Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

‘This is a pulau: rice and meat,’ and La Borgne found himself leaning low over a dish, stuffing food into his mouth with both hands, the insides of his mouth dancing. ‘I have a cook from Lucknow, and this is zarda, sweet rice with saffron and raisins, and this is kabab, ground beef, and this is paratha, bread,’ and La Borgne was dizzy with the spices and the smells, rich and thick and heavy; later, the servants brought out hookahs that burbled gently, and La Borgne felt the quiet of the evening settle around him.

He was awakened from a deep dreamless sleep by the hollow click of hooves against stone. He sat up, and Moulin was looking away, to the west, where a line of horsemen drifted across the sun. ‘Learn their languages,’ Moulin said, and pointed to his scar. ‘They can do this, but often they send a message to you on the evening before they attack, asking to be granted the honour of combat.’ He shook his head. ‘Somebody is going to take all this. On the field they fight each to himself, like it’s a personal quarrel. I was a barber in Lyons, and now I eat like this.’ He rubbed his face, and then said morosely: ‘You’re going to get dysentery soon. Diarrhoea.’

‘No, I won’t,’ said La Borgne, and he didn’t, and the days and then the years flashed by with an increasing velocity; fulfilled, he found a commission with the French forces stationed in Pondicherry; here, for the first time, he drilled Indian troops and encountered, irrespective of the age or religion of the men, that particular and peculiar mixture of pride, loyalty and anarchistic self-importance that distinguished these soldiers from any other martial caste in the world; La Borgne drilled, ordered and trained — he was at peace; then, predictably, he had to move on.

This time, there was a different kind of vision, a stirring of the flesh; he was found in the bed of another officer’s wife; officers trained in the European way were scarce, and no duels were allowed, so La Borgne mounted a black horse and rode into the beckoning interior, into the boiling confusion of the clans and states and castes seeking to inherit the mantle of the Moghuls; let us say that he rode across dusty plains and swollen rivers, from Calcutta to Lucknow to Delhi (where the Moghul Shah Alam huddled in his palace and sought release from the misery of his life in piety) and down to the south again; let us say that finally he attracted the attention of a power-broker named Madhoji Sindhia, a man who ruled in the name of the Peshwa but insisted on being referred to as a Patel, a village head-man; let us say that La Borgne entered the service of this crafty Maratha whose armies circled the Deccan and sniffed at the outskirts of Delhi; let us say that La Borgne raised and trained two battalions of infantry for Madhoji, using all his skill, presence and sometimes his physical strength to transmute immensely skilled, courageous, individualistic and unruly men from every clan and class into a single mass, a thing of mechanics, a phalanx, a machine which finally turned and wheeled on order, coerced into synchronization by La Borgne’s magical certitude (wheeling and turning while sometimes enduring the laughter and sneers of the proud wild cavalrymen who passed by, sniffing elegantly at roses); La Borgne persisted, driven, and was, finally, to a degree, successful.

Let us say, then, that La Borgne found himself one morning on a field near the village of Lalsot, near Jaipur, with his two battalions ranged to the left of the enfeebled imperial army of Shah Alam, in line with the Maratha cavalry of Madhoji Sindhia; let us say that these men were ranged against the armies of Jaipur and Jodhpur and the troops led by the Moghul nobles Muhammed Beg Hamadani and Ismail Beg; the particulars of this war are now confusing and dimmed by the years — as always, the causes could be said to include the lust for power, greed, fear, anger, ignorance and also courage, loyalty and love; let us just say that on this field of Lalsot, Benoit La Borgne became Benoit de Boigne, that years of wandering had pointed the boy who had been fascinated by the clock-work motion of the flour-mill towards this morning.

Horses danced uneasily as the whoosh of shells tore at the air, followed, a fraction of a moment later, by the dull thudding of the artillery pieces; Muhammed Hamadani was disintegrated by a cannon ball; his head spiralled through the air, sprinkling blood over his men, who moved back uneasily, muttering. Ismail Beg, sensing panic, spurred his horse to the forefront; shouting, he led the ranked squadrons against the Maratha cavalry ranged opposite him. The Marathas reeled; on their left, La Borgne saw a twinkling, silver mass beginning to move towards him. A convulsion seemed to pass through the ranks of his brigades, a whisper moving in quick waves, back and forth:

‘Rathor.’

‘Stand to!’ La Borgne shouted, his voice breaking; ten thousand Rathor horsemen were coming against him, men dressed in chain mail and steel helmets, men from the Rathor clan of the Rajputs of the desert, ten thousand incredibly handsome men, the flower of the chivalry of Rajputana, ten thousand men who claimed descent from the sun, men of the clan which claimed to have forgotten the feeling of fear; sunlight glanced off their helmets as they broke into a trot. There was laughter as they swept down onto the infantry drawn into a hollow square, because no infantry had ever withstood the onslaught of the Rathor cavalry (there were songs that floated through the dry, windswept valleys of Rajputana, songs about the Rathor horsemen, the Rathor swordsmen); they broke into a gallop, coming steadily at La Borgne’s lines; closer, closer, then the musket-men pulled back, revealing La Borgne’s guns — the Rathors riding on, swords raised — then the hot yellow and red belch of grape-shot swept into the horsemen, spilling them over, and he thinks, I will henceforth be known as Benoit de Boigne; torn apart, they come on, keep coming, coming into the guns, slashing at the gunners, beyond, at de Boigne’s line, closer, closer, then on command, a vast, long sheet of fire blossoms from two thousand muskets, tearing down the Rathors, spinning them down into the mud, sudden spurt of blood blackening the sand till it is too wet to rise into the air (horses fall into this, eyes rolling, with a wet slipping sound), the volleys ring out one after the other, regular, crack-crack-crack, and de Boigne’s men stand elbow-to-elbow like figures made of rock, refusing to rise to the taunts that the baffled horsemen are screaming at them, the invitations to come out and test their skill. De Boigne’s men are quiet; there is no cheering because no one has ever seen anything like this; the Rathors are trying to rally, eyes red, but de Boigne sounds the advance, and his battalions move forward, steady themselves, and again, precise and coordinated, the muskets swing up and spit. The Rathors flee.

The forces aligned with de Boigne’s battalions won that morning, but that is of no consequence to us now. That evening, when other officers came to de Boigne’s tent, bringing gifts, they found him seated outside, his gaze focused on the horizon. The officers laid their gifts around him and backed away, bowing, thinking that he was reliving the events of the morning, that facing the dreaded Rathors was an experience that needed to be faced again and again, till it faded away. They were wrong. De Boigne was seeing visions of the future, and was fighting them; he saw other villages, other fields where he would fulfil the destiny of his flesh and breeding and history, where he would be the instrument of the perverse gods who moulded events and decided the fate of soldiers and nations. De Boigne fought his private battles at night and in the morning, on horse-back and in the perfumed rooms of palaces, but to no avail. On other fields, near other quiet villages with names like Chaksana and Patan, his battalions, moving like clock-work, decimated other hosts. Again and again, the infuriated cavalrymen hurled themselves against de Boigne’s unnatural unmoving ranks. At Patan, the Rathors broke and ran again, and a song was heard in the passes of the desert mountains: