Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

‘He said, can you believe, that a thing should do what a thing is meant to do, nothing more, nothing less.’

‘Barbarian,’ Ram Mohan said, wrapping his arms around his knees and peering up at his brother-in-law.

‘Quite. And the armourer turned pale and looked away’ Arun walked back and forth, forgetting for once, it seemed, his daily ritual disrobing, the casting aside of sweaty clothes. ‘I was no more than three feet from him, and I distinctly saw his lip tremble.’

‘And what of Daroga Sahib?’

‘Well, since he had recommended this armourer, brought him to the city, given him money to set up a work-shop and presumed upon his relationship with the RajaSahib, you can imagine his state. He laughed, he blustered: “Iskinner Sahib,” he said, “Iskinner Sahib, but you see…,” but before he had gotten out two sentences the firangi said, his lip turning, “My name is Skinner, Skinner.”’

‘Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable.’

‘So now you can imagine the Daroga’s state; he was incoherent. Finally I said, Arre Skinner Sahib, look at the workmanship, see how the lion howls around the muzzle of the thing, how cunningly the shape of the animal is made to conform to the necessary lines of the weapon, how beautiful it is, how the thing is made, but he said, all that is unnecessary, a thing should do what it is meant to do, no more and no less. And then he took his leave.’

‘The man is unbearable.’

‘But our RajaSahib is enamoured of him because the Company wins battles. The Company wins here, the Company wins there, the Company always, everywhere wins, and so we are judged by the Company. I tell you, brother, we live in ugly times; our lives are invaded by soldiers. We speak their language, we aggrandize them, we celebrate their virtues, our poetry is infected by their artifices, our ideas by their craft.’

Hoping to cool the other’s anger, Ram Mohan held up a silver paan-box, and Arun grabbed up a leaf and chewed angrily, the crimson liquid spurting out of the corners of his lips. ‘Skinner lives over the wall from us, but he has taken over our house, my brother; here we are, you and I, love-poets of the first order, reduced to writing about a homicidal madman because our majesty is fascinated by Skinner’s bluff tales of first he went here and conquered this, then he went there and murdered those, and finally he ambled over and set so-and-so country on fire. Our name will die out with us.’

‘Hideous.’

‘Oh, we are slaves, and to work, to work; have you made the knot?’

‘Yes, brother, it is in the back.’

They walked around the house, keeping to the outer verandas and porches, carefully avoiding the inner rooms; Arun began to shrug off his clothes, and Ram Mohan limped behind him, bending awkwardly to pick up the garments.

‘I made the knot,’ Ram Mohan said, hopping along. ‘I made it of twine, string, leather thongs, strands of fibrous materials from plants, pieces of cloth, the guts of animals, lengths of steel and copper, fine meshes of gold, silver beaten thin into filament, cords from distant cities, women’s hair, goats’ beards; I used butter and oil; I slid things around each other and entangled them, I pressed them together until they knew each other so intimately that they forgot they were ever separate, and I tightened them against each other until they squealed and groaned in agony; and finally, when I had finished, I sat cross-legged next to the knot, sprinkled water in a circle around me and whispered the spells that make things enigmatic, the chants of profundity and intricacy. My brother, there has never been such a knot. Look at it.’

It hung between two branches of a peepul tree that grew near the boundary wall running around the unkempt garden, among mango trees and bushes of hibiscus, its suspending cables reaching up like untidy tentacles; as Arun strode up to it, now clad only in his dhoti, it rocked forwards and back, its shadow moved lightly over the ground below, and he stopped short.

‘How did you get it so big?’

Ram Mohan smiled, pleased, and ducked under the ball, running a hand intimately over its rough surface and holding on to it as he bent down to the ground.

‘Here’s the sabre, freshly sharpened like you said.’

‘Let the sabre drown in its own piss, Ram Mohan,’ Arun said. ‘Look at this thing, it’s a monstrosity.’

‘But you said you wanted a big one. You said it.’

‘Yes, yes, but I meant big, not this.’

‘I don’t know; after a while, it took no effort — I’d bring something close to it, and it would attach itself, suck it up, it seemed.’

‘All right. All right. Now But there’s no cutting this thing,’ Arun said. ‘You have to at least try.’

‘It’s clearly impossible.’

‘Sikander did it.’

‘He was a madman, with a lunatic’s strength; sickness sometimes brings brawn; write that down.’

‘Or he was a king of kings.’

‘All right, all right. Here. Let me have it.’ Arun took the sabre, unsheathed it, flexed his shoulder, looking all the while at the knot, at the riot of colour and texture that was almost as big around as Ram Mohan’s torso. ‘Even if he could cut it, if he did cut it, how could he bear to? Look at the thing. You said it yourself, it is a thing of profundity; think, a knot that nobody has been able to unravel for thousands of years, an undecoded mystery, an obscurity so deep that it becomes a pain and a pleasure at the same time, what I mean to say is: it is a monument, and along comes this bravo, this puling upstart given to melancholic fits and uncontrollable rages, and he rips it in two! Cuts it.’

‘He was a brute. But Skinner calls him king of kings. The world calls him king of kings.’

‘What a robbery! What a disregard for future generations; how many thousands of young people would have made the journey, hoping to solve it, to take it apart, strand by strand, but he reduced it to nothing, to nothing.’

‘Nothing. But cut it, brother.’

‘Step out from behind it. Away, I mean. Good.’ Arun shuffled back and forth on the balls of his feet, settling into a wide stance, weight held low; he measured the distance to his target with a slow swing, and took a deep breath.

‘You look like a warrior, like Arjuna,’ Ram Mohan said.

Arun smiled. ‘Like Parashurama, I hope. For the glory of our family’

‘For the good name of the Parashers.’

The blade shrilled through the air, and then Arun was rolling on the ground (the knot oscillated above him, barely dented, squeaking), holding his wrist, shouting and cursing; he called down maledictions on the knot, on Ram Mohan, on himself, on the sword, on Skinner, and finally he cursed Sikander himself for being a passion-ridden, syphilitic fool who disturbed the sleep of millions even centuries after worms had disposed of his flesh.

‘Brother,’ said Ram Mohan, ‘look, look —’

‘Look at what, you owl’s spawn? Look at my wrist, it’s swelling already; Oh, what a fool I was to do this, why did I do this, what do poets need of experiments? Go, what are you looking at, mud-head, find somebody, send someone to the bone-setter’s, get him here, stop gaping.’

‘But, brother —’

‘What brother-brother? Get me the vaid.’

By now Arun had raised himself to his feet, cradling his wrist, turning as he twisted up, so when the voice spoke behind him he spun around and thumped into the knot, which swung back and hit Ram Mohan in the chest, knocking the wind out of him and causing a sudden state of breathless, heightened wonder, a moment of excruciatingly acute sensation in which he stared with astonishment at the tremendously pregnant woman who balanced on top of the garden wall, teetering, the sphere of her belly pulling her to the point of imbalance and then back. She spoke again: