The Splendor Of Silence (35 page)

"Now I see why you tied the tablecloth to your hands," he shouted. "I will hold you down, Mila. Let the Lu battle both of us."

She laughed into the screaming of the wind. Strands of her hair came free from the plait and lashed across her face. Sam, with a serious cast to his face, put a hand behind her head to undo her plait. It took him a while to do this; first he had to untie the green ribbon that held the bottom of the plait together, and then dig his fingers into each strand, pulling one and then the other loose. Until in the end, the black shawl of Mila's hair hurled out from her head in all directions.

"I must look like a ghost," she cried.

"You look beautiful," Sam said. He wrapped the sheet around them more tightly now, until they were in a little island of calm, the wind buffeting the outside, lifting the edges of the cloth, trying to sneak in. The light in their makeshift tent had a curious, transparent quality, as though they could run their fingers through it and it would sift through their skins and vanish into the distance. And in this red, glowing luminosity Mila saw

Sam more clearly than she had before. She was at once fraught with fear and exhilaration and a desperation to feel Sam's skin beneath her fingers. She touched his face lightly and the pads on her fingertips scrubbed against the day's growth of beard on his chin and his cheeks. She traced the arch of his eyebrows, thick and lush above his intense blue gaze that she would not meet. Sam leaned in and kissed her.

Mila had been kissed before, not many times, but enough to know what it was supposed to feel like. There was the touch of lips upon bps, the scent of the other person, the slick feel of their teeth. With Sam, there were none of these specifics. He opened her mouth to devour her, there could be no other word for such passionate action, and she accepted, feeling her heart fly out of her chest and settle somewhere within Sam. He lay back against the wall and pulled her onto him. For the next two hours, the storm raged and ebbed around them, hurling itself against Chetak's tomb, lifting its red veils to reveal flashes of false lightning streaking across a preternaturally darkened sky, hurling handfuls of red dirt over their exposed boots and legs. Mila and Sam did not notice any of this. They kissed, they drew back to gaze upon each other, they drowned in each other. Although they were both trembling with need, Sam knew that Mila was holding herself back from him, and he refused to take only part of her. He wanted everything. They talked after a while, their voices clear to each other above the indignant yowls of the wind demanding attention.

Sam told Mila of his mother, and father, of Mike, though he still did not tell her why he was here, and that was only to protect her from him or any consequences of what he was about to do. Sam told her stories from his childhood, told her of the snows of Mount Rainier capturing the last golden light of summer evenings, of dripping rain forests upon the western coast where the trees were clad in mosses of every conceivable green. Here we have browns, Mila said, the browns of the earth. Every conceivable brown. What do so many greens look like, Sam? He tried to explain them to her--the green of grasshoppers, newly born pine needles, glistening rhododendron leaves, pond water.

Mila talked then, in her turn, of her mother, Lakshmi, whom she had barely known, of Lady Pankhurst's "at homes" and Sam's fortuitous escape from her, of her father whom she loved more dearly than any other man. At this she hesitated. Mila was also keeping one most important secret from Sam, something she hoped he would never have the opportunit
y t
o learn before he returned to Assam. Even that thought was instinctive, for she had deliberately shut out the world, reveling in this flood of happiness. What tomorrow would bring, no, even how the next few hours of reflection would shape her actions, she did not know or care about. Everything was in this moment. Guilt could wait.

The storm eventually died down, and caught in their little oasis under the red tablecloth, Mila and Sam did not notice its demise. For Sam had begun to kiss Mila again, and through the fog of their want, they finally heard the servants shouting to ask if they were safe. They emerged covered with infinitesimal particles of red dust, so minute that they had crept in through the very weave of the tablecloth to coat their eyelashes, their hair, and to men Mila's brilliantly white shirt into a shade of pink. Ashok and Vimal came running up to them, Vimal still carrying the enormous varan as though it were a baby, its massive head leaning against one shoulder.

Sam met Mila's eyes and he smiled only for her. He made a movement to put out his hand and to ask for hers, but she shook her head imperceptibly. A misery began to grow within her until her whole chest hurt.

Chapter
Nineteen.

No farmer ever existed who does not grumble sometimes. As their own proverb puts it, "He was given a bundle, and he asked for a mule, after that for a man to lead it, for another to put the bundle on the mule's back, and then for a third man to take it off."

--Lady Wilson, Letter, from India, 1911

*

R
aman, Sayyid, and the old villager had arrived at Nodi at ten o'clock - IV in the morning after riding for eight hours into the scrub of the desert. Or rather, Raman and Sayyid rode their horses; the old villager had pleaded instability and dizziness and dismounted from his donkey to walk the rest of the way. Raman and Sayyid slowed to a steady trot and listened as they rode to the clip-clop of their horses' shoes and the accompanying flap-flap of the villager's thick-soled feet. Two miles from Nodi, they had come upon a little boy asleep under the shade of a dhokara tree, his herd of two scrawny cows chewing away at the lower foliage. He woke up and a laugh burst out of him when he saw them, so full was he of happiness at the presence of the burra sahib, the big sahib. The boy ran screaming toward Nodi, shouting that Raman was here, that the old villager had made good his word and brought the burra sahib to their village. His cows he left foraging around the dhokara--they would eventually rest under the shade of the tree and wait for him to return to lead them home. For a long while, almost a mile, Raman could see the tiny figure of the boy as he raced through the deflated land of the desert, and even hear his jubilant wailing as it cut through the sheer air.

It was a reception he had missed in the years he had spent as Jai's advisor. Jai, though always happy to see Raman--sometimes he would be petulant but always polite--had never been this ecstatic. The entire trip no far had been glorious, Raman thought. Riding through the cool of the early morning, the servants' footsteps in accompaniment, their lanterns held untiringly aloft to light the way and to warn of snakes and scorpions. The stop for breakfast in the shadow of a tomb, crumbling and in ruins. No one knew whose tomb that was, who lay there in eternal rest, and travelers did not care, for the structure provided shade and coolness from the midday heat and a partial shelter at night for those who dared to sleep where ghosts walked. It was a tiny building, the inside walls blackened with smoke from a hundred breakfast, lunch, and dinner fires, and to this soot Sayyid added his own, cracking open eggs for a savory egg toast--thick slices of bread doused with whipped eggs, garlic, coriander leaves, and chili powder and fried on a pan. Sayyid then cut green mangoes for a sour chutney on the toast. This last was Raman's private affectation, when the mangoes lay heavy and green on the branches of the trees, sap smearing their sides, he ate his egg toast with mango chutney. Sayyid also served Raman with his hot cups of coffee and wedges of golden muskmelon to finish the meal. For the next two hours, Raman rode in aimless musings, a smile painting his face without his knowledge.

At sunrise the thick earth of the Sukh desert turned from indigo to gold. In two hours, the heat became almost unbearable, but Raman affixed a sola topi upon his head and sweated his way in the saddle, relishing the waves of heat from the ground upon his face, and the tiredness that had begun to creep into his limbs.

Half a mile out from the village, what seemed to be the entire village had turned out to meet him. Some of the men had garlands in their hands, made from knitted mango leaves, and these they insisted on putting around Raman's neck even before he dismounted from Sans Reproche. His neck and chest grew heavy with the weight of the good wishes and blessings upon him. They led him to the main village square, which was no more than a brick platform built around the burly and growing roots of a banyan tree. The main shops were arranged around the tree--a greengrocer with withered vegetables baking in the heat, a dry-goods merchant with small mounds of multicolored lentils and pulses, a blacksmith with his smithy fire and cinder-blackened face, a cloth merchant with a fe
w c
heap voile saris hung under a jute awning. Nodi was a poor village, like too many villages in India. He saw a few of the women glance at him shyly from under their ghoonghats, the veils only pulled over their heads to their noses, saw that a few more had their hands folded in supplication, and that yet others had tears in their eyes. They kept wiping the tears, more fell in their place, and Raman felt an ache flood his heart.

It must have been too long since any administrator had been here at Nodi to listen to their complaints, seek out their wants, pacify their needs. Colonel Pankhurst and Raman's primary duties were to Jai. In other parts of the British Raj, the villages would come under the jurisdiction of the Indian Civil Service. In Rudrakot, because it was a princely state and the ICS had no authority here, Jai was in charge of the land and the people, collecting agriculture taxes, putting that money to good use. Raman now saw that they had all been lax in their duties. He had held Jai's hand for so long, mentored him into adulthood, taught him right from wrong as much as he knew himself and as much as he could that he had forgotten the common people in the kingdom of Rudrakot. It took him only a few minutes into one such visit to realize all of their folly.

Raman sat down in the shade of the banyan, in the best shade of the banyan, for its leaves were sparse in some
. A
reas, and as the sun shifted to pierce through the tree's canopy, the villagers insisted that Raman move from one spot to the other so that he could be the coolest of them all. He listened to the men speak for hours about the vagaries of the monsoon rains, the failing of crops, the lack of water, the fights over land rights, whose cattle strayed and foraged in whose land, and so on. Some of the women talked of squabbles from their front doorsteps where they spent the afternoons knitting for the cooler, winter desert nights, and soon Raman found a pattern among them all. If their husbands were engaged in a spat, inevitably the women found something spiteful and petty to say about each other. Her voice is too loud. She brays like a donkey. She Acts teeth like a horse. To each complaint, Raman sat and listened with patience. He kept his place under the banyan tree all morning and afternoon long, eating his lunch and drinking his afternoon chai right there in front of hundreds of eyes. Finally, the old villager, who had been attending to Raman's every word, scuttled over on his haunches as close as he could get to Raman's knees and coughed to attract his attention. Then Raman spoke to the villagers in his gentle voice about the possibility that they must all face, tha
t t
here might not be a monsoon this year, no matter how much they prayed or propitiated their Gods. That the well this villager had built had sweet and clean water inside it, that its vicinity was to be kept pristine if the water was to maintain its freshness. That to sully the land around it, to defecate and shit there would mean taking away the only source of pure water for all of Nodi. That even if the nights were immeasurably hot--and they were hot now and were going to continue to be--the villagers must show resilience and strength and not seek the temporary coolness of the well's saucer-shaped brickwork.

Because Raman had stayed under the banyan tree, listened to them speak, showed a concern and consideration they had not had from any other administrator, his words were taken as gospel. The villagers nodded their heads respectfully, made promises to do exactly as Raman said, and even told him the words he was always thrilled to hear at the end of one of these village sessions. Aap hamare Ma-Baap ho, Saha You are our mother and you are our father.

The Lu came roaring out of the desert and exploded around them a minute later, just as Raman was wiping a surreptitious tear from the corner of his eye, using a cloth towel to ostensibly mop his face of sweat. The villagers and Raman had all been somewhat mesmerized by each other and no one had noticed that the atmosphere had become laden with the stillness that heralded the coming of the Lu. And no one had remembered that the Lu was always prophesied around the time of purnima, the full moon, which was tomorrow.

As the wind snarled and clamored around them, they all ran, shouting with laughter at themselves that they could have been so ignorant of its approach. Sayyid brought a towel to wrap around his master's head, and they both wrestled with the piece of cloth, Raman screaming that Sayyid should take cover himself, Sayyid shouting back that he would be where Raman was. After the villagers had taken their very old and their very young away and tucked them under the shelter of charpais and huts, two young men came running across the village square with torn and ragged blankets and offered them to Raman and Sayyid.

"Come to our house, Sahib," one man said above the bawling of the wind.

"We are all right here," Raman replied, "Go, take cover yourself. Are our horses safe?"

"Yes," a man said, "we led them to the mango grove behind the village; they will be safe enough there."