A House Called Askival

by Merryn Glover

  ‘Nor without forgiveness.’

  ‘Forgiveness is not enough. People need liberation. You cannot ask them to go on forgiving and forgiving if nothing will change.’

  ‘Seventy times seven, Paul.’

  ‘So you’re telling them to shut up and suffer it.’

  ‘Not at all. But forgiveness changes things.’

  ‘People, yes, but not systems. And that is why we must fight.’

  ‘Paul, Paul, we can’t fight for peace. Your theology!’

  ‘You challenge my theology?’ retorted the Reverend. He was not long retired from a life’s tenure as Principal of Covenant Bible College, Lucknow. There were a dozen books to his name and as many letters after it. James laughed softly.

  ‘I know, I know. I’m just a retired doctor and part-time rubbish-picker. What do I know?’

  ‘You know when you’ve lost an argument, and that’s a good thing.’ Verghese flashed him a grin and winked at Ruth. Opposite James’ unkempt clothes and shaggy head, the small man looked polished and buffed as a piece of palace furniture. His Brylcremed hair was combed into an unmoving black cap that matched his rectangular moustache and the thick rims of his glasses. Inside the stiff folds of his suit he sat upright like a cardboard cut-out, shoes clamped together and so shiny they reflected the room. After every delicate bite of cinnamon bun he returned it to the plate, rubbed his fingertips to remove the sugar and dabbed at his lips with a napkin.

  Ruth smiled. It was just like his son, another class-mate of hers, and the most fastidious person she’d ever met.

  ‘How’s Thomas?’ she asked.

  A cloud passed across the Reverend’s face. He wiped his mouth again, brushing out the corners of his moustache. James looked down at his hands.

  ‘Thomas has given himself over to the iniquities of the flesh,’ said Verghese and looked Ruth straight in the eye. Her mouth was full of bun.

  ‘Oh,’ she managed. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She wasn’t in the slightest. She was electrified. Thomas? Of all people! He was always going to be an evangelist. Save India. Maybe the world. She wanted to ask to which particular iniquities of the flesh he had succumbed, but resisted.

  The Reverend’s eyes needled her, as if she might possess some information that would explain the tragedy. She was, after all, equally ruined. But she offered nothing and busied herself with brushing sugar off her t-shirt and licking her fingers. James turned to her and when she met his gaze, her chin jutting out, she was caught off-guard by his tenderness. She blushed and stood up.

  ‘Time to go, ji!’ she called out to Iqbal, who was checking kitchen cupboards and scribbling on a list.

  ‘Hah-ji, Sani-Rani,’ he sing-songed. He had said nothing during the other men’s debate but Ruth had heard little whistles and clicks and seen him shaking his head. Now he gathered the list and a bundle of bags and tucked them into a backpack. They were off to Mussoorie bazaar for food shopping and Ruth’s first lesson in tip-top ingredient selection. That was the excuse, anyway.

  At the fork in front of Morrison Church she hesitated.

  ‘Shall we take the back road?’ she asked.

  ‘Certainly! The flora is most beautiful on the northern side. Doctor-ji knows the name of each and every plant and is introducing me.’

  Ruth smiled as she imagined Iqbal shaking hands with a maidenhair, exchanging pleasantries with a tree, getting chummy with a clump of moss. Sure enough, the whole way along the back chakkar he pointed out ferns and flowers, picking some and pressing them into her hands. Shield fern, violets, lily-of-the-valley, bracken, peacock flowers, soft dryad fern, reindeer orchids and wild ginger. She breathed in the damp, woodsy smells and wondered again why this man was in her father’s life.

  ‘Iqbal-ji,’ she ventured, trying to sound casual.

  ‘Rani-ji!’ He was bubbling with bonhomie.

  ‘How did you and Dad meet?’

  She caught a flicker of consternation on his face. ‘Oh, our brotherlyhood is going long time back.’

  ‘You were never around when I was growing up.’

  ‘Oh, no. My family had shifted to Pakistan that time.’

  ‘But you came back.’

  ‘Yes.’ They were passing through the graveyard and he stopped, laying his hand on his breast. ‘The blessing of God be upon your saintly mother,’ he murmured. Ruth couldn’t think what to say. ‘Are you wishing to make visitation?’ he asked, gesturing down the path.

  ‘No. I’ve been with Dad.’

  ‘Enough then,’ said Iqbal, as they walked on. ‘She is not there anyway. She is with Jesus.’

  ‘You don’t believe that.’

  ‘And how does Miss-sahib Ruth know what I believe? You only met me this one week.’

  ‘I know you’re a Muslim.’

  ‘There are Muslims and there are Muslims.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I am Muslim with a small “m”.’ He smiled and held up a finger.

  ‘Moderate?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Middle-of-the-road?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Mild?’

  ‘No.’

  She made a horsy huff. Iqbal chuckled. ‘Give up?’

  ‘Have to.’

  ‘Mystery!’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘It’s a mystery what this old fool believes!’

  Then he laughed, a round rich sound like the swelling beat of a tabla. It washed over her in a wave and she laughed with him and realised that in the last week she’d seen her father laughing more than she ever remembered.

  Yet at the same time, she’d seen something else.

  A longing in his eyes when he looked at Ruth; an appeal.

  They arrived at the far end of the ridge where the road bends back round the southern side of the hill. On the promontory ahead lay Askival.

  THIRTEEN

  It was the middle of September 1947 and the rains were dragging on. Monsoon was once again playing her cruel trick, that annual metamorphosis from bride of promise to bitter wife. Every year when she arrives, veiled in silver rain and fresh as a flower, she is greeted with jubilation. Grown men dance in the streets, women laugh, children run naked in the swirling water. She is a blessing, a relief from the unbearable heat, a cure for the cracked earth. And how abundant are the fruit of her loins! Crops rise like armies in the fields, trees hang heavy with foliage, vines run rampant over wall and courtyard.

  But then she sours, becomes a disease. She floods the place with her brown swill and eats away at the heart of things; pelts people on their way to work, soaks them to the bone and flushes their filth down the streets. In the hills, she infects the houses till they go swollen and speckled, reeking of damp, furniture sagging. Bed sheets never quite feel dry and clothes carry a constant smell of wood smoke from the dhobis hanging them up in fire-lit rooms. At the bottom of wardrobes, shoes sprout a whitish fuzz and in kitchen cupboards, mould stealthily conquers the food. Even the people take on a sodden, fishgrey look as they appear through the mist, rain-spattered clothes clinging to their legs, skin cold.

  It was just such a person who came up the path of Askival that wet afternoon, his shalwar legs rolled to the knees, chappals flapping through the mud. Carrying James’ hiking back pack and the Memsahib’s black umbrella (CONNOR 2), Aziz was returning from the bazaar with the shopping. He walked round to the back of the house, propped the umbrella on the veranda and pushed through the screen door to the kitchen, where the Memsahib was checking a tray of kidney beans for worms. She was peering at them through the grey light from the window, the power having failed again.

  Sahib had left the hillside a week before. Two days after Colonel and Mrs Bunce’s visit, he and a party of medical missionaries had travelled down to the plains to help in the refugee camps. Aziz had overheard these plans over the wasteland of that supper and when he had finished clearing up, he’d slipped out to the servants’ quarters and into the warmth of his bed where Salima and the baby lay sleeping. But he h
ad barely slept, and when he did it was only to enter dreams that left him sweating and crying out.

  The night before Stanley’s journey, Aziz had made him a packed lunch of army-surplus-Spam sandwiches, a banana and two peanut butter cookies and filled a water bottle from the filter. He’d watched as Stanley lifted his gun out of its box, hesitated, and then returned it. In the days after he’d gone, Aziz begged the Memsahib to explain all she knew, but she was cautious. It was her way to make no fuss, but he could read the map of her face: the contours of worry, the drooping of eyelids from broken sleep, the stretched greyness of her skin. He knew she had not heard from the Sahib since he’d left, though this was to be expected. Few letters were reaching Mussoorie, and a telegram would only be used in emergency. Aziz had asked the Memsahib about their plans. His every move was determined by theirs, and although this had once brought security, it now filled him with unease. He worried they did not understand the forces at work around them in this country that they loved but did not fathom. These two countries, now. The Connors believed, they hoped, they had faith that God would provide and goodness prevail. But if it didn’t (and He didn’t), they could leave. They were Americans. They had passports, money, choices, multiple futures, whereas he – and his family – had one: them.

  But despite his anxious probing the Memsahib had given nothing away.

  ‘We don’t know the next step, Aziz-ji, but the Lord does.’ She spoke in Hindi, the norm for their conversations. ‘And all things work together for good for those that love Him.’

  Aziz wondered if the promise included him. He loved Allah. Was that the same? Well, in truth, he worshipped Allah in submission and fear. Did that mean love? He knew Allah to be good and merciful but did not know if that would help him in the here and now, or just in Paradise. Would he and his family be safe if the missionaries were gone? What work could he get? No one else would want his Walnut Fried Chicken and Peanut Butter Cookies. There was no point turning to his parents for support. They were poor as dust and already relied on a meagre share of his monthly earnings. And Salima’s people were of no use. She’d been illegitimate and kicked from birth. The day Aziz married her, she’d begged him never to return her to that cursed village. He had promised and prided himself on the life he gave her: a clean and comfortable room in the servants’ quarters, food and clothes enough and his own devotion. In turn she had given him the delights of her body and the unsurpassed joy of a son. But now he churned with worry for them. All but his love was under threat.

  In the week since Sahib had gone, he had felt fear tightening round him like a snake. By the time he arrived back from the bazaar that afternoon, he was out of breath and his heart thumping.

  ‘Memsahib,’ he said and lowered the backpack, water dripping off him onto the floor. ‘They are all talking in the bazaar. The Punjabis have come. They will kill us!’ He pulled off his wet, fogged glasses and rubbed them on his kameez. The Memsahib looked at him, steadily. He could not stop the trembling in his hands as he pushed his spectacles back up his nose.

  ‘That’s not good talk, Aziz-ji,’ she said. ‘It just breeds panic and there’s no call for that. Did you get the stuff?’

  ‘Memsahib, it is true! Some Sikhs have already moved into Mullingar Hotel and one Muslim family there was pushed out. Traders are leaving town already. I saw them going.’

  ‘Well, I think they’re being a bit hasty and there’s certainly no need for you to worry. You’re perfectly safe up here. Now, where’s that mutton?’ She reached for the pack. ‘We’re needing it for tonight’s supper.’

  ‘Yes, Memsahib, but there won’t be any more.’ He was sweating as he helped her pull open the flap and undo the drawstring. ‘All the butchers are going. They told me.’

  ‘Well now,’ she muttered and pulled newspaper-wrapped parcels out of the bag.

  ‘And all the cake-wallas, jam-wallas, sweet-wallas, Memsahib!’ He passed two jars and a tin to her. ‘All Muslim. All going.’

  ‘We’ll just have to do without, then,’ she replied, inspecting the labels on the jars and setting them firmly on the bench. Her mouth was tight.

  Aziz stood by the empty backpack and looked at her. On the tray at her elbow some of the kidney beans were moving.

  By six-thirty, he had everything ready for supper and was just waiting for James to return from school. He was off collecting ferns and beetles with Paul Verghese and the Natural History Society. Aziz could never see the point. The garden was thick with ferns, the house with bugs. If James simply sieved the flour he would find plenty of weevils for his studies, and should he venture into the kitchen early morning, he might even be greeted by a scorpion, tail high.

  Aziz checked his Mutton Stew (recipe of Mrs Meribelle Winshaft) and ran a fork through the rice. He added a tin pitcher of water to the neatly laid table and looked through to the living room where the Memsahib was unravelling an old knitted sweater by the light of a kerosene lamp. A radio beside her was talking like the Colonel Sahib. It was too fast and crackly for Aziz to understand, but he read much from her body as she sat upright, pushed forward in her chair, reading glasses askew on the end of her nose, eyebrows low and scrunched. She kept shaking her head and sucking in her breath, a wet hiss across her teeth. All the while, her large mottled hands yanked at the wool, the sweater disintegrating on her lap.

  There was a crashing at the door.

  ‘Mom!’ James shouted as he came down the hall.

  ‘What in mercy—?’ cried the Memsahib, jumping from her chair, wool tumbling to the floor. James appeared at the living room door, sweaty and rumpled, his torch still on.

  ‘There’s a house on fire on Mullingar hill! I saw it. Just below the Hotel. People were running everywhere, shouting, screaming.’

  His wild gesturing made the beam from his torch dance across the room. It hit Aziz in the eyes and he squeezed them shut. Behind the closed lids he pictured the house on the hill, the flames, the black flicker of bodies trying to escape.

  Just below the Hotel.

  All the houses there – on the steep, rocky, eastern slope of Mullingar Hill – belonged to Muslims.

  The next morning, as he was making the porridge for breakfast, Aziz heard Bunce Sahib at the door and slipped into the hallway.

  ‘Been a bit of unpleasantness,’ the Colonel was saying to the Memsahib, ‘and I’ve taken the decision to get the lot of them out.’ Behind him, Aziz could see two Gurkha soldiers, still and erect, uniforms neat, chins sliced by helmet straps.

  ‘The Nawab of Rampur is an old friend and a good chap. He’s got a pile down the other end of the bazaar – used to be Wildflower Hall, you know? Rampur House, now. Well he’s given that as a refuge till we get everybody bussed back home.’

  ‘Mercy!’ The Memsahib shook her head. ‘I never thought Mussoorie would be troubled.’

  ‘Just a matter of time, eh,’ said the Colonel. “I’ve bumped into a few gangs of thugs already. “Any Musselman?” they ask. “Any shikar?” Like they’re off on some bloody hunting trip. Appalling!”

  Aziz felt a cold sweat break out on his palms. James, still in his pyjamas on that Saturday morning, had come out of his bedroom and stood listening, one hand across his heart, the other twitching at his side.

  The Colonel’s voice was brisk. ‘Then last night they burned down that boarding house where the Pathan labourers live, so enough’s enough, I say.’

  ‘Never, never,’ the Memsahib murmured, hand on her mouth. Aziz felt sure they must hear the thumping in his chest.

  ‘I’ve brought these chaps up from Dehra Dun,’ the Colonel Sahib went on, with a jerk of his head to the Gurkhas. ‘Stationed them all through the bazaar. Got some of them rounding up the Mohammedans and escorting them down to Rampur House. This pair’ll take your lot.’

  ‘Well, thank you, Colonel,’ the Memsahib said and turned, stopping at the sight of Aziz at the end of the hallway. For a long moment he held her gaze, then dropped his head and slipped back to the kitchen. He wi
ped his hands on his apron, hung it on the hook behind the door and ran to his quarters.

  The Memsahib followed with bags and helped him pack as Salima sat cross-legged on the floor nursing the baby. When the child dropped off the breast, mouth soft and dribbling, eyes closed, she pressed his warm, heavy weight to her back and tied him on with a shawl.

  ‘We’ll walk with you to Rampur House,’ said the Memsahib, ‘to help you carry your samaan.’

  ‘There is no point, Memsahib,’ said Aziz, shaking his head, eyes glistening behind his glasses. ‘We must only take what we can carry between us, because that’s all we can do at the other end.’ He did not know where the other end was. It seemed Pakistan was the only safe place for them now, but they knew no-one there.

  ‘But cooking things and food,’ the Memsahib pressed. ‘There will be nothing at Rampur. Let us carry those for you and you can leave them behind if you have to.’

  Aziz lifted his hands in surrender.

  They walked down the mountain together in the pouring rain, a small troop of ants clinging to giant crumbs. Aziz had a duffel in one hand and in the other a bedding roll wrapped in canvas, bouncing against his leg with every stride. He wore an army surplus rain mac of Stanley’s that swamped him in wet, flapping folds and the smell of kerosene. Under Leota’s waxed poncho, Salima carried the baby on her back and several string bags of clothes, the legs of her shalwar plastered to her shins. James had his hiking pack and an umbrella while the Memsahib struggled with another umbrella and a clinking bundle of pots and utensils. The Gurkhas walked in silence at the front and rear, bayonets resting on their shoulders, faces still as slate as rain coursed off the brims of their helmets.

  As they passed Mullingar Hotel, they saw the burnt ruins of the houses and breathed the bitter air, thick with the smells of soaked ash and smoke. They were joined by others in the bazaar, all clutching children and possessions, some lugging metal trunks between them, others with rolled-up carpets on their heads. All were bent under the rain, clothes wet against their bodies, make-shift rain shields slipping from their backs. One man carried two chickens by their feet, the birds squawking and flapping, while another tried to lead a stubborn goat. Every few hundred yards a pair of Gurkhas stood, armed and silent. Here and there, a ransacked house, broken windows, a looted shop. At the tiny bangle stall of the Muslim churiwalla they saw only smashed glass. A thousand fragments of light and colour broken in the mud, beaten by rain.