Nightrunners of Bengal (16 page)

He mounted, sawed at the horse’s mouth, and cantered away towards the city. Rodney lay still and watched the Guru. So he was in it, something that would end in killing, and he was English. Leprosy and exposure to sun and wind had effectively disguised the colour of his skin. The part under the loincloth he had probably stained in some way; then there were the ashes with which he usually covered himself. His eyes could have given him away, but many men from the extreme northwest of India had those pale eyes. He’d travelled reasonably fast to get here, for on Monday he’d been under his trees in the Little Bazaar, talking about chupattis, when that fat merchant was there listening.

The carts were “on their way to the lake”; that might be anywhere, for many small lakes and big ponds dotted the state; Rodney certainly couldn’t find them tonight. But he could follow the Silver Guru and gather a little more information for his report to Bulstrode. The references to “the girls” and “the other stuff” he did not understand.

Five minutes later the Silver Guru rose without a sound. Carrying the wooden begging bowl in his right hand, he strode down the middle of the trail towards the city. When he was only a tall shadow in the moonlight, Rodney stood up and followed him. The monkeys screamed; the fields lay ghostly grey on either side.

Soon the fort cut a black square out of the lower sky to his left, and a confused murmur from the city ahead throbbed in his ears. That would be the Holi celebrations; they might help or hinder him. The bulk of the people would gather in the square and the main streets, leaving the lanes in the slum districts empty; but gangs of revellers would stray everywhere and might run into him. They were unlikely to molest him, except in an excess of drunken playfulness, but they could make him lose touch with the Guru.

The shadow ahead passed the first shacks of the city, and Rodney closed his distance. The alley here had no lights, and the central gutter overflowed with slops and garbage. Close to the houses a thick layer of dust and dried cowdung deadened the sound of his boots. A rank smell permeated the air. Once a drunken peasant lurched from a house as he passed and cannoned into him; Rodney held his breath—but the man was too full of toddy to notice or care. The noise in front grew louder. At each turn he waited until the Guru was well round the next, then he scurried forward and waited again.

Peering round the corner of an empty shop, he saw that thirty yards ahead the alley widened out and was flanked by three-storeyed houses. At the end there was bright light, and a host of people shouting and blowing horns; there the alley ran into the main square. He remembered the night of the riot. As he was looking now, Sitapara’s house stood somewhere to his left, the temple to his right.

When just into the wider part, the Guru turned sharp right and disappeared. Rodney slipped forward and found the place where he had gone—a narrow slit between blank walls that must lead to the back of the temple. He waited; he dared not follow the Guru yet, but where he stood he was in full view from the square and protected only by the uncertain light.

A knot of revellers broke from the mob in the square and surged yelling down the alley towards him. They carried brass jars full of water dyed red, brass syringes, and bags of red and blue powder. As they ran they splashed and squirted red water over the house doors and over each other, in the rite symbolizing the bleeding of women; and they shouted obscenities, because in legend a demoness had once been frightened away from a village by the villagers’ rude words. The leading man had a wooden phallus two feet long strapped round his waist; with one hand he held the vermilion-daubed knob away from his chin, and in the other brandished a small bell. Rodney pressed flat against the
wall and hoped that they might pass by him unseeing, for their eyes were glazed with toddy, opium, and lust.

All together, they tried to force into the narrow part of the alley. They could not, and doubled their yelling as the red water and coloured powder flew, and lifted their torches so that sparks showered up. At the flank a coolie woman in a dark red skirt and brief separate bodice leaned back in giggling stupor against the wall. A man stumbled by and sloshed the whole of his jar of red water over her. She collapsed across Rodney’s feet and spread her knees; the man dropped the jar and, as he bent swaying down to rip her bodice open, fell forward on top of her. His head hit Rodney’s thigh, and he looked up, hiccoughing. “Out of the way, friend. I’m going to have this one!”

Then he saw. Rodney watched the bleared, half-focused eyes travel up—from his trousers to his shirt to his face. The man shouted, “It’s an English sahib! Sahib! Sahib! He’s come to our Holi!”

He meant no harm; Rodney thought for a second the man was going to offer him first go at the woman. But the mob heard and turned, and the torches flared in his face. He pushed the drunk hard and dived into the lane after the Guru. The mob rushed screaming behind him, led by the man with the phallus.

Forty yards down the lane the houses on the left gave way to a plot of waste land. Across it was a big building, and he recognized the architecture of the temple. The Silver Guru had vanished; he must have gone in there. Rodney vaulted a low wall and ran for the nearest door. Pushing it open, he burst through, slammed it shut behind him, and leaned panting against it.

The smoky little room was full of men. There were ten or twelve of them, in loincloths, cotton shirts, and turbans, and they were all staring at him. There was something familiar about them.

He did not think the mob outside would have hurt him, unless he had drawn his pistol. They were drunk enough to
have done anything then. But it had been unpleasantly exciting, and his heart leaped when he realized why the men in the room seemed familiar. There was Naik Parasiya of his own company, one or two others of the regiment, a big old fellow he knew to be a subadar of the 88th. Rodney did not know them all by sight, and they were not in uniform, but his first quick glance told him, by the way they stood, that every one was a sepoy, N.C.O., or Native Officer of the Bengal Army. He smiled and moved towards them.

They were moving towards him. They came on slowly together across the floor, like men concussed. Their mouths drooped slack and open. Their muttering was a sibilant hiss.

“It’s a sahib, it’s a sahib, it’s Savage-sahib …”

A
DOOR in the far wall flung open and the Silver Guru strode into the room. He called out,
“Rescue
the sahib! Block that door! The madmen
outside
want to kill him!”

Rodney looked at him in surprise across the heads of the sepoys. The mob had not seemed to be in so dangerous a mood, but it was impossible to tell, when people were drunk. The sepoys stopped in their tracks; Naik Parasiya stared round at the Guru, then suddenly echoed his cry. “
Rescue
the sahib!”

Most of the men turned away; a few ran past Rodney to the door. One of these, a squat long-armed man with an undershot jaw and wide nostrils, opened it a fraction and shouted through the crack, “Go away! There is no sahib here.”

“But we saw him go in. He is defiling the temple!”

So their temper had changed after all. The ape-man quelled them with a hoarse bellow. “No sahib is here! Dismiss, you drunken owls.
Hut!
”

The chief Brahmin of the temple waddled in. His forehead was marked with a red line down the centre, the sacred thread looped diagonally across the rolls of fat on his bare stomach, and his face was grey with fright. He whispered to the Guru.

The Guru turned to Rodney. “Come with me—this way. The passage is open to the main square, but no one’s taking any notice that side. Keep on my right.”

Rodney had a hurrying vision of the market-place—red-splashed faces, swirling spotted clothes, the far housefronts shaking in the irregular light. It was a Brueghel canvas sprung to life. Shadowy dwarfs shouted and ran about in droves, some with the gigantic wooden phalli strapped to them. Bonfires glared sudden unearthly colours as men threw powder on to them; rockets rode vivid trails into the sky; bells rang; conch horns quaked. Oblivious of it all, a humped white bull urinated on the steps of the temple and chewed the heavy garlands of zinnia, canna, and jasmine drooping around its neck.

They passed through an open door, and the Silver Guru bolted it behind him.

The room was about twenty feet square. The floor and walls were of red stone blocks; black and yellow designs were painted on the ceiling. Six pillars stood out in high relief from each wall, and there were two doors—the one they had entered by, and another, open, facing the plot of waste land at the back of the temple. The drunken gang there had dispersed, and the stirrings of the hot air brought in only the muted noises of the crowd in the market-place.

Round above the pillars ran a stone frieze depicting the adventures of the god Shiva in his home on the Himalayan peak of Kailas. A foot-high phallus of red sandstone sprouted from the floor in the centre of the room; the sculptor had carved the face and body of Shiva into the
stone, and someone had daubed the whole with vermilion paint. Cotton wicks burning in earthenware bowls of oil diffused a smoky light. There was one in each of three corners of the room; in the fourth corner, the lamp was on the plinth of a small statuette of an eight-armed god. The god sat cross-legged, knees and thighs flat, and with two of his arms grasped the minuscule figure of a woman. Her geometrically rounded breasts pressed against him, her arms and legs twined round him, and the stony carving of her sexual parts engulfed him. Jasmine petals and dried cowdung littered the floor; the sacred bull had been here too.

Rodney leaned against the wall and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He saw with disgust that his clothes were splashed with red and blue dye. Looking up suddenly, he said in Hindustani, “What are those sepoys doing here, out of uniform?”

The Guru had subsided to the floor and sat in his usual upright position. “They can get leave of absence during the Holi, can they not? This is a famous temple of Shiva and caters well for the holy lusts of the flesh. I do not know why they are out of uniform. It is more sensible to ask, what are
you
doing here?”

Rodney remembered now giving Parasiya leave. The others would have got it too, from their own company commanders; they’d probably clubbed together to hire a couple of pony traps for the journey. There was nothing strange about it.

He eyed the Guru and began to collect himself. Half an hour ago, intent on the affair of the carts, he had thought and acted like a British Officer of the Honourable East India Company. Now the dishevelled wreck of his clothes, the atmosphere of exploding desire, the sexual riot of this night under a full moon, all conspired to make him forget that he was an Englishman and stood here by right of blood and conquest. But he must remember, for he was on duty.

He spoke in English: “Guru-ji, I was the drunken compatriot of yours capering about at midnight outside Bhowani—but I was not too drunk to see the shells. I am acting on
orders. You will explain to me at once, and truthfully, the whole scope of the plot in which you, Mr. Dellamain, and the Kishanpur government are engaged. And speak English.”

He wondered what he would do if the Guru refused to speak—force him out at pistol point, perhaps, and with the sepoys’ help take him back across the river? The Guru turned so that his eyes, which always looked straight forward out of his head, focused on Rodney’s. Rodney stared back grimly, and the two pairs of light eyes, one blue, one grey, glinted in the guttering flicker of the lamps. When the Guru began to speak Rodney looked away. He had won.

“I will tell you, and what you do about it afterwards I do not care. It began when the Rani murdered the old Rajah. I had foreknowledge of that, but at the time it was none of my affair and I did not try to prevent it.” His English was uncertain, as from long disuse, and had no accent of class or locality.

“Why did she kill him?”

“Fear—and lust. She is one of those women with a fire in the loins, and will certainly be burned by it in hell hereafter. In this life it takes many men to damp such a fire. The Rajah found out. At first he would not believe—as I see you do not wish to believe. Then he had to. So she killed him.”

Rodney watched the smoke curl up from the lamps. Clamped on the god, the stone woman did not move, but her desirousness pervaded the shadows.

“Go on.”

“The Dewan saw a chance to regain a power which all his family once had—you know he is a Bholkar, of the Bholkars of Goghri? He began to prepare a revolution which would overthrow the Rani and leave him as real ruler of the state, with some Rawan as puppet Rajah—perhaps the boy.”

“But he hasn’t had time to arrange all this, and get the guns imported from overseas and brought here, since January the first.”

The Guru paused perceptibly. “His plans were laid beforehand. He knew the Rani would do it sooner or later. And not all the weapons come from overseas. There are many secret stores in Maharajahs’ palaces and forts up and down India.”

“So the Rani and her supporters will be murdered! That’s the killing the Dewan’s looking forward to? You can’t
kill
her!”

“Why not? What is death? What is it to me of all people?” He held out his scaly arms and laughed with a clear tinkling sound that was gruesomely out of place and terrifying. “She’ll die. So will you—one day.” He forestalled the question on Rodney’s lips. “Dellamain-sahib—
Mister
Dellamain I should say in this language—is in the Dewan’s plot too, but not of his free will. Since long before the murder—for over three years—the rulers here have been bribing him to let them smuggle opium, salt, and children of the harlot tribes through his territory. It has always been a main source of income to the state—Kishanpur is the clearing house for Central India. Nowadays the state pays ‘protection’ to a British official instead of a Mogul satrap. That money—in diamonds—was paid to Mr. Dellamain by various hands, but always on the authority of the old Rajah—and now of the Rani. The Dewan is simply smuggling his arms in with the same convoys that bring the opium and the girls. He blackmailed Mr. Dellamain by threatening to reveal the original bribery and ruin his career for good—and he added a bigger bribe on his own account.”

“You mean Dellamain’s collecting a bribe from the Rani to wink at her smuggling, and at the same time allowing the Dewan to use her convoys to destroy her?”

“Yes. Mr. Dellamain put one foot wrong and has been pushed the rest of the way. However, there is one point which helps to prevent him rebelling. He knows, and I know, and many others know, that the Governor General will weep no tears if the Rani is murdered. Lord Canning would never tell Dellamain to have it done, as a Mogul would—we are a
hypocritical race, sir. The reason? She is very unpopular with the people. A palace revolution is better than a people’s revolution, because it does not alarm other rajahs. If you think, you will see what I mean.”

Bitter at heart, Rodney saw, and nodded his head. If the people here in Kishanpur rebelled and threw off the Rani, they would then ask the British to rule them in her stead—for they would never, of course, imagine they could rule themselves. The British would be forced to take over to avoid anarchy. And nothing would persuade other princes that the British had not planned the whole affair from first to last with precisely that end in view. The Dewan’s plot on the other hand could end only in a palace revolution, which would neither alter the relation between state and Company nor disturb other princes.

He saw that it was only too likely a situation. Nothing could excuse Dellamain’s personal bad faith with the Rani, but the circumstances might easily decide an ambitious and nervy man like that to lie quiet under this novel combination of blackmail and bribery. Bulstrode also would have to walk delicately after he had received Rodney’s report Only one factor seemed unaccounted for: the Dewan was as much hated as the Rani, and just as likely to be overthrown by the people. But presumably first things must come first. None of it was pleasant to think about.

Rodney turned on the Guru. “How do you know so much about it? Who are you? I know you’re a fake holy man, and on the way to be a murderer—but who were you?”

“A private of Her Majesty’s One Hundred and Twenty-Fourth Foot—only it was still His Majesty King George the Fourth’s when I deserted thirty years ago, about the time you were born. You are surprised that I do not have a common person’s accent, I see. Not all private soldiers are the scum of the gutter—didn’t Wellington call us something like that once? I was born a gentleman—perhaps a little more than that For many years, too, the only English I have heard is from officers speaking it by my tree in Bhowani. My
tongue is rusty, but I talk in English with myself, inside my head, and imitate what I hear. I was a good soldier once. You would find it in my record of service if I told you my name, which I will not. And I was young—younger than you—and whored and drank in the cities at night with other lads. One day—this.”

He stretched out his hands.

“A spot—here. And the same day fifty lashes for overstaying late pass. I deserted. India had touched me—here—and I belonged to her.”

“But you’re a Christian!”

“What is a Christian? Or a fakir, or a sadhu? Is not leprosy a religion? For two years I lived with a sweeper’s widow in the slums of Benares. For five years I travelled the roads as a beggar and learned the fakirs’ lore—oh, the crows were real, and so are other frightening things I could show you. I read sacred books, and argued with holy men in the dust outside temples and mosques and Sikh gurdwaras. The leprosy grew worse. For four years I studied alone at a shrine near Badrinath in the Himalaya. Then I came to Bhowani and sat down under the peepul tree—nineteen years ago.”

“Why did you join in this filthy plot? How do you benefit? You must realize you’re doing nothing but evil.”

The Guru stared at the wall and did not answer for a long minute. His voice was gentler than before. “Captain Savage, I know you. I have seen you galloping down the Pike, and laughing and joking with your brother officers and the sepoys. I know that you dream of romantic adventure. I know that duty did not compel you to swim the Kishan and follow me here into this temple. Your blood drives you. Don’t you think I might be the same sort of person? I have island blood too, and in those years on the road I found that I could not master it. I am cast out from my own people.” He lifted his hands again and slowly lowered them. “I must grub about in dung to find my gold. It is pure gold to me to be a leper under that tree, and from a leper’s world
—which is himself alone—burst out into other worlds. This is not my first adventure—plot, whatever you like to call it—but I think it will be my last. I am getting old.”

Rodney paced uneasily up and down the floor. At one end he looked out on the waste land and the low wall; at the other on the god and the woman locked in stone embrace. The wind of his passing tugged at the flames so that they guttered and puffed in the bowls while distorted shadows crouched across the ceiling. Incense and wood smoke burdened the hot air, and the throb of chanting. From one end he saw the Guru’s straight back and matted hair, and from the other end stared into the man’s eyes.

They were North Sea eyes, grey English Channel eyes, and indelible on their retinas thirty years of this—fecund squalor, diseased and germinating dust, circling vultures, grey glowing sky, hot rain, and rioting lust, and a silver skin. He was a fresh-faced boy like young Myers, a tall young man in scarlet serge who drank strong rum with a thousand others like him of his regiment, and ate salt beef, and swore monotonous soldiers’ oaths. India touched him, but not with her hot hand of death. That laid the body under a slab in a walled cemetery—distorted, shrunk, discoloured, preserved for ever in its English thoughts.
Here lies Private X, H.M.
124th Foot, died of the cholera, on such a day, 1827, in such
a year of his age
—such a young year. Rodney had seen hundreds of them.

Those dead were English and would remain English for ever under the Indian sun and the Indian tree. At the end of “for ever” they would be remembered with the men in the sea and the girls under the Devon hill.

But this tall man would not, because India had touched him and turned his white to silver. Selecting him, she branded him and drew him ashamed out of the English room into the darkness and the glare. After that he could have no master or servant or lover but her, and, because she had caressed him and he carried the mark, her people revered him.