Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

‘Come,’ Sikander said.

Sanjay shook his head.

‘Come on, pumpkin-head,’ Chotta whispered. ‘You won’t break again.’

‘Come on, Sanju,’ Sikander said. ‘I’ll hold on to you this time.’

Sanjay turned away, pulse quickened; the cow watched, its mouth moving.

‘Sanju,’ Sikander said, ‘don’t you want to know?’

He lifted both hands up to them, and they pulled him up effortlessly (he felt his feet leave the ground, ankles extend); they worked their way around the edge of the sloping roof, and Sanjay resolutely turned his face to the comfortable, musty smell of the thatch, and clamped a grip on Sikander’s kurta.

‘Here,’ Sikander said, moving aside handfuls of coarse straw, and Sanjay reached in beside him, glad to be doing something. ‘Quietly, quietly.’ The stuff came away in easy tufts, slightly moist, and then they were through: a small ragged hole, an obscuring beam, and, beyond, very white in the grey interior light (outside, the sun blazed), at first an unnameable moving construction, a twisting rectangular patch and two spheres, speckled, then the image twisted on itself, resolved (altitude is dizzying), and became a back ridged by shoulder blades, and below, two contracting and expanding buttocks, a quick moment of vertigo, a strong dislocation, longing, longing, it can crush your bones, and below, Hercules moved faster (ragged rhythm) between the dark splayed thighs, and above his right shoulder a dark face, a woman, heavy face, passive, impassive, eyes marking the colourful figures on the shelf, the icons, images, then turning slightly to look at an empty corner (only dust floating like stars), time passed, time, and Hercules grunted, his fingers in her hair, pulling, twisting her face to his (her lip drawing back, pain), grunted again, long rattling sigh.

Sanjay turned his head toward Chotta, then Sikander, but found that he couldn’t bear to look at them, and so his memory of that moment was always a confusion of straw, the base of a neck, hands, perhaps eyes; he looked back down at Hercules, who had rolled to a corner of the mat and was lying on his side, silent, his chest heaving. Around his belly a single shiny streak of wetness dripped to the ground; the woman moved — density, darkness between her thighs — and began to pull a piece of cloth about her.

‘When I was very young,’ Hercules said, then stopped, reaching forward to rest a palm, flat, on the smooth mud wall. The woman moved about the room, paying no attention, tucking away strands of hair, bending to move a pair of boots into a corner. ‘When I was very young,’ Hercules began again, ‘the only nightmare I remember from my childhood was this — I dreamt that I was walking through a street paved with stones, flanked by white houses, when the grey sky opened up like a funnel, sucked me up. The ground vanished from beneath my feet, and I plummeted upwards, limp, terrified. In a moment it enfolded me, sky stifling like a shroud, I was scattered, vanished, gone, not capable then even of being scared. But then I awoke, shaking. Later that morning — I must have been no more than nine or ten — my father, my mother and I, with my other sisters, walked to our church. All was well — there was not a cloud, I could hear birds, my brothers ran about despite my mother’s entreaties — but even then I was frightened. They asked me what it was, but what child of nine could tell about what I had felt, so I shook my head, went along, trying to keep between my parents. In the church, I clutched the wood of the pew, and tried to pull my legs up onto the seat. My father reached around my mother and tapped me sharply on the back of the head; when the tears cleared I found my eyes fixed on the image of Christ: a simple representation in dark wood, a certain heaviness about the figure, as if the agony dragged, pulled. I wiped, snuffling, then looked closer. His muscles bulged. I followed the strained curve of the arm to the taut tendons in the wrist, and then to the nail, piercing straight and perpendicular through the flesh. I tried to follow the line of the metal, through the flesh and into the wood, and I saw how firmly fixed He was, how pinned. I wept with relief, and my parents looked on me proudly, thinking that the sermon had moved me. I knew I had been told something then, as firmly as if He had spoken to me, moving his wooden lips: the mark of man is tragedy, and the world must know this. I was nine, the years passed; I became a soldier, to take the Word to the world. In this country there are many, most, who have spent their lives without the Knowledge, so I have aided those who tell, who speak. I have given them shelter, and food, and protection, and tried to keep the memory of that hour alive, when I knew that He stood between me and devastation. But comes now the hidden army of the Other, the march of moments, the thousand things that are necessary, that distract. All that must be done I do, I earn, I administer, I feed, I fight, but finally, in the pause, in reflection, I am brought to the comprehension that I have been consumed again, engulfed, the great task left undone. His Act is forgotten, that perfect culmination, everything stretches forever, behind and in front, like that endless, hideous pantheon. He died! Something changed! But weariness brings doubt, and then I come here, to be doubly devoured. Here, in this place, I am finally finished. Do you listen?’

Hercules sat up, and the woman glanced at him, then began to arrange the betel leaf and tobacco in her palm; he reached for a shirt, drew it over his shoulders, and stood, his thighs exposed between the tails. Sanjay watched him pulling on his clothes, still unsettled by the extreme sadness in Hercules’ voice, so unlike his usual plummy confidence. Sanjay wanted to ask Sikander and Chotta what it was that Hercules had said, that had made his words so faint, what had compelled him to touch the wall as if testing its solidness, its physicality, but a glance on either side convinced him that it was wiser to wait: the two brothers were watching their father, below, with a concentration that seemed to reject the possibility of emotion, much less conversation. So Sanjay too watched Hercules as he dressed, straightened his hair, picked a few coins out of his purse to place on a mantelpiece built into the wall; Hercules left without a word to the woman, who sat chewing moodily on her paan — they seemed indifferent, now, to each other.

‘Come on,’ Sikander said. They dropped to the ground — this time not earning even a glance from the cow in the corner — came around the corner of the hut, and were halted by a rude phalanx of children.

‘Who are they?’ a small girl dragging the wooden cart said from the rear, rising up on her toes.

‘What are these rich babas doing sulking behind our Amba’s hut?’

‘Stealing her cow’

‘Not even going out by the front door, like the others.’

The line pressed forward, and Sanjay stepped back, but Sikander and Chotta stood their ground, only moving a little closer to each other; Sikander seemed to be calm, almost dreamy, but Chotta was crouching, eager, hands held in front of his thighs, palms up.

‘Why here, babas?’

‘Motherfuckers,’ Chotta said. ‘Fuck your sisters too.’

‘Enough,’ Sikander said, but already there were three or four boys pushing through the press to get at Chotta, who for his part edged forward to meet them. The first of them had to step past Sikander, who reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘No,’ Sikander said.

‘Eh, don’t you drop in the middle,’ the boy said, moving his arm to brush Sikander off, and suddenly he flew through the air, landing jarringly on his buttocks in front of the little girl with the cart.

‘I told you no, no?’ Sikander said, smiling pleasantly. The others stopped, uncertain, as the boy picked himself up, eyes tearing, and then they all began to move forward in small jerks and starts, each waiting for another to lead the assault, cursing fervently in a kind of courage-building chant. Sikander moved his head in a funny rolling motion, and Sanjay, hearing the bones in his neck crackle, shivered.