Zemindar (38 page)

‘But … but to just
allow
it to happen like that! I …’

‘Yes! But now look, Laura, and don’t turn away your head; listen to me! You are not one of those hysterical females who can duck the darker side of life by having the vapours. You’ve got to face things.’ And he gave my hands a shake, as he would the reins of his horse when he was impatient to get on.

‘First—now hear me!—that girl was in no condition to suffer. She had no idea what was happening to her, and if she had she would probably have gone anyway. She had been filled up with
bhang
—you know what that is? A drug—ever since her husband died. She was unconscious, or at any rate unknowing, when you saw her, and would be unconscious when they strapped her to the pyre.’ I shuddered at the dreadful image conjured by his words. ‘Yes! I know I’m being brutal, but if I’m not you’ll go on lacerating yourself with visions of how you would feel if you were to be burnt alive, and believe me there is no reality in your visions. Quite apart from the fact that the girl knew nothing of what was happening to her, these people are reared to other expectations than ours. A widow who is “
suttee
” is assured of a better life in her next incarnation, and when you know something of their lives here, you’ll sympathize with the lengths they’ll go to to improve their lot in the next.’

‘You cannot be defending it?’

‘Good God, no!
Suttee
, and many things like it, must be seen to be evil before we stand a chance of helping these poor devils, really helping them. But you must see their point of view too. For them
suttee
is no barbarous ritual of senseless cruelty, as it appears to you. It is a religious function, solemn, holy, admirable, sanctioned by centuries of usage. And, let’s not forget, often necessary economically! Here’—in another voice—‘blow your nose!’

He released my hands and gave me his own pocket handkerchief. I mopped up my tears while he went on: ‘In the old days the widows used to go to the pyre singing, and it is said that their state of exaltation was such that they died without a pang. Well, none of us can know about that, and now times have changed. The practice is continued here and there, and not infrequently among these jungle folk to the north who have very little contact with anyone outside their own villages. They have remained primitives, and we with our Western ideas have never got close enough to them to make any impression. And that is the whole point of what I am saying; you cannot equate that girl and yourself. She would react to nothing as you would, not even pain. I am not denigrating her humanity. I will not insult you by trying to convince you she would not be capable of pain, of all sorts of pain and mental and physical suffering, because she is primitive. But what you must realize is that both the causes and the effects in her life would be totally different to anything in yours, believe me!’

He paused and sighed, and I caught him looking at me speculatively, wondering whether I understood.

‘You thought me heartless this morning, didn’t you?’

‘And aren’t you?’

‘Perhaps. The truth is I wasn’t so much concerned with the wretched drugged girl. I knew I could not help her. I was wondering what influence is at work that makes ignorant, backward people like that take the law into their own hands so brazenly. Why they should suddenly feel so immune from the law, even though it is almost impossible to enforce it among them. There is something behind it all, and I am not sure what it is.’ His eyes became abstracted as he tried again to work the matter out in his mind.

‘And you very much dislike not being sure—of anything!’ I remarked acidly. ‘What a strange man you are. You can worry about the remote implications and yet not give a fig for the suffering individual.’

‘That is not quite just,’ he decided, having considered my words. ‘It would be unwise for me to care too much for the individual. That’s not my job. I have over thirty thousand individuals on this estate, Laura, and that means that every day—no, every hour—some tragedy is in the making or takes place that, if I were to give adequate attention to it, might require months or years of my time to ameliorate. I do not like the sights that meet my eyes as I ride through the villages: the potbellied, half-starved babies, the disease everywhere, the children deliberately crippled for begging purposes, the little girls sold into the temples, the … and the other things,’ he added lamely, so that I knew he would have said more had he not realized he was talking to a female. ‘But all I can do at this stage is try to provide some small positive good, rather than combat a large negative evil, over which I can never hope to win.’

‘I don’t think I am condemning you,’ I said, realizing not without satisfaction that I had managed to puncture his usual ironic self-assurance. He was actually explaining himself to me. ‘I don’t know enough about you or your work to condemn. I know that I could never act, or think, in the way you do, no matter how long I lived out here. I could not disregard the evil under my feet.’

He came back to the bed and stood looking down at me with his hands in his breeches’ pockets.

‘I believe you couldn’t. But then you are a woman.’

‘Why have you told me all this, Oliver?’ I asked.

‘Isn’t it obvious? I didn’t want you to suffer. Unnecessarily. You have too much sense to allow yourself to agonize over imaginary miseries once you know the facts. So I have given you the facts.’

‘Thank you. It’s true, I do feel easier in my mind now. About the girl, I mean. And I … I suppose you really had no option this morning. But … but too many things had happened too quickly, all seeming to contradict each other, and I could make nothing of them, nor of my own state of mind.’

‘Good! And now I’ll tell you something else. Ishmial has already ridden to Lucknow with a report of the morning’s incident. He thinks he knows the village the funeral party came from, and I believe he is right. It is a hamlet, way off any track, and the people are unusually backward and intractable even for that region. They are not the responsibility of Hassanganj, but I have had trouble with them before when they have raided my villages for stock and … er … women. That sort of thing. If anything can be proved, and I’m by no means sure that it can, then, eventually, justice of a sort, your sort, will be done. That is as much as I can do. I realize of course that it is not enough in your eyes.’

‘My views are of small importance,’ I whispered. My head was aching abominably. He made no rejoinder, but the mask was back on his face. ‘Oh, Oliver, we will never see anything from the same angle. But thank you for trying to help me. It was good of you.’

‘A pleasure,’ he muttered. ‘Well, I had better go now and let you rest. Drink all the water you can. I hope you will feel better very soon.’ For a moment he looked as though there was something more he wanted to say. Then he shrugged his shoulders and walked out of the room. I was glad he had gone. He posed too many problems that I had not the energy to grapple with.

A few moments later Kate came back with a servant bearing a tray. I wanted no food, but forced myself to swallow a few mouthfuls. When I had finished, I asked Kate what on earth had made her persuade Oliver Erskine to come and talk to me. ‘He told me nothing you couldn’t have, Kate, and he is such an upsetting person when one isn’t feeling well. We nearly quarrelled and I know I annoyed him.’

‘But I didn’t persuade him, m’dear! It was he who suggested explaining matters to you. He was very worried about you.’

She left me then, and I drifted off to sleep with Bhujni fanning my head. Why should Oliver, of all people, have been worried about me, I thought as I fell asleep.

Emily was told that I was suffering from a touch of the sun, and though I guessed Charles knew the facts of that troubled ride, I did not care to mention it to him. In a couple of days I had quite recovered, but for some time thereafter I did not accompany the men on their daily exercise, preferring to remain within the park and garden, so I saw even less than usual of my host.

Emily, Kate and I were now busy making baby clothes, and spent a great part of each morning on the verandah, sewing tiny dresses and petticoats, jackets and bonnets. One day, towards the end of February, as we were so employed, I looked up to see Oliver approaching across the lawn, carrying a bundle of checked calico in his hand. Charles was with him, and both men seemed in a great hurry.

‘Ishmial! Ishmial!’ Oliver roared as he reached the house. ‘Come here—
juldi
!’ And he subsided on the verandah step almost at my feet, while Charles, mopping his red face, sat down on a chair. We all stopped work, wondering what was to come. It was unusual to see Oliver about the house in mid-morning.

‘Phew,’ gasped Charles. ‘Haven’t enjoyed a chase so much in years, but he was the slipperiest little beggar you ever saw!’

‘Who was? What has happened?’ asked Emily.

‘A little boy—up a tree.’

‘You chased a little boy up a tree?’

‘But he got away all the same—agile as a monkey!’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Kate put down her work. ‘Oliver, will you kindly explain?’

Oliver had been sitting with his head in his hands smiling to himself over what was obviously an enjoyable recollection. Charles looked put out at not being applied to himself, but allowed his brother to continue the tale.

‘Well,’ began Oliver, chuckling, ‘we were walking along the road leading to the factory from the village when I saw something move in one of the old neem trees. Now, you know how I cherish my trees.’

Indeed we did. Most of the trees on the estate had been planted by Old Adam, but each year Oliver put in others to compensate for the depredations of the villagers, who, being perennially short of fuel, thought nothing of cutting down the timber designed to save their soil from wind and water, to warm themselves and cook their food. Only a little less heinous in the eyes of Oliver was their practice of denuding trees of foliage to make fodder, and I had myself seen him suddenly tear away on his horse to make an example of some poor little wretch who was up a tree chopping off small branches to drag home for the family goat.

‘So,’ he continued, ‘we immediately ran forward to catch the culprit. Charles was up the tree in a trice, while I stayed at the bottom waiting for the thief to descend, but damn me if he didn’t run along to the end of a long branch, drop to the ground and disappear while we were still trying to believe our eyes. A spirited morsel. What’s more, he had not been cutting the leaves off; there was no sign of a chopper or any damage. But we did find this.’ He picked up the bundle and showed it to us, ‘And I am ready to swear that the lad was the son of the
thanadar
of Narainganj and that he had a good reason for wanting to keep out of my sight.’

He opened the bundle while he spoke, revealing a pile of
chapattis
, the flat, round, unleavened bread of the natives.

‘That’s too bad of you, Oliver,’ scolded Kate. ‘Now the poor fellow will be without his midday meal, or perhaps he was taking it to his father, and his mother will beat him for losing it.’

‘I think he’ll be in trouble all right, but not for that reason. Ishmial!’ he yelled again. ‘Where the devil is he?’

Just then Ishmial, summoned by other servants who had heard their master’s call, came running down the verandah.

‘Good! Now we shall see,’ said Oliver as Ishmial came to an apologetic halt beside him. He gestured towards the
chapattis
and asked Ishmial a series of questions in Hindustani. Ishmial picked up the bundle and examined its contents with interest, nodding from time to time as Oliver spoke. He pointed to something in the middle of one of the flat cakes as he turned them over, then replaced the lot in the rag with an air of accomplishment.

‘So, I was right!’ Oliver tied up the bundle and handed it over to Ishmial, who departed carrying it.

‘About the boy?’ suggested Emily hopefully; we were all now thoroughly mystified by Oliver’s manner.

‘No—oh, yes, I think I know the lad—but I’m right about these
chapattis
. Ishmial has come to me twice lately saying that
chapattis
are moving around the country in a mysterious fashion, carried from village to village with some sort of instructions to keep their movement going. And the headman of Mylapore came to me only yesterday, asking whether he should comply with the instructions or ignore them. I just wanted to make sure these were the same as the others, and it is Ishmial’s opinion that they are. There was a scrap of goat’s meat cooked into one of them.’

‘What is it all about?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know—yet. It’s a puzzle. They may have some religious significance, I suppose. But no one to whom they have been brought seems to know anything more of their origin or purpose than I do.’

‘Well,’ said Charles, rising, ‘the chase was the thing this morning, whatever the cause of the
chapattis
. Never saw a boy run so quickly in my life before. Like greased lightning!’

So the matter was forgotten, soon overlaid in our attention by the appearance of Toddy-Bob with a bundle of letters he had collected in Lucknow. I received one from Wallace Avery that morning, I remember. Apart from a scrawled note at Christmas time, we had heard nothing from Connie, but I had not supposed she would prove an active correspondent. Wallace had written several times to me or Emily, the letters bearing the imprint of his facile, faintly pompous personality as clearly as his florid face. It was difficult to know just how much of what he said was to be believed, but Emily and Charles were glad to know that their cousins had settled in happily to their new station, that their bungalow was an improvement on the one they had occupied in Lucknow, and that little Johnny was much improved in health this winter. ‘I very much hope,’ he ended, ‘that quite soon my Dear Old Lady and our boy will be on the good old briny on their way Home. Financial affairs in the house of Avery are looking up very well, and so I allow myself to hope that I will soon be able to afford their little trip!’ But I did not allow myself to hope in his hope, and, as often before, wondered whether I should not, even now, reveal the whole unhappy affair to Charles and ask for his intercession on Connie’s behalf. How gladly he would have helped; I was sure of that. And yet, and yet, it was not my business to reveal the affairs of Wallace to any third party; that much I had learnt the hard way! So I said nothing.