by Amitav Ghosh
‘I mean, if I too had been fortunate in marriage.’
‘Fortunate?’
The word had burst involuntarily from Shireen’s lips but once it was said she too was seized by a need to unburden herself. ‘Oh Cathy – my marriage was not what you think.’
‘Really?’
‘After my husband died,’ said Shireen softly, ‘I discovered that he had a mistress and another family, here, in China.’
‘No!’
‘Yes, Cathy, it’s true. It was a terrible shock to me. I could not believe that he, who had always seemed so devoted, so dutiful and devout, could be entangled in this way with someone from another country, someone who did not share his faith.’
Now Shireen too paused to dab her eyes. ‘It’s only now that I’ve begun to understand how life takes those turns.’
Mrs Burnham gave her a long, searching look and then came to sit beside her. ‘Things have changed for you, haven’t they, Shireen,’ she said gently, ‘ever since Mr Karabedian came into your life?’
Shireen was choking now; all she could do was nod.
‘But Shireen,’ Mrs Burnham whispered, ‘you’re very lucky you know. You are a widow; you can remarry.’
‘That’s impossible,’ said Shireen adamantly. ‘My children, my family, my community – they would never forgive me. And I have a duty to them after all.’
Mrs Burnham slipped her hand into Shireen’s and gave it a squeeze.
‘Have we not done enough by our duty, Shireen? Do we not also have a duty to ourselves?’
The question caught Shireen unawares, shocking her into silence. She was still trying to think of an answer when a steward stepped in to say that Karabedian-sah’b was at the front door.
*
Once the bombardment had started, the banjee-boys were allowed a brief rest: they seated themselves on the ground, in a sheltered spot. As the barrage intensified they could feel the shock-waves coursing through the earth and into their bodies. The sound was so loud that Raju had to clap his hands over his ears.
Then Dicky jogged his elbow: ‘Look – over there.’
Glancing down the line Raju spotted a man coming towards them with something that looked like a dead goat on his back.
‘It’s the bhisti, bringing water,’ whispered Dicky. ‘This is it – it’s going to start now. The bhisti always comes before the charge.’
When the bhisti reached him Raju drank his fill from the spout of the mussuck before filling his water-flask. Then, following Dicky’s example, he popped a sweet into his mouth.
Just as abruptly as it had begun the barrage stopped. A strange, crackling quiet followed, in which screams could be heard, echoing over from the Chinese lines. Then Captain Mee shouted, ‘Fix bayonets!’ and the fife-major began to call out orders in rapid succession. Suddenly the boys were all on their feet, advancing in echelon, in pace with the sepoys who flanked them on both sides.
Even though Raju had practised the manoeuvre many times he found himself struggling for breath, head spinning. In drills no one warned you about the dust, or the pall of smoke; nor did they tell you that the sepoy beside you might stumble on a cannonball’s crater and lurch towards you in such a way that his bayonet would miss your face by inches. The noise too was almost overpowering, the sheer volume of it: the thudding of feet, the pounding of drums, the ‘Har-har-Mahadev’ battle-cry of the sepoys, and above all that, the whistle and shriek of shots passing overhead. And cutting through all that noise was the eerie, reverberating sound of bullets hitting bayonets.
Raising his eyes, Raju saw that they were now very close to the walls of the fort: he could see the heads of the defenders, topped with conical caps, desperately trying to aim their antiquated matchlocks, which were fired not with a trigger but by holding a slow-burning wick over the touch-hole.
Then all of a sudden the advance stopped.
‘Prepare to fire!’ shouted Captain Mee and the sepoys fell to their knees to prime their muskets. On the next command the soldiers and sepoys threw up a curtain of fire, to cover the sappers who were racing ahead to plant explosives along the breastworks.
The respite came as a godsend to Raju; his throat was parched, his nose clogged with dust, his eyes smarting from the smoke. Within seconds his flask was empty and when a bhisti appeared it seemed as if a prayer had been answered; Raju clung to the spout, sluicing water over his face and into his mouth; he would have emptied the mussuck if Dicky hadn’t shouldered him aside.
In the distance, at the foot of the hill, down by the water, there was another eruption of flame as the Queen and the Nemesis began a second bombardment, aimed, this time, not at the fortifications on the hill but the gun-emplacements along the shore. Then came an explosion that silenced everything else: it was the blast of the sappers’ charges, going off under the breastworks on the hill. When the smoke and debris had cleared Raju caught a glimpse of Major Pratt, with his sabre drawn, racing towards a breach in the walls, followed by a company of marines.
The banjee-boys jumped to their feet, expecting that B Company would be the next to charge into the breach. But then suddenly the fife-major sprang up in front of them: instead of signalling a charge they were to pipe the sepoys’ column into wheeling to the left, on the double.
What was happening? Were they advancing or retreating? Raju did not know or care; his only thought was of staying in step with the other banjee-boys.
They were going downhill now, so the pace accelerated steadily until the whole detachment seemed to be running headlong. One by one the fifers gave up trying to blow on their instruments; there was not enough breath in their lungs. Glimpsing blue waters ahead, Raju realized that they were almost at the bottom of the hill.
Then the road made another turn and they found themselves on an incline that led to the rear of the fort. They saw that the ramparts had crumbled under the bombardment from the two steamers; they saw also that the vessels were still abreast of the battery. The strip of water between them and the shore was filled with the bodies of defendants: some were still alive, thrashing about helplessly. The sailors on the steamers’ decks were picking them off, one by one.
Kesri was in the first rank when the rear of the fort came into view. He saw that hundreds of Chinese soldiers were pouring out of the gates. He guessed that they were being driven out of the walls by the marines, who had attacked the shore-side battery after storming down from the hilltop fort. Now the remaining defendants were rushing out to meet the sepoys in a headlong charge: having endured a bombardment of terrifying intensity they seemed almost to welcome the prospect of hand-to-hand combat.
But the sepoys were prepared for the onrush; falling to their knees they met the charge with a barrage of bullets, mowing down the vanguard and causing panic in the ranks behind. And then, with the Chinese front lines already decimated, the sepoys fell upon the milling survivors at close quarters, with swords and bayonets.
When the two lines collided the shock reverberated through the column. The pace slowed so abruptly that Raju bumped up against the fifer in front of him. Brought suddenly to a halt, Raju and Dicky stood motionless, fifes hanging uselessly in their hands. All around them metal was clanging on metal, drowning out the cries of dying men.
Slowly as the carnage unfolded, Raju and Dicky were pushed ahead by the irresistible weight of those behind them. After a few paces they found themselves stepping over the heaped bodies of slaughtered defenders. Almost without exception the clothes of the Chinese soldiers were scorched or burned – this was true even of those who were still on their feet. When hit by a bullet or a bayonet their clothing would burst into flame and they would light up like torches.
Suddenly the fife-major materialized again, within the cloud of smoke; he told Raju and Dicky to get to work, slinging corpses off the road. Tucking their fifes into their belts they took hold of a pair of lifeless ankles and dragged the corpse to the side of the road, where the hillside sloped into the water, a few yards away. As the body r
olled down they noticed that the narrow strip of shore between the road and the channel was filled with the corpses of defenders. They were lying in piles, two or three deep in some places. Many had rolled into the water; the channel seemed to be full of them, floating like logs. On some, the clothes were still burning.
The boys turned away abruptly and went back to the road. As they were taking hold of another corpse they heard a grunting sound close by and looked up.
A few yards ahead a fallen Chinese soldier had struggled to his feet: his clothes were scorched and his left arm was hanging uselessly at his side, almost severed at the shoulder. In his right hand was a sabre which he raised when his eyes found Raju and Dicky. Pressing up against each other they froze in shock as the man stumbled towards them, brandishing his sword.
Then Dicky found his voice and screamed: ‘Bachao!’ – and miraculously a sepoy emerged from the swirling cloud of dust and bayoneted the man through the stomach. Scarcely pausing to look at the two boys, the sepoy put one foot on the corpse, wrenched out his bayonet, and plunged back into the fray.
As Raju’s breath returned he realized that his trowsers were wet. He was staring at the dark patch when Dicky said: ‘Don’t worry about it, men. Happens to everyone. It’ll dry up soon.’
Glancing at his friend, Raju saw that Dicky’s trowsers showed a similar stain.
*
Less than a hundred yards away Kesri was trying, vainly, to hold back his men.
From his position at the head of the Bengal detachment he had seen the carnage unfold, as the defenders ran straight into the sepoys’ barrage of bullets. In the beginning Captain Mee and a few other officers had called on the surviving Chinese soldiers to surrender. Uncomprehending and panicked, they had responded instead by flailing about with their weapons. The officers had perforce had to cut them down, and as the lines closed, the marines and sepoys had abandoned themselves to a frenzy of blood-letting.
The sight sickened Kesri: in all his years of soldiering he had never seen a slaughter like this one. There were corpses everywhere, many of them with black scorch-marks on their tunics. On some, the clothes were still burning: looking more closely, Kesri saw that the fires were caused by a fault in the defenders’ equipment. The powder for their guns was carried not in cartridges, as was the case with British troops, but in rolled-up paper tubes. These tubes were kept in a powder-pouch that was strapped across the chest. In the course of the fighting the flaps of these pouches would fly open, spilling powder over the soldiers’ tunics; the powder was then set alight by the wicks and flints of their matchlocks.
Turning to one side, Kesri skirted around the road, to the shattered ramparts of the waterside battery. The Union Jack was flying everywhere now – on the ramparts of Chuenpee and across the channel, on the fort of Tytock, which had been stormed in a similar fashion by another British landing-party.
Climbing through a breach in the wall, Kesri made his way into the nearby battery. Here too there was ample evidence of a massacre: bodies lay in piles around the craters where heavy shells had exploded; along the bottom of the ramparts lay the corpses of Chinese soldiers who had been felled by crumbling masonry. Plastered against the light-coloured stone of the walls, in bright, bloody splashes, were clumps of tissue and fragments of bone. Here and there splattered brains could be seen dribbling down like smashed egg-yolks.
Almost uniformly the clothes of the dead defenders were scorched with the marks of burning gunpowder. It took no great effort to imagine the panic among the defenders as the flames leapt from tunic to tunic.
In some of the gun-emplacements British marines and artillerymen were hard at work, rendering the big guns useless by hammering spikes into their touch-holes and knocking out their trunnions. Amongst them was a marine who often visited the wrestling pit at Saw Chow.
‘Damned fine set of guns they had here,’ said the marine to Kesri, stroking the gleaming brass barrel of a massive eight-pounder. ‘Have to hand it to Johnny Chinaman – he learns fast. Some of these guns are perfect copies of our own long-barrels. We even found some thirty-two-pounders. All newly cast – lucky for us they haven’t yet learnt how to use them properly. Look here.’ He kicked a block of wood that was wedged under the barrel. ‘These jackblocks kept them from lowering the barrels – that’s why so many of their shots went over us.’
In a corner, over a heap of corpses, hung a hastily scribbled sign, in English.
‘What does it say?’ Kesri asked.
The marine grinned, wiping his face with the back of his hand: ‘One of our sarjeants put it up. It says: “This is the road to glory.”‘
Turning away, Kesri walked in the other direction. Ahead lay a sharp corner, and on rounding it he found himself in a dim, narrow passageway. As his eyes grew accustomed to the light he saw that there was a Chinese soldier at the far end of the corridor. Kesri knew from his tall, plumed hat and his high boots that he was probably an officer. He had evidently suffered an injury, for there was a cleft in the armoured plates that covered his torso; blood was dripping through the cracks.
On catching sight of Kesri the soldier raised his heavy, two-handed sword. Kesri could tell from his crouched stance that he was gathering strength for one last charge.
Lowering his own sword, Kesri rested the tip on the ground and raised a hand, palm outward.
‘Surrender! Surrender!’ he called out. ‘No harm will come …’
Kesri knew, as he was saying the words, that they were useless. He could tell from the expression on the man’s face that even if he’d understood he would have chosen death over surrender. Sure enough, a moment later the man came rushing at Kesri, almost as though he were begging to be cut down, as indeed he was.
When he had pulled out his dripping sword, Kesri saw that the man’s eyes were still open. For the few seconds of life that remained to him, the man fixed his gaze on Kesri. His expression was one that Kesri had seen before, on campaigns in the Arakan and the hills of eastern India – he knew it to be the look that appears on men’s faces when they fight for their land, their homes, their families, their customs, everything they hold dear.
Seeing that expression again now it struck Kesri that in a lifetime of soldiering he had never known what it was to fight in that way – the way his father had fought at Assaye – for something that was your own; something that tied you to your fathers and mothers and those who had gone before them, back into the dimness of time.
An un-nameable grief came upon him then; falling to his knees he reached out to close the dead man’s eyes.
*
On the island of Hong Kong, the sound of cannon-fire, muted though it was by distance, was still menacing enough to keep the gardeners away from the nursery. Through the morning Paulette worked alone, trying to stay busy, watering, pruning, digging – but it was impossible to ignore that distant thudding.
Over the last year Paulette had grown accustomed to hearing sporadic bursts of musketry and cannon-fire in the distance – but this was different. Not only was it more prolonged, there was a concentrated menace in it, a savagery, that made it difficult to carry on as usual. It was hard not to think of death and dying; of spilt blood and torn flesh. In the midst of all that, caring for plants seemed futile.
Towards mid-morning, when the cannon-fire died away and a pall of smoke appeared on the northern horizon, Paulette broke off to sit in the shade of a tree.
What had happened? What did the smoke portend? She could not but wonder, although in some part of herself she did not really want to know.
In a while she spotted a figure coming up the path that led to the nursery. Training her spyglass on the slope she saw that the visitor was Freddie. She breathed a sigh of relief: with Freddie at least there would be no need to pretend to be cheerful, or brave, or anything like that. He would be content to be left to himself.
And her intuition was not wrong. Freddie greeted her from a distance, with a nod, and seated himself on one of the lower terraces of the nurs
ery, with his back against the trunk of a leafy ficus tree.
For a while he sat motionless, staring northwards with his back to her. She too looked towards the distant clouds of smoke and when her eyes strayed back to him she saw that he had taken out his pipe. Something stirred in her and she went down and seated herself beside him, watching quietly as he arranged his implements on the grass.
‘You would like to smoke, eh Miss Paulette?’
She nodded. ‘I would like to try.’
‘You have not smoked before?’
‘No. Never.’
He turned to look at her, narrowing his eyes. ‘Why not?’
‘I had a fear of it,’ she said.
‘Fear? Why?’
‘I feared becoming a slave to it.’
‘Slave, eh?’ He gave her one of his rare smiles. ‘Opium will not make you slave, Miss Paulette. No. Opium will make you free.’
He inclined his head in the direction of the distant cloud of smoke. ‘It is they who are slaves, ne? Slaves to money, profit? They don’t take opium but still they are slaves to it. For them opium is just incense, lah, for their gods – money, profit. With opium they want to make whole world slaves for their gods. And they will win, because their gods are very strong, ne, strong as demons? When they win they too will see, only with opium can they escape these demons. Only smoke will hide them from their masters.’
In the meantime he had lit a long, sulphur-tipped match with a flint. Now he began to roast a tiny pellet of opium over the flame. When the pellet was properly scorched he handed his pipe to Paulette.
‘After opium catch fire I will put on dragon’s eye’ – he pointed to the tiny hole in the bowl of the pipe – ‘and you must suck hard. Smoke is precious, eh, must not waste.’
Once again he held the pellet to the flame and when it caught fire he placed it on the pipe’s bowl. ‘Now!’
Paulette put her mouth to the stem and sucked in her breath, drawing the fumes into her body. The smoke poured in like a flood, and when the tide ebbed it left in its wake a startling stillness. Just as smoke drives away insects, these fumes too seemed to have expelled everything that carries a sting: fear, anxiety, grief, sadness, disappointment, desire. In their place was a serenely peaceful nullity, a pain-free void.