Cromartie vs. the God Shiva

by Rumer Godden

‘But I do, of course I do, especially as I must as soon as possible. Thank you, Hem.’

  ‘I long to see a bazaar again,’ said Michael, as they set out. Inspector Dutta had two of his men with him, a sergeant from his home town, who spoke Hindi, and a young trainee who spoke Telegu, which was why he was given this opportunity. Both knew English. In the garden Auntie Sanni had turned a hut into an office for them; she did not want police work in the house.

  Now they went out past Patna Hall’s big double gates and its lodge where Thambi lived. His handsome, big-breasted young wife, Shyama, was supposed to be the gatekeeper but as they were always kept open she had nothing to do and did nothing but wash her hair, spreading it on her shoulders to dry as she lazed in the sun. If Thambi happened to come home – he did the shopping and cooking – he would pick up a tress, run it through his fingers and kiss it.

  At dusk, though, Shyama would come out and light the little oil lamp below the sacred small tulsi tree they kept in their courtyard. When the flame was steady, she would blow on a big conch shell, ‘Ulla-la, ulla-la, ullah.’ To Thambi it was a call home.

  ‘Well, Shyama is very lovely,’ said Auntie Sanni. ‘Plump and sweet.’

  Michael thought that too when, although she had hidden her face in her sari, she opened it a little to smile at him.

  ‘When I was a child,’ Michael told the Inspector – and he felt he was a child again – ‘I was not supposed to go into the bazaar alone, but I got over the wall of our garden and went wandering.’

  ‘Has it changed very much?’

  ‘Not really, except for all the plastic, plastic everything. Gharras, water pots, plates. They used to use banana leaves but now plastic tumblers, toys, even bangles.’

  Plastic and electricity – usually a single bulb hanging on a cord – and radios blaring, yet the bazaar had not changed. There were still the lines of shanty shops, all open booths showing their wares: sacks of grain or rice, vegetables piled high or floating in water; saris hung up or carefully folded on shelves; baby jackets on tiny hangers, flat as paper. There were cookshops where samosas and puris sizzled in open pans, and the smell of hot mustard oil mingled with the stench of urine from the gutter. A barber was shaving his client in the open while a letter writer had his floor desk on the pavement, his paper, ink and stamps ready. There were the inevitable crows with their harsh voices, pigeons, mynah birds, some in cages, and nanny goats, with their udders shut away from their kids in muslin bags. There was even a sacred bull, helping itself unhindered from a grain bag or vegetable stall; its hump was covered by a cap worked with beads. And there were, of course, the people, walkers, shoppers, children running loose, babies crawling and, in the road, bicycle rickshaws, their hoods patterned with flowers, their bells ringing, and a swarm of small black-and-yellow three-wheeled taxis hooting incessantly. ‘Those are new,’ said Michael. ‘I’ve never seen them before, but I’m back.’

  They came to a kite shop that could have been the one where he had bought his kites, made of the thinnest paper in pink, green, red, white stretched on the lightest cross-bars of bamboo. He seemed to feel the wickerwork spool turning as he flew them. ‘We used to pass our thread through a mixture of ground glass and glue so that it would cut.’

  ‘So did we,’ said Inspector Dutta.

  ‘Then challenge another kite by dipping ours. If it dipped back we crossed strings, which was where the skill showed. I was a mighty kite fighter.’

  ‘So was I.’

  Michael cajoled him, ‘Hem, let’s forget about the case, fit ourselves out and go down to the beach for a kite fight.’

  His companion looked at him severely. This was another side of the genial Inspector Dutta. ‘Mr Dean, we are searching the bazaar, not playing but looking for the slightest clue. Also I have my sergeant with me. What would he think? And the trainee, who is here to learn. It seems you, too, need to learn.’

  Still Michael found it difficult to pay attention. The front of the money-changer’s jewellery shop had bars across it, with the man sitting behind them on a red cushion quilted with black and white flowers. Although this was South India, Michael knew he was from Marwar in Rajasthan: the Marwaris were renowned as businessmen and financiers. He had a small black cap on his head and many ledgers in front of him.

  There was apparently nothing in his shop but a safe, a pair of scales and a table a few inches high on which he displayed the items that he brought out from the safe. In India jewellery is sold by weight and often made of silver threads, woven into patterns and flowers. While Inspector Dutta talked to the man, Michael bought a pair of his filigree silver earrings for Honor.

  Then he saw a small temple and went across to it. The outside walls and floors were tessellated with broken china, countless pieces set in concrete. Its pointed roof was covered in beaten-out kerosene tins which shone silver in the sun, but the painted plaster gods of his childhood had been replaced by two large, jointed Western dolls. They were dressed in gaudy muslin, tinsel and paper flowers, but Michael knew that the priest put them to bed every night, got them up in the morning. ‘Hindus worship round the clock,’ he had told Honor, and, true, before these doll-gods was a low table with offerings of sweets and flowers. As he watched, a woman came to pray; on the brass tray she put a little powdered sugar making with her thumb a pattern on it for luck. ‘But what a shame to have those dolls,’ Michael said to Inspector Dutta. ‘They used to have wonderful home-made images.’

  ‘They still do,’ said the Inspector. ‘You must come and meet Veeranna, the potter. His name means “one who is brave and good in his work”, which he is. A fine modeller.’

  Michael had already smelt the kiln. ‘That smell makes me remember that every village has a potter.’

  ‘Often more than one, but for how long can they last now that we have plastics? Of course, plastics are far more sensible.’

  ‘Ugh!’

  The Inspector laughed. ‘You can cheer up. We still need potters. Festival images cannot be made of plastic because at the end of their puja or feast they are taken to the nearest water – here it is the sea – and they are immersed and have to disintegrate. Veeranna is busy now because the feast of Vinayak Chauthuri is near, when Ganesh, the elephant-headed god, is worshipped. Most of the time he finds it hard to make a living out of clay but, being gifted, he has been trying to do metal work. I believe he went on a course to learn.’

  The potter’s workshop was away from the village. ‘But villagers, even though they are converted to plastic, revere their potter if he is an image-maker as well,’ Inspector Dutta told Michael, ‘because it seems to them that out of the air, or earth because he works in clay, he can conjure up any god they need, from the little household gods kept in a house’s prayer corner, to the life-size ones that are the central figures in a feast when they stand in a pandal, a sort of arbour, in the village square or street to be worshipped. Any god or goddess. The people think that marvellous. Veeranna, though, is not sociable, never married and lives a lonely life, immersed in his work.’

  His house had the same earthen-clay walls and floors, the same thatched roof as any in the village but it was bigger, having two rooms and a more spacious courtyard shaded by trees. The larger room was for living as well as work, with an open fire for cooking in one corner, a low wooden bed held together by a web of strings, its quilts tidily rolled up. Veeranna evidently believed in order: lines of clay bowls, some little and others as big as gharras, stood in the courtyard, largely unsold, but the centre of the room was taken up by his wooden wheel which he spun while sitting on the floor. Beside it was a hole dug wide in which he mixed his clay.

  The kiln was outside but so near the threshold that the room’s upper walls and inside roof were blackened by the fumes. ‘He lights the kiln with coal and cakes of cow dung, which he collects and dries in pats on the house wall outside. But see,’ said Inspector Dutta, ‘those are jars of glazing made out of local rock, powdered and mixed with soda ash.’ Shelves propped on bricks hel
d ‘Pigments of all colours,’ said the Inspector, ‘especially gilt. He has to paint his images.’ On another, wider, shelf were the properties needed for the gods: musical instruments – flutes and, especially, little hand drums – swords, arrows, beads, even a stuffed snake or two, crowns, jewellery, bolts of gauze cloth, some patterned with gold stars or silver crescent moons, or woven with gold thread and with gold borders.

  ‘He must have a good trade,’ said Michael.

  ‘He says, enough.’

  When they had come in – without knocking, Michael noticed – Veeranna had been sitting on the floor painting in the finishing touches of gilt on the crown of a Ganesh, already complete, even to his short gleaming tusks. For a moment the potter did not lay down his paintbrush, then abandoned it and stood up reluctantly, salaaming.

  Veeranna was almost as big as Thambi but modelled more finely. As if he had modelled himself, thought Michael, who looked particularly at his hands, large, long and strong-fingered, the thumbs spatulate and bent wide, almost double-jointed. As he faced the policemen, his hands were never still – Nervous, thought Michael. Unlike Thambi’s golden brown skin, Veeranna’s was as dark as only a Dravidian’s can be: when he dived into the room’s shadows – he seemed to think it necessary to show Michael this or that piece of pottery – he almost disappeared and only the whites of his eyes glinted. When he stood in the light, Michael saw that the irises were brown not black as he had expected, and that Veeranna had unusually long lashes. He is proud and sensitive, thought Michael, yet childlike in the way he treats me, this stranger sahib, even though he was obviously frightened by the policemen: ‘Police mean trouble.’ Michael could have said it for him.

  They went into the inner room. ‘This is where Veeranna says he will do the metal work that so inspires him.’ But the room had nothing in it except a wooden turntable and a bright neon light on the ceiling.

  ‘Nothing else?’ Michael was disappointed.

  ‘I expect it is as far as he has got,’ said the Inspector. ‘The tools are most expensive but Veeranna is determined. I am sure he will get them in time.’ But now Veeranna was beckoning.

  ‘He says he have something to show Sahib,’ the young trainee told them.

  As they watched, Veeranna went to a wall where finished images stood. Because of the coming feast, most were of Ganesh, but one figure, taller than the others, was carefully swathed in muslin and, with something like triumph, Veeranna took off the coverings, lifted it and put it down before Michael, who was astounded. He whispered, ‘Saraswati.’

  ‘Yes. Goddess of all learning.’ Inspector Dutta was intent on his information.

  ‘Goddess of pen and ink,’ Michael remembered, ‘and music too, of course. She always holds a vina. On her puja day I remember they used to set up a pandal for her in the street and the students and poets, and schoolchildren, used to bring their books, manuscripts and instruments and lay them at her feet. I always thought she was beautiful, but this is lovely. Tell him so,’ he told the young trainee. Veeranna had given her a gauze sari, patterned with little gold stars, a crescent moon in her hair, even the holy little red henna spot that marks devoted women’s foreheads. Her smile was so gracious she seemed alive. In English so quick that neither of the young policemen could follow it, Michael said in the Inspector’s ear, ‘Don’t you think Veeranna could have made the new Shiva?’

  Inspector Dutta gave a loud guffaw. ‘Dear Michael, how you do get carried away! As I have said, Veeranna is a good craftsman but don’t forget the Shiva is bronze and he has only just started working in metal – if he has. That needed an artist, someone approaching that old master sculptor. No village potter could possibly have made it.’ As Veeranna was standing looking puzzled, the Inspector said to the young trainee, ‘Translate for him.’

  Veeranna listened, said nothing, only picked up the Saraswati to put her away, but Michael had seen a gleam of resentment in his eyes.

  When they came back to Patna Hall the sun was still hot. ‘I think I’ll go in for a dip,’ said Michael. ‘I’ll fetch my things.’

  He came back to find Inspector Dutta at the head of the beach watching Artemis: she was standing at the top of the high diving board built far out into the bay with the surf sending up a turbulence of white against it. In her wicker helmet and turquoise bikini, she was wet and her body glistened. She stood taut, her hands held high and joined ready. Thambi was beside her but not touching her as they dived, she in a perfect curve far out beyond the waves, swimming ahead of him. They were clapping her on the beach as Inspector Dutta said, ‘Is there anything that young woman cannot do?’ Then, unexpectedly, ‘I’m glad I haven’t got her for a wife.’

  Michael did not answer; he was too intent. She went down – he caught his breath – but came up and rode in on the surf, Thambi holding her on a gigantic wave that, as it fell, rolled them far up the shore, spreading ripples round them as they lay panting but laughing until Artemis staggered up the sand and fell on her swimming towel, spread ready.

  ‘She best of all,’ Thambi told Michael, who had dared to walk over.

  ‘Thambi says that to everyone,’ said Artemis. ‘Don’t you, Thambi?’

  ‘This time true.’ Thambi laughed. ‘Sahib want to go in?’

  ‘He can’t. He’s going to talk to me,’ and Artemis patted the sand beside her. ‘Come on, sit down,’ and as Michael obeyed, ‘Tell me something nice and nothing to do with people. People, people, people!’ She was vehement. ‘Tell me something innocent as if we were children.’

  Sitting on the warm sand, scooping it up to let it trickle through his fingers, by some magic Michael was inspired to begin:

  ‘And then with hat and ball and hoop go playing

  in parks where the bright colours softly fade,

  brushing against the grown-ups without staying

  when ball or hoop their alien walks invade …

  And hours on end by the grey pond-Side kneeling

  with little sailing-boat and elbows bare;

  forgetting it, because one like it’s stealing

  below the ripples, but with sails more fair;

  and, having still to spare, to share some feeling

  with the small face caught sight of there:–

  Childhood! winged likeness half-guessed at, wheeling,

  oh, where, oh, where?’

  Artemis turned on her side and looked at him. ‘I didn’t know brilliant young men could quote poetry.’

  ‘I’m not brilliant.’

  ‘Auntie Sanni says you are and she knows.’ The teasing stopped. ‘Perhaps knows too much,’ she said. For a moment she turned away, then back to look at him again. ‘Do you write poems, Michael?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Say one.’ It was a command, and something in Michael told him to rebel.

  ‘No, thank you!’ he said, got up and walked away.

  Artemis did not come for drinks or dinner: she was busy helping to arrange the drawing room-ballroom for Auntie Sanni and the Colonel’s supper reception. Samuel was there too, and the dining room was almost empty. Only the Fishers, Inspector Dutta and Michael were having dinner, waited on by the head waiter. Professor Ellen had a bad headache so that after dinner the four of them were alone on the veranda while from the ballroom they could hear music.

  Michael showed Lady Fisher the earrings he had bought for Honor. ‘These are really good ones,’ said Lady Fisher, ‘beautiful. It’s amazing what you can find in a village bazaar.’

  This led to talk of Honor. ‘To us, she’s just a young girl,’ said Sir John. ‘We can hardly believe she’s a QC.’

  ‘What is that?’ asked Inspector Dutta.

  ‘Queen’s Counsel. A very senior barrister. Apparently in her year there were over five hundred applicants and perhaps seventy were admitted. There’s a huge waiting list.’

  ‘Of whom only eight were women,’ said Lady Fisher.

  ‘Honor has been a QC for five years which, of course, has led to her high status,
’ and Sir John explained to Inspector Dutta, ‘It’s all deeply traditional. As a QC, in court you have to wear a full-bottomed wig, gloves, buckled shoes and the traditional black silk gown, which is why it’s called taking silk.’

  ‘Taking silk. I like that,’ said Inspector Dutta.

  Professor Ellen came down: ‘To have a little fresh air, and a brandy if I may?’ she asked Sir John. The music had changed, dancing had begun. ‘I find this the hardest work of all.’ She had collapsed into a chair. ‘Thank God for Artemis but I shall have to go in soon.’

  ‘And I have just come out.’ Auntie Sanni had appeared. ‘A brandy for me too, please, John. Ellen, you look very pale.’

  ‘I feel it, but Artemis is there.’

  ‘It seems strange,’ said Michael, ‘noisy dancing in a room that has a shrine in it.’

  ‘They have dancing girls in temples,’ Sir John pointed out.

  ‘But not for this sort of dancing.’

  ‘That reminds me.’ Inspector Dutta’s thoughts were never far from his work. ‘Professor Webster, in your experience, since Henry Bertram’s time, did the Nataraja ever go out of the house?’

  ‘Yes. I’d been worried about it. The sea air and saltiness were beginning to erode it. Of course, it should have been kept under glass.’

  ‘Under glass!’ Auntie Sanni was indignant. ‘That would have defeated its purpose.’

  ‘You see?’ Professor Ellen shrugged. ‘But Artemis is bolder than I. In her explorations she had come to know a renowned old sculptor, Sri Satya Narayana, who specialized in antiques. He himself used the centuries-old ancient methods, carving in wax. The season before last, Artemis had arranged not to fly home but to spend the summer, the hot weather, researching in Kashmir, and offered to take the Shiva to Sri Narayana on her way there, picking it up on her way back.’

  ‘She went by car?’

  ‘Yes,’ Auntie Sanni confirmed.

  ‘With an escort, I hope?’

  ‘Escort? What escort?’

  ‘The Shiva is very valuable, Miss Sanni.’

  ‘Well, Artemis just took it but it was no good. When she got to Sri Narayana’s house-studio to collect the Nataraja on her way back, she found he had died two months before without touching it so she brought it back.’