Coromandel!

by John Masters

  The lieutenant said, ‘We go now to see the captain.’

  ‘Now?’ Jason asked. ‘My wife is tired.’ She bridled self-consciously. He had taken to calling her his wife, where before he had referred to her as his woman. He had said with a surly mien one night that she must not think he really meant to marry her, just because he called her his wife; only he did not want people to think she was a loose woman.

  The lieutenant said, ‘I know she is tired. I am tired too. But I dare not delay in making this report. Perhaps the captain will let us rest when he has talked to you. Dismount here.’

  Jason helped her down. Though she did not need his hand, she took it and jumped lightly on to stone tiles. ‘Now,’ the lieutenant said, ‘follow me. And if you have deceived me--But you are honest people, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. The poor man sounded afraid all of a sudden. Holding Jason’s hand, she entered a high arch and walked down a passage. The lieutenant ahead turned right, left, entered a small room, stopped. Another green coat rose and said, ‘Latif! What are you doing here?’

  The lieutenant began to explain with voluble anxiety. Jason muttered, ‘The captain cannot read the map. He is holding it upside down.’

  The captain sounded pompous. He said, ‘It is false. Claw them with red-hot pincers till they speak the truth.’

  The lieutenant cried, ‘Yes, lord! At once, lord!’

  Catherine said quickly, ‘Blood has already been shed to prove this map is false! Look at my lord’s fingernail. But it is not false, and that is why we are here.’

  She heard the captain cracking the joints of his fingers. He said, ‘I have reached my decision, and that is--that the subadar shall decide.’

  They went out of that room and followed along more passages, with scarlet-clad soldiers clanging among them and the smell of oil from the smoky lamps thick in her nostrils. They passed women too--a sudden whiff of languid scent and two tinkling voices. Jason tripped over his cheap sword.

  She began to laugh, the gusts of laughter shaking her so that it hurt to keep her face straight and her body upright.

  Jason cried, ‘Lord, please go more slowly. My wife is almost blind.’ But really it was his sword that was worrying him. Oh, she loved him, and all would be well, somehow, somewhere.

  They hurried along, and Jason kept muttering, ‘Careful now! Steps up here--twenty-five. God’s blood, the thoughtless brutes! More steps--seven, eight, nine.’

  (Blind she was, but she loved him. She had guided him from the coast of Coromandel to the fortress of the Grand Mogul. She had executed Mansur Khan because Mansur had done wickedness--no, because Mansur had tempted Jason to do wickedness. She was sorry that the lieutenant had been cruel about that execution, but that was not her fault. God would be good to her and find a place for Jason.)

  This room was large and strongly lighted. The subadar wore blue, and the ranks of blue and steel were thicker about him, and a thin, ancient voice was reading aloud from the Koran in a far corner. The captain began to explain.

  The subadar said, ‘Show me this map, then.’

  In the corner the old man’s high voice piped on above the subadar’s grated decision. ‘It is false. Hang them up by the thumbs till they speak the truth.’

  Catherine said, ‘The wazir has word of this map, lord. I am to show it to him when I go to his couch tonight.’

  She heard Jason gasp beside her, but she felt hilarious and capable of saying anything. She had never met the wazir, but she knew he was a more important man than a subadar.

  But the subadar stood up with a cry of astonishment and said, ‘The wazir! You! This is a miracle! We must take them to the wazir indeed.’

  She thought: What have I said now? It didn’t matter. This was India! Let her speak, then, in riddles or jokes. Let her join the charade, because no one, including the actors, knew from moment to moment whether it was charade or reality. Kisses and blood, gold and cow dung--anything might be pressed upon her at any time. Meantime she was in love, and Jason loved her, though he dared not tell himself so, and this was a wonderful and ridiculous game of wits.

  ‘To the wazir!’ everyone cried, and one and all rushed out into the passage--half a hundred now, and she and Jason nearly forgotten in the crush, so that she could say, trying not to giggle, ‘I love you so,’ and he could cry, ‘God’s blood! What trouble have you got us into now?’

  (She had given Azeema the power to leave the Rawan’s palace, where before she had had only the longing to. At second remove, the fire of her will had scorched the mullah’s ancient behind so that he had jumped up and on to his horse and galloped off, faster than a fur-capped messenger, to the nearest Mogul post.)

  They stormed up and round and down, and, from the shouting, half the hawk-minders and curtain-dyers and zither-tuners in the palace seemed to have joined them. The wazir’s room was twice as large as the subadar’s, and all white, dazzling white, with lacy reflections on the ceiling and everywhere a secretive smell of flowers.

  Jason whispered, ‘Two boys are stroking his hands!’

  Then she remembered the lascivious tales of the old housekeeper in Manairuppu, and knew why the subadar had been so astounded that she was going to share the wazir’s bed. She giggled uncontrollably now and could not stop until she managed to turn it into a fit of coughing.

  The wazir had a sweet, hoarse voice. It said, ‘Show me the map, my dear.’ And the subadar said, ‘Here it is, lord Wazir.’

  After a time the wazir said, ‘It is false. Force raw red peppers into their rear ends, my dear, until they speak the truth. I will come and help you.’

  She nudged Jason and muttered in English, ‘Kiss his hand! Go on!’

  She heard the smacking of lips. The wazir said, ‘Such eyes! We must take him to the king’s dear son.’

  Out again--and God knew how many in the mob now. The wazir was there, and the subadar, and the captain, and the lieutenant, and hundreds of soldiers and clerks, and probably the boys Jason had told her about.

  (She must have smelled Mansur’s true nature that first day in Sagthali. Perhaps she had known all along--because God was good--that something must happen to show Jason the evil of that road. She had known Parvati from the first, too, when everyone else, including Jason, thought she was a common strumpet. Jason hated himself sometimes for the way he treated people who had been good to him; he had told her about the women Emily and Mabel in London. But he could not help it. He hurt them because, in spite of himself, he must follow his dream. They were good women all, but they did not belong in that dream. She did!)

  The room of the king’s son was like a barn, where a squadron of cavalry could hide unnoticed. All around her the men threw themselves flat on the floor, and bang-thump-bang went their heads against the stone. She looked over their prostrate, heaving behinds and saw an army of soldiers in green, shimmering on guard, and the flesh of girls glowed gauzily about a pile of cushions, and somewhere a hookah gurgled.

  Then everyone rose to his feet, and Jason too. He was silly to have bowed with the rest. He should have stood, to make himself obvious to the king’s son.

  Jason said, ‘I can’t see a thing. We are right at the back now.’

  A stern official voice beside her said, ‘What are you doing here? Out, foreigners!’

  Jason said, ‘Yes, lord! At once! Quick, Catherine, let’s go while we can.’

  But from a distance the king’s son said, ‘It is false. Put them in a bath and pour in boiling water till they speak the truth.’

  Then--’Where are they?’ screeched the wazir, and everyone dashed about, shouting, while she and Jason stood still, and soon fifty soldiers fell on them, each holding an ear or a toe, and dragged them forward. The one who shouted loudest was the man who had told them to go away, and he yelled, ‘Lord, I caught them! They were trying to escape!’

  Jason shouted, ‘Why, you damned liar!’ But Catherine bowed before the brilliance that must be the king’s son, and said, ‘Your Majest
y, this diamond came from the treasure--so it must exist.’ And she held up the last of the stones she had brought from Coromandel. The king’s son took it from her and said, ‘Well, then, we had better take them to the Great King, my father.’

  ‘The Great King!’ everyone whispered. Catherine held out her hand for the stone, but the king’s son did not give it back.

  (She had made Parvati an offer that would have meant sharing Jason with her, although she loved him. There was no other hope at that time, and even that wasn’t much of a hope because--oh, he’d been in love with Parvati. Before all that, in the very beginning, she had decided to marry him when she first saw him--no, when she first heard him singing ‘Greensleeves.’ That was an impossible thing to decide, but she had done it. He ought to understand. He had bought a map at first sight, and spent all that he had saved, and gone to Coromandel.)

  In the court of the Great King a thousand clashing points of colour danced a slow dance around a peacock throne, and in the still night air horses neighed and elephants trumpeted salutes, and all the people of the city shouted their petitions. Someone held tight to her, and soon she arrived before the Great King, the Mogul Emperor, Shah Jehan, Lord of the World.

  The king’s son, the wazir, the subadar, the captain, and the lieutenant all spoke at once. ‘Majesty! Majesty! There is a map--‘

  One by one, in ascending order of importance, they fell silent.

  At last the king’s son said, ‘Your Majesty! My father! . . .’ He told the story and gave the map to the king his father.

  The Great King said, ‘Come here.’

  Quietly the sense of unreality subsided in Catherine. This was a quiet, nasal voice, speaking from the throne above her. The joke had ended. She stepped forward at Jason’s side.

  There was a long silence, in which she heard the rustle of paper. The people around her seemed to be breathing less noisily.

  The king said, ‘Which?’

  No one seemed to breathe at all. The horses in the courtyard ceased their neighing, and the elephants fell silent, and all the vast throng made no sound.

  Then the king sighed, and the sound of the people moving and breathing stirred like a wind in the palace. She did not know what had happened, except that it was important.

  The king said, ‘Go and tell your tale to the empress, then. She understands adventurous young people better than I do. Don’t be afraid.’

  When the audience heard this they shouted aloud in a trance of adulation, ‘Beyond description is the wisdom of the Great King!’

  The Great King suddenly screamed, his voice breaking, ‘Be quiet, you blasphemous dogs! You, lead the foreigners to the empress.’

  Slowly they were led back through the enormous fortress. Catherine whispered, ‘What happened--there, in front of the king? Why were the people so quiet?’

  Their guide said, ‘Sssh!’ and stopped and called, ‘Within there! Two foreigners, a man and a woman, sent by the Great King to explain themselves to Her Majesty.’

  A womanish voice answered, ‘Wait. Her Majesty will see them now.’

  ‘Where’s the map?’ Catherine whispered.

  ‘I have it,’ Jason said in a strange voice. ‘The king gave it back to me.’

  The guide said sharply, ‘Be quiet! Go in there.’

  Jason led her forward. When he knelt she knelt beside him. It was dark in there, except for a single blue light. There was a curtain, but she could not tell whether it was behind or in front of the lamp. A woman’s clothes rustled richly beyond the curtain. The eunuch rattled his scimitar in the corner behind them.

  A quiet, rather high-pitched voice said, ‘Look at me.’

  She raised her head, put the glass to her eye, leaned forward, and could not suppress a violent start and a cry. The curtains were parted near the level of her face by a single huge eye, six inches across. A yellow light glowed in it, the blue lamp cast „ lustrous and ghostly shadows on it, it did not move. Slowly she realized that it was not an eye but a piece of glass that she gazed at--curved and most cunningly shaped glass that caught the light from within and without and magnified just the eye of the Empress behind the curtain.

  The eye blinked as she examined it, the light chased across the pupil, and the treble voice said sharply, ‘What are you doing, girl?’

  She said, ‘I can see nothing without my glass, Your Majesty.’

  ‘Oh. But you are beautiful in your way, aren’t you?’

  ‘Your eye is beautiful,’ Catherine said.

  ‘And the rest of me?’ The empress’s voice rose inquiringly. Catherine said, ‘I have heard that the Great King thinks so. He is not blind.’

  The voice trilled delightedly and said, ‘Come round to the back of the curtain--on the right, my dear.’

  She got up, putting away her glass. The voice said with sudden suspicion, ‘You are really blind?’

  ‘Nearly, Your Majesty.’

  ‘Come, then. Even the Great King may see no more of me than my eye when I am like this.’

  Catherine slipped round the edge of the curtain, wondering. As soon as she felt the hand in hers, guiding her down to the cushions, she understood. The empress’s hand was fat and puffy--not just the fatness of obesity, but a soft, yielding fatness that spoke of disease. Yet the eye was very beautiful.

  ‘Now tell me,’ the empress said. ‘We will leave your young man outside there. He looks handsome, in your European fashion.’

  ‘I love him, Your Majesty. It is about a map. Jason, give me the map, through the curtain. . . .’

  She told the empress the whole story, from the beginning, omitting nothing except her own disbelief in the map as a guide to hidden treasure. She would have liked to tell the empress that too, for she felt that this was a sensitive woman; but Jason could hear what they were saying.

  When she finished, the empress said, ‘It is a strange and unlikely tale. All the best tales are unlikely, especially the ones that come true. Such a tale is that of my marriage to the Great King, and how I came to be called Mumtaz Mahal, the Treasure of the Palace. I would like to help you if I can. I want to believe in your map, so I do--but that is not enough. Let me think. All the men who have examined this map have been thinking only of money, and I only of the tale you have told. There must be some better way--some man who can judge it with an eye that is blinded by neither greed nor romance.’ She lay back, only to start forward and cry, ‘Ishmael! Of Multan! You shall go to Ishmael tomorrow. He shall decide.’

  ‘Who is he?’ Catherine asked.

  ‘Ishmael is the king’s librarian,’ the empress said. ‘He is a funny old man--yet he is not funny at all, but wise. He is laughed at sometimes--but when you see who is laughing, you see only oafs and fools. Yes, Ishmael shall decide. But have no fear. Even if the map is false, I shall see that you come to no harm. You are my sister in suffering. I understand much that you do not have to tell me. Do you know that I am a poet? Perhaps that is why I understand. But I am also an empress, and that is why I must send you to Ishmael, instead of coming with you!’

  Catherine bent, without disgust, to kiss the pulpy-soft hand.

  In the morning a eunuch took them to the library.

  The door closed with a heavy thud behind them. They stood motionless for a minute, but no one came to them. She said, ‘Where is Ishmael? Can you see anyone?’

  The words went running away from her and. were over-powered by silence, and then the silence crept up from the farthest corners and, when it reached her, laid hands on her, first stopping her mouth and then driving out from her the last remains of yesterday’s tempestuous hours and all her anxiety. The whirling, darting, bowing memories slowed their circular wheels of movement. The jagged colours faded as the motion died. At last all settled into place. They were in a great room. There was a cool floor, shadowed white light, in the distance a pierced marble screen. She moved slowly forward.

  The room smelled of parchment, paper, teakwood, and leather. She drew out her glass and began to exami
ne everything within reach. There could be no hurry here. Rolls of parchment lay stacked on the shelves, and there were other books, of the kind that she knew, standing straight-spined in their places. There were low tables covered with books. There were single sheets of paper, resting alone in lakes of light, whereon three or four arabic letters, graceful as leaping deer, swept across the smooth white plane.

  Jason wandered on ahead, feeling the thick parchment between his fingers, stooping to examine the hanging seals, carefully lifting out the brass cylinders in which some of the rolls were kept. Such strange and wonderful worlds were displayed here, yet hidden from him by the binding, by his ignorance. Surely it was in these worlds that he was meant to wander and wonder.

  Jason said, ‘Oh!’ and came to a stop. She joined him slowly, and he muttered, ‘That must be Ishmael.’

  ‘What does he look like? Is he close?’

  ‘Twenty feet off, near the marble screen.’

  By the dappled light something rose, and white wings fluttered. A man spoke somewhat querulously. ‘You see, he was as wise as Solomon, yet as eager as a child. He journeyed all over the world, but he had time to notice the flowers and the birds.’ Then, with vehemence: ‘And, more important than all, he wrote down what he saw, what he did, what he felt. Nothing like that is being done now, is it?’

  He seemed to expect an answer. Jason was obviously struck dumb, so she said, ‘No, sir. Who are you talking about?’

  The man exclaimed, ‘Why, the Emperor Baber, of course! Who else? But I see you are a foreigner. Dutch? Portuguese? English? I speak them all just a little, and--‘ He moved quickly and called, ‘Come and look at this! Hurry!’