Isle of Woman (Geodyssey)

by Piers Anthony

  Shyaam glanced at his mother, for she alone had the privilege of speaking before him. She, as Flower understood was usual, elected not to speak. The privileges of women were nominal rather than actual, though mothers and wives did have special powers over the men to whom they related.

  “I have selected Mboong aLeeng to be my official heir,” the king announced. “He will be king after me.”

  This was no news to the members of the council; the word had spread ahead, as it always did. In fact, they had probably required the king to make this designation, because Mboong was both the closest male kin and the best qualified. The king had delayed, hoping to have a male child, but now he was old and no child born after this would be of suitable age by the time Shyaam died. So they signaled their approval by raising their belts.

  “But is this man worthy?” the chief historian inquired, following the ritual for this occasion. “Does he know the lineage and histories of the kings of our land?”

  “About that he shall have to satisfy you himself,” Shyaam replied.

  “Then let him enter and demonstrate his knowledge,” the chief historian said.

  At this point Mboong entered, resplendent in his skirt and belt. He came to the center of the chamber and looked around. Flower saw his eyes widen a trifle when they passed her; he had not known she would be there. Then he faced the chief historian. He began to recite the lineage of kings.

  But Grandmother Ember's concern proved to be well founded. After the first several kings, Mboong hesitated, evidently having lost his place. It had happened several times when Flower was drilling him.

  The particular king he needed had been known for introducing a new kind of nut to the diet of the tribe. Flower slowly lifted her hand to her mouth, and bit down as if breaking open a nut. In a moment Mboong's gaze passed her, and he saw her unobtrusive pantomime. Immediately he spoke, naming the nut-king and continuing with his history.

  Twice more during the recitation Flower cued Mboong on particular kings. Then he finished the last several with flair, knowing that he had passed his examination of worthiness.

  The chief historian nodded. The heir apparent had proven himself.

  The council meeting was done. The men departed. Flower helped her ailing mother to make her way out. It had been an interesting experience.

  As they left, Mboong stepped from the shadows. “I will remember,” he said, and went on as if merely passing them.

  Flower understood then that time would prove that memory. The business of Flower's family would prosper because of the favor of the king, and in due course Flower herself would be appointed chief singer, allowing her mother to retire. She would achieve a position of considerable prestige, and remain free to marry whom she wished. Grandmother Ember had known.

  Mboong aLeeng's reign was considerably more violent than that of his predecessor; there were a number of wars. But the Kuba did well, and maintained their special identity through to the present. Many legends came to clothe the reigns of Shyaam and Mboong, making them archetypes of the peaceful and warlike aspects of tribal history. In terms of global politics the region was incorporated into the Belgian Congo, which today is the nation of Zaire. But the people of Kuba remember their history, which is unique to them in detail and manner.

  CHAPTER 19

  * * *

  INDIA

  The British Empire at its height was the most extensive known to man, in global terms, embracing territories in Europe, America, Africa, Australia, and Asia. But its most valuable was India, including what are now Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ceylon, and later Burma down through the Malay Peninsula, and it carefully safeguarded the strategic points of the routes there. Thus Gibraltar, South Africa, Suez, the Gulf of Aden and other spots became British and remained so until the twentieth century. British soldiers and merchants were everywhere, but their relationship with natives was not always easy. In 1857 several units of the Indian army revolted against the British domination; that was put dawn, but British cynicism increased. Worse was to come in the following decade.

  STONE laid the letter on the table. “Tree, your grandfather has agreed to make the arrangements for your keep during your time in England,” he announced. “We shall arrange passage for you next year, and you will start classes there in 1866.”

  Wood nodded. He couldn't stop his father from calling him by his given name, but elsewhere he could get away with a nickname. Stone had arranged a good thing for him, and he was duly appreciative. This meant that he would be able to have the two years of schooling in England required to prepare him for the rigorous examinations for qualification for the Indian Civil Service, or ICS. He also liked the idea of having closer contact with Grandfather Blaze, whom he had met only twice but regarded as a great old man. He hadn't seen Blaze since he was twelve, six years ago when the elderly couple had visited India, so it was certainly time.

  “I shall try to uphold the standards of the family, Father,” he said.

  “I should expect so.” Stone turned away, dismissing him.

  Wood left the room. He knew his father cared, but like most upper-class Britishers he found it almost impossible to express anything as common as family closeness. Grandfather Blaze was entirely different, being expressive and warm, as was Grandmother.

  He found his mother working in the garden behind the bungalow. She loved gardening, and had many exotic as well as local flowers and shrubs growing. At the moment she was among her ginger plants. “Grandfather Blaze has agreed,” Wood told her. “They'll board me in England.”

  She set aside her trowel and brushed herself off. She was forty-one years old, but still by his unobjective judgment a lovely woman. “Oh, that's wonderful, Woody!” she exclaimed, hugging him. “I know you'll love England.” She was as expressive as Stone was inexpressive, though in public she managed to appear properly reserved.

  “It is a relief,” Wood admitted. “I feel at home here in India. At least with Grandfather Blaze I'll have someone to make that foreign land bearable.”

  “Why, England isn't foreign!” she protested, laughing. “It's our homeland. You were born there, Woody. You need to refresh your interest in your true culture.”

  “But this is the land I love, Mother. Almost everything I remember is here. I know some of the dialects about as well as I know English.”

  “Then it is high time you reviewed English,” she retorted. It was clear that in this respect her attitude was one with his father's.

  Out of sorts, Wood took his tennis racket and went to the club for a workout. His family was not wealthy, but every Britisher had the privileges of the dominant group, and all the considerable entertainment facilities of Calcutta were available to him.

  At the club he passed several British women. He ignored them, and they ignored him. Their mutual aversion had long since been recognized. He regarded them as spoiled, snotty creatures without depth, and they regarded him as what was termed “turning native.” It was true; he had come to value the cultures of India, and had respect for many of its people, and he couldn't stand those who looked with disdain on the natives. So the gulf between him and most other children of British officials in India was too deep to be conveniently bridged.

  Today he spied a newcomer. The man had a racket, but looked uncertain. Wood approached him. “Are you looking for the courts? I'm going there myself.”

  “Actually, I was looking for an opponent,” the man said. “I arrived a few days ago, and I'm not familiar with the people here.”

  “As I said, I am going there. If you care to play against me, I'm of middling competence.”

  “That's my case exactly!” the man agreed. He held out his hand. “John Duncan, here.”

  “Wood Stone,” Wood replied. “No, it's not a pun, other than that foisted on me by my parents.” He shook the hand.

  They walked on toward the tennis courts. “Everything seems so strange here, no offense,” John said. “For example, I never saw an elephant before, yet here they are common
place. Such huge creatures! Every person seems to have several servants, and can't do anything for himself. But I'm used to doing for myself, so I said no thank you. But I find that does leave me a bit lost.”

  “Next year I must go to England, to complete my education,” Wood said. “I expect to be similarly lost there.”

  “You have not been there?” John asked, surprised.

  “Not since I was six years old. I remember it, but not well.”

  “Ah, your family never returned! That's unfortunate.”

  “I have not thought it so. I like India.”

  “But you must give England a chance! There is no country in all the world like it.”

  They came to the courts and changed to playing uniforms. Native boys came out to tend to their balls and provide towels, refreshments, and enthusiasm. “Why, this is just like a club in England,” John said, surprised.

  “I wouldn't know,” Wood said. “Perhaps when I am in England, I shall be able to play, and recover a sense of home.”

  John laughed, thinking it a joke. They proceeded to the play. They turned out to be well matched, both being in the middle range and neither being too proud to look foolish on a point. John had a strong serve that gave Wood some trouble at first, while Wood had a drop shot that continually caught John playing too far back. Their first set went to several deuces before John put it away 10-8.

  Several others had gathered to watch. Now two young British women approached, lovely in their well-fitting sport outfits. “May we join you?” one asked John. “We would love to make it a doubles game.”

  Wood was disgusted. He knew the girls. They were good enough players, for their gender, but that was because they seemed to do very little else in their limited lives. He regarded them as decorative nuisances.

  “Why, I don't know,” John said, taken aback. “I'm new here, and don't know the conventions.” He looked at Wood. “Are such things done here?”

  Both girls shot Wood warning glances. They had come to move in on a new prospect, and didn't want him interfering. Since he did not want the kind of scene that could erupt if he balked them, he yielded gracefully. “Here in India we have smaller communities than perhaps are the rule in England. Men and women do play together on occasion, especially when there are not otherwise enough to make a group.”

  “By all means, then, let's play,” John said.

  One girl joined John, and the other joined Wood. “Just keep your mouth shut,” she muttered.

  They played a doubles set. The girls were in decorously long sleeves and long white skirts, but it was amazing how clearly their limbs and torsos manifested, especially when they reached for far balls. John was plainly impressed, as he should have been, for the display was for his benefit. Once, Wood's girl managed to crash into him when trying for a ball she shouldn't have, and he had to support her lest she fall. “What are you trying to do?” he asked as he set her upright, knowing that she had no interest in him.

  “Watch and learn,” she replied.

  Not long later John's girl did the same with John. Somehow their supposedly inadvertent entanglement became more like an embrace, with her body making lingering contact with his. Then she flashed him a brilliant smile. “Thank you so much for preventing my fall,” she told John.

  After that Wood saw that John watched her, unobtrusively, not with distrust but with interest. She had made an impression on him. Wood's girl had set it up by demonstrating how such innocent contacts could occur.

  After the set John's girl suggested that they retire for some refreshment, and John was happy to agree. They went as a foursome to the refreshment counter. Thereafter they broke into two couples, at the girls’ instigation, and separated as such. That had been the girls’ objective from the outset: to attach one of them to the new man, who should be good for some entertainment before he became too familiar.

  “You know, you're not a bad sort, when you behave,” Wood's girl remarked. “Would you care for some croquette?”

  Wood knew that the offer included more than that, if he had a mind for it. The British women of Calcutta were nominally completely proper at all times, and the older ones were busy enough to comply, but boredom brought some of the younger ones to sometimes notorious private behavior. Wood understood this, but remained turned off, because he knew how utterly shallow this girl was. She considered it a virtual crime to know or care anything about the natives; her life was completely isolated from theirs. By her estimation, an Indian existed to serve a British person, completely and without protest, and deserved no other life.

  “I think not,” Wood said, and left her.

  Another day John saw him in the club and approached him. “I say, I didn't mean to break up the tennis without giving you a chance to even the score,” he said apologetically.

  “It was a good match as it was,” Wood said. “Don't be concerned.”

  “Please don't take offense, for I mean none, but you seem different from others I've encountered here.”

  Here it came. “How so? No offense, of course.”

  “You have character.”

  Wood laughed. “How could you tell that, from a tennis game?”

  “It isn't what you said, but what others have said of you. They intend, I fear, disparagement, but I take it otherwise. They say that you have gone native. Meaning that you seem to care more for the concerns of the natives than for the prerogatives of the British echelons.”

  “They're right.”

  “I respect that. I believe we shall be unable to benefit the natives if we don't learn their ways.”

  “Not all their ways are nice by our definitions,” Wood said wryly.

  “How so?”

  “For example, the Hindus have sati, literally ‘true wife,’ which is the practice of throwing a widow on her husband's funeral pyre. We have outlawed it, but not with complete success.”

  “Certainly we outlawed it! You can't approve of such a practice!”

  “No. I merely recognize that it is part of their culture. There are, by my definition, both assets and liabilities of it. They view some of our customs with similar disdain.”

  “Oh? What—”

  “We don't regard the cow as sacred, or the pig as unclean.”

  “Oh, yes. That triggered the Sepoy Mutiny eight years ago. Because the grease on the cartridges for the Enfield rifle contained tallow which was said to come from a number of animals, including pigs and cows, and they had to bite into it to open the end and release the powder. No one at the time clarified that the source was actually mutton fat. That was certainly a mistake.”

  “It was more than a mistake,” Wood said. “Suppose you had to bite into a cartridge heavily smeared with polluted sewage and excrement? So that you feared dysentery as well as being absolutely disgusted? To a Muslim pig's fat is similarly disgusting, and to a Hindu the touch of cow's fat on the lips would be worse. In fact it would be an abomination for which we have no parallel, because of the sacredness of the animal. Imagine eating fat rendered from your own deceased father, perhaps. It would damn a person spiritually. Our disregard for such sensitivities brought much mischief.”

  John nodded. “I appreciate that now. There is more I have to learn about India, that I think was not adequately covered in my lessons in England.”

  Wood shrugged. “We are as a class largely indifferent to the concerns of the natives. I'm not. That damns me in the eyes of my associates.”

  “Not in my eyes,” John said firmly. Then he extended his hand.

  Wood took it, gratified.

  In the following weeks John was occupied studying local language at the College of Fort William, so that he could pass his examinations before being posted to the field the following spring. He found it difficult. “I have no trouble with the ordinary aspects of education,” he confessed to Wood. “But I never was sharp at foreign languages, and these of India have me baffled. I'm not sure I'll ever get it.”

  “That's odd,” Wood said. “I never ha
d any problem. I suppose it's because I grew up here, and listened to the natives speaking among themselves when I was a child. I just seemed to pick it up naturally. What I fear are the sciences and pedagogic aspects.”

  “I wish we could exchange parts of our minds,” John said.

  They discussed some of the things that John found most confusing, and Wood clarified them for his friend. John made better progress. “I don't know where I would be, without your help,” he said candidly.

  Then disaster came. “I'm being posted this autumn!” John said, stricken. “I'm not ready. I expected to have until spring, but it seems that something came up, and my professor recommended me. I fear it is your fault.”

  “My fault? I have tried to help you.”

  John smiled. “Exactly. I have improved so much, after a shaky start, that it impressed my professor, who believes I have a special talent for native dialect. I tried to tell him that I have gotten special tutoring, but he thinks I'm being modest. It's a good assignment; it means I will be commissioned sooner than otherwise. But I am distinctly unready. I fear I will make hideous blunders.”

  Wood realized that he did indeed bear some responsibility for his friend's situation. He knew that John did not yet have sufficient command of Indian dialects or nuances of culture to handle himself well. “I shouldn't have interfered,” he admitted ruefully.

  John was immediately contrite. “I was not serious, Woody! Without your help I would have been completely lost at sea. I simply didn't realize that I was making a better impression than I deserved. Oh, if only I could have your advice on the circuit!”

  Wood considered. “I wonder whether that's possible? I'm not busy until I embark for England next year. I love India, and would be glad to see as much of it as possible before I have to leave it. But I also would like to learn more of England before I go there, so as not to be in the same trouble there that you are in here. You could surely prepare me for that, if we had time together to talk. Do you think I could go along as an interpreter?”