by Dan Vyleta
“A production plant of sin! What a precise definition of our colony.” Mr. Singh barks out a laugh and nearly chokes himself on his biscuit. “Did you picture giant torture chambers? Or some synthetic mode of production? Sterile vats and native engineers, stirring the soup, as it were?”
Thomas shrugs. “I don’t know what I pictured. I just tried to make sense of it. Of the Storm’s darkness. Of its hate. In the Britain I grew up in, vice was something for the cities. People produced it. So that’s what I pictured: a factory compound in one of your metropolises; abandoned, now that the price of sin has plummeted.
“When I got to Bombay, however, and people made inquiries for me about who was spending what money, all this turned out to be nonsense. Someone was putting an expedition together. Adventurers, mercenaries, mountaineers. Maps; experimental new equipment for high-altitude climbing. They were headed to the mountains. North, that is. Apparently there had been an earlier expedition, eleven or so years ago. Now they were retracing its steps. But they were not heading there directly. Something was missing, some piece of information. They were looking for someone, a Hindustani. He used to be in the colonial service; a surveyor and cartographer in the western Himalayas. But then he quit his job rather suddenly, and disappeared.” Thomas pauses, his eyes on the maps gracing the walls. “They spent a fortune to trace you here, Mr. Singh. I need to know what they did once they found you.”
Still Singh hesitates, his fingers around his glass. His demeanour is cool, withdrawn. Above it, though, diffused in the whisky fumes, there is the scent of his anger, his not-yet-Smoke. Thomas feels it fan his own impatience.
“They did come here, didn’t they? A group of Englishmen? I need to know, Mr. Singh. I cannot leave here until I do.”
“Yes, they came. Three and a half weeks ago.”
“How many?”
“Six. No, seven, though one stayed outside. Keeping guard. Only one talked. A Mr. Watts.”
“What did he want? Maps?”
“Maps, yes. Of the Nepalese Himalayas. The Gandaki section—”
“Nepal! But the kingdom is closed. No white man may enter. Do such maps even exist?”
Singh shrugs. Thomas can see he’s lying. No, not lying. Sifting his words. Holding back.
“When I was a younger man, I spent some time in that region. Very few people have, you see—other than the locals. They knew this and asked me whether I had records from that time. I denied it. ‘Come, man,’ this Watts kept on saying, ‘don’t be stubborn.’ He was very insistent—just the way you are. He offered me money, first a little, then a lot. ‘Why sell bicycles? You are no tradesman.’ When I continued to deny having any records, they searched my house. Top to bottom. I had kept a few crude maps, for nostalgia’s sake, in my private notes. They found them and stole them. When they left, Watts petted my cheek, like a dog. ‘Sly little Arab,’ he said. Then they went.”
Singh finishes his whisky, then rises, wiping crumbs off his lap.
“It is time to retire,” he says, his voice firm. “We can speak more over breakfast. Before you are on your way.”
Thomas’s breath is dark with his frustration.
But he obeys.
[ 5 ]
The guest room is a small high-ceilinged room, its walls painted bright saffron. A narrow army cot serves for a guest bed. There is no furniture other than a low rattan table, fraying at the edges. But the bedsheets are pristine starched cotton, and the carafe of water that has been placed near the bed is made of cut glass. A piece of soap has been placed on his pillow as a gift.
Thomas has only just started to undress, when he hears steps outside.
“Thomas-babu?” Mrs. Singh’s melodious voice floats through the curtain that serves as a partition. “Are you decent?”
Thomas smiles at this version of his name and quickly does up his shirt. “Yes, come in.”
Mrs. Singh steps through, then makes to draw the curtain behind herself before thinking better of it. There are proprieties to observe.
“I just wanted to ask whether you have everything you need.”
The question is so obviously disingenuous that Thomas does not bother answering. He looks at her and she meets his gaze with a boldness that makes him think of Livia. Her bindi shines on her forehead like a third eye.
“You eavesdropped,” he ventures. “You heard everything your husband and I said.”
Mrs. Singh nods. “It is terrible to be nosy, isn’t it? Mr. Singh, he always chides me. ‘Keep your nose out,’ he says. But he does not really mind.”
“If you heard us then you know that he is lying.”
She does not answer at once but simply looks at him, her eyes on his scar and his mark.
“You must think of what you are doing to him, Thomas-babu! Here you are: a hero from a sacred song. Like Arjuna. Or Mangal Pandey. My husband is very excited. And so he scolds himself for his excitement. After all, he is a serious man; committed to his cause. You confuse him.”
“I will leave tomorrow. Then he can return to his revolution. Perhaps he can be convinced to draw me a map that will show me where those men are heading.”
But Mrs. Singh’s face tells him it won’t be as simple as that. It might have been, had she not chosen to come here and ask after his needs.
“Will you tell me what else happened?” he continues. “When those men came here. Your husband is omitting something, something vital.”
Mrs. Singh hesitates. It is clear she came here with the express purpose of answering this very question. But the repercussions weigh on her, or perhaps it is her conscience. Thomas reaches out instinctively but then lets drop his hand before it has touched her. Mrs. Singh may not appreciate being touched. He is a foreigner, a man in his bedchamber, his shirt open at the chest. He has no caste.
“Please,” he says, and she sniffs at the haze that accompanies the word with interest.
“The men who came to see my husband—they were not just asking for maps. They wanted Mr. Singh to go with them. To lead them where they want to go.”
“He was to act as a guide? Because he knows the region?”
“Not just the region, Thomas-babu. He knows the place. My husband was there.”
“Where?” he begins to ask. Then it dawns on him what Mrs. Singh is telling him. “Eleven years ago: the first time someone went up into those mountains! The expedition whose steps this new one is retracing—they went to Nepal and found something there. Something they brought back and shipped to England. And your husband was there!”
Thomas pauses, breathless; thinks it through. He pictures this Watts coming to the house, trying to cajole Singh into his service.
“I am surprised they did not force him to come along.”
“They tried. First, they offered money; then they threatened him; then they beat him. One of them suggested dragging him along in chains. But what good is a guide who wishes to mislead you? Then they found the maps and notes. They are very detailed, you see. They took every scrap of paper they could find. Next I thought they would kill us. Not as a punishment but to erase any trace that they had come. I heard them talk about it. In the end they decided it would leave a bigger trace than if they just went.”
Thomas nods. “Yes, that makes sense. If the Company soldiers stationed here found you dead, there’d have been an investigation. This Watts is with the Company but his isn’t a Company venture. They are trying to keep it secret. This was when? Three, four weeks ago? What happened next?”
“Mr. Singh was very angry.”
“Because they stole from him and beat him?”
“Yes. But also—because part of him wanted to go. You see, they were tempting him. They are going climbing. High, high up—perhaps as high as anyone has ever climbed. My husband, he loves the mountains. He may love them more than he l
oves me. More than the revolution! But he has sworn never to help the sahibs again.”
She falls silent at a noise, somewhere in the house, then turns back to him. It occurs to Thomas that surely Mr. Singh must know that she is here, talking to him. Did he send her? But no, she is too independent for that, too intelligent to be a mere messenger. He must respect her too much to interfere. It makes Thomas like the man, despite his prickliness.
“They were tempting him,” Mrs. Singh resumes. “They didn’t even know it. If they had, then perhaps they would have succeeded. And now, you are tempting him. After all, you are just like them. Another sahib with a mission. You, too, will want him to come with you. Already it is eating at his heart.”
She waggles her head, a movement Thomas has learned can mean a number of things: approval, acquiescence, acceptance, doubt. Mrs. Singh’s husband is not to be changed. Then something new occurs to her and she produces from some fold in her clothing a piece of paper not much bigger than a palm.
“There is something else,” she explains. “One of them came back. I think he felt ashamed, at being a thief. He wanted to pay us. He had not many rupees, so he gave us this. My husband tore it up at once.”
She hands Thomas a cheque, preprinted by a Bombay bank, now crumpled and ripped into two halves. Sum and signature are in a different pen, a different hand.
“Twenty pounds sterling. A large sum of money. But not so big that it would raise questions. They must carry a whole stack of these, presigned; good as cash.”
He is about to hand back the cheque, then glances again at the scrawl of the signature, deciphering the bold double loop of two Os.
“Cooper,” he reads.
If Mrs. Singh notices his sudden pallor she does not comment. She may have little practice in interpreting the quirks of pale pink flesh.
[ 6 ]
Mrs. Singh wants to go. She has been here long enough, with this stranger in his bedroom; has said what she came to say. Thomas sees all this and yet he stops her; moves around her, to the curtain, blocking off retreat.
“Why tell me all this?” he asks.
“Because my husband wanted to tell you but he would not allow himself to. So I betray him.” Again that waggle of the head: mischievous, amused. “Are you married, Thomas-babu?”
The question returns the blood into his cheeks. “Not married—not exactly. But something like that.”
“Then you understand.”
He shakes his head. “It’s different. The Second Smoke took care of all our secrets. Back home, the unsaid drifts on the air. It may be that your way is better after all.”
This surprises her; enough so that her eyebrows arch up and her full lips shape a laugh. “Ah, Thomas-babu! Are you sure you are who you say you are?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because in the stories, you’re different. Always angry! You walk through the world with a snarl.” She shapes it with her mouth, this snarl, then looks him in the eye: a searching look, as direct as a man’s. “Are the stories wrong?”
“Some of them are.”
Thomas pauses, aware that this is a nonanswer, designed to hide him from her scrutiny and judgement. Mrs. Singh has fed and clothed him. She made him the gift of a secret.
She deserves better than that.
“All that happened more than ten years ago, Mrs. Singh. I was a boy then.” It comes out stiffly, at once pompous and unfeeling, a plaster cast of a phrase. “I have endeavoured to change, Mrs. Singh. You see, all that anger—it came at a price.”
“You regret it then? What you did with your friends? Letting the genie out of its bottle?”
“I regret those who died.”
“That is good,” she replies. And adds, still in the same light, beautiful tones: “We will regret the dead, too, I believe, once it is over and our country is free.”
It is only now that Thomas understands that Mrs. Singh is a revolutionary, too.
[ 7 ]
Mr. Singh wakes Thomas before dawn.
“Come,” he says. The voice is not so much gruff as actively hostile. “Dress.”
“Your wife spoke to you.”
“Yes. She…confessed.” Singh’s lip curls over the word. As Thomas wraps a piece of cotton around his head to hide his mark, he wonders what school chaplain or teacher introduced Singh to the word and forever soured its flavour.
They leave the house through the back door. It is the coolest part of the night, and though the temperature may still equate to a northern English summer’s day, Thomas shivers. Mr. Singh walks quickly, furtively, keeping to the shadows. The curfew has not been lifted yet.
“Where are we going?” Thomas asks.
Singh shushes him, runs across an intersection into the shadow of a building, then gestures impatiently for Thomas to follow.
It occurs to Thomas that Singh is leading him to his arrest; that somewhere in his head he has discovered some advantage in giving Thomas up to the authorities. Or perhaps he is jealous. He caught his wife flirting with the sahib. It’s nonsense, of course, but people kill each other over nonsense all the time.
All the same, Thomas follows without hesitation. Singh is the link: between the men he is chasing and the thing that happened ten years ago. Without him, Thomas will never learn what it is that really transpired on the banks of the Thames. What he is culpable of. Sometimes he feels he never left school: that dentist’s chair in Renfrew’s office, where master and pupil peeled back layers of guilt as though they were divesting an onion of its skins—he is sitting in it still. One more peel (two at the utmost) and there’ll be no onion left.
Soon it is evident that Singh is leading him not to the town’s centre with its governmental buildings and the ugly bulk of a garrison, but to its outskirts. Here the houses are little more than mud huts, leaning on each other, some growing second storeys like boils. Filth lines the alleyways; semiferal dogs lie nose to tail in complex constellations and raise their heads at their approach. The imprint of Empire is weaker here; soldiers are only rarely dispatched to patrol its streets. Singh walks more openly now, if still with a fast, harried gait. He stops before a doorless gateway, as unadorned as all the others. Inside, the sweet smell of coconut pervades, the tang of rotting flowers. In a rough alcove, hewn into the mud, Ganesha hulks cross-legged on his giant mouse. Various offerings lie scattered at his feet.
“A shrine?” Thomas asks, but receives no answer. Instead, Singh steps through a curtain hidden in the gloom into an adjacent room, so small as to be little more than an alcove itself. A lamp has been left here; Singh strikes a match from the box he has brought but finds it won’t light. Each fresh attempt reveals a flash of picture. It has been painted in brilliant colours onto a whitewashed section of wall.
At last the lamp is lit, the flame unsteady yet. Its flicker gives life to the figures depicted on the wall. There is a circle of three, bending towards a fourth. The prone one is rendered in black, lying on a curl of dark water. The girl is standing by his head, a companion to either side. Her hair is pale ochre and hangs down to her waist. On her left, a crimson-headed youth, a bowl of water in his hand. On her right, a featureless figure, dark-haired, the side of his face marked by a blotch of dark blue. He is holding a bowl of blood. Four figures, united in puja. Above their heads a storm cloud pelts black rain.
“Our paupers, the casteless, the despised: they come here and pray. The nation means nothing to them; ‘home rule’ is a term they don’t understand. But they have heard a whisper: that the Smoke both sahibs and Brahmin have told them to despise is a weapon; that Kali will dance when the land is dunked in black. Look…” Here Singh bends down and lifts a little earthenware plate heaped with dark-grey flower petals, as delicate as moth wings. “From the black poppy fields. They risk their lives stealing them. They chew them, you see: they come here and
pray and chew and dream of darkness brought to them by a half-god with white skin.”
Thomas hears all this obliquely, as though at a distance. His eyes are on the figures on the wall. In truth, Ramsbottom, the Bombay veterinarian, told him about places like this. But he was not prepared for the raw power of this crude painting. It is as though one of his dreams has been snatched across five thousand miles to be etched onto this miserable wall.
“And what do you dream of, Mr. Singh?” he asks at last, distractedly, aware that the man expects it.
“Order! Trains. Telephones. Sanitation. A government plan against poverty and another against caste discrimination. Religious integration. The national seizure of the poppy fields. If a free India can produce sweets, then we will earn the respect of the whole world. And its credit!”
Singh pauses, as though exhausted by his list of dreams, then rouses himself to new energy.
“Have you come here for this, sir?” He jabs a finger at the wall. “My father once told me that every white man wants to be Jesus.”
“Nailed to the cross?”
“Adored! Immortal.”
Thomas turns to hide his bitter smile, lest it be misunderstood. It brings his focus back to the painting. As though by itself his finger rises, stops a half inch from the figure whose hair is rendered in a shade of ochre pale as straw.
“What do they call her?”
Singh snorts, then consents to answer. “In Bengali? ‘Dumar mar’—‘Mother of Smoke.’ ”
“And him?”
“Fire-Hair.”
“And this bruiser here? The one with the blue mark?”