The Splendor Of Silence (7 page)

"Not very long," Sam said. "So why Rudrakot?"

"Many years ago, we claimed this as the origin of the kingdom--as the sacred ground upon which Lord Shiva had wept for joy. The name was then shortened to Rudrakot, now to mean the abode of Lord Shiva, not merely of his tears, even more ambitious than the original name, as you see. What had not mattered to the kings who named the land was that no rudraksha tree grew in or around Rudrakot. When we are questioned about the absence of the tree that gives the place its name, you will find us vacillating, with perhaps at one time maybe or but, of course, there was a reason, now just lost in time and legend. The rudraksha tree grows only at the foothills of the Himalayas; the Sukh desert could never nurture it." Mila began to laugh. "Perhaps that is why Rudrakot shortened its name--the nonexistence of the tree is obvious; Shiva's presence at Rudrakot could not be suspect. For God only shows Himself to those who believe."

"Sahib," the rickshaw puller said behind them. "We can go."

Mila's laugh turned into a lower, more self-conscious sound. She bent down to pat her horse's neck and soothe him. For the past five minutes, as Mila and Sam had talked, Ghatoth had fallen into a steady restlessness, his shoes clicking on the tar road as he shifted his feet about.

"Thank you," Sam said. "I will remember this story forever." And the voice and the face of the storyteller, he thought to himself. If only he had more time in Rudrakot, he could find out who this woman was, he could ...

He stood back and raised his hand again. "Good-bye."

She nodded and rode away.

Twenty minutes later, Sam reached the political agent's house and paid off the rickshaw driver. When he looked down at the ground, he realized that he was standing on an elaborate design--flowers and squares and hexagons, drawn upon the dark earth in rice flour; this was a welcome kolam. He lifted a foot and saw that the lines of the design had dissolved under his weight. Sam stepped carefully around and climbed the steps without smudging the design. It seemed a shame to destroy it, yet he knew that a smudged kolam was the sign of a house well-visited, a house where people came to ask after the owners' health, a house that was welcoming and open--it was almost obligatory for the visitor to step into the home with little grains of rice flour clinging to the soles of his feet, but Sam did not have the heart to disturb it so early in the morning.

At the top step, Sam was raising a hand to pound on the door when his shoulder began to throb. He dropped his holdall, letting it tumble down to settle in a fine mist of dust and rice flour, the kolam distorted beyond recognition, and leaned against the wood door, his eyes closed, his knock unfinished.

April 1942, a Month Earlier

Somewhere in Burma

There has been no rain for an hour, but the teak forest stubbling the lower hills holds moisture in its dogged embrace. It is not monsoon season yet, or so the meteorologists declared in the report that Sam read in Assam. The monsoon in Burma is southwesterly; rains blanket the country from May until October of every year. It sometimes rains every day, and every night, with no respite. September will bring relief--the rains shut down, like a faucet turned off. A little, oft-overlooked footnote, which Sam did not miss, added: A few showers are possible in April, but the months of December to April are definitely the dry season.

Sam sprawls against the base of a tree, where he has thrown himself when they stopped. Twenty minutes pass and the three of them do not speak, and in the silence they harness their fleeing energies. Sam slouches into his chest, his chin touching the front of his shirt. He inhales and exhales with an effort, as though teaching himself to breathe again. His lungs draw in the damp air of the forest, the putrid stench of his mildewed socks, the stink of unwashed perspiration. His breathing then falls into such a quiemess that bluebottle flies buzz busily around his face and eyes, enticed by the rankness of his skin. If he stays still long enough, they will lay their eggs into his skin, uncaring that he might still be alive.

A sharp cry breaks through the silence. A monkey perches almost upside down on the lower branch of the tree that shelters Sam, gazing at him with hard, bright eyes. Sam moves his right hand to his side and lifts the Winchester up and at the monkey, the butt of the rifle against his stomach. They gaze at each other for a few long minutes, until Sam deliberately curls his index finger around the trigger.

The monkey protests, swings up on the branches, chatters madly, an
d p
elts a hard berry in Sam's direction before jumping onto another tree, then another, until he is gone.

"They are wicked," Marianne Westwood says, fatigue smudging the normally sharp edges of her voice. "It would have clawed your eyes out while you slept. I have seen a man mauled by a gang of monkeys near the village. They even ate parts of him."

"You're awake?" Sam turns to the woman leaning against a teak trunk on the other side of the all but blurred trail. He smiles at her through the dull green light of the forest. Above them, the sun has come to ride the skies again, but here the trees cram themselves into any space possible, depositing tiny and tender green saplings with a ferocity fed by the nurturing damp and warmth. Their branches meet on top, linking arms with each other, battling for a glimpse of the sun, and so the bottom of the forest is in perpetual shade.

Marianne nods. "I can't sleep."

"I hoped to frighten it away without you noticing," Sam says. "You would have wanted to keep it as a pet. And," he says, his tone lightening, "you've given me enough trouble already."

Her eyes come alive through the grime on her face. They are bright, like the monkey's, but hers are a blue washed into paleness by the hand of time. Marianne Westwood has labored under the Burmese sun for the last twenty-five years as a Baptist missionary in northeastern Burma where the Kachin live. She was married when she came here, but malarial fever took Joseph away during the first monsoon, and Marianne stayed on. She lived in a basha set atop teak posts at the edge of the Kachin village, made them construct a new basha for a church when the old one that Joseph had built disintegrated in the rains one year, learned their language, translated the word of God into their tongue. The Kachin children came to Marianne's Sunday school, listened to her exhortations to think of her god as their own, and called her prettily, in their lilting voices, "Marie-annne." The children, with their masses of glossy black hair chopped at their jawlines, their ready smiles, enchanted her. They also loved the chicken curry she made for them after Sunday school.

When Colonel Parsley sent word that the Japanese were in Burma, and that she should find her way to Myitkyina for a flight out to India, she decided to stay with her beloved Kachin.

"Just how many of them did you manage to convert?" Sam asks. H
e k
nows her history by now; they have been together for five days. He also knows of her stubbornness, her will--these he has read about in a report. When the Japanese came to Burma, Marianne Westwood, formerly of New Jersey, all but forgotten by any who knew her as a child, suddenly became a POI--a person of importance--for she was the only American missionary in Burma who would not leave. Her hair is cut short, shorter than Sam's, close-cropped to her head. It is almost all white too, a blaze of noncolor against skin brushed with a palette of browns over the years. She wears, incongruously, diamond earrings in her little and perfectly shaped ears.

"Not a one," she says with the smile of an imp, which sheds years from her face. "I'm a terrible failure. In that first year"--she looks down at her hands--"it seemed as though Joseph was going to have some success. They listened so politely, were so patient with us " She turns to her right and gently shifts Ken's head from her shoulder, where he has been resting it in a pooling circle of sweat that is soaked into her shirt.

He jerks awake and sits up. "Sorry, did I fall asleep?"

"Every time we halt, you fall asleep," Sam says with a grin. "It must be a propensity of the idle--this ability to sleep at every stop."

"Don't tease the poor child, Captain Hawthorne," Marianne says as she rubs Ken's face with the back of her hand.

"The poor child, as you call him, flew his plane into a hillside and so he's here with us instead of back in Assam, drowning himself in beers with his buddies. It was a good thing I parachuted out first." Sam mock-glowers at Ken. "I should have left you by the crash site; my orders were only to bring Marianne out."

Both of them ignore Sam, and Marianne Westwood leans toward Ken and says in a gentle voice, "Does your leg hurt?"

"Only a little, Mrs. West-wood," Ken says, his voice aching and youthful, and at the same time with an edge of laughter directed at Sam. She bends over to check on the rancid bandages around Ken's foot and ankle. While she is thus engrossed, Sam swats in the air at Ken, and then sobers into silence as the boy winces at Marianne 's touch. What lies under that bandage, Sam does not even want to think about. It has been five days since he last wrapped that foot; the dressings should have been changed every day, at least every day, if not every time they were drenched by the rains. But they are right now guardians of their very lives; a foot seems a little enough sacrifice.

Ken is not even supposed to be here with them. He piloted the plane that dropped Sam into the Burmese jungles in his mission to find and coax Marianne Westwood to safety. And just as Ken was lifting off above the trees, in a strange perversity of nature on an otherwise calm day, a massive wind buffeted the plane and plunged it into the hillside. Sam, watching that explosion of fire and heat, his heart crashing, sees a parachute struggle to open in the sky as Ken comes down. The forest mostly cushions his fall, shatters only his right ankle. The navigation officer in the plane is not so lucky. Sam drags his body from the crash debris and buries him in a shallow grave. He does not weep even as Marianne sings out a few prayers into the clean forest air, even though this is his first encounter with death in the war.

Another ten minutes, Sam thinks, before they have to move on. At the last supply drop, they had instructions to head to the Chindwin. By Sam's calculations, a hundred and fifty miles of mountains, bush, rivers, monsoon forest, and contingents of the Japanese army lie between them and India and freedom. And there are just three of them. Ken is almost incapacitated by his smashed ankle--they cannot carry him, so he walks on broken bones, with even the idea of pain long anesthetized. Under the surface of her good humor, Marianne carries, imprinted on her for life, pictures of the Japanese slaughter of the entire Kachin village that she had once called home--she could have better handled walking on two broken legs and shattered ankles. But she does not complain, and Sam is grateful for that little consideration because he has been given the responsibility of bringing her out of Burma, according to his orders, in merely a bodily whole. He does not have charge of her emotions, which, in any case, will take years to heal if they do heal at all.

At least, Sam thinks, he is not injured. Yet. Toughened by his training, toughened even by his own self, Sam never lets himself think that India is a distant and unattainable possibility. They will survive. They will reach safety. For a reason more important than merely his own survival.

Sam watches Marianne coo over Ken, who is enjoying the attention. He shifts against the tree trunk and bangs his hand over his shirt pocket to swat a whining mosquito that is trying to burrow through the plastic and cloth to his skin. He reaches into the pocket and draws out a bundle of papers, enclosed carefully in the clear plastic wrapping of his cigarettes. The handwriting is familiar, still as unformed as a child's hand. Here are

Mike's tales of this distant desert kingdom called Rudrakot in northwestern India. Here in these other letters, also written by a familiar hand, are his mother's fears that Mike might be ... Sam leans back against the tree, his heart exploding. He was given his orders to rescue Marianne and the news that Mike was missing on the same day and with no time to even turn his head away from Burma and absorb the news. Missing, he thinks of Mike as missing, does not dare to even think of that other word.

"What is it?" Marianne says softly at his shoulder. And it is then Sam realizes that his fingers scrabble over the cellophane covering the letters. He stops.

"Nothing," he replies. "Nothing."

Ken lifts his eyelids with an effort; he is tired. "Is it a love letter?"

Sam smiles, thinking how much easier it is to let them think this. "Of sorts."

"Have you ever been in love, Sam?" Ken asks.

Chapter
Three.

Declaring himself Indian first and a Brahman afterward, he told the conference he would not follow any custom of the Brahmans, however sanctified by age and authority, if it came in the way of his duties as a true Indian in independent India, there continue to be few Indians but many members of the various carte groups--a sad commentary on our national life.

--Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, The Scope of Happiness, 1979

*

The political agent's house at Rudrakot was built in the style of a British back-home house, with only some allowances made for

India. It was a long, serene, whitewashed building in two stories. Three low stone steps led up to the front door, and the style here was so much home and so little India that the door stood naked, embedded into the wall--no portico, no cool, slender-pillared porch sheltered the front entrance to the house. Carriages, phaetons, rickshaws, and cars stopped in the blasting heat of the desert sun; the door itself, painted a warm red, swallowed the westerly heat and spat it out in the evenings in the faces of callers. An architectural mistake, of course, one that was much lamented but little addressed over the seventy-odd years of the house's existence. A compound wall encircled the front of the house with wrought-iron gates on two corners. A half-moon driveway started at one gate and, swinging near the house, ended at the other. There was a fountain in the center of this semicircle, resplendent with plaster cupids who spoute
d w
ater out of their pursed mouths when the rains came. During the dry season, they were frozen in disgusted pouts, feeling perhaps quite as silly as they looked.