The Splendor Of Silence (19 page)

"I'm used to Mila, Captain Hawthorne," he said, grinning. "She likes to race out of the driveway usually, but has no courage to continue her mad driving outside."

"This from someone who has no driving privileges."

"And why not?" Ashok demanded, his head between the two of them. "I'm sixteen, not a child. Jai was driving when he was twelve. He taught Kiran when he was fourteen. Why can't I drive?"

"You do drive," Mila pointed out. "Just not when Papa is around."

Sam listened to them banter and quibble, with a soreness in his heart, as they drove along the avenue that sheltered all the houses in the Civil Lines of Rudrakot. Mike and he were perhaps the same number of years apart as Mila and Ashok, and their arguments had once--foolishly--involved knives. This was many years ago--Mike had brandished a kitchen knife and then laid it back on the counter, and Sam had leapt for it and then leapt at Mike. He had chased him all over the house in a murderous rage about something he could no longer remember. Their mother, horrified beyond appeal, had banished them from the kitchen for three months and quarantined them at home for a month. It was the only rime Sam could remember having been so angry with Mike. He had never lost his temper again. It had sobered them both.

He raised his head and breathed in the aroma of the sun-fired flowers of the prakrit trees along the avenue. Mike had been here along this very road at one time. This afternoon's search had led nowhere, but no matter, if Mike was in Rudrakot, Sam would find him.

Ashok and Mila had fallen quiet, voices tired of competing with the jeep's engine roar. They were the only ones on the road, and for Sam this was stunning, this hush, this emptiness, this lack of human presence, so used was he to that other, teeming India where even his thoughts did not seem to belong to him. Wealth and opulence bought open spaces and silence. The houses were all, like Raman's, set well back from the avenue. The trees canted obligingly toward the center of the road, linking their arms on the sides, until it seemed as though they were driving through a wondrous sun-dappled tunnel of greens and golds.

As they passed by the houses, someone stepped out from behind a tree. Sam saw him first and then he thought that Mila saw him too, for her hands wavered on the wheel and the jeep swerved to one side. The ma
n h
eld their gazes until both Sam and Ashok turned their heads to look back at him. The man's kurta and pajama glimmered a serene white in the shade, his skin glistened with sweat, his hair lay built up in thick curls on his well-crafted head. At the kurta's opening at his neck, his collarbones jutted out, sharply defined under his skin. An Indian David, Sam thought, perfection bestowed upon each muscle, each line on the face, the brightness of the eyes. Who was he? And why did he look at them like that? There was no paraphernalia of trade or business surrounding him, no boxes of silks or curios, and no pots of water to indicate that he was within the Civil Lines to sell something. Mila's shoulders had tensed. Ashok turned to the front and dropped his eyes, a flush riding on his young face. And that moment passed in silence.

"Who was that man?" Sam asked.

"That's the vicar's house," Mila said in response, and Sam followed her finger to his right. A watchman drowsed upright on his stool in front of the gate, his brown turban bobbing as his head moved in sleep. There were two glass-plated signs, painted writing on them, embedded into th
e c
oncrete gateposts. One read 12 ALBERT AVENUE, the other THE SEXTONS.

The gate itself was hung with a black metal letterbox with the words

LAETITIA SEXTON painted on it.

"What an unfortunate name for a vicar," Sam said, allowing himself to be diverted from his question.

Mila laughed. "It bothers Mrs. Sexton quite a bit. The vicar doesn't seem to care; he has lived with this name all of his life. Laetitia acquired it only through marriage."

They had passed the house now, and Sam got a small glimpse of stately white pillars, plush lawns, an empty garage shed, and pink geraniums in pots on the front porch.

"It's a beautiful home," he said. "Vicars live well in India."

"Not all vicars," Mila said. "Only the Rudrakot vicars. There are not enough British here in the civil area, so they'll take anyone they can get, even vicars."

"Why even vicars?"

"Mrs. Sexton's father," Mila said, "was a fishmonger in London; marrying the vicar has brought her up considerably. Under any other circumstances, she would not have been accepted in Rudrakot society. Perhap
s s
he would not be accepted at home, in England, but here the British cannot afford to be choosy."

The road curved out of the trees and into the blazing sun. To their right was the lake, its waters blue bright in the light, mesmerizing in contrast to the brown and red hues of the desert. Sam shaded his eyes with his hand. Another jeep broke out from the trees ahead and onto the road, and as it passed them, the man driving raised his hand. Both Mila and Ashok nodded and Sam waved. Now, in his own clothes, in his own skin, in a jeep, by Mila's side, he was no longer invisible--as he had been when he had walked here in the afternoon.

They drove out of the sun into the cantonment area.

"The home of the Rudrakot Rifles," Sam said, and then wondered if he should have exhibited knowledge of this. But Mila and Ashok did not react.

"On the right," Ashok said. "The Rifles are a British regiment. On the left are the Rudrakot Lancers. An Indian regiment."

Sam looked right first and then left and it was like looking at images in a mirror--the two regimental headquarters looked alike, the same redand-white-painted stones along the pathways, the same whitewashed facade of the barracks, flags hanging limply on the airless, treeless, sun-drenched maidan near the sentry houses. Sam now remembered stories from Mike's letters of the pranks the officers of the Rifles regiment played on those of the Lancers--jackal carcasses strung on the barbed wire in the middle of the night, a cow let loose to deposit dung at the base of the flagpole, the stones along the drive upturned to their muddy sides. With an immense stroke of luck earlier in the afternoon, he had stumbled correctly around the living quarters of the Rifles, Mike's regiment, and not the one right opposite it.

"The Rifles came here once the Lancers were brought into commission." "Why? It must be a great drain on resources."

"Have you heard of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, Captain Hawthorne?" Mila asked.

Sam nodded. "A little. Mostly what I've read."

"Well, since then, since the mutiny, as it was called, was started within--and was largely contained within--the ranks of the army, the British try to maintain a one-to-one ratio of British soldiers to Indian soldiers. It's a show of force, a deterrent to further mutinies. It is called the Cardwell system, after the man who invented it." She paused. "The presence of the army in Rudrakot is relatively new--Jai's father, Raja Bhimsen, first raised the Lancers about twenty years ago; the government brought the Rifles here soon after."

The road stretched before them, metallic black with clean edges, and the two regiments garrisoned on either side balanced each other's might. Mila said, "The Cardwell system is meant to station British soldiers only within India's borders. At the borders, the northwest frontier, for example, there are fewer British soldiers for every Indian soldier. The threat comes from within, you see, not without."

And what do you think of the politics of this prejudice, Sam wanted to ask. Mila had recited the facts like a history lesson, with little change in her demeanor, little expression of disdain. She had shown no rancor. Here is the British regiment, Captain Hawthorne, and here is the Indian regiment. One is meant to keep the other in order. British. Indian. Mila was Indian, living in her own country, ruled by a foreign hand. For the first time, Sam began to think of what this must mean.

"How do you know all of this?"

She gave him a fleeting smile. "We know a lot because of Jai." "Who's Jai?"

Ashok and Mila began to speak together, went silent together, started to laugh together. "Poor Jai," Mila said finally. "Here is someone in his kingdom who does not know who he is. He will be crushed, devastated. We must not tell him."

"Jai is the prince of Rudrakot," Sam said, smiling too when he realized what he had just said. It was akin to blasphemy, to not acknowledge the presence of a sovereign in his own kingdom.

"Jai commands the Rudrakot Lancers, Captain Hawthorne," Ashok said from behind. "So he is the only one who can go into the Rifles' mess halls and their club. The main club, the Victoria Club, is another matter, though. A whole other bomb just begging to be detonated."

"Why?" Sam asked. Mila had stopped talking, but she was angry; he could sense that. She listened, driving slowly now.

"The Rifles, before they came here, were not used to sharing their club with an Indian regiment. They insisted on separate tables at first, separate sections of the club for their use ... but they forgot that they were the secand occupants of the club. This is why Jai goes over to the Rifles regiment to dine with the officers and the men. He wants them to see him often, to realize that Rudrakot is the Rudrakot Lancers."

"Jai is Indian too, isn't he?"

"So he is," Ashok said with a grin. "The men don't forget this. Jai is dark as the heavens in a thunderstorm, Captain Hawthorne. But he is royalty. Every drop of his blood has more value than the whole of the Rifles put together. It is an undeniable fact. It is an unpleasant conundrum for the noncommissioned British army man, the Tommy. He will not take orders from a blackie, but damn if that blackie could not buy him and his county out from under his feet."

It was an astonishingly lucid thought for a sixteen-year-old, and Sam felt an admiration for Ashok. In Seattle, Sam had heard on the radio of the conditions in India and of the freedom struggle. But it was not until he had come to the Indian subcontinent and seen this discrimination at work that he had begun to fathom the real cause of the ferment. The British had so long held themselves aloof from Indians, built up so much animosity, that there was no middle ground for compromise for the Indian nationalists. The British were not welcome in India anymore--there were no circumstances under which they could stay on or share India.

Ashok said, "Did you see the washrooms at the railway station?" Damn, Sam thought, knowing what was coming. It was something he had heard for the last few months from almost every Englishman and woman in India the moment he had opened his mouth and his accent had placed him as an American. And he had heard this in some form or another everywhere--at clubs, in shops, on railway station platforms, within the barracks in Assam. You talk of equality and civil rights, Captain Hawthorne; tell me, are all people equal in America?

The Indians he had spoken with had only made it a little easier. To them, he had been representative of FDR and openness and generosity, swung and placed at the other end of the pendulum, much, in some senses, as Raman had seen him earlier this morning. Sam was uncomfortable in both roles, of being from a dominating race in his own country and of being considered so impartial--neither was true.

Ashok repeated his question. "Did you happen to notice the washrooms at the railway stations, Captain Hawthorne?"

Sam nodded.

"They must have been marked 'Europeans Only' and 'Indians Only.' " Ashok paused and leaned forward. "Tell me, Captain Hawthorne, was that distinction not much like home to you?"

"The land of the free," Mila sang, "and the not-quite free."

Chapter
Ten.

My father was among the few black members of the Delhi Gymkhana Club. This was only for show; Indians who had been knighted were regarded as wogs acceptable to the British. But the Gymkhana Club and other dubs which started taking Indians made conditions very difficult. You had to be interviewed. Your wife had to be there with you. Now my mother couldn't speak a word of English
,
Whites-only places like the Delhi Club remained a symbolic reminder of the alien and humiliating side of foreign rule. The last of them, the Breach Candy Swimming Pool in Bombay, excluded Indians till the 1960s and continues to operate discriminatory entry rules for visitors.

--Zareer Masani, Indian Tales of the Raj, 1987

*

Tai was not solely responsible for the Rudrakot Lancers being permit...! ted in the Victoria Club, as Ashok had said. It was actually very much an institution of the British part of the Raj, and Indians themselves, no matter what social status they occupied, had been anathema at one time. Ashok would not have known this, neither would have Mila, for they were both very young when Indian officers from the Lancers were admitted into the sacred hallways of the club. The story they told Sam accorded very well with their sensitivities though, and made the Lancers seem quite heroic. What they did not know was that their admiration could have found its home closer to their hearts, in their father.

The club was born for the amusement of the British resident in

Rudrakot, sometime after Victoria became queen-empress of India, and hence its name. At the very beginning, only the British were members, and only British men, really. Even the ruling princes of Rudrakot had to wait outside in their limousines when they came by to pick up a government agent who had come to visit them. It was not a tenable state of affairs. The club admitted the vicar, the owner of Pitman's Dry Goods, the clerks in the British resident's office, the publisher of the Rudrakot Daily News and two of his senior reporters, the railway stationmaster, and selectively, the resident's chauffer (before 6 P
. M
.). Even the local boxwallahsyoung, opportunistic Englishmen who worked in the indigenous industries at Rudrakot, like the block-printing mill and the cement factory--had entry.