Nightrunners of Bengal

by John Masters

  “A spot--here. And the same day fifty lashes for overstaying late pass. I deserted. India had touched me--here-- and I belonged to her.”

  “But you’re a Christian!”

  “What is a Christian? Or a fakir, or a sadhu? Is not leprosy a religion? For two years I lived with a sweeper’s widow in the slums of Benares. For five years I travelled the roads as a beggar and learned the fakirs’ lore--oh, the crows were real, and so are other frightening things I could show you. I read sacred books, and argued with holy men in the dust outside temples and mosques and Sikh gurdwaras. The leprosy grew worse. For four years I studied alone at a shrine near Badrinath in the Himalaya. Then I came to Bhowani and sat down under the peepul tree--nineteen years ago.”

  “Why did you join in this filthy plot? How do you benefit? You must realize you’re doing nothing but evil.”

  The Guru stared at the wall and did not answer for a long minute. His voice was gentler than before. “Captain Savage, I know you. I have seen you galloping down the Pike, and laughing and joking with your brother officers and the sepoys. I know that you dream of romantic adventure. I know that duty did not compel you to swim the Kishan and follow me here into this temple. Your blood drives you. Don’t you think I might be the same sort of person? I have island blood too, and in those years on the road I found that I could not master it. I am cast out from my own people.” He lifted his hands again and slowly lowered them. “I must grub about in dung to find my gold. It is pure gold to me to be a leper under that tree, and from a leper’s world--which is himself alone--burst out into other worlds. This is not my first adventure--plot, whatever you like to call it-- but I think it will be my last. I am getting old.”

  Rodney paced uneasily up and down the floor. At one end he looked out on the waste land and the low wall; at the other on the god and the woman locked in stone embrace. The wind of his passing tugged at the flames so that they guttered and puffed in the bowls while distorted shadows crouched across the ceiling. Incense and wood smoke burdened the hot air, and the throb of chanting. From one end he saw the Guru’s straight back and matted hair, and from the other end stared into the man’s eyes.

  They were North Sea eyes, grey English Channel eyes, and indelible on their retinas thirty years of this--fecund squalor, diseased and germinating dust, circling vultures, grey glowing sky, hot rain, and rioting lust, and a silver skin. He was a fresh-faced boy like young Myers, a tall young man in scarlet serge who drank strong rum with a thousand others like him of his regiment, and ate salt beef, and swore monotonous soldiers’ oaths. India touched him, but not with her hot hand of death. That laid the body under a slab in a walled cemetery--distorted, shrunk, discoloured, preserved for ever in its English thoughts. Here lies Private X, H.M. 124th Foot, died of the cholera, on such a day, 1827, in such a year of his age--such a young year. Rodney had seen hundreds of them.

  Those dead were English and would remain English for ever under the Indian sun and the Indian tree. At the end of “for ever” they would be remembered with the men in the sea and the girls under the Devon hill.

  But this tall man would not, because India had touched him and turned his white to silver. Selecting him, she branded him and drew him ashamed out of the English room into the darkness and the glare. After that he could have no master or servant or lover but her, and, because she had caressed him and he carried the mark, her people revered him.

  Rodney felt tears close behind his eyes. The light glinted down the Guru’s back, and a harsh shadowline edged the bony shoulder-blades. India had taken him, given him no choice. As an Indian he was sane and wise and perhaps merciful. Rodney blinked and grated his teeth together; as an Englishman the Guru was perhaps mad, certainly cruel. They were going to kill Sumitra. She had lost control of herself that night in the marquee by the falls and babbled words without meaning: “It’s gone too far, I can’t stop it.” He understood now. She had known about the plot, and by refusing her he had condemned her to death, and her little boy.

  “The Rani asked me to command her army. She knows about your plot. Why doesn’t she get another Englishman instead?”

  “She may know something about it, but she is helpless. At one time she would have taken any Englishman. Now she still hopes that you will change your mind--for reasons which perhaps you know of.”

  Rodney swung once more up and down the room and came to his decision. “Very well. I will now tell her everything that I know. If she wishes, I’ll escort her to safety in British territory. I don’t care what she’s done; she’s not going to be murdered by a bloody little rat like the Dewan. I’ll report to the officer who sent me, of course. If we want you, we’ll get you, wherever you go.”

  For a quarter of an hour something had nagged at the back of his mind, something important to him personally. Now he got it. Every prince in India knew that he owed his own present subordination to the discipline and skill at arms of the Company’s native armies, for without them the British spearhead would have had no shaft. Presumably those qualities would fetch a high price from men plotting to overthrow a prince.

  “Those Native Officers and sepoys--are you people enticing them to desert, to help in your revolution, promising them special privileges--loot, high pay, and so on?”

  “No, sir. They are here in the combined pursuit of sex and salvation, as I told you. They would never desert. You know that.”

  It was true enough. He had seldom heard of a sepoy deserting to take up service in a state, though men pensioned off or for any reason dismissed could usually find a rajah keen to employ them.

  The Silver Guru’s eyes had gone out of focus. There was nothing more to be done here. Rodney had to find the Rani, give her his warning, and swim back across the river. He said, “I’m going, and--can’t I get a doctor to look at you, in Bhowani?”

  He knew no doctor could do anything; the Guru did not answer. Rodney stared helplessly at the scarred back and at last went out on to the waste land. A dog nosed about among the garbage; a man slept, rolled in a sheet, under the low wall. Glancing at the stars, Rodney slipped over into the lane and hurried back the way he had come. The alleys were empty and in themselves silent, but murmuring with diffused noise from the marketplace. Moon shadow painted the walls of the houses dull blue; red bonfire light, reflected from the sky, tinged the roofs and cornices. The marks of coloured water lay red and blue on bolted doors and shuttered windows.

  He walked quickly in the dust under the walls, looked back often, and stopped at each transverse lane. There was no need to be cautious now, but he was on edge and would have liked to run. It was a little before three o’clock; he tried to think what words he would use to Sumitra. Near the edge of the city he paused at a corner and wondered whether he should turn right for the fort.

  A white shape swept round the corner and bumped into him. He gripped tight with his arms, his nerves and muscles contracting. The thing gasped and he saw it was a woman, enveloped from head to foot in a burqa. At. once she snapped upright and whispered fiercely, “Let go, you drunken sot!”

  He knew the voice and the authority in it, and the black glitter behind the coarse netting of the eyepiece. At the same moment she recognized him. He tightened his hold on her elbows and dragged her into a doorway.

  She said softly, “Well?”

  “What are you doing here, Sumitra?”

  For a moment longer she stared at him. He felt her brace her shoulders. She motioned at the splashes of red on his shirt. “It looks as if I am on the same errand as you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Holi, fool!” She trembled under his hand. Her voice hardened, working itself into a quivering anger. “Are you a child? Must I explain in simple words? If you wanted a brown woman, why not me? If I’m not expert enough, if you like the gutter, why didn’t you change your suit? I do.”

  He jerked out his pistol and came to the edge of vomiting. This tender flesh submitted to him--and to every shame of the night. This, that ha
d been jasmine and sandalwood, crept by choice into the darkened temple chambers. Under the burqa she’d wear the dress of a dancing girl, a hereditary harlot, and in the dark no one would see her face.

  He snarled and rammed the pistol into her stomach. Tears watered the blackness of her eyes as his finger itched on the trigger.

  He gritted his teeth. “Tonight--don’t go to your filth. Your Dewan and the Silver Guru are planning to murder you. They have a secret store of arms and have probably suborned your army. Go back to the fort, take your son, and escape into British territory as quickly as you can. There, that’s my duty. You meant something to me, a lot of courage and brightness. I thought I’d behaved like a swine to you--you murderous bitch.”

  He stepped back. As he gauged the distance he saw her eyes were streaming and heard her moan. He smashed his open left hand with all his strength into the side of her head. She fell into the gutter, and lay spread-eagled, crying hopelessly. He tugged the ruby from his finger and flung it at her.

  He turned and ran, his boots echoing in the lane. Images crowded in on him: she lay on the cushions and smelled of musk; she crouched in a darkened temple room, the revellers came, slipped money to the priests, and went into the room; they fumbled at the femaleness of her. Twenty times between now and dawn--the hands, the seeking, the sweaty struggle; peasants hog-drunk and acrid from the plough, syphilitic officers of her army, strong coolies, fat merchants, sepoys. She lay there in the dark and wriggled.

  He panted with the effort of running and the struggle to force down the images and forget. Let these animals drown in the ordure they wallowed in--plot, counterplot, treason, treachery, vice, procurement, murder, dope, sadism. It would end in half of them being disembowelled while the others watched with savage sexual pleasure. Then they’d begin again.

  Where the lane debouched into the fields he met a fat man in white robes. He’d seen him before too; it was the Calcutta merchant who’d been in Bhowani on Monday morning--on his way back east, hurrying now to the temple and the women, and Sumitra. Rodney flung past and ran on, noticing the man’s suddenly taut expression--of course, the pistol was still in his hand. He put it back into the holster.

  Let them all wallow. The red splashes would stain his skin for life. He longed only to get to his bungalow, to burn his clothes, and be again an Englishman, happy and unseeing.

  14

  “And here are the three copies of Captain Savage's report, sir.”

  Major Peckham, immaculate in scarlet and white, fumbled to untie the ribbon binding the roll of papers. Bulstrode waited, his hand out and his little eyes examining the major; he too was wearing the white trousers of hot-weather full dress but he had not put on his tunic. Suddenly he said, “Third button upside down, Major. Don’t let it happen again. Thank you.”

  He took the papers with a flicker of the eyelid at Rodney and sank grunting into a long chair. The others sat down around him--on his left Rodney and the flushing Peckham, on his right Caroline. As the colonel began to glance through the pages of copperplate script, he bawled, “Prunella!”

  The small mouselike noises inside the house stopped, feet scurried down the passage, and Mrs. Bulstrode trotted on to the verandah. She came to her husband’s chair and stood by it, head bowed and hands folded. “Yes, dear?”

  Without looking up, he said, “Breakfast; have it cleared away. And the steak--overdone. Give someone hell.”

  “Yes, dear.” Mrs. Bulstrode hurried back into the house, looking more nervous than ever but not at all ashamed or angry.

  Bulstrode read on, tugging at his ear, while Caroline stared at him, an angry sparkle in her eyes. The bearer took away the dirty dishes; Rodney guessed from the remains that the colonel had breakfasted on mulligatawny soup, beefsteak with devilled kidneys, and a bottle of claret. Mrs. Bulstrode appeared to have had a cup of tea.

  He stared at a bowl of ferns suspended by chains from the ceiling over his head. Screens of coir matting hung down all round, and water dripped from them on to the flags. Outside the sun glared on a dozing garden, but in here there was a dark light, like that of a crypt, and it threw no shadows. A thickness in the air dulled the noises--the swish of water as the watercarrier drenched the screens, the squeaking of a punkah inside the house, the tapping of a woodpecker at a tree. Bulstrode’s shirt was wet and drops of sweat formed on his bald head and ran down his face into his beard; a servant boy stood behind his chair, fanning him with a hand fan made of plaited grass, wafting the rank smell of his shirt over the others; the bearer reappeared and put a plate of Nagpur oranges on the table. Bulstrode laid the papers aside and began to peel an orange.

  “Feeling better, Savage? Dead beat yesterday, weren’t you?”

  “I was tired, sir.”

  Today was April the eleventh, a Saturday. After his encounter with Sumitra at the edge of Kishanpur City, he’d reached the half-squad in their jungle bivouac at four on Thursday morning. He’d slept most of that day, set out for Bhowani at four in the afternoon, and arrived at three o’clock on Friday morning. Four hours later he had come here to Bulstrode’s bungalow to make his report, and the colonel had sent for Caroline and Peckham to hear it too. He’d been tired all right then; he had ridden a hundred and thirty miles in temperatures between 90 and 105 in the shade, besides swimming the Kishan twice. But it was not physical fatigue which made his face in the mirror haggard and set lines of strain round the corners of his mouth. He’d explored an underworld of emotion, and he carried the marks of his experience. He had thought the others would not notice, but Bulstrode’s eyes were always shrewd, and the girl had unpredictable flashes of sympathy; they had both detected his exhaustion of spirit. That was yesterday; today he felt less tired, but more apathetic. Action was over; Bulstrode had spent a day and a night thinking what he should do. Now they were gathered at his bungalow to hear his decision.

  Bulstrode said, “You were more than tired, boy. You did well, spite of disobeying orders. About this report--you sure the Rani understands those fellahs are after her blood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Yesterday he had said only that he had warned the Rani of her danger; he had not mentioned the place and other circumstances of their meeting. He did not meet the colonel’s glance, and noticed that in this light the blue veins were very prominent on the back of Caroline’s hand.

  “Good. Don’t want to feel we murdered her. Now she can stew in her own juice, or stew t’others in theirs, hey? Probably strung up a few score of those fellahs already, if you ask me.”

  A servant came out and picked the pieces of orange peel off the floor, where Bulstrode was throwing them as he ate. He went on, between chews.

  “Pity you didn’t get a chance to talk with Purshottam Dass--head Brahmin of the temple there, the fat fellah with the red line down his forehead. They’re Shaivas in that temple--that is, credit Shiva as chief power of creation and reproduction, as well as destruction; have a wonderful old illuminated copy of the Shiva Purana--lists a thousand and eight names of Shiva. See the frieze of demons, the Pramathas? Best piece of carving between Delhi and Nagpur; the stone damn well moves as you look at it. Pity! Still, I s’pose you were busy. Right.

  “I’ve read that report carefully. Situation is this. Either Silver Guru, or Private Whatever-his-name-is, is lying--or he’s telling the truth, eh? Let’s say he’s telling the truth. Then we go to Dellamain. He’ll swear it’s all official and aboveboard, but far too secret to explain to women and clods of soldiers like us--and, by God, he may be right. Often these fellahs--commissioners, collectors, residents--have to guess what policy is, and act on their own initiative and judgment. If they guess wrong--worst of all, if they ask too many questions upstairs and force the fellahs above ‘em to do the Christian thing--then they get a pat on the back and a twenty-year stretch as Collector of Rumblebellypore. Remember Dellamain must have one miscue chalked up against him already, or he wouldn’t be in this hole, with his brains.

  “What that comes to is
this: leave ‘em all alone if we possibly can. We’re soldiers, just the business end of this damn great engine; keep our fingers out of the guts of it or God knows what’ll happen. I don’t care a damn if Dellamain takes bribes from here to doomsday--and that Rani deserves to be murdered!

  “My duty is to make sure Dellamain knows the facts, and to pass report on privately to the general. Then Dellamain can do what he likes--competent to take any action he thinks fit. Don’t forget this territory is leased; there’s never been a Resident at Kishanpur, so the Commissioner here does a job that’s normally two different people’s. The general can do what he likes; may write a note to the Chief, to the effect that he hears something funny’s going on in Kishanpur. You can see what happens then--note goes across to Lieutenant Governor, down to Dellamain, all very guarded. Answer--a lemon. Right. That’s all on the assumption that the Guru’s telling the truth.

  “Now let’s say he’s lying, that the guns are not for the Dewan’s plot. This we have to think about, because Dellamain wouldn’t know. They could he to him just as easily as to you--easier. Then who in God’s name are the guns for? Only one sensible answer: the state, the Rani, the Dewan in his official position. What for? Three answers: one, face; two, fear; three, ambition. Face--the bigger a rajah’s guns, the bigger the rajah. But they all know it’s too damned dangerous these days to smuggle in guns just for prestige. So that’s out. Fear--who are they afraid of? Us. A few piddling guns won’t help. Another state? They know we’d never allow states to have private wars. So that’s out. Ambition --who are they going to attack? Another state? We won’t let ‘em. Us? It’s fantastic. Goddam it, all the states in the Presidency couldn’t stand for five minutes against the Bengal Army, and they know it. Any of those things are possible, but they’re so unlikely that the Silver Guru’s story is almost certainly true. Don’t forget he’s English--mad, of course, but if any of these other theories are true he’d be aiding and abetting treason. No Englishman in India can be a traitor, however mad--never has, never will be. Another point: they didn’t try to kill you, Savage. They would have if there’d been something as important as treason to shelter. . . .”