Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

‘Is he blind?’ This was someone else, speaking in English.

‘No, I am not,’ Sanjay said in English. ‘The patient is outside.’

‘You speak English?’ This time Sanjay saw him: he was dressed in black, in a formal English suit of the type Sanjay had only seen in woodcuts, a black cravat, so that at first Sanjay could only think, he must be warm in that.

‘Yes,’ Sanjay said, finally. ‘I speak English. My name is Parasher.’

‘Pleased. I am Doctor Sarthey. And the patient?’

‘She is outside.’

‘Well, I am sure you understand that I must speak to her, to the patient herself.’ The smile on the doctor’s face was small and intimate, asserting a common, shared knowledge.

‘Of course,’ Sanjay said, feeling foolish despite himself. ‘I will go and call her.’

Outside, Gul Jahaan raised the purdah from her face, the better to speak to him; she listened to him gravely, then asked: ‘Will I have to expose my face to him?’

‘It is likely.’

‘I have done worse,’ she said. ‘And this is for our sons and daughters.’ She rose and walked rapidly past him; inside, she spoke strongly and directly, and without hesitation extended her wrist to the doctor. He, in turn, seated on an iron chair, prescribed rest, broth of fowl, some medicine he would provide, and finally advised, when the child was born, the presence of a good doctor.

‘Tell him that we have no other doctor,’ Gul Jahaan said. ‘Tell him that we will come with him.’

‘Travel with me?’ the doctor said when Sanjay translated. ‘It is hard, and also…’ But he stopped, looking at Gul Jahaan’s small face, framed by her black burqua, very serious and attentive as she looked at him unwaveringly.

‘Yes,’ Sanjay said. ‘She is very determined.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I suppose it is all right, then.’

They had come prepared for this; Sunil, his bald head now shiny with the gravity and importance of a renowned cook, headed Gul Jahaan’s entourage. They had come with carts, beds, mosquito nets, and so they settled themselves a little distance from the English tents, adopting naturally the orderly rows and arrangements of the other settlement. That night she turned to Sanjay joyfully: her pleasure was always slow, unhurried, completely conscious, but tonight it seemed like a form of knowledge itself; they sat in front of each other, joined, still except for secret movements and fluctuations, looking into each other’s eyes, and it went on until passion gave way to a greater lucidity, it was dark but he could see her perfectly, as if her dark hair, the roundness of her breasts, all were radiant with some inward light, he laughed suddenly because the air was so clear, every touch of her fingers carried inward along his body like a word, his head floating and transfixed and transformed by her, her smell, her presence which was everywhere.

The next day, it became clear to them that they were in a foreign camp: the young doctor forbade any sort of performance by Gul Jahaan; she was known of all over Avadh, and so there were more visitors, villagers and townsmen, and some of them asked the pleasure of hearing her sing. Sarthey forbade it, without anger or sternness, but nevertheless he said, ‘That is impossible.’ In all other respects he was courteous, and Gul Jahaan accepted his wishes as a condition of being a part of his camp; every day, he examined her, and kept a close watch over her diet, sometimes sending delicacies to her kitchen. Sanjay, for his part, often spoke to him, and Sarthey seemed delighted with his English, his interest in things English, poetry especially; soon the doctor took to bringing books to Sanjay, treatments of history, discussions of currencies and trades, practical discussions of geography and progress, the vast potential of the future. At first their conversation consisted of these things; then they began to have silences between them, as they rode along in the early morning, and Sanjay recognized these incredulously as the natural quietness between friends. These moments, as the sun washed a thin line of red on the furthest clouds, had the unmistakable taste of intimacy, and despite himself Sanjay could not dislike the Englishman: he was curious about everything, and wanted to know the names of plants; his hair pulled back from his forehead tightly, but his face, thin and serious as it was, had the habit of suddenly smiling, at which times he would bunch over in his saddle, hold an embarrassed hand over his mouth, and giggle. Although Sanjay knew they were the same age, he felt incomparably older, as if he was already tasting the time of ashes and compromise, while the other, yet, knew not even the complete and unbroken hopes of youth. And above all, further and more valuable than anything, was Sarthey’s intelligence, not wit, but a slow circling watchfulness that approached and prodded and tested and finally held; to discover this in the Englishman was shocking, because all his life Sanjay had secreted a prideful loneliness, a certain belief in his precocity and understanding, the like of which he had recognized in no one else except this one, this man. So Sanjay reminded himself of the past, and predicted without doubt a future of disaster, but there it was, this companionship, unbidden and without reason; despite everything, at those times in the mornings Sanjay found no humiliation in asking question after question, what is it you do in the morning in England when you get up, how is breakfast made, and without pause came answers and then questions in return.

Gul Jahaan seemed to regard their meetings with the amused toleration of a woman for men’s things, and she took to referring to Sarthey as ‘your Englishman,’ and professed a fear of him, of his blue eyes and ascetic air. But Sanjay, standing by to translate, watched sometimes in the evenings as he dispensed treatment: his precise fingers on the bandages, the knots square and neat, the clear gaze as he laved out wounds and boils, the doctor’s eye that detached itself from the pain, the twitching faces, and yet was actively compassionate; all these things Sanjay found gentle.

At this time another letter came from Sikander. It was delivered by a seller of sweets who left the little packet of paper tucked between two rosogullas.

Sanjay,

I am wounded.

Another war, another combat: I will not weary you with the unfortunate details of a soldier’s life. Enough to say that the struggle for supremacy over Hindustan rages on, the alliances shift, soldiers die. This time we were caught in the open in an unequal fight, no support and no hope, we fell back as best we could but they broke our square. Then it was cavalry all over us and teror; I slashed about, and there was a moment, as I ran, of suddenly thinking about my wives, my children, and then I cut a man down, easily. I was shouting something, I don’t know what, I couldn’t tell you, leaping forward, and they fell back from me, frightened; then out of the corner of my eye I saw a rider spurring at me, turned to face him, saw him raise a pistol, felt a thick blow against my thigh, as if someone had taken an iron rod and swung it about at my abdomen, a blow blunt and numb, saw the flash at his hand, and I floated to the ground, and it seemed to me as I hit that the sound of the shot boomed forever in my head.

When I awoke, Sanjay, it was night, and I was pinned to the earth by a huge shaft of pain through my belly. The pain had its strictures about my body, its paths carved from my groin everywhere so that at each movement it tightened about me. At first I was afraid, but finally I forced my hand down and felt, but all I fingered were the raw edges of a wound, the shapelessness of the body when it is burst in some way. As I touched this rupture I felt that chaos reeled over me, and I cried out, not from pain, but in fear of this derangement that wanted to eat me, grind me all up into an obscene mixture. Mother, I shouted, Mother, Mother. Do you know what I feared, Sanjay? It was that battle-field aftermath, the parts of men scattered like refuse, everything pulped together, not anymore this and that, one and another, but all gone into the great whirl of fire and filth — it was this great loss, this anarchy that strangled the breath from me. I let my fear take my senses from me, gratefully I let it all go, but the moon came up and I saw it and could not hide anymore: Mother, Mother, Mother. I whispered with others beside me, we wept all of us like a chorus in the darkness, and in the flat white light everything became a sharp blackness, shadows and the edge of steel like fire, blood is black at night. Then I heard a woman’s voice: Sikander, I am here. Mother, I said, but I saw her, a lovely tall woman in white, her skin illuminated from within, a red mouth, it was Kali. She came to me, Sanjay, and in horror and awe I shook, tranced and unaware, the night fell apart in fragments, the moon trembled and slid into the earth. When I came back to myself, could see again, think, I heard a voice, Sikander, is that you, is that you? It was Uday: I could hear the pain in his voice, the agony from an anonymous cannon shot that shivered his leg; he told me, he saw it coming a moment before it hit, and then it shattered him. Learn a lesson, young Sikander, he said, in this war skill can only take you so far, when it wants to find you, the bullet will, no honour, nothing keeps it from you. So we talked, and the pain ebbed but I felt it come again, the spinning of the sky, a chariot wheel spinning and spinning and flying apart, myself in a hundred places and pieces, Uday’s voice, now hold on, youngster, hold on, steady, but I was gone, the darkness parted and from far away I saw the mound of crushed bodies, the spears broken and impaled, heard the ravings of the wounded, water, water, please water. It seemed then that Kali was holding me in her arms, cradling me in her arms, my head on her breast, and I looked up into her wild eyes and said, Mother; then she was above me, seated cross-legged on my groin: Sikander, why do you fear? She laughed, her dark hair floating about her face, and now she was dancing on my body, from head to toe her feet pressed me, and she said, Sikander, you were not made to be happy. Finally she lay beside me, stroked my forehead, and said, don’t be afraid, there’s nothing to be afraid of, and I knew she told the truth, the pain fell away, I smiled and fell asleep.