Red Earth and Pouring Rain (48 page)

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‘Wake up, wake up.’ When he awoke it was dusk outside, Sikander was shaking him, and he could hear Markline’s voice outside.
‘Get up, he caught your damn type,’ Sikander said. ‘He saw the letters were thick and the thickened letters appeared regularly
but he can’t figure out your code, so Sorkar told him it was just bad ink, runny, but he’s got his people outside searching
for a hidden type, where is it? He’s red in the face and looks ready to kill. They found Sorkar’s type under his stool but
they couldn’t tell for sure that it was different, he told them it was just a spare set. But if they find yours you know what
he’ll do.’

Sanjay gestured at his pillow and got up to peer outside, where he could make out dim shapes running about and hear things
being thrown around, and under everything the whisper, katharos, katharos.

‘Listen,’ Sikander said. ‘We can’t hide it in here. Our retreat’s cut off, there’s no way out except through the court-yard,
there’s four of them besides Markline, but if you create a distraction I could maybe —’

‘No need,’ Sanjay said. ‘Here, give them to me.’

‘What? What for?’

‘Give. I’m hungry.’

‘Listen, you’re dreaming or something still.’

‘No, I’m not dreaming, I see very clearly now. Look, I’ll even take the band off and look at you double-eyed and say clearly,
give them to me, I’m hungry. I see now this has to happen whether we want it to or not.’

‘What? What are you talking about? What are you going to do?’

‘Give.’

Sanjay took a packet and opened one corner of it, raised his chin and opened his mouth until his jaw cracked, and then poured
the letters in, in a single continuous stream, hard-edged, rattling, he felt his gullet expand and his tongue lacerate and
his mouth filled with blood but they went in one by one and together and then the paper was empty.

‘More.’

‘O my mother, how did you do that?’

‘I am our mother’s son. I can do anything. More. Italics next, if you please.’ He could feel a ghastly grin stetching his
face; one by one Sanjay
opened the packets and felt the type descend, felt it in his throat and chest, felt it reach his stomach; he felt it weigh
his body and harden his skin.

‘Come,’ he said, when it was finished, spitting blood. ‘Let’s go and see the tamasha. Have they searched the roof?’

‘First place they looked.’

‘We’ll sit up there.’

‘Your throat, I saw them in your throat, it bulged like a python’s belly. It’s black.’

‘What?’

‘Your throat.’

‘Come on.’

They went through the court-yard, raising their arms away from their bodies when Markline’s servants came towards them, look,
we have nothing. Sorkar was crouched on the ground in front of Markline, his head down, with Kokhun and Chottun just next
to him; Sanjay stared fearlessly at the Englishman and walked past him without a word. On the roof, as he lowered himself
into a squat, in an area of shadow where he could look into the court-yard below without being seen, he felt something sticky
running down the backs of his thighs; he sat and opened his mouth and let the blood flow down his chin.

‘We have to get you a vaid,’ Sikander said.

‘Nothing’s going to happen to me, be still.’

Below, there was a shout, and a few moments later a red-wrapped package was laid at Markline’s feet. ‘Could this be it?’ he
said. ‘Looks too small to me, and besides I wonder if you’d really have the audacity to use Bacon’s code in a book you knew
I was going to read. But this was kept like a secret, tucked away behind clothes and such, was it not? Let’s see what it is.’
He lifted away a flap and the pale yellow leather shone through the twilight. ‘I’ll be damned! Here it is! My stolen book!’
He threw himself back in his chair, then leaned forward to put his forearms on his knees, his face close to Sorkar’s. ‘Look
at me. Why did you keep it for so long?’ Sorkar shrugged. ‘What are we to do with you? I come to investigate one sin and find
no evidence of it only to find another grown pale and cracked with age. Shall we send you home? Shall we have you jailed?
Shall we have you whipped? How shall the punishment suit the crime? How will you bear up? Why, you seem
sullen, do you blame me if I punish you? Do remember, dear fellow, the words of the great poet,
glorius mundi
himself, “To punish me for what you make me do, Seems much unequal —”’

‘Willy’ Sorkar said.

‘What?’

‘It was Shakespeare, not the other.’

‘What have we here? A Stratfordian? A Stratfordian who speaks out despite the threat of violence, the possibility of a whipping,
the sack and forced return to the ancestral village, perhaps jail and a starving family! I see now what must happen, what
we must have: a public burning, a demonstration of the eventual destruction of all error and misbelief, a dissipation of rank
superstition and blind trust. A torch, bring that torch here. Now, my dear fellow, this is how it will be: you will take that
tome, and page by page, starting with that atrocious portrait of the imposter, burn it, thereby admitting the error of your
ways and the giving up of your claims.’

Above, Sikander had to get up and move away from Sanjay, because a black pool had formed on the roof, a sluggish puddle an
inch thick and widening every moment; despite the flow from his body, from his mouth and anus, Sanjay felt himself getting
stronger: his body was becoming heavier and heavier, and now he noticed that his double vision was ebbing, that his two images
of the world were slowly but unmistakably converging. He watched the scene below with detachment, feeling anger in some remote,
alien part of himself, hidden by an inevitable crust of calm and acceptance; and below, Sorkar looked up quickly at Markline,
his dark face and white eyes in a flickering pool of light, no anger or pain, and without protest he took the torch, opened
the book and ripped off, cleanly, the picture of the earringed man with sad eyes. In the clear gold liquid of the fire the
Stratford man’s face blackened and blackened and then disappeared. The pages hardly whispered, a quick crackle, before they
disappeared in the leaping convection of the flame; when it was all finished there was an infinitesimally thin layer of black
ash over the court-yard, a touch of bitterness in the air, the sky black overhead, and Markline left without another word.

When Sanjay descended from the roof, his body was encrusted by a black layer of blood from his mouth to his toes; it covered
him like a new
skin and cracked as he moved. He felt each step he took as a metallic impact that started at his heel and vibrated throughout
his body; his flesh was now so dense that he was afraid he would leave imprints on the brick of the court-yard.

‘I can see you clearly,’ he said to Sorkar. ‘The doubleness is gone.’

‘What happened to you?’ Sorkar said.

‘He ate his type,’ Sikander said. ‘Swallowed it.’

Sorkar uncrossed his legs and leaned forward in the darkness: ‘And he is still alive.’

‘I feel strong,’ Sanjay said. ‘Stronger than ever in my life.’

‘So he cured you after all,’ Sorkar said, laughing shortly.

‘I have to wash myself,’ Sanjay said, taking Sikander’s arm as he walked past him and leading him away. ‘Alexander’s voice
is gone too. I wish to be gone from here,’ he whispered into Sikander’s ear. ‘Away from Englishmen.’

‘Wait,’ Sorkar called after him. ‘What was it that you hid in his book?’

‘We have a right to know,’ Kokhun said.

‘What was the message? What was the code?’ Chottun said.

‘Just read it,’ Sanjay said.

‘There was no code?’ Sorkar said.

‘No mathematical code. Just pick the letters with the thickened serifs.’

‘Why couldn’t Markline read it?’

‘It’s in Hindi. He must have thought it was gibberish.’

‘You took a risk.’

‘No risk. If he lived in this country for two hundred years he wouldn’t gain a word of Hindi, and he’s too proud to ask.’

‘What was the message?’

‘It was this: “This book destroys completely, this book is the true murderer.” Just that, repeated again and again. Excuse
me. I must wash myself.’

‘Yes,’ Sorkar said. ‘We must get back to work.’

‘Work? After all this? After what he did?’

‘I must work.’

‘He insulted you.’

‘Yes.’ Sorkar struggled to his feet and walked heavily towards the press, followed by Kokhun and Chottun.

In the bath Sanjay poured bucket after bucket of cold water over his head, holding up his face to the purifying stream. The
blackish layer on him dissolved and vanished, vanished down the drain in a thick stream clouded by black particles, and it
seemed to him that the skin revealed underneath was more pale than he remembered; soon he was clean again, all the colour
gone, except what looked like a purple-bluish bruise which encircled his throat like a collar. He took up his eye-band, shook
it out, folded it over into a wide strip and wrapped it around his throat; as he did this Sikander appeared at the door.

‘I wish to be gone from here,’ Sanjay said.

‘Yes,’ Sikander said.

‘Away from here, away from Englishmen. They have a monotonous tendency to come into my life and make it uncomfortable.’

‘I see that.’

‘I wish to be delivered of their judgements. Let’s go tonight. Now’

‘Yes.’

‘Quietly.’

‘You won’t say good-bye to Sorkar Moshai?’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘Why?’

‘He is a coward without honour.’

‘You are a fool. He is the bravest man you will ever meet.’

‘You say good-bye to him.’

‘I will. I will touch his feet.’

As Sikander turned away, Sanjay called out to him: ‘Let us go to Lucknow’

‘Why Lucknow?’

‘I wish to be a writer. I wish to have women.’

‘You wish a lot of things tonight.’

‘I see things very clearly now’

He waited in the lane outside for Sikander; the night was broken by lonely barking, and a breeze fluttered sheets and beds
and set windows creaking. Sanjay imagined it springing from the sea, whistling from the dunes into the continent, unknowing
and impervious to those it
whipped over; he felt it pressing at his throat, close about his neck like a vice.

Sikander stepped from the darkness, soundless as always: ‘Let’s go.’ They walked into the whole and unbroken black. ‘Sorkar
said to tell you good-bye, he sends his blessing. He said not to be angry like that, and said, Willy is my boy, tell you,
to tell you, Willy is my boy. He said, tell him, tell him about the Englishman:

It is himself, his own self’s better part,

His eye’s clear eye, his dear heart’s dearer heart,

His food, his fortune, and his sweet hope’s aim,

His sole earth’s heaven, and his heaven’s claim.

He also said something else about the Englishman.’

‘What?’ said Sanjay.

‘He said Markline is the most generous of men: he gives to charities, he sets up hospitals for the poor, he is angered and
maddened by injustice and tyranny, he works harder than any man.’

‘Is that why Sorkar chooses to stay with him?’

‘No. Sorkar Chacha said it is this generosity which makes Markline dangerous.’

‘Yes.’

‘He said to be well.’

‘Yes.’

Then they were both quiet, and they walked on, their faces set towards the sunrise, night their sanctuary: in this fragile
darkness, delivered of the malignant judgements of reason, the past and present are the same, and the future is lit by the
radiant light of hope, and the spirits of your ancestors walk beside you; in the trembling of the earth underneath and the
movements of indistinct animals is all the pain of the mother, who loves the universe and makes it well.

In Lucknow they found a city mad with poetry. They reached the town one morning many days later at sunrise, and were stunned
into silence by a song that lifted off the waters of the Gomti like the sun’s fire and that dazzled them with its need to
live; they sat on the river-bank and watched the egret and the heron curve against the darkness of the water, the morning
mist vanish slowly, the distant minarets and cupolas of
the city appear pink and then white as the muezzins called to prayer. The song vanished finally, seeming not to stop but to
recede into the silence from which it had come, and afterwards neither Sanjay nor Sikander could remember what the lyrics
had been, and they were left only with a memory of longing.

‘Who was that singing?’ Sanjay called out to a bazaar boy who was walking to the bridge nearby, carrying a pot on his head.

‘Whoever has sung a song, ever?’ sang the boy. ‘It is the song that sings the players.’ He walked on, swinging one arm jauntily,
humming.

‘These Lucknow types are mad,’ Sanjay said.

How mad they were became even more evident as the sun came up: a kulfi-seller set up his cart near the bridge, and a crowd,
mostly of young boys, formed around him; the boys shouted insults at him, and he replied to each in verse, never at a loss
for an answer: he was, it seemed, a kulfi-seller famous for his wit and erudition. Sanjay and Sikander watched him sell his
kulfis to people who came more for his verses than his confections, and as afternoon drew on they heard tablas burp questioningly
and sitars quaver; voices tested hesitatingly: sa-re-ga-ma-pa, sa-re-ga.

‘We’re in the fast section of town,’ Sikander said.

‘Good,’ said Sanjay. ‘Where I want to be. But are you hungry?’

‘Very. And you?’

‘Yes.’ But there was no money left; they had survived for the last two days of the journey on the kindness of peasants and
an occasional charitable serai established for the help of travellers. ‘What to do?’

Sikander shrugged; it was becoming clear to Sanjay that they were going to have to steal, and the only question was whether
they were going to try it in daylight, when the food-stuffs were laid out for the taking, or whether they had the patience
to wait for night. In either case he was not scared of being caught: to go filching with Sikander, the natural master of stealth
and skill, was surely to go hunting with a ghostly and swift-stepping assassin —the quarry would not even know it had been
cut clean, its fat flesh stripped away.