No Man's Land (4 page)

Lalu felt, however, as if the naive questioner had taken the words out of his own mouth. For the rim of the sky was full of bloody contours, as if the souls of the war dead were going through the agony of being burned in their journey from hell to heaven. The battle might be raging there, though it was foolish to think so, because surely there would have been a sound of guns if the front was so near.

Lest someone should be looking at him and prying into his thoughts he began to walk away towards the prow of the ship.

‘So we have come across the black waters safely,' he said to himself apprehensively, as if he really expected some calamity, the legendary fate of all those who went beyond the seas, to befall him at any moment. Truly, the black, or rather blue, water seemed uncanny, spreading for thousands of miles. It seemed as if God had spat upon the universe and the spittle had become the sea. The white flecks of the foam on the swell, where wave met wave, seemed like the froth churned out of God's angry mouth. The swish of the air as the ships tore their way across the rough sea seemed like the fury of the Almighty at the sin which the white men had committed in building their powerful engines of the Iron Age, which transported huge cities of wood and steel across vast spaces, where it was difficult to tell in which direction lay the north, the south, the east or the west.

If his father had been alive and present, he would certainly have prophesied disaster for all those who had crossed the black waters, and he would have regarded this war to which they were going as a curse laid upon the Sahibs for trying to defy nature.

‘But why am I turning superstitious and thinking such thoughts?' he rebuked himself. He had always defied his father and preened himself on his schooling, and he did not realize that he had inherited many of his father's qualities, not only the enduring ones such as his short, lithe wiry frame, his love of the land, his generosity, his stubborn pride, and his humour, but also his faith and his naivete.

A few sea-gulls were coming out to meet them, and more seemed to be seated on the hills above the bay, but on closer view these proved to be houses.

It was thrilling to be going out on this adventure, he felt, ‘like the pride of the beggar who suddenly finds wealth.' The smoke from the funnels of the convoy ships before, behind, and on both sides, was talking to the sky. The sea spoke the language of his soul, restless and confused while the wind went bursting with joy in the sun. And the ship was urging him forward into the unknown. He was going to
Vilayat
after all, England, the glamorous land of his dreams, where the Sahibs came from, where people wore coats and pantaloons and led active, fashionable lives – even, so it was said, the peasants and the poor Sahibs. He wondered what was his destiny.

The rocking of the boat unsteadied his steps a little and there was a strange disturbance inside him which kept welling up and choking him as if he had eaten a frog. He had prided himself on resisting sickness, when almost all the other sepoys had rolled about in their vomit, and hoped he was not going to make a fool of himself now at the end of the journey. Perhaps he had been smoking too many cigarettes, which the Government was distributing free. Or, perhaps, it was the fear of the Unknown, now that they were getting to their destination. But he had slept badly the previous night and had dreamt a weird dream about Nandpur, in which his mother was crying over the body of his dead father, and his brother, Dayal Singh, was rebuking him for running away when they most needed him. Only to him the village seemed far from here now…

‘Oh Lalu! Son of a sea-cow! Let us go and get ready,' called young Subah, son of Subedar Major Arbel Singh, his round red face flushed as if he had got the direct commission which his father had been negotiating for him all the way, as the boy had been self-importantly telling everyone.

‘You go, I am coming,' said Lalu evasively, to shake him off, and stood with the hordes of sepoys who leaned on the railings, watching the little tugs which had come out and were pushing and pulling the steamer from where it had slackened over the placid waters of the bay towards the wharves.

Lalu smelt the rich sunny smell which was in the air, and felt that the entrance of the harbour was a wonder such as only the heart could feel and remember.

‘Boom! Zoom!'The guns thundered from somewhere on land.

‘Oh, horror! The war is there!'

‘To be sure!…'

‘The
phrunt
!'

The sepoys burbled gravely, looking ahead of them, fascinated, in wonder and fear, intent.

But a Sikh N. C. O. said: ‘Have your senses fled? These are the guns of the
Francisi
warships saluting us.'

And, indeed, the convoy ships answered back acknowledging the greetings, and the booming stopped.

Before the ship came to a standstill, a number of French officers came up on board with some British officers and shook hands with the officers of the regiment. The French Sahibs looked like the Indians with their sallow complexions, but very solemn and sad.

The sepoys looked at them and wondered. They were afraid of talking in the presence of the Sahibs and stood silent or slipped away.

The shrill crescendo of the ship's sirens shook the air with an urgent, insistent call.

Lalu was excited almost to hysteria and went down to look for Uncle Kirpu, Daddy Dhanoo or Havildar Lachman Singh, as he did not know what to do next. But the news had gone round that the sepoys would disembark here, rest for a day or two, then go by train to the front as soon as possible, for the Sarkar was anxious to avoid the disappointment which the troops might feel at not being allowed to rush and defeat the Germans at once. This relieved the tension somewhat, and soon he was hurrying to get ready to alight.

He sweated profusely as he exerted himself, and he felt a strange affection in his belly as thousands of throats on the harbour burst into an incomprehensible tumult of shouting. Then he rushed towards his bunk, losing his way going down the gangways, till he sighted Uncle Kirpu and ran up to him.

‘Slowly, slowly, gentleman, Franceville is not running away,' Kirpu said, blinking his mischievous eyes, and shaking his sly, weather-beaten face in a mockery of Lalu's haste.

‘Being a man of many campaigns, you feel there is nothing new,' Lalu teased.

‘I don't feel peevish and shy as a virgin, as you do, son,' said Uncle Kirpu and patted Lalu on the back affectionately.

‘Where is Daddy Dhanoo?' Lalu said with a pale smile.

‘First on deck in full war kit! Just to set the young an example!' Kirpu said.

‘Let us hurry, then, and follow his example,' Lalu said and pulled the protesting Kirpu.

As they emerged on deck, the quay seemed to be drowned in a strange and incongruous whirlpool: Pathans, Sikhs, Dogras, Gurkhas, Muhammadans in khaki, blue-jacketed French seamen and porters, and English Tommies. And there was a babble of voices, shouts, curses, salaams, and incomprehensible courtesies. He struggled into the single file which was disembarking and, before he knew where he was, stood on solid earth in the thick of the crowd, without Kirpu. The sepoys were all looking at each other embarrassedly, or talking to the
Francisis
, gesticulating and wringing their hands and turning away when they could not make themselves understood. The French carried on in their own lingo, imparting information in a tumultuous flow of words which all seemed like ‘phon, phon, phon, something, something…'to the Indians.

But they were kind and polite, these
Francisis
, bowing and smiling and moving their heads, their hands, and their bodies in broad gestures, unlike the reticent Tommies.

Lalu stamped his feet to see if the impact of the earth of France was any different from the feel of Hindustan. Curiously enough, the paved hard surface of the quay, under the shadow of gigantic ships, full of cranes and masts and steel girders, seemed different somehow, new, unlike the crumbling dust of India. He swerved, and began to tap the pavement, to jump, and caper out of sheer exuberance of spirit…

The quick darting notes of the bugles tore the air, and the sepoys ran helter-skelter with their heavy trappings, and began to get into formation.

Lalu spotted Havildar Lachman Singh, rushing towards the wide gates which opened into a road from the high wall of the quay. He ran after the N. C. O. His company was already forming while he had been procrastinating to find out the exact orders. ‘Fall in, son,' said Lachman Singh with a kind smile on that brave, keen face of the Dogra hillman which Lalu had always seen sweating, owing to the energy which the sergeant put into whatever he had in hand, whether it was plying a hockey stick, instructing at the gymnasium, taking out a fatigue party, or doing any other regimental duty.

As Lalu was rushing into line, warmed by the kindness of Lachman Singh, Subah shouted ‘
Oi
, Owl Singh!' and came and dragged him to his platoon.

‘Then, what is the talk – how do you like the land of France?' Lalu asked, leaning over to Uncle Kirpu.

‘This land,' said Kirpu with an amused smile, ‘this land is like all the others, it came to be with the coming of life, and will go down with death.'

‘How can the blind man know the splendour of the tulip!' Lalu said.

‘There is one splendour in men, another in tulips,' Uncle Kirpu answered.

Lalu was too enthusiastic about the adventure to feel as Kirpu felt, but he looked at the amused unconcern in the face of the experienced soldier who accepted fate with the resignation of a mild cynic, and who smiled at everything with a gentleness born of some hurt. Then he gazed at the lined, grave, Mongoloid face of Daddy Dhanoo, who had just outlived the accidents of time, space, life, and did not speak at all, as if he had become neutral, immortal. Their behaviour was so different from Subah's blustering, and his own excited manner.

But the band struck up a tune for the route march, and the orders of the officers rang out, and the heavy tread of ammunition boots, the flashing of arms, the rustling of uniforms, transformed the air.

‘
Vivonlesindu
! Something, something…' the cry rang out, above the ‘lef right lef' of the N. C. O.s, from the crowd, which stood five deep under the awnings of tall, white-shuttered houses under the shadow of the harbour walls.

Lalu felt a shiver pass down his spine, and he felt shy walking as a man among men through a crowd of cheering spectators. But the cheering continued.

A Tommy cried back on behalf of the sepoys; ‘Three cheers for the French – Hip hip hurrah!'

The sepoys repeated: ‘Hip hip hurrah!' ‘Hip hip hurrah!' Lalu scanned the faces by the cafes, the dock gates, the huge sheds and warehouses with tear-dimmed eyes. An irrational impulse was persuading him to believe that the dirty, squalid outskirts of this town were a replica of the outer fringes of Karachi Harbour. The presence of trams, motors, ships, moorings and masts encouraged the illusion. And, as he peered into the narrow, filthy lanes where women and children stood crowded in the windows and on the doorsteps, under lines of dirty washing, as he saw the small, languid unkempt Frenchmen in straw hats and with flourishing moustachios, it all seemed so like the indolent, slow-moving world of an Indian city that he felt an immediate affinity with this country.

‘
Vivleshindou
!
Vivongleshindu
!
Vivelesallies
!…' the cries of the crowd became more complex as the sepoys entered a square beyond the small fort which stood on top of a hill where the warehouses ended, and where the greenish sea made an estuary, congested by hundreds of small boats painted in all the colours of the rainbow. And Lalu almost stumbled and fell out of step through the wandering of his eyes among the faces of the women who shrieked and waved their hands at the pageant of the Indian Army.

‘Look out, heart squanderer,' called Subah.

‘Can the blind man see the splendour of the tulip?' Lalu repeated his phrase.

As the troops turned left, and marched up the hill along the Canebiere, the throngs multiplied on the broad pavements outside the dainty fronts of the shops, and of the beautiful high buildings decked with flowers. They were mostly women, and children, and lo and behold, as is the custom in India, they threw flowers at the sepoys while they cried: ‘
Vivongleshindoos
!
Vivangleterre
!
Vivelesallies
!
Vive
…'

Lalu could not keep his eyes off the smiling, pretty-frocked girls with breasts half showing, bright and gleaming with a happiness that he wanted to think was all for him. Such a contrast to the sedate Indian women who seemed to grow old before they were young, flabby and tired, except for a cowherd woman with breasts like pyramidal rocks!… Why even the matrons here were dressed up and not content to remain unadorned like Indian wives, who thought that there was a greater dignity in neglecting themselves after they had had a child or two!

‘Vivonleshindou
!' a thousand throats let loose a tide that flowed down the hill from the mouths of the throngs on both sides.

‘What are the rape-daughters saying?' asked Kirpu, playing on the last word affectionately to take away the sting of abuse latent in the classical curse of India.

‘What knows a monkey of a mirror's beauty!' said Lalu, adapting his phrase to the current description of the hillmen as monkeys.

‘You don't know either,' said Kirpu.

‘They are saying something about the Hindus,' said Lalu.

‘What knows a peasant of the rate at which cloves are sold; he spreads a length of cloth as though he were buying two maunds of grain,' said Subah to Lalu. ‘They are saying, “Long live the Indians”. I can understand, because I know
Francisi
.'

‘All guesswork and no certainty,' said Kirpu sceptically.

‘
Vivongleshindous
!
Vivelangleterre
!
Vivonlesallies
!…' the cries throbbed dithyrambically.