by M. M. Kaye
‘— that he who kills an Englishman sacrifices a goat to Kali,’ finished Alex grimly. ‘So I also have heard. But the goat’s flesh that was sent thee is but a sign that the flocks and herds shall increase, for in a good year there is grass and water for many. Tell them this in the villages, that they may know that it is a sign for good.’
The Kotwal salaamed deeply, and stowing the crumbling chuppatti with reverent care among the folds of the blanket he wore wound about him, he backed out of the room, and they heard his feet patter away on the matting of the verandah.
‘So it comes at last,’ said Niaz softly, echoing Alex’s own thought. ‘That was quick thinking. Will he believe?’
‘Let us hope so. It is the Government who will not!’
‘All Governments,’ said Niaz cheerfully, ‘are as blind as the monkey of Mataram who did not wish to see.’ And he squatted down to help Alex remove his boots and to regale him with the gossip of the lines.
Alex wrote a report on the mysterious distribution of the chuppattis the following morning and sent it across in triplicate to the Commissioner, who was pleased to be facetious on the subject that evening.
‘Damned if I ain’t beginning to think Fred Moulson is right about you, Alex. Bees in the bonnet. Though its more like bats in the belfry, if y’ ask me! Yes, yes, yes - I know y’ had a wild tale last year about some hocus-pocus at Khanwai. But as I told y’ then, it’s a mistake to go pokin’ about in that side of native life. Probably no connection with this at all. Far more likely that this is only some local big-wig propitiating the gods by a distribution of cakes; it ain’t unusual - you should know that! And if you think I’m going to forward such a farrago of nonsense to the Governor, y’ must be mad! Fiery cross indeed! No such thing! … Mahratta rising? What’s that got to do with it? … Oh, nonsense! I don’t believe a word of it - coincidence. That other business happened half a century ago.’
Alex said slowly: ‘The people round here say that the numerical values of this year form an anagram: “Angrez tubbah shood ba hur soorat.”’ (The British shall be annihilated.)
‘Bah!’ said the Commissioner. ‘A triviality.’
‘Or a straw in the wind?’ suggested Alex.
‘Nonsense! Rubbish! Tell you what, you should relax. You’re gettin’ a sight too vapourish. Get a woman instead - do you all the good in the world! Comin’ on this shoot tomorrow? Good, good. Day in the open will blow some of these cobwebs away.’
Alex, who spent the larger part of his day in the open dealing less with paper-work than with people, and who had recently spent half his nights there as well, forbore to comment. He refused the offer of a drink, and walked back to his bungalow wondering if he had ever really imagined for a moment that the Commissioner would take any other attitude. He supposed not, and he felt slightly ashamed of that report in triplicate, realizing that he had only put it in writing so that he could justify himself later from the files. But of what use to him, or to anyone else, would such justification be? ‘I told you so’ was a cheap form of satisfaction at the best of times, and he despised himself for having given way to it. He would have to go more often to the villages and talk with the headmen and the elders, and see what he could do towards allaying any panic that the distribution of the chuppattis might have caused.
Did the things also carry any specific message? or were they merely a means of creating an atmosphere of suspicion and alarm, and thus providing a fruitful breeding ground for deeper and more savage hates and fears? Five. … Did that mean anything? Alex knew the Indian custom of sending a message by means of a handful of oddments - flowers, leaves, fruits, bangles; things that each carried their own meaning in the language of signs, and were in common use as messages between lovers. In that language any object appearing in duplicate stood for a number indicating time, unless it were accompanied by a pinch of saffron or incense, in which case it stood for place. Five chuppattis … The fifth month? That would be May, and Kishan Prasad had said ‘in the hot weather’.
An open carriage passed him bearing a Captain and Mrs Hossack, their four children and an ayah. Mrs Hossack was a pleasant woman with a somewhat anxious manner, and the four children, the youngest of whom, wrapped in innumerable shawls, lay in the arms of the ayah, were pale-cheeked, leggy little creatures whose pallid fragility was a cause of endless anxiety to their mama. The two older children, recognizing Alex, waved enthusiastically as they passed, and Mrs Hossack smiled and bowed.
‘Thank God I’m not married!’ thought Alex with sudden vehemence. ‘At least I have not that fear to face.’ And thought instantly: ‘I must get him to send her to the hills. She will have to go if he orders her. After all, he is her husband.’
But he was not thinking of Mrs Hossack.
30
The duck shoot at Hazrat Bagh was timed to begin soon after eight o’clock in the morning, to allow the guns and the guests to assemble and breakfast to be eaten on a prepared ground half a mile from the jheel.
Previously it had always taken several hours of riding over difficult country to reach the jheel, and no carriage or cart could have attempted the trip. But the temporary road that the hosts had caused to be constructed for the convenience of their guests proved remarkably good, and the carriages that had started from Lunjore as the dawn was breaking reached the rendezvous in ample time for breakfast.
To Winter’s surprise many of the guests proved to be strangers to her, and she found on inquiry that they were officers and officials from Suthragunj, a large cantonment town beyond the borders of Lunjore.
As the crow flies Suthragunj lay less than thirty miles from the Lunjore Cantonments, but the main road ran far to the southward for more than double that distance before a branch road to Suthragunj added yet another fifteen miles to the score. There were various small footpaths and side tracks that wandered between the villages, but since none was capable of taking a carriage, the British residents of Suthragunj and Lunjore seldom met. Now, however, two of the hosts having acquaintances among the Suthragunj garrison, the kutcha (makeshift) road had been extended beyond the jheel so that they too might attend, and at least a dozen members of the garrison were present.
Also present were three exceedingly vivacious ladies and four seedy-looking gentlemen of assorted European extraction: the members of a so-called ‘Italian Opera Company’, touring the East, whose successes in Calcutta and Bombay had emboldened them to try their luck in other towns. Having found few that were provided with facilities for the presentation of opera, they had abandoned that in favour of playing farce and singing at private parties, and after recently appearing in Lucknow were now on their way to Delhi. One, at least, came from Goa, and a second from the French settlement of Pondicherry, and none of them was Italian. But the leading lady (lately the soprano), a languishing auburn-haired charmer who rejoiced in the improbable name of Aurora Resina, was noticeably handsome, and the two older ladies, though highly coloured, were by no means unattractive.
They had arrived at the shoot unsuitably attired in the gayest of garments: their crinolines the widest for day wear yet seen in Lunjore, their inadequate hats decorated with innumerable ribbons, frizzes and bobs, and their complexions shielded from the sun by frilled parasols guaranteed to scare any wild bird into the neighbouring province.
The Commissioner, who had made their acquaintance at a small supper-party given by Colonel Moulson on the previous evening, had been particularly taken with the opulent charms of the leading lady, but even his partiality was not proof against the conviction that she would be better kept well out of sight of the duck and discouraged from taking her stand near the jheel. The opera company had been an eleventh-hour addition to the shoot at the request of Colonel Moulson, and though two of the gentlemen had stayed in the tents with the ladies, the other two had borrowed guns and expressed their intention of ‘trying a shot’.
‘For God’s sake,’ begged Captain Garrowby of the 93rd, eyeing with lively apprehension the way in which one of
these gentlemen held his gun, ‘put ’em somewhere where they can do no harm. That feller will fire down the bund, or I’m a Dutchman!’
The other gentleman - a Mr Juan Devant on the playbills, who claimed to be of Franco-Hungarian descent and hailed from Pondicherry - handled his gun with more authority and in a manner that made Alex regard him with sudden interest. ‘Cossack-trained,’ thought Alex, and murmured inaudibly to Niaz, who could presently have been seen in idle conversation with one of the villagers who had come out the night before to act as beaters and retrieve the fallen duck.
‘Mullu will watch him,’ reported Niaz rejoining Alex as they took up their allotted stations on the grass-grown, tree-shaded bunds that wandered around and across the jheel.
The jheel was not in the least as Winter had pictured it. She had imagined a mile-long lake fringed with reeds, but the narrow bunds divided the shallow water into numerous squares and triangles, few of which were more than a hundred yards across. Kikar trees and high grass grew thickly along the bunds, which were fringed with reeds and red waterweed, and the guns with their loaders and beaters took up their positions at intervals of fifty to a hundred yards apart.
Winter had seated herself on the hard ground with her back to a tree-trunk a few yards from where her husband had taken up his stand, and removed her wide-brimmed hat to let the breeze ruffle her hair. There was a continuous coming and going among the thousands of water-fowl who blackened the open water, and the noise of quacking and quarrelling birds and the ruffle of wings made a soothing and monotonous music. Doves cooed among the kikar trees, and the soft, warm breeze whispered through the reeds and the thorny branches, rustling the dry grasses and bringing with it a sweet scent of pollen and water-weeds. The bright morning sunlight chequered the banks with patterns of light and shade, and the sky no longer appeared to weigh down upon the wide earth as it often seemed to do in the heat of the day, but to curve high and cool and cloudless; as full of peace and serenity as the placid water that reflected it.
A little striped-backed Indian squirrel crept within a yard of Winter’s foot and stood up, small paws dangling and the pale soft fur of its tiny stomach making a white splotch against the tree shadows. It regarded her with bright curious eyes, and as she did not move and her grey riding-habit was a pleasant and unobtrusive colour against the dusty ground and the rough grey bark of the tree, it dropped down on all fours again and continued to search for seeds. A hoopoe alighted nearby and paraded upon the bund, its crest rising and falling, and a ruffle of wings swept along the reeds as a flight of teal moved further down the jheel.
‘I should like to build a house here,’ thought Winter, her thoughts moving as slowly as the slow shadows. ‘Not a house … a hut of dry reeds. And live here all by myself, and sit by the door and watch and listen; like Nissa does …’ A green-bronze feather drifted down through the warm air and came to rest in her lap, and she thought of all the places to which the birds would soon go, and all the wild, strange forests and lakes and tundras that they would see. Alex had said they would go to Central Asia and Outer Mongolia and Siberia. But next cold weather they would come back again to Hazrat Bagh - flight upon flight of mallard and teal, widgeon, pintail and pink-feet, white-fronted geese and the long-legged storks that built their nests in the isolated kikar trees that grew out in the open water of the jheel, and reared their foolish, flapping babies. And in the summer there would still be the doves and the hoopoes, the black and white kingfishers, the green pigeons and the blue jays, and a hundred other birds and beasts who lived their placid lives beside the jheel …
The striped squirrel whisked away with an indignant chirr and Winter, turning to see what had alarmed it, saw the loader hand her husband a gun, and was suddenly seized with an absurd desire to cry out to him, begging him not to fire.
The first shot broke the drowsy, murmurous peace of the morning with a shattering impact, and instantly the day was no longer peaceful, but full of noise and violence, for it was followed by a crashing fusillade and a sound that Winter had never heard before - the slow, rushing roar of a hundred thousand birds rising off the water.
The quiet air was ripped by wings and deafening explosions that crashed and echoed and crashed again as the panic-stricken birds whirled towards the bunds, banked and rose, wheeled and broke, to sweep up over the tree-tops and rise higher and higher in dark, lacy patterns against the high blue sky.
An elephant who had been walked out into the widest stretch of water, to keep the birds from coming down out of range, squealed and trumpeted, splashing and backing while its mahout yelled encouragement. And then the birds began to fall; plummeting into the water to float inertly or flutter wounded into the temporary shelter of the reeds.
Winter leapt to her feet and backed against the rough bark of the tree, pressing her hands over her ears to keep out the noise of the shots and the shouting, and staring in shuddering horror at the falling birds and their helpless, dying flurries as they strove to dive and could not do so, or thrashed upon the water with broken wings, striving to evade the men who waded in to retrieve them, but whose caste forbade them to put a dying creature out of its misery.
She shut her eyes, trying to shut out the sight; but she could not shut out the sounds. And then something crashed through the thin branches and struck against her, and she opened her eyes to see a huge goose struggling on the ground at her feet. It dragged itself away, one wing trailing and its beak wide as though it gasped from fear or for air.
‘Good shot, that,’ commented Conway lumbering up. ‘Better wring its neck, or it’ll get away. Surprising how tough these birds are—’
He stooped, but Winter was before him. She caught the great bird in her arms, her face white with all the accumulated pain and horror and panic of the last months, and backed away from him, her mouth open in a soundless scream.
‘Here, give it to me,’ said Conway. ‘Can’t kill it yourself. You’ll find it takes a deal of doing.’
‘Don’t touch it!’ The words were almost a scream. ‘It’s only hurt. It isn’t going to die. You shan’t kill it!’
Conway stared, his pale eyes bulging with anger. ‘Don’t be a fool! Put it down at once, d’you hear me?’
He lurched towards her and Winter evaded him with a frantic leap, and turning, fled down the bund clutching the wounded bird to her breast, its warm neck across her shoulder and one huge helpless wing almost brushing the ground as she ran.
The bund bent at a right angle less than fifty yards from where her husband had taken up his position, and high grass closed in about it, reaching up to the lower branches of the thorn trees. Winter ran blindly, in the grip of a breathless, reasonless, gasping panic, and she did not see Alex until she had run into him.
Captain Randall had been given a less exposed position, just beyond the turn of the bund, but he had not been shooting well that morning. He had been thinking of other things. Seeing at last and very clearly the reason for this elaborate shooting party, and wondering why it had not occurred to him before, when it was so simple and so entirely obvious. Was it this climate? Did the hot suns that sapped one’s strength also slow down one’s thinking? Well, it was too late now. He should have stopped it before. How? … Barton would never have let him. But perhaps - who knew? - it would cut both ways. So simple, and yet he had not seen it!
‘Mark!’ yelled an unseen man - Captain Garrowby of the 93rd - from fifty yards further down the tree-shaded bund. A lone goose swished overhead and Alex fired and saw the bird fall wounded somewhere along the further arm of the bund. Niaz gave a grunt of disapproval and Alex threw the gun across to him and said: ‘Damn the birds!’ He turned away and walked towards the turn of the bund, feeling in his pockets for a cigarette, and Winter brushed through the grass and stumbled against him.
Alex caught her by the shoulders and held them in a hard grasp, staring down into the wide, panic-stricken eyes. For a moment she had tried to wrench herself free, and then she had seen who it was who held her
.
‘Alex! - Alex, don’t let him kill it! Don’t let him—’ She thrust the warm heavy body at him, and as she did so the soft, feathered neck slid down from her shoulder and hung limp.
‘It’s dead, dear,’ said Alex quietly, and took it from her.
‘No! No, it can’t be dead. It was only wounded.’ Her dress was splotched and spattered with bright scarlet drops, and a wide patch of blood stained the breast of the grey habit as though it were she who had been shot and not the bird; and at the sight of it a savage wave of fear lashed at Alex as though something had struck him over the heart.
He let the bird slip to the grass, and Winter caught at his arm as though she would have snatched it from him. And then quite suddenly she dropped her head against him and wept.
Alex stood very still, holding her: feeling the shuddering of the slim warm body under his hands. Her hair smelt faintly of lavender as it had on the walls of Delhi, and he held her quite gently because he wanted so much to hold her hard against him … because he wanted so much to thrust her away from him! The sound of her helpless, broken sobbing tore at his heart, and his face above her bent head was twisted with pain and scored with harsh lines that had not been there before. ‘Oh God,’ thought Alex, ‘not this! Not now. I can’t stand it.’ The sun was hot on his shoulders and the warm silence was drowsy with the hum of bees among the kikar blossoms and sweet with the scent of lavender, and the crackle of shots seemed to come from very far off as though he were hearing them from the other end of a long tunnel. At last the choking, shuddering sobs quietened and ceased, and he put her gently away from him.
She made no attempt to turn away, but stood facing him, her long lashes sticking wetly together and her face streaked with tears, searching in the pocket of her habit for a handkerchief. It was a flimsy enough affair, and stained too with the blood that had run down the great wing. Alex produced his own and handed it over. His nostrils were pinched and there was a white shade about his mouth, but he spoke quite pleasantly: ‘Try this one,’ he advised. ‘It’s larger and a good deal cleaner.’