The Crow Eaters (21 page)

‘… The water was almost finished; a few of us had a little left in our bottles. My men were crawling and flopping – and then our scout shouted from the top of a mound that he saw date-palms! Oh well, I can tell you, we crawled a bit faster!

‘The oasis had a suspiciously deserted look. There was a small hamlet, but no sign of man, camel or dog. I knew it was not safe going at it as we did – we should have taken some precautions – but my soldiers were half dead with thirst. They flung themselves on the sticky mud around the pool. Even as I drank I knew we were surrounded by natives concealed like wolves behind mud walls and mounds. They were Arabs – and there were only a handful of Musulmans amongst us. We were the original non-believing kafirs! We were done for!’

At this point Sir Noshirwan Jeevanjee Easymoney shifted his position in the chair, and adroitly freed the pinched fork of his pyjamas. Then he passed a cordial volley of wind.

The pause was timed to kill his audience with suspense; the gestures to establish an informal camaraderie and to demonstrate that though he might be a sir, and accustomed to the ways of British aristocracy, he was first and foremost a loyal and down-to-earth Parsi! He hawked phlegmatically and spat for good measure.

His audience did not move. The uncles leaned forward in their chairs as if they were listening to the story for the first time. The ladies chattered softly amongst themselves, debating the advantages of what they termed ‘cock-heeled’ shoes over leather soles. Only Freddy reciprocated with a
polite quantity of wind, anxious as he was to know the fate of the predecessor to the glass eye.

‘Do you know what I did, old chap?’ asked Sir Easymoney in English, turning his solitary eye upon Freddy. His nose was aquiline and his chiselled, long upper-lip permanently curved up at one end.

Freddy shook his head politely.

‘My good man, I spread my blanket on the sand and knelt down in the Mohammedan attitude of prayer, shouting “Allah-ho-Akbar!” a few times. I did not know what came after that, so I pretended to mumble under my breath; now raising my arms to heaven, now touching my nose to the blanket. My soldiers, following my lead, did the same.

‘We prayed till we were out of breath – but it had to end sometime – and then bloody hell broke loose! Our uniforms, our guns, our ruck-sacks, blankets, bottles, shoes were pillaged. Some of us were wounded. My eye was gouged out in honour of my rank, but our lives were spared!’

‘Jolly good shot! Jolly good shot!’ chortled Freddy, appreciatively slapping his thigh. And in one go he both congratulated his courageous host on his cunning and implied they were of a kind with his explosive use of ‘jolly good shots’.

In the course of the evening Sir Easymoney gratified Freddy by acknowledging this. They were discoursing on the bigoted attitude adopted by some natives when he said, ‘… Now take you and me: One leg in India and one leg in England. We are citizens of the world!’

And jolly good for jolly good, fart for fart, the cultures of the East and West met in these two worthies …

THE Junglewallas left Bombay four days after the wedding. They took with them all of Tanya’s considerable luggage.

Billy and Tanya had already boarded a train for Simla on the night of their marriage. After a month of honeymooning they were to go directly to Lahore.

Five thousand guests had assembled to witness the wedding ceremony that took place on a flower-bedecked stage. Tanya, wearing a white satin sari, heavy with silver and pearl embroidery, sat demurely on a carved chair. Billy sat on an identical chair wearing a tall, dark pagri-hat, and white coat and pyjamas. Two priests stood before them chanting and throwing rice, coconut slivers, and rose petals at them. Faredoon and Putli stood behind Billy and Sir and Lady Easymoney behind Tanya, as witnesses.

The officiating priest eventually recited, ‘… Say whether you have agreed to take this maiden named Tanya in marriage to this bridegroom in accordance with the rites and customs of the Mazda worshippers, promising to pay her 2000 dirhems of pure white silver and two dinars of standard gold of Nishahpur coinage?’

‘We have,’ answered Freddy and Putli.

‘And have you and your family with pure mind and truthful thoughts, words, and deeds, and for the increase of righteousness, agreed to give for ever and aye, this bride in marriage to Behram?’ the priest asked the bride’s witnesses.

‘We have agreed,’ they replied.

Then the priest asked, ‘Have you desired to enter into this contract with pure mind and until death do ye part?’

‘I have so desired,’ answered Billy and Tanya in unison.

After this the priest invoked the blessings of God on the married couple and advised them on how to conduct themselves properly.

The bridal couple were smothered in garlands and presented with thousands of envelopes containing money and gold coins.

It was a memorable wedding. Years after people still talked about it. Hedges had been levelled in the compound of the Taj Mahal Hotel to clear parking space for carriages and limousines. Openings were dug in the walls dividing the banquet rooms, reception rooms, and lobby of the Hotel to accommodate guests and facilitate the flow of service. Flowers were commissioned from Bangalore and Hyderabad, cheeses from Surat, and caviar from the Persian Gulf. There was lobster and wild-duck and venison. There was a bottle of Scotch and Burgundy for each guest; and ambulances, their motors idling, stood ready to convey the inebriated or over-stuffed to their homes or to the hospital. Two hundred Parsi families living in a charitable housing scheme and not invited to the party were each given a sack of flour, a ten-pound canister of rarefied butter, lentils and a box of Indian sweets. There was a Police Band, a Naval Band, a dance orchestra and an orchestra that played chamber music. There was singing.

The revels continued into the small hours of the morning but Tim and Billy left their wedding reception at about ten, changed, collected their light luggage and went to the station. They were seen off by their immediate families. Someone gave Tanya a packet of telegrams just as the train was about to move.

Tanya and Billy waved their handkerchiefs until the station lights were a blur. Then Tim retracted her torso from the open window, wiped a tear from her eye and sat down. Billy sat down beside her.

‘Well!’ he said awkwardly.

The train gave a jerk, making a clatter as it changed lines – and abruptly brought Tanya to an awareness of her surround
ings. The novelty of travel, of her brand new husband, the excitement of the alien and luxurious little compartment, all had their effect on her. She sprang up, enthusiastically switching on lights and fans and examined all the intriguing conveniences that could be pulled out or snapped in. She propped the folding table on its legs, put a glass in a slotted bracket and started unpacking. Laughing and prattling, she handed Billy things to put into the bathroom. Billy darted in and out of the toilet. He followed at her heels, bumping into her in the restricted space and apologising gravely each time he touched her divine flesh.

Towels, mugs, soap and toothbrushes were organised in the bathroom; their bunks, one above the other, were covered with bedsheets and stacked with pillows, the doors secured and the window shutters pulled down.

Billy and Tanya read their congratulation telegrams. Billy was touched by Harilal’s message. The old clerk’s long telegram ended with a fervent ‘… May God grant you son at His earliest convenience.’ Another telegram that delighted them was from Bhagwandas, an accountant Billy had employed a year back. It read, ‘I am bounding in delight that my boss is returning in couple.’

All the telegrams were gone through twice. Now what? Billy was restless. There was a job to be done, almost ritualistic in its symbolism, and Billy despaired of ever getting down to it.

He tried out his bed on the upper bunk, rumpling the sheets in the process. He jumped down, adroitly clearing Tim’s head, stretched his limbs and gave one of his exaggerated, roaring-lion yawns. Tim laughed at the peculiar face he pulled, and at the roar, and throwing his nightsuit at him, commanded gaily, ‘Get into the bathroom and change into this. And lock the door from inside.’

Billy emerged, grave and self-conscious in his crackling new cotton night-suit, looking as if his hands and legs had more joints than normal. The over-long sleeves had three dent-like creases where they had been folded and pressed, and
the diagonal indentation in his crisp pyjamas conveyed the impression that he had an additional knee in his thighs, and an ankle in his calf.

But Tanya did not laugh. The occasion was too momentous and her concept of it too uncertain. And she loved her husband. She sat demurely, hands folded in her lap, the flesh above the scooped neck of her nightdress and at the sides of her cut-away sleeves swelling beneath the filmy material.

Billy tore his eyes away, trying to appear unaffected, but his covert glances gave him a shifty-eyed and exceedingly sinister aspect. He removed his glasses.

Tanya pushed past him saying, ‘My turn. I’ll go to the bathroom now,’ and her bosom beneath the silken lace of her tiny bodice wobbled as delicately as dandelion fluff.

Billy plonked down on the bunk, wiping the perspiration from his face. He had been seeking the opportunity to be alone. Quickly he slipped the envelope, written all over in Putli’s fine round hand, underneath the pillows.

They sat on the bunk swinging their legs. Tanya knew something was in the offing, but her anticipation was undefined. Billy’s urges were more substantive but he wondered how to get matters going. At this rate they would reach Simla unconsummated – a betrayal of their whole future. The speed, sound, and swagger of the train accelerated their urgency at each circumvolution of the hurrying wheels.

Billy cleared his throat. ‘Tim, may I kiss you?’

Tanya removed her glasses, placed them carefully on the table and puckered her lips. Billy saw her for the first time without her glasses. She looked disquietingly child-like, and her small up-tilted eyes, for all the exuberance and cheek of her personality, were as ingenuous and trusting as a doe’s. He touched the faint indentation made by her glasses on the bridge of her nose; he brought his mouth close and Tanya closed her eyes.

Billy drew back. ‘Not like that!’ he said in a hoarse, plaintive whisper. His face was pinched and crumpled. ‘You don’t want to kiss me?’

‘But I kissed you,’ said Tanya astonished.

And suddenly he realised that he was the first man to ever kiss her and she knew no better.

‘That’s how you kiss your mother or father,’ he said, gluing his mouth to hers and forcing his tongue between her teeth. Her mouth tasted deliciously of minty toothpaste.

Tanya struggled, pushing at him with her hands. Desperately she bit his tongue.

Billy fell back with a cry. His eyes were smarting with pain and humiliation.

‘What did you do that for?’

‘You are a filthy sweeper fellow! Haven’t you studied hygiene? Poking your germs into my mouth!’

A chill ran up Billy’s spine. If this was her reaction to a kiss what would she do when he tried something else? Fortunately, he reflected, that at least would be away from her teeth.

He lifted his pyjamaed feet on to the bunk and leaned his head back. Tanya turned her face away.

‘But that’s how everyone kisses!’

‘Hah!’

‘O.K., if it upsets you so much I won’t kiss you again. O.K.?’ Billy’s tone was conciliatory. Tanya kept her face averted.

The engine blew a shrill whistle and there was a deafening rattle. Another train passed them. Tim turned about with a start.

‘Just another train like ours,’ said Billy putting his arms around her and the tension between them was dissipated.

After a while, attempting a fresh approach, he said, ‘Look under the pillow. There is something there for you.’

Tanya buried her inquisitive fingers beneath the stack of pillows and removed the envelope. It was sealed.

‘What’s this?’

‘Read.’

Tim read aloud, slowly deciphering the Gujarati script written on Billy’s behalf. As for all auspicious purposes, the ink used was red.

‘To my beloved wife Tanya, the sum of Rupees 101, for the privilege of undoing her tape – from your adoring and everlastingly devoted husband, Behram.’ ‘What on earth …! What tape?’ Tanya asked.

Billy blushed. ‘Your pyjamas or … knicker tape,’ he said feebly.

‘But I don’t wear tapes in my pyjamas or knickers! I wear elastic!’

Tanya jumped up, hoisted the hem of her night-dress clear to her chest and snapped the elastic in her flared rayon panties. ‘See?’ she said, stretching the waistband with her thumb and letting it go, but not before Billy had a reeling glimpse of a dark, triangular shadow. Zap! Zap! The elastic stung her waist and she lowered her nightdress.

Tanya was in high spirits after this demonstration; but not Billy. He felt his family had conspired to show him up to this girl for what he was – a boy who had his antecedents in the jungly villages of his forefathers. Obviously a tape was a vulgar, outmoded article, regarded by no one except his own fossilised family. The girl would talk to her sisters, and they would laugh at him. He felt betrayed and vaguely inferior, as when Tanya talked of her tennis courts and her swimming pool, or of the elephant her father gave her on her eleventh birthday, or of the cut-crystal reading lamps specially imported from Vienna when her brothers sat for their Matric examinations.

Tanya tore open the envelope and waved the hundred-rupee note victoriously. She retrieved her crocodile skin handbag from the rack and encased the note with an exultant and proprietory snap.

Her pleasure at the gift mollified Billy a little. But the persisting gloom of inferiority, and his sensational glimpse of black hair, aroused him to an ungovernable frenzy of excitement. Losing all self-control he suddenly flung Tanya back on the embankment of pillows, flung himself upon her, and pressed her with his weight.

Once again she surprised him. He had expected her to
throw him off. Instead, her body relaxed. It moulded itself to his shape and then grew rigid with anticipation.

This proved too much for Billy. He went to the toilet to wash.

Ever since babyhood Tanya had been safeguarded by a battery of nannies, sisters, and aunts, and by her mother. No man, old or young, servant or guest, was above suspicion. To judge from their attitude, all males were only awaiting the chance to commit unspeakable atrocities.

There was some justification for this, considering that most servants were celibate for months on end, visiting their villages and wives only once a year.

This repression worked both ways. A gigantic conspiracy was practised by an entire society to keep its girls ridiculously ‘innocent’. The wealthier the family the more ignorant the daughters. This carefully nurtured ignorance had a high market value in the choice of a bride. Tanya, although she was intelligent, and intelligently brought up, had remained totally innocent of the fundamentals of sex. She always had been dumbly in love with someone or other, obsessed and devastated by emotion, and utterly confused by the undefined cravings of her body.

When she was only six years old, Tanya had once gone to a festive
mela
accompanied by her nanny and a man servant. On the way back she wept with exhaustion, refusing to walk another step. The servant picked her up and sat her on his shoulders. She enjoyed the ride, holding his head and dangling her feet on his chest till they found a carriage for hire. At home she was full of prattle about the
mela
. Scarcely anyone listened. Suddenly Rodabai was all ears. ‘What did you say?’ she asked, swooping down on her. Tanya repeated that when she was very tired, the kind servant had carried her astride on his shoulders.

Rodabai placed a trembling hand on her palpitating bosom and screamed. The servant was summoned, scolded, and sacked. The nanny was stormed at and only forgiven when she fell at her Ladyship’s feet swearing that she would never allow such a thing to happen again.

Then, when Tanya was ten, some cousins visited from Poona. Among them was a randy thirteen-year-old who fell in love with her. At least that is what her precocious nine-year-old brother suggested: ‘What a sissy! Why does he always hang around you – is he in love or something?’

Her cousin taught her to make bows and arrows and flattered her with unexpected attentions. He exerted himself to do this and that; opening doors, vacating his seat and valiantly braving the ridicule of other young persons for her sake. He also led her, conspiratorially, into empty rooms. Once inside, he laid her on a bed and swayed his body full length on hers. She enjoyed the rhythm of his movements, the exciting intimacy of their fully clothed bodies, and lay docile beneath.

One day her withered, grey-haired nanny walked in on them. Tanya never forgot the accusing and sharp glower she directed at her cousin. He raised himself on his hands and knees with a sickly, sheepish smile. The sari-attired nanny stood there, glaring at the boy, her face quaking with wrath. There was no need for her to speak. The boy slunk from the room without a backward glance.