Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

When I awoke I knew somehow that it was past midnight, I knew where I was, and now there was no longer that vertigo, that terror of before. I tried to sit up as best I could, to see my men and what could be done for them, and they were in the torments of a special soldier’s hell, where time is forever, your blood flows, you cannot move, and there is no water. All around me I heard the cry for it, weak, desperate, hopeful, mad, as the condition of the man might be; over this there was Uday’s voice, talking, encouraging, but even there I could hear the way his lips were sticking, the tongue moving like a leathery beast in the dry cavern of the palate. Is it very bad, O master, I asked, and he said, it is not so bad that it will not pass, and his words burdened me with grief, because suddenly I knew he was talking, not without hope, of his own death.

And so the night passed; in the morning came two old people, I saw them walk towards us from far, a man and a woman, very old and from their dress peasants, bearing water-skins. They were wrinkled and thin, blackened by a life of brutal work, but their eyes had the compassion of a thousand years. They passed from man to man, giving water and comfort and hope; the woman came to me, and I drank gratefully, and she folded a coat and put it under my head. She smiled, toothless, and said, we are farmers. But Uday would not take their water: he said, thank you, but I cannot, it would break my caste. I said, take it, Father, because even the scriptures hold that caste rules do not apply in times of disaster; but he said, it may be so, and I hold no man weak for taking water now, but I will not do it. So I began to speak to him about rationalism, science (remembering the conversations I had heard in my father’s house), religion; we had, in short, a theological and philosophical debate, lying there in the tall grass with our bodies holed. We touched upon every question of belief and doubt you can think of, and even the other wounded grew quiet and listened; and finally I demonstrated to him the error of his thinking, and that it was not only possible but his duty to drink. But he said, I am an old man, I have lived too long and I have seen too much change, you are no doubt right, I am in error, I am sorry I upset you, but I have lived a long time in this dharma, and I will die in a few hours, I will keep to it. But your suffering — I could not help bursting out — but how you must suffer! He said, this is my dharma.

So all through the long day I watched him, and he lay pierced in a thousand places, steadfast; in the evening our opponents came back, having broken off the engagement, and they gathered us up and took us to shelter, to good doctors. But Uday was dead. As they lifted me up the old woman said to me, do not weep, do not weep for death. Uday was dead, and I could not remember the moment in which his voice stopped. As they lifted me up the pain flared and brought a cry from me, but in the sound was something of relief, of release; somehow in the confusion there was a sense, there was the sky above me, fringed with black birds, the eyes of the old woman and her husband, their kindness, the unbreakable dharma of Uday, the dead around me, and life which opened to me once more, and I said to the water-bringers: I vow by the pain I have suffered that beyond right and wrong, this and that, us and they, I will build a temple, a mosque and a church, all of these in honour of my mother and my father, in honour of these men who have ridden with me, and in honour of what is to come. I was half-mad by now, but the old ones said, this is good. I will do it; even though, now in tranquil recollection, I do not know what I meant, cannot recall exactly what it was I saw on the field, I will do it.

I am permanently wounded; to be blunt, the ball took one of mine. I am healed, but I suppose I am halved. Mistake me not, I am as capable as before, let us say; but before I lived carelessly, I asked the world for victory, and that was all I asked. Now I am not so sure; now I am somehow unable to sleep, and victory, when it comes, is not all sweet. I am rambling, ahead to my further adventures.

I healed, was released by our foes, and took again command of my troops, but the misfortune which had threatened for long was finally against us, as you well know. The Marathas fight the English: the moment of decision is here. We waited for this so long, Sanjay, and we all knew it was coming, but after all, I fight not for the Marathas. What happened was this: a few days after the campaign started, Perron — you remember him, the posing Frenchman who ran from Thomas at Georgegarh — well, this Perron called all the country-born officers in his command to his tent. None of us could think why, but we went, and Perron, seated in state, told us our fates: while he did not doubt any of us individually, he said, it had been decided that those officers who were of partial English descent could not be wholly relied upon in the war to come. And in this supremely important war no doubts could be entertained, and therefore we were to be released from our services, and were free to do as we liked, with assurances of safe-conduct, etc., etc. At this there was a wild howl from those assembled, and a movement forward, and Perron blanched a little and his guards hitched their pieces; I stepped forward, and spoke: I am a Rajput, and my loyalty is unquestioned, you insult me. No insult is intended, he said, but there was a particular satisfaction in his voice, a faint gloating when he made his announcements; he hated the English, you see, and so he hated us. I am a Rajput, I said again. Undoubtedly, he said, but you are also something else. At this Chotta started forward, and by instinct I reached out to check him, and the sight of his face, blotched with angry red marks, a thousand of them, shocked me into self-possession: Chotta would have killed him. So I nodded my head, unable for anything to bow, and led them out, into the bright sun outside, and we walked through the military bustle we had known all our lives, suddenly foreign.

The road we took then, Sanjay, was the longest of our lives; we said good-bye to our men, stanched their weeping and their talk of mutiny and left the camp. The direction we took was the only one open to us — we travelled towards the British; what I am is a soldier, and that was the only service available then, and now. But before we had gone far, distance hid our comrades from us, and the road narrowed between fields and groves of trees, and all was peace; I bid my friends to go on ahead, told them I would catch up shortly. I left the road, found a shade of mango trees, and leaned up against one of them; my legs gave, and I sat, my legs apart like a child, and then I dropped forward and wept, smearing my face with the dust of my country.

So we went on towards the English. We had not gone far, the next morning, when disorganized groups of Maratha horsemen began to stream past us, replying to our shouts with only the cry that the English were coming, the English were coming. Then we saw Perron, hatless, fleeing down the road on a blown horse, and I ran out and caught his reins. It is all over, he said, all over, the English surprised us, flee, flee, and he was delirious with panic, his big yellow eyes rolling. But you haven’t fought them, I shouted, look, none of your weapons have been discharged, you have done nothing, and he would say only that they had come upon the camp unseen and unsuspected, it was all over. Come, we will help you, I said, make a stand here, rally your men, we will beat them, but he began to weep, it is over, it is over. So I let him go, and said to the others, come, we will go and rally, and we will stop the English, and I began to saddle my horse, and Chotta followed me, but the others looked on grimly, and by the time I had finished tightening the cinch-grips I was weary with hopelessness and rage: if we had been with our men that night perhaps there would have been no carelessness, no surprise, no panic, no unfought defeat. The bigotry of this European and his fellows lost the Marathas this battle, maybe this war, maybe their kingdom; he had looked at me and had not seen the soldier’s salt, the Rajput’s vow. What men are these, Sanjay? Truly we are in Kalyug. In the dust of that road, when everything fell apart, and I was alone under the great sky, far from my men, what I felt most was the meanness of an enormous trap closing slowly about me, its oily hinges and its power that somehow was crushing me flat. I am fearful.