Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

‘The same night, they returned, my seekers, one dressed as an old gipsy woman, another as a seller of perfumes. They told us — by this time La Borgne was privy to all my doings, for he was a fine young man — they told us that they had gone to the party’s camp-fires, and had mixed with them, joking, advising them on the best wine and the most tender meats, and they had ascertained that the men, a varied bunch of Rajputs, Turks, Afghans, Sikhs, Marathas, Avadhi Brahmins, Bengalis, Kashmiris, Arabs, Germans, a lot of Germans, and a couple of English, were engaged in a quest, a search for a treasure which moved with the sun. And I said, how splendid, but my friend sneered.

‘Nevertheless, the next morning, I pulled him out of bed, and we rode out and slipped up to their camp, taking advantage of the natural cover and the darkness. Just before the sun began to rise, the men arose and quickly moved into a circle. In the centre of this circle, they constructed a strange apparatus: a fire, above it a cooking pan full of water, and in the water a mirror, floating face up. As the lip of the sun appeared above the trees, the smoke from the fire curled above and around the pan, but then the mirror caught a ray and flashed it back, like an explosion, and we all moved our hands to our eyes.

‘When I looked again, there was a woman standing in front of the fire, wrapped in smoke, a white sari, jet-black hair, and out of her mouth came a white horse, a horse of perfect proportions, and it pranced around the circle, raising its knees high, shaking its head from side to side, eyes rolling and flashing, screaming, and I was afraid. And then she asked each of the men in turn, do you want this horse, tell the truth, and each of them replied, yes, and she said, then you shall not have the treasure.

‘She looked up at us, and she knew we were there, even though we were well-hidden, and she said, do you want this horse? and La Borgne stepped forward and said, no, kill it, and all the rest of us gasped with horror, because of all things that had ever lived it was too perfect to die. But she drew a sword — this one, this one with the white hilt in the shape of a horse’s head — and the horse came to her, and she plunged it into his chest, in the place where two ridges of muscle sloped down into a valley. The horse threw its head back, then tumbled down, rear first, and the sword slipped from the yawning red wound, and all of us except La Borgne shouted in dismay. Then the woman said to him, you have the treasure, and she disappeared, and her sword clanged on the hard-packed earth.

‘Now all the men cursed La Borgne, because he had caused the death of the horse for nothing, there was no treasure, and he laughed at them. They drew their swords, and I rushed them from the rear, and we fought them, over and around the corpse (even now beautiful!), and we killed them all. Then I said, I have helped you because you are my friend, but now I will fight you, because you have caused the death of the most perfect thing in the world. He laughed at me, and then I hated him; I ran at him, my point presented, but he parried easily and dealt me a great slashing blow across the forehead, taking my eye. I fell to the ground, and lay, my face in the horse’s belly, crying with pain and anger, and I said, you have done all this for nothing. You fool, he sneered, you fool for thinking the treasure was gold, or this horse, or this sword, or the woman, and with this he threw the weapon to me. I had the treasure in the instant I spoke, he said, and walked away.

‘I recovered from my wound, or at least it healed, and have had many other adventures. I have been rich, then powerful, then poor, and then rich again; finally, I am here. And while I was slowly climbing into the pit of poverty and old age, La Borgne was passing from victory to victory, always richer and more powerful, until he finally became de Boigne, the master of the Chiria Fauj. I thought of him often, or rather constantly, and each time I heard of another one of his triumphs, a sliver of pain shot up from my gut and transfixed my throat; if only I had realized, I would think, if only I had thought, I might have been the ruler of all Hindustan, if only. So, full of bitterness, I wandered about the country, from one bad situation to another worse, with no money to go home, and nothing to go home to, till finally the only employment I could find was as a cook for a procurer, a buyer and seller of half-castes, and it galled me, believe that it tasted bitter as rotted meat, but I never sold that sabre, I kept it with me always, although several coveted it and offered me sums of money.

‘Today, a great noise ran through the bazaar, and groups of people hurried through the streets; children danced by, feinting at each other with wooden swords. What is it? I called, and they said, the great de Boigne is passing by, he is sailing to Calcutta. So I put down my ladle and my spices and put on my best coat, strapped on the sabre, ran down the street to the river’s edge, pushed through the throngs. After an hour, or maybe two, a group of boats floated down the waters, slowly, slowly, and I shaded my eyes from the sun, but the glare off the river dazzled and defeated me. So, I shouted, La Borgne, La Borgne, La Borgne, L-aaa Bo-oooooo-rgne, and the people about me moved away, laughing, but I kept on; the people on the boat looked at me, and some shook their fists at me threateningly, be quiet, but then a man pushed aside the flaps of a canopy on the third boat, a tall man, a large, heavy man, and he levelled a glass at the banks. I jumped, waved, held up the sabre, L-aaa Bo-oooooo-rgne, and he put the glass down, Moulin, Moulin, is that you?

‘Suddenly, I was happy, I ran down the bank, keeping up with the boat, and he shouted, Moulin, you were right, you were right, and his voice bounced off the water and echoed, I cannot dream, Moulin, I cannot dream, and even across the distance and the wrenching of my breath I could make out the sadness in him, the break in his voice; unable to run anymore, I stopped, and the boats began to quicken their pace around a slow curve, and he called to me again, for the last time — a tone of unbearable, shattering nostalgia — Moulin, Moulin, I am free, free.

‘When I could get up, I came back into the town, sold everything I owned, not much, and with what I could get I bought half a dozen bottles of this miserable wine; French, it was, six bottles; now, I have only the last. When this is over, I shall be finished; the story is nearly over, gentlemen, and what is the moral? The meaning? I do not know, gentlemen; that you must calculate yourselves; but, you probably think, it is the story-teller’s duty to give something, something at least. Very well, for my part, I will give you this sabre; I pass on to you, carefully and gratefully, my last illusion.’

Moulin pulled at a buckle, then arched his back to get the belt off; he threw it so it landed at Sikander’s feet. Sikander bent, picked it up, ran a finger over the horse-head hilt, nodded at Moulin, whose face was now almost a caricature of sadness, with pouches below the eyes, drooping lips, tangled hair.

‘Let’s go,’ Sikander said. Sanjay got to his feet, both hands pushing against his thighs, feeling like an old woman for doing so; as they walked towards the edge of the nullah, he quickened his pace, even though it hurt in the calves and knees, eager to be home, in the garden with the familiar chatter of his uncle, the friendly squabbling of his mother and father, the lofty story-telling of Sikander’s mother. As they began to climb the bank, he heard Moulin again, the incomprehensible tongue of the foreigner:

‘Come back, come back. In return, you must use it. Use it on me. Gentlemen, kill me. Dispatch.’

‘Hurry,’ Sikander said, but Sanjay couldn’t help but turn to look — how can hope live in the same words as the most crushing despair? Seeing them continue their clambering, Moulin reached back and threw the bottle; it spun at them and hit the bank — they cringed away from it, expecting a shower of glass — but it stuck, head-first, at an impossible angle, in a patch of soft mud under an over-hang. At this Moulin howled like a dog, scrambled towards them on all fours, face distorted, then staggered up to his feet and ran at them; Sikander and Chotta went over the lip, then reached down for Sanjay. He reached up, placed fingers over a tuft of grass, pulled, feet feeling for a rest, other hand reaching up, Sikander’s hand, then there was a rush of hot breath on the small of his back, a pressure around his chest, down, grass pulling out of earth, Moulin’s face, eyes shining, pupils afloat in a lace-work of red, then a body flew overhead, wrapped around Moulin’s head, and almost instantly, transmitted through Moulin’s body, the shock as something else collided; they rolled down the slope, the world spinning, Moulin’s clutch, an embrace, Chotta screaming, wordless, Sikander concentrated, single-minded, thoughtful, tufts and particles of mud, dead leaves spinning, flap of green cloth, thrashing, the panic of insufficient strength, then stillness.