The Splendor Of Silence (47 page)

Before the durbar began, Mila wandered around the line of chairs set flush against the long aisle down which everyone would walk to reach Jai in his balcony and searched for Sam and Ashok. Her father, and Colonel Pankhurst (had he been in Rudrakot on this day), would be arranged in a line somewhere beyond the gates of the palace, waiting to be announced and called into the durbar for their turn. Kiran had never sat with her and she wondered where he was.

As she passed by Sam, he reached out and clasped her wrist gently. "Are you looking for me?"

A flood of happiness went through her and she said, "Yes. But where is Ashok?"

Sam's expression was stolid. "He is here somewhere. He promised me he would come before the durbar."

She sat down on the seat next to Sam. "I thought he was with you at the Victoria Club. Where is he, Sam?"

Sam took a deep breath and held it for so long that Mila began to listen for the sound of his breathing again, and a sudden fear came over her. She did not believe, even then, that Sam would knowingly do harm to her brother, but there was something that troubled him. What? She did not have to ask again, merely to prod his conscience into speech, for Sam knew she would be anxious, much as he had himself become in the last hour. So he told her. Not everything, not that he owed Vimal a promise, or that Vimal had wanted Ashok to come furtively to the meeting, but instead that he himself had taken Ashok to the meeting. He did not tell Mila that this was a fore-planned action, but he felt that she recognized it as such.

"You should not have," she said.

"Why? Is it that you do not want Ashok involved in nationalism?"

She hesitated and looked away over the heads of the people opposit
e t
hem to the red ramparts of the fort. "We must seem an unorthodox family to you, Sam. I can see that you support the Indian cause for freedom, and being Indian, we should too." She turned to him. "And we do. I do, Papa does, Ashok does when he thinks about it, Kiran does when he wants. Yet it means different things to us all. Here, in Rudrakot, Papa is a representative of the British Indian government, and as such he cannot allow his personal feelings to overrule his commitment to his duty. So not one of us can either. We must be seen to present a united front."

"I was curious about the meeting and wanted to hear Vimal's speech," Sam said.

A wry smile turned up the corners of Mila's mouth. She began to speak and then flushed when she realized what she was saying. "What was it you said in the verandah earlier this evening? That is not enough of a reason." She had to stop, her heart thumping at the remembrance, and it was almost a minute before she could speak again. "It is not just the nationalist movement, for we have our part to do also in this struggle. On the one hand, we are taught not to be individualistic, that fealty to our parents must supersede every other want and every other need, on the other, it is quite simply the question of freedom for my people. I choose to be loyal to my father, not because I am taught so, but because I choose so. "What I fear for Ashok ... is Vimal. I do not like that boy, and it is, really, an irrational distaste based on something as stupid as the fact that everyone seems to adore him because he has a slick tongue and a becoming appearance. Perhaps there is more, but I do not like him."

"I'm sorry," Sam said. He could also have said, I had to take Ashok to the political session; I had promised Vimal. But he did not, and his silence brought a little wedge of distrust between them, for Mila wondered why, and then thought that Sam must have had a reason or he would not have done something she so disapproved of.

The trumpeters near the gate of the courtyard lifted shining silver trumpets strung with silver tassels to their mouths and a sweet melody floated over the courtyard. They all became silent as the dulcet voice of the diwan rang out, first announcing Jai's arrival in the balcony, for which they all rose, and then, one by one, all the men and women who were to pay obeisance to the prince. Lady Pankhurst sailed by, so did the wife of the colonel of the Rifles regiment, the vicar's wife, and quite a few of the ladies from the Civil Lines where Mila lived. The men came next, first the officers of the two regiments and, finally, in the end, Raman, who walke
d u
p the aisle and smiled at Isis daughter as he passed her. Mila covered her mouth with the palm of her right hand and kissed it, sending her love to her father.

Over the next two hours of the White Durbar, the moon shrank in the sky, and when it had ended, strings of aquamarine lights were lit all around the courtyard. Jai stayed in his balcony watching the crowds below, the women of the ienana disappeared from their perches, and the audience remained where it was for the grand finale. Bearers in white, with flowing turbans and bare feet, came by with large silver trays on which rested little silver saucers of the specialty of Jai's kitchens, served only on this night, and only to the assembled guests. It was a sweet made from the milk of buffaloes fed only on a diet of almonds and honey. This milk was laced with jasmine honey, boiled for long hours while the top foam was skimmed off and deposited upon the silver saucers. These saucers were then taken into the glass-enclosed conservatory that held the prized roses of the Rudrakot palaces and left there overnight on the cool floor. The dew that formed on the milk was rose-scented, light as air, and sparkled in the moonlight like crystals upon cream.

Each teaspoon of this precious dessert evanesced upon Sam's tongue and soared through his body like an incantation. He knew then that Mila was lost to him forever; how could he even begin to compete with the love of a man who could, so casually, feed four hundred people the sweetened cream of milk drenched with dewdrops? His heart yearned for her, and even though she sat by his side, so close to him, he could not sense her presence. It was as though she were elsewhere.

And Mila was elsewhere. While all the pomp of the White Durbar was meant to awe and impress, on Mila its effect was one of suffocation. She saw herself in this life, in this same life, year after year, perhaps in one of the tiny fenana balconies after a while, looking down upon the durbar. There would be little room for spontaneity, not when so many people had to be appeased. She thought of her day and of her evening and how different they had been. The wife of the prince of Rudrakot could not be seen in the brothels of the Lal Bazaar, teaching the girls the letters of the Hindustani alphabet. Her charity, if that is what it was, would have to be more distant, through someone else. Besides, no matter how much she tried to convince herself otherwise, she did not love Jai. Not as she loved Sam.

It took a couple of hours for everyone to leave the house at the end of the Lal Bazaar, but finally it was empty and only Ashok and Vimal remained. As each person left, they came in their own way to pay obeisance to Vimal also, just as Jai received respects in the White Durbar. The boy or girl would bend from the hip, drag their fingers along the floor, near Vimal's feet but not actually touching them, for he had made it clear that the practice of asking for blessings thus was extremely distasteful to him.

Ashok sat in one corner of the room, still spellbound by what he had seen and heard. It was difficult not to be swept away by the adulation of so many, all about as old as he was, fifteen, sixteen, or perhaps as old as eighteen. He recognized a few of them as students from Annadale College and marveled that Vimal's hold over them was so compelling. As each person approached Vimal, a tremor seemed to take hold of his or her body simply with the joy at being so close to their beloved leader. They did not dare to meet Vimal's burning eyes, which swung every now and then to Ashok and saturated him with trembling also. Vimal's skin was white on his temples, lines had formed deep grooves around his mouth, his hair was wet with perspiration, and his breathing was shallow, his chest heaving with every breath, and Ashok felt fiercely protective toward him. He thought that Vimal's energy had drained slowly in the two hours that he sat upon the chair in the middle of the bare room so that his followers could bend, to speak a tentative word in his ear, receive a smile or a nod. Finally, they all departed and left Ashok seated in his corner of the room, on the floor, uncaring that the seat of his expensive linen pants was smudged with dust and dirt.

"Shall we go up to the roof?" Vimal asked, putting out a hand.

Ashok leapt from his place, ran up to Vimal, and helped him out of his chair as though he were a very old man. They went up the narrow staircase, walled on either side, with Vimal's arm around Ashok's shoulders, and Ashok's arm around Vimal's waist.

After the heated closeness of the room downstairs and the stink of sweat from too many bodies, the terrace was lit with the palely lustrous moonlight and a sprinkling of stars across the night sky. They sat down in one corner of the terrace, on the floor, after scratching their feet over the cement to check for snakes or scorpions their eyes could not see in the shadow of the parapet. The stone, still warm, retained the blazing heat of the day, but it was strangely comforting because they were both tired.

Vimal was physically exhausted from his speech in front of his disciples, and Ashok had lost all life from his limbs in the worship of Vimal. He could not stop his hands from trembling.

Vimal took out a tin of cigarettes from the pocket of his kurta and lit one, the flare of the flame glowing gold over his beautiful face. The image of that face stayed imprinted on Ashok's brain long after Vimal had blown out the match and thrown it away. Vimal offered the cigarette to Ashok and he put it between his lips, feeling the cool wetness on the tip where Vimal's mouth had closed over it. A shiver ran through him as he handed the cigarette back. They were silent for a long while, listening to the mighty blow of the trumpets at the fort to announce Jai's arrival at the White Durbar.

"You should be there," Vimal said softly.

"I want to be here," Ashok replied, his voice rough and daring. "Do you really?"

"Yes."

Another silence followed as Vimal smoked his cigarette to the very end and threw the still-glowing butt away, toward the center of the terrace. It bounced and bumped along the floor and came to rest facing them, and then slowly it burned itself out until the only light upon them both was the radiance from the moon swelled to fullness.

Vimal took Ashok's hand in his and pulled him closer, until his head was upon his chest. There was nothing left in the world that Ashok cared about at that moment apart from Vimal. Ashok too, like Mila, would never know another love like this, for the rest of his life.

"An hour before sunset," Vimal said, "I want you to accompany me to the grounds of the residency. They will not let me in by myself, but if you were to come, it would be all right. I am going to put a bomb in Colonel Pankhurst's Daimler. He will drive it himself to the club later in the evening."

It was a testament to Vimal's astonishing power over his fellow human beings that Ashok felt only a fine twinge of guilt, but he also felt almost immediately that Vimal could very well have hidden the purpose for his request and had not. He had trusted him with this incendiary secret. He made a small sound of assent and that was enough.

Vimal put a hand under Ashok's chin and kissed him on the mouth.

April 1942, a Month Earlier

Somewhere in
Burma

The waters of the pool are suddenly icy cold to Sam. When the python pulls him under the surface with one sweep of its muscula
r b
ody, he barely has time to register what is happening. His mouth is open to shout out to Marianne, and when he sinks, it fills with water, sending him gasping and choking as his lungs expand and protest.

Sam flails and tries to loosen his right arm from the snake's tenacious grip and feels an immense, shattering pain as it snaps his arm out from its home in his shoulder, tearing tendons and ligaments under his skin. The ache sears its way through his brain and Sam's vision whitens and blurs as everything dissolves in front of him. He can no longer feel the water even, or the lack of oxygen to his veins. If he could think at such a time, he would realize that Burmese pythons are gargantuan creatures, often reaching ten feet or more in length and weighing more than a hundred pounds at full maturity. He would know that once the python begins its crushing embrace, it rarely lets loose until it can feel that its prey has stopped breathing and is completely still. This one, Sam's python, is an adult male, five years old, particularly aggressive and fifteen feet long. The snake has been hungry for twelve days now and has slipped into the pool at the bungalow for the same reason as Sam--to cool off in the immense heat of the late afternoon and to contemplate its hunger in peace. Normally it would not think of humans as prey ... but there is always a first rime.

None of this reasoning is part of Sam's brain the moment it shuts down all other aspects of his body. He can no longer see in the water, no longer suffer from the pain of his dislocated shoulder, no longer even feel the cold of the pool. And in that moment of blankness, comes a sudden clarity, a will to survive, a need to do so--the same resolution that keeps his brother alive in the field punishment center in Rudrakot.

Sam heaves upward with a powerful thrust of his legs and hauls himself and the python out of the water like projectiles. He opens his mouth, breathes in deeply before he plunges back into the water, and then strikes out with just his left arm and his legs toward the verandah, dragging the python behind him, still attached firmly to his useless right arm. He opens his eyes finally, and as the water streams from his retina, he sees the figure of Marianne Westwood come into focus. She stands at the edge of the pool, a tiny, pearl-handled pistol held steadily in her hand, aimed at him. She pulls the trigger. The bullet goes cleanly through the python's head and it explodes into a mess of muscle, tissue, sinew, all palely yellow and bloody. Sam reaches Marianne, and just as calmly, she kneels to help him out of the water and unwinds the snake's quivering body from his right arm as though she is unwinding thread from a bobbin.