The Rebellion of Yale Marratt

by Robert H. Rimmer

  Two days later, in the afternoon, feeling her heart pounding, dismayed with her need to be with Yale and trembling with fear at being discovered, Anne went to the officers' club. Feeling like a spy or fellow-traveler, she whispered the words to the fat brown face behind the bar. The face, attached to a well-balanced, corpulent body, broke into a happy grin. "Me, Vaswani. You, memsahib! Tee kai! Come with me."

  She followed Vaswani at a distance, watching him waddle in the direction of the officers' quarters. She waited on the road before a group of bamboo bashas, wondering who might see her. Vaswani returned in a few minutes followed by a tall Indian whose thin emaciated appearance was in striking contrast to Vaswani's fleshy body.

  "He, Chatterji . . . Sahib Marratt's bearer. Take to his gaon, thori dur."

  Chatterji had smiled at Anne's bewilderment. "Means village," he said, showing beautiful white teeth. "Not far. Follow. But not look like." Anne realized that he meant that an American would not walk beside a Hindu servant. Certainly not a woman. She followed him, watching his clean white dhoti billowing behind him. They had finally left the base on a footpath leading through rows of tea bushes.

  It's the same path that I walked that day, Anne thought. Then the rolling green terraces of tea bushes had looked strange and unfamiliar to her. She had had an instinctive reaction to flee and not follow Chatterji. What if she had, she wondered? What if ninety days or so ago, she had thrown Yale's note away? That would have ended it. She would have lost all the wonder of this fairytale existence and the ecstasy of their greeting after a few days of separation. She would have lost this love. Because now she was wildly . . . passionately . . . crazily in love with this Yale Marratt who sometimes made her feel so tender, engulfed in her emotions, that she would cry from happiness; and who at other times awoke in her a strange bewilderment that she had surrendered herself to a stranger who was already committed to another woman.

  As she walked toward the village she waved to some of the tea pickers who looked shyly in her direction. Soiled and dusty in their grey saris, they peered decorously from behind veils. She knew that some of them were Moslems from a nearby village. But the language they spoke softly to each other, commenting on this strange American woman, was the same warm glissando Hindustani that was now so familiar to her, and some of the words were beginning to trip on the threshold of her consciousness.

  She looked at her watch. It was five-thirty. Yale would be waiting, wondering what had detained her, fearing that she had been assigned some project that would keep her from the village that night.

  She remembered that first overwhelming day when Chatterji had led her across the rice field into the cool oasis of the village, along narrow paths between the bamboo houses. And then she had caught a glimpse of Yale, before he saw her, leaning indolently against the side of a tiny house built of bamboo, and roofed with dried grass several feet thick.

  He had led her inside. There was a big rope bed covered with mosquito netting, and bamboo chairs and a table. On the wall was a print of the three-headed aspect of the Indian world Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma. He had chuckled when she looked at it in consternation. She mentioned that it was not very pretty. "It's Chatterji's house-warming present." Yale hugged her excitedly. "Say you like it, Anne! Please. This is our home. This is where we escape Trafford. The lines of communication between us are Vaswani and Chatterji. Right after Vaswani brought you to Chatterji, he came to me. I rushed out here to welcome you. Chatterji's relatives built it for us. The whole thing cost two hundred rupees. Sixty dollars. Isn't it wonderful?"

  "It's crazy, Yale Marratt," she had said. She withheld the thought that crossed her mind. So I'm an Army shack-up job and the smooth Yale Marratt, the big operator, has not only outwitted Colonel Trafford, he has what every soldier wants, a little sexpot, at his beck and call.

  Now nearly three months later she knew that she had been wrong. In the twenty or so times they had "escaped" from the base, Yale had created for them a world of warm friendliness. Distant at first, the Hindu villagers soon responded to Yale. Anne was amazed at the rapidity with which he had grasped Hindustani. She recognized in the persistence in which he filled notebooks with Hindustani phrases a dynamic energy that was frightening in its powerful drive. "I can't help it, Anne," he told her. "I am driven. Have you ever read Thomas Wolfe? Remember him trying to absorb the entire Harvard library? Read every book in it. Know everything. I can understand that. A Faust-complex. It comes out in strange ways. I've heard so damned many Americans deprecate this country and these people that it makes me sick at heart. Here we are with an opportunity to learn about the culture of Hindus and Moslems. What do most of us do? We call them dirty wogs. Here is the oldest civilization in the world, but we are so sure of our own machine superiority that we look on these people with disgust. The Communists understand these things. In the bookstores in Dacca are thousands of books printed by the Russians in Hindustani and sold to these people for a few annas. We will lose India after the war to Communism because we ignored the mind of Indians. We think feeding their bodies is enough. Some day we'll find it isn't."

  Often, they were invited to Indian ceremonies in the village, ceremonies that were part of a seemingly endless procession of holidays whose meanings Anne and Yale tried to understand. There were village dances, and feasting. They ate rice wrapped in large palm leaves, and they sat cross-legged on the ground, enjoying the friendliness of the villagers. Yale brought back from Dacca, on his twice-a-month trip to the bank, several books on Hindu beliefs and customs. Anne and he studied them avidly.

  One day Anne made the discovery that the villagers were Tantrics. She and Yale were naked on their rope bed, idly playing with each other's body, finding sheer delight in a caress or touch. The gasoline lantern Yale had taken from the finance office sputtered on the table. It cast weird reflections on the wall and open ceiling, making a checkered pattern of shadows through the mosquito net.

  Anne held Yale's penis gently, examining him with interest, a mischievous grin on her face. "This is a silly thing to worship," she remarked. She pinched him lightly. "Do you know something, Yale Marratt! The people in this village worship the lingam and yoni. They believe in 'Circle Worship.' Sunanda Gupta told me yesterday. I'm supposed to be privileged to know. It's a very secretive thing." Anne rested on her elbows. She looked at Yale seriously, trying to divert his attention from her dangling breasts. Yale knew Sunanda Gupta. She was the wife of Surya Gupta, the head of the village. Sunanda had learned to speak English at a British school in Calcutta.

  "She's a very pretty woman," Yale had said. "I can't figure out why she wants to live here. I know they believe in Chakrapuja. It's a ritual based on the belief that this is the Age of Kaliyuga . . . a time on earth when men have come so far away from the ultimate godhead that they cannot worship in any ascetic way. Since for the Hindu all paths lead to Brahma, the Tantrics seek Salvation, for this time in the life of man, through something called the five Makaras: Madya, liquor; Mansa, flesh; Matsya, fish; Mudra, corn; and Maithuna, sexual intercourse. Wine, women and song, for the West." Yale kissed her nipple. "I knew Sunanda would talk to you. Surya Gupta asked if we would like to participate some evening." He looked at Anne with a wide grin on his face.

  ". . . and what did you say? Yes, I suppose." Anne had demanded. "Let's not let our curiosity run away with us, chum! I've been reading, too! Chakrapuja is where men and women sit together, naked in a circle, with their wife on one side and their 'spiritual' wife, meaning the wife of the guy next door, on their other side. Then all the men play house with the girls next door."

  Yale had choked with laughter. "They do that in the United States, only it's not in fun. It ends up in divorce courts."

  "I think that Sunanda wants to try you out," Anne said bitterly.

  "Maybe Surya Gupta wonders how a white woman would be," Yale said and then was sorry that he had carried the kidding too far because Anne was crying. He had soothed her.

  "I can't help it, Yale.
Sometimes all this sneaking around to be together gets me down. I know you are joking about Chakrapuja but sometimes I get frightened. We can't plan anything. Either one of us could be transferred. And that's the end. Some day, when the war is over, you will be sitting back in your country club in Midhaven, Connecticut, and you will tell the boys about the nice little set-up you had in Talibazar," Anne sighed. "It makes me feel a little cheap, and available. I guess it's just that I know you'll never quite love me, Yale."

  He had protested that he did love her.

  "Do you?" she had asked, her eyes blue-black and bright with tears. "Do you know how often you call me Cindar? My name is Anne."

  As she crossed the half-mile long dike that joined the village to the road and separated the rice swamp, she watched a straw-hatted farmer whipping his water buffalo out of its age old inertia, Onto the dike. The shadows of night were feeling their way out of China. From some nearby Moslem village the mournful evening prayers of endlessly repeated nasals were being cried to the sky. The sadness and eternal longing of the prayers to Mohammed seemed to blend with the cool night air and become a part of the aloof and remote quality of India.

  That was a month ago, she thought. Before Mat Chilling had arrived. Yale hadn't apologized. "Anne, of course, I love you. I love Cindar, too. If I have called you Cindar, it was a compliment. Why do people try to live by the idea that love is like water from a faucet . . . that you draw only when you're thirsty and turn off at will. I can't love that way. You can't love that way either. Ricky, your husband, is dead, but you still love him. Only some perverted idea of religion has made the greatest emotion man can have an exclusive one-to-one relationship."

  "I suppose you love everybody," Anne said, half in joy and half in anger. "You should go and hold hands with Trafford."

  "I don't hate Trafford," Yale said, amused. "I only wish he could know a love like yours for me, or care as much as I do for you; then he would be unable to deny his fellow men."

  Yale was elated the night he told Anne that Mat Chilling had been transferred to Talibazar. "Can you imagine! I was walking toward the mess hall, and I saw this long skinny frame approaching, looking down at me from heaven." Yale chuckled. "Mat Chilling! I guess I yelled his name at him. He came out of the clouds, and recognized me. Honestly, Anne, wait until you meet him. He's a good six-foot-five, with a tremendous lean and bony face. If he weighed about fifty pounds more, he'd look like God himself."

  Anne felt a strange jealousy for a moment. Yale seemed to be to inextricably woven with his past. How, she wondered, if what Yale had told her was true, could he accept and like this Mat Chilling? She asked him point blank.

  Yale looked at her silently. "I wish I could answer you, Anne. I've always admired Mat. He has such an inquiring mind. Do you know that he can speak fluent Hindustani? Somewhere, he studied Sanskrit. Then he got interested in various yoga disciplines and theories of Vedanta. He learned to read Hindu scriptures, like the Bhagavad-Gita , in the original. That's why he was sent to India. Actually, he's in Talibazar both as base Protestant Chaplain, and also to help the Army as interpreter with several local political problems that have developed."

  Yale handed Anne a package. "It's a sari. I bought it for you to wear because you just wrap it around yourself. It makes you so nicely accessible."

  Anne took the package, smiling. "You haven't answered my question," she said.

  "I asked him how Cynthia was," Yale said. "She's gone home to New Jersey to live with her father."

  "Did you tell him that you still love her?"

  "Anne!" Yale said delightedly. "You're jealous." He kissed her. His touch gradually aroused her and they made love, but she didn't forget about Cynthia.

  Two days later Colonel Trafford introduced Anne to Mat Chilling. Yale had flown to Mytikinia to transfer some funds to the finance office in Burma. Anne had been sitting with Helen Axonby when Trafford arrived at the tea planters' club. From Yale's description she recognized Mat instantly, but was unprepared for the deep musical quality of his voice. Mat introduced them to an Indian, who smiled obsequiously, showing very white teeth in his dark complexioned face.

  "This is Sri Sundari," Mat said. "He is a very wise guru."

  "Sahib Chilling is most kind," Sri Sundari said in perfect Oxford English. "But he exaggerates my abilities. Guru means 'dispeller of darkness' and I'm afraid no man in the last analysis can dispel another's darkness."

  Trafford shifted uneasily on his feet. "I don't suppose I can buy you a drink, Captain," he said, ignoring Sundari. Mat refused for himself and Sundari. Relieved, Trafford left them for the inner recesses of the club.

  "Your Colonel does not approve of his Indian brothers," Sundari said, smiling. Mat shrugged. "If we are offensive to you ladies," he said bluntly, "let's not find it out by innuendoes. I'm sure Sundari will understand."

  "My! My!" Helen Axonby said. She tapped her cigarette on her fingers. "You are a rude one, aren't you? It so happens I have heard Sri Sundari lecture several times on his Love Yoga, or whatever you call it." She smiled at Anne. "My husband calls it bosh, but I think it's because he is envious. You have nothing to fear from Mrs. Wilson either, Captain Chilling." Anne looked quickly at Helen Axonby, hoping that she wouldn't reveal the many things Anne had told about Yale and herself. "Stop worrying, Anne. Any confessions you wish to make, you can make directly to Captain Chilling."

  Mat laughed. "Sorry, but I maintain no confessional."

  Anne knew from the way Mat responded that Yale had not mentioned anything about her to Mat. She wondered why. Was it because he was ashamed of her? Was it because Mat's wife had been his beloved Cynthia? Or was it that Yale didn't really like Mat despite what he had told her? After all, Mat had taken Cynthia from him.

  "Sri Sundari, I enjoy India," she had said. "It's a privilege to have come to this country. I am interested in this Love Yoga of yours. I have been reading about yogas and Tantrics and find some of it rather shocking."

  Sri Sundari leaned against the balustrade. "Memsahib Wilson, I do not know your background but I assure you, properly understood, there is nothing shocking about love." He sighed. "Until we are better aware of each other's limitations, however, I find it wiser to discuss less febrile aspects of Hinduism."

  Chris Powers and Jane Belcher joined them on the porch with Howard Tuttle. Tuttle immediately tried to engage Sundari in a discussion of Moslem and Hindu problems. He asked Sundari whether he believed in the partition of India. Jane Belcher, a serious girl, who loved to discuss India and "solve the Indian problem," joined the discussion, citing Gandhi's theories of non-violence and the "spinning-wheel" as the salvation of India.

  Anne noticed that Mat Chilling did not participate in the discussion. She drew away from the group, and he followed her.

  "I'm afraid I'm not a political person," he apologized. "I find most of these discussions deal only in surface realities and hence tend to fly in ever diminishing circles."

  Anne chuckled. "You mean like the filylu bird," she said delightedly.

  "You don't think it appropriate that a minister would know that old joke?"

  "I would expect that Mat Chilling would know it."

  Mat looked at her surprised. "You say that as if you know me."

  Anne wanted to say, I have heard nothing but Mat Chilling for the past two days. Instead she said, "Let me be mysterious, will you? Let me ask you questions which you must answer without asking me any questions in return."

  "That's so very feminine. I can do no less than assent."

  She thought, you'll be sorry, Mat Chilling, and so will you, Yale Marratt. She paused as if framing her first question with great deliberation.

  "The year is nineteen thirty-nine. You have just graduated from theological school. You meet a girl named Cynthia. A Jewish girl. You marry her. Did she love someone else when she married you?"

  Mat looked at her intently before be answered. "There are two possible reasons for your question. One, you know Cynthia. Two, you kno
w Yale Marratt. I'll take the last as a logical guess. If that is correct, you know Yale pretty well."

  Anne could feel her face coloring.

  "You are blushing, Mrs. Wilson. Very charming. I wonder if you are asking the question for Yale? I could see it in his eyes in Miami, and the other day when we talked briefly."

  "I'm asking the question for myself," Anne said, trembling a little. "Now I'm sorry I asked it. Please forgive me."

  "I care for Cynthia very deeply," Mat said. "We were married not in nineteen thirty-nine, but in nineteen forty-three . . . two years ago. You look puzzled. I'm sorry I never did find out what actually happened between Cynthia and Yale. I suspect it was a religious problem." Mat touched her arm. "I would be very obtuse if I couldn't see your interest in Yale." He looked out across the rolling green lawn of the club's golf course. "So your question is one of dates. In this case I don't think the dates substantially changed anything. I think you can safely say that Cynthia still loves Yale." He noticed that there were tears in Anne's eyes. "When you love you give away a part of yourself, don't you think?"

  Anne agreed. As she walked the path that led through the village to their bamboo house, she could hear the first sibilant sound of crickets and night insects. Far away a jackal cried mournfully to the coming of night. Rolling clouds seemed huddled close to the earth as if pressed by infinity. Somewhere overhead an airplane droned. The round-the-clock movement of pipe and gasoline into China continued. The night was close and warm and somehow fidgety with a feeling of something about to happen.

  She caught up with an Indian woman who smiled at her as she passed. She was carrying a baby who nursed unconcernedly on his mother's swaying breast, half covered by her flowing sari. The baby's tiny arms and wizened penis bobbled in unison with his mother's step. Anne wanted to hold the baby and she smiled her emotion through tears at the woman, thinking as she smiled that she was becoming very sentimental lately.