Tiger Hills (44 page)

Thanking you sincerely.

Your former student,

Kambeymada Devanna

Devanna stared at it and then, tearing it in half, he threw the letter into the wastepaper basket. When Devi asked that evening if it had been posted, Devanna hesitated an instant and then gestured noncommittally with his hand.

When weeks passed with no response to the never-posted letter, Devi tried a different tack. She dressed Appu in his best clothes, the brand-new shorts and shirt she had bought from the English clothing store in Mercara. She smoothed his hair down with coconut oil and water as Devanna coached him how to greet the Reverend in English. Devanna was reticent about accompanying them, but Devi was having none of it.

“You have to come,” she insisted. “You were close to the Reverend. You
must
speak with him on Appu's behalf.”

The former novices, now nuns, flocked around Devanna like plump, graying pigeons in their habits. Devi watched, a strange softness in her eyes as the nuns cooed over him. “I am well, I am well,” he assured them, smiling, the gauntness in his features suddenly dissipated. “Look,” he said, removing his hand from the cane, “I can stand unaided, even walk a few steps.”

Where have you been, child? they wanted to know. You have completely forgotten us. So close you live, and not once have you come to visit us in all these years. Did you not want to see the Reverend? Old he has become now, he needs young people around him.

“I heard he had a stroke …,” Devanna said hesitantly, and one of the nuns shook her head.

“Two. Two strokes, one after the other. He survived both with the Good Lord's grace, but what a scare he gave us each time.” She sighed. “Hardly ventures out now, stays in his office working. But what am I chattering on for? He will be so thrilled to see you.”

She hurried down the chessboard-tiled corridor, calling out to Devi as she left. “Devi, your son Nanju, he is a sweet boy. Reminds
us so much of his father, he does.” The softness died abruptly from Devi's eyes. She smiled briefly and looked out the windows at the nodding gerberas.

The nun returned, fussing with her habit. “Child,” she said, embarrassed, “the Reverend, he … he is busy right now. Can you … do you think you can leave him a letter?”

“He has already sent one,” Devi interrupted, “and we are still waiting for a reply. Oh, this is ridiculous.” Without waiting for a response, she swept down the corridor.

“Devi! Child! You cannot just go in.” Squawking in alarm, the nuns fluttered around Devi, trying to dissuade her, but she was already knocking on the door to the Reverend's office.

He turned in surprise from the bookshelf.

“Who—?”

“Devi. You don't remember me, perhaps, but surely you remember my husband? Kambeymada Devanna. Dev, you used to call him.”

The Reverend looked past her at the nuns. “It's all right,” he said to them. “Shut the door behind you, please?”

“He wrote you a letter. Why did you not reply?”

Gundert frowned, puzzled, but before he could comment, Devi rattled on. “He is waiting outside. Why did you not come out to see him?”

Gundert looked down at the book he held in his hand. Sunlight poured into the study through the starched curtains, their crocheted edges casting serrated circle and heart patterns on the walls and the floor. The light bounced off the Reverend's bowed head, a patchwork of pink scalp visible through the thinning silver hair. “I am busy.”

“Too busy to say hello? He used to look up to you so. I should know, all he would talk about was you. All he thought about was what you taught him. Trees and flowers and poetry, that's all the man still thinks about, to this day. And you will not even come out and see him?”

Gundert was grasping the book so tight, there were faint indentations in its leather-bound cover from his fingers.

“I see how it is,” Devi said, when he did not reply. “So be it, let's get down to brass tacks then. You're building a new wing to the school, are you not? I hear you're seeking donations to fund the construction. How much do you need?”

Gundert looked up at her. His voice, when he spoke, was flat. “One thousand.”

“Done.” Devi turned to go. “I will have my bank arrange the funds. In return, there is a boy who must be admitted.” She dropped an elaborate curtsy. “Good day, Reverend.”

Devi swept out of the school, but Devanna halted by the gates, shading his eyes against the sun to scan the windows that lined the Reverend's office. He stood there, his heart pumping painfully as he searched, but of the Reverend there was no sign. He turned away, the pinched expression settling back into his features, failing to notice the slight shifting of the curtains in Gundert's office. The sort of movement an old man might cause as he stood there, heavy-hearted, then stumbling hastily back from the windows lest he be spotted.

In the coach on the way home, Devanna asked after the Reverend. Was he looking well?

Devi shook her head. “Frail, he looked. Shrunken. Eyes all watery. I can't believe how scared I used to be of him.”

“Did he … I mean, did he … ”

Devi hesitated only briefly. “He asked about you,” she said then, briskly. “Wanted to know how you were, how you were doing. He would have come out himself, but he had people there in his office.”

Devanna had nodded, knowing she was lying, but was strangely comforted all the same.

Chapter 29

T
he years that followed passed gently over them all, cloaked in the easy language of youth and two thriving sons. While neither boy came close to duplicating Devanna's academic prowess, Appu at least showed an early and outstanding athletic ability, becoming the youngest student in the history of the mission school to try out successfully for the junior cricket team. When a craze for hockey swept through Coorg, ten-year-old Appu was at once enchanted; the following year, he was effortlessly selected for the junior outdoor XIs. The team forged its way through the district tournament, generating so much local excitement that on the day of the finals, there was not even standing room to be found around the field. All of Coorg, it seemed, had turned out to watch the game and judge for themselves the prodigious talent of the Kambeymada lad they had heard so much about. Appu did not disappoint, scoring two crucial goals.

Devi could barely contain her pride as he went up to collect his Player of the Tournament trophy. “Look at him, just
look
at him!” she whispered jubilantly to Tayi, and the old lady smiled.

“What a game!” someone said, stopping to congratulate Devanna. “The boy is a natural, you must be proud of him.”

“I am, very,” Devanna replied, beaming.

“Lucky child,” the man continued, glancing enviously at Devanna's
brogues. “If it weren't for you, where would he have been today? No parents, no land, no prospects … it was a fortunate day for him when you took him in.”

“Nanju and Appu, they are equally my sons,” Devanna said, embarrassed. “We as parents are the fortunate ones.”

“Well, he is very lucky to be your ward. Such largesse—”

“Appu is no ward—he is my son,” Devi interrupted coldly. “His father was a tiger killer. A war hero. That game Appu just played? As you say, he is a natural. It's in his blood. No amount of
largesse
can substitute for that.”

“Why do you say such hurtful things?” Tayi admonished her later.

Devi frowned. She was still upset by the man's comments. All these years, and yet people refused to accept that Appu was hers. The day had been a muggy one, the threat of a storm brewing in the oppressive air; the headache that Devi had been ignoring all morning had painfully flared up. “What did I go and say now?”

“You're so quick to point out at every instant that Devanna isn't Appu's father. Think how Devanna must feel when you do so. He's treated Appu as if he were his own child, from the day you brought him home.”

“Appu is
Machu's
son,” Devi said flatly.

“And you his mother? I see. So where does that leave Devanna? Or Nanju?”

“What do you mean? Nanju is my child, too.”

“Come, Devi. You know you favor Appu, you always have. And yet, has Devanna once voiced his objection? Never, despite the hurt it must cause him.”

“Voice his objection?”
Devi pressed her fingers to her throbbing temples, suddenly filled with anger. “On what grounds? You want to talk about Nanju? Let's. Take a long look at him, Tayi, remember as I do, every time I see him, just
how
his father's seed was planted in me.”

Tayi blanched and turned to the sink.

“No, why do you turn away from me now? Is this too bitter a truth for you?”

Tayi began to sort the pots and pans with a great deal of clattering. “Enough. Why do you insist on raking up the past? It's gone, Devi.”

“That's right. Let's shut it tidily away, pretend that nothing happened. Yes, the past is gone.
Machu
is gone, forever. While Devanna limps about this house, a … a constant reminder of everything I have lost.”

It grew dark outside, the birds suddenly quiet as they hurriedly flew toward shelter. “He has always loved you,” Tayi said, distressed. “From the time you were little.”

“Love. It must be a misbegotten love indeed, to have caused me so much grief.”

Tayi's hands trembled. “Whatever happened, happened. The past
is
gone. Look ahead to the future. My flower bud, my darling child, be like a
flower.
The true beauty of a flower lies in the sweetness it carries within, in the perfume it shares with the wind.”

Thunder rumbled as the first drops of rain splattered into the dust, a cooling whiff of petrichor rising from the estate. Devi massaged her temples again. “My head,” she said tiredly. “I'm going to rest for a while. You're right, Tayi, I should look ahead. Iguthappa has been kind, and I am blessed. Machu's son. Appu … I've been given the future.”

From the other side of the kitchen door, Appu detached himself from the shadows and melted silently into the house, trying to make sense of what he had just overheard.

Devanna awoke in the middle of the night, smiling. He groped about in his mind, trying to replicate the fragrance that had perfumed his dreams, but it slipped through his fingers, note after tantalizing note. He had been jumping, he remembered, across the crab stream, his legs bounding off the wet mud. She was laughing, her laughter the very color of the water, a clear, unaffected silver. He turned his head, still half asleep. Fireflies hung flickering outside the bedroom window, tracing patterns across the velvet of the night. Now on, now off, shifting and rearranging themselves in a myriad sparks of code.

The bamboo flower! His eyes flew open. The flower the Reverend had shown him all those years ago. He recalled the fragrance still trapped in its dried petals, the heady roundness of it.

Deeper than a rose.

Muskier than jasmine.

Bambusa. Indica. Devi.

How had he forgotten all these years?

He slept no more that night, thumping his walking stick impatiently on the floor for Tukra to help him out of bed as soon as the first light streaked the sky. “Quickly Tukra, we have a flower that is waiting to be discovered.”

When Devi came downstairs, she found to her surprise the coffee workers gathered earnestly around Devanna as he held court upon the lawn. He was searching for a particular flower, he told them, large as his fist and divinely perfumed.

It was rare, very rare, and grew hidden among the bamboo thickets. “Find one for me,” he told them, “and you will be richly rewarded. But remember, I want the plant, roots and all.”

The workers waggled their heads, bemused by this odd request but keen to please this master, who always had a kind word for them and their children as he patiently attended to their cuts, sores, and various fevers. They would ask their relatives, too, they assured him, those who worked on other plantations as well as those who still lived among the forests. Someone would definitely find the flower.

Nanju and Appu clamored to be included in this project. They went traipsing eagerly through the estate and poked at the bamboo thickets that grew by the lake, but apart from two petrified rat snakes that the dogs promptly tore apart, there was little else to be found. “But
where
is it?” Appu asked impatiently, and Devanna smiled. He raised his cane and pointed toward the mountains, hazy in the distance. “Probably there. But it would be foolish, wouldn't it, to overlook the possibility of our own estate?”

Devanna began once more to maintain records of the plants he found, pressing the specimens when his fingers were too stiff to paint. He spent hours referencing and cross-referencing his books,
inscribing the species and genus to which each specimen belonged in a copperplate script that sometimes lifted and jerked midway no matter how hard he tried to control his hands.