Not Yet Drown'd

by Peg Kingman

  THE FIRST PIERCING rays of the rising sun raked across the rough land falling away at Catherine’s feet, across the ugly slump of steep, broken wasteland running down toward the bed of the slow gray river far below. A vast fan of slumped red earth spread out, away below where she stood—raw, ugly, shattered earth and deep jagged fissures running all down it. It had been mud—the very earth liquefied; now it was cracked and dry and hard. Some trees, the remnants of a garden, remained at the very edge of the massive mudslide halfway down the slope. Catherine looked out over the river. She could just make out—four miles further down, and on the opposite bank—the white villas and pavilions of Ghazipur itself, which they had left behind in the predawn coolness and darkness several hours ago. It was a charming prospect.

  Here Sandy had died—crushed, drowned, or smothered by this mudslide on a July night at the height of the monsoon nearly two years ago.

  Someone squeezed her elbow: Lady D’Oyly, expressing her sympathy. Lady D’Oyly, speechless at last.

  “Here is where the wall of the tank must first have given way,” said Major Leslie, pointing with his stick. Only a few muddy stones now remained in the breach of what had once been a broad dam. It had been a large tank—not very deep, but long and wide—impounding the water of a little mossy stream which ran off the farmland behind them, and storing it here for use in the dry season, for use at the villa which had stood on a broad terrace below, to fill its fountains and water its gardens.

  “You were among the first on the scene after the disaster, I believe?” said Catherine.

  “I was,” Major Leslie said, stroking his tremendous mustache. “I immediately organised a rescue team, drafting the villagers who were living up there among those rose fields. We dug while daylight lasted, and again the next day. It was still pouring rain. I am afraid there was nothing more anyone could have done.”

  Catherine had known that neither her brother’s remains nor any of his belongings had ever been recovered. She had thought this was odd and suspicious; but now she was not so sure. This had been a vast mudslide. She did not ask Major Leslie any more questions. Standing here now in the increasing heat, she knew how it had been. A drenching, drowning rain; the liquefied clay soil so heavy that even a shovelful is too heavy, too sucking, to lift; and flowing off the shovel in slow motion like thick heavy slag. It looks solid, but you can plunge your hands into it as though it were water. You can feel something, something—a limb? a shoe? You can close your hand around it and drag it with all your strength up from the sucking mud; it releases with a kissing sound. It is a shoe, a slipper of Nankin silk. Your excavation has filled in already. You are caked in the sticky clay. It is wrinkling, shifting again, slipping; and you must grab the rope and save yourself. There is nothing anyone can do.

  Naughty Grace! With no one watching, she had made her way down along the far edge of the slide, down to the grove of trees which were all that remained of the garden once belonging to the villa. Now her pale red head suddenly emerged from their shade into view; and she waved her thin arms, gesturing for Catherine to come down to her. “Come see,” she piped. “Do come down, my dear!”

  “No, you come up!” called Catherine, but Grace ducked back under the trees and did not come up. “Grace, come up at once!” called Catherine once more, but Grace did not appear.

  “Shall I send someone down to fetch her?” offered Major Leslie.

  “No, I shall go after her myself,” said Catherine. “My ayah—where is she? There you are. My ayah will come down with me.” Carefully Catherine made her way down the steep slope, with Sharada following, skirting the deep fissures until she came to easier ground. A little path wound into the dappled shade of a stand of trees. There was an under-story of thriving shrubs, knee high, so deeply green, so vivid, so exuberant. The leaves were long pointed ovals, four inches long, with tiny serrations all along their edges. Round plump scaled buds sprouted from the axils and drooped modestly downward. Catherine stopped abruptly, and Sharada nearly bumped into her. Grace popped up from a thicket of the green shrubs. She was chewing a leaf. A hot morning breeze ruffled the peeple leaves overhead, and light skittered over Grace’s pale hair.

  “He has been carrying water for them,” said Grace, and she pointed to a little old white-haired native man who was standing half hidden behind a vine-covered tree. A stout timber yoke—actually the handle of a pickax—lay across his shoulders, with a water jar hanging from each end. “And manure.”

  “Who planted them? Who planted these bushes here?” said Catherine.

  No one answered. Catherine turned to Sharada. “Ask him,” she said.

  Sharada made a namaste to the old man and addressed him in Hindi, May the blessing of the great god lie upon you, honoured uncle. This foreign lady asks who planted these green bushes.

  The old man came out from behind his tree and replied: Blessings of the great god upon you likewise, niece. It was my lord Sikander, who lived in the house that was here, and who died in the mudslide.

  Where did they come from, these bushes?

  He shrugged, saying, I don’t know. Sikander Sahib brought them, seeds and baby plants. From the eastern mountains, he said.

  Sharada translated for Catherine, “He says it was Sikander Sahib who planted them. He was bringing the seeds and plants from the mountains to the east.”

  “Ask him what the plant is called.”

  She asks, what is it called, this beautiful plant, Sharada said.

  Oh, ah! My niece, what is this beautiful green shrub, greenest of all shrubs? What is it indeed? I, I myself, a lifelong gardener and a pious man, I believe it to be none other than soma itself, divine soma, beloved of the gods. And, indeed, did not the Khasi chieftain from the eastern mountains with his strange-sounding speech, did not even he call it shama? Yet Sikander Sahib said it is called tea. Tea, he said, repeating the explosive little word.

  “He says he is believing it to be soma, the celestial herb; and there was at that time a Khasi chieftain here who was calling it shama; but Sikander Sahib said it is tea,” translated Sharada.

  “Khasi chieftain? What is Khasi?”

  Now, oh honoured uncle, she wants to know about this Khasi chieftain.

  But, niece, I should like to know who is she with all her questions? Who is this foreign female of yours?

  She is his sister, honoured uncle; Sikander Sahib’s twin sister, come all the way from Scotland on a pilgrimage to the place where he died. She has a right to ask her questions.

  Oh, his twin sister! She does resemble him a little. I make her a namaste then, in his honour. Well, what is it? The Khasi chieftain, yes. He journeyed here on the river, from the Abode of Clouds and Mist in the eastern mountains beyond the great Brahmaputra, and he lived in the great house as guest of Sikander Sahib. They plucked the tender baby leaves of my beautiful soma bushes, and crushed them, and dried them.

  To Catherine, Sharada said, “He thinks it was an important man from the hill tribes who dwell in Meghalaya, in the eastern mountains, and he came as a guest of your brother’s. They were plucking the leaves of these bushes, and drying them to make—tea.”

  Catherine plucked a tiny new leaf and chewed it. It tasted juicy and astringent; then sweetness spread across the tongue. “Ask him if he remembers that night of the mudslide. Where was he that night when the dam burst?”

  She wants to know about the night of the mudslide, said Sharada. She asks if you remember that night when the wall of the tank burst.

  Of course I remember it, I remember everything with perfect exactness. That fateful night, that terrible night! And yet I was spared—I, an old man, without wife or children, I was spared. It was the beginning of the monsoon—surely you remember it, respected niece, the monsoon of two years ago. You are from hereabouts, I think. I can tell by your speech and by your looks. It came like the army of the Pandavas meeting the army of the Kurus, did it not? I see you do remember it. I had a dry little shed behind the big house, well thatched and com
fortable, where I kept my tools and my bed. I was sound asleep when Sikander Sahib awakened me and told me I must carry a parcel for him across the river to an English lady in Ghazipur that very night! I did not want to go, for it was not my proper duty; I am the gardener, not the chaprasi. Also I was afraid, for the lightning was striking all about. And I was afraid, too, of the Thugs, for there had been a great many stranglings of poor travelers in that year, my niece. But Sikander Sahib was strangely fierce. He had already sent out the chaprasi earlier on another errand, so I must carry that parcel though it was not my proper duty. He forced me to go out into the terrible night, in pounding rain, and infested by dangerous robbers. And therefore I was not asleep in my bed when the waters and earth came pouring down the hill, and my life was saved.

  Sharada translated the old man’s answer. Then Catherine asked, “And the other servants? Were any of them drowned that night?”

  Sharada said, She asks about the other servants, whether any of them were saved by a divine intervention that night, as you were.

  All! All were spared, my niece! Most had gone already into the village for a wedding, and the others had gone to tend their dying relative. But, oh, the poor ill-fated chaprasi! He was not drowned that night, yet he met his fate nevertheless—for was not his body found three days later in a well? Strangled by the Thugs?

  “None of the servants were here that fateful night, memsahib,” translated Sharada.

  “Ask him if my brother died owing wages to him and the other servants,” said Catherine.

  Sharada asked, and the old man replied, But that is another marvelous thing, my niece. For on the very day, the last day of his life, my lord Sikander called every servant into his presence and paid all our wages up to the last ana, the last paisa. Had he a presentiment? I have wondered.

  That is marvelous indeed. A presentiment. Or…But what happened to the Khasi chieftain? Was he here on that terrible night? asked Sharada.

  Alas, he was. But of all the people living here, perhaps thirty souls, it was only he and my lord Sikander who met their deaths that night.

  Why are you still here, honoured uncle? Why do you still bend your old back to tend these beautiful green bushes?

  Ah, niece, will you ask me that? It is a private vow I have made, a discipline. I have made a vow to Lord Shiva to tend this garden of the divine soma for as long as I shall live. Why else was I spared? And if my lord Sikander ever returns to his garden, he will find it thriving.

  What do you mean, my uncle? How can he ever return?

  Oh, in his next incarnation, of course. What else would I mean?

  “What is he saying? Translate, please,” said Catherine.

  “He is saying…he is saying that Sikander Sahib paid all the servants’ wages very soon before he died.”

  “Oh, did he? How interesting…Still, he must accept this, from me, for my brother’s sake,” said Catherine, and she gave the old man ten rupees, two months’ wage.

  The old man bowed respectfully and said, Tell the Bibi Sahib I am grateful. I will use the money to buy new tools, for all mine were lost in the mud, and I have no money to buy new ones. Oh, yes, all lost, all except for this heavy pickax. Very curious that it was not lost with the others. Very curious, revered niece. Yes, this one tool is all I have left, and I found it on the morning after the disaster lying—where do you suppose?—just by the fatal breach in the dam. Yes, just thrown to one side, thus. And I had last laid eyes on it the previous night, just when my lord Sikander sent me out of my little dry room into the storm, for I thought then of taking it with me for protection from the Thugs. But I left it behind after all.

  “What does he say?” said Catherine.

  “He is thanking you for your generosity, memsahib. He is saying he will use it to buy new tools, so he can be continuing to tend your brother’s garden.”

  Sharada’s face was set like stone, and she drew her shawl around her, though the morning had grown hot.

  They toiled back up the steep hill with the sun now frankly blazing on their backs. Lady D’Oyly had taken shelter in the buggy, whose awning provided a little shade at least. They settled themselves, and as the buggy lurched forward, she patted Catherine’s hand and gave her a look of sympathy. Catherine smiled gently to show that she was not devastated. “It is so very good of you to come here with me,” Catherine said, “and so good of Sir Charles to have made all the arrangements.” She nodded at Major Leslie, who rode ahead of them on his good bay gelding, and at the detachment of native foot soldiers, who fell in behind the buggy, trotting along in the hot dust. “I am sorry to have given so much trouble, but I am sure you understand how exceedingly important it has been for me to see the place at last for myself.”

  “Of course, my dear,” said Lady D’Oyly, and patted her hand again. “And Sir Charles did not mind in the least; it has been no trouble at all.”

  But a considerable deal of trouble had certainly been taken. “Is it really necessary to have an escort whenever one goes about?” asked Catherine. “We are only a few miles from Ghazipur.”

  “Oh, yes. This region is infested by Thugs who prey upon travelers,” said Lady D’Oyly. “It is another of Sir Charles’s great headaches.” She explained Thuggee in a lurid whisper, which Grace politely pretended not to overhear: “These fellows roam about the country in gangs, strangling travelers for their money and throwing the corpses down the wells or hacking them to pieces and burying them in shallow holes. They do it not only for the sake of the robbery but also as a sort of human sacrifice to their horrid black goddess they call Bhawani. Their weapon is a perfectly innocent cotton kerchief, which they wet and twist to make a thin cord, for strangling their victims. Very seldom are Europeans attacked, but it is wise to appear well guarded and well armed, and to beware any parties of native travelers one may meet along the road. Last year a gang of sixteen Thugs was captured when one who had been caught with his share of the booty was flogged and made to confess. They had been responsible for at least thirty-seven murders during the previous year. Oh, yes, they all were hanged; but still Thuggee continues, and the natives hereabouts dread to make any journey.”

  Grace interrupted at last. “That smell! Is it roses?”

  It was: Atta roses, Lady D’Oyly called them. She made their party halt, and one of the sepoys was sent down to the field below the road to fetch a few blooms for the memsahibs. Native women moved through the field, gathering petals two-handed into baskets slung from their necks, to make the attar of roses, rose oil essence, and rosewater for which the district had always been famous. The rosebushes were small, and they looked baked and exhausted in the heat, as though the small pale blossoms they produced were flags of surrender. But the scent of these small five-petaled flowers! Catherine gingerly held the tender stem, just a little prickly between her fingers, and inhaled deeply of the petals. Rich and complex, powerfully rose. There was another deeper, muskier scent as well, but it was not in the blossom. Catherine sniffed again, trying to find it. Ah! On her fingers, where she had held the rough stem just below the blossom, was a rich musky oily scent, much darker and more erotic than that of the rose petals. Catherine rolled the stem with its oil glands between her fingers to get more of the scent. As they drove along the fine countryside, she surreptitiously passed her fingers under her nose from time to time, to enjoy that musky smell.

  They came at last to the tent which had been set up for their breakfast by the servants sent ahead. The tent was pitched in a grove of noble mango trees overlooking a poppy field; and inside were chairs, a table laid with silverware; and plates, cups and saucers of chinaware, on a fresh linen cloth. The cook fires behind were burning well, and in the ten minutes before the breakfast was ready, the travelers walked down to see the poppy field in its stockaded clearing.

  Enormous blooms opened just under Catherine’s nose, and rather above Grace’s red head. The day’s poppies, newly struck by daylight, were just casting off their tight green turbans and unfurling their c
rumpled silk petals, all in shades of purple and mauve, and sparked by the occasional crimson, white, or pink. A broad velvety black cross marked the heart of each blossom. An ardently pitched humming rose from all across the broad field, for each blossom contained a reveling intoxicated court of bees, four or five of them staggering drunkenly around the green baroque galleries at the top of each green ovary, then tumbling incapacitated among the fringe of golden stamens. The bees were ravished, frenzied, dizzy, utterly seduced. Occasionally they would remember their duty, and would dutifully launch themselves—but immediately forgetting it again, they returned over and over to the same flower.

  This plantation had none of the sweet seductive scent of the rose fields. The scent of these plants—leaves, flowers and all—was acrid, pungent. The broad leaves were like enormous glaucous lettuces, or like acanthus, more familiar as ancient carved Greek marble than as a living plant. Where a leaf was torn, a thick white sap oozed. Catherine touched it: sticky. She licked it from her finger: horribly bitter!

  The workers moving through the field were native men in white muslin and native women in bright saris more brilliant than the flowers. They paid no attention to the newly opened blossoms, the ones full of bees; nor to yesterday’s flowers, already dropping their silken petals to shrivel unregarded on the ground. The women sought the flowers of day before yesterday; these were now just plump, flat-topped green pods; inside, the gray-black seeds like ticks were already ripening. The swelling seedpods were shaped like a deep lidded bowl, like a tiny Chinese lidded cup for drinking tea; each with an arcade around its top just under the rim. Catherine watched a woman pinch a pod between thumb and forefinger, and with her sharp little knife deftly cut four vertical slits at the four points of the compass on the swollen seedpod; immediately the bitter sap began to seep from these slashes.