Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

There was something about his voice, not the sense of it but the texture, I wasn’t listening to him at all, but there was something about lying down and having my eyes closed and a story in the air that made me small again, I was smelling a gobar fire, the smell of the cow-dung fresh and pure, a delicious wind taking the heat from my skin as we slept in the veranda on a hot summer night, the rustling of the grass, the cool smell of the water, and a hand on my forehead. I jerked up, pushed myself away from the car, and stumbled off, walking quickly, trying to get the image of my grandfather out of my head. He was dead, and it seemed like a long time since I had thought of him, since the phone call that had brought me news of his death, it seemed like centuries, but now his memory hurt in my chest, he was a thin man, a practitioner of a medicine I thought useless, little homeopathic pills that were nothing but sweetness, I had grown up to think him ineffectual. I was walking in darkness now but it seemed to me that I was walking into his house: you went down the narrow paved lane, dusty and dirty, and through a little gate inset into the huge gate, into a garden, a scattering of trees and bushes really, no order, cows chewing placidly in the manger, and you went into the house, past the little sitting room with its ancient furniture and shelves of knickknacks, into the inner veranda, which always smelled of food, and then into the large room with chatais on the floor where we all eat, and there is a cabinet full of old books and vials of medicine, and on the wall, you see two photographs, one is my grandfather, very young, the frame on the picture is cracked and the glass seems to have yellowed with age, but you can see him smiling, he is wearing white trousers, a blue blazer, a straw boater tilted forward over his eyes, he has one hand in his pocket and the other holds forward a ball, the seams clearly visible, and to the right of this photograph is another one, taken thirty-odd years later, his son sits with a group of young men, to your eyes they all look innocent to a degree that is almost pathetic, they are all debonair and confident, there are silver cups and shields strewn before them, and the legend on top of the picture informs you that this is the B.H.U. College of Humanities Cricket Team, 1947.

I sat down in the grass, and I wept for my grandfather, for his death and missing him. I sat for a long time and thought about him.

“There you are.” Amanda came running up and sat down in my lap. “I was looking for you.”

“I was thinking about my grandfather. And Kate and a guy called Katiyar. He was my school captain and my cricket captain.”

She felt my face and then kissed my eyes, and held to me very tight. After a while we got up and started to walk back, she a little behind me, and suddenly she put her arms over my shoulders and hopped up, piggyback, and I carried her for a bit while she giggled into my neck. I was laughing.

“Now your turn,” she said. And so she carried me for a while, she was strong, and we were laughing so much we both collapsed to the ground, but we carried each other all over that field. She was singing something into my ear when we went over a grassy rise, and then she said, “Oops.” On the other side of the rise, in a little hollow, I could see Tom and Kyrie, their two heads gleaming in the moonlight close together, they were making love, and so I turned. As I turned there was a cheer, and then a succession of pops, rumblings, all melting into a roar, and then a hundred trails streaked into the sky, slivers of light throwing themselves up, unstoppable and prodigious flight, the sky turned to fire as they went keenly up, so bright I turned my face away, and below us I saw silhouetted the car, its elegant shape, and White Eagle sitting cross-legged, still as a rock, on its roof.

Amanda and I left for California the next day. Tom said he was going to stay behind, and I wanted to argue but I suppose I could see why, so I said nothing. We all waited in a coffee shop while Amanda drove home to say good-bye to her parents, and when she asked me if I would come with her I said I had better not. So we drank coffee, and Kyrie fed coins into the jukebox, and W. E., that was what I was calling him now, he shuffled over to the counter and brought back a battered chessboard.

“Do you play?” he said.

“I’ll thrash you, W. E.,” I said, and so we laid out the pieces, and there was a white bishop missing so I looked around and finally put a shiny quarter on the black square. I led off, but by the time Amanda was back he had me down three games to nothing. After all that he didn’t even smile, just looked old, and then we saw the Jaguar pull in, so we went outside. There didn’t seem to be anything much to say, so we shook hands, all of us, and Kyrie hugged Amanda and me.

“Call me,” I said to Tom.

“I will.”

We pulled away quickly and seemed to be on a freeway instantly. He never called, so I have no idea where they are now, or whether they are all together or what. I imagine them in a dusty rental car, red or black, driving across a Texas plain, and Elvis quavering “Heartbreak Hotel,” and then they’re gone. Amanda and I, we seemed to be back at Pomona almost instantly, it was too quick, and I felt tired almost all the time, walking around the campus. But anyway nobody seemed to have noticed that we had been gone, and I got back into classes and all the rest of it, and the months passed quickly and I graduated. I was with Amanda almost all the time, but we had never talked about what we would do after I was finished, I didn’t know either, but on the day that I gave my last exam I looked up and saw the clouds on a distant mountain and knew I wanted to go home. I told Amanda this, and she nodded, looked down. Do you want to come with me? I said. She nodded, still looking down, with her hands behind her back, but when I hugged her she clung to me tightly and trembled.

So I told the college to mail my degree to me, I printed out my father’s address in block letters on a card, and we flew out two days before graduation. My mother, I knew, would want a picture of me in a cap and gown, holding my anthropology degree across my chest, but the idea of it annoyed me and I got us on the first flight that had seats. Amanda seemed happy, she skipped around the airport and brought me a chocolate ice cream bar that we shared, and with chocolate smeared around her lips we kissed, and she said, “I’m so happy we’re getting out of here,” with a sweep of the arm that took in the whole airport and the sky outside. On the plane she put her head on my shoulder, held my arm with both hands and closed her eyes.

“Do you know how I imagine it?” she said, eyes still closed. “Big sky. Green, everything green. Blue water and women in gold saris walking slowly. Everything slow. Birds in the trees, parrots. An elephant in the distance, waving its trunk. Unbelievable sunsets.”

“Don’t imagine too much,” I said.

“Oh, shut up, spoilsport,” she said. Then she slept with a smile on her face, and her breath was warm on my skin. But later, in Bombay, when we were waiting in a long underground corridor to go through immigration, she began to look unhappy. I noticed this and looked around, and there were long lines of people waiting, everyone tired from the trip, but smiling a little, patient.

‘Relax,’ I said, rubbing her arm. She nodded. Then we went through the check, and descended into the swirling crowd around the luggage, and then again we went through the line at customs. Outside, it was still dark, but there was the ever-present gang of boys who wanted to carry our things, and I shooed them off and we got into a taxi. I had no idea what we were going to do, I wasn’t ready to go home to my parents yet, and so I gave the driver the name of a hotel in Colaba.