The Glass Palace (66 page)

‘What's the matter?' Alison said to Dinu. ‘What's happening?'

Dinu stepped up to face the guards. ‘
Kya hua
?' he said, addressing them in Hindustani. ‘Why've you stopped us?'

‘You can't go through.'

‘Why not?'

‘Don't you have eyes?' a guard said to him brusquely. ‘Can't you see that this train's only for Europeans?'

‘What?'

‘You heard—it's only for Europeans.'

Dinu swallowed, trying to keep his composure. ‘Listen,' he said carefully, ‘that can't be true . . . This is wartime. We were told that this was an evacuation train. How can it be only for Europeans? There must be some mistake.'

The guard looked him in the eye, and gestured at the train with his thumb. ‘You've got eyes of your own,' he said. ‘
Dekh lo—
take a look.'

Craning over the guard's shoulder, he looked up and down the platform, at the train's windows: he could not see a single face that looked Malay or Chinese or Indian.

‘This is impossible . . . it's madness.'

‘What? What's impossible?' Alison tugged at his arm. ‘Dinu, tell me, what's going on?'

‘The guards say this train is only for whites . . .'

Alison nodded. ‘Yes. I had a feeling that it would be— that's how things are . . .'

‘How can you say that, Alison?' Dinu was frantic now and sweat was pouring down his face. ‘You can't put up with this stuff . . . Not now. Not when there's a war . . .'

Dinu spotted a uniformed Englishman, walking along the platform, checking a roster. Dinu began to plead with the guards: ‘Listen—let me through—just for a minute . . . just to have a word with that officer over there . . . I'll explain to him; I'm sure he'll understand.'

‘Not possible.'

Dinu lost his temper. He shouted into the guard's face. ‘How can you stop me? Who's given you the right?'

Suddenly a third man appeared. He was dressed in a railway uniform and he too appeared to be Indian. He herded them away from the entrance, towards a flight of stairs that led back to the street. ‘Yes please?' he said to Dinu. ‘I am the station master—please tell me: what is the problem?'

‘Sir . . .' Dinu made an effort to keep his voice even. ‘They are not letting us through . . . They say the train is only for Europeans.'

The station master smiled apologetically. ‘Yes—that is what we have been given to understand.'

‘But how can that be? . . . This is wartime . . . This is an evacuation train.'

‘What can I say? Why, in Penang, Mr Lim, the magistrate, was turned back even though he had an official evacuation letter. The Europeans would not let him board the ferries because of his being Chinese.'

‘You don't understand . . .' Dinu began to plead. ‘It's not just Europeans who are in danger . . . You can't do this . . . It's wrong.'

The station master pulled a face, shrugging dismissively. ‘I do not see what is so wrong with it. After all it is common sense. They are the rulers; they are the ones who stand to lose.'

Dinu's voice rose. ‘That's nonsense,' he shouted. ‘If that's the way you look at it, then the war's already lost. Don't you see? You've conceded everything worth fighting for . . .'

‘Sir,' the station master glared at him, ‘there is no reason to shout. I am just doing my job.'

Dinu raised his hands and grabbed hold of the station master's collar. ‘You bastard,' he said, shaking him. ‘You bastard . . . it's you who're the enemy. People like you—just doing their jobs . . . you're the enemy.'

‘Dinu,' Alison screamed. ‘Look out!'

Dinu felt a hand closing on the back of his neck, wrenching him away from the station master. A fist slammed into his
face, knocking him to the floor. His nostrils filled with the metallic smell of blood. He looked up to see the two guards glaring angrily down at him. Alison and Saya John were holding them off. ‘Let him be. Let him be!'

Alison reached down and helped Dinu to his feet. ‘Come on, Dinu—let's go.' She picked up their luggage and ushered Dinu and Saya John down the stairs. When they were back on the street, Dinu steadied himself against a lamp-post and put his hands on Alison's shoulders. ‘Alison,' he said, ‘Alison— maybe they'll let you on, by yourself. You're half-white. You have to try, Alison.'

‘Shh.' She put a hand over his mouth. ‘Don't say that, Dinu. I wouldn't think of it.'

Dinu wiped the blood from his nose. ‘But you have to leave, Alison . . . With your grandfather—you heard what Ah Fatt said. One way or another you have to go . . . You can't stay at Morningside any more . . .'

From inside the station there was a piercing whistle. All around them, people began to run, crowding into the station's entrance, pushing at the gates. Dinu, Alison and Saya John held on to each other's arms, anchoring themselves to the lamp-post.

At last they heard the train pulling away. ‘It's gone,' said Saya John.

‘Yes, Baba,' Alison said quietly. ‘It's gone.'

Dinu stepped back and picked up a suitcase. ‘Let's go and find Ilongo,' he said.

‘Tomorrow morning we'll go back to Morningside.'

‘To stay?'

Dinu shook his head. ‘I'll stay there, Alison,' he said. ‘They won't harm me—I don't have anything particular to be afraid of. But you and your grandfather—with your connections— American and Chinese . . . There's just no telling what they would do to you. You have to go . . .'

‘But how, Dinu?'

At last Dinu said the words they'd both been dreading:

‘The Daytona . . . It's the only way, Alison.'

‘No.' She threw herself on him. ‘Not without you.'

‘It'll be all right, Alison.' He was careful to speak quietly, feigning a confidence that he was far from feeling. ‘I'll join you soon . . . in Singapore, you'll see. We won't be long apart.'

It was dark when Arjun returned to consciousness. The sensation in his leg had subsided to a raw, throbbing pain. As his mind cleared Arjun realised that a stream of water was flowing past him and the culvert was resounding to a dull, drumming noise. It took him several minutes to understand that it was raining.

Just as he was beginning to stir, Arjun felt Kishan Singh's hand tightening on his shoulder, in warning. ‘They're still around, sah'b,' Kishan Singh whispered. ‘They've posted pickets in the plantation. They're waiting.'

‘How close are they? Within earshot?'

‘No. They can't hear us in the rain.'

‘How long was I out?'

‘More than an hour, sah'b. I bandaged your wound. The bullet passed cleanly through your hamstring. It'll be all right.'

Arjun touched his thigh gingerly. Kishan Singh had unwrapped his puttees, rolled up his trousers and applied a field dressing. He'd also made a kind of cradle to keep his leg out of the water, by propping two sticks against the sides of the culvert.

‘What shall we do now, sah'b?'

The question confounded Arjun. He tried to look ahead but his mind was still clouded by pain and he could think of no clear plan. ‘We'll have to wait them out, Kishan Singh. Tomorrow morning we'll see.'

‘
Han,
sah'b.' Kishan Singh seemed relieved.

Lying motionless in the inches-deep water, Arjun became acutely aware of his surroundings: of the wet folds of cloth that were carving furrows into his skin, of the pressure of
Kishan Singh's body, stretched out beside him. The culvert was filled with the smell of their bodies: the mildewed, rain-soaked, sweat-stained odour of their uniforms, the metallic smell of his own blood.

His mind strayed, disordered by the pain in his leg. He remembered suddenly the look that Kishan Singh had given him on the beach that day, when he came back from the island with Alison. Was it scorn that he'd seen in his eyes— a judgement of some kind?

Would Kishan Singh have done what he had? Allowed himself to make love to Alison; to prey upon her; to betray Dinu, who was both a friend and something more? He didn't know himself why he'd been driven to do it; why he'd wanted her so much. He'd heard some of the chaps saying that these things came on you in wartime—on the front. But Kishan Singh was on the front too—and it was hard to think of him doing anything like that. Was that part of the difference between being an officer and a
jawan—
having to impose yourself, enforce your will?

It occurred to him that he would have liked to talk about this. He remembered that Kishan Singh had once told him that he'd been married off at the age of sixteen. He would have liked to ask Kishan Singh: what was it like when you were married? Had you known your wife before? On the night of your wedding how did you touch her? Did she look you in the face?

He tried to form the sentences in his head and found that he did not know the right words in Hindustani; did not even know the tone of voice in which such questions could be asked. These were things he did not know how to say. There was so much that he did not know how to say, in any language. There was something awkward, unmanly even, about wanting to know what was inside one's head. What was it that Hardy had said the night before? Something about connecting his hand and his heart. He'd been taken aback when he said that; it wasn't on for a chap to say that kind of thing. But at the same time, it was interesting to think that Hardy—or anyone
for that matter, even he himself—might want something without knowing it. How was that possible? Was it because no one had taught them the words? The right language? Perhaps because it might be too dangerous? Or because they weren't old enough to know? It was strangely crippling to think that he did not possess the simplest tools of self-consciousness— had no window through which to know that he possessed a within. Was this what Alison had meant, about being a weapon in someone else's hands? Odd that Hardy had said the same thing too.

Waiting for the minutes to pass he could feel his mind fixing on his wounded leg. The pain grew steadily, mounting in intensity until it saturated his consciousness, erasing all other sensation. He began to breathe in gasps, through gritted teeth. Then, through the fog of pain in his head, he became aware of Kishan Singh's hand, gripping his forearm, shaking his shoulder, in encouragement.

‘
Sabar karo, sah'b
; it'll pass.'

He heard himself say: ‘I don't know how long I can last,

Kishan Singh.'

‘You can last, sah'b. Just hold on. Be patient.'

Arjun had a sudden premonition of blacking out again, sinking face first into the rainwater, drowning where he lay. In panic he clutched at Kishan Singh, holding on to his arm as though it were a life raft.

‘Kishan Singh, say something. Talk. Don't let me pass out again.'

‘Talk about what, sah'b?'

‘I don't care. Just talk, Kishan Singh—about anything. Tell me about your village.'

Hesitantly Kishan Singh began to speak.

‘The name of our village is Kotana, sah'b, and it's near Kurukshetra—not far from Delhi. It's as simple a village as any, but there is one thing we always say of Kotana . . .'

‘What is that?'

‘That in every house in Kotana you will find a piece of the world. In one there is a hookah from Egypt; in another a box from China . . .'

Speaking through a wall of pain, Arjun said: ‘Why is that, Kishan Singh?'

‘Sah'b, for generations every Jat family in Kotana has sent its sons to serve in the army of the English sarkar.'

‘Since when?'

‘Since the time of my great-grandfather, sah'b—since the Mutiny.'

‘The Mutiny?' Arjun recalled Lieutenant-Colonel Buckland's voice, speaking of the same thing. ‘What does the Mutiny have to do with it?'

‘Sah'b, when I was a boy, the old men of the village used to tell us a story. It was about the Mutiny. When the uprising ended and the British re-entered Delhi it came to be known that a great spectacle was to be held in the city. From Kotana a group of elders was deputed to go. They set off at dawn and walked, with hundreds of others, towards the southern postern of the old capital. When they were still far away they saw that the sky above the city was black with birds. The wind carried an odour that grew stronger as they approached the city. The road was straight, the ground level and they could see a long way into the distance. A puzzling sight lay ahead. The road seemed to be lined by troops of very tall men. It was as though an army of giants had turned out to stand guard over the crowd. On approaching closer, they saw that these were not giants, but men—rebel soldiers whose bodies had been impaled on sharpened stakes. The stakes were arranged in straight lines and led all the way to the city. The stench was terrible. When they returned to Kotana the elders gathered the villagers together. They said, “Today we have seen the face of defeat and it shall never be ours.” From that day on, the families of Kotana decided that they would send their sons to the army of the English sarkar. This is what our fathers told us. I do not know whether this story is true or false, sah'b, but it is what I heard when I was a boy.'