Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

When I pushed myself up I rose into a reeking mess of blood and fire; the marines on the quarter-deck above us had been cut up awfully and two of the guns on the starboard side were knocked over on their side, one with the wood of the carriage splintered away. Our number two gun was loose on the deck, bucking back and forth with every swell, running over and crushing the bodies that lay on the deck. As I stood it came at me, and I was dazed enough to be cool about the way I stepped aside, stooped down for a capstan which I jammed into the wheel, stopping the gun short in its wild career.

‘Good lad,’ said a blackened, grinning face to me as I stood, quite unable to know what to do next. I recognized the layer of the number one gun, which was now on its side and finished; he motioned at me and we worked like fiends to get the cannon back into harness. Now that I had someone showing me what to do I was myself again. I was always strong for my age, and between the two of us and another of his crew we had the gun ready when our sails took the wind and it came time to give reply. Even on that first day I had a feeling for the craft, and as the gun grew hot and leapt like a beast into the air when we fired, it took me not long to learn the rhythm of it, the quick scrape with the wet cloth inside, the cartridge, shot, running it up, the tap-tap as the layer took his sights and then waiting for the top of the wave, and then the roar. We were taken apart, though, that day, and we must have surrendered if a frigate hadn’t come up to scare off the Frenchman, and when it was over my part was noted and I was made a part of the number one crew, which suited me very fine.

After that I served on many ships, most of them men-of-war heavy with cannon and shot and low in the water; we sailed many waters, and as the years passed I visited many countries, many cities in Europe and Africa and then Asia; I fought men of all races and colours and learned how to use the instruments of war. Then an English ship I served on docked at the port of Goa, and that evening for the first time I walked on the soil of this country which we call India; we traded with the Portuguese and two weeks later sailed again. I sat on deck whenever I could and watched the coast of Malabar slip by, green and dark, with fishing boats slipping in and out among the beaches and the palms and the swamps; we passed by many ships, some Portuguese and some Arab and some belonging to the kingdoms on the coast. One afternoon, a week or two before we rounded Comorin, I saw a tiger lying on a beach, stretching and yawning in the sun, and we all rushed to the rail, shouting and gesturing, and I remember thinking, I must remember this; and as we watched he stood up and stared at us; even at that distance I could see the yellow glare of his eyes; then he grunted (I felt my heart squeeze) and moved off into the darkness under the trees.

We docked at Calcutta, and I wandered through the streets, the bazaars full of fruit, muslin, silk, fish. I saw people dressed in every imaginable colour, turbans round and triangular, jewellery on every limb; there were traders, soldiers, scholars, priests, labourers, servants; there were dozens of languages, accents sibilant and staccato, long hovering vowels and strong decisive consonants. We stayed for a month, and I spent every moment I could walking, alone.

Finally, loaded with spices and silk, we set off. I watched the white beaches recede into a distant stain on the horizon, with the sails cracking and the mast creaking above me, a heaviness in my heart. For two days we headed due south-west, and then were seized by a dead calm; we drifted. The sea was a flat grey; a school of dolphins surrounded us and splashed through patches of seaweed, walking through the water on their tails, grinning up at us; on the tenth day we saw land to starboard, and slowly drifted closer to it. I could see huge trees, gnarled and twisted, branches reaching down, roots rising out of water; the air was very still, the sun sent us scurrying for whatever shadow we could find, and the pale blue of the sky hurt the eyes; I sat under a boat, fanning myself with a little straw punkah I had bought in Calcutta, dreaming, thinking of the stories I had heard of the kingdoms of the plains and the Deccan, the nawabs of Avadh, the broken Moghuls, the Sikhs, the Marathas, the Rajputs, the sultans of the south. Late that night, a slight breeze sprang up, and our captain came running out of his cabin, shouting orders; ropes creaked and wood groaned, and we began to move, slowly, hesitantly, and then out of the trees, from the dark forest, I heard a coughing grunt; I stood bolt upright, and then a tiger’s roar boomed over the ship, a harsh fearful spitting sound, unbelievably loud; I felt warm liquid spill out of me and spread down my thighs, but even before the echoes had died away I was running towards the rail; I went over in a running dive and hit the water like a knife; racing towards the trees, I could hear shouts behind me, but I knew they couldn’t stop to put out a boat after me — the wind was up, and they couldn’t be bothered with one man; so I pulled myself through the darkness, weeping and laughing and talking to myself. Soon, I was able to pull myself up onto a thick root. The lights of the ship receded. I was alone, among the trees.

Thomas was quiet, then, for a moment, and looked dreamily into the dark.

‘Why?’ he went on. ‘One might ask, why? Listen…

As I stumbled and swam through the swamp, thirsty, starving, I asked myself again and again; but the roots of things are hidden, shrouded. The black trees towered above me, and I sprang from branch to branch, my skin covered with sores and bites and cuts. I lost my shoes in the bubbling ooze that rose and fell each day with the tide; I grew faint and lost all sense of direction, and often I collapsed, my limbs jerking and flopping about, dreaming, seeing impossible creatures rise out of the green water: chimeras, gryphons, phoenixes. Why? I asked, and all I can say even now is that for some the unfamiliar holds the promise of love, of perfection.

One morning, I lay on my back on a small island, a patch of brown soil in the middle of rushing water. With watery eyes I watched the sun climb through the leaves, and then I felt a hot rush of breath on my feet, a miasma that climbed up my thighs and over my chest, a rich rotting-meat smell that filled my nostrils. I looked up into golden eyes, calm eyes, eyes vacant in a natural ferocity quite without malice. I felt whiskers brush softly across my cheek, and then there was the sharp pain of a bite in my left shoulder, just below the neck; he picked me up and carried me easily through water and over trees and dry ground. The blood slipped out of me and over his jaws, dripping into the thick green scum; the sun followed us, moving over the patchwork canopy above; the light danced in my eyes and I knew I was going to die. Just before the last fragment of my awareness dropped away, I lost all control and smelt, in the mist that hung above the water, the odour of my own refuse.

I opened my eyes and there was a man standing above me, his bare brown legs straddling my body; he was shouting at the tiger, waving a spear. The tiger was crouched, its belly flat on the grass, its tail flicking to and fro; it snarled, jaws thrust forward, teeth stained pink from my shoulder. The man’s voice dropped into a tone almost conversational — he spoke to the animal in a language full of grunts and clicks; the tiger seemed to listen, and then the man screamed, raising his hands high above his head. The tiger backed away, easing out of its crouch, and then turned and disappeared into the trees.

My saviour bent down and smiled, speaking to me in that gentle clicking language. He was an old man with a tiny wizened face painted in red and green and crowned with coloured feathers; around his neck and in his ears he wore jewellery made of bone and chiselled pieces of coloured stone; he wore animal skins, and carried a spear and a bow. All this I saw as he bent over me and brushed the salt-encrusted, matted hair away from my face. He clapped a palm on his dark, muscular chest.