Red Earth and Pouring Rain

by Vikram Chandra

  When dawn came they were half-way across a great scrubby plain, ringed by haze and filled by the metallic, unceasing squeaking of crickets. ‘Burn it here,’ said Sunil. ‘Burn it here and let’s get done with it. Finish it, and let us go.’

  Still, Sanjay hesitated; then, remembering the face of his son, he nodded, and they pushed the books onto the ground. While Sunil struck sparks and made tapers, Sanjay took a few volumes and made a pile; at first the flames seemed barely to move across the jackets and leather-bound spines, and Sunil puffed and blew with obvious kitchen-expertise. Then they got a snapping blaze going, which Sunil judiciously fed with albums and hand-books and manuals; Sanjay sat on a rock and watched quietly, unable to stop himself from reaching out now and then to handle a book, to study its title-page, place of publication, the end-papers, a page or two from the middle, stopping only when Sunil took the piece firmly from his hand and laid it gently on the fire.

  Something collapsed in the fire, a noiseless breaking of some leather-bound spine, and with a puffing exhalation the fire blew out a wafting curl of sheets over the ground. As Sanjay darted around the fire, bent over, picking up the pages, he noticed that they were covered with the smallest handwriting he had ever seen, an impossibly fine hand but precise, done with fine nib and green ink in orderly rows stretching from margin to margin without error or smudge.

  On the blackened sheet under his thumb, Sanjay read:

  I am in Hell. I am in Hell. On my second day at Norgate I thought this repeatedly. Dulwich tipped me out of bed, saying, up, bitch. We were Porter’s fags, Byrd and I, puffing at a fire at five in the morning for hot water, for Porter’s shave and wash. It was devilish cold, and the buckets pulled out your arms on the long walk back to Porter’s room, and what was slopped off through exhaustion had to be made up with another trip. Then back to the long room for a panic-stricken minute or two for your own scrub, then the stairs two and three at a time for morning call at the Rectory, sundry prefects kicking away. I collected a kick on the back of my thigh that left a bruise for seven days, and later I wet my crust and the dab of marmalade was salty. Don’t snivel, bitch, said Byrd, here comes Dr Lusk. I am in Hell.

  At this Sanjay ran around the fire, kicking at it, shouting, ‘Stop, stop.’ He batted at the piles of paper, trying to knock out pages to the ground.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Sunil said, pulling at him, but Sanjay was now kicking at the blaze, unmindful of the billows of embers which puffed up to sting at him. Pages of the diary —of course it must be that —came out still burning, the threads of narrative disrupted and holed by the conflagration.

  ‘Save these pages,’ Sanjay said, still dancing around the fire. ‘With the green handwriting.’ He noticed then that Sunil had turned away, was facing outward from the fire and paying him no attention at all: they were surrounded by half a dozen horsemen, all dressed in brilliant yellow, bearded lancers who were regarding him with curiosity, in fact as if he were mad. ‘Who are you?’ Sanjay said.

  ‘We are of Skinner’s Horse,’ said one of the lancers. ‘And you are the thieves we were detailed to catch, but why are you burning your haul? Or are you not? Are you trying to save it?’

  Sanjay did not answer, but as the captors stamped out the fire, he managed to push the handful of pages he was holding under his shirt; in the pretence of aiding the soldiers he was able to secure a dozen others, variously burnt and charred. Later, on the way back to Delhi, surrounded by these splendid horsemen, Sanjay had much time to study them; of their skill as scouts and cavalry he had no doubt, since they had appeared soundlessly and suddenly, and in this were the apt followers of their commander Sikander, but it was their costumery that interested him.

  ‘Are you of the unit of Sikander?’

  ‘Yes. We are the riders of the sun.’

  ‘What does this yellow colour signify?’

  ‘That those who wear it embrace death already, and therefore care nothing for death.’

  To this splendid Rajput sentiment Sanjay could put no further questions, since all of the lancers so obviously believed in it: they laughed, flashing white teeth against pointed black beards, hitched up their lances and galloped their horses, making wild cries and enjoying the glinting of the sun on their steel helmets and lance-heads, and they were a swaggering bunch who threw their heads back and rode with elegant but careless dash.

  ‘Well,’ said Sikander, ‘do you like my Yellow Boys?’

  He was a little more massive, deeper in the chest like a bull, and heavy with that animal’s satisfaction with its power: Skinner’s Horse was detailed to police the plains around Delhi, to keep the peace and to put down all miscreants, robbers and banditti, and this morning they had done it with a speed that was likely to add to their growing legend. Sanjay was reluctant to tell him why he had stolen Sarthey’s books, because the man in front of him was very respectable and somehow foreign, the kind of person who might laugh at the Begum Sumroo’s advice as a joke, or a primitive fairy tale. But then Sikander spoke again: ‘This is a bad time to do this, this revenge you wanted. The time is bad. We hear, through pigeon-post and other devices, that the Marathas face the English soon, very soon, maybe today or tomorrow, for the final confrontation. It must come soon, de Boigne’s brigades against Wellesley’s troops, they are now without the old man, de Boigne is gone but his brigades remain to fight for the Marathas, and perhaps the old Chiria Fauj fights for the last time.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Near a village called Assaye.’

  ‘Listen, Sikander,’ said Sanjay. ‘We have both gotten old, and have gone very far on different roads. But in your letters you are still my brother, and I will speak to that Sikander I see in the letters. What happens in Assaye depends upon what we do here: let me burn those books. Otherwise all is lost.’

  ‘How exactly is that?’

  ‘Never mind, but remember what you saw when you lay shot on the battle-field. Will you deny it now? I have a son, a bright son who will decline if those books are allowed to exist.’

  ‘You are talking magic, Sanjay, and I am concerned now with fact.’

  ‘Do you know who this Sarthey is? Do you remember your mother at all?’

  Sikander looked at him without reply, and Sanjay heard how absurd, how insane he sounded in that room: the white walls were bare, there was a brown desk with a white blotter, and the air itself seemed calm and permeated with a rationalism from some other shore.

  ‘Do you remember this?’ Sikander said, extracting a plain iron spoon from an inner breast pocket. ‘I keep it always. It seems it comforts me somehow’

  ‘By your mother’s memory and last words, I enjoin you to grant me this: I ask for the gift of single combat, and let the victor treat the books as he will.’

  Sikander laughed. ‘You’ve really gone crazy. It must be the sun.’

  Without a word Sanjay leaped over the table, reaching for Sikander’s throat but grabbing only a handful of coat, and despite Sikander’s agile weaving he managed to get a hand to his face, disregarding the other’s entreaties to stop, stop, and then Sikander shifted his weight slightly and brought an elbow to Sanjay’s chest, taking the air out and bending him double, then a tremendous buffet at the base of the neck bringing up the floor and black.

  When Sanjay awoke his vision had doubled again; he was in a small, comfortably furnished room, clearly not a cell and yet one which offered no hope of escape. The ventilator, high up on the wall, was barred, and its small white image reproduced itself perfectly, so that Sanjay did not know which was real and which unreal. For a long time he sat on the bed with his head between his hands, rubbing his eyes, but finally he pulled out the blackened mass of paper from his waist-band, stained and made mucilaginous by his sweat, and began to read. They were random sheets from Sarthey’s diary, and at first he had to lay them out on the bed to sort them, and while reading there were many gaps, many passages made illegible by fire, others wholly reduced, and so it was a curious, patchwork narrati
ve, all torn apart and shattered, but Sanjay read it as if his life depended on it.

  There were four who considered themselves blades, and cut a style with cravats, wide cuffs and a considered and elaborate manner of speech. ‘Consider this specimen, gentlemen,’ said Bowles (the first time I saw them, all four together and abreast, strolling along the cinder-path), ‘what say you regarding this homunculus?’ ‘A nut-brown baggage, isn’t she?’ said Bailey. ‘Exceedingly brown,’ said Hodges. ‘One might infer certain inferences.’ And Durrell seated himself on a bench by the path, one leg crossed over the other and swinging foot, running a finger over a silver-headed walking stick. ‘What’s your name?’ he said. ‘Paul Sarthey, sir.’ ‘Paul?’ he said. ‘I think not. You will present yourself at my study post-prep. We shall give you a name. We will have a ceremony and we will give you a name.’ I went at night to his rooms.

  My father’s new house was my new mother’s house. We came to it one grey evening in October, and I was cold without cease for four months, until I was sent down to school. Despite fires and coats and blanket upon blanket my teeth shivered and rattled because I knew only the sun of Calcutta. I was cold and always alone. At the dinner table I was silent. Sometimes I was told to go outside and take the air, at which times I circled the house, not straying too far from its grey stone because the country-side was muddy and huge, and full of rough people whose tongues produced accents I could not decipher. Inside the house I was pursued by echoes, but I could be alone and safe. I sought empty rooms in the upper apartments, where there was no sound at all, nobody, and then I would walk in a circle, walk till in a species of trance I was again under a warmer sky, and there was about me the familiar ceaseless chatter of birds, and my friends, and so I would escape the room with its dark furniture, its paintings and wood, all away till a servant came to summon me to supper. ‘Don’t eat quite so fast, Paul dear, you’re gobbling. Use your knife.’ She was a large woman with blue eyes, my stepmother.

  * * *

  ‘You’re a nigger.’ ‘No I’m not.’ ‘You’re a nigger wog.’ ‘No I’m not.’ ‘Nigger’ ‘I’m not.’ ‘You’re blubbering, nigger bitch. Look at this here. She’s blubbering.’ ‘I’m not. That either.’

  The school was day and night, and Durrell had the night and Dr Lusk had the day. At the very beginning I was called into the Doctor’s study for an interview, as he wanted to know how much I knew. He questioned me regarding the ancient poets, of which I knew none, of history of which I knew nothing. Finally he said what an atrocious accent you have my boy you must work on it. Your education has been patchy. I can do mathematics I said, and I can engineer anything, a model bridge a working windmill. That’s very good, he said, but you are here to learn those things which make you an English gentleman. Character, he said, character. He was massive in his proportions, and in his black robes and with his great head and his measured manner of speech, deep basso voice he frightened me quite wonderfully. Yes sir I said, not knowing at all what he meant. Outside the low grey clouds took me back to the docks on the Hooghly where I had learnt knots. That evening I was to see Durrell.

  Am I to understand your people are in trade, said Durrell. I was quiet, for what could I say: my own mother passed to the other side before I could remember, and my father was who he was. Then he married my mother. There was something in him that was attractive to women. On his lecture tours they would flock around him, eager and moist-eyed. In his lectures he would stop, his hands raised up, too stirred to go on as he talked about the great task. I think it was that they loved. My new mother married him against her father’s wishes. They waited until he was dead. She was very large, and their money was from candles, and cloth.

  Your new name, said Durrell, your name now and forever, is Mary. I kept silent. After that they called me Mary. One takes the names one is given.

  Bowles was house captain, and Bailey and Hodges were prefects, and Hodges cricket captain besides, and Durrell was nothing. Nothing official, that is, but he was unmistakably the leader. They all followed him, and undeniably, as soon as I met him, I did too. He was small, orsmaller than the rest, with neat, dark hair (After two weeks I parted my hair in the middle, like him), and he looked at you as if he were weighing you, all the time amused. He was completely sure of himself. In trying to think of why we all were his disciples, all I can say even now is that he commanded us because he had a certain moral force, a strength of character that was like steel, which appeared only when he chose to reveal it. For all their pretensions I think there is not one master at Norgate who knew what he really was, who understood his position in the world of the boys, which they knew very imperfectly, if at all. I am sure they all thought of him as nothing more than a middling scholar and a bit of a dandy. He was always impeccable. Even when I was that young, it was clear to me that the others were merely brutes, that their cruelty, even when it was malicious, was only of the canine variety, all slobber and grunting and swagger. Durrell was different. I did not understand him for a long time.

  Dr Lusk took a great interest in me, for which I shall always be grateful. I suspect he saw in me a worthy project for his reforming instincts, which I surely was: tempestuous; flighty; emotional rather than analytical, despite my scientific leanings; and given to tears and rages. Whatever the cause or mode of his attention, my conversations with him softened my loneliness, although he terrified me. It was like talking to God: the awe one felt was not sufficient to completely dissipate the enormous reassurance of being noticed. He called me to him often as he walked through the paths of Norgate: Well, Sarthey, I hope you’re getting along, eating well. Good morning, young fellow. Sarthey, now I hear you’re not applying yourself sufficiently to Horace, and I’m not happy about it. His voice curled itself comfortably about the Norgate stones, so rich and round it was, and it seemed that he must be eternal: I’m not happy about it. He appeared like a black vision in the walks, on the grounds, in the dormitories, and he always knew exactly what was being whispered among the boys, what scandals were brewing, who the culprit was. He was uncanny and fearsome and everywhere.

  The occasion of my first switching was an offence observed by Dr Lusk: I secreted a piece of bread from the mess and ate it on the walks outside the classrooms. No bread at school, control your appetites,young fellow, said Dr Lusk suddenly from behind me, assembly hall Saturday if you please. What’s that mean, I asked Byrd. You’re in for a flog, old Mary, he said off-handedly, and I thought of nothing for the days after. I woke up thinking about it and slept with it. I suppose I ate and read and did the usual, but not a thing I can remember, and then on Saturday morning there was the Hall. The older fellows got it first. They leaned over a desk, trousers down and shirt pulled over their heads, clutching at the side of the desk. Dr Lusk held out a hand for the switch, a bushy terrible pack of wattles, and I looked away but the sound was like a bowl of water being dashed onto a rock. When it went on I could hardly bear it, and when he finally got to us I could hardly stand, my legs were shaking and I was blubbering. Somebody took me to the desk and they did the belt for me, hauled up my shirt. When it hit me there was a very small moment when it was only a shock against my thighs, and I thought that’s all that’s all it is, but then it seared me like a fire and I howled. I must admit I couldn’t stop it. There was a murmur when I roared —the flogging being the chief entertainment on Saturday mornings, there was a crowd of fellows spectating from the pews and they thought my performance ripping. I got three strokes, and afterwards Byrd said you’ll have a fair set o’ stripes, one of Lusk’s better efforts, close together and nicely grouped. After this I went with Byrd to the Saturday shows. Some of the older chaps took it without a groan. Even watching, I jumped every time I heard it make its thin whistle in the air.

  During the holidays I was always alone. I stumbled about my mother’s house, clambered about the grounds. Once my parents had Markline up for dinner, and I suppose he was some class of nobility but he seemed to me a pious bore. He asked me very car
efully about my classes, with particular attention to the practical sciences, and wrote down my answers in a little book. And is there anything about Norgate you don’t like, he said, looking significant and my father goggling at me over his shoulder. They were both so peculiar that it required me a moment to take their meaning, and when I did I almost laughed. But I said, no, because I was supposed to be very nice to him. That’s what my mother said, be very nice to him. It was that he was rich, and better, known to the grandees, so he helped them on their crusades, and he gotme into Norgate. For which I am grateful. But to tell him about Durrell, no. I told nobody about Durrell.

  … that night Bowles had me to his room. I sat there for a while, on a hard wooden chair. He had hunting prints on the wall. Then he came in, and he let on he was drunk, but I think he was putting it on. I mean he had to act drunk so he could do what he did, which was put me on the bed. He was cursing and pushing me about, not that I was fighting him but rather that I was completely passive, even when it hurt. The candle flickered and he whispered bitch but I didn’t shut my eyes, just bore his weight as if it were far away, and it was. Afterwards I was very cool and methodical, putting on my pants and buckling up, and it rather impressed him. The next night it was Hodges, and then Bailey. So when Durrell called me up, and I went to his digs, and he walked in, I started to unbutton, and he said sharply, oh stop that, you silly child. I must have looked puzzled, because he seated himself across from me, crossed his legs, put an elbow on a knee. You’re too sharp for those simple pleasures, he said. Oh no you’re much too keen. I have a special plan for you. I’ve been watching you he said.

  At first nobody understood what I said because I half-sung my words. I had a whole new language to learn. Bogs were the privies. When you were flogged it was a good tunding you got. Not chapel but the gaol was where we went Sunday mornings for a wailing. Nothing was good, but it was top.