Red Earth and Pouring Rain (47 page)

Now there was a great whispering and going-to-and-fro amongst the watchers, and when they brought him a glass of hot milk
he understood that out of concern for his sanity they had decided to silence him; he shook his head and when they laid hands
on him he struggled and fought, all the time screaming, not not not not not, but finally they grip his head and force open
his mouth shut his nose, Sanjay tastes warm iron-tinged milk seeping between his teeth, the warm metal pressing against his
lips, voices murmuring and clucking, the sweep of god’s clothes overhead, they fly around him and their silks fan over his
forehead, enfolding him in red, gold and blue, then he can’t speak, sleeps.

When he awoke two full nights and days later it was time again to go to Markline’s house, and he eagerly set forth despite
the others’ entreaties.

‘Don’t go, don’t go,’ Sorkar said. ‘You’ve had a shock, who knows what you might do?’

‘Listen, Sanju,’ Sikander said. ‘You don’t have to go. We can say something, anything. We’ll tell him you’re sick.’

Sanjay shook his head: he wanted to visit Markline and he didn’t know why; when he thought of him, of his red face and shiny
boots and precise manner, he was filled with a stupendous rage, but he still wanted to go. He made his preparations, and dressed
with even more care than usual, leafing through his kurtas until he found one stiff and bluish with starch. The others came
with him as far as the river, and as he was getting into the boat Sikander said, ‘We’ll wait for you here.’

On the water he dreamt about what was going to happen: in one minute he saw himself arguing with Markline, persuading the
Englishman that the book was false, dazzling him with the subtlety of his arguments and demolishing his counter-contentions
with terrible force; in the next minute he was slitting open Markline’s throat from side to side as if it were paper, the
black blood gushing like thick printer’s ink. All these images became increasingly vague and insubstantial as they drew closer
to the shore, and by the time Sanjay was trudging up the beach he was wholly unable to use any of them to ward off the fear
that blew up with the sand and whistled into his nostrils; as he went through the gate all he was aware of was Markline’s
presence in the house, everything else was gone, the trees vanished, the birds silenced, everything illogically but incontestably
reduced to nothing by the terrific and invisible power of the man inside, by Sanjay’s terror. When he took his next step both
his feet left the ground and he felt himself float, carried forward some twenty feet by momentum, until he cycled his legs
and stretched for the gravel; both feet down again, Sanjay looked around guiltily to see if anyone had seen, and then took
small shuffling steps all the way inside.

Remember, Sanjay thought, remember, but these words were all that came to him as he was led through the rooms of the white
house by servants, he could not remember the face of his mother, the smell of his father; when he finally stood in front of
Markline he could not hear anything but the thudding of his own heart.

‘Hello, young fellow,’ Markline said. ‘You look well today, flushed.’

No, I’m not well, Sanjay wanted to say, but found himself looking at the thing Markline was eating: a brown slab that spurted
black-red whenever Markline cut into it; the Englishman was using a thin silver knife that he moved in small sawing motions,
a four-tined fork with which he speared the stuff, each time causing four reddish bubbles which soon disappeared into his
mouth. Sanjay moved his head, shut his eye, tried to speak but found his throat blocked tightly by something as hard as metal;
he did not know what he wanted to say but knew that he couldn’t, what was possible to say he couldn’t say in English, how
can in English one say roses, doomed love, chaste passion, my father my mother, their love which never spoke, pride, honour,
what a man can live for and what a woman should die for, can you in
English say the cows’ slow distant tinkle at sunset, the green weight of the trees after monsoon, dust of winnowing and women’s
songs, elegant shadow of a minar creeping across white marble, the patient goodness of people met at way-side, the enfolding
trust of aunts and uncles and cousins, winter bonfires and fresh chappatis, in English all this, the true shape and contour
of a nation’s heart, all this is left unsaid and unspeakable and invisible, and so all Sanjay could say after all was: ‘Not.’

‘What might you mean, not?’ Markline said, leaning forward. He looked at Sanjay intently for a moment, a deep vertical line
between his eyebrows, then said abruptly: ‘Never mind. The doctor’s coming.’ He smiled. ‘He’ll be here in a few minutes.’

Sanjay nodded, feeling a steady wave of nausea: he had seen plenty of meat before, at Sikander’s house they ate it curried
every other day, but the thing on Markline’s plate seemed pitiful and distorted; try as he might he could not imagine it as
part of some animal.

‘I notice you’re looking at my food,’ Markline said. ‘And that is no wonder. Your present condition might well be a result
of lack of proper nutrition, or at least it is probably exacerbated by your diet.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘Let us make
a secret covenant: I will do everything in my power to cure you, but you must in return do something for me. Agreed?’

‘What?’

‘You must break with these customs that make you weak. Let us be frank —one of us here has power, the other has not. We English
rule in your country because we are sustained on a scientific diet, both bodily and intellectual. If you hope to follow in
our footsteps, you must abandon superstition. I know you want to, but let there be some sign between us that you have made
your decision, have made the first and most important step.’ With quick squaring motions, he sliced a rectangular portion
of the meat on his plate, then held it out on his fork. ‘Eat.’

Sanjay swayed back and forth, looked around for help: he saw that the table-top was of veined marble, the legs of dark teak;
there were two small side-tables, each bearing a brass cannon; there was a painting on a wall, a white-gowned woman and a
hovering swan; a gold clock on a mantel-piece, its hands moving in regular and mechanical jumps.

‘Eat,’ Markline said, and this time the last consonant was hard and
explosive; the rank smell filled Sanjay’s head, he felt it pressing on his lips, then he felt it in his mouth, he swallowed
as the four steel points scraped, retreating over his lower lip, felt his throat expand over the gristly mass, contract, but
his mouth was full of blood, and he screamed, screamed once for his mother and fell.

Sanjay awoke to a piercing bright light and probing fingers; the light was near and white and overpowering, the fingers kneading
his forehead and holding his eyes open. He turned his head against the fingers and pulled at the hands, moaning; his mouth
tasted sour and he could smell his breath.

‘Quiet, boy, quiet.’ The voice was unfamiliar, but then Markline spoke from above him.

‘It’s the doctor, Sanjay. Be still.’

Sanjay pulled himself away and sat up; at first all he could see was spinning and intersecting diamonds of light, then the
flashing subsided into a double-image of Markline holding a dark lantern which sent forth a single beam of intense, focussed
light. The doctor walked around Sanjay and stood bending over him, hands on hips.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘No sign of crossing. The damage is internal, as I thought.’

Sanjay clapped a hand over his right eye, jumped off the bed and ran to the door.

‘Wait,’ Markline said. ‘Sanjay…’

‘What did I eat?’

‘Sanjay…’

‘What was it?’

‘Beef.’

Sanjay ran from the house; the ground outside was hot and stung his feet, but he did not stop. On the beach, next to the water,
he knelt and tried to vomit, first one finger down his throat and then two, but all that resulted was a series of heaves that
wracked his belly and prostrated him, his face in the water. He drank, huge gulps, and finally the taste went from his mouth,
but his stomach remained hard, knotted and unyielding. The boat came and he found himself a place at the stern, tried not
to look at anyone, hid his face between his knees.

‘What did the fucker do to you?’ Sikander said as soon as he got off the boat.

‘You’re so pale,’ Sorkar said.

‘White,’ said Chottun and Kokhun.

But Sanjay refused to say a word and walked home barefoot, through the streets of Calcutta. The next morning he set to work
as usual, but he set the type slowly now, putting each character into the stick with deliberate care, constructing Sarthey’s
book with passionless exactitude. At noon he said to Sorkar: ‘Where does the man live, the one from Dhaka, the type-cutter?’

‘What will you do?’ Sorkar said.

‘What you have done all along: put in my words under his.’

‘Use my types.’

‘No. This is personal.’

‘What will you give the cutter?’

‘I’ll find something.’

Sorkar was hesitant, but in the end he drew Sanjay a map on the back of a hand-bill; with this in his pocket Sanjay walked
alone into the city that evening. He slipped away from the shop quietly, avoiding Sikander’s offer to accompany; he walked
quickly, making precise turns at corners and anticipating twists in the lane: the thin lines of the map were clear in his
memory, he found no need to look at it. In a poor Muslim quarter he stopped and spoke to a group of men sitting on charpoys:
‘I am looking for Kabir the cutter.’

‘I am Kabir,’ said a thin man with a grey beard that reached his waist.

‘I work for Sorkar Moshai at Markline. I need a type to be cut and cast.’

‘Come in,’ said Kabir the cutter, and led him into a tiny room, barely more than a niche in the wall; the walls were lined
with racks filled with jewellery and type.

’Sorkar Moshai wants this type?’

‘No, I do.’

‘You?’

‘Yes, I. As you did for Sorkar Moshai, a duplication of the ten-point Baskerville.’

‘The same modifications on the font?’

‘No. For me, just make the serifs thicker, so that on the page it looks like it could be an ink smudge if it is noticed casually.’

‘Ink smudge? That much thicker?’

‘That’s what I want.’

‘You know the money?’

‘I have no money.’

‘What do you have?’

‘The complete works of Mir. Hand-lettered on fine paper.’

‘You would give that away?’

‘It is worth it to me.’

‘Why?’

‘I have been insulted.’

Outside, the sun had set and the men’s hookahs burbled quietly in the dusk; the bazaars were lit up and crowded with people.
Sanjay smelt food all over, the dense smell of mithai mingled with the spices from the chat-wallahs; now that the thing was
started, the deed set in motion, he felt quiet and alone, no anger or bitterness, no fear. He felt no hunger, and the darkness
and yellow light somehow distanced him from those around him, so that they looked curiously flattened and far; when he reached
the shop he refused dinner and lay awake on his bed all night, listening to Alexander.

Three days later Kabir the cutter sent word that the font was ready; in the meantime Sanjay had looked for and found the Mir
in a stack of books, jammed between
Principles of Physics
and loose pages from a work on animal husbandry. On receiving Kabir’s call Sanjay dusted off the book and went forth eagerly;
he had not worked on the Sarthey job for three days, and had spent the time thinking about what he would put in, what he would
code into the language. At Kabir’s house, the cutter handed him the font wrapped into small paper packets, then sat looking
down at the Mir, lifting the pages and gently setting them to the side one by one.

‘Listen,’ Kabir said. ‘This is a big thing to give.’

‘Take it,’ Sanjay said. He had opened one of the packets and was examining the letters m and x. ‘For cutting such as this
you deserve it.’

‘It is still a big thing to give. Pick a number at random and you shall have that page. To keep.’

‘No. It is yours. Thank you.’ With this Sanjay closed his packets and walked out into the street; as he hurried away Kabir
came running after him.

‘Take this,’ Kabir said, his voice rough as he stuffed a page down the open neck of Sanjay’s kurta. ‘Take it.’

Looking at his face, and sensing behind him the young men in lungis beginning to move, Sanjay nodded and nodded again, then
backed out of the lane and started to run, the balled-up paper scratching against his chest. Once the lanes came into a wider
street, he stopped and groped inside his kurta, found the Mir page and threw it hard across the road, into a puddle; the rest
of the way to the shop passed quickly in anticipation as he moved his fingers over the packages, feeling their heaviness and
the hard little shapes of the letters underneath the wrapping. He went immediately to his table and spilled the type onto
the wood; without pausing to put it in a case he began to set, starting where he had stopped days earlier; now instead of
the frantic speed there was a deliberate even motion, regular and without breaks or faltering. When the others stopped for
the day they came to watch him, for a while, then left him to his task without arguing; he worked through the night by the
light of a lantern, and the next morning he felt no fatigue, and knew for certain that this was no illusion, that he was making
no errors, that the endurance of his body and mind was a gift from his anger, like the ceaseless flame that burns above cracks
in the earth. He worked all day, refusing food and water, at which Sorkar muttered under his breath,

Why, he has no tears to shed:

To him this sorrow is an enemy

And would usurp upon his ashy eyes,

And make them clean with tributary tears:

But he will grope the way to Revenge’s cave.

The setting and pressing of the book was finished in three days, and Sanjay did not eat or sleep for all that time; when the
galleys were finished he folded them into a red envelope and gave them to Sorkar to take to Markline. ‘I will not go there
anymore.’ The galleys came back marked ‘Not one mistake —excellent!’; they ran off a print, which took twenty-one days, and
still Sanjay did not eat or sleep; to all queries he replied with a shrug, and did not tell anyone, even Sikander, about the
thing that sat brick-like in his belly. When the print run was over Sanjay broke up the formes; he separated and wrapped Kabir’s
type again, put the bundles beneath his pillow and slept for eleven days, dreaming one long single dream in which he wandered
amidst spare grey monolithic shapes rising out of mist.