The Day of the Scorpion (30 page)

‘How did Kumar explain the marks?’

‘Explain? Oh, Master Kumar never explained anything. He was above explanations. His speciality was dumb insolence. He refused to explain the marks. He refused to answer any question until he was back at my headquarters and was told what he was being charged with. His answer to that was that he hadn’t seen Miss Manners since a night two or three weeks before when he’d gone to a local temple with her. What struck me as extraordinary really was that she said exactly the same thing. They were both so specific about their last meeting having been the visit to the temple it was as if they’d rehearsed it, or rather as if he’d terrified her or hypnotized her somehow into using just those words: I’ve not seen Hari Kumar since the night we visited the temple: while he for his part said: I’ve not seen Miss Manners since the night we visited the temple. I thought it didn’t ring true, but everyone else thought it would sound pretty conclusive in court. I always hoped we could get it into court because on oath and in those sort of surroundings the terror and shame I think she was suffering might have been lifted. I’m sure she was under a kind of spell. I’ll never understand it. I can never get it out of my head either. The picture of her running home as she did, all alone along those badly lit streets. I expect you know she died nine months later, in child-birth?’

‘Yes. As I recall it, her aunt inserted notices.’

‘That was extraordinary too, wasn’t it? Inserting notices. The death, yes. But the birth of an illegitimate half-caste kid whose father couldn’t be identified?’ Merrick raised his hands and let them fall again on to the balustrade.

‘It shocks you?’

‘Yes.’ Merrick paused, as if considering the nature and
depth of his reaction. ‘It’s like a direct challenge to everything sane and decent that we try to do out here.’

‘It was a human life lost, and a human life beginning. Why not mark the occasion?’

‘I’m sorry. I can’t see it that way.’

‘Most of your countrymen would agree with you,’ Bronowsky said. ‘I find it sad that in the end Miss Manners inspires more contempt than she does compassion, but I recognize that this is the way it has to be. You English all felt that she didn’t want you, want any of you, and of course among exiles that is a serious breach of faith. It amounts to treachery, really. Poor lady. The Indians didn’t want her either. There were those things that happened to Indian boys because of her. Happened or didn’t happen. In any case they went to prison, and no one seriously believed their political affiliations or crimes or whatever it was that was used as an excuse to keep them under lock and key were of a kind to warrant detention. Even the English thought it a pretty transparent ruse to hold the suspects, a handy alternative to punishing the culprits. It was the kind of ruse that wouldn’t have worked in more settled times. One forgets how highly charged the whole emotional and political atmosphere was. There were English here who talked as if a new Mutiny had broken out. Later, I remember, some of your more liberal-minded people had prickings of conscience. There was an article in the
Statesman
. I expect you saw it. It interested me but I looked in vain for any further developments. I thought, well that police officer was sticking his neck out but no one is going to cut it off. He’s weathered the storm. I’m sorry to realize you didn’t. Sundernagar was something of a back-water, wasn’t it? Tell me, if you’d had a chance to serve in the police force of an Indian state such as Mirat, would you have been interested? Or would the army have exerted a stronger fascination? I know how much many of you young Englishmen in the civil and the police dislike the general policy of treating these as reserved occupations.’

‘Would
you
have given me such a chance?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps not. But I’ve never been inhibited, by any reservations. I might have about the consequences, in
taking controversial action and making unpopular appointments, if that action or appointment attracts me strongly enough. My own appointment, after all, was monumentally controversial. Let me put it this way, rather. Were you not presently committed in quite a different direction, I should be interested to discuss such a possibility with you.’

‘May I ask why?’

Bronowsky smiled. ‘Because my instinct tells me you are something of an anachronism in this modern world of files, second-hand policies and disciplinary virtues. The Indian states are an anachronism too. The rubber-stamp administrator or executive is too advanced an animal for
us
, although ideally that is the likeness one looks for in the outward appearance. Detachment. Objectivity. Absolute incorruptibility – I don’t mean in the venal sense of the word, or the word’s opposite I suppose I should say. But a man can be – swerved – by his own passions, and to me incorruptibility always suggests a certain lack of concern. The concept of justice as a lady with a blindfold and a pair of scales someone else may lay a decisive finger on without her noticing has often struck me as questionable. It presupposes a readiness in those among whom she dispenses her gifts to keep their hands to themselves. You must agree that would be a perfect world and in such a world she would be a redundant figure. But we are dealing in imperfection. Keep the figure by all means, as a symbol of what might be achieved. Keep the illusion of detachment. Cultivate its manner. But admit it cannot be a controlling force without compromising itself. What is detachment, if it’s without the power to make itself felt? Ah, that’s the common factor – power! To exercise power in Mirat you need eyes in the back of your head as well as an unblinkered pair in front. And you need men around you who do not lack concern, who have enough concern to be in danger of it getting the better of them and leading them into error. God save us anyway from a world where there’s no room for passionate mistakes.’

‘You think I made one?’

‘I think it’s possible. For instance you haven’t said what led you to the hut where the boys were celebrating, or to Kumar’s house where you found him bathing his face. It strikes me as
a significant omission. It suggests that your only reason for visiting Kumar so soon after you heard Miss Manners had been raped by a gang of unknown Indians was that Kumar had been associated with her in the past.’

‘You think that reason insufficient?’

Bronowsky shook his head and looked down at his shoes, considering. ‘This hut,’ he said, ‘where the other boys were found half-drunk. It was close to the Bibighar?’

‘Just the other side of the river, in some waste ground.’

‘And Kumar’s house?’

‘That was also on the other side of the river.’

‘In roughly the same area as the hut?’

‘No. But not far.’

‘How soon after the rape, approximately, would you say you found the boys in the hut?’

‘At the time I estimated it at approximately three-quarters of an hour.’

‘Time enough for the five boys to get across the river to the hut and open a bottle.’

‘Of course.’

‘And get half drunk.’

Merrick paused. ‘I used the expression loosely.’

‘All the same it was the impression you had. That they were in liquor.’

‘Yes.’

‘And I suppose about ten minutes later you got to Kumar’s house?’

‘Yes.’

‘So he had had at least three-quarters of an hour to get away from the Bibighar?’

‘Yes.’

‘And yet he was still bathing his face?’

‘Yes.’

‘Perhaps he hadn’t gone straight home.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘He could have gone to the hut with the others and had a drink. Then one of them might have noticed the tell-tale marks in the light of whatever lamp they lit, and he thought it wiser to go home and clean up.’

‘Very possibly.’

‘There was a lamp?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did they say they’d seen Kumar that night?’

‘They said they hadn’t. Only two or three of them were friends of his so far as I knew. They insisted they’d spent the whole evening in the hut, alone.’

‘Where might Kumar have gone if he hadn’t gone straight home?’

‘Anywhere. He might have waited in his own garden until he thought it safe to go in and upstairs.’

‘Without being seen by his aunt, you mean?’

‘His aunt, or a servant.’

‘If he’d gone straight home how long would it have taken him?’

‘About fifteen minutes. Twenty at most.’

‘Walking?’

‘Yes – walking.’

‘Say ten or less if he’d had a bicycle?’

Again Merrick hesitated.

‘Naturally.’

‘I wonder about the business of bathing his face, you see. Working from the basis of the earliest moment he could have got home and into his room and started to clean himself up he would then have had a good half-hour before you arrived.’

‘If he did go straight home then half an hour wasn’t enough, was it? He was bathing his face. Do you really think I had insufficient reason for going to his home? The boys in the hut first, boys of Kumar’s kind, two or three of them Kumar’s friends, swilling hooch, laughing and joking. What more natural than that having started combing the area of the Bibighar and found them I should go straight to look for Kumar?’

‘Well forgive me. That wasn’t clear to me, the order and circumstances of arrest. All this is impertinent, I know, but perhaps not without interest to yourself, to talk about it again, with a stranger. And I am trying to get a picture. For instance, presumably you went immediately to the scene of the crime, the Bibighar, in case some of those fellows were still there and in any case to examine it. Now, if you stood in the Bibighar and said Yes, this is Kumar’s work, would the
route you then took to Kumar’s house, presumably in a truck or jeep with some constables, would it have led you over the bridge and past the waste ground?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you saw the hut. I think earlier you used the word derelict. And perhaps we have established that there was a light showing
from
it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, is that the picture? That you saw the light, stopped the vehicle and rushed across the waste ground to the hut and found those boys?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, wasn’t there something strange about that? Didn’t it strike you as odd? There you had a group of young men supposedly guilty of the most heinous crime of all, the rape of a white girl, getting on for perhaps an hour after they’d left her, but barely a few minutes away from the scene of the crime, in what sounds like a rather conspicuous place, a derelict hut in the middle of some waste ground, showing a light, laughing and joking and getting sozzled.’

‘You find that inconsistent?’

‘I do rather. It sounds to me more like the behaviour of boys who’d done what they insisted they’d done, and no more. Spent the whole evening in the hut, drinking illicit liquor, lighting a lamp when it got dark, just intoxicated enough to be careless about who saw it. The distillation and drinking of illegal hooch is not a very serious misdemeanour.’

Merrick smiled. ‘You’ve drawn your picture out of context. You’re forgetting what day it was and what had happened during the day. It was the ninth of August. On the eighth the Congress passed their Quit India resolution. On the morning of the ninth we arrested not only leading Congressmen but Congress members of sub-committees throughout India. Everything had come to the boil. In the afternoon in a place called Tanpur some police were abducted and an English mission teacher called Miss Crane was attacked by hoodlums. The fellow with her, an Indian, was murdered. We got Miss Crane back into the Mayapore hospital at above five o’clock. Nobody knew what would happen next. Shopkeepers put up their shutters and people
stayed in their homes. I know the Congress has denied that there was any underground plan for rebellion. But I’d say later developments provided sufficient evidence of organized rebellion to make their denial look silly. Boys like the ones we arrested for the rape may not have been directly involved in that kind of organization, but that’s what they wanted, that’s what they had their hearts in, that’s the kind of activity that appealed to them. They laugh at Gandhi, you know, all that crowd. All that passive resistance and non-violence nonsense is just a joke to them, just as it’s a joke to the militant Hindu wing of the Congress and organizations like the Mahasabha and the RSSS. When you get down to the level of the educated fellow who thinks the world owes him a living in exchange for his matric or BA failed, the kind of chap who loathes the English who gave him the chance to rise above the gutters of the bazaar but is very happy to ape English manners and dress English style, then you’re down at a level where nothing but anarchy reigns. When trouble comes decent people in the towns put up their shutters and close their doors. In the villages they harbour their cattle and guard their property and their lives. And out come the badmashes in the countryside, and the hooligans in the cities. But in the cities a lot of the hooligans can quote Shakespeare at you. When I went across the river that night I wasn’t looking for people hiding in their homes, but foot-loose fellows like those in the hut. You see my interpretation of your picture of the fellows in the hut is quite different. What made them careless, showing a light, lounging around only a few minutes away from the Bibighar was an intoxication that only had a bit to do with the liquor. The rest was cockiness. They’d had a white woman. They thought the country was rising. Their day was dawning. They could see it quite clearly. The
raj
was on the run. The long knives were out. In a day or two the white man would be crawling, licking their shoes, and there’d be as many white women to rape or murder as they wanted.’

‘And Kumar?’

‘Kumar? Oh, Kumar! He was the worst of the lot. Have you heard of Chillingborough?’

‘Chillingborough . . . yes. One of your big public schools at home?’

‘Exactly. Well that’s where Kumar was educated. To hear him speak, I mean if you looked away while he spoke, he sounded just like an English boy of that type. His mother died very early and his father took him to England when he was about two with the express intention of bringing him up not only to act and sound like the English, but to
be
English. The father was rich, but got involved in some sort of financial trouble, lost all his money and died leaving Kumar penniless. The aunt of his in Mayapore, a decent enough woman she was too, paid his passage back to India and tried to look after him. But nothing was good enough for him. He couldn’t take what it involved, to be just another Westernized Indian boy in a place like Mayapore.’