Tiger Hills (64 page)

After Daisy, there were others, now and again. It relieved the monotony.

The Indian Independence movement continued to swell, was debated in Persian-carpeted drawing rooms and
Whites Only, No Dogs or Indians Allowed
clubs across the country. Surely, the British asked uneasily of one another, nothing is going to come of all this nonsense?

His earlier reservations forgotten, Appu had embraced the political cause wholeheartedly. “Chief Minister!” Timmy said. “With your family background and money, Dags, you could be Chief Minister of an independent Coorg.”

Suddenly, it had seemed an entirely reasonable notion.
“I am the son of the tiger killer.”

He began to travel extensively with his political coterie, to the
government offices that lay along the Mysore–Bangalore–Madras corridor as they promoted the cause for independent Coorg. An acceptable compromise, they offered, we can work something out between us, as gentlemen.

He did not take Baby with him; indeed, he no longer even expected Baby to accompany him to the Club. Baby, for her part, stubbornly refused to go anywhere at all; even at the galas Appu hosted at Tiger Hills, she stopped mingling with the guests. She would make the arrangements for the party and then, despite Devi's worried advice, she remained upstairs, watching as the headlights of the cars threw patterns across the lawn.

“A child,” Devi said, distressed, to herself. “What we need is the sound of little voices to lighten our hearts.”
A baby would set things right between Appu and Baby,
she thought, touching her fingers to the tiger brooch, as if to reassure herself.

“One must
fight
for happiness,” she urged Baby. “When Appu becomes a father … try, kunyi, you must try harder.”

Baby was trying, how she was trying. It was not as frequent as before, but still, every time they lay together, Baby tightened her muscles, trying to hold on to the juices that dribbled into her.
A baby, please, let there be a baby.
But without fail, a few weeks later the cramps would begin.

Devi hung an old calendar behind the door to her room. “See this,” she told Baby. “Here, we need to track your monthly blood better. Whenever it comes, make a mark on the date.”

Month after month, Baby stood silently in front of the calendar. She would read the prayer printed on its pages. “May the
wind
be in your face, the
sun
always at your back.” Month after month, sometimes, a week late, once, nearly three, but eventually, Baby would make the slow, unhappy journey to Devi's room, and circle yet another date.

When nothing else seemed to work, Devi consulted a tantric from Kerala. He measured a white powder into a sachet of newspaper. “Make the husband eat this on the twentieth day after the full moon. I promise you the child that follows will be a boy.”

Baby and she surreptitiously mixed the powder into Appu's rice, and that night Baby got precious little sleep.

The next morning, she awoke, her body languid and ever so slightly sore. It had been like the old times, the previous night. She rubbed a hand over her stomach, watching Appu sleep, and smiled.

That entire day proved magical. Appu too was in a languid mood, coming out of the bathroom to place his arms around her. “Wife.”

“Things will be different, Appu,” she said softly, smoothing the hair back from his face. “Just you watch.” Even the light seemed different, the dust particles in its shafts alchemized into shards of broken, dancing gold.

The family had a leisurely breakfast, with the gramophone playing in the background. Later, Baby plucked armfuls of roses, lilies, and lotuses, filling porcelain and crystal alike, all through the house. Now and again, she touched her belly, smiling to herself.
Their child.

They lay together again after lunch; a slow, relaxed coupling, Appu gazing into her eyes until she thought her heart would explode. They fell asleep like that, him on top of her, and when she awoke, it was past five in the evening. She smiled at the tuneless whistling coming from the bathroom.

He came out, and she looked at him, the smile dashed in an instant from her face. “You're going out
tonight?
”

“Billiards evening, remember?” Appu grinned. “You're not going to make a fuss now, I hope? Or”—he bowed and took her hand—“perhaps you will surprise me and give me the pleasure of your company?”

“Appu,” she began. “Appu … please don't go.”

They started fighting again, the magic of the day vanished into a cold hardness. “Stay with me. Just today, don't go.”

He had almost given in, but then something snapped. “No,” he said to her. “No. I can't go through this again. I'm going. You're welcome to come, but … ” He walked down the stairs.

She threw on her petticoat, her body still unwashed from the
afternoon, still smelling of him, a clean, earthy smell, like moss after the rains. She fastened her blouse, one of the fitted variety that she had finally capitulated to, and draped a sari, a thin red silk he had always liked on her.
The very shade of your lips,
he used to say.
My Snow White lovely.

“Snow White, Snow White,” Baby muttered to herself, as she pulled her hair away from her face, tears smarting in her eyes.

She rushed to the window as she heard the engine of the car. “Appu,” she called. “Appu! Appu!” She ran to the library where the windows lined the wall.

The engine of the Austin revved up, and the car began to move down the drive. “Appu!” Baby screamed, suddenly furious. “You
cannot
leave—stay with me!”

The Austin continued to pull forward and then it hesitated, stalled.

He stepped from the car, shading his eyes with his palm as he stared up at Baby framed in the library windows.
If it's so very important to her…
he thought tiredly.

“You can't leave!” she shouted, not caring who might hear. She pummeled a fist against the window frame. “Stay with me, you must stay with me.”

He stood in the drive, not saying a word, just staring up at her. The sun was beginning to set, casting its burnished glow. How lovely she looked, standing there. A rose, his blushing rose. And yet …

Appu was gripped suddenly by a deep sadness. He stood looking at her, completely immobile. She fell silent, too. And in that stillness, something ineffable passed between them, husband and wife. A realization; not yet the resigned acceptance, for that would still take time, but the awareness, inescapable, that things had changed.

The sun sank further. The knife grinder beetles began to drum their feet on the trees, heralding the dusk. A buzzing, a sawing, hundreds upon hundreds of them, in the plantation, from the surrounding jungles. Baby's lips moved silently, but he knew, even without hearing, the word.
“Stay.”
Her eyes pooled with tears.

I cannot,
Appu thought wearily.
It's not in me, even if I wanted to.

He turned around and slowly got into the car. The engine revved, kicked into motion, and the Austin set off down the drive. Baby stood watching, tears running down her face. She stood there alone in the darkening library, cradling her stomach in her arms, craning her head from the window until the last flash of the headlights vanished down the road.

Chapter 42

T
here never came a child. Tiger Hills seemed to sink into a prolonged period of drought. Oh, the rains came every year, sometimes early, sometimes late, but always unfailingly ferocious in that first, initial onslaught. The lychee seeds that Devanna had planted on the periphery of the estate germinated lavishly, proliferating into small shrubs that shot higher with each passing year. They began to bear fruit, tart and wizened in the early years, maturing into sweet-fleshed juiciness after a few more summers.

Baby, though, seemed permanently caught in the grip of some still, lifeless afternoon. Gradually, the light seeped from her. Almost imperceptibly, until she no longer remembered what it felt like to float a few inches off the ground, moored by disappointment, into shadow. Finally, Devi took down the old calendar that had hung behind her door. She did not replace it.

The deliverance that Devi felt whenever she looked at Appu and Baby had long since disappeared, the delight she used to take in their togetherness forgotten. Appu and Baby seemed to drift along like two parallel currents, coming occasionally together, and then, inevitably, Appu would pull away once more. Devi tried, occasionally. “Appu, enough,” she would plead. “Enough billiards for the week, stay home with us tonight.” More often than not, she remained silent. There was a newfound frailty about her, a shrunkenness,
almost. As if this final disappointment, this dismantling of Appu and Baby's once perfect union—“
such
a beautiful couple”—had at last managed to stoop her shoulders.

Devanna was filled with sadness to see the fire so quenched within her, to see her sitting still, hands folded in her lap, staring into space. He would look at that perfect face, rendered all the more lovely by the lines etched into it over the years, like the rings on a deep-rooted jungle tree.

There was so much left to say.

Bambusa indica devi,
he wanted to tell her, as the first light began to gild the trees, and the garden,
her
garden, emerged from the dark.
That was what I once planned to name the bamboo flower.

He would look at her, the words remaining locked inside him, as bees droned over the flower beds and the lotus pond murmured in the sun.

The workers on the estate came to see him in great excitement one year. The flower that he had so wanted? The bamboo flower? Word had come through the Korama tribals that the groves were in bud! How many of the plants did he want? Devanna had hesitated and then slowly shaken his head. “No,” he said quietly, “leave them be.” Some things were better left unspoiled. Like jungle flowers, growing wild. The groves flowered en masse that summer of 1939. Unfettered, untamed. Now and again a whiff of their perfume was borne honeyed upon the wind, velveting all of Coorg.

War began to foment once more in Europe, sending the prices of even the most basic goods—cotton, salt, and oil—skyrocketing. Appu's biggest grouse against World War II, however, was the cancellation of the 1940 Olympics that had been scheduled for Sapporo. Boosted by wartime demand, coffee prices rose once more. The planters who had stuck out the 1930s did handsomely for themselves. They were loath to talk of their fortunes, reaped in wartime; it would hardly have been in good form. Nonetheless, traces of this shiny new wealth became apparent in Coorg. Gordon Braithwaite bought his wife a thick choker of diamonds—it suited the bitch, Daisy said spitefully at the Club, gaudy dog collar that it was.

Devanna's health began to falter. Some days were better than others: sometimes he felt strong enough to work on his beloved gardens; on others, he was listless, weakened by a persistent, low-grade fever. Tukra once more devoted himself to caring for Devanna, but the years had taken a toll on him, too—he was no longer able to lift Devanna into the planter chair without assistance. The doctor was summoned again and again to Tiger Hills. Devi would hover at the entrance to Devanna's room, waiting for the doctor to complete his examination. Each time, his diagnosis was the same. “PUO,” he would conclude. “Pyrexia of Unknown Origin.

“There is no real remedy,” he explained. “Just make sure he is comfortable, and get him some hot soup.” Devi would nod, her eyes fixed on Devanna, tracing the lines of exhaustion on his face.

In the evenings after the doctor had been, Devi would light the prayer lamp and then stay awhile in the prayer room, her hands clasped together. “Let him … ,” she would begin. “Please, Swami Iguthappa, let him … ” and then she would falter.

The Indian independence movement gained even more momentum. At a hockey match held in the grounds of the mission, nationalists stormed the field shouting, British, Quit India, Quit India. They were dutifully rounded up and taken to the two cells at the Mercara court, but not quite sure what else he ought to do, the local superintendent let them off with a reprimand.

The emboldened nationalists next targeted old Hans's store. They smashed the porcelain dolls and china teapots, tore the leaves from books, and crushed dozens of tins of sweets underfoot. Hans came rushing out from his living quarters wild-eyed, nightcap askew. The leader of the gang held him off effortlessly with just one hand, laughing all the while. He let his guard slip, however, and Hans picked up a chair and hit the boy on the head with it, cracking open his skull. The mob pounced on Hans then, changing in an instant from a gaggle of rowdy students into a thing of snarling, bestial fury. The police found the old man the next morning lying in a pool of his own blood and vomit, his body already stiffened amid the shards of broken porcelain.

Devi burst into tears when she heard the news. “They killed him,” she sobbed, “they
killed
him. Such a harmless old man, what did he ever do to anyone? The sweets he used to have in that store … ” On and on she sobbed, as if Hans's murder had jolted the last remaining fortitude from her, her outpouring of grief almost grotesquely out of proportion to the event at hand. She insisted Appu attend the wake.