The Setting Sun

by Bart Moore-Gilbert

  He stands over the trembling Kimwaga until it’s drained.

  ‘Yote itakua sawasawa. Everything will be alright. Go on, now. See you tomorrow.’

  Kimwaga already looks an inch taller as he makes his way out to the kitchen. The boy’s relieved. He’d been dismayed to see his minder in distress, irritated by his father’s levity.

  Later that night the boy’s woken by triumphant ululations. In the morning, a dark-stained blanket hangs from the window of his minder’s quarters. The smell of roasted meat and pombe still hangs in the air. The matriarchs sprawl on the steps, puffing at their pipes, complacent smiles signifying that everyone’s done their duty. The boy’s father winks at him as they make their way to the Land Rover. His son affects a worldly expression. On the way back from their wonderful safari to the Ugalla River, his father decided to explain the facts of life, in interminable detail, with the aid of a cold sausage. His face had been so intent, so concerned not to shock, that, despite the boy’s exquisite embarrassment, he couldn’t bring himself to confess he’d already learned it all at school.

  At breakfast the next day, I get another call from the consulate. Back on course, thank God. They’ve established that I’m not a drug dealer or a gunrunner, and invite me to pick up my documents. Rushing back to Makers’ Chambers in a tuk-tuk, I pick up the attestation and return to Elphinstone. There’s more good fortune when I get there. Dhavatkar is still ill, and his deputy genially accepts the document without even mentioning Delhi. Perhaps things are really beginning to go my way. Rajeev’s already at his carrel, smiling like the Cheshire Cat. This time I order a Coke in the canteen.

  ‘Look at this,’ he says, once the pleasantries are over. He removes a manila envelope from his satchel, out of which in turn he fishes a scanned photograph. The caption reads: ‘Central Police Training School, Nasik, 1940’.

  Despite the poor quality of the sepia reproduction, I immediately spot Bill in the front row. My heart leaps. He looks as fresh-faced as a model for Pear’s soap, much blonder than I remember. Perhaps it’s overexposure? One shoulder’s slightly turned, as if he’s cramped amongst his close-packed comrades. He gazes back at the photographer with the ghost of a smile. For some reason, he’s the only one not wearing riding boots. Perhaps he was late for parade?

  ‘These are the others from his cadre,’ Rajeev explains, pointing to the front row. To my surprise, Indians outnumber whites.

  ‘Who are the people behind?’

  ‘The ones in black shakos are trainee sub-inspectors. Behind them, head constables. The civilians in the second row taught riding, law and languages.’ He hands it to me. ‘For you. I copied it.’

  I’m deeply touched by his thoughtfulness. ‘Can’t tell you how grateful I am, Rajeev.’

  Here’s the first new visual evidence of Bill’s Indian career, another piece in the jigsaw. I’m impatient to find out more and suggest we begin our search in the archives. My new friend detains me a moment.

  ‘I looked at the notes I have on the Parallel Government, so called.’

  ‘Why so-called?’

  Rajeev’s eyes droop. ‘Terrorists mostly. Many started as petty criminals, although some of the leaders became important politicians after Independence. One such was Vasantdada Patil, commonly known as Nana Patil, who ended up chief minister of Maharashtra. Then there was Y.B. Chavan, later federal defence minister under Indira Gandhi. He helped bring in the Emergency in the 1970s when Indira Gandhi wouldn’t give up power, using legislation which the British brought in during the 1940s. Nearly a million people were locked up.’

  I’m surprised. ‘That many?’

  Rajeev’s expression is bitter. ‘The British only put away a hundred thousand in six years of war.’

  I nod sympathetically. ‘But what about the underground in Satara?’

  ‘In Marathi, they called themselves the Prati Sarkar, the Parallel Government. But they were soon renamed the Patri Sarkar.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘The Government of the Bastinado.’

  I look at him blankly.

  ‘The bastinado is a thin cane used to beat the soles of the feet. The standard punishment for anyone who opposed them.’ Rajeev grimaces. ‘Agonisingly painful. But they did far worse. Gandhi himself denounced them from jail in Pune. Anyway, I didn’t discover anything about your father’s relations with them.’

  ‘Any luck with Shinde’s book?’ I ask.

  Rajeev shakes his head. ‘No one I know has it. There are various second-hand places. But it’ll be a lot of bother, especially in this heat.’

  I’m not too disappointed. Between Rajeev and the Elphinstone staff, I’m sure I’ll soon have some kind of compass. I’ve already got a sense of the context surrounding Bill’s posting in Satara. How had he dealt with these opponents and how successful had the counter-insurgency been? What did they get up to, for the Mahatma to disown them? However, I’m aware of possible complications in Rajeev’s account. If they were just thugs, if they flouted Gandhi’s precepts, how come Patil and Chavan reached such elevated positions in Congress-dominated India after 1947? In any case, why does Rajeev seem so sympathetic to the British?

  But, as he warned, the archives are indeed chaotic, catalogues missing or incomplete, files with different numbers to the ones I ordered coming up, all effected with interminable slowness. Bill’s period of service has a limited role in Rajeev’s research, and he’s unfamiliar with the holdings I need. With a harassed-looking member of staff, who makes increasingly less convincing suggestions, we call up file after file either side of lunch. There’s little on the Hoors. Rajeev speculates that the relevant archives are in modern-day Sindh, now in Pakistan. Material on Satara’s plentiful, however. At times I feel the ghost is almost within my grasp. At one point a folder arrives with documents signed by Lindsay Padden-Row, in later life godfather to my younger brother, after whom he was named. It consists of correspondence with the district magistrate in Satara during Bill’s posting there, but concerns only air-raid precautions and an internment camp for foreigners. Did Bill read the letters, or was he consulted about their contents?

  ‘Without more specific information, we could spend weeks looking,’ Rajeev laments.

  I’m beginning to feel discouraged again. ‘Bhosle told me to come here.’

  ‘These provincial historians,’ he mutters with a deprecating expression.

  ‘Looks like I’ve got to get hold of Shinde’s book.’

  Rajeev looks mournful for a moment. Suddenly his eyes light up. ‘What about the old University library?’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  Strolling through late-afternoon Mumbai, with its softening light and body-temperature fug, I have a feeling of extraordinary connection to Bill. In Rajeev’s photo, he’s so much younger than I am now that I feel almost fatherly. What would he think of the quest I’m undertaking? He always encouraged my curiosity, and took pride in my achievements at school. Perhaps this journey will prove a fitting final homage to his memory. To reach the old campus, I skirt the Oval Maidan, where a dozen cricket pitches are crammed together. Given his passion for the sport, I wonder if Bill might have exercised his talents here, during his periods of leave. Several children are playing a scratch game against a bin, arguing over whether the batsman is out.

  Behind the nets at the Arusha Club, the boy watches hot-cheeked as his father puts an arm round François. His temporary foster-brother’s upset.

  ‘Come on, François, you have to learn to be a good sport.’

  The child looks up uncomprehendingly. He’s the son of the private secretary to the exiled Kigeli V of Rwanda, and is himself distantly related to the recently overthrown king. With civil war threatening, François’s mother is trapped in the capital Kigali and his father’s gone back to try and get her out. But what to do with their kids in the meantime? They’ve been farmed out to various friends and the boy’s parents have agreed to look after the oldest, a timorous ten-year-old with almost blue-black skin, enor
mous eyes and long lashes. François has become increasingly fretful as his father’s absence stretches from week to week and no news comes from home, leading to one or two tantrums recently.

  Amongst their own children, the boy’s parents don’t tolerate displays of temper. Yet when François flies into a rage, they simply look at each other knowingly and indulge him. Most of the time, the boy gets on well with their guest. They share a room and he loves the new stories his foster-brother tells at night. But he’s beginning to resent the different way François is treated.

  ‘When will his father be coming back?’ the boy asked his mother disingenuously only that afternoon.

  ‘As soon as they stop slaughtering each other, I expect,’ she responded cheerfully. ‘Until then, you carry on treating him just like Ames and Lindsay.’

  Still the boy’s aggrieved, blaming François rather than his parents for the confusion they’ve introduced. So he watches triumphantly as his father strides over when the protesting shouts begin.

  ‘But it was out, Mr Moore-Gilbert,’ Rolf Trappe appeals, seconded by others. ‘He was hit below the knee, everyone saw.’

  Tears welling, François eventually confirms it. The boy’s father speaks softly to him in French, before reiterating it in English.

  ‘It’s very important to be a good sport, François,’ he concludes: ‘rules are rules. You can’t change them as you go along.’

  He turns before his son has time to wipe the smirk from his face.

  ‘Why are you grinning like an idiot? They don’t play cricket in the French-speaking parts of Africa. How would you feel if you lived in Rwanda and people teased you because you didn’t understand the laws of boules? You’re old enough to know better.’

  What is bool? the boy wonders. What kind of sport has a name like that? Is it to do with bullfighting? And if French-speakers don’t play the game, why is it called French cricket? But wilting beneath his father’s frown, he decides to keep quiet.

  Later that evening, the boy observes François peering into the cage containing the family’s pair of parrots, Congolese Greys with brilliant red tail-feathers. He’s feeding peanuts to Ruanda, the female, while her mate Urundi preens himself, making ear-piercing whistles. François mutters something, a tear rolling down his cheek. It sounds like a prayer, though whether in French or Kinyarwanda, it’s impossible to make out. Mortified, the boy goes to him.

  The original Bombay University looks like Oxford’s Keble College transplanted to the tropics: contrasting-patterned brick, grassed quadrangles, confident Gothic bell tower. The library has an Arts-and-Crafts feel, breathtaking teak barrel-vaulted ceiling, imposing issue desk, busts of Victorian benefactors surveying the handful of students at long tables. After signing me in, on the strength of my London University visiting card, a librarian sifts the ancient index with the dexterity of a card sharp. Among innumerable Shindes, she finally finds the one I’m after. I wait with increasing anticipation as it’s fetched from the stacks.

  When the book arrives, I settle down to read, disturbed only by an occasional pigeon sweeping disconcertingly through the open leaded windows. It’s a 500-page hardback with a curious illustration on the front, an enormous wave about to overwhelm a frail-looking barque. The Parallel Government of Satara: a Phase of the Quit India Movement, the red lettering proclaims. According to the dust jacket, Dr A.B. Shinde is a college principal in Kolhapur with a PhD from Shivaji University – the same place Bhosle works. They must know each other. Have they collaborated in their research? I spend time getting a feel for the text, chapter headings, appendices, sources. It has every hallmark of serious historical research, relying not just on archival material but first-person testimony, including extracts from the weekly confidential reports of successive district superintendents of police.

  From the opening chapters, I get a very different impression of the movement to what Rajeev suggested. It doesn’t seem like a terrorist organisation. Like so many of the anticolonial nationalist movements I’ve studied, it seems to have emerged out of entirely justifiable and long-standing political dissatisfactions, which were aggravated when Britain declared war on Germany in India’s name – without bothering to consult its peoples. The Defence of India Rules, applied in draconian fashion once hostilities broke out, further inflamed the situation. From what Shinde says, Gandhi’s arrest in August 1942 was the final straw, provoking armed rebellion on the part of the Parallel Government. With my professional hat on, I can see nothing to disapprove. How then to account for Rajeev’s animus against the movement?

  Bill on the mess steps, Nasik PTS c. 1939

  There’s not time before the library closes to read the text systematically. Turning to the index, my heart jumps to see Bill’s name. I skim to the first page referenced. This is what I’m after. ‘By the end of 1944 … Satara was in turmoil.’ Despite increasing pressure from the Raj, ‘the movement did not break down’. ‘Atrocities’. The word leaps off the page. Not ones committed by the Parallel Government. ‘The police, therefore, lost self-control and perpetrated atrocities on the people.’ I brace myself to read on. ‘Moore-Gilbert, the Additional DSP, Satara, got wide notoriety for his ruthlessness with which he conducted these raids.’ The narrative zooms in on a single day more than sixty years ago: ‘Moore-Gilbert, accompanied by 100/150 policemen marched into the village Chafal on December 4, 1944, at about 4 a.m. and camped in the temple of Mahadeo situated on the banks of the river Uttarmand.’ Where’s Chafal exactly? ‘The inhabitants going to the river, or proceeding to their farms or villages or to the forest were rounded up and herded together like cattle in the temple: they were deprived of their clothes and mercilessly beaten up.’ Inside the temple? ‘Cow-dung and mud were thrust in the mouths of some while others were made to lie prostrate on the ground and nearly frightened out of their life by holding bayonets to their throats; even old men were not spared.’ I feel sick. ‘The inhabitants of Chafal are filled with panic; even a rumour of a police raid frightens them away to the forest and shop-keepers roll down their shutters. Even the leading Congress workers from the district are afraid of visiting Chafal and consoling the people.’ But there’s more. ‘A few days ago, a similar havoc was played among the villages Mhavshi and Tambve …’

  Something I can’t yet name cracks inside me. Is it to protect me from all this that Bhosle decided to make himself unavailable? I’m so upset I can barely see to jot down the identification numbers of the archival files on which Shinde draws.

  CHAPTER 3

  Memory and Doubt

  Leaving the library, I wander in a daze. Must be some mistake, I keep repeating. The image of my father constructed in my childhood memories, such a stable emotional anchor all these years, has fractured. Frantically I turn the pieces over, trying to fit them back together. But they won’t go. I’ve taught autobiography for long enough to know that memories, especially early memories, aren’t necessarily trustworthy, whatever subjective truth they might embody. Didn’t J.M. Barrie write that ‘God gave us memory so that we’d have roses in December’? Michel de Leiris is similarly ambivalent: ‘I do not know if what I remember of my youth is true. But I remember it truly.’ Whatever, the stench of something foul is threatening to overwhelm the scent of my December blooms.

  The disillusion’s so excruciating, I can’t think straight. Assuming I’ve been heading back to my hotel, I eventually realise I’ve gone the other way, into Colaba. Here’s the Leopold Café, scene of one of the bloodiest recent terror attacks. I’m startled to see it already packed with tourists again. The group nearest the door as I come in, burly young men with pirate bandanas and angry sunburned faces, look drunk. In clashing voices they denounce the prohibition on beach parties in Goa, brought in a few days ago as a security precaution. Only one table’s free. There appear to be bullet holes in the plate glass behind it. Haven’t they had time to repair the damage? How neat the punctures are, the surrounding glass immaculate, as if drilled by a craftsman. On an adjacent plinth are gar
landed photos of two murdered waiters, with collecting boxes for their families. No wonder the table’s not occupied.

  It would be too ghoulish to sit there, desperate though I am for a drink. But if I share someone else’s, I’ll have to talk. I shrink back into the crowded pavements, like an injured crab seeking the safety of water. There’s no relief here. Everything jars; sharp-eyed hawkers’ fangy grins, garishly lit shop fronts, screeching music from successive pavement stalls, incomprehensible shouting, combine to create a nightmare fairground. A street-child begs. While guiltily fumbling for change, I accidentally give him my room key, which he returns disdainfully, as if I’m a cheapskate. I come within a hair’s breadth of being knocked down by a cab when I step carelessly off the kerb. In his wing mirror, the driver’s face is a rictus of soundless curses. I feel entirely abandoned.

  I must get away from this city of dreadful night. There’s a travel agency. As I plunge in, the young woman adjusts her electric-blue sari with a startled expression. Do I have the mark of Cain?

  ‘Goa,’ I mutter. ‘I’d like to make a booking.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Where in Goa?’ Bangles jangle on her wrist, skin the colour of cinnamon, as she waves me to sit. Posters extol the castled glories of Rajasthan.

  ‘Arjuna Beach.’ It should be really quiet now.

  Her X-ray eyes cloud. She shows me brochures of anonymous package hotels. I haven’t even considered what I want. My incoherence makes the woman increasingly uneasy. She speaks into an intercom and a short, perspiring man emerges through the flimsy partition behind. He’s chewing and exhales a nauseous gust of garlic and brinjal.

  ‘Looking for beach action or what?’ he demands, as we go through a more promising list of small guest-houses. ‘Don’t worry about the so-called ban,’ he adds airily. ‘There’ll be lots going on. This one’s very popular with the younger crowd.’

  I don’t want to be with the kind of people I’ve just overheard in the Leopold.