by Brian Mooney
‘Here! Clean that down! Fetch a bucket of water!’
‘Hussoor (excellency)!’ he said, in token of assent, leaping smartly to grab a bucket. He made as if to dash off, apparently tickled to death to be singled out for this unattractive service.
‘Hold on a minute!’ I shouted after him, on impulse. ‘Come back!’
He returned, crestfallen, and stood before me, a picture of dejection.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to shout at you. I only wanted to know your name. You see, this is my first malish. You’re the first rifleman I’ve spoken to.’
He positively beamed.
‘Dal Bahadur, huzzoor sahib, Chettri.’
It was quite irregular for whoever had been in charge of the mules to have allowed them to remain in this condition. Their pricks should have been washed and dressed and tucked away out of sight long since. I called, accordingly, for the offending havildar, in order to deliver the appropriate dressing-down. He was of the very highest caste, a fair-skinned thakur named Thaman Bahadur. I expressed my disapproval of the mules’ condition in no uncertain terms – after all, an officer has to find something wrong when he takes over command from a previous incumbent!
He rasped out an order at the top of his voice. His face betrayed no sign of pique. Indeed it was without change of expression. All the boys seized buckets as Dal Bahadur had done, and rushed off with them into the jungle to fill them at the famous Brigade Headquarters filthy pond.
Within the space of seconds they were back.
Immediately they set to cleaning down the less attractive parts of the mules’ anatomy. They did this with such care and detail that I felt a fool for ever having mentioned the subject. I began to suspect that I was deliberately being made to look ridiculous. So I would have been, had they been Sikhs, but not with Gurkhas, who are without malice.
‘For Heaven’s sake,’ I blurted out to Thaman Bahadur. ‘That’s enough, I beg of you! I’m sorry I ever mentioned it. I don’t want them to make an exhibition of it.’
The mules were squealing and bucking and kicking. The Gurkhas were squirting with barely suppressed giggles. The manoeuvre was being accomplished with a torrid commentary. Moreover the place reeked to such an extent of ammonia fumes exhaled from the mule-piss and the horse-dung – and everybody was in such high good humour – that I sought to dampen down these excessively high spirits. I dreaded that the Brigadier might put in an appearance and demand to know the cause of the confusion. He would probably attribute it to my inability to keep order.
‘Please, Thaman Bahadar,’ I pleaded. ‘You’ve had your revenge and I feel thoroughly chastened. Now do try and get your men at least to look a little more serious. This is intended to be a fatigue. They are not supposed to be enjoying it!’
‘Huzzoor!’ he assented sternly, the gleam of a smile dawning tentatively across his wooden features as he realised that I was being funny. He barked out another order, and the smiles on the faces of his men disappeared on the instant.
By now it seemed as if I might be establishing, unsteadily, some sort of moral ascendancy. The Gurkhas were all at their tasks, brushing down and grooming away assiduously – some of them were so diminutive that they could scarcely reach up to put on a head-halter – and the muted hum of a disciplined and controlled activity began to make itself apparent. It was like the purr of a precise and perfectly maintained piece of machinery. I began to feel rather self-satisfied, as if I had adjusted it all by myself.
Thaman Bahadur and I were strolling back and forth, deeply engrossed in the problem of which mule to select for the Brigadier’s demonstration. Suddenly an impish face popped over the back of a mule and gave me the most decided, diabolically impudent young wink. Before I could respond, it disappeared behind the mules – we had passed by in our perambulations, and Thaman Bahadur was engaging my attention. I was so astonished that I wondered momentarily whether I had been the victim of a hallucination.
I reacted to it by finding myself completely and unpredictably committed. It has not generally been my good fortune to be on the receiving end of such an unmistakable come-hither signal, and it bound me with bonds as unequivocally as a magical invocation.
I got rid of Thaman Bahadur as quickly as I could, and returned palpitating to the place where I had been propositioned.
The men all had their heads tucked into the mules’ flanks, brushing and blowing away furiously. I could not for the life of me detect which one of them it had been. Who had dared distinguish me with that discreet, dashing, disengaged sign? Whoever it was, he was obviously not risking revealing himself again. I deliberately went around the near side of each mule to see if I could get a diagonal view of the culprit.
No luck! Still, I am practically certain it must be that one! I decided to sail close inshore and risk coming to grief on the rocks. If my challenger could be provocative, I too could be daring.
Now, if there is one thing I am confident of performing correctly, it is the grooming routine according to the traditional formula of a stable. I had always maintained a horse of my own and I had been scrupulously drilled by a succession of grooms in the strict techniques of looking after it. Consequently I can pick up a brush and walk into a grooming session with confidence.
I did so now, trusting to God that I had picked on the right fellow. ‘Here, Comrade, hand me that brush!’
The young man withdrew his head from beneath the mule’s belly and slowly straightened up. His face wore that self-conscious, slightly bemused smile which I later learnt betokened uncertainty. He was obviously expecting to be reprimanded.
‘Good heavens!’ I exclaimed. ‘It’s Dal Bahadur!’
‘So his excellency recognises me!’
‘Who,’ I said, taking the brush and curry-comb from him and fumbling embarrassedly with handfuls of fingers, ‘could ever forget you?’
He had not expected this! My simple, out-of-hand acceptance evidently baffled him. He said nothing and contented himself with looking mysterious.
Presently I plucked up the courage to blurt out, ‘Did you wink?’
‘What?’ he replied, with a show of imperturbability.
‘Did you wink at me just now – as I passed by, I mean – as I passed by with Thaman Bahadur?’
‘So!’ he hissed with a pretence of passion. ‘That’s what they’re up to!’
‘W-w-what?’
‘The shameless young riflemen are making eyes at his excellency – and his excellency is flirting with them!’
‘Certainly not,’ I declared. ‘It was nothing like that.’
I got under the mule’s belly and put in some devoted work with my brush. Dal Bahadur maintained a discreet silence.
‘Well, did you?’ presently I persisted. ‘Did you?’
He adopted such an equivocal attitude, it was hardly removed from coquetry!
‘Would it have displeased his excellency if I did?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘certainly not,’ adding as an afterthought, ‘Sulti!’ This was a Gurkhali term which I had heard the Gurkhas using on the North-West Frontier. ‘If you had winked at me, I should certainly have been flattered.’
‘So you dare call me that!’ he responded almost explosively, his eyes sparkling like planets.
‘If it has offended you, I’m sorry.’
‘It is very intimate,’ he said. ‘Perhaps his excellency doesn’t understand. It is only used between lovers.’
He looked suddenly shy and bashful.
‘His excellency is surely making a mock of me.’
***
It was soon eleven o’clock.
Gossip about my forthcoming trial by ordeal seemed to have seeped out to the entire training establishment. Word of it had been brought to the mule-lines by the muleteer whom I had told to return at the eleventh hour for the demonstration. That was even before I put in an appearance at the morning malish, where I had my first experience of commanding my Defence Platoon Gurkhas and when, under my orders, they had playfully was
hed down the mules. I had distinctly caught one of them, Dal Bahadur, giving me a wink.
Muleteers and defence platoon riflemen were drifting in from every quarter, in ones and twos, like rustics towards a country fair. They cautiously examined the pitch as they passed with the discrimination of a selection committee or a long-established Board of Governors. They added such an exaggerated aura of unconcern to the elaborately constructed excuses with which they bolstered their airs of injured innocence when challenged, that it was well-nigh impossible not to be disarmed by their manner as well as half-deceived by their transparent cunning.
But I felt sufficiently radiant and relaxed to be generous towards my public. I did not feel inclined to insist that admission was only by invitation. The Brigadier and his consorts arrived to a fanfare of trumpets and processed to the royal box. A casual signal would start the entertainment.
The scene was set. The sky had cleared. The clouds had momentarily vanished. The sun beat down with abrasive candour. I retired to my corner calmly enough, as befitted a famous animal-tamer. I wanted to await completion of the various formalities before launching into the final flourish.
In that noonday silence – the hour sacred to Pan – when every living creature had retreated to the shelter of whatever shade was available and where, in the villages, the pie-dogs lay panting in the shelter of the walls, prostrate with exhaustion, the activity within the Brigade Headquarters encampment area could not but strike an observer like myself, who had been able to withdraw slightly from it, as having a perverse aspect. It went contrary to the dictates of nature.
It was indeed difficult to deny that such activity exemplified, in the most unflattering manner, that obstinate cussedness of mankind, who insists on imposing his personal will on circumstances, no matter how inopportune they are, while relaxed nature walks her own unaided way into the shade and accommodates herself to the fact that sleep is the only answer to climatic inclemency.
In front of me, in the little jungle clearing where the contest was to take place, Havildar (Sergeant) Thaman Bahadur was arranging the loads on the ground with the help of the four tallest riflemen – selected on that account from the defence platoon in order to be able to reach up to mule height. They looked a bit lost in the full blaze of the sun. The perspiration was pouring from under their hats on account of their shaven heads, so it is hardly surprising that they were not enthusing over their work. I abandoned my place in the shade to saunter over to see if my presence could inject a bit of enthusiasm.
I suddenly wanted to make a howling success of it. The demonstration was, after all, designed to prove my mastery of men and animals.
I had from the beginning always been somewhat mystified by the sense of daring which accompanied this simple operation. The movement to be completed was the easiest in the Mountain Artillery drill book. It was one which my Sikh gunners could have performed a dozen times in a dozen minutes without considering themselves in the least dashing.
It consisted of selecting two loads of approximately equal size and exactly equal weight – in this case, the radio transmitter and its generator, or perhaps a couple of boxes of accumulators – and placing them on the ground with a space between them. The mule would then be led into this space like a ship into dock, so that, as soon as the order was given, the loads could be hoisted up and hooked simultaneously on either side of the pack-harness. ‘Simultaneously’ was the operative word, for of course if one side was loaded earlier than the other, the unbalanced weight – something in the nature of 280lbs, if I remember rightly – would hopelessly disarrange the pack-saddle and greatly upset the mule. It had to be a swift, swinging, coordinated, concerted movement on the part of the men, two each to a load.
Mules, being unable to speak, have only one method of expressing their disapproval – to kick their load, and sometimes their muleteers and mule-loaders, to pieces.
Given a simulacrum of simultaneity, however, and the whole operation was dead easy. The muleteer simply had to stand at the head of the mule, with his two hands on either side of the snaffle and the reins looped loosely over this arm, ready to throw himself into the mule’s path if it should show signs of bolting.
Smartly I assembled my little squad and told them all this. They were singularly unresponsive. Being the tallest among the riflemen seemed to have taken everything else out of them. I wondered, after all, whether I had been right to be so self-confident.
One of them, Rifleman Agam Singh, appeared so listless that regretfully I had to replace him as being constitutionally unsuitable. I called in, instead a sturdy, sombre-browed, dark-skinned young lance-corporal called Shiv Jung.
At the last minute, evidently sensing my disquiet about the men, Havildar Tulbir Gurung took the place of lance corporal Tej Bahadur Gurung, and Havildar Ganga Bahadur took the place of Rifleman Bhim Bahadur. Then Havildar Thaman Bahadur suddenly stepped forward and took the position which was being competed for by Riflemen Gopal Bahadur Rai and Man Bahadur Limbu – a pair of boy-inseparables whom nobody would dream of parting from each other.
With the exception of Shiv Jung, I recognized that I was left with a detachment of havildars. It was rather disconcerting, as it always is when top people stoop to menial labour.
Stifling my disquiet, I sent for the mule. She turned out to be a great big placid creature with a velvety muzzle and docile eyes – or such was the impression which registered on the surface. It was at this point in the proceedings, however that I received my first protest from the subconscious: it was not going to go well; I had been too sanguine about the outcome.
The mule gave me a look full of indignation which only too plainly indicated what she intended. She resented being disturbed at this noon-tide hour for a detachment of havildars and she did not intend to put up with it, not even if his excellency the captain-sahib himself should personally take control of the lead reins.
How strange that she should have expressed herself thus intuitively! When she arrived on the scene, I had already decided I could not in all conscience further postpone taking part personally in the demonstration. I advanced, accordingly, in order to take up the position of first muleteer and key mule-driver.
Looking back on the event, the temptation to suspect some sort of secret conspiracy between the havildars for my discomfiture is very compelling. However, I absolve them from any complicity. What they did, I am convinced, was done out of simple sense of duty. It was just unfortunate that the incident did not turn out better.
The five of us adopted a position of readiness, and I glanced guardedly towards the Brigadier. He nodded. I said ‘Up!’ tersely, and the men doubled themselves over the loads and straightened up, elastically flinging the 280lb boxes acrobatically into the air. There was a cavernous clunk as the hooks engaged and the mule stood there, slightly staggering, with approximately 600 lbs of radio equipment in the saddle.
If ever I saw an expression of amazement come over an animal’s face, I saw it then. It was replaced by an expression of consternation, followed by one of resentment, finally malice. She obviously thought we were going to get the better of her and get away with it.
‘Steady on, old girl; it can’t be as bad as that!’
My remark was entirely inadequate as an attempt to calm her. She let out an outraged squeal of protest and immediately started bucking.
It was all up. Once they do that, the loads flop up and down against their sides, encouraging them to even greater demonstrations of resentment, and the process does not stop until they have disposed of everything.
‘Look out!’ I yelled to the havildars. ‘It’s all up with us!’
I motioned them to move aside as the loads began to come adrift like the shifting cargo on a sinking liner.
‘Take care; she’ll end up getting you!’
She had started off with a little kick – nothing more than a girlish caper. Having done this two or three times and in this manner satisfied herself of what she was capable, she really let fly with her
heels. A sod of impacted earth shot off from her hooves and hit the Brigadier in the midriff. I too was forced to abandon ship, for once you have gazed into a mule’s mouth with her lips turned back you lose all stomach for closer acquaintance.
Presently the radio set was sent flying into the air to a groan of dismay from Briggo and the uncompensated-for load on the other side pulled the pack-harness loose until it slipped down past her ribs where it simple lowered itself in a dignified manner to the ground and then fell off, leaving the mule standing with the harness underneath her belly, grinning slightly with those great big yellow teeth of hers, but otherwise without an ounce of malice.
I approached her cautiously and repossessed myself of the reins. Thaman Bahadur loosened her girths and between them the havildars readjusted the pack-harness. She made barely a move, nor hee-haw, nor whinny, nor neigh of protest.
‘Well!’ said Briggo dispiritedly, ‘I suppose that settles it!’
‘Not at all!’ interposed Lentaigne.
‘Then what do we do now?’
‘We simply try again.’
‘I don’t know’ said Briggo dubiously, ‘if my sets will stand up to this hammering.’
‘I don’t see why not!’ exclaimed the Brigadier tartly. ‘That’s what they’ve been designed for.’ ‘Again?’ I queried. ‘Again,’ nodded the Brigadier. ‘Are we ready?’ I asked the others. ‘Yes, ready sahib! Yes, ready!’
‘Up!’
‘Clunk’ went the loads as they engaged on the hooks. The pack harness creaked disquietingly. The mule stood her ground, absolutely still. I was not deceived, however, by her absence of movement. I noticed in those eyes an unnerving glint of intelligence, denoting a brain as calculating as any chess player’s.
Quite deliberately yet unhurriedly she began to kick. It was not the panic reaction of a confused beast. It was the result of complicated processes of mature logic. She was, moreover, big. Doubtless all her muleteers had been as terrified of her as I was. It must have given her considerable confidence.