Tiger Hills (50 page)

Of them all, it was Dags alone who treated her with a distant cordiality, opening the door politely for her but looking above her head when she turned her eyes up to his with her softest, most melting smile. Naturally, of them all, it was he who intrigued Rosie the most. She began to place herself in his path, to visit the hockey training sessions and cheer the swimming team, until it was plainly obvious to anyone who cared to see that Rosie D'Costa had eyes only for swimming captain, hockey captain, moneybags Dags.

He became an obsession for Rosie. The more the other boys hankered after her and the more Dags stayed away, the more she wanted him, until he was all she could think about. He timed it perfectly, goading her almost to fever pitch so that when he finally did make his advance, she was as sweet and yielding as a ripe guava.

Appu enjoyed Rosie for nearly the entire term, their mutual shenanigans driving the boarders mad with envy and making
the poor saps who were truly in love with her sick to their stomachs. What he overlooked, though, was her stolidly middle-class upbringing. When one afternoon, he informed her casually that they were over, Rosie had been shocked. Her copious tears, her vehement pleading, had served only to make Appu's lips tighten slightly in distaste. “There, there,” he said as he patted her shoulder, looking surreptitiously at his watch and wondering how much longer before he could get back to the hockey field.

When it became obvious that there would be no changing his mind, a wailing, distraught Rosie collapsed into the arms of her mother. That good lady, of course, ran to her husband, and a horrified Devi rushed to Ooty to prevent her darling from being summarily expelled.

It took a great deal of negotiating, a lot of string pulling and donating to the school, but finally, Biddies agreed to let Appu finish his year. A shaken Devi gave Appu an earful, refusing to be mollified even when he dimpled winningly at her and cracked a weak joke or two. Rosie was whisked back to Madras, and when she got her next period, her mother wept from relief. All things considered, the entire episode was hushed up rather well.

It was only when Appu began his application to the KCIO program that the full repercussions of the previous term really came to light. When he wrote to Captain Balmer for a recommendation, the captain wrote a somber letter back, expressing his regrets. He had heard from Colonel Bidders about the unfortunate incident at the school. No doubt, there were always two sides to every story; however, under the circumstances, he could not, with a clear conscience recommend Appu. He was truly sorry—he had had high hopes for him, but as things stood … the KCIO program included a rigorous selection process, and it was certain that given what had happened, Appu would not be considered for admission. If there was
anything
else he could do for him, he would be only too happy to help. There were other fields besides the army.

Devanna wrote to Colonel Bidders on Appu's behalf, only to be met with a rebuttal. The boy had very nearly been expelled. It was only on account of his track record at the school in all the previous
years that he had been allowed to finish. “I'll have you know, sir,” the Colonel wrote, “that the cornerstone of the school is its unflagging commitment to the development of sterling character in our youth. I do not see, given all that has transpired, how you expect me to recommend your ward to the admissions committee of what is the most prestigious program in the army today.”

Still Appu did not lose heart. It would all blow over, it had to. “Come down, Avvaiah,” he urged. “Talk to the headmaster, he won't refuse you.”

Devi went once more to Biddies, but to no avail. “He won't budge, the old fool,” she said angrily to Appu. “You've brought this mess squarely upon yourself, Appu. The
headmaster's
daughter?”

Appu pushed a hand through his hair. “What does this mean? The KCIO program … ” It hit him then, at last, that do what they would, this time he was not going to get his way. The KCIO door had been shut in his face.

Devi bit her lip, her anger dissolving at the stunned disbelief in his eyes.

“Appu,” she said gently. “There are other things besides the army.”

“There
must
be a way, Avvaiah. Maybe if you
met
Colonel Bidders, instead of just a letter—”

“Appu. Listen to me. It's done. Move forward.”

“No.” His voice trembled. “The army. I have to get in.”

“Why?” she asked softly. “Because of your father? No, you don't. Your father joined the army because he had no other choice.”

“He was a hero.”

“He was a hero long before he joined. He was a tiger killer, Appu. A tiger killer.”

She waited, but he said nothing.

“Your father's heart, even when he was far from Coorg, was always there. Tiger Hills—
that
is your legacy, Appu. And Tiger Hills you shall have forever. Forget this KCIO business. They don't know what they are missing not to have my son.”

“My father gave up his life in the army.” Appu's voice was tight. “Captain Balmer wrote to me about how well he fought.”

“He joined only because he had to,” Devi repeated. “His roots—”

“Oh stop, for God's sake, just stop, Avvaiah.” He whirled on her, cutting her short. “How would you know? You were
not
his wife, you are
not
my … ” He stopped short of saying it—
you are not my MOTHER
—but the word hung unspoken between them.

Devi swallowed, trying to quell the bright stab of pain flaring within her.

He saw her to the car and bent down to touch her feet. She hesitated a moment, as if wanting to say something, and then, changing her mind, she got wearily into the car.

He waited as the car pulled away, and when it was finally out of sight he turned, squaring his shoulders as he stared at the red-bricked sprawl of the school.

Chapter 33

1927

T
he banyan tree seemed blown from smoke and shadow, its contours blurred, watermarking the early morning mist. Charcoal and slate, Devi thought, the colors that lay between night and dawn. Cold fire, forgotten stone. Drawing the shawl tighter about her shoulders, she touched her fingers to her temples.

This was usually her favorite time of day. When the garden lay half asleep, orchids secretly unfurling, the grass shivering and weighted with dew. The veera watching from the shadows as she silently walked the grounds. Machu's presence seemed to be everywhere, there, just there, standing straight and tall among the trees, a fluid truth discernible among the moist, shifting shapes of the dawn.

Today, though, a headache flicked cruelly at her temples, pressing needle-fingered through her scalp. She moved gingerly about the garden as the parrots in the banyan tree began to stir. Raising a hand to massage her forehead again, she turned toward the house. “Devanna,” she called fretfully, “Devanna.”

“Zeuzera coffeae,”
Devanna read aloud. “The coffee berry borer is the single most damaging pest to plague plantations across India, Malaya, and Brazil. Also known as the cocoa pod borer, the tea stem borer, and the coffee carpenter, the beetle has even been known to infect teak, eucalyptus, and grape. The newly hatched
larvae enter the young twigs of a coffee bush, migrating as they grow to larger branches. As the beetle bores its way through the plant, damage is evidenced by holes mottled with frass—”

Devanna paused to glance at Devi over the half moons of his spectacles. “Insect excreta,” he explained helpfully. “Now where was I … mottled with frass and characterized by overall brittleness and withering. Larvae pupate in the tunnels, with each adult female laying between 190 and 1,134 eggs. Serious damage results ultimately in the death of the coffee plant.”

“All useful information, I'm sure,” Devi said tartly. “Now can you please come up with a solution?”

She was worried for the coming crop. Coffee seasons alternated in quality; a bumper crop one year was typically followed by a lighter one the next. Usually even the lesser yields had been good, but Devi's estates had faltered for the first time last season.

The crop had been adequate, but not nearly enough to pay for the Strawoniser spray engines that she had installed after the previous harvest. The bank manager had been good to her, extending the loans for another year; however, Devi knew that the discussions would not go nearly as smoothly a second year running. She had crossed her fingers and waited anxiously for the blossom showers. The rains, thank Iguthappa Swami, had been plentiful, and Devi had heaved a sigh of relief. Still, unwilling to leave anything to chance, she had bolstered the soil in all three estates with a compost of manure and cuttlebone as an extra precaution. The coffee blossomed in profusion, thousands of the tiny, honeyed white flowers dotting the estates.

And then, just when all was looking well, the coffee borers had struck.

It had been just a couple of bushes at the periphery of Tiger Hills at first, their stems riddled with holes, the odd borer beetle hovering nonchalantly in the air. And then suddenly, in scarcely more than the blink of an eye, the borers were running rampant across the entire estate. It was stunning how rapidly the pests had bred, and it was not long before another of Devi's estates was infected as well.

So acute was the distress in the Bamboo district that already many of the European estates had embarked on the final, desperate step of burning down the infected bushes. She had heard that in some estates as much as fifty percent of the land had been cleared and replanted with “supplies”—immature coffee saplings. It was a desperate step. The new saplings would take at least seven years to reach maturity and begin to yield.
No,
Devi thought stubbornly to herself,
there must be a better way.

She went over the numbers again in her head. Two of her estates, including Tiger Hills, had been infiltrated by the borers, which put just over half of her annual produce at risk. Luckily, the third estate, a sprawl of two hundred acres in South Coorg, had been unaffected. The beetle, it seemed, preferred the open stretches and rolling hills of the north over the thickset forests of the south.

If the crop at the South Coorg estate was good, and they contained the spread of the borers in the other two properties, they could make it through the year.

It would be tight for the next few months, but there were ways to cut corners. She would not hire the temporary pickers she usually called in to help; that would save some rupees. The family could help oversee the picking, especially Nanju and Appu. She would speak with Appu as well, to have him cut down his expenses … Devi sighed.

It was over a year since Appu had come back for good. Devi bit her lip as she stared out across the lawn. That KCIO business … the very year after Appu had graduated from Biddies, two more Coorgs had been selected for the program. Appu had no doubt come to hear about it as one of the boys admitted was, like Appu, an alumni of the Presidency College in Madras. Appu, however, had said nothing; indeed he had never spoken of the army again. All the boy seemed interested in was his horse racing and partying, becoming ever more thoroughly entrenched in the local social scene while at college in Madras. Three years later, when he graduated, he had taken up an apprenticeship with a tea exporting company. Rapidly growing bored, he had tossed up the
job not five months after he'd joined and had wandered back to Tiger Hills.

Devi had not objected. Nanju had graduated from agricultural college some years earlier and had headed eagerly back for Coorg. She had assigned the South Coorg estate to him to manage. The boy was a hard worker and anxious to please.
Appu will learn,
she had thought. He would watch his industrious older brother and would soon tire of his own lotus-eating ways. To her chagrin, however, Appu had showed not the slightest inclination to anything more taxing than visiting the Club.

She twisted her plait around her fingers, oblivious to the softness in Devanna's expression as he watched from behind his book. At forty-eight, Devi looked to him even lovelier than before. The years had colluded to burn away the soft comeliness of youth, but in its stead they had laid bare a spare, whittled beauty. The hair that sprang free to curl about her temples had barely any gray, her skin, still supple as silk, despite the faint lines around her mouth. Her cheeks had hollowed, but this had only accentuated the bone structure of her face, with its promontory of proud, jutting cheekbones.

“I don't want to have to burn the infected plants,” she said suddenly to Devanna, almost pleadingly. “Find another way. There must be one.”

He sighed and reached for his walking stick. “Let me look,” he said to her. “I have a book on ayurveda. Maybe … ”

“Careful you don't fall,” she said distractedly, as he hobbled across the verandah. “The tiles are slippery with dew.”

Gundert's senses had become so dim and unreliable that he did not realize at first that he had fallen. He had often, in recent days, found himself addressing shadowy figures that on closer inspection proved to be nothing more than a billowing curtain or a trick of the light. His hearing was failing too; Gundert knew from the way the nuns started when he spoke to them louder than he had intended. It was slowly giving way, this body, like a sack that had weathered too many seasons.