The Splendor Of Silence (9 page)

Raman nodded energetically. "Yes, and that was exactly it. I took away my caste name, my village name, slashed away half of my actual name.

But I did not put a notice in any papers, or announce it publicly. I did this more than fifteen years ago, Sam, and by sheer persistence, I made people think of me as Raman."

"You still haven't told me what your name was," Sam said.

Raman rubbed the top of his head in a rueful gesture. This young man was very smart, and very persistent. But Raman was persistent too--it had taken him many years to get people to think of him as merely Raman, but now they did, not remembering what his actual name was. "Murugankoil Ramanathan Iyer."

"The first is your village ... ?" Sam asked, ticking off the names on his finger, as Raman had; he waited for the other man's nod, and went on, "the second is your name ... the third identifies you as an Iyer a Brahmin from the land of the Tamils. You speak Tamil, and you are also a Shaivaite, a follower of Shiva; the other sect of Tamil Brahmins are Vaishnavites, followers of Vishnu."

Raman had been following this discourse with a light of absolute enjoyment in his eyes. He had no idea how Sam knew so much, or had taken the care to know so much. This was an army man? "You see why I got rid of my names?"

"Yes," Sam replied. "Not because you do not honor them, but because they take away the mystery of who you are, because they assign a place in life to you, because they burden you with certain expectations to be fulfilled. I see why."

They stretched across the rattan center table between them and shook hands. The sun had broken beyond the height of the tamarind outside and bathed the southern half of the verandah in a clean oblong of light. Dust motes rode lightly upon the beams of the sun and Raman felt a kinship to Sam he had not felt before with any other man.

"The taking away of my caste name had more to do with just what expectations were required of me," Raman said. "I felt it set me apart. We have had, Sam, as Brahmins, a somewhat shameful history of neglect and domination of our fellow humans. I abhor the caste system; my name marked me out as an oppressor--I discarded it."

They reached simultaneously for their coffee cups, which Sayyid filled. They drank in silence and then Raman said, "Rudrakot is very far from the war, Sam."

"Yes, sir," Sam replied, brought into alertness again. He sat up in hi
s c
hair, and touched his right forearm in what he thought was a surreptitious gesture, but Raman's eyes followed the movement of his hand.

"An injury?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," Sam said, "In Burma, last month."

"Hmmm. " Raman's gaze grew reflective. "I did not know the Americans were in Burma last month, Sam."

"We were, sir," Sam replied, and then waited. What a lot of secrets he had to keep. He could not talk of Burma, aside from skirting around the periphery of it, and he could not talk about Rudrakot or why he was here. Sam's shoulder began to grow uncomfortable in his body. The bones seemed to swell, the skin writhed as though tickled by a hundred unseen fingers, a fist came from out of nowhere to punch him in his clavicle. Sam took a deep breath and held it for as long as he could, not willing to feed the pain any more oxygen. He let it out finally when Raman began to speak.

"I see. What can the political agent do for you, Sam?"

"I have a letter for him, sir, from Colonel Eden, he's--"

"--in the governor-general's council in the Bengal presidency," Raman finished for Sam. "I know him well. What does the letter say?"

"I am ..." Sam hesitated. "I am looking for a place in Rudrakot for the next four days of my leave. Colonel Eden recommended that I stay with the political agent."

"Why?"

Sam understood that question well enough, but tried to divert his response anyway. "Colonel Eden thought the agent might not mind billeting me, sir."

Raman shook his head gently. "I mean why are you here, Sam?" So here it was then for Sam, his first attempt of many over the next few days at a stellar subterfuge in response to a direct question. He thought about his answer, not really wanting to misrepresent himself to this man for whom he felt a sudden affection merely because they had conversed about Indian names. But it had been a conversation not about the war, not about Burma, or death or dying, and so was of immense value to Sam. He was not trained for the war in his civilian life; his mind did not bend toward destruction, but rather the vagaries of societies, the wills of men, their eccentricities. He was, though, trained for deception--in fact, since he had volunteered for the war, that was all Sam had been taught.

Sometime during this last half hour, Sam had started to address Raman as "sir." There was something about him--not his appearance, for Raman was just barely clad, as though he were newly risen from bed--that invited the title. Also, Sam was now army, and in the army he had been taught that when in doubt, append the salutation of respect.

He said with a rueful little smile, "I have been ordered by the army and by my doctor to rest my arm and shoulder, sir. I thought Rudrakot would be an interesting place to visit. Perhaps I can tour around the state a little, see the sights, the fort, even the horse's tomb beyond the lake. .. ."

"Of course," Raman said. "As our guest, you must avail yourself of all that we have to offer."

Sam searched for suspicion in Raman's expression, but the other man's face was open, friendly, welcoming. The first hurdle passed, he thought. Many more to come for sure in the next few days, but he would overcome them all too, and then he would leave Rudrakot, and no one would remember that a U
. S
. Army captain named Sam Hawthorne had ever been here, lying about everything so completely that even his name was false. What Sam did not know that May morning in Raman's verandah was how untrue these thoughts were--for he would be inextricably linked to Rudrakot for the rest of his life.

He asked, "When will I meet the political agent, sir? Will he be in his office soon?"

The man opposite him, bare chested, with a head of still-black hair receding quite far, a cloth of white known as a veshti around his waist (his only vestment), his feet without slippers, made the most astonishing announcement of this morning to Sam.

"Why," Raman said, "I am the political agent. I thought you knew that."

Sam's surprise, his assumption that Raman could not be the political agent because he was Indian, had been born in his subconscious, and was not entirely unfounded. For until Raman, no other princely state in India had had an Indian political agent or resident.

Jai was the reason Raman was at Rudrakot, which already had a British resident. The two titles--political agent and resident--were equally interchangeable, and in most of the independent kingdoms of the

British Raj, there was only one or the other. The political agent himself, by whatever name he was called, was the heavy hand of the British Indian government upon the princely kingdom's grudging shoulder. The British East India Company had created the post many years before India had come under the crown of Queen Victoria. The political agent's influence had few limits; he advised the ruler on agricultural policies, taxes, revenues, court ceremonies, and even arranged marriages between kingdoms.

In 1858, Queen Victoria stepped in and declared herself empress of the Indian empire, and transferred all powers to her viceroys, governors, and civil servants. The princely kingdoms each made their own treaties with this new empress in England, and allowed the continued presence of a diplomatic official in their kingdoms under the name of a political agent, who was either a member of the heaven-born Indian Civil Service or a high-ranking army officer.

Sam's inadvertent inference about Raman had come from his ability to assimilate nuances in his atmosphere, and from his unconscious understanding that this was a prejudice that came from both sides--Indian and British.

The princes, many of whom considered themselves descended directly from the sun or moon or some other celestial body, would not countenance an Indian as their advisor--the British they could tolerate even though they considered the British beneath them, casteless, temporary residents of their lands who deposited their faith in foreign Gods. The position of a political agent was supposed to hover over the prince in hierarchy--in actuality, the princes considered themselves superior (for the reasons mentioned before), and the British considered themselves superior, but each played the diplomatic game with polite words and gestures and formal rituals and neither was hurt by the deception. An Indian political agent would not fit in this grand scheme of things. By the very virtue of being a lay Indian, he would be inferior to the sun-descended prince; by virtue of his position in the kingdom, he would be above the prince as a representative of the British Indian government.

Raja Bhimsen, Jai's father, had disdained such distinctions. Knowing he was going to die of cancer, Bhimsen had used his generations-old royal inheritance of trickery and guile to bring Raman into Rudrakot as a mentor for his son in the years to come. Bhimsen had met him in Englan
d w
hile Raman was there to sit for his civil service examinations, had introduced him to liquor and meat, had seen him resist both initially and then exercise moderation--had seen in the young Raman a man of steady character and calmness, all of which he thought Jai would need.

The deal he struck with the British Indian government was that Raman's posting to Rudrakot would be for his life, or as long as Jai needed him. The return Bhimsen gave was allowing the Rudrakot Rifles regiment to construct a field-punishment center beyond Chetak's tomb for defectors from the army. Atrocities were committed at the punishment center in the name of discipline and training; army traitors entered its gates only to disappear forever from the world of the living. But Bhimsen shut his eyes to everything. He had Raman and he died peacefully, knowing that his son would be well looked after.

Very early after Sam had volunteered for the war, he had had bestowed upon him another name. Why? he had asked his colonel at the training camp in Virginia, wasn't his name good enough? Yes and no, the colonel had replied, for Sam was to be part of a fledgling, invisible force, so early in the stages of its conception that it was best for all of them to carry names they did not own. This was so that no one, friend or enemy, would be able to tell who they really were.

All that subterfuge, which Sam had considered unnecessary, not so much like making war, but playing at war, had its advantages. For because of that name, no one initially connected Sam Hawthorne with his missing brother--Second Lieutenant Michael Ridley of the Rudrakot Rifles regiment.

Chapter
Four.

You occasionally met Indians at dinner parties--very high-class Indians. I was allowed to go out with Maharajahs--there was something about their being very rich that overrode the colour thing.

We made lots of friends with Indians, but it didn't get any further. I mean to say, I don't think that if our sons and daughters had been anxious to marry each other, any of no would have been at all pleased. I mean, the prejudice was as much with them. as it was with la.

--Anton Gill, Ruling Passions: Sex, Race and Empire, 1995

*

Mila had come home while Raman and Sam were talking, still me- Lila down the convoluted paths of the name explanations.

She threw her reins to the syce and ran up the stairs, heading for her room. At the landing, she paused, stripping off her gloves. Papa's voice rumbled from the verandah, interspersed with another man's voice, more youthful. She tarried there, head slanted toward her left, thinking that he sounded like the man she had met on the road earlier that morning. The doors to the verandah were open, and the morning's rising heat filled the door frame.

Pallavi backed out of Ashok's room and shut the door.

"Who's with Papa?" Mila asked. "He doesn't like early visitors. Nothing's wrong, is it?"

Pallavi came down the corridor, shaking her head. "No, nothing wrong, I think. Some man wanted to see your papa, Sayyid let him in, and he is there now. I didn't want to intrude or I would have gone to see who it was."

"I'll go." Mila moved and Pallavi put a hand on her shoulder.

"Look," she said, pointing at Mila's crisp white shirt, with its sweat stains on the back, under the armpits, encircling her neck. Mila's hair lay slick against her head, and little lines of sweat streaked her face. "Don't go like this, my dear, what will your papa say when he sees you unwashed and wilted?"

Mila bent to put her arms around Pallavi. She rubbed her sweaty face into the curve of Pallavi's shoulder, against her blouse. With her voice in Pallavi's sandalwood-scented skin, she said, "Papa won't say anything, Pallavi. You will."

Pallavi reached up on tiptoe to grasp all of Mila in her arms. She grumbled about her smell, about the perspiration, but even as she muttered, she managed to give Mila a little kiss on her neck. It was the soft peck of a chicken, all but lost in the rest of the clucking. " ... and wearing those pants," Pallavi ended. "Why wear pants? Go take a bath, change into a sari. You are a woman now, so old you should have been married five years ago."

Mila withdrew her face from Pallavi. This too was a familiar refrain, and Pallavi was right, here in any case. Mila did not know too many women her age, twenty-one, who were not married and did not have at least two or three children. But then, marriage had never really seemed important until now. They stood in the middle of the landing, Mila much taller than Pallavi, much more slender, thin really, with the biology of her youth, thin also because she could not keep her arms and legs at rest, as Pallavi said a lady should. A little prick of exasperation began to build in her. She was hot, she was tired, all she wanted was a bath and to go back to bed, for her night's sleep had been frayed on both ends, with the party last night, and the early riding this morning.