Coromandel!

by John Masters

  He turned away from the sea, threaded between the huts, and walked down to wade the stream. He trod on a sharp stone and sat down with a gasp of pain. He found the stone and angrily flung it away. His foot hurt, and he smelled blood on his fingers. He washed his foot in the stream and wondered whether he should bind it with a leaf. But he had no time. He must get on.

  Feet ran up behind him--a soft thump-thump in the mud. He jumped up and turned. The rough handle of his knife grated in his palm. Simon’s voice called, ‘Jason? Don’t go yet, Jason. I have something to give you. He is here, senhorita.’

  A second shape appeared, and Catherine said, ‘Come back, Jason. Simon does not know what you have done. We can put them back before he finds out.’ She spoke in English.

  Jason said, ‘I’m going now, with what I’ve got.’

  The three of them stood close in the blackness by the gurgling stream, the whites of their eyes like a grouping of tiny lamps. Simon looked from Jason to Catherine as they spoke tensely in the foreign language.

  Catherine said, ‘I found you had gone. I guessed and woke Simon. You must not go.’

  Jason said, ‘You stupid whore!’ and turned to run. She flung herself at him and bore him down. Simon shouted distractedly and knelt to separate them. He seized Jason’s knife wrist and cried, ‘Jason, no, no, lord! You don’t need a knife!’

  Jason wrenched his arm free and struck. The knife sank against resistance. Jason drew back his arm to strike again. Catherine still hung silently around his waist. Lamps ran down the slope, and the pearlers threw themselves on him, and he heard their shouts. ‘Who is it? A robber! Bring him to the huts!’

  Catherine stood up slowly and said, ‘It is Lord Jason.’

  One of the men knelt quickly with a little lamp in his hand. He said, ‘Simon is hurt.’

  From the back of the group a high, keening wail began.

  Simon’s wife ran forward and threw herself on Simon’s body. Jason said, ‘I killed him.’ The woman glanced up at him but seemed to see nothing. Her eyes were blank.

  Simon sat up and groaned. ‘I’m hurt--in the side.’

  Jason said, ‘I did it.’

  One of the pearlers said, ‘It was an accident, Lord Jason. You were his friend.’

  Jason said, ‘I meant to kill him. I stole his pearls.’

  Simon said, ‘That is impossible, Jason. I was going to give them to you.’ Wide-eyed, filthy children sobbed and clung together on the edge of the crowd.

  Jason began to cry. The tears streamed down his face, and he could not close his eyes to check them. Catherine took his hand and said, ‘Lead me to our hut.’

  Lead her? He could not see. But he had to dry his eyes and master himself, and all for the sake of this girl. He took her hand and led her to the hut. He lay down and stared at the intertwined leaves of the roof. Slowly, softly, she began to talk. She was not speaking English or Tamil, so he did not know what she said.

  He had failed this time. His heart slowly hardened as the tears dried on his cheeks. He would not fail again.

  In the morning she said, ‘Give me the pearls. Simon can’t afford to give them away.’

  They were still in his sack. She wasn’t so blind she could not have felt in a sack some time during the night, but she had to make him give them to her. Why should he, damnation take her? But he was helpless here now, and did not know what to do. Simon would recover. He hated them all.

  Sullenly he handed over the pearls, and she went out of the hut. In a few minutes she returned and said, ‘Take me to the sea again, Jason. To the same place, please.’

  He got up and led her round the beach. On the far slope of the dunes, where the sea wind struck, she sat down. She said, ‘Go and bathe yourself in the water. Wash all over.’

  He walked slowly into the sea until the waves broke against his chest. Then he had to fight to keep his footing. For half an hour he fought strenuously against the waves, jumping into them, and trying to beat them down with his fists.

  When he went back to her he felt that his strength and confidence had returned. He said shortly, ‘I’m going to leave this place now.’

  She said, ‘You don’t have any money.’

  ‘I’ll get some.’

  ‘Then what will you do?’

  ‘It’s none of your business.’ Why should he tell her? Then he changed his mind. He said spitefully, ‘I’m going to beg and steal, and borrow and not pay back. I’m going to laugh last.’

  She said, ‘At the last you will not laugh. No, we must follow your map until we find the treasure.’

  He laughed sourly. ‘Don’t be a fool.’

  She said, ‘If you don’t promise to follow the map I won’t give you any money.’

  Startled, he looked at her and blurted, ‘You haven’t got any money.’

  She said, ‘I have--several small diamonds. Parvati sewed them into the skirt.’

  He said, ‘You had them when you came! What have you done with them? Where are they?’

  She put her hand into the fold-over of her skirt and drew out his map. She unfolded it and said, ‘We must follow this, Jason.’

  He said, ‘I tell you it’s no good. A trickster called Voy, Speranza Voy, sold it to me in England for forty shillings. How did he know I only had forty-six shillings, three pennies, and two farthings?’

  ‘Because you’re you,’ she said calmly. ‘What can you lose by following the map? You’ve got to go somewhere, haven’t you? Why not go where the map points?’

  ‘I can’t read it,’ he snarled. ‘And some of it’s in Latin.’

  ‘I can read it,’ she said. ‘That’s why I brought my spectacles. I’ll translate the Latin for you, but not before we are near the treasure. Until then you don’t need to know what it means.’

  He said, ‘I’m not going anywhere with you. What good’s a blind woman who won’t lie with me?’

  She said, ‘You’re going to cook for yourself? Mend your own clothes? You’re hoping to have more than a loincloth one day, aren’t you? And if you don’t take me I won’t give you any money.’

  He looked at her with the purest hate. Blind, thin, weak, half naked, female, and helpless--and she was forcing him to do what he did not want to do.

  He relaxed. What was a promise? Something which, if you kept, they laughed at you.

  He said, ‘All right, I’ll take you with me.’

  But he’d better pretend to be angry still, or she would smell a rat. In a surly voice he added, ‘But remember, I’m not going to treat you as my wife. You’re going to be my slave. Do what I tell you. Don’t argue. Don’t speak unless I speak to you. Otherwise I’ll leave you.’

  She stood up and said with no hint of irony, ‘Yes, Jason. I am your slave already.’ She held out her hand.

  On the way back to the huts she said, ‘There’s no need to stain your skin. I’ve heard of albinos, and Father Felipe said that the farther north you go the paler the people are.’

  Jason grunted.

  She said, ‘I asked Simon’s wife to cook something for us. It will be ready now.’ She turned into their hut and came out a few moments later to join him.

  When they had eaten she said, ‘Now we must go.’

  He said, ‘Where are the diamonds? I’d better look after them.’

  ‘I have them safe,’ she said.

  The loathing of her welled up like bile in his throat. By the blood of Jesus, she’d lie dead in a ditch before they’d gone far. She lifted the bundle to her head, and Jason hitched on his sack. Simon came, leaning heavily on his wile’s shoulder, and said, ‘Good-bye, Lord Jason. May the gods travel with you. You have been our friend.’

  Jason turned and led towards the stream. From behind him--Catherine called quietly, ‘Jason.’ He swore violently, went back, and gave her his hand.

  They crossed the stream.

  Suddenly he felt the full weight of departing. The sea rolled in behind him, and the enormous unknown shape of India rolled away in front. Somewhere th
ere might be a Castle of the Holy Men and a twin-peaked mountain Meru, and galloping men with fur hats--but the City of Pearl was a city of bitterness, and he shook the dust of it from his feet.

  God’s blood! The map was a fraud, and he had an accursed limpet of a blind Portuguese whorelet fastened to the end of his arm. He walked faster--faster, faster, until he was nearly running.

  She never said a word, nor stumbled nor dragged. He slowed to a proper pace and shouted aloud in the passion of his hatred, ‘Our Saviour’s wounds, what have I done?’

  Chapter Four

  She rose to her feet and stretched out her hand. Jason took it, and she squeezed his fingers and let go. She said, ‘I can see that it’s an open road.’

  Jason said, ‘Gee up!’ and beat the little donkey on the rump with the flat of his hand. They set off again after their rest, walking side by side down the wide road. She thought: This is March 1629, and we keep moving north, but each day is hotter than the last.

  Nearly six months, and uncounted hundreds of miles, lay between them and Jason’s City of Pearl. So many things had passed since they left the shores of Coromandel, all passed in a slow blur before her eyes, from the heavy green of the south to the harsh brown and paler green here, from the sticky embrace of Manairuppu’s damp heat to the fiery touch of this sun. In the south a crowd had been a shimmer of black skin and coloured cloth; here it was a dotting of brown on white. The food had changed, and the taste of water, and the smell of the air at night.

  Jason had changed. When he wounded Simon she had hoped for a moment that he would come to his senses. But he hardened his heart, and the moment passed. He was determined to laugh last; so he had lied and deceived and stolen his way northwards. The donkey he had stolen, months back. The fine clothes in the saddlebags were stolen. The pistol--stolen. Surely soon she must find a means to stop him. People had hurt him, though, both here and in England, and he meant to get his own back. It would not be easy to show him that his happiness did not lie in revenge. He was such a good, clever thief. People trusted him.

  Jason said, ‘That’s Jarod, on the left--the place Mansur was so frightened of. We’ve passed the danger now, and nothing’s happened. I knew it wouldn’t.’

  The ground rose gently on either hand. She looked to the left but could see only the shapes of the trees. Hidden in there was the earth fortress where black dwarfs hid, and sometimes sallied out with poisoned darts to attack travellers on the road. Mansur had been very nervous of it.

  She thought about Mansur. They’d met him in the serai at Sagthali the day before yesterday. He was a thin and fearful-seeming man and had an old, old servant. It was Mansur who gathered the travellers going past Jarod and warned them of the danger from the dwarfs along that road. The people laughed at his nervousness, but twenty or so agreed to go in a band with him at least as far as Madhya. Jason thought he was a craven old fool, but she was not so sure. She could not see people’s faces well enough to try to read character in them. She judged by voice, and though Mansur often whinnied from anxiety she did not think he was a cowardly man, nor perhaps as old as he pretended.

  And she remembered a strange incident when they had first met him in the serai. He had come up and explained his fear of the dwarfs and then said to Jason, ‘Are not you the brother of Ali, who is my friend?’ Jason answered that he was not, that he had never heard of Ali. Mansur apologized, with much stammering, for his silly mistake.

  But why should Mansur make such a mistake in the first place? She and Jason had learned enough Urdu in their time on the road to be able to talk easily enough in it, but no one could have thought it was their native language. Ali was a Mohammedan name; and Jason did not look like a Mohammedan, nor did she wear burqa or veil as a Mohammedan woman should. It was strange.

  The trees passed by like giant, slowly-marching soldiers. Her sandals sank into the dust. The road was good, and the life on the road was good; but neither could last for ever. She must bring Jason back to his map. She must keep his heart tender and vulnerable, to laughter and to love.

  Jason said, ‘Mansur’s got money, or something valuable, in his saddlebags. The old servant gave it away; he was looking after them so carefully in Sagthali.’

  He paused, and she felt his defiance. He wanted her to say something, to tell him he must not rob and steal. But she said nothing, holding herself in check. He went on, ‘It won’t be difficult to get Mansur alone somehow, and then--why, I’ll only have to show my teeth and he’ll hand over. A chance will come soon.’

  He spoke so brutally that she could no longer prevent herself from crying out, ‘Don’t do it, Jason!’ She knew that her warning would only goad him on, because he thought he hated her, but she had to speak. The sound of his voice touched the chords of her heart, as it had the first day she heard it, and every day since then. She tried to keep herself a little aloof from him so that she would be able to think dispassionately and do what was best; but every time he came close enough so that he touched her, she felt the pain of love blurring her judgment.

  Jason said, ‘I’ll do it, when I get a chance.’

  She said, ‘How do you know he’s not armed? That he doesn’t have friends among us--secret friends, perhaps? What a man seems to be isn’t always the same as what he really is. You’ve robbed people you thought were rich, and they turned out to be poor, and--‘

  ‘And I found the pistol in the scrip of a starveling,’ Jason said. ‘Now mind your own business. You eat, don’t you? You’re wearing stolen sandals, aren’t you? Well, hold your tongue.’

  I’ll hold my tongue, she thought--better than you know. In the convoy there was a retired dancer who had somehow taken a fancy to her, and showed Catherine her jewels. They were magnificent, and Catherine had examined them with delight, her glass to her eye, behind the purdah curtain thrown across a stall of the serai in Sagthali. She had wanted to tell Jason--but she had held her tongue.

  She walked on in silence. In the beginning she had often wanted to cry, but not now. This sadness lay too deep for tears.

  She saw a cloud of dust in the distance and stepped out of the centre of the road. The horseman passed in a flash and a reek of sweat, and dust curling up to grate in her teeth. Jason said, ‘That man was wearing a fur hat, like the men on the map.’

  She stopped and looked helplessly back down the road. ‘What did he look like?’ she cried.

  Jason said, ‘He had slanted eyes and a droopy moustache, and a bow and a quiver of arrows across his shoulders. What does it matter?’

  She said, ‘The map, Jason! Oh, I wish I could have seen him! We must try to find out where he comes from, and then we will know where to go to.’ She turned reluctantly. The horseman was only a cloud of dust again. But perhaps this was the sign. Perhaps this would lead to something that would rebuild Jason’s faith in the map.

  She said, ‘Do you think Mansur Khan will know?’

  Jason said, ‘I’ll ask him.’ She heard the sudden thoughtfulness in his tone and bit her lip. He was thinking that perhaps this would give him the chance he was looking for--to rob Mansur.

  She wondered if he had any idea how much she loved him. Did her blindness still fill him with anger, that he had to look after her? No, because now his hand went out instinctively to help her when she needed help. It was no longer a matter for thought and so for anger. Perhaps, on lonely nights in the jungle, he even thought she was beautiful. He had never tried to make love to her. That she understood--he would laugh last. Perhaps he would. In those warm and scented twilights her affection grew almost too much for her, and she longed to touch him and whisper her love--but she had, with pain, held herself to her promise. He did not love her. When he did--ah, when he did, she would not even need the act of love. A touch of his hand would be enough.

  Poor Jason! Once he became sure that she loved him he went more often to the strumpets, and told her where he was going. Several times he had brought a woman to their roadside camp. She went away as long as the woman was the
re, but otherwise she said nothing, did nothing, and thought she showed nothing. He paid the women with her money.

  There was nothing amusing in that, yet she found herself bending her head to hide a smile--not because of the women, but because they had made her think of money, and that, in turn, of Jason’s fury at her cunning in hiding what money they had. He could never find it. She had been cunning, all right-- she nodded her head--but she had needed to be. A score of times, she knew, Jason had been on the point of leaving her in the dark, pushing her into a river, hitting her on the head--but always she had found something to say that made him change his mind, however unwillingly, and stay at her side. She could cook, and he couldn’t. She could sew, and he couldn’t. She had a knowledge of healing herbs, and he had none. She knew where she had hidden the few small diamonds remaining to them, and he didn’t. She could read--but so could he, because she had taught him, and now the four books were dog-eared with their daily studying.

  But where was he going?

  The world was a monstrous big place. She kept talking to him about the map, and studying it with the glass held to her eyes, and because of the map they were headed north rather than east or west. But he did not believe in the map. It was not to the mountain Meru that he was going, try as she might to make him. Was she right to try to make him believe the map once more? It was surely a fake and would not lead to any treasure.

  She was sure she was right. The map had originally been an inspiration to discovery, a source of wonder. Along the road he had lost that inspiration and come to think of the map merely as a guide to riches. That brought in the cold light of common sense; in that light he had descended the next easy step and disbelieved altogether in the map. But she wanted him to believe in it again, so that, through the quality of belief rather than through any merit of the map, he could rediscover the inspiration and the power to marvel and wonder.

  He was, instead, a common thief. He didn’t intend to remain one for long. He meant to become a great thief. She thought that many of these mean exploits were a kind of practice to him, and an instruction in the gradual hardening of the heart.