Amitav Ghosh - The Glass Palace

Rajkumar squatted beside her. ‘Why don’t you talk to Saya John?’ he suggested. ‘Perhaps he’ll be able to help.’

Ma Cho snorted in tearful disgust. ‘Don’t talk to me about Saya John. What’s the use of a man who’s never there when you need him?’ She began to sob, her hands covering her face.

Tenderness welled up in Rajkumar. ‘Don’t cry, Ma Cho.’ He ran his hands clumsily over her head, combing her curly hair with his nails. ‘Stop, Ma Cho. Stop.’

She blew her nose and straightened up. ‘It’s all right,’ she said gruffly. ‘It’s nothing.’ Fumbling in the darkness, she reached for his longyi, leaning forward to wipe the tears from her face.

Often before, Ma Cho’s bouts of tears had ended in this way, with her wiping her face on his thin cotton garment. But this time, as her fingers drew together the loose cloth, the chafing of the fabric produced a new effect on Rajkumar. He felt the kindling of a glow of heat deep within his body, and then, involuntarily, his pelvis thrust itself forward, towards her fingers, just as she was closing her grip. Unmindful of the intrusion, Ma Cho drew a fistful of cloth languidly across her face, stroking her cheeks, patting the furrows round her mouth and dabbing the damp hollows of her eyes. Standing close beside her, Rajkumar swayed, swivelling his hips to keep pace with her hand. It was only when she was running the tip of the bunched cloth between her parted lips that the fabric betrayed him. Through the layered folds of cloth, now wet and clinging, she felt an unmistakable hardness touching on the soft corners of her mouth. She tightened her grip, suddenly alert, and gave the gathered cloth a probing pinch. Rajkumar gasped, arching his back.

‘Oh?’ she grunted. Then, with a startling deftness, one of her hands flew to the knot of his longyi and tugged it open; the other pushed him down on his knees. Parting her legs she drew him, kneeling, towards her stool. Rajkumar’s forehead was on her cheek now; the tip of his skinned nose thrust deep into the hollow beneath her jaw. He caught the odour of turmeric and onion welling up through the cleft between her breasts. And then a blinding whiteness flashed before his eyes and his head was pulled as far back as it could go, tugged by convulsions in his spine.

Abruptly, she pushed him away, with a yelp of disgust. ‘What am I doing?’ she cried. ‘What am I doing with this boy, this child, this half-wit kalaa?’ Elbowing him aside, she clambered up her ladder and vanished into her room.

It was a while before Rajkumar summoned the courage to say anything. ‘Ma Cho,’ he called up, in a thin, shaking voice. ‘Are you angry?’

‘No,’ came a bark from above. ‘I’m not angry. I want you to forget Ma Cho and go to sleep. You have your own future to think of.’

They never spoke of what happened that night. Over the next few days, Rajkumar saw very little of Ma Cho: she would disappear early in the morning, returning only late at night. Then, one morning, Rajkumar woke up and knew that she was gone for good. Now, for the first time, he climbed the ladder that led up to her room. The only thing he found was a new, blue longyi, lying folded in the middle of the room. He knew that she’d left it for him.

What was he to do now? Where was he to go? He’d assumed all along that he would eventually return to his sampan, to join his shipmates. But now, thinking of his life on the boat, he knew he would not go back. He had seen too much in Mandalay and acquired too many new ambitions.

During the last few weeks he’d thought often of what Saya John’s son, Matthew, had said — about the British invasion being provoked by teak. No detail could have been more precisely calculated to lodge in a mind like Rajkumar’s, both curious and predatory. If the British were willing to go to war over a stand of trees, it could only be because they knew of some hidden wealth, secreted within the forest. What exactly these riches were he didn’t know but it was clear that he would never find out except by seeing for himself.

Even while pondering this, he was walking quickly, heading away from the bazaar. Now, looking around to take stock of where he was, he discovered that he had come to the whitewashed facade of a church. He decided to linger, walking past the church once, and then again. He circled and waited, and sure enough, within the hour he spotted Saya John approaching the church, hand in hand with his son.

‘Saya.’

‘Rajkumar!’

Now, standing face to face with Saya John, Rajkumar found himself hanging his head in confusion. How was he to tell him about Ma Cho, when it was he himself who was responsible for the Saya’s cuckolding?

It was Saya John who spoke first: ‘Has something happened to Ma Cho?’

Rajkumar nodded.

‘What is it? Has she gone?’

‘Yes, Saya.’

Saya John gave a long sigh, rolling his eyes heavenwards. ‘Perhaps it’s for the best,’ he said. ‘I think it’s a sign that the time has come for this sinner to turn celibate.’

‘Saya?’

‘Never mind. And what will you do now, Rajkumar? Go back to India in your boat?’

‘No, Saya,’ Rajkumar shook his head. ‘I want to stay here, in Burma.’

‘And what will you do for a living?’

‘You said, Saya, that if I ever wanted a job I was to come to you. Saya?’

One morning the King read in the newspapers that the Viceroy was coming to Madras. In a state of great excitement he sent for Mr Cox.

‘Is the Viceroy going to call on us?’ he asked.

Mr Cox shook his head. ‘Your Highness, I have not been informed of any such plan.’

‘But protocol demands it. The Kings of Burma are the peers of such sovereigns as the kings of Siam and Cambodia and of the emperors of China and Japan.’

‘I regret, Your Highness, that it is probably too late to effect a change in the Viceroy’s itinerary.’

‘But we must see him, Mr Cox.’

‘The Viceroy’s time has already been spoken for. I am sorry.’

‘But we wish to find out what the Government plans to do with us. When we came here, we were told that this was not to be our permanent residence. We are eager to know where we are to live and when we are to go there.’

Mr Cox went away and came back a few days later. ‘Your Highness,’ he said, ‘I am glad to be able to inform you that the matter of a permanent residence for you and your family has finally been resolved.’

‘Oh?’ said the King. ‘And where is it to be?’

‘A place by the name of Ratnagiri.’

‘What?’ The King stared at him, nonplussed. ‘Where is this place?’

‘Some hundred and twenty miles south of Bombay. An excellent place, with fine views of the sea.’

‘Fine views?’

The King sent for a map and asked Mr Cox to show him where Ratnagiri was. Mr Cox indicated a point somewhere between Bombay and Goa. The King was thoroughly alarmed to note that the place was too insignificant to be marked on the map.

‘But we would rather be in a city, Mr Cox. Here in Madras. Or Bombay. Or Calcutta. What will we do in a small village?’

‘Ratnagiri is a district headquarters, Your Highness, not a village by any means.’

‘How long are we to remain there? When will we be allowed to return to Burma?’

Now it was Mr Cox’s turn to be nonplussed. It had not occurred to him that the King still harboured hopes of returning to Burma.

Mr Cox was a kindly man, in his gruff way. ‘Your Highness,’ he said, in a quiet and gentle voice, ‘you must prepare yourself to be in Ratnagiri for some time, a considerable time I fear. Perhaps. .’

‘Perhaps for ever?’

‘Those were not my words.’ Mr Cox coughed. ‘Not at all. Those words were not mine. No, I must insist, they were not. .’