The Eden passion

by Harris, Marilyn, 1931-

  He said this last with a pronounced sneer. "Bloody aristocrats," he cursed. "The plain blokes does the work, and they move in to take the credit."

  John agreed with a nod, recalling the stupidity of the British officers in the Crimea, who frequently were more concerned with getting their boots polished than finding a warm dry place for their men to sleep.

  He was about to make this contribution when he saw that Alex needed no help. The man was talking effortlessly now, of exotic scenes, vast official palaces, and dark-skinned veiled beauties, of the fierce Indian sun and the liquid seduction of the Ganges. "So I roamed for a while, I did." He grinned at John. "Me and Rod, that is, who had no more stomach for the military than I did. We'd saved a good purse between us, thanks to John Company, and one day we took off on our own." The grin broadened. "Went native, we did, lived good and bad from Bombay to Delhi." For a moment he sank into a kind of trance, the calm of his voice spreading to the expression on his face. "Lord, but I loved it," he whispered. "A world where the sun reaches its zenith before noon, the sweltering heat of the plains, the shuttered houses with only the slow wafting of a punkah to move the air, the shimmering afternoons, the courtyards

  emptied of all white men, and only a few natives visible, dozing in the shade like bundles of old rags."

  The spell was complete, skillfully woven. Surprised by the man's eloquence, John found that he was almost afraid to breathe.

  "'Course, don't get me wrong," Alex warned. "It's a harsh land with lots that takes gettin' used to. They do things different, they do, but I figured it was still their country in spite of John Company, and they had a right." He leaned closer. "Like suttee. Ever heard of it? No, of course you ain't. Well, what that is in two words is widow-burning."

  John listened closely, amazed by the new light in the man's face and the grim tale he was telling. "'Course, our missionaries has stamped it out in most places now. In His Name, they calls it. But Rod and me seen one once in a village near Meerut. Some Moghul had died and we saw the natives building this bier. All night long they worked on it, and at dawn they carried out the dead man and laid him atop it, then went back for his widow."

  The light of excitement on his face dimmed. "She didn't seem to take to the idea at first, and they had to drag her through the dust, not ten yards from where we was standing. But they managed to get her up there with her dead husband, and suddenly she wasn't objecting no more. Just sittin' there on top of that bier with her face raised. And she was still sittin' there when the flames took her."

  He broke off speaking, his left hand kneading the back of the settee. "Lord, but it's awful, the smell of burning flesh."

  John felt himself accompanying Alex back into that exotic world, and finding it, if not preferable to, at least different from any he had ever known before.

  "Where did you go from there?" he asked eagerly.

  "After Meerut?" Alex grinned. "Well, it was our intention, Rod's and mine, to find our fortune, you see. Plenty of others had found theirs before us, so naturally we figured why not us?"

  There was a spirit of joking about him now, as though he were secretly laughing at his own foolishness. "Instead, for a period, all we found was plenty of soft brown spread legs." He laughed aloud, a look of affection on his face. "Never seen such willing females. And gifted, too, they are. Like brown macaroni, wrapping themselves about a man."

  Overcome by the memories of his sexual exploits, he couldn't for the moment go on. "Lord, forgive me," he apologized. "You shouldn't have started me talking. You really shouldn't have."

  "No, please," John said urgently, leaning forward. "Go on. I want to hear more. Everything, please, I beg you."

  Alex looked at him closely as though trying to determine his sincerity. At last he commenced speaking again, lounging back against the cushions, a faint look of superiority on his face, as though his various experiences were a source of pride to him. "After Meerut," he mused to the ceiling. "Hard to say. Outside of the cities, time in India don't mean much. I know we traveled its length at least twice, exhausting that purse of ours in the meantime, as well as exhausting ourselves." He closed his eyes as though again feeling the fatigue. "I remember Rod saying one day that if we really wanted to find our fortunes, we'd better go where fortunes existed, 'cause we sure as hell weren't going to find them in any of those poor villages." • While he lapsed into a momentary silence, John looked about. For the first time he was aware that the solarium was empty. Good! This world seemed to be dying just as the other one was coming vividly to life. He listened attentively now as Alex filled the quiet air with strange names, recounting his progress up the Ganges, through Benares to Fatehpur, on up to Cawnpore, which boasted a sizable British settlement, then across the dusty plains to Agra and Aligarth, and at last. . .

  "Delhi!"

  With a sense of awe the simple place name seemed to fill the empty room. Even Alex sat up straighter as he spoke it, then leaned close with an important intimacy. "Whoever commands that walled city will command the respect of all of India," he said with conviction.

  "WTio commands it now?" John asked.

  Alex shrugged. "The British, of course, who else? For the time being, that is. Men from all parts of Asia meet in Delhi," he went on, keeping his voice low, as though someone were listening in the empty room, "and someday or other much mischief will be hatched within those walls."

  The warning was cryptic and briefly spoken. In the very next breath, he was speaking again, rubbing his hands together. "Lord, after the dust and poverty of the villages, Delhi was our mecca, for three hundred years the capital of the Moghuls, the rulers of the Muslim Empire in India, and though old and reduced by the British to virtual bondage, the last Moghul king still lives there."

  He sat erect, his legs apart, his massive hands planted on his knees. "I knew him, don't you see?" he boasted. "Yes, I did. Rod, too."

  He laughed as though in a way he found it hard to believe his own words. "We were—how shall I put it?—thrown together, you might say. Mutually joined, don't you know, by our loathing of the British military."

  John leaned slowly back, not wanting to distract the man with sudden movement, sensing that the already fascinating tale was on the verge of even greater excitement.

  "The main road into Delhi," Alex went on in the manner of a storyteller, "crosses the River Jumna—at one point almost a mile wide— by a bridge of lighters lashed together and covered with logs. Now, this road and bridge is under the domination of the Red Fort, the King's personal palace and in sight of his private quarters."

  He'd begun to use his hands, massive gestures depicting the size of the river, the curious log-covered bridge. "Now, here we come to a difference of opinion." He smiled. "There are two forces that think they control that bridge. One—and need I say it?—the bloody British Army, and two, poor old Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last descendant of the Moghul conquerors."

  He shook his head sadly. "Poor old man, he's long since ceased to hope that he might throw off British domination. Eighty-two if he's a day, he is, kind of womanlike in size, brought up in the vicious atmosphere of his own court, and now with the British boot on the back of his neck, a tiny, ailing man, none too clean, let me tell you, wandering of eye, and toothless."

  He paused, some new expression on his face, a look of affection for the old man he'd just described. "Well, he sits up there in his private quarters, he does, day in, day out, and watches his bridge, and somehow in his mind is the idea that anyone the British hate is automatically his friend."

  He chuckled and leaned back, his hands laced behind his head. "Well, as you can imagine, Rod and me that day weren't greeted with no brass band. Oh no, Johnny Company had sent out our names and faces on posters as deserters."

  As his outrage increased, he stood suddenly and commenced pacing, as though to walk off the excess energy. When after several minutes of angry pacing he still showed no signs of going on with his tale, John asked, "What happened then?"

 
"What happened?" came the thunderous echo from the window. "I'll tell you what happened. We was met on the Delhi side of that bridge by six armed guards, with rifles raised, pretty little soldiers they was, warning us that another step would be our last."

  Although he'd been standing erect, now he crouched down as though recreating the scene in pantomime. "Well, I knew Rod wasn't of a mind to obey them little boys, and Rod knew I wasn't, and the last hope of our salvation lay in gettin' past them and into the foot traffic of Delhi itself."

  He bent farther over, his arms raised in an attitude of combat, a completely absurd position for the hospital at Scutari, but at that moment John was not aware of the reality of his surroundings. He, along with Alex, stood on that hot, dusty bridge, with the gates of Delhi only a few yards beyond and six soldiers blocking their path.

  Suddenly an unearthly war cry issued from Alex's lips and his raised arms lifted in a rapid-fire movement, until all John saw was the gray blur of his hospital robe. "We took 'em, we did," he shouted triumphantly, "Rod flattening three of them on the right, and me the other three on the left, and while they was lying stunned, old Rod and me, we were two blurs racing through them gates, knocking peddlers aside, catching a chicken or two in our face, but running like hell."

  Still breathless from his recent theatrical, Alex smoothed back his long hair, sank into the chair near the window and nodded broadly for a moment or two while he tried to catch his breath.

  "Well," he commenced, "that's when the fun really started. No more than through the gates we were, skirting the walls, keeping close in the shadows, when suddenly a door opens out of the wall and there's these two Indians motioning us to come in. All turbaned up, they was, in white coats and wrapped leggings, and I'm here to say we didn't ask 'em twice what they meant, and before we knew what had happened we was inside that courtyard and facing the old Muhammad himself who told us we was safe, and if the British hated us so, he was bound to love us."

  His expression froze. "Muhammad Bahadur Shah Zafar," he said, as though treating the air to the sound of the name. "He took good care of us, he did, set us up in a private quarter next to his retinue."

  For the first time he looked at John, as though at last aware of an audience. "A world within a world, that's what the place was, lad. Old Rod and me, we prided ourselves on having seen it all. But. . ." Here he shook his head. "We hadn't seen nothing till then. Dusty blood-red, the earth was there, where filth lay side by side with rich carpets, and ivory and silver chairs covered by dirty rags."

  He stopped speaking and looked across at John with a mischievous grin. "That's where I wore me cock out, lad, I'm sure of it. Seems

  like everyplace me and Rod looked, there was a set of brown eyes looking back at us, promising us paradise."

  Predictably the memory of sexual pleasure was more powerful than combat. John waited patiently.

  He didn't have the heart to interrupt such pleasant suffering.

  When Alex started speaking again, it was on the same subject. "Cock, it was," he announced bluntly, "that endeared us to the Muhammad forever. His cock." He grinned further. "Can you imagine the old geyser, at eighty-two, still lusting?" He shook his head. "But he did, and you see, he had a special appetite. Oh yes, and a difficult one for his retinue to fulfill."

  He walked back to the settee, John following every movement with rapt attention.

  "Englishwomen." Alex grinned down. "The old bastard liked Englishwomen. And one day he approached Rod and me with a bargain. Ten pounds a head for every piece of white flesh we brought him."

  John stared upward. "What did you do?" he asked.

  Alex shrugged. "We obliged, of course, though we weren't too happy with the price. Ten pounds out of that treasure house was like one grain of sand from Brighton beach."

  "Could you find them? Englishwomen, I mean, who were willing—"

  Alex laughed and settled back into the settee beside John. "Find 'em!" he parroted. "We had a selection as grand as the lanes of St. James Park. In fact, old Rod laughed once and wondered what the English gents were doing with all their whores on Indian soil. And they weren't all whores either," he added slyly. "Oh, no, not at all. There was fresh young maids who'd come over with officers' families, and a few grand ladies themselves, bored, with their soldier husbands gone off hunting, wanting to see if it was any different with an Indian."

  He grew reflective. "Oh, we was good whores' bullies, we was, slipping out under cover of night to avoid meeting up with our soldier friends, and bringing back fresh white meat for old Muhammad. You see, they trusted us, the bitches did. White men would take care of them and see they got safely home. And we did. We had all that understood with the old man. No branding, no white slavery, no drugs, just a set of white legs he could play with all night, just so long as them same legs could walk her home come dawn."

  He winked at John. "And of course, like the enterprising businessmen we was, we kept upping the price a little and claiming a

  diminishing market, and the old man's supply of pounds became exhausted and one night he came to us in his grand robes and said the words we was waiting to hear."

  All at once he stopped speaking, casting only a sideways glance at John. Within the instant everything about him had changed, his manner, his volubility, his own interest and enjoyment in his tale.

  John gave him all the time he needed, concentrating anew on the small leather pouch which swung gently against the broad barrel chest. A moment later, his voice, muffled behind the barrier of his hands, Alex commenced speaking again. "I've done some god-awful things, lad," he confessed. "When I buried Rod, I. . . kept wanting to jump in the grave with him."

  John listened, amazed at the sense of childlike shame which was emanating from the man. He had to get him back to his story somehow. 'Tell me what happened, Alex," he prodded gently.

  Drawing a massive breath, Alex looked up with a peculiar expression of indifference on his face. "What happened?" he repeated. "Betrayal, that's what happened. The old man begged us to wait one night, claimed he'd pay us right enough, if we'd just continue to bring him white flesh."

  Again he shook his head. "Rod was the one who suggested we follow him. And we did. He moved like a ghost across that courtyard, and disappeared into a mound of dirt, and we were moving right behind, down a narrow passageway, following his small torch like it was the evening star itself. My God," Alex whispered, "we must have burrowed under half a mountain, like a mineshaft it was, pitch black except for that beacon light carried by the old man."

  Suddenly he stood again, strode rapidly around the settee, forcing John to crane his neck for fear of missing a word.

  "Then, there it was," Alex said, a strange calm in his voice, "just as Rod had predicted, a low wooden door which wouldn't keep a healthy flea out, leading into an underground chamber. Oh, mind you, it was pitch dark at first, till old Muhammad lit the wall torches. Then ... a scene out of AH Baba, it was," he gasped, "trunks, caches, chests filled with jewels, like the spilling of a rainbow, and ivory and silver and gold mixed in, for as far as the eye could see in every direction, the light of the torches catching the brilliance and damn near blinding the both of us. Gold chains, I seen, lad," he whispered, bending close, "the size of a man's arm, and ropes of emeralds, and silver chairs, the treasure of the Moghul Empire, all sittin' unattended in that mole's hole, just waitin'. . ."

  He raised up. "I was the one who did it," he confessed bluntly, "gave the old man a light tap was all, enough to knock him senseless. And we wasn't greedy, no sir, we wasn't," he protested. "Rod took what he wanted, and I took what I wanted, and left enough for the whole bloody world."

  John saw the man's strong right hand move up to the pouch about his neck, a reflexive gesture, as though he'd been threatened in some way. "I got scores to settle, I have," he said, his voice suddenly hard. "Alex Aldwell ain't going to be a joke anymore."

  He said something else, but John didn't hear. Slowly rising from the settee, he found that h
e was unable to take his eyes off that fist that covered the leather pouch. "Come on, Alex," he begged. "Give us a look. What harm?"

  But the man merely tightened his grip on the pouch and stepped back, a look of defiance in his eyes.

  "Come on, Alex," John wheedled. "It was a grand tale, but how am I to know you didn't make it up?"

  Fortunately the man rose to the challenge. He stepped back to the settee, looked carefully about the large room and at the same time lifted the pouch to his teeth and commenced to chew loose the tight leather cord.

  Amused by the melodrama, yet curious to see the contents of the pouch, John followed after him, saw the massive hands shift, the leather pouch upended, the object, whatever it was, now cradled in the palm of Alex Aldwell's right hand.

  For a moment the man's own broad shoulder blocked John's view. Then Alex shifted to one side and John saw clearly, yet not clearly. My God, what was it? An ice crystal the size of an apricot? A pool of fire cupped in the broad palm?

  Aldwell sensed his awe and grinned approvingly. "A right pretty bauble, wouldn't you say?"

  John stepped closer, incapable of saying anything. He'd never seen such a gem, never even dreamed that one like this existed, a diamond of inestimable value.

  While he was still gazing upon it in disbelief, it was gone, slipped stealthily back into the leather pouch, the pouch itself shoved protectively inside Aldwell's robe.

  "And that's it," Alex pronounced in a strong voice, moving away from John as though intent on putting distance between them. "Come on, lad, let's eat now. I've worked up quite an appetite, I have."

  But food was not paramount in John's mind. "Wait," he called out, wanting to hear more. "Was it . . . really that simple?" he asked, following after the retreating man.

  "Simpler." Alex grinned. "You see, everyone inside the palace walls trusted us. We just crawled up out of that mole's hole and left through the gate, and walked out of Delhi and kept walking to Bombay. There we bought ourselves passage on a troop ship leaving for Portsmouth." Here his voice fell. "And we almost made it, we did, 'cept for the sickness that sent us sailing here instead of home."