Red Earth and Pouring Rain

by Vikram Chandra

  He settled himself with some ceremony, spreading the tails of his coat around himself, like black wings. ‘I will talk. I will advise you. How, then, about a story? I will tell you a story concerning myself, and something I did, with a friend, when I was younger. Like all good soldiers’ stories, this one involves two cavalrymen, a beautiful woman, a good horse, a sword. In fact, even now I have this sword, look.’ He pulled at his belt and slid it around till they saw a sword hilt, carved from white jade in the shape of a horse’s head.

  ‘Listen. Once, long ago, when I was young, almost as young as you, I met a man, a man named La Borgne, a Savoyard. In the rough-and-ready way of men meeting in a foreign land, I conceived an instant liking for him, and so I invited him to my home. At the time, my fortunes were good, I was a soldier serving a certain power (never mind which one; in the end they are all the same), my house was full of servants, and so I entertained my friend with a magnificent meal. He ate, and I watched and envied him the pleasure of discovering, for the first time, the delights of the Mughlai cuisine. After, he slept; his face relaxed, and I wondered at the look of peace on his face, for certainly he was a man free of dreams. I confess: after eating like that, I am susceptible to the chimeras that lurk within; my friends tell me that my eyes dart from side to side, my limbs twitch and sometimes I get up and wander under the top-heavy trees. So I watched him, and then, as he slept, I heard the quick rolling rattle of hooves, and far away, a party of horsemen cantered. La Borgne awoke, and we both watched the riders, and the setting sun; curious, I summoned my spies and sent them out after those far-away men.

  ‘The same night, they returned, my seekers, one dressed as an old gipsy woman, another as a seller of perfumes. They told us —by this time La Borgne was privy to all my doings, for he was a fine young man —they told us that they had gone to the party’s camp-fires, and had mixed with them, joking, advising them on the best wine and the most tender meats, and they had ascertained that the men, a varied bunch of Rajputs, Turks, Afghans, Sikhs, Marathas, Avadhi Brahmins, Bengalis, Kashmiris, Arabs, Germans, a lot of Germans, and a couple of English, were engaged in a quest, a search for a treasure which moved with the sun. And I said, how splendid, but my friend sneered.

  ‘Nevertheless, the next morning, I pulled him out of bed, and we rode out and slipped up to their camp, taking advantage of the natural cover and the darkness. Just before the sun began to rise, the men arose and quickly moved into a circle. In the centre of this circle, they constructed a strange apparatus: a fire, above it a cooking pan full of water, and in the water a mirror, floating face up. As the lip of the sun appeared above the trees, the smoke from the fire curled above and around the pan, but then the mirror caught a ray and flashed it back, like an explosion, and we all moved our hands to our eyes.

  ‘When I looked again, there was a woman standing in front of the fire, wrapped in smoke, a white sari, jet-black hair, and out of her mouth came a white horse, a horse of perfect proportions, and it pranced around the circle, raising its knees high, shaking its head from side to side, eyes rolling and flashing, screaming, and I was afraid. And then she asked each of the men in turn, do you want this horse, tell the truth, and each of them replied, yes, and she said, then you shall not have the treasure.

  ‘She looked up at us, and she knew we were there, even though we were well-hidden, and she said, do you want this horse? and La Borgne stepped forward and said, no, kill it, and all the rest of us gasped with horror, because of all things that had ever lived it was too perfect to die. But she drew a sword —this one, this one with the white hilt in the shape of a horse’s head —and the horse came to her, and she plunged it into his chest, in the place where two ridges of muscle sloped down into a valley. The horse threw its head back, then tumbled down, rear first, and the sword slipped from the yawning red wound, and all of us except La Borgne shouted in dismay. Then the woman said to him, you have the treasure, and she disappeared, and her sword clanged on the hard-packed earth.

  ‘Now all the men cursed La Borgne, because he had caused the death of the horse for nothing, there was no treasure, and he laughed at them. They drew their swords, and I rushed them from the rear, and we fought them, over and around the corpse (even now beautiful!), and we killed them all. Then I said, I have helped you because you are my friend, but now I will fight you, because you have caused the death of the most perfect thing in the world. He laughed at me, and then I hated him; I ran at him, my point presented, but he parried easily and dealt me a great slashing blow across the forehead, taking my eye. I fell to the ground, and lay, my face in the horse’s belly, crying with pain and anger, and I said, you have done all this for nothing. You fool, he sneered, you fool for thinking the treasure was gold, or this horse, or this sword, or the woman, and with this he threw the weapon to me. I had the treasure in the instant I spoke, he said, and walked away.

  ‘I recovered from my wound, or at least it healed, and have had many other adventures. I have been rich, then powerful, then poor, and then rich again; finally, I am here. And while I was slowly climbing into the pit of poverty and old age, La Borgne was passing from victory to victory, always richer and more powerful, until he finally became de Boigne, the master of the Chiria Fauj. I thought of him often, or rather constantly, and each time I heard of another one of his triumphs, a sliver of pain shot up from my gut and transfixed my throat; if only I had realized, I would think, if only I had thought, I might have been the ruler of all Hindustan, if only. So, full of bitterness, I wandered about the country, from one bad situation to another worse, with no money to go home, and nothing to go home to, till finally the only employment I could find was as a cook for a procurer, a buyer and seller of half-castes, and it galled me, believe that it tasted bitter as rotted meat, but I never sold that sabre, I kept it with me always, although several coveted it and offered me sums of money.

  ‘Today, a great noise ran through the bazaar, and groups of people hurried through the streets; children danced by, feinting at each other with wooden swords. What is it? I called, and they said, the great de Boigne is passing by, he is sailing to Calcutta. So I put down my ladle and my spices and put on my best coat, strapped on the sabre, ran down the street to the river’s edge, pushed through the throngs. After an hour, or maybe two, a group of boats floated down the waters, slowly, slowly, and I shaded my eyes from the sun, but the glare off the river dazzled and defeated me. So, I shouted, La Borgne, La Borgne, La Borgne, L-aaa Bo-oooooo-rgne, and the people about me moved away, laughing, but I kept on; the people on the boat looked at me, and some shook their fists at me threateningly, be quiet, but then a man pushed aside the flaps of a canopy on the third boat, a tall man, a large, heavy man, and he levelled a glass at the banks. I jumped, waved, held up the sabre, L-aaa Bo-oooooo-rgne, and he put the glass down, Moulin, Moulin, is that you?

  ‘Suddenly, I was happy, I ran down the bank, keeping up with the boat, and he shouted, Moulin, you were right, you were right, and his voice bounced off the water and echoed, I cannot dream, Moulin, I cannot dream, and even across the distance and the wrenching of my breath I could make out the sadness in him, the break in his voice; unable to run anymore, I stopped, and the boats began to quicken their pace around a slow curve, and he called to me again, for the last time —a tone of unbearable, shattering nostalgia —Moulin, Moulin, I am free, free.

  ‘When I could get up, I came back into the town, sold everything I owned, not much, and with what I could get I bought half a dozen bottles of this miserable wine; French, it was, six bottles; now, I have only the last. When this is over, I shall be finished; the story is nearly over, gentlemen, and what is the moral? The meaning? I do not know, gentlemen; that you must calculate yourselves; but, you probably think, it is the story-teller’s duty to give something, something at least. Very well, for my part, I will give you this sabre; I pass on to you, carefully and gratefully, my last illusion.’

  Moulin pulled at a buckle, then arched his back to get the belt off; he
threw it so it landed at Sikander’s feet. Sikander bent, picked it up, ran a finger over the horse-head hilt, nodded at Moulin, whose face was now almost a caricature of sadness, with pouches below the eyes, drooping lips, tangled hair.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Sikander said. Sanjay got to his feet, both hands pushing against his thighs, feeling like an old woman for doing so; as they walked towards the edge of the nullah, he quickened his pace, even though it hurt in the calves and knees, eager to be home, in the garden with the familiar chatter of his uncle, the friendly squabbling of his mother and father, the lofty story-telling of Sikander’s mother. As they began to climb the bank, he heard Moulin again, the incomprehensible tongue of the foreigner:

  ‘Come back, come back. In return, you must use it. Use it on me. Gentlemen, kill me. Dispatch.’

  ‘Hurry,’ Sikander said, but Sanjay couldn’t help but turn to look —how can hope live in the same words as the most crushing despair? Seeing them continue their clambering, Moulin reached back and threw the bottle; it spun at them and hit the bank —they cringed away from it, expecting a shower of glass —but it stuck, head-first, at an impossible angle, in a patch of soft mud under an over-hang. At this Moulin howled like a dog, scrambled towards them on all fours, face distorted, then staggered up to his feet and ran at them; Sikander and Chotta went over the lip, then reached down for Sanjay. He reached up, placed fingers over a tuft of grass, pulled, feet feeling for a rest, other hand reaching up, Sikander’s hand, then there was a rush of hot breath on the small of his back, a pressure around his chest, down, grass pulling out of earth, Moulin’s face, eyes shining, pupils afloat in a lace-work of red, then a body flew overhead, wrapped around Moulin’s head, and almost instantly, transmitted through Moulin’s body, the shock as something else collided; they rolled down the slope, the world spinning, Moulin’s clutch, an embrace, Chotta screaming, wordless, Sikander concentrated, single-minded, thoughtful, tufts and particles of mud, dead leaves spinning, flap of green cloth, thrashing, the panic of insufficient strength, then stillness.

  Sanjay’s right hand was under a knee, a body of unusual pressing weight that refused to budge; pushing against it with his other hand, he felt an inertia that was unquestionable, immutable, and then he realized what it meant. He felt his body cleave in the middle, letting something, his heart, his soul, drop into a vacuum; he looked up —Sikander sat cross-legged, his hands folded in his lap, fighting to control his breath, Chotta lay face-up, blinking, opening and closing his mouth, which was ringed with dark blood, and Moulin’s face was pressed into the mud (which was darkening, a steady drip from somewhere), his back to the sky, hands turned at the wrist and palms upwards, one foot pointed in and the other out: he was quite dead.

  ‘Come on,’ Sikander said, tapping Chotta on the head; they pulled Sanjay’s arm from under the body, and hoisted him up, between them, over the bank. ‘Wipe your face.’ Chotta rubbed at the stain while Sikander bent and picked up the sabre; without waiting for them, Sanjay began to walk towards the trees. Sikander caught up with him and put an arm over his shoulder. ‘We mustn’t tell anyone. Understand. No one at all. Mustn’t tell anyone.’ Sanjay nodded, feeling the weight of his friend’s arm on the back of his neck, struggling against the urge to cry; in the grove of trees, they stopped to wrap the weapon in Sikander’s kurta and hide it under a rock at the base of a banyan tree. Feeling a steady accumulation of moisture, Sanjay rubbed his right eye, and realized that out of the other eye he could now see normally —one perfectly resolved image of Sikander kneeling, pushing leaves around a rock, Chotta rocking forward onto the balls of his feet, then back onto his heels. Sanjay cupped a hand over the other eye, and again, there were the trees, a brown sky, grey squirrels and birds, without duplication; when he looked with both eyes there was the old doubling, but he was so excited by the return to monocular singularity that he spent the rest of the journey testing one eye and then the other, and almost forgot the stains on his clothes and the scratches on his limbs.

  ‘Go in quietly and take a bath,’ Sikander said. ‘All right? And don’t tell anyone anything. If they ask, tell them we were playing and you were Treasure-keeper, and we two jumped on you. Don’t forget.’

  Later, in an enclosure near the house-well, Sanjay sat on a wooden stool and poured water over himself from a bucket; under the cool stream of water, his skin felt smooth and resilient, his muscles relaxed, and a quiet drowsiness came over him. When the water was finished, he sat quietly, the wrinkled skin of his scrotum contracting and expanding against the cold wood; thousands of birds cheeped and swooped in their evening frenzy, and very faintly he could hear the tinkling of cowbells as the animals were led home; and it wasn’t until the thread over his shoulder began to stiffen into dryness that he realized that his face was still wet, that he was crying.

  The next morning, while transcribing the story of Yajnavalkya, who was born without a father, Sanjay looked up at his uncle —Ram Mohan was seated cross-legged as usual, wrists resting on knees, in the classical pose of the teacher or scholar, head tilted back a little, eyes fixed on something a little above the horizon; to his right, Sikander’s mother sat with her head to one side, gravely regarding her toes, which protruded from under her full red skirt. In that moment, Sanjay saw quite clearly the chaste and desperate love between them, the years of need and public companionship, the mutual recognition of the impossibility of consummation, of the audacity of the possibility itself (the immensity of the barriers, social and physical), and yet, the quiet, relentless passion. Sanjay wondered why he had never seen it before —it was plain enough to see —why no one else had ever seen it; he wrote a few words, and then, as he reached for a dip in the ink, he shut one eye —in the utilitarian spareness of monoscopic vision, the scene took on the stillness of a tableau: the scholar and the noble lady, the poor Brahmin and the Princess, the yogi and the temptress. Seen with one eye, in singularity, their love seemed so fantastic, so idealized that it became unreal, and therefore did not exist, could not be allowed to exist; he opened his eye, and now, in the double-imaged richness of his handicap, what was real became indistinguishable from the unreal, and all that was fantastic was forced to exist, really and severally. Conscious, for the first time in his life, of power, he giggled, and they looked up at him, pleased; he smiled back at them, feeling ridiculously old and benevolent. He wanted to hug them, press their heads to his chest, say, go in love, be prosperous, but instead he giggled, purposely, in order to play the child, and bent again to his task.

  They looked at him, surprised; he smiled, then handed them a note: ‘Let us all go, when the moon is full, for a trip to the Ganga.’ Ram Mohan read out the note to Sikander’s mother, and then they handed it back and forth, unsettled by Sanjay’s unusual loquaciousness —he had earned, in the weeks and months after his injury, a reputation for being dull and sullen. Sensing that the issue was still in doubt, he handed them another note: ‘Often, I feel like I am eaten up by the sky. It will make me feel better, I think.’ Ram Mohan perused the note, and from his puzzled look Sanjay concluded that the claim to terror or death was too alien, much too pathetic for a child. Another note followed: ‘Uncle, Uncle, talk to Ma, she’ll listen to you. My head hurts, and the water of the Ganga will cure it.’

  Ram Mohan reached over and patted his knee. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll talk to your mother. A trip to the Ganga will do us all good.’ He squared his shoulders, and Sikander’s mother looked away from him and resumed her inspection of her toes. ‘The scriptures say that Gangaji is our mother, and he who bathes in her waters is washed of all karma.’ He began to recite hymns to the Goddess Ganga, and then launched into a recitation of the story of Shantanu the king, who married a woman who killed her children, seven of them, one by one. ‘Death,’ Ram Mohan said, ‘as Shantanu found out, can sometimes be a gift to the dearest ones. Also, it is advisable to learn how to recognize goddesses when one intends to marry, or risk being left ultimately wifeless, with only a child who will cause great wars.�
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  ‘Let me do it,’ Sikander’s mother said suddenly, without looking up. ‘Let me —I will talk to whoever needs to be talked to, I will send for palanquins and elephants, and hire cooks and coolies and servants and bearers, I will arrange for guards, soldiers and cavalrymen, and we will proceed, over hills and through deserts, to the sacred river.’

  ‘There are no hills here, and nothing like a desert,’ Ram Mohan said, ‘but if you wish it, of course you must do it.’

  ‘Good,’ Sikander’s mother said, very stern-faced but exuding, all the same, an unusual air of eagerness and satisfaction; she stood up quickly, whipping her ghagra around her ankles, and walked off briskly, tucking the end of her chunni into her waist-band, as if she was about to start, at that very moment, the disposition of camels and the organization of food-stuffs. For the next few days, they saw her rarely, and even then always on the way to a kitchen or a store-house, trailed by three or four maids of various ages, a white-haired faithful retainer or two, and a sweating cook; Sikander and Chotta brought back reports of a breakdown in the armed truce that existed between their parents —there were heated arguments about the possibility of a trip to the river, and then about the necessity of such a thing. Leaving his black-coated friends in the garden, Hercules had appeared at the doors of the women’s apartments and had spoken (in English, translated by Sikander, Chotta and their sisters) about the lack of safety on the roads (thugs, not long banished from these provinces), the discomfort of travelling (dust, heat, unfamiliar faces), the change in the children’s diets, the expense, but Sikander’s mother went on with her preparations, saying merely, ‘It will do them good.’