To The Coral Strand

by John Masters

  Three hours later I came to another jungle village, this one reached by a telephone line. A telephone line in those hills usually meant a police thana, and so I presumed there was one, and again skirted the village in such a manner that I would be seen - but first I cut the telephone line. This was a long and hard business for me, since I had to find a big stick, and climb a tree, then batter at the line passing six feet off. I did it, and then skirted the village much as before, fairly close and keeping my eyes sharply open. This time two small boys saw me. After a long moment of staring under shaded eyes at me across the field, they darted back into the houses. I broke into a run, hurrying over the ploughed earth by the thorn fences until I reached the jungle. Then I ran along a westward path and, after half an hour, eased off on to the leaves and lay down behind a rock, waiting. I was only just in time. Two policemen, wildly excited and calling to each other as though it were only a jackal they were pursuing, came panting up the path, their noses down. Three boys and an older man followed. One of the policemen carried a slung rifle. I watched them, my pistol ready, until they disappeared westward. Then I started south and, going with extreme caution so as not to be seen at all, by anyone, at dusk found a place to lie, and lay down and tried to sleep.

  I did not sleep more than an hour or two all night, from hunger, but my body got a rest, at least.

  Before dawn, listening to the sounds of the jungle, I knew that I must get some food today or I would not be able to go any farther. I ought to do it at once, rather than look for it while on the move. The human mind has difficulty in real concentration on two things at once, and if I was looking for food I might forget other dangers.

  After two hours of daylight searching I had found nothing, and set off eastward once more. The denser jungles and lakes of the Bhilghat area, and the tangled hills along the southern part of the India-Chambal border, now lay behind me. It was reasonable to assume that the hunters, having twice seen me heading towards them, would suppose that they were my destination - especially as the area formed a near-perfect refuge, and had been used as such often enough in the old days - by hunted Thugs fleeing from my great-grandfather; by Pindaris broken in Lake’s campaigns of extermination against them; by Mahratta horsemen shattered at the Third Battle of Panipat; by all the defeated and the hopeless, starting with the Gonds four or six thousand years earlier.

  In the afternoon I came to a stream, where I drank, and then a road. I lay down and observed it carefully from the edge. I saw bicycle tracks in the dust, but not fresh. Seeing no one, I crossed it with all precautions, and soon after fainted on an open hillside where my body as it lay must have been visible for half a mile in all directions. The relentless sun brought me round with a triphammer headache and a return of nausea, but I had nothing to vomit now, and after a time I crawled into the nearest shade, and lay down. A lizard appeared and my jaws ached painfully. Two hours later, when it was crawling about on the rock under my hand and I had not moved a muscle, a sudden spasm of effort brought it into my fingers. I broke its neck and ate it raw. At dusk a crow settled in the top of the tree ten yards from me, and cocked its eye, examining me. I shot it, it fell down through the boughs with a thump to the ground. I grabbed it and went on east as fast as I could, for the road I had crossed was close behind me, certainly within sound of that shot, and it was a time of day when many people besides police might be travelling along it.

  In a thicket, two miles farther on, I lit a tiny fire, scraped open the crow’s belly with a sharp stone, gutted it, and grilled it whole, burning off the feathers, and ate it, and then stumbled on another mile through pitch darkness before lying down to sleep.

  At the edge of the wood, by a dusty road, two peacocks displayed before a hen. I had gone out to shoot peafowl and beside me Manparsad chattered with excitement, but I could not shoot. The cocks were grave and voluptuous in their appalling male beauty, and the hen crouched and waited so tenderly that I put my finger to my lips, and we crept away, back through the forest. We reached the road near a small village where women bent over the well and brass pots shone in the dusty sunlight. A cow had died there and forty vultures crowded the boughs of the gnarled tree overhanging her body, and ten more hissed and trampled, with wings arched into black and white canopies, to plunge their heads into her anus and vulva, dragging out long strips of bright meat. The vultures on the tree flew away when Manparsad and I appeared, and those on the ground tried to, but it took them a long time, like a modern jet, slow hop-hop and gradual run across the field, their wings dragging along the ground and raising dust as they tried to flap, at last they just got off the ground, but for another thirty yards made so little altitude that the wing tips still touched the ground and stirred the dust. I raised my gun to shoot one of the gorged despoilers - then lowered it. The peacock is sacred to some in India: the vulture to all. Without them, death would overwhelm life. Manparsad and I went back to camp empty-handed, but we had walked twelve miles in the forest, and seen the peacocks and the vultures and the dead cow and the women at the well. . .

  The next day I stole a chicken from a village and got away without being seen except by the pariah dogs, which bark at everything and so are not much heeded. Again I cooked it, this time by a small lake, and drank well, and was strong enough afterwards to go ten hours, resting only twice. I did not go fast but estimated that I had covered about twenty miles. There was no more food that day, or the next, and in the late afternoon I came suddenly and unexpectedly upon the railway line. It was single track, broad gauge, the rails shimmering in the sun, and no one in sight north or south. This must be the main line from Bhowani to Itarsi and Bombay. I had travelled this line often during the troubles of 1946 but could not recognise this exact spot.

  I did not cross it, but lay in the shade staring at it. The heat of the pursuit was for the moment far behind me, somewhere in those hills which had disappeared into the haze. When I had rested, should I cross the line and head on towards the rising run - like yellow-dog dingo, running and running across the endless plain of Australia - like the kudu of Africa, or the sambhur of this very land, pursued relentlessly by packs of dogs, relay replacing relay, always yapping and snapping at their heels until, bleeding from fifty bites in the tendons, they turn to fight, and die?

  No, I would not cross it. I would jump a freight train during the night, and at last get away from this arena where they pursued me.

  The first train was a passenger, going south. It came fast in the twilight, the red carriages hurtling past with a long rhythmic clatter, lights shining out from some windows, others dark and shuttered. If I tried I knew I could remember something wonderful about that train, and someone who had loved me and whom I had been able to give something to. But I could not remember, because my mind, like a baulking horse, came to a point and shied off violently, hurling me, its rider, to the painful stones.

  The next train, two hours later, also was a passenger, going the other way, still fast but not nearly so fast. My time in Bhowani in ‘46 had taught me something about locomotives and I knew from the beat of the exhaust that this last train was going uphill. There were only a few carriages and the powerful engine could still maintain 30 or 35 miles an hour up the slope - too fast for me.

  Between one and three in the morning two freight trains passed, southbound, both going fast. At ten past three I heard in the south the laboured roar of an engine coming up the hill with a heavy load. At last the searchlight swung round the distant curve, two miles away, and laid a band of light along the rails. The thunder grew and I crept close to the track, lying among trees ten yards from the edge of the ballast. She came on up, groaning through the night in heavy labour, towering sparks just visible high above, where the searchlight had lost its intensity. The engine and tender passed, and at once I scrambled forward and stood close to the clanking, creaking wagons. First came ten or more boxcars, tight-closed and locked; then open wagons. After letting two pass to gauge the speed and see exactly where the steps and platforms
were, I ran alongside, caught a step and swung myself up. My wound shot a bolt of pain through my stomach, but I hung on and by slow, careful effort climbed over the edge of the wagon and fell in a heap down inside. It was empty, and smelled of crushed stone.

  I lay there for two hours, while the locomotive up ahead worked north under blazing stars. Near five in the morning the wagon began to clatter over points and switches. I climbed up and, looking past the red glare of the engine’s firebox I saw the lights of houses and the square silhouette of others, very black in that moment before dawn. Signal lights shone green and red among the fading lower stars, another track branched out beside us, more jerk and rattle of switches. I climbed down to the outer step and waited. We came up under the first approach gantry, past the bungalows of the railway colony, and from the engine I heard the hiss of escaping steam and felt the first grind of the brakes. I stepped off into the black grit of Bhowani Junction yards. So, I had come here, where Janaki was, whom I had loved, who had rejected me. I would give myself up to her - give her the final satisfaction of handing me over to the new lords of my country.

  Twenty minutes later I walked along the side of Flagstaff House and passed through the back hedge. The house was dark, but the french windows on the right, facing this garden, were open. I went in there, and at once a low voice whispered ‘Rodney?’ It was Margaret Wood. My eyes, accustomed to the night, could see that she was sitting up on a camp bed in that room, which was ordinarily Max’s study.

  I sat down slowly, very slowly, in the chair by the desk. ‘Food,’ I said, and could say no more.

  She was out of bed, hurrying into a dressing-gown, kicking her feet into bedroom slippers, closing the windows behind me. ‘Don’t put on the light,’ she whispered, ‘Janaki thinks the house is being watched. I have something ready for you.’

  ‘Wha’?’

  ‘I have, every night,’ she said. ‘Wait. I’ll tell Janaki, and Sumitra.’

  The sound of that name sent a worse pain than any physical one through me and I gasped with it. It was the first time for ten days, which seemed like a thousand years, that any thought of her, even to her name or perfume or the sound of her voice, had come into my consciousness.

  Chapter 18

  A log on the fire starts to burn with a light, leaping flame as the bark catches. During its maturity it burns more steadily but with a greater warmth. At the very end, often, it flares up again, and again light flames dance along it, and jets of fire, fed by the last reserves of its stored fuel, hiss out against the grate.

  Four days and nights they hid me in an attic of Flagstaff House. I lay on a thin mattress on the plank floor, asleep most of the nights and all the days. I saw, the first night, a high valley of Lahoul, the main snow peaks of the Himalaya beyond, and a grey monastery set in a stony wilderness. The monks wore orange robes and tall red hats. The night I reached that place they danced the devil dance in the monastery courtyard. Ten-foot horns of copper and silver rested on the shoulders of acolyte boys, they and the trumpeters standing on a flat roof high above the courtyard. Long flags whipped in the never-ending violence of the dry Central Asian wind, gold and brass gleamed in the shadows of the pillars, and behind smoking oil lamps grotesque statues, carved in butter, loomed out of the echoing corners. Inside - the dark red and swirling yellow of the dancers in the courtyard; outside - one step - the beginning of eternity, of cold and wind, stone and snow...

  The second night I saw the Bengal famine of 1943. I passed through in a train on my way to the Burma front. Women and children lay dead beside the track as the train clanked through the hot-weather afternoon. Men lay in the fields, fallen where they had been trying to grub a leaf from a dead plant. In Calcutta corpses littered the gutter. I saw soldiers giving bread to children with matchstick legs and arms and huge staring-eyed heads. The children crumbled it listlessly in their hands - only cooked rice was food to them, bread wasn’t. Later their heads sank and they too lay down in the gutter. Etched on the copper sky over the train, over the city, kites circled, vultures waited . . .

  The third night I revisited an orange grove near Nagpur. The time was early February - the same as now. (Often during my flight from Lapri it had come to my mind that in Nagpur and Chhindwara the oranges were ripe and sweet on the trees; and I had to swallow the aching saliva and think only of the stones under my feet.) A caravan of gipsies were camped in the orange groves. They were a criminal tribe on the move, and a couple of policemen travelled with them, to see that they did not steal the oranges from the landlord’s trees; but otherwise the policemen turned a blind eye, and all night long men slipped out of the town a mile down the road, and came to the camp, to sit by the leaping fires under the golden Hesperidean apples. Here bears danced on the end of short chains. A blind man played a sitar with haunting beauty. Women lay on their backs under the hedge with customers. Their husbands, sons, and fathers picked pockets, danced, beat drums, sold arrack, and escorted more men in from the town ...

  On the fourth and last night it was a beach of sand, pale pink in colour under an early sun. Palm trees leaned over the sand from the landward rim, and the sea broke in long waves, alternately blue and white. I did not know where that scene came from in my past, but there it was - just that, the empty sand, the sea, and the trade wind. That was the last vision.

  Janaki’s servants were old and loyal, and knew me. No one came up to me during daylight, for it involved placing a ladder in the middle of Janaki’s bedroom floor. The ladder would have been too difficult to hide or explain away in case of a sudden visit. Janaki came up that first night, with Margaret Wood. Margaret Wood spent a long time on my bandages, almost weeping over what I had done to myself since she last tied them. The second night she came alone, telling me that Janaki had gone to Chambalpur to say good-bye to Max before he finally left for his new posting in the wilds. She was going to have a last couple of days up there with him. I wished I could have at least felt sorry for him. The third and fourth nights it was Margaret Wood alone, twice each night, after dusk and before dawn, working on my wound and bandages, emptying the pot, feeding me, filling the water jug, leaving food for the daytime. I wished I could have at least felt sorry for her.

  The fifth night, when the hurricane lantern rising like a will-o’- the-wisp through the trap door awakened me, I saw that it was Sumitra. A physical shock, like a bullet wound, set my head spinning. She saw that I was awake and came on up, but did not look at me again. For a time she set about her business, handing down the pot to an unseen sweeper waiting below, handing down the water jug, waiting for it to be returned full, taking up the tray of food, setting it on the floor beside me. I watched her, and waited. At last she squatted on her heels at the foot of my bed, and said gently, ‘Eat, Rodney . . . Margaret had to go to the chemist’s.’

  I ate. She sat silent, her face averted. When I had finished she handed the tray down the trap door, and returned to her place. ‘Have you nothing to say to me, Rodney?’ she muttered.

  All the time my head had ached, the plates had wavered in front of my sight.

  ‘Come here,’ I said. She began to get up, and my hands flexed. The throbbing in my head turned to sharp stabs of agony.

  We both heard the creaking of the ladder, then Margaret Wood’s head appeared, followed by Janaki’s. The pain left my head and my eyes focused. They glanced quickly from Sumitra to me. Sumitra stared at her feet. Janaki said, ‘I’m just back ... I have to leave this house tomorrow, Rodney. The new general is moving in the day after. Sumitra’s going to friends in Bombay, and I to my mother. We will take you with us. You must leave India as soon as possible. Margaret is sure she can arrange with Sir Andrew Graham to smuggle you out on a McFadden Pulley ship. If that fails, P. R. Sethi has promised to fly you to Pakistan, from there it will be easy to go on wherever you want to. Max saw Hussein Ali in jail in Chambalpur yesterday - he’s being let out any day now - and he has promised to put ten thousand rupees into a Swiss bank for you. You must see that the
re is no other way, nothing else to be done now.’

  I said, ‘How do we get to Bombay?’

  She stared at me, surprised. ‘Well ... that’s wonderful ... I didn’t expect, somehow ... we will leave early in the morning in the Ford station wagon, Margaret, Sumitra, and I. You will be hidden under the bedding rolls in the back. “Chop” Wazeer, Max’s A.D.C., will drive for the first ten miles, and that far we’ll be travelling with an artillery regiment going down to the Babina ranges. There is a police post on the road but I don’t think they’ll search us very carefully, if at all, in the circumstances. After that, you will be our chauffeur, an Anglo-Indian perhaps ...’

  ‘George D’Souza,’ I said. ‘All right. Get me some clothes and thin, cheap shoes.’

  ‘I’ve done that,’ Margaret Wood cut in; ‘everything’s ready. You get to sleep now.’

  ‘The head of the regiment is passing the house at seven in the morning,’ Janaki said. ‘We must be ready to go by then.’

  ‘All right,’ I said.

  The three women left the attic, and again I was alone, in the dark.

  ‘Slower, Rodney, please!’

  Janaki’s voice was sharp. I realised I was doing over seventy, and eased my foot on the accelerator pedal. The old Ford slowed. It was a pre-war V-8 station wagon, much the worse for wear, the springs gone, the body rattling, and a hurricane of dust swirling around inside so that the two Indian women had the ends of their saris drawn tight across mouth and nostrils. Margaret Wood was in front with me.