by Shobha Rao
* * *
The ship’s manifest recorded the diamond merchant as having boarded. Renu was shown, by no other than the ship’s captain, to her cabin. She had practiced deepening her voice so that when the captain said, “Does it suit your needs, sir?” Renu paused, settled the air deep in her throat, and said, “It’ll do.”
And it would: it was three large rooms, furnished handsomely, and she was provided with a personal servant. She waited for the captain to leave, and then she readjusted the pouch in the inside of her kurta, straightened her cap in the mirror, and realized the hardest part was over. She breathed, she let out a smile; she sat on the bed and thought not about the country she was leaving but about the people she’d already left. She thought about Gopichand, and the naïve, young love she had felt for him. She thought about Neela, sweet, scarred Neela, and how their love had defied everything—the hunger in the camp, the loneliness, the deprivation—until her husband had reappeared one day and taken her away. And she thought about the diamond merchant, the one who—in her own way—she had loved the most. She wondered first how long it would take them to notice the newly turned earth on the edge of his private garden. Then she wondered if she would ever love another as much as she had the diamond merchant, but it didn’t seem possible. It didn’t seem possible that the heart could hold so much love, that it could hold so much and still keep itself from breaking.
One morning, at the end of the third week on the ship, the lookout sighted land. He yelled down from the crow’s nest and all the passengers scampered onto the deck to have a look. Renu saw it from the starboard side. At first it was only a thin line at the edge of the horizon. And for hours that’s all it was: a thin line. But even after all the other passengers had drifted away Renu remained on deck. She watched that thin line until evening then she went to sleep and woke up and watched it again. By now the coastline of Africa was clearly visible. She saw a cluster of outcroppings that looked like rocks; she realized they were buildings. The water became even bluer. It turned the turquoise of the lehenga she had left behind when she’d stolen the diamond merchant’s clothes. And then the wind shifted. It turned warm. And Durban came into view. She looked at it with pleasure, with such delight that her heart seemed to swell. And the warmth of the wind carried with it the scent of Africa. The scent of its soft green endlessness, its cracked roads and flat-topped trees, its red and lonely cliffs that baked under the hot sun. It smelled of its teeming cities and dusty bush, its antique shores pounded by so many seas, its breathless summer nights. She felt like she had been lifted from a previous life and placed here, on this ship, on the cusp of this vast and unknowable continent, the interior beckoning her like a moonlit road. But those roads would all come later. For now Renu let the warmth sweep through her and for the fourth and final time, she fell in love.
THE IMPERIAL POLICE
Jenkins drank his morning tea and waited. It’d been three days since Abheet Singh’s death. His wife had already been informed, but it was required that the head constable make an official report to the family of the deceased. Jenkins took a sip of his tea. He looked out into the main room of the police station. It was empty; the subinspectors were out questioning the villagers. A pall of heat hung over the room, the walls dripped morosely. The fan too seemed wilted in the heat, ticking off the mournful seconds like a metronome. He watched it with interest, wondering what she would be like. He guessed she would most likely be silent, weeping, a bit unattractive; these village women aged prematurely from working in the fields all day. He hardly knew what to say to her, his own eyes warmed with tears at the thought of Abheet Singh; he looked down at his wrist instinctively.
But it was peculiar: in the short time that Jenkins had held the post of head constable, with Abheet Singh as his subordinate, he’d not so much as mentioned his wife. Nor children, if he’d had any. That omission had filled Jenkins with a vague and guilty hope. He’d reasoned, while Abheet Singh was still alive, that these Indian—and soon to be Pakistani—villagers arranged all their marriages in childhood. How absurd. Who knew how one would turn out? Maybe, he’d concluded tentatively, Abheet Singh was just like him. The mere thought had made the heat rise to Jenkins’s face yet here he was: waiting for his widow. How could he even look at her? There’d be hardly any need, he decided, these village women barely raised their heads, hidden as they were beneath all those veils and burqas and some such nonsense. Still, he wondered.
* * *
The morning of Abheet Singh’s death, only three days ago, was exceptionally hot. Jenkins had taken a rickshaw in, though he generally preferred to walk, but he’d slept badly the night before. It’d been four weeks since he’d arrived in Rawalpindi but he still couldn’t abide the heat, or the thoughts of Abheet Singh. And so finding Abheet Singh waiting, hands clasped behind his muscular back, nearly sent Jenkins tumbling over a chair as he strode toward his desk. He recovered, stripped off his coat, the heat already prickling his skin, and grew curiously and painfully agitated. He pushed away the feeling and took a deep breath. Meanwhile, Abheet Singh saluted his lamely executed salute, and stood waiting next to the doorway.
“What is it?” Jenkins said, looking down, shuffling through some papers and feigning annoyance.
“A couple of the stalls were burned down early this morning, sir. In the main bazaar.”
Jenkins sighed. So it had reached Rawalpindi. “Muslim or Hindu?”
“Sikh.”
Jenkins might’ve guessed. Once he gathered the courage to take a long look at Abheet Singh—lifting his gaze from the desk to his face, lingering on the turn of his jaw, angled and strong even with the beard covering it and leading rapturously into that turban, the silken sheaths of hidden hair driving him to distraction, forcing him to focus—even Jenkins could see that Abheet Singh’s eyes were anguished, glistening; his own people had been attacked.
“Bring the jeep,” he ordered after a moment but then regretted it immediately. A kind word first might’ve been more appropriate. Abheet Singh seemed not to notice. He only saluted again, turned, and this time Jenkins noticed that his hand didn’t even attempt to reach his brow but collapsed just short of his reddening eyes.
* * *
Still, the salute hadn’t been the first thing Jenkins had noticed about Abheet Singh. The first thing he’d noticed, upon his arrival in Rawalpindi, was Abheet Singh’s meticulousness. His shoes were always spotless, his uniform and turban, even in the blistering Rawalpindi heat, perfectly pressed. He was always the first to arrive at the police station, located just south of the main marketplace. And he completed every task he was assigned with such alacrity that it seemed nearly out of place in this small, remote desert town. Jenkins had requested this post six months ago. He’d been party to a small scandal back in Delhi—nothing he chose to dwell on, though the fact that it’d been based entirely on rumor had left in him a feeling of profound and inexplicable tiredness—and the isolation of this northwest frontier town suited him perfectly.
He’d arrived in April, when all his former colleagues at Delhi Cantonment had been making preparations to spend the hottest summer months in the mountains, Shimla or Haridwar probably. Most of them had not even bothered to say good-bye, nodding imperceptibly as they passed his desk on his last day, their eyes averted with embarrassment. Or maybe pity. He could see them now: sitting on their vast verandas, under the cool shade of the Himalayas, sipping their Pimm’s and watching the bruised and tender green of the foothills with the same malevolent attention with which they’d watched him.
The police station in Rawalpindi was composed of three rooms. The main room was the public area with a stone floor, a long counter, two thin wooden benches by the entrance—along which the town drunks, the only ones the police ever had occasion to pick up in this small town, tottered and tipped over—and an overhead fan that knocked and swung and brayed like the devil. Every day Jenkins was sure it would come unfastened and fly out of the window. The fan had the pull of the devil too;
he watched it with such contempt and such longing during the sweltering hours of the afternoon that it sometimes felt to him like love. He had a direct view of it from his open door; beyond it was the third room of the police station, which was just a straw-filled holding cell. Sometimes, if they were repeats or if their wives threatened to beat them, Jenkins let the drunks sleep it off in the cell. But usually it was empty, and it was in front of this darkened cell that Jenkins had first espied Abheet Singh’s affliction.
Was it an affliction? It was a mystery, no doubt, because despite his impeccable and almost fastidious devotion to his appearance, Abheet Singh was glaringly casual in one regard: his salutation. He of course saluted Jenkins, as his superior officer, promptly every morning and evening, but the way he raised his hand to his forehead had none of the fervor and precision of his other duties. In fact it was downright sloppy.
It was because of this strange gesture that Jenkins began studying him during his second week in Rawalpindi. He did this surreptitiously, only when they were in the public areas of the station, and only when Abheet Singh saluted the other officer under Jenkins, Subinspector Iqbal. His two subordinates could not have been more different. Iqbal was corpulent and overly garrulous, mildly and gratingly obsequious; Jenkins guessed that a wealthy uncle, and bribes, had gotten him the position of subinspector. Abheet Singh, on the other hand, was a slim reserved man, young, in his early twenties. From his file Jenkins knew he’d already been married five years, probably in his late teens like all Sikh boys from the rural villages. His face itself, unlike the faces of the other young men in the village—fawning at the first sight of Jenkins, only to fall vacant once he passed—was like the desert that surrounded Rawalpindi. Somber and alive. The light in his eyes heaved and fell like the windswept sands. Even his skin was the color of sand dunes. Jenkins—who’d not met a single Indian during all his time in England—could practically feel the heat of the entire subcontinent rising from the bodies of these lovely brown men.
Abheet Singh’s was no exception.
Though what drove Jenkins to utter distraction was his salute. He eyed it with increasing irritation with each passing day: first Abheet Singh’s right arm would rise, as expected, but then his wrist would twist at a bizarre angle, palm out instead of down, just as his hand neared his forehead. He’d hold it there for far longer than was needed, almost as if he were drawing attention to it. Then his arm would fall back to his side, uncontrolled, the limb plummeting as lifeless as a dead bird. And with that the whole gesture concluded lamely, hurriedly, and Abheet Singh would avert his eyes like a child caught misbehaving. The motion was slow, lazy, and lacked even an iota of the crispness of military movements.
The first few times Jenkins had watched him he’d decided it was simply a sign of indolence. But that made no sense; he’d never seen Abheet Singh move so much as a pen without ensuring that it was laid straight against the edge of the desk. He then decided it was some form of insubordination. He’d wake at night, unable once again to sleep from the heat, and wonder at Abheet Singh’s gesture. Could it be mocking him? At Delhi Cantonment the other officers had complained constantly about the newly trained Indians. It was the tropical treachery inherent to the Indians and the kaffirs, they said, Sikhs and Muslims and Hindus alike. Look at how they’re killing each other off and the native police not doing a thing about it, they’d said smugly in the months leading to Partition. “Wouldn’t know proper regimental training and order if it bit them on the bum,” Smithson had said. They’d been in the canteen on a winter afternoon, the light of the sun yellow and inflamed, when Hughes had given Jenkins a sidelong glance and said, “Some here might even be keen on biting them on the bum.” The next day Jenkins had requested transfer, and reddened even now, as he lay in bed well away from Delhi, at the insult. Still, he hadn’t believed them, not completely. It was true that the Indians were slow learners and a bit smelly but they weren’t treacherous, Abheet Singh least of all. But there was something about him, so much, really. His beautiful skin, his strong, muscular forearms, and all that silken hair piled on the top of his head, hidden under his turban. His beard was trimmed but Jenkins knew that Sikh men—that husky, ancient race of warriors—were forbidden to cut their hair. How long was it? Did it fall in a great wash down his back when he undid his turban, or was it tied up in some way? How did it look, spread across his pillow? The questions kept coming and Jenkins grew even warmer from the rush of heat to his middle. He sat straight up in bed. Well. This was unacceptable; it simply had to stop. He came to a decision, right then in the middle of the night: he simply must talk to Abheet Singh. Such a gesture, such total lack of discipline was inexcusable. How could a country even hope to govern itself with such obvious lack of self-control?
* * *
The question of self-control—it had been a question of self-control, hadn’t it—recalled to him the piano lessons his mother insisted that he take well into his adolescence. So that while all the other boys were out playing cricket and looking at pictures in laddie magazines, Jenkins was stuck at home practicing piano. He’d been miserable at first—especially since his best friend, Toddy, was captain of the cricket team. But then Mrs. Bunting had retired and his mother had hired the new director of the church choir, Mr. Templeton, to give him lessons on the side. Before the first lesson Mr. Templeton, who’d read classics at Oxford, had knocked on the door and when Jenkins had opened it the sight of him had nearly knocked him off his feet. He’d never laid eyes on a man so perfectly formed: gray eyes as gloomy as the sea, hands and neck wiry yet formidable, thick dark hair that needed a cut fell over his ears and tickled his neck. He stood so erect, so blissfully unaware of his own handsomeness that Jenkins actually blushed. After that Jenkins didn’t once complain or miss his piano lessons. In fact it got so that he was downright promising at it.
Of course, then came the incident in the church vestiary, when he and Mr. Templeton were found in what the vicar had called “an unfortunate position.” Within a week Mr. Templeton was transferred to a parish in Wales and Jenkins, as his mother wept and his father looked away shamefacedly, boarded a train for Warwick. When the train pulled out of the station Jenkins stuck his head out of the window. He wanted to wave but he couldn’t. His mother was still crying, but now she’d laid her head against his father’s shoulder, while his arm held her to him. They stood like that—leaning against each other—for as long as Jenkins watched them. And it was that, that simplicity of feeling that Jenkins knew he’d somehow lost.
Even Mr. Templeton, after being found in the vestiary, when they were waiting for the vicar in his office, had said, “Deny it. Deny everything.”
“But how,” Jenkins said. “He saw us.”
Mr. Templeton leaned toward him. “Make him doubt what he saw.”
“That’d be lying.”
“No,” he said. “It’d be concealing the truth.”
Jenkins looked at him. It seemed hard to believe that this had been the same person who’d held him to his beating chest, who’d kissed him only moments ago. The vicar, in the end, made it clear he wanted only for them to be out of his parish. “The empire’s vast,” he said, showing them to the door. “Try, if you could, not to come back.”
And so Jenkins had been sent off to boarding school. Though, even at the age of sixteen, it seemed absurd to Jenkins that he should be sent to a boarding school for boys. The two years he remained at Warwick—along with the two or three tousles he had while there—did nothing more than solidify his sense that he was different, and that what he did must always be kept concealed, and that for him, in spite of the ache that had settled into his chest, clogged the passageways to his heart, there was no greater peace than the peace of another’s arms. And so what, he thought, bracing against the cold of the long West Midland winters, if the arms happened to be those of another boy?
* * *
There had, of course, been no need for Jenkins to summon Abheet Singh; he’d been waiting for him in his office
early that Monday morning. Once he’d brought the jeep around they’d headed into the village. They didn’t return to the station for another twelve hours.
The looting had spread. Stores in the mainly Sikh and Hindu populated city center were locked as of midday. Jenkins imposed a curfew from noon till the next morning. They’d patrolled the streets for hours, chasing after small itinerant fires and skirmishes, crumbs thrown along their path just to taunt them. Jenkins, with Abheet Singh driving, rounded corner after corner only to see the marauding gangs vanish into a narrow alley or a nondescript doorway. They’d race to the end of the street, or the alleyway, and find a silence so deep it was as if the gang had simply vanished into thin air, as if it’d never existed.
They’d reached one such alley when Jenkins jumped out of the jeep and yelled, “Where the devil did they go?”
“It’s easy to outrun the English, sir,” Abheet Singh said calmly. “You never go anywhere without your jeeps.”
So they abandoned it under a peepal tree and set out on foot. By then the sky burned white with heat, the last of the sun’s rage before it began its descent, and the sand blew straight into their eyes. After half an hour of this Jenkins knew it was of no use. They headed back toward the jeep. As they neared the peepal tree Abheet Singh was the first to notice. “Sir, the tires,” he gasped. All four had been slashed. They ran to it as if they could staunch its wounds but the air had let out long ago and the jeep rested, sleepy and bemused, on its axles. They looked around them; the street and the market were deserted.
“At least the curfew’s working, sir,” Abheet Singh said.
“Yes, well,” Jenkins said. “That’s the only time things work in this country: when you don’t want them to.”
They left the jeep under the peepal tree and began walking. Jenkins looked back at the jeep ruefully, as if it might be following them like a stray dog.