The Empress of India (26 page)

“They’re coming up!” Mummer Tolliver whispered, peering around the entrance to the cave and watching the tour group ascend the stairs. “We’d best hurry!” He turned around to see that the three porters with him had stopped what they were doing and were staring at him questioningly. “You blighters don’t speak English, do you?” Tolliver trotted back to where they were standing. “Silly me. Here, lets get this statue back into the corner there.” He made lifting-up and pushing-back motions with his hands. The native porters followed his mimed instructions and lifted the plaster-coated brass copy of the Queen of Lamapoor, currently known as the Lady of Lucknow, and thrust it deep into an otherwise empty niche along the wall of the cave. For one with a discerning eye for Indian art and artifacts, it was stylistically as different from the artwork surrounding it as a Rembrandt is from a da Vinci, but the closest one with such a discerning eye was in the Department of Antiquarian Studies at the University of Bombay, some fifteen miles away, and his opinion was not asked.

“That’s perfect,” the mummer said, making the universal sign for “that’s perfect” with his hands. While the porters watched indifferently—they had long since stopped trying to understand why the crazy European
tourists did any of the things they did—he scrambled up onto the ledge and took a small packet of quick-drying cement powder from one pocket and a vial of water from another, poured the water into the powder, and stirred it to produce a thick white goo. He tilted the statue and applied the goo under it and all around the bottom. Then he jumped off the ledge, produced a small brush, and brushed the floor, gathering up the dust into a small pan. He then blew the dust onto the statue. Although its pallid whiteness could not be totally disguised, this gave it a semblance of age and permanence. It looked different from the other images in the small cavern, but not quite an only-been-here-for-the-past-ten-minutes difference.

“Now quick!” the mummer said, making a brushing motion with his hands. “Back to the main cave and let’s get busy helping the others unpack the lunch hampers and set up.”

The visitors from the
Empress
straggled out along the steps going up to the caves, some 250 feet above the landing. A troupe of red-faced monkeys scampered over the rocks to chatter at them and demand back-sheesh as they arrived at the top. When no food or shiny playthings were offered, the monkeys scolded the arrivals and departed as they had come, except for two who settled, one on a flat rock above the cave entrance and the other on a stone post in the clearing, leaned back on their haunches, and stared at the visitors, immobile as graven images of their primal monkey god.

Most of the
Empress
group went with Professor Moriarty into the central cave with the stone pillars and he gathered them in front of the twenty-foot-high three-headed statue known as the Trimurti. Moriarty lit the brass bull’s-eye oil lamp he was carrying and shone its beam on the heads, so far above their own heads. They represented, he explained, three major aspects of the godhead that was Shiva: Lord Brahma the creator, Lord Vishnu the preserver, and Lord Shiva the destroyer. This
provoked a spirited discussion on how a god could be all three, and with three separate names at that.

“Nothing will provoke such hilarity and disbelief in a man as another man’s religion,” Moriarty said dryly. “And that goes whichever man is considering the beliefs of whichever other man—or woman.”

Margaret and Peter sat outside one of the larger caves, in the shadow of its high, vaulted ceiling, holding hands, ignoring the others, and talked softly about something they could never recall later. In a while, when the sounds of conversation from inside grew fainter, they stood.

“Shall we walk?” asked Peter.

“Let’s.” Margaret adjusted her bonnet and smoothed her skirt.

They wandered through the hall, pausing to admire one or another of the carvings which filled the walls almost continuously, talking about this and that.

“So you’re going to be in London for a while?” Margaret asked casually.

“As far as I know,” he told her. And then, after an elaborate pause: “And you?”

“My father will be going to Castle Fitzroberts, the Highland Lancers’ headquarters outside Kilmarnock. But he plans to spend a couple of weeks in London first, attending to family business. I’ve been thinking of asking him if I could stay on. My aunt Constance would be glad to have me, I’m sure. She has a house in Belgravia.”

“I was thinking of taking some leave time after I report,” Peter said. “I have a month or so coming.”

“Really?” asked Margaret.

They stopped in front of a figure delicately carved in relief on the left wall. It depicted a smug-looking man dancing. He had a secretive smile on his face and an extra arm, which was stretched above his head holding what seemed to be a small person. Even with the third arm he looked realistic and energetic, as though he could dance off the wall and join them, if he chose. If, perhaps, he found them as interesting as they found him.

“Striking,” Peter said.

“Beautiful,” Margaret agreed. “But incomprehensible. You have the feeling with so much of this art that it is meant to convey some deep feeling, or relate a truly meaningful story, but it’s someone else’s story, and you aren’t meant to understand it.”

“I do, indeed, have that feeling,” Peter agreed. “But I felt the same way for the whole week I was in Florence staring at a peck of Renaissance masterworks. I am resigned to accept the fact that I must merely enjoy fine art without hoping to understand it. And then there was the opera I went to.
Tosca
. I didn’t understand a word of it. It was as though it were in a foreign language.”

Margaret suppressed a giggle. “Philistine!” she murmured.

After a bit over two hours of exploring, examining, and contemplating the caverns of infinite delight and perpetual torment, abode of the masculine force and the eternal feminine, the living incarnation of Shiva, the perpetual inanimate and eternal avatar of the godhead, Moriarty and his followers returned to the main grotto to find the picnic hampers unpacked, six light tables set up and surrounded with canvas camp chairs, the serving tables pushed together and piled with provender of an Anglo-Indian sort: whole roast chickens and tandoori chicken, roast leg of lamb and roast lamb cubes on skewers, three different kinds of chutney, basmati rice with yogurt, pureed eggplant, nan bread, and more. Two servers with dazzling smiles stood behind the tables in their white aprons. A third was removing more platters of hot food from the camp stove even as the group formed into a line and reached for plates. A cool breeze blew in from the sea, and all agreed that tramping about in caves staring at stone figures can make pausing for food seem like an awfully good idea.

General St. Yves and his two adjutants, Colonel Morcy, whose waist was larger and whose face was redder than when the trip commenced,
and Major Sandiman, whose mustache was thicker and whose visage was more dour, sat at a table with Colonel Moran and Professor Moriarty, discussing Hindu art and other matters of mutual interest as they ate.

Colonel Moran waited until what he judged was the proper moment in the meal to dangle the bait. When the pace of eating had slowed and the others were beginning to look restless, he began. “I understand that one of these caves has some carvings of a more, ah, if I can borrow a term, sensual nature,” he said, leaning forward and speaking in a confidential tone.

“That’s so,” said Professor Moriarty, setting the hook. “The book in the ship’s library mentioned them. Without going into any great detail, of course.”

“I wouldn’t mind taking a dekko at them, if it can be managed without offending the others,” Moran said.

“It would be very interesting,” Moriarty agreed. “The carvings have a deep religious significance, I understand, even if to our eyes they seem a little, well, risqué.”

“Religious significance, you say?” St. Yves asked.

“So I’ve been told.

“Seems to me,” St. Yves commented, “that everything on this bloody subcontinent has a religious significance, even the b-bloody insects.”

“I have had a similar feeling myself,” Moriarty admitted. “But it would certainly help with our understanding of the various peoples of India if we had a deeper knowledge of their traditional beliefs and religious practices.”

“True,” St. Yves agreed.

“After all,” Moriarty added, “despite the ‘poor benighted heathen’ image that the overseers of the British Raj try to project, India had a highly developed civilization back when the people of Britain were still painting themselves blue and worshipping trees. Our overlordship of India is the result of better guns, not a superior culture.”

Moran gave the professor a quick warning glance. This was not the
time for one of Moriarty’s little rants on the evils of modern society, or just who was calling whom uncivilized. “Perhaps we should go look at these carvings now, if we’re going to go,” he said, determined to get the conversation back on the rails again. “Then we can be back by the time everyone else has finished eating.”

“It might be amusing,” St. Yves agreed, pushing his chair back. “Do you know where this particular chamber is, Professor?”

“I believe so,” Moriarty said. “We’ll take a stab at it.” He relit his oil lamp and, with as little fuss as possible, the small group left their companions and headed back into the caves.

The mummer joined the group as it left the large cave, and Moriarty introduced him to the others as “my friend Mr. Tolliver, a dealer in Indian curiosities.”

“ ’At’s right,” the mummer agreed. “And the curiouser the better, says I.”

Moriarty led the group through a not-quite-maze of little chambers, grottoes, and connecting corridors to a cave with a high, narrow opening to the outside, letting in a wide blade of light that progressed about the room as the day advanced.

“I believe this is it, my friends,” Moriarty said, casting the beam from his lantern about the room. More of the wall space seemed to be unfinished in here than in most of the other chambers. But the carvings that were there were well and carefully done by a true artist with a feeling for the human form. The far wall displayed a series of images of strong men and supple women, or perhaps the same strong man and supple woman, engaged in erotic dalliance of an imaginative and athletic nature, assuming positions of which the average European had never conceived, and several that he or she would have deemed impossible.

“Well, there you are, gentlemen,” Moriarty said. “The people who built this had an enlightened attitude toward the sensual aspects of human relations fifteen hundred years ago. They have pictured here acts that we would be embarrassed to admit we know the names for.”

“I’d just as soon not know the name for that one,” Colonel Morcy said, pointing to a carving of a couple particularly intricately entwined. “It looks intricate and not particularly pleasurable.”

“I’d just as soon not know the names of any of them,” said Major Sandiman, who was standing at a position of parade rest and determinedly looking straight in front of him. Where, as it happened, was a carving in high relief of a woman’s leg wrapped around a man’s torso, her toes pointing joyously toward the ceiling. “A gentleman does not do that sort of thing!”

“No kidding, cove?” asked Mummer Tolliver, sounding intrigued. “What sort of thing does a gentleman do, then?”

Colonel Moran peered into a niche in the wall a little farther along. “Well, I’ll be damned!” he exclaimed. “Bring that lamp over here, will you?”

“Certainly.” Moriarty strode over to Moran with the lamp. “What have you found?”

“Shine it in there—in that recess.” He pursed his lips and stared at the illuminated statue in the niche. “I’m damned if that doesn’t look like a stone version of that statue you gentlemen of the Lancers go to dinner with,” he said, turning to General St. Yves.

“Here, now, what’s that?” Colonel Morcy demanded, wheeling around and stalking over to where Moriarty and Moran were standing. “A statue resembling the Lady of Lucknow? Wouldn’t that be something? Perhaps we can discover something of her provenance if it’s so.”

“It has been something of a mystery where she came from,” Brigadier General St. Yves said, coming over to examine the statue. “Hmmm. Curious. It does look like her, at least superficially, I’ll admit.”

The mummer elbowed his way between the men and squinted at the statue that he had put in that very niche barely two hours before. “Well, I’ll be packed in putrid pickled peppers,” he exclaimed, “if that ain’t Fatima the Dancing Dolly.”

“You know this statue?” St. Yves asked.

“Not this very one, o’course,” the mummer explained. “But I got a couple of hundred just like her in the hold of the ship. Only made out of the purist brass. I calls her ‘Fatima the Dancing Dolly,’ and plans to sell them to the tourist trade in London and Brighton, and such-like.”

“A couple of hundred?” asked Major Sandiman, looking annoyed.

“I would have gotten more if I could,” the mummer said. “The last batch went in nothing flat.”

“The last batch?” asked Major Sandiman, looking even more annoyed.

“You say you call her ‘Fatima’?” asked St. Yves. “Does that mean you don’t know the actual provenance of the statue?”

“Oh, sure I does,” the mummer said breezily, “but I couldn’t very well call her by her right name, now, could I?”