Coromandel!

by John Masters

  She followed him and saw, beyond a blurred forecourt, a stretch of the river, a couple of boats, and then, sharp and still on the opposite bank, small horses and big trees.

  ‘Wonderful,’ the voice breathed.

  Jason said, ‘What is, sir?’

  ‘Why, didn’t you see? The heron, flying upstream--such beautiful wings, such slow strokes, yet it never falls into the river. What keeps it up? It is a heavy bird. But if you don’t see, you don’t. What have you come to me for? Do you want a petition translated? That’s what the Portuguese priests were always wanting, till they learned for themselves.’

  She thought: He is an old man; during his life he must have seen a hundred thousand birds in flight. Why does he suddenly dart out to see another? Yet of course it was wonderful, and why should the hundred thousandth be any less exciting than the first?

  Jason said hesitantly, ‘Sir--you are Ishmael of Multan?’

  ‘Indeed, yes--librarian to His Majesty.’

  Jason said, ‘The empress, Mumtaz Mahal, told us to show you this map.’

  The paper rustled. She waited in painful suspense. Ishmael cried, ‘Wonderful! Look at this, look at that! The man who painted this was an artist--in his way, in his way. He was a Westerner, of course. Sir Thomas Roe often tried to tell me about your art.’

  The blood began to pound and her heart to sing. She must see this man. She put the glass to her eye and leaned forward. They were taking no notice of her. She could look without being rude. He was old indeed, but red-bearded. A green turban was pushed to the back of his bald head, and a pair of spectacles pushed to the front of his long nose. She stooped closer. The beard had been dyed with henna. She chuckled aloud with delight; he was a scholar, but he dyed his white hairs to show the woman of his house--and perhaps other, younger women--that he had not buried all his power in books. She looked more closely yet at his face. It was not a scholar’s face like those she had sometimes examined in drawings and paintings. His was thin and strong, and scarred by old wounds.

  And Jason stood there, leaning over the map, wonder like spring in his face. He must have looked like that when Voy sold it to him; when he lay on the floor of his room in England and looked at it, his sister beside him. His eyes sparkled.

  She put away the glass. God was, after all and in spite of all, good. This old man was Jason. Wherever Jason had been, this old man had been, in his own way and his own time. Wherever Jason wanted to go, this man could go with him. She had led far enough, and had known for some days that the end of her capacity to lead was near, because also the end of her experience and understanding of this man she loved. She had known from the beginning that Jason was a deeper, stranger person than herself. Now she could hand over, and Ishmael would take the charge.

  Ishmael was saying, ‘Look at this! See, these men in fur hats--Tartars. This mountain is marked Meru. Hmm! Everyone who makes a map shows Meru somewhere up there. I don’t believe it even exists. I’ll prove it to you.’

  The white wings fluttered and bent down. She sought Jason with her eyes. Though she could not bring him out of the pearled mist before her, she knew that he was looking at her. She held out her hand.

  Chapter Five

  Ishmael was saying, ‘Look at this! See, these men in the fur hats--Tartars. This mountain is marked Meru. Hmm! Everyone who makes a map shows Meru somewhere up there. I don’t believe it even exists. I’ll prove it to you.’ He darted round and began to rummage energetically in a chest full of papers and books.

  Jason took a deep, incredulous breath. This old man was as excited as he had been when Voy first mentioned the map. This old man behaved as though the map were true--not quite that, certainly not in respect of the treasure, which he hadn’t even mentioned yet, but as though, true or not, the map was a wonderful thing to have and to look at and wonder over.

  Catherine was looking at him, the sun in her eyes and her hand outstretched. God’s blood, it was lucky that she’d been so tired she’d flopped asleep as soon as the empress dismissed them last night. Otherwise she’d have asked again about that tense moment in the king’s council chamber. He had to remind himself that she was blind. It was hard to realize that she had known nothing of that critical pause, when the king had said, ‘Which?’ and he alone had had to decide.

  She looked so happy now that he took her hand and kissed it. She held the hand to her cheek, and he flushed with awkward pleasure.

  Last night the Great King had said, ‘Come here,’ and they had stepped forward together, he and Catherine. The king had the map in his hand and a moody smile on his face. A great black man, black as pitch, almost naked, with a red turban and green pantaloons and a black, naked, hairy belly, stood at the king’s left hand, a long sword on his shoulder. A fat and hairless man, all in yellow, stood at the king’s right hand. The king was in the middle, with the map. Grouped all round in a close circle were the wazir and the king’s son and the rest of them.

  The king raised his little finger. The fat man held out a bag of money, the neck open so that Jason and everyone else saw the gold coins glittering inside it. The black man brought down the sword, and the long, shining blue blade, with ugly little nicks in it, rested across the map on the king’s hand.

  Then the king said, ‘Which?’

  No one seemed to breathe. The horses ceased their neighing, and the war elephants arrayed across the far courtyard, steel spikes in their head harness, fell silent. The king smiled still--that menacing, harassed smile.

  He was offering them an ordeal: take the money and bother him no more with the map; or cleave to their silly tale and risk the sword if it was false. ‘Which?’

  But it was not to them that the ordeal was being offered, but only to him, Jason Savage, because Catherine could not see. On him alone rested the decision, and he did not truly believe in the map. The sensible thing to do was take the money and get out. All would have been achieved--escape from the Rawan, escape from violence, escape from lying. He had only said he believed because Catherine believed, and he did not want to hurt her. It was madness to risk that sword. This was not a charade. The king smiled, but the sword would sweep down if he gave the signal. This was India.

  He glanced once at Catherine waiting placidly beside him. Madness! But he reached out his hand and, looking straight at the king, touched the map and the sword, laying his hand across both. Then it was that the king sighed, and the sound of the people moving and breathing stirred like a wind through the council hall.

  Jason had thought of the ordeal, and his choice, all during the time that Catherine was closeted behind the curtain with the empress. He had decided he was a fool. Now, in the library, listening to Ishmael of Multan, he was not so sure.

  Ishmael straightened his back out of the box and said, ‘I can’t find it. You’ll have to take my word for it; there is grave doubt among scholars as to whether this famous magic mountain Meru actually exists. Do you know what the trouble is?’ He waited, his eager eyes behind the scratched lenses fixed on Jason.

  Jason muttered, ‘No, sir.’

  ‘I’ll tell you! The trouble is that those who dream, don’t do, and those who do, don’t dream--except Baber and perhaps Jehangir and a few others. Love, war, peace, the beauties of repose--it’s always the same! Passionate love lyrics are written by nervous little fellows who’ve crawled home every blameless night to their shrewish wives. Old, bearded clerks curdle their own blood with epics of battle. Kings pour out poems about their gardens and their nightingales! Do you know what I dream of? Exploration of the earth and the people in it. And what do I do? Sit here and explore old books. Why don’t I do both? Why don’t I try to relate the wisdom of the study with the fierceness of the mountains? Why don’t I try to find what men have thought in the past and compare it with what they actually do now? Why?’

  He demanded an answer. Jason was no longer afraid or worried. He had no desire but to help. He said, ‘Because you think you’re too old.’

  Ishmael leaned back s
lowly, the tips of his slender fingers dragging across the map on the table.

  He said, ‘Ah! You are wise. Yes, I do think so. And I have no follower, no son or disciple or friend who can go on where I must stop.’ He brushed his hand wearily across his forehead and spoke in a more subdued tone. ‘I’m sorry, my friends. I have been alone a long time in this library. I get excited. Now about this map--what do you want me to say?’

  Jason glanced at Catherine, waiting for her to speak. She said nothing. He realized that she was waiting for him. Very well. He was ready now to assume the leadership.

  He said, ‘We want to follow this map to find the treasure on it. Here.’ He thought he saw a small crease of worry flit across Catherine’s face. What was the matter now? What else could he have said?

  ’Treasure?’ Ishmael said sadly. ‘You’re after money, are you? Then I’m afraid the map is useless, as a map. Look at this. Look at that. Hills--here? There are none. The man who made this map had never been near India. He had heard of the Himalayas. He has marked them here--not bad, not bad. The Castle of the Holy Men? I wonder what that might be.’ His voice lost its gloom and began to quicken and sharpen. ‘Badrinath might fit, though it’s five hundred miles from where he’s shown the castle. The Hindus have a temple at Badrinath because it’s near the source of the Ganges. If you went that way you would cross into Tibet over the Mana Pass.’

  He turned suddenly to stare at Jason. He said, ‘The Mana Pass! Come and look at this!’ He dived into the chest again, but this time came up with a small, thick manuscript. He dumped it on the table. ‘Look at this!’

  ‘What is it, sir?’ Jason asked.

  ‘Diary, my boy. Mmm. Crossed the pass on such-and-such a day. Mmm. Diary of an ambassador sent to Lhasa by the emperor about forty years ago. Weather cold this day and the Lady Fatima complaining that the wind, which never stops, will ruin her skin. What am I to do? Ha! Met a monk. Ah, here we are. Listen, now. This infidel monk, who seemed nevertheless to be a man of taste, told us that, some two days’ march to the north of where we then were, a scholar had died in olden times. No one knows the name of that scholar. He was buried where he died, at the edge of a salt lake near the foot of a great mountain which has two peaks, and all his knowledge was buried with him. Later the king of that land is said to have caused a tomb to be built over his grave. The monk told us that the winds had blown sand over the tomb, or “stupa,” as he called it, for hundreds of years, and no one now knows exactly where the scholar lies. Ishmael of Multan--that’s me--has instructed me to dig up any such place I heard of, but the monk said there would not be any treasure buried in the stupa, so we did not waste time searching for it. What would I find, even if by the grace of Allah I came upon the tomb? The Lady Fatima complains that--Bah!’

  The old man’s eyes blazed. ‘No treasure! But the scholar was buried with all his knowledge. Books, inscribed tablets--what may not lie hidden there? I have never forgiven that fool of an ambassador.’

  Jason thought: Twin peaks! There was a mountain, then, even though it might not be Meru; and there was a treasure, though not a treasure of money. He said, ‘Father, I will look! I will find the stupa!’

  Ishmael said, ‘What do you care about knowledge?’

  Jason began, ‘Father--‘ then stopped.

  He wanted to say that now he cared about nothing else. In this library only his four books, of all that he owned or had ever owned, seemed to have any value. But Catherine was standing at his side, and the map was her guiding star. All her strength came from it. He could not say that the map meant little to him now, any more than he had been able to say it to the king yesterday.

  He said, ‘Father, can we not dream of gold and look for knowledge? Or dream of knowledge and look for gold?’

  Ishmael said, ‘Can we? I don’t know. But we can try. We shall go together. I shall come with you.’

  Jason said, ‘But you are--you have said you are not young.’

  Ishmael said energetically, ‘Sixty-nine. And you are--twenty-two? And the lady about the same? That makes us each thirty-seven, for we must share alike all that we have of experience and skill and muscle. An excellent age. Now, the king will not wish to let me go. But he needs money. It is, after all, possible that there is a treasure of money on Meru--if Meru exists. Or on some other mountain, if it does not exist. I think His Majesty will let us go, provided we do not ask him for guards and travelling expenses. As to that, I have a little saved up. So, we shall go! And what shall we see?’

  He wandered over to the stone screen as he talked, and now gazed through it, the bird-like eagerness of his movements stilled and his voice quietened. He spoke as Voy sometimes used to, so that his words took the power of wings, and Jason rose with them. He knew the unknown scholar. He was the unknown scholar, dying among foreign mountains. The hard light dimmed. Death came to him as a wild bird across the plain. Must he leave all his knowledge behind? No, because he--could leave it buried there with his body, and yet take it. There was nothing else in the world, except love, that could be shared and yet possessed. They were burying that body by the salt lake, and the wind blew stronger. Jason was at peace. He knew where his life must go. He would be a scholar.

  Ishmael’s voice ended. Jason said, ‘We shall find him! Then we shall know everything!’

  Ishmael took his hand and shook it gently. ‘Not everything, my young friend. Only a little, and that perhaps of no great importance.’

  ‘When can we start?’ Jason said eagerly. The sooner they started, the sooner they would return.

  ‘Patience, my son,’ Ishmael said, leading him outside. ‘Will the lady join us? How should I address her?’

  Catherine said, ‘Please think of me as your daughter, and so call me by my name.’

  Ishmael nodded, and with his hand brushed a few specks of dust off a marble bench. They sat down there on the terrace above the river. The shadow of the pink walls laid its careless shelter over them, and the sun beat at the stones beyond their feet. Ishmael said, ‘Tell me your story, from the beginning. Wait!’ He stood up.

  There was no heron this time, but Jason did not need to ask, What is it? A man stood in the shallows on the far side of the river, a net over his shoulder. So they watched; and two saw the sudden curve of light along the fisherman’s back and thighs as he flung the net, and the sweeping arc of the net in the air, flying, unfolding, falling, and the circle of splashes where the weights, all together, struck the face of the Jumna; and one saw nothing, because she had closed her eyes and fallen asleep, her head on Jason’s shoulder.

  Then Ishmael said, ‘Now--begin.’

  Jason groaned, turned over, and tried to close his ears.

  Catherine said, ‘What is it, Father?’

  Ishmael said, ‘Come out, children.’

  Jason struggled out of the blanket and crawled towards the opening of the tent. The old man’s enthusiasm knew no limits. What would it be this time?

  Once in the open, he stood up and stretched. The camp was in a grove, the night’s fires were dying, and the first splash of yellow light warmed the eastern horizon. Ishmael tugged at his hand, and he at Catherine’s, and they hurried through the grove, over the sheeted travellers and among the ranked trees. At the farthest edge Ishmael stopped and breathed, ‘There!’

  Crops sloped gently away in front. An opal-starred mist hung over the ground. A cock crowed from a clump of feathery trees. Jason yawned, rubbed his eyes, and looked.

  He blinked. His eyes widened. His knees began to buckle, and he sank to the earth with his fingers locked on his chest and his breath altogether stopped.

  Above the crops spread the white mist. Above the mist green hills climbed slowly upward. Above the hills the air was hazily blue and dense with distance. Now out of that blue sea of air rose the golden battlements of heaven. Their walls swept down in falls of pearl. Their diamond towers soared up from oceans of sapphire. From their black portals unseen archers streamed red arrows at the paling stars. A thousand
cathedrals thrust up thin golden spires.

  The light changed; the colours ran down from dazzling white cones to purple deeps. The sun rose, and for a moment the miracle hung, all gold and black above the abyss, stretched from the rising sun to the setting moon, and from earth to heaven.

  Catherine whispered, ‘I see the City of God.’ Jason closed his eyes.

  When he opened them the mist had risen, and all was gone. He stood up slowly and said, ‘Father, what have I seen?’

  The old man said, ‘The Himalaya--a hundred and fifty miles away. We are going beyond that. We had better get back and eat. See, they are packing up the camp already. Oh, look at those ducks!’

  But Jason did not want to look at anything. He wished he might be struck blind at that moment and never see anything again. Or sit here for a year, at the edge of the grove, facing north, and every morning at dawn watch the light lift that City of God out of the darkness. No, he would rise two hours before dawn, and wait alone through those last chilly hours in contemplation, thinking. Sometimes the mountains would not be seen, because of mist or cloud or rain. In a way, that would be better, because he could imagine them.

  Still, he could not do it now. He had to go on, following the map and Ishmael and Catherine. He walked pensively back through the grove to their tent. Catherine busied herself over the fire. Jason sat down, cupped his chin in his hands, and stared into space.

  Ishmael said, ‘What’s the matter with you, Jason? You have been very quiet all the time. Are your bowels loose? Are you constipated?’

  Jason said, ‘I was thinking. I understand why the Hindus think that most of the gods live up there in the Himalaya. I could watch them all my life.’

  Ishmael said cheerfully, ‘Many people do exactly that and nothing more. They are mystics. I’m hungry!’

  An hour later they trotted out on to the road and continued their journey. Towards midday Ishmael drew up to Jason and said, ‘There, see! There’s a man such as I told you about--a mystic.’