The Splendor of Silence

by Indu Sundaresan

  “Not a one,” she says with the smile of an imp, which sheds years from her face. “I’m a terrible failure. In that first year”—she looks down at her hands—“it seemed as though Joseph was going to have some success. They listened so politely, were so patient with us…” She turns to her right and gently shifts Ken’s head from her shoulder, where he has been resting it in a pooling circle of sweat that is soaked into her shirt.

  He jerks awake and sits up. “Sorry, did I fall asleep?”

  “Every time we halt, you fall asleep,” Sam says with a grin. “It must be a propensity of the idle—this ability to sleep at every stop.”

  “Don’t tease the poor child, Captain Hawthorne,” Marianne says as she rubs Ken’s face with the back of her hand.

  “The poor child, as you call him, flew his plane into a hillside and so he’s here with us instead of back in Assam, drowning himself in beers with his buddies. It was a good thing I parachuted out first.” Sam mock-glowers at Ken. “I should have left you by the crash site; my orders were only to bring Marianne out.”

  Both of them ignore Sam, and Marianne Westwood leans toward Ken and says in a gentle voice, “Does your leg hurt?”

  “Only a little, Mrs. Westwood,” Ken says, his voice aching and youthful, and at the same time with an edge of laughter directed at Sam. She bends over to check on the rancid bandages around Ken’s foot and ankle. While she is thus engrossed, Sam swats in the air at Ken, and then sobers into silence as the boy winces at Marianne’s touch. What lies under that bandage, Sam does not even want to think about. It has been five days since he last wrapped that foot; the dressings should have been changed every day, at least every day, if not every time they were drenched by the rains. But they are right now guardians of their very lives; a foot seems a little enough sacrifice.

  Ken is not even supposed to be here with them. He piloted the plane that dropped Sam into the Burmese jungles in his mission to find and coax Marianne Westwood to safety. And just as Ken was lifting off above the trees, in a strange perversity of nature on an otherwise calm day, a massive wind buffeted the plane and plunged it into the hillside. Sam, watching that explosion of fire and heat, his heart crashing, sees a parachute struggle to open in the sky as Ken comes down. The forest mostly cushions his fall, shatters only his right ankle. The navigation officer in the plane is not so lucky. Sam drags his body from the crash debris and buries him in a shallow grave. He does not weep even as Marianne sings out a few prayers into the clean forest air, even though this is his first encounter with death in the war.

  Another ten minutes, Sam thinks, before they have to move on. At the last supply drop, they had instructions to head to the Chindwin. By Sam’s calculations, a hundred and fifty miles of mountains, bush, rivers, monsoon forest, and contingents of the Japanese army lie between them and India…and freedom. And there are just three of them. Ken is almost incapacitated by his smashed ankle—they cannot carry him, so he walks on broken bones, with even the idea of pain long anesthetized. Under the surface of her good humor, Marianne carries, imprinted on her for life, pictures of the Japanese slaughter of the entire Kachin village that she had once called home—she could have better handled walking on two broken legs and shattered ankles. But she does not complain, and Sam is grateful for that little consideration because he has been given the responsibility of bringing her out of Burma, according to his orders, in merely a bodily whole. He does not have charge of her emotions, which, in any case, will take years to heal if they do heal at all.

  At least, Sam thinks, he is not injured. Yet. Toughened by his training, toughened even by his own self, Sam never lets himself think that India is a distant and unattainable possibility. They will survive. They will reach safety. For a reason more important than merely his own survival.

  Sam watches Marianne coo over Ken, who is enjoying the attention. He shifts against the tree trunk and bangs his hand over his shirt pocket to swat a whining mosquito that is trying to burrow through the plastic and cloth to his skin. He reaches into the pocket and draws out a bundle of papers, enclosed carefully in the clear plastic wrapping of his cigarettes. The handwriting is familiar, still as unformed as a child’s hand. Here are Mike’s tales of this distant desert kingdom called Rudrakot in northwestern India. Here in these other letters, also written by a familiar hand, are his mother’s fears that Mike might be…Sam leans back against the tree, his heart exploding. He was given his orders to rescue Marianne and the news that Mike was missing on the same day and with no time to even turn his head away from Burma and absorb the news. Missing, he thinks of Mike as missing, does not dare to even think of that other word.

  “What is it?” Marianne says softly at his shoulder. And it is then Sam realizes that his fingers scrabble over the cellophane covering the letters. He stops.

  “Nothing,” he replies. “Nothing.”

  Ken lifts his eyelids with an effort; he is tired. “Is it a love letter?”

  Sam smiles, thinking how much easier it is to let them think this. “Of sorts.”

  “Have you ever been in love, Sam?” Ken asks.

  Three

  Declaring himself Indian first and a Brahman afterward, he told the conference he would not follow any custom of the Brahmans, however sanctified by age and authority, if it came in the way of his duties as a true Indian…in independent India, there continue to be few Indians but many members of the various caste groups—a sad commentary on our national life.

  —Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, The Scope of Happiness, 1979

  The political agent’s house at Rudrakot was built in the style of a British back-home house, with only some allowances made for India. It was a long, serene, whitewashed building in two stories. Three low stone steps led up to the front door, and the style here was so much home and so little India that the door stood naked, embedded into the wall—no portico, no cool, slender-pillared porch sheltered the front entrance to the house. Carriages, phaetons, rickshaws, and cars stopped in the blasting heat of the desert sun; the door itself, painted a warm red, swallowed the westerly heat and spat it out in the evenings in the faces of callers. An architectural mistake, of course, one that was much lamented but little addressed over the seventy-odd years of the house’s existence.

  A compound wall encircled the front of the house with wrought-iron gates on two corners. A half-moon driveway started at one gate and, swinging near the house, ended at the other. There was a fountain in the center of this semicircle, resplendent with plaster cupids who spouted water out of their pursed mouths when the rains came. During the dry season, they were frozen in disgusted pouts, feeling perhaps quite as silly as they looked.

  The front door led to an entrance porch. To the right was the dining room, with windows along the width of the eastern and western walls. To the left were the political agent’s offices—a room that was an actual office, light and airy; a small washroom for the most important visitors; and an antechamber for those who had to wait for the agent.

  All the actual living was done upstairs. The top story of the house, seen from the gates, sat on only two-thirds of the bottom story—it ended somewhere above the dining room in a huge and open verandah. Here—in the pillared, roofed-in verandah—was the concession to India. No English home could boast so much open space for outdoor living; the weather would not support it. The stairs to the second story climbed from the entry hallway and came to a small landing upstairs, then cleaved into corridors running along the house on both sides, to drawing rooms and six bedrooms with attached baths.

  Toward the back a verandah wrapped itself around the lower story, its roof the balcony of the top story, looking out into the lush garden with its banyan and tamarind trees. Here Mila had stood earlier in the morning, looking down upon her father praying at the well.

  The servants slept in separate buildings behind the house, tucked behind the trees, which also had the offices of living for the masters of the main house—the kitchens, the storeroom, and the storage room. Als
o to the back was a huge, steel-girdered shed that housed the two cars, a jeep and a Morris Cowley; their chauffeurs; and a phaeton. The cows for milk, the horses for riding and for drawing the phaeton, and the chickens for eggs had their own sheds too, and each animal had its keepers. A cowherd milked the cows every morning and grazed them in the scrub near the lake; three syces exercised the horses and accompanied Mila on her morning rides; and Pallavi fussed over the chickens, rustled through the straw for breakfast eggs and encouraged her charges to be obliging or they would find themselves in the pot for a home buffet.

  Raman drank his morning cup of coffee in the upstairs verandah, which faced south. When he had first come to Rudrakot, this verandah was a bare square of cement with a low compound wall around it. He had the concrete pillars erected, and a thick thatched roof of straw and dry palm fronds put on top to keep away the sun’s glare. But over the years he found the roof to be impractical. It disintegrated during the rains—sparse as they were—and after the monsoons, every insect in Rudrakot, along with the ever-present yellow geckos, found its home there. Kiran and Ashok loved this, quite naturally, and spent all of their time catching beetles and grasshoppers by poking sticks into the thatch and gathering up their spoils by the handful. Mila hated it, also quite naturally; she had not her brothers’ fascination with either the insects or the geckos that left their tails wriggling on the floor as they tried to escape.

  A brick-and-mortar roof was also impracticable, so Raman, after years of hits and misses, came up with the idea of a wooden skeletal frame for the roof, covered now with lightweight khus matting knitted of fragrant river rushes. This dried swiftly after the rains, kept direct sunlight off their faces, and gave out a pleasant aroma. The idea was so successful that Raman had khus mats installed along the pillars too, rolled up in the mornings and let down in the afternoons. Raman had been at Rudrakot for fourteen years, well beyond the time of any political agent’s duties. As a member of the political branch of the Indian Civil Service, he should have moved all over the country, but he had been here for most of his life as an ICS officer, and for a reason. So there had been time to experiment with the verandah roof ’s vagaries, to understand them, and, finally, to appease them.

  He raised the coffee cup to inhale that first, sharp scent of coffee beans, and saliva rinsed his mouth in anticipation. It was quiet around him. The sparrows tittered in the bushes; the busy gray-and-black crows cawed out morning greetings; the tamarind tree’s leaves rustled quietly in a gentle breeze from the lake. He set the cup down on the saucer, and let his mind rest for a while. Raman had woken early, as usual, bathed and said his prayers, and heard Mila depart for her morning ride. The boys were not awake yet; Ashok would get up soon, for his tutor came in at nine; Kiran was rarely a presence in the house before noon.

  At the thought of his eldest son, Raman began to fret mildly, and then pushed away the worry. This was his time for solitude and calm, the rest of the day would churn out in all directions and fritter away any quiet he might have. Like his daughter, Raman also had demands on his time and his energies all through the day, and yet, because he was a man, he had more freedom.

  His coffee cooled. Sayyid, standing behind his master’s chair, took away the cup and saucer and filled a new cup with some more coffee from a steel jug that sat among the glowing embers of coal in a brazier. Raman liked his coffee hot, not just hot, but boiling hot, so his tongue was scalded each time he drank. That meant every sip had to come as though directly from the stove. In the early days, he would invade the kitchen quarters behind the house, and drink his coffee leaning over a blazing mud chula, setting down his steel tumbler over the fire between sips. The servants chattered in protest to Lakshmi at this irregularity. Every stove was needed; there was water and milk to boil, coffee to make, tea kept ready if wanted, spices to roast. Besides, Raman’s being in the smoke-blackened rooms threw them into a frozen silence, with hands suspended over chopping and cleaning and cutting until he left, because the sahib had no place in the kitchen, and they did not quite know how to get on with their duties while he was there.

  So Lakshmi, knowing Raman would not change his ways, ordered a brazier from the bazaar and came up with the idea of the live coals, the steel jug, the ten empty cups filled just before Raman wanted a sip.

  Raman was on his third cup when he heard the banging on the front door. “See who it is, Sayyid,” he said.

  “Yes, Sahib.” Sayyid bowed and went downstairs. He came back in a few minutes and said, “An American sahib wishes to see you, Sahib.”

  “This early? Tell him to come back at nine o’clock; I will be in the office then.”

  “Yes, Sahib.” Another bow, another retreat, and then Sayyid came back again. “He says it is not official business, he must speak with you, and now.”

  Raman sighed. He had learned to guard this half hour in the morning with a lover’s jealousy, as he had learned, over the years, to guard his nightly sleep, and he gave up either only for Jai and for no one else. Jai was demanding enough as it was, the others came during office hours, or dragged him from bed only for absolute emergencies. He considered insisting that the man wait, but relinquished that thought almost as soon as it came to mind, for Raman could deny almost no one. It was a weakness in one so often petitioned, he knew, but so carefully ingrained in his character, he realized it and did not any longer fight it. Raman also considered putting on a shirt, rubbing a hand over the hair on his chest, but this he was able to resist—if the American wanted to see him outside of his office hours, he would have to take him as he was. He told Sayyid to bring the man up.

  When Sam came into the verandah, Raman rose from his armchair and offered him his hand.

  “Good morning,” he said. The other man’s shake was tentative. But why? He had come seeking him, to his house. Sam recovered himself soon enough and his eyes crinkled at the edges when he smiled.

  “Good morning. Sam Hawthorne…I was told to come to the political agent’s home in Rudrakot. Colonel Eden’s orders.”

  “I see,” Raman said. “Won’t you sit? Sayyid, some coffee for the gentleman. Or…” He looked at Sam. “Would you prefer tea?”

  “Coffee’s fine, thank you.”

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Hawthorne?” Raman asked.

  “Actually, it’s Captain Hawthorne. Third Burma Rangers, U.S. Army,” Sam said, accepting a cup from Sayyid and nodding his thanks. “I was hoping to talk with the political agent.”

  “Ah,” Raman said. He sat back to look upon the young man in front of him who had very easily mistaken that just because Raman was Indian, he could not, naturally, be the political agent. What did he consider him? A peon? A secretary? There was, however, nothing offensive in his guest’s manner. He had an engaging smile and an evenly browned face. His eyes were a startling blue among all that earth color, the hair a glossy, India ink black, too long in the front for an army man. Sam had to, every so often, toss his head slightly, or swipe the hair from his eyes. It was not an unmanly gesture, and yet Raman had not seen much of it before, as used as he was to the straitjacket rigidity of the officers of the British Indian army.

  Somehow, that lack of insistence on protocol made him American to Raman. His accent rang strange too, true, but not unpleasantly. Raman wondered what he was doing here in Rudrakot.

  “May I ask, Captain Hawthorne,” he said, “how old you are? If it is not a too terribly invasive question?”

  “Not at all,” Sam replied. “But I’m sorry; I don’t know with whom I am talking…”

  “My name is Raman.” And so Raman deliberately kept the information from Sam yet another time.

  “Just that?” Sam asked before he had the time to think. It was not a rude question in itself, but the manner of asking it denied etiquette. But Raman let it pass, for it told him more about Sam than his appearance had. He did not need to know how old Sam was anymore; in Raman’s mind he could not be more than twenty-five, or twenty-six at the most. But a few years older
than Kiran, though he seemed to possess more of himself than Kiran did. His eldest son was a restless, unhappy creature, especially now. Raman shifted in his chair, and as he had earlier, tore his attention from Kiran to Sam.

  “My name is just Raman,” he said. “Do you know something of Indian names, Captain Hawthorne?”

  “Sam, please. Please call me Sam.”

  “All right,” Raman said, surprised and somewhat pleased. It was not less than he had expected from an American—for all of Raman’s ideas of Americans were based on what he had been told by friends who had traveled to that country. So he had expected this openness, this immediate and somewhat rash friendship, because Sam did not know who Raman was, yet insisted upon a familiarity that was, because it was so unusual to Raman, charming.

  “And yes,” Sam added, “I’ve been in India long enough to distinguish between different names, not very well though. My batman taught me that the name could point to many different things: religion, of course, though it’s easy enough to tell from a name whether you are Hindu or Muslim, also what your caste is, what part of the country you come from, in some cases what languages you speak.” Sam grinned. “I must admit that it was all quite confusing, I understood that much from what Ramsingh told me, but not enough to actually use any of it.”

  Raman smiled at this much information. Sam had come to Rudrakot on the night train from Palampore; his clothes and his person held that iron-and-metal smell of railway travel. He had also come here, in the not-so-distant past, from some war front, or some training camp; the color of his face and hands gave that away. Sam Hawthorne had taken the trouble to talk with his batman about the origin of Indian names.

  “You have an erudite batman, Captain Hawthorne,” Raman said. “I don’t know many men in that class of life who would choose to engage their masters in conversation other than the shine of polish on their shoes or the ironing of their uniforms.”