Red Gloves, Volumes I & II

by Christopher Fowler

  Stepping back from the statue, which seemed to be smiling at her in the half-light, she headed from one building to the next until she reached the sunken groves of the charbargh, the walled paradise garden divided in four quarters to represent the four parts of life, but the boy was nowhere to be found.

  The only thing she could do now was persuade Shere to take her to the village and ask the shopkeepers if they had seen him, but already she sensed that they would unite behind the child and her mission would fail.

  The first fat drop stained the dust at her feet like ink falling from a pen nib. It made an audible ploc as it landed. A second, tac, hit the steps. Looking up, she saw that the clouds entirely covered the sky. Moments later the droplets multiplied by tens, hundreds, thousands, millions, from a shower to a roaring downpour, to a thunderous cascade, to a sound like the end of the world. Visibility dropped to zero and she stumbled up the steps into the open-sided pavilion, watching in wonder as rain unlike any she had ever seen deluged the palace.

  At his car, Shere swore and threw down his cigarette as the first drops fell. He heard raised voices; a massive cheer of excitement filtered through the trees from the village. His client would already be soaked unless she had managed to take shelter. If she complained to the tour company, they would dock his pay or worse, place him on a circuit where he could make no money from the shops and restaurants he recommended.

  There was no point in looking for her; the uphill path was already turning into a mudslide. She would have to wait for a break and return as best she could.

  A change was sweeping over the monsoon palace. The dried-out walls had blossomed into bright ambers, ochres and fiery reds. Tiles were washed of their dust to reveal fierce blue glaze beneath. Mosaic panels covered with geometric lapis motifs sprouted and bloomed like orchids, glistening ornamental patterns emerging on the chhatris of the pavilions. Grey walls revealed hidden blues, yellows and greens. Earth was washed from the courtyard to reveal a polished marble floor inlaid with designs: floral bouquets, fruit trees and wine decanters. The gutters filled with rivulets that became gurgling streams, then pounding torrents, water shooting out of stonework spouts as the fountains sputtered into life. Marion grabbed the wet pages of the guidebook and searched for the pictures of the palace.

  ‘But it is the magic of the monsoon that restores the Palace’, she read, ‘for this forgotten complex of sandstone buildings and gardens was created to activate special effects during the rainy season that would delight the Bharatpur kings. The palace’s reservoirs are designed to fill instantly, fed by water-steps which pump streams through pipes to the peacock fountains.’

  Following the guide’s floor plan, she looked straight ahead and saw that what she had mistaken for piles of pale stones were in fact great marble peacocks. Rain was rushing down the steep gullies to be forced into the narrow stone pipes surrounding the birds. Water gushed from behind their long necks in shimmering rainbow fans, perfectly replicating the bird’s plumage. Marion was stunned. All about her, pipes and pillars were spouting water shapes, birds, animals, flowers. The pavilion’s overhanging balconies and kiosks channeled rain into intricate patterns that held formation for a moment before breaking apart and falling to earth.

  The palace had been built to provide royal delight during the monsoon. It needed heavy rain to come alive. Water swelled and saturated the parched earth and the arched halls around her, filling them with colour and vigour. She walked, then ran through the white cascades between the inundated pools and reservoirs.

  A long low belch of thunder sounded from somewhere between the ground and the clouds. Looking to the roof of the opposite pavilion, she saw a series of heavy lithic balls forced by sprays and jets of water to roll slowly across the concave roof, then back from the far side, artificially producing the sounds of a storm. The ditches around her were filling fast. Shielded from the downpour, they formed graceful mirror geometries that reflected the falling rain. She looked to where she had last seen the boy sitting. The curiously curved roof of the tomb now made sense; its upturned reflection was that of a boat, ferrying its precious cargo to safety.

  She was crying uncontrollably now, tears pouring down her cheeks in an unstoppable flow. Her white shirt was stuck to her shoulders, her breasts. She fought the urge to tear the transparent material from her body and wade into the lake. A sense of understanding flooded through her, filling her with compassion. She no longer cared about her watch, her luggage, her husband, her home. The trappings of her life had vanished in the revelation of the tempest. Unashamed of crying or calling to the gods, her voice joined the thousands of others who celebrated the coming of the monsoon.

  —

  The boy splashed through the streets with the paper bag clutched in his fist, and found his uncle closing because of the rains. Uncle Javed’s decision to delay the repairs to his roof would cost him dearly. Later on this very night, part of the shop’s ceiling would fall in and ruin his new stock of winter jackets and saris.

  The boy showed his uncle the watch, and received a clip across the ear for his trouble. ‘Oh, Karan, you will cause your mother to die of despair,’ he scolded, ‘for producing another little thief like your brother. Hasn’t the poor woman had enough trouble in her miserable life? Why do you want to see her suffer further?’

  ‘I didn’t steal it,’ Karan insisted. ‘A rich American lady opened the window of her car and handed it to me.’

  ‘Such a little liar!’ Uncle Javed cried, trying to seize the boy’s thin neck. ‘What kind of monster have we raised that he should steal from the very people who come here in trust? Was she very rich?’

  ‘You steal from them all the time,’ said Karan, stepping back from his uncle’s grabbing hands, ‘every time you sell them a shawl and tell them it was sewn by a lady who took twenty months to make it all by hand.’

  ‘That is the art of business, you rude child. Every woman wants to be told the story behind her purchase, in order to make it more of a bargain.’

  ‘But your stories aren’t true.’

  ‘They are exactly what people wish to believe. Price has nothing to do with value. And this’—he held the glittering watch aloft—‘must go back to the tourist you stole it from.’

  ‘But I’m sure she has gone.’

  ‘Did you look for her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, that is a blessing. My heart aches to think of the trouble you would have caused by making her think you were a thief. Come on, we have to visit old Mister Chauhan. He will be able to tell us how much the watch is worth. We must know how big a thief you have become, in order to find the right penance for your sin.’

  Karan reluctantly agreed to go along, but first he made sure that Uncle Javed returned the bag to him.

  The boys in the village said that Mister Chauhan was about five hundred years old, and had once been introduced to Queen Victoria in Old Bombay. His skin was so wrinkled, it looked to Karan as if someone had magically transferred his features to a brown paper bag, then screwed the bag up and flattened it out imperfectly. Mister Chauhan owned a brass-rimmed magnifying glass the size of a hotel dinner plate. He raised it by a pair of horn handles and held it over the watch on his cluttered desk. For several minutes there was complete silence in the cramped antique shop. Finally he set down the glass and turned to the boy.

  ‘There are thirty-six diamonds of extremely high quality inside this watch-casing, but there is also something missing.’

  ‘Missing?’ Uncle Javed looked at his nephew in puzzlement.

  ‘No serial number,’ said Mister Chauhan. ‘On Cartier watches of this type there are two types of authentication. On the downward stroke of the Roman numeral seven one can see, with the aid of a strong magnifier, the word ‘Cartier’ written in script. That is one sign. The other is the serial number on the back of the casing, but there is none.’

  ‘So typical that my thieving nephew should choose to steal a worthless fake,’ Uncle Javed complained, giving
the boy another clip around the ear.

  ‘I did not say it was a fake,’ Mister Chauhan continued. ‘This watch is very genuine indeed. It is extremely rare, so rare that someone has erased the number to prevent it from being traced. Every Cartier can be traced by its number.’

  ‘Why would somebody remove it?’ asked Uncle Javed.

  Uncle Chauhan sucked his teeth and thought for a moment. ‘I can think of two very good reasons. Either the person who bought it did not wish it to be found, because he made the purchase with bad money.’

  ‘He avoids his taxes. He is a crook.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘What is the other reason?’

  ‘A man might make such a purchase for his mistress, whose name he does not wish to be recorded on papers as the watch’s owner.’

  ‘The lady was not a mistress,’ said Karan, ‘she was a wife.’

  ‘Then perhaps her husband repents and gives the watch he buys his mistress to his wife, after first taking the precautionary measure of removing the serial number.’

  Uncle Javed looked as if he had just seen a fortune fly out of the window.

  ‘Mister Chauhan, you make a fine storyteller,’ laughed Karan. ‘If I did not know you better, I might be tempted to think that you were inventing such a marvellous story so that I might agree to sell it for a small amount.’

  ‘The watch cannot be repaired or serviced by Cartier,’ Mister Chauhan explained. ‘And this is the very thing that any prospective buyer would want.’

  But even as he looked into the boy’s unblinking brown eyes, Mister Chauhan knew he had lost. For this was India, where the past was not important, and anything could be repaired. He sighed and ordered the chai to be brewed, knowing that it would be a long evening. The bargaining began in earnest. Karan had seen the greedy fire in Mister Chauhan’s eyes, and knew that the process of negotiation would be lengthy and arduous.

  In fact, the formalities took three days and involved one boy and five men from two villages. Part of the problem was that the arrangement had to be kept away from the knowledge of the local police constabulary in order to avoid an unacceptable level of commission being deducted from the sale. At the conclusion of the deal much money was assembled, assurances were written out, whisky and masala tea were poured, everyone involved was sworn to silence, and Karan rode the train to Bangalore, to begin a new life.

  —

  Shere Banjara, the driver for Jacaranda Tours, fifty-two years old and married with five children, was severely reprimanded and fined for the loss of his charge. The paperwork involved took over a year to sort out. Finally he was moved from his base in Delhi to Kolkata, where he quickly learned that the new circuit could reap him unexpected rewards from a fresh generation of middle-class businessmen looking to buy carpets and tapestries for their second homes.

  As the years passed, the dry and rainy seasons replaced each other like cards falling upon a gaming table. The monsoon palace was denied World Heritage status due to a dispute over the ownership of its land, and remained overgrown and forgotten by all except the monkeys, doves and peacocks, who lived within its evening shadows. Parjanya sat in the dusty shadows and bided his time.

  Then, one overheated day, just before the arrival of the monsoon, when the air was so scorched that it felt like you might carve a hole in it to breathe, some workers angrily threw their pickaxes and shovels down onto the hard dry soil and started shouting at one another.

  ‘What the bloody hell is going on here?’ asked the project foreman, striding over. Work had fallen behind, and it was starting to look as if they would not be finished before the rains came, which would be disastrous because the road had not yet been sealed and they needed to take the shack down now.

  ‘The villagers tell us we cannot remove Maran or we will bring bad luck to the area,’ said one of the workmen. ‘We need to dismantle any obstacle today.’

  ‘Wait, you are talking about this? This?’ The foreman pointed to the chaotic arrangement of tin huts that stood in their path and began to laugh. ‘Bulldoze it flat. Pass me a pickaxe and I’ll do it myself.’ He spat paan on the ground dismissively.

  ‘You don’t understand. A promise was made that Maran would never be moved.’

  ‘Who was this promise made to?’

  ‘An old man called Javed who lived in the village.’

  ‘Javed? That scoundrel? He has been dead for over five years! The past is the past. Knock it down.’

  The workmen reluctantly moved towards their tools, but before they could continue their work, a horn sounded and they were forced to move to the sides of the road to allow for the arrival of a white Mercedes. Everyone agreed that the man who emerged from the rear seat looked like a younger version of Shahrukh Kahn, the Bollywood superstar. He walked over to the tin huts, examined them and beckoned the foreman.

  ‘How far over the boundary line?’

  The foreman looked at the ground and thought. ‘Twenty feet, at least.’

  ‘You know how long Maran has lived here?’

  ‘The men tell me fifteen years.’

  ‘Sixteen. You know why?’

  ‘Something to do with guarding the palace and keeping it in good repair, but there’s no paperwork—’

  ‘You don’t need paperwork for everything. Let me deal with this.’ As he approached the huts, a pair of green parrots screamed and rocked the ornate wire cage that hung from the lintel above the front door. He tapped respectfully and stepped back, waiting.

  The grey-haired woman who appeared in the doorway studied her visitor and smiled. ‘Come inside,’ she instructed. ‘I wasn’t sure if you would get here in time. The chai is almost ready. I’ve learned to like it sweet. I never took sugar at home. Have that chair in the corner, but be careful, the leg is broken.’

  The interior of the hut was crowded with decorative ornaments that had been presented to her by the villagers over the years, mostly Hindu gods. ‘Let me look at you.’

  Karan adjusted his collar and slicked back his hair, ready for inspection. ‘I did not believe you would stay, Maran.’

  ‘Marion,’ she corrected. ‘Oh, I come from a long line of very determined women. Besides, if I deserted my palace, who else would do the job? You people are losing respect for your past, all this rushing towards the future.’

  ‘And “you people” have not done the same?’ asked Karan. ‘This is not your palace. It is not a cause you can simply adopt, like a child.’

  In the soft light Marion looked younger than her years, the way she had been when he first saw her. ‘You’re right, of course. I can’t explain what I feel. But I know you can’t take his land.’ She touched her bare tanned neck, remembering. ‘I wanted to look nice for you but the damned monkey took my necklace. He’s probably buried it out by the jharna.’

  ‘The gardens of the monsoon palace have never been accurately measured, you know. We could go beyond their walls right now, trim a hundred yards off and no-one would ever know.’

  ‘Shame on you, to even think of such a thing. He will know. Parjanya will know.’

  ‘I have no other choice. But you, do you really want to stay on here?’

  ‘I have no other choice either. I burned my bridges long ago.’

  ‘Where is your husband?’

  ‘Maybe he stayed with his mistress,’ she said carelessly. ‘I wrote him some letters. I don’t know if he got them.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be, I’m not. I’ll become like the old British ladies who still live on in Delhi, complaining about their landlords and going slowly crazy. Something about this place encourages the irrational…’

  ‘I could move you back into the village. Javed’s children have offered you a home.’

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I need to be within sight of the pavilion. I’ve seen the designs for your little housing project, Karan. A gated community? I stayed here to get away from such things. Don’t tell me it’s progress, because it’s nothing
of the kind.’

  ‘It’s what people want.’ Karan smiled. ‘Didn’t you know, we’re all middle class now, even if our castes can never change.’

  ‘Well, it seems to me that we have to strike a deal, but I have no cards to play. Are you hungry? I could make you some paneer.’

  ‘No, I had a pizza.’

  ‘You could have me thrown off the site tonight, if that’s what you want.’

  ‘I could, but you know I would never do it.’ He sipped his masala. ‘You make this better than my mother used to. So, this is what we’ll do. You stay here. I’ll shift the boundary back, everyone’s happy.’

  ‘Everyone except Parjanya.’

  ‘It is the only solution I can offer.’

  ‘It sounds like you already had that in mind. You can’t do it without changing the planning application, can you?’

  ‘I can change the application with a few handfuls of rupees. We need to reduce the size of the estate because the surveyors are arriving from Delhi next week.’

  ‘It’s a shame. I thought the monsoon palace would eventually be accepted as a World Heritage Site. Now, more than ever, Parjanya needs a guardian here.’ Marion laughed softly to herself.

  ‘What is funny?’ Karan asked.

  ‘I was foolish enough to think that such an ancient, magnificent monument might be saved by a bag of sweets,’ she replied.

  ‘The palace will be protected, but the condition is the partial surrender of its grounds,’ said Karan.

  ‘He will not let you take his land,’ she said simply.

  ‘Listen, Marion, I have respect for you, but you cannot change what must be done.’ Enough. She exasperated him. Karan rose and took his leave. Outside, as he spoke to his foreman, she imagined the desiccated ground receiving fat drops of quenching rain.

  The men moved in. The yellow bulldozers and earthmovers backed away from the hut, but surged toward the low dry-stone walls and pushed straight through them, gouging channels in the soft red earth. The workmen marched forwards behind the vehicles, an advancing army clad in bright protective jackets.