Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

Hanuman looked on from a rafter, and then he swung down easily to land next to Ganesha, who sat in a corner cross-legged, swinging his trunk to and fro.

‘Very strange,’ said Hanuman.

‘Yes,’ Ganesha said. ‘It seems he loves you after all.’

‘He’s forgotten his fear of madness.’

‘Which was madness, and which is sane?’ And then they both laughed together, and Hanuman rolled over and over, and Ganesha’s paunch shook mightily. But I couldn’t see Yama, and when I looked over to my left, his throne was gone, and he was nowhere to be seen. Then when I lay back, my head on a pillow, I saw that there was someone sitting behind me, behind the pillow: it was an old man with fine white hair and golden eyes, dressed in white with his right shoulder bare, and there was a smile on his lips as he gazed down at me.

‘Who are you?’ I said.

‘You still do not know your friends?’

His eyes never blinked, they were as still as pools of water, and in them I saw reflected a thousand red and white pennants, the glint of lances, the sweating shoulders of horses and the proud riders, I saw the sun flash and a wind blew across the plains, and I saw myself, my monkey-face and the other one besides, translucent and mixed up, the scars of one appearing in another, and as I looked at myself there were a thousand others who seemed to float behind: de Boigne, George Thomas, Begum Sumroo, Ram Mohan, Arun, Shanti Devi, Janvi, Hercules Skinner, Sorkar, Markline, a host of others, even the mad Greek Alexander, they were all there.

‘Yes, I know who you are,’ I said. ‘At last I know you: you are Dharma, who is the friend of men and women. You are forever with us, even when we do not know you, you walk with us in our streets and finally we return to you. You are Yammam-Dharmam, and you are our father.’

He smiled at me, and put his hand on my shoulder. His touch was cool. Then there was a sudden shouting outside, a flaring of angry voices. Ashok hurried out, and when he came back a few minutes later his face was full of worry and grief.

‘Three groups were fighting,’ he said. ‘The police stopped it.’ There was no more shouting now, on the maidan, only the buzz of thousands of voices.

‘About what?’ Mrinalini said.

‘Who knows?’ Ashok said. ‘But now it’s become politics.’

‘Hurry, Sanjay,’ Abhay said. ‘You must go on. Continue, and they’ll listen.’

So I got up slowly, and went back to the machine, and then I typed all this, and then: ‘Abhay, the contract said that a story must be told. You have your part today left to tell, so you must tell it. There was an invitation to a cricket match, was there not? Tell the story. But I am done. Saira, and you, my friends, I thank you. Do not be afraid, there is nothing to fear. Do not grieve, because tragedy is an illusion. We are free, and we are happy, and together we are complete. Abhay, when I have finished, I shall lay my head in the lap of Yama and I shall listen to your story, and the story will never end, in its maya we will play, and we will find endless delight.’

Now I speak no more. Saira is sitting beside me, quiet, holding my hand tightly between both of hers, and she is weeping.

I HAD NOT PLAYED CRICKET for so long that I had forgotten it. I mean not just how to play, but that I had forgotten the linseed smell of the bat, the smooth heft of the ball and the comfort of its seam, the good green of the grass, the hollow pok of a good drive that is the best sound in the world, and distant figures in white, and a glass of ale in the pavilion, the chattering clapping for a particularly elegant cut, fellowship and sportsmanship and well-being. I had borrowed whites from William James, and I had to roll up the bottoms of the trousers, the shirt fell loosely over my shoulders and bunched at my waist, I must have looked ridiculous but I was remembering cricket under a desert sun and so I didn’t care, I was remembering Lord Mayo and the mountain Madar overhead, fiercely-fought house-matches, buckling on pads, all of us staring open-mouthed as some schoolboy legend passed by, a school First Eleven cricketer with a double century in the last inter-school match, and school colors in six sports.

I was remembering all this and I suppose the childhood must have shown in my face, because Amanda said, “Why d’you want to do this?” She was lounging in a deck chair, drinking a vodka and tonic, and she was already bored and unhappy.

“Dear, as they say, it’s the only game in town.”

“You sound funny.”

“No doubt.”

“I hate this place.” We were on the deck of the Regents clubhouse, which was a huge square black building with classical pillars and scrolled cornices. It looked more like a government ministry than a cricket pavilion to me, but then my notion of a sporting building had been formed by the delicate red sandstone fantasy of a pavilion at Mayo, and in any case there was the field in front with the players tossing the ball back and forth, and the pitch really was glorious, smooth and even and hard as a billiard table. So I paid no attention to Amanda, who had just been brought another drink by a dark-skinned waiter in a white coat.

The glass door to the clubhouse opened, letting out a rush of cold air, and William James emerged, followed by a stream of other players. He was tall, and, I noticed, very broad-shouldered, and as he talked to me he slipped a ball from one hand to another, and the bulk of his forearms was really remarkable. He looked ruddy and strong, and clean.

“You’ll play for the Coasters,” he said, meaning the other team. He was the captain of the Regents. He looked out at the field, and said, “It’s a friendly match.”

He introduced me to the captain of the Coasters, a fiftyish Englishman named Ballard, and then they walked down to make the toss, which Ballard won. He chose to bat first, and so I sat on the steps and talked to the Coasters, who were a motley collection of Australians, Indians, and Pakistanis, and a couple of West Indians. The Regents team was mostly older men, six Americans, more than I had expected, an Irishman, two Australians, and, strangely, a Japanese. We clapped for the first two batsmen in, and then William James began to bowl. He was a pretty useful pace bowler, medium-fast most of the time but trying for the really whizzing ball, and when he tried to snap it he tended to lose control of the length, but every once in a while he’d get one right on the sweet spot and it would whistle by the batsman. In his third over he clean-bowled one of our openers, and the middle stump cartwheeled end over end for a good six feet and the wicket-keeper caught one of the bails.

I looked around for Amanda and she had disappeared, so I got to my feet and told Ballard that I’d be right back, and went into the clubhouse. The air conditioning was so hard and complete it felt vicious, and I could feel the rivulets of sweat on my back vanishing instantly. Inside, the ceiling was high and everything seemed to be green, the carpets and the wall, and there were huge chandeliers overhead. I wandered around from room to room, and then I found the waiter who had served us.

“Miss Amanda?” he said. “I don’t know. Maybe she’s on the roof.”

“The roof?”

“With her mother at the pool.”

“There’s a pool on the roof?”

“Yes,” he said, smiling. He was an old man with peppery hair, and now I could catch, faintly, the Jamaican in his speech. “Go to the left to the stairs there. Go take a look, young man. It is something to look at.”

I didn’t think I’d find Amanda with her mother, but I wanted to see this rooftop pool, and so up I went, and emerged into sunlight so blinding that I stumbled for a few seconds, hand over my eyes, in a bright haze, and when I could finally focus I saw a brilliant sheet of perfect blue, blue water, so flawless that it didn’t look real. Next to it was Amanda’s mother, and when I saw her my heart dropped out of my body and whirled off somewhere into space. Candy, I whispered. She waved at me, and as I went closer I lost sense of myself, me and my body I mean, it was as if I was floating across the surface of the earth, and in the distance, the tops of trees. She was lying flat on her stomach in a gold bikini, a book in front of her, and her body was smooth and long and perfect, she had the string on the top untied, the length of her back burnished and shining, I could see the sides of her breasts as she leaned on her elbows. Something happened to me but it wasn’t arousal, you shouldn’t think that, it felt deep and hollow and empty, it was bad if it was anything. It made me crazy. It wasn’t arousal at all but it was attraction.