Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

‘Tired?’ Chottun said, steadying him. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.’

‘No, not tired,’ Sanjay said. ‘It’s this English, hard to read.’

‘Funny language,’ Kokhun said. ‘I gave up on it a long time ago, now I just look at it, all the letters sitting apart from each other.’

‘Cowards!’ Sorkar yelled from the other end of the shop, where he was leaning over Sikander and a ledger. ‘Fear-mongers. Don’t infect him.’

‘Sorkar Sahib has mastered it,’ Kokhun said.

‘Defeated it,’ Chottun said.

‘Indeed,’ Sorkar said, striding to the centre of the room and hooking his thumbs in his waist-band. ‘Listen, Sanju, at first I was as scared as you. It snarled like a lion, this English, and I was afraid to go near it.’

‘How did you learn it?’ Sikander said, getting up from his seat. ‘Did you have a teacher?’

‘No, no teacher for Sorkar Sahib,’ Kokhun said.

‘He mastered the animal himself,’ Chottun said. ‘In fair and equal competition. He —’

‘Be quiet, you two,’ Sorkar said, with a quick glance at Sikander.

‘Tell us, sir,’ Sanjay said. ‘Is it a secret method?’

‘Please,’ Sikander said.

‘No, no,’ Sorkar said. ‘Enough talk. Get back to work.’

Sikander returned to his desk, and Sanjay went back to his reversed letters. Later that afternoon, Chottun pressed a stack of impressions and sat beside the machine, wiping his forearms and chest with a rag; Sikander stepped from his niche, taking off his shirt, and took the bar.

‘It’s all right,’ Sikander said when Chottun and Kokhun twittered about propriety. ‘Never mind all that.’

‘What they mean exactly is that this work is not for you,’ Sorkar said. ‘After all, you’re a Sahib…’

‘I’m a Rajput,’ Sikander said. He took the bar and set to work, and soon Kokhun and Chottun were scurrying to keep up with him; Sikander’s body was smooth, built squarely and dense, gleaming dark brown, ceaseless and regular in motion, his face blank and eyes unfocussed and internal. The bar moved khata-khat, khata-khat, while the impressions piled up, ream upon ream. The next day, and the day after, Sikander worked, and they all watched him, awed by his stamina and strength; on the third evening Sorkar stopped him, offering a glass of sweet lassi.

‘Enough work,’ Sorkar said. ‘Enough, O magnificent Sikander, or we will be finished with our job before the end of the week, and this hasn’t happened ever in Calcutta. Here, drink.’

‘How did you learn English?’ Sikander said, his hands still on the bar, his chest heaving.

‘I’ll show you, I’ll tell you,’ Sorkar said. ‘Drink, drink.’

Sikander took the steel tumbler, and he and Sanjay sat on the ground and drank while Sorkar disappeared into a store-room. Kokhun and Chottun squatted opposite, and then Sorkar came back out and put a parcel in the middle of the circle, a rectangular object wrapped in red cloth. He wiped his hands on his dhoti, and with an air of great ceremony he untied the fat knot on top of the package. Kokhun and Chottun smiled knowingly; Sorkar peeled back four flaps, revealing a thick book bound in leather and embossed in gold. He lifted the cover, opening to the frontispiece, a dreamy-eyed man with a beard.

‘Can you make it out?’ Sorkar said to Sanjay, pointing to the title on the facing page. ‘No, never mind, I was like that at first, I stole the book’ —smiling at Sikander —‘and I could read not a word. It was a long time ago. It was when this press was first set up, and Mr Markline himself worked here, and I was a boy doing the chores and the cleaning, and many an evening Mr Markline lay in this very place, drinking out of a black bottle, cuffing me whenever I passed within reach. It was a long time ago, he was young then, just come here from over the seas, his eyes as pale blue as today, his hair flat brown over his head. He was thin, always crisp and tense, always unpredictable. Everything he wanted exactly so, anything not just as he wanted it would throw him into a rage, red-faced in a language none of us understood. I would shake my head, sometimes without wanting to, break into a smile, and this would infuriate him, tears in his eyes, and he would hit me. Once he beat me with a cane, with a cane because there was dust where there shouldn’t have been, the ink-balls weren’t in their proper place, something, I’ve forgotten what. Afterwards he lay drunken in the court-yard, in the heat, and I sat feeling the sting of the cuts on my shoulders, weeping. I was young but I had already a wife and three children in my village, my mother, a small plot of land. I sat and cursed and wondered. When I heard his snores I went in and stood over him, looking at the length of him, his legs hanging off the sagging cot, his thick arms with their strong muscles, his pink lips, thinking I could kill him now, poison his drink, put a krait in his bath. But by his bed lay this book, one of a few he had brought with him, beautiful books he’d look at sometimes, examples, I suppose, of the English printer’s art. I picked up the book and carried it outside, out of the house, and hid it in the banyan tree, lowering it into a hollow. Then I opened a window, but went back in through the door, closing it behind me, waited for a few moments, then shouted, thief, master, thief. He staggered up and we rushed around, lighting lanterns, checking locks. Finally he found the open window; discovered that the only thing missing was the book. I heard feet, I said, saw a form leaning over your bed, I said. He looked at me, raised the lantern to my face, but I held up my eyes to him, and what could he do? Well, we went back to sleep, and the days and months passed, we got business, we printed, things got better. I started to help in the composing, and a day came when he left the press to me, he started other things, other businesses, made money, and he let me take care of it, coming in once a day to read the proofs, once in two days, then even less. One night when I hadn’t seen him in weeks, I went out and brought the book back in, out of the tree and into the house. It was weathered now, the leather stiff and faded, the paper curled. I opened it up and saw this picture, this bearded man with his ear-ring, and I thought of the scars on my back, and I said, I must read this. You understand, at that time I knew only the letters, separate and by themselves, and maybe a few familiar words, here and there. But I said, I must read this. So I read the first page, this title, can you see it, Sanjay, try it.’

‘T-h-e,’ Sanjay said. ‘C-o-m-p-l-e-t-e…’

‘Say it,’ Sorkar said.

T-hee?’

‘The,’ Sikander said, smiling.

‘Com…,’ Sanjay said.

Sikander helped him along: ‘plete.’

After a great deal of hesitation and fits and starts Sanjay said it: ‘The Com-plete Works of Wil-liam Shakes-peare.’

‘And so I began to read,’ Sorkar said. ‘And at first the complete works were like a jungle, the language was quicksand. Metaphors turned beneath my feet and became biting snakes, similes fled from my grasp like frightened deer, taking all meaning with them. All was alien, and amidst the hanging, entangling creepers of this foreign grammar, all sound became a cacophony. I feared for myself, for my health and sanity, but then I thought of my purpose, of where I was and who I was, of pain, and I pressed on.’

‘Oh, brave,’ said Kokhun.

‘Fearless,’ said Chottun.

‘And so day by day I read through to the end, not understanding much but learning. The next year I read through again. And then again the next year. And so I have traversed the complete works thirty-four times, and from a foreign jungle I have made it my own garden. Every part of this terrain I have faced with my body, this earth is my earth, Willy is my boy. Ask me anything, and I will respond as he would have. Ask. Give me a word.’