Red Earth and Pouring Rain

  ‘Tell me again what will happen.’

  ‘Everything will turn red.’

  As Sanjay traced the words on Chotta’s skin, he noticed the cold sweat on his arm, but the pulse was steady and slow

  ‘Who will die?’

  ‘All of them.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘All.’

  ‘All right.’

  Chotta rose and walked back towards the house, but on the way he turned back. ‘I find it impossible to get angry any more,’ he said. ‘It must be age, or the time.’

  Before Chotta went, Sanjay tried to motion, attempted to say something, but it was very dark, and in any case he did not know what it was he was signing. He sat back, breathed through his nostrils, first the right and then the left, but all night he was unable to continue his planning. There was something that he thought he remembered, and always forgot just as it appeared.

  In the morning the sun had just appeared above the roofs when Sanjay heard the first shots. He got up and ran to the house, and even as he ran he congratulated himself on his new speed, but the shots were faster, they came one after another without pause, and yet there was something very deliberate about them. They came like an even drum-roll and Sanjay knew there was murder in it, so that when he ran through the sitting-room at the front of the house and saw a maid-servant leaning against the bloody wall it was only what he expected. In the courtyard in the middle of the house there were three more bodies, there was a cook huddled under the dining table, his cheek-bone shattered, and on the stairs up to the roof a woman lay head downwards, her chunni a long green trail up the steps to the top. The shots were on the roof, and when Sanjay came up out of the stairwell Chotta was feeding bullets into a large black gun.

  ‘Have you seen one of these?’ he said. ‘Revolver. Six shots without reloading.’

  The sun was behind him and he appeared to Sanjay as a silhouette darkened by white light. There was a trail of blood moving slowly through the crevices between the bricks on the roof; it turned a right-angled corner first in one direction and then another.

  ‘Miraculous,’ said Chotta. ‘Fire and fire and fire.’

  Sanjay took the gun from him and in the same sweep pushed him to the wall. He held him easily to the stone, a hand on his throat, and then he felt a blow to the small of his back. He turned, dropping Chotta, and stopped a hand at his face, held it absolutely still. Sikander first struggled to release himself and then blanched with shock.

  ‘You?’

  ‘Yes, it’s him,’ Chotta said, stepping out from behind Sanjay. He was unbuttoning his coat collar. ‘It is him, come back from the mountains of ice with a new strength.’ He peeled off his jacket, dropped it to the ground, and began to remove his shirt. ‘He didn’t do it. I did.’

  Sikander was looking at Sanjay, leaning forward, holding his hand where Sanjay’s fingers had made white marks on the skin. He looked away slowly, at Chotta, his face expressionless. ‘You?’

  ‘Yes.’ Chotta was sitting on the ground tugging at his boots. He flung one away and it skittered over the roof.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I am disappointed.’

  ‘With what?’

  Chotta was naked now. He sat cross-legged at the edge, above the court-yard.

  ‘In you. I am disappointed with you,’ Chotta said. ‘Do you remember what we were supposed to be? We were supposed to be princes. You were supposed to be emperor, and I was to follow you. I did. I wanted you to be glorious. I spent my life following you, and now I am angry with what you have made me. I was to be a prince, a Rajput, a soldier. I was sure of myself. Today I am nothing. Do you know how I am nothing? It is because I am an Anglo-Indian, which is that thing that nobody owns. I am free and nothing. I am sometimes a soldier, sometimes a trader, sometimes this and sometimes that. I am everything and nothing. I am nothing and in this, my house full of nothingness, I give birth to nothing. So I killed them all and now I kill myself. Give me the gun.’

  ‘No. No.’ Sikander reached down and held Chotta by the scruff of the neck and pulled him to his feet. ‘What is this? What’s happened to you?’

  ‘You can’t fight this, big brother. Even your huge arms can’t defeat this.’ Chotta leaned against Sikander, and he spoke softly and caressingly. ‘Ever since Sanjay came back from the mountains I have been granted clear vision. Before that my life passed in a haze of hope and drunkenness. But Sanjay carries with him the coldness of the mountain air, and all who come near him breathe this in, this frigidity, and I saw with clarity the outside of my house, and its inside. Do you know what I saw there? I saw how it pretended to grandeur but was everywhere peeling, I saw the black of the soot on the ceilings I had never seen before, I saw the old webs in the corners, the dried corpses of the long-dead spiders, I saw how my proudest Made-in-England cutlery was cheap and tawdry, I saw everything I had never seen before. And I saw that my wives were bitter, that their laughter was sharp and unbearably nostalgic, that they smoked their hookahs with greed instead of enjoyment. So I asked them, one by one, why are you bitter? And do you know, not one of them asked me what I meant, they just gave me reasons: I do not have enough woollen shawls; my children are not intelligent enough; I hate the place we live in; I have never been beautiful enough. But all these reasons did not satisfy me, they seemed to me to be evasions, but finally I asked my oldest wife, the one I loved first. She shrugged, and said, because we did not become what we thought we would become, because what are you? What are we? And I looked and saw we were nothing. I asked her, I don’t know why, have you ever betrayed me? She said no, hesitated, then she looked into my face and saw, I think, how old I was. She said, yes. I said, with whom? She said, it was not important. Who? A servant. Then I saw how our lives are forever not ours. It was not that I was angry at her: it was because I half-expected it I asked. I was not angry. I loved her. But it was that this is not what I asked my life to become. So I did it. Disappointment is an angry disease.’

  Sikander’s hands slipped to his sides, and then Chotta sat again, tucking his legs in.

  ‘It is interesting that I could not kill the children. I was going to but I could not.’ He held up his hand. ‘Give me the gun.’

  ‘No,’ said Sikander. ‘I will not allow it.’

  ‘Do you still believe in your strength?’ said Chotta, laughing. ‘Poor brother. You are a child still. But there are things your strength cannot fight. Disappointment is stronger than a thousand of you. Look. They say that virtue and penance give a man power over his own death. But I tell you that disappointment is stronger than anything. In the name of disappointment I call upon death to take me.’ He looked at Sanjay. ‘Take revenge. Don’t disappoint me.’ He shut his eyes, and took a deep breath. His body seemed to turn an intense red, and all over there were myriad tiny spots that blazed like coals. Then a burning passed over his skin, a searing fire that was hard to look at, and he toppled slowly back onto the roof. Now the spots faded slowly until his skin was white again. Sikander reached out a hand to him.

  ‘He is dead.’

  The blood dripped off the roof and made a shapeless puddle below.

  * * *

  At the funeral, Sanjay handed Sikander a note: ‘Come with me.’ As Sikander read it, Sanjay wrote another: ‘Bring your men; we will finish all this.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Sikander said. ‘I’ve eaten their salt.’

  ‘That’s an old excuse even you don’t believe any more.’

  ‘I am bound.’

  ‘Even after this?’

  ‘I cannot see any other way out.’

  ‘Will you oppose us?’

  ‘I suppose I will have to.’

  ‘I will kill you this time.’

  Sikander said nothing, and Sanjay turned back to the pyre, which had settled into a red glow. He reached in, feeling the heat not as pain but as a foreign element pressed against the skin, and came up with a handful of black ash. As he walked away, Sikander called to him.

  ‘What
happened to you?’

  Sanjay pointed at him, meaning: exactly what happened to you.

  That evening, as the sun set, Sanjay watched as Sunil cooked eight batches of chappatis, each sprinkled with black ash. The smell of the flour was sharp with memories, but Sanjay pressed them away and gave his instructions: each packet of chappatis was to be sent to one of the cardinal directions. At the first village or town the chappatis were to be delivered to those most filled with anger. They were to eat the chappatis, saving only a tiny piece that was to be crumbled and powdered over the chappatis they prepared themselves, and sent on to their neighbours in the next settlement. So the bitter taste of war would spread, multiplying at every eating, until it was rampant and uncontrollable and the hour was right. Sanjay wrote: ‘It cannot be stopped.’

  Sandeep said: ‘So Sanjay prepared a fire for the English. He moved from town to town, travelling without cease by foot and often exhausting Sunil into collapse. His food appeared in every village from Bengal to Punjab, and since it was dusty, small and common no English ever noticed it, at least not until it was too late. There was always the usual, the petty intrigues of small kings, the obsequiousness of the servants towards their masters, the loyalty of the soldiers to their salt, the constant churning of the ocean of trade, and there was no Englishman who understood that everything had changed, that Sanjay walked the streets of Hindustan, which was India now. Sanjay was pale, he gleamed with a hard lustre like machine steel, his hair was white, he was silent, and he spoke to men and women about their humiliation and their rancour, he told them to think about what they loved. He showed them loss. The country grew quiet and the English thought it was peace.’

  Sanjay came back to Delhi because there was one man who knew what he was and what he wanted: Sikander. Sikander knew and fought him at every turn, Sikander gathered intelligence and sent out spies and reported to the English, who never believed him. In Agra, Sanjay set up a cabal of Muslim horse traders, but three months after they began their secret work they were arrested for treason by Sikander and executed; Sanjay asked, who is his best friend? An Englishman’s name was the answer, and Sanjay said (with bitterness), kill him. This was done, and in return Sikander caused the arrest of a man who was innocent of the Englishman’s death, but who was essential to Sanjay’s schemes in Delhi, and this agent, a nobleman, was tried for the murder and vulgarly hanged. At this insult Sanjay could bear it no longer, and he sent a message to Sikander asking for a meeting. It was agreed that they would meet on black Amavas night in Hansi.

  They met on the barren field where Jahaj Jung had fought his last battle. Sanjay stood, his hands folded across his chest, watching as a slight breeze kicked up dust against his thighs. Some distance away there was a doorway, an empty arch left from some long-disappeared building, and against this Sunil huddled with his men. Three of them were farmers, there was a small land-owner’s younger son from Avadh, and two grain merchants, and the other dozen ex-soldiers of all ages. They were cold, but not frightened, even of the Yellow Boys whom they were meeting, because they had seen Sanjay break a man’s neck with one shrug, and they knew his coolness and his delicacy. Sanjay felt their eagerness, and the winter’s cold against his bare chest made him keenly alive. He was only afraid that Sikander would not come, that he had in his dotage learnt care and the fear of darkness. Sanjay wanted him to come, and it was not the ruin, the door, that struck him as poignant, but the thought that whatever he and Sikander did would be the finish of a lifetime. This was sadly refreshing. The winter earth was new and wet and full of promise.

  Finally Sanjay saw a skirmish line of torches curl up out of the horizon. They came slowly, maintaining a sort of patient discipline, an even distance from each other that Sanjay had never been able to get from his men, despite his appearance and their fear of him. It was a skill he found himself envying even now, this effortless military grace, so that when Sikander reined up his horse Sanjay was already angry.

  ‘Halloa,’ Sikander said. ‘What a hellish long way for a meeting.’

  He strode forward, through the wary lines of their guards, and hugged Sanjay, thumping him on the back twice. Sanjay pulled back, and he could see that he was smiling, that he was sincere in his gladness. But Sanjay had no interest in conversation, and he wrote a note and handed it to him: ‘Why do you fight us?’ Sikander took the note, but was moving his head from side to side, peering at him through the darkness. Sanjay pointed at the note.

  ‘Can you see in the dark?’ Sikander said, with an expression more of horror than amazement. Sanjay snatched a torch and held it above Sikander’s head, lighting grey hair, dark skin that looked porous in the red light, a jowled face. Slowly, Sikander lowered his gaze to the piece of paper in his hand. Sanjay saw a bald spot on top of the head before him, and was filled with sudden pity.

  They walked a little away, into the field, and they sat next to each other on the earth, and Sanjay held Sikander’s arm and traced message after message onto it, all asking the same thing: ‘Come with us. Why will you not come with us?’ Sikander shrugged. ‘Do you understand I will have to kill you?’ Sikander nodded. ‘Why, why will you die for them?’ Sanjay told him about the English, what they were, what they had done already and what they wanted to do. ‘It is not only that they steal from us. It is not only that our grandchildren’s children will starve because they will bleed us into poverty and weakness. It is not only this. Do you remember a voice I used to hear, the voice of Alexander? They are mad, they want more than land, they want to change the world. They will not stop, not ever, when the English are gone it will be somebody else, they will kill everything in their search for beauty. They are mad. Everything else will cease to exist but their madness. Do you understand? We must fight them now or lose forever. Your brother is dead, and he was my brother. Do you remember your mother? We are all lost.’

  Sikander was silent, and so Sanjay thought, no, not this, a change of tactics is necessary. He wrote again.

  ‘What is it? Is it what they have given you? You think they’ve given you honour and wealth? They’ve made you into a national monument, Sikander. You’ve become one of the sights of Delhi. They get here, with their children and their nannies and ayahs and dogs and picnic-baskets, and first they do the Red Fort, ladies and gentlemen, mothers and fathers, babies and babas, here please first be seeing the place where Shah Jahan used to hold court; then they go to the Qutab Minar, aunties and uncles, now we are having here the tallest tower in the world, the wonder of the continent; and then they come here, English lords and ladies, now please look at this man, this black man, this nigger man —here, in human shape and form, a mausoleum! His skin has turned into stone, his bones are timbers, he houses the death of hopes and ambitions, but he makes a serviceable shelter for the great ones of Britain. Once it was thought that an emperor lived here, a ruler who would lead his peoples, but as you can see, that was merely illusion, and what lives here now is a doddering old madman (a lunatic inhabits every tomb in this country), a few rot-odoured vultures. But don’t be scared, little ones, the old man won’t harm you, come on in, sit at his knee, he’ll tell you a story, a fine story of adventure and conquest, he has plenty of those, he’s served you well, he’s dispatched men all over this land for your fathers. Now he sits waiting eagerly for visitors, hungry for an audience, so he can smile and wag his head and entertain them; see how clownishly he acts out the episode, see how he hops and jumps, like this he rode the horse, like this he swung the sword, oh, be kind, children, ladies, reward him with a smile. And then they leave, saying, so, young Robert, did you like the shrine, wasn’t it quite amusing in a quaint provincial Indian way? Little Esther, leave that alone, no, it’s part of the mausoleum, no, you can’t take a couple of bricks with you. Roger, don’t let Rover go in those nice rose bushes, he can do it over there, against the side of the building. Now, now, Edward, don’t play in the road, watch where you’re going, don’t use that sort of language, and especially not concerning those wagons, the
y’re taking cotton to Manchester, and iron ore to Leeds, and gold to the Bank of England. No, Edward, all that doesn’t belong to this manor —it’s not a manor, but a memorial —it belongs to us, because this monument commemorates surrender, fatigue, cowardice. Look at this plaque —what is this shape, Edward? You know this shape. Can you read the writing? —it says, in large carved letters, that dharma is dead, the king has abdicated. That means, Edward, that they have lost, and we have won. Come on, children, hurry now, we’re going to the zoo next, to look at the animals, won’t that be nice? Grinning monkeys, and miming apes? They’ve made you into an animal, Sikander, and somehow you don’t even feel the insult.’

  Finally, Sikander said: ‘Everything you say is true. But I am what I am, and I cannot change that. Even you are what you want to deny: you are already changed. I cannot betray them because I have remained what I always was, my mother’s son. And you must fight them because you have become what you are, what you had to become. This is also true.’ He paused. ’You say I betrayed you, but I am a Rajput, and I have given of my body. I have never been afraid of death, none of us have. We have laughed at it. But you, you were supposed to be a poet. You were supposed to tell us what we should become, what we were. I would have been a king, I would have been anything if you had shown me how. It is you who have betrayed us. You betrayed yourself because you became something else.’

  Sanjay slapped him, and Sikander took the blow without a word, without even flinching.

  They fought in a ring of torches, a circle of light surrounded by a huge darkness. An unseasonal rain had begun to fall, an irregular flurrying of moisture that released a deep clayey smell from the ground. Sanjay stood naked in the circle and waited as Sikander stripped off his jacket, shivering. Sikander wiped his face with both his hands and then, without formalities, they began. It was over very quickly. In the first moment Sanjay knew Sikander’s enormous skill, his years of science that moved him so artfully that he was impossible to catch but gave no impression of speed. Sikander hit Sanjay a dozen times in the first few seconds, smashed him about the shoulders and head, probed under his ribs with a horned thumb, found a nerve on the inner thigh, but all of it made no difference. Sanjay was hard and tireless. The blows made no difference to him and he was content to wait. Finally he caught Sikander in a hug, his arms around the chest, and he held him as Sikander looked at him with a puzzled look on his face. Sanjay twisted, turned and they both fell to the ground. Sanjay held him down, pressed him close to the earth, down, and he felt Sikander strain against him, enormous bursts of strength that drummed against the ground like thunder, once, twice, thrice, and then Sikander’s body broke. Sanjay saw his grey eyes widen once and then relax. Sikander was dead.