Flood of Fire (9 page)

One day a cousin from a neighbouring village came to visit. Although not much older than Kesri he had already spent a couple of years in Delhi, in the service of the Mughal army. This was his first visit home and he could not, of course, be allowed to leave without spending the night: the boys took their charpoys out into the courtyard and were soon absorbed in their cousin's stories. He described Delhi's temples and mosques, forts and palaces. When he and his company went on marches, he said, their unit was far outnumbered by their camp-followers. The bazar that trailed behind them was like a small town, only much more colourful. One whole section of it was given to naach-girls – and they were the most beautiful women that anyone had ever seen, from Afghanistan and Nepal, Ethiopia and Turkmenistan. Boys like Bhim and Kesri, he said, could not conceive of the things these girls could do with their bodies – no more than they could imagine a banana being peeled with the tongue.

Of course it couldn't be left at that. The boys plied him with
questions and after a little bit of nahi-nahi and other pretences of modesty, he told them all they wanted to know and more – how it felt to have the contours of your face stroked with a nipple, and what it was like to have your instrument enveloped by muscles that could squeeze, pluck, and even glide, like the fingers of a musician.

For Kesri this was dangerous territory, for one of the most important aspects of his regimen of training, as a wrestler, was the control of the inner workings of the body – especially its desires and their manifestations. To that end he regularly practised a variety of exercises, intended to prevent the loss, accidental or intentional, of his vital fluids. But that night his training proved unequal to the task: he woke suddenly to find that he had succumbed to a
swapnadosha
– a ‘dream-mishap'.

As for his brother Bhim, he knew at once that this was exactly the brand of soldiering that would suit him best. With Kesri's encouragement he went to their father the next morning and told him that he wanted to go to Delhi with his cousin. Ram Singh willingly gave him his blessings and promised to make all the necessary arrangements.

Preparations for Bhim's departure started at once and involved the whole family. Clothes were made, bedding and blankets were prepared, and an array of equipment was assembled – flints, powder, musket-balls for his goolie-pouch, and an assortment of edged weapons, long and short.

Kesri, in the meantime, was busy ploughing the poppy fields. But try as he might, he could not stop thinking of his brother Bhim's forthcoming journey to Delhi, mounted on a horse, with his weapons slung behind him and a fine new turban on his head. By contrast his own bare body, with a filthy langot knotted around the waist and flies settling on his pooling sweat, was a reminder of the lifetime that lay ahead of him, of trudging endlessly behind draught animals, jumping aside when they spurted dung in mid-stride, season after season, watching the crops come and go, counting it a luxury to snatch an hour's sleep in the shade of a tree in the afternoon, and at the end of the day, struggling to wash away the mud that had hardened into a second layer of skin between his toes. And in the meantime Bhim would be going from city to city,
filling his bags with booty, eating rich meats and fowl and revelling in the embraces of beautiful women.

Abandoning the oxen in the middle of the field Kesri went to sit under a tree; tears trickled down his cheeks as he sat there, clutching his knees. That was how Deeti found him when she brought over his mid-day meal of rotis and achar: she understood without asking what the matter was; she stayed with him through the afternoon and helped him finish the ploughing.

At the end of the day, when they were walking home, she said: Don't worry, it will happen. You will leave too.

But when, Deeti?
Batavela
. Tell me – when?

*

For several days after his unfortunate encounter with Mrs Burnham and her daughter, Zachary lived in hourly fear of being evicted from his comfortable new lodgings on the budgerow. It seemed just a matter of time before a khidmatgar arrived with a letter to inform him that his employment had been terminated because of his lapse from decorum.

But as the days went by, with no dismissal, he decided that Mrs Burnham had perhaps decided to grant him another chance. Still, he knew he could not be complacent – occasional flashes of light in the mansion's windows suggested that he was still under observation – so he went to great lengths to observe all the proprieties in matters of dress and deportment. When working in exposed parts of the boat, he made sure that he was clothed from neck to toe, no matter how hot it was.

But other than this minor annoyance, Zachary was perfectly content to be living on the budgerow. His days were uneventful but not unrewarding: he got up early and worked steadily till sunset; when he needed help he called on the mansion's khidmat-gars but mostly he was content to labour on his own. His quiet and frugal existence seemed to excite the pity of the household staff and they kept him supplied with leftovers – in fact he could not remember a time in his life when he had eaten so well and lived in such comfort.

Best of all were the nights. The bed was itself like an embrace, soft and yielding, and the solitude and quiet were an even greater luxury. Nourished by the fine food and peaceful surroundings his
imagination grew so vigorously concupiscent that it took no effort to summon Paulette out of the shadows and into his bed – and the pleasures of his trysts with her were so intense that he often sampled them several times in one night.

One morning, while working on the foredeck, Zachary heard Annabel's voice, calling from the shore: ‘Holloa there!'

He raised a finger to his cap. ‘Hello, Miss Annabel.'

‘I came to say goodbye – I'm leaving for Hazaribagh today.'

‘Well, I wish you a safe and pleasant journey, Miss Annabel.'

‘Thank you.'

She took a step closer. ‘Tell me, Mr Mystery,' she said, ‘you knew Paulette, didn't you?'

‘So I did.'

‘Do you think you may see her again soon?' ‘I don't know,' he said. ‘I hope so.'

‘If you do, please tell her I said hello, won't you? I do miss her so.'

‘So do I, Miss Annabel.'

She nodded. ‘I'd better be off now. Mama doesn't like me to talk to you.'

‘Why not?'

‘She says it isn't decent for a girl to talk to mysteries.'

He laughed. ‘Well, you'd better run then. Goodbye.'

‘Goodbye.'

Annabel and Mrs Burnham left later that day and for a fortnight afterwards the Burnham mansion was silent and dark. Then suddenly the lights went on again and Zachary knew that Mrs Burnham had returned. A week later there was an explosion of activity around the house; khidmatgars, chokras, malis and ghaskatas went swarming over the grounds, stringing up lanterns and putting out chairs. One of the chokras told Zachary that a big burra-khana was to be held at the house to celebrate the Beebee's birthday.

In the evening a great number of gharries and coaches rolled up the driveway and the sound of voices and laughter wafted across the lawns until late into the night. Zachary sequestered himself in his stateroom and was careful to stay out of sight.

The next day, at suppertime, the khidmatgars brought over a lavish spread of leftovers as well as a few bottles of beer. Along
with the food and drink they also delivered a small parcel. It was accompanied by an envelope that had Zachary's name written on it, in a steeply sloping scrawl.

This was the first communication Zachary had received since his last encounter with Mrs Burnham: he opened the envelope with deep trepidation, not knowing what to expect. To his surprise the tone of the note was not just pleasant but almost cordial:

It was clear now that he had been granted a reprieve! With a groan of relief, Zachary deposited the note and parcel on the teapoy that stood beside his bed. Then he celebrated by opening a bottle of beer and proceeded to eat a hearty meal. Afterwards he went up to the deck above and summoned Paulette to sit beside him, under the stars. Her presence was so palpable that it made him long for the pleasures of his bed; he went hurrying back to his stateroom and tore off his clothes. Wasting no time, he parted the mosquito net and slipped between the sheets, pausing only to snatch up one of the stained and crusted doo-rags that lay strewn around the bed.

He was about to snuff out the candle when his eyes fell on the parcel that Mrs Burnham had sent him. Reaching over to the teapoy, he tore off the parcel's paper covering: inside were two books, of just the sort that he would have expected to receive from
Mrs Burnham. One was a biography of a long-dead missionary and the other was a collection of sermons, by a Reverend someone-or-the-other.

The books looked dull and Zachary was in no mood to read anyway: but just as he was about to put them away a little pamphlet tumbled out of one of them and fell on his chest. Picking it up, Zachary glanced at the cover. Printed on it, in bold, screaming letters, were the words:

O
NANIA
;
OR THE
H
EINOUS
S
IN
OF SELF
-P
OLLUTION
.

The title made him sit bolt upright: he wasn't quite sure what the words meant but their very sound was enough to cause alarm.

Opening the pamphlet at random he came to a paragraph that had been heavily underlined.

Self-pollution is that unnatural practice by which
Persons of either Sex, may defile their own Bodies,
without the Assistance of others, whilst yielding to filthy
Imaginations, they endeavour to imitate and procure to
themselves that Sensation, which God has order'd to
attend the carnal Commerce of the two Sexes, for the
Continuance of our Species
.

His eyes returned, as if hypnotized, to the words ‘filthy imaginations'. A chill of shame went through him and he quickly turned the page, but only to arrive at another underlined passage:

… the Crime in itself is monstrous and unnatural; in
its Practice filthy and odious to Extremity; its Guilt is
crying, and its Consequences ruinous; It destroys
conjugal Affection, perverts natural Inclination, and
tends to extinguish the Hopes of Posterity
.

He turned feverishly to another page:

In Men as well as Boys, the very first Attempt of it has
often occasion'd a Phymosis in some, and a
Paraphymosis in others; I shall not explain these terms
any further, let it suffice that they are Accidents which
are very painful and troublesome, and may continue to
be tormenting for some time, if not bring on Ulcers and
other worse Symptoms. The frequent Use of this
Pollution; likewise causes Stranguries, Priapisms and
other disorders of the Penis and Testes but especially
Gonorrhoeas, more difficult to be Cur'd than those
contracted from Women …

Zachary's hands began to shake and the pamphlet dropped from his fingers. Reaching down, he pulled open his drawers and began to examine himself, looking for evidence of ulcers, stranguries and phymosises. What exactly they were he didn't know, but amongst the wiry hairs of his pubes and in the wrinkled folds of the sac below, there was no shortage of troubling manifestations – pimples, white-heads, creases, and swollen veins that he had never noticed before.

When had they appeared and what did they portend? He could not think and was grateful only that he could see no signs of incipient priapism. This was a disease he had often heard discussed among sailors: their name for it was ‘fouling the fiddle-block', and he had heard it said that it could lead to terrible damage, sometimes even causing the head of the organ to erupt, like a boil or pustule. He could not imagine a more dreadful affliction.

And then a thought occurred to him that was even more frightful than the spectre of disease: what if the pamphlet's arrival was not an accident? What if Mrs Burnham had deliberately stuck it in the book, knowing that it would find its way into his hands?

No, that was impossible surely? It was beyond his imagining that she would even know of the existence of such a book, let alone possess a familiarity with the matters that were addressed in it. Surely a woman like her, a memsahib of tender sensibility, the most sheltered of Burra Beebees, would not allow her eyes to dwell on a booklet of this sort? And even if she had, surely – surely? – she would not have considered sending the pamphlet to a man whom she hardly knew at all?

For what could be the intent of such an act? What grounds could she have for imagining him to be an Onanist – indeed, of accusing him of it?

To know something so secret, so private, would mean that she had looked into his very soul. And to see so deep into the head and body of another person was to take possession of them, to achieve complete mastery; he might as well be her dredgy now for he would certainly never be able to look her in the eyes again.

And the worst part of it was that he would never find out whether she knew or not – a subject like this could never be mentioned between a mystery and his mistress.

A terrible dread swept over him now and all thought of his anticipated tryst with Paulette was erased from his mind. He was filled instead with a self-loathing so acute that he could not imagine that such filthy temptations would ever well up inside him again. And if they did he would fight them; he would prove that he was no Onanist: of that he was determined – his freedom, his mastery of his very soul, seemed to depend on it.