Kiran walked across the lawns and watched the circle of Rifles officers around Sam. These men he considered his very best friends, even though this friendship was transient in nature. They were soldiers serving in the army, and while Rudrakot was their permanent home after a fashion, the army beckoned its servants away far too often and to distant lands. The war fumed beyond them and they were curiously untouched by it, but it was just a matter of time before the Rifles would don their uniforms and sling on their armor and weapons. The Rifles officers drank their nights away in the mess or in the clubhouse, threw anna coins at nautch girls brought in to sing and dance prettily, took a few of them to their beds, or visited the Lal Bazaar. But they spoke the king’s English and they were his only friends in Rudrakot who could do that. He tarried at the outside edge of the shamiana and touched his back pocket where the rupee bills that Sayyid had given him reposed. What a bother old Pater got into, he thought, over a bit of money, and why, really, he had chunks of it lying around. Well, not chunks of it perhaps, but enough. They had their house, and Papa had a job that would last him until he had to retire, for Jai would never let go of him. How did it matter if he, Kiran, did not get into Papa’s cherished ICS?
He moved forward and touched Sims lightly on his shoulder, thinking that for tonight and the next few nights he had enough money to pay the bills at the Victoria Club. What was to happen after that, he would worry about later.
“Where have you been?” Sims demanded.
Kiran felt a flush of happiness at the question, for it showed him that Sims had been aware of his absence. What a good chap he was.
“Here and there,” Kiran replied with nonchalance. “Had a bit of a run-in with the Pater.”
Sims grimaced and patted his slick blond hair. “Sorry to hear that, old chap. Fathers can be the absolute worst sometimes.”
Kiran nodded, and then indicated Sam. “That is our hallowed guest? Captain Hawthorne?”
“Yes.” Sims turned to follow Kiran’s gaze. He rubbed his finger along his weak jaw. “Something is not right though.”
“What?”
Sims shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s not his uniform”—and they peered at the Third Burma Rangers badge sewn on Sam’s sleeve along with the red, white, and blue China-Burma-India theater of war badge—“or his demeanor. He’s not regular army, that’s for sure, corralled in for the war. And I seem to have seen him somewhere before…” Sims shook his head again. “It will come to me in time. So, are you going to return with us to the mess tonight?”
“Of course,” Kiran said eagerly, then remembering his afternoon talk with Raman, he sobered. “But this may well be the end of more such outings. Papa was furious when I talked with him.”
“Tough luck,” Sims said sympathetically. “Then don’t tell him; you’re not a child anymore, Kiran.”
“I am not,” Kiran said with determination.
They were silent for a while as Sims steadily drained his glass and a passing bearer brought a fresh gimlet for him and one for Kiran.
Then Sims said, “Mila is particularly lovely tonight.”
“Oh?” Kiran turned to look at her. She was standing alone now, near the tea tent’s exit that led to the coconut shy, which she had promised Laetitia Sexton she would tend until the end of the evening. As they watched her, her eyes fell upon Sam and a glow crimsoned her cheeks. Sam caught her gaze at the same time and raised his glass to her.
“What was all that about?” Sims asked, his tone tinged with spite and speculation. “Did they know each other before? Something’s afoot between them.”
“Of course not,” Kiran said in a heat. “Sam Hawthorne is a guest in our house; naturally Mila would look after him. Don’t be filthy, Sims.”
“Sorry, old chap,” Sims said, “I forgot that she was your sister. It’s easy to do that, you know; I think of you as one of us.” He put an arm around Kiran’s stiff shoulders. “Let’s go up to Sam Hawthorne for a minute here; I need to ask him something. I think I remember where I know him from.”
He dragged a reluctant Kiran with him past the tables to the spot where Sam was talking with a few of the Rifles officers. Kiran went along, flushed himself now and uncertain about Sims. It was the first time he had even made a comment about Mila, and damn, his sister was pretty, but it seemed like something dirty when Sims spoke of her. Kiran had spent enough hours at the Rifles mess and here at the Victoria Club with Sims and Blakely and the other chaps to know that their talk was not always the most refined or polite. But then it had seemed like a lark to make fun of the women they knew, talk of who slept with whom on which afternoon, be mirthfully irreverent. Sims had spoken of Mila in the same tone he used at their drinking sessions, and Kiran felt a wave of disgust.
But at the same time he remembered that Sims had said that he was one of us. One of us—there could be no higher compliment, no higher honor than those words from a British officer. Delirium and blissfulness infused Kiran’s veins and he floated behind Sims. He was both mollified and still troubled somewhere at the back of his head about Mila. He heard Sims say, “Damn if we don’t have another Yankee in our midst.”
Sam waited for five seconds before responding, and when he did, it was in an overly casual and disinterested manner. “You have another American visiting? An officer or a civilian?”
Sims, still belligerent, said, “You must know of him, Captain Hawthorne.”
Sam shrugged and borrowed a phrase from Mila. “America is a big country; I could not possibly keep track of who comes here.”
“Who are the Third Burma Rangers anyway?” Blakely asked.
They had gathered around him again, breaking once to let Sims in, and Sam saw that there was a young Indian man within that circle. He was slim and pale and quite tall, taller than Sims and Blakely. Like Ashok, he was impeccably dressed in trousers with a sharp crease running down the front, a silk shirt in white, a slender red tie with tiny black polka dots. He seemed to be like one of them, not uncomfortable outside the circle of Indians, though a slash of discontent had come to mar his face in knitted eyebrows. He held out a hand to Sam. “I’m Kiran Raman,” he said.
Then it all fell into place, for he looked like Ashok and Mila and yet did not look either like them or their father. This then was the elusive son who had come home late the previous night and not woken up until very late this morning, details Sam had garnered from the time he had spent at Raman’s house—from Mila, from Sayyid, from Raman himself earlier that morning. Kiran and Sims stood shoulder to shoulder as though they were fast friends. Sam, who had begun to loathe Sims after his encounter with him earlier this afternoon, found their apparent friendship to be a strange and repellent thing. Surely Kiran was aware of Sims’s bigotry, his intolerance—how could he find anything amicable about this man who denigrated Kiran’s own countrymen?
“Where are the Burma Rangers garrisoned, Captain Hawthorne?” Kiran asked.
“In Assam,” Sam replied. “We are newly commissioned to help in the retaking of Burma.”
“We need no help from the Yankees,” Sims said slowly.
Sam turned to face him with a level gaze. Where he had been willing to overlook the earlier disrespect in his voice, for he was used to this by now, this time he could not. “We all need help, Lieutenant Sims,” he said. “We are all on the same side, fighting the same enemy.”
“Are the Third Burma Rangers all from the U.S. Army?”
“Most of us are,” Sam replied. “But tell me about the other American you have visiting here. I’d like to meet him.”
“Why?” This from Blakely. And they were all watchful now, breathing softly and in unison. What had Mike done?
“No particular reason.”
“He has defected from the Rudrakot Rifles, Captain Hawthorne,” Sims said. “Gone AWOL for a little more than a month now. I doubt he is going to return.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Sam replied easily, though he searched through all their faces for a sig
n of deception and found none. Unless he was wrong, these men did not know what had happened to Mike. They were belligerent toward him, unwelcoming even, suspicious of his regiment and who he was—all of which Sam had anticipated and encountered in Assam. Whatever the politics might be between America and England, at a personal level, all of their prejudices welled up and spilled out into uneasy encounters like this one. Sims, Blakely, and the other officers had been far more polite than Sam had expected. And if they truly believed that Mike had gone AWOL, then they would not be kindly predisposed toward another American in Rudrakot.
“The next round of drinks is on me,” Sam said, raising his hand to signal to the bearers. He smiled at Kiran. “Can I repay a part of your father’s hospitality by getting you a refill?”
Kiran grinned. “Thank you, yes, Captain Hawthorne, I’m drinking a gimlet.”
As the darkness enveloped the mela grounds, the lights strung around the lawns and the tents came to life in bright glitters. For the next two hours, Mila was kept busy at the coconut shy with an unending stream of visitors. For two annas, each person received a set of three white tennis balls to throw at the coconuts resting on specially constructed wooden stakes with cupped platforms. If they knocked more than two coconuts down, they received a treasure from underneath the booth’s counter. The regimental wives had crocheted and embroidered antimacassars, table runners, napkins, and tablecloths in pink and blue thread as prizes. These Mila gave out as fast as she could, amused by the ease with which the coconuts came tumbling down; either the stakes were too close, or the coconuts too wobbly, or the players too skilled.
One by one, as the night wore on, people drifted back into the tea tent for some more chai, cakes, sandwiches, and hard-boiled eggs sprinkled with chili powder and mustard. Across the lawn from Mila, the lady at the weigh-the-cake booth left her post and went wearily to the tea tent also, leaving Mila gazing wistfully after her. She forgot to take the glass jar with her, which was crammed to the rim with slivers of paper bearing guesses on the cake’s weight upon them. The cake itself, an enormous cream-and-coconut concoction, sweated on the booth’s main table, the icing slipping down the side and onto the wood. Under normal tradition, the cake was the prize for guessing the correct weight, but this one had lost its shape and had pulverized in the heat. The other stalls began to close also, the hoopla stall, the fancy goods stall, and even Mrs. Sexton put a board outside her tent that said, GONE TO TEA. The vicar’s wife had dressed in voluminous pants, many bangles, dangling earrings, a multicolored scarf, and black eyeshadow to transform herself into Esmeralda, Queen of the Nile, the fortune-teller.
As Mila was desultorily counting out the money at her booth, she saw Sam approaching her with two martini glasses of pink champagne.
“Are you thirsty?” he asked with an engaging smile and a tilt of his head to keep his hair from his eyes.
“Thank you.” She put the box of money away and accepted the champagne, suddenly overcome by thirst. The liquid fizzed and bubbled on her tongue, and Mila put a hand over her nose to sneeze. Just for a moment there, when Sam came toward her, backlit by the lights strung over the mela grounds, she had thought he was Jai. There was something in his gait, the way he swung his arms, the fact that they were both tall, both had dark hair…but they were two different men, there were no similarities between them at all. Papa would have laughed at her and as usual called her too imaginative. Mila sighed.
Sam leaned against the booth. “Are you done for the night?”
“Almost,” Mila said, indicating the box of money. “I’m two annas short of the target Laetitia has set for me; one more player and I shall be done. Are you having fun, Captain Hawthorne?”
Sam gave her a curious look, his blue eyes bright and deepening in color the longer he gazed upon her. “I thought I might not enjoy my stay here because, of course”—he touched his right arm—“but I find myself enchanted in Rudrakot.”
“Oh,” Mila said, feeling a smile widen her mouth, filled with a strange happiness.
“Let me try,” Sam said, putting a hand into his pocket and drawing out some change. “Here.” Instead of putting the money on the counter, he gathered her left hand in his, laid the coins in her palm, and covered it with his other hand.
At that moment, the rest of the world faded away for Mila. It was such a simple gesture on Sam’s part, a mere holding of hands, but that was when Mila fell in love with Sam too. Not simply because of the gesture, of course, but it brought to a culmination all of her thoughts about this stranger who had come to Rudrakot to stay in their home, whom her father liked so much.
For all her little obstinacies and rebellions in driving the jeep, in riding the horse Jai had given her, in drinking pink champagne or smoking the odd cigarette, Mila had been brought up traditionally, in the shadow of her father and her brothers. It was the men who made decisions, who changed the courses of other people’s lives with their actions. Mila would never have thought of Sam if Raman had not been delighted with him, and so it was Raman, with his enthusiastic welcome of Sam in the morning, who had inadvertently placed a morsel of affection within his daughter’s heart—a fragment that blossomed eventually into love. Mila knew nothing much about Sam other than what she had gleaned from their conversations; she did not know if he had a father and a mother, brothers and sisters. She knew that he came from Seattle because Sayyid had rummaged through his bags and found, beneath the tailor’s label behind his collar, the words Seattle Sam—a nickname the army had bestowed upon him.
Sam, who was cautious and pondered every deed before he took a step in the direction of anything, had clasped Mila’s hand without thought, and once he held that small and slender hand within his, he did not want to let it go. What he wanted was to bring that hand to his chest and hold it against his heart, but he stayed that action, his fingers shaking with want over hers.
At that moment, Mila looked down on their hands and thought it was an intimate act, unlike a mere shaking of hands to say hello upon meeting. She saw the fine hairs on his knuckles, a little tremble before he increased the pressure and wove his fingers into hers. The cool of the metal from the coins flooded her palm. There was a tiny scratch on the back of Sam’s hand, and this Mila touched fleetingly.
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
“No.”
She had not been cognizant of the sound of her own voice or even that she had spoken aloud, but when she heard his voice, Mila realized that they were at the mela grounds, in front of everyone. Men and women simply did not touch in public, no matter how long they had been married, or how close their relationship. Indians certainly did not, and neither did the British; if anything, distant pecks in the air, accompanied by a “darling” was the closest one came to one’s husband or wife. The noises at the mela pervaded her consciousness—the laughter, the music from the orchestra, the click of women’s heels on the wooden floor laid out on the lawn for dancing. But every sound came from a fading distance. Mila finally broke the grip, and it was with a reluctance that she recognized but refused to acknowledge, for it meant nothing, surely it meant nothing.
“I could not possibly take your money, Captain Hawthorne,” she said, “Someone else will come along soon to make up my quota.”
“Please do,” he said, “I want to play.”
“All right.” Mila put the money in the box and placed the three tennis balls on the booth’s table. Then she finally looked up to meet his smile. This close, with just the table separating them, she could see the oncoming sheen of dark hair on his chin and cheeks. Mila glanced around quickly, almost with guilt, to see if anyone else had been watching and saw with a growing fear that Lady Pankhurst, Mrs. Stanton, and Laetitia Sexton were grouped in a threesome just a few booths away.
When Sam picked up all three tennis balls with one hand, she said, “You are to throw them, one at a time, at the coconuts and knock as many down as you can.”
“How many tries do I get?” Sam stood back from the counter
and took aim.
“Just the three.”
The first ball went sailing past the coconuts and thudded into the canvas backdrop of the booth.
“You need to try just a little harder, Captain Hawthorne,” Mila said, “it’s really quite easy.” She put a hand up to her mouth. “Oh, I didn’t mean to say that…I meant…”
Sam grinned. “I must try harder.”
He stood even farther back from the booth and made an elaborate pretense of first closing one eye and then the other to take aim at the coconuts. He juggled the tennis ball from one hand to the other. He turned his back and made as if to throw the ball over his shoulder, twisting his body. As he tried this last antic, a grimace of pain swept over his forehead and he straightened up and turned around to face her again. “Sorry. I had forgotten that I was not quite back in shape again.”
Despite this, Sam nudged an imaginary cap on his forehead with his knuckles, lifted his left leg, drew his right arm back, and sent the ball thundering out of his hand to knock down first one coconut, and then a second in quick succession.
Mila clapped her hands. “You were joking that first time. This is wonderful.”
Sam bowed to her and she smiled at him, forgetting all of her worries. He had showed off to Mila with a preening of his feathers, with his pitcher’s stance, his pitcher’s throw, even his sham attempt at evoking sympathy from her by openly demonstrating his reaction to the pain from his injury.
The Splendor of Silence Page 21