The sepoys gaped at Diwan Amar Nath admiringly, as if he were no less a person than the Aga Khan who, they had heard, also lived in these parts and was friendly with kings and queens and noblemen, and who had recently offered himself as the first recruit to the Sarkar.
‘It is very gracious of you to deign to sit with us,’ said Kirpu faintly ironical.
The waiter brought a drink and put it before the Diwan.
‘Oh, you are my countrymen, of course, and you come on my head and I go to your feet,’the Diwan began apologetically after a sip. Then he continued in a voice, which made every word strike like the note of a gong. ‘But these Europeans — I know them inside out. I have had several personal friends here among the barons and baronesses, counts and countesses, who are about the same status as our rajas and ranis in India. Some of the most aristocratic ladies have offered me their daughters, while one invited me to tea and begged me to marry her. But, brothers, I have my own dignity to keep and these people respect you if you are stern with them. Only last year, a princess fell in love with me. She came to my shop in Paris and asked me to accept her home, her jewels and her servants as my own. But I said to her, “Madam, I am a Hindu and an honourable man; you have got your husband and though he is an old man and is incapable, he is nice to you because he has given you his wealth… I am a Hindu and a respectable man.” And she wept and cried and implored me to accept her, but as one of the greatest of our sages, Kabir, has said, “If a businessman builds his home in a woman’s eyes, his business will be ruined”.’
‘Oh, you should have yielded!’ said Subah, warming to the Diwan’s lasciviousness.
‘Brother, sin in the soul is like fire in the chaff,’ said Kirpu pretending to take the Diwan’s point of view.
‘To be sure, you do the right talk,’ said the Diwan, inclined to win the shrewd Uncle Kirpu over. ‘One has to be pure as unsmoked sugar.’
Lalu couldn’t reconcile the bombast of his previous manner with the saintly views the Diwan was now expressing. And if he was a rich man, why was he going about from place to place? From the assumed smile on his face, there seemed to be something crooked about him. It was curious how Subah had picked him up.
‘Now, you are not going to talk of unsmoked sugar?’ Subah said to the Diwan. ‘I have been telling these lusty swine that you will take us to some place…’
‘Come, come, for the sake of you brothers, I could go to hell, not to say a whorehouse,’ said the Diwan.
‘Come then, we are ready,’ Subah said thumping his shoulder. ‘I can hardly hold him down.’
The sepoys laughed at the Jemadar’s words with such abrupt boisterousness that they became the centre of attention of the whole cafe, their shining faces glowing an exultant, intoxicated brown, curiously beautiful yet menacing through the tresses of smoke, which drifted up from their cigarettes into the quickening shadows of the street outside.
‘Have you any money?’ the Diwan asked Subah in a whisper, leaning over to the Jemadar’s chair. ‘I have forgotten my wallet at home.’
‘Don’t you care for the limp lord,’ the Jemadar said, and taking a wad of notes from his pocket, held them before his friend.
‘That won’t be enough,’ said the Diwan with a grimace, which made his padded face contract somewhat. ‘You had better give that to me and I shall negotiate the business for you.’
‘With great happiness,’ said Subah. ‘Now, let us go.’ And, thrusting the money into the Diwan’s hand, he threw up his arms like a child.
The Diwan got up with casual self-assurance and walked ahead, while Subah and the sepoys followed, blushing as they saluted the smiling people in the cafe.
As they emerged into the street, Uncle Kirpu stopped short and said: ‘I will be going back to camp, boys.’ And then, turning to the merchant, he continued: ‘Diwan sahib, it was good to meet you.’
‘I shall come with you, Uncle,’ said Lalu out of mere fellow-feeling, though he was really full of curiosity about the secret life they were going to see.
‘Oh come, Uncle, come, don’t be such a killjoy,’ begged Subah. ‘I didn’t refuse to come through the prostitutes’ bazaar in the cantonment with you when you used to fetch me back from school. Come Lalu, come and see the fun.’
‘Someone may report us,’ said Uncle Kirpu. ‘You youngsters are all right, but it will bring shame on my grey hairs.’
‘Oh come, I shall see that not a hair of your head is touched,’ said Subah, and then, pulling himself to his full height, thumped his chest with his hand and declared, ‘I am not a Jemadar for nothing.’
‘No,’ Uncle Kirpu said emphatically and turned away.
Subah put his arms round Lalu and proceeded to catch up the Diwan who had already walked ahead with the Baluchi and Sikhs.
Stumbling, blundering, nervous and eager, the group of heart-squanderers walked through a side street, past a few shops displaying strings of dirty brown sausages and other cooked meats in their windows, up a dark lane off the main square in the shadow of the church.
‘That meat is a funny shape,’ said Subah and giggled lewdly.
‘About the same size too,’ said the Diwan. ‘I am a North Indian,’ said the Baluchi.
‘You can’t compete with us Sikhs,’ said one of the Sikhs.
‘You are a pack of shameless fools,’ said Lalu, though he was on edge with expectancy and could hear his eardrums thrumming.
Not a soul was in sight in the thickening shadows, and it seemed uncanny that a few yards away from the glittering street there should be the stillness of a gloom in which he could hear the echo of each heartbeat. Only the tall houses, shuttered with wooden windows, stood solemnly against the cold that permeated through the thin mist spreading from the corners of the church.
‘There’s a house up there,’ said the Diwan in a hoarse, half-suppressed tone, as he looked this side and that, ‘where a woman runs what she calls a Massage Hindu.’ And he laughed and repeated, ‘Hindu Massage.’
‘What does that mean?’ enquired Subah, tense with emotion now so that his drunken, hot breath came and went in short, sharp gasps.
‘She says that a rajah once visited her and taught her that,’ the Diwan said. ‘You come and see.’
‘Let us go and see this Massage Hindu!’ Subah said, dragging the Diwan ahead and encouraging the others with his enthusiasm.
‘But there is one thing,’ the Diwan said. ‘She will want more money than you gave me.’
‘There is no talk of that,’ said Subah. ‘We will give you all we have.’ And he turned to the sepoys even as he plunged his hand into his own pockets: ‘How much have you got, brothers? Let us give Diwan Amar Nath all that she may want. This is the happiest day of our lives. We are having the real pleasures of Vilayat.’
The sepoys dug into their pockets and handed over the little money they had. The Baluchi handed over a fifty-franc note, saying: ‘In my religion it is legal to go with a Christian girl; the Prophet himself said so.’
Lalu wished he had had more money to give, for he felt quite reckless now. He wanted to go and see things once in his life. He had cheated himself of this experience in Sherkot and Manabad all this time for fear he might bring disgrace on his family if he were seen going anywhere near the forbidden quarters. And he had heard that the women in the Ferozepur cantonment were diseased and gave you either a gold medal or a silver medal for your money. And yet, passing through any big town in India, he had seen prostitutes sitting in their windows and he had often felt like breaking the limits of his modesty, though the difficulty was how to run up the stairs without being seen by some acquaintance or other. And, then he had pretended that he was disgusted by the loads of imitation jewellery these prostitutes wore and the tinselly splendour of the clothes with which they decked themselves. But the truth was that he had never had the courage. This time he would go. He was bent on it. This man, the Diwan, seemed to know, though there was something odd about him. And it was uncanny how the air of twisting an
d turning made this desolate street look like a bad Indian gulley. It was funny also how the Diwan said, ‘Hindu massage!’ And that a rajah had been here.
‘What is this Hindu massage, Diwan Sahib?’ a Sikh sepoy asked, snatching the question almost out of Lalu’s mouth.
‘You have to…’ the Diwan halted and whispered, ‘you have to take your clothes off. And then the girl you choose comes and washes your horse and her mare, and…’
‘Oh, come along, hurry,’ Subah called.
The Diwan beckoned, looked around to see if there were any strangers. And, then, walking up to a huge door, he pulled a knob out of the wall and let it go.
A tense second passed during which everyone’s breath seemed to be suspended. Another second during which Subah came stamping back. A third, and the group explored each other’s faces, smiling and embarrassed when their eyes met. And then they suddenly suppressed their nervousness and breathed deeply from their huge chests. Nothing seemed to happen. The Diwan turned politely round and pulled the knob again, two or three times, and looked up.
Just then, however the huge door opened, and a heavy woman’s voice shouted something in French.
The Diwan said something like, ‘Noosoonce.’
Then, through the cavernous space beyond the door, a small window opened in another door and the heavy red face of a middle-aged woman stared out into the blackness. She whispered. And she nodded without relaxing the frown, which was visible on her face under the shadow of the hanging lamp behind her.
Diwan Amar Nath motioned to his friends to enter.
As they pushed forward on their heavy boots, almost falling over each other in the dark, the door closed behind them of its own accord and the inner door opened.
‘Come on,’ Subah urged.
But the sepoys were all too shy to push through the crowd at the door, through the querulous air of a hiccupping music, into the boisterous atmosphere where a crowd of unblushing men and women were swaying about in swift pushing movements, like those which the sepoys had heard the sahibs in India performed with mems at dances in clubs. Subah rushed up with characteristic bravado, craned his neck over the shoulders of the crowd and clapped with his hands to the rhythm of the music. But the sepoys were relieved that the crowd did not turn round and stare at them and laugh, for they knew that with their turbans and uniforms they looked strange enough.
Then the Diwan came, led by the elephantine woman who had opened the door and whose face now revealed a fearsome mustachio and a beard like that of a witch.
As if the crowd at the door had sensed the approach of majesty, it made way for the procession.
‘Oh, where have we got entangled?’ said Lalu with an embarrassed laugh as he followed with a bent head and nervous mien.
‘Walk along now,’ Subah urged as he dragged Lalu, brushing past the wall, precariously near the happy, hoarse, hilarious dancing couples, through a corridor into a room where there were a few tables and chairs, as in a cafe. It was only about ten steps from the hall, but the red hot waves of shame, which swirled through his forehead, behind his eyes, eager to look at the dancers and yet bent in shame, made these steps a perspiring ordeal.
He drew his handkerchief from the pocket of his breeches and, sinking sideways into a chair by his companions, began to mop the sweat off his face and neck, affecting a deliberate casualness as he glanced openeyed around the bare walls, seeking to understand the meaning of it all.
‘What will you have?’ the Diwan said turning away from Madame, the she-elephant who stood hulking by the table with an enigmatic smile on her face. ‘You must have something to drink here. It will be a little dearer per bottle, but it is the custom to buy some from her if you want to get girls later.’
The sepoys remained silent as the price of pleasure seemed to be increasing beyond the limits of their purses. ‘Get anything you like!’ Subah said with a nervous smile.
‘You have got some money, haven’t you?’ the Diwan asked. ‘I have only five francs left after paying the entrance fee.’
‘Money is dirt,’ said Subah, jerking his head and waving his arms. ‘Let us have some fun.’ And he emptied the contents of his second pocket into the Diwan’s hands.
The Diwan spoke to the woman who frowned a little as she edged away.
Lalu and Subah looked at each other for a moment and smiled shyly as if seeking to recognise each other. For, in this pursuit of happiness, they seemed to have become disconnected, detached, as if they had lost contact with the familiar persons in each other, the darkness of night covered Lalu’s soul. The daylight seemed to disappear. His heart throbbed.
At that instant, a French boy came in a stampede across the corridor behind a shrinking, heavy-bodied girl and, inspired by her laughter and shrieks, caught her from the waist, swung her round in a wild abandon and then bent the whole weight of his torso on her bosom and kissed her.
‘Wah! Wah! Son of your father, kiss her again!’ shouted the Baluchi and smacked his lips.
‘Shabash!’ the Sikhs roared.
‘May I die for you! The fun has begun!’ said Subah.
‘This is nothing, you wait and see,’ said the Diwan.
‘They kiss on the mouth then here?’ asked Lalu, blushing with a modesty that had received a shock and a thrill at the same time.
The other sepoys also turned to each other as they realised that they had seen a mouth kiss, because they had always kissed their wives on the cheeks and foreheads in India. They were eager to taste this new sensation, but even as they waxed enthusiastic, they were restrained by the humility of their position as sepoys who had never dared to look at a white woman with the eyes of desire. And the sense of the poverty of their pockets threatened to put all these pleasures beyond their reach.
Another boy and girl came in and, embracing each other, sat down in a corner and began to kiss.
The Indians were watching the couple with their rudimentary stares when the Diwan suddenly touched Lalu’s shoulder with his hand and said: ‘Look, there in the corridor!’
As they lifted their eyes to the corridor, they saw a series of girls followed by boys passing into the inner recesses of the house with clean new towels and chunks of soap in their hands.
‘Shall we remain dry, then? said Subah to the Diwan, fidgeting in his chair. ‘Go and bring some girls!’
‘Costs some money,’ said the Diwan with a mock-serious expression on his face.
‘There is no shortage of money,’ said Subah. ‘I can hardly hold it down…’
‘Let the Madame come,’ answered Diwan.
There was no sign of Madame, but a bovine young woman with a treble chin, fashioned in the image of Madame, came, a bottle in her hand. And, lifting her skirt wantonly to show her naked thigh, and holding up the bottle, moved her head as if to ask, which will you have?
Subah jumped up and catching hold of her, tried to emulate the boy who had kissed a girl full on the mouth in the doorway.
‘Non, non,’ the girl shrieked challengingly. And, finding it difficult to secure her release from Subah’s hard embrace, slapped him full on the face.
Subah let her go and tried to laugh away his chagrin, though the pallor on his excited face betrayed his hurt pride.
Putting the bottle on the table she laughed and, inclining her head in blandishment, said something to the Diwan in French.
‘She says it costs money to do that,’ said the Diwan.
‘Oh, she can have as much of that as she wants,’ said Subah. And, plunging his hand into his pocket, he emptied all the change on the table before him.
‘That will pay only for the wine,’ said the Diwan, counting the coins.
Seeing the injured expression on Subah’s face, the girl laughed an artificial, wooden laugh and, with pouting lips, came to sit in the Jemadar’s lap.
Subah’s face was saved and the sepoys laughed at this.
Whereupon the girl lifted the edge of her skirt to show the naked flesh between her legs and, then,
with a deliberate ‘Ooh’ dropped it again.
The sepoys began to talk to her, the Diwan interpreting, while Subah explored her form impatiently for its content.
Instead of laughing or smiling as the others did, Lalu found himself contracting into his own skin, till he felt himself reduced to an emptiness from the centre of which his two eyes seemed to see this world as an enormous enclosure, crowded by hordes of hard, gigantic shapes, which were oppressing him. In order not to sit aside, apart from his companions, he tried to persuade himself that he was happy, as happy as Subah and the Baluchi. And he tried to put on a smile and thought of saying something. But his eyes met Subah’s and the deliberate smile on his face broke up into the edges of a nervous laugh, which suddenly stopped short and gave place to a grim, set expression.
At that instant, another girl came into the room and seeing Subah’s flushed face and a colleague on his knee, purred with the simulation of pleasure and rubbed her form felinely against him and brushed his cheeks with her hand.
Subah put his arms around her and began to hold a conversation with her in the few French phrases he knew.
‘There is no talk,’ said the Baluchi, ‘so long as they are kind to one of us.’
Lalu looked at the scene now quite detachedly as if he were a creature of some other world, who, however, understood the meaning of this. The girls seemed to be laughing at all of them in spite of all the blandishments which they were practising. Their wanton obscenity was so much in excess of the coyness they affected to titillate the men into passion that they looked like spoiled and grimy dolls oozing with the smell of their stuffing. They were originally perhaps merely ignorant, poor girls who fell a prey to the advice of someone who told them of a way to earn easy money and were lured by the life of the senses, till they were fouled and used and couldn’t get back to ordinary life. But, as in India, perhaps prostitutes were meant to show the young the various ways of lovemaking. The barrier of language prevented any real contact between these girls and the sepoys. He felt sad for Subah because the attempt at conversation had broken down and the Jemadar seemed at a loss.
The Great War Page 12