Flood of Fire (36 page)

On waking the next day he realized that it behooved him to go
to the big house to pay his respects to the Burra Sahib. But he kept putting it off, unsure of whether he would be able to maintain a normal demeanour, fearing that he would betray himself with some chance word or gesture.

But as the hours went by it became ever clearer that it was by staying away that he was most likely to draw suspicion to himself. So in the late afternoon he screwed up his courage and walked over to the mansion to ask for Mr Burnham.

A khidmatgar led him to a withdrawing room, where the Burra Sahib was conferring with an important-looking gent. As Zachary stood waiting, hat in hand, the force of the tycoon's presence began to work on him like a spell: Mr Burnham's commanding stature, his wide, masterful chest, his shining beard, and even the swell of his belly helped to create an aura such that to gain his good opinion seemed a prize worth striving for.

Nor, somewhat to his own surprise, was Zachary beset by pangs of guilt or jealousy as he had feared he might be. To the contrary he was aware instead of a peculiar kind of sympathy, a sense of kinship even, born of the knowledge that neither he nor Mr Burnham would ever be able to lay full claim to his wife's heart, which had perhaps forever been lost to her first love.

When at last Mr Burnham turned to him, Zachary shook his hand with unfeigned warmth.

‘I'm very glad to see you, sir.'

‘I'm glad to see you too, Reid. Are you finished with the budgerow yet?'

‘Not quite, sir, but I will be very soon.'

‘Good! I'm glad to hear it. Let me know when you're ready and I'll come by to take a look.'

With that Mr Burnham turned on his heel and disappeared into his daftar.

This exchange, brief though it was, was hugely energizing for Zachary; he began to work harder than ever before, polishing, hammering, carving, holystoning. Sometimes, when he stopped to rest, his mind would wander, and then it would seem to him that the last few months had passed in a kind of delirium in which nothing had been real except the feverish voluptuousness of his nights with Mrs Burnham: whether he was with her or not, her
voice had always been in his head; even when he was in his own unkempt bed, he had felt himself to be cradled in her satiny sheets.

Had his memories of those nights been a matter of the mind alone then he would have been able to deal with them without too much difficulty. But his body too had acquired a great trove of memories, and having grown accustomed to the fleshly pleasures of the boudoir, it often cried out insistently for release. But in this matter he was unyielding. Mrs Burnham's words on the subject were loud in his ears and following her advice he began to eat judiciously, subsisting largely on crackers and bland, unspiced foods. He started to exercise vigorously, with dumb-bells and weights, and after rousing his body to a great heat he would shock it with a long, cold bath. At night, when the fear of lapsing became especially powerful, he would tie his hands to the bedstead, to prevent them from straying, as recommended by Dr Tissot. One evening he even attended a prayer meeting in the city, and for the first time in his life he understood what the preacher was talking about, what he really meant when he talked about Man's fallen nature, and the devil that lurked in every heart; he too was among the worshippers who left the meeting armed with a precious trove of fear and dread.

And sure enough, just as Mrs Burnham had predicted, his mounting fears and anxieties began to work a slow but steady change in him; he started to see why it was more important to hoard than to waste, he understood why accumulating was more important than spending, and slowly he came to be filled with a great disgust for the life he had led before – a life of profligacy and poverty, in which he had wasted his mind and body in pointless pursuits. He longed to leave that life behind him – and again arose that confounded question: but how?

One day he saw the Burnham carriage rolling by, with both master and mistress seated within, and he yearned to prove to both of them that he was not ‘just a mystery'; that he too could be a Burra Sahib with a mansion, a carriage and ships to his name.

But how?

He could think of no answer. After many hours of fruitlessly racking his brain he went off to Kidderpore and bought himself a bottle of rum.

Ten

N
ow that they knew where they were going, the balamteers talked of little else but China. And the more they spoke of it the faster the rumours flew: it was as if the very name – Maha-Chin – were enough to stir up elemental fears in them. They knew nothing about China of course, except that the people there were different in every way, not least in appearance – they looked like Gurkhas, some said, and this too was cause for disquiet. The sepoys were well aware of the Gurkhas' fearsome reputation as fighters; many of them had relatives who had fought in the East India Company's wars against the Gurkha empire some twenty-two years before. One of the naiks in B Company was the son of a sepoy who had died at the Battle of Nalapani, where the Gurkhas had inflicted a severe defeat on the British. Like all professional soldiers, the sepoys had long memories: they knew that a few decades earlier the Gurkhas, for all their martial prowess, had been thoroughly defeated and subjugated by the army of Maha-Chin ka Faghfoor – the Emperor of China.

All of this created misgivings and these were compounded by speculation and rumours: some sepoys put it about that the Chinese had supernatural powers and were masters of the occult; others said that they possessed secret weapons and were ingenious in spreading confusion among their enemies.

Kesri was not impervious to these rumours: he had personally experienced many strange things on the battlefield and did not doubt that unknown forces could intervene in times of war. Why else did soldiers offer prayers before fighting? Why else did they carry protective amulets and have their weapons blessed? To speak of ‘luck' and ‘chance', as the British officers did, was merely an evasion to Kesri: what were those things but names for the interventions
of kismat? And if the Angrezes really believed that supernatural and divine forces played no part in war, then why did they go to their churches to pray on the eve of a battle? Why did they allow their sepoy orderlies to take their weapons to the temple to be blessed?

But of course these thoughts could not be voiced to anyone, least of all the naiks and lance-naiks: instead Kesri told them stories about his wartime experiences in Burma, where the people were also akin to the Chinese and the Gurkhas. It was true, he said, that they were fierce and skilful warriors, and that they used all kinds of arts and ruses to confuse their enemies. But in the end the Burmese, who had in the past vanquished the armies of the Emperor of China, had themselves been defeated: there was no reason to be awed by Chinese soldiers, said Kesri; like everyone else they could be beaten.

By this time Kesri's personal authority over the men was strong enough for his words to have a steadying effect: through the wrestling pit he had built close personal connections with many of the sepoys, and they had come to trust him. Besides, it was reassuring to them to know that they were serving under a havildar who had campaigned overseas before. As the days went by their performance on the parade ground improved and Captain Mee even went so far as to congratulate Kesri: ‘Shahbash havildar! The men are shaping up well.'

In late February Captain Mee held a briefing for Kesri and the other NCOs. With the aid of a large map and two interpreters, he explained that their company had been assigned to the
Hind
, a civilian transport ship that would take them to Singapore, and from there to southern China. Depending on the weather, the first leg of the journey would take fifteen to twenty days; the next might take a little less, but sailing times could not be predicted with any certainty. They could expect to leave after the retreat of the northerly monsoon, and before the onset of the summer rains – probably in March or April, which meant that their departure was now only a few weeks away.

The length of the voyage came as a surprise even to Kesri. None of his previous sea-journeys had lasted more than a week – it was daunting to think of spending a month or more at sea. It was not
that he was concerned about the discomforts of the voyage: what worried him was the question of how to keep up the men's morale so that they would be in a condition to fight when they reached their destination. Very few of them had ever sailed before and they all harboured that dread of the
kalapani
– the black water – that was prevalent in their home regions.

Kesri knew that Captain Mee's briefing would stir the men's misgivings and he was not wrong. One day a medical orderly came to tell him that one of the company's sepoys had suffered a serious bayonet wound. When Kesri went to the infirmary to inquire, the man claimed that he had hurt himself accidentally. But Kesri knew at a glance that he was lying – the wound was in the fleshiest part of the thigh, where it would do the least harm. He guessed that the man had done it to himself, in the hope of getting out of the army with an unblemished record of service, so that he could keep all his battas and perhaps get a pension as well.

Captain Mee agreed with Kesri that they would have to make an example of this man if they were to prevent an outbreak of self-inflicted wounds: a court martial was quickly convened and the man was given a seven-year sentence of transportation, to be served on Prince of Wales Island.

*

Baboo Nob Kissin's gaze was usually wary and vigilant, like that of a ruminant watching out for hungry predators. But Zachary's presence often had a transformative effect on him, and now, as he pushed open the door of his stateroom, the Baboo's eyes grew dewy and moist in anticipation of beholding the object of his devotion.

A year and several months had passed since Baboo Nob Kissin had last laid eyes on Zachary. Through most of that time he had been in China, with Mr Burnham; he had returned to Calcutta with his employer, on the
Anahita
. Had circumstances permitted he would have come at once to visit Zachary – but Mr Burnham had decided otherwise. On the very day of their return he had dispatched Baboo Nob Kissin to Patna and Ghazipur, to make inquiries about that season's poppy crop. Now, having completed his mission, Baboo Nob Kissin had come hurrying to the budgerow, in the spirit of an eager pilgrim: as the door of the stateroom swung slowly open, he saw to his shock that Zachary was lying
sprawled across the bed, clothed in nothing but his drawers, with his fingers still fastened on the neck of an almost empty bottle of rum.

In other circumstances the odour of sweat and liquor would have aroused Baboo Nob Kissin's utmost revulsion, but this being Zachary he took the signs of drunkenness to be intimations of something unknown and unexpected, some perplexing mystery that would lead him towards illumination. Tiptoeing inside, the Baboo slowed his steps so that he could take full advantage of this rare opportunity for an unguarded darshan: as he contemplated the snoring, sweating figure his heart swelled up with the almost uncon-tainable emotion that Zachary sometimes inspired in his breast, transporting him back to the moment of his epiphany, when he had stepped on the
Ibis
for the first time.

That day walking aft, towards the officers' cabins, Baboo Nob Kissin had heard the piping of a flute, the instrument of the divine flautist of Vrindavan, god of love as well as war. The sound of the flute had aroused a sudden stirring in his vitals. After a moment of alarm he had realized that the rumbling was not intestinal – it had been caused by the awakening of his late Gurumayee, Ma Taramony, who had transmigrated into his own body after shedding her earthly form. He had felt her coming to life and beginning to grow, like an embryo inside an egg, and he had known that the process would end only when the occupation of his body was complete and his own outward form was ready to be discarded, like a broken shell. He had fallen to his knees at the door of Zachary's cabin; and just then it had flown open to reveal the flute-player himself – a sturdily built young man dressed in shirt and breeches, with a dusting of freckles and a head of dark, curly hair.

It was a comely vision, not unworthy of a messenger of the beautiful Banka-bihari of Vrindavan: only in one respect was it disappointing and this was in the colour of his skin, which was of an ivory tint and utterly different from the blue-black hue of the Dark Lord. But the Butter-Thieving Imp was nothing if not playful and Baboo Nob Kissin had always known that when the Sign came its carrier would be wrapped in many disguises in order to test his powers of perception. The truth, he knew, would be hidden
in some unexpected place – and sure enough, he had found it while examining the
Ibis
's crew list: there, recorded against the name ‘Zachary Reid', was the word ‘black' under the column of ‘race'.

Baboo Nob Kissin had needed no other confirmation; it was exactly as he had known it would be: the outward appearance of the messenger was but a disguise for his inner being, an aspect of the flux and transformation of the material world, of Samsara. He had torn the page from the log-book and hugged the secret to himself: it had become his bond with Zachary, the relic that marked the beginning of his own transformation.