The Splendor of Silence

by Indu Sundaresan

  Jai sighed and put down the pen and the pad. Reluctantly, he picked up Captain Cameron’s carefully worded note. I am afraid, my dear Jai, Cameron had written, that the young maharaja of Kishorenagar has been…how shall I put this…misbehaving. Would you talk with him, old chap? Might be better coming from you. He looks up to you, you know.

  Such were the burdens of responsibility. When Jai had first joined the ICC, he had been a student here, schooled in the best traditions that the corps could offer, given first his viceroy’s commission into the Indian army, then, with a lot of trouble and effort, his king’s commission. The ICC had only twenty students at any given time. The students were restricted to the nobility and the royalty in India, and even so, a student had to be nominated by at least two or three prominent men, his lineage researched, his bloodlines tested. There was no question of an open examination, no question of anything as common as merit to decide the applicant’s fitness in joining the ICC. With all these restrictions, then, there were never very many students here, and so no necessity for a staff of more than three officers—a British commandant, a British adjutant, and a native adjutant. It was the last of these three that Jai had been invited to be for this term in the ICC. As a military school, the ICC was to teach as many subjects as possible, but very soon, arithmetic and algebra gave way to history (of England), English literature, dictation, and some Greek and Latin.

  The native adjutant was not considered qualified to instruct in any of these subjects, naturally, so Jai’s job was to drill the cadets every morning and to teach them to ride properly and like gentlemen. It was a dubious honor at best, Jai thought, gathering the papers Cameron had sent to him along with the note. Procrastinating again, he picked up the silver bell on the table and rang it. Even before its soft tinkles had faded into the dull gloom of his tent, the flap lifted, letting in a lean shaft of the outside light.

  “Huzoor?” the servant said.

  “Get me a lime soda. Make sure it’s cold. Lots of ice.”

  “Ji, huzoor,” the servant said, bowing and retreating, allowing the coolness to return.

  The minutes passed, interminably, it seemed to Jai, who was used to the fleet-footed servants at his palace in Rudrakot. Here, he knew, the servant had to trek across the heated earth to the mess tent, place the order for a lime soda, put the glass on a tray, and bring it back. At Rudrakot the distances to the kitchens were surely as long, Jai thought irritably, still waiting. If only he could have brought his servants, but the rules at the ICC allowed only three ponies (maximum) to be brought for the drills and the polo fields, not servants. It was a wise precaution, for otherwise the cadets would arrive with full entourages—uncles, cousins, and servants—all deemed an absolute necessity, given masking titles of secretaries and aides-de-camp. An entourage, then, was not encouraged, but one diwan could come along, and all the princes had brought with them at least one advisor.

  Knowing he could delay his reading no longer, Jai picked up the first letter from the maharaja of Kishorenagar to a young cadet at the ICC, the son of a noble from another princely kingdom. He had to force himself to read the letter. This was a love letter, no, perhaps not a love letter but a letter of seduction. The young maharaja—he was only seventeen—eulogized the advantages of male friendships, suggested that the women in the zenanas were a necessity for the continuation of the lineage, but it was among men, hard-riding, hard-drinking and unsentimental men that true amity could be found. Kishorenagar said that when the officers of the ICC were abed, every night at midnight, a group of them met in his tent to watch the nautch girls brought in from the bazaars at Meerut, and once the girls left, there were still entertainments for the rest of the night. Would this cadet join them? If he did now—and this was implied more than written outright—there was an opening after they all graduated from the ICC, at Kishorenagar for a fauj bakshi, a military commander of the infantry.

  The tent flap lifted and the servant came in. He meticulously wiped his bare feet on the mat at the entrance and then deposited the tray with Jai’s lime soda on the table next to his armchair. The glass was covered with a fine net in silk thread weighted at the corners by silver beads.

  Jai nodded, and when the servant left, he drank half the glass in one big gulp, the tart and sweet taste singing in his mouth, the coldness of the ice soothing the fever within. After half an hour of reading the other letters, some from the maharaja of Kishorenagar to other cadets, some from other members of that group, Jai rang the bell again.

  When the servant appeared, he said, “Bring the maharaja of Kishorenagar here.”

  The servant balked, though not visibly, just enough to show resistance. His head bowed but he did not back out of the tent at once. He lifted his gaze to Jai’s feet, and he brought his palms together in a salutation.

  “The Sun God rides high in the sky, huzoor,” he said softly.

  “Now, Ramlal,” Jai said. “If he is asleep, he must be wakened. I want him here in fifteen minutes.”

  When the servant had gone, Jai drank the last of the now-warm lime soda and put down the glass with shaking hands. Giving orders came naturally to him, for he was born to be the heir of Rudrakot, and yet Kishorenagar was no minor princely state. The population of Kishorenagar was three times that of Rudrakot, the land acreage at least twice, even including all the waste desert land that Jai ruled over. But more than these obvious markers of supremacy, the British government of India had awarded Kishorenagar an eighteen-gun salute at all official functions, and Rudrakot, because it was tiny and relatively poor, had only a thirteen-gun salute. The young maharaja of Kishorenagar then, although only seventeen, would expect, and get, a proper amount of respect from Jai. Under any other circumstances.

  The tent flap lifted again, and this time Jai had to put up a hand to shade his eyes from the glare. Kishorenagar stood there, mutinous, rubbing sleep out of his face. He was not a handsome boy; he had a bulbous nose, thick eyebrows that met in the middle, a small and growing belly under the pristine white cotton of his kurta. When he spoke, it was with the clipped English accent he had acquired from having spent the last five years in London in pursuit of…generally nothing. “I can hardly believe the servant’s message. You commanded me here?”

  Jai was equally curt. “Come in and sit down, Kishorenagar.” He used a shorter form of his title, and so the name of his kingdom, to address the maharaja. Employing his actual name (and he too had many, like Jai) would have shown a degree of familiarity that was not encouraged at the ICC. Since most of the cadets, if not all, had some title or other, this is how they were addressed and urged to address each other.

  There was something in Jai’s voice that propelled the maharaja into the tent, and he stomped in with clouds of dust, not bothering to wipe his feet on the mat. The flap remained open.

  “Ramlal,” Jai said quietly. When the servant appeared, he said, “Go to the mess tent. I will call for you when I want you.” The servant bowed and began to retreat. “Wait.” Jai turned to the prince. “Are any of your toadies outside?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” The maharaja’s tone was icy.

  “Ramlal,” Jai said again, as the figures of four or five men blotted the door to the tent behind the servant’s shoulders, “there must be no one outside the tent for the next half hour. Not one single person, is that understood?”

  “Ji, huzoor.”

  “You are being ridiculous, Rudrakot.” Now the maharaja’s voice was full of spite.

  “When you are here,” Jai said slowly, holding the young prince’s gaze, “at the ICC, you will address me as Major Jaikishan.”

  The boy headed to the sofa opposite Jai. He lounged casually; none of the fight had left him, but there lurked some fear, some nervousness as he picked with his thick fingers at the fabric of the sofa’s upholstery. Jai let him sweat for a while and then brought out the letters and placed them on the table between them.

  “Captain Cameron came by these yesterday and sent them to me.”<
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  Kishorenagar’s eyes darted to the table and his face blanched. “They are not mine.”

  “I think the authorship of these letters is easily established. You have signed them yourself.”

  “It is a forgery.”

  “A very good one, then, for I can recognize your handwriting.”

  Kishorenagar made a sucking sound with his mouth and then stuck his tongue out in distress. He took a deep breath, cunning marking his face now. “You would have no opportunity to read my dictation or my essays, Major, you teach us foot drills and riding.” He sat back on the sofa. “Unliterary pursuits.”

  Jai rubbed his face slowly, damping the anger as it rose within him. He had expected resistance, bravado and some brashness, from the young maharaja. And perhaps some insinuations about their respective positions in the royalty ladder, but not insults. He bit down on the words that came swelling up. Kishorenagar sat watching him, his eyes screwed up and sly beneath his brows.

  “Captain Cameron recognizes your penmanship, then, Kishorenagar.”

  “Oh.” The prince was quiet. Then he said, “But it is nothing. An attempt at play, a way to pass time while we are here.”

  “You are here to learn to be an army officer, Kishorenagar,” Jai spat out. There were many and better ways to handle this situation, but Cameron had enlisted Jai’s help because he had thought that the reprimand would be better coming from another Indian, an Indian prince. And Jai, as much as he knew he seethed at insults, also knew that at some time in his life he had to learn to control his temper—perhaps this was Cameron’s way of giving him a chance. But Jai’s anger was not to be stopped, especially at this insult to his beloved corps. Why could Kishorenagar not see that this was a privilege, being here at the ICC? He asked him.

  The maharaja sat up and crossed his legs in his best drawing-room manner. “What you do not see is that we are, none of us, allowed to sit for the examinations at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, for if we did, and if we passed out of Sandhurst, we would have to be granted king’s commissions, right?”

  “We get them now, Kishorenagar, or rather, you would get one if you were able to give up these bad habits and graduate from the corps.”

  “To what avail, Rudrakot?” the maharaja said with a sneer. “Can you command British officers, or will you just return to your tiny kingdom and reign over your all-native, all-black Lancers? What use is a king’s commission under such false pretense?”

  What an audacious bastard he was, Jai thought, a little calmer now. He recognized that Kishorenagar’s arrogance was reflected within himself also—like this prince, he had always also believed that he was here by some divine right to be king. Under the British Raj, the concept of divine right, of an absolute right to rule, was laughable. Arrogant or not, the maharaja was correct—Jai had his king’s commission, but until he had the right to command any battalion of the British Indian army, it was pretty much worthless. The anger rose again within him, not just because Kishorenagar had pointed out this truth, but because it was the truth and it had troubled him for many years.

  “Yours is not to question, Kishorenagar,” Jai said. “You are here to train to become an officer in the Indian army, to hold a commission signed by the king-emperor himself, to be a facet of the British empire, to be a worthy representative of that empire. Your job, your responsibility is to rise strongly to the defense of the empire.”

  The maharaja of Kishorenagar clapped his hands languidly, slapping flabby fingers against one another. “Well done, old chap,” he drawled. “You do us all proud—it is a speech fit for a king. You are a king, are you not, Jai? One can never be too sure, you know. My mother still resides in the zenana quarters of my father’s palace. I look like my father; I have his eyes, his nose”—he tapped his nose gingerly—“even his damned receding hairline.” Kishorenagar stroked the top of his forehead. “I am my father’s son, not some usurper who makes claims to the throne. I should be the one giving the speech of kings.”

  Jai’s voice went quiet. “Just what are you insinuating, Kishorenagar?”

  “Nothing,” the boy said, sitting up now, knowing somehow that he had gone too far, said too much. “Nothing, Major. Permission to leave, sir.”

  “Stay,” Jai said, with as much inflection in his voice as if he were talking to a dog. He picked up Cameron’s letter again. The words, masturbation and sodomy, swam before his eyes. I’m afraid the young maharaja is guilty of both; make him see reason, will you, Jai? Before the boy had come in, Jai had been prepared to reason with him. All boys in boarding schools indulged in this nonsense at some time or other. When Jai, at sixteen, had been at school in England for one brief year, he had been approached three times and had rebuffed each of these proposals. Not because he had been disgusted, but because he had already been with a woman, and unlike the boys in his school, knew what women had to offer. There had been no need to experiment with members of his own sex.

  His first experience in lying with a woman had been when he was fifteen. His diwan had brought him the girl and had left her in his bedchamber, naked on his bed. She had been irresistible, and he had never felt even a shred of guilt about it later, knowing somehow that this was what men did. He had never told Raman about it…why, he could still not fathom, though this inculcation into manhood (as long as it was done discreetly and well) would be something both the political agent and the British resident would approve of as a necessity for a prince. But Jai had always wanted the respect of Raman the man, the father figure, and did not somehow think that this was the way to earn that respect. Jai had been married at seventeen, the same age as this young maharaja, who was betrothed, but not yet married. God help his young wife-to-be, Jai thought. This boy is a bastard.

  “I am leaving now.” A little bluster had returned to the maharaja’s tone, now shirred with disrespect again.

  “Yes,” Jai said simply, refusing to react. “Pack your bags. I want you out of the ICC by sundown.”

  “You are joking.”

  “No,” Jai replied. “There is nothing remotely humorous about this. You have constantly defied the rules of the ICC, you have come here under false pretenses; you have been unwilling to conform. The filthy habits you indulge in”—Jai’s upper lip curled—“which I am loath to even give name to, have blackened the name and reputation of the ICC.”

  Jai had always thought the young maharaja of Kishorenagar to be a vapid, unthinking young man, but now he saw a terrible malevolence marking his pudgy features. “There will be repercussions, Jai,” he said in a growl.

  “So be it,” Jai replied with a forced nonchalance, turning away again to his papers. “The scandal of your dismissal from the corps will be nothing. We have a standard to uphold here, and in giving you permission to leave the ICC, we are maintaining that uprightness for which the corps is known.”

  The maharaja of Kishorenagar jumped up from the sofa and staggered toward the entrance of the tent. He would say no more in his defense, this also Jai knew, for they were both princes, not used to explanations or excuses. But he did say something when he turned at the doorway, the flap lifted, the sunshine outside casting his body in a silhouette and smudging his features. “There will be repercussions for you, Jai. I will remember this insult for a long time.”

  When he had left, Jai rose from his armchair and stumbled blindly around the tent in circles, bumping into various pieces of furniture, cursing as he tripped over an occasional table. His hands ached for the smoothness of Fitzgerald’s reins, he wanted to bury his face in the sweet aroma of the horse’s coat and mane, feel the pounding exhilaration of a ride even in this dense afternoon heat. But he had to stay here, within his tent, stay and pretend, as though this conversation, Kishorenagar’s insults and allusions, had not almost taken the life out of him. Would he never be free of his past? How had Kishorenagar, as young as he was, the impudent and swaggering puppy, known? How had he dared to repeat what he had heard?

  When Jai finally sat down again
, reaching for the drawing pad with a desperate yearning, hardly able to hold his pen steady in his fingers, he was saturated with sweat. Leaning over the pad, he began to draw with an urgency—the line of a finely carved brow, the curve of a neck, the liquid eyes, hair the color of a moonless midnight, all taking shape in a matter of seconds. Little drops of sweat ran down his cheek and dripped onto the sketch, blotching the lines, making the ink run.

  The young maharaja of Kishorenagar had an instinct for knowing when to tell the truth. Or to put it another way, Kishorenagar knew the stories and tales and gossip about the royal houses in India that usually lurked only in the recesses of the old-timers’ minds. He had had a lot of time in London to listen to these stories from his diwan and the other members of his entourage while he was dressing to go to a ball or to the park or to the theater. So when he had suggested kinks in Jai’s lineage, he had been speaking the truth.

  Jai was not Bhimsen’s natural son, but was the child of a cousin a few times removed, who was precariously pendant on a distant branch of the family tree. Jai’s original father was a minor chieftain, but the family were, and this was important in the adoption process, Rajawats—a line from which kings and princes could be safely adopted. Hindu law recognized the necessity of the carrying on of the male line, or the frailty of the human condition in not being able to supply that male heir, and considerately provided loopholes such as this one—any child, male or female, adopted into a family and brought up as their own, would become their own. The bloods would merge, the histories would become one, and they would be, in everything, born of the parents who nurtured them. Such was the forgiving and providing nature of the law.