Alone in the Jungle
Lawrence can smell the burnt odor of gunpowder from the musket ball that tore through the collar of his shirt, missing him by a fraction of an inch. He scrambles down the forested hillside, between huge boulders covered with moss, through narrow ravines full of rustling ferns. It is still dark but the Tommies have given up pursuit. Lawrence figures if he descends to the foot of the hill, he can find his way to Ajeebgarh by following the Magor River upstream. Tired, scraped and bruised from his escape through the jungle, he stops by a stream to drink, gulping the cool water and splashing his face. Now that dawn is approaching, he can hear all kinds of sounds in the jungle—the whistling and warbling of birds, the whooping of monkeys, even the sawing growl of a panther. But Lawrence is no longer afraid, for the thumping of the Tommies’ boots has been left behind.
Heading down the stream, which he assumes will eventually flow into the river, Lawrence comes to a clearing in the valley. The ridges seem to lean backward to reveal a brightening sky. The moon has set and most of the stars have disappeared, but just above the treetops, Lawrence can see a tiny pinprick of light, its edges blurred, but shining with a persistence that seems to defy the dawn.
“Mercury,” Lawrence whispers to himself. Last year, his mother taught him the names of the planets as they sat on the lawns of the planter’s bungalow, gazing up at the night sky. “Mercury, the messenger,” his mother had explained. The memory of her voice, describing the stars and constellations, makes him feel suddenly helpless and alone. As his eyes fill with tears, the planet seems to melt away.
Shaking off his emotions, Lawrence continues along the streambed, moving as quickly as he can in the half-light. By the time he is out of the mountains, the sun is already high overhead and the air is hot and humid. Swarms of mosquitoes and gnats hum about his ears, and Lawrence wishes it was dark and cool again. He begins to wonder if the stream will actually lead him to the river. It seems to go on and on. Now that he is on the plains, his sense of direction becomes confused. For three days, all he has eaten are a couple of moldy biscuits. Hunger and exhaustion make him delirious. He thinks he sees a mango tree full of ripe fruit, but when he tries to climb it, the branches are covered with thorns. The round white rocks in the streambed look like melons, but when Lawrence reaches down to pick one up, imagining the sweet juice dribbling down his chin, the stone is burning hot from the sun and as heavy as an iron cannonball.
Stumbling now, barely able to walk, he sees what looks like the mast of a sailing ship, with some kind of rigging. Lawrence raises one hand, as if he were a castaway on a desert island, and begins to run toward the ship with its tall, straight mast. He trips, then gets to his feet again, finally throwing himself against the wooden post. In his muddled mind, he realizes this isn’t a ship, but something much better—a telegraph pole. Wiping the stinging sweat from his eyes, he can see the copper wires leading straight through the jungle to Ajeebgarh. Fifty yards ahead is another pole, and another one after that.
Crawling to the stream, he takes a drink of water, though it makes his empty stomach turn. Looking up to see the telegraph pole again, his vision is blurred and he blinks his eyes. In front of him is a wavering line, like a swaying mirage. Is it a hand, waving at him? A rope dangling in the air? He blinks again. This time when he opens his eyes, Lawrence sees a king cobra. The snake’s hood is unfurled, and it is prepared to strike.
22
The Philatelist
That afternoon, Gil walked over to Nargis’s house as soon as she got home from school. When he told her about the genie, she didn’t seem convinced, but he offered to prove it to her. Together they headed back to the Yankee Mahal. When they went upstairs to the study, Prescott was sitting at the rolltop desk, leaning over a thick album, with a magnifying glass in one hand.
“Grandpa, what are you doing here?” asked Gil.
Prescott gave him a sheepish smile. “Nothing much,” he said. “Just a hobby of mine.”
“It’s a stamp collection,” said Nargis.
Prescott nodded as Gil made sure the letter he had opened earlier was still in its pigeonhole.
“Can we have a look?” Nargis asked.
“Sure, if you really want to,” said Prescott. “Most people find stamp collecting boring, but I’ve been a philatelist since I was eight years old.”
As Gil and Nargis leaned over to look at the album, they saw a dozen two-cent stamps displayed on the page, all of them with George Washington’s face. Each one looked exactly the same.
“I just got this stamp today,” said Prescott, pointing to one at the bottom, “from a dealer in Virginia. I’ve been negotiating with him for a couple of weeks and he finally lowered the price.”
“How much did it cost?” asked Gil.
His grandfather winced with embarrassment. “A hundred and twenty dollars,” he said.
“What? Are you kidding?” said Gil with a laugh. “That’s a two-cent stamp.”
“It must be pretty rare,” said Nargis.
Prescott nodded. “It’s from 1848. I’ve been trying to find one of these for years, to complete my collection. You see, each one is different.” Taking the magnifying glass, he ran it over the stamps, pointing out the slight variations in printing and color. One of the stamps had George Washington facing in the opposite direction.
“That’s the rarest one of all,” said Prescott, “because it’s reversed.”
“How much is it worth?” said Gil.
“A thousand dollars at least.”
“Whoa!” Nargis whispered.
Prescott turned the page and showed them a set of stamps with Alexander Hamilton’s face on them. Another page had nothing but Benjamin Franklin. Even though they were worth a lot of money, Gil couldn’t understand why anyone would get excited by stamps with pictures of dead patriots and presidents.
“Let me show you the first collection I ever made,” said Prescott, unlocking one of the lower drawers of the desk. He took out a smaller, scuffed album with a leather cover and thick black pages. The album contained more than two hundred stamps from America and other countries like Mexico, France and England.
“When I started, I collected everything I could find and stuck them in this album in random order. Later, I started to get more specialized. Now I collect mostly nineteenth-century American stamps.”
Gil flipped through the pages of Prescott’s first album, which had descriptions and dates written in white ink on the black pages. The handwriting was childish but neat.
“Every stamp is a story,” his grandfather said. “You see that one with the yellow butterfly? It’s from Vietnam, or Indochine, as it used to be called under the French. When I was still in seventh grade, back in 1953, my father got a letter from a man in Saigon. I soaked the stamp off the envelope and added it to my collection. Whenever I see that butterfly, I think of that day, and how naive I was. I’d never heard of Vietnam before. A few years later, it was a place we’d never forget. A lot of my friends were fighting over there, and I was in jail as a conscientious objector.”
“What’s that?” asked Gil.
“A pacifist,” said Prescott. “I refused to be drafted and join the army.”
This was something else Gil had never known about his grandfather. For a moment, he forgot about the stamps.
“How long were you in jail?” he asked, intrigued.
“Six months,” Prescott replied. “After that I did Alternative Service, teaching at a school for the blind in Alabama. It was the most important experience of my life, teaching Shakespeare in Braille.”
“What’s in the other albums?” Nargis asked.
“Mostly American stamps. These are from an earlier period.” Gil could see that the dates were printed on the outside of each album. 1870–1879. 1880–1889. Unlocking a second drawer, Prescott took out an album embossed with ornate gold patterns.
“Here’s one that might interest you,” he said. “I’ve got a complete collection of stamps from the ki
ngdom of Ajeebgarh, which no longer exists. It’s part of India now. The maharajah issued his own postage until the British forced him to stop. I got interested in Ajeebgarh because that was where Ezekiel Finch had his tea estates. He died there in 1879. Among our family papers we had a lot of his old letters that carried these stamps and I’ve been able to put together a complete collection.”
Nargis nudged Gil with her elbow and the two of them exchanged startled glances. Most of the stamps in the album had pictures of the maharajah on them. Gil recognized his profile from the postage on the genie’s envelope.
“Maharajah Lajawab Singh II,” said Prescott. “He was an interesting man, who wanted to turn his kingdom into a modern state. The post and telegraph office in Ajeebgarh was one of the most efficient in India. Lajawab Singh II had all sorts of trouble with the British, who thought he was an upstart, full of dangerous ideas. He insisted on issuing his own postage and brought the telegraph to Ajeebgarh. Supposedly, Lajawab Singh was also negotiating with the Russians to export his tea. Eventually the British invaded Ajeebgarh and took over the kingdom by force. It’s sometimes referred to as the Postage Stamp War.”
Staring down at the page full of stamps, Gil could barely contain his excitement. When he looked across at Nargis, he could tell she too was thinking about Sikander.
Prescott stopped himself for a moment and pointed to the picture on the wall, an etching of a battle scene.
“Here you go,” he said. “I found this in an antiques shop a couple years back. It’s a picture from the London Illustrated News that shows the siege of Ajeebgarh. This was printed in 1896. You can see the maharajah’s palace in ruins.”
Gil and Nargis squinted at the old print, which showed a lot of British officers waving their swords about and cannons spewing clouds of smoke. One of the maharajah’s soldiers was trying to fight back, but he was wounded and had fallen to one knee. Reminded of Sikander again, Gil shuddered and wondered if he was all right.
Picking up the magnifying glass, he studied the jewels on the maharajah’s turban and the way his moustache curled up at the ends. It was definitely the same man pictured on the stamp on the genie’s envelope. Hesitating, Gil reached for the letter.
“Grandpa …,” he said,“I found this today.”
Prescott took it from him, ignoring the address and training the magnifying lens on the stamp instead.
“Look at that!” he said with excitement. “It says 1896. The cancellation mark is smudged, but you can tell by the sash he’s wearing. Where did you get this?” Prescott fixed his eyes on Gil.
“Um … this morning, it arrived through the mail slot while you were away …”
His grandfather stared at him suspiciously, then turned back to examine the stamps.
“Actually …,” said Gil, swallowing hard. “There’s something inside the envelope you might want to see.”
Prescott still looked confused. He opened the paper, flattening it on the green baize surface of the desk.
“What’s this?” he said with an interested frown, recognizing the verses. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. He began to read the lines: “ ‘Awake! for Morning in the bowl of Night / Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight … ’”
Gil waited for something to happen but there wasn’t any explosion or puff of smoke. When Prescott finished reading the poem, he shook his head and smiled, then went back to examining the stamp. No genie had appeared, and Gil exchanged a puzzled glance with Nargis. He took the letter and held it up to the light. The ink remained fixed to the page.
23
Salvilinus frontinalis
Ezekiel Finch kneels beside the slate-lined tank and watches the tiny fingerlings swarming through the clear, cold water. The sight of their tapered bodies wriggling against the gentle current fills him with a feeling of satisfaction and regret.
Late last year, on a bright November day, before he sailed from Hornswoggle Bay, Ezekiel had cast his fly line into the ice pond near his house. A fat brook trout took the fly and he played her into shore. She was full of roe, and when he held her over a basin and squeezed her belly, the eggs had squirted out like seeds from an overripe tomato. After collecting these, he released the fish back into the pond and cast again. The autumn colors in the trees were as full of gold as a pharaoh’s tomb. Within an hour, Ezekiel had landed twelve trout, most of which were ready to spawn. Finally, he had hooked a male brook trout that leapt on the surface of the pond, in a fierce struggle to throw the hook. Holding the line firmly, Ezekiel drew the fish to shore. The male trout was smaller than the others, a bright orange and mottled green, its spawning colors as gaudy as the maple leaves. In the basin, hundreds of clear trout ova were mixed with white milt from the male, just as they might have been fertilized in the pebbled shallows of the pond.
Later, the eggs were transferred into three glass jars, full of water and gravel, which were taken aboard the Moorish Queen. Throughout the long voyage to India, Ezekiel had the water siphoned out and replaced each day to keep the eggs alive. Ezekiel himself had turned his back on New England, with a sad, stern look on his face. He was a hardy, self-made man, not given to outward emotions, but as he sailed beyond the headland and caught a last glimpse of the high slate roof of the Yankee Mahal, his eyes glistened with remorse.
Stone by stone, he had built that house, dreaming of carrying Camellia over the threshold one day. It was to be a home in which they raised a family and lived in contentment for the rest of their lives. But the dream had frozen over as quickly as the surface of the ice pond in December. Ezekiel had nothing left to live for there. His ships, with their cargo of tea and ice, had made him a wealthy man, but none of that mattered, now that Camellia had refused to give him her hand in marriage.
The only thing Ezekiel took with him from Massachusetts, to remind him of bright autumn days like this, was the brood of fish eggs. In the foothills of the eastern Himalayas above Ajeebgarh, he planned to stock a pond with trout. Everything else he left behind, his house with all its furnishings, his horses, his orchards, his land. Never again would he see the foliage turn gold in autumn, or feel the crunch of snow beneath his boots, or touch Camellia’s soft brown hair. Instead, he sailed away to a lonely exile in the East.
And now, as he kneels beside his fish hatchery, watching the fingerlings swimming back and forth, he realizes how far he’s come. Ambital is no bigger than the ice pond—a secluded lake in the mountains above the tea estates he owns. Unlike the European brown trout (Salmo trutta), brought by the British to other parts of India, these American brook trout are a different species—Salvilinus frontinalis. Ezekiel will release the fish halfway around the globe, as a tragic reminder of his loss and a wriggling testament of thwarted hopes.
24
Beyond Xanadu
Leaving Prescott to his stamp collection, Gil and Nargis took the poem and went out to the garage. Leaning against Prescott’s Volkswagen, Gil shook his head.
“I swear, the last time I read this poem, a genie appeared. I can’t figure out why it didn’t work.”
Nargis took the paper from his hands and began to read the verses aloud. As soon as she reached the last line, there was a muted explosion and the ink disintegrated into a whirligig of smoke. Dropping the paper, Nargis jumped back, almost tripping over a lawn mower.
“At your service m’lord!” said the genie.
Gil swallowed hard. “Why didn’t you appear when my grandfather read the poem?”
The genie shrugged. “I was off duty,” he explained. “Elevenses.”
Nargis stared at the apparition that hovered inside the garage, like a cloud with a human face.
“What do you mean?” said Gil. “I thought you were supposed to be here whenever I need you.”
The genie took a pocket watch out of his waistcoat and wound the knob.
“Well, that’s true, sir. But we genies operate on a strict schedule, negotiated and agreed upon by common consent. You see, I break for breakfast from eight to ni
ne, then elevenses at eleven o’clock, of course. Lunch is from half past noon to two o’clock. Afternoon tea: three to four thirty. Dinner is six to nine PM. After that I’m off until seven AM.”
“That doesn’t leave you much time to work,” said Gil.
“We also get Saturdays and Sundays off, as well as bank holidays,” said Aristo, polishing his watch and returning it to his pocket.
Nargis didn’t like the genie much. After the first shock of seeing him rise up off the page, she found him pompous and condescending. Though he greeted Nargis with formality and called her “m’lady,” he seemed much more interested in talking with Gil, as if girls were a waste of his time. He had an annoying way of sniffing when he spoke, and his hands were always making dismissive gestures in her direction. For all his mysteriousness and magic, Nargis could tell that Aristophanes Smith was a very ordinary genie who liked to put on airs.
Before going back into his envelope, he insisted on reciting “Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossom’d many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery …
The first part of the poem was all right, but after that it got long-winded as Aristo droned on until the end. While reciting the poem, he tucked one hand between the buttons of his waistcoat and the other he waved about like an orchestra conductor. During this performance Nargis nudged Gil’s arm and rolled her eyes.
After the poem was finished, Gil nodded, then asked Aristo to explain how he’d got into the envelope in the first place.
“With the help of a calligrapher’s pen,” said the genie. “Naturally—or supernaturally as the case may be—there are certain things I can’t reveal, but suffice it to say that my existence depends upon a process of versification and reversification, if you know what I mean.”
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