A Far Horizon (16 page)

‘I have no rent to pay for a stall, so my produce is cheap and good.’ The woman stood up and began to shout.

‘You are obstructing me, get out of my way. My granddaughter is waiting at home.’ Jaya herself began to shout.

The man who sold sandals was perched on the narrow shelf that was his shop, behind his merchandise. Rows of leather thongs were strung up like thick vines about him. He pushed his head out of this foliage. ‘Make her drink lemon juice mixed with red chillies. Four sips every two hours. That chases out these spirits. My son also was possessed for a while, but we got rid of the devil that way.’

‘There is no devil inside her,’ Jaya informed them in exasperation. She raised her eyes again to the moon. The sandal man, the spice man, the vegetable woman and the man from the fruit stall all looked at her expectantly.

‘It is the Goddess Herself who has come,’ Jaya revealed. The
importance of this announcement beat through her. In the trees the glow of the moon intensified. Light skated across a pond, turning it to pewter.

‘How do you know this?’ the fruit man asked, a new note of awe in his voice.

‘It was confirmed in the temple. I saw the Goddess with my own two eyes. She jumped out of Sati into the room. Her tiger roared for Her from the jungle. I heard that too. It was the Goddess, there is no doubt,’ Jaya informed them. ‘Now let me pass, stupid woman.’

The itinerant vegetable woman drew back at once to the side of the lane, pressed her hands together and lowered her head in respect to Jaya.

‘If the Goddess has come, it is for a reason. She will fight our battle with Siraj Uddaulah. We will be safe,’ the sandal man announced.

‘Here, take this ripe melon,’ the fruit man insisted. ‘Ask the Goddess to care for us in this difficult time.’

‘Take these yams,’ said the vegetable woman, not to be outdone. ‘They are still good. Fresh things I will bring you tomorrow. We must keep the Goddess happy.’

‘No harm can come to us if the Goddess is amongst us,’ the seller of sandals agreed.

When at last Jaya reached home and pushed open the door, she struggled to enter, loaded down with the melon and vegetables, with a terracotta oil lamp and a pair of sandals. Sati lay with her eyes wide open. The flame before the Goddess had burnt out. The moon streamed in through the window, lighting the room mysteriously. Jaya peered nervously about; her home had acquired a strange new dimension. She hurried to the oil lamp. At this hour the Goddess must not be left in the dark. Pushing open the door again, she went to light a fresh wick from Pagal the albino who lived next door.

It was impossible not to tell Pagal the news, now that she had told the stallholders and the vegetable woman. He was after all her neighbour. Jaya explained the whole thing to him, adding details she would not divulge to a common shopkeeper. The albino’s rabbity
pink eyes blinked in confusion. He wore no turban and his flaxen hair fell about his face. His wife was out and his children danced around him, dark as the rest of Black Town, as if they were no relation.

‘The Goddess has come to your house? Next door to us poor people?
Praise
be
to
Kali.
Praise.
Reverence
to
Her
.’
Pagal was overcome; he began to pray. The children, not realising the seriousness of the news, jumped about, chanting his words
irreligiously.

‘The Goddess has come next door.
Praise
be
to
Kali.
Reverence
to
Her
!’
They sang out the words.

‘Shut up,’ Jaya commanded, lighting the wick from the flame in Pagal’s house. As she turned, the albino roused himself and accompanied her. His children followed. Outside his hut he picked a frond of flowering creeper.

‘For the Goddess,’ he said.

In the door of Jaya’s hut Pagal hesitated, as if afraid to enter. He stood staring at Sati as his children pushed about him. Then he bowed his head and pressed his hands together in obeisance. His children giggled as he stepped forward to lay the flowers at Sati’s feet. Sati half opened her eyes and then closed them again, unable to find the energy to acknowledge him. She felt the feathery touch of leaves on her skin and heard the albino’s breath pumping noisily in his throat.

As a child Jaya had told her the story of Pagal. Everyone called him Pagal, the mad thing; nobody knew what his real name was. One year there had been a monsoon when it rained so much whole towns were swept away. The albino was a baby then, and, unnoticed by his mother, who was busy cleaning rice, he crawled out into the rain. Soon he was lost and cried himself to sleep beneath a thorny bush. It was a while before his mother found him, and during that time, it had rained so hard upon him that all his colour was washed away. He had crawled out of his home a deep polished walnut and returned the colour of a maggot. His mother had never got over it. She sobbed
for weeks, refusing to nurse her baby. The horror of seeing his marble skin against her dark breast soon caused all her milk to dry up. Eventually she died of grief. The albino was then doubly cursed. He was left not only with the monsoon’s freakish affliction but also with the burden of causing his mother’s death.

‘
Praise.
Praise.
Reverence
to
Her.
’
The albino’s white hair fell over his pink hands as he backed respectfully out of the door. His children crowded after him, still tossing his words about between them.

Once Pagal had departed, Jaya set the lamp before the Goddess again, bowed a moment in prayer, then started the cooking fire to heat a gruel of rice and
dhal.
She helped Sati up to eat the warm food. The girl coughed and pushed the gruel away, but Jaya was gently insistent. Soon the bowl was finished. Jaya settled down on the pallet beside her granddaughter.

‘I have done a terrible thing. Tomorrow I am going back to the temple and asking forgiveness of the Goddess. I will take a basket of fruit to offer.’ Jaya spoke in an agitated way.

‘What is the matter?’ Sati whispered. Any word of the temple now filled her with fear.

‘I saw Her,’ Jaya whispered. ‘That fool of a priest could not see Her. Only to me did She reveal herself. There is no devil inside you. It is the Great Goddess who has come to you.’

‘What are you saying?’ Sati asked. ‘It is only my Durga. I have told you about her many times.’ To push the words out of her mouth was an effort; the pain reverberated down her back.

‘The Goddess has come into you. She has come to you as Kali. In the temple I saw Her. I heard Her speak in that strange voice, deep as a man’s,’ Jaya told her.

‘You saw the
Goddess
?’ Sati whispered. Her grandmother’s talk made her uneasy.

‘I tried to stop that priest. I pulled at his arm and shouted but the fool took no notice of me. All he wants is money. The Goddess is before him and he can see nothing. But I, an old woman, can see Her,’ Jaya scoffed.

‘Why has She come to me?’ Sati looked around for Durga. In spite of what her grandmother said, she could not see Durga as Jaya did. She looked at her in disbelief.

Jaya would say no more. Already her eyes began to close. It had been too long a day. She could not take in the momentous things that had filled it If the Goddess was in the room, She would know mortals must sleep.

Soon Sati heard her grandmother snore. She raised her head and looked one last time out of the window. The moon was still held fast in the branches of the tree, as if uniting heaven and earth. And in the midst of the illumination sat Durga. She held her head high now, and silver gleamed in her eyes. Fireflies made a fiery robe upon her as if her power were restored.

T
he Chief Magistrate left the Mayor’s Court in a surly mood. He had been summoned there by Dumbleton and Plaisted, as if he were a criminal. As he passed Omichand’s house in his palanquin, he turned his face away. He had no wish to stretch his tired mind to further complexity; his need was for a friend. He directed the palanquin bearers to take him to the Chaplain’s house. The morning’s events at the Mayor’s Court had left him more disturbed than any threat from Siraj Uddaulah. He looked forward now to a glass of Madeira, and the steady atmosphere that always prevailed in the Reverend Bellamy’s home.

The
chowkidar
was absent at the Chaplain’s gate. It swung open at a push, groaning upon rusty hinges. The Chief Magistrate was too agitated to note the glances exchanged by his palanquin bearers. They lowered the litter to the ground with a practised swing of the arm. Holwell emerged, unfolding himself, pulling his waistcoat into place before turning to climb the steps. He was surprised to see no servant run forward to usher him in, but this irregularity was lost in the turmoil of his own feelings. He reached the door and rapped the knocker impatiently. Eventually it swung ajar to reveal a small part of Bellamy’s face. When the Chaplain saw the Chief Magistrate he gave a cry of relief.

‘Thank the Lord it is you, John.’ Bellamy pulled Holwell quickly inside.

‘What is all this, Gervase?’ Holwell asked, detaching himself from Bellamy’s grasp. There seemed something frenzied about the Chaplain. His hair stood askew, his black shirt hung loose about his breeches and was unbuttoned at the neck. He wore no coat or stockings. As he stared at the Chaplain’s bare legs the Chief Magistrate was reminded of the pale pink worms in the drinking water of his first sea voyage.

‘We are trying to light the stove. I was only by chance near the door just now,’ the Chaplain explained over his shoulder as he hurried off into the depths of the house. The Chief Magistrate followed, swallowing his annoyance at finding his friend so
preoccupied
. A sudden idea, that Bellamy had gone mad, came briefly into his mind. There was also, he now noted, a perceptible difference in the house. Although the perfume of beeswax still lurked faintly, the sweet smell of fresh flowers and baking bread had vanished. Instead there was the odour of unemptied chamber pots. Tatties hung at the windows dry as a bone; a hot wind blew dust through the house.

The Chief Magistrate caught up with the Chaplain, and together they left the house by a side door and walked, as they had a few days before, in the direction of the wine cellar. Before they reached it the Chaplain stopped at the cookhouse and plunged inside.

‘This is the cookhouse,’ Holwell exclaimed, hesitating at the door. The Chief Magistrate had never once entered his own cookhouse and was surprised that the Chaplain should do so.

‘Where else would the stove be found?’ Bellamy’s voice answered from within.

The Chief Magistrate shrugged and lowered his head to enter. It was dark and hot inside. The Chaplain’s wife, Dorothy, and his daughter, Anna, were standing before a blackened stove. Both women had a dirty, dishevelled appearance. A servant child of about seven stood beside them. Why any of them were in the cookhouse was unfathomable to the Chief Magistrate. He looked about in
confusion and began to feel annoyed. He had come for some Madeira and to unload his worries, not to stand about in the Chaplain’s cookhouse.

‘I have come directly from the Mayor’s Court. The whole thing is an insult. They wish only to make a fool of me.’ The Chief Magistrate’s thoughts returned to the morning’s humiliating appraisal of Jaya Kapur’s will. The Mayor’s Court had summoned him and there had been nothing he could do but obey. He had had to stand in the dock like a common criminal to face Dumbleton, Plaisted and company.

‘I was forced to swear an oath upon the Bible and answer their impudent questions.’ Just the memory made the sweat pour off the Magistrate’s back.

‘Why did you go then?’ Bellamy asked in a tone of preoccupation as he tried to light a flint. He gave it to the servant child, but the boy was all fingers and thumbs and the Chaplain took it back.

‘They demanded I turn over to them some trifling gems I have in safe keeping for a client.’ Dumbleton had made a detailed
examination
of Jaya Kapur’s will and found it a valid legacy of inheritance, not a making-over in her lifetime of worldly effects. The Chief Magistrate’s blood began to rise once more at the thought of the Notary’s impudence. He turned to see the effect this information had had upon the Chaplain, but Bellamy appeared not to have heard the Chief Magistrate. His mind was still upon the flint.

‘Confound the thing,’ the Chaplain roared, flinging down the flint in exasperation. His wife and daughter began to cry. Holwell frowned in annoyance.

‘I will not be dictated to by Dumbleton. Do you know, he has had the audacity to overturn a case I have been trying, a custody case. Who does the man think he is, poking his nose into affairs that do not concern him? Why does he bother with a senile old native woman? Only because he can get at me through her. The man carries some grudge I know nothing of…’

‘Do you know something of lighting a fire?’ The Chaplain thrust
the flints into Holwell’s hand. ‘Come to the stove, John. I beg you, make yourself useful. Perhaps your hand is better than mine.’ Bellamy bent to haul a bucket of water up on to a tripod over the unlit fire. The servant boy ran to help and together they lifted the bucket.

‘Add a little more paper and some of that charcoal, Anna. It’ll burn up the better when we get it going,’ Bellamy encouraged his daughter.

‘For what reason, Chaplain, are we here lighting this fire?’ Holwell enquired, looking down at the flint in his hand. He had had enough of the charade, whatever it was, being played out before him.

‘Do you have a little claret or Madeira to hand, Gervase? The day so far has not been kind. I feel a great need of something, or I would not ask,’ the Chief Magistrate continued when no answer was given to his previous question.

‘We too have a need, John. A need for tea. We have not even had that today.’ The Chaplain’s voice was hard.

‘Order the servants, Chaplain. I do not understand,’ Holwell answered, controlling his anger. At his words Dorothy Bellamy’s sobs grew louder. Anna gave a wild laugh.

‘Dear God, John, where have you been today? There
are
no servants. Chaplain, Magistrate, Notary or Governor, all must light their own stove today. There are no servants left in White Town. Either they obey the nawab’s order to supply us with nothing, or they prepare to flee into the jungle. This boy is still here only because he overslept and when he awoke everyone was gone.’

‘My servants were there this morning. My palanquin bearers carried me here,’ Holwell said with a frown. ‘They are in general a well-disciplined crew. I would not expect them to desert.’

‘Perhaps your servants are different from mine,’ Bellamy answered tersely, taking the flint from the Chief Magistrate’s hand. ‘As of now I know of no one who has help. All are in the same pitiful position as us. All are attempting to make soup or tea. There is Madeira on my desk if you are so in need, but I cannot be spared to join you. Ah,
here it comes,’ Bellamy shouted joyfully as a flame crackled up against the wood. There was a sudden strong odour of smoke. The servant child jumped up and down in excitement.

‘We can make a gruel of vegetables and rice,’ Anna Bellamy said, after an examination of the cookhouse’s deeper corners. She carried a rush tray with a few shrivelled vegetables on top of a mound of rice.

‘There are weevils in the grain,’ her mother accused, tears rolling down her cheeks.

‘There is no grain in this country without weevils, Mother,’ Anna replied. ‘The servants spread the grain in the sun and the insects run away.’

‘I thought that was what
they
ate. What
we
eat is surely kept in a cleaner state. How dare they give us such grain just because they think we do not know,’ Dorothy Bellamy sobbed.

‘Mother,’ Anna sighed. She began to spread the dirty rice on a tabletop, picking out stones and weevils, crushing the insects beneath her nail.

‘Do not excite yourself, my dear. See, the fire is burning up nicely now. Soon we shall have tea.’ Bellamy tried to calm his wife.

‘Take her back to the house, Father.’ Anna’s face, smudged with charcoal, turned grimly towards them.

The Chaplain sighed, taking his distraught wife by the shoulders and steering her through the door. The Chief Magistrate followed the Chaplain back to the house. It required some effort to control the impatience effervescing through him. Bellamy’s haphazard ways and his wife’s tearful hysteria were not the underpinning of an orderly house. It was no wonder the servants had run off at the slightest encouragement. The Chief Magistrate strode behind the Chaplain, his mind firmly upon the Madeira.

The Chaplain seated his wife in a chair in his study and hurried to provide her with some wine, holding the glass to her lips. Mrs Bellamy took a mouthful and began to cough, the wine spluttering over her breast. Unable to wait any longer, the Chief Magistrate stepped forward and picked up the bottle, looking about for a glass.
Several dirty silver tumblers stood upon the Chaplain’s desk. Flies clustered over the sticky rims and fed within the bowls. The Chief Magistrate was acutely aware once more of the ripe odour of chamber pots. He had the sudden recollection that Bellamy kept a chamber pot in his study, hidden beneath the day bed that he himself was now sitting upon. He stood up quickly and opened a corner cupboard in search of a glass. There was nothing to be found. His need for a drink had now reached such a pitch that he picked up one of the fly-encrusted tumblers, took out his handkerchief, wiped it as thorougly as he could and filled it to the brim with Madeira. With the first gulp he immediately felt better and realised that his wish, now the wine was under his belt, was to leave the Chaplain’s home immediately. The sympathy he had hoped for was clearly not forthcoming. Bellamy had shown no interest in the morning’s events at the Mayor’s Court, and seemed cut off from Holwell. A world of domestic detail threatened to smother him. The Chief Magistrate’s agitation had been intensified rather than mitigated by the Madeira and his view of Bellamy’s depressing circumstances. He found a show of politeness beyond him.

‘I shall get myself home now,’ he said.

‘Aye. You wanted your drink and now it is drunk,’ Bellamy answered, his attention still on his sobbing wife. The Chief Magistrate looked up with a frown.

‘I suggest you drop this business of lighting fires. Bring yourselves to my home and let me provide for the moment. This situation cannot last for long,’ the Chief Magistrate replied.

‘We may yet be forced to accept your offer,’ Bellamy nodded.

‘I shall send a palanquin for the ladies as soon as I return. I doubt you have any means of conveyance at the moment,’ Holwell added, pursing his lips.

‘We shall be grateful,’ the Chaplain answered in an offhand tone.

The Chief Magistrate turned and left the room, making his way down the corridor. The latch of the door was stiff and took him a moment to open. At last he emerged into the sun. Below the steps his
palanquin rested upon the ground, the runners nowhere to be seen. Holwell frowned and walked about in search of them. He had no doubt they had taken advantage of the wait and were chewing betel nut or tobacco in some obscure corner of the Chaplain’s premises. After some moments of prowling around and calling out loudly in a stern voice, the Chief Magistrate was forced to conclude that he had suffered the same ignominy as the Chaplain. He returned to Bellamy’s study. The Chaplain and his wife were now sitting quietly, side by side, each sipping a glass of Madeira.

‘Those fools of runners are gone,’ Holwell exploded. He suddenly noticed the predominance of flies buzzing about the Chaplain’s study. He also noticed Dorothy Bellamy was still in her négligé, having had no one to lace up her stays. Her soft white body billowed shapelessly beneath the folds of muslin, like an overfed larva.

‘It was to be expected,’ Bellamy replied, raising his eyes briefly from the Madeira. His wife gave a long, shuddering sigh and held her empty glass out to her husband. He refilled it silently and topped up his own, then sat looking glumly into his tumbler, clutching the bottle to his chest. Holwell stepped forward, pulled the Madeira away from Bellamy and looked about for his glass.

‘It is clear to me now, as never before, Chief Magistrate, how much we depend upon Black Town.’ The Chaplain’s voice was hoarse with emotion.

‘Most certainly. The rascals see to our comfort and fleece us royally into the bargain.’ Holwell was not prepared to hear a sermon at this moment from the Chaplain.

‘My dear man, they do more than that. They have made us as weak and vulnerable as newborns. They tend to both ends of us at the same time. The going in and the coming out of us are dependent upon them. They nourish and cleanse us. They keep us afloat in this heinous land, whether they know it or not. They…’

‘They are a pack of sly monkeys,’ the Chief Magistrate interrupted. The note of hysteria in the Chaplain’s voice, winding up like the spring of a rusty clock, alarmed him. ‘What need have we of them?
Your Anna is managing well enough without them, as are you yourself.’ Holwell was firm in his opinion as he stood up to leave.

‘I shall return home and send you one of my own servants,’ he announced, pulling down his waistcoat. He brushed dust from his tricorn as he left the room.

The Chief Magistrate was forced to walk home in the midday sun, picking his way up The Avenue. The sky was clear and cruel; a fire beat down upon him. Dust shifted about his feet and settled upon his lips. Wherever he looked he met the gaze of the adjutant storks lodged upon every available perch. He pulled his tricorn over his brow, but the heat knifed through his coat. Shadows were short and offered no respite. Sweat flowed in tributaries from him. He longed for a drink and looked about for a water carrier, but White Town was deserted of its usual underpinning of dark faces. The bustle and the call of hawkers’ voices was gone. The place had a desolate feel. There had been many times in the past when the Chief Magistrate had stated aloud that Calcutta would be a more tolerable place if all the Indians could be deleted. Now, at last, he had his wish and it only annoyed him.