The Siege of Krishnapur

by James Gordon Farrell

  After the glare of the compound a midnight darkness seemed to prevail on the verandah. A figure advanced out of the gloom and shook Fleury’s hand, welcoming him in loud tones which he recognized as belonging to Rayne. Another figure loomed up, bowed and clicked his heels nearby: this was Burlton who looked after the Treasury. He seemed to be a sensitive young man, anxious to please, and laughing excessively at everything Rayne said. Inside, there was another man, as yet only dimly perceived, who made a motion of bowing from his chair as he was introduced; at the same time he laughed sardonically; his name was Ford, one of the railway engineers. “Always glad to meet a griff,” he drawled.

  “We have Ford and his ilk but I’m hanged if the railway will ever reach Krishnapur,” jeered Rayne, who was evidently somewhat drunk. “Where’s that damned bearer? Ram, bring the Sahib a drink … Simkin! That means champagne, old man. We don’t drink tea in this house.”

  Fleury groped his way to a chair and sat down. For a few moments Rayne lapsed into silence and the only sound was his rather heavy breathing. When the bearer returned with a glass of champagne for Fleury, Rayne said loudly: “We call this lad ‘Ram’. That’s not his real name. His real name is Akbar or Mohammed or something like that. We call him Ram because he looks like one. And this is Monkey,” he added as another bearer came in carrying a plate of biscuits. Monkey did not raise his eyes. He had very long arms, it was true, and a rather simian appearance.

  “Where are the mems?” Ford wanted to know, but there was no answer.

  “Soon it will be cool enough to go for a canter.”

  “Why don’t we play cards till then?”

  But nobody made any move. Fleury sipped his champagne which had an unpleasant, sour taste. He could hear Chloë moaning on the verandah where she had been tied up by one of the servants. Presently another servant came in bearing a box of cheroots; he was elderly and dignified, but exceedingly small, almost a midget.

  “What d’you call this blighter?” asked Burlton.

  “Ant,” said Rayne.

  Burlton slapped his knee and abandoned himself to laughter.

  “I’d like to know what Mr Fleury thinks of this Meerut business,” said Ford. “What? Can you beat that! I’m damned if he’s even heard of it! Where have you been all day?” And delighted, he set to work to give Fleury what seemed to be a largely imaginary account of some terrible uprising of sepoys, full of “plump young griffins, fellows about your age” being “hacked to pieces in their prime”. Fleury could see that he was being made fun of, but was alarmed all the same.

  “Don’t worry,” said Burlton condescendingly; he had been in India almost a year and thus was less of a griffin than Fleury. “Jack Sepoy may be able to cut down defenceless people but he can’t stand up to real pluck.”

  “When did all this happen?”

  “What day is today? Tuesday. It happened on Sunday night.”

  Ford had lost interest in Meerut by this time but Fleury managed to get some idea of what had happened from Burlton. Two native infantry regiments had shot down their officers and broken into open revolt; in due course they had been joined by the badmashes from the bazaar who had set to work plundering the British cantonment. The British troops had been on church parade when the trouble started. In the end they had managed to quell the outbreak but the mutineers had escaped with their firearms. The telegraph wires had been cut soon after the first word of the outbreak had come through, but all sorts of grim rumours were circulating. Krishnapur was almost five hundred miles from this trouble. All the same, news travelled fast in India even without the telegraph … one only had to think of the speed with which the chapatis had spread. What nobody knew was whether the sepoys at Captainganj would follow this example and attack the Krishnapur cantonment.

  “Ant! Monkey! Bring simkin double quick!”

  “Of course, they’re bound to know of it already,” said Burlton. “What beats me, Rayne, is how the blessed natives got to hear of it before I did. I overheard the babus chatting in the Magistrate’s office about Meerut this morning. They were saying that the mutinous sepoys had marched on Delhi and that soon the Mogul Empire would be revived.”

  “A likely story. The people know when they’re well off. They wouldn’t stand for it.”

  “Well, they seemed to think it could happen. They wanted to know who were the fifty-two rajahs who would assemble to place the Emperor on the throne.”

  But Rayne and Ford were not interested in this fancy of Burlton’s and Ford said crushingly: “The first thing one learns in India, Burlton, is not to listen to the damned nonsense the natives are always talking.” And poor Burlton flushed with shame and avoided Fleury’s eye.

  Fleury had by now grown accustomed to the gloom and could see that Ford was a heavy-featured man of about forty; in spite of his inferior social status as an engineer, he clearly dominated Rayne and Burlton. Ford said unpleasantly: “Perhaps Mr Fleury will tell us what he thinks about it, since he has so many bosom friends among the ‘big dogs’ at Fort William.”

  “What I think is this,” began Fleury … but what he thought was never revealed for at this moment his interlocutors sprang to their feet. Startled, Fleury jumped up too; all this talk of mutiny had set his nerves on edge. But it was only the two ladies entering the room.

  “What a disgusting creature!” exclaimed Mrs Rayne, smiling prettily.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I say, Burlton. Would you mind telling that little beggar to bring more simkin for the ladies?”

  “Haven’t you heard, Mr Fleury, that there is an Englishwoman who has been behaving disgracefully at the dak bungalow? The Padre has been out to reason with her more than once, I hear.”

  “Could they not send the wretched girl away?” Mrs Ross wanted to know. “She can’t live for ever in the dak bungalow. At the same time she has clearly forfeited the right to the company of virtuous women.”

  “Is it true then, Sophie,” asked Ford teasingly,

  “ ‘That every woe a tear can claim,

  Except an erring sister’s shame?’ ”

  Ford had pulled his chair closer to that of Mrs Ross and had abandoned his lethargic manner.

  “How I wish Florence had a piano,” wailed Mrs Ross, changing the subject abruptly. “My fingers fairly ache to play. I fear that Mr Fleury will find but few of the comforts of civilization in Krishnapur, is that not so?” Opening her eyes very wide she gazed interrogatively at Fleury.

  “Well,” began Fleury, but once again he was forestalled, this time by the arrival of what seemed to be a tornado hitting the verandah and the wooden steps that led up to it. Such a crashing and banging shook the house that the gentlemen started up and made towards the folding louvred doors to see what was the matter. But before they could take more than a couple of steps the doors burst open and a young officer, whom Fleury instantly recognized as Lieutenant Cutter, rode into the room on horseback, wild-eyed, shouting and waving a sabre. The ladies clutched their breasts and did not know whether to shriek with fear or laughter as Cutter, his face as scarlet as his uniform, drove his reluctant horse forward into the room and put it at an empty sofa. Over it went, as clean as a circus pony, and landed, skidding, with a crash on the other side. Cutter then wheeled and flourishing his sabre, lopped the head off a geranium in a pot as he turned his horse to drive it once again at the sofa. But this time the animal refused and Cutter, his sabre still in his hand, slithered off its back on to the floor.

  “Do you surrender, sir?” he bellowed at a cushion on the sofa, his arm drawn back for a thrust.

  “Yes, it surrenders!” shrieked Mrs Rayne.

  “No, it defies you,” shouted Ford.

  “Then die, sir!” cried Cutter and charging forward transfixed the cushion, at the same time tripping up in a rug in the process, with the result that he collapsed in a whirlwind of feathers on the floor.

  “It’s just a joke,” explained Burlton to Fleury, who was amazed and shaken by this latest d
evelopment. “He’s always up to something. What a clown he is!”

  “Who is this griffin?” shouted Cutter, fighting his way out of the rug with which his spurs had become entangled. “Who is this milk-sop? Do you surrender, sir?” And drawing back his sabre once again he seemed to be on the point of running Fleury through.

  “Yes, he surrenders!” shouted everyone except Fleury, who merely stood there, too dazed to speak, with the point of the sabre patrolling the buttons of his waistcoat.

  “Oh, very well then,” said Cutter. “No thanks, Rayne, you can keep your Calcutta champagne. I only drink Todd and James, my horse drinks that rubbish. Monkey, bring brandy pawnee!” But Monkey was evidently familiar with Lieutenant Cutter’s tastes for he was already hastening forward with a tray.

  “Does Beeswing really drink simkin?” Mrs Rayne wanted to know, for it seemed that Cutter had given his horse the name of the celebrated Calcutta mare. At this, Cutter, who had sunk despondently on to the feather-strewn sofa with his boots and spurs dangling over the end, started up again with a roar and nothing would do but that Beeswing, who all this time had been standing patiently by the window and occasionally dropping his head to try and crop the Persian rug on which he was standing, should join the party too and drink his fill. Ram hurried in with another bottle and a bowl, but Cutter ignored the bowl and seized a solar topee from a side table; into this he splashed the contents of the bottle, guffawing and shouting encouragement to his horse. When the champagne was stuck under his nose Beeswing, who was thirsty from his canter in the late afternoon heat, began to lap it up with a will.

  The sun was already low on the horizon and Fleury was anxious to return home to see if Miriam had returned and to find out if by any chance the Dunstaples wanted to invite him to supper. But such was the jollity surrounding Beeswing that he had the greatest difficulty attracting the attention of his host.

  “What? Can you be off already?” exclaimed Rayne. “I haven’t yet had a chance to talk to you … A talk about civilization, that’s what I wanted to have! You ask Mrs Rayne if I didn’t say to her: ‘I’ll ask him over and we’ll have a serious chat about civilization.’ My very words. And now you’re showing a clean pair of heels.”

  “I’d be most happy … another time, perhaps. I wonder would you mind asking one of your bearers to accompany me?”

  Rayne shouted a command, but then he had to return his attention to Cutter, because he and Ford had just concluded an extravagant wager: namely, a dozen of claret that he and Beeswing could not spring from the compound over the verandah and in through the drawing-room window in one great leap Fleury said goodbye to the ladies and hurried away with Chloë frisking ahead; he was by no means anxious to witness this reckless feat.

  4

  Dark circles had appeared round the Collector’s eyes, and the eyes themselves stared more moodily than ever at other members of the congregation during evening service in the Church; at other times during the service he was seen to hold his head unnaturally still; it was as if his features were carved in rock, on which the only movement was the stirring of the whiskers in the breeze from the punkahs. It was evident that he was having trouble in sleeping for soon he ordered one of the bearers to seek a sleeping draught from the doctor. Dr Dunstaple happened to be away at the time so it was Dr McNab who found himself summoned to attend the Collector. He found him in his bedroom beside the open French window giving on to the verandah.

  Dr McNab had only recently come to Krishnapur. His wife had died a couple of years earlier in some other Indian station; otherwise, not much was known about him, apart from what Dr Dunstaple supplied in the way of amusing anecdotes about his medical procedures. His manner was formal and reticent; although still quite young he had a middle-aged and melancholy air and, like many gloomy people, he looked discreet. He had never entered the Collector’s bedroom before and was impressed by the elegance with which it was furnished: the thickness of the carpet, the polish of the tables and wardrobes, the grandeur of the Collector’s four-poster bed, inherited from a previous Resident, which to a man grown accustomed to the humble charpoy appeared unusually impressive.

  The Collector looked round briefly as Dr McNab entered, and invited him to come to the window, from where there was an excellent view to the south-west, over the stable yard, over the Cutcherry, to the recently built ramparts of dried mud baking in the afternoon glare.

  “Well, McNab, d’you think they will keep out the sepoys if they attack us here as they did at Meerut?”

  “I confess I know nothing about military matters, Mr Hopkins.”

  The Collector laughed, but in a humourless way. “That’s a judicious reply, McNab. But perhaps you are better fitted to judge the state of mind of a man who builds a fortress in the middle of a peaceful countryside. Doctor, I’m well aware of what is being said about me in the cantonment on account of the mud ramparts down there.”

  Dr McNab frowned but remained silent. His eyes, which had been on the Collector’s face, dropped to the fingers of his right hand which were too tightly clenched around the lapel of his frock coat in what would have been, otherwise, the calm, and commanding posture of a statesman posing for his portrait.

  “If no trouble develops in the end, Mr Hopkins, no doubt you will look a fool,” he said, then added grimly: “But perhaps it is your duty.”

  The Collector looked surprised for a moment. “You’re quite right, McNab. It’s my duty. I have a duty towards the women and children under my protection. Besides, I myself am a family man … I must think of protecting my own children. Perhaps you think that I give too little thought to my children? Perhaps you think that I don’t have their welfare sufficiently at heart?” He stared at McNab suspiciously.

  “Mr Hopkins, I know nothing of your personal life.” This was almost true, but not quite. A short time earlier McNab had happened upon the Collector’s children in a velvet brood being escorted by their ayah along one of the Residency corridors. And he had remembered hearing that it was by the Collector’s order that these children continued to wear velvet, flannel and wool, while the other children in the cantonment were dressed in cotton or muslin for the hot weather. Even as children, it seemed, they had a position to keep up in the community. Only perhaps in the hottest period, when he chanced to notice how red-faced his offspring had become, might the Collector permit a change to summer clothing.

  “I can assure you, Dr McNab. that I am as much loved by my children as any father was ever loved,” said the Collector, as if reading his mind.

  McNab shook his head soothingly, implying that it would never have occurred to him to think otherwise, but the Collector paid no attention to him; instead, he snatched up a leather-bound volume from the table and flourished it. “You see, my daughters bring me their diaries to read so that I may exercise supervision over their lives … I require them to do so, as any right-thinking father would. Every Sunday evening I read a sermon to them and to my other children, by Arnold or Kingsley, just as any father would. Why, I even prepared my manservant, Vokins, for confirmation by hearing his catechism! I think that you can hardly accuse me of neglecting my duty towards my household …”

  “It would never occur to me to accuse you of this or anything else,” said the Doctor quietly.

  “What? What are you saying? No, of course you wouldn’t accuse me of such things. Why should you? But tell me, d’you believe in God, McNab?”

  “Aye, of course, Mr Hopkins.”

  “I wondered because I noticed that you do not attend the Sacrament. No, please don’t think that I mean to pry into your beliefs. I was merely curious because I have here a book of my. wife’s … I found it the other evening … I suppose she left it purposely by my bedside. It’s Keble’s The Christian Year, a series of poems on religious themes, perhaps you know it… Here, let me read you some lines … Let me see, this will do:

  ‘Lo, at Thy feet I fainting lie,

  Mine eyes upon Thy wounds are bent,

  Upon Thy s
treaming wounds my weary eyes

  Wait like the parchèd earth on April skies.’”

  He paused and stared interrogatively at McNab, who yet again made no reply. Nor had he any idea what it was that he was supposed to reply to.

  “I have always considered myself to believe in God,” pursued the Collector after a moment, his dark-ringed eyes searching McNab’s face “but I find such enthusiasm offends me. Evidently there are those who believe in Him in a way quite different from mine. And yet, perhaps they are right?”

  “It’s only possible for a man to believe in his own way, Mr Hopkins. Surely nothing more can be asked of him. So it seems to me, at any rate.”

  “Splendid, McNab. What a fine philosopher you are, to be sure. ‘In his own way’, you say. Precisely. And now I shall let you return to your duties.” And while he escorted McNab towards the door he laughed as if he were in the best of spirits.

  At the door, however, there was a moment of confusion for as McNab approached it, it opened to admit the very brood of children whom he had seen earlier. Now scrubbed and combed, these children had been marshalled by their ayah in the corridor outside to be presented to their father while he took his tea. The Collector reached out his arms to the youngest of them, Henrietta, aged five, but she shrank back into the ayah’s skirts. As he took his leave, McNab had to pretend not to have noticed this small incident.

  Everything had remained quiet in Krishnapur as the news of Meerut had spread, but there had been a number of small signs of unrest, nevertheless. While the Collector was discussing with the Magistrate whether the ladies should be brought into the safety of the Residency a message from Captainganj arrived to say that General Jackson would be calling later to discuss a cricket match that was due to take place between the Captainganj officers and the civilian officials. This message was brought by a havildar who had ridden ahead of the General and who also brought a more ominous piece of news: fires had broken out in the native lines the previous evening.