Flood of Fire (10 page)

His eyes fell on the yellowing rags that lay around his bed and he shuddered. In light of what he knew now, they looked unspeakably vile, veritable founts of sin and contagion. He cast his hands around him until they fell on the rag he had brought into his bed, and he hurled it away with a shudder of loathing. Then he picked up the pamphlet and read it through one more time, from beginning to end.

Over the next few days Zachary wore the pages of
Onania
almost to shreds, reading the pamphlet over and again. The parts that made the most powerful impression on him were the passages on disease: every perusal deepened his apprehensions about the infections that were simmering inside his body.

Until this time he had been under the impression that the clap was the revenge of the pox-parlour and could not be caught without actually thrusting your cargo through a hatch, no matter whether fore or aft: that merely winching up your undertackle with your own maulers could produce the same result had never entered his mind.

On the
Ibis
he had seen the consequences of the clap on other sailors: he had listened to pox-ridden men screaming in pain as
they tried to tap their kegs; he had viewed, with horror-struck curiosity, the fruit that blossomed on diseased beanpoles – the clumps of welts and boils, the dribbles of pus. He had also heard stories about how the treatment – with applications of mercury and even leeches – was just as painful as the disease. To spike one's cannon forever seemed better than to take that cure.

It had never occurred to him that his night-time trysts with Paulette might be leading in this direction. He had thought that his bullet-pouch was no different from his bladder or his bowels in that it needed an occasional emptying. He had even heard it said that coughing up your cocksnot from time to time was as much a necessity as blowing your nose. Certainly no one who had ever slept in a fo'c'sle could fail to notice the fusillades that shook every hammock from time to time. More than once had he been bumped in the nose because of an overly energetic bout of musketry in the hammock above. Just as he himself was sometimes shouted at, he'd learnt to shout: ‘Will you stop polishing your pistol up there? Take your shot and be done with it.'

But he remembered now, with a sinking in his heart, that it was always the most trigger-happy gunmen who ended up with the clap. He himself had never been of that number – at least not until he fell under the sway of Paulette's phantom. Now, as he battled the temptation to sink into her arms again, the very sound of the letter ‘P' became unbearable to him – as did words like ‘gullet' and ‘mullet' and everything that rhymed with ‘Paulette'.

The worst part of it was that each day brought with it worrying signs of the one condition he thought he had been spared – pria-pism. It was a bitter irony that this disease had manifested itself only after he had forsworn its cause; no less was it an irony that the longer he abstained the more vigorously it asserted itself. On some nights it was as if his spuds were cooking in a kettle: to keep the lid on, with the pressure building up below, took a jaw-gritting effort, but he persisted, for to give in would be to capitulate, to acknowledge that he was indeed a congenital tug-mutton.

During the day he managed to keep the symptoms at bay by applying himself strenuously to his work. But even then, scarcely an hour passed during which his tackle did not stir in its stowage. The shape of a cloud would conjure up an image of a breast or a
hip, and before he knew it his drawers would puff up like a spanker in a breeze. The sight of a boatwoman on the river, rowing a sampan or a paunchway, could bring on a situation in which he had to race off to find an apron to drape around his middle. One day, a glimpse of a goat, lazily grazing in the distance, evoked the curve of a woman's thigh – and before he knew it his hawser was trying to bore a hawse-hole through the flap of his breeches.

That night he wept to think that an animal – a goat! – had produced such an effect on him: how much lower was it possible to fall?

When the khidmatgars brought him trays he would stare morosely at them, wondering whether they too had ever visited the Onanian isles. He would examine their faces for signs of the symptoms listed in the pamphlet: pimples, inflammations, rapid blinking, dark patches around the eyes and an unnatural pallor. On none of them were the signs so prominently visible as they were on himself. They had probably married early, he guessed, and would thus never have needed to resort to the solitary vice.

But even these inoffensive reflections were fraught with danger. One thought would lead to another and visions of the khidmatgars' intimacies with their wives would flash through his head. The hairy hand that bore the tray would evoke the rounded shape of a breast; a calloused knuckle, on the fingers that gifted him a bowl of dumbpoke, would turn into a dark, swollen nipple – and all of a sudden his jib-boom would be a-taunt in his drawers and he would have to push his chair deeper under the table.

His condition being what it was, nothing was more terrifying to Zachary than the prospect of accidentally encountering Mrs Burnham. For this reason he spent all his time on the budgerow, hardly ever setting foot on shore. But one morning, in despair, he decided that confinement was making his condition worse and he forced himself to go for a walk.

As he marched along the riverbank, his head felt lighter than it had in many days. The twitching in his groin also began to abate – but still, as a precaution, he kept his eyes rigidly fixed on the ground. But his confidence grew as he walked and he began to look around more freely. And to his surprise, many sights that would have hoisted his mizzen just the day before – the bulge of
a breast under a sari; a woman's ankle, twinkling down the street – aroused not the faintest flutter.

As his assurance increased he let his eyes wander where they wished, allowing them to dwell, promiscuously, on voluptuous clouds and suggestively heaving trees. Finding no cause for concern he even ventured to pronounce the proscribed words: mullet, gullet and so on until he arrived finally at a full-throated ‘Paulette!' – and still his foredeck remained perfectly ship-shape, with his tackle tightly snugged down.

He stopped and drew a breath that coursed euphorically through his body: it was as if he had been granted a reprieve, a cure! Turning around, he strolled joyfully back to the budgerow, and there, as if to confirm his exculpation, he found a visitor waiting.

It was Mr Doughty, bearing an invitation to the Harbourmaster's Dance, a fancy-dress ball intended to raise money for the Mariners' Mission in Calcutta: it was the custom to give away a few tickets to indigent but deserving young sailors.

Zachary understood that Mr Doughty had gone to some trouble to procure a ticket for him and thanked him profusely. ‘But the trouble is, Mr Doughty, I don't have a costume.'

But Mr Doughty had thought of this too. ‘Oh, don't you worry about that, my boy. I've got one for you – same thing I'll be wearing. Why don't you come over early and eat dinner with us that day? I'll get you all kitted out – won't cost a thing and you'll enjoy yourself, I promise.'

Three

E
very year at the start of winter, around the time that the festival of Naga Panchami was celebrated, a mela was held at the akhara where Kesri went to train. Along with all the usual fairground attractions, a special raised ring was prepared and wrestlers came from afield to test and prove themselves.

The mela lasted several days and attracted a great number of sepoys, jawans and other military men; thousands of them would converge on the shrine, along with hordes of naked Naga sadhus who came there from distant points in the Indian subcontinent. The festival was considered particularly auspicious for new recruits so it was arranged that Kesri's brother, Bhim, would wait till it was over before leaving for Delhi with his cousin.

That year Kesri was in the open competition for the first time and much was expected of him. But his brother's imminent departure, and the prospect of his indefinite detainment in the village, had so demoralized Kesri that he lost quite early, dashing the hopes of his guruji. This added to his misery and the next day he was scarcely able to drag himself out of bed. For once his father took pity on him and let him off from going to the fields.

Since Bhim was soon to depart for Delhi, this became an occasion for the family to gather in the angaan in front of their dwelling. Their mother sent out snacks, sweetmeats and sharbat while everyone lounged on charpoys in the shade of the mango tree.

Around mid-morning, as they were savouring the treats, a horse-cart was spotted in the distance, wheeling up the path that led to their straw-thatched home. Soon enough it became clear that the men in the carts were strangers. The food was swept away and the girls were sent inside. Ram Singh went to greet the visitors himself, with Kesri and Bhim on either side.

The first man to step out of the cart was of impressive, even intimidating appearance. His chest was as deep as a battle-drum and his hands were big enough to cover a brass thali. His upturned moustache glistened with wax, and his skin, which was the colour of ripening wheat, was burnished to a glow with mustard oil. Everything about his appearance and his manner – the taut mound of his belly, the heavy gold rings that dangled from his ears, the richly embroidered shawl around his shoulders – spoke of expensive tastes and voracious appetites. He gave his name as Bhyro Singh and said his village was near the town of Ghazipur, some sixty miles to the west of Nayanpur.

This put Ram Singh on his guard. The people of the area around Ghazipur were known to have close links with the British because many of them were employed by the Company's opium factory. But Bhyro Singh did not look like a factory worker. Even though he was not in uniform, Ram Singh sensed that he belonged to the East India Company's army. Nor was he mistaken: the visitor soon explained that he was a havildar in the ist battalion of the 25th Regiment of the Bengal Native Infantry – the famous ‘Pacheesi'. The three men who were with him were sepoys from his own battalion; they were on their way to join their paltan and had decided to stop at the Naga sadhus' mela before proceeding to the regimental base at Barrackpore, near Calcutta. He had come, he said, to discuss a matter of some importance.

It turned out that Bhyro Singh was a recruiter who had heard of Kesri's prowess as a wrestler; he had come in the hope of persuading him to join the East India Company's army. When Ram Singh said that Kesri was not available for recruitment Bhyro Singh was taken aback; he was even more surprised when he learnt that his brother, Bhim, was soon to leave for Delhi to join the Mughal Badshah's army.

But why, Ram Singhji? Bhyro Singh protested. The boy is young and you are his father. You should explain to him that Delhi is not what it used to be; a soldier who wants to rise in the world needs to go to the East India Company's capital – Calcutta. There is no army in Hindustan that can match the terms offered by the British.

How so?

This prompted Bhyro Singh to launch into a detailed listing of the advantages of the Bengal Native Infantry: while the basic pay might not be higher than in other armies – just six rupees a month – what counted was that the money was always delivered in full and on time. Besides, there were regular increments, with rank: a naik received a basic pay of eight rupees, a havildar ten, a jamadar fifteen, and a subedar thirty. Best of all, the salary was always paid on schedule: never once, in all his years with the Company, had Bhyro Singh known it to be delayed.

Tell me, Ram Singhji, of which other army in Hindustan can it be said that their soldiers are paid regularly? You know as well as I do that our rajas and nawabs purposely keep their salaries in arrears so they won't desert. Such things are unheard of in the East India Company's army.

And the battas!

The Company's allowances were more generous, said Bhyro Singh, than those of any other army: they added up to almost as much again as the basic pay. There was a special batta for marching and another for campaign rations; still another for uniforms. As for booty taken in battle, the splitting of the spoils was always scrupulously fair. Why, after a major battle in Mysore, the English general had kept only half the loot for himself! The rest was divided fairly amongst the various ranks of officers and sepoys.

But that was still not the best of it, said the havildar. The Company Bahadur was the only employer in all of Hindustan that looked after its men even after they had left service. When they retired they were handed something called a ‘pension' – a salary, of at least three rupees a month, that was paid to them for the rest of their lives. On top of that they could obtain land grants if they wanted. If wounded, they were provided with free medical care whenever they needed it.

Do you know of any employer in Hindustan that offers all this, Ram Singhji? Tell me, truthfully.

Ram Singh's eyes widened but he parried by asking: What about accommodation? In Delhi they give their soldiers quarters to live. Does the Company do the same?