Tiger Hills (52 page)

The nun who opened the door of the mission had obviously been crying. The embarrassed driver looked at the floor as he held out the plant. She accepted it mechanically, tears streaming down her cheeks when he explained that his master had sent it for the Reverend. His master had told him to wait for a message, he said.

“Tell him … tell Dev … not good … ” She broke down again as the driver shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, unsure how to respond. The nun shut the doors, and not knowing what else to do, the driver retreated to the car. He waited there for an hour, and when nothing else was forthcoming he revved the engine and turned back toward Tiger Hills.

The nun took the plant into the Reverend's room, wiping her
eyes. “Reverend?” she said. He had suffered a third stroke sometime during the previous night. When the nuns came to bathe him that morning, they had found him in a deep coma, his head still tilted toward the gates.

“See, Reverend, our Dev, our little Dev has sent you something.” She opened the note, her brow furrowing in confusion.
“Bam … bambusa … indica … olafsen,”
she read laboriously.
“Bambusa indica olafsen,”
she repeated, wondering what it meant. The comatose priest lay still, the breath rattling in his lungs.

She placed the note on the bedstand, propping it against the lamp. She stroked the bud that Dev had sent; even through her puffy, swollen eyes, the nun could see how beautiful it was. Cutting it carefully from the stem, she went to the chapel, where she placed the bloom on the altar. “Lord, have mercy.”

The remainder of the plant—stem, roots, and all—she had the cleaning boy throw on the rubbish heap.

The driver returned to Tiger Hills. “No,” he said defensively, in response to Devanna's frenzied questions, he was sure that there was nothing else. Yes, he had given the plant to a nun. No, there was no other message.

Gundert continued to wheeze in his bed. The bamboo flower bloomed in the dark, cool chapel, slowly unfurling until it was as large as a man's fist. It perfumed the pews for days, and on the ninth day, when the bloom was just beginning to fade, Gundert died.

The church bells pealed out over Mercara, and eyes turned somberly in the direction of the mission.

He had been a good man, the Reverend. May his soul rest in peace.

Chapter 34

R
everend Hermann Gundert, 1840–1927, was buried in the Mercara cemetery. The cross that rose above his grave was as simple and unadorned as he would have wished. The eleventh day after his passing—coincidentally the very same day, the regulars would marvel later in the Club, that the Thames grew so uncharacteristically swollen with rain that it completely flooded the moat at the Tower of London—a vicious, unseasonable rain lashed all of Coorg. It rained that way for an entire week, so hard that bridges were washed away and snakes dislodged from their holes, an unceasing downpour that tore the heads of young paddy from their stalks and caused an epidemic of fevers to rage up and down the hills.

The rains were especially severe in South Coorg. Nanju caught a high fever from working around the clock in the estate, trying to lash together sheets of tarpaulin above the coffee, but his efforts were in vain. The wind whipped away the covering, and when the torrent finally ended, Devi's estate, along with those of her neighbors, lay flooded in four and a half feet of muddy water.

However, what was worse, much worse, was the damage to the storehouse. Nanju had been so busy trying to shield the plants that he quite forgot to check the house containing the harvested coffee berries. Its roof had held for only a couple of days before
caving in. When Nanju finally checked the place, the berries had been rotting in water for days, their surfaces coated with the black fuzz of mold.

Devi listened, stone-faced, as Nanju told her the extent of the devastation. There would be no crop from South Coorg that year. The buffer she placed her hopes on, the stellar crop that should have come from that estate, was no longer a reality. With the damage already caused by the borer insect, there was little left with which to pay back the bank.

After all the years of relentless hard work, despite all her planning, Devi found to her shock that she was ruined. The bank managers were sympathetic but firm. They had already refinanced her loans twice, they reminded her, and they simply could not do it a third year running. Besides, she was actually asking them for more loans so that she could tend to her flooded estate. No, it was simply not feasible. They could defer the interest on her borrowings, they told her, but unless she found a way to come up with at least a third of the capital she owed, they would be forced to foreclose.

The only concession Devi managed to wring from them was a brief window of time. “Fifteen weeks,” the bank manager told her, “and this is only because you have been a client of such high standing.”

It was drizzling when she left. She stood in the street, dazed from the conversation. “Devi akka!” A young couple crossed the street toward her, beaming. She watched as the husband placed a protective finger—anything more would have been inappropriate in public—under his wife's elbow, holding the umbrella over her head as he guided her carefully through the mud. Devi felt a sharp, bitter pang of envy. Turning abruptly toward the car, she drew a deep breath.

She would find a way.

She devised a plan to sell the other two estates, but the prices she was quoted were ludicrous. Nobody wanted to buy an estate infested with the borer fly. She explained that they had the pest under control, it was this turmeric paste, you see, but the instant
that potential buyers spotted the telltale holes in the branches, they backed off. The buyers agreed with her that the estate in South Coorg would have rich yields; not for another three years, however, they pointed out. The rains had washed away much of the fertile top soil; it would take careful nurturing, likely even expensive applications of jungle mud, before it began to yield anything.

However … the buyers turned their beady eyes toward Tiger Hills. Now that was a fine bungalow. And the gardens. Why, everyone knew about the gardens, from Mercara to Mysore. How much would Mrs. Devanna want for
this
property?

“More than you could ever afford,” Devi replied flatly. “Tiger Hills is not for sale.”

After waiting in vain for more reasonable prices to prevail, Devi let both the other estates go to a wizened old coffee magnate from Mysore. She pawned all her jewelry, keeping only her mother's bangles and the tiger brooch that Machu had given her. Still their cash continued to dwindle until Devi finally had to stop all work at Tiger Hills. “Take a holiday,” she told the workers, “this is only a temporary stoppage.”

“But, akka, will you still pay our wages?” they asked, alarmed. Devi looked shamefacedly at the ground.

They let the servants go, everyone except Tukra and his wife, who wept when she counseled them to think about leaving. “Go where, akka?” Tukra asked tearfully. “This is our home.”

The fifteen weeks that the bank had granted Devi drew to a close. They sent an appraiser to value Tiger Hills.

“No,” Devi told the man. “This is still my home; I won't have you here.”

“But, madam—” he began, and something in her snapped.

“Leave now,” she said, her voice hard. “Before I set the dogs on you.”

“You're being foolish,” he warned. “Less than a week, that's all, and I'll be back. And then, madam, there will be nothing you can do about it.”

He was right, Devi knew. It was meaningless, her act of
bravado. Three more days, that was all they had left, and then the bank would foreclose on Tiger Hills. Three days more before they were pushed from their home. She retreated to her bedroom and sank onto her bed.
Tell me what to do, Machu. I have tried everything.

The curtains rustled impersonally and Devi began, at last, to cry.
“I have failed you. I have failed us all.”

Two days later, Mr. Stewart came to visit.

He had taken the coach from Mysore to Mercara, he explained, and then a carriage to Tiger Hills.

Devi nodded. “The bank? You are with the bank?”

“Bank? No, madam,” he said puzzled, mopping his forehead. “Our firm is an independent one, in no way affiliated with a financial institution. Er … is Mr. Devanna home? I need to consult with him.”

Devanna reluctantly came out to meet him, but he had not come to tour the gardens nor to offer a price for Tiger Hills. “The will, Mr. Devanna,” he said. “I am here to discuss Reverend Hermann Gundert's will. Did you not receive the telegram I sent you?

“The deceased,” he explained, as a bewildered Devanna shook his head, “had rather a lot of property in Germany. Black Forest region, rather picturesque, I am told. He left instructions in his will to liquidate the holdings.” Devanna looked at the papers the lawyer was holding out to him.

“You, Mr. Devanna, are named in the late Reverend's will as his sole and unequivocal beneficiary.”

Devanna stared at him, stupefied. “I am … what did you say?”

“Reverend Gundert's beneficiary,” the lawyer repeated patiently. “He has bequeathed all he had, sir, to you.”

It had taken some time for the Reverend's affairs to be put in order, he explained, or he would have been there sooner. He rustled through his papers. “The details are set out in these documents. A sum of one hundred and thirty thousand pounds sterling is to be wired to your designated account from the holding bank in Berlin. There is one thing, though. You”—glancing surreptitiously at Devanna's cane, he continued smoothly—“or a person authorized by you must visit the bank in person before the monies
can be transferred. Oh,” he added, “and here.” Reaching into his briefcase, he withdrew an oilskin packet. “The deceased also left this for you.”

Devanna nodded blankly, taking the packet.

Appu leaned forward. “
Ours.
You mean, all this money is ours, no strings attached?” His eyes were gleaming.

“Mr. Devanna's, yes. It belongs to him to use as he deems fit. So, Mr. Devanna, if you would sign here … and here … wonderful. Well, I should get going, then.”

Devi saw the lawyer to the door and made her way back to the verandah, where the family sat stunned at the news. Devanna was staring out at the garden, turning the oilskin package this way and that. Devi ran the numbers through her head again. One hundred and thirty thousand pounds. One
hundred
and
thirty thousand
pounds.

It was enough to take care of all their financial troubles, with a great deal left over. Tiger Hills was safe—it was more than safe.

“Well … ,” she said shakily. “This … ” She began searching again for words. Then she simply threw her head back and laughed out loud. Nanju and Appu leaped from their chairs. Everyone seemed to be talking at once, and Tukra and his wife came rushing from the kitchen to see whatever was the matter.

In the melee that followed the lawyer's visit, none of them noticed that Devanna had gone missing. He limped into the garden, clutching the oilskin package in his hands. His
sole
beneficiary. Him, the Reverend had named
him
his only beneficiary. He sat down on the wooden seat of the arbor. The Reverend had chosen
him.

He hugged the package to his chest for a long time before he could bring himself to open it. The first thing he pulled out was a book from the Reverend's collection. Devanna immediately recognized the handsome cherry leather binding and the gilt-edged lettering along its spine. The thick, creamy pages reeked faintly of naphthalene, transporting him across the years.
A sun-filled classroom. The guttural sound of the Reverend's voice, bringing the words to life.
Devanna swallowed, a catch in his throat.

The calotype lay pressed under the front cover. The two men within its frame stood beaming. One swarthy, the other slim and tow-haired, their faces alive with promise. Devanna picked up the calotype and then saw that a dedication lay beneath, on the front page of the book. It was a quotation from the Bible, inscribed in the Reverend's precise copperplate.
“Sons are a heritage from the Lord,”
he had written,
“children a reward from him.”
Devanna's eyes filled with tears.

One more thing lay inside the oilskin, a package of silk, soft and yellowing from the years. He unwrapped it with hands that shook. A dried flower, large as a book, thin as tissue. He traced the delicate stamens with his thumb, running his fingers back and forth along the parchment petals, and then Devanna began uncontrollably to weep. A faint, desiccated perfume rose from the bamboo flower. It lingered in the air; sweeter than a rose, richer than jasmine, with the musky undertones of an orchid.

Chapter 35