No Country: A Novel (25 page)

A couple of faces peeped out of the windows to see the abrupt entry of the troops into the Bagh. Below us, under a bristle of guns, about a hundred soldiers were marching purposefully, emerging into the last rays of sunshine inside the enclosed Jallianwala Bagh.

I dashed back to the bay window overlooking the Bagh. Once inside, the Gurkhas split and quick-marched along the two near walls adjoining the entrance and stood facing the open ground. I thought the families would now be ejected, and worried about their interrupted meal. But then I heard the officer call out an order. The soldiers knelt and pointed their weapons. The villagers in the Bagh turned slowly, curiously, while some of the children pointed excitedly, paused in their games. I felt my breath rush out of me as I heard the single word.

“Fire.”

The sharp volley startled a flurry of pigeons which scattered overhead in the evening air. A row of the villagers crumpled to the ground. An eerie cry broke out within the crowd. Mothers were throwing themselves down, covering their children. Some ran towards the far wall, which looked insuperably high. I saw a mother gather her baby and grab for her older child just beyond her reach, stumbling to the ground in the effort. Everything was moving slowly, as in a dread dance.

Next I saw the officer pointing directly where the crowd was thickest. I heard his command to fire again, shrill and clear. And time snapped out of its slow dance into a frenzy. The second fusillade echoed and bounced off the high walls. I saw the crop of falling bodies, heard the rising howls of women and men, the shrieking children, and suddenly realized that I too was screaming as loudly as I could, unable to stop myself. Blood was pounding in my skull as I watched some mothers began hurling themselves headlong into the well, their babies in their arms. The order to fire came again and again. The Gurkhas were having trouble holding their rifles, which had overheated from the dozen or so times they had been fired.

I felt at once drained of blood, and strangely sharp-eyed, as if I were both the dead and the perpetrator, implicated in the act and its consequence, by the fact of having witnessed it. The children’s earlier greeting kept hammering inside my head, the greeting and the misreading:
“Sat sri-akaal, Ingrez sahib!”
I almost expected to find the floor under my feet as soaked as the bare earth of the Bagh which was now covered with blood and bodies, still and writhing.

At a sharp final command, the troops turned and marched out, in perfect formation.

Dizzy and breathless, I clung to the window. It was hard to
tell the men from the women, for many of the men had their hair undone, turbans forgotten. Cries rose around us,
Paani, Paani
, and people were running in with whatever pots and basins they could find, pouring out water to the wounded among the numerous dead.

And then I heard Amrik Singh and my father behind me. As he came to the casement for air, my father looked down at the killing ground and leant for support at the sill. He was bent double, wheezing in distress. I held him up to stop him from falling to the floor. Some men down below in the Bagh looked up and saw his pale face framed in the window as he fumbled to loosen his tie.

“Ingrez saala, oye ingrez bhaaynchot!”
rose the angry cries from below.

Amrik was tugging at my sleeve. “They think you are English, come away this instant,” he hissed. He manhandled my father down the dark stairs, as I followed stumbling after them.

My father was struggling, for he was carrying a heavy canvas bag. I took it from him. “The house-sale money, Robert. Be careful with it,” he said urgently. I asked him if I should get the rest of our things together.

“
Abbhi chaalo!
No time for that,” said Amrik sharply, and we followed him.

At the bottom of the stairs, he headed us away from the main door, leading us instead under the dusty stairwell and along a small corridor and out into the back of the house. It was a lane so narrow that our shoulders scraped the wall as we scrambled through utter darkness. I was completely disoriented, but Amrik knew this maze well.

We burst into the street near the garage. Amrik darted into a side lane, gesturing us to hide within a doorway. In the minute or so he was gone, I could hear little above my father’s laboured
breathing and my own thumping heart. As I regained my breath, I thought I heard running footsteps in the lanes all around, the sounds echoing through their narrow channels.

Amrik appeared with Nathwa, who had emerged wild-haired without his turban. He snapped me a salute, then simply said in Hindustani, “I will get your car, sahib.” He took a few loping steps, but then abruptly jogged back to the lane he had emerged from. Amrik, Baba, and I looked at each other in confusion. But Nathwa was back in a trice, carrying something. “Follow me after a minute,” he rumbled.

By the time we reached the garage, Nathwa had pushed the car out into the street. He started to crank the engine, which grumbled briefly and fell silent. I tossed the bag my father had entrusted to me under the car seat and turned to Nathwa.

“Let me help!” I begged, but Nathwa shook his head. “
Naahin
, sahib. I will get it started. You get in as soon as it does,
turaant
! Then I’ll put that petrol jerry can in the carrier.” He pointed to where it stood beside the car. “To refill the car after a hundred miles. It will be rural there. No chance of getting petrol.”

“But what if it doesn’t start, Nathwa?” I whispered. I could hear running footsteps.

“
Arre
, it starts first shot every time. Maybe it’s sleepy.” He grinned nonchalantly, flashing his gigantic teeth. “I try once more,
bas
. If it doesn’t start right now, we push it to a safe place. Father-sahib can sit inside and steer, no?”

As he cranked, the engine burst into life, a tremendous roar at first, subsiding into a powerful thrum. I was so intent, looking at Nathwa and the growling car, that I was astounded to find us surrounded by a crowd of silhouettes lit from behind. Someone came running through the lane with a lighted torch.

“Ha ha ha,
chaalo
Sahib,” roared Nathwa, oblivious of them,
urging us to get in. He turned to retrieve the petrol, when he noticed that the jerry can had been picked up by a shadow from the night crowd.

Then I heard the cries, “
Maaro saale Ingrez-ko
, kill the English,
haan tod de gaaddi,
yes smash the car!” Nathwa leapt into the vehicle.
“Yeh Rafe-Sahib da gaddi, saale
,” he bellowed, releasing the brake and revving the engine, shouting and making a sweeping gesture.
“Haat ja, haat ja tusi
,” making it clear he would run over anyone standing in the way. “Move move,
chaal chaal
!” he yelled in his army camp manner.

We stared, momentarily forgotten by the crowd, while Nathwa stood in the open car as if it were his war chariot, a hero from an older age, defiant and peremptory.

Time slowed as that shadow from the muttering crowd flung the contents of the jerry can, a ragged opal shawl of petrol, turning into a fishnet over the motorcar. The figure with the torch threw his fiery missile after it, which turned end over end in an aerial race. Nathwa was swirling in a surge of light. His hair ignited, and then his clothes, and in an instant he was the bare warrior in flames. A terrible cry rose, from the crowd, from me, from Nathwa, whose great height buckled as the boat-like interior of the car swayed in a wave of fire. I heard the glass windshield crack sharply. Nathwa crashed down, lying over the gleaming bonnet of my car, its paint curdling and bubbling. Then came an eruption from within the engine, and shards of metal and glass flew about. The crowd ran helter-skelter, some lingering at the mouths of various lanes, peeping, before slipping away.

Nathwa lay supine on his raging pyre.

Amrik, holding my arm in a violent grip, urged, “You need to hurry.
Jaldi-jaldi
to the station, now, come away. There is a midnight
train. It is not safe here for outsiders, especially you. There will be more reprisals, so hurry.” We ran into the night, my father and I, following the Sikh lawyer.

“They thought us English!” I panted.

“Look at what was done to Nathwa
sipahi
,” groaned Amrik-ji. “We are all English, we are all Indians. You just happen to be born of both.”

“Irish and Indian,” wheezed my father, his years of pipe and cigar smoking telling now, as he lumbered along the dark lane.

The Sikh cut him off. “Brendan-ji, our Gurus say, we are all brothers:
bhai-bhai
. Are we? The Ingrez have forgotten that. So have we. There is no forgiveness after such forgetting.” We ran, struggling for breath, until we stood by the iron gates of the railway station.

“Well, Brendan, goodbye,” said Amrik, pointing. “That night train to Delhi will leave soon. Go buy the tickets, Brendan. Do not take out too much money at once,” he cautioned, and left.

“My bag,” said my father, turning to me, stretching out his hand.

With a shiver I realized that I had left it in the car, the bag which my father had entrusted me, containing the money from the sale of Uncle Rafe’s house. It was now all ashes. I was numb with guilt.

“It could easily have been me, Son,” my father said simply, emptying out his pockets. He had just enough money for our journey back, if nothing else went wrong.

“Oh Nathwa,” he muttered, shaking his head as he walked into the station, “poor brave Nathwa.”

•  •  •

T
HE TICKET BOOTH
was shut, and we looked about, unsure where to go.

“Let’s get into any compartment for now,” decided my father, and we made our way down the dark platform towards the train, noticing how few bogeys there were, compared to when we had arrived. All the Second and Third Class compartments were packed beyond belief, as if limbs had been twined and stuffed in the spaces. The doors were locked from within. We could not possibly push our way through the windows, as these were barred. Hostile brown faces stared at us. What struck me was their stubborn silence, so uncharacteristic in India. There would be no help from them, I knew.

We moved farther down the platform, close to the engine, but it was no use. My father shook his head in frustration. The guard on the other end of the platform was blowing a whistle. I saw him mount his caboose at the tail of the train, swaying his green lantern back and forth. The train lurched to life, and as it did so, we heard a shout.

Someone had opened the door of the First Class compartment and was leaning out, calling us urgently, “Come, hurry, there’s time yet!” A short round man in a clerical collar, he had the stoop of a far taller man, and an old, wrinkled face.

“It’s the First Class,” muttered my father under his breath. “Come Robert, there’s no help for it. We have the fare, damn and blast it.” I had never heard my father swear before.

“No lights yet,” the clergymen was saying, “I am sorry,” as if he was in his rectory, and this an ordinary night.

“No matter, sir,” replied my father, loosening his tie, “but when the light returns, you will find that we are not Europeans, my son and I. We are Brendan and Robert Aherne, Anglo-Indians.”

The clergyman leant forward, as if genially interested in our genealogy. “Excellent, excellent,” he gushed, “I am the Reverend Dominic Kelly, born in Ireland. County Mayo.”

I wondered if the old man realized that we could be ejected at the next station if some other European were to board and object to our presence. But I was ready to doze off for now, my heart heavy in this bewildering night; my car, Nathwa, the falling bodies in the Bagh—all flickering pictures in my head. But I became aware of another man beside the heavily curtained window. He took out a small candle, lighting it with a match and setting it on a saucer on the table. A man in his prime, hair neatly combed, his actions minimal and decisive. His eyes were amused. “Aherne?” he said. “An Irish name?”

“Do you object to our presence, sir?” asked my father testily.

“Not a bit, Mr. Aherne,” said the man, leaning to light his cigarette from the candle, “as far as I am concerned, you are part European, occupying a part of a European carriage.” He was smiling, and added, “I’m Tegart, Charles Tegart. I too am descended from Irish clergymen, Reverend Kelly—the son of one, and the grandson of another.” And with that, the three adults began speaking of Ireland while I kept dipping in and out of a troubled torpor.

“Ah, I might have known your father, Mr. Tegart, or your grandfather, but I left the Irish shores over fifty years ago,” the old man was saying. Now he would proceed to tell us about his life and times, I thought, but the clergyman surprised me, turning to my father courteously. My father needed no further encouragement to speak of my grandfather Padraig and his mother’s small shop in County Sligo.

“The western coast of Ireland,” said the clergyman, breaking
into a delighted smile. “My parents took my sisters and me to the Donegal coast and Horn Head that last summer before I left the dear island,” he lamented. “But India too has changed since I first came here. The chaos, the sudden violence. Even after fifty-four years here, I do not know what to expect. Look what happened here!”

“With a firm hand and a cool head,” said Tegart, “we can pacify the locals.”

“And would that firm hand be holding a rifle?” My father was truculent. “Have you got any idea what happened in the Bagh just a few hours ago, Tegart? It was a massacre. Do you not think it shames the Empire in the world’s eyes?”

“You know about the incident?” asked Tegart, his voice low.

“Know? Know?” repeated my father, his voice rising, “Why, Mr. Tegart, my boy saw what happened before his eyes.”

“It was bad policy. Foolish decision making. Monumental incompetence,” said Tegart. “It should never have happened. I arrived too late.”

“Bad decision, foolishness?” My father was choking on his words. “Mr. Tegart, do you know what happened there, do you have the faintest idea?” he challenged.