Soot

by Dan Vyleta

  “Full-Angry.” As he says it, dour Mr. Singh surprises himself with something like amusement. His voice takes on a stronger lilt, the English of servants in Mr. Kipling’s colourful books. “Maximum raging.”

  The smile they share is like Smoke, thinks Thomas: a bond forged of flesh not words.

  “I am here, Mr. Singh, to find Watts’s expedition and to understand what it is he is after. That is all. Once I know, I will return to the tepid skies of England.”

  Singh studies him and at length extends his hand. They shake like two clubmen who have agreed upon a bet: solemnly, taking pleasure in the formality. Thomas makes his plea while the other man’s hand is still in his.

  “Will you draw me a map of the place they are heading? And will you tell me what you saw when you first went there?”

  Singh answers by freeing himself and leading Thomas back out into the street. Dawn is about to break. Far away, in town, a cannon shot sounds, signalling the end of the curfew. They walk quickly, side by side, as the town wakes around them to the sound of people hawking up their nighttime phlegm. Back at the house, Singh stops Thomas by a tug at his sleeve as they enter the workshop.

  “I will come with you,” he announces. “You will never find them without my help.” And then he adds, before Thomas can object or thank him. “It’s a printing press, not a bomb. The thing I am hiding. Why I was afraid of arrest. I have been publishing a newsletter.”

  “Praising telephones, trains, and home rule.”

  “Why yes, sir,” says Singh with a cheerfulness that becomes him. “And wishing the sahibs all to hell.”

  ENGLISH-LANGUAGE NURSERY RHYME OVERHEARD IN SOUTH BENGAL, AS SUNG BY TWO NATIVE GIRLS PLAYING A VERSION OF THE “CLAPPING GAME,” FROM ANNA MCINTYRE (ED.), AN INDIAN TREASURE CHEST: COLLECTED FOLKTALES AND IDIOMS OF THE RAJ, IN ENGLISH, HINDI, AND BENGALI. CALCUTTA: T. HENDERSON PRESS, MCMVIII.

  Fair-face

  White-face

  Whisker-face

  Prune

  Rifle, trifle

  Toffee, tiffin

  Pud-ding

  Spoon

  Poppy-field

  Train-track

  Te-le-phone

  Loom

  Merchant

  Vicar

  Soldier

  Boom!

   SINGH’S STORY

  There were four of them, each of them the son of a most noble house. They knew each other from school—one of those great public schools that so often feature in our children’s books, where English boys learn the rules of rugby, cricket, and fair play. They were princes of Empire, you see, waiting for their turn at the mighty wheel of rule; but very young still, almost boys, sowing their wild oats out here in our Raj, where sins of youth are easily hidden. Their passion was not for women, however, nor for arak, nor for betting on horses—it was the mountains that had stolen their hearts. They had climbed, they later told me, all the peaks of Scotland, and had even obtained special permission to spend a summer in the Alps at a time when Europe was off-limits for most Britons. Now they were making forays into the western Himalayas and the Zanskar mountains, staying in the wilderness for weeks at a time.

  “I met them in Kashmir. They had just arrived in the region and were looking for a guide. I was, at the time, a proud and faithful servant of the Crown. The British had educated me, albeit by the proxy of a swarthy Tamil schoolmaster who wore tails even in the most sweltering heat and spent his pennies on tinned English cheese imported from Devon. I went on to university in Calcutta, on an imperial scholarship no less, after which our kind rulers provided me with a position as imperial surveyor and cartographer which sent me into the remotest mountain regions of our northern border, with the task of creating topographical maps of military accuracy. In short, the Queen herself was kindly paying me to travel, to imbibe clean mountain air, and to climb!

  “I, too, had long caught the climbing bug, you see. I had grown up in Mandi in the northern Punjab and, as a child, had stumbled on an illustrated book in the town library extolling the fortitude of British explorers. Of the many exploits celebrated there, none enthralled me as much as a short chapter devoted to those determined to ‘ascend higher than any living man had ascended before and plant the British flag upon peaks that touch the very firmament.’ I did not know what a firmament was, but there were mountains at our doorstep, and an officers’ mountaineering club at the local garrison that would from time to time employ natives to carry loads for them. I presented myself to the club secretary on the day of my fourteenth birthday and impressed him with my English and my enthusiasm for his fatherland. By the time I left for university, I was an accomplished mountaineer and it was this, along with my university qualification and references, that helped me secure the position.

  “Thus, when our four adventurers asked for a guide to take them into the Kashmiri wilderness, it was only natural that people would mention this mountain-mad Sikh known for his exquisite coloured maps and sincere devotion to the Empire. They sought me out and arranged, without the slightest bit of fuss, three months’ paid holiday for me, so that I could show them some of my favourite routes and climbs. This alone should have told me something about the power these young men commanded and the reach of their connections. But I was young and flattered and rather in awe of them, and eager to be of service.

  “We spent ten weeks in the mountains, supported by half a dozen porters whom I commandeered with the smug arrogance of the white man’s favourite pet. Of course, I did not see it like that then. The foursome treated me courteously, even respectfully, and I had fallen in love with the thought that the higher one climbed, the more one could strip away all outward difference, so that on the highest peaks, on the rooftops of this world, I, too, would become an Englishman, smokeless and pale. Once, during a snowstorm that found us halfway up a mountainside, I slipped and fell into a crevasse, and it was only the quick action of one of my companions that saved me. This pleased me more than even the opportunity of saving his life would have done, for he risked much by not cutting the rope that fastened me to him and held me in an exhausted embrace once he had hauled me back across the lip of the crevasse. ‘Rum luck,’ he muttered, his lips inches from mine, and, ‘Nothing broken, eh? Splendid!’ For a long time after, these seemed to me the best, the noblest phrases in the whole world.

  “I have not told you yet their names. They were Percy; Hounslow; Wyatt; Tulkinghorne. Hounslow was the one who saved me: a shy, pale, girlish man with a very beautiful voice and an uncommon ability to endure physical suffering. Wyatt was tall, wiry, quiet; with an odd and slightly sinister intensity that animated his every movement. He was the only one of the four who would allow himself to smoke from time to time, or at least would allow himself to do so in front of us natives. Tulkinghorne was garrulous, sociable, fond of food. He, too, might have smoked, but I could smell sweets on him quite often, even up at fifteen thousand feet where the air seemed too thin to sustain any passion other than the will to climb. Percy was their leader: not by rank or election but by an inner aristocracy that made him better complexioned and straighter-limbed than his companions; more cautious with his words; wider-ranging—deeper—in his thoughts. A man born aloof because he is better made than anyone else. There was a melancholy to him, and a quiet self-conviction. He and I were the strongest climbers of the lot.

  “The season ended, the monsoons came. I returned to my position, consisting of desk work in this portion of the year, though not before my companions had bid me a warm good-bye and showered me with little gifts. It was seven months before I heard from them next. I had expected—or at any rate hoped—to receive a letter announcing a repeat of our exploits in the coming climbing season. What I received instead was a summons, reaching me via telegraph, to present myself at the Palace Hotel in Lucknow on such-and-such a date. My absence had already been cleared with my superiors,
I was told. I was to bring climbing gear and cartography materials and would be reimbursed for the train. The telegram—curt even by the standards of that mode of communication—was signed by Percy. It bypassed the formality that was my consent.

  “I went, of course. To tell the truth, by the time I had boarded the train, I had forgotten whatever slight offense I may have taken or dismissed it as inconsequential. I arrived wearing my best suit and hat and carrying with me a case filled with my climbing clothes and mapmaking materials. During the packing process it had struck me as strange that I had not been asked to bring any actual maps with me. At the hotel I was greeted by a porter and shown to a room in that part of the hotel that was reserved for native guests. I should have resented this perhaps, but the hotel’s entrance hall was so overwhelming in its splendour that I followed the boy gawking like a village fool. On my bed lay a copy of the Times of London, only a few weeks out of date and still quite crisp in the fold. I handled it like a relic and read it religiously, assuming that it had been placed there by one of my travel companions because it contained a clue as to their intentions. It was only later that I learned that the hotel routinely collected and ironed newspapers that had been cast aside by the better sort of guest and turned them into welcoming presents for the likes of me.

  “I met my companions at dinner that evening, a meal that they irritatingly and inaccurately referred to as ‘tiffin.’ They were in a buoyant, celebratory mood. Tulkinghorne and Hounslow were already quite drunk and continued to drink throughout the meal. Wyatt’s intensity, too, was leavened by both joy and gin, though he remained reticent, observant, quiet. Only Percy was entirely sober and dignified, though he made sure not to dampen the others’ spirits. It was he who explained the reason for their celebrations. After months of lobbying they had finally secured all the paperwork they had been waiting for; their expedition had been given the go-ahead.

  “ ‘Paperwork?’ I remember asking. ‘Expedition to where?’

  “ ‘Nepal. The central Himalaya. We will climb mountains no white man has set foot on before!’

  “In his dignified excitement he seemed to include me in that designation and I felt a strange mixture of resentment and pride.

  “ ‘Look here, Singh, it is good that you’ve come. The viceroy wants you to make maps of the area—accurate, professional maps—only we can’t be seen to be doing so; His Highness the King of the Gorkha would not approve.’ And, indulging in a moment of boasting not at all typical for him, he added: ‘My cousin is the British representative in Kathmandu; he interceded for us.’

  “ ‘Are we explorers then, or spies?’

  “The table went quiet when I asked the question.

  “ ‘Explorers,’ Percy at once assured me. ‘But we must document our journey for posterity. We shall publish a book. One day, your maps will be pored over by every English schoolboy, Singh. We rather thought you would jump at the chance.’

  “They excused themselves after coffee and promised we would discuss all the details in the coming days and weeks. That night, I gathered, they were going out to celebrate. There was a furtive, adolescent excitement about this excursion that suggested to me a visit to a brothel or some similar act of debauchery. Tulkinghorne drank off his brandy, dug in his pocket, and produced a cigarette that he offered for me to sniff. It did not smell of tobacco. He winked, stuck the cigarette rakishly behind his ear, and said, ‘Englishmen don’t smoke, Singh. Only once in a while—they bloody well want to!’ Percy alone shot me a parting glance as they walked out of the hotel’s dining room, communicating both an apology towards me and indulgence towards his friends. Some ritual of bonding had to be performed.

  “Several weeks later we set off for the Nepalese border. The king did not want us anywhere near his capital, and so the Central Himal had been suggested as the realm of our exploration. We only had very crude maps of this area and no real idea what to expect. In truth there was no reason to believe that these mountains were any more interesting or spectacular than the giants of the western Himalayas, of which we had been able to summit only the tiniest of fractions. The allure lay simply in the unknown. When we crossed the border, a military band played on the Indian side, and a regiment of soldiers welcomed us on the other. We were escorted to the foothills of the Himalayas the way a pupil is marched to the headmaster by a kindly teacher, lending him strength on this slow march towards punishment or praise, and making sure he does not escape. Once in the foothills, though, they set us free. We hired porters and guides, bought provisions, and headed for the highland.

  “It was, truth be told, a rather arduous journey. The highland villages that we slept in were unspeakably squalid; and the porters, less trained in regarding the sahibs as gods, were cantankerous and slow, interested only in their wages. Only two or three men who hailed from the mountains rather than the hills—Buddhists, with dark, sunken almond eyes and big cheeks burned near black by the mountain sun—seemed to comprehend our fascination with climbing. Though I could communicate with them only in gestures and a handful of words where my rusty Hindi coincided with whatever language it was they spoke, they helped us immeasurably in setting a route. We walked along a deep gorge cut by a raging river. It split the mountains in two, forming a trench so deep its bottom was a ribbon of white water, spuming over rocks. Rope bridges crisscrossed the gorge wherever it narrowed, swinging perilously when the wind caught them. Below was a world of jungle and water; above us a world of rock and ice.

  “The expedition was not doing well. Too late did we discover that to travel somewhere without a definite plan meant to flounder, to waste time, to be morally eroded by indecision. If my companions had set off filled with boisterous confidence, they were subdued now, and irritable. In all their previous exploits, they had always tested their mettle in known landscapes, taking advantage of good maps and chasing a particular peak. Here, surrounded by some of the highest mountains anyone had ever seen, they found themselves at a loss. Percy, keen to fight this malaise of indecision, soon set his sights on a giant that my crude triangulation suggested was more than twenty-six thousand feet in altitude. Nobody, of course, had ever climbed as high as that, but Percy argued that even the attempt would be invaluable for science, for we should learn, firsthand, the effects of oxygen deprivation on the human organism. In his heart of hearts, perhaps, he believed that any mountain would yield under sheer force of his will, and that he was destined to be the first man to stand with his feet on earth and his head up in the stars.

  “It came to naught. We hiked to the foot of the mountain, then spent an exhausting two weeks studying it from every angle only to conclude that any attempt at ascent was suicide. Frustrated, we turned back.

  “To the east, on the far side of the gorge, there was another giant that, from the peak of some of the higher hills, we had already marked from afar. This mountain, too, towered over its companions and reached for the very sky. Broad-browed, massive, it formed the central piece of a range that appeared to form a semicircle around a hidden valley. When we asked the highland men about access to this valley, they at once informed us that it was inaccessible. There was something to the haste of their answer that made us suspicious. We pressed them, offering them food, then money, and at long last learned that there existed a secret pass but that the valley was off-limits; that the mountain was a pregnant goddess grown sick in her womb; that any attempt to climb her was sheer folly. Under no circumstances were we to go there. Nobody would guide us. We would incur the mountain’s curse.

  “We set off at once, of course. What self-respecting Englishman does not at once start running at the merest mention of a curse? Running towards it, that is: his tongue hanging out like a dog’s. I was as bad as my companions. There must be gold in those mountains; a lost civilisation; El Dorado, displaced from the jungles of the Americas and hidden behind superstitious myth. It took further bribes and threats to get even one of the men to take
us to the unmarked goat pass that offered the only way into the hidden valley. He came with us as far as the foot of the path.

  “ ‘The snows will come soon,’ he warned us.

  “ ‘Not yet, not yet,’ we dismissed him. And, carrying all our own equipment for the first time since we entered Nepal, we set off, singing a stately Purcell hymn, I recall, that Tulkinghorne had provided with rather more earthy lyrics: four sahibs, and the spiritual mongrel that was I, half servant, half companion, singing loudest of them all.

  “We ran into trouble almost at once. It was overcast, the high pass so snow-mired that it was almost impossible to traverse. Near its summit, Hounslow started growing sick. I don’t know if it was the altitude that had crept into his blood or some infection or other; or if his mind had simply started to unknit. He grew weak, disorientated; wandered aimlessly, and started speaking to himself. At times he would stop in his tracks and, bending over, listen to the whistling of his lungs for long minutes at a time; would laugh or start babbling; or lie down and bury his face in the dirt. Eventually, he stopped walking altogether.

  “By then, the pass had led us down into another river gorge, so narrow and sunless that it lay entirely barren. According to the highland man’s crude map, the valley opened near its mouth. We were within a few leagues of this opening when Hounslow, midstride, lay down flat on the ground and closed his eyes. He was not asleep but refused to answer any questions; moaned pitiably when we tried to shift him. Smoke would drift up from him, but even this was listless, weak. The man was spent.

  “We could not leave him in the wilderness. Percy ordered Tulkinghorne to stay with him while the rest of us pushed on. Tulkinghorne refused. Why should he, a white man, play nursemaid and forgo his shot at glory if there was a golliwog ready at hand? It was not the crudeness of his question that shocked me but the coolness of Percy’s response: the feat of their ascent would be diminished in value if they could not also produce a good map or at least an evocative artistic impression of the secret valley they were about to enter. None of the Englishmen had any artistic talent; while I had completed many a pencil sketch of the ridge outlines and mountain aspects, along with some topographical drawings of the land we had covered. In short, Percy agreed that Tulkinghorne had a right to the climb by virtue of his race; but my expertise was functionally more important. In their protracted argument neither of them as much as looked at me.