Red Earth and Pouring Rain (78 page)

WHEN I FINISHED I
leaned back from the keyboard and lay back on the bed and I was feeling tired, but calm and somehow clean, as if I had been
absolved of something; Saira sat cross-legged next to me, a hand on my shoulder. It was strange, but I was not afraid anymore,
and when Abhay started to speak the vehemence in his voice startled me.

‘What, that’s it? Get up. There’s more you have to tell us. Go on.’

I shook my head, and held up a hand: no more.

‘Are you afraid? Have you given up?’ He came close and squatted next to me, his eyes angry. ‘Do you want that fool Yama to
win after all? You’re a story-teller. Have you grown weak? Has your imagination run dry? The Book of the Return is
not
over. Get up and do your duty.’

Hanuman looked on from a rafter, and then he swung down easily to land next to Ganesha, who sat in a corner cross-legged,
swinging his trunk to and fro.

‘Very strange,’ said Hanuman.

‘Yes,’ Ganesha said. ‘It seems he loves you after all.’

‘He’s forgotten his fear of madness.’

‘Which was madness, and which is sane?’ And then they both laughed together, and Hanuman rolled over and over, and Ganesha’s
paunch shook mightily. But I couldn’t see Yama, and when I looked over to my left, his throne was gone, and he was nowhere
to be seen. Then when I lay back, my head on a pillow, I saw that there was someone sitting behind me, behind the pillow:
it was an old man with fine
white hair and golden eyes, dressed in white with his right shoulder bare, and there was a smile on his lips as he gazed down
at me.

‘Who are you?’ I said.

‘You still do not know your friends?’

His eyes never blinked, they were as still as pools of water, and in them I saw reflected a thousand red and white pennants,
the glint of lances, the sweating shoulders of horses and the proud riders, I saw the sun flash and a wind blew across the
plains, and I saw myself, my monkey-face and the other one besides, translucent and mixed up, the scars of one appearing in
another, and as I looked at myself there were a thousand others who seemed to float behind: de Boigne, George Thomas, Begum
Sumroo, Ram Mohan, Arun, Shanti Devi, Janvi, Hercules Skinner, Sorkar, Markline, a host of others, even the mad Greek Alexander,
they were all there.

‘Yes, I know who you are,’ I said. ‘At last I know you: you are Dharma, who is the friend of men and women. You are forever
with us, even when we do not know you, you walk with us in our streets and finally we return to you. You are Yammam-Dharmam,
and you are our father.’

He smiled at me, and put his hand on my shoulder. His touch was cool. Then there was a sudden shouting outside, a flaring
of angry voices. Ashok hurried out, and when he came back a few minutes later his face was full of worry and grief.

‘Three groups were fighting,’ he said. ‘The police stopped it.’ There was no more shouting now, on the maidan, only the buzz
of thousands of voices.

‘About what?’ Mrinalini said.

‘Who knows?’ Ashok said. ‘But now it’s become politics.’

‘Hurry, Sanjay,’ Abhay said. ‘You must go on. Continue, and they’ll listen.’

So I got up slowly, and went back to the machine, and then I typed all this, and then: ‘Abhay, the contract said that a story
must be told. You have your part today left to tell, so you must tell it. There was an invitation to a cricket match, was
there not? Tell the story. But I am done. Saira, and you, my friends, I thank you. Do not be afraid, there is nothing to fear.
Do not grieve, because tragedy is an illusion. We are free, and we are happy, and together we are complete. Abhay, when I
have finished, I shall lay my head in the lap of Yama and I shall listen to your story, and the story will never end, in its
maya we will play, and we will find endless delight.’

Now I speak no more. Saira is sitting beside me, quiet, holding my hand tightly between both of hers, and she is weeping.

I HAD NOT PLAYED CRICKET
for so long that I had forgotten it. I mean not just how to play, but that I had forgotten the linseed smell of the bat,
the smooth heft of the ball and the comfort of its seam, the good green of the grass, the hollow
pok
of a good drive that is the best sound in the world, and distant figures in white, and a glass of ale in the pavilion, the
chattering clapping for a particularly elegant cut, fellowship and sportsmanship and well-being. I had borrowed whites from
William James, and I had to roll up the bottoms of the trousers, the shirt fell loosely over my shoulders and bunched at my
waist, I must have looked ridiculous but I was remembering cricket under a desert sun and so I didn’t care, I was remembering
Lord Mayo and the mountain Madar overhead, fiercely-fought house-matches, buckling on pads, all of us staring open-mouthed
as some schoolboy legend passed by, a school First Eleven cricketer with a double century in the last inter-school match,
and school colors in six sports.

I was remembering all this and I suppose the childhood must have shown in my face, because Amanda said, “Why d’you want to
do this?” She was lounging in a deck chair, drinking a vodka and tonic, and she was already bored and unhappy.

“Dear, as they say, it’s the only game in town.”

“You sound funny.”

“No doubt.”

“I hate this place.” We were on the deck of the Regents clubhouse, which was a huge square black building with classical pillars
and scrolled cornices. It looked more like a government ministry than a cricket pavilion to me, but then my notion of a sporting
building had been formed by the delicate red sandstone fantasy of a pavilion at Mayo, and in any case there was the field
in front with the players tossing the ball back and forth, and the pitch really was glorious, smooth and even and hard as
a billiard table. So I paid no attention to Amanda, who had just been brought another drink by a dark-skinned waiter in a
white coat.

The glass door to the clubhouse opened, letting out a rush of cold air, and William James emerged, followed by a stream of
other players. He was tall, and, I noticed, very broad-shouldered, and as he talked to me he slipped a ball from one hand
to another, and the bulk of his forearms was really remarkable. He looked ruddy and strong, and clean.

“You’ll play for the Coasters,” he said, meaning the other team. He was the captain of the Regents. He looked out at the field,
and said, “It’s a friendly match.”

He introduced me to the captain of the Coasters, a fiftyish Englishman named Ballard, and then they walked down to make the
toss, which Ballard won. He chose to bat first, and so I sat on the steps and talked to the Coasters, who were a motley collection
of Australians, Indians, and Pakistanis, and a couple of West Indians. The Regents team was mostly older men, six Americans,
more than I had expected, an Irishman, two Australians, and, strangely, a Japanese. We clapped for the first two batsmen in,
and then William James began to bowl. He was a pretty useful pace bowler, medium-fast most of the time but trying for the
really whizzing ball, and when he tried to snap it he tended to lose control of the length, but every once in a while he’d
get one right on the sweet spot and it would whistle by the batsman. In his third over he clean-bowled one of our openers,
and the middle stump cartwheeled end over end for a good six feet and the wicket-keeper caught one of the bails.

I looked around for Amanda and she had disappeared, so I got to my feet and told Ballard that I’d be right back, and went
into the clubhouse. The air conditioning was so hard and complete it felt vicious, and I
could feel the rivulets of sweat on my back vanishing instantly. Inside, the ceiling was high and everything seemed to be
green, the carpets and the wall, and there were huge chandeliers overhead. I wandered around from room to room, and then I
found the waiter who had served us.

“Miss Amanda?” he said. “I don’t know. Maybe she’s on the roof.”

“The roof?”

“With her mother at the pool.”

“There’s a pool on the roof?”

“Yes,” he said, smiling. He was an old man with peppery hair, and now I could catch, faintly, the Jamaican in his speech.
“Go to the left to the stairs there. Go take a look, young man. It is something to look at.”

I didn’t think I’d find Amanda with her mother, but I wanted to see this rooftop pool, and so up I went, and emerged into
sunlight so blinding that I stumbled for a few seconds, hand over my eyes, in a bright haze, and when I could finally focus
I saw a brilliant sheet of perfect blue, blue water, so flawless that it didn’t look real. Next to it was Amanda’s mother,
and when I saw her my heart dropped out of my body and whirled off somewhere into space. Candy, I whispered. She waved at
me, and as I went closer I lost sense of myself, me and my body I mean, it was as if I was floating across the surface of
the earth, and in the distance, the tops of trees. She was lying flat on her stomach in a gold bikini, a book in front of
her, and her body was smooth and long and perfect, she had the string on the top untied, the length of her back burnished
and shining, I could see the sides of her breasts as she leaned on her elbows. Something happened to me but it wasn’t arousal,
you shouldn’t think that, it felt deep and hollow and empty, it was bad if it was anything. It made me crazy. It wasn’t arousal
at all but it was attraction.

I sat down cross-legged next to her and she turned her head (slowly, slowly) and the hair was almost white in the sun, and
in her dark glasses I could see myself, eyes wide and flicking.

“How are you, Abhay?” she said.

I shrugged. I couldn’t have spoken if I had wanted to, and I didn’t want to. I wanted to sit there and look forever, vaguely
frightened and on the edge of some precipice. A young waiter came through the door, he looked like a nephew or son of the
old man downstairs, and he had his face composed and stiff but as he looked at her I saw the same aching.

“Jamie, take this away, will you?” she said. There was a plate of fruit by her side, barely touched, and she picked it up
and held it to him. The cloth moved away from her as her arm stretched and then I saw, under her arm, almost invisible, almost
not there but there, a scar. It was a little pucker of flesh, a tiny crease, it was nothing but I was so fixed on it she saw,
and very casually, not hurrying, she gathered her bikini top back to her breast. I suddenly flashed on a scalpel cutting,
a thin steel blade going into the soft flesh and I felt sick.

“I do hate a mess, don’t you?” she said brightly.

I nodded, and she smiled at me, and it occurred to me that this was a woman who went through life accustomed to silences,
who had grown accustomed to one-sided conversations. I nodded again.

“In honor of you, I went and got something,” she said. ““I’ve always been interested in your country. It’s just so, you know,
mysterious.” I nodded. “So I thought I’d read something about you. About India I mean.” When she said
India
she stretched the word so that it sounded weird and wonderful, somehow,
Eeen-dee-yaa
. “So I went to the library.” With a friendly smile (I felt my dazzled senses reel even further) she held up the book: it
was
The Far Pavilions
. I could hardly see past the golden descent of her chest, but there was another book on the left of her, Kim, and one on
the right,
A Passage to India
.

“I had better go,” I said. “I’m on the batting side.”

“You better.” She smiled again, and I fled, searching for the door with scrabbling hands, for a last moment I could see the
water like a sheet of some amazing new synthetic, and again the air conditioning chill rode up and down my spine, by the time
I reached the bottom of the stairs I was moving slowly, like a man stricken by some disease of the bone. As I went out onto
the patio the old waiter caught my eye and smiled, and his face looked almost naughty, as if we had shared some secret.

Out on the field William James had been taking wickets, and as I came out he took another with a bouncer that got the batsman
slashing wildly and caught easily in the slips.

“Are you a heroic batsman?” said Ballard hopefully.

“Not in the least,” I said. “Can I go last? But I do an okay off-break.”

We scored twelve more runs and they got another couple of wickets, with William James adding one to his bag, and then, all
of a sudden, I was in. As I walked out to the wicket, pulling on the gloves, the smell
from them, slightly sweaty, leather, calmed me, and as I adjusted my cap and took my stance I was actually smiling. William
James was a good ten yards beyond the bowler’s wicket, tossing the ball up and down, and even at that distance I could see
his blue eyes. The umpire lowered his hand and William James ran in, his feet making hardly a sound on the grass, and I saw
his arm come round, it was one of his fast ones, a little short of a length, and I stepped out to meet it and it reared up
wickedly at me, I saw it coming and twisted my body aside but it caught me stinging on the side of the neck and dropped me
back to my knees. They crowded round as I straightened up rubbing at my collarbone, it really wasn’t bad, thank you, just
a snick, and we went on, but there was a red smudge on my shirt. William James was taking his long walk back to his mark,
and I could feel my pulse thumping at the back of my head, he came in again running fast, and when he released the ball he
made a loud sound, an explosive grunt with the effort of it, and I flinched and never even saw the ball, I held the bat out
defensively but never found it, and he took my off stump out of the ground. We were all out for seventy-two, and as we walked
back to the pavilion William James came over and patted me on the back.

“Good effort,” he said, smiling.

And then he walked ahead of me, there was a large damp spot between his shoulder blades, and his shirt was stretched tight
over his back, and he was laughing, he was confident and a little swaggering and very handsome.