Tiger Hills (22 page)

The freshman class came in. Father Dunleavy expressly forbade Martin and his lot from having any,
any
hand in the ragging at all. His warning was redundant. For Devanna's batch mates pounced upon the first years with glee, determined to extract revenge for all that they had endured the previous year. “This is for your own good,” they assured the first years, “you should be thankful to us, we are toughening you up for the real world.”

Devanna stayed away from the ragging, but one evening, as he was returning from the library, a pile of books in his arms, his classmates called to him in the corridor. There was no danger of incurring Martin's wrath. He was away with the rest of his classmates, traveling to a village deep in the interior of the state as part of the field training prescribed in the curriculum. “Come on, Dev,” his classmates cried, “join in.”

Devanna hesitated. And then, loath to disregard their olive branch, he reluctantly joined the crowd around the apprehensive first years. “Off with your pants,” the second years cried, handing out wooden rulers. Devanna's eyes fell upon one oversized boy, so obviously distressed by the exercise that even his jowly buttocks were flushed a vivid red. He bent trembling in front of a classmate, wiping the sweat from his eyes. “What's the matter, fatty?” someone demanded. “Hurry up.”

“I … I … ” His hands were trembling. And then he set the ruler down on the floor. “I … I cannot. This is wrong, it is a sin … ”

They pounced on the boy then, twisting his ear, hooting and jeering as they kicked that flabby bum. “You a saint or what, fatty? Get him, get him good.” “Fat crybaby!”

Devanna stood silently by, a faint taste of bile on his tongue,
watching as the fresher collapsed in a vast, blubbering pile. “Stop it,” he wanted to shout at the raggers. “Be a man,” he wanted to tell the boy, wanted to tell him to pick himself off the floor, but the words remained stuck in his throat.

Nobody noticed when Devanna left. Heading straight for the deserted dormitories, he sat down heavily on his bed. The faint sound of laughter, traveling up through the floors. Devanna swallowed. The image of the boy, crying in a heap on the floor. “Be a man.” Again the sound of laughter. His heart started to race, sweat beading his forehead as memories of the past year came suddenly alive once more.

Flora Sylvatica. Flora Indica. Spicilegium Neilgherrense. Icones Plantarum.

With a small, choking sound, Devanna rose to his feet. Yanking open the drawer on his desk, he began scrabbling about for an inkpot and his fountain pen. Barely noticing Nancy as she raced into his lap, he tore out a sheet of foolscap and, breathing harshly through his mouth, began to write. “Devi.” No more, enough of his reticence, this waiting. He would tell her everything. The tangle of emotions within him. The revulsion he had felt at the freshman's tears, the ghosts it had dredged up as he watched them crowd about the boy. He had stood by, watching. Despite all he had gone through himself, his own silence, his inability, his
unwillingness
to say anything, to stop the ragging. All he had done until now was to stay silent. With them. With her. No more.

“Devi,” he wrote, the jeering from downstairs ringing in his ears. The nib of his pen scratching at the paper. “Devi. I miss you,
how
I MISS you. I am turned to shadow by with your absence. Coorg-Devanna, lost without you. Mission-Devanna, an empty, posturing shell.
DeviDeviDevi.
” He wrote with such vehemence that the nib ripped through the paper, depositing a copious blot of ink that began to spread through his words.

Crumpling the ruined sheet into a ball, he flung it from him with a force that made Nancy leap from his knee. She bounded up the curtains in alarm, scolding and nagging at him from her perch until at last he sighed and turned to look at her. “I am sorry,
milady,” he said, holding out a placatory arm. “You are right. I should not be so impatient.” Nancy cautiously descended, still making reproachful noises. Devanna capped his pen and drew her into his lap. He stroked the squirrel's fur, the anxiety that had gripped him receding.

The laughter from the ground floor had ceased; a halt, presumably, had been called to the ragging. There was the faint clatter of footsteps on the stairs. He hugged Nancy close to him, unsettled by the evening and loath to give up this brief pocket of solitude. He looked unhappily outside. Somewhere to the west, dusk must be claiming the hills. She would be lighting the lamp atop the courtyard pillar. Unconsciously biting her lip as she stood on tiptoes, carefully now, carefully, so as not to spill the oil. Lamplight flickering across her face, a stray tendril of hair curling across her cheek.

The squirrel, as if sensing his mood, curled herself about his neck, not even so much as looking up when the rest of the dorm trooped triumphantly in.

Martin was sullen and irritable all through the field trip, pondering the faggot chokra. Maggot chokra faggot. Something seemed to have changed over the holidays, Martin knew it had. But what?

By the time they returned to the college some weeks later, even his cronies gave him a wide berth, sensing the blackness of his mood. He sat at the very back of the coach, occupying the entire seat and broodingly cracking his knuckles. It was mid-afternoon when they arrived. The hostel was silent, all the students in class. On a sudden whim, Martin strode to the second-year dorms. He flung open the door to Devanna's room and then yelled in fright, as Nancy flew through the air to land on his head. “Gerroff. Gerroff me!” he shouted, and the squirrel scampered up the curtains and perched there, angrily chiding him.

“What the … ?” Martin peered upward. He shook the curtains and whistled softly. Whatever
was
that thing? “Heeere … Come here.” He held out his hand. Nancy descended slowly, pausing every
couple of seconds to scold him. “Come heeere.” Barely had she put her nose in his palm, when he clamped down hard with his other hand, trapping her in his grasp. Struggling in panic, Nancy opened her mouth and dug her tiny, needle-sharp teeth into his thumb.

He threw her off with a howl of pain and she bounded up the curtains again, chittering in fright. Martin shook them so hard that she fell off. She righted herself in midair and landed on the sill. Flying across the room, she made straight for Devanna's bed and dived trembling beneath her pillow.

Nursing his sore hand, Martin began to laugh.
Chokra.

Devanna knew immediately, as soon as he returned to the dormitory, without even entering the room, that something was terribly wrong. The huddle of boys around his bed, the horrified pitch of their voices. He stood in the doorway, turned to stone. “Dev. Dev, old chap … I am so sorry.” Someone took his books from his arms, the crowd parting as he approached his bed with leaden feet.

Nancy lay splayed upon his—her—pillow. Someone had performed a vivisection on her, pinning her to a dissection board and cutting her open from chin to tail. Devanna could not but help notice the precision of the cut even through the fog swirling in his brain. Impeccable. Absolutely impeccable. A clean slicing, right through the epidermis, the specimen presented in perfect dorsal perspective. The neatness of the labels affixed to the innards.

OESOPHAGUS.

KIDNEY.

HEART.

Nancy twitched feebly on the board. “She's still alive,” someone to his right said, sickened. “The bastard didn't even use chloroform.”

Devanna unpinned Nancy's paws and lifted her into his arms. “Nancy?” he whispered, his face pallid. “Nance?” The squirrel
tried to turn toward him, failed, opened her mouth in a yowl of agony. “Hush. Shhh … No Nance, hush.”

He carried her to the hostel garden, whispering to her all the while. That lush, vibrant red tail spilling over his arms, a crowd of somber boys following in his wake. He set her down in the grass by the rockery. Nancy twitched again, trying feebly to rub her head against his thumb. “My good girl, my best girl. Nancy, my good Nancy … ” His voice faltered and he stroked her fur. Then, lifting a large rock, Devanna raised his arm high above his head and brought it smashing down upon Nancy's skull. The squirrel's paws jerked once and then she was still.

“Why?” he asked raggedly. “Why her, why in God's name, why my squirrel?”

“What squirrel?” Martin asked innocently. “Did you have a pet in the hostel? I am sure not, chokra, it is against the rules.”

“I
know
it was you.”

A sheen of pleasure passed across Martin's face.
“Finally.”
He stepped closer to Devanna, flexing his massive arms. “So? What are you going to do about it, fag?”

Hatred, compacted so determinedly inside him, flaring alive. The room around them was very still. Devanna's heart was hammering so loud, he was certain everyone must hear it. “Come on, faggot,” Martin whispered. “Give me a reason, just give me a reason.” Devanna's fingers bunched into a fist and with a wild, inarticulate cry, he launched himself at Martin.

Martin swatted at him as he might a bug, laughing as he effortlessly fended off Devanna's blows. “My turn, chokra.” Devanna never even saw him move, but he found himself suddenly sprawled on the ground, the sweet-salty taste of blood in his mouth. Martin bent over him, grinning. “Chokra faggot.” Devanna tried to rise but Martin punched the side of Devanna's head with all his strength. Devanna gagged. “Say it out loud,” Martin coaxed, raising his fist and hitting his head again. “
Say
it, fag. Pets Are Not Allowed.”

“Stop it, Martin,” someone said. “Let him go.” Martin swung about to tell the person to bloody mind his own business, but something about the crowd, the hostility in their faces, made him hesitate. “Stop it,” someone said again, and fear prickled along Martin's spine.

“Not worth my time anyway,” he blustered, his voice unusually high, and calling to his cronies, he pushed his way out of the room.

Behind him, the crowd slowly started to dissipate. “Come on, man, get up,” they urged Devanna.

Devanna lay unmoving, his head buzzing unbearably, grief and humiliation grainy upon his tongue.

He left for Coorg that same afternoon. It was the only thing that made sense to him anymore. Devi … He wove unsteadily out of the hostel gates, heedless of the classmates who tried to stop him. He needed to go to the infirmary, they said. “You're
concussed,
man, you need to rest. Come on, get back inside before the warden does his rounds.” When they saw it was futile, they shoved a few rupees in his pocket and gave him whatever grub they could lay their hands on: a small tin of biscuits, plum cake, even a precious quarter-liter bottle of gin.

He caught the coach to Mercara, a delicate crusting of blood in his hair. It kept playing over and over in his head, the image of Nancy, splayed open. The sound her skull had made as the rock came crashing down, a crunchy, brittle sound like an eggshell coming apart. He began to shake. A brisk breeze wafted through the open windows, cold upon his face; he lifted a hand to his cheek and found to his surprise that he was crying.

The coach broke down midway; they managed eventually to repair it, but by the time the lights of Mercara came into view, it was well after two the next morning. Devanna's scalp ached as if someone had taken an ax to it, and the buzzing in his ears was even louder than before. He stumbled off the bus into a blanket of mist so thick it was impossible to see more than a few feet ahead. Mercara was deserted; even the beggar who ordinarily trawled the coach stop was missing, curled up somewhere asleep. Devanna
glanced once, shivering, toward the mission, and then, turning westward, he set off at a blundering run toward the Pallada village, despite the wild elephants and the ghost who frequented the trail.

Chengappa anna used to scare Devi and him with tales of the ghost when they were little. “Very tall, she is, and beautiful, ah, so beautiful that a man can burn with fever just by laying eyes on her. But if you look down, beyond her ankles to her feet, that is when you know she is a pisachi. Her feet, you see, are turned
backward.
” Devi would slip her hand into his and he would resolutely clutch her fingers, frightened, too, but trying not to show it.

He raised an arm now, pushing through the mist. If he saw the ghost tonight, he would push right through her. Right
through
her. He giggled. He touched his fingers to the side of his head. The swelling was worse, he noted detachedly, but at least the bleeding had stopped. The buzzing in his ears, though, was even louder, like a hive of jungle bees swarming over his scalp.
“Flora Sylvatica, Flora Indica,”
he muttered to himself, his teeth chattering.
“Spicilegium Neilgherrense, Icones Plantarum.”

So pink, so unbearably tiny, that pink, pulsing heart. She had waited for him, he knew, held on to life until he found her.
“Hortus Bengalensis, Hortus Calcuttensis, Prodromus Florae, Peninsulae Indicae.”
He started to shiver uncontrollably. Butchered wide open, and yet again, he had been unable to do a thing. There was such a thirst in his throat … Remembering the bottle in his pocket, he took a long swig, coughing as the gin hit his mouth. She had been his. She had been HIS. Devi … He started to run even faster, lurching from side to side along the trail.

Dawn was breaking, gunmetal gray, as he approached the Nachimanda house. The mist began to thin, but nonetheless, it would be a subdued sunrise this morning, a throng of clouds advancing grimly in the sky. A chorus of bullfrogs started up, serenading the clouds and thrilling to the smell of rain in the air. He stumbled on.

The dogs, after a few sharp barks, rushed toward him, gamboling in delight as they recognized him. “Yes, yes,” he mumbled as
he abstractedly patted their heads. He would sit awhile, he decided, wait on the verandah perhaps, until this ache in his head subsided. Before he spoke with Devi and proposed. Silver flickered in the east, a rooster crowing from somewhere behind the house.