Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

At the house, this time, he was taken in straightaway to Markline, who was eating some brown object with a flashing knife and fork; as Markline sawed methodically at the meat on his plate, dividing it into identical brown squares, Sanjay stifled a quick upsurge of nausea.

‘Good morning,’ he said, as he had learnt from Etiquette for the Young Child.

‘Morning,’ Markline said. ‘Why do you wear that thing on your eye?’

‘I see doubly,’ Sanjay said.

‘Double. Have you seen a doctor?’

Dak-tah? Daak-ter? Sanjay shifted, and felt water drip from his knees onto his feet.

‘Doctor,’ Markline said. ‘Have you seen a doctor?’ He swallowed, then said slowly, ‘Doctor?’

‘O doctor, doctor,’ Sanjay said in delight, finally understanding. ‘Yes, yes, but they did nothing. Many hakims and vaids came.’

‘I meant a real doctor,’ Markline said. ‘Come on.’

A closed carriage was waiting outside; Sanjay was motioned up, to sit between the driver and Markline’s major-domo, the tall, thin man who soon revealed his name to be Ardeshir, and then sat silently, his hands held together tightly in his lap. The driver too was quiet, and it occurred to Sanjay that all of Markline’s attendants were curiously unspeaking, but then he forgot all about this as they rumbled through the streets, causing people to break off conversations and gawk. Sanjay threw back his shoulders and affected a stare at something floating in the air perhaps a hundred feet away; the attention pleased him, but all too soon they were at a maidan surrounded by carriages. Markline leaped from the carriage, followed by Ardeshir, and was instantly lost in the crowds of firangis that eddied around the vehicle, filling the air with English too speedy and coloured by accents to decipher. Sanjay followed the driver to the other side of the maidan, where they squatted amidst others whom Sanjay recognized instantly as servants; he experienced a brief twitch of anger and shame, for a very quick moment thought of his mother, but then a bunched group of horses exploded onto the maidan, and the air was filled with cheers and shouts.

The dust boiled off the ground, and the riders materialized and vanished into the yellow haze, slashing with sticks at a ball that ricocheted from one end of the maidan to the other; sometimes the whirling knot of men and horses followed the ball close to where Sanjay sat, and then for a few moments it seemed as if he was surrounded by screams and huge rolling black eyes, iron-taut horse muscle, yellow teeth, hooves, sticks hissing through the air and cracking against each other, shouts. Then all this would subside and they would vanish into the dust, leaving his heart thudding and thudding as if it wanted to crack his ribs, the wind whipping away the veil for a moment so that he could see, very far away across the expanse of pitted ground, the carriages in which the firangi women stood and waved handkerchiefs, hurrahing in voices that came to him subdued and yet sharpened by the distance, so that he was filled with a not-unpleasant but unfocussed nostalgia, as if he was longing for a memory he had never known.

When it was over Markline came to the carriage caked with dirt, climbed in without a word and they were off; Sanjay realized that in all the time of the match he had never managed to make Markline out among the riders, that the sport accorded a strange anonymity to the players. At the house Markline pointed a finger at Sanjay: ‘Wait.’ He went into the house, came striding out a few moments later and without pausing threw a small rectangular object at Sanjay, saying ‘Here!’

Sanjay flung up his arms, wanting for once in his life to make the catch, but the thing of course spiralled through and hit him on the chest painfully, so that his eyes teared and he had to scrabble in the twilight dust for it.

‘Read it,’ Markline said, already turning around and walking away. ‘And come back next week.’

It was a book, and Sanjay peered at the title page, bringing the paper very close to his nose; it smelt like smoke, and the title was arranged very symmetrically in simple black letters: The Poetics of Aristotle.

That week, Sanjay studied the book: the sense was clear enough, if limiting for the maker of art; there seemed to be an insistence on emotional sameness, on evoking one feeling from the beginning to the end of the construction, as if unity could be said to be defined as homogeneity or identity; there seemed to be a peculiar notion of emotion as something to be expelled, to be emptied out, to be, in fact, evacuated, as if the end purpose of art was a sort of bowel movement of the soul; but all this was reasonable, somehow, understandable, even if it violated all of the rules Sanjay had attempted to learn from Ram Mohan’s fragmented discourses; even as it was, it was comprehensible as an intellectual exercise, a system of belief, one darshana of the world. What was unearthly and frightening about the book was a voice that whispered from its pages, a voice that whispered and yet silenced all others, that left a silence in the printery-shop, in which it alone remained and spoke, spoke again and again one phrase: ‘Katharos dei einai ho kosmos.’ And even in the evenings when the book was shut, or at dinner, Sanjay could hear the repeated syllables drifting through the courtyards and flying over the walls, under the wind and the rubbing of branches; it went on, gentle and reasonable at first but then maniacal in its insistence, morning and night, katharos, katharos, until Sanjay pounded at his ears and pressed his head between his fists, unmindful of the pain.

One morning, later that week, Sikander dressed and went to meet his sisters; he returned late at night looking exhausted. Sorkar sat him down to a large dinner and then herded him into bed, but as Sanjay lay awake long into the morning, listening to the constant whisper outside, he also heard Sikander breathing and knew he too couldn’t sleep.

‘How were they?’ Sanjay said finally.

‘Who?’

‘Your sisters.’

‘Fine. They were fine.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Tonight I keep on remembering them.’

‘Of course,’ Sanjay said. ‘You just saw them.’

‘No,’ Sikander said. ‘Not Emily and Jane. Them. Ma.’

‘And my uncle?’ Sanjay said.

‘Yes.’

‘Listen, Sikander,’ Sanjay said suddenly, then stopped, embarrassed. ‘What?’

‘You know that book I’ve been reading?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s a book by a Greek.’

‘Yes?’

‘And when I read it I hear a voice.’

Sikander turned towards him. ‘A voice? You mean a voice that says something?’

‘Yes.’

‘Poor Sanjay.’

‘What poor Sanjay? I knew I shouldn’t have told you. Damn Rajput.’ Sanjay jumped from his bed and stood in the darkness, trembling.

‘I didn’t mean that way poor Sanjay,’ Sikander said, infuriatingly calm. ‘Sit. Sit, Sanju.’ Sanjay found himself soothed, as susceptible to the charm as always. ‘What does it say?’

‘I don’t know, it speaks in some other language, must be Greek. “Katharos dei einai ho kosmos,” it says. Katharos, katharos, all the time.’

‘A ghost, you think? A spirit bound to the book?’

‘No, something else. But that’s not the thing, not what scares me. What it is is that I think I know who it is, I don’t know why, but I recognize it, the voice.’

‘Who?’

‘It’s Alexander,’ Sanjay said. ‘You know, the Great.’

‘Alexander the madman? The butcher?’

‘Yes, him.’

‘Did he write this book?’

‘No. I don’t know why I think it’s him.’

They lay silent, then Sanjay said: ‘Where was she from, Ma?’

‘I don’t really know,’ Sikander said. ‘She never spoke about it. But she used to talk sometimes about a place called Ahwa.’ They could hear, now, from outside, the occasional call of a bird. ‘Sanjay, what were we made for?’