The Year of Rice and Salt

by Kim Stanley Robinson

  Eventually it grew quiet. The hunters left the scene. When they had been gone a long time, and the ordinary shush of the jungle had returned, Kya shifted onto her paws and looked around. The air reeked of blood, and her mouth watered. Dead bodies lay on both banks of the river, and were caught on snags against the banks of the stream, or had rolled into shallows. The tiger padded among them cautiously, pulled a large one into the shadows and ate some of it. But she was not very hungry. A noise caused her to slink swiftly back into the shadows, hair erect on her back, looking for the source of the sound, which had been a cracked branch. Now a footfall, over there. Ah. A human, still standing. A survivor.

  Kya relaxed. Sated already, she approached the man out of no more than curiosity. He saw her and jumped backwards, startling her; his body had done it without his volition. He stood there looking at her in the way hurt animals sometimes did, accepting their fate; only in this one's face there was also a little roll of the eyes, as if to say, what else could go wrong, or, not this too. It was a gesture so like that of the girls she had watched gathering wood in the forest that she paused, unllungry. The hunters who had ambushed this man's group still occupied the trail to the nearest village. He would soon be caught and killed.

  He expected her to do it. Humans were so sure of themselves, so sure they had the world worked out and were lords of it all. And with their monkey numbers and their arrows, so often they were right. This as much as anything was why she killed them when she did. They were a scrawny meal in all truth, which of course was not the main consideration, many a tiger had died trying to reach the tasty flesh of the porcupine; but humans tasted strange. With the things they ate, it was no surprise.

  The confounding thing would be to help him; so she padded to his side. His teeth chattered with his trembling. He was no longer stunned, but holding his place on purpose. She nosed up one of his hands, rested it on her head between her ears. She held still until he stroked her head, then moved until he was stroking between her shoulders, and she was standing by his side, facing the same direction. Then very slowly she began to walk, indicating by her speed that he should come along. He did, hand stroking her back with every step.

  She led him through the sal forest. Sunlight blinked through trees onto them. There was a sudden noise and clatter, then voices from the trail below, in the trees, and the hand clutched at her fur. She stopped and listened. Voices of the people-hunters. She growled, then coughed deeply, then gave a short roar.

  Dead silence from below. In the absence of an organized beat, no human could find her up here. Sounds of them hurrying off came to her on the wind.

  The way was now free. The man's hand was clenched in the fur between her shoulderblades. She turned her head and nuzzled his shoulder and he let go. He was more afraid of the other men than of her, which showed sense. He was like a helpless cub in some ways, but quick. Her own mother had held her by biting the same fold of skin between the shoulderblades that he had seized, and at the same pressure – as if he too had once been a tigress mother, and was making an unremembered appeal to her.

  She walked the man slowly to the next ford, across it and along one of the deer trails. Wapiti were bigger than humans, and it was an easy trail. She took him to one of her entrances to the big nullah of the region, a steep and narrow ravine, so precipitous and cragbound that its floor was only accessible at a couple of points. This was one, and she led the man down to the ravine floor, then downstream towards a village where the people smelled much like he did. The man had to walk fast to match her gait, but she did not slow down. Only a few pools dotted the ravine floor, as it had been hot for a long time. Springs dripped over ferny rockfalls. As they padded and stumbled along she thought about it, and seemed to recall a hut, near the edge of the village she was headed for, that had smelled almost exactly like him. She led him through a dense grove of date palms filling the floor of the nullah, then still denser clumps of bamboo. Green coverts of jaman fruit bushes covered the sides of the ravine, mixed with the ber thorn bush, dotted with its acid orange fruit.

  A gap in this fragrant shrubbery led her up and out of the nullah. She sniffed, a male tiger had been here recently, spraying the exit from the nullah to mark it as his. She growled, and the man clutched the fur between her shoulders again, held on for help as she climbed the last pitch out.

  Back in the forested hills flanking the nullah, angling uphill, she had to nudge him with her shoulder – he wanted to contour the slope, or go directly down to the village, not up and around to it. A few bumps from her and he gave that up, and followed her without resistance. Now he had a male tiger to avoid too, but he did not know that.

  She led him through the ruins of an old hill fort, overgrown with bamboo, a place that humans avoided, and that she had made her lair several winters running. She had borne her cubs here, near the human village and among human ruins, to make them safer from male tigers. The man recognized the place, and calmed down. They continued on towards the backside of the village.

  At his pace it was a long way. His body hung from his joints, and she saw how hard it must be to walk on two feet. Never a moment's rest, always balancing, falling forwards and catching himself, as if always crossing a log over a creek. Shaky as a new cub, blind and wet.

  But they reached the village margin, a barley field rippling in the afternoon light, and stopped in the last elephant grass under the sal trees. The barley field had furrows of earth into which they poured water,

  Clever monkeys that they were, tiptoeing through life in their perpetual balancing act.

  At the sight of the field, the exhausted creature looked up and around. He led the tiger now, around the field, and Kya followed him closer to the village than she would have dared in most situations, though the afternoon's mix of sun and shadow provided her with maximum cover, rendering her nearly invisible to others, a mere mind ripple in the landscape, if she moved quickly. But she had to keep to his faltering pace. It took a bit of boldness; but there were bold tigers and timid tigers, and she was one of the bold ones.

  Finally she stopped. A hut lay before them, under a pipal tree. The man pointed it out to her. She sniffed; it was his home, sure enough. He whispered in his language, gave her a final squeeze expressing his gratitude, and then he was stumbling forwards through the barley, in the last stages of exhaustion. When he reached the door there were cries from inside, and a woman and two children rushed out and hugged him. But then to the tiger's surprise an older man strode out heavily and beat him across the back, several heavy blows.

  The tiger settled down to watch.

  The older man refused to allow her refugee into the hut. The woman and children brought out food to him. Finally he curled up outside the door, on the ground, and slept.

  Through the following days he remained in disfavour with the old man, though he fed at the house, and worked in the fields around it. Kya watched and saw the pattern of his life, strange as it was. It seemed also that he had forgotten her; or would not risk the jungle to come out and look for her. Or did not imagine she was still there, perhaps.

  She was surprised, therefore, when he came out one dusk with his hands held before him, a bird carcass plucked and cooked, it appeared even boned! He walked right to her, and greeted her very quietly and respectfully, holding out the offering. He was tentative, frightened; he did not know that when her whiskers were down she was feeling relaxed. The offered titbit smelled of its own hot juices, and some other mix of scents – nutmeg, lavender – she took it gently in her mouth and let it cool, tasting it between her teeth as it dripped hot on her tongue. A very odd perfumed meat. She chewed it, growling a little purr growl, and swallowed. He said his farewells and backed away, returning to the hut.

  After that she came by from time to time in the lancing horizontal light of sunrise, when he was going off to work. After a while he usually came out with a gift for her, some scrap or morsel, nothing like the bird, but tastier than it had been, simple uncooked bits of meat; s
omehow he knew. He still slept outside the hut, and one cold night she slunk in and slept curled around him, till dawn greyed the skies. The monkeys in the trees were scandalized.

  Then the old man beat him again, hard enough to make him bleed from one car. Kya went off to her hill fort then, growling and making long scratches in the ground. The huge mohua tree on the hill was dropping its great weight of flowers, and she ate some of the fleshy, intoxicating petals. She returned to the village perimeter, and deliberately sniffed out the old man, and found him on the well-travelled road to the village west of theirs. He had met several other men there, and they talked for a long time, drinking fermented drinks and getting drunk. He laughed like her kol bahl.

  On his way home she struck him down and killed him with a bite to the neck. She ate part of his entrails, tasting again all the strange tastes; they ate such odd things that they ended up tasting peculiar themselves, rich and various. Not unlike the first offering her young man had brought out to her. An acquired taste; and perhaps she had acquired it.

  Other people were hurrying towards them now, and she slipped away, hearing behind her their cries, shocked and then dismayed, although with that note of triumph or celebration one often heard in monkeys relating bad news – that whatever it was, it hadn't happened to them.

  No one would care about that old man, he had left this life as lonely as a male tiger, unregretted even by those in his own hut. It was not his death but the presence of a man eating tiger that these people lamented. Tigers who learned to like manfiesh were dangerous; usually they were mothers who were having trouble feeding their cubs, or old males who had broken their fangs; so that they were likely to do it often. Certainly a campaign to exterminate her would now begin. But she did not regret the killing. On the contrary, she leapt through the trees and shadows like a young tigress just out on her own, licking her chops and growling. Kya, Queen of the jungle!

  But the next time she came to visit her young man, he brought out a morsel of goat meat, and then tapped her gently on the nose, talking very seriously. He was warning ber of something, and was worried that the details of the warning were escaping her, which they were. Next time she came by he shouted at her to leave, and even threw rocks at her, but it was too late; she hit a trip line connected to spring loaded bows, and poisoned arrows pierced her and she died.

  Four. Akbar

  As they carried the body of the tigress into the village, four men working hard, huffing and puffing under its weight as it swung by its tied paws from a stout bamboo bouncing on their shoulders, Bistami understood: God is in all things. And God, may all his ninety nine names prosper and fall into our souls, did not want any killing. From the doorway of his older brother's hut, Bistami shouted through his tears, 'She was my sister, she was my aunt, she saved me from the Hindu rebels, you ought not to have killed her, she was protecting us all!'

  But of course no one was listening. No one understands us, not ever.

  And it was perhaps just as well, given that this tigress had undoubtedly killed his brother. But he would have given his brother's life ten times over for the sake of that tiger.

  Despite himself he followed the procession into the village centre. Everyone was drinking rahkshi, and the drummers were running out of their homes with their drums, pounding happily. 'Kya Kya Kya Kya, leave us alone forevermore!' A tiger holiday was upon them, and the rest of the day and perhaps the next would be devoted to the impromptu festivalizing. They would burn its whiskers to make sure that its soul would not pass into a killer in another world. The whiskers were poisonous: one ground up in tiger meat would kill a man, while a whole one placed inside a tender bamboo shoot would give those who ate it cysts, leading to a slower death. Or so it was said. The hypochondriacal Chinese believed in the efficacious properties of almost everything, including every part of tigers, it seemed. Much of the body of this Kya would be saved and taken north by traders, no doubt. The skin would go to the zamindar.

  Bistami sat miserably on the ground at the edge of the village centre. There was no one to explain himself to. He had done everything he could to warn the tigress off, but to no avail. He had addressed her not as Kya but as madam, or Madam Thirty, which was what the villagers called tigers when they were out in the jungle, so as not to offend them. He had given her offerings, and checked to make sure that the markings on her forehead did not form the letter 's', a sign that the beast was a were-tiger, and would change to human form for good at the moment of death. That had not happened, and indeed there had been no 's' on her forehead; the mark was more like a birdwing in flight. He had kept eye contact with ber, as one is supposed to do when coming on tigers unexpectedly; he had stayed calm, and been saved by her from death. Indeed all the stories he had heard of helpful tigers – the one that had led two lost children back to the village, the one who had kissed a sleeping hunter on the cheek – all these stories paled in comparison to his, although they had prepared him as well. She had been his sister, and now he was distraught with grief.

  The villagers began to dismember her body. Bistami left the village, unable to watch. His brutal older brother was dead; his other relatives, like his brother, had no sympathy for his sufi interests. 'The high look to the high, and so they can see each other from a great distance off.' But he was so far away from anyone of wisdom, he could see nothing at all. He remembered what his sufi master Tutsami had told him when he left Allahabad: 'Keep the haj in your heart, and make your way to Mecca as Allah wills it. Slow or fast, but always on your tariqat, the path to enlightenment.'

  He gathered his few possessions in his shoulder bag. The death of the tiger began to take on the cast of a destiny, a message to Bistami, to accept the gift of God and put it to use in his actions, and regret nothing. So that now it was time to say Thank you God, thank you Kya my sister, and leave his home village for ever.

  Bistami walked to Agra, and there he spent the last of his money to buy a sufi wanderer's robe. He asked for shelter in the sufi lodge, a long old building in the southernmost district of the old capital, and he bathed in their pool, purifying himself inside and out.

  Then he left the city and walked out to Fatepur Sikri, the new capital of Akbar's empire. He saw that the not yet completed city replicated in stone the vast tent camps of Mughal armies, even down to marble pillars standing free of the walls, like tent poles. The city was dusty, or muddy, its white stone already stained. The trees were all short, the gardens raw and new. The long wall of the Emperor's palace fronted the great avenue that bisected the city north and south, leading to a big marble mosque, and a dargah Bistami had heard about in Agra, the tomb of the sufi saint Shaikh Salim Chishti. At the end of his long life Chishti had instructed the young Akbar, and now his memory was said to be Akbar's strongest link to Islam. And this same Chishti in his youth had travelled in Iran, and studied under Shah Esmail, who had also instructed Bistami's master Tutsami.

  So Bistami approached Chishti's great white tomb walking backwards, and reciting from the Quran. 'In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful. Be patient with those who call upon their Lord at morn and even, seeking his face: and let not thine eyes be turned away from them in quest of the pomp of this life; neither obey him whose heart we have made careless of the remembrance of Us, and who followeth his own lusts, and whose ways are unbridled.'

  At the entry he prostrated himself towards Mecca and said the morning prayer, then entered the walled in courtyard of the tomb, and made his tribute to Chishti. Others were doing the same, of course, and when he had finished paying his respects he spoke to some of them, describing his journey all the way back to his time in Iran, eliding the stops along the way. Eventually he told this tale to one of the ulama of Akbar's own court, and emphasized his master's relation by teaching to Chishti, and returned to his prayers. He came back to the tomb day after day, establishing a routine of prayer, purification rites, the answering of questions from pilgrims who spoke only Persian, and socializing with all the people visiting t
he shrine. This finally led to the grandson of Chishti speaking to him, and this man then spoke well of him to Akbar, or so he heard. He ate his one meal a day at the sufi lodge, and persevered, hungry but hopeful.

  One morning at the very first light, when he was already in the tomb's courtyard at prayers, the Emperor Akbar himself came in to the shrine, and took up an ordinary broom, and swept the courtyard. It was a cool morning, the night chill still in the air, and yet Bistami was sweating as Akbar finished his devotions, and Chishti's grandson arrived, and asked Bistami to come when he had finished his prayers, to be introduced.

  'A great honour,' he replied, and returned to his prayers, murmuring them thoughtlessly as the things he might say raced through his head; and he wondered how long he should delay before approaching the Emperor, to show that prayer came first. The tomb was still relatively empty and cool, the sun just rising. When it cleared the trees entirely, Bistami stood and walked to the Emperor and Chishti's grandson, and bowed deeply. Greeting, obeisances, and then he was obeying a polite request to tell his story to the watchful young man in the imperial finery, whose unblinking gaze never left his face, or indeed his eyes. Study in Iran with Tutsami, pilgrimage to Qom, return home, a year's work as a teacher of the Quran in Gujarat, a journey to visit his family, ambush by Hindu rebels, salvation by tiger: by the end of the story Bistami had been approved, he could see it.

  'We welcome you,' Akbar said. The whole city of Fatepur Sikri served to show how devout he was, as well as displaying his ability to create devotion in others. Now he had seen Bistami's devotion, exhibited in all the forms of piety, and as they continued their conversation, and the tomb began to fill with the day's visitors, Bistami managed to lead the discussion to the one hadith he knew that had come by way of Chishti to Iran, so that the isnad, or genealogy of the phrase, made a short link between his education and the Emperor's.