Sanjay started then, because Sikander and Chotta appeared, unexpectedly, where he could see them; noiseless, as usual, but undoubtedly, plainly visible when a good ten feet off. Sanjay rose to his knees, hands signalling I-see-you, but the others covered the intervening ground in a quick-flash instant (how do they do that?), thrust a forearm each under his shoulders, and lifted him off the ground, into the bushes. He started to struggle, but a warning, painful pinch stilled him, just in time to hear a steady shuffling through the trees, a familiar rhythm to it, attempted stealthiness with an unmistakable clumsiness underneath; a gait is like a man or a woman’s script —attempts at masquerade fail because the disguise is usually so exaggerated, and who can hide that arrogance, that assumption of strength that demands of things to move aside when the foot is put down, that assumes all roads will be smoothened? —it was, of course, Hercules. But Hercules was skulking now, his furtive-ness emphasized by his obvious eagerness, by the haste with which he angled through the bushes. He passed the boys by, and Sanjay saw Sikander and Chotta look curiously at each other, clearly puzzled by the jackal-in-the-bush demeanour of their father. Without a word, a decision was made —they pulled Sanjay to his feet, placed him between them, behind Sikander and in front of Chotta, and began to follow Hercules.
Sanjay had, for as long as he could remember, understood that Sikander and Chotta had somehow learnt the techniques of being invisible (or had they been born with the skill?), but on this day he watched them exercise their art —they placed their feet wide-toed and ball first, quickly and surely, but without suddenness, so that a dry leaf, instead of cracking and crackling, only moved and bent, and obligingly bore the weight. Sometimes Sikander and Chotta seemed to delight in following their quarry so closely that it seemed impossible that he not see them —and he did look back, often, with the quick uptilted nose of a sniffing feline —but when it seemed that he must see them, they froze, and were somehow camouflaged by the shadow and sunlight, the golden grass and earth. Sikander’s right hand, held behind him and below the waist, signalled stops and starts, safety and urgency; they passed from a maidan to a cluster of huts, and here Hercules straightened up, pulled at his lapels, extracted a kerchief and wrapped it, brigand-fashion, around his face, and resumed his usual, stately walk; now Sikander and Chotta modified their strategy —they strolled along, keeping Hercules barely in sight, stopping to look at fruit baskets and chat-seller’s wares.
Sanjay realized, with a quick rush of excitement at having penetrated a forbidden zone, that they were in a settlement of low-caste people; he looked about himself with the eager curiosity of a foreigner, half-expecting and wanting to be shocked, but all around them were the business and affairs of ordinary, familiar life —food, chores, children, animals, the washing of clothes, and perhaps the only extraordinary thing was a difference in the tie of a turban, or a particular way of wearing a dhoti. The presence of three unknown boys seemed to provoke no hostility, but rather a blank, level stare that said precisely nothing; Sanjay was beginning to be disappointed that nothing more strange had happened when Hercules turned left down a lane. The boys turned the corner just in time to see him ducking into a door, and tugging aside a ragged red curtain hanging over the lintel; there were some children playing by the open drain that ran along the side of the lane, pulling a little wooden cart to and fro.
‘If we could get up on the roof,’ Chotta said.
‘Right,’ Sikander said.
Sanjay pawed at Sikander’s arm, shaking his head, but the two brothers were already stepping down the lane, jumping over the cart as it rattled along; they edged over close to the hut, stood with their backs to it, watching the game, and the moment no eyes were turned their way, they dashed off to the rear, pulling Sanjay along. Behind the hut, a cow raised its head to look at them, then swung back down to its feed; Sikander and Chotta found a chink in the mud wall, wedged their feet into it, and pulled themselves up to the thatch above. They reached down for Sanjay.
‘Come,’ Sikander said.
Sanjay shook his head.
‘Come on, pumpkin-head,’ Chotta whispered. ‘You won’t break again.’
‘Come on, Sanju,’ Sikander said. ‘I’ll hold on to you this time.’
Sanjay turned away, pulse quickened; the cow watched, its mouth moving.
‘Sanju,’ Sikander said, ‘don’t you want to know?’
He lifted both hands up to them, and they pulled him up effortlessly (he felt his feet leave the ground, ankles extend); they worked their way around the edge of the sloping roof, and Sanjay resolutely turned his face to the comfortable, musty smell of the thatch, and clamped a grip on Sikander’s kurta.
‘Here,’ Sikander said, moving aside handfuls of coarse straw, and Sanjay reached in beside him, glad to be doing something. ‘Quietly, quietly.’ The stuff came away in easy tufts, slightly moist, and then they were through: a small ragged hole, an obscuring beam, and, beyond, very white in the grey interior light (outside, the sun blazed), at first an unnameable moving construction, a twisting rectangular patch and two spheres, speckled, then the image twisted on itself, resolved (altitude is dizzying), and became a back ridged by shoulder blades, and below, two contracting and expanding buttocks, a quick moment of vertigo, a strong dislocation, longing, longing, it can crush your bones, and below, Hercules moved faster (ragged rhythm) between the dark splayed thighs, and above his right shoulder a dark face, a woman, heavy face, passive, impassive, eyes marking the colourful figures on the shelf, the icons, images, then turning slightly to look at an empty corner (only dust floating like stars), time passed, time, and Hercules grunted, his fingers in her hair, pulling, twisting her face to his (her lip drawing back, pain), grunted again, long rattling sigh.
Sanjay turned his head toward Chotta, then Sikander, but found that he couldn’t bear to look at them, and so his memory of that moment was always a confusion of straw, the base of a neck, hands, perhaps eyes; he looked back down at Hercules, who had rolled to a corner of the mat and was lying on his side, silent, his chest heaving. Around his belly a single shiny streak of wetness dripped to the ground; the woman moved —density, darkness between her thighs —and began to pull a piece of cloth about her.
‘When I was very young,’ Hercules said, then stopped, reaching forward to rest a palm, flat, on the smooth mud wall. The woman moved about the room, paying no attention, tucking away strands of hair, bending to move a pair of boots into a corner. ‘When I was very young,’ Hercules began again, ‘the only nightmare I remember from my childhood was this —I dreamt that I was walking through a street paved with stones, flanked by white houses, when the grey sky opened up like a funnel, sucked me up. The ground vanished from beneath my feet, and I plummeted upwards, limp, terrified. In a moment it enfolded me, sky stifling like a shroud, I was scattered, vanished, gone, not capable then even of being scared. But then I awoke, shaking. Later that morning —I must have been no more than nine or ten —my father, my mother and I, with my other sisters, walked to our church. All was well —there was not a cloud, I could hear birds, my brothers ran about despite my mother’s entreaties —but even then I was frightened. They asked me what it was, but what child of nine could tell about what I had felt, so I shook my head, went along, trying to keep between my parents. In the church, I clutched the wood of the pew, and tried to pull my legs up onto the seat. My father reached around my mother and tapped me sharply on the back of the head; when the tears cleared I found my eyes fixed on the image of Christ: a simple representation in dark wood, a certain heaviness about the figure, as if the agony dragged, pulled. I wiped, snuffling, then looked closer. His muscles bulged. I followed the strained curve of the arm to the taut tendons in the wrist, and then to the nail, piercing straight and perpendicular through the flesh. I tried to follow the line of the metal, through the flesh and into the wood, and I saw how firmly fixed He was, how pinned. I wept with relief, and my parents looked on me proudly, thinking that the sermon had moved me. I knew I had
been told something then, as firmly as if He had spoken to me, moving his wooden lips: the mark of man is tragedy, and the world must know this. I was nine, the years passed; I became a soldier, to take the Word to the world. In this country there are many, most, who have spent their lives without the Knowledge, so I have aided those who tell, who speak. I have given them shelter, and food, and protection, and tried to keep the memory of that hour alive, when I knew that He stood between me and devastation. But comes now the hidden army of the Other, the march of moments, the thousand things that are necessary, that distract. All that must be done I do, I earn, I administer, I feed, I fight, but finally, in the pause, in reflection, I am brought to the comprehension that I have been consumed again, engulfed, the great task left undone. His Act is forgotten, that perfect culmination, everything stretches forever, behind and in front, like that endless, hideous pantheon. He died! Something changed! But weariness brings doubt, and then I come here, to be doubly devoured. Here, in this place, I am finally finished. Do you listen?’
Hercules sat up, and the woman glanced at him, then began to arrange the betel leaf and tobacco in her palm; he reached for a shirt, drew it over his shoulders, and stood, his thighs exposed between the tails. Sanjay watched him pulling on his clothes, still unsettled by the extreme sadness in Hercules’ voice, so unlike his usual plummy confidence. Sanjay wanted to ask Sikander and Chotta what it was that Hercules had said, that had made his words so faint, what had compelled him to touch the wall as if testing its solidness, its physicality, but a glance on either side convinced him that it was wiser to wait: the two brothers were watching their father, below, with a concentration that seemed to reject the possibility of emotion, much less conversation. So Sanjay too watched Hercules as he dressed, straightened his hair, picked a few coins out of his purse to place on a mantelpiece built into the wall; Hercules left without a word to the woman, who sat chewing moodily on her paan —they seemed indifferent, now, to each other.
‘Come on,’ Sikander said. They dropped to the ground —this time not earning even a glance from the cow in the corner —came around the corner of the hut, and were halted by a rude phalanx of children.
‘Who are they?’ a small girl dragging the wooden cart said from the rear, rising up on her toes.
‘What are these rich babas doing sulking behind our Amba’s hut?’
‘Stealing her cow’
‘Not even going out by the front door, like the others.’
The line pressed forward, and Sanjay stepped back, but Sikander and Chotta stood their ground, only moving a little closer to each other; Sikander seemed to be calm, almost dreamy, but Chotta was crouching, eager, hands held in front of his thighs, palms up.
‘Why here, babas?’
‘Motherfuckers,’ Chotta said. ‘Fuck your sisters too.’
‘Enough,’ Sikander said, but already there were three or four boys pushing through the press to get at Chotta, who for his part edged forward to meet them. The first of them had to step past Sikander, who reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘No,’ Sikander said.
‘Eh, don’t you drop in the middle,’ the boy said, moving his arm to brush Sikander off, and suddenly he flew through the air, landing jarringly on his buttocks in front of the little girl with the cart.
‘I told you no, no?’ Sikander said, smiling pleasantly. The others stopped, uncertain, as the boy picked himself up, eyes tearing, and then they all began to move forward in small jerks and starts, each waiting for another to lead the assault, cursing fervently in a kind of courage-building chant. Sikander moved his head in a funny rolling motion, and Sanjay, hearing the bones in his neck crackle, shivered.
‘Oh, why are you fighting in the lane, you dirty children? Fighting outside my door, making bad noises. Go away. Go, run away, or I’ll come after your heads with a rolling-pin.’ It was the woman from inside, Hercules’ woman; she stood at the door of her hut, hands on her hips, hair rolling over her shoulders, mouth red from the paan. ‘And who are these? Why are you bothering these fine boys. Go away, leave them alone.’
‘Are they your customers too, then, Amba?’ a boy called from the rear, and at that she ran after them, swinging her arms, dealing out slaps and cuffs, and they scattered, laughing. Finally, she came back to them, huffing.
‘Come inside,’ she said. ‘Wait for a while and the little oafs will go away. Then they won’t bother you.’
Inside her hut, Sanjay tried resolutely not to look at the small puddle of light that gathered along the wall at the back, and concentrated instead on a minute inspection of the images of gods and goddesses that were arranged on the numerous ledges, crannies and shelves built into the walls.
‘Are you lost? Why did you come here? Poor boys, this isn’t a place for you. You are lost, aren’t you?’
This was directed at Chotta, who was staring at her, lips puckered, eyes shining, as if he was about to burst into tears. She looked curiously at him for a moment or two, then Sikander turned to her.
‘Yes, we’re lost,’ he said.
‘How did it happen? Did you just pay no attention, and get lost in some game? Where do you live?’
‘Char Bagh.’
‘Ay, what a long way you’ve wandered. Don’t these other two talk at all? I suppose they’re scared. But don’t be scared, this is a place you all would have found a way to, sooner or later. You three just got an early start all right. All of you from Char Bagh come here, no matter how high and mighty you act.’ She laughed; the pink of the inside of her mouth was very bright against her dark skin, and again Sanjay felt his belly full of an incredible longing. ‘They all come here, Brahmins and Rajputs and Company men. Here, touch-this-and-don’t-touch-that and untouchability and your caste and my people and I-can’t-eat-your-food is all forgotten; this is the place that the saints sang about, little men. Here, anybody can touch anybody else, nothing happens. When you are a little older, when you understand a little more, you too will come and touch, and maybe by then I will be an old woman, but remember me. Here you can forget the world, and be friends with every man. Do you see what I say? I have a friend, a little way down the lane, in a big house that she was brought to when she was just a child, but she remembers something from before, when she was home, far and far to the south; she sings it sometimes, and I ask her, What is this? What does it mean? Whose song is this? and she says, listen, sister, I don’t know who wrote it, but it means this:
What could my mother be
to yours? What kin is my father
to yours anyway? And how
did you and I meet ever?
But in love
our hearts have mingled
like red earth and pouring rain.’
She put her hands on her knees and leaned forward, raising her eyebrows. ‘Do you understand, babies? That’s what happens here.’
She smiled, exposing again the pink gums; Sanjay pulled at Sikander’s arm: let’s go.
‘We have to go now,’ Sikander said.
‘Be careful.’
Outside, they stumbled through the streets, feet scraping through dust; Sanjay put up a forearm to shield his eyes from the light, squinting, and noticed, now, how many women sat in door-ways, clad only in petticoats, and how they looked bluntly at passers-by, sometimes calling out to them, ‘Come, come to my house.’ Now, he saw many smiling, oily men with flower-garlands around their wrists lounging between the shops, and other men who walked slowly through the lanes, stumbling a little, speaking in louder-than-necessary voices intended to project jocularity, fraternity, but Sanjay wondered at the underlying, unmistakable presence of fear and hope. He looked back at Chotta, who was dragging his feet, looking down at the ground; Sikander saw the glance, and looped an arm around both their shoulders.
‘We’re almost out,’ he said.
Chotta’s pout seemed to intensify, and Sanjay wanted to say, no, she said we’ll be back, we’ll come back like these others, like lost children, but instead he forced a smile, an
d they walked on.
In the dry nullah-bed, Sanjay’s knees gave way, and he sat down, exhausted, on top of the curving channels carved by once-running water. He was covered with a film of cold perspiration, and once or twice he felt something hot and sticky rush up to the back of his throat. Sikander and Chotta squatted next to him, resigned to waiting; they scratched absently in the mud, making patterns, sometimes figures, mostly horses.
They heard the singing first, a high, cracked voice in a strange language, and then the man appeared —he was a tall man, a firangi, with pomaded, dirty white hair, a scar that stretched from his forehead across an empty eye-socket, a bottle in his hand; bits of blackened lace hung in little wisps off his blue coat. He stopped at the edge of the nullah, leaning down towards the boys.
‘Ah, there you are,’ he said in English. ‘There you are, my little friends. I was thinking I had lost your trail. I introduce myself —I am Moulin, the would-be adventurer but most-times cook.’ He paused to take a swig from his bottle. ‘I shall climb down to you, boys. I shall, appropriately enough, descend into a sewer.’ He slid down the side of the ravine, half-sitting, and then came up to them, weaving a little. ‘What hostile little faces you have! But that is why I followed you, I saw you walking through the bazaar, and I thought, there are the three saddest boys I have ever seen. And what are they doing here? So I came after you, because, I, Moulin, am sad, too. I, gentlemen, am the saddest Frenchman you will ever see. But are you understanding anything I am saying?’ He switched to rough Urdu: ‘Do all you understanding English?’
Sikander and Chotta nodded, but Sanjay stared up apathetically, too drained to even shake his head.
‘Then,’ Moulin said, sitting down beside them, ‘we will converse in English, my Urdu being but rudimentary, even after all these years.’ He paused to devote his full attention to the bottle again, then wiped his mouth. ‘Rudimentary Urdu. But how is it that you two speak English? And aren’t frightened of me —I am, after all, that most fearsome of things, a white man. Doesn’t your mother tell you, hush, baba, or the firangi will come and take away your little clay cart, and all your toys? And he’ll take your father’s land? And your mother’s honour? No? Oh, you don’t want to talk? No matter.’