The Hope of Shridula (28 page)

Shridula waited until the sun was halfway to its zenith, a time when she thought the laborers would all be busy in the fields. As she hurried along the sun-baked path, her eye caught sight of a small patch of weeds not yet roasted dry and dead. She bent down to touch them. So limp. So thirsty. An overwhelming sadness swept over Shridula. Why must everything die? Why must every person die?

The girl pulled herself up and tried to run, but she could not. The heat sucked every bit of strength from her body. She felt as limp as the poor weeds. But she must not stop.

"She is coming!" a young voice shrieked as she rounded the last bend in the path. "Shridula is coming!"

By the time Shridula arrived at her father's hut, a crowd had gathered, eager questions already poised on anxious lips.

Shridula tried hard to say the right things. But after a few minutes, she cried in frustration, "Stop! You must not ask me so many questions, because I do not know the answers! All I know is that India is now an independent country and so is Pakistan. Muslims have to move to Pakistan and everyone else has to come to India, whether they want to or not. Everyone is terribly angry with everyone else, but the British army went home, and now too many people are dying. That is all I know. Nothing else."

"What will happen to us?" someone called out.

"What of the harvest?" Dinkar demanded.

Shridula covered her ears and burst into tears.

"Go away, all of you!" Ashish ordered. "Let my daughter be! Go to your homes and leave us alone."

Words, words, words! Rajeev had come to the marketplace with one purpose in mind: to show off his knowledge and political strength before as many people as possible. How would it look if he were to let the words of a humble spice merchant drive him away? Pulling himself up tall, he removed the anxiety from his face and replaced it with a confident smile. He turned back toward the spice trader's stall and called out, "Thank you! Thank you to everyone for your attention!"

Actually, it quite amazed him to see the size of the crowd that had assembled behind him. And every person was watching him.

Rajeev raised his arms high and called out, "You ask what independent India means to you? Even now, a constitution is being written that will determine the answer to that question. I wish to see your rights included in it. Since I have had the singular foresight to forge valuable alliances with each of the personalities and factions charged with establishing the new government, I see myself, more than any other individual in this village—indeed, more than any other person in this entire area—in the position to assume a leadership role in the new Union of India!"

He paused, waiting to graciously receive the villagers' praise and shouts of encouragement.

"What is your position on the Radcliffe Line, Master Landlord's Son?" Mani Rao called out.

Rajeev's smile froze and his eyes narrowed.

"What of the millions of poor souls forced from their homes and ordered to seek refuge on the other side of that line?" Mani demanded.

"Not millions!" Rajeev shouted back.

"Yes, Master Landlord's Son, millions! My father saw the endless line with his own eyes. Men and women and children. Babies and old people. In bullock carts and piled onto lorries and stuffed into buses. But most of all, on foot, carrying their pitiful sacks of belongings on their heads, and their old grandmothers on their backs."

"Go back and sweep up your spilled pepper!" Rajeev called. He tried to laugh, but his face dripped sweat and his throat choked.

"What have you to say to the thousands who lie starving beside the road?" Mani challenged. "Or to the living who scratch in the dried earth to bury their dead?"

The silent crowd stared at Rajeev.

"What of the rivers of blood from the uncounted masses slaughtered along the roadside?"

Not a sound from the crowd as they waited for Rajeev's answer.

Rajeev's eyes darted from one person to another to another, then back to Mani. "The British assured us of a smooth transition," he offered lamely. "Of course there will be unfortunate circumstances. That cannot be avoided. But for the most part . . . with the British army and the Indian army working together to keep order—"

"The Boundary Force?" Mani said. "Is that what you mean by working together to keep order?"

"Yes," Rajeev answered. He took a deep breath and relaxed a bit. "Yes, the Boundary Force. Exactly. They will keep the peace."

"Then they would have to do it with fewer than one soldier for every murderous roadway mile," Mani shot back. "And since they are not even able to protect the cities along the route, what can they hope to do for the endless caravans of refugees that clog the roadways?"

Rajeev opened his mouth, but for once in his life, he could think of absolutely nothing to say.

"Refugees that, by now, may well include your family," Mani added.

"Now see here! You—"

"Especially your half-and-half children. For they are like the houses divided between two countries. The Radcliffe Line divides the very spirits of your children in two!"

Suddenly, the heat of the day was more than Rajeev could bear. Trembling and perspiring, he turned his back on Mani Rao and the rest of the crowd. He wanted to run, but he was far too unsteady on his feet. Curious eyes bored into his back. He knew it was so, even though he couldn't see them. Determined to do no further damage to himself, he raised his head high, took a deep breath, and fixed his eyes on the road for home.

"Servant!" Rajeev called as he approached his father's house. "Udit! Make the cart ready for me immediately. With the horse!"

Udit hurried out, his face lined with confusion. "But, master, the sun is still high. Surely you do not mean now. Not in the heat of the day!"

"Immediately!" Rajeev ordered. "Without one moment's further delay!"

September 1947

W
ith Rajeev lashing wildly at its flanks, the horse jerked the cart away at a fast trot. Choking dust billowed up behind it and hung heavy in the simmering heat.

"Have you no respect for the beast?" Brahmin Rama scolded from the shade of his mango tree. "The sun is too hot for so fast a ride in an open cart."

Rajeev knew that. Of course he knew it. He grabbed hold of the
chaddar
that flapped about his shoulders and swiped at his burning face. Then he slapped the switch across the horse's back harder than ever.

When he arrived at the English Mission Medical Clinic, Rajeev led the exhausted horse to a scraggly stand of trees. He climbed down from the cart and, ignoring the main clinic, headed directly for Miss Abigail's cottage.

Krishna stepped out to see who was approaching, but Rajeev didn't slow his pace. "Get water for my horse!" he ordered in the Malayalam language. "Now!"

Had circumstances been different, or his intentions less urgent, Rajeev would have behaved in a more civilized manner. But this day, with only one thing on his mind, he strode quickly toward Miss Abigail's door, bellowing all the way, "
Mem
Davidson! We be needing to talk together.
Mem
Davidson!"

Rajeev shifted impatiently from one foot to the other as he waited outside the closed door. After what seemed an inordinately long wait, he slammed his open hand hard against the door frame. The door swung open a crack, and Miss Abigail's anxious face peeked out.

"
Mem
Davidson, please, I must be talking with you. Now!"

Miss Abigail squinted at him with her filmy blue eyes. She waved her hands about her head, as if swatting at flies, although it was much too hot for insects of any kind.

"Immediately,
Mem
Davidson. Please. Please!"

Miss Abigail opened the door a bit wider. "I am afraid you have missed Dr. Cooper," she said. "He no longer resides here."

"In that case, you more certainly are to be needing protection," Rajeev said. As he talked, he pushed his way through the doorway. "Yes,
mem,
more certainly you are!"

Miss Abigail frowned, but she stepped aside.

"It is being most fortunate for both you and me, my coming here today," Rajeev said as he moved past Miss Abigail and settled himself in the nearest of the two chairs. "I am to be needing your help now. The British government, you see, officials who are to be staying in India. They can be helping me when I am arriving in Delhi, do you see, and that is the reason why—"

Miss Abigail, who had been glancing nervously at the closed door, interrupted him in an urgent whisper, "Oh, sir, the most terrible things have happened! Horrible things, really. A massacre, sir! An absolute massacre!"

Miss Abigail hustled over to the table, which was strewn with newspaper clippings. She rifled through the pile with shaking hands, then pulled out a photograph and held it out to him. "Refugees in a long train of oxcarts," she said. "Children. Even babies! God in heaven knows what will happen to them." Tears filled her cloudy eyes. "Look here. A poor, poor old man! He must carry his wife on his back! How far can he go bearing such a burden?"

Rajeev stared at the pictures. Every woman's face looked to him like Amina's face. And in the faces of every child, he saw his own little ones.

With tears streaming down her wrinkled cheeks, Miss Abigail grabbed up yet another photograph from the pile and thrust it to him. "Look! Burial mounds alongside the road. Distressing! Most distressing!"

Rajeev's face had gone white. He pushed the clippings away from him.

Miss Abigail sat down in the second chair. "I have not always agreed with the British way of doing things, but they are a people of laws. One must appreciate that fact. We English do cling to decorum. Ours is a country of order."

"A country of order? It is being a country in a maddening rush to get India's independence over before the chop, chop, chopping begins! For three hundred years, your people are to be taking India's wealth away from us. Now you are having to go away so quickly that you are to be muddling everything up for us. You are to be confusing everyone!"

Miss Abigail stared at the Indian man in confusion. "What?" She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut.

"You are to be tearing away Muslim wives and leaving them to be burying their sons beside the road!" Rajeev swatted at the stack of clippings. "Look at the order your great country is to be leaving behind for the new India to sort out!"

"I do not understand, sir," Miss Abigail said. "Did you Indians not want independence?"

"It could be that those are being my own baby sons in the line of oxcarts!" Rajeev exclaimed. "It could be my family that is to be lying in those burial mounds on the side of the road. No,
mem,
this is not what we are to be wanting. None of us. We are not to be wanting this!"

The troubled look ebbed from Miss Abigail's face. Brightening, she turned her eyes to a picture pinned up on her wall. It was a faded photograph of her as an energetic young woman with blonde hair, and freckles sprinkled across her nose, sitting on the back of an elephant. "Do look at that silly elephant and me," she said with a laugh. "We are both smiling, do you see? What a lovely day that was."

Rajeev's eyes darted up to the wall, then back to the scattered newspaper clippings.

"I well remember that day," Miss Abigail continued dreamily. "I had just come back from England determined to spend the rest of my life in India. How Dr. Moore scolded me for permitting that picture to be made! He called me an unprofessional child. Yes, that was his exact word—'child'!"

"Yes. Well . . ." Rajeev began. "Were we not discussing the importance of us to be working together? Perhaps you might be good enough to be writing for me a letter of reference. Do you see? As we are to be helping each other? I am being certain you will be protected always, and you can be helping me to be making the acquaintance of important people in Delhi who can also—"

"Oh, yes, the times are hard." Miss Abigail shook her head sadly. "Most surely and definitely. Horrible things are happening. A massacre—"

"Yes, yes," Rajeev interrupted. "As you are still to be having connections to the British government, I am holding to the hope that you might also to be having—"

"I have lived a long time," Miss Abigail said in a hushed, conspiratorial tone. "I remember when the world was a very different place."

Confusion clouded Rajeev's face. "I am also remembering,
mem.
But what I am to be requesting from you at this moment is—"

"I remember when we feared cobras and tigers more than we feared each other. Do you remember such a time, young man?"

Rajeev sighed in exasperation and ran his hand across his face. "The British government,
mem,"
he began. But Abigail wasn't listening. She had dropped off to sleep.

Naturally, the summer sun had long since baked the marshes and streams until they lay hard and cracked. Certainly the withering heat had scorched the rice paddies dry. Of course parched rice stalks withered brown, and drying rice heads hung heavy. All this was to be expected. It happened every year as the end-of-summer harvest approached.

None of this disturbed Saji Stephen. In fact, when he climbed into the bullock cart and settled himself beside Udit, his spirits were high and his only intention was to survey his fields. Death and mayhem might plague the north of India, uncertain winds of charge might whip through the new government, his sons might dash to and fro in search of a new world order, but this one constant remained: harvest. The promise of storehouses refilled and coffers replenished. Soon, grateful villagers would envelop him with adoration and praise. And after the deprivations of a long summer, more of them would come to him begging for loans. Whatever happened elsewhere in the world, in Saji Stephen's village, life would go on just the same as it always had.

Saji Stephen gazed overhead. Nothing but hot, blue sky. He turned and stared back toward the mountains. Not so much as a tiny wisp of cloud. Good. Nothing to disrupt his harvest.

"What is this?" Saji Stephen exclaimed to Udit. To his left lay an empty field. Not empty as in harvested, but empty as in never planted.

"It is the farthest field from the labor settlement, master," his servant said. "The least fertile and most unproductive of all your lands."

This answer did not satisfy Saji Stephen. He was still voicing his dismay when the bullock pulled the cart toward the next field. It had been planted and rice was growing, but the ground was so dry that the paddy had opened up in large cracks. And the rice—nothing but sparse, stunted stalks growing in a sea of weeds.

"This is . . . this rice paddy . . . it is . . ." Words piled together in a helpless jumble on Saji Stephen's shocked tongue.

Slowly the lumbering bullock pulled the cart past the weed-choked edge of the second field and on to the main paddies beyond. Although this ground had received better care, it, too, had been baked dry. Stunted rice stalks barely topped the weeds. Saji Stephen's dismay turned to blinding fury.

"I do not see even one of my laborers at work in the paddy!" he bellowed. "Where are my workers? Where are my overseers?"

His servant didn't even attempt an answer.

"Take me to Dinkar! Find that lazy Ashish! I will have the skin whipped from both their worthless backs!"

As the bullock lumbered down the path, the cart behind it bounced and lurched over deep gullies left over from the rainy season, now baked hard as rock.

"No one even bothered to smooth out the pathways!" Saji Stephen cried. "Enough! Turn the cart around and take me home!"

With a tug on the rope and a click of his tongue, Udit stopped the bullock. The beast flicked its tail and flattened its ears, then it pulled the cart around and headed back up the path.

"I will not forgive any of them!" Saji Stephen vowed through clenched teeth. "Not Dinkar and not Ashish, and certainly not a single one of the workers. Every one of them will pay! And I will not forgive my worthless sons who live in my house like lazy princes, either!"

A bullock is a steady beast, but it is also slow. The rutted road back allowed Saji Stephen plenty of time to storm and yell. But once his outbursts were spent, he sank back in silence and let his rage simmer.

". . . if the doctor and his wife even managed to get out of India, and I cannot be absolutely sure that they did, Mrs. Cooper would have nothing but to go north to Agra, you understand. To see the Taj Mahal with all its marble treasures, she said, which are all quite wonderful I am told, though I have never seen them with my own eyes. I told her it was nothing but an enormous tomb—magnificent, yes, but a tomb all the same. Of course, the gardens surrounding it can be most splendid and well worth the effort it takes to get there, but with the world in such a state of flux, it did not seem the time to undertake such a journey, although I quite understand Mrs. Cooper's point about taking advantage of being so close—relatively speaking, of course. One should see the sights while one is already in the country. She was most insistent on this point. But when I read the newspaper accounts, and when I see the photographs . . . well, you do understand my concern, do you not?" Miss Abigail Davidson paused to grab a breath and await her guest's reply.

Lulled by the endless prattle of the old woman's voice, Rajeev had turned his attention to the open window. Only now did he notice a spindly tree—some species he didn't recognize—growing just outside in the courtyard. Its shadow stretched out alarmingly long.

"Sir? You do understand my concern, do you not?" Miss Abigail repeated.

"What? Oh . . . Yes. Yes, I do indeed," Rajeev said quickly. "But I must to be excusing myself. The afternoon, it is becoming late, and I must to be going on my way."

"Oh, dear. I'm afraid I have bored you with my endless blather. It's just that everything has happened so quickly, and no one is here to help me set it to rights in my mind." Miss Abigail's face suddenly brightened. "You wouldn't happen to have made the acquaintance of Lord Mountbatten, would you?"