He went left, then right at a sweetmeats stall. Five minutes lefting and righting on instinct. Ten. No sign. He’d lost her. He stopped and bought a glass of lukewarm tea from a chai wallah, drank it standing up. Shouldn’t have waited. Idiot. Her womanhood had come early, ambushed hips, breasts and thighs with rousing prematurity; embarrassment just beneath her surface because she knew men held her body’s advertisements accountable. She hadn’t wanted it, hadn’t been ready, needed another year at least. If he had spoken to her she would have blushed, gone hot in the armpits. In the uniform he would have seemed older, impressive.
Useless hypotheticals. Missed moments like that subtracted something from your heart.
A barefoot beggarly boy of about nine or ten in ragged, filthy shorts shuffled past. He had the khaki handkerchief bundle in his hands, and was picking at the knotted leather thong.
Ross waited until the knots had brought the boy to a standstill under a nearby archway before approaching him with, in quiet Hindi, ‘I don’t think that’s yours, is it?’
The boy looked up, frowning, as if he’d been inconsiderately disturbed. Everything in the dirty young face was all right except for one misangled canine, which poked out from under his top lip. There was a smudge of grease on his left cheek. Ross imagined a thieved samosa, wolfed down. ‘You found that, didn’t you?’ he said.
The boy’s frown became a scowl. He put his lips together in an enormous crooked pout.
‘Let’s have a look and see what it is.’
The boy shook his head violently.
‘Come on,’ Ross said, reaching out towards the bundle. ‘I’ll help you untie—’
The boy cringed and screamed as if he’d been burned. Heads turned.
‘Shshsh!’ Ross said. ‘I’m only saying let me untie it at least and we’ll see what’s in there—’
Again scream and cringe. More heads turning, the first ripple of collective censure.
‘You won’t handle him like that,’ a voice said. Ross turned. A young Britisher, a little older than him, perhaps twenty, had come up alongside them. ‘Bit simple,’ he said quietly. ‘But not so simple he doesn’t know how to use it.’ Then in flawless Hindi to the boy, ‘We’ll trade, Ram, okay?’
Ram, with renewed effortful pouting, shook his head: no.
‘Yes, we will. Come on. You don’t even know what you’ve got in there, do you?’
‘You know him?’ Ross asked.
The Britisher–English, the accent said–nodded with fond disapproval. He was shinily clean-shaven with a dramatically cleft chin; blue eyes that said not a trick missed, slicked-back blond hair. ‘Local character,’ he said. ‘He’s known on the market.’ The voice had education, evoked for Ross lawns, frothily dressed white women, grand houses, but something alert and commercial, too. The tone and quick glance said: I’m not pulling anything on you, age, race, class. Just trust me. It excited Ross. He was used to every degree of British assumed superiority from abuse to painstaking condescension. Occasionally someone’s burning Christlike fraternity, of which he was mere functional object. Something else going on here. He couldn’t quite see it–then could: the young man was crooked. For a second he’d thought homosexual. Even now he didn’t rule it out; but if it was there it was secondary. The communiqué was that they, the men, had an opportunity. A chance for profit. Amazing how quickly you could sound each other out. The Devil’s shorthand.
The Englishman reached into his inside pocket (linen blazer, single-breasted, palest khaki) and pulled out an expensive-looking fountain pen. His hand movements were gracefully authoritative. Under the jacket he wore a pink cheesecloth shirt. ‘Here,’ he said, offering the pen to the boy. ‘You hold this while I untie the knots, yes?’
Apparently a new angle of pain for Ram: dilemma. He screwed his face into a snarl.
‘Come on, just while we open it up.’ Then in English to Ross. ‘Obsessed with fountain pens. Loves them. Any idea what’s in there?’
‘There was a Sikh fellow looking for it.’
‘Fat chap. Gobind Singh.’
‘You know him as well?’
‘I know him; he’s a crook.’
Ram snatched at the pen. The Englishman fluidly moved it away, shaking his head. ‘Ram, listen to me. Give me the bundle and I’ll let you hold the pen. Come on. Don’t be silly.’
By painful degrees Ram delivered the tied handkerchief into the white left hand while receiving the fountain pen from the right. The Englishman looked at Ross: with your permission? Ross nodded. The man had an up-to-the-minute aliveness about him, an effect that made Ross feel that his experience of time, the present, the modern world, had until this moment been missing something. The market had got louder, as if everyone was debating at once. Ram inked a line on the back of his hand, then realized his lapse and forced himself to watch the unwrapping.
‘Heavy,’ the Englishman said. His clean-nailed fingers worked at the knotted thong. Spotless pink shirt cuffs, a yellow-faced wristwatch on a brown leather strap. ‘Without making it obvious,’ he said, not looking up, ‘is anyone watching us?’
If Ross had smoked he’d have scanned the market under cover of lighting up. As it was he put his hands in his pockets, raised his eyebrows and looked up with fake boredom.
The girl appeared from behind a fabric stall, in front of which a chipped mannequin crookedly modelled a purple and gold sari. She’d bought a bag of pistachios. For a second he wondered if she, too, were simple; the anxiety had been replaced by a look of dreamily not caring. Then she lifted her head again, to her left, as if suddenly reminded that she might be being followed. Clean features, fine eyebrows and quick animal eyes. She wasn’t mad. It was something else, Ross thought–then in a leap: she wasn’t afraid of death. With a disgusted flourish the moustached stall-holder flung a roll of pink silk open in front of her, then immediately turned to talk to another customer. Some vendors were like that, as if the notion they might need to sell you anything was beneath their contempt. Others whined and babbled as if their children’s lives depended on it.
‘Please react in the manner of somone barely interested,’ the Englishman said.
Ross just managed not to say ‘What?’, though he’d heard perfectly.
‘I don’t think we’re much interested in these, do you?’ the Englishman said in Hindi, holding out the unwrapped handkerchief, in which were four small, slender gold bars.
Ross stared, said nothing. Felt the tip of the Englishman’s shoe touching his own, once, twice. ‘No,’ he said. He cleared his throat, then repeated, ‘No.’
The Englishman snorted, hurriedly rewrapped the ingots and held them out to Ram. ‘You can keep these,’ he said. ‘But you won’t be able to trade them.’
Ram, sweatily gripping the fountain pen, narrowed his eyes as if trying to see something remotely distant. ‘Gold,’ he said.
‘Ye-es,’ the Englishman said, making two syllables out of one and forcing Ram’s filthy fingers round the bundle, ‘it is gold. But it’s Gobind Singh’s gold, which he lost today. Everyone knows he’s looking for it. Who do you think will trade with you? Gobind is looking for it right now. Already this soldier sahib and I know you’ve got it. How long before everyone knows?’
The girl lifted the pink to look at a roll of orange chiffon underneath. The world was strewn with rights and wrongs; you passed through them as through the market’s stinks and perfumes. There was an irresistible weave of wrongs around these gold bars. (And the girl?) He knew he was going to do the wrong thing, that God was going to watch and at some later time pay him back in proportional suffering. He considered, as he always did at such moments, refusing, walking away, confounding Heaven. But even as he thought it he imagined God grinning and shaking His head: we both know you’re not going to do that.
Meanwhile the Englishman had been in quiet negotiation with Ram, who not infrequently writhed and made a great show of being unfairly stymied. Presumably the thought that the sahibs would be in the same position as
him should they acquire the treasure hadn’t entered his head, along with much else that hadn’t entered his head, such as the absurdity of Gobind Singh’s walking about telling everyone he’d lost four gold bars.
‘What do you think?’ the Englishman said.
‘What?’ Ross had drifted, was shocked back. The Englishman had pulled out a pack of Woodbines and was offering him one. Ram, now in an elaborate depression, had walked a few feet away and slumped to his buttocks. He sat with his knees up and his chin resting on them.
‘No thanks, I don’t,’ Ross said, meaning the smoke. Then, ‘It’s incredible.’
The Englishman slipped a cigarette into his thin mouth, rolled his head through a slow left to right arc and back again as to relieve stiffness, then lit up from a matchbook. Ross observed the first needful drag and majestic exhalation. Smoking looked good; it was remarkable he’d never taken it up. ‘Do you have any idea what those are worth?’ the Englishman said, repocketing the matchbook.
‘Not really. A lot.’
‘Quite a bit, I should think. Possibly four or five hundred apiece. Have you any money on you?’
‘Not much. About fifty rupees.’
‘Are you willing to let me handle things?’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay. Give me twenty.’
The girl turned from the stall, looked around, saw Ross, slightly noticed him, then turned and walked away. Now or never. A dark bare-chested young man, wirily muscled, went past carrying in one hand a wire coop with two enormous chickens, in the other a basket of shiny brinjals. In the time it took for him to pass, the choice was made. Ross followed the Englishman towards Ram. The girl disappeared.
‘As I said: simple, but awkwardly so.’
‘Parents?’
‘Around, somewhere. You know.’
They veered from the subject. Build a picture and you gave your conscience more to work with. It was good, the fluency between them. Every Britisher could’ve been this way and the whole country would’ve been different. Ross almost hoped the Englishman was homosexual; it would mean that in spite even of that you could fleetingly align in understanding.
The Englishman’s fountain pen and cufflinks plus thirty-five Ross Monroe (or rather Ross Monroe and associates, since fifteen of the thirty-five came from Stan, Dick and Eugene’s whorehouse allowance) rupees secured two of the four bars. But bargaining appeared to work Ram up. He became truculent over the second pair. It was a careful balance. He’d get riled and shriek with impatience, which had two effects: first, it reminded him, Ross saw, that it was in his own interest not to draw attention (which might well become the attention of Gobind Singh) to himself; second, it filled Ross with fear of the crowd’s attention. The Englishman put up the watch for a third bar, but the remaining cash, twenty rupees, wouldn’t budge the boy on the last.
‘I’ll take that one ring also,’ Ram said, with the stubborn little head-waggle and averted eyes.
You could see why people didn’t bother with negotiation, Ross thought, just went straight to force. Once you got your soul out of the picture, it was simple economics.
‘That one ring’ was the bloodstone on his right index finger. The Englishman saw his hesitation. ‘Up to you,’ he said. ‘But unless it’s worth five hundred, I’d let it go.’
‘Sentimental value,’ Ross said. ‘My mother gave it to me.’
Ringless but richer by perhaps a thousand rupees, Ross went over the scene in the cart on the way back to Walton.
He’d have to think of something to tell Beatrice when the time came, or replace the ring with a copy. The betrayal had left a dirty aftertaste, as if her blood was on his tongue, old and ironish. Becoming a man was of necessity murdering a little of your mother. Ross had felt his skin warming with shame. But a thousand rupees! Every time he thought of it (the phrase unravelled heraldically in his head, a thousand rupees) a thrill tightened his balls. Undischarged lust maybe, the unvisited whores, the poppy-dressed girl. He could make intuitive mental leaps. Sex-energy was malleable, would find its way into something if not the act. Lucifer, Danglers was fond of saying, is like molten metal, like lava: he can trickle into any shape, and once he’s there, once he’s there, my boys, he hardens for good.
Ross pinched between his eyes then pressed outwards round their sockets. His father’s gesture against the unreasonable load he had to carry. He shouldn’t have done it. His mother’s bloodstone ring. Well, he’d done what he’d done. Pilate, Danglers told them, had said, Quod scripsi, scripsi. What I have written, I have written. It had become for the St Aloysians a playground saw, to be produced whenever one was caught out in wrongdoing. You stole that bleddy pot of guava jelly from my trunk, you thieving sonofabitch. A shrug: Quod scripsi, scripsi. Ross chuckled at the memory. The day had gathered in him, given peace to his limbs, the morning’s liquor and lime, the egg custards, the grog-thirst and the heat like an angel wrapped round him as he tailed the girl, the Englishman’s handshake, their mutual visibility and shared shame. Two each, yes? It was as if they’d molested the boy together. There was a knack to reaching out and taking life’s wealth, letting it accumulate in you, feeling the filthy enrichment. He stretched, leaned back and put his feet up on the seat in front of him, where in silhouette Stan and Dick sat sluggish, irritable, glutted.
‘Are you sure we haven’t had this bugger before?’ Eugene whispered, leaning close. He smelled of Mrs Naicker’s: incense and perfume, cigarette smoke, his own cooled bittersweet sweat. His breath was louche with booze and the brothel’s greasy snacks.
‘I’m sure.’
‘How can you be sure, men?’
‘Well he took us, didn’t he?’
‘He’ was the cart driver, an inscrutable leathery Pathan, white-moustached, ropy with muscle. They were less than a mile from the base. Ross knew the moment couldn’t be put off much longer. He didn’t feel up to it. Just here the road was lined with and scented by cinnamon trees. It was a clear night. Stars when he tipped his head back and bared his throat to the current of night air. All these pleasures free if you knew how to take them.
‘Listen, I don’t think it’s fair you using our money like that,’ Eugene said. ‘I mean, we should be in for a share.’
‘You’ll get a share,’ Ross said, bringing his head forward again. ‘I told you. Proportional.’
‘Why not equal shares?’ Dick said.
‘Because it’s not an equal bleddy investment, is it? See that?’ Ross held up his right hand, missing its bloodstone. ‘Did you part with your mother’s ring? No.’
Stan leaned forward, smiling. ‘Just remember you owe me fifteen rupees.’ He had laughed, sceptically, when Ross told the story and produced an ingot. (No need for them to know there were two.) Stan had laughed, patiently, as on behalf of the entire jaded world and Ross had hated him for it. Coward’s laugh: expect nothing and you don’t need the courage to hope, nor the strength to withstand disappointment when nothing comes.
‘It’s time,’ Eugene said quietly. Even saying this couldn’t quite bring them to it. Another minute passed. The nag’s clopping and the wheels’ occasional judder. Bats kept shadowily just missing them.
‘Stop!’ Dick called. ‘Driver, hold on! Stop!’
The driver looked over his shoulder, saw Dick and Eugene trying to get up from their seats, drew rein and halted the cart. The horse snorted, shook its huge head–tinkle of bridle bells and harness gewgaws–then settled. The driver turned in his seat to observe. Only the wet stone gleam of his eyes and two white twists of his moustache showed in the dark. He said something in Pushtu, a polite question. None of the passengers answered. Out of initial silence cicada-riot swelled around them. Pale flowers in the roadside darkness were fairyish presences, watching.
‘Wallet,’ Eugene said loudly, jumping down from the cart. ‘I dropped my wallet.’ Dick followed Eugene. Ross got up and stretched, stayed put for a moment, then dropped down on to the road. Terrible contained smash of blood in his soles from sitting
too long. For all the free pleasures, your body kept reminding you it was blood and meat, destined for rot. Stan slowly and as if yet another unreasonable demand was being placed on an already exhausted man slouched down last. The Pathan watched without comment. Stan elaborately pantomimed searching his pockets and made the finger rubbing against thumb money gesture. Wallet. Dropped on road. We look. You wait. The driver nodded, once, almost a formal bow, then busied himself lighting a bidi. Scrutinizing the ground, the four men in uniform inched back down the cart’s tracks, spreading out as they went.
‘Enough?’ Eugene whispered. Two minutes later they had regrouped, bent, hands in pockets, peering, as if at something discovered on the ground.
Ross shrugged. ‘Okay.’ The shrug was an effort, as if each shoulder carried a heavy bag. He was supposed to be getting himself ready. Very definitely didn’t feel up to it. The day’s residue that had been calm and golden and warm in his limbs was turning or had turned to mild disgust. This shift always came sooner or later; suddenly the casual delight went and it wasn’t a game. For a while God jollily observed you mucking yourself up with sin, but always at some point let the jovial mask fall, became grown-up, left you with the stink of yourself and all the dismal consequences lined up.
‘Driver!’ Stan called. ‘Come here and look at this.’
Gesticulation was needed. They spoke no Pushtu and the driver’s English was restricted to fares and destinations. Stan and Dick went part-way back to the cart and persuaded him to come and see.
‘You know these Pathan buggers,’ Eugene whispered to Ross as the driver approached. ‘They never forget a wrong. They’re bleddy tribal, men. You insult one of their women, they’ll kill you.’
Ross said nothing. This was Eugene’s shamed masochistic routine, after the whores.
‘Seriously,’ Eugene said, laughing. ‘They’re known to cut a fellow’s guts out and wrap them round his head.’