Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

‘No, Chotta,’ Sikander’s mother said, ‘you cannot go out again. I want you to stay here, you’ve already burnt yourself black in that sun, by the time we get home again I don’t know what you’ll look like. Now where is that woman with the fruits? Has everyone died somewhere?’ Two women hurried in, carrying trays of pakoras and sherbet, and Sikander’s mother took a plate and held it out towards the girls, saying, ‘Eat, eat. Take one more.’

‘Try this,’ Ram Mohan said, offering a plate of barfi; he was sitting on a low couch, shifting uncomfortably, and there was something in his voice that attracted Sanjay’s attention. Ram Mohan noticed his quick glance, and smiled awkwardly, saying, ‘And how are you, maharaj? My limbs are breaking; that elephant friend of yours tossed me about like a doll till everything ached and ached.’

‘But I want to be outside with the men,’ Chotta said.

‘What I’ll be like after a week or two of this I don’t know,’ Ram Mohan said, smiling again, looking not in the least bit apprehensive.

‘No, you can’t go outside, Chotta,’ Sikander’s mother said. Chotta, still sitting, kicked moodily at a cushion on his mattress. ‘You’re stuck in here with all of us, in the zenana.’ At this, Chotta kicked again, and the cushion rolled over slowly and fell on a tray, knocking over glasses and spilling pakoras across the carpet; everyone jumped, and so did Sanjay, but as he jerked towards the tumbling glasses, his bad eye (the other vision) jumped to the periphery, zigzagged involuntarily (which was the bad eye, right or left?), and so inadvertently took in the bright blush that coursed from Ram Mohan’s neck up to his face and bald pate, a blush so conspicuous and luminous that it caused him to change directions in mid-start and attempt to refocus; at this, of course, he lost control completely and fragmented images flashed about his head: Ram Mohan, Sikander’s mother, Sikander, Chotta, the two sisters, the water spilling across the floor and carpet, the dulled glow of the sun on the roof.

When everything had settled down again, when the vertigo had ceased, Sanjay studiously avoided Ram Mohan’s eyes; Sikander seated himself behind Sanjay and leaned against him.

‘What is it, little brother?’ Sikander said softly. ‘You have that green stuffed look on your face again, like you’re bursting with pressure, which usually means you’re thinking and thinking and thinking.’ Sanjay shook his head. ‘One day you’ll think too much,’ Sikander went on, ‘and you’ll quite explode, like a cracker. Always thinking.’

Like a cracker, like a cracker: the words stayed in Sanjay’s head that night, after the card game which Sikander’s mother insisted on; everyone played except the two girls, who watched with an expression mingling disdain and fascination as Chotta plunked down his winning cards, whooping, and as Ram Mohan dithered and agonized over his moves, as he apologized to Sikander’s mother, who accepted with affectionate indulgence. Years later, far away in Delhi, in the dismal palaces of Bahadur Shah II (who was born an emperor, made a poet by his misfortunes, and created an emperor again by his people), Sanjay would see a party of English who had come to look at the last of the Moghuls, and on their faces he would recognize that same look, that smugness and impatience that is given only to those who are travellers, who are powerful because of their ultimate indifference, that faintly-smiling detachment of the tourist; but that night it was still an incomprehensible gaze that excited his curiosity and raised his stick, hard and quivering, so that he had to tuck the end of his jama under his knees and make a tent, so that he played an utterly serious and ruthless game while the others laughed and carelessly flung away essential viziers and valuable kings.

They slept that night in a row, Sikander between Chotta and Sanjay, and still Sanjay felt himself throbbing, with now and then a lancing twinge of pain,and he twisted to put a flat pillow between his knees, holding himself, thinking for some reason of a snake raising its head to hiss, ffffff-fffffftt.

‘How you won every game tonight, Sanju,’ Sikander whispered quietly, ‘how you played. That was clever, very clever.’ Sanjay raised his head and nodded, then reached back with his free hand and traced out, on Sikander’s arm, the words king and minister , meaning that the others had been careless with their court cards. ‘Is that what you think, Sanjay? I think sometime we will be soldiers, we will raise armies, we will be kings. Can you imagine? We will get ourselves a fortress somewhere, and we’ll defeat everyone who comes against us, and I’ll lead out the cavalry, and you can be minister and send out spies, and advise.’ Sanjay sat up; on Sikander’s other side, Chotta slept face-down, limbs splayed and palms exposed, as if he had been dropped from a great height. ‘We’ll rule from the valley of Kashmir to the straits of Lanka, to the end, and Chotta will be my general, and you, Sanju, send out messages, tell them our horse is coming, our white horse, accept and give tribute, or fight.’ Sikander sat up suddenly, and they peered at each other through the darkness, sinking in shadows; suddenly, Sikander got to his feet.

‘Stay here,’ he said, in such a voice of command, low and casual, yet expecting obedience so naturally and completely that Sanjay lay back down immediately and tucked the pillow between his knees. ‘Go to sleep,’ Sikander said. ‘I’m going out. I’ll come back later.’

He pushed aside a hanging and disappeared; Sanjay pressed his arms around the pillow and lowered his face to the sweet-smelling cloth. Much later, he turned in his sleep and was awakened by a not-unpleasant but bitter taste in his mouth; he was aware instantly that Sikander had returned and lay again in the middle, and also that he smelt of sweat. Sanjay pushed away the pillow and lay flat on the sheets, which now felt uncomfortably rough, and pressed down as hard as he could, crushing the unbearable, alien organ between himself and the bed; he opened his mouth and bit the cloth, felt his teeth grind, but there was no relief.

The next morning they drank milk out of large brass tumblers, sitting on a porch at the back of the tent. The chintz that lined the inside of the encircling quanat screen had large lotuses painted on it; beyond, they could hear, faintly, the animals humphing and calling as they woke up to the sun. Sanjay scribbled a note and handed it to Sikander: Where did you go?

’How did you ever learn to write without being taught?’ Sikander said.

Thinking about it, Sanjay could recall no moment of movement from not-knowing to knowledge; conversation in the form of writing seemed more natural to him than speech — when you handled pen and paper, what was said was visible and solid, and could be handed back and forth, but words from the mouth, despite the pleasure one could take in their taste and form, were ephemeral, apt to vanish like life. He answered: Who taught you to prowl in the dark?

‘I went where I went,’ Sikander said, thumping Chotta on the shoulder. ‘Come on. Maybe they’ll let us ride by ourselves today’ Chotta had been paying no attention to them, being intent on getting the last drop of milk out of the glass, stretching out a tongue for the last white bubble. ‘You have milk on your eyebrows, Chotta.’ At the door Sikander turned back. ‘And you, you have a white moustache. You look like an old man.’

But Sanjay was imagining a moving patch of white in darkness, a woman’s face above a shoulder, calm beyond pain or even resignation; he sat for a long time with the white on his lip, looking down at the writing on the paper: when he thought with concentration and exactitude about that scene, that image that tended to dominate his memory and being, about the scratching against his chest from the thatch, the light catching a muscle flexing across the back of a thigh and rolling into a buttock, the small smacking sounds of movement, the lettering on the paper became black scratches, the familiar shapes of his own handwriting awkward and alien, the words themselves foreign. The sun had edged up to his toes, where he felt the heat gather at the skin; it was going to be a very hot day, a bad day for travel, but a cow lowed beyond the screen, and Sanjay felt an unaccountable, all-comprehensive tenderness, a softness of feeling that took in all the world with its horses and women and screens and mountains and dust and armies and poems and Gajnath and gods and sun.