Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

‘Careful, master,’ the mahout said nervously. ‘If you say all that you’re going to have to give him all that. He doesn’t like it when people promise and don’t give. It puts him in a bad mood, and he likes you, I can tell.’

‘I’ll give him, Sanjay says,’ Ram Mohan said, reading again. ‘Gajnath, don’t worry, we have all that and more. Come on, Gajnath.’

In the camp, Gajnath knelt ponderously. Ram Mohan clambered down, with an attendant at each side, and hobbled away towards a tent. Sanjay mouthed at Gajnath, wait, wait (in the grey flesh, that old, knowing eye, with the tracks of tears underneath), and hurried off to look for familiar faces. At the peripheries of the camp, amongst piles of baggage, he found a harried-looking bawarchi shouting at his underlings. When he came back to the centre, he found Gajnath seated exactly as he had left him, legs bent at the knee before the huge body, ears flapping forward and back, trunk moving from side to side.

‘He wouldn’t move,’ the mahout said, exasperated. ‘What did you tell him? Have you taught him how to read now? He’ll be even more of an impossible fellow than he already is.’

Gajnath lifted the mangos from Sanjay’s hands, and the pink, soft tip of the trunk stroked his wrist for a moment, like a finger; the bawarchi says we’ll have to wait for the barfi and the sherbet — Sanjay moved his lips — he says this is a camp on the road, not a palace, but we’ll get some sooner or later. Gajnath swung up, looming, and Sanjay laughed in delight; watching Gajnath walk away (the little mahout beside, scolding), Sanjay understood all the various allusions in Ram Mohan’s dictation to beautiful women with elephant-walks: there was that unhurried, graceful placing of one foot, then the other, the body swaying above, that delicacy. Sensing somebody behind him, Sanjay turned; the chief firangi stood a little distance away, his arms behind his back, leaning forward a little, flanked by his younger compatriots, watching Sanjay.

‘Charles, if you please,’ the leader said, and one of the others pulled out a notebook handsomely bound in fawn-coloured leather. ‘The Indian, no, no, start again, the native of India is singular in his inability to make the natural and godly distinction between man and the other creatures. They are apt to treat of the lesser species as if they were separate and equal nations, instead of beasts lacking in the powers of comprehension that are gifted solely to Man by his just and good God. The natives further display the capriciousness of children, which is to say that while they display a sentimental and sometimes blasphemously religious attachment to the lower animals, such as the grimacing monkey, the chewing, placid cow, and the elephant, they are capable of displaying the most callous cruelty towards these very same species.’ He paused. ‘What d’you think of that, Charles?’

‘Er, enlightening,’ said the young man. ‘To the readers, it will be, I mean, sir.’

‘Properly so,’ his elder replied. ‘Heavens, why does he look at us so? Is he trying to speak, d’you think?’

Sanjay was trying, silently, the taste of a new sound, ‘crool-ti’; it felt like ashes.

’This is the one that fell, the boy from the neighbouring house.’

‘Er, yes, sir. I see the scars.’

The older man bent, and squatted on his heels; close up, his pupils were pale blue, the eyes rimmed a distinct and startling red from the dust; a white collar pressed up against the loose and raw-looking flesh of his neck.

‘Hallo,’ he said, smiling. Sanjay was examining the blackness of the stubble against the white skin, and was startled by the smile. ‘I’m the Reverend Sarthey,’ the man said, smiling again, this time with rather conspicuous effort, and putting his hand on his chest.

Sanjay pulled out his sheaf of paper, scribbled, and handed him a note, causing considerable surprise. ‘He writes! And not scared of us, either. Charles, see if you can make something of this.’

‘I’m afraid not, sir, it’s rather a fluent sort of vernacular, I should imagine, and colloquial, too. I can just about tell some of the letters from the others.’

‘Well, no matter. We will try to decipher your missive, young sir, and will return with an answer on the morrow. Meanwhile, adieu.’ He extended a hand, palm held perpendicular to the ground, thumb up, and for a moment Sanjay tried to decipher the significance of this strange sign (a one-handed namaste? did he want a mango?), then scrawled out another rapid note and inserted it between two fingers. The men all smiled together, then strode off; Sanjay walked slowly through the camp, running over the various nuances of the recent meeting — how much had they understood? What had they said? He wondered what they would do with his two notes: the first one asked, ‘What is si-vil-iz-a-shun? ’ and the second one queried, ‘What is the meaning of di-cay? ’

Sikander’s mother owned a very large tent, a crimson shamiana that was surrounded by a red quanat screen and seemed to spread endlessly in all eight directions, compartmented and partitioned so that there was always a new nook to be discovered; the textile itself was lined with chintz embroidered and painted in abstract designs taken from the flowers and vines of some imaginary, perfect garden and from the regular, hypnotic geometry of mathematics; there were yellow flags that flew from the tent-posts at regular intervals, and striped curtains hung over the entrances and narrow windows; the floor was covered with light dhurries, and folding furniture had been assembled and laid out with cushions. After walking through the arched main entrance (painted and cut to look like stone), where two soldiers stood guard, Sanjay made his way through the maze of corridors and rooms inside, all the way to the back; hearing Sikander’s voice, he looked around for the entrance to the large zenana sitting-room, but there was only a blank white wall of cloth. He walked along parallel to it, running a hand over the smooth, heavy material, listening to Sikander’s mother telling her boys that a whole day of riding was enough, especially in this rotting heat, they were on no account to venture outside; finding a break in the wall, a place where two sections came together and were secured to a bamboo pole, Sanjay worked on a couple of knots, pulling at them with his teeth, and then squeezed himself through the resulting slit. He strained for a moment, his head turned around, shoulder and knee scraping uncomfortably on the bamboo, and then he fell through, onto a providential pile of cushions, causing Sikander’s sisters to scream and jump; he straightened up, rolling over, and sat cross-legged on the cushions, examining them unashamedly: they were a secretive, inseparable pair who constantly confided in each other, whispering mouth-to-ear in their father’s language, interspersed with a few words in Hindi or Urdu. Sikander and Chotta seemed to treat the both of them with the same formal cordiality that they extended to their father, with that careful concern that one usually reserved for guests in one’s home; on their part, the two girls — named Ai-mee-lee and Jain — seemed to prefer their father’s rooms and friends to the apartments and intimates of their mother. Sanjay saw them infrequently, had never exchanged a word with either of them, but found them both utterly fascinating: their clothes were cut to a foreign pattern, presumably native to their father’s country; they seemed to cultivate an air of generalized distaste for everything around them; and when they used a language that he could understand they unfailingly mispronounced vowels and misplaced accents in a manner that he found devastatingly charming. He smiled at them sheepishly, sticking out his tongue between his teeth involuntarily, and they tossed their heads and resumed their murmured conversation.