Amitav Ghosh - Flood of Fire

‘But then why not cure me forever? Why not run away with me?’

She laughed. ‘Oh Mr Reid! Now it is you who is being the gudda. Surely you can see that it would not suit me at all to be a mystery’s mistress, living in some dank hovel? And if I were on your hands all day long, you too would quickly tire of me. In a week or two you would run off with some larkin of your own age and then what would become of me? I would end up as a buy-’em-dear, trawling for grapeshot on Grope-chute Lane.’

She ran her fingertips over his face. ‘No, my dear — soon enough a day will come when we will have to forsake each other forever. When it does we will meet one last time, for a night of delirious delight, and then we shall say goodbye and go our separate ways.’

‘You promise?’

‘Yes of course.’

Now, once again, they entwined their arms around each other and by the time they unclasped them it was almost dawn.

She climbed out of the bed as he was pulling on his breeches, and after he had slipped on his shirt she took hold of his hand and pressed something into it. He opened his palm to find himself looking at three large gold coins.

‘B’jilliber!’ His fingers flew open, scattering the coins over the damp, crumpled sheets. ‘I can’t take these from you.’

‘Why not?’ She picked the coins off the bed and circled around him. Putting her arms around his waist, she pressed her stomach to his back. ‘If you are to be a sahib you must have some proper clothes, mustn’t you?’

‘Yes, but this isn’t how I should get them.’

‘Like this then?’ She slipped a hand into the pocket of his breeches and let her fingers roam as the coins trickled out, one by one.

‘No — stop!’ He tried to dig her hand out, but she had anchored her fingers in the fork of his legs and would not let go.

‘It’s just a loan,’ she whispered, flicking her tongue over his ear. ‘You’ll pay me back one day, when you’re a rich sahib.’

‘Shall I be a rich sahib?’

‘Yes of course you shall. Between the two of us we will contrive to make it so. You shall be the richest and most mysterious sahib there ever was.’

Her hand was now so busy in his pocket that he forgot about the coins. Turning around he picked her up in his arms and carried her to the bed.

‘No!’ she cried. ‘You must go now. There isn’t time.’

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘There isn’t.’

But several minutes passed before he left and it was not till he was back on the budgerow that a metallic jingling reminded him that the coins were still in his pocket. Two of the guineas he put aside but the third he took into town the next day and ordered himself some fine new clothes.

The journey from Rangpur to Calcutta took Kesri and Captain Mee almost a fortnight, most of which was spent on a hired Brahmaputra river-boat.

For Kesri the journey was a time of recuperation. The boatmen did all the work, so he had plenty of leisure. The food was exceptionally good, being produced by a cook who fully lived up to the vaunted culinary reputation of Brahmaputra boatmen: he worked wonders with the freshly netted fish they bought on the way.

Captain Mee had brought along the normal officers’ travelling rations of salted meats, biscuit and so on, and these were usually prepared for him by his own servant. But he soon tired of the sameness of the fare, and having long had a liking for karibat, he hinted to Kesri that he would not be averse to an occasional plateful. Had any other officers been on board it would have been difficult for the captain to share Kesri’s food — but this was a fine opportunity to flout the rules of his caste and he did so not only in the matter of food but also drink: in the evenings, when the boat was moored and the crew had retired below deck, he and Kesri would share the occasional bottle of beer from his rations.

‘Only because we’re in mufti, havildar — mind you, not a word to anyone!’

‘No, sir!’

Never once, in their conversations, did the subject of Kesri’s shunning by the paltan arise; yet Kesri sometimes sensed that the captain was trying to express sympathy for his plight, although without speaking of it directly.

One evening they talked about London, where Captain Mee had grown up but which he had visited only once after moving to India. While reminiscing he made a disclosure that astonished Kesri: he revealed that his father, now dead, had been a shopkeeper — ‘a banyan’, he said, with a slightly embarrassed laugh.

Kesri understood immediately why he had never spoken of this before: the English officers, no less than the sepoys, were very particular about the castes of the men they admitted to their ranks. Most of the officers were from professional, landed or military backgrounds and it was through their family connections, Kesri knew, that they secured the recommendations and letters patent that enabled them to obtain their commissions. How a shopkeeper’s son had managed to do this Kesri could not imagine, but the disclosure helped him make sense of some things that had always puzzled him about his former butcha.

He remembered one evening, many years before, when Mee-sahib had got very drunk at the officers’ mess in Barrackpore. He was then a seventeen-year-old ensign and Kesri was his orderly; he had been summoned to the mess to take his butcha back to his rooms. On the way, Mee-sahib had drunkenly blurted out a garbled story about how he had wanted to join some club in Calcutta: all the other ensigns and second lieutenants had been admitted; he alone had been blackballed. That was when Kesri had understood that there was something about his butcha — perhaps to do with his parentage or caste — that set him apart from the other officers.

For Kesri his butcha’s rejection by the club was like a personal affront: he never spoke of the matter to anyone, and whenever there was any talk about Mr Mee among the men, he always made a point of mentioning that he was ‘a man of good family’ — khandaani aadmi — knowing that such things mattered as much in the sepoys’ estimation of their officers as they did in their judgements of each other.

Not long after this there followed another episode that made Kesri even more protective of his butcha. The paltan was then stationed at Ranchi, along with a number of other battalions. The picturesque little town was then listed as a ‘family station’ and many British civil and military officers had their wives and children living with them. As a result there were many parties, hunts and burra-khanas; as for dances there were so many as to wear out the regimental bands.

Mr Mee had plunged into the social whirl with all the energy of a healthy and gregarious young ensign. Kesri knew of his butcha’s doings because word of the officers’ antics would always trickle back to the sepoy lines, either through the soldiers who were on guard duty at the regimental clubs and messes, or by way of the cooks, stewards and punkah-wallahs who worked in the officers’ residences. Sometimes the news would even cause trouble among the sepoys: some were so closely bonded with their butchas that a quarrel between two lieutenants could spark angry exchanges between their orderlies.

So it happened that Kesri found himself being singled out for some good-humoured teasing on account of Mr Mee.

Arré Kesri, do you know what your fellow’s been up to now?

He’s quite the loocher, always got his eyes on a girl.

Wu sawdhan na rahi to dikkat hoé — if he’s not careful, there’ll be trouble.

Through hints like these Kesri was given to understand that Mr Mee was involved in a flirtation with the most sought-after missy-memsahib in the station: she was striking to look at, tall, full-busted with reddish-brown hair; she was also the daughter of a brigadiergeneral who belonged to one of the highest of twice-born military families.