Nightrunners of Bengal

by John Masters

  She kissed his ear. “Silly! I am a queen, and you are my king. Who are we to make apologies?”

  He held her wrists and looked up. Her face was so happy now--fulfilled, and relieved.

  He said suddenly, “When this--when I came in, you had something on your mind. What was it?”

  “I was afraid you wouldn’t come back to take all the things I want to give you. I was a fool, but these last weeks have been awful, unbearable, to love you so much and treat you so formally. But I’m glad now--now I know that you love me, and you will come back to me.”

  He stared at the shine of black cloth on his knees and could not speak. When she had first knelt down, he knew that she loved him, whatever she was trying to make him do. He knew, too, that he admired her and liked her and felt sexual desire for her--but he did not love her. He wasn’t sure that he knew what love was, except that this was not love. In a sudden realization he saw that they had flown down from planets far apart in space, met, and for an instant joined on the scarlet cushions. She was a queen of the East. She loved, and thought he did. That was all; that was enough. Wife, child, profession--all would bow to her, take their new places, and be honoured. He was an Englishman, a married captain of Bengal Native Infantry. Surely she must know that this was a point of time, wonderful, but isolated and secret for ever? That here their touching wings must part? He was frightened that he, who admired her so well, and thought he knew India, could have been so blind. She lived in another room.

  Sunk in unhappiness, he said, “I do not know whether I love you or not, Sumitra. But I cannot come back.”

  The words came out flat and final. Her hands tensed, and he felt her fighting to control herself. Exhausted with the giving of love, she could not do it. She collapsed on the cushions and lay still while tears ran silently down her cheeks. The fight continued; Rodney watched miserably and admired. He knew that hell; Joanna used to have the power to send him down into it.

  Suddenly Sumitra lifted her head, seized his arm, and almost screamed, “My lord, Rodney--you must, you must come; you must, you must! I must have you here--and your wife and child, everything you love. Oh, God’s cruelty! Everything has gone too far to stop. I can’t stop it!” She rocked in an agony. “My lord, you must leave Bhowani and come to live in my fort, now, before----Now! I will give you all the money you want, all the money your wife can possibly use--ten thousand acres of land. You need never see me again except in public. I will submit even to that, and I am a queen. Do you not believe me? Does this prove anything?”

  She ran to an iron-bound chest standing against the canvas, rummaged frantically, and pulled out an ivory silk bag. She hurried back, breathing hard, and spilled a cascade of diamonds and pearls into his hands so that they overflowed and rolled across the carpet in glittering streams of fire. Rodney felt her panic scrabbling at his sanity; he knew there must be something appalling, because he knew she was fearless. In a moment he too would start to pant in terror, and not know why. He set his teeth and clenched his hands on the jewels: this wasn’t real, it wasn’t English. No one behaved like this, no man could possibly mean as much as this to any woman--not the jewels, but the mad panic.

  “Take anything, ask anything, but promise!” She knelt, dropped her head on his knees, and sobbed.

  He smoothed the wreck of her hair and said hoarsely, “Sumitra, I’m a swine. That’s all I can say. I didn’t understand how much--I didn’t know that--oh, Christ, I’m a swine. I can’t ever see you again.”

  She looked up, and he saw that he had condemned her to live in a nightmare. He would never understand how it could be so, but he saw that it was. She climbed to her feet and stood unsteadily over him. He waited for the storm of her fury to burst. He wanted it, for that would be the real, proud Sumitra he knew. Perhaps he could believe then that she was not in reality so deeply hurt. He wondered if she had a knife on her.

  She spoke in a low relaxed voice. “Very well, my lord. It is a punishment for trying to use you. The gods twist straight trails under our feet and spread nails. I can see that my love means as little to you as the dancing girl’s body. She was lucky; she’d have no breasts now, or nose, if she had succeeded in doing what I told her to do.”

  “Did you--were you watching then?”

  “Of course. I watch the mating of my mares and stallions; I watch the men dying on my scaffolds. That was only Friday --a week ago. And even then, God save me, I would not admit I loved you--an Englishman! I wanted to admire you; you were the good commander I needed for my army. It had to be something else--not love. I prayed the girl would settle it for me--I am jealous--but she could not.

  Then this week, talking to the princes--“ She broke off suddenly and shivered. “You will never know what I have passed through.” Her voice dropped. “It is all over now. Forget I love you, but keep this to remember today--the tigress, and Sumitra.”

  She pulled from her finger the ruby ring which he had first noticed the night he met her on the battlements. She pushed it on to the little finger of his left hand and pressed the hand against her wet cheek.

  “Keep it on always. And, one night, if you have time, remember I offered you much else. I know it is useless--but remember the post is open for you to accept at any time. Wait. Say goodbye to my son. It is all for him.”

  She slipped out and came back carrying the young Rajah in her arms. The boy was asleep; Rodney ran his fingers gently through the dark straight hair and bent to kiss one cheek. It was petal-soft, like Robin’s; the child was about the same age, but not as chubby.

  He saw her eyes were burning and thought her mother-love was beautiful, but she said, “When he is a king, I will tell him what sort of man it was that I murdered-- for him.”

  The words shocked and hurt him. She didn’t have to throw her murders in his face. But she was crying again, relaxed and wide-eyed, like one who has given up all struggle. Suddenly he felt completely drained of all emotion and all strength. He stumbled weakly across the carpet, diamonds and pearls hard under his boots, and went to his tent.

  8

  On the road back to Bhowani he let the sepoys open their collars. Marching on foot at the head of the company, he moved his shoulders uncomfortably. There had been a nostalgic sheen in his early weeks at Kishanpur, even while he was living them. Kishan Falls had been different, an explosion of feeling. The vivid scenes there--intensely delicious, intensely bitter--overlaid the earlier sweet melancholy. He could blame only himself for the scorn weighting his shoulders. He would do better to forget all about Kishanpur, if he could; but his thoughts would not be checked and, as he marched, played over every incident. The red road stretched ahead.

  Before he began to feel tired it was one o’clock and they had reached the halfway stage at Adhirasta: twenty-five miles done, twenty-three to do. Before dismissing the company he glanced at the sepoys to see what shape they were in. They were hot and sweaty but carried themselves with the careless flexibility of men who are not tired: they’d like to get back to their barrack huts. He ordered that the march would begin again, after a rest and a meal, at nine p.m. and continue through the night. The sepoys fell out and scattered under the shade trees, grinning and chattering and idly swinging their rifles. The red flowers of the flame-of-the-forest stippled the jungle, and the sky was blue and clear. He gave Rambir his belt and sword, took off his boots, lay down at the foot of an isolated sal, and forced himself to sleep.

  At nine they were on the road again, heading west. He felt the hard, sure rhythm of their marching as a current of satisfaction in him; they were fit, and so was he, and to that extent at least he had done his job. The tramp of boots and creak of accoutrements lulled him. Out in front, where he was, clean air dried the sweat on his face; behind, they tied handkerchiefs over their mouths and the dust made the bottle-green uniforms a paler brick-red in the starlight. The moon was in the first quarter and gliding high. He marched in the removed trance of the professional infantryman, his thoughts miles from this business o
f swinging one foot ahead of the other. He watched the wheeling stars, savoured the night smells, thought of Robin and Sumitra and money, and wondered what the sepoys were thinking of; but another part of him knew where the hands of his watch pointed, and caught every break in the rhythm, every drag at the step.

  Shortly after one o’clock he decided to cut south-west off the road and travel instead along the cart trails criss-crossing the jungles. The dust could be no worse, and the bare earth would jar their spines less than the metalling which had been put down on this section of the main road. Within an hour he began to recognize features of the country and knew they were approaching the village of Devra. There the forests straggled to an end; beyond lay crop lands and eight flat miles to Bhowani.

  The moon was low ahead in the west. To his left the shadows flickered, some distance off. His brain snapped alert, and he peered into the thin jungle as he marched. The flickering took form, and he saw a man running under the trees, running with an easy lope, passing from moonlight into blackness and out again. He was coming in on a converging trail and had not heard the dulled tramp of the sepoys or seen the moonlit dust haze they raised. The event was bizarre, for villagers seldom traversed the jungles at night, and it was mysterious that the man should run. Rodney stopped and held up his hand. Behind him the soldiers jostled in silence to a halt.

  The man, coming on with head bent to pick his way among the tree roots, ran straight into Rodney’s arms. He screamed shrilly and collapsed to his knees. His eyes rolled up and round at the sepoys, immense and threatening under the tall shakos, and he gabbled a Hindu prayer. Rodney had thought he might be a district mail runner whose bell had lost its clapper, but the man had neither letter pouch, badge, nor bell. He was just a man in a loincloth, his face and body wet with sweat. In his right hand he clutched a pair of the thick discs of unleavened bread called chupattis.

  Slowly the terror died from the man’s face as he recognized them for sepoys with an English officer. Strained anxiety replaced the fright, and he scrambled to his feet and made to wriggle away. Rodney and a couple of sepoys in the front rank caught and held him.

  “What’s the matter, brother? Can we help? Is there a tiger after you?” Rodney laughed and nodded down at the chupattis. “Surely the one in your house can’t be so hungry that she makes you bring her bread, at this pace, in the dark of the night!”

  The man tried to hide the chupattis behind him. Rodney secured his grip on the scrawny neck, snatched the discs, and stared at them suspiciously. This got odder and odder; the ordinary villager would have been volubly eager to talk about his errand, his flocks, the rain or the lack of rain, and anything else that would pass the time.

  “What have you got in these? Stolen jewels?” He felt the discs with his hand; the fellow might be a dacoit--an armed bandit--who had murdered some woman, hidden her rings and gold ornaments in the chupattis, and buried his weapon till it was needed again. It had been done before. But there was nothing foreign in the texture of the bread. “You won’t be able to eat them, now I’ve handled them--unless you’re an untouchable; you’re not, are you?” The sepoys took their hands away in alarm, but the man shook his head vigorously, and Rodney shrugged. “Well, it’s your own fault. What are you doing?”

  The man whined, “There’s nothing in them. Give them back to me, sahib-bahadur. I am doing no harm.”

  “You tell me why you’re acting like a robber, and I’ll let you go. What use are the chupattis to you now, anyway?”

  Subadar Narain had come up from the back of the column to find out the cause of the halt and was standing at Rodney’s side. He took the rifle from a sepoy’s hand and slammed the butt down on the captive’s bare toes. “Answer the sahib, clod!”

  The man danced and howled, “Mercy! Mercy! I am only taking these chupattis to the watchman of Devra, for his village. Please let me go on!”

  Rodney stared, astonished. “For heaven’s sake--leave him alone, Subadar-sahib--what good are two chupattis to a whole village? Though I see they are good thick ones.”

  “I must take them, sahib.”

  “Why?”

  “The watchman of Pathoda brought the orders to me.”

  “And who the hell are you?”

  “I’m the watchman of Bharru--it’s a little village four miles east of here. Pathoda is--“

  “I know Pathoda; we passed through it on the main road three or four hours ago. Go on.”

  “The man from Pathoda came to me early tonight, bringing two chupattis. He said I must make six more and carry them on to the nearest villages west, south, and north of mine, just as he had done--two to each village.”

  “What on earth for? Come on, the whole truth, or we’ll take you with us to Bhowani Gaol.”

  “I don’t know what it means, sahib, but it must be done. He said Pashupatti baked the first pair--away in the east-- and Yama is in one and Varuna in the other. The wrath of Shiva will certainly destroy anyone who breaks the chain.” Rodney nodded; that was clear enough, for all the names mentioned were manifestations or attributes of Shiva the destroyer--Pashupatti was Fire, Yama Justice, and Varuna Punishment.

  The man went on with more assurance, “When I get to each village I am to call the watchman and, when he comes, say, ‘Out of the east--to the north, to the west, to the south!’ Then I give him two chupattis, first breaking one into five equal parts and the other into ten equal parts. And I am to promise Fire, Justice, and Punishment on him and on his village, unless that night or the following night he too makes and delivers six more chupattis--two each to north, west, and south. Let me go, sahib. It is late in the night and I have visited the villages to the north and south of mine. Only Devra remains.”

  The sepoys shuffled their feet uneasily. Murmuring shivered away down the files as the men in front whispered back what was happening, and the word was passed on. Subadar Narain muttered in a subdued voice, “We had better let him go, sahib. The anger of Shiva is not to be lightly disregarded.”

  “It will strike all who hinder the passage of the chupattis,” the runner broke in meaningly.

  Rodney made up his mind. He could report the incident to Caversham or Dellamain, but the man was committing no crime that he knew of and would have to be released. The civil might be interested; then again they might not. They’d probably dismiss it as another utterly pointless mystery and forget about it.

  He motioned to the sepoys, they let go quickly, and the man slipped away. Rodney watched him run on down the track towards Devra, flickering in and out of the dying moonlight patches. He shook his head, hitched up his sword, and began to march. The company, after a few hesitant minutes, dropped into the familiar rhythm, but the confidence was gone. He heard the mutter in the ranks and knew the runner’s story had disturbed them. To them, there would be nothing fantastic about it. Out of the east the god Shiva was sending messages across the earth: he was threatening someone or something with fire, justice, and punishment-- and perhaps it was them, the sepoys. Someone, someday, might explain further--or events might make the Destroyer’s meaning very clear.

  When they reached the lines, in the last of the night, he was glad to dismiss them and stood watching as they broke ranks and wended to their quarters. They were tired now and dragged their feet. He was standing with Rambir by the corner of a hut; the men came out of the fading darkness like greenish dust wraiths, shuffled past, and went their ways.

  At the other corner of the building a sweeper stumbled unseeing into a sepoy. The sepoy swore, picked up a stone, and shouted, “Hut! Low-caste ape, lump of defilement!”

  The sweeper dodged the flung stone and jeered. “Low-caste ape? Lump of defilement? Listen to who’s talking! Why, you have no caste left yourself, licker of cow’s fat!”

  The sepoy swung up his rifle like a club, and Rodney darted forward. “Stop it at once! Come on, we’re all tired. Go to your cots.”

  The men separated sullenly. When they were gone, Rodney sent for Boomerang, mounted, and ro
de up the Pike towards cantonments.

  He’d have to speak to the Native Officers tomorrow and issue an ultimatum about this squabbling; quarrels like the one he’d just seen were becoming frequent. He must find out, too, what the sweeper had meant and try to protect him. It was an accident, but the poor fellow would have to do unimaginable penance for defiling the sepoy unless the latter could be persuaded to pretend that it had never happened. Who was that sepoy? Ramlall Pande--Brahmin, eight years’ service, a poor shot, home in a village near Cawnpore. He might have eaten some cow’s fat or flesh by mistake somewhere and the sweeper come to hear of it. Rodney himself would have to feel his way with care; if he went and kicked up a fuss he might uncover a scandal everyone was trying to gloss over and do a lot of damage. The sweeper’s behaviour was odd, as odd as that of the runner in the night. A sweeper was the lowest of the low, outcast, untouchable through life, dedicated by his birth to the disposal of human ordure. The sepoy was a Brahmin, twice-born, highest of the high. It was all but unthinkable that any sweeper should raise even his voice against any Brahmin.

  Rodney shook the reins impatiently; he didn’t want to upset the foundations of society, but he would do all he could to help the sweeper. The general goodwill and good sense of the men made the Bengal Army work--but no thanks were due to the caste system. He’d often seen Native Officers and N.C.O.’s of middle caste grovel before a Brahmin sepoy; Brahmins were never put on a charge unless a British Officer saw the offence and insisted; even then, everyone was uncomfortable. The sepoys were still unhappy that the Brahmin caste had been subjected to the ordinary criminal laws and could be tried and hanged like anyone else if they committed murder. Then there was old Mehnat Ram, the retired subadar-major, who trotted out to make obeisances to his juniors--that had been the early morning of January the first; today was March the third.

  What on earth was the meaning of the chupattis, and why break them up--one into live pieces, one into ten? He passed under the gold-mohur tree at the entrance to his drive, saw his bungalow, and put the worries from his mind.