Red Earth and Pouring Rain (43 page)

‘Tired?’ Chottun said, steadying him. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.’

‘No, not tired,’ Sanjay said. ‘It’s this English, hard to read.’

‘Funny language,’ Kokhun said. ‘I gave up on it a long time ago, now I just look at it, all the letters sitting apart from
each other.’

‘Cowards!’ Sorkar yelled from the other end of the shop, where he was leaning over Sikander and a ledger. ‘Fear-mongers. Don’t
infect him.’

‘Sorkar Sahib has mastered it,’ Kokhun said.

‘Defeated it,’ Chottun said.

‘Indeed,’ Sorkar said, striding to the centre of the room and hooking his thumbs in his waist-band. ‘Listen, Sanju, at first
I was as scared as you. It snarled like a lion, this English, and I was afraid to go near it.’

‘How did you learn it?’ Sikander said, getting up from his seat. ‘Did you have a teacher?’

‘No, no teacher for Sorkar Sahib,’ Kokhun said.

‘He mastered the animal himself,’ Chottun said. ‘In fair and equal competition. He —’

‘Be quiet, you two,’ Sorkar said, with a quick glance at Sikander.

‘Tell us, sir,’ Sanjay said. ‘Is it a secret method?’

‘Please,’ Sikander said.

‘No, no,’ Sorkar said. ‘Enough talk. Get back to work.’

Sikander returned to his desk, and Sanjay went back to his reversed letters. Later that afternoon, Chottun pressed a stack
of impressions
and sat beside the machine, wiping his forearms and chest with a rag; Sikander stepped from his niche, taking off his shirt,
and took the bar.

‘It’s all right,’ Sikander said when Chottun and Kokhun twittered about propriety. ‘Never mind all that.’

‘What they mean exactly is that this work is not for you,’ Sorkar said. ‘After all, you’re a Sahib…’

‘I’m a Rajput,’ Sikander said. He took the bar and set to work, and soon Kokhun and Chottun were scurrying to keep up with
him; Sikander’s body was smooth, built squarely and dense, gleaming dark brown, ceaseless and regular in motion, his face
blank and eyes unfocussed and internal. The bar moved khata-khat, khata-khat, while the impressions piled up, ream upon ream.
The next day, and the day after, Sikander worked, and they all watched him, awed by his stamina and strength; on the third
evening Sorkar stopped him, offering a glass of sweet lassi.

‘Enough work,’ Sorkar said. ‘Enough, O magnificent Sikander, or we will be finished with our job before the end of the week,
and this hasn’t happened ever in Calcutta. Here, drink.’

‘How did you learn English?’ Sikander said, his hands still on the bar, his chest heaving.

‘I’ll show you, I’ll tell you,’ Sorkar said. ‘Drink, drink.’

Sikander took the steel tumbler, and he and Sanjay sat on the ground and drank while Sorkar disappeared into a store-room.
Kokhun and Chottun squatted opposite, and then Sorkar came back out and put a parcel in the middle of the circle, a rectangular
object wrapped in red cloth. He wiped his hands on his dhoti, and with an air of great ceremony he untied the fat knot on
top of the package. Kokhun and Chottun smiled knowingly; Sorkar peeled back four flaps, revealing a thick book bound in leather
and embossed in gold. He lifted the cover, opening to the frontispiece, a dreamy-eyed man with a beard.

‘Can you make it out?’ Sorkar said to Sanjay, pointing to the title on the facing page. ‘No, never mind, I was like that at
first, I stole the book’ —smiling at Sikander —‘and I could read not a word. It was a long time ago. It was when this press
was first set up, and Mr Markline himself worked here, and I was a boy doing the chores and the cleaning, and many an evening
Mr Markline lay in this very place, drinking out of a black bottle, cuffing me whenever I passed within reach. It was
a long time ago, he was young then, just come here from over the seas, his eyes as pale blue as today, his hair flat brown
over his head. He was thin, always crisp and tense, always unpredictable. Everything he wanted exactly so, anything not just
as he wanted it would throw him into a rage, red-faced in a language none of us understood. I would shake my head, sometimes
without wanting to, break into a smile, and this would infuriate him, tears in his eyes, and he would hit me. Once he beat
me with a cane, with a cane because there was dust where there shouldn’t have been, the ink-balls weren’t in their proper
place, something, I’ve forgotten what. Afterwards he lay drunken in the court-yard, in the heat, and I sat feeling the sting
of the cuts on my shoulders, weeping. I was young but I had already a wife and three children in my village, my mother, a
small plot of land. I sat and cursed and wondered. When I heard his snores I went in and stood over him, looking at the length
of him, his legs hanging off the sagging cot, his thick arms with their strong muscles, his pink lips, thinking I could kill
him now, poison his drink, put a krait in his bath. But by his bed lay this book, one of a few he had brought with him, beautiful
books he’d look at sometimes, examples, I suppose, of the English printer’s art. I picked up the book and carried it outside,
out of the house, and hid it in the banyan tree, lowering it into a hollow. Then I opened a window, but went back in through
the door, closing it behind me, waited for a few moments, then shouted, thief, master, thief. He staggered up and we rushed
around, lighting lanterns, checking locks. Finally he found the open window; discovered that the only thing missing was the
book. I heard feet, I said, saw a form leaning over your bed, I said. He looked at me, raised the lantern to my face, but
I held up my eyes to him, and what could he do? Well, we went back to sleep, and the days and months passed, we got business,
we printed, things got better. I started to help in the composing, and a day came when he left the press to me, he started
other things, other businesses, made money, and he let me take care of it, coming in once a day to read the proofs, once in
two days, then even less. One night when I hadn’t seen him in weeks, I went out and brought the book back in, out of the tree
and into the house. It was weathered now, the leather stiff and faded, the paper curled. I opened it up and saw this picture,
this bearded man with his ear-ring, and I thought of the scars on my back, and I said, I must read this. You
understand, at that time I knew only the letters, separate and by themselves, and maybe a few familiar words, here and there.
But I said, I must read this. So I read the first page, this title, can you see it, Sanjay, try it.’

‘T-h-e,’ Sanjay said. ‘C-o-m-p-l-e-t-e…’

‘Say it,’ Sorkar said.

T-hee?’

‘The,’ Sikander said, smiling.

‘Com…,’ Sanjay said.

Sikander helped him along: ‘plete.’

After a great deal of hesitation and fits and starts Sanjay said it: ‘The Com-plete Works of Wil-liam Shakes-peare.’

‘And so I began to read,’ Sorkar said. ‘And at first the complete works were like a jungle, the language was quicksand. Metaphors
turned beneath my feet and became biting snakes, similes fled from my grasp like frightened deer, taking all meaning with
them. All was alien, and amidst the hanging, entangling creepers of this foreign grammar, all sound became a cacophony. I
feared for myself, for my health and sanity, but then I thought of my purpose, of where I was and who I was, of pain, and
I pressed on.’

‘Oh, brave,’ said Kokhun.

‘Fearless,’ said Chottun.

‘And so day by day I read through to the end, not understanding much but learning. The next year I read through again. And
then again the next year. And so I have traversed the complete works thirty-four times, and from a foreign jungle I have made
it my own garden. Every part of this terrain I have faced with my body, this earth is my earth, Willy is my boy. Ask me anything,
and I will respond as he would have. Ask. Give me a word.’

‘Heart,’ Sikander said.

Sorkar smiled, then declaimed in English:

The eleven-fold shield of Sikander cannot keep

The battery from my heart
.

‘What does that mean?’ Sanjay said.

‘You’ll learn, you’ll learn, but give me a word.’

‘Power.’

A greater power than we can contradict

Hath buried our intents
.

‘But what does it mean?’ Sanjay said, his voice rising.

‘It’ll come to you presently, my son,’ Sorkar said. ‘But listen:

Time shall unfold what plaited cunning hides
;

Who cover strengths, at last honour them abides
.

‘I wish you’d tell me what it means,’ Sanjay said sullenly, but instead Sorkar began to instruct him in the language. Now,
as they composed, he pronounced whole words and provided meanings, paraphrases, glosses; as he did this Sanjay became aware
of the incontrovertible fact that Sorkar stole industriously and hugely from the Englishman: reams of paper were pronounced
exhausted when there was a good quarter of an inch left, for every vat of ink that was mixed and used, a tenth part was secreted
away by Kokhun and Chottun, perfectly good formes were thrown into a pile in a back room. And of course everyone except Sikander
worked at a determinedly leisurely pace, pausing often to drink, rest, or merely reflect; in addition Sorkar was given to
musing halts during which he would scratch his head, squint through narrowed eyes at his composing stick, and appear to calculate,
after which, instead of calling to Sanjay for a letter, he would extract one from a case he kept under his stool, covered
with a red cloth. Inserting this special letter into his stick, he would smile at Sanjay with a simper that would pull in
his face towards its centre, making him look like a bullfrog with something in its gullet. ‘Ooo yais,’ he would say, delighting
in his role of teacher, in what Sanjay already recognized as fatally Bengali-accented English, ‘next please: letter v, making
already half of “river,” which is to say a flow, flood, or plentiful stream of anything.’

Yes, and I bow to you, O mine guru, Sanjay wanted to say, but why i from under your magnificent buttocks, what language is
that a part of, but already it was clear that Sorkar revealed only as much as he wanted to, rewarded knowledge according to
some secret reckoning, let one through his many-layered, soft defences to his innermost secrets only after a mysterious judgement
quite beyond flattery or influence. So Sanjay waited, attempted to please, concentrated on the language, and sounded Sikander
on the mystery.

‘What do you think he’s doing?’ Sanjay said. ‘I looked at the letters after you pressed them, the
i
in river, and it looks exactly the same.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Sikander, and turned over and went to sleep. He had become strangely dull and incurious; every day he
worked at the press, making impressions, heaving the bar to and fro until he seemed stunned with fatigue and monotony. In
the evenings Sikander dropped into his bed and slept twisted in the sheets, insensible to the sounds and smells of Calcutta
that drifted in over the walls and kept Sanjay awake till late: Sanjay lay thinking about the courtesans of the pamphlets,
but was unable to bring himself to face the city by himself. After the voices quietened, and the wheels stopped creaking outside,
the smell still tormented Sanjay with its wood-smoke bitterness, rot, its syrupy heaviness, so that he whispered ‘Kali-katta,
Kali-katta’ even as he fell into sleep, dreaming of secrets.

One morning, Sorkar woke them up early, saying, ‘Come, come, you two, it is accounting-day and Markline Sahib wants to see
you, he has asked for you.’ He instructed them to wear their best clothes —Sikander’s black coat and Sanjay’s silk kurta —and
supervised their baths, then put them in a rickshaw, one on either side of himself, placed a roll of paper in his lap, and
set off. The city slid past them, and then they had to get in a ferry to cross the Hooghly; the morning sun came off the water,
the single sweep creaked in the lock, and the boatman sang an incomprehensible Bengali song full of longing. Then, while Sanjay
was still unsteady from the motion of the water, they were at the house, a bungalow set far back behind a white wall, amongst
clipped hedges and walks. They waited in an ante-chamber, sitting uncomfortably on thick couches, amidst small brown tables
laden with silver, an elephant’s leg umbrella-stand, paintings of pastoral landscapes from some cool clime, and under a series
of mounted heads. A tall domestic, dressed in white, came in and motioned them forward, towards a large double door. ‘Come.’

At the lintel Sorkar laid a hand on Sanjay’s shoulder. ‘Your shoes,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘You have to take them off.’

Sanjay felt anger bubbling up from his stomach, and knew his face was flushing, but Sikander was already bending to his boots.

‘Not you, baba,’ the servant said to Sikander.

But the boots were already off, and then Sanjay had to hurry to get his sandals off as Sikander pushed through the door, animated
for the first time in weeks.

The Englishman was seated on a long cane armchair, his feet up on its extended arms. Sanjay, finding it hard to look directly
into the blue eyes, stared instead at the white shirt, the brown pants and boots splattered with mud, the long muscular length
of arm under the rolled-up cuff; the marble was icy under Sanjay’s feet.

‘Are you James?’ Markline said, and Sanjay surprised himself by understanding every word, despite the accent —he felt a sudden
surge of confidence, and looked up: the man’s hair was blond and fine, falling across his forehead, his skin red and a little
wrinkled, but healthy, his teeth yellowed and clamped firmly around a long brown cigarette.

‘Sikander.’

‘I see,’ Markline said, leaning forward, heels clicking on the floor. ‘I see.’ Sikander met his gaze without fear, and Sanjay
thought, pridefully, for the first time in his life, my brother. Markline suppressed a smile and turned his head towards him:
‘And this is the boy from the other family?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Sorkar said.

‘Very interesting,’ Markline said. ‘Cheeky-looking fellow’ He turned back to Sikander. ‘I knew your father well. We were young
men together in Calcutta. You must do proud by him, work hard.’ He lowered his head a little to peer at Sikander, who had
by now regained his customary indifference to the world; Markline looked up at Sorkar, his eyebrows raised, then towards Sanjay.
‘And this fellow? What does he want to be?’