Zemindar (36 page)

‘Certainly not! But I am not aware that we need to “promote” any friendship.’

‘The devil you ain’t! Then you must have a cold notion of friendship if you consider your manner towards me has been friendly!’

‘I am sorry you think so,’ I said and went on, unwisely, ‘In what have I erred?’

‘In avoiding me with an enthusiasm and consistency quite remarkable, to begin with. Then in accepting my small overtures to understanding … er … for instance, the services of Benarsi Das … my library … small things like that … and then allowing the flower of friendship to wither on the twig untended.’

His manner was light, and I was not alarmed by the banter.

‘I believe I have expressed my gratitude with all sincerity, for those and many other favours!’

‘And with the most eminent propriety!’

‘How else should I behave towards you then? With impropriety?’

‘A thousand times yes, if it will make you a little warmer to deal with!’

‘Now I know you are joking.’ And I laughed, anxious to deflect the conversation into easier channels.

‘No, I am not joking. I am puzzled. For two months or thereabouts, oh “woman dear”, as Kate calls you, I have tried in my rough, masculine way to indicate that, contrary to your obvious belief, I am a human being, that I recognize you as a human being and that I believe the two of us could reach an enjoyable understanding of each other. That at least was the first impression I formed, at the Residency ball and later. And I had hoped that your stay in Hassanganj would be productive of something more than the correct attitudes and meaningless platitudes which are all that you have ever vouchsafed me. I had thought … I had truly thought … for a time, that is, that we two could have found some … some, er … meeting of true minds!’

He still spoke jestingly, but there was a hint of something—was it bitterness or resentment?—behind his words, that made me realize suddenly that he was profoundly serious.

I rode on for a moment in silence, Pyari carrying me forward, so that when I spoke again it was over my shoulder.

‘You confuse me,’ I said at last. ‘I don’t know what to say except that I have never wished to be hurtful, or in any way unfriendly towards you.’ I paused, but felt him listening intently, so went on with a rush. ‘But it is true—I find you a most … a most difficult man to know!’

‘Yet I am a simple man—if you would see me as such.’

‘No,’ I said decidedly, ‘not simple at all! You are reserved. And so often silent yourself. And I have had no wish to break into your … well, your privacy.’

‘But you do not find it difficult to talk to me…?’

‘On the contrary!’

Again there was silence, only the clop of the horses’ hooves in the dust and the creak of saddlery breaking the morning hush.

‘This barrier. I am puzzled by it, I admit. A little piqued perhaps. I generally get my way with people—yet you … you have formed an opinion of me—an adverse opinion, I believe—that nothing I can do or say will alter. Admit it now, you are prejudiced against me? Or no, do not make yourself vulnerable by any such foolish admission. It is the sort of mistake one remembers in the future. But remember that I realize it, and that I will not be content to remain the stranger, at arm’s length always, that you wish me to. Sooner an enemy any time!’

‘That is mere hyperbole,’ I said coldly, ‘and allow me to say that you misjudge me and my motives. I regret that you find my character and my manner cold and unfriendly. Such was never my intention. But I am as I am. I cannot guess what else you would have me be!’

The gelding now paced beside Pyari, and I glanced up to find Oliver’s golden eyes regarding me with a gaze that was both wry and rueful.

‘That’s only too obvious,’ he said, but
sotto voce
, so that I could not be sure of what I had heard. Then, surprisingly, he threw back his head and laughed in the golden sunlight so that the nervous Pyari danced in the track, flattened her ears and snorted in alarm.

‘Whoa! Whoa, girl!’ he chuckled, quieting the mare with a pat on the neck. ‘Very well then, Miss Hewitt, we shall call a truce. For the moment. Forgive my clumsy handling of a delicate matter. Intimacy—er, of the mind, of course—cannot be forced. You are right to resent my trying. But, at least, when I enter the library don’t grab the first book you see and withdraw. Fortunately I know that you do not read Latin, or I might have been shocked by seeing you depart in a hurry clutching a copy of the
Saturnalia
!’

For a moment I was nonplussed. It was true that I generally made a rapid exit from the library if he was in it, but I did not realize I had been so obvious. Then the humour of the situation struck me … for my father had owned the
Saturnalia
in translation. I too threw back my head and laughed, and magically the tension that had arisen between us was dispelled.

We rode on together then, very amicably, and my companion told me some of the legends of Krishna and stories from the
Ramayana
, and said we were approaching the village where his grandfather had begun his work of settlement sixty years before. The ride would be a long one this morning, so at about the time we usually breakfasted we dismounted in a grove and Ishmial produced from his saddlebag a neatly packed parcel of sandwiches and fruit and a flask of brandy and water. The latter I refused, promising myself a drink when we should reach the village. We were sitting silently in the shade on the tumbled remains of an old wall while Oliver smoked a cigar, when a little procession of children approached us, so gay, so charming, that I stood up in delight, eager to miss nothing of the picture they made. There were perhaps a score of them, none of them more than ten or twelve years of age, all dressed in yellow and carrying garlands and bouquets of the yellow
basant
flower. Two or three had small drums on strings around their necks, others played on bamboo flutes and the rest tapped short wooden staves together in time to the drums. They were singing and dancing as they came, and the swirling
sari
skirts and
dhotis
around dusty feet, the primitive instruments, and the joyous childish faces alight with laughter immediately put me in mind of Donatello’s cherubic choir. They took no notice of us, but, absorbed in their high nasal chant, swayed through the trees and disappeared from view, only the sound of their voices remaining to assure me I had not witnessed some brief faerie visitation.

‘Oh, what a pretty sight, Oliver! They looked so fresh and happy. What were they doing?’

‘They are going to visit the shrine of some favourite village deity here in the grove, and lay their flowers and other offerings at the foot of the peepul tree he inhabits. They couldn’t have timed it better, could they? That’s another little bit of the “real India” that I am glad you have seen. Those children are bred to dirt, disease and grinding poverty but, as you see, India has gifts for everyone who will take them. We like to consider their beliefs mere ignorant superstition, but those beliefs are enough to produce music, laughter and respite from the fields on a day like this, and what god can do more? This evening everyone will eat well, probably for the first time since the last festival. There will be more dancing and music, and perhaps storytelling and wrestling in the village square, and their fathers will get drunk and beget them brothers and sisters on wives for once not too tired to be more than acquiescent. They will make the most of their day, I promise you. Then tomorrow they will put away their yellow finery, sweep their courtyards clean of dead flowers and return again to the intractable fields and their pinched bellies. But they always have another holy day to look forward to!’

The village, when we reached it, was also
en fête
, the yellow
basant
burgeoning on every lintel and arch, while women in buttercup
saris
squatted at their doors readying the celebration meal and men slept luxuriously late on string cots in the sunshine or wandered in groups towards the grog shop. We were now at the edge of a tongue of heavy forest that to the south merged into the
terai
, but the morning was very warm and still and a dusty haze hid the foothills. I foun d myself thirsty and rather tired, which, perhaps, was why I was not much impressed by the first fruits of Old Adam’s labours. Here, said Oliver, was where he had made his first camp, living in a tent while he directed the clearing of the jungle, the cutting of tracks and waterways, and the building of the first huts. Whatever his pioneer plans for it, the village now was the usual collection of flat-roofed mud huts, intersected by unpaved alleys—crowded, dirty and smelly. Only the ephemeral gilding of the bright spring flower lent the place a brief beauty.

We rode slowly through the village, stopped often by the inhabitants, who grasped this opportunity to lay a complaint or ask a favour of the
sirkar
, or who, perhaps, were merely curious to look at the unaccustomed white woman with him. Oliver bore himself with a sort of good-humoured assurance, bandying words with passers-by, attentive to supplicants, reassuring to an aged crone who held his horse by the bridle while she poured out her story, but on the whole unmoved—(as was apparent from the resigned disappointment of the faces we left)—by these extemporary pleas for preference. Our objective was a temple tank which Oliver was sure would interest me but, as we rode through the untidy outskirts, I averted my eyes hurriedly from a lean-to thatch shelter built on to one of the huts, where I had seen a bundle of filthy rags stir at the unfamiliar sound of horses’ hooves. It was a leper, put out to die by his family in a crude shelter less weathertight than their cow-byre. There he would lie in all weathers, shunned by all comfort, slowly putrefying to a merciful death. Once a day scraps of food would be placed a little distance from him, not to be approached until the bearer was safely out of sight. I had seen other such bundles of rags in other villages, but the sight was not less harrowing on familiarity.

India, Oliver had said, has gifts for all who will take them. Would this end be the gift singled out for one of those happy, singing children in the grove? I shuddered at the thought, and so reflecting on the monstrous and too manifest injustices of fate, the small octagonal pool with its shallow steps leading down into the water failed to move me to much appreciation. Certainly it was very lovely with its white onion-domed temple and a clump of palms beside it. But the water was green with scum, and the resident holy man had long locks matted with ashes and surveyed us with an avaricious eye as we walked past.

‘Sitting there praying and raking in the people’s food and their poor
annas
when you should be up and out doing some good!’ I thought to myself. The bundle of rags, as a leper, was denied even the help of the holy man’s prayers.

Oliver had not noticed my preoccupation. He was speaking: ‘… and much predates the village of course, probably by hundreds of years. No one now can remember the people who built the pool or the ruined fort back there in the forest. It is the last vestige of some old, old jungle culture, or perhaps the culture was here even before the jungle.’

Then, as having circled the pool I stood ready to mount Pyari again, he said with some annoyance, ‘Well, and what has gone wrong now? Is it not worthy of your pencil after all? I have kept it in mind to bring you here for weeks and now you turn away as though such things can be seen every day!’

‘I’m sorry.’ I shook my head and tried to look apologetic. ‘I am not in the mood to draw now. But the pool is beautiful, really it is, and I am very grateful that you brought me here. But… but it was that poor leper. I cannot think of my silly sketching when I remember him and what he must be going through. He is a human being!’

The annoyance faded from his face. ‘Yes, well, that too is India, I am afraid, Laura. The inescapable India. There are a score of lepers in every village, hundreds in the bazaars. There’s no cure, and the natives have long realized that isolating them is the only way to protect themselves from contagion.’

‘But it’s so cruel … so barbarous!’

‘Undoubtedly. But some things one must accept.’

‘Not without protest, without some effort to rectify things, surely?’

‘What would you have me do; take him back to Hassanganj and house him with the servants? At least here he is with his own. And they care for him, in their fashion. Come now, it’s getting late. Perhaps we can return here another day, if you wish to.’

I was unconvinced, but mounted and followed him dejectedly as we left the village. I was displeased with myself for my own lack of enthusiasm about the pool. Had he not said he had kept it in mind for me for weeks? Was this not another of those overtures to friendship which he had made and I had—to his mind—rejected? It was strange, but his clumsy, even abortive, efforts to break through what seemed to him to be my reserve, had done much to warm my mind towards him. Perhaps because for the first time he had shown a little weakness, a chink in the armour of assurance which repelled me. Now, I found I was unhappy at having disappointed him. For the very first time I discovered myself wishing to please him. But I had lost the opportunity.

The track narrowed as we entered the forest. We were not returning the way we had come, so I hoped we were taking a short cut home since, having forgotten to beg a drink in the village, I was now very thirsty and not a little fatigued. It was nearly noon and, though by no means hot, the temperature here at the edge of the steamy
terai
was warm enough to have stilled the sounds of birds and the chattering of the monkeys. All that could be heard was the dull clop of our hooves in the thick, sun-dappled dust, and an occasional stir in the dry undergrowth as jungle fowl made for cover.

All three of us must have heard the chant simultaneously: low, rhythmic, somehow oppressive in its half-heard insistence.

‘
Jai Ramji Jai! Jai Ramji Jai! Jai Ramji Jai!
’

Oliver, leading as usual, held up his hand to halt us.