Then came the cholera from all four quarters of the compass. It struck a pilgrim gathering of half a million at a sacred shrine.
Many died at the feet of their god, the others broke and ran over the face of the land, carrying the pestilence with them. It smote a walled city and killed two hundred a day. The people crowded the trains, hanging on to the foot-boards and squatting on the roofs of the carriages; and the chlorea followed them, for at each station they dragged out the dead and the dying on the platforms reeking of lime-wash and carbolic acid. They died by the roadside, and the horses of the Englishmen shied at the corpses in the grass. The rains did not come, and the earth turned to iron lest man should escape by hiding in her. The English sent their wives away to the hills, and went about their work, coming forward as they were bidden to fill the gaps in the fighting line. Holden, sick with fear of losing his chiefest treasure on earth, had done his best to persuade Ameera to go away with her mother to the Himalayas.
‘Why should I go?’ said she one evening on the roof.
‘There is sickness, and the people are dying, and all the white Mem-log have gone.’
‘All of them?’
‘All—unless, perhaps, there remain some old scald-head who vexes her husband’s heart by running risk of death.’
‘Nay; who stays is my sister, and thou must not abuse her, for I will be a scald-head too. I am glad all the bold white Mem-log are gone.’
‘Do I speak to a woman or a babe? Go to the hills, and I will see to it that thou goest like a queen’s daughter. Think, child! In a red-lacquered bullock-cart, veiled and curtained, with brass peacocks upon the pole and red-cloth hangings. I will send two orderlies for guard, and—’
‘Peace! Thou art the babe in speaking thus. What use are those toys to me? He would have patted the bullocks and played with the housings. For his sake, perhaps—thou hast made me very English—I might have gone. Now I will not. Let the Mem-log run.’
‘Their husbands are sending them, beloved.’
‘Very good talk. Since when hast thou been my husband to tell me what to do? I have but borne thee a son. Thou art only all the desire of my soul to me. How shall I depart when I know that if evil befall thee by the breadth of so much as my littlest finger-nail—is that not small?—I should be aware of it though I were in Paradise? And here, this summer thou mayest die— ai, janee, die!—and in dying they might call to tend thee a white woman, and she would rob me in the last of thy love.’
‘But love is not born in a moment, or on a death-bed.’
‘What dost thou know of love, stone-heart? She would take thy thanks at least, and, by God and the Prophet and Beebee Miriam, the mother of thy Prophet, that I will never endure. My lord and my love, let there be no more foolish talk of going away. Where thou art, I am. It is enough.’ She put an arm around his neck and a hand on his mouth.
There are not many happinesses so complete as those that are snatched under the shadow of the sword. They sat together and laughed, calling each other openly by every pet name that could move the wrath of the gods. The city below them was locked up in its own torments. Sulphur-fires blazed in the streets; the conches in the Hindu temples screamed and bellowed, for the gods were inattentive in those days. There was a service in the great Mohammedan shrine, and the call to prayer from the minarets was almost unceasing. They heard the wailing in the houses of the dead, and once the shriek of a mother who had lost a child and was calling for its return. In the grey dawn they saw the dead borne out through the city gates, each litter with its own little knot of mourners. Wherefore they kissed each other and shivered.
It was a red and heavy audit, for the land was very sick and needed a little breathing-space ere the torrent of cheap life should flood it anew. The children of immature fathers and undeveloped mothers made no resistance. They were cowed and sat still, waiting till the sword should be sheathed in November, if it were so willed. There were gaps among the English, but the gaps were filled. The work of superintending famine relief, cholera-sheds, medicine distribution and what little sanitation was possible, went forward because it was so ordered.
Holden had been told to hold himself in readiness to move to replace the next man who should fall. There were twelve hours in each day when he could not see Ameera, and she might die in three. He was considering what his pain would be if he could not see her for three months, or if she died out of his sight. He was absolutely certain that her death would be demanded—so certain that, when he looked up from the telegram and saw Pir Khan breathless in the doorway, he laughed aloud, ‘And?’—said he.
‘When there is a cry in the night and the spirit flutters into the throat, who has a charm that will restore? Come swiftly, heaven born. It is the black cholera.’
Holden galloped to his home. The sky was heavy with clouds, for the long-deferred rains were at hand, and the heat was stifling. Ameera’s mother met him in the courtyard, whispering: ‘She is dying. She is nursing herself into death. She is all but dead. What shall I do, Sahib?’
Ameera was lying in the room in which Tota had been born. She made no sign when Holden entered, because the human soul is a very lonely thing, and when it is getting ready to go away it hides itself in a misty borderland where the living may not follow. The black cholera does its work quietly and without explanation. Ameera was being thrust out of life as though the Angel of Death had himself put his hand upon her.
The quick breathing seemed to show that she was either afraid or in pain, but neither eyes nor mouth gave any answer to Holden’s kisses. There was nothing to be said or done. Holden could only wait and suffer. The first drops of the rain began to fall on the roof, and he could hear shouts of joy in the parched city.
The soul came back a little and the lips moved. Holden bent down to listen. ‘Keep nothing of mine,’ said Ameera.
‘Take no hair from my head. She would make thee burn it later on. That flame I should feel. Lower! Stoop lower! Remember only that I was thine and bore thee a son. Though thou wed a white woman tomorrow, the pleasure of taking in thy arms thy first son is taken from thee forever. Remember me when thy son is born—the one that shall carry thy name before all men.
His misfortunes be on my head. I bear witness—I bear witness’—the lips were forming the words on his ear—‘that there is no God but—thee, beloved.’
Then she died. Holden sat still, and all thought of any kind was taken from him till he heard Ameera’s mother lift the curtain.
‘Is she dead, Sahib?’
‘She is dead.’
‘Then I will mourn, and afterward take an inventory of the furniture in this house; for that will be mine. The Sahib does not mean to resume it. It is so little, so very little, Sahib, and I am an old woman. I would like to lie softly.’
‘For the mercy of God, be silent awhile! Go out and mourn where I cannot hear.’
‘Sahib, she will be buried in four hours.’
‘I know the custom. I shall go ere she is taken away. That manner is in thy hands. Look to it that the bed—on which— on which—she lies—’
‘Aha! That beautiful red-lacquered bed. I have long desired . . .’
‘That the bed is left here untouched for my disposal. All else in the house is thine. Hire a cart, take everything, go hence, and before sunrise let there be nothing in this house but that which I have ordered thee to respect.’
‘I am an old woman. I would stay at least for the days of mourning, and the rains have just broken. Whither shall I go?
‘What is that to me? My order is that there is a going. The house-gear is worth a thousand rupees, and my orderly shall bring thee a hundred rupees tonight.’
‘That is very little. Think of the cart-hire.’
‘It shall be nothing unless thou goest, and with speed. Oh, woman, get hence, and leave me to my dead!’
The mother shuffled down the staircase, and in her anxiety to take stock of the house-fittings forgot to mourn. Holden stayed by Ameera’s side, and the rain
roared on the roof. He could not think connectedly by reason of the noise, though he made many attempts to do so. Then four sheeted ghosts glided dripping into the room and stared at him through their veils. They were the washers of the dead. Holden left the room and went out to his horse. He had come in a dead, stifling calm, through ankle-deep dust. He found the courtyard a rain-lashed pond alive with frogs, a torrent of yellow water ran under the gate and a roaring wild drove the bolts of the rain like buckshot against the mud walls. Pir Khan was shivering in his little hut by the gate, and the horse was stamping uneasily in the water.
‘I have been told the Sahib’s order,’ said he. ‘It is well. This house is now desolate. I go also, for my monkey face would be a reminder of that which has been. Concerning the bed, I will bring that to thy house yonder in the morning. But remember, Sahib, it will be to thee as a knife turned in a green wound. I go upon a pilgrimage and I will take no money. I have grown fat in the protection of the Presence, whose sorrow is my sorrow. For the last time I hold his stirrup.’
He touched Holden’s foot with both hands, and the horse sprung out into the road, where the creaking bamboos were whipping the sky and all the frogs were chuckling. Holden could not see for the rain in his face. He put his hands before his eyes and muttered: ‘Oh, you brute! You utter brute!’
The news of his trouble was already in his bungalow. He read the knowledge in his butler’s eyes when Ahmed Khan brought in food, and for the first and last time in his life laid a hand upon his master’s shoulder, saying: ‘Eat, Sahib, eat. Meat is good against sorrow. I also have known. Moreover, the shadows come and go, Sahib. The shadows come and go. These be curried eggs.’
Holden could neither eat nor sleep. The heavens sent down eight inches of rain in that night and scoured the earth clean. The waters tore down walls, broke roads, and washed open the shallow graves in the Mohammedan burying-ground. All next day it rained, and Holden sat still in his house considering his sorrow. On the morning of the third day he received a telegram which said only: ‘Ricketts, Myndonie. Dying. Holden. Relieve. Immediate.’ Then he thought that before he departed he would look at the house wherein he had been master and lord. There was a break in the weather. The rank earth steamed with vapour, and Holden was vermilion from head to heel with the prickly-heat born of sultry moisture.
He found that the rains had torn down the mud-pillars of the gateway, and the heavy wooden gate that had guarded his life hung drunkenly from one hinge. There was grass three inches high in the courtyard; Pir Khan’s lodge was empty, and the sodden thatch sagged between the beams. A grey squirrel was in possession of the veranda, as if the house had been untenanted for thirty years instead of three days. Ameera’s mother had removed everything except some mildewed matting. The tick-tick of the little scorpions as they hurried across the floor was the only sound in the house. Ameera’s room and that other one where Tota had lived were heavy with mildew, and the narrow staircase leading to the roof was streaked and stained with rain-borne mud. Holden saw all these things, and came out again to meet in the road Durga Dass, his landlord— portly, affable, clothed in white muslin and driving a C-spring buggy. He was overlooking his property, to see how the roofs withstood the stress of the first rains.
‘I have heard,’ said he, ‘you will not take this place any more, Sahib?’
‘What are you going to do with it?’
‘Perhaps I shall let it again.’
‘Then I will keep it on while I am away.’
Durga Dass was silent for some time. ‘You shall not take it on, Sahib,’ he said. ‘When I was a young man I also . . . But today I am a member of the municipality. Ho! ho! No. When the birds have gone, what need to keep the nest? I will have it pulled down; the timber will sell for something always. It shall be pulled down, and the municipality shall make a road across, as they desire, from the burning ghat to the city well. So that no man may see where this house stood.’
Footnotes
Introduction
*The Virgin Mary.
*Solomon and Plato.
THE BEGINNING
Let the conversation begin...
Follow the Penguin Twitter.com@PenguinIndia
Keep up-to-date with all our stories Youtube.com/PenguinIndia
Like ‘Penguin Books’ on Facebook.com/PenguinIndia
Find out more about the author and
discover more stories like this at Penguinbooksindia.com
PENGUIN BOOKS
UK | Canada | Ireland | Australia
New Zealand | India | South Africa
Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
This collection published 2010
Copyright © Penguin Books India, 2010
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Jacket images © Ayush Rajvanshi
ISBN: 978-0-143-06790-0
This digital edition published in 2015.
e-ISBN: 978-9-352-14098-5
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
The Phantom Rickshaw Page 17