Red Earth and Pouring Rain (32 page)

Sanjay turned his head toward Chotta, then Sikander, but found that he couldn’t bear to look at them, and so his memory of
that moment was always a confusion of straw, the base of a neck, hands, perhaps eyes; he looked back down at Hercules, who
had rolled to a corner of the mat and was lying on his side, silent, his chest heaving. Around his belly a single shiny streak
of wetness dripped to the ground; the woman moved —density, darkness between her thighs —and began to pull a piece of cloth
about her.

‘When I was very young,’ Hercules said, then stopped, reaching forward to rest a palm, flat, on the smooth mud wall. The woman
moved about the room, paying no attention, tucking away strands of hair, bending to move a pair of boots into a corner. ‘When
I was very young,’ Hercules began again, ‘the only nightmare I remember from my childhood was this —I dreamt that I was walking
through a street paved with stones, flanked by white houses, when the grey sky opened up like a funnel, sucked me up. The
ground vanished from beneath my feet, and I plummeted upwards, limp, terrified. In a moment it enfolded me, sky stifling like
a shroud, I was scattered, vanished, gone, not capable then even of being scared. But then I awoke, shaking. Later that morning
—I must have been no more than nine or ten —my father, my mother and I, with my other sisters, walked to our church. All was
well —there was not a cloud, I could hear birds, my brothers ran about despite my mother’s entreaties —but even then I was
frightened. They asked me what it was, but what child of nine could tell about what I had felt, so I shook my head, went along,
trying to keep between my parents. In the church, I clutched the wood of the pew, and tried to pull my legs up onto the seat.
My father reached around my mother and tapped me sharply on the back of the head; when the tears cleared I found my eyes fixed
on the image of Christ: a simple representation in dark wood, a certain heaviness about the figure, as if the agony dragged,
pulled. I wiped, snuffling, then looked closer. His muscles bulged. I followed the strained curve of the arm to the taut tendons
in the wrist, and then to the nail, piercing straight and perpendicular through the flesh. I tried to follow the line of the
metal, through the flesh and into the wood, and I saw how firmly fixed He was, how pinned. I wept with relief, and my parents
looked on me proudly, thinking that the sermon had moved me. I knew I had been told something then, as firmly as if He had
spoken to me, moving his wooden lips: the mark of man is tragedy, and the world must know this. I was nine, the years passed;
I became a soldier, to take the Word to the world. In this country there are many, most, who have spent their lives without
the Knowledge, so I have aided those who tell, who speak. I have given them shelter, and food, and protection, and tried to
keep the memory of that hour alive, when I knew that He stood between me and devastation. But comes now the hidden army of
the Other, the march of moments, the thousand things that are necessary,
that distract. All that must be done I do, I earn, I administer, I feed, I fight, but finally, in the pause, in reflection,
I am brought to the comprehension that I have been consumed again, engulfed, the great task left undone. His Act is forgotten,
that perfect culmination, everything stretches forever, behind and in front, like that endless, hideous pantheon. He died!
Something changed! But weariness brings doubt, and then I come here, to be doubly devoured. Here, in this place, I am finally
finished. Do you listen?’

Hercules sat up, and the woman glanced at him, then began to arrange the betel leaf and tobacco in her palm; he reached for
a shirt, drew it over his shoulders, and stood, his thighs exposed between the tails. Sanjay watched him pulling on his clothes,
still unsettled by the extreme sadness in Hercules’ voice, so unlike his usual plummy confidence. Sanjay wanted to ask Sikander
and Chotta what it was that Hercules had said, that had made his words so faint, what had compelled him to touch the wall
as if testing its solidness, its physicality, but a glance on either side convinced him that it was wiser to wait: the two
brothers were watching their father, below, with a concentration that seemed to reject the possibility of emotion, much less
conversation. So Sanjay too watched Hercules as he dressed, straightened his hair, picked a few coins out of his purse to
place on a mantelpiece built into the wall; Hercules left without a word to the woman, who sat chewing moodily on her paan
—they seemed indifferent, now, to each other.

‘Come on,’ Sikander said. They dropped to the ground —this time not earning even a glance from the cow in the corner —came
around the corner of the hut, and were halted by a rude phalanx of children.

‘Who are they?’ a small girl dragging the wooden cart said from the rear, rising up on her toes.

‘What are these rich babas doing sulking behind our Amba’s hut?’

‘Stealing her cow’

‘Not even going out by the front door, like the others.’

The line pressed forward, and Sanjay stepped back, but Sikander and Chotta stood their ground, only moving a little closer
to each other; Sikander seemed to be calm, almost dreamy, but Chotta was crouching, eager, hands held in front of his thighs,
palms up.

‘Why here, babas?’

‘Motherfuckers,’ Chotta said. ‘Fuck your sisters too.’

‘Enough,’ Sikander said, but already there were three or four boys
pushing through the press to get at Chotta, who for his part edged forward to meet them. The first of them had to step past
Sikander, who reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘No,’ Sikander said.

‘Eh, don’t you drop in the middle,’ the boy said, moving his arm to brush Sikander off, and suddenly he flew through the air,
landing jarringly on his buttocks in front of the little girl with the cart.

‘I told you no, no?’ Sikander said, smiling pleasantly. The others stopped, uncertain, as the boy picked himself up, eyes
tearing, and then they all began to move forward in small jerks and starts, each waiting for another to lead the assault,
cursing fervently in a kind of courage-building chant. Sikander moved his head in a funny rolling motion, and Sanjay, hearing
the bones in his neck crackle, shivered.

‘Oh, why are you fighting in the lane, you dirty children? Fighting outside my door, making bad noises. Go away. Go, run away,
or I’ll come after your heads with a rolling-pin.’ It was the woman from inside, Hercules’ woman; she stood at the door of
her hut, hands on her hips, hair rolling over her shoulders, mouth red from the paan. ‘And who are these? Why are you bothering
these fine boys. Go away, leave them alone.’

‘Are they your customers too, then, Amba?’ a boy called from the rear, and at that she ran after them, swinging her arms,
dealing out slaps and cuffs, and they scattered, laughing. Finally, she came back to them, huffing.

‘Come inside,’ she said. ‘Wait for a while and the little oafs will go away. Then they won’t bother you.’

Inside her hut, Sanjay tried resolutely not to look at the small puddle of light that gathered along the wall at the back,
and concentrated instead on a minute inspection of the images of gods and goddesses that were arranged on the numerous ledges,
crannies and shelves built into the walls.

‘Are you lost? Why did you come here? Poor boys, this isn’t a place for you. You are lost, aren’t you?’

This was directed at Chotta, who was staring at her, lips puckered, eyes shining, as if he was about to burst into tears.
She looked curiously at him for a moment or two, then Sikander turned to her.

‘Yes, we’re lost,’ he said.

‘How did it happen? Did you just pay no attention, and get lost in some game? Where do you live?’

‘Char Bagh.’

‘Ay, what a long way you’ve wandered. Don’t these other two talk at all? I suppose they’re scared. But don’t be scared, this
is a place you all would have found a way to, sooner or later. You three just got an early start all right. All of you from
Char Bagh come here, no matter how high and mighty you act.’ She laughed; the pink of the inside of her mouth was very bright
against her dark skin, and again Sanjay felt his belly full of an incredible longing. ‘They all come here, Brahmins and Rajputs
and Company men. Here, touch-this-and-don’t-touch-that and untouchability and your caste and my people and I-can’t-eat-your-food
is all forgotten; this is the place that the saints sang about, little men. Here, anybody can touch anybody else, nothing
happens. When you are a little older, when you understand a little more, you too will come and touch, and maybe by then I
will be an old woman, but remember me. Here you can forget the world, and be friends with every man. Do you see what I say?
I have a friend, a little way down the lane, in a big house that she was brought to when she was just a child, but she remembers
something from before, when she was home, far and far to the south; she sings it sometimes, and I ask her, What is this? What
does it mean? Whose song is this? and she says, listen, sister, I don’t know who wrote it, but it means this:

What could my mother be

to yours? What kin is my father

to yours anyway? And how

did you and I meet ever?

But in love

our hearts have mingled

like red earth and pouring rain.’

She put her hands on her knees and leaned forward, raising her eyebrows. ‘Do you understand, babies? That’s what happens here.’

She smiled, exposing again the pink gums; Sanjay pulled at Sikander’s arm: let’s go.

‘We have to go now,’ Sikander said.

‘Be careful.’

Outside, they stumbled through the streets, feet scraping through dust; Sanjay put up a forearm to shield his eyes from the
light, squinting, and noticed, now, how many women sat in door-ways, clad only in
petticoats, and how they looked bluntly at passers-by, sometimes calling out to them, ‘Come, come to my house.’ Now, he saw
many smiling, oily men with flower-garlands around their wrists lounging between the shops, and other men who walked slowly
through the lanes, stumbling a little, speaking in louder-than-necessary voices intended to project jocularity, fraternity,
but Sanjay wondered at the underlying, unmistakable presence of fear and hope. He looked back at Chotta, who was dragging
his feet, looking down at the ground; Sikander saw the glance, and looped an arm around both their shoulders.

‘We’re almost out,’ he said.

Chotta’s pout seemed to intensify, and Sanjay wanted to say, no, she said we’ll be back, we’ll come back like these others,
like lost children, but instead he forced a smile, and they walked on.

In the dry nullah-bed, Sanjay’s knees gave way, and he sat down, exhausted, on top of the curving channels carved by once-running
water. He was covered with a film of cold perspiration, and once or twice he felt something hot and sticky rush up to the
back of his throat. Sikander and Chotta squatted next to him, resigned to waiting; they scratched absently in the mud, making
patterns, sometimes figures, mostly horses.

They heard the singing first, a high, cracked voice in a strange language, and then the man appeared —he was a tall man, a
firangi, with pomaded, dirty white hair, a scar that stretched from his forehead across an empty eye-socket, a bottle in his
hand; bits of blackened lace hung in little wisps off his blue coat. He stopped at the edge of the nullah, leaning down towards
the boys.

‘Ah, there you are,’ he said in English. ‘There you are, my little friends. I was thinking I had lost your trail. I introduce
myself —I am Moulin, the would-be adventurer but most-times cook.’ He paused to take a swig from his bottle. ‘I shall climb
down to you, boys. I shall, appropriately enough, descend into a sewer.’ He slid down the side of the ravine, half-sitting,
and then came up to them, weaving a little. ‘What hostile little faces you have! But that is why I followed you, I saw you
walking through the bazaar, and I thought, there are the three saddest boys I have ever seen. And what are they doing here?
So I came after you, because, I, Moulin, am sad, too. I, gentlemen, am the saddest Frenchman you will ever see. But are you
understanding anything I am
saying?’ He switched to rough Urdu: ‘Do all you understanding English?’

Sikander and Chotta nodded, but Sanjay stared up apathetically, too drained to even shake his head.

‘Then,’ Moulin said, sitting down beside them, ‘we will converse in English, my Urdu being but rudimentary, even after all
these years.’ He paused to devote his full attention to the bottle again, then wiped his mouth. ‘Rudimentary Urdu. But how
is it that you two speak English? And aren’t frightened of me —I am, after all, that most fearsome of things, a white man.
Doesn’t your mother tell you, hush, baba, or the firangi will come and take away your little clay cart, and all your toys?
And he’ll take your father’s land? And your mother’s honour? No? Oh, you don’t want to talk? No matter.’

He settled himself with some ceremony, spreading the tails of his coat around himself, like black wings. ‘I will talk. I will
advise you. How, then, about a story? I will tell you a story concerning myself, and something I did, with a friend, when
I was younger. Like all good soldiers’ stories, this one involves two cavalrymen, a beautiful woman, a good horse, a sword.
In fact, even now I have this sword, look.’ He pulled at his belt and slid it around till they saw a sword hilt, carved from
white jade in the shape of a horse’s head.

‘Listen. Once, long ago, when I was young, almost as young as you, I met a man, a man named La Borgne, a Savoyard. In the
rough-and-ready way of men meeting in a foreign land, I conceived an instant liking for him, and so I invited him to my home.
At the time, my fortunes were good, I was a soldier serving a certain power (never mind which one; in the end they are all
the same), my house was full of servants, and so I entertained my friend with a magnificent meal. He ate, and I watched and
envied him the pleasure of discovering, for the first time, the delights of the Mughlai cuisine. After, he slept; his face
relaxed, and I wondered at the look of peace on his face, for certainly he was a man free of dreams. I confess: after eating
like that, I am susceptible to the chimeras that lurk within; my friends tell me that my eyes dart from side to side, my limbs
twitch and sometimes I get up and wander under the top-heavy trees. So I watched him, and then, as he slept, I heard the quick
rolling rattle of hooves, and far away, a party of horsemen cantered. La Borgne awoke, and we both watched the riders,
and the setting sun; curious, I summoned my spies and sent them out after those far-away men.