The Splendor Of Silence (16 page)

"Tell me," he says again. Gently.

Marianne 's eyes fill with tears. She shrugs the thick straps of her haversack from her shoulders and pulls it onto her lap. From inside, she draws out a whittled teakwood pipe and a dried plantain leaf full of a powdered substance, much like tea leaves. She stuffs the pipe, sets it smoking with the lit end of her cigarette, and inhales. As the opium races through her lungs, into her veins, it dulls the sharp edges of fear on her face. Her blue eyes, washed out and overexposed to the Burma sun, glaze over. The opium smacks its calmness into her with even just that one draw, for Marianne, like Sam and Ken, is hungry, is tired, is weak from the rain and the blinding heat. She offers the pipe to Ken. Then to Sam. And they both clasp it gratefully, even Sam, despite his best intentions--and he does intend to go into the village, come what may--wants the blessed relief of a few hours without worry.

A grinning idiocy comes over Sam. His mouth widens and his ears seem to grow funnel-like on either side of his head. He can hear every drip of water in the hush of the forest.

"Have you?" he asks, feeling his lips stretch over his teeth.

Marianne lifts a slow gaze to his and then shifts on her buttocks to face Ken.

"Once," Ken says. "I've been in love only once, Sam." He had asked Sam this very question, once, so many days ago, and it is only now Sam thinks to ask him back. But Sam has mulled over this word, this love, not wanting to think of the other word, death, in relation to his missing brother, Mike.

"Who ," Sam begins and then pauses to consider the pictures of emotion Ken displays so violently across his youthful face. The effect of the opium takes away all pretense of civility Ken might otherwise have shown--his mouth twists, he heaves from his stomach, his fists clench into bloodless stumps at the ends of his wrists. Sam almost shudders at this sudden and unexpected ugliness. Ken is the ideal of an all-American boy--thinly muscled, lean jawed, clean shaven, with an easy manner and a beguiling, faultless smile. But some passion lurks beneath that surface, pulled out by Sam's innocuous question.

"What is her name?" Sam asks, more out of curiosity than anything else. He watches Ken with care, leaning forward. Marianne does not see any of this, for she is humming a tune and examining her fingernails with the studied attention of the very inebriated.

Ken turns from the bright scrutiny of Sam's blue eyes and rests his chin against the tree trunk behind him. His voice comes out sour. "What do names matter? It was a pretty enough one. Rosalie."

Chapter
Eight.

One hard-pressed Resident, Sir Berland Glancey, had travelled hundreds of miles to talk to one of the Princes about a problem. He was very put out to be told that his Highness could not be disturbed. He protested that he had come a long way and eventually the Maharajah appeared. "Ah, Sir Bertrand," he said in a state of excitement, "we are having a vet), urgent Cabinet meeting."

The Resident, appreciating this sort of priority, was suitably impressed. "Yes," went on the Maharajah. "There is a most interesting item on the agenda; we have three canaries and we are trying to decide which one sings best."

--Ann Morrow, The Maharajas of India, 1998

*

The same sun that blistered Rudrakot flamed harsh and white over the Civil Lines and the cantonment of Meerut, about three hundred miles east. Northeast of the city was a large, wholly tented compound that simmered along with Meerut. This was a military compound, so the tents, though white, blazed with the care of scrubbing from a hundred servants; the mud paths between the tents were swept and blighted of vegetation, stones lined the paths, dabbed with red, white, and green paint, liquid in the heat.

Inside the tents, it was as though India had stepped back three hundred years into the traveling tents and entourages of the great Mughal kings. Oils of present, past, and future kings (or in this case, princes) of the princely kingdoms in India adorned the walls. Canvas tarpaulin mats ha
d b
een laid on the ground, these then covered with jute mats, and these further clad with Persian carpets in grasshopper greens, coconut browns, or chameleon reds, depending upon the whimsy of the prince. Unlike the divans and bolsters and low beds of the Mughal kings, furniture of every modern and ancient English kind abounded-- secretaires and writing desks, chairs and tables, four-poster beds, a lot of which would have been not just welcomed in the best of British homes, but desperately vied for. It was here, so far away from Rudrakot, that Jai had spent many months. This was the headquarters of the Imperial Cadet Corps, a concoction of Lord Curzon's brain. Curzon, viceroy of India at the turn of the century, had sought to birth a military school in India for the sons and male members of the Indian elite, and by that he naturally meant the princes--the natural nobles of the country.

In the quiet dull of that afternoon in May, Jai lounged in a wooden armchair with curved legs and blue damask upholstery. Blue was the predominant color in the tent. The sheets on his bed, placed on a raised platform, were of a light blue silk; the coverlet was a darker blue-and-puce brocade; the carpets were a rare Persian white, with a blue-and-gold weave in the pattern. All the furniture was in gleaming wood, mahogany and a dark, rich walnut--the Queen Anne bookcase with its marquetry inlay and an opalescent oyster veneer; the table at which he wrote his letters and corrected his notes; the sofa and armchair in an eighteenth-century Chinese style. Jai had his feet propped on an occasional table and a blank writing pad rested on his knees.

A cool breeze swirled around the tent, repelling the immense heat of the sun, as a rectangular punkah swung back and forth, pulled by rope by a boy seated outside. This was the time for a siesta, but Jai, restless as ever, had never yet closed his eyes in the afternoon unless it was on a day when he was ill with a fever.

He was a tall man, leanly muscled from all his years in the saddle. Horses were Jai's first love. There was no time in his life when he could not remember the scent of a stable, the nicker of pleasure when one of his horses saw him approaching, the sigh when he ran his hand along their corded and muscular necks. Because he was a prince, the heir to Rudrakot, Raja Bhimsen, Jai's father, had frowned on his sleeping in the stables at night, but no other power on earth had kept him from his horses for every waking moment. Riding horses almost from the day he could walk--first his Shetland ponies
,
and then the waters--had burned Jai's skin to a dark ochre. His cheeks were pitted by a childhood bout of smallpox, which he had fought and vanquished, but which had left its mark upon him. He had a strong face, cut in sharp angles; a slanting, clean-shaven jaw; and a trimmed, thin mustache, more a darkening above his well-formed lips than a mustache.

He moved his right hand and dipped the pen into the inkwell by his side, then, holding the nib against the rim of the glass, drained the excess ink. When he put the pen to paper and began drawing in broad strokes, the mane, forelock, glittering eyes, and flared nostrils of his favorite horse, Fitzgerald, took shape quickly. Jai shaded in the area on Fitzgerald's forehead, and left a tiny star of white unmarked. Then he tore the paper from the pad and let it fly loose into the tent, where it wavered in the breeze from the punkah before settling on the floor. His hand hovered again over the paper, his pen dropped blotches of ink upon its unmarred surface, but he could not sketch again.

Jai sighed and put down the pen and the pad. Reluctantly, he picked up Captain Cameron's carefully worded note. I am afraid, my dear Jai, Cameron had written, that the young maharaja of Kishorenagar has been how shall I put this misbehaving. Would you talk with him, old chap? Might be better coming from you. He looks up to you, you know.

Such were the burdens of responsibility. When Jai had first joined the ICC, he had been a student here, schooled in the best traditions that the corps could offer, given first his viceroy's commission into the Indian army, then, with a lot of trouble and effort, his king's commission. The ICC had only twenty students at any given time. The students were restricted to the nobility and the royalty in India, and even so, a student had to be nominated by at least two or three prominent men, his lineage researched, his bloodlines tested. There was no question of an open examination, no question of anything as common as merit to decide the applicant's fitness in joining the ICC. With all these restrictions, then, there were never very many students here, and so no necessity for a staff of more than three officers--a British commandant, a British adjutant, and a native adjutant. It was the last of these three that Jai had been invited to be for this term in the ICC. As a military school, the ICC was to teach as many subjects as possible, but very soon, arithmetic and algebra gave way to history (of England), English literature, dictation, and some Greek and Latin.

The native adjutant was not considered qualified to instruct in any o
f t
hese subjects, naturally, so Jai's job was to drill the cadets every morning and to teach them to ride properly and like gentlemen. It was a dubious honor at best, Jai thought, gathering the papers Cameron had sent to him along with the note. Procrastinating again, he picked up the silver bell on the table and rang it. Even before its soft tinkles had faded into the dull gloom of his tent, the flap lifted, letting in a lean shaft of the outside light. "Higoor ?" the servant said.

"Get me a lime soda. Make sure it's cold. Lots of ice."

Ji huzoor," the servant said, bowing and retreating, allowing the coolness to return.

The minutes passed, interminably, it seemed to Jai, who was used to the fleet-footed servants at his palace in Rudrakot. Here, he knew, the servant had to trek across the heated earth to the mess tent, place the order for a lime soda, put the glass on a tray, and bring it back. At Rudrakot the distances to the kitchens were surely as long, Jai thought irritably, still waiting. If only he could have brought his servants, but the rules at the ICC allowed only three ponies (maximum) to be brought for the drills and the polo fields, not servants. It was a wise precaution, for otherwise the cadets would arrive with full entourages--uncles, cousins, and servants--all deemed an absolute necessity, given masking titles of secretaries and aides-de-camp. An entourage, then, was not encouraged, but one diwan could come along, and all the princes had brought with them at least one advisor.

Knowing he could delay his reading no longer, Jai picked up the first letter from the maharaja of Kishorenagar to a young cadet at the ICC, the son of a noble from another princely kingdom. He had to force himself to read the letter. This was a love letter, no, perhaps not a love letter but a letter of seduction. The young maharaja--he was only seventeen--eulogized the advantages of male friendships, suggested that the women in the Tenanas were a necessity for the continuation of the lineage, but it was among men, hard-riding, hard-drinking and unsentimental men that true amity could be found. Kishorenagar said that when the officers of the ICC were abed, every night at midnight, a group of them met in his tent to watch the nautch girls brought in from the bazaars at Meerut, and once the girls left, there were still entertainments for the rest of the night. Would this cadet join them? If he did now--and this was implied more than written outright--there was an opening after they all graduated from the ICC
,
at Kishorenagar for a fauj bakshi, a military commander of the infantry.

The tent flap lifted and the servant came in. He meticulously wiped his bare feet on the mat at the entrance and then deposited the tray with Jai's lime soda on the table next to his armchair. The glass was covered with a fine net in silk thread weighted at the corners by silver beads.

Jai nodded, and when the servant left, he drank half the glass in one big gulp, the tart and sweet taste singing in his mouth, the coldness of the ice soothing the fever within. After half an hour of reading the other letters, some from the maharaja of Kishorenagar to other cadets, some from other members of that group, Jai rang the bell again.

When the servant appeared, he said, "Bring the maharaja of Kishorenagar here."

The servant balked, though not visibly, just enough to show resistance. His head bowed but he did not back out of the tent at once. He lifted his gaze to Jai's feet, and he brought his palms together in a salutation.

"The Sun God rides high in the sky, hufoor," he said softly.

"Now, Ramlal," Jai said. "If he is asleep, he must be wakened. I want him here in fifteen minutes."

When the servant had gone, Jai drank the last of the now-warm lime soda and put down the glass with shaking hands. Giving orders came naturally to him, for he was born to be the heir of Rudrakot, and yet Kishorenagar was no minor princely state. The population of Kishorenagar was three times that of Rudrakot, the land acreage at least twice, even including all the waste desert land that Jai ruled over. But more than these obvious markers of supremacy, the British government of India had awarded Kishorenagar an eighteen-gun salute at all official functions, and Rudrakot, because it was tiny and relatively poor, had only a thirteen-gun salute. The young maharaja of Kishorenagar then, although only seventeen, would expect, and get, a proper amount of respect from Jai. Under any other circumstances.

The tent flap lifted again, and this time Jai had to put up a hand to shade his eyes from the glare. Kishorenagar stood there, mutinous, rubbing sleep out of his face. He was not a handsome boy; he had a bulbous nose, thick eyebrows that met in the middle, a small and growing belly under the pristine white cotton of his kurta. When he spoke, it was with the clipped English accent he had acquired from having spent the last fiv
e y
ears in London in pursuit of ... generally nothing. "I can hardly believe the servant's message. You com-manded me here?"