by John Masters
Robin said very clearly, “Pigeon going do maila man’s head.”
The pigeon did. The audience dissolved in near-hysterical laughter, and there were tears and threats of thrashings. The flocks of ayahs waddled round the corner of the Club, quacking stridently. “Sarhe chhe, baba, ghusl, mm, sab hogya, baba.” Half-past six, baby, bathtime, bedtime, all finished, baby.
Robin was lead away, monotonously chanting, “Pigeon do did maila man’s head.” Rodney followed them to the victoria; he’d call for Boomerang in a minute and ride after them. He glanced up and thought they were in for a dust storm, for the sky had turned dark and the leaves were very still. Joanna came, to tell him that she wanted to stay and talk with Mrs. Cumming about a sewing bee next Wednesday, and would he leave the carriage for her. Ayah could wait too. That was fine; Rodney would take Robin back on his saddlebow.
The Atkinson twins and little Ursula Herrold found the four sepoys who had stayed to watch the party, and danced round them hand in hand, begging pickaback rides in a last desperate ruse to escape from their ayahs. Naik Parasiya had returned for some reason, and watched with a tortured face and pinched nostrils. Rodney thought of ordering the man to report sick, he looked so ill.
But suddenly he was stiff and tired and did not care. Everyone had enjoyed himself after his own fashion, and it was time to go home. The excitement of the Kishanpur affair had not died with the meeting at Dellamain’s, as Rodney had persuaded himself it would; as long as Caroline Langford was here he half-expected some new vivid mystery. She was the thread running through it all--even in his weeks in Kishanpur he had been trying to prove to himself that she was wrong; so she had been a presence looking over his shoulder all the time, staring down even into Sumitra’s gaping face to see if there was murder there. He had seen her for the last time now, and the thread was broken.
He hefted Robin on to the front arch of Boomerang’s saddle and swung up behind him. Crooking his right arm round his son, he felt the thin shoulders wriggle ecstatically. This was the joy that is perfect because it has no memories. This child, this joy, was two; and he was thirty-one. Time to go home, time to relax and let age come, time to sink into the secure infinity of cold weathers, hot weathers, rains, as the sun was sinking into the hills of Lalkot. But the sun would rise again and make a million bright mornings. The weight of the unseen years settled briefly on him, and he shivered.
16
The sun sank as a dark red disc from which ragged pennants of green, gold, blue, and saffron trailed across the lower sky. The glow died out of the dusty heat haze, leaving the air dead. The dust storm passed by to the south, but the threat of it made the twilight black and electric. Then the word passed. It was not even yet an exact word, but a curse and a warning: This is the night. The word ran across the plains, leaped wide rivers, and raced through the jungles as a fire races under dry leaves. A woman tapped on a city wall and whispered it to her neighbour. One man cried it to another as their bullock carts passed in the fields. It set out at sunset from every place where sepoys were stationed; it travelled in every direction; and before the morning of Sunday, May 10, 1857, it had crossed and re-crossed itself many times. People hurried home when they heard it, or bolted their doors, and waited. They did not know who was threatened this night, but it might be they. Some prayed; some shrugged; few went abroad.
Shivarao Bholkar, Dewan of Kishanpur, held the queen of spades in his hand, but revoked by playing the king of diamonds. Suddenly he said, “I can’t play any more. This is the night.” Prithvi Chand grinned and said, “Night for what, Excellence?” and began to sing softly that Pathan love song which is called “The Wounded Heart” and whose words begin: There’s a boy across the river with a bottom like a peach. . . . The Dewan threw the cards in his face, and he stopped singing. The Dewan jumped to his feet, stood near the light, and stared down into Prithvi’s face, saying, “This is the night. Do you mean you never knew? We’ve succeeded better than we hoped. I’ll tell you. Tonight the English are going to die, all of them. The sepoys are going to mutiny and kill them. Tomorrow the name Kishanpur will mean again something it used to mean--something India’s forgotten, yes, even you’ve forgotten. No one will sneer behind my back after tonight. Perhaps I won’t stay awake at night. Perhaps I won’t think of my mother every minute of every night. I’ve prayed for this, and now--God, I want to be able to sleep.” Prithvi Chand’’s fat face quivered, and the puzzled expression dissolved from it. He began to shake all over and said in a cramped voice, “All of them? The women and children? Captain Savage? Murdered in the dark? Oh, India! India’ “ The Dewan said, “Tonight, I know what you feel like. Tomorrow, I won’t.” He walked slowly out of the room; Prithvi Chand bowed his head over the scattered cards and began to weep.
The Silver Guru waited until he could no longer see the steps at the edge of the river, close to his left hand. No crowd was gathered under his peepul, and the Pike was deserted, north and south. The air was so still and the land so hushed that he could hear the Cavershams and their guests singing “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes” in the cantonments up the road. He rose, picked up his bowl, and strode due east across the fields, looking to neither the right nor the left.
Piroo the carpenter lit a lamp in his tiny hut. He moved with purpose and twice glanced out of the only window, a grimy square of glass in the back wall. He took off the old green trousers and tied on a dirty loincloth. His legs were long for his height, and very thin. He tucked a black silk kerchief, nearly three feet square, inside the loincloth so that only an inch at one corner showed. He pulled a wooden box out from under the string bed, unlocked it, and extracted a small pickaxe, oiled and bright-clean, with a light straight two-foot helve. He put his hand on the bolt of the door and in that instant cringed and became another man--the man the sepoys knew and never noticed. This man opened the door and shuffled across the square, across the Pike, and on due east across the fields, looking to neither the right nor the left.
At ten o’clock the word came to Mehnat Ram, once a subadar-major of Bengal Native Infantry, now retired. He was ninety-three years old, and lay on a cot in the front room of his house by the road from Bhowani to Kishanpur. His skin was brown, shiny, and paper-thin, and knots stood out at every joint; he was naked except for a pair of cotton drawers. A man, late in from the city, ran by and whispered the word to the old man’s granddaughter. She was fifty, and lived here with her husband, tilling the land she hoped to inherit. The subadar-major heard too, for he was not asleep. He lay awhile trying to think, but always after ten or fifteen seconds his thoughts would go off on a foolish tangent--his cows . . . seed for the winter sowing . . . oil for his pyre . . . the handful of parched lentils he’d shared with the little Ensign-sahib by the breach at Turkhipura. What a night that was! Couldn’t remember the Ensign’s name--Eshmit, Eshmooi, Eshmyte, something like that. This is the night. He got up and fumbled into his old scarlet uniform coat; the trousers had long since rotted away, but his white drawers would have to do; no boots either--slippers with turned-up toes. His sword hung on the wall below a steel engraving of Lord Lake. One of the sahibs in the regiment had given it to him when he retired--a tall thin sahib. Couldn’t remember his name. This is the night, serious work afoot . . .The black calf, something wrong with its near fore--bitten by a jackal? By the gods, he couldn’t help that now; they’d want someone to guard the barrack stores and perhaps the women and children while the sahibs led the young sepoys off. No one would care about his low caste at a time like this . . .Priests, money to the priests or they’d never burn him properly. He pushed off his granddaughter’s arm. “Fool girl, stay here with that other woman you call your husband, and guard my estate. Man’s work afoot tonight!” He hurried west across the dark fields towards Bhowani. Might be Lalkot cavalry vedettes on the road, or those dogs from Kishanpur --high time they were all wiped out. He knew the fields as he knew his veined hand; he felt fine . . .Sholingur, Bhurtpore, the frowning might of Gwalior ahead, Lord La
ke; Cud’dalore, and the dark 24th and the white English soldiers, storming shoulder to shoulder--young blood, rivers of fire, the glacis’ slope and the rockets’ glare.
The word passed through the lines of the regiments. It had started there, but few knew that--except, in each company and squadron, one or two knew. The sepoys gathered in barrack rooms where the lights were out or dimmed and the windows covered by sacking. No air moved, and the night temperature was 105. They strained sweating against one another and whispered, “What’s happening? What’s happening?” The fear and the heat melted the barriers of rank. In the dark ovens they did not always recognize who it was that talked and took the lead, but in each gathering one man did--among others, Jemadar Pir Baksh of the 60th and Naik Parasiya of the 13th. The speaker’s voice was always taut and urgent; the hearers were afraid already and became terrified. The voice said, “This is the night. Shiva-- or Allah--has promised destruction, and this is the night. The Silver Guru said, ‘Until God’s promised destruction strikes the wicked.’ Who are the wicked? We are the wicked because we have not defended our gods. The English have hanged Brahmins, stripped our princes, attacked our gods in their temples--and we have done nothing. We have helped them. Now they are going to kill us. They do not need us any more. They are going to kill us, for only we can protect the old gods they despise. We’ve whispered it and warned you, and you would not believe. Now they’ve started--yes, yes, they’ve started, haven’t you heard? They disarmed our brothers at Gondwara last night and blew them to pieces with the guns, and the English soldiers shot them down. That is why the word is out. The guns are coming up the Pike now, and the English soldiers, coming up for us.” The hearers jostled and muttered to each other, “I’m going mad in this heat. I can’t believe it. Gosse-sahib? Savage-sahib? Caversham-sahib? Going to kill us!” “It’s true, I tell you. Step by step they’ve trodden us down. They will make us sail the Black Water, they will take away all our old rights as they took away the field allowances. You must believe or you will die, all of us die, die defiled. Remember Manga! Pande. They lied; we know the cartridges are greased with defilement; we know. They killed Mangal Pande and hunted his comrades down. They have two of our brothers in the Eighty-eighth’s guardroom now. They will kill them when the guns come, and scatter us in the fields and murder us with the guns. Can’t you read the messages? Kill or be killed. Do you want to die sewn up in a pigskin, and spat upon? Kill or be killed. The guns are coming up the Pike now, galloping all night. Can’t you read the messages? A chupatti in five parts, signifying the fifth month. A chupatti in ten parts, for the tenth day. Flesh, white-skinned on one side, raw on the other--a big piece for a sahib, a smaller piece for a memsahib, and a little piece for a child. On May tenth kill all the white skins--or they kill us!” . . . I’ll die, lower than a sweeper, defiled, hopeless for eternity. I’ve been in here for hours and I’m going mad. I sweat and tremble, and a hundred eyes roll, and we gnash our teeth. The guns are galloping up the Pike. Out of here, get out of here, for any sake get out! “We are the masters. Remember the snows in Afghanistan and the way we died, though they led us. Remember Chillianwallah. They are not gods. Get them together. We will burn the court to get them out, and kill them there. Kill the others in their bungalows. Kill the sahibs you do not know, that pity may not stay your hand. Pity--and die. Remember Mangal Pande. Haven’t we wives and children? Who is not with us is against us. Arm yourselves. Run, run to the court. This way. Come with me; you to the court, you to this bungalow, you to that. Be silent and hurry. Remember Mangal Pande. That will be the sign, listen for it, wait for it--’Remember Mangal Pande!’”
Rodney awoke at midnight from a light sleep. The threatened dust storm had decided them to sleep inside the house. Beyond the open windows his garden lay breathless under a full moon. By the far wall the leaves on the two peepul trees stirred, and their shadow was a patterned carpet across lawn and flowerbeds. Inside the room each piece of furniture shimmered in the half-light.
Joanna lay beside him under the sheet. Her mouth was open, and her hair spread in a yellow aureole over the pillow. Her face glistened with sweat. The moonglow, reflected from the white walls and high ceiling, smoothed out the lines of self-pity drawn in her face, and softened the pout of her lips. He looked at a ghost, pale, ethereal, and remote from all human passions. The quick shallow intake of her breathing raised her breasts under the sheet. This was his wife for ever, Robin’s mother, a woman asleep, and he did not love her.
He lowered his feet to the floor, found his slippers, and poured out a glass of cold water from the earthenware jar on the table. Robin might be awake; when the moon shone he sometimes lay in his cot and stared at the walls or out at the trees.
Rodney walked quietly along into the next room. Ayah was there, asleep on her bed, her head wrapped in the end of her sari. He stared at the shapeless white bundle; she wouldn’t stir if the house took fire over her. He bent smiling over Robin’s cot. The eyes came round, huge baby eyes still, and stared back briefly; then turned away and up at the ceiling, and the mouth smiled at a secret joke. His father kissed him, and he closed his eyes at once.
Rodney went back to the big room and slipped into bed. Sweat trickled down his back and between his thighs. The moon shone like a night sun--not clear and cold but thick and living. Robin had been good at the party. He’d never been to a big one before, and considering the rumpus he’d done very well not to get over-excited or throw a tantrum. He’d made a consul’s triumph out of that homeward ride on the saddlebow, bouncing up and down, laughing, shouting in Hindustani to his friends the sepoys as they passed along the cantonment roads. The men usually gave him a grinning mock salute, and said “Salaam, buddha sahib,” but they hadn’t this time. They’d been too busy stiffening into a real salute for Rodney. Buddha--”old.” Sometimes the child did behave like a miniature patriarch; that was the pet name Rambir had given him when, as a baby, he used to wear such a puckered and care-worn frown.
Suddenly a sick emptiness of love ached in the pit of his stomach--for his son, who was two and had a halo round his ash curls; to keep the lights for ever in his hair and in his eyes, to have him live for ever, and for ever be a little boy riding his father’s horse in the crook of his father’s arm.
The sheet burned and he could not sleep. He lay still while his thoughts wandered. In the evening he had mentioned that Caroline Langford was leaving Bhowani. Joanna had said, “Of course. She’s seen she can’t get de Forrest, and she can’t get you.” When he asked her what she meant, she said, “Didn’t you see her face when she was looking at you and Robin? She’s a wicked, jealous woman.”
He tried again to recall the girl’s expression; it had been strange, and frighteningly hurt--but not jealous, for God’s sake. He wondered suddenly about Caroline’s body, her thighs. Breathless, he turned over and held the sheet in both hands. Christ, Christ, the sword was in his loins; was this to be his punishment?
He looked out of the window. The garden sprawled in the heat of the moon. Below Joanna’s breathing he could distinguish no other separate noise, and yet the night shuddered and a pulse of sound made the leaves tremble. He closed his eyes.
Joanna. She was not perfect, but nor was he. He believed there was an Eternal Witness, and tried to live as a man should. She called him unstable and hairbrained, and cried that he would never amount to anything. He’d never be the sort of husband she had grown to want--nor she the wife.
Robin would have to go home in ‘60 or ‘61. Joanna’s mother had a room for him in the house outside Balham, but he’d be all right in India for another three years, no more; he looked pale. Joanna could take him up to Simla next hot weather, or there was that new little place he’d heard Max Bell mention--Almora; that would be much cheaper. Then, if he borrowed more, or went on the staff, he could take them both home when he went on furlough in ‘60 and leave them there when he came back. Eighteen-sixty. That would make thirteen years in India without a break. His father had done forty-
four and died here, burned out. Forty-four years was too long. His father could have taken furlough several times; perhaps forty-four years passed in a flash when you were crusading as he had against the Thugs. Perhaps you thought of nothing but the task in front of you, and it concentrated you and kept a lire burning in you, and you were happy. Me Lords, Ladies, h’and Gennel-men--Colonel William Savage, the Destroyer h’of Thuggee! H’and ‘is son, Captain Rodney Savage, the Meddler of Kishanpur! He chuckled to himself.
He wanted to sleep. Long ago the Native Officers and sepoys of his company had arranged an open-air party for tomorrow, the tenth, and had invited him. Their caste laws forbade him to eat with them--they didn’t even eat with each other for that matter--but he would come later, in time to watch the amateur juggling and listen to the stories. They’d smoke rolled-leaf cigarettes and hookahs, and talk about crops and cattle. All parties in the lines had a pleasant sameness, and he knew already that he would sit sedately on a hard chair at Subadar Narain’s right hand and listen and nod. The sepoys would be full of chupattis and lentils, and content. Rambir, his batman, who had never hurt a fly, would tell again how he strangled the huge Sikh gunner at the battle of Chillianwallah, and everyone would laugh because they liked old jokes the best. Narain would talk about the Afghan War of ‘39 when he had been a mere three-striped havildar; about the snow in the northwestern passes in ‘42. He would relate what he had said to General Napier, what General Wellesley said to his father, how his grandfather lost an arm at Plassey fighting against the British. Plassey, June 23, 1757, where Clive established the foundations of an empire--and Jonathan Savage with him --almost exactly a hundred years ago.