by M. M. Kaye
He tried not to think of that, but it was difficult not to do so during the slow, furnace-like months of the hot weather, when the day's work must begin at first-light if it was to be done before the temperatures reached a point that made any form of physical or mental activity almost impossible, and the hours between mid-morning and late afternoon were spent indoors with the shutters closed against the heat and the glare, with nothing to do but keep still – and if possible, sleep.
The majority of citizens, and all the Europeans, seemed to find no difficulty in doing one or the other, but to Ash these hot, idle hours were the worst part of the day… too much time – aeons of it – in which to think and remember and regret. Therefore he studied Gujerati in an effort to kill two birds with one stone, and mastered the language at a rate that astonished his munshi and won the admiration of the sowars… and was still unable to keep from thinking unprofitable thoughts.
He should have grown used to that by now, for he had been plagued in this fashion for over a year. But somehow it had been easier to accept the situation as irrevocable when hundreds of miles separated him from Juli and there was nothing in his surroundings to remind him of her. Besides, Rawalpindi, even after Wally's departure, had provided some palliatives – half-a-dozen good friends, his horses, and an occasional weekend in Murree from where he could see the Kashmir snows… Even the feud with Crimpley and his friend Raikes had had its uses. It had at least served as a distraction, and almost without his knowing it, the pain of loss had begun to ease a little and the gnawing sense of restlessness to decrease, until there had actually been times when he had come through an entire day without thinking of Juli at all.
But here in Ahmadabad that was no longer so and sometimes he wondered if space, as measured in miles, could have an effect on thought. Was it because he was now so much nearer to her in terms of distance that the memory of her was again so vivid and so continuously in his mind? From here Bhithor was only three days' journey away… four at most… If he were to set out now – ‘You are not attending, Sahib!’ the munshi would reprove him. ‘Read me that sentence again – remembering what I told you about the tense.’
Ash would drag his mind back from the past and fix it on the present; and when the lesson ended, cast about for something else, anything else, to keep him occupied until the worst of the day's heat was over and he could go out and ride. But in October, with the end of the hot weather in sight, the outlook became considerably brighter. The cold season was a time of intense military activity, and now, as though to make up for the unavoidable idleness and lethargy of the past months, camps, manoeuvres and training exercises followed one another at speed, while any spare time was taken up by such energetic pastimes as polo, racing and gymkhanas.
Best of all, Ash acquired two things that did more than all the rest to take his mind off his personal problems and compensate him for being banished from the Frontier, and the Guides. A friend, Sarjevan Desai, the son of a local landowner. And a horse named Dagobaz.
Sarjevan, known to his intimates as Sarji, was a great-nephew of the Risaldar-Major – a fierce, wise, grey-whiskered warrior who was by now something of a legend in Roper's Horse, for he had served with it since its inception some forty years ago, joining it as a lad of fifteen in the days when the land was ruled by the East India Company.
The Risaldar-Major was a martinet and a notable horseman, and he appeared to be related to most of the local aristocracy, among them Sarjevan's late father, who had been the son of one of his many sisters. Sarji himself was no military man. He had inherited a large estate, and with it his father's passion for horses, which he bred more for his own pleasure than for profit, refusing to sell to anyone he did not personally know and like.
His great-uncle, having taken a favourable view of the newly joined British officer, had introduced Sarji to Lieutenant Pelham-Martyn with instructions to see that the Sahib was fitted out with mounts that would not disgrace the good name of the Regiment – or of Gujerat. And fortunately for Ash, the two had taken to each other. They were the same age and their mutual love of horses had cemented an immediate liking that had soon become friendship, with the result that Ash had acquired, for a not unreasonable figure, a stable that was the envy of his fellow officers and that included a pedigree black stallion of Arab descent: Dagobaz, ‘The Trickster’.
Since the days when he had been a horse-boy in the stables of Duni Chand of Gulkote, Ash had seen and ridden and later on owned many horses. But never yet had he seen anything to equal this one for beauty, mettle and speed. Even Baj Raj, now in Wally's care in Mardan, paled into insignificance by contrast. Dagobaz was almost three years old when he came into Ash's possession, and at first Sarji had been reluctant to sell him, not because of his spectacular looks and promise, but because the stallion had not been named Dagobaz for nothing. He might have the appearance of perfection, but his character did not match his looks; he possessed a fiery and uncertain temper, together with a dislike of being ridden that no amount of patient training had so far been able to overcome.
‘I do not say that he is vicious,’ said Sarji, ‘or that he cannot be mounted. He can. But unlike the others he has still not outgrown his hatred for the feel of a man upon his back. This you can sense in your bones when you ride him, and it does not make for comfort. He has a will of his own, that horse—a will of iron – and by now even the best of my syces are ready to admit defeat. They say he has a thousand tricks whereby he may rid himself of a rider, and that when one thinks one has learned them all, lo! he has a new one – and there one is again, sprawling in the dust or among the thorn-scrub and faced with another walk home. You are taken in by his beauty; but if you buy him – and I would sell him to no one else – you may well live to regret it. Do not say I have not warned you!’
But Ash had only laughed and bought the black horse for a price that in view of its looks and its pedigree was ridiculous: and never had cause to regret it. Sarji had always been good with horses and was an excellent rider, but being a rich man's son he had not gained his experience the hard way, as Ash had done, by working with them as a child in the lowly capacity of horse-boy.
Ash had made no attempt to ride Dagobaz for at least ten days, but during that time he spent every moment he could spare in the stable or in the enclosed field adjoining it, handling the horse, grooming him, feeding him raw carrots and lumps of gur (the crude brown stuff that is extracted from sugar-cane) and talking to him by the hour together. Dagobaz, at first suspicious, soon grew used to him and presently began to make a few tentative overtures of his own until eventually, on hearing Ash's low whistle, he would prick up his ears and answer to it with a soft whinnying, and trot over to greet him.
Rapport having been established, the rest had been comparatively easy: though Ash had suffered a few reverses and had on one occasion found himself faced with a five-mile walk back to the cantonments. Yet in the end even Sarji had to admit that ‘The Trickster’ had been wrongly named and should now be re-titled ‘The Saint’. But Ash had retained the old name, for in some ways it was still applicable. Dagobaz had accepted him as a friend and his master, but showed plainly that he was a ‘one-man’ horse and that his affection and obedience were reserved for Ash alone. No one else could ride him with impunity, not even his syce, Kulu Ram; though he would grudgingly permit that individual to exercise him on the rare occasions when Ash was unable to do so – giving as much trouble as possible in the process, so that Kulu Ram was driven to declare that he was no horse but a devil in disguise. But with Ash on his back, be behaved like an angel.
He was a big horse by Arab standards, and the length of his stride was phenomenal. Ash discovered that he could, when pressed, out-distance anything else on four legs, including Sarji's pet hunting cheetahs – though the cheetah is reputed to be the swiftest of all animals and can easily run down a buck. He had, in addition, a mouth of velvet, the manners of a prince, and a truly royal temper that discouraged strangers – and syces – from takin
g liberties with him. But as Sarji had truly said, there was no vice in him, and once Ash had succeeded in winning his heart, he proved to be as docile and affectionate as a kitten and as intelligent as a well-trained gun-dog. So much so, that within two months of his purchase, and notwithstanding his known foibles, Ash had received at least half-a-dozen offers for him, all of them greatly in excess of the sum that he himself had paid – and all of them refused.
There was not, Ash asserted, enough gold in all India to buy Dagobaz. In proof of which he trained the stallion to jump, entered him in a local cross-country race and won it by over fifteen lengths (to the dismay of the bookmakers, who knowing that the horse had never raced before had rashly offered long odds), and for the best part of a month rode him on parade in place of the more experienced charger that he had acquired on his arrival in the station. Dagobaz, though unfamiliar with the drill, had taken it in his stride, and apart from one attempt to keep ahead of the line, had behaved as if he had been trained to it from the beginning.
‘There's nothing he can't do!’ declared Ash, boasting of his performance to Sarji. ‘That horse is human. And a damn' sight cleverer than most humans, at that. I swear he understands every word I say. He uses his head, too. He'd make a wonderful polo-pony, except that I don't need another, so I'd rather keep him just to ride and… Did you see the way he took that irrigation channel with the well on the near side of it? Flew it like a bird. By God, he should have been caled Pegasus. The Colonel says I can race him in Bombay next cold weather – that is if I'm still here.’
‘You expect to go before then?’ asked Sarji.
‘Not expect,’ corrected Ash wryly. ‘Only hope. Didn't they tell you I was serving a sentence? I'm on attachment; and as I shall have been here a year in March, there's just a chance that the powers in Rawalpindi may relent and send word that I may go back to my own rissala.’
‘What powers are those?’ inquired Sarji, interested.
‘Gods,’ said Ash flippantly. ‘Tin gods that say unto one “go” and he goeth, and to another “come” and he cometh. I received the first order and perforce obeyed: now I hope for the second.’
‘So?’ Sarji was puzzled but polite. ‘And what of Dagobaz? Will you take him with you when you go?’
‘Of course. You don't think I'd part with him, do you? If I couldn't take him any other way, I'd ride him back. But if I'm to be left here to rot for another year, I mean to take him down to Bombay for the races, and the entire Regiment are planning to put their shirts on him.’
‘Shirts?’
‘Money. They are going to bet every rupee they can lay hands on.’
‘Ah! I too. I shall go to Bombay with you and I shall back you with a lakh of rupees for your first race, and make a fortune!’
‘We all will. You and I and your great-uncle the Risaldar-Sahib, and every man in the Regiment. And afterwards Dagobaz will have a silver cup as big as a bucket to drink out of.’
Ash's opinion of the black horse was shared by many; though not by Mahdoo, who refused to see anything admirable in the animal and openly regretted its purchase.
‘I believe that you care more for that Child of the Pit than for anyone else,’ complained Mahdoo crossly as Ash, returning at dusk after an evening ride, fed Dagobaz with sugar before sending him back to the stables. ‘It is not fitting to give one's heart to an animal, who has no soul.’
‘Yet Allah made horses for our use,’ retorted Ash, laughing. ‘Is it not written in the Koran, in the Sura of the War-Steeds… “By the snorting of
war-steeds which strike fire with their hooves as they gallop to the raid at dawn, and with a trail of dust split the foe in two: man is ungrateful to his Lord! To this he himself shall bear witness.” Would you have me ungrateful for such gifts as these, Cha-cha?’
‘I would have you spend less time talking to a brute-beast, and more on those who have your welfare at heart. Such as Hamilton-Sahib, to whom, as I know well, you have sent only one short letter since the day that you acquired that son of perdition.’
Ash started and had the grace to look guilty: ‘Have I not? I did not realize… I will write to him now, tonight.’
‘First read what he has to say. This came by the morning's dâk, but it seems that you were in too great a hurry to glance at your letters before you went off to that creature's stable. This thick one is, I think, from Hamilton-Sahib; and we also, Gul Baz and I, would like news of him and of our friends in Mardan.’
He proffered a brass salver bearing half-a-dozen letters, and Ash snatched up the bulkiest, and tearing open the envelope, carried it into the lamp-lit bungalow to read it:
‘The cavalry have been having a damned dull time of it lately,’ wrote Wally, ‘but the infantry, lucky devils, have been having no end of larks. I can't remember if I told you about that trouble with the Jowaki Afridis over the Government suddenly deciding to stop bribing them (sorry, I believe I should have said “paying them an allowance”. Wah illah!) in return for keeping open the road through the Kohat Pass, and offering them an equivalent sum for safeguarding the Khushalgarh road and telegraph line.
‘They didn't take to the idea at all, and after a bit they began to make their displeasure felt by plundering and burning villages and attacking escorts and police stations. Then they burned down a bridge on the Khushalgarh road and that seems to have got the Powers-that-Be on the raw – a sort of last straw on their august shoulders. They decided that the Jowaki jokers must be given a sharp rap over the knuckles, and, I regret to say, that was just about all it was. A quick dash into Jowaki territory by three columns, one of them ours – 201 bayonets with Campbell in command and Stuart, Hammond, Wigram and Fred in support – burn a village or two and nip back again. Bus! (enough). The columns were under arms in vile heat for twenty hours, marched nearly thirty miles and had eleven casualties – our fellows had two men wounded. Short and sweet, and apparently a complete waste of everyone's time, for the Jowakis remain noticeably unimpressed and are still cutting-up with unabated vigour.
‘I suppose this means that we shall be having another go at them before long. If so, I hope the Big-Wigs let the cavalry get into the act. I'd like to see a bit of action for a change. Zarin sends his salaams and asks me to tell you that he is afraid his father was right. He says that you will know what he means, and I hope you do because I don't. Let us have some news of you. You haven't answered my last letter yet and it's months since I heard from you. But as no news is good news, I presume you are alive and enjoying yourself. My salaams to Mahdoo and Gul Baz…’
‘When you write, send ours to him,’ said Mahdoo, and added sourly: ‘And ask him if he has need of another servant: an old man who was once a good cook.’
The other servants had settled down contentedly enough, for as there was no shortage of accommodation in the Ahmadabad cantonment, Ash had a whole bungalow to himself with a large compound and plenty of servants' quarters: a luxury seldom enjoyed by a junior officer in any military station. Kulu Ram had been pleased to approve of the stables, and Gul Baz, who had left his wife and family in Hoti Mardan, had made himself comfortable by installing a local woman in the hut behind his quarters – a silent and retiring creature who kept herself to herself, cooked and washed and generally attended to the wants of her temporary protector.
Mahdoo, however, was too old for such arrangements; and he hated everything about Gujerat with the possible exception of Ahmadabad's great mosque, where the founder of the city, Sultan Ahmad Shah, lies buried. For the rest, he detested the heat and the humidity, the lush, dripping greenery in the compound, and the rain clouds that during the monsoon had driven in on a wind that smelled of the sea, to empty their contents on the roofs and roads and parade ground of the cantonment until the whole area was awash and it seemed, at times, as though the bungalows were islands floating in a waste of water. The food did not agree with him, and he distrusted the local people, whose language he did not understand and whose ways were not his.
‘He
is too old to change,’ said Gul Baz, excusing Mahdoo's crotchetiness. ‘He misses the scents and sounds of the north, and the food and talk and customs of his own people.’
‘As you do,’ said Ash, and added under his breath: ‘and I also.’
‘True, Sahib. But then if God is merciful you and I will have many more years to live, and therefore if we spend one or two in this place, what matter? But with Mahdoo-ji it is different, for he knows that for him the years are few.’
‘I should not have brought him here,’ said Ash remorsefully. ‘Yet how could I help it, when he refused to be left behind? I would send him on leave at once if I thought he would stay in his own home until we go north again, but I know he would not, so if we are to spend another hot season in this place it would be better for him to stay here now while it is cool, and leave for the north in the first half of February. That way he will miss the months of greatest heat and the worst of the monsoon; and if we are still here when it is over, I may even be able to send to tell him that he need wait only a little longer and meet us in Mardan. Because by that time I must surely know my fate.’
In this last respect, Ash was to be proved right: though in a way that he had not foreseen.
Throughout that cold-weather season, whenever the Regiment was not in camp or engaged in manoeuvres, Ash would rise with the dawn in order to take Dagobaz out for an early-morning gallop. And on most evenings he would ride out alone or with Sarji to explore the countryside, returning to his bungalow only after dusk had fallen.
There was much to be seen, for Gujerat is not only drenched in history, but is the legendary scene of the chief exploits and death of the god Khrishna, the Indian Apollo. Every hill and stream has its link with some mythological happening, and the land is strewn with the ruins of tombs and temples so ancient that the names of those who built them have long been forgotten. Among the memorials to the dead – the magnificient, pillared domes of the great and the sculptured slabs of humbler men – one curious motif attracted Ash's attention, for it appeared over and over again. A woman's arm, ornamented with intricately carved bracelets and armbands.