished I was old, really old, and experienced past shock.

  ‘Sure, and do we not all know the heartbreak of seeing others’ suffering and having no way of easing it? ’Tis the Man Upstairs Himself, and only Him, who knows the way of it, and the why of it. But maybe it will ease your mind a bit to talk of it, when you’ve had a rest and a sup. Wait now while I run downstairs and see what I can find to tempt you.’

  ‘I couldn’t eat anything at all,’ I gasped through tears and sudden shivering.

  ‘Och, you’ll manage a little clear soup no doubt when it’s put before you. Lie quiet, there’s someone else here to mind you while I’m gone.’

  She patted my hands, wiped the tears from my face and beckoned to someone out of my sight. Then her black buttoned boots took her briskly to the door.

  A figure came slowly towards the bed. Had I been capable of thought, I would have expected Emily, or perhaps Bhujni, my ayah, but in my confused condition I was hardly surprised when Oliver Erskine came to the bedside and sat down in the chair Kate had vacated.

  ‘Better now?’ he asked quietly.

  I nodded, wondering without interest what had brought him to my bedside—anxiety, kindness or guilt? He could not be feeling proud of his part in the morning’s drama. What was it he had said about the leper? ‘There are some things one must accept.’ What an easy, trouble-free idea to go through life with. He probably didn’t care a button about the wretched girl hauled to the flames; that too was something one must accept. Was it cynicism? Or gross insensitivity? Or merely a dedication to his own ease of mind that made him so impervious to the claims of his own kind?

  He had been sitting silently beside me for some time when I turned my aching head towards him, trying to get my eyes to focus on his face.

  ‘I believe you’ve had a touch of the sun to add to everything else,’ he remarked coolly. ‘That damn fool headgear you wear. You need something with a bigger brim!’

  It was a silly hat, but, with its curling frond of ruby feathers, a very smart one, and I clung to it, since Charles once said it suited me.

  I narrowed my eyes and his face became clearer. The effort required made me see it as though for the first time. Why did he appear so different? It was the same face, yet not the same. He began to speak, but I ignored his words and went over the features slowly and carefully: the brown hair bleached where the sun caught it, the broad forehead and prominently arched nose (a little crooked it was too), the wide mouth, the cleft chin, the hazel eyes that were amber sometimes, sometimes gold, narrow below heavy lids fringed with straight black lashes. The same face but, I now realized, a different expression. A pleasant, open expression, I saw with surprise. It was as though the active principle that forged meaning in the eyes and twisted the lips into smiles or sneers lay passive for once: as though he had for a moment dropped the mask he chose to wear and allowed himself to be seen undefended by self-consciousness.

  He stopped talking when he found I was not listening, and allowed me to scrutinize his face with equanimity.

  ‘Well?’ he said at length, unsmiling. ‘Satisfied?’

  His words pulled me up. I was embarrassed that he should have witnessed my undisguised curiosity.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered, looking away. ‘I’ve never seen you so … so, well … kind before.’

  ‘Am I such a monster then?’ And he smiled.

  ‘No, not…’ I began, but explanation was too much of an effort. I closed my eyes and lay still, wishing he would go away and leave me in peace. Only a short while before I had felt I hated him, yet now here he was taking some sort of interest in my welfare and I could think of him as kind. Why didn’t the confusing creature remove himself? I kept my eyes shut, but he stayed.

  After a time, when I could hear him fidgeting in his chair, probably debating whether to stay or go, he said, ‘Laura, are you awake? If you are, there are some things I feel you ought to know, as soon as possible. They’ll help you to feel better. Will you listen to me while I talk? Will you pay attention? You need not open your eyes; I know what a sun headache is like.’

  So naturally I immediately opened my eyes.

  ‘What else must I know? You have already told me there are things I must accept,’ I pointed out with bitterness.

  ‘There are several things about what happened this morning that are not at all as you think them to be now. I know that you will not sleep or rest—tonight or for many a night—while your imagination is allowed to fuel itself on ignorance. That is why Kate asked me to speak to you. She knows a great deal about such matters, about India and Indian ways and how they strike a young woman from England, and she can probably understand your feelings better than you do yourself at the moment.’

  I shook my head on the pillow and the damp cloth fell away.

  ‘But … but that poor girl, and all those horrible men hauling her away to her death!’ And I began to cry again. He took both my hands in his and held them, saying nothing. ‘If only I hadn’t seen it. Nothing is so bad when you only hear about it. Oliver, why … why didn’t you help?’

  ‘I’m not God Almighty, and I told you why at the time!’ There was a note of asperity in his voice.

  ‘But … but to just allow it to happen like that! I …’

  ‘Yes! But now look, Laura, and don’t turn away your head; listen to me! You are not one of those hysterical females who can duck the darker side of life by having the vapours. You’ve got to face things.’ And he gave my hands a shake, as he would the reins of his horse when he was impatient to get on.

  ‘First—now hear me!—that girl was in no condition to suffer. She had no idea what was happening to her, and if she had she would probably have gone anyway. She had been filled up with bhang—you know what that is? A drug—ever since her husband died. She was unconscious, or at any rate unknowing, when you saw her, and would be unconscious when they strapped her to the pyre.’ I shuddered at the dreadful image conjured by his words. ‘Yes! I know I’m being brutal, but if I’m not you’ll go on lacerating yourself with visions of how you would feel if you were to be burnt alive, and believe me there is no reality in your visions. Quite apart from the fact that the girl knew nothing of what was happening to her, these people are reared to other expectations than ours. A widow who is “suttee” is assured of a better life in her next incarnation, and when you know something of their lives here, you’ll sympathize with the lengths they’ll go to to improve their lot in the next.’

  ‘You cannot be defending it?’

  ‘Good God, no! Suttee, and many things like it, must be seen to be evil before we stand a chance o
f helping these poor devils, really helping them. But you must see their point of view too. For them suttee is no barbarous ritual of senseless cruelty, as it appears to you. It is a religious function, solemn, holy, admirable, sanctioned by centuries of usage. And, let’s not forget, often necessary economically! Here’—in another voice—‘blow your nose!’

  He released my hands and gave me his own pocket handkerchief. I mopped up my tears while he went on: ‘In the old days the widows used to go to the pyre singing, and it is said that their state of exaltation was such that they died without a pang. Well, none of us can know about that, and now times have changed. The practice is continued here and there, and not infrequently among these jungle folk to the north who have very little contact with anyone outside their own villages. They have remained primitives, and we with our Western ideas have never got close enough to them to make any impression. And that is the whole point of what I am saying; you cannot equate that girl and yourself. She would react to nothing as you would, not even pain. I am not denigrating her humanity. I will not insult you by trying to convince you she would not be capable of pain, of all sorts of pain and mental and physical suffering, because she is primitive. But what you must realize is that both the causes and the effects in her life would be totally different to anything in yours, believe me!’

  He paused and sighed, and I caught him looking at me speculatively, wondering whether I understood.

  ‘You thought me heartless this morning, didn’t you?’

  ‘And aren’t you?’

  ‘Perhaps. The truth is I wasn’t so much concerned with the wretched drugged girl. I knew I could not help her. I was wondering what influence is at work that makes ignorant, backward people like that take the law into their own hands so brazenly. Why they should suddenly feel so immune from the law, even though it is almost impossible to enforce it among them. There is something behind it all, and I am not sure what it is.’ His eyes became abstracted as he tried again to work the matter out in his mind.

  ‘And you very much dislike not being sure—of anything!’ I remarked acidly. ‘What a strange man you are. You can worry about the remote implications and yet not give a fig for the suffering individual.’

  ‘That is not quite just,’ he decided, having considered my words. ‘It would be unwise for me to care too much for the individual. That’s not my job. I have over thirty thousand individuals on this estate, Laura, and that means that every day—no, every hour—some tragedy is in the making or takes place that, if I were to give adequate attention to it, might require months or years of my time to ameliorate. I do not like the sights that meet my eyes as I ride through the villages: the potbellied, half-starved babies, the disease everywhere, the children deliberately crippled for begging purposes, the little girls sold into the temples, the … and the other things,’ he added lamely, so that I knew he would have said more had he not realized he was talking to a female. ‘But all I can do at this stage is try to provide some small positive good, rather than combat a large negative evil, over which I can never hope to win.’

  ‘I don’t think I am condemning you,’ I said, realizing not without satisfaction that I had managed to puncture his usual ironic self-assurance. He was actually explaining himself to me. ‘I don’t know enough about you or your work to condemn. I know that I could never act, or think, in the way you do, no matter how long I lived out here. I could not disregard the evil under my feet.’

  He came back to the bed and stood looking down at me with his hands in his breeches’ pockets.

  ‘I believe you couldn’t. But then you are a woman.’

  ‘Why have you told me all this, Oliver?’ I asked.

  ‘Isn’t it obvious? I didn’t want you to suffer. Unnecessarily. You have too much sense to allow yourself to agonize over imaginary miseries once you know the facts. So I have given you the facts.’

  ‘Thank you. It’s true, I do feel easier in my mind now. About the girl, I mean. And I … I suppose you really had no option this morning. But … but too many things had happened too quickly, all seeming to contradict each other, and I could make nothing of them, nor of my own state of mind.’

  ‘Good! And now I’ll tell you something else. Ishmial has already ridden to Lucknow with a report of the morning’s incident. He thinks he knows the village the funeral party came from, and I believe he is right. It is a hamlet, way off any track, and the people are unusually backward and intractable even for that region. They are not the responsibility of Hassanganj, but I have had trouble with them before when they have raided my villages for stock and … er … women. That sort of thing. If anything can be proved, and I’m by no means sure that it can, then, eventually, justice of a sort, your sort, will be done. That is as much as I can do. I realize of course that it is not enough in your eyes.’

  ‘My views are of small importance,’ I whispered. My head was aching abominably. He made no rejoinder, but the mask was back on his face. ‘Oh, Oliver, we will never see anything from the same angle. But thank you for trying to help me. It was good of you.’

  ‘A pleasure,’ he muttered. ‘Well, I had better go now and let you rest. Drink all the water you can. I hope you will feel better very soon.’ For a moment he looked as though there was something more he wanted to say. Then he shrugged his shoulders and walked out of the room. I was glad he had gone. He posed too many problems that I had not the energy to grapple with.

  A few moments later Kate came back with a servant bearing a tray. I wanted no food, but forced myself to swallow a few mouthfuls. When I had finished, I asked Kate what on earth had made her persuade Oliver Erskine to come and talk to me. ‘He told me nothing you couldn’t have, Kate, and he is such an upsetting person when one isn’t feeling well. We nearly quarrelled and I know I annoyed him.’

  ‘But I didn’t persuade him, m’dear! It was he who suggested explaining matters to you. He was very worried about you.’

  She left me then, and I drifted off to sleep with Bhujni fanning my head. Why should Oliver, of all people, have been worried about me, I thought as I fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 7

  Emily was told that I was suffering from a touch of the sun, and though I guessed Charles knew the facts of that troubled ride, I did not care to mention it to him. In a couple of days I had quite recovered, but for some time thereafter I did not accompany the men on their daily exercise, preferring to remain within the park and garden, so I saw even less than usual of my host.

  Emily, Kate and I were now busy making baby clothes, and spent a great part of each morning on the verandah, sewing tiny dresses and petticoats, jackets and bonnets. One day, towards the end of February, as we were so employed, I looked up to see Oliver approaching across the lawn, carrying a bundle of checked calico in his hand. Charles was with him, and both men seemed in a great hurry.

  ‘Ishmial! Ishmial!’ Oliver roared as he reached the house. ‘Come here—juldi!’ And he subsided on the verandah step almost at my feet, while Charles, mopping his red face, sat down on a chair. We all stopped work, wondering what was to come. It was unusual to see Oliver about the house in mid-morning.

  ‘Phew,’ gasped Charles. ‘Haven’t enjoyed a chase so much in years, but he was the slipperiest little beggar you ever saw!’

  ‘Who was? What has happened?’ asked Emily.

  ‘A little boy—up a tree.’

  ‘You chased a little boy up a tree?’

  ‘But he got away all the same—agile as a monkey!’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Kate put down her work. ‘Oliver, will you kindly explain?’

  Oliver had been sitting with his head in his hands smiling to himself over what was obviously an enjoyable recollection. Charles looked put out at not being applied to himself, but allowed his brother to continue the tale.

  ‘Well,’ began Oliver, chuckling, ‘we were walking along the road leading to the factory from the village when I saw something move in one of the old neem trees. Now, you know how I cher
ish my trees.’

  Indeed we did. Most of the trees on the estate had been planted by Old Adam, but each year Oliver put in others to compensate for the depredations of the villagers, who, being perennially short of fuel, thought nothing of cutting down the timber designed to save their soil from wind and water, to warm themselves and cook their food. Only a little less heinous in the eyes of Oliver was their practice of denuding trees of foliage to make fodder, and I had myself seen him suddenly tear away on his horse to make an example of some poor little wretch who was up a tree chopping off small branches to drag home for the family goat.

  ‘So,’ he continued, ‘we immediately ran forward to catch the culprit. Charles was up the tree in a trice, while I stayed at the bottom waiting for the thief to descend, but damn me if he didn’t run along to the end of a long branch, drop to the ground and disappear while we were still trying to believe our eyes. A spirited morsel. What’s more, he had not been cutting the leaves off; there was no sign of a chopper or any damage. But we did find this.’ He picked up the bundle and showed it to us, ‘And I am ready to swear that the lad was the son of the thanadar of Narainganj and that he had a good reason for wanting to keep out of my sight.’

  He opened the bundle while he spoke, revealing a pile of chapattis, the flat, round, unleavened bread of the natives.

  ‘That’s too bad of you, Oliver,’ scolded Kate. ‘Now the poor fellow will be without his midday meal, or perhaps he was taking it to his father, and his mother will beat him for losing it.’

  ‘I think he’ll be in trouble all right, but not for that reason. Ishmial!’ he yelled again. ‘Where the devil is he?’

  Just then Ishmial, summoned by other servants who had heard their master’s call, came running down the verandah.

  ‘Good! Now we shall see,’ said Oliver as Ishmial came to an apologetic halt beside him. He gestured towards the chapattis and asked Ishmial a series of questions in Hindustani. Ishmial picked up the bundle and examined its contents with interest, nodding from time to time as Oliver spoke. He pointed to something in the middle of one of the flat cakes as he turned them over, then replaced the lot in the rag with an air of accomplishment.