A Choice of Evils

by Meira Chand

  It was the season to flood the paddies. The land was a jigsaw of watery mirrors. Thatched farmhouses rose like islands above the deluge. The movement of clouds and the ridges of hills reflected at his feet. It seemed a strange reversal of order for Heaven to fall to earth in this way. Refracted in the window his own face skimmed over the aqueous kingdom, insubstantial as a ghost.

  This land was different from India. Everything was crushed together into the frame of the window: houses, bamboo, pines, worked fields. All was neat, terraced, lined, an obedient and precise formation. Nature seemed manipulated to the will of men. Hills, thick with trees blocked the eye everywhere. Here there were no far horizons.

  On the train journey from Delhi to Bombay to embark the ship to Japan, there had been nothing but horizon. Tilik remembered a thousand miles of dry brown land, dust in his mouth and the baking sky. Occasionally the figure of a woman walked into view, a brass pot of water on her head, its dampness the only gleam of moisture remembered on that journey. Man appeared powerless before such terrain. Where had he come to? What had he done? He could never return to India. In the panic of the past weeks, he had forgotten he was fleeing into exile. The finality came to him now.

  He drew back from the window and stared at the flooded world about him. He had the feeling the neat demarcations of this land must fit the nature of its society. The hard wood of the seat pressed against his back. Before him a man unlaced his shoes and placed them neatly upon a newspaper, tucking his feet up beneath him. The woman beside him did the same. They opened lunch boxes of cold rice covered with strips of seaweed.

  Towards the end of the journey Mount Fuji appeared, sweeping into the sky like a tall grey funnel. Since summer approached, the cap of snow depicted on picture postcards was missing. Tilik stared at the toy shape. In the train people rushed to the windows to gaze at the icon. Tilik did not stir. In India the Himalayas soared beyond the grasp of men. His awe was reserved for Rash Bihari Bose, the object of his own pilgrimage.

  From his pocket Tilik pulled out the letter of introduction carried with him from India, and read it for the umpteenth time. To his mind it did not say enough. After stating his name it spoke only of the coming death of White Rule in India and the glory of Independence. All it said otherwise was: Please Honoured Sir, Great Patriot, be kind enough to help this young man in his hour of need. He will tell you his story himself. Would this be enough to interest Rash Bihari? The letter was signed by Patel, the commander of the revolutionary group Tilik belonged to. He had not thought to ask Patel if he knew Rash Bihari personally. Now, as the train clanked heavily over the tracks, taking him nearer the Great Patriot, these questions and more filled his mind. What if Rash Bihari turned his back upon him? A great amount of his remaining money was invested in this railway ticket. On the telephone, requesting an interview, Tilik had been tongue tied, and had not missed the weariness in Rash Bihari’s voice when he at last agreed to meet him.

  Tilik had once seen a picture of Rash Bihari Bose. It showed a strong face, a thick head of hair and a moustache above full lips. The freedom fighter, wrapped in a shawl over a high-necked jacket, projected dignity. His patriotism was an example to generations. He became known in India and abroad after a bomb attack on Lord Hardinge. As the hunt for him intensified, he was persuaded to leave India and continue the struggle for freedom elsewhere. He had fled long ago to Japan. Tilik already felt close to the man. He too had fled India on account of a bomb.

  He took a taxi from the station to Rash Bihari’s home. A maid showed him in. Tilik sat down and waited in trepidation. Out of respect he had worn a tie, but he loosened it now in the heat. He studied the walls of thin varnished wood and the threadbare patch in a rug. The stale odour of Indian spices hung on the air. He picked out the sharpness of mustard seed that had filled his own home at cooking times, and behind it the perfume of incense. Emotions, tightly suppressed for weeks, rocked abruptly through him, filling him with grief for the loss of everything familiar. He remembered the smell of frying savouries at roadside stalls, the odour of burning cow dung, and the perfume of ripe mangoes. There was the taste on his tongue of the bitter almonds he had picked from trees as a child, and the oily delights of the sweetmeat shops. His senses were tormented; he would never return to India. Soon he heard footsteps outside the door.

  Rash Bihari was now neither young nor thick-haired but a portly, balding, elderly man in a crumpled Western suit. The ordinariness was disconcerting after the legendary tales. His smile was warm, he seemed pleased to see a countryman. Tilik’s throat grew suddenly tight. This was the first Indian he had met since arriving in Japan. Emotions overcame him. His first words to the patriot emerged as a stutter. He pushed forward the letter of introduction.

  The old man read it then refolded the paper, handing it back to Tilik. ‘I do not know these people. Many know me whom I do not know. But it is of no matter. You are here for reasons I understand and appear in need of help.’ Rash Bihari sat down and called for some tea. The words rehearsed for this moment shrank upon Tilik’s tongue. He sat looking at his hands.

  ‘You have family in India? A wife?’ Rash Bihari asked, trying to help. His expression was benign and yet there was detachment. He had a quiet, forceful manner.

  Tilik shook his head. ‘My father died in Amritsar, at Jallianwala Bagh, and my mother some years ago. Had she been alive I expect she would have been looking for a suitable girl for me to marry. I’m already thirty-three. I was an only child. My father would follow only Gandhiji. To him revolutionary organisations were unusable as a tool for civilised men. His death opened my eyes to other more forceful ways,’ Tilik explained. ‘I chose then to follow Subash Chandra Bose.’

  He wondered how one acquired the kind of aura Rash Bihari carried. Was it zealous patriotism to a cause? Did exile establish it? Would people one day feel about him as he now felt about Rash Bihari? Even as he asked these questions he knew the quiet certainty that emanated from Rash Bihari was something more than all these things.

  ‘Ah! Amritsar,’ Rash Bihari sighed.

  ‘I hate all Englishmen,’ Tilik burst out.

  ‘We must hate them collectively in order to be free, but there are decent and reasonable men amongst them. This you should not forget.’ Rash Bihari spoke mildly. He listened attentively as Tilik told the story of his father’s death at the hands of General Dyer. He watched emotion tremble through the young man’s body.

  ‘My respect for Gandhiji is without words,’ Rash Bihari said when Tilik finished. ‘But only force, not passive resistance, will drive the British from India. Only young leaders like Subash Chandra Bose, whom you follow, can take us to our goal. For Independence to be achieved Subash must stay in India. He must not, like you and I, be driven into exile.’ Although they shared the common Bengali name of Bose, there was no relationship between the two freedom fighters, Rash Bihari and Subash Chandra.

  The maid entered and set down the tray of tea. Rash Bihari poured it out himself, setting a strainer over each cup. ‘I do not believe we are men of true violence for all this talk,’ he sighed. ‘We hold ourselves above the common criminal because of our sense of mission. But then again, why should intellectual ruminating in any way set us apart? Death is death and its perpetration cannot be ameliorated whatever the cause. Now, as I grow older, I think about these things. Of course, when I was your age and hotheaded, such thoughts were far from me.’

  Tilik stared at the stream of tea Rash Bihari poured carefully into the cups. He saw the liquid was dark and thick; leaves, sugar, milk and cardamoms all boiled up together. His mouth began to water. He had not drunk such tea since leaving India. He realised once more how far he had drifted from all that was familiar.

  ‘This tea is sent to me from home. You cannot get Nilgiri tea here, you cannot get any good tea at all. The first thing we all have to do in exile is to arrange our supplies of tea and spices.’ Rash Bihari chuckled.

  Tilik found no humour in these facts. Who was to send him thi
s tea? How was he to pay the sender? What was he doing in a country that could not even provide him with tea? His life as it now unfolded had not been mentioned in his horoscope, charted at his birth.

  Rash Bihari Bose stared at the young man opposite him, nervously turning the cup in his hand. A high-ridged nose dominated his face, his brows met in a bar. His wide mouth had a looseness that seemed to Rash Bihari to weaken his expression. His eyes burned with the earnestness of most young zealots and protruded slightly, as if pressured from inside. He would be prey to men of stronger character who sided not with right, but with the trite truths of a personal agenda. There was something lost about him. Rash Bihari remembered his own early days in Japan, and felt sympathy. Probably he would find his way.

  ‘And what of this recent incident that caused you to flee to Japan?’ Rash Bihari asked, settling back once more, balancing his teacup on the wooden arm of the chair.

  ‘I was working in a firm of British accountants in Delhi, McGregor, McGregor and Anderson. My qualifications were Indian ones, so I had no hope of rising above the level of a clerk. I could only watch the rise of the White Sahibs. But at college I had met many who felt as I did. I was already working actively in revolutionary groups. Of course at McGregor, McGregor and Anderson they knew nothing of this . . .’ Tilik’ s voice trailed off.

  ‘The incident?’ Rash Bihari reminded him, stifling a yawn in the hot afternoon. Tilik cleared his throat, and groped for words with which to describe the bungled bomb attack in Delhi on Police Commissioner Tegart.

  Once more, as he finished his story, Tilik found he was shaking. Rash Bihari reached forward, took the cup from his hand and set it on a table for safety. ‘You must remember that violence, even if we believe its use achieves something for our people, is still violence. It belongs to the active, insidious, creeping power of something so dark it can swallow all reason and destroy the personality. This, to me, is the greatest personal battle we face when we choose revolutionary ways. Regard yourself as a swimmer in a vicious sea. Your job is to keep your head above water, while the body is submerged. All about you are men of dubious nature, who would use you for their cause.’ Rash Bihari spoke quietly while looking hard at the young man before him.

  ‘Now tell me the rest of your story,’ Rash Bihari continued.

  Tilik forced his mind back again to the failed bomb attack. ‘The police saw me clearly as I ran. They put out a description of me. They wanted to hang me for the attempted murder of Tegart. I had an uncle in business here in Japan, in Kobe. He said he would give me a job. The commander of our group had contacts at the Japanese Embassy in Delhi. A Japanese there by the name of Kenjiro Nozaki, who was sympathetic to our cause, arranged special papers for me. I was smuggled aboard a boat at Bombay. I arrived in Kobe to find my uncle had died the week before. My Japanese aunt closed the business. In Delhi, before I left, they told me to make contact with you, they gave me that letter. It has all happened so quickly.’

  ‘There is a role for those of us outside India,’ Rash Bihari told him. ‘Only Japan is in the position to stand by the oppressed Asiatic and to liberate Asia. Japan encourages us to continue our own struggle under their protection. They know as long as British imperialism rules India they cannot expect a final victory in Asia in this battle. I have worked many years here to establish contacts with the military and civil high commands, and to impress upon them the necessity of helping India in her struggle. Subash Chandra Bose looks to Germany and Hitler for help. In my view he should look East, to Japan.’

  The stress he had lived with since he arrived rose up again in Tilik. He was without contacts or friends. He could die in this land and no one would know. He had neither money nor a language in which to communicate and no country to return to. He recalled once visiting a relative in a dilapidated building due for demolition. During his visit the floor had vanished beneath him, leaving him clinging to a beam, treading air. This was how he felt now.

  ‘There is much here for an energetic young man to do,’ Rash Bihari announced. ‘You must travel and talk of our Indian cause throughout Japan and the Far East. Japan is on the brink of extending its power into Manchuria and this will widen our own theatre of agitation. There are very few of us in Japan with experience in anti-British activities. Most Indians here are merchants.’ Rash Bihari’s tone was fatherly.

  ‘But I know nobody, what can I do?’ Tilik could not keep the desperation from his voice. Rash Bihari laughed.

  ‘You must meet Mitsuru Toyama. He is an old man now with a white beard, but his vigour is undimmed. And Shumei Okawa. If you know these men all doors will open. Without their help we can do little.’

  ‘Are they so powerful?’ Tilik asked.

  ‘Toyama heads an extreme right-wing nationalist group in Japan. He is the main force in the Black Dragon Society. His power stretches from the palace to the peasants. Like you, I knew nobody when I fled here. Then I met Sun Yat-sen, who had also been given asylum. He introduced me to Toyama, who has been my protector ever since.’ He stood up and crossed the room to some bookshelves.

  The afternoon sun filled the room. Rash Bihari bent forward, peering at titles. Tilik thought again of the photograph of the man in his prime and observed the portly form at the bookshelves. Now he wondered if exile would produce in himself the same aura of sad irrelevance. He shook these thoughts from his mind. The small standing fan turned on a table, its breeze sweeping over Tilik at intervals.

  ‘Take these English translations and read them, they are the writings of Shumei Okawa, Toyama’s protégé.’ Rash Bihari pushed several books into his hands. Tilik turned the pages politely. They were well thumbed and spotted in places by mould.

  ‘Patriotism like ours, aimed not only at a free India but also at an Asia free of Western domination, has values close to Toyama’s own heart. He arranged my safe hiding in the beginning, in the home of a baker called Soma. For Toyama the family took the risk of protecting me. Those were difficult years. I married their daughter Toshiko. She was a brave woman.’ Rash Bihari’s face filled with emotion as he continued. ‘My marriage was arranged by Toyama. He thought it a good way to bind me to Japan and our common cause. We were happy while Toshiko was alive, but she died when our children were still small.’

  They sat in silence for some moments before Rash Bihari spoke again. ‘We live in a troubled era, the reign of the white man is ending. All over East Asia there are Indian freedom fighters. We need an Independence League, to give shape to our struggle in a co-ordinated way. We need to utilise the changing situation in East Asia to further our cause. Toyama talks in far-reaching ways. We have also an ally in Okawa, who has studied our culture and language. These men are leaders in Japan. If Japan rises to free Asia, they will march with us into India.’ New strength rose up in Tilik. For the first time, listening to Rash Bihari speak, the confused weeks behind him had meaning. He saw a pattern in his destiny. His eviction from India was not to enter limbo.

  The weeks that followed had a breathlessness. Tilik was employed in a trading house in Tokyo, and as language was a problem, was settled in the accounts department. He was to board in the home of Ichiro Ohara, a partner in the firm. All this he gathered was arranged by Mitsuru Toyama at Rash Bihari’s request.

  Mr Ohara spoke passable English and was proud of his cosmopolitan attitudes. The family made an effort to welcome Tilik and brought out forks and spoons even though he insisted on eating with chopsticks. The younger children stared curiously. Only twenty-yearold Michiko, the eldest daughter, ignored Tilik and his efforts with chopsticks and the language that reduced her siblings to giggles. However badly she snubbed him, the adrenaline raced through his body in a pleasant but disturbing way.

  Each morning Tilik set out for the office with Mr Ohara, and in the evenings immersed himself in Japanese lessons. Soon the linguistic mysteries about him lessened. Outside office hours he wrote anti-British literature. Through Mitsuru Toyama’s influence much of this appeared in the Japanese vernacu
lar press after it had been translated. Invitations began to come to give public lectures. Among the friends he acquired at the Black Dragon Society and elsewhere was Jun Hasegawa who, as a close associate of Mitsuru Toyama, acted as his intermediary. Hasegawa worked with Army Intelligence. His English was perfect. When Tilik tried his Japanese, Hasegawa became annoyed.

  ‘Please let us speak in English. Every time I hear a foreigner speaking Japanese I have a strong desire to strangle him.’

  One September evening Hasegawa summoned Tilik to a restaurant they frequented. He entered, beaming. He had a new mistress and the grey hairs apparent in the year Tilik had known him were now covered by ebony dye.

  ‘Women keep me young,’ he said when Tilik commented on his appearance. ‘If you don’t start soon your balls will dry up.’ He ordered iced beer and food. The heat had not yet abated. The door of the restaurant stood open to the sound of traffic from the main road.

  ‘We’ve gone into Manchuria,’ Hasegawa announced after a long drink of beer. His colour was high. Tilik did not understand. He was hungry and his attention was on the man behind the counter, fanning their dinner over charcoal.

  ‘We’ve taken Mukden,’ Hasegawa explained. He spoke in a low voice so that nobody else should hear, trying to suppress his excitement. ‘The whole country is waiting for news. The morning newspapers will be full of it.’

  ‘I’ve heard nothing of it,’ Tilik replied. Hasegawa refilled their glasses with iced beer.

  ‘How would you, you’re a foreigner. There has been hardly anything in the press, although for months now many people have known this was in the air. As a nation we are able to keep a secret.’ Hasegawa’s voice was full of pride. His eyes were hooded and his chin receded abruptly. He had the look of a lizard: sleepy, wary, arrogant.