Red Earth and Pouring Rain (30 page)

Hercules stood by his side, portly, head held tilted back in a habitual demonstration of sniffy pride, and seated around them,
in wicker garden chairs, other black-coated men listened respectfully, brows wrinkled with concern and thought, their fingers
steepled before their faces; the red-haired man took a deep breath, seeming almost ready to speak, and Sanjay caught hold
of Chotta’s dhoti, preventing him from crawling any further. ‘And, finally, my friends,’ the red-haired man said; ‘the scoundrel
says —and I almost lack the courage, the sheer gall to read this out before an assembly of God-fearing men —but he said, he
said…’; he looked down at the paper, clenched his teeth, threw his head back and looked up to the sky, as if for help, then
snapped back to the writing on the paper, licked his lips, and then spoke, eyes bulging: ‘He says this. I quote: “The people
of India are a sober, quiet and industrious race, and the propagation of Christianity is neither desirable nor practicable.”’

Hercules and the other men raised a chorus of unbelieving and disgusted gasps, and above them Chotta tremored and turned,
alert as a mongoose: Sikander swung around the corner, upright, eyes fixed on Sanjay and Chotta, feet falling easily and instinctively
at the centre of the parapet, his body relaxed, a quick smile of triumph on his face, right arm outstretched to make the tag;
Sanjay had turned to follow Chotta’s glance, and now Chotta’s legs pistoned against his back (the heads below were beginning
to turn up), and as Sanjay pushed himself away from the eager-to-touch hand (he knew its bruising strength), he managed, even
in the midst of that furious activity, to find a moment to envy Sikander’s easy stance, his grace, to curse his own plump,
ineffectual legs, to wish for strength instead of an early and wholly unprofitable skill at writing (at two he knew the alphabet,
and at four and a half the pleasure of a couplet that fell into rhyme almost by itself), but then he abruptly became aware
of the lack of anything under his behind, the ponderous, unceasing demands of gravity; there was an expression of bemused
concentration on his face, an indication of what-is-this-nothingness-under-my-arse as he toppled over backwards, ankles sliding
across the stone, the world turning upside-down, the things of the soil —its leaves, the blades of grass, the grain of mud,
and something else, two bumps —getting bigger, a moment of light:

Yama is a happy god. Ruins seed the ground, the harvest is tendrils that burst out of the soil, through the soles of our feet.
They occupy us without our knowledge.

Kites float in sluggish circles for thousands of years, alert for the faintest ribbon of dust below. Everything is the eater
and the eaten, rocks throb, expand, contract, until they burst. Snakes abandon their below-surface treasures to husk off their
skins under the sun, leaving the figures of former selves, fragile histories that begin to disintegrate as soon as they are
formed.

The passing of the powerful causes noise, but rain deadens even this sound. Rivers swell, and the bloated carcasses of lions
bob up like children’s toys, softened and ready for the surgeon-skill of the vulture. Monuments are silted over, windows are
plugged with clay and ash, when the waters recede the farmers reap good crops.

Above, those who cannot see the spirits are the dead. The gravity of the cold sometimes-glimpsed glow of the cities on the
ocean’s
floor, the hiss of the guardians, impels us. Even the deniers are driven: in each mouthful they ingest a hundred years, a
million deaths. What is sacred cannot be history, but memory (the grimace of the monkey, the shark’s yawn) is divine.

When Sanjay gained consciousness, there were two holes in his head, spaced evenly on his forehead above his eyes, and people
began to tell him secrets; later, he decided that perhaps it was the fact that the holes somehow suggested an extra pair of
eyes, that it was this that compelled confessions, or perhaps it was his constantly pained expression, which suggested a precocious
wisdom (which, of course, meant piety, holiness) but actually resulted from a perpetual case of double-vision, of seeing everything
twice. Perhaps it was also the manner in which he had been injured. When Ram Mohan told him that he had fallen onto Shiva’s
trident, he had wondered if his uncle was making some elaborate metaphor, but this was entirely and literally a fact: the
injuries were from two metal points protruding from the ground; upon investigation, and excavation, what was revealed was
first a trident with the middle prong snapped off at the root, and then the god himself, dancing. When Sanjay was alone, he
wondered how long Shiva had hidden under the soil, his right hand raised: ten years, a hundred, a thousand? But now he had
emerged, and the manner of his coming made Sanjay famous, as the boy who brought the god, and so there was a stream of visitors
who came to sympathize and marvel at his survival, at his resistance to the twin assault on his brain.

The first visitor that Sanjay remembered, that he was conscious enough to recognize, was Hercules —this was the first time,
in all the years Hercules had been a neighbour of the Parashers, that Sikander’s father had deigned to visit the Brahmin household;
and when he came, he arrived in the full glory of his uniform, resplendent in red and green, trailed by his two sons. Sanjay
recalled, much later, the fastidious, finicky curve of the wrist with which Hercules flicked the tails of his coat out of
the way as he sat gingerly in the only Angrez-style chair in the Parasher household, that and his arched-eyebrowed stare at
the paintings on the wall and the colourful design on the bedspread. He looked also, long and carefully, at Sanjay’s father,
who flinched a little under the scrutiny but stood his ground, standing at the foot of the small bed,
unwilling to leave his son with the soldier, but finally Hercules leaned down to Sikander, who whispered to Arun, and the
three —Arun and Sikander and Chotta —backed out of the room. As they left, Hercules spoke a few words in broken Urdu, stumbling
over the consonants often enough to bring a slight twitch of amusement to Arun’s face, at which Hercules resolutely turned
to English, speaking perhaps just a little louder than necessary. Hearing the sounds of English, Sanjay tried to raise his
head, fighting off the nausea that resulted from the duplication of the world in his head, from the doubling —presently of
Hercules —that would plague him for much of his life.

‘My sons were undoubtedly involved in the inception of your present condition, my boy,’ Hercules was saying; he leaned forward
and clasped Sanjay’s hand, ‘but one might state with some certainty that it was also your unhappy country which assaulted
you, since it was one of those old, false gods who have oppressed and humiliated your simple people since time immemorial
who thrust his way out of the soil to thrust his weapon into your brow.’

‘Wait a minute,’ one of the sadhus said. ‘Wait just a minute here.’

‘You have a doubt?’ Sandeep said.

‘I do, I do. We can assume with certainty that at this point in his development Sanjay doesn’t speak English, no?’

‘We don’t have to assume. I asked my story-teller in the forest the same question, and she said that Sanjay knew no English.’

‘Then how is it that he seems to know what Hercules is saying? Why is it that we hear what Hercules is saying?’

‘Because Sanjay hears it.’

‘But you just said…’

‘Sanjay hears it, and it is his blessing, or power, that even though he doesn’t understand what is being said, he hears each
word, each sound, as a crystal-clear, separate entity. You might say that he is cursed with the inability to hear noise, that
he is gifted with the ability, or, rather, the imperative task, of really listening to language. So when he heard Hercules
speak, he heard not the confused jumble of clatter that most of us hear when we listen to a foreign tongue, but a set of distinct,
polished, complete objects, devoid of meaning but possessed of inherent completeness or beauty, and so, later, he was able
to remember these
things, or words. On learning the meanings attached to these symbols, years later, he was able, then, to discern what Hercules
had said that afternoon, or what he had said apart from what he had uttered.’

‘That’s all very well, but a little too clever, if you ask me,’ the sadhu grumbled. ‘But I suppose we must give our story-tellers
a little room to work in.’

‘Clever is hardly the word I’d use,’ Sandeep said. ‘It is structurally necessary —if Sikander is the brave, and Chotta can
drink poison, then it is necessary that Sanjay be able to listen to language.’

‘It is?’ said the sadhu. ‘To me it makes no sense.’

‘Listen,’ Sandeep said. ‘In fact there is even more to Sanjay, because he knows what he has never been taught…’

‘That’s completely acceptable,’ the sadhu said. ‘We all know about Mozart and his symphonies at four and a half, but this
other stuff, you know…’

‘Can we get back to the story?’ another sadhu said, a young man with the nervous habit of tapping the sole of his foot with
a bent forefinger. ‘I want to know what Hercules wants.’

‘All right, all right,’ Sandeep said. ‘Listen .…

‘One might state with some certainty that it was also your unhappy country which assaulted you, since it was one of those
old gods who have oppressed and humiliated your simple people since time immemorial who thrust his way out of the soil to
aim his broken trident at your brow,’ Hercules said. ‘Ah, boy, it is a pity that you cannot understand, yet, the manner in
which your accident may be an act of providence, in that your story, in Reverend Sarthey’s capable hands, will be an instrument,
a persuasive balm, which will bring about an agreeable effect on the Christians of Europe, loosening purse strings and setting
in motion political action designed to rectify the Company’s unfortunate policies towards the great work of bringing the Word
to your countrymen. The good reverend will take that horrifying demonic effigy, with its serpent necklace and tiger-cloth
and cavorting pose, and will travel with it throughout England, from village to little town, exhibiting the depths of degradation
that characterizes the so-called theology of the Hindoo, that collection of libertinism, oppression, superstition and folly
that masquerades as a religion; he will tell your story, pointing to
you as a symbol, and so you must not despair. Your suffering has a purpose, a meaning —through your injury you have exposed
the rot that hides below the surface of what is called civilization here, the demons that live just below a patina of effete
conversation and decadent arts. You are chosen. Rejoice.’

Abruptly, Hercules snapped out of his chair, and left the room (when he drew back the curtain at the door, the light filled
Sanjay’s head with painful, luminous circles); Sanjay let his head loll back, exhausted, and listened to the voices outside
—Hercules’, Sikander’s, his father’s —listened, frustrated by the distance and the intervening, muffling cloth, but still
catching some of the guarded tension of the conversation in the voices, by the rhythms and the pitch. He shut his eyes to
listen better, and sensed, further away, the presence of his mother (shuffling steps, nasal and slightly-liquid breathing),
his uncle Ram Mohan (a click of bone against bone at a joint, frequent swallowing), and Sikander’s mother (something almost
unheard; what was it?); they entered through the door which led deeper into the house, huddling together, pushing aside the
red curtain.

‘Has he gone?’ Sikander’s mother whispered. ‘Has he?’

‘I can hear him outside,’ Ram Mohan said.

‘What did he want with you?’ Sanjay’s mother said to him, running a palm over his cheek. He squinted, trying to fuse the two
parallel images of her, and tears rolled slowly down her cheeks. ‘Oh, child. Oh, child.’

Sanjay grunted, a ball of muscle moving up and down his throat, trying to bring the words up, and he could see the words,
the forms they would take, and feel them, the emotional weight each would carry, but for all the gasping concentration he
could bring to bear on it, his tongue flopped about his mouth, reptilian and trapped, uncontrollable. He gathered himself
and tried again —the others watched, mournful but encouraging —and drool ran down his chin. He swallowed (Ram Mohan reached
forward to wipe), compressed his lips, focussed every last iota of his being at the front of his face (lips and nose, eyes
and chin), then released, and one word emerged: ‘Mmmmm-Mah.’ His mother, kneeling beside the bed, let her head droop until
it was leaning on his chest and wept, her shoulders shaking (but above, the other image hovers, miming her), and then Sanjay’s
father entered, followed by Sikander and Chotta.

‘He wants me to give him the Vedas,’ Arun said, flinging his hands about. ‘That’s what he really came for, the Vedas and the
Geeta.’

‘What do you mean, give him the Vedas?’ Ram Mohan said. ‘How can you just give anybody the Vedas?’

‘That’s what he said. There’s a man staying in his house, some Englishman with red hair, some Sartha or Partha or something
like that…’

‘Sarthi,’ Janvi said.

‘That’s the one,’ Arun said. ‘And he’s supposed to be a scholar or teacher or something, isn’t that what he said, Sikander?’

‘That’s right, Uncle,’ Sikander said. ‘He told me to translate. And he said that Sarthi was a scholar who wanted to study
the Vedas —only he called them the Beds —so Uncle here should give them to him.’

‘Don’t you give anything to him,’ Janvi said.

‘But how?’ Arun said. ‘Oh, he came very politely, in sympathy with our child and all that, and when he spoke to me it was
a request all right, but he knew and I knew that I was expected to give them what he wanted. “If you would be kind enough
to supply my friend with the necessary… ,” he said; no, Sikander? And how he looked at me. Standing with legs apart in my
house as if he knew who was really master. How will we say no?’

‘The Vedas are for the twice-born,’ Janvi said. ‘They are not twice-born.’

‘In truth whoever has the power to take the Vedas takes them, never mind twice-born or thrice,’ Arun said.