Bhowani Junction

by John Masters

  The Sirdarni was sitting, European style, in a wobbly chak and staring out of the window. She greeted me and then did not move or say anything for fifteen minutes. At last she looked up at us where we were standing a little to one side and talking quietly. Without apology she interrupted us, ‘Victoria, what is the latest about the mutinies? Is there really no spark left in either Karachi or Bombay?’

  Her strong hands were folded in her lap, the white sari lay across her shoulder. She looked grim and untidy that morning, but very powerful, as usual. I told her. The mutinies were over; the government were picking up the pieces. They were holding courts of inquiry and taking summaries of evidence, forming judicial commissions and rounding up deserters. The warships lay peacefully at anchor in their ports. About fifteen ringleaders were under arrest; the other sailors were doing duty.

  The Sirdarni said angrily, ‘There is a great opportunity wasted! The German revolution of nineteen eighteen began in their navy. The sailors played a big part in the glorious Russian revolution. And now we’ve wasted ours, let the fire go out, because of the treachery of Indian lickspittles. Look at that street!’ She jerked her head in an extraordinarily male gesture. ‘Look at it. The fools walk up and down as though they hadn’t just thrown away their best chance. The policeman’s on his platform at the corner. He ought to be ten feet above it, hanging from Mir Khan’s second-floor balcony.’

  Ranjit said, ‘Mother, can we please not talk about politics this morning? I want to——’

  She said, ‘Not talk politics, son? How often have I to tell you that politics isn’t something you talk? It’s not even something you do. It’s something you live. That’s the trouble with the Nehrus and Gandhis you admire so much. If they’d had one ounce of real fire in their livers, this street would be running in blood, and Govindaswami would have died where he was born—on a dungheap.’

  Ranjit said, ‘You really ought not to speak of the Mahatma like that, Mother. You will——’

  She said, The Mahatma! He’s a tool of the mill-owners, a cunning, ambitious little lawyer. He’s going to sell the country to the millionaires when the British go—if they go—and then you had better look out for real trouble. The people must rise then, and blood must flow in rivers.’

  I steadied myself and, ‘I think you are talking nonsense, Beji.’ I waited quietly, looking the Sirdarni in the eye.

  She blinked as though I had hit her. I felt Ranjit staring at me in fearful astonishment.

  At last the Sirdarni said, ‘Nonsense? That is a very rude thing to say to your mother.’

  ‘I do not mean to be rude,’ I said obstinately. ‘But I had to tell you that I don’t agree with you, in case you thought I did. Can’t we talk about something else?’

  ‘Such as what?’ the Sirdarni said, again folding her hands in her lap. I did not think she was really angry, just astonished and perhaps a little pleased. She had no use for weaklings, and now perhaps she was thinking I would be even more useful than she had thought. She obviously never doubted that she would master me in the end.

  I said, ‘Let’s talk about something nice and unimportant, like—well, have you seen the new picture at the cantonment cinema, The Road to somewhere or other with Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour?’

  It was a silly thing to say, perhaps, but it was the first that came into my head. When I had said it I thought, That does sound as if I’m fed up with Indian politics; it sounds insulting. Perhaps I meant to be insulting.

  ‘I have not seen the picture you mention,’ the Sirdarni said, ‘I never go to the cantonment cinema, as you know, and even here in the city I never see any film made in England or America. It is wrong to put money into the pockets of the capitalists. They use it to make guns and hire mercenaries like Govindaswami and your Colonel Savage and his Gurkhas to suppress freedom everywhere.’

  ‘Have you ever been to Paris?’ I said. ‘I’d love to go.’

  She said, ‘I have not. I have never left India. The French are just as bad as the British, if not worse. They——’

  It was like a rather bad-tempered game—I trying to change the subject, she trying to show that politics could not be avoided

  I said, ‘Wouldn’t you like to go to Paris, Ranjit? I’ve heard it’s so gay and free there, and there are beautiful flowers everywhere in the spring. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone gave us a lakh of rupees as a wedding present so that we could fly to Paris for a week?’

  ‘It would be wonderful,’ Ranjit said, smiling nervously. ‘But I do not think anyone will give us a lakh of rupees.’

  The Sirdarni said, ‘If they did, you should use it to increase political awareness among——’ and at the same time I said, ‘I would love to see the clothes they really wear in Paris. I’ve often wondered if the women are as smart as they’re supposed to be.’

  The Sirdarni said, ‘Fashions in saris do not change. The money those people spend on one dress—what they call a cheap dress—would feed a whole Indian family for ten years—ten years!’

  I stood up, feeling hot behind the eyes. I would burst into tears or lose my temper or do both at once if I did not go away. I said, ‘I think I must go home now, Beji.’

  She got up quickly and came over to me. She put her arm round my shoulder and said, ‘Don’t go. Don’t be angry, Victoria. It is my fault. I am a headstrong, rude old woman. You can teach me something while I teach you something. I have arranged the marriage for July the first.’

  Ranjit said, ‘But Mother, I told you I had to see the guru.’

  She said, ‘I’ve seen the old fool. I’ve told him everything he wanted to know. He pretended he wasn’t keen on marrying you when he knew that neither of you were practising Sikhs, but he agreed in the end. I stayed in there arguing until he did. Now come to your room, Victoria, and tell me what I should do to it to have it all ready for you.’ She began to guide me across the room.

  I felt weak from the continuous effort of forcing myself to contradict and fight her. In her mind, probably, she had made a great concession by allowing me to have the room the way I wanted it. I didn’t really feel strong enough to keep on with this struggle now, but I had to.

  I stopped moving and said, ‘Beji, I can’t live here. It isn’t that I don’t want to live with you, but I do want a house of my own, and I must have one.’

  She still held her arm round my shoulder. She said slowly, ‘You refuse to live here with me? People will say Ranjit has thrown me out, you know that?’

  I wished Ranjit would say something; but perhaps that was too much to ask. He would feel quite as horrified as his mother did—perhaps more so, because he was more conventional. I didn’t think the Sirdarni really cared what people might say. She was using that as a weapon against me. She wanted to be with Ranjit always and keep her hands on him, who could always be moulded, and on me, who would be the easiest instrument for her to mould with.

  I said, ‘I’m sorry, but I know I must have my own home.’

  The Sirdarni said, ‘You and Ranjit go out and have a nice walk. Talk about it. You will eat here?’

  I agreed thankfully. I would have agreed to anything that got me out of there quickly.

  Ranjit went with me, and we bicycled off through the city. I was thinking of the Sirdarni and what on earth I was to do, so I did not notice until we were nearly out of the city that everything had been very quiet. The people walked up and down, as the Sirdarni had pointed out, but there were few of them, and those few walked as though they had some definite job. They did not stroll. I knew the ‘feel’ of Bhowani and looked round for other signs. Soon I saw a shopkeeper barring his store against the street. ‘What’s happening this time?’ I asked Ranjit.

  He hadn’t noticed anything, and I had to explain what I meant. He said, ‘I don’t know. I think you may be imagining it, Victoria. The shopkeeper is probably going away for a few days. Surabhai hasn’t told me about any plans.’

  ‘What about the Moslem League?’ I asked.

&n
bsp; He said, ‘They’re not big enough to cause any trouble. Where are we going?’

  I had been leading the way toward the same place on the river bank where we had gone before. I said, ‘To the river. I want to talk again, Ranjit. Only this time we must get things settled.’

  We went to the same place, but now the sun was high and the ground yellow, dry, and glaring hot. We wheeled our bicycles a little back over the grass and sat under one of the big dark trees. From there we could see the river on one side and the parade ground of Kabul Lines on the other.

  I put my hand on Ranjit’s and said, ‘Ranjit, do you love me?’

  He said slowly, ‘I worship you, I think, Victoria.’

  I squeezed his hand hard, demanding, ‘Yes, but do you love me?’

  However close I got to Ranjit there was always a thing like a very delicate gauze screen or curtain hanging down between us. I had asked him if he loved me. I had never asked any man that question before, because it hadn’t been necessary. Men had breathed hard on me and tried to get close to press against me. They wanted only one thing, but at that moment they wanted it from me, and I had it. The point was, I knew them, I saw them, I felt them. There was no gauze screen. There were other men who liked the look of me but didn’t want me—perhaps they had other girls, girls of their own. And I always knew that, because there was no gauze screen. There were men like Ted Dunphy, who loved me but had made up their minds they were not good enough or clever enough for me, or couldn’t offer me enough. I wouldn’t have cared if I had loved them. But there was no gauze screen. Then there were men who just weren’t interested, and to them I was a thing in a skirt, sometimes a nuisance, sometimes a bore, sometimes quite pleasant, sometimes just a thing. But I knew, because there was no gauze screen.

  All those men had been white, or thought they were white, or said they were white. Savage had been all those men to me—even the lover, even like Macaulay. The meaning of a look I’d caught in his eye, of a brutal word, of a roughness that might have been a tiger’s caress, burst on me in a sudden flash. Usually he was the last sort and treated me like a mere thing.

  Patrick didn’t fit anywhere. He had been none of those men. There was only one sort of man left that he could be, the one sort I didn’t know about—the husband. It was a frightening idea, because it was what Patrick himself thought—logical and inevitable.

  But—Ranjit? What was the sign in an Indian, what was the language? It might be nothing to do with Indians in general; it might just be Ranjit, which made it even more difficult.

  I said, ‘Kiss me, Ranjit.’

  I closed my eyes and dropped my head against his shoulder. I suppose I turned my face up to him, but I don’t remember. Ranjit said agitatedly, ‘Oh, dear Victoria, I can’t! We don’t do it like that. We think it is shameful, insulting. Not here. Look!’

  I opened my eyes and saw a man walking along a footpath a hundred yards away. I said, ‘I don’t care about him. We think it’s insulting for a man not to kiss a girl who asks him to, especially if he’s engaged to her.’

  Ranjit dabbed his face down, and his dry lips touched my cheek.

  I said, ‘On my lips.’ It was like the game with his mother, only much more important.

  He said, ‘I can’t. It is—indecent. It is not done until we are married, Victoria. When we are married and alone in our room.’

  I sat up slowly. I still didn’t know anything, and still the gauze screen hung there between us. It was shaking now, because we were wrought up, but still it hid more than it showed. Ranjit said, ‘I do love you.’

  ‘How do I know what you mean?’ I asked.

  He said, ‘Love is more than this kissing. That is something animal——’

  I said tiredly, ‘I know, Ranjit. I don’t want a lecture.’

  So at last I had to think about sex. I knew all about respect and affection and devotion. I didn’t know whether I would ever get that far with Ranjit. I wasn’t Rose Mary, to plot and plan and go to bed with a man and be unchanged, untouched through it all. I didn’t dare think about, or treat, the idea lightly, because the God’s truth is that when it happened I was flooded and overwhelmed. I loved it and myself and the man, and was filled with the hot thoughts and love and respect and affection all mixed up together, so that I couldn’t separate them. I suppose Johnny Tallent told Macaulay what I was like, without understanding at all, and that is partly why Macaulay couldn’t control himself. In that way I had led Macaulay on. And in that way I had murdered him. There never had been a man who understood what I was trying to give him. They called me ‘a piece of hot stuff, and still I had to go on wrapping my heart and soul and body round them, and dying to make them happy, until it was over.

  Ranjit had my respect and affection and devotion. If only he would start on the other thing, to show at least that he cared about it, that he knew it was important, I’d have everything, and so would he.

  I said, ‘My dear, you’ve got to get away from your mother.’

  I said that to force him out into a place where I could see him clearly. I thought he would get angry and argue with me, and try to persuade me what a wonderful woman she would be to live with. But he said, after a very short pause, ‘Yes. I must.’

  I looked at him to see if he was beginning to fight at last. His tone told me nothing. But he was just melancholy. He went on, ‘I shall go to the guru tomorrow and ask him to receive me back into my religion. Will you come with me and be a Sikh?’

  I wanted him to kiss me, but God was important too. I didn’t know God at all. No one had ever suggested that He was an Anglo-Indian. He must have been a Jew actually, though the padre didn’t often say so out loud. It was rather like no one except Sir Meredith Sullivan actually getting up in public and saying, ‘I am an Anglo-Indian.’ They’d made him a Sir for that. I didn’t really believe one word of what the padres said about God. The Virgin Mary made me wonder, every time I thought of her: Who was it, really? If I didn’t believe the padre, why shouldn’t I not believe the guru the same way, and all the time believe what I really believed?

  I said, ‘I’ll become a Sikh—if you’ll promise to kiss me the day before, and promise to leave your mother’s house the day after.’

  ‘Where shall I go?’ he asked.

  I said, ‘Find a house were we can live. We’re being married on July the first, aren’t we?’ He hadn’t answered about the kiss, so I added, ‘If you kiss me.’

  I wondered if I meant ‘kiss’. It was awful to force myself on to him like this. I’d never done it before. I told myself that I had to find out whether he loved me, not just admired me. That was why I was forcing myself on him. I was being honest, that’s all.

  It was true, but also I had listened to too much English gossip, read too many romantic stories of love in the East. Would he sit opposite me, his knees crossed, and draw me to him? Would he shine in jewels taken from some family vault, and would his body be pale golden and glistening with sweet-smelling ointments? It was a tale of the Arabian nights that I saw in my mind, of a man strong and beautiful and determined to have me. Then all would be well, and there would be no more curtains—if he was like that.

  But—I found myself frowning fondly on him. As so often, I wanted to pat his head and tell him to cheer up. A couple of sentences I remembered from my first school reader fitted the feeling perfectly: DO NOT SOB, BOB. BE A MAN, BOB.

  I am not sure how the rest of the morning and the early part of the afternoon passed. I only remember that it was peaceful inside the Sirdarnf’s house, and very still outside, and I couldn’t find the quarrelsome courage to go on any more just then about K. P. Roy. People never move about much on a hot-weather afternoon, but this was something different—eventually the stillness became an uneasiness that crept inside the quiet room where I was playing dominoes with Ranjit. The Sirdarni had been out when we got back from the river, and she did not come in until shortly before four. We ate at five, and at six I went home. I wanted to go alone, but the Sirdarni sa
id that Ranjit would—must—go with me.

  We saw no one on the way except a fat woman running, waddling like a duck, down a side alley. ‘You were right,’ Ranjit said. ‘Something is brewing.’

  I said, ‘And your mother knows about it. That’s why she made you come with me.’

  Then on the Pike we met an old farmer with his wife and his two grown sons, all on a bullock cart, all heading toward the city. The farmer stopped us and asked whether what he had heard was true.

  ‘What have you heard?’ Ranjit asked.

  He cried, ‘What! You haven’t heard? And you live in the city?’

  ‘I’ve heard nothing,’ Ranjit said.

  The old man said, ‘There is no rioting, then? The soldiers are not out? I will be able to sell my vegetables to Kurrum Chand? The girl was not killed?’

  ‘There’s no rioting,’ Ranjit said, and then the old farmer told us what he had heard. The Moslems had risen and raped and murdered a little Hindu girl who had innocently thrown a cowpat at the mullah. He had all the details except exactly when it had happened—some time this morning was all he knew. ‘I don’t know why we tolerate those Moslems,’ he said, wagging his beard. ‘They are few, they live here on our sufference, and now look what they’ve done! I hear they fell on a procession of our Hindus the other day and slaughtered twenty. And then the Gurkhas came and killed twenty of them in revenge. Because the Gurkhas are Hindus. That was good. Did you see that?’

  ‘Nothing like that happened,’ Ranjit said wearily. ‘I don’t know about a girl being killed to-day, but there’s no rioting. You can go into the city.’

  The old man’s old wife turned to examine me more closely in the sunless evening light as the bullocks leaned into the yoke. We got on to our bicycles, and Ranjit muttered, ‘Rumour, hate, fear. When will it end?’

  ‘When we’ve stopped trying to shield Ghanshyam, who is not K. P. Roy’s brother, but K. P. Roy himself,’ I said suddenly.

  But Ranjit answered, ‘I can’t send my mother to jail,’ and my obsession of guilt, of going in a wrong direction, swelled a little larger in the bottom of my throat.