by John Masters
Krishna put on his tunic and turned to Ralph, a little nettled because all these denigrations could be taken to include Warren. He said, ‘You hate the upper classes, don’t you, Ralph?’
Ralph’s face creased into a sardonic smile. ‘Why not? I’m a byblow of one of them ... old Henry Bateman, seducing my mother when she was a cowman’s daughter and he the vicar here. Mrs. Bateman’s done her best, bringing me up the way she brought up her own children, after my mother died ... but from where I stand everything looks different... different, and bad.’
Joan Bateman laid a hand on his arm and said, ‘Ralph dear, don’t talk about it. It doesn’t matter to me ... to Mother ... to anyone who matters ... Come in for lunch.’
They walked away together, across the yard and into the house, looking at each other, not speaking, Krishna forgotten. He felt a cold chill of certainty that they were lovers.
That afternoon Diana said, ‘What a shame it’s such a miserable day. I wanted to ride up on the Plain this afternoon, as it’s your last day.’
‘Let’s go,’ Krishna said, ‘but walking. From what I’ve seen of defence systems in France, cavalry will never be used again. I’d better get used to walking.’
They put on raincoats and Diana wore a sou’wester over her hair, and Mrs. Bateman gave Krishna a blackthorn stick from the umbrella stand in the hall and they strode off side by side down the drive, along the lane, left at the Upavon Road and so up on to the Plain. The rain stung Krishna’s face as they headed south-west. He hardly spoke, for what he had guessed deeply troubled him. Surely it was the war, in some way, causing it, for surely Warren would have been different back in India a year ago, at the training camp, at the cricket, if Joan was already turning away from him then. But gradually the awareness of Diana striding along at his side drove his apprehensions deeper into his consciousness, and finally out of sight. She was more than herself, a young woman, Warren’s sister; she was England, England walking through the rain, her spaniel hunting the dulled scent of rabbits, lonely trees like distant ghosts across the short grass.
Soon after they returned to the Old Vicarage half a dozen children came for a party with Rodney and Louise and after they had all eaten cakes and drunk tea, and pulled crackers, and the maid had cleared away the mess, everyone, grown-ups included, divided into two teams to play Charades. Krishna had never played before--in turns each side acted out a word, syllable by syllable, while the other side had to guess what the word was. He loved it, and loved the bright-eyed eagerness of the children, the whole-hearted way they flung themselves into their parts, how they loved to dress up in the finery Mrs. Bateman brought down from the attic.
‘That’s the best part of Charades for them,’ she said, smiling. ‘Dressing up. We never throw away old clothes, but keep them just for this.’
‘We should give more to the poor people, Mother,’ Ralph Harris said.
‘If they are working clothes, we do,’ the old lady replied equably, ‘but that silk ball gown there which Caroline Gill is wearing ... I wore that to the Hunt Balls in--let me see, Sir George was Master--1877 and ‘78. That would not be much use to a poor woman.’
‘How do you know, Mother?’ Joan Bateman said. ‘It’s up to them to decide how they use it, not us.’
‘Yes, dear,’ Mrs. Bateman said. ‘It’s your side’s turn to go out now. And we shall have to make this the last one. It’s nearly seven o’clock.’
The maid awakened Krishna at six next morning. It was still raining. The fields disappeared green-grey into the thick air, and if any gods existed they were shivering damply in the formless clouds that filled the sky. Krishna washed slowly, dressed, and took out his cigarette case. He looked at the cigarette between his fingers and said aloud, ‘No.’ No more. There was an unpleasant taste of old tobacco smoke in his mouth and in the room, but that was not what led him to empty the case into the wastepaper basket. It was time to give up, to abstain, not to acquire. Warren would not understand. He felt the oppression of sadness again. He would have liked to talk to Diana about Warren and Joan, but that was impossible, now. Another time, perhaps, if he survived. And Warren.
He was going back to the trenches. Back to Warren, his friend and teacher. He felt an uneasy malaise as though he were to face some severe test and did not know how he would pass it. Ralph Harris’s words weighed heavily on him. Those sodden fields and thatched cottages held sorrows, lusts, and angers as bitter as any in India. Cricket would not assuage them. Nor destroying the Hun. Something was breaking here, even as he had seen administration break down on the Western Front. Was the war causing it? Or only exposing it?
He had drunk too much last night--again. But perhaps his malaise came from the fact that he was going to say goodbye to Diana Bateman, and might never see her again. He began to shave, noting how very brown his face looked here, in this pale light.
March 1915
Krishna Ram ducked under the low door and settled himself quickly at the back of the small crowd. It was another roofless house (were there any with roofs in France?) in St. Hubert, this one allotted for use as a Hindu temple. A tattered tarpaulin suspended from the ends of beams sticking out of the walls covered most but not all of it. A sowar in C Squadron had carved a lingam out of another beam, that must have been there for five hundred years, and the Brahmin had set it up in the centre of the tiled floor. A few primroses and snowdrops lay scattered at the base of the lingam, a garland of small fresh daisies hung round it, and the top was scattered with turmeric.
It was March 20, the second and most important day of the great Hindu spring festival of Holi. The Brahmin, squatting in front of the lingam, rocked back and forth in white robes, palms joined, eyes closed, chanting endless Sanskrit verses of prayer to the Fire God. A dozen sowars seemed to fill the room, some chanting holy names, some praying silently with hands joined and heads bowed. They were all wearing their grey army socks, for the tiles were cold and damp, though the boots were left outside.
O Fire, you are immortal among mortals,
You protect us as a friend does,
In front and at the back and at higher levels and lower levels.
Destroy the strength and might of the demons!
The letter burned like a live coal in the pocket of Krishna’s tunic. Her writing was almost unformed, and certainly the wording was banal enough: ‘It rained hard yesterday and we had to get Young Marsh to come and clear the ditch ... Fudge is getting fat with not enough exercise now that I work for the Women’s Volunteer League every afternoon ... Mother asks what size socks you wear as she is going to knit you a pair of heavy woollen ones .. ‘
O beloved we are celebrating the festival of Holi today in Brij
Two ladies of fair complexion and two of dark have come out of their homes to play Holi
But it was the first letter she’d written him, and it arrived the day the regiment came out of the line a week ago, after a fortnight in the trenches, again opposite Lestelle Wood and Hill 73. That was the first half of March, two weeks of sleet and rain and snow, and raw cold, men going down with pneumonia and influenza and Major Bateman insisting on an even more rigorous discipline, even more aggressive patrolling. Now, in the rear area, he was trying to stop the men from washing themselves every morning by stripping naked, except for the loin cloth, and washing the whole body at a pump or in a bucket. That was the only form of ceremonial cleanliness for a Hindu, but Major Bateman said it was causing pneumonia, from which the regiment was losing 500 man-days a month, and he wanted to forbid it. ‘Why can’t they wash like everyone else does in this climate?’ he demanded of Krishna. ‘A bit at a time, keeping the rest of their clothes on?’
My beloved, the red powder is flying in the air,
And the clouds are red in the sky.
I am drenched in saffron coloured water,
And the people are playing various musical instruments--
Mridang, Jhanj, Dhup, Majera!
Krishna bowed ceremonially, made a last silen
t prayer, went out, and sat on the step tying his boot laces. It was good to see, at the edge of the wood, the fifty horses which had been brought up for the celebrations.
In this hour before the beginning of the long northern twilight, there was an appropriate breath of spring in the air. Music--Indian music--sounded from the left and Krishna followed it down a narrow alley to its source in a big barn. The regimental band was playing, squatted in a half circle on earth and straw. Half a dozen sowars in the full costume of the Ravi hills danced in the centre of the circle. Two men astride makeshift hobby horses danced after beckoning, escaping girls. The barn was jammed with sowars. There must have been over two hundred of them and from the crests on turbans, and the brass shoulder tides, Krishna saw that many men from the division’s regular infantry battalions--Punjabis, Gurkhas, Dogras, Mahrattas--had come to join in the celebration. A pair of Gurkhas had made huge phalluses out of wood for themselves, and fastened them round their waists and, obviously full of cheap brandy, danced after the men in women’s clothing, to the applause and laughter of the crowd.
Krishna noticed some French villagers at the edge of the crowd and smiled to himself. They would never have seen a celebration of Holi before, or even heard of it; but they would recognize what it was about easily enough. After all, there were spring festivals in every religion, Mr. Fleming had said. Even Easter was a spring festival, timed to replace the old Saturnalias.
The band played more loudly. The dancers spread out from the barn on to the twilit field. A couple of young soldiers ran down from the street and began to hurl red and blue powder. Louder the music, more heavy the beat...
One of the phallus-armed Gurkhas jerked his hips in front of the French women at the edge of the crowd. The women giggled, turned away, looked again, moved their legs comfortably. Their eyes enlarged, focused on the stiffly upthrust phallus jerking there so close against their skirts.
There’d be a lot of men going down the road to Longmont tonight, Krishna thought. Holi was the Rite of Spring. The men had not seen their wives and lovers for over six months now. They were drinking, too, passing round brandy and wine.
He went back into the village. The doors were open, the men inside drinking and singing lascivious songs. Other men ran down the street hurling the red powder, symbol of women’s blood. From behind half drawn curtains French villagers watched, wondering.
At Major Bateman’s billet the orderly sat in the doorway polishing the major’s boots. Through the window, Krishna saw Warren writing by the light of a hurricane lantern set on the table beside him. Krishna stopped. He should go and talk to him. He was the only Christian of the regiment, the only Englishman. He must feel specially alone on an evening like this, when everyone about him was involved in something he could not share. Warren’s family had taken him, Krishna, to the Christian church in Shrewford Pennel. Surely he should do something for Warren now?
But it was different. Warren despised Holi as an obscene heathen spectacle, typifying the worst of India. He had not tried to stop the celebrations, but had told Krishna that he himself would take no part in them. If there was any religious ceremony involved, as in the blessing of weapons at Dussehra, Krishna was to represent him. He was not willing to take whatever the Hindu faith, or the Brahmin, or this gaudy rite of Holi could give him; as Krishna had been willing to take what the little church in Shrewford Pennel held out to him. So he sat there, isolated, working, Shikari at his feet. Krishna thought, is he writing to Joan? Has she told him something, to bring that frown to his face? Perhaps yes, perhaps no, but the frown was becoming almost permanent now, together with a jerky, nervy irritability quite foreign to the Warren whom Krishna had known in India. Overwork ... the war ... Joan, perhaps ...
He moved on, among men now dancing in the street in the dusk, and powder bursting like bombs against doors and windows, and the sound of the band a spring wind in the air, full of longing.
‘Sowar Alam Singh, Ravi Lancers, you are charged under Section 40 of the Indian Army Act with desertion in the face of the enemy, in that ..
The voice of the British lieutenant-colonel of the 1 /12th Gurkhas droned on with the details of the charge in fluent Hindustani. At the end he said, ‘How do you plead, guilty or not guilty?’
‘Guilty, sahib,’ the prisoner replied promptly.
The colonel said, ‘Since the charge is liable to the death penalty, your plea must be recorded as Not Guilty. The trial will proceed on that basis.’
Krishna Ram settled more comfortably in his chair behind the two blanket-covered tables. The General Court Martial was being held in Divisional HQ at Pont des Moines, five miles farther back than St. Hubert. The other members of the court were Krishna, Captain Sher Singh, Captain Longmire of the 71st Punjabis, and 2nd Lieutenant Puran Lall.
The evidence was plain. Sowar Alam Singh had run away during the debacle at Hill 73, and had disappeared. The rest of his squadron had stopped when they reached B Squadron standing steady in the old front line; but Alam Singh had kept on, not running now but walking, all the way past the reserve regiments, past the gun lines until he reached an Indian AT company. He’d spent the night there, the next day got into a cattle truck on a train and stayed in it till it stopped, six hours later. Then he’d walked across a couple of fields, knocked at the door of an isolated farm, and by gestures asked for food. It was a lonely farm, the men away at the war, and two women, an old one and a young one, had looked after him. They kept pigs and chickens and had no man to do the heavy work. Alam Singh became their farm labourer.
‘What did you do while at the farm?’ the defending officer asked in his examination-in-chief.
‘Worked, sahib. I worked hard. Those Fransezi women showed me much that I did not know about pigs. Their pigs were bigger than any I have seen. Their chickens laid more and bigger eggs.’
‘Did you intend to return to the regiment?’
‘No, sahib,’ the man said. ‘I was tired of the war. I wanted to leave a month before, and return to my farm at home, but the major-sahib--Bholanath--would not permit it. I had then served the Rajah five years, as I promised when I joined.’
Krishna thought, he’s one of the old type, brave, tenacious, simple, totally honest. Since he had missed the rigorous training that Warren had given the regiment since the debacle at Hill 73 he had not, like the rest of the men, become harder, tougher, more sophisticated, and, to tell the truth, less likable. Such a man as Alam Singh still was could not survive in the new regiment. It would be better for him, and the Rajah, and the regiment, if he were allowed to go back to farming.
The defending officer tried hard to get the sowar to say that he had intended to return to the regiment some day--for the intention never to return is the essence of the crime of desertion; but Alam Singh remained adamant that he intended to give up soldiering forever. The prosecuting officer, Dayal Ram, hardly had to prove any of the points that he needed to substantiate the charge, for they had all been proven for him. The evidence completed, Major Bholanath gave witness of the man’s excellent character, and--until the time of his absence--reliability. The prosecution did not rebut that, and the court retired to consider their verdict.
The colonel turned to the junior officer, as was the order of a court martial, and asked him for his opinion. Puran Lall glanced covertly at Krishna, looking for a lead as to what the prince thought; but the colonel said irritably, ‘Don’t look at Major Krishna Ram, man! What do you think?’
‘I think, guilty,’ Puran Lall said, ‘but ...’
‘That’s all I’m asking you now,’ the colonel snapped. ‘Longmire?’
‘Guilty.’
One by one the other officers followed suit, all saying, ‘Guilty.’ The colonel said, ‘Now, the punishment. As you know, the Indian Army Act says that this crime shall be punished by “death or such less punishment as the court shall decide”. In other words we have complete latitude to award any punishment whatsoever, and as we are a General Court Martial, we have the power
to award the death penalty ... I consider this man’s crime as serious as it could be. He ran away in the face of the enemy. He found a safe place a hundred miles in the rear and simply stayed there, betraying his oath, his comrades, and his military duty. He lived with these two French women and God knows what he didn’t... well, that’s not in the charge, and the women said he’d been a model labourer and had done nothing against them or anyone else. But they’d say that anyway ... The general thinks that desertions will increase disastrously if we don’t jump hard on the ones we catch. So ... Mr. Puran Lall?’
Again Puran Lall sought Krishna Ram’s eyes. Krishna imperceptibly shook his head. He had suddenly decided that the man must not be shot. He was an Indian farmer. No one but other farmers, other Indians, other men from Ravi, could really understand what he had done and why.
Puran Lall understood, and said, ‘Not death, sir. Some years imprisonment. I do not know how many.’
The colonel said impatiently, ‘If that’s what you say we’d better vote first for or against the death penalty. Then we can settle the number of years if we have to. You are against the death penalty in this case?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Longmire?’
‘Death, sir.’
‘Sher Singh?’
‘Not death, sir.’
‘Major Krishna Ram?’
‘I am against the death penalty, sir.’
The colonel shuffled his papers angrily. ‘I am of the opinion--strongly--that the man deserves death. But we are three to two against, and I so record it. Now, what do you suggest as the appropriate punishment for this ... the most serious crime a soldier can commit? Two extra guards, perhaps, Major Krishna Ram?’ Krishna thought, this procedure was all very well for the British, and for them it worked well; but for Indians it was better to discuss, for everyone to have his say and for everyone to be aware of what the others thought, the decision would not then be the result of a hard mathematical count--so many yes, so many no--but a consensus, a compromise commonly arrived at. By attacking with this sarcastic question the colonel had given him the chance he needed.