Red Earth and Pouring Rain (34 page)

Ram Mohan reached over and patted his knee. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll talk
to your mother. A trip to the Ganga will do us all good.’ He squared his shoulders, and Sikander’s mother looked away from
him and resumed her inspection of her toes. ‘The scriptures say that Gangaji is our mother, and he who bathes in her waters
is washed of all karma.’ He began to recite hymns to the Goddess Ganga, and then launched into a recitation of the story of
Shantanu the king, who married a woman who killed her children, seven of them, one by one. ‘Death,’ Ram Mohan said, ‘as Shantanu
found out, can sometimes be a gift to the dearest ones. Also, it is advisable to learn how to recognize goddesses when one
intends to marry, or risk being left ultimately wifeless, with only a child who will cause great wars.’

‘Let me do it,’ Sikander’s mother said suddenly, without looking up. ‘Let me —I will talk to whoever needs to be talked to,
I will send for palanquins and elephants, and hire cooks and coolies and servants and bearers, I will arrange for guards,
soldiers and cavalrymen, and we will proceed, over hills and through deserts, to the sacred river.’

‘There are no hills here, and nothing like a desert,’ Ram Mohan said, ‘but if you wish it, of course you must do it.’

‘Good,’ Sikander’s mother said, very stern-faced but exuding, all the same, an unusual air of eagerness and satisfaction;
she stood up quickly, whipping her ghagra around her ankles, and walked off briskly, tucking the end of her chunni into her
waist-band, as if she was about to start, at that very moment, the disposition of camels and the organization of food-stuffs.
For the next few days, they saw her rarely, and even then always on the way to a kitchen or a store-house, trailed by three
or four maids of various ages, a white-haired faithful retainer or two, and a sweating cook; Sikander and Chotta brought back
reports of a breakdown in the armed truce that existed between their parents —there were heated arguments about the possibility
of a trip to the river, and then about the necessity of such a thing. Leaving his black-coated friends in the garden, Hercules
had appeared at the doors of the women’s apartments and had spoken (in English, translated by Sikander, Chotta and their sisters)
about the lack of safety on the roads (thugs, not long banished from these provinces), the discomfort of travelling (dust,
heat, unfamiliar faces), the change in the children’s diets, the expense, but Sikander’s mother went on with her preparations,
saying merely, ‘It will do them good.’

Finally, with the look of a man who has encountered an unfamiliar,
immutable natural force, Hercules began to seek a compromise —the journey, he said, would be sanctioned if the party were
escorted by a detachment of the Company’s cavalry, which precaution would properly foster an atmosphere of official formality
and strength likely to prevent criminal mishaps. My daughters must come with me, Sikander’s mother said. Leave them out of
this foolishness, you will endanger their health, the air in this country is foul always, but especially fecund for fevers
at this time, and who knows what waters they will have to drink, and why not go to the river here, on the edge of the town,
if you must, it’s just as good, to my eye. There is only one holy river, they will drink what I have tasted first, Sikander’s
mother said, and whatever you want you have done with them, you have done with them as you Angrez do to your women, so that
now I can hardly speak to them, but before I die I will see them bathe once in the river.

At this Hercules looked a little taken aback, even a little ashamed, and he said, perhaps if Mr. Sarthey and two of his companions
could go along to chaperon the whole affair, maintaining, thus, a sense of propriety and so on. Fine, Sikander’s mother said,
but Sanjay’s uncle will come, he must come to look after the boy’s health. The cripple? Hercules said, I suppose it is all
right if Mr. Sarthey is there too, but all in all this is a sorry piece of women’s uselessness, and too damn close to the
monsoons for comfort. But Sikander’s mother was already gone, looking to packing of provisions; Hercules turned, nodded at
his sons, and walked back to his part of the house, clearing his throat.

Nine days later, the party set out. In front of Sikander’s house, elephants shook their heads, camels refused to get to their
feet under their loads, horses balked and cantered about, servants ran about doing nothing, dogs barked, soldiers shouted
orders and palanquin-bearers sat in groups, smoking sullenly. But finally, out of this swirling mass, a stream evolved and
sluggishly headed off down the street —a party of cavalry went first, lance-heads sparking red from the first sun, and Sikander
and Chotta, after much consultation and assurance, were allowed to go with them, seated in front of two grey-bearded officers;
behind, their mother and sisters followed in two curtained palanquins (the bearers now chanting steadily, ‘Hunh-HA, Hunh-HA,
Hunh-HA’), surrounded by attendants on foot; then came an elephant named Gajnath, the largest elephant in the group, and on
this elephant, behind the mahout, sat Sanjay, giddily happy, almost unaware of the slight pain in
his right upper arm, caused by the bony grip exerted on it by his uncle, who sat bolt upright behind him, his face twitching
in alarm each time Gajnath’s back rolled and dipped in the course of a stride. As they wound through the streets, children
ran out onto balconies and roofs to look at the horses, the soldiers, and Gajnath; Sanjay straightened up, concentrated on
looking directly ahead, and wished they had a band of musicians to play some sprightly martial tune —he was a king on his
way to survey his domains, he was a prince off to win a beautiful princess in spite of scheming rivals, he was commander of
a small army headed into battle with a powerful invading tyrant.

‘O Gajnath, Lord of Elephants, you are indeed mighty, O Expansive One,’ Ram Mohan said. Finding that the pressure on his arm
had ceased, Sanjay turned, his illusion broken, to his uncle, who was laughing at the way Gajnath had twisted his tail to
one side and high, at the huge steaming circles of black dung he was depositing, one after another, in the middle of the street.
Then Gajnath stopped, and began to mark the path with a dark, wet circle that soon spread at least twenty feet, and two soldiers
who cantered past raised their right hands and said, ‘Fine, fine, very good!’ and the on-lookers applauded in wonder, and
Sanjay wished he could get off and look at the prodigious stream, for surely it was something to be remembered. But just then,
as Gajnath finally lowered his tail, three horsemen in black, their long coats flapping, rode up and past, their faces held
carefully up, nostrils quivering, and then took positions around the red palanquin bearing Sikander’s sisters. One of them,
whom Sanjay recognized as the choleric foreign gentleman from the garden, the speaker with the book, leaned close to the curtains
and spoke, then straightened up to peer about at the crowds with unmistakable hostility, or at least fear.

‘I think that one, the one with the red face, is the one who wants our books, Sanju,’ Ram Mohan said. ‘What’s the matter?
Do you want to pee? No? Listen, if you want to, you must, keeping it in has the most undesirable results. We’ll hold you here
at the back of the howdah, and you can make a nice mark in the mud just like Gajnath. No?’

Sanjay shook his head violently, aghast at the loss of regal dignity such a procedure would entail; in fact he wasn’t sure
of the reason for his sudden uneasiness, at his inability to sit still. He shut one eye, and the three black horsemen rode
steadily alongside the red palanquin; he repeated the same operation through the other eye, and still they
trotted along, surrounding the palanquin like guards; he opened both eyes, and the three became six, a black circle.

‘Listen,’ Ram Mohan said. ‘I’ll tell you a story, all right? Did I ever tell you about the play that your father and I wrote
once, long ago, when you weren’t even with us, and the knot, and Sikander of Macedon, who wanted to kill the world? Did I
tell you about that? Well, in it, we had a part, a scene which dealt with this very issue, a short scene that we took out
before we performed it in court, because Skinner, yes, Sikander’s father, in his capacity as resident, advised us such a thing
was incompatible with the dignity of the court, that’s what he said, ‘the dignity of the court,’ which he had himself degraded
and humiliated until the Raja became like a nervous old camel, but in any case there was this scene, want to listen? Listen,
then; it went something like this. This is the famous scene when Sikander comes upon some sadhus under a tree, and we thought
we’d done a good job of it, but the Company man said that Sikander of Macedon deserved a more dignified treatment, more exalted
dialogue, but in any case it went like this. Sikander, you understand, is speaking to the sadhus through a translator.

He wants to know why you’re naked.

Ask him why he’s wearing clothes.

He says he’s asking the questions here.

Questions give birth only to other questions.

He says people who get funny with him get executed.

Why?

Because he’s the King of Kings. And he wants you to stop asking questions.

King of Kings?

He came all the way from a place called Greece, killing other kings, so he’s King of Kings, see.

Fool of Fools. Master-Clown of Clowns. Maha-Idiot of idiots.

You want me to tell him that?

I said it, didn’t I?

You’re crazier than he is. He says he’ll kill you. Right here, right now.

I’11 have to die someday.

Listen, don’t do this. He’s demented, he doesn’t realize who you are, he thinks naked people are poor savages. He’ll really
kill you.

I’ll really have to die someday.

He wants to know why you aren’t scared of dying.

That’d be silly.

He says that’s not a satisfactory answer.

What sort of answer would he like?

He says you should tell him exactly what mystic path you followed to reach this sublime state of indifference. And he wishes
you
would stop asking questions. Really, this is incredible, I think you’ve got him hooked.

Mystic path?

Mystic path. Literal translation.

When I feel like shitting, I shit; when I feel like eating, I eat.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen him like this —he doesn’t know whether to be upset or horribly fascinated. You’re very good at
this. He says that shitting when you feel like shitting is irresponsible, you should have some discipline in your life, instead
of lounging about naked under a big tree. He says people who shit when they feel like shitting never do anything with their
lives.

Ask him how often he shits.

You want to ask Sikander of Macedon how often he shits, in public?

I said it, didn’t I?

You know, you’re starting to get on my nerves with this answering-questions-with-questions dodge. All right, I’ll ask him.
I think he’s speechless. I think he’s upset.

O-ho. I thought he looked constipated the moment I saw him.

What? What? You want me to tell him that?

Why not? Tell him that’s probably why he’s impelled to invade other nations and massacre tribes and all of that —any student
of
yoga will tell you that mistreating the body leads to mental disaster. Yogic science has shown that people who hold it in
are inescapably driven to behaviour like running about slashing at people, besieging towns, and frivolous acts of bravery.

Now you’ve done it. He has those fits when he gets angry, see, he’s rolling about on the ground. Last time he did that he
put a city of eighty thousand to the torch, no survivors.

He’d be a lot better off if he shat more often. I wonder what his per week rate is.

I’m not going to ask him, understand? He’ll kill you and all your friends and probably all the rest of Sindh too. I refuse
on the grounds of conscience. It’s my job but I refuse for the well-being of all the population of this country.

There’s a yogic cure for constipation. Every morning, you take… T
RANSLATOR

Shut up. Shut up. You’ve caused enough trouble for one day.

You’d be remembered as the man who saved the world from Sikander the butcher. Get this fellow shitting right and he’d probably
go home, quiet as a lamb.

No, no. You’re lucky, he’s decided killing you would be bad for his campaign at this moment, he’d look cruel, and then nobody
would surrender. He’s having his chroniclers strike this conversation from the record. Now history will state that Sikander
the Great met some strange naked men under a tree, that’s all.