Hillstation (27 page)

‘No, I think that would be excessive,' muttered Father to one of my sisters who was holding a can of petroleum spirits and a box of matches.

‘But he has divided young from old,' she said. ‘High from low and, by his own confession, has invoked the demons of calumny and chaos. What greater crime could there be? And thus,' she glared at me, rattling the matches, ‘what better punishment?'

Whether or not he might have been persuaded I never discovered, since I was hoisted abruptly onto various young shoulders, from where I could see Sharon, likewise aloft, parading elegantly around the remains of the burning car. I could also see, from my new vantage point, that the barricade, unattended by its distracted owners, was now very much on fire.

‘The barricade!' I shouted.

‘The barricade!' shouted some of the young men. ‘To the barricade!'

‘No, no,' I said. ‘It's on fire.'

At which point, calls of ‘fire fire' spread through the crowd very much, in fact, like fire itself. The response was fairly swift as the stall-holders ran to save their merchandise, though the flames were already hot enough in places to beat them back. Malek Bister, meanwhile, stood to one side laughing.

‘So now we know,' he jeered. ‘how detached you Brahmins are when your stalls catch light.' His smile vanished, however, when the mango-seller pushed his cart to safety, in spite of the fact that it was already burning, straight into the hall porch.

‘You idiot,' shouted Malek, running towards him. ‘Do you want the only cultural institution of any repute in this bloody village to go up in smoke?'

The mango-seller climbed out from under his cart. ‘Mangos!' he coughed, beating the flames with his hat. ‘Lovely mangos.'

‘Stop that!' shouted Malek, snatching the hat. ‘Don't you know anything about fires? Beating only enrages them further. Look at it.' The door had already begun to plume with yellow snakes of flame. ‘Get me a fire extinguisher!'

Several extinguishers clattered around Malek's feet along with some rather smug smiles. Malek picked one up, pulled the pin, pressed the button, scowled and threw it into the flames. He tried another. ‘Bloody things,' he said. ‘Give me that.' He seized the mango-sellers hat and began to flap at the burning door. ‘Will nobody help me?' he cried.

‘Suddenly it isn't so funny,' said Father, grimly.

‘Oh, you've come to gloat, have you?' snarled Malek.

‘If it means the end of that ridiculous building, I think I can be forgiven a moment of quiet satisfaction.'

‘I built this for the glory of Pushkara,' said Malek, coughing.

‘You built it for your own.'

‘And why not?' said Malek, stamping on embers. ‘What's wrong with a little glory for me?'

‘Because your glory,' said Father, angry enough to take a swipe at Malek with his wig, ‘is the village in uproar, your hall on fire, my son completely mad and English women dancing on cars.'

‘He was mad anyway,' said Malek, flailing back with the mango-seller's hat.

‘He was stupid,' admitted Father. ‘But it was your son that made him mad.'

‘My son?' said Malek as the mango-seller dodged around him, trying to get his hat back. ‘I told him to keep away from you lot, with your gods and goddesses and metaphysical codswallop. Of what bloody use is transcendental consciousness for selling scooters? Can you repair an engine with a philosophical axiom or cook samosas with a semantic paradox?'

The porch timbers were beginning to creak, roasted specks of ash spitting down over their heads.

‘It was your son,' shouted Father, ‘who infected my son's head with commerce, calumny and carnal predilections.'

‘My son was a dutiful boy getting ready to take over his father's business,' said Malek. ‘Now what is he?'

‘I don't know,' sobbed a lady's voice, ‘but it doesn't look good.'

It was then that I noticed, not for the first time in recent days, that everything around us had become eerily quiet. Cindy stood at the edge of the crowd, knees bruised, arms bloody, her rich hair a tangled mat across her forehead. She'd lost her shoes and torn her dress.

Malek and Father stared at her. Hendrix hobbled over. ‘Take your time,' he said.

She gathered enough breath to say, ‘It's Pol. He fell.'

‘What do you mean, “fell”?' said Malek. ‘Fell over? Fell off? Fell under? What are we talking about?'

‘I don't know,' said Cindy. ‘Perhaps he didn't.'

‘Then if he didn't, there is no cause to fuss, is there?' said Malek, stepping briskly away from a shower of burning wood.

Cindy shook her head. ‘He was on the rock. The big rock. The ah…'

‘The Shiva Rock?' I said.

‘Yes,' said Cindy. ‘He climbed right to the top, saying all sorts of stuff about… I don't know, the gods and not being grateful. We told him to come down. But he just laughed, you know like people do when they don't care anymore. And I was saying, like, “Pol, Pol, please, my little peanut, come down from there, I'm sorry, and I love you.” And that's when…' She choked a little. ‘He fell or… he jumped, I don't know.'

‘I'm guessing that's serious,' said Hendrix.

‘The rock is very high,' I said. ‘And there is nothing between the top of it and the ground below.'

‘What, is he hurt?' said Malek. ‘Is he… is he… ?'

‘Dead?' I finished the question for him.

‘I don't know,' she sobbed. ‘But he's so broken.'

I pictured Pol, who could prance over rocks nimble as a goat, gazing down to the hard earth from which he had always sought to escape. Did he step? Or did he slip? And, either way, was he, in that moment, just before the unforgiving stone crushed the life out of him, neither earth nor sky but a free thing falling? Or was he thinking, ‘oops'?

Cindy clutched at my arm. ‘Help him,' she pleaded. ‘You're his only friend.'

But what sort of a friend, I wondered as I turned once more to the dusty track. For if Pol were dead, whose fault was it but mine?

12

I had seen blood before,
obviously, in vials, cuts, and the occasional stool sample. But never so much, nor disgorged so wantonly over rock. Pol was lodged between two boulders, one arm sporting an additional elbow, his leg twisted into hideous shapes. Blood flowed from his scalp, the stones beneath him spattered like a paan-seller's shoes.

Our School Master had often reminded us that sacred places demanded special duties. ‘It is not me that you are messing with,' he'd remark, hurling the board rubber at some recalcitrant wretch who'd stuck his bogies under the desk, ‘but the gods. You think when you're all grown up you'll be able to do as you please. But you're wrong. Getting older just means the board rubbers get bigger. In fact the whole world is one big board rubber that slaps you about the head, day after day, year after year, for what? Why do you think everyone's so miserable? Because they are being punished. Because they spend their whole lives trying to sneak bogies under their desks. You think I'm tough? Hah! If you annoy me, all you get is a kick up the arse and a clip round the ear. If you so much as irritate them, you'll develop untreatable haemorrhoids and headaches, though it probably amounts to much the same in the end.'

‘Has he moved?' said Cindy who had run ahead of me, turning every so often to usher me onwards.

Martina shook her head. If Pol had been felled by a board rubber of his own making, so Martina's quick, dry glance in my direction felled me no less brutally.

‘Oh my sweet poppadom,' sobbed Cindy. ‘Forgive me, please.'

‘No, no,' I gasped. ‘Don't touch him. Let me see.'

I knelt beside Pol as best I could, planting my feet between rocks, the blood beneath him like a spreading shade. His wrist was cold and limp but, after an agonising wait during which I could feel only the pumping of my own heart, there it was: a pulse.

‘He's alive,' I said.

‘Pol!' whispered Cindy.

‘Well, he can't stay here,' said Martina. ‘And I don't suppose you've got Air Ambulance.'

‘We must get him to the clinic,' I said. ‘Cindy, would you please run back to the village? If you don't know where the clinic is, ask someone. In there you will find my brother. He is a Doctor and has been to England. Tell him that Pol Bister is badly injured, and to prepare whatever remedies may keep alight the flame of life in the shattered body of our gentle friend.'

‘I'm not leaving him,' said Cindy. ‘What if he dies, up here, all alone?'

‘From the moment he met you,' I said, ‘he forgot what it is to be lonely. Now, I think you are the fleetest of foot while Martina, I suspect, is the strongest. Yes?'

Cindy nodded.

‘And get some people up here to help us,' added Martina.

Cindy blew Pol a kiss and turned back towards the village.

Pol's position was awkward, with a large boulder pinning his leg. If we tried to drag him clear, I thought, we'd probably tear him in half. I remembered him just a few weeks ago, skipping among these very hills, wild, free and slightly frantic, laughing at the sky. The sight of him now stung my eyes.

‘He'll be alright,' said Martina softly.

‘Is this something you know?'

‘It's just something to say,' she shrugged, pulling her skirt up and kneeling beside me. ‘In England if you don't know what to say, you say anything. It doesn't matter. Okay, we need to shift this rock.'

I put my weight to it and pushed until I thought my head would burst.

‘Why don't we do it together?' said Martina after I'd collapsed panting. ‘I'll count and then we push.'

‘Alright,' I said bracing myself.

‘One, two, three.' She pushed for a moment then looked at me. ‘What's the problem?' she said.

‘I'm sorry, I don't know what you're counting, nor indeed how many of whatever it is you are counting there might be.'

‘Okay,' she said, wiping a smear of dust across her forehead. ‘I should have said I'll count to three. We push on four.'

‘But you do not count the fourth?'

‘No. That's right. The fourth is the push.'

‘Alright, I think I understand.'

‘One, two, three…'

With a prodigious effort we managed to edge the rock forward a couple of inches. But it slipped back when I leaned on it to catch my breath. Pol moaned pitifully.

‘Don't worry, Pol,' I murmured, ‘you'll be alright.'

Martina looked at me. ‘You're catching on,' she said. ‘Okay, we need to clear some of this stuff from the front. I think that's where it's getting stuck.'

She leaned down, pulling at twigs and stones, while I began to claw at the ground with a vehemence that would leave her in no doubt as to my alacrity in the removal of debris.

‘Maybe don't throw up so much dust?' she said.

‘I'm sorry,' I said, coughing.

‘You're having a go,' she said. ‘That's the main thing.'

‘But surely the outcome of one's go is the main thing,' I said, sitting back on my haunches. ‘Without the outcome, “go” can hardly be described as bearing the attributes of a measurable entity, which is to say a definable “thing” as such.'

‘Well, let's just shift some of this crap without chucking too much of it in the air. Okay?'

Which we did.

‘Alright,' she said after a few minutes. ‘Let's see how we're doing.' She pressed her shoulder to the rock. It wobbled.

‘Nearly there,' she said.

We scraped some more.

‘Okay,' she said, wiping her hands on her thighs. ‘This is it.'

We positioned ourselves as before. She counted to three. And then we pushed until our limbs cried, our breath stung, and the sweat trickled into our eyes. The rock shuddered and began to topple, stones cracking under its abominable weight. Then it tipped forward, teetering for a moment before crashing down the slope, throwing rocks and dust and pieces of torn tree behind it, resting finally somewhere in the silence of the valley floor.

‘Extremely good counting, if I may say so,' I said.

‘You may,' she smiled.

I could now see Pol's other leg, ugly and twisted, the trouser torn, blood oozing through its rent fabric from a gaping wound in his thigh.

‘How long before help gets here?' said Martina.

‘That is difficult to say. Fetching an injured villager, even a low-born, demands proper supervision. Seniority will be of paramount importance, meaning the frail and infirm, some of whom take many hours just to reach the bathroom. The younger men, meanwhile, would not be so impolite as to run ahead. In any case, by the time they've settled the various protocols it may very well be time for tea.'

‘It's down to us then,' said Martina. ‘I'll take his legs, you take his arms. It won't be easy, but I don't suppose we've got much choice.'

‘Few things worth doing are easy,' I said.

‘Is that why you make everything so difficult?'

To which I had no answer.

Though slim-boned and gangly, Pol was heavier than I expected. Martina managed to get her hands under his thighs leaving me the upper torso. His head lolled worryingly but at least he was still breathing which was more than I could say for myself after only a few steps. The ground was treacherous beneath my feet, either tripping me up or slithering wickedly away. The further we got, the harder it was to grip Pol's sodden shirt. I noticed that Martina's arms and dress were also streaked with blood but she didn't seem to mind. We stopped only when she needed to shake a stone from her shoe.

‘That wasn't your sisters on fire, was it?' she said, slipping it back on.

‘How did you know?'

‘I didn't think they'd do it.'

‘But they were so determined,' I said as we lifted Pol again. ‘And they'd gone to all sorts of trouble, with matches, old commodes and petroleum spirits.'

‘Yeah, but when it comes to it, people don't necessarily do what they think they'll do. Sometimes you realise what you thought was important doesn't matter that much.'

‘I thought it mattered to them.'

‘A bunch of third rate tarts from England dancing in their knickers? How's that going to matter to anyone?'

‘You are not a third rate tart,' I protested.

‘Thanks,' she said.

‘I have not met many tarts, but of this I am sure: you are not just first rate, you are without equal. I would go so far as to say,' I said smiling, ‘that you are peerless among tarts. The Queen of Tarts. In fact…'

‘Yeah, alright,' she said. ‘You've made your point.'

We trudged on in silence. From time to time Pol groaned.

‘It is an apposite figure of speech,' I said after a while. ‘And I am glad to have learned it only today from the man with a cravat. For, like a tart, your dry exterior conceals a soft bed of warm fruit. And, as the word suggests, one's tongue recoils slightly at its excess before diving helplessly for more. Indeed, though I can hardly breathe for the weight of my broken friend, my helpless eyes are drawn to the sweet confection of your form again and again.'

‘Just keep walking,' she growled.

When we reached the last slope that tumbled towards the flat meadows at the end of the track, she stopped suddenly. ‘What man with a cravat?' she said.

‘He was in the village,' I said, ‘accompanied by others. A maroon cravat. It might have been his car that was on fire.'

‘I said they'd find us. Jesus Christ.' We resumed our walk. ‘Mike's an idiot. So who burnt the car? How did that happen?'

‘I think he dropped his cigar on a trail of petroleum spirits left by my sisters. I'm told it went up very quickly. Then Sharon danced on top of it.'

‘Yeah, she would.'

‘You must one day explain to me the curious English practice of dancing on cars,' I said. But I was in pain now. ‘Martina, we have to stop. Please. I am losing my grip.'

‘Okay,' she said. ‘A quick one. That's all.'

I lowered Pol to the ground. There is always something less brutal about traumatic injuries nestled among flowers. For a moment he seemed at peace. I felt his pulse again to make sure the peace wasn't excessive, and nodded to Martina who was obviously waiting for my verdict.

‘Don't sit down,' she said.

‘Just for a moment.'

‘He doesn't have a moment.'

But when I stood up again my legs wouldn't hold me.

‘You have to try,' said Martina. ‘For your friend.'

‘I would do anything for my friends,' I said. ‘For Pol, that is. I'm not sure about my other friends. Actually, I'm not sure that I have any other friends, but right now I cannot move. Not a muscle. Not an inch.'

‘Then do it for me.'

It might have been the look in her eyes, or the weariness around her shoulders, or the soft sway with which she eased the strain of her hips, but suddenly my legs were moving, my back upright, and my head as clear as a morning sky. Pol was lighter than he'd ever been, the road less arduous, and the goal more desirable. It is by this, I thought, that knights do battle and heroes prevail. I had never felt so strong.

We met the first of the villagers where the loamy meadows frayed into the beginnings of the track that meandered down the hill to home. Unfortunately, she was of no use at all.

‘My baby!' shouted Mrs Bister, running towards us, feet unshod, a forgotten saucepan in her hand. ‘What have they done to you?'

Martina insisted that we carry on walking while Mrs Bister ran hysterically back and forth, occasionally trying to slap Pol, saying, ‘He but sleeps, yet who shall awaken him?' From time to time, little bits of dhal would fly from her saucepan as she swung it around. I had often seen her grieve but never without a slice of onion to precipitate the tears.

‘He's stopped breathing!' she wailed at one point.

‘No he hasn't,' I said reassuringly, although it was true that his breathing was getting dangerously irregular. I decided to look up ‘Irregular Breathing' in my symptoms book as soon as I got back, but dreaded finding only, ‘Prognosis: impending death. Action: notify relatives.'

As the village came into view, we saw Cindy, Mr Bister and a group of excited young men hurrying along the road.

‘Perhaps you'd run a bit faster if you lifted your dress up,' said one of them.

‘I'm outrunning you, you creep,' retorted Cindy trying, in fact, to pull it down, as some of them craned their necks to peek.

‘What is this?' said Malek. ‘This crushed and devastated creature? It cannot be my son, for my son is neither crushed nor devastated. My son is a healthy, happy boy who skips along singing, not this gaping wound, this broken heap of brittle flesh!'

‘It's Pol,' said Martina, bluntly. ‘So either get out of the way or help us. You lot!' she barked. ‘What's that under your sleeves? Seaweed or muscle? Let's see what you're made of, come on.'

Eager to please, the young men gathered round, some taking his legs, some his arms, others sliding their hands under his body. Cindy took charge of his head, kissing it fervently. ‘Cindy, there's a love,' said Martina. ‘We have to move.'

‘This is my fault,' said Cindy. ‘Because I was so horrid to him. Honestly, Marty, I didn't mean what I said.'

‘Don't worry,' I said. ‘For in time Pol will come to understand how English ladies like to dance on cars and say things without meaning. And once he does, you may dance to your heart's content and speak meaninglessly for hours.'

‘Thank you,' she said, frowning slightly. ‘That's very sweet.'

Just outside the village we came across those elders, designated to supervise the collection of Pol, sitting down for a light picnic to restore their energies. A little further on we could feel the heat from the fire.

‘That's not just a car,' said Martina.