Tiger Hills

by Sarita Mandanna

  The Reverend decided to change tack, realizing that the younger generation was the key to the success of his mission. He gave up all overt preaching, restating his primary objective as the establishment of a school in Mercara. The Coorgs had shown an immediate if cautious response, as the wealthier families began to send in their children in dribs and drabs. The quality of teaching was unquestionably better than anything else in the region, and as the months passed and they realized that their children seemed to be in no imminent danger of contracting Christianity, they had slowly gained confidence in the school. It was only a matter of time, the Reverend knew, before the rosters would be full. It was then that he planned to introduce Bible study classes into the curriculum, possibly even a weekly Mass.

  The Reverend paid keen attention to his students. They were the hope of this country, its future, and he took his duty of educating them, of civilizing them in the finest traditions of the Western world, to heart. He set high standards, no tougher than the ones he set for himself. Woe betide the child who came unprepared to Hermann Gundert’s class. “No,” he would state flatly. “Nein, you are incorrect.” The hapless student would make his or her way to the front of the class, where the Reverend would make them stand in a corner.

  It was strange, the students marveled among themselves, that despite the fact he never took a cane to them or made them squat holding their ears until their muscles screamed, like some of the other teachers did, it was the Reverend’s punishments that seemed the most unbearable. “It’s the way he looks at us,” they said, shuddering, “with those blue eyes, the color of the afternoon sky.” It was the way he spoke to them, the controlled, almost too low pitch of his voice, the refined precision of his disappointment, that reduced even the most callous bully to tears.

  Gundert could never quite put his finger on what it was that first drew him to Devanna. Had it been a snippet he had heard, something the teachers had said about the boy’s mother, God rest her soul, having taken her own life? But no, it couldn’t have been that. Committing suicide was almost a way of life here, if one might pardon the pun. Gundert had discovered to his dismay, soon after he had arrived, that the Coorgs seemed to view taking their own lives as an honorable solution to a wide range of issues. Not a month passed without the news of someone or other having held a gun to their heads, swallowed their diamond rings, or taken a fatal leap into a swollen river.

  It had been something else. There were other children more personable than Devanna, but there had been something about his pale face and apprehensive eyes that had made Gundert linger as he read out the roll call that day. He had contrived to sit in on some of the classes, noting with pleased surprise the boy’s obvious intellectual prowess. When the mathematics teacher set the class an especially complicated set of sums that Devanna proceeded to solve in his head, without even needing to put chalk to slate, it had sealed the matter for good. Gundert took the child under his wing.

  When Pallada Nayak summoned him, Devanna stood before his grandfather, trying not to tremble and wondering what he had done wrong. To his astonishment, the Nayak thumped him on his back, guffawing that things were obviously going well at school since the Reverend had sought the Nayak’s permission to give Devanna extra lessons twice a week. It was clear that Devanna had been blessed with the Nayak’s brains, quite unlike the rest of his dull-headed brood.

  Devanna could scarcely believe his ears. The Reverend had asked for him. Him!

  They sat across from one another, the graying Reverend and his protégé, in the rosewood-paneled study, poring over texts from his personal collection. Devanna loved the feel of those books, the creaminess of the paper, their grainy, gilt edges and the naphthalene smell that rose from their pages, tickling his nose. He enjoyed the guttural sound of the Reverend’s voice as he read aloud. Devanna could not understand all of the words, but the poems conjured up pictures in his head, wonderful images of green meadows and stone paths and flowers the like of which he had never seen, flowers with names like cro-cus-es and i-ris-es and daff-o-dils, that sounded to him as beautiful as one of Tayi’s songs.

  The Reverend was reading aloud one afternoon when something fell from between the pages of the book. Devanna bent immediately to retrieve it, noting curiously the ridged indigo stamp upon its back, “William Henderson & Sons, Photographic Studios. Madras, circa 1861.” He turned over the calotype. A much younger Reverend was laughing out at him. He stood beside another young man of stockier build, who seemed equally amused, who struck a pose with a hand on his hip and the other thrust into the lapels of his jacket. “Who is he, Reverend?” Devanna asked timidly, as he placed the calotype on the table. Gundert continued to read as if he had not heard, then stopped suddenly, midway through the poem.

  “Olaf,” he said curtly, picking up the calotype and slipping it back into the book. “The man you asked after, his name was Olaf.” Glancing out of the window at the fading light, he shut the book with a snap and abruptly called an end to the lesson. Hurt by the Reverend’s brusqueness, Devanna silently gathered up his slate and left.

  Gundert sat alone in the classroom, the book still clasped in his hands. He ran his thumb slowly across its leather binding. Olaf. How many years had it been since he had said his name out loud? Olaf, beloved Olaf. Olaf and he, the best of friends, soul mates forever, running carefree through the woods. How beautiful Olaf had looked, the wind in his hair, laughing as his kite soared into the blue.

  Brothers in all but blood.

  It was later, when the first fuzz stippled their cheeks, that their world had begun to shift. Olaf was suddenly no longer as interested in their fishing expeditions, not even when old man Uwe came home with the largest trout anyone had ever seen in those parts. No longer as keen to go rabbit hunting or to romp in the woods with their dogs, Olaf preferred to lounge about the village square, inspecting the women passing by. “Her,” he would whisper to Gundert, nudging him sharply in the ribs each time a particularly nubile young thing appeared. To his pleasure, Olaf discovered the opposite sex found him equally attractive. Hermann was disgusted. It infuriated him when the girls simpered coyly back at Olaf, the assessing looks they threw toward the breadth of Olaf’s chest, and filled him with revulsion. He stared them down coldly if they made the mistake of turning in his direction, and they soon left off making any overtures toward him. He had tried talking Olaf out of this new obsession. He put down the girls that Olaf fancied, pointing out the thick ankles of one, the long hairs matting the arms of another. Olaf was not to be deterred. “Oh, stop your griping,” he said good-naturedly. “Go on, get one of your own, why don’t you, and taste their many pleasures.”

  “I have no intention,” Hermann archly informed him, “of doing anything quite so crass.”

  Too proud to demand his friend’s attention, Hermann masked his hurt each time Olaf brushed him off, raising an eyebrow or shrugging noncommittally when Olaf said he was too busy for him. “It will pass,” he assured himself. “This is only a phase. Olaf will soon tire of these … these trollops.” Soon it would be just the two of them again, Olaf listening drowsily in the afternoon sun as Hermann read aloud, Heine’s “Rhampsenit,” perhaps, or even “The Gods of Greece.” But he knew, deep down, that he was losing his friend. He watched as Olaf caroused around the village, listened with feigned excitement as Olaf recounted each tryst, his own heart twisting with jealousy and dark, incomprehensible longing.

  The Church had been his succor. Hermann had always liked attending Mass; he enjoyed the coolness of the alabaster carvings, the angular pews, and the contained lilt of the choir. He had always been a little in awe of the brothers, of the pristine whiteness of their robes and the inherent purity of their abstinence. Now he found himself drawn even more to the serene interiors of the local parish. He began to spend hours there, when the ache inside him grew unbearable and shame coated his tongue in a thick, inarticulate fuzz. Christus, du Lamm Gottes, der du trägst die Sünde der Welt, erbarm dich unser.

  C
hrist, Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.

  When the mission authorities had come to visit the village, seeking new recruits, Hermann had realized with a small frisson of shock that they were calling out especially to him. The Lord in his infinite mercy had shown him the way. He had left almost immediately for Basle to be confirmed, much to the distress of his parents. “Why?” his mother had wept. “Why the Church when there is so much here for you? This land, the manor, all of it yours, why must you leave?” Hermann had remained silent, denying the confusion that swirled within him, leaving without even bidding Olaf farewell.

  He had returned nearly two years later, collected and remote. He was ordained, trained in English, botany, history, and the rudiments of medicine, fully equipped to spread the word of the mission across the seas. It was to be a brief visit home, a succinct farewell to his parents before he left with the mission for India. Word of his visit had spread rapidly through the village, however, as every bit of news did, and Olaf had come to visit. The old, verboten feelings began to stir at once within Hermann, shaking themselves free from the silt, surging through him with a force that had jolted his moorings.

  It was a morose and dejected Olaf who sat before him, jilted yet again and nursing a broken heart. Hermann listened distractedly to his outpourings of woe. He knew his friend well, knew he would bounce back soon enough from this latest episode. Hermann sat there, the very picture of composure, while Dante marched through his head, keeping time with the ticking cuckoo clock:

  You shall leave everything you love most:

  this is the arrow that the bow of exile shoots first.

  Hermann’s eyes traveled hungrily over Olaf’s face, committing to memory the barely noticeable scar by his temple from when he had tripped in the woods, the amber tips of his eyelashes that turned bright gold in the sun.

  And suddenly, inspiration had struck.

  He had leaned impulsively forward, urging Olaf to travel with him to India. “Think about it,” he pressed, “the mission needs volunteers. Spend a year there with us and when you return, it will be as a hero.” He had suppressed the brief twinge of conscience by telling himself that he only had Olaf’s best interests at heart. They did need volunteers in India.

  The plan, crazy as it was, appealed to Olaf’s fickle heart. India! What adventures they would have, Hermann and he. How Margarethe would weep when she heard that Olaf had left, how she would rue the day she had spurned him

  They were soon on a steamer bound for Madras. Olaf climbed onto the railings enclosing the deck as the hazy shoreline finally hove into view. “India,” he shouted. “Magical, ancient India! Hermann, you and I, we will change this country forever.”

  They had the calotype taken not two hours after they had docked in Madras, giddy with youth, intoxicated by the smorgasbord of smells and sounds, spurred by Olaf’s enthusiasm and the large sign outside the photographer’s studio that said they took all manner of European currency.

  Tuberculosis, the doctor at the Our Lady of Mercy hospital had said dispassionately, not a month later. He saw it all the time. Hermann had wanted to claw his hands away as the doctor prodded at Olaf’s body, but he steeled his voice instead, courteously thanking the man for his time. He barely stirred from Olaf’s side all those weeks, cradling his beloved friend in his arms, murmuring words of comfort or contrition, he would never know which, into the sweat-soaked rankness of his hair. He had watched helplessly as Olaf deteriorated: the pfennig-sized clots of blood and mucus, the discharge that turned the golden lashes a sodden, muddy brown, the confusion rampant in his voice as he called out for his mother, for Margarethe.

  When Olaf died, Hermann knew, he knew without a doubt that it was he who had killed him—as surely as if he had put a pistol to his head. Olaf had come to India only at his urging, had died this awful death because of the desires snaking unspoken within Gundert’s weak, despicable heart.

  Hermann, you and I, we will change this country forever.

  Gundert had thrown himself into his work. The young missionary was tireless, preaching the gospel, setting up schools, lobbying the local authorities and recruiting converts, working late into the night and rising earlier than anyone around him. No matter, though, how much he gave of himself, no matter how often he denied himself sleep, eventually the dreams would begin again. The church spire silhouetted against a clear spring day, and look, there were their kites waltzing in the air. “Hurry up, Hermann,” Olaf would cry, racing through the forest, pine needles crunching under his feet. “Wait, Olaf, wait for me,” but Olaf charged on. No matter how fast Hermann ran, no matter how he begged, Olaf was always just ahead, just out of reach, laughing as he disappeared around the bend. Gundert would awake trembling, his hands still reaching toward a ghost long slipped through his fingers. He would stumble to the chapel and there he would kneel, the name of the Lord on his lips, begging forgiveness over and over, until daylight began to bleed once more from the stained glass of the chapel windows.

  That morning, he would ask yet again to be transferred.

  Thunder boomed in the skies outside, startling Gundert out of his reverie. How long had he been sitting here? He slowly opened the window and put his hand out into the dark. It had started to rain sometime earlier, and water was now hammering down into his open palm. A blast of cool air whirled through the windows, tinged with wood smoke and jasmine and the faintest whiff of dung. A jackal howled in the distance, the sound carrying then fading in the wind.

  Gundert thought of his mother, of her fingers fluttering in distress upon his face like the wings of a bird, tracing his every feature as she bid him farewell. He thought of Olaf, cemented permanently in a land he had barely known, of the certainty he carried within himself that he, too, would be buried here one day. Brothers forever. He thought of Devanna, of the innocent purity of his face, the innate, inexplicable chord the boy had struck deep within him.

  For the first time since Olaf’s passing, Gundert felt peace stealing into his heart. The Lord had given him another chance with this boy, a surrogate son to call his own. “Rest in peace, Olaf,” he whispered, the breeze snatching the words from his lips. “Mein Schatz, mein Liebling, farewell.”

  Gundert intensified his mentoring of Devanna, drawing a list each Saturday of the ground he was to cover with Devanna the following week. History and geography, language and literature—each month he raised the bar a little higher, and each month Devanna eagerly followed, blooming under the Reverend’s tutelage. The other Nachimanda children gathered curiously around as Devanna helped Devi with their homework in the evenings, and soon he began to teach them the alphabet, too. He showed them the atlas that the Reverend had lent him, pointing out Germany and England and the numerous archipelagos that lay to the East. He taught them the poems he had learned that week: “Ahostoff goldun daffadils,” they parrotted, infusing Devanna with confidence.

  Suddenly it didn’t matter that he never did win any of the races that were conducted each year in the freshly plowed, waterlogged paddy fields or that he would never be the first up the mango trees or that he had never been the bal battékara at a hunt. Even the village bully sidled up to him one day, asking if he could learn some Inglis. Devanna flinched instinctively before he realized there was to be no box on the ears that day.

  No one was more proud than Devi. Things shifted between the two; with Devanna no longer needing her constant guardianship, she began increasingly to lean on him instead. When three baby cuckoos fell from their nest, squawking pathetically under the mango tree, it was Devanna she sought out, confident he would know what to do. When Muthavva scolded, he was the one she complained to; he would hear her out patiently, such a quizzical expression on his face that Devi would invariably catch herself mid-tirade and begin to giggle. When they ran barefoot through the fields, it was Devanna who knelt gently at her feet, picking out the thorns that sometimes breached her soles; he was the only one who didn’t laugh and tell her she was being silly
when she confided just how much she hated bangles of any sort at all.

  When Devanna came to look back upon his life, it was these years that would seem to him the most perfect, the most untainted, suffused with the warm glow of memory.

  There was the time when a jackal had got at the chickens. Two of the hens had hatched their eggs, and the courtyard was filled with the buttery fluffiness of their chicks. Devi and Devanna were woken one morning, however, not by cheeping but by a stream of abuse coming from the chicken coop. They ran to see what the commotion was about and peeped curiously from behind Thimmaya’s back as he stood cursing at the carnage. The jackal had killed willy-nilly, leaving a mess of half-chewed birds, entrails, and bloody feathers in its wake. When Devi spotted what was left of the chicks, she started to cry. Thimmaya swung her into his arms, kissing the top of her head and telling her to be a brave Coorg, but although she swallowed her tears, she remained pale and subdued.

  Tayi packed wedges of raw mango dipped in salt with their lunch as a special treat, and Muthavva fastened her silver anklets about Devi’s ankles for her to wear all that day, but the tears kept welling in Devi’s eyes. Devanna tried to cheer her up as they walked to school. “Look, Devi, look at those flowers,” he said, pointing out a bunch of orchids spilling from the branches of an athi tree; “See, Devi, there,” a spider’s web in the damp grass, dew drops glistening amid its threads. The brilliant flash of a kingfisher, the bubbles in the paddy tanks that promised a fat fish lurking below, none of these were able to lighten her mood. Tukra, the servant boy accompanying them, even broke into a ridiculous dance, stomping on the ground with arms akimbo, knocking his knees together, leaping into the air and smartly clacking his heels, but Devi did not so much as smile.