The Day of the Scorpion

  A pause.

  ‘He said he was personally in a good position to see through all this pretence because his origins were humble. If he hadn’t had brains he’d have ended up as a clerk in an office, working from nine to six. But he had brains. He’d got on. In India he’d got on far better than he could have done at home. In India he automatically became a Sahib. He hobnobbed on equal terms with people who would snub him at home and knew they would snub him. When he considered all the things that made him one of them in India – colonial solidarity, equality of position, the wearing of a uniform, service to king and country – he knew that these were fake. They didn’t fool either him or the middle and upper class people he hobnobbed with. What they had in common was the contempt they all felt for the native race of the country they ruled. He could be in a room with a senior English official and a senior Indian official and he could catch the eye of the English official who at home would never give him a second thought, and between them there’d be a flash of compulsive understanding that the Indian was inferior to both of them, as a man. And then if the Indian left the room the understanding would subtly change. He was then the inferior man. He said you couldn’t buck this issue, that relationships between people were based on contempt, not love, and that contempt was the prime human emotion because no human being was ever going to believe all human beings were born equal. If there was an emotion almost as strong as contempt it was envy. He said a man’s personality existed at the point of equilibrium between the degree of his envy and the degree of his contempt. What would happen, he said, if he pretended that the situation was simply that of a just English police officer investigating a crime that had taken place and I pretended that I had no responsibility for it, and that there was such a thing as pure justice that would see me through, and if both of us recognized each other’s claims to equal rights as human beings? Nothing would happen. Neither of us would learn a thing about our true selves. He said that the very existence of laws proved the contempt people had for each other.’

  A pause.

  ‘At one point he smeared his hand over my buttocks and showed me the blood on his palm. He said, “Look, it’s the same colour as mine. Don’t be fooled by that. People are. But prick an imbecile and he’ll bleed crimson. So will a dog.” Then he smeared his hand on my genitals. I was still on the trestle. After he’d had me taken from the trestle I was put in a small cell next door. It had a charpoy with a straw mattress. I heard them caning one of the others. Afterwards he came in alone with a bowl of water and a towel. My wrists and ankles were manacled to the legs of the charpoy. This was the third phase. I was still naked. He bathed the lacerations. Then he poured some water in a tin cup, pulled my head up by the hair and let the water come near my mouth.’ A pause. ‘I drank.’ A pause. ‘After I drank he told me I must say thank you, because he knew that if I were honest I’d admit I was grateful for the water. He said he knew it would be difficult to swallow my pride, but it had to be done. He would give me another drink of water. He would give it to me on the understanding that I was grateful for it, and would admit it. He pulled my head back again and put the cup close to my lips. Even while I was telling myself I’d never drink it and never say thank you I felt the water in my mouth. I heard myself swallow. He put the cup down and used both hands to turn my head to face him. He put his own head very close. We stared at each other.’ A pause. ‘After a bit I heard myself say it.’

  A pause.

  ‘That was one of the reasons why when they asked me if I had anything to complain about I said I hadn’t. It was a way of making up to myself for thanking him for the water. After I’d said thank you he let go of my head. He smoothed my hair and patted my back. He said we both knew where things stood now. I could sleep now. There’d be no more questions for the present. I didn’t have to confess tonight. The girl had incriminated me but it didn’t matter. Tomorrow there would be questions. Tomorrow I could confess. When I woke up I’d be anxious to confess. My confession would show the girl up for a liar. I would be punished, but not for rape, because surely I could prove she’d agreed to the meeting, wanted the meeting? He would help me if I would confess to the truth. When I woke up I’d realize he was my one hope. I’d be grateful. I’d already thanked him for the water. That was enough for tonight. Now I could go to sleep. He rinsed the towel out and put it over my buttocks. Then he covered me with a blanket. I don’t know how long I slept. I remember waking in the dark. My wrists and ankles felt as if they were still manacled to the charpoy. It was a shock to find they weren’t. I had an impression of falling through space. I called out for help. The name I called was Merrick.’

  A pause.

  ‘Nobody answered. That gave me time to reason. The most humiliating discovery I made was that I’d believed what he said about Miss Manners incriminating me. I say had believed, but I was still believing it for minutes at a time, and then for another few minutes believing he was lying, then that he wasn’t. Like that. Alternately. There can come a point, can’t there, when the only attractive course of action for a man completely surrounded by others bent on his destruction is to help them destroy him, or do the job for them before they’ve quite mustered force for the final blow. It’s attractive because it seems like the only way left to exercise his own free will. I made up my mind to confess to whatever he wanted. I thought, well anyway what’s going to be destroyed? Nothing. An illusion of a human being, a ridiculous amalgam of my father’s stupid ambition and my own equally stupid preferences and prejudices. A nonentity masquerading as a person of secret consequence, who thinks himself a bit too good for the world he’s got to live in. He might as well be got rid of or, better still, get rid of himself, and who would feel there was any loss in that, except perhaps Aunt Shalini?’

  A pause. She leaned back, closed her eyes, so that her understanding should come to her through only the unidentifying voice.

  ‘But then, you see,’ the voice said, ‘the question arose – What did nonentity mean? And the answer was quite clear. It meant nothing because it was only a comparative – a way of comparing one person with another, and I wasn’t to be compared, I was myself, and no one had any rights in regard to me. I was the only one with rights. I wasn’t to be classified, compared, directed, dealt with. Nothing except people’s laws had any claim on me and I hadn’t broken any laws. If I had broken any it was the laws and not the people who operated them I had to answer to. There wasn’t a single other person except myself I was answerable to for anything I did or said or thought. I wasn’t to be categorized or defined by type, colour, race, capacity, intellect, condition, beliefs, instincts, manner or behaviour. Whatever kind of poor job I was in my own eyes I was Hari Kumar – and the situation about Hari Kumar was that there was no one anywhere exactly like him. So who had the right to destroy me? Who had the right as well as the means? The answer was nobody. I wasn’t sure that they even had the means. I decided that Merrick had lied and that far from incriminating me she probably didn’t even know yet I’d been arrested. That’s the moment when I knew I was sick of lying passively there in the dark. I managed to crawl out of bed and grope round the wall until I found the light-switch. It was pitch black and it took me quite a long time just to stand upright. When I had the light on I noticed he’d left the tin mug near my bed. There was still some water in it. I put the towel round my middle and walked up and down so as not to stiffen up again. The water was warm, the room was probably stifling, there wasn’t a window, only a ventilator high up, but I was shivering. Even after I’d drunk the water I went on walking up and down, holding the tin mug. What I was doing reminded me of something but for a while I couldn’t think what. Then I got it. Like my grandfather, going off to acquire merit. The loin-cloth and the begging-bowl. It was funny. Aunt Shalini’s in-laws were always on at me about becoming a good Indian. This wasn’t what they meant but I thought, well, here I am, a good Indian at last. Up until then whenever I thought of that story my father told me about his father leaving home; shru
gging off his responsibilities it hadn’t seemed possible that I was connected with a family where such a thing could happen. But walking up and down as I was, dressed in that towel, holding that cup, I understood the connection between his idea, and my idea that no one had any rights over me, that there wasn’t anyone I was answerable to except myself. And I saw something else, something Merrick had overlooked. That the situation only existed on Merrick’s terms if we both took part in it. The situation would cease to exist if I detached myself from it. He could ask his questions but there was no power on earth that said I had to answer them. He could try and probably succeed in making me answer them by using force, but it would be my weakness and not his strength that made me speak. So I came to a decision to go on saying nothing. I wouldn’t answer his or anyone’s questions except as it pleased me. I would never thank him again for a cup of water. I’d rely on no one, no one, for help of any kind. I don’t know whether that made me a good Indian. But it seemed like a way of proving the existence of Hari Kumar, and standing by what he was.’

  She opened her eyes and stared down into the room, was struck again by that extraordinary incongruity: the hunched submissiveness of the man’s body, the alert and responsible intelligence of the man himself.

  ‘Walking up and down with the tin mug – that’s how Merrick found me when he came in. He looked as if he’d been home to bathe and change but not to sleep. He was very pale. I thought I saw the tic start up again on his cheek, but it was only for a second or two. I asked him what the time was. His response was automatic. He said it was six o’clock. Answering automatically like that showed him that our relationship had changed. He began to look puzzled. I walked up and down and every time I turned to face him I saw this expression on his face, a sort of dawning mystification, and I thought, my God, the risks he’s taken, he must have been very sure, he must have been absolutely convinced of my guilt. And he was still sure, still absolutely convinced, but he guessed or knew it had all begun to go wrong, and he couldn’t work out why. I had a flash of admiration for him. He was totally unconcerned about what I could say or do that could get him into trouble. He said the constables would bring me something to eat and some fresh clothes to put on that had been collected from my home. They brought the food and clothes. Then they took me to a new cell, the one that turned out to be my home for a couple of weeks. I never saw anyone all that time except the two constables and Merrick, unless I was taken upstairs and examined by people like Iyenagar and the Assistant Commissioner. When Merrick examined me it was always in the room where the trestle was but there was never any physical violence. He questioned me every day, sometimes twice or three times, and I could tell that the conviction never left him. I was guilty. The day he told me Vidyasagar had been arrested he tried lying again, tried to make me believe Vidya had incriminated me by accusing me of trying to get him to take part in a plot to attack Miss Manners, but I had the impression that making me confess didn’t interest him any more. Our last full session was the day after I’d been examined by Iyenagar. Merrick said he understood what I was doing. He called it pretending nothing had happened, wasn’t happening and wouldn’t happen. He said I was wrong, it had happened, was still happening and would go on happening and that he had more contempt for me than ever before. It wouldn’t have done me any good to complain to the lawyer, but it disappointed him I hadn’t had the guts to accuse him when I had the opportunity. He wouldn’t bother to question me again. He admitted he’d lied about Miss Manners accusing me. He said she’d told a cock and bull story about going into the Bibighar Gardens because as she strode past she had a sudden idea that she might see the Bibighar ghosts if she went in. So she’d gone and sat in the pavilion and then been attacked by five or six men she hadn’t got a proper look at. Then he said, “But it’s not true. You were together in the Bibighar. You rammed her. You know it, she knows it, I know it. She’s lying and you’re lying. She’s lying because she’s ashamed and you’re lying because you’re afraid. You’re so scared you’re trying to convince yourself the whole business is an illusion, like some naked Hindu fakir pretending the world doesn’t exist. What price Chillingborough now?” Then he got up and stood very close to me and reminded me step by step of all the things he’d done to me. He invited me to hit him. I think he really wanted me to.’

  Kumar slowly looked down, as if to indicate that he had finished. After a while Rowan said, ‘I shall call the clerk back in. Do you wish to make a statement to this effect?’

  He shook his head, then raised it. For the first time a smile was fully recognizable. ‘I’ve said it all. The clerk wasn’t here to record it. That’s part of the situation too, isn’t it?’

  She felt the first wave – scarcely more than a milky ripple – of an extraordinary tranquillity the nature of which she had no energy to determine; instead only the temptation to surrender to as a runner tired of the race would give in to the temptation to fall out of it. It will end, she told herself, in total and unforgivable disaster; that is the situation. As she continued to look down upon the tableau of Rowan, Gopal and Kumar – and the clerk who now re-entered, presumably as a result of the ring of a bell that Rowan had pressed – she felt that she was being vouchsafed a vision of the future they were all headed for. At its heart was the rumbling sound of martial music. It was a vision because the likeness of it would happen. In her own time it would happen. She would live to see what she had been committed to enshrined in the glittering reality of an actual deed, and the deed itself would be a vindication of a sort. But it would never happen in her heart where it had been enshrined this many a year. The tranquillity she felt was the first tranquillity of death. For her the race had ended in the Kandipat in this room with its secret sordid view on to another. The reality of the actual deed would be a monument to all that had been thought for the best. ‘But it isn’t the best we should remember,’ she said, and shocked herself by speaking aloud, and clutched the folds and mother-of-pearl buttons in that habitual gesture. We must remember the worst because the worst is the lives we lead, the best is only our history, and between our history and our lives there is this vast dark plain where the rapt and patient shepherds drive their invisible flocks in expectation of God’s forgiveness.

  *

  The room was empty. Only the light remained, the dim light, and the glaring light that shone on the empty chair. Kumar had gone with the rest. A hand had touched her shoulder. Looking round she was aware of Captain Rowan and of his voice repeating a question, ‘Are you all right, Lady Manners?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and let him help her out of the chair. Standing she put her handbag on the table, took off her distance spectacles and returned them to the case. She thought how odd such human preparations for departure were. In the passage the weight of unconditioned air threatened to extinguish her. Her legs were shaky from the long inactivity of sitting. They went by stages through degrees of cold and heat: from the cool room to the close, warm corridor, out into the oven-scorched air and the furnace of the waiting motor-car. She sat with her eyes closed, felt the subsidence of the cushion as he lowered himself into the seat’s opposite corner. Then the movement: the villainous shadow of the prison gateway. No pause this time. Sun-fish swam across her lowered lids. She raised them and was blinded by a spike of light that pierced the blinds as the motor-car turned at an angle into the sunlight and smell of Kandipat.

  ‘He told the truth,’ she announced with a suddenness that caused him to glance at her sharply.