Red Earth and Pouring Rain (11 page)

‘Hanuman’s here,’ Saira said. ‘Hanuman the Great.’

‘Sanjay’s done nothing bad yet,’ said Mrinalini.

Zahira looked at both of them, perplexed. I started to type again, but stopped as three loud crashes rang out in the court-yard,
one after the other.

‘Mrinalini,’ said Zahira, ‘they’re knocking over your flower-pots.’ Glass crackled and splintered outside. ‘That was your
sliding window. Who are these people?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen them before.’

‘They’re not even from this mohalla. They can’t come into your house and do this. Come.’

Zahira left, followed by Mrinalini, and a moment later we heard Zahira’s voice lash out, and the court-yard fell silent. Smiling,
Saira peeked out the door.

‘Saira, you stay in there.’ Saira ducked back in.

‘She’ll have them organized in a minute,’ Saira said.

‘Too neat,’ Yama said. ‘Much too timely’

‘The three crashes,’ Hanuman said, jumping down from his perch and stalking around the room, tail swinging restlessly, ‘the
three crashes like three drum-beats rising to a crescendo, completed by the glass breaking, just in time to distract that
lady, to make her a participant. Much too neat.’

‘Do you sense a hidden hand?’ Yama said, standing up.

‘A hidden something or other,’ Hanuman said. ‘But where? Where are you hidden, whoever you are?’

‘Who?’ I said. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Someone who wants a story told,’ Yama said.

‘Someone who is bound to monkeys,’ Hanuman said, ‘but that’s me, and I’m already here.’

‘Judging by the timing and the rhythm of those crashes,’ Yama said, ‘an aesthete. A protector of poets.’

‘Too vague still,’ Hanuman said, ‘but apply logic; Yama, ratiocinate. I feel something, someone here; look at the hair on
the back of my neck. But my blood is rising, like on a hunt; you are the cold one, the icy thinker. Think. You know your own
methods; apply them.’

‘A protector of Parasher, and who is Parasher?’ Yama said, sitting down. ‘A sometime singer and poet, a lover, a fomenter
of revolutions, a monkey. No. Nothing yet.’

‘Nothing,’ said Hanuman, leaping around the room, his tongue flicking in and out between his hard yellowed teeth. ‘Something,
something, I smell something. Why are you so much trouble, Sanjay? Why did you come to this house, singer?’

‘Food,’ I said. ‘I was hungry. You can’t blame me for that.’

‘Food!’ Yama cried. ‘That’s it! You’re a thief, Parasher, a filcher of clothes, a robber, a pilferer, a rifler!’

‘Listen, calm down,’ I said. ‘I was only making a living.’

‘Thieves and poets,’ Hanuman said, ricocheting from the walls, eyes dark, ‘poets and thieves. And who is the fat patron of
poets and thieves? All right, you fat snoot-face, where are you? Come on out, broken-tusk!’

There was a scraping behind the wall under the bookshelves, a rubbing of something over brick and wood, and Hanuman leapt
at the wall, hand outstretched. His fist punched a hole in the wall (my friends watched the brick shatter, mouths open) and
disappeared behind the plaster; for a moment, Hanuman struggled, pulling back, and then a nasal voice said: ‘All right, all
right. I’ll come out.’

Hanuman eased away from the wall, and a small mouse backed out of the hole, its tail still gripped by the Wind-son’s fingers.
A small figure hopped off the mouse’s back and took a few steps, growing larger with every step. My face curved in a ridiculous
smile; I clapped my hands; I burst into laughter.

‘O snoot-face!’ I said. ‘O marvellous excellent fat one!’

Ganesha picked daintily at his shawl with plump fingers, until it lay just so, and his trunk twisted about his head and neck,
adjusting the brilliant necklaces of unearthly stones and the crown of gold.

‘Do you have to be so rough, monkey?’ he said. ‘Uncouth.’

Hanuman was scratching the mouse between its ears, and he looked up, laughing. ‘What were you doing skulking inside walls,
han?’ Hanuman said.

‘There was a story to be told, and so, naturally, I came. Even though people around here seem to have forgotten who I am.’

‘The remover of obstacles himself,’ Yama growled. ‘So it’s been you all along. Did you interfere with my scribes? Have you
been casting spells, making things easy for this monkey-man here?’

‘Who, me?’ said Ganesha, looking innocently at the Death-lord with his sunken elephant eyes. ‘I haven’t done anything at all.
I’ve only been here for the last minute or so.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, bowing to the son of Shiva. ‘Thank you.’

‘I did nothing,’ he said, his big grey head inscrutable, the ears flapping gently to and fro. ‘Come, nearly time to start.’

He settled himself on the bed, next to the typewriter. Saira hopped up onto the sheets and sat on the other side of the machine.
The door
opened, and Zahira and Mrinalini came in. I could hear faint whispers circling the court-yard.

‘I’m not sure about this still,’ Zahira said, putting a protective arm around her daughter.

‘Sister, it’s all right,’ Mrinalini said. ‘My son’s here too.’

‘Yes, he is, isn’t he?’ Zahira said, looking at Abhay curiously. ‘Well, Allah will protect. But only the children are in the
house now; the rest of the crowd is outside, scattered on the maidan, and they want to listen to the story, too. Will you
pass papers back and forth, from here to the court-yard, from there to outside? And it will be read here, and then there?’

‘It’ll never work,’ Ashok said. ‘You’re asking for confusion.’

Ganesha nudged me and whispered in my ear, and I typed: ‘Ganesha is here (we seek his blessing in our endeavours to attain
wisdom and knowledge).’ I received another nudge, none too gentle, in the ribs (just as Saira squealed, ‘Ganapati baba moriya,
Ganesha is here!’), and so I went on: ‘Ganesha asks if you have a stereo speaker and if you do you should put it on the roof,
never mind about the wires.’

Instructions were sent out to the willing children for this to be done, while I explained to the rest of my family (I think
I can use that word now) what had happened. They looked a little concerned: one god in the house is fine, I could see them
thinking, and two is better, but three in a room is a lot of divinity in a very small place, and what if this trend is to
continue? Can we expect to see the whole immeasurable pantheon in the near future, the shining hosts? Should we also prepare
for visitations from the big hitters themselves (Ashok’s phrase), the heavy dudes (Abhay, edgy) and the boss ladies (Mrinalini,
smiling) like Shiva and Parvati and Vishnu and Lakshmi and maybe even Brahma himself? That was a dizzying thought, and who
can predict the actions of the mighty (Hanuman shrugged, Yama and Ganesha looked inscrutable), so I made reassuring noises
and tried not to look nervous. The story-telling hour was drawing near.

Finally, the speaker was on the roof.

‘Let the child say something,’ Ganesha said.

‘Saira, say something.’

‘Say what?’ Saira said, and the words rang out clear as the chimes of a fine bell from the speaker above. Saira jumped, a
hand clapped over
her mouth. ‘One, two, three,’ she said. ‘Testing, testing, one, two, three.’ Her voice went right to the edge of the maidan
and maybe a little beyond.

‘Obstacle removed,’ said Ganesha.

‘Don’t be smug, youngster,’ Yama said. ‘All right, Sanjay. Where were we?’

Where we were, god, was with Benoit de Boigne, in his journey across the seas, in his search for a dream.

So, I began to type, and Mrinalini read it all out.

Listen…

ON A MAIDAN
, within sight of green mountains, Uday Singh and George Thomas exchanged cuts, the sound of their clashing swords echoing
among the banyan trees and the water-filled fields.

George Thomas watched Uday Singh’s sleepy eyes and relaxed stance, listening to the other’s easy breathing and waiting for
an opening. They circled each other, moving always to the right; Thomas felt the world recede, distanced by their revolutions,
and saw only Uday’s white beard, the shimmering edge of his blade, the place where his tunic curled back to reveal the ridge
of the collar-bone and the dimple at the base of the throat, and Thomas felt Uday’s presence, his spirit, his courage, his
old wounds, his loves, his disappointments, his fear, felt that old unspoken intimacy, that sometimes obscene knowledge between
adversaries, and waited for a secret wavering, an internal retreating that would reveal itself as an opening.

Thomas saw Uday’s eyes narrow, and suddenly saw a crack in his guard, felt Uday drop back, there it was; Thomas lunged forward,
but even as his thighs clenched and his point reached out he knew it had been a mistake, because Uday moved lazily, slowly
aside, avoiding the thrust easily and cutting from underneath in a scooping movement to tap Thomas gently on the stomach with
smooth steel.

Thomas straightened up, panting.

‘How do you do that?’ he said. ‘You knew I was coming before I did.’

‘I could see you making up your mind,’ Uday said. ‘It’s not so hard. It comes with age.’ He thumped Thomas on the back. ‘You’re
getting better. Your Urdu still needs work, though.’

As they walked back to the tents, they stripped off the heavy leather and chain mail armour that glinted in the late-afternoon
sun. The grass under foot was wet with the first rains of the monsoon; in a red tent, Thomas ate, sitting cross-legged on
the carpeted floor, and Uday watched.

‘Eat something,’ Thomas said. ‘Nobody’ll ever know’

‘The gods will know, and I will know,’ Uday said, smiling. ‘Eat, firangi.’

‘Firangi? Me? I’m no foreigner, I’m Jahaj Jung, old man, or haven’t you heard?’

‘Jahaj Jung, the warrior from the seas,’ Uday said, smiling. ‘That very man,’ Thomas said, ‘but here comes a firangi.’

The man who entered, stooping a little, was tall and thin, with long, lank dark hair and a large nose.

‘Reinhardt,’ Thomas said. ‘Sit. Eat.’

‘Later,’ Reinhardt said. ‘I have an idea. A plan.’ He lowered himself to the floor and poured wine into a cup.

‘Get on with it,’ Uday said.

‘Of course,’ Reinhardt said. ‘The rains will set in soon, and we will languish in these muddy fields, no campaigning, no money
to be earned. But not far away, there is a palace. There is a palace with a woman in it. A palace with a princess who needs
officers for her brigades.’

‘Sardhana,’ Uday said. ‘You’re talking about Sardhana.’

‘Of course,’ Reinhardt said, grinning. ‘A beautiful woman, they say, a tempestuous woman, a hungry woman, a passionate woman.’

‘A witch,’ Uday said. ‘Zeb-ul-Nissa, the Witch of Sardhana. Daughter of a dancing woman. Married a general named Le Vassoult,
who died. Now she rules his estate, with spells and terrors and a hand of steel.’

‘Will you come?’ Reinhardt said.

‘Of course he will,’ Uday said.

‘A beautiful woman?’ Thomas said.

‘Unquestionably,’ Reinhardt said.

‘A passionate woman?’

‘Undoubtedly.’

‘A tempestuous woman?’

‘Surely’

‘You’re crazy to go near her,’ Uday said. ‘She has the magic of the Brahmins, the hidden magic. But of course you have to
go.’

‘A woman with an estate, a kingdom,’ Thomas said. ‘Too good to let go.’

‘You have to go,’ Uday said. ‘You would have to.’

‘Uday the fencer with the foresight,’ Thomas said.

‘Fencing or women, survival is the same thing,’ Uday said. He smiled. Jahaj Jung. Be careful.’

‘You aren’t coming?’

‘I have more sense than to go near a witch.’

‘Children’s stories,’ Thomas said.

‘Precisely the ones to be afraid of,’ Uday said.

The next morning Reinhardt and Thomas rode out. Uday waved good-bye from a ridge of mud between two fields, his white tunic
transparent in the low slanting sunlight, his beard shifting slowly across his broad chest in the wet breeze. Reinhardt began
to sing a French song in a thin, piping voice; Thomas twisted in his saddle, watching the straight-backed figure get smaller
and smaller until it was hidden by a grove of heavy-topped mango trees; then there was the distant singing of women in the
fields, the heavy sticky fall of hooves in mud, the creaking of leather, the call of thousands of crickets, the busy chirping
of birds, and the distant rumble of thunder, the rolling black and grey of the clouds above.

At noon they stopped in the ruins of a serai at a cross-roads and sat on crumbling stone, nibbling at cold chappatis and pickles.
A group of Marwari merchants and their Pathan escorts huddled on the other side of the building and watched them curiously.

‘How long have you been here?’ Thomas asked.

‘Here, in India? A year and eight months.’

‘Why do you still wear that coat?’

‘This coat? What’s wrong with the coat? It’s Parisian, I had it made in Paris, made for me.’

‘Why not wear this? It’s better here, more comfortable.’

‘I like this coat. Do you find something wrong with it? What?’

‘No, nothing.’

Thomas looked away, and said nothing about how the long tails of the coat flapped about the rump of the horse when Reinhardt
rode, making rider and horse look like some monstrous bird of prey; that afternoon they cantered through a light drizzle.
Reinhardt seemed to recover from his quick irritation and resumed his singing. The road grew steadily wider, and the traffic
thickened: farmers with loads of hay on ancient two-wheeled carts drawn by magnificent white oxen, shepherds with flocks of
thick-bodied goats, traders with covered carts, caravans escorted by lance-bearing Rajputs and Afghans; Reinhardt grinned
and slapped his thigh.

‘A rich place, this Sardhana,’ he said.

‘It’s all rich,’ Thomas said. ‘If it weren’t for the wars, what a thing this Hindustan would be.’

‘If it weren’t for the wars, where would we be?’ Reinhardt shouted, spurring his horse. ‘Come on, on to the Begum.’

At dusk they drew up to a large arched gate in a crenellated wall.

‘We are officers,’ Thomas said, ‘come to see the Begum and serve her.’