‘You look after these boys?’
‘I am with them day and night.’
‘All right,’ Uday Singh said, laying down the lance and sitting on a stool. ‘Sit, please. You should know. I don’t know how you’ll feel about all this, but you should know. Listen…’
I first saw her (Uday Singh said), the woman who is now Skinner’s wife and the mother of Sikander, during the siege of Bejagarh, when we had finally blown up the East Gate and were in the city, in the palaces. All around us the shells were still falling as we chopped up their defences. I served then, as I do now, under this Skinner, a careful, stolid man, without much in the way of dash or daring, but a soldier, nevertheless, in a monotonous, determined way. So we broke into the city at the first hint of light, and struggled up the hill, coming up against little knots of resistance every so often and taking casualties, but we were already certain that we had won, and finally, with whoops of joy we plunged into the palaces, eager for the rubies and gold inside that were ours for the taking.
And in a certain palace, a richly-appointed place, we saw, down a corridor, what seemed like a few men running, and we decided we had caught up with some stragglers, so we rushed on after them, losing sight of them, then spying them again, like jungle dogs after antelope; a shell landed then, tearing through the roofing, and wood and masonry flew everywhere, and I saw a gap open ahead of me, and without thinking, in my momentum, you understand, I ran through it, and saw instantly my old friend and once-comrade, George Thomas, known to the world as Jahaj Jung, and he was standing as if stupefied, in front of a woman of beauty.
Even as I ran towards them her loveliness began to work on me, and I felt the sounds of war fade away, and my breath left my body, and I wanted to weep, so it was as much to release myself from this as to warn him that I was coming that I shouted, JAHAJ JUNG!’ and he turned, stiffly, still not seeing me, and me, I was trying not to look at her, trying to keep my attention on my weapon, and on him, because I knew I must face him. Then Skinner said something, with the arrogance he must have been born with, and I spoke to Thomas, but he jumped at me, came at me instantly, you see, without a word of greeting or recognition, as one expects from an old comrade, even if the circumstances of fate and combat should pit one against the other, and so he surprised me, surprised me not only by the quickness of his attack but with the mad strength of his blow, which threw him off balance and open to my thrusts, had it not splintered my sabre and sent me stumbling back. So I picked myself up and chased after him, angry beyond words at his rudeness and insensitivity —you see, after all, one does not expect such behaviour from friends —but in the crowd and confusion of fighting, I quite lost track of him, so on the street outside the palace, I was obliged to give up the chase.
I went back inside and found Skinner organizing a guard around the few women who were left, the few who were seated on the black-and-white floor of the great hall we had found them in, their heads bowed in shame, and I felt pity for them, because now, denied death, they had nothing left but dishonour; Skinner was strutting about, looking busy, and I noticed he was paying particular attention to one of the women: he knelt down, next to her, and said, in his abominable Urdu, his face ruddy, a smile on his lips, ‘Don’t worry. You’re safe now,’ and she said, her voice muffled by the dupatta, ‘Just let me kill myself.’ He said, ‘No, no, nonsense. Nothing of the sort,’ and she glanced up quickly, and the veil moved, and I saw her eyes flash with hatred, but again my heart moved for her loveliness and I cursed myself for not having the courage to kill her there, then. But she lived and Skinner took her in marriage, and what could she do? —her city was dead, her people were dead, her family was dead, her time was dead.
So I thought I would never see her again, but as you know, some years ago she summoned me, and I thought of the danger of going to your house, of the suspicions of plotting and treason floating in the air like poison, but I tried to remember her face and could only bring back the ache it caused me, and I thought 1 must go, even if it’s only to see her again, once again before I die.
I came to your house in the early morning, to sit at her feet, and she was as beautiful as ever, only now she looked like a radiant young girl, eager and flushed; now there was no longer that ache. She smiled at me and said, ‘You were there when Bejagarh fell, when that man tore off my dupatta? Yes? And you called him Jahaj Jung? Is he that one? The warrior from the seas? The one with the cannon? The conqueror of cities?’ And I said, ‘Yes, it was him, for some reason, in disguise, or at least incognito.’ And she said, ‘As long as it was him. Listen, Uday Singh. I have decided. I have been insulted, but that was in my fate. My karma is bad, so I must live. But if I must have children by a firangi, let it be that one. If I must have sons, let them be fathered by Jahaj Jung. Go to him. Find him, wherever he is. Tell him I said, if I must have sons, let it be you.’
I looked at her happy face, and I thought of the terrible anger that must have driven her into this madness; I cursed this age, when the cow of morality stands tottering on one leg, when the only love that stands between men and women is passion, when the only virtue is greed, where honour is forgotten, but I said, ‘I will tell him.’ I said this because then and now I would have done anything for her, because like all those who have seen her I too loved her.
What was it? Her beauty? That was there, but perhaps it was too fragile; was it her grace? That was there, but even that is an artificial, temporary thing, which excites only need; what was it? I will tell you: You and I, Ram Mohan Sahib, and the others, have loved her for her innocence, for that genuine thing, like a child’s, which makes it seem that she comes to us from some earlier age, from a time when the use of power had not made us cynical, when there was no distance between what was said and what was felt, when all actions had consequences. Now there are only causes and results, but I said, ‘Yes, I will tell him,’ and I rose to go, and she smiled, saying, ‘Tell him that he was the first to raise the veil.’ I understood.
I bowed and left the same way I had come, and contrived to be released from my duties, even at the risk of being suspected of plotting; the same day, I rode out on my strongest horses, money stitched into my coat, my bamboo lance couched firmly beside my stirrup, repeating to myself, ‘If I must have sons, let it be you.’
After several weeks of chasing rumours, of frustration in small villages and towns and nameless hamlets frequented by bandits, I found him. I found him in an abandoned town, to the north and somewhat to the west of Delhi, amidst walls shattered by the patient weight of trees, among crumbling wells; and when I found him he was dressed in women’s clothes, and in the process of having his face painted by a cluster of giggling houris, while nearby, three badmashes —the sort, you understand, who carry a dagger in their belts, a smaller one in the top of a boot, a still smaller one behind the shoulder, and a tiny blade up a sleeve, and another one or two secreted elsewhere —three scoundrels heaped flowers before an image of a woman made of wood and mud and chanted:
HRING, O destroyer of time!
SHRING, 0 terrific one!
KRING, You who are beneficent!
Possessor of all the arts,
You are Kamala,
Destroyer of the pride of the Kali Age,
Who are kind to him of the matted hair,
Devourer of Him who devours
Mother of Time
You are brilliant as the fires of the final dissolution,
Spouse of Him of the matted hair.
O You of formidable countenance,
Ocean of the nectar of compassion,
Merciful,
Vessel of mercy,
Whose mercy is without limit,
Who are attainable alone by Your mercy
Who are fire,
Tawny,
Black of hue,
You who increase the joy of the Lord of creation,
You who are the mad mother of the world,
Night of darkness,
In the form of desire
,
Yet liberator from the bonds of desire.
But before greeting Thomas, I went and sat by a couple of his men, including an old Sikh, and asked, ‘What is he doing? I am an old friend of his, Uday Singh. What is this?’ And the Sikh said, yes, they had heard him speaking of me; they told me that at Bejagarh they had, while following Thomas, plunged over a cliff and into a moat, and after the drop, the escape, they had ridden aimlessly this way and that, surviving on what little they had, drifting after the ragged figure of Jahaj Jung. Finally, as if by chance, they had come to the town of Sardhana, where Thomas had sought an audience with his old acquaintance, Zeb-ul-Nissa, now known universally as the Begum Sumroo. At her court, Thomas and his little crew had caused no little trepidation —it was not entirely the fact that each of them was armed as if he intended to carry on a war single-handed, no, not that; it wasn’t, either, their obvious hunger, that wild bright-eyed tattered look of starvation; no, it was, rather, the way they moved together, fluid, yet always guarding each other’s flanks, it was their casual display of that wordless understanding that exists between those born from the same mother, it was the lack of back-slapping and loud laughter and boisterous speech that frightened the courtiers and, indeed, Begum Sumroo.
Understanding that it is not advisable to keep a pack of wolves in one’s house, she said to Thomas, forget whatever has happened, whatever makes you sad, what you and your brave fellows need is a kingdom, a place to plant your flag, a place, as they say, to call your own; there is, a little to the west of here, a place called Hansi. Once it was a thriving town, fat with produce and craft, but of late the wars have rolled over it again and again, and since we no longer pay heed to the ancient rules of war (we live in evil times), crops are destroyed and innocents are murdered, and towns are emptied, and Hansi is a ruin now, full of ghosts and memories. But the ground is still fertile, she said, the people are still farmers; go and rebuild this town, and police the region around it —execute thieves, levy taxes, and grow old and fat, in short, construct a kingdom. Thomas, who until now had seemed to be in the grips of some mild drug, now looked up, and we each of us saw this new fantasy take hold of him, saw the intoxication of the dream clear his eyes, straighten his back, and he smiled back at us and said, what of it, laddies.
When we finally saw the town (the two men said), spied this little dump of mud and rotting wood, we let out a great whoop of joy and broke into a gallop, coming down through that slope there and beside that thicket, into what once must have been the main street of Hansi; we went through it, jumping the horses over and through the remains of the town, when we suddenly saw a man, a small, naked man with long muscles and tangled hair like straw, and skin covered with red mud. He stood erect on one of the few remaining roofs, hands fisted and arms held curving out by his sides, head thrown back, eyes rolled back; we speeded on towards him, Thomas ahead of all of us, shouting run, old man, we are here, flee, you fool, and a few of us levelled our lances, when suddenly, very close by, a sound like blood, like death itself, shook us, and trembled our horses, sending them twisting and falling, out of control; pray to your gods, whoever they might be, brother (the men said), that if you have never heard the roaring of lions at close hand, your ears might never be hammered by this noise: no matter what you might have lived through (and we live in inauspicious times), no matter what battles you have seen, no matter what hopes you have felt turning dead within your breast, this sound will make you a child again, will terrify you, will fill your pants full of piss.
A pair of lions appeared then, jumping from wall to roof to tree-limb, roaring, watching us with their yellow eyes, their black manes fluffing with every step, their tails twitching. We made our preparations: some of us aimed muskets, while others planted the butts of their spears against rocks, and we waited, sweating, but suddenly the man, the old man on top of the roof, with the reddened skin, he looked down at us, and even those of us far away felt the power of his presence (and the lions quietened and sat down) as he shouted, ‘Why are you here? What are you doing in my city?’ And Thomas shouted, ‘Your city? How is it your city?’ ‘It is mine because I claim it,’ the other said; and Thomas shouted back, ‘I claim it, too. Leave my city, old man. Leave with your mangy pets before I throw you out.’ ‘Throw me out?’ the old man said. ‘Come. Throw me out.’
So Thomas put down his lance and sword, and ran up to the roof, and we watched, laughing, but the old man moved without seeming to move, and without the slightest trace of exertion he pitched Thomas off the roof, to lie stunned in the dust below. We picked him up, and the old man watched as we carried him out of Hansi, to this place; we moistened a piece of cloth and applied it to his forehead, but as soon as he recovered he stormed down to Hansi again, this time carrying two pikes, and challenged the old man to single combat, and again we had to carry him back, this time with two deep wounds on his left side and thigh and a cut on the head.
A few days later, as soon as he thought he could fight again, he went running on down there, and ever since then it’s been one weapon after another, Thomas attacking furiously, the old man fighting back, and the defeats have come just as steadily; it had, recently, become clear even to the most dense in the camp that the old man was some sort of master of arcanum, or perhaps a necromancer, and by this time Thomas had forgotten his pique, and had started to take a sort of detached delight in the contest, so we persuaded him, the last time he went down there, to bow to him, and ask politely, ‘Sir, how may you be defeated?’ The old man smiled, crossed his arms behind his back, and said, ‘I’m glad you ask, or otherwise you could never have defeated me. Listen, then; it has been said, by somebody long ago, that only one who is a woman can attain this city; this is how you can defeat me.’
That same evening, he sent a message to the Begum Sumroo, who arrived a week later with her entourage of girls, and her battalions led by her husband, Reinhardt the Sombre. Well, Begum Sumroo heard Thomas out, and she stood looking down at Hansi, wondering, no doubt, who the old man was, what had happened to a city that she had thought empty; then she prepared three of her most beautiful girls, bathing them in fresh spring water and sprinkling them with expensive perfumes from Lucknow, three of her pupils, the ones most skilled in the science of erotics, one tall and slim, one short and richly built, one with the body of a boy —she dressed them in filmy cloth embroidered with gold thread, and spoke to them in a low voice on the other side of the clearing, telling them, no doubt, that their mission was to distract the old man from his meditations, to sap his strength, to impel him to discharge the psychic energy he had built up with years of sacrifices and mortification. They left that evening, walking down the path with their hips swaying gently, their anklets speaking chanuk-chanuk, and all night we heard their shrieks ringing out above the trees, so that when morning came we didn’t know whether they were dead or alive; but later that morning they came walking up, walking stiffly, bending forward a little at the waist, their finery very bedraggled, distant half-smiles on their faces, and the short one giggled and said, ‘I don’t think we sapped him very much at all.’ So there was confusion and despondency in the camp, and some of us wanted to leave, but Thomas said, ‘Wait, my friends. Put a woman’s clothes on me, and I will go down there again, for the last time, to try my luck, and we will see what happens.’ So here we are (the two men said), waiting to see if the woman Thomas will fare better than the man, and what will become of the old man and his lions.
Then (Uday Singh said) I got to my feet, thanked the Sikh and the other man and walked up to Thomas, greeting him courteously; ‘My friend,’ he said, and I sat beside him, and told him for what I had come, referring to Skinner’s wife as the lady from Bejagarh. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but as I’m sure you’ve understood, I’m otherwise occupied. I think I understand about the sons, but I really can’t do anything about it at this moment.’ So I leaned forward, and looked at him carefully, and said, ‘The lady in question has been insulted enough. You might die down th
ere tonight, and what will I tell her then?’ ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I can’t.’ ‘Then I’m afraid I must fight you,’ I said. ‘I can’t fight you and him,’ he said. ‘That’s how it is,’ I said. Then one of the girls who was dressing him, the tall one who’d been down in Hansi the night before, said, ‘Why don’t you ask the old man down there? I’m sure he’ll come up with something.’ So when Thomas was ready, I walked with him down to Hansi; as we left the camp, the boyish girl, whose face was still puffy from sleep, smiled and said, ‘Good luck, O pretty one.’
On the path, Thomas reached out and touched the flowers on the bushes as we walked along; the bangles on his wrists clinked and jangled; behind us, the fading chant: ‘Hiring, Shring, Kring’; the wind pulled the dupatta away from his face, and he snapped it back with a flick of his wrist and a slow graceful twist of the neck, looked back at me, his nose and lips hidden by the cloth, looked at me slant-eyed, and I marvelled at how he was already learning the strange cunning of the defeated, those weapons that are not weapons, the dharma of survival.
In Hansi, the old man waited for us, his lions by his sides —I heard their breathing long before I saw them —and as soon as he saw us, he called, ‘There you are. I was wondering what had happened to you.’ ‘I have come again,’ Thomas said, ‘and for the last time. But before we try it again, there is a problem.’ He told the old man why I was there, upon which the old one scratched one of his lions behind the ears and said, ‘No problem, no problem. Bring me a little gram flour, sugar, oil.’ And he said, bring me all this, so we did; he set up a pan over a fire, made little balls of the gram flour, and, sitting cross-legged, pressed the balls together into globes and fried them in sugar syrup, while we sat, watching him with gratification, because his movements were easy and supple, embellished sometimes with little flourishes for our pleasure. Finally, he ladled out five laddoos onto a muslin cloth and turned to Thomas, saying, ‘Now, my friend. Now we must have a piece of you in each of these.’ Muttering under his breath —some secret charm, some ancient mantra —he gave Thomas the small kitchen spoon he had been using to stir the syrup. ‘Make a cut in each of the digits of your right hand,’ he said. ‘With this?’ Thomas said. ‘Why not a knife?’ ‘Don’t argue.’ Thomas struggled a bit but managed to make a scratch in each of the fingers of his right hand, using a jagged piece of the spoon, where the iron curved from the handle into the cup. ‘Now a drop for each of the laddoos, one by one, one by one.’ One by one, the old man picks up a laddoo and holds it up; Thomas poises his hand above and squeezes a shining black-red globule of blood onto each globe, a finger for each laddoo, and the dark liquid melts away instantly into the scores of smaller spheres the laddoos are made of, causing each laddoo, in turn, to glow, to gleam. I shivered, a short spasm, and then I heard something and looked up from the spheres —Thomas’ face was contorted, as the blood dropped from him he wept, quietly, and I could not tell whether it was joy or sorrow.