The Peacock Spring (27 page)

‘We shan’t go all the way to Varanasi,’ Ravi had said. ‘They may be checking all trains.’

Una thought it unlikely. ‘Edward and Alix will only just be back from the bird sanctuary.’

‘You never know.’ Ravi was determinedly dramatic. ‘We shall leave the train at Sevapuri, slip into the crowd,’ and, just after noon, Una found herself standing with her
bundle on a platform that seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, the surahi in her other hand, while Ravi found the tickets. No one in the sleepy little station looked at them, or stopped them, and
in a moment they were out on the road that wound away from the shambling town.

‘Wait, I must get some more water.’

‘Is it drinking water?’ Una was dubious but in many Indian towns, rich men, to gain merit, install shelters with filtered water, free for the public. There was one near the station.
‘Seva puri – seva means “to take care”. See, I am taking care of you,’ said Ravi.

‘Isn’t it, rather, the rich man?’

By the water shelter was a milestone.
Varanasi 22kms
.’ Shall we find a bus?’ asked Una.

‘They may be checking buses. It is safest that we walk.’

‘I can’t walk twenty-two kilometres.’

‘It is only fifteen miles. Come.’

‘In the middle of the day, in
this
heat, an English girl and pregnant!’ Hem would have exploded, but Ravi put the rose-painted trunk on his shoulder and blithely led the way
to the dust track beside the road.

‘Come along,’ Ravi had to order every half-hour.

‘I can’t.’

‘You must. Come
along
.’

Una held her veil across her mouth and nostrils to keep out the dust that swirled every time a car, lorry, bus or tonga passed, swerving off the hard surface of the road, or when Ravi caught up
with a bullock cart; her eyelashes were stiff with dust and her eyes smarted and stung with it and tiredness. Her skirt was white up to her knees, her skin burned, but worst of all were her feet;
they were not supple yet, hard-skinned as were most Indian women’s, and the chappals had blistered them. Una was certain she had plodded for miles behind Ravi, watching a damp patch spread
wide on the back of his kurta as the sweat ran down from his neck.

‘How far have we come?’

‘Perhaps ten kilometres.’

‘Only ten!’

‘Come along.’

‘I can’t,’ but this time Una managed not to say it.

They had paused in a village where Ravi, with sudden thoughtfulness, had taken Una’s veil, his own chuddar – shoulder cloth – too, and run them under the village tap; the cool
wetness was grateful but the veil soon dried; Ravi’s chuddar, wound on his head, stayed wet far longer.

‘Isn’t there another village?’

‘No. Come along.’

The fields each side of the road had been harvested and bullocks or buffaloes were working, trampling the cut wheat with a heavy wooden beam that they drew in a slow circle; women with flat
wicker scoops were sifting the grain into huge jars; as they sifted the chaff rose in golden puffs. They would stay in the fields all day, sometimes singing, often chattering, though the heat
shimmered from the stubble. At evening, when the jars were filled and the slow carts creaked home with them to the village, the women would gather up the straw and carry it in mountainous heaps on
their heads – probably carry a baby too. They drew in their buttocks so that they walked erect and lightly. ‘You don’t know how to walk,’ Ravi told Una.

If she stepped on to the asphalt it was so hot it scorched through her chappals and was sticky, and now they came to a stretch along the dust track where the mahowa trees had dropped their
yellow flowers in heaps which were fermenting in the sun; they gave off a heavy sickly smell that made Una feel dizzy. ‘No wonder,’ said Ravi. ‘The villagers make them into wine;
children come out and gather them in the early morning. You can eat the flowers too, fresh or cooked.’

‘Don’t,’ said Una. She could not get the smell out of her nostrils. ‘How far now?’

‘We have only done another kilometre. We haven’t gone halfway,’ but Una was forced to gasp, ‘Couldn’t we have a rest? Go on when it’s cooler?’

‘Arré! Sust!’ which was hardly fair, but reluctantly Ravi led the way off the road to where, in a field, there was a patch of shade from a mango tree. The field was empty
except for a donkey, hobbled and thin, pulling hopefully at a few stalks left among the stubble; a hawk circling, circling in the glare of sky made Una’s eyes ache still more as she watched
it. ‘This is a horrible place,’ said Ravi.

‘I know, but I can’t go on yet.’ Una took the tormenting chappals off her feet.

‘It will be your fault if they catch us,’ Ravi scolded.

‘Why should they look for us here?’

‘There may be police all along the road.’

‘Then they will catch us anyhow.’

Ravi spread his chuddar, dry now, on the ground, poured water from the surahi into Una’s tumbler – ‘Not too much – it will make it harder to go on,’ – drank
himself and spread the remains of their food. Una shook her head.

‘You must eat.’

‘I can’t. It’s those flowers.’

‘Can’t, can’t, can’t,’ Ravi mocked again. ‘Una, how you fuss!’

‘It isn’t me. It’s him.’ She patted her stomach and Ravi was repentant.

‘I forget. I still can’t believe it.’

‘You will believe it by and by,’ and, for all the discomfort and the heat, the bone hardness of the ground, its dust, her prickly heat, blisters, headache and nausea, Una was
content. She lay down on Ravi’s chuddar, put her bundle under her head. The sound of the traffic, bus horns, wheels, the shouts and thwacks of the carters, the shuffling feet, grew dimmer.
Una was asleep.

She was woken by a cry, discordant yet, she was sure, part of this Indian landscape turned by the sinking sun to a mist of pink-gold like the cinema clouds she had seen in
Indian films of Krishna’s heaven. Still drugged with sleep, she raised herself on an elbow to look and thought she was back in one of the parade-ground rides or at Fatehpur Sikri, because a
peacock was standing not twenty yards away from her, a peacock with three hens. Her patch of shade was lost in the slanting rays that lit the stubble, haloed even the donkey and caught the blue
lustre of the peacock’s neck, the delicate crown of feathers on his head, his train spread in all its glory as he displayed it before his hens, fanning it backwards and forwards around him as
he posed. The cry did not come again; instead, he began to dance. The train fanned, the legs strutted, trod for a moment and then came a paroxysm of quivering from his feet to the crown of
feathers, sending a dazzle of colours into Una’s eyes and the eyes of his hens. It was meant to dazzle; he gave a dart towards the chosen hen and returned to his quivering.

Ravi was still asleep; no one on the road had glanced or paused; it was only she, Una, who had been chosen – yes, chosen, thought Una – to see the peacock love dance; she, Una, and
the half-starved donkey who was watching as gravely as she. This was not imperial Fatehpur Sikri; in this peasant field the air smelled of petrol and dust, not bougainvillaea and roses; there was a
continual noise of traffic but cock and hen were oblivious of anything but their mating and, That is how it should be, thought Una.

The peacock was like Ravi – or Ravi like the peacock – regal with his colours, crown and train that was not a tail, as people supposed, but made by the wing feathers, while she, Una,
was the hen, drab with only a glint of colour – but a necessary hen; the chosen one was getting ready to crouch, the other two standing by like handmaidens; the peahen crouched low and Una
had felt this abasement herself, almost a worship of Ravi’s act of love. Not that I should ever tell him so, thought Una. Of course not; it was private of privates – like the
‘womb house’ in some of those temples she had seen with Edward, the innermost sanctuary where, meeting the God it enshrines, the worshipper is born again.

‘I can’t appear before your grandmother like this.’

‘Of course you can. I tell you – she will not even see your clothes.’

‘She will smell them. Ravi, I’m reeking.’

‘Your fault for jumping into that puddle.’

‘I didn’t jump. I fell.’

‘I told you not to lean against the door.’

For the last eight kilometres, Ravi had flagged down a lorry and made a bargain with the driver. ‘You slept so long that, as it is, we shan’t get to Varanasi till
midnight.’

‘You slept longer.’ Una had not woken him until the peacock had had his way.

‘I did not want to sleep at all. It was you who insisted.’

‘
You
slept on the train.’

Una sat against the lorry door; she had been so tottering with exhaustion that it seemed to her the kindest vehicle she had ever met. No wonder its driver had decorated it with jewellery –
the lorry wore a long black tassel, bound with beads that hung from the windscreen to the bonnet. Do lorries wear jewellery? Are jewels on lorries? ‘Am I delirious?’ asked Una.

‘Are you going to sleep
again
! Kya wabal
ē
j
ā
n – pest of my life,’ scolded Ravi. ‘Don’t you know
you are a dead weight on my arm?’

‘Then don’t hold me.’

‘I have to hold you. The door isn’t safe.’ It was not safe. When the lorry had stopped and Ravi took his arm away, Una had tumbled out into a puddle. Of what? She could not
see, but she could smell cess on her clothes.

‘We must stop and buy me a sari,’ but they were engulfed in people – men, and children. One moment Una was against a man’s hot burliness, against his spotless muslin
shirt; the next, against the nakedness of a holy man; the ashes with which he had smeared himself rubbed off on her. She knocked against women: some execrated her; some pushed her on with a pat and
a smile. Once she was against a baby and could feel its tiny helplessness between her and its mother. ‘Careful, Ravi, or I might crush it.’

‘Don’t talk English to me.’

‘But what
is
this?’

‘A procession.’

‘For Baisakhi?’

‘I don’t know. There are always processions in Varanasi. Fortunately it is going the other way.’

Una could see a banner, lettered and hung with marigolds; something was being carried: a corpse? a bridegroom? a god? Around it, people were chanting, beating on miniature cymbals.

‘Ravi.’

‘Hsst. A Hindu wife would not say my name.’

An old man pushed a bicycle over Una’s toes; strapped on to its handlebars were an iguana and a huge adjutant stork, both limp and dead. ‘Do they eat those?’

‘For God’s sake, stop asking questions.’ Una was banged, pushed, flung sideways, as Ravi pulled her through the crowd; a hand snatched at her bundle and clawed her as she
tugged it back. Beggars followed the procession; a man, his leg withered, hopped with a stick; a malformed boy with a lolling head, was dragged in a home-made cart and a crone who whined seemed to
fix her sightless eyes on Una, but, ‘Ag
ē
chelo!’ shouted Ravi. ‘Jao. H
ā
t jao – get away.’ He dragged Una into
a wide alley; at the far end of its lane she could see a glint of silver – a river. The River Ganges, thought Una.

‘Who were all those people?’ Ravi had stopped for breath.

‘I told you I don’t know. A funeral perhaps.’

‘A
funeral
? They were singing, playing cymbals. I thought funerals were sad.’

‘Preconceived notion, but maybe it was a bridegroom procession – but probably pilgrims.’

‘Pilgrims! But I thought pilgrims were – reverent?’

‘Can you not be reverent and enjoy yourself?’ Ravi was still out of temper. ‘I told you – a holy day is a holiday.’ Remembering the dead iguana, the filth from the
puddle, the clawing at her bundle, Una shuddered and, ‘I thought you loved India,’ said Ravi.

‘I do.’

‘Until your fastidious little nose is rubbed in her. I tell you, in the morning those same people will go at dawn to pray, to wash in the river ritually, immerse themselves, which is more
than you will do, you hypocrite.’ How could Ravi, even in his fatigue and dirt, be so unkind? Una’s prickly heat spots seemed to be in her throat and eyes now, only they were prickly
tears. She turned from Ravi and ran.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Where you said I wouldn’t go. To wash in the river.’

‘Una – come back. We are at my grandmother’s . . .’

‘In the river . . .’

‘Una, don’t be a fool.’

Her voice floated back to him: ‘Bring me a clean sari.’

‘You can bathe in the house,’ but she was already at the river steps.

It was a private ghat lit by one small flickering light: its steps of worn stone led deep into the water. There was no one else there and, dropping her veil and chappals on the steps, Una
stepped down them until she was breast high and took off her bodice to let coolness flow round her. She could feel the current eddying; it must have been strong further out; even here it lifted her
skirt so that it spread in a circle on the water – which was probably filthy – and she thought of babies’ dead bodies, ashes, and the bones Hindus called ‘the flowers’
and which the priests throw into the river; but nothing, at that moment, Una thought, was more filthy than she. Something sinuous caught round her waist, making her gasp, but it was soft and light,
only a soaked garland of marigolds. The current took it away as the river took everything – no wonder it was sacred. Ganga mai – Mother Ganges: mother of rivers everywhere –
cleansing, purifying.

The fun and excitement, the tiredness, sickness, aching, hunger and thirst, were running from Una like the water and she had a longing to let herself slip away too, calmly into this calm. It
would save so much trouble. Why did she suddenly think of that? ‘Let go . . . Let everything go.’ It was as if her own voice commanded her, but Ravi spoke from above on the ghat.
‘You look like a water lily,’ said Ravi and indeed she glimmered white in the round leaf of her skirt.

‘Come,’ and now Ravi’s voice was soothing and kind. ‘I have been to the shops and bought you a clean sari. Come – my grandmother is waiting.’