Red Earth and Pouring Rain

  At noon they stopped in the ruins of a serai at a cross-roads and sat on crumbling stone, nibbling at cold chappatis and pickles. A group of Marwari merchants and their Pathan escorts huddled on the other side of the building and watched them curiously.

  ‘How long have you been here?’ Thomas asked.

  ‘Here, in India? A year and eight months.’

  ‘Why do you still wear that coat?’

  ‘This coat? What’s wrong with the coat? It’s Parisian, I had it made in Paris, made for me.’

  ‘Why not wear this? It’s better here, more comfortable.’

  ‘I like this coat. Do you find something wrong with it? What?’

  ‘No, nothing.’

  Thomas looked away, and said nothing about how the long tails of the coat flapped about the rump of the horse when Reinhardt rode, making rider and horse look like some monstrous bird of prey; that afternoon they cantered through a light drizzle. Reinhardt seemed to recover from his quick irritation and resumed his singing. The road grew steadily wider, and the traffic thickened: farmers with loads of hay on ancient two-wheeled carts drawn by magnificent white oxen, shepherds with flocks of thick-bodied goats, traders with covered carts, caravans escorted by lance-bearing Rajputs and Afghans; Reinhardt grinned and slapped his thigh.

  ‘A rich place, this Sardhana,’ he said.

  ‘It’s all rich,’ Thomas said. ‘If it weren’t for the wars, what a thing this Hindustan would be.’

  ‘If it weren’t for the wars, where would we be?’ Reinhardt shouted, spurring his horse. ‘Come on, on to the Begum.’

  At dusk they drew up to a large arched gate in a crenellated wall.

  ‘We are officers,’ Thomas said, ‘come to see the Begum and serve her.’

  The officer of the guard, a toothless, much-scarred campaigner from Bengal, hooked his thumbs into his belt, and walked in a half-circle around the horses.

  ‘It is late,’ he said, ‘and the Begum gives audience in the morning. Go. Come tomorrow.’

  ‘Send word to her now,’ Thomas said.

  ‘Go.’

  ‘Tell her Jahaj Jung is here.’

  ‘Jahaj who?’

  ‘You know what, Bengali. Go, tell her.’

  ‘Jahaj Jung is the one with the cannon?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A fine soldier, they say?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A good man?’

  ‘A generous man, yes,’ Thomas said, and a coin arced through the air and disappeared into the Bengali’s belt.

  The halls of the palace were dimly lit; tiger skins and swords and round shields gleamed in the flickering torchlight. Thomas and Reinhardt followed the Bengali officer through dark rooms and up staircases, their heels clicking on polished stone and wood, spurs clinking; higher and higher, and then Thomas heard, far away, low laughter, the laughter of girls, turning into long trails of giggles. The rain swept down suddenly, drumming against glass windows in three gusts, one after the other, and then the three men emerged onto a roof.

  ‘Wait here,’ said the Bengali.

  Under a red-and-yellow canopy, a large silver swing creaked back and forth; the Bengali stepped over the moving, bejewelled forms seated on the carpeted floor and leaned close to the swing. Eddies of water skittered over the roof and scattered themselves on parapets and railings. Thomas wiped his face with a sleeve, smelling, faintly, the aroma of tobacco, the heaviness of rich perfume and the wetness of the earth itself; Reinhardt muttered under his breath and blew his nose.

  The Bengali beckoned. ‘Come,’ he said.

  The woman reclining on the swing raised an ivory mouth-piece to her lips and inhaled; a hookah murmured; Thomas bowed.

  ‘Salaam walekum,’ he said, echoed by Reinhardt.

  ‘Walekum salaam,’ she said. Her voice was rough, alternating between girlish highs and deep huskiness; a.tiny white diamond perched on a nostril called attention to the perfection of the nose, to the sculptured length that stopped just short of the awkwardness of too-long; white smoke drifted up from full lips, shrouding large, dark, kohl-rimmed eyes. There was a fullness about the face, an almost-plumpness that hinted at soft fleshiness hidden below the dark blue silk of a loose kurta-garara.

  ‘We heard you need officers, Highness,’ Reinhardt said.

  ‘Yes, but how well do you ride?’ said the Begum.

  ‘Well enough,’ Thomas said, smiling.

  ‘Good. Come. The Chiria Fauj marches nearby, I hear. I want to see it.’

  She rose from the swing in one swift movement. The men followed her down the stairs, through the dim halls and corridors, out to the front gate where a company of mounted soldiers waited beside four saddled horses. They rode through the darkness, mud splashing, leaves and branches brushing their faces and arms; occasionally, when the clouds scattered, Thomas saw the Begum, riding far out in front, bent low over the mane of her white horse. He twisted in his saddle and slowed, letting Reinhardt come up to him.

  ‘Crazy,’ he shouted over the rolling beat of hooves. ‘Mad.’

  Reinhardt glanced at Thomas, his lips twisted back in a grimace that revealed uneven teeth, and said nothing. Thomas settled back in his saddle; soon, in the swaying back and forth, in the sounds of night and the hooves and saddlery and water, in the regular bunching and relaxation of the faithful muscles beneath him, Thomas lost track of the passing of time; when they halted near a grove of trees, he had to shake his head and breathe deeply, as if he was awakening from a deep sleep.

  The Begum dismounted, beckoning to Thomas and Reinhardt.

  ‘Put these on,’ she said, throwing a bundle of black cloth at Thomas.

  ‘A burqua,’ Reinhardt said.

  ‘I don’t want to be recognized,’ she said, pulling a voluminous length of cloth over her head; when she had finished every inch of her body was covered except her eyes. She arched an eyebrow at Thomas and Reinhardt. ‘What delicate women you make.’

  Thomas bowed, and Reinhardt muttered something in French; the two Europeans and the Bengali followed the Begum around the grove of trees and into the outskirts of a little town. The streets were crowded, even at that late hour of the night; little boys ran excitedly from one side of the street to the other, waving wooden swords and brightly-coloured bows. The Begum and her companions found a perch on the raised veranda of a halwai’s shop; Thomas looked at the Begum through the fine netting that covered the burqua’s eye-slit, trying to see her eyes. The fragrance of sweetmeats still lingered about the veranda, despite the closed doors, and Thomas was suddenly hungry, the back of his mouth aching for the taste of laddoos, jalebis, balushahis and imurtis; the Begum turned to him abruptly.

  ‘Do you know why we are here?’ she said.

  Thomas shook his head.

  ‘Because the world is old, and this is something new.’

  ‘What?’ Reinhardt said. ‘What?’

  ‘Hush,’ the Begum said, as a steady tramp was heard from the head of the street. The boys scattered to the walls, and the Chiria Fauj marched through, in the numbing rhythm of the long march, faces blank, feet falling together, thrump-thrump-thrump, eyes fixed on the back of the neck of the next man in column, yet looking through the sweating flesh and hair at something maybe a thousand feet away; they marched determinedly, seemingly seeing and hearing nothing.

  ‘Fine,’ Reinhardt whispered under his breath, ‘fine men.’

  Thomas saw the Begum’s head move, saw a quick little stiffening of the neck. The ranks passed by, steady and straight, and finally, preceded by a murmur of voices, a black horse pranced near, nervous, its flanks trembling, bearing a tall figure dressed in a green coat. The hand on the reins was still and very pale in the yellow light of the torches, the chest rose and fell evenly, the shoulders were thrown back and the head tilted up, eyes cast over the heads of the soldiers, over even the clustered houses, up at something lost in the black clouds and the night.

  ‘He rides like a king, this de Boigne,’ Thomas whispered. r />
  The Begum’s head moved again, and then she stumbled back, falling slowly, gracefully; Thomas reached out and caught her, clutching at her around the waist. The moon broke through the clouds then; with the Bengali shouting ‘A lady has fainted,’ Thomas and Reinhardt carried the Begum through the bazaar and out into the darkness of the fields. They stopped near the grove and laid her on the ground, her head cushioned on Thomas’ knee; the Bengali raised the flap away from her face. Her eyes bulged, the breath whistled in and out of her taut nostrils, her lips convulsed. Even in the dim moonlight, Thomas could see that the Begum’s skin was splotched with dark stains that chased each other over her face, like the massive black shapes of distantly-seen fish in deep water. The Bengali began to chant something under his breath; Thomas recognized the long resonant vowels of Sanskrit.

  ‘Has this happened before?’ Thomas asked.

  ‘Never,’ said the Bengali.

  ‘She’s saying something,’ Reinhardt said.

  A globule of saliva bubbled out of a corner of her mouth and slid down her chin.

  ‘The thing,’ she said.

  ‘Begum,’ the Bengali said, gently wiping the moisture from her face.

  ‘The idea. The instrument,’ she said, her jaw moving strangely from side to side. ‘The thing. The idea. Everything will become red. Everything will become red.’ She shuddered again, and tears broke from her eyes and raced down the sides of her face; her body relaxed, her eyes closed. They carried her to the horses, and took her home, riding slowly; the Begum seemed to be sunk in a deep sleep, impervious to the guttural calling of thousands of frogs and the incessant metallic twittering of the crickets.

  The next morning a peacock spread its tail against the red and grey of a monsoon sky, tiptoeing back and forth along a garden wall in the palace. Thomas and Reinhardt sat in a canopied veranda, sipping at cups of lassi. The peacock spun slowly, carefully, arching its neck.

  ‘Thomas,’ Reinhardt said, ‘do you know how old creation really is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A priest in England calculated it. I forget his name. He considered all available scriptural evidence and worked it out —four thousand six hundred and sixty-two years.’

  ‘Wrong,’ the Begum said, and the two men rose to their feet. She smiled, cheerful and relaxed.

  ‘Wrong?’ Reinhardt said.

  ‘The Brahmins say creation is without beginning and without end. Three hundred and sixty of our years make one god-year; a Kali-yuga is one thousand and two hundred god-years, a Dvapar-yuga is two thousand and four hundred god-years, a Treta-yuga is three thousand and six hundred god-years, a Krta-yuga is four thousand and eight hundred god-years; one cycle of these four types of yugas makes one Great Interval; seventy-one Great Intervals make one Period —at the end of each Period the universe is destroyed and re-created —and fourteen Periods make one Kalpa, one Great Cycle; the Great Cycles follow each other, the smaller cycles within, wheels within wheels, creation, construction, chaos, destruction. Many universes exist beside each other, each with its own Brahma; this is the wheel, immense, beyond the grasp of conception.’

  Thomas laughed. ‘And up and down we go, back and round again, again and again.’

  ‘Something like that,’ the Begum said. ‘So. It seems you have served me already. Officer my brigades.’

  ‘As you wish,’ Thomas said, bowing. Reinhardt sat silent, looking at the floor between his knees. ‘Reinhardt?’

  ‘What? Oh, yes. Thank you.’

  And so Thomas and Reinhardt drilled the Begum’s brigades. They spent long days with the motley collection of Europeans and Hindustanis that led Zeb-ul-Nissa’s men, practising the quick controlled frenzy of the move from column into line, the almost-panic of the falling into square, bayonets bristling. In the evenings the officers drank in their bungalows or walked through the gardens of the palace, listening for the far-away laughter that drifted down from the roof. Sometimes the Begum held durbars; the officers would sit in long parallel lines in front of the Begum, offering flatteries and receiving gifts and khilluts; sometimes a dancer would whirl over the cool marble, filling the great hall with the jingling of her anklets, her hands curving and head swaying and eyes flashing; at such times, even Reinhardt was seen to sit with his head low, jaw working, calling often for wine.

  At night, when the other officers visited their mistresses or gathered to tell stories of combat or seductions, Reinhardt was seen to lie spread-eagled on the floor of his bedroom, his hands clutching at the floor; at other times he took long walks through the country-side, striding across fields and fighting through hedges, returning dishevelled and sweaty and wild-eyed. Soon, for his downcast countenance and his silence, for the constant working of his throat and his sudden sighs that rang out even on parade, attracting curious looks from the soldiers, he was awarded the sobriquet of Reinhardt the Sombre. Finally, one evening, Thomas strolled past Reinhardt’s bungalow and observed him squatting in the garden, writing something in the mud and wiping it out, over and over.

  ‘Reinhardt,’ Thomas said.

  Reinhardt jerked up quickly to his feet, then slowly sank back to the ground.

  ‘Reinhardt, what is it?’ Thomas said. ‘What has happened?’

  Reinhardt shook his head.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Do you remember what she said?’

  ‘Who said?’

  ‘Her. The Begum.’

  ‘Said about what?’

  ‘How old it is.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘This, this,’ Reinhardt screamed, waving his hands about his head. ‘All of it. This country. Just this. How many years?’

  ‘Yes, I remember.’

  ‘No, you don’t. I worked it out. Do you know what it is? Look.’ He scratched with a stick in the mud: 4,320,000,000. ‘Look. Look.’ His voice was a whisper, a whimper.

  ‘Listen, so what?’ Thomas said.

  ‘So what? So what?’ Reinhardt said, rubbing his upper lip with a knuckle. ‘It weighs on me like a great stone. It crushes me.’ He wrote again, digging in deep: 4,320,000,000. He sighed. ‘It’s endless.’

  ‘Nothing dies. Surely that is good.’

  Reinhardt turned away, a disgusted look on his face; he strode off, face thrust up at the sky, hands swinging limply near his thighs. Thomas knelt and looked at the numbers, at the long string of zeros; the mud was already beginning to seep back into the scratches, filling them up; he picked up a twig and traced the figures. A flight of pigeons wheeled overhead, their wings snapping and flapping, and a delicate shadow, full of shifting areas of light, like a lacy Lucknow shawl, moved over the ground. Thomas smiled, and picked up a clod of mud; he walked on, pressing it between his finger-tips, feeling its smoothness.

  That evening, the Bengali officer knocked on Thomas’ door.

  ‘The Begum requests the pleasure of your presence at her unworthy abode,’ he said.

  ‘Of course,’ Thomas said. ‘One moment.’ He pulled on his boots and put on a turban. The Bengali maintained a discreet silence as they rode through the darkness. Finally, as they drew up beside the outer walls of the palace, next to a little-used door set deep in the wall, Thomas asked, ‘Why, what is it, Quasim Ali? Why does the Begum need to see me at this hour?’

  ‘Why,’ said the Bengali gravely, ‘I imagine she wishes to discuss the weather.’

  The Begum sat on the roof, in her swing, surrounded by her usual entourage of girls; Thomas sat on a low stool a few feet away, his feet on a cushion. A few minutes passed in the exchange of greetings and the passing to and fro of paan; Thomas peered through the dim lamplight, hearing the sleepy cooing of pigeons from the cote at the other end of the roof and the jingling and rustling of the girls.

  ‘So,’ the Begum said, ‘Thomas Sahib, my little daughters here are curious: Where do these tall pink men come from, and why? Who are they, they ask, these brave warriors who come so far to our Hindustan?’

  ‘Do they ask?’ Thomas said.

/>   ‘They do, indeed,’ the Begum said.

  ‘Then listen, and I will tell you,’ Thomas said. ‘I don’t know about any of the others, but I will tell you about me. Listen…’

  I was born in a place called Tipperary, in Ireland, where it is always cold and the fog drifts over moors. I lived well, and my family ate and drank to satisfaction, but always I felt a little empty, a little absent, as if something was missing; always, I thought of places I could go where everything would be new, and when I thought like this, for a while, that feeling would vanish; so one day, when I was very young, maybe ten or eleven or twelve, I walked away from my home and made my way to the coast and became a ship’s boy, a cook’s helper, and in time, a sailor.

  I will tell you about how a gun made me a sailor. At the time I was a general-purpose scullion and helper in the gallery of an English two-masted brigantine named Constant, sailing in the waters north of Calais on blockade. One winter morning we engaged the French sloop Ella when she caught us unawares by coming out of a heavy bank of fog to the west. She had the advantage of us from the very start. As we came around slowly into the wind, with the beat to quarters sounding, we could see that she would pass us astern, raking us from head to stern without a shot fired in return.

  That is the thing about a naval engagement: you can see it coming. I was carrying cartridges from the magazine up to the deck, laying them by the number two gun, and each time I went down and then up it was awful how she drew slowly closer, beautiful with the sails against the dark grey of the fog and the wake rising clean and white behind her. All this time there was not a word said, just the creaking of the timbers and the slow rise and fall of the deck under our feet, and then the side of the French ship was hidden by smoke and suddenly I was lying flat on my back wondering at the terrible, torn state of the sails above me.