The Hope of Shridula (10 page)

The old woman struggled to pull herself upright and stumbled away through the paddy.

"Me, too!" said the woman with the loud voice. She also stood up and walked away.

"Come,
Amma,"
Shridula said. "Let us go, too."

Zia hesitated, but Shridula had already gotten to her feet and was adjusting her
sari.
"Daughter," Zia warned, "the landlord will not allow this disobedience. He will not let it go unpunished!"

In the next paddy, Ashish halted the black water buffalo and shaded his eyes. He stared in disbelief at the women.

"What have I started?" he murmured.

Boban Joseph sat alone in the gathering darkness, watching the full moon cast a ghostly glow over the mango grove. An owl called out from somewhere in the shadows. Boban Joseph shivered in spite of himself. He was not used to being alone. But after he sent Nihal Amos and his wife away from the house, the rest of Saji Stephen's family retreated to the back. The evening drew out long and lonely.

"Master!"

Boban Joseph started at his servant Udit's unexpected call. He opened his mouth to scold the fool for creeping up so silently, but the servant said, "Big trouble by the entrance to your new dairy, master. The workers caught an intruder and they say you must come."

"A thief, then. Is that what you mean to say?" Boban Joseph demanded as he leaped to his feet. "Prepare the cart!"

"Begging your pardon, master," Udit said, "I have your horse already prepared. You must make all haste!"

Boban Joseph hesitated.

"Your overseer . . . he has gathered workers. Already they prepare to fight the intruder, but they need your wisdom and guidance."

"I shall leave at once!"

Although Boban Joseph used to ride often, he seldom attempted to get up on a horse anymore. Yet it did make sense, for haste was most certainly called for in this situation. "Get me the whip!" he ordered. "And my knife, too."

Boban Joseph mounted his horse and rode awkwardly past the garden. He followed along the paths that led through the fields. He started at a face-saving trot, but as soon as he was out of sight, he slowed to an easy walk.

Even under a full moon, the narrow road was heavy with shadows and lined with dangerous thorn brambles. It made for a murderous combination. "Perhaps we should have insisted on the cart," Boban Joseph said to the horse. It gave him courage to hear a voice, even if it was only his own.

Boban Joseph passed by two fields not yet prepared for planting, then turned down the path that ran alongside the rice paddy Ashish had finished leveling that very day. The night was perfectly still. Not even an owl called out. Boban Joseph could hear nothing but the clop, clop, clop of his horse's hooves.

As the shadows shifted, Boban Joseph made out two men on horseback up ahead. They looked to be waiting at the juncture of two field paths.

"There they are. The thieves!" Boban Joseph breathed. Icy fear rose in his throat. He gasped for breath, his heart pounding.

Frantically, Boban Joseph looked about for Dinkar and the band of workers. He sighed in relief at the sound of muffled voices coming up behind him. From the tramp and clatter, it sounded to be a sizable number of men. Boban Joseph laughed out loud, his fear dissipating, replaced by a fresh bravado. He kicked at his horse's sides and plunged forward, bellowing, "Stop the thieves! Grab them!"

To Boban's surprise, the men on horseback didn't try to escape. Instead, they moved slowly toward him and stopped their horses in the middle of the path ahead. Boban Joseph glanced around in confusion. He started to call out to the group of men, but as they drew closer he saw by the light of the moon that they had pulled their
chaddars
off their heads and wrapped them so low over their faces that he couldn't make out who they were. Puzzled, Boban Joseph turned and stared from the men on foot to the two men on horseback.

Suddenly the group on foot ran toward him, yelling and swinging heavy clubs. Boban Joseph had no room to move his horse. He was trapped between the men advancing on foot and the two on horseback. On either side, bramble fences hemmed him in.

Boban Joseph's horse, panicked by the wild terror from behind and bellowed threats in front, did a quick-stepping sort of dance that nearly threw Boban from its back.

Some men in the advancing crowd thumped their clubs on the ground. Others waved them in the air.
What are you doing?
Boban Joseph wanted to ask.
Stop it! Stop it now!
he wanted to shout. But everything happened so fast that he couldn't get his wits about him. He couldn't think!

A hard blow smashed against Boban Joseph's shoulder and his arm went numb. Terror rose in his chest. He tried to jerk his frightened horse around, but the angry mob completely blocked the path. Another blow struck him squarely in the back, almost knocking the breath out of him. Fumbling for his knife, he tried again to turn his horse around, to head for home and safety. But before he could get his hand on his weapon, a long staff caught him a sharp blow in the head and knocked him off his horse. Boban Joseph tumbled directly into the needle-sharp barbs of the brambles.

Stunned, wounded, and bleeding—and helplessly entangled in the thorns—Boban Joseph screamed, "I will give you money! Let me go and you can have anything you want!"

But the men, now a vengeful mob, rained blow after vicious blow down on him. Boban's screams turns to piteous wails, his wails to whimpering pleas for mercy.

Using the last of his strength, Boban Joseph pulled himself painfully off the brambles and toppled to the ground. He curled up, his arms over his head in a vain attempt to block the beating. Even with his dying words, punctuated by the impact of the pounding clubs, he still sought to appease his unknown tormentors: "Please . . . please . . . Anything . . . I am . . . the landlord . . . and . . . I can give you . . . give you anything . . . Anything."

As the sun rose in a scorched sky to start another day, Shridula once more followed her mother to the nearer rice paddy. Again she hiked up her sari and tied it high. Again she hunkered down in the muddy water to plant yet another of the endless basketfuls of rice seedlings. One by one by one. Each six inches apart. Row after row after row.

In the field beyond, her father steered the black water buffalo through the clumped mud toward the east. That's when he saw the battered body of landowner Boban Joseph.

"Thieves," Dinkar said in answer to Ashish's cries for help. He clucked his tongue and shook his head. "It's the only answer for such an assault. An attack by thieves."

Ashish pointed to the lavishly carved knife that lay by the landlord's side. "Could thieves have missed that?"

Dinkar kicked the knife into the muddy water of the paddy. "I will call the landlord's men," he said. "You take the day off and rest yourself. You deserve it after so much extra work. We all do."

11

June 1946

M
iss Abigail! Come quickly, Miss Abigail!" Krishna called. "Two policemen be asking questions of the doctor and
memsahib
in the great room, and now they demand to be seeing you, too!"

"Whatever for?" Miss Abigail asked. She knew better than to react too quickly to demands from Indian police. "Has something happened?"

"They be telling me nothing," Krishna said. "Only to fetch you, and bring you most quickly."

Miss Abigail Davidson slipped her shoes on—she seldom wore them in her own rooms—and adjusted her
sari.
As she and Krishna made their careful way across the mission clinic yard, Miss Abigail was struck by the silence in the compound. No one hoed in the garden. No one pumped water at the well. No children ran about, calling out or playing in the dirt. Why, she could remember when the entire place rocked with noisy activity. When every single person . . .

Miss Abigail shook her head. No! She must not recall those long-ago times. She must not torture herself. Past was past; what was gone was gone.

As soon as Miss Abigail entered the great room, she knew something was terribly wrong. Dr. Cooper sat stone-faced on the settee, his wife sagging beside him. Susanna had gone quite pale and she twisted nervously at the handkerchief clutched in her hands. Both she and her husband kept their eyes away from the two Indian policemen who had positioned themselves beside the fireplace.

The moment Miss Abigail entered, Dr. Cooper jumped to his feet and reached out to her. "Miss Davidson. Awfully good of you to come straightaway. Please, sit down. Do sit down!"

Miss Abigail slipped into the nearest chair—that uncomfortable straight-backed thing she so disliked—and gazed cautiously from doctor to policemen to anxious wife and back again. "Well?" she asked. "What is this all about?"

"The landowner, Boban Joseph Varghese," said Dr. Cooper. "He is dead."

Miss Abigail raised her eyebrows. "Oh? Well then. A death is always a sad event for a family, is it not?"

"Tell her, William!" Susanna hissed.

"Murdered, it would seem."

Miss Abigail caught her breath. "Oh? Goodness me!"

"Yes," said Dr. Cooper. "Indeed."

Never one for emotional displays, Miss Abigail turned her attention to the two policemen. One was tall and clean shaven, the other short with a bushy beard and mustache. "You came all the way out here to bring us this news, then?"

Dr. Cooper cleared his throat. Susanna dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief.

"What dealings have
you
had with landowner Boban Joseph Varghese?" the tall policeman demanded of Miss Abigail.

"I beg your pardon?" Miss Abigail looked questioningly from the policeman back to the doctor. "Why, absolutely none. No dealings at all."

The short, bushy-faced policeman's eyes narrowed. "His family has a different story to tell. They say Boban Joseph Varghese was a kind and generous man that Indians, both his family and the villagers, held in the highest esteem. But they say that you English harassed and threatened him."

"Especially you," the tall policeman said to Miss Abigail.

"Why, not a bit of it!" Miss Abigail protested. "I have never so much as made the man's acquaintance!"

Or could it be that he was that nice man who came to see me?
Miss Abigail wondered. Fortunately, she had the presence of mind not to say out loud every thought that came to her mind.

The policemen fixed Miss Abigail fast in an accusing stare.

"My entire life I have worked among the outcastes of your society," Miss Abigail said. "I tended to the sick who came to the clinic for help, and I took in the little ones tossed aside because no one else wanted them."

"Hindu children or Muslim?" the bushy-faced policeman demanded.

"Whichever needed my help, sir."

"You will do well to determine with which side you will align yourself," the tall policeman stated. "Christians caught between Hindus and Muslims will soon be in for a sore squeezing."

"In no such manner as you suggest have I ever imposed myself," Miss Abigail huffed. "Nor have I ever interfered with the landlord or his business. No, sir, not in the least!"

Maybe there could have been some disturbance,
Miss Abigail thought.
Once, long ago. When was it? I can't quite recall . . .

"Not in the least, you say?" The bushy-faced policeman thrust his face close to Miss Abigail's and assumed a most accusatory tone. "You are certain of that?"

"Quite certain!"

Well, why not "quite certain"? It couldn't have been much of a disturbance or I would remember it, wouldn't I?

"Then why does Boban Joseph Varghese have a laborer who continually invokes your name as a threat in order to avoid undesirable work?"

Miss Abigail stared at the policeman in confusion. She looked to Dr. Cooper (he hardened his gaze unsympathetically) and to Susanna (she continued to blot at her red-rimmed eyes). Miss Abigail shook her head and tried to understand.

"Oh!" she suddenly exclaimed. "You must mean Ashish!"

Long after the policemen had left, Dr. Cooper continued to grill Miss Abigail for details. ("Do not expect this to be our last visit," the tall policeman had warned on his way out.) Miss Abigail patted a handkerchief across her wrinkled brow and willed her mind to stop skipping around so. How she longed to retire to the calm of her rooftop and watch the sun sink over the mountains. But Dr. Cooper would not stop talking.

"I did my utmost to warn you, Miss Davidson! 'Do not get overly involved with the natives,' I said. Did I not warn you?"

Miss Abigail heaved a heavy sigh. "Ashish is just a child. He and Krishna play together."

"Your Krishna is an old man!" Susanna exclaimed in exasperation. "Can you not remember that?"

"Do not get involved, that was my counsel. Yet look at you! Dressed in Indian clothes. Eating with your hands like a native from the jungle. Speaking their gibberish language!"

"Yes, yes, Dr. Cooper. I am guilty on every charge. All of them! But I did not interject myself into the landlord's slave business."

"Slave business! There you are, rousing up trouble again! We can only thank God that the policemen were not around to hear you say that."

Miss Abigail looked at Dr. Cooper's flushed face and flashing eyes. She could not help but notice the pulsing at his temples.

Best not to tell him I gave Ashish my Bible,
she decided.

Age and experience had their benefits. This was a truth Miss Abigail Davidson understood in her more lucid moments. And she had both at her disposal. She was painfully acquainted with India's decades-old struggle for independence, and even more with her own country's determination to thwart those efforts. The "Quit India" movement, for instance, when the Indian Congress had demanded immediate independence. The British response was to call out fifty-seven fully armed army battalions. Horrible! They had fired on the peacefully assembled, unarmed Indians and had killed thousands. When Miss Abigail tried to tell Dr. Cooper and Susanna about it the next day, they told her to stop spreading such ridiculous tales.

"Really, we've nothing to fear from the Indian police, have we, dear?" Susanna asked her husband.

"I shouldn't think so," Dr. Cooper said. "We know those fellows to be nothing more than an irritating nip at the heels of the unshakable Empire."

"It really is quite funny, when one considers it in that light," Susanna said. "Those two Indians, standing before us, were making such a show of looking official."

"That they would actually threaten us and expect us to fall into line behind them would be a grave insult, were it not so absurd," Dr. Cooper agreed.

Miss Abigail said nothing.

The doctor turned to her. "Although you most assuredly have nothing to fear from them, Miss Davidson, it does not lessen the import of our previous warning to you. I do hope you will try to understand."

Still Miss Abigail held her peace. So Dr. Cooper turned his attention back to his wife. But while he laughed with Susanna over the policemen's visit and joked about a "silly puppy barking at the feet of a tiger," Miss Abigail trembled. Because she knew. She knew.

As Abigail stood to excuse herself, Susanna Cooper interrupted. "Pardon me for being so blunt, Miss Davidson," she said, "but at times like this, I feel that one must be honest. You are a woman of considerable years, are you not?"

Miss Abigail smiled. "Indeed. Full of age and experience, and, at times, a fair share of wisdom. Would you agree, Doctor?"

Dr. Cooper cleared his throat.

"What I mean to say is that someone of your age really should be residing in a civilized country," Susanna pressed.

"I see. A country of aggressors as opposed to a country fighting for its right to govern itself. Is that what you mean?"

"Miss Davidson," Dr. Cooper interrupted, "what my wife is trying to explain is that, for your own good, at this time of your life you should be surrounded by your own kind."

"Ahhh. I see. And what exactly would you consider to be my own kind, Dr. Cooper?"

"Englishwomen who are . . . of an advanced age where . . . what I mean to say is, elderly women who have earned the right to . . . to drift a bit now and then and to . . . to . . ."

"Who have spent their lives lifting women and children out of a human dumping ground? Who have dedicated themselves to rescuing unwanted little ones who would otherwise have no chance of escaping poverty? Who have spent the better part of half a century showing the love of Jesus Christ with their hands as well as their words? Is that what you mean?"

"Well . . . I suppose . . . That is, you see . . ." Dr. Cooper stammered.

"Do tell me, good Doctor, where exactly am I to find this gathering of my own kind with which you would have me surround myself?"

"We are only thinking of your welfare, Miss Davidson. My wife and I are exceedingly concerned about your well-being— most appropriately concerned, I might add."

"I did not come to India with the intention of digging a well only to give thirsty persons a single sip and then send them on their way."

Miss Abigail's blue eyes lost their blur and fairly flamed with passion.

"No, my dear ones. I shall remain exactly where I am."

Susanna turned to her husband with a desperate look of
whatever-shall-we-do-now?

"You two are free to leave, of course, and to find a place where you can be surrounded by people you find more to your liking," Miss Abigail hastened to add. "But as for me, I am already with my kind."