The Splendor Of Silence (33 page)

As the servant approached, Sam turned to see Vimal. They both accepted the cocktails gratefully.

"Will lunch be soon?" Sam asked.

"In an hour, Sahib," the boy replied, bowed, and padded his way to the tent that the servants had erected to cook the food. A little spiral of smoke and the aroma of wood and charcoal wafted over them to signal that a fire had been started.

Vimal sipped his cocktail and looked out eastward. "The walls of the center are twenty feet high, Captain Hawthorne, and sheer. The gate ha
s n
o footholds in the planks of wood; in any case, two sentries stand guard all night on the inside of the gate. The guard towers are usually manned on every night except for the nights before and after purnima, the full moon. There is a common superstition in this part of the world, and I'm not quite sure where it came from, but Chetak is said to rise and ride through the desert on the nights before and after the full moon, and one of those," lie said, turning to look at Sam, his skin glistening with a thin sheen of perspiration, "is tonight. Tomorrow the moon swells to fullness. It is considered to be bad luck to lay eyes upon the horse's ghost, so the guards stay inside."

"Does it matter if there are guards in the towers?" Sam said, wiping the sweat from the eyepiece of his binoculars against his shirt.

"Not really," Vimal replied. "They are a bunch of lazy buggers. There is not much excitement in their lives, Captain Hawthorne. The men they watch over are on their way to meet death in any case--no one has ever escaped from Rudrakot's field punishment center." He put his empty glass down on the verandah parapet's ledge and almost at once, a line of red army ants came marching up the latticework stone, swirled around the base of the glass, and then swarmed into it. Vimal knocked against the glass and the ants shuddered, fell to the stone, regrouped, and marched up again.

By his side, Sam sweated in silence. Vimal knew somehow that Mike was his brother, and knew also that he was at the field punishment center. As he watched the building, it evaporated again from sight and the sun whitened into horizontal lines in front of his eyes. Ghosts and disappearing buildings, Sam thought, how was he to battle all of this to find Mike? His shoulders bent under the weight of this entire burden, and the pain of loving the woman who now stood silhouetted in the entrance archway. Nothing seemed possible suddenly.

"How did you know?" he asked finally.

Vimal did not answer for a long rime and all Sam heard was the ragged intake of his breath. He had asthma, or some other breathing disorder, and Sam wondered if he was aware of this.

"You have the same face, Captain Hawthorne," he said finally. "Or should I say Ridley?"

"It does not matter, the name does not matter," Sam said. "Michael is my brother." But Mike had sandy hair that bleached to a straw yellow b
y t
he end of the summer. His lashes were light too. Sam had never given much thought to their physical resemblance, he had supposed, as one always took for granted that they looked alike, that perhaps they spoke in the same way, had the same mannerisms. They had grown up in the same house; they must be alike. Yet they were physically different and Vimal was the only one who not only had seen the likeness, but had made connections with that knowledge and had come to him. By now Vimal's martini glass was completely covered by the brown and red bodies of the ants, thickly layered like treacle. He knocked on the glass again, and the ants fell off, only to climb back again.

"They have a great deal of determination, Captain Hawthorne," Vimal said. Then he looked upon Sam, a faint dusting of red on his cheekbones. "But so have I."

"Is Mike at the field punishment center?" Sam asked.

"Yes." The answer came too quickly.

"Why?"

"He was"--Vimal spread his hands out--"sympathetic to us, to our cause."

Sam leaned against the verandah's parapet and crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Others have been, and not everyone is incarcerated because of harboring sympathies toward the nationalists."

"Bravo, Captain Hawthorne," Vimal said softly. "You know who I am then."

Sam inclined his head. There was much he did not know about Rudrakot and its residents, but Vimal Kumar and his nationalist supporters had been on every page of the report Sam had read in Calcutta. So far, Vimal had only led a few student demonstrations at the local college and somewhat alarmingly filled the front compound of his "exercise camp" headquarters with a throng of supporters to listen to his vehement speeches. There was also mention of a bombing and the authorities suspected Vimal was involved in it. It was only on the drive here that Sam had finally recalled who Vimal was; until then his name had merely been familiar.

"Four months ago," Vimal said, using the palms of his hands to heave himself onto the parapet so that he was no longer facing Sam, "a British schoolteacher died in the schoolhouse she had set up on the outskirts of Rudrakot. Her name was Jane Crowley. Or rather"--he grinned and hi
s f
ace lit up with a beauty an artist would have envied--"as you say, names are not important. Suffice it to note that Miss Crowley was a dried-up old bird who had been born in Palampore to a major in the Indian army, never married, and had grown meddling and troublesome--there are a thousand Englishwomen like her in India." Vimal's voice dropped, even though Mila and Ashok, and the servants, were nowhere near. "We wanted the schoolhouse and the land it was built on as a base for keeping our fleeing freedom fighters safe from the police. I went and offered Miss Crowley a very large sum of money for the property, but she refused. The ornery old bitch." Vimal said this last without any inflection or change of tone, as though Jane Crowley ought to have succumbed to the money if not his overabundant charm.

"We courted and wooed her for seven months, Captain Hawthorne, and all the while the freedom fighters were sent to safe houses elsewhere in the country because we could not look after them properly here." Vimal tilted his martini glass and it wobbled for a moment on the edge of its base before falling through the hot, still air to the ground where it broke into tiny, shining pieces. "Because of Jane Crowley, I could not meet the great men of my time, could not host them, and look after their needs."

To Sam's astonishment, tears pearled at the edges of Vimal's eyes and came rolling down his well-formed cheeks. He did not bother to wipe them away. "The old bitch," he said again, and this time there was a murderous intensity to his voice.

"And so what did you do?" Sam asked.

"We set a bomb in the schoolhouse on a Sunday afternoon when no one was to be there, but Miss Crowley had decided to correct term papers at that very time. The bomb," Vimal said matter-of-factly, "blew her into little pieces. But we bought the land and the remains of the house and rebuilt the structure."

Sam felt an overwhelming wave of pain sweep through him. He could barely bring himself to form the words, but did eventually manage to say, "Did Mike light the fuse?"

Vimal smiled. "Of course, Captain Hawthorne, that was the point of my story."

"He was punished for that?"

"Well " Vimal paused and considered his next words. "I cannot lie to you, it was not just for that. Your brother, Mike, was involved in
a m
onth-long argument with one of the officers of the Rudrakot Rifles; I'm not sure what that was about, some stupid bawarchi who had been thrashed ... something like that."

"Sims," Sam said, his whole being crushed with rage. "That bloody Sims."

"Ah, yes," Vimal said. "That was the name of the officer. Well, so they managed to send Michael Ridley ... er ... away."

"Is he in the field punishment center?" Sam asked quietly. Again. "Yes."

Sam looked out into the shaky landscape that shimmered in the heat. They would have to return to Rudrakot without him since he was going to the field punishment center.

Vimal put a hand on his arm. "I will take you there tonight, Captain Hawthorne. It is not an easy fortress to storm. Let me show you the way." "Go back to the others. I will handle this myself."

In response, Vimal jumped off the parapet, dusted his hands, and dragged Sam to the west-facing verandah. He pointed out into the distance. "Look," he said. "We will not be able to return to Rudrakot this afternoon."

Sam peered where Vimal's finger was pointing, his eyes crinkling for clarity. He could see nothing but the hot dust and a thin, ailing tree. He began to reach into his bag again for his binoculars, but Vimal stayed that gesture. He dipped his head past the shade of the tomb into the sunlight. Every curl on Vimal's handsome head glittered, his eyes gleamed with delight, and a tiny smile arched the bow of his lips, as though he was going to make an important announcement. "It is not visible yet," Vimal said. "But it will be, and soon."

At Sam's next intake of breath, a fine mist of dirt entered through to coat the inside of his lungs and he coughed. Vimal stood aside, watching and smiling more fully now. When Sam finally looked up, bleary eyed and irritated, Vimal said, his finger again flung out into the horizon, "A dust storm approaches, Captain Hawthorne. We call this the Lu, the heated wind. It will come in a few hours, last for a few more. There is no question of returning to Rudrakot tonight."

Sam rubbed his eyes, gazed out again, and saw now, for the first time, a fine smear of red dust at the very point where the washed-out blue sky met the burning, red earth.

"When will we leave?" Sam asked, his heart beginning to bang and crash within his chest.

"After everyone is asleep," Vimal said.

Sam walked back to the eastern verandah and reached out in his mind to the myth of his brother in the field punishment center. There was no guarantee that Mike was still there, or even that he had ever been there. He would be a fool to trust Vimal. And yet when at the Victoria Club he had looked at the map and had seen the pencil drawing of the center, Sam had been assailed by an unshakable conviction that Mike was there, that he was alive, that he had called out to him for help. Until now, Sam had been sure that he would go to the field punishment center and find Mike, but having seen its mammoth, impenetrable face, and hearing Vimal's account of it, he was no longer sure that he could get inside without assistance. And Vimal had offered himself up as a friend, no, as someone who would help him. But why?

His face inscrutable and stony, Sam finally turned to the young, handsome man by his side and said, "What is it you want in return, Vimal?"

Chapter
Eighteen.

The air was heavy with dust and sand from the bed of the river, that filled boots and pockets and drifted down necks and coated eyebrows and moustaches ... The wind seemed to be picking up the earth and pitching to leeward M great heaps; and the heat beat up from the ground like the heat of the Day of Judgment.

--Rudyard Kipling, Plain Tales from the Hills, 1899

*

L
unch was a desultory, somnolent affair, exhausted as they all were
all
by the incalescence of the day. Sam had thought that he could not bear to put a morsel in his mouth, and yet when the food was being cooked and the aromas came eddying toward him, he found himself suddenly ravenous.

Sam and Mila sat on the side of one of the verandahs, watching a servant make rumali rotis with practiced movements. He patted the dough into a large circle, turned his hand over, palm facing down, and draped the dough over his fingers. Then he flipped his hand in the air, with each flip flinging the dough out into the sky, and with each flip the circle of dough swiveled outward until it became thin and almost translucent. Handling this waferlike dough carefully, the servant swathed it over a kadai, a scoop-bottomed pan that rested upside down over the wood fire. The kadai had been roasting over the slow fire until its surface was crimson hot. The roti, thin and airy as it was, took less than minute to cook. The man peeled it from the surface of the kadai with a pair of iro
n t
ongs, layered its many folds on a plate, dabbed it with some fragrant ghee, and deposited the roti into a porcelain dish with a lid. The dish was fancifully wrought with a detailed painting of a peacock, the blue of its skin iridescent in the sunlight, a tree in bloom with white flowers in the background. Sam watched as the servant's thick fingers held the lid's handle with delicacy and elegance. The dish was a Sevres china dish. Only in India, he thought, would there be such a study in contrasts, only here would Sevres china be used at a mere picnic, amongst the dust and dirt of a centuries-old tomb built to celebrate the life of, and then mourn the death of, a horse.

He glanced to his left at Mila. "I will never quite get used to the fluidity with which you can settle into this life in India--servants a plenty and no work to do."

"And yet," she said deliberately, "the British do not really want to be here."

Sam raised a quizzical eyebrow. "I thought they did. Isn't that what the nationalist movement is about? Them leaving India?"

Mila sighed, her fingers twisting into each other. She had been fretful for a long time, seated by Sam's side. "Oh, they want to be here because India is a conquered country and they are the conquerors. But every Englishman I have known has always talked fondly of Home."

In one way or the other, Sam too had noticed this particular quality of speech among the British ever since he had come to India. He had encountered officers of the Indian army who had been in India for four or five generations--always marrying into the British community, bringing up their children in an insulated India made to seem like that elusive Home.