Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

On the blackened sheet under his thumb, Sanjay read:

I am in Hell. I am in Hell. On my second day at Norgate I thought this repeatedly. Dulwich tipped me out of bed, saying, up, bitch. We were Porter’s fags, Byrd and I, puffing at a fire at five in the morning for hot water, for Porter’s shave and wash. It was devilish cold, and the buckets pulled out your arms on the long walk back to Porter’s room, and what was slopped off through exhaustion had to be made up with another trip. Then back to the long room for a panic-stricken minute or two for your own scrub, then the stairs two and three at a time for morning call at the Rectory, sundry prefects kicking away. I collected a kick on the back of my thigh that left a bruise for seven days, and later I wet my crust and the dab of marmalade was salty. Don’t snivel, bitch, said Byrd, here comes Dr Lusk. I am in Hell.

At this Sanjay ran around the fire, kicking at it, shouting, ‘Stop, stop.’ He batted at the piles of paper, trying to knock out pages to the ground.

‘What are you doing?’ Sunil said, pulling at him, but Sanjay was now kicking at the blaze, unmindful of the billows of embers which puffed up to sting at him. Pages of the diary — of course it must be that — came out still burning, the threads of narrative disrupted and holed by the conflagration.

‘Save these pages,’ Sanjay said, still dancing around the fire. ‘With the green handwriting.’ He noticed then that Sunil had turned away, was facing outward from the fire and paying him no attention at all: they were surrounded by half a dozen horsemen, all dressed in brilliant yellow, bearded lancers who were regarding him with curiosity, in fact as if he were mad. ‘Who are you?’ Sanjay said.

‘We are of Skinner’s Horse,’ said one of the lancers. ‘And you are the thieves we were detailed to catch, but why are you burning your haul? Or are you not? Are you trying to save it?’

Sanjay did not answer, but as the captors stamped out the fire, he managed to push the handful of pages he was holding under his shirt; in the pretence of aiding the soldiers he was able to secure a dozen others, variously burnt and charred. Later, on the way back to Delhi, surrounded by these splendid horsemen, Sanjay had much time to study them; of their skill as scouts and cavalry he had no doubt, since they had appeared soundlessly and suddenly, and in this were the apt followers of their commander Sikander, but it was their costumery that interested him.

‘Are you of the unit of Sikander?’

‘Yes. We are the riders of the sun.’

‘What does this yellow colour signify?’

‘That those who wear it embrace death already, and therefore care nothing for death.’

To this splendid Rajput sentiment Sanjay could put no further questions, since all of the lancers so obviously believed in it: they laughed, flashing white teeth against pointed black beards, hitched up their lances and galloped their horses, making wild cries and enjoying the glinting of the sun on their steel helmets and lance-heads, and they were a swaggering bunch who threw their heads back and rode with elegant but careless dash.

‘Well,’ said Sikander, ‘do you like my Yellow Boys?’

He was a little more massive, deeper in the chest like a bull, and heavy with that animal’s satisfaction with its power: Skinner’s Horse was detailed to police the plains around Delhi, to keep the peace and to put down all miscreants, robbers and banditti, and this morning they had done it with a speed that was likely to add to their growing legend. Sanjay was reluctant to tell him why he had stolen Sarthey’s books, because the man in front of him was very respectable and somehow foreign, the kind of person who might laugh at the Begum Sumroo’s advice as a joke, or a primitive fairy tale. But then Sikander spoke again: ‘This is a bad time to do this, this revenge you wanted. The time is bad. We hear, through pigeon-post and other devices, that the Marathas face the English soon, very soon, maybe today or tomorrow, for the final confrontation. It must come soon, de Boigne’s brigades against Wellesley’s troops, they are now without the old man, de Boigne is gone but his brigades remain to fight for the Marathas, and perhaps the old Chiria Fauj fights for the last time.’

‘Where?’

‘Near a village called Assaye.’

‘Listen, Sikander,’ said Sanjay. ‘We have both gotten old, and have gone very far on different roads. But in your letters you are still my brother, and I will speak to that Sikander I see in the letters. What happens in Assaye depends upon what we do here: let me burn those books. Otherwise all is lost.’

‘How exactly is that?’

‘Never mind, but remember what you saw when you lay shot on the battle-field. Will you deny it now? I have a son, a bright son who will decline if those books are allowed to exist.’

‘You are talking magic, Sanjay, and I am concerned now with fact.’

‘Do you know who this Sarthey is? Do you remember your mother at all?’

Sikander looked at him without reply, and Sanjay heard how absurd, how insane he sounded in that room: the white walls were bare, there was a brown desk with a white blotter, and the air itself seemed calm and permeated with a rationalism from some other shore.

‘Do you remember this?’ Sikander said, extracting a plain iron spoon from an inner breast pocket. ‘I keep it always. It seems it comforts me somehow’

‘By your mother’s memory and last words, I enjoin you to grant me this: I ask for the gift of single combat, and let the victor treat the books as he will.’

Sikander laughed. ‘You’ve really gone crazy. It must be the sun.’

Without a word Sanjay leaped over the table, reaching for Sikander’s throat but grabbing only a handful of coat, and despite Sikander’s agile weaving he managed to get a hand to his face, disregarding the other’s entreaties to stop, stop, and then Sikander shifted his weight slightly and brought an elbow to Sanjay’s chest, taking the air out and bending him double, then a tremendous buffet at the base of the neck bringing up the floor and black.

When Sanjay awoke his vision had doubled again; he was in a small, comfortably furnished room, clearly not a cell and yet one which offered no hope of escape. The ventilator, high up on the wall, was barred, and its small white image reproduced itself perfectly, so that Sanjay did not know which was real and which unreal. For a long time he sat on the bed with his head between his hands, rubbing his eyes, but finally he pulled out the blackened mass of paper from his waist-band, stained and made mucilaginous by his sweat, and began to read. They were random sheets from Sarthey’s diary, and at first he had to lay them out on the bed to sort them, and while reading there were many gaps, many passages made illegible by fire, others wholly reduced, and so it was a curious, patchwork narrative, all torn apart and shattered, but Sanjay read it as if his life depended on it.

There were four who considered themselves blades, and cut a style with cravats, wide cuffs and a considered and elaborate manner of speech. ‘Consider this specimen, gentlemen,’ said Bowles (the first time I saw them, all four together and abreast, strolling along the cinder-path), ‘what say you regarding this homunculus?’ ‘A nut-brown baggage, isn’t she?’ said Bailey. ‘Exceedingly brown,’ said Hodges. ‘One might infer certain inferences.’ And Durrell seated himself on a bench by the path, one leg crossed over the other and swinging foot, running a finger over a silver-headed walking stick. ‘What’s your name?’ he said. ‘Paul Sarthey, sir.’ ‘Paul?’ he said. ‘I think not. You will present yourself at my study post-prep. We shall give you a name. We will have a ceremony and we will give you a name.’ I went at night to his rooms.