Amitav Ghosh - The Glass Palace

The sight was beyond comprehension. He could find no way of explaining what had happened, even to himself. Was this what was meant by the phrase ‘put to rout’—this welter of fear and urgency and shame; this chaotic sensation of collapse in one’s head, as though the scaffolding of responses implanted by years of training had buckled and fallen in?

Arjun had a sudden aching vision of their battalion’s headquarters in Saharanpur: he recalled the building they called ‘the Nursery’—the long, low bungalow in which the officers’ mess was housed. He thought of the heavy, gilt-framed paintings that hung on its walls, along with the mounted heads of buffalo and nilgai; the assegais, scimitars and feathered spears that his predecessors had brought back as trophies from Africa, Mesopotamia and Burma. He had learnt to think of this as home, and the battalion as his extended family — a clan that tied a thousand men together in a pyramid of platoons and companies. How was it possible that this centuries-old structure could break like an egg-shell, at one sharp blow — and that too, in this unlikeliest of battlefields, a forest planted by businessmen? Was the fault his own? Was it true then, what the older Englishmen said, that Indians would destroy the army if they became officers? This at least was beyond doubt: as a fighting unit the 1/1 Jats no longer existed. Every man in the battalion would now have to fend for himself.

He’d left his pack in the jeep, on the river: it hadn’t occurred to him that he’d be running for his life within minutes of climbing out. All he had on him now was his.45 Webley, his water bottle and his belt with its small pack of odds and ends.

He looked around. Where was Hardy? Where were the CO and Captain Pearson? He’d caught glimpses of them earlier, as he was running into the plantation. But now in the gathering gloom it was hard to tell what lay ahead.

The Japanese infantry would almost certainly be mopping up behind their tanks, combing the plantations. It was possible that he was being watched even as he stood there, through any one of the hundreds of sightlines that converged on the precise spot on which he was standing.

What was he to do now?

To drive to Gunung Jerai was Alison’s idea. She and Dinu left the house well before sunset, in the Daytona, taking the road that circled around the mountain. The kampongs seemed deserted now, the daytime panic having yielded to a watchful quiet. In the markets there were hardly any people in sight. Alison was able to drive through at high speed.

They made good time and turned on to the summit road while there was still plenty of light. When they began to climb, the sound of the car rose to a shrill, steady whine. It was twilight on the slopes, because of the thick forest cover. Alison had to switch on her headlamps.

The turns on the road were very sharp. They came to a bend that switched back on itself, rising upwards at a steep angle. Alison had to stop and reverse the car in order to make the turn. As they were coming out of the corner, they both looked up at the same time. The sky above the northern horizon seemed to be darkened by a stain — a cloud of tiny, horizontal brushstrokes. Alison stopped dead, and they stared— several moments passed before they realised that they were looking at a flight of planes, heading directly towards them, from the north. They were facing the aircraft head-on and in profile the planes seemed stationary, their advance signalled only by a gradual thickening of their outlines.

Alison started the car again, and they went speeding up the road. The lodge loomed ahead, in the gathering darkness. It was empty, deserted. They parked under the porch and walked up to the veranda that ran around the building. Tables were placed along its length, draped in white cloth, weighted down with heavy ashtrays. Plates had been laid out, as though in expectation of a crowd of diners.

They could feel the roar of the approaching bombers under their feet, in the vibrating planks of the wood floor. The planes were very close now, flying at low altitudes. As they stood watching, the flight suddenly separated into two, parting round the mountain, like a stream flowing past a boulder. Banking steeply one wing veered off towards the seaward slope of the mountain, on a flight path set for Butterworth and Penang. The other wing headed for Sungei Pattani, on the landward side.

Alison reached for Dinu’s hand and they began to walk along the balcony, making their way between the dining tables. The tablecloths were flapping in the breeze and the plates were covered with a thin film of dust.

There were no clouds today. Far below, in the dimming twilight, the island of Penang appeared as a dark shoal afloat on the sea; to the south-east lay Sungei Pattani, a small raft of habitation, marooned in an ocean of rubber trees. They could see roads and rail-lines, glimmering in the last flicker of daylight. The landscape was like a map, lying unfurled at their feet.

The planes were losing height in preparation for their bombing runs. Sungei Pattani was the nearest of the targets and it was the first to be hit. Bursts of flame appeared on the dark landscape, strung closely together in straight lines, like rows of bright stitches on an inky fabric.

They went around the veranda, picking at the tablecloths and running their fingers over the dust-filmed plates. They saw yet another cloud of planes approaching; on the seaward side, the bombers were diving low over the port of Fort Butterworth. Suddenly a great tower of orange flame shot up from the coast reaching hundreds of feet into the sky; the blast that followed was of such magnitude as to make itself felt all the way up the mountain.

‘Oh my God!’ Alison threw herself on Dinu. ‘They’ve hit the oil-tanks at Butterworth.’

She buried her face in Dinu’s chest, snatching at his shirt, bunching up the cloth in her fists. ‘I drove past them, just that day.’

Dinu held her fast. ‘Alison, you still haven’t told me why you went. .’

She wiped her face on his shirt and pulled away from him. ‘Give me a cigarette.’

Dinu lit a cigarette and put it between her lips. ‘Well?’

‘I went to see a doctor, Dinu — a doctor who doesn’t know me.’

‘Why?’

‘I thought I might be pregnant.’

‘And?’

‘I’m not.’

‘And what if you had been pregnant, Alison,’ Dinu said quietly. ‘Would you have wanted the child to be Arjun’s?’

‘No.’ She threw her arms round him, and he could feel her sobbing into his shirt.

‘Dinu, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.’

‘About what?’

‘About everything, Dinu. About going away that day— with Arjun. It was a mistake — a terrible, terrible mistake. If you only knew, Dinu. .’

He silenced her by putting a finger over her lips. ‘I don’t want to know. . Whatever happened. . I don’t want to know. It’ll be better that way. . for both of us. We don’t need to talk about Arjun again.’

He was cut short by a flash of light, an explosion that illuminated the whole town of Sungei Pattani. A series of lesser explosions followed, one after the other, like a string of fireworks.

‘The armoury,’ Alison said. She lowered herself to her knees and stuck her head into a gap between the veranda’s rails, holding on to the wooden bars with her fists. ‘They must have hit the armoury.’

Dinu knelt beside her. ‘Alison,’ he said urgently, gripping her shoulders. ‘One thing’s for sure. . You have to go away. With Japan and America at war, you’re in danger here. Your mother was American. . Your brother still lives there. . There’s no telling what would happen if the Japanese managed to push through. You’ve got to get away.’