The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy (23 page)

As the days went by, the original impression that India was beyond comprehension disappeared. It could be comprehended – by its own standards. You obviously had to yield to it, as to sex.

The shithouse at the barracks was cleaned and emptied by a group of Untouchables, who bent low to their sweeping and touched their foreheads as you entered. In there, behind the stable-like door of one compartment or another, I went to a regular evening rendezvous with my dry-mouthed widow.

The rumour was that the Untouchables would bring you a
bibi
if you asked. You just had to say,
‘Bibi hai?
', and one would become available. But the association with shit and disease was so marked here that I never dared ask. I fantasized instead. The mere image of lifting up a sari, exploring amid its dark forbidden areas – while those white teeth smiled! – and shafting the girl up against the whitewashed back wall of the bog – a knee-trembler in the sunset! – was always enough to send your hand into a frenzy of imitation matrimony.

Those desperate wanks! It was a case of remaining mortally sane, not morally pure. It was never enough merely to lower your trousers – they had to come off, and ankle-putees and all, so that you could crouch there naked but for your shirt, frantically rubbing your shaft, as if by this nakedness you got a little nearer to the real world and further from your own useless dream. And to see the spunk spattering down into the throat of that lime-odorous pit was never satisfaction enough. Again I would wrench at my prick, red and swollen, until it spat out some of my longings a second time.

Sometimes these sessions ended in disgust, sometimes in a blessed feeling of relief. It was hateful doing it in the shitter, but nowhere else was private enough, not even your creaking
charpoy
, the rope beds on which we slept. As you crossed the sandy distance between barracks and shithouse, with your intention working in your mind, you could see the empty country beyond, tawny by day, blue by evening, and, as dark moved in, lit furtively all round the horizon by flickers of lightning. That world of freedom out there! The hand was a poor but essential substitute for it.

Kanchapur was only a small town. Perhaps it thrived, although to a squaddie's eyes it wilted. The highroad from the barracks led straight to it, so that a sermon on the contrast between military order and the disarray of Indian life was readily available. We walked down from an outpost of England and civilization into a world where grotesque trees and monster insects dominated poor streets; and on those streets, tumbledown houses and shops had been built over reeking ditches.

Everything was terrible to us because it was strange. We laughed and pointed in horror at anything you would find in different form in Exeter or Bradford. The bright posters for native films, ointments, or magazines; the amazing script which flowed over shops and placards like a renegade parasitic plant; the unlikely beobabs and deodars that shaded the road; and particularly the smells and foreign tongues and wailing musics – all so closely related that they might have poured from one steaming orifice – these things seemed like the stigmata of some sleezy and probably malevolent god.

Desperately randy as ever, I tried to discuss this supernatural feeling with Geordie, when he and Wally and I were down in the bazaar one evening.

‘They've never been Christian here, that's the trouble,' Geordie said, piously. ‘I mean, like, they don't go to church proper or sing hymns the way we do.'

‘No more do you, you hypocritical fuck-pig!'

‘Oh, aye, I know what you mean, like, but I mean I
could
go, like, if I wanted. Anyroad, I've got an Uncle and Auntie what goes to the Baptists every week. Or most weeks, leastwise.'

‘These Wogs've got a church down the road here, though.'

‘No, I know, aye, yes, they have that, but it must have come too late like, I mean they've been worshipping monkeys and all that, haven't they, for millions of years. You know what I mean. That's why you've got to be so careful with them. Folks at home just wouldn't believe what goes on here, would they?'

‘I wish I knew what goes on here. Don't you reckon the women must be like bloody wild animals in bed?'

‘They say the longer you've been out here the whiter they look. I saw a little one just now I wouldn't sort of mind having a go at …'

‘I heard that one of their gods has got a dozen cocks!'

Geordie laughed. ‘I bet Jack Aylmer told you that.'

‘Stop talking shit and come and have a
shafti
at this stall,' Wally called. Mention of any god annoyed him; he was a fervent atheist. Wally came from Dagenham, where he was a car-worker like his father, and we gathered that if God ever had the cheek to enter the factory, every manjack would have downed tools at once and walked out on strike.

‘Why don't you pack in ordering us about, Wally?' I asked, but Geordie was already on the move, in his submissive way.

Geordie and I made our way over a plank bridge spanning an open sewer to see what Wally was up to. He was standing in front of a wooden stall decked with magazines and pictures, mostly sugary ones of Indian film stars. Behind the little counter sat the owner, dressed in white and nodding and smiling at us, indicating his stock with a graciously inclined hand.

‘Hello, young masters, come to see what you are liking just now to buy very much! Yevery thing all at very cheapest prices, young masters, for suit the pocket. If you are looking pretty magazines with photographs of young ladies in the Yinglish language, I have very plenty what is to your likings.'

Ignoring him, Wally pointed to some pictures hanging from the beams of the stall. Each picture portrayed one fantastic personage. Their bright colours suggested that they were posters.

‘What a bunch of fucking savages!' Wally said. ‘You were talking about their gods – well, there they are, and a right old bunch they look! You notice this cove don't have no pictures of Winston Churchill here!'

‘You like the pictures, sahib? I hold light for you to make the close observation. Yeach and yevery one a Hindu god and lady-god!'

As we stared, Wally pointed with particular venom at one of the posters. ‘Look at this bastard here! What do you make of him, pulling his own guts out by the fucking yard! Wyhyrr, makes you want to spew up!'

He was stabbing his finger at a splendid and terrifying green figure with the face of a monkey. The monkey wore a crown and the elaborate and stiff golden garments of a prince. The garments were undone. The monkey was ripping
his body apart from throat to pelvis, revealing a generalized mass of pink and red entrails. His face was distorted by something between pain and ecstasy.

‘Christ-on-fucking-crutches!' exclaimed Geordie. ‘Them blaspheming bastards! I mean to say, anyroad, it's bloody cruel, like, even in a fucking picture.'

‘Yes, yes, very terrible scene,' agreed the stall-keeper, smiling from one to the other of us. ‘This is a depiction of Hanuman, young gentlemen, who fought for Rama and also Rama's beautiful wife, the lady Siva. He is also called the Monkey God.'

‘He's marvellous in a revolting way,' I said. ‘What did he do?'

‘Sahib, Hanuman is fighting for the lady Siva when she is keeping by Ravana.' He performed a little sword-play with his hands.

‘Who's Ravana when he's at home?'

‘Ravana is the King of the Rakshasas.' His smile suggested he did not mind stating the obvious for us.

Geordie burst into laughter. ‘Ask a daft question, Stubby, get a daft bloody answer!'

But I was fascinated by the monkey god. I knew how he felt. Wally was furious that I was taking the matter seriously.

‘What do
you
fucking care what this monster did? The bloke who painted that ought to be put away for keeps!' He thumped an adjacent picture, which showed an impossibly pink and rounded young lady with curly nostrils, busily balancing on one foot on a green leaf in a bright blue pool. ‘Who's the pusher, Johnny?'

‘Yes, yes, this lady is Lakshmi, sahib, the lady-god of fortune and also the pleasure of the god Vishnu, according to our religion of Hinduism, sahib. If you like buy one or two picture very cheap?'

‘
I
don't want to buy the bloody things, do I? I've got no time for all that rubbish. It's a load of fucking junk, if you ask me.'

‘The pictures demonstrate items in our religion, sahib.'

‘Well then, that's your look-out, mate, ain't it? Just don't try to convert me to the bloody nonsense, that's all!'

Ganesh, the elephant god, hung there too, with diamonds in his trunk. Wally knocked him and sent him swinging, to show what he felt about Hinduism.

‘Come on, Wally, like – I don't think you ought to take the piss out of the poor sad!' Geordie said. ‘He's got his living to earn.'

‘How much?
Kitna pice ek
picture?' I asked the stall-keeper.

‘Gods and lady-gods all one low price, sahib, only five rupee yevery painting. Very lovely things to look upon, in the day or even night-time. Five rupee. No, sir, you young gentlemen now from the barracks, I know – four rupee! For you, four rupee!'

Wilkinson was trying to move Page on, arguing in his vague way. He now tried to move me on as well – not that I had any intention of paying four or five rupees. Seeing us about to move away, across the plank over his well-flavoured ditch, the stall-holder called that he would accept three rupees.

‘Tell him to fuck off,' Page said. ‘All that sort of thing gives me a pain in the arse. It's downright sinful! Let's go and get something to drink!'

‘Yes, let's go and get something to drink,' Geordie said.

‘I'll have a drink when I feel like it, and not before. You two piss off if you're so bloody thirsty! Give you one rupee for the monkey god, Johnny!'

The stall-holder came to the plank and bowed his head, regarding me at the same time under his brows. ‘You very hard man, sahib, me very poor man with wife to keep and many many
chikos
to give food, and mother also very sick, all about her body. This is real good Indian painting, sir, for to take home to your lady in England.'

‘I'm not going home. I'm here to stay. I'll give you one rupee.'

‘Come
on
, Stubbs, fuck it – you can buy three beers for one rupee!'

‘Aye, tell him to stuff it up his jumper!'

I gave up and yielded to my friends' gentle advice. As I moved across the plank, the stall-keeper followed, one hand out.

‘All right, sahib, I take one rupee. Come, come, you give!'

Page clouted himself on the head several times. ‘You don't want that fucking thing, Stubbs! You cunt, come and have a drink! I ain't buying you a beer if you waste your money on that load of old rubbish!'

But I went back across the ditch and waited patiently while Hanuman was rolled up inside a sheet of frail pink paper.

As I came away with it, Wally and Geordie made pantomimes of staggering about in disgust, clutching their throats and vomiting into the ditch.

‘Don't bring that horrible thing near me, Stubbs!' Wally said. ‘You must have more bollocks than brains! We haven't been out here five minutes and you're going fucking native already. Isn't he, Geordie?'

‘Besides, if he'd hung on, he could have got the thing for half a rupee,' Geordie said. ‘It's really a terrible country – you have to say it!'

‘Git your loin cloth on, Stubbs, you jungley wallah!'

‘I'll fling you into the fucking ditch, Page, along with the other turds, if you don't shut your arse! Let's go and get a bloody beer!'

After a bloody beer, we went to the cinema. Being a garrison town, Kanchapur boasted three cinemas. One, which showed only native films, was Out of Bounds. The other two, the Vaudette and the Luxor, were in bounds and changed their programme every Sunday, Tuesday, and Friday. Wally, Geordie, and I went to the Luxor, sitting among the peanut shells in the front row but one, to wallow in
The Girl He Left Behind
in which – have I remembered aright after all these years? – Alice Faye sang
A Journey to a Star
and
No Love, No Nothin
'.

Later, back in the aimless main street, night hung like Technicolor in the trees. The promptings of lust were on every side. Kanchapur's street lights, infrequent and yellow, were besieged by a confetti of insects. Every shop was open. Soldiers apart, there were not so many people about, yet the impression was of bustle. A man in a dhoti spat a great gob of betel-juice at our feet as we passed.

‘Dirty bastards!' Wally said automatically.

We made our way to a restaurant and sat out on the verandah bellowing for a waiter with plenty of fine deep-throated ‘
Jhaldi jaos
'. We ordered five eggs-and-chips and beer three times. It felt good to be sitting there, chatting idly about the film as we ate, occasionally waving to a friend in the street, and slapping the odd mosquito that settled on our fists.

Geordie set his knife and fork down and leaned back in the wicker chair.

‘Aye, well, that was almost as good as getting stuck up Alice Faye.'

‘I'd rather have Ida Lupino.'

‘Ida Lu-fucking-pino? Balls, she's got no figure – Alice Faye's lovely, built like a brick shithouse!'

‘She's just an old cow. Even you can see that, Geordie!'

While this debate on female standards of beauty was in progress, Wally leant forward and grabbed my rolled-up picture of Hanuman, which was lying on the table.

‘Let go of that, you bastard!' I seized him by his curly yellow wrist. He laughed, pulled back, and crunched the cylinder. I hit him in the chest with my left fist.

The next moment, we were on our feet and confronting each other. I was so angry, I hardly took any notice of Geordie, who was shouting feebly at us both to sit down.