The Truth (20 page)
‘I can pay my way. Put some money in the kitty.’
Melville dropped his pencil and it slowly rolled across the map,
stopping, as if he’d always intended it to, just before the edge of the table. He looked up. His eyes were flat and hard.
‘I can’t do that, Keith.’
Mabbut felt a chill and at the same time a realisation that, for better or worse, cards must be put on the table.
‘I can’t do that,’ Melville repeated. ‘Not without knowing a little more about you.’
Mabbut shrugged. ‘There isn’t much to know. I’m just . . .’
Melville held up the phone.
‘Like why you’re working for Urgent Books.’
Which is how it happened. Instead of telling Melville why he was here, Melville told
him
why he was here. Ron Latham’s name and number were all over his mobile, a string of Latham’s messages awaiting replies. And Melville’s tentacles seemed to stretch far and wide. By the time the short, sharp grilling was over, it was clear that Melville had most of the information about him. He knew about the car hire, he knew about the hotel bookings. There was nothing left to deny.
‘So, why
are
you here?’
‘To write a book about you.’
Melville betrayed just the trace of a smile.
‘Now we’re talking. You mean
they
want a book about me, and they’re paying
you
to do it.’
‘Is that such a bad thing?’
Melville leant back.
‘I can save you a lot of time and effort right now. I’m not interested in talking about myself. I’m interested in what I can do, in the time left to me, to prevent a little of the damage we seem hell bent on inflicting on this long-suffering planet. I’m not the story.’ He gestured towards the horizon. ‘These people are the story. The Masira Kidonga, the Musa, the Gyara. The way things are going they have even less time than I do. And that’s just here in India. There are people all over the world who are being rolled over. I don’t have time, Keith, for newspaper puffs and glossy profiles. That’s another world. The world that wants us all to keep buying and consuming and stuffing ourselves, whatever the cost to those around us.’
Mabbut felt invigorated by finally being able to talk openly. And he felt a vehemence too.
‘With respect, Mr Melville, you could just have handed me the opening paragraph. That’s why, like it or not, you are admired by every generation. You’ve earned it by following your own path, by not taking anyone else’s shilling and that gives you the immense privilege of being listened to. Your story is the story of all the causes you’ve championed. Through your story, their story is told. It’s what you’ve dedicated your life to – giving a voice to the anonymous and powerless. I just want to help that voice be heard.’
Melville’s pole-like frame had bent lower and lower over the table. His long, thin hands had come up over his face, and it was clear he was shaking. Mabbut wondered, just for a moment, if he might have moved the man, but when Melville finally straightened up, it was somewhat humiliating to see that the tears were tears of laughter.
‘Oh dear!’
Melville took a deep breath and gestured at the table.
‘Sit yourself down, before you have a heart attack.’
Mabbut, by now deeply confused, pulled out a chair.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to mock, but I had you down for an old hack.’
Melville held up his hand to forestall any protest.
‘A decent old hack, but suddenly . . .’
He shook his head, still gurgling with laughter.
‘You’re Martin Luther King, for fuck’s sake!’
There was a sudden gust of wind and a hiss as dust scattered. Melville wiped his eyes and spread his hands apologetically.
‘I’m sorry. We’ve all been working too hard.’
He reached for a tin and picked out a hand-rolled cigarette.
‘So, Keith, before I kick you out for spying, I feel I at least owe you an explanation. Smoke?’
Mabbut shook his head.
‘Bad habit.’ A flame sprang from the match. ‘One of many.’
Melville drew on the cigarette and looked up at the night sky.
‘What you have to realise is that I’m not a god figure. I’m not even a good figure. I’m someone who wasn’t great at school, who flunked university, who chased women until he found the wrong one, and
then married her. I travelled to get away from the mess I’d left at home, found that I could get on better with people abroad than I could get on with people at home, and that’s pretty much all there is to it. I’m not an admirable man, Keith. I like these people. I stay out here because I like them much more than the idiots I have to deal with back home. If the media has me down as some kind of recluse, that’s because I have three million better things to do than accept awards and give press conferences. I work at my own pace, in my own way, with people I respect. If that’s being “a wild card” or “a man of mystery”, so be it. You people love labels, you love to have everyone pinned down like butterflies on a board. It is one of the great illusions that a free press makes us all free spirits. What they really want is for us all to come out alike. Quantifiable, accessible, programmable. Die-stamped off the same production line.’
He took one more drag on his cigarette then flicked the stub past Mabbut into the darkness.
‘So, forgive me, Keith, if I’m not quite ready for the file marked “Hamish Melville, Living Legend”.’
He half rose, as if to bring the evening to a conclusion, but Mabbut held up his hand. Melville had set out his case. Now it was his turn. And perhaps his last chance.
‘Look, I apologise for being devious and secretive, but the really important thing is that I took on this book because I believe in the same things as you do. I always have. I fought big companies because I knew they were lying, and that in some cases people were dying because of those lies. I like to think that, in a very tiny and marginal way, I was fighting the same battles as you. The difference between us is that I’m that lowest form of human life, a journalist. But we need the public eye to help us fight our battles. Being heard by as large an audience as possible is what we have to do. You have been very successful at what you do – getting projects cancelled, saving lives and livelihoods – but you never have to explain yourself to anyone.’
Melville made to speak.
‘With respect, Mr Melville, I know what you’re going to say. “So what? Why should I?” That you couldn’t do what you do without privacy. But what you can’t expect is that people such as myself, and
others who see you as a role model for getting good things done in a shitty old world, should be incurious about how you do it. You may think of me as a spy, but all I can say is that I’m spying for the best possible reason, which is that I think the world is a better place because of you, and I want more people to follow your example.’
Melville stood. He sniffed the air and looked up into the sky.
‘Weather’s due for a change,’ he said, not altogether happily. Then he checked his watch.
‘We’ve an early start.’
Mabbut nodded and reached for his phone, but Melville kept his hand on it.
‘I’ll hang on to this if you don’t mind.’ He smiled. ‘Security precaution.’
K
umar’s shouts woke him from a very deep sleep. Mabbut felt desperately tired. His bag, full of dirty laundry, lay beside him. He felt sticky and grubby and he was sure he was beginning to smell.
As soon as he’d emerged from his tent, Kumar and the younger boys moved in to dismantle it. Melville, who had found a freshly pressed kurta from somewhere, seemed positively energised by the lack of sleep. If he’d been discursive the previous night, there was no sign of it this morning. He was deep in discussion with Kinesh and Mahesh. Mabbut went over behind the tree, peed and cleaned his teeth. Anything more elaborate would have to wait till later. When he came back, Melville was at the table holding a flask.
‘Coffee?’
‘Please.’
He poured Mabbut a cup.
‘I apologise for last night,’ he said briskly. ‘I was defending my territory.’
He held the cup out to Mabbut.
‘Maybe I’ve just grown cynical over the years. I assume everyone who wants to know more about me is out to stop me doing what I do. But you helped us yesterday, and the boys like you, so here’s the deal. Instead of taking you to the station, I will give you Kumar and a car. He knows these tribal areas, he’s Masira himself. Go with him and you will at least have a chance to see the people we’re fighting for, and what they’re fighting against. Then, maybe, we’ll have something to talk about.’
He drained his cup and indicated the stocky figure of Kumar, who was loading Mabbut’s bag into the back of an old Land Cruiser.
‘Are you sure you can spare him?’
Melville held out his hand.
‘Think of it as the first and last day of our new public relations department.’
He laughed loudly, and walked off to confer with a group of village elders. There was much grasping of hands and clasping of arms. It was as if something was in the wind.
Mabbut climbed into the Land Cruiser and settled himself beside Kumar, who was checking his rear-view mirror. Kumar was a local, with thick long hair, a square and homely face and broad features.
Ahead of them, Melville climbed into another car with Mahesh and Kinesh. The headlight beams stabbed out and they started to move, rumbling over the hard red clay past spectral groves of eucalyptus and mahua. As the first hint of light crept into the eastern sky, Mabbut wondered how he could have done things differently, and if he had, whether he would now be travelling with Melville.
After a half-hour or so, Mabbut was woken by the crackle of a radio. Kumar pulled a receiver towards him and words were exchanged. Kumar nodded approvingly, replaced the receiver, and accelerated along a partly tarmacked road. Mabbut looked to his left just in time to see Melville’s vehicle peel off, bounce up a dirt track and disappear into the forest. He thought he saw Melville wave goodbye.
‘Where are they going?’
Kumar ignored the question. ‘Mr Melville says I am your guide now. There are many things he wants me to show you.’
They made their way north-west, on gently rising ground which led deeper into the interior than Mabbut had been before. This was a largely empty land. Weathered rocks and scrubby bush with the shadow of the hills away to the west. It was a landscape both serene and sinister. At the top of an incline Kumar pointed out the remains of a mobile-phone mast, destroyed by the Maoists a month before. They passed a police post, so heavily fortified it looked like something from a war zone. A few miles beyond that, stacks of concrete sleepers marked a wide strip of land from which the trees had been cleared, awaiting, Kumar explained, the go-ahead for a railway to the refinery. Then suddenly the car slowed and he pointed excitedly into the distance.
‘That is my home.’
Mabbut could make out a misty, russet-brown ridge a few miles ahead. It looked much like any of the other low, wooded ranges that ran one after the other as far as the eye could see. After a few miles the road narrowed and the scrubby trees turned into woodland, which then turned into forest. Then they were out of the trees and on to a flat, cleared plain. They entered a small town at the junction of a road and a railway. At the far end of a crowded main street they came to a long, high wall topped by coils of razor wire. Mabbut glimpsed through the gates a well-kept campus and a sign proclaiming the Masoka Hills Agricultural College.
Why would anyone put razor wire round an agricultural college, Mabbut asked. Because Astramex paid for it, Kumar replied, and they have many enemies. On the far side of the town, with the walls of the agricultural college still visible, they came to a small settlement of traditional low thatched houses surrounded by smaller brick and concrete units with tin roofs. Kumar’s family lived here, and Mabbut met his thin but sharp-eyed father, his quiet, shy sisters and two or three children who followed his every move with increasing amusement. His mother, he said, had died in childbirth many years ago and now his father had another wife. She was in the fields that day gathering rice for winnowing. They were a happy group, and Kumar proudly showed off his new friend.
‘I tell them you love our land,’ he said with a grin. His parents had lived up in the hills, but when the road was built and the interior opened up to industry the missionaries came and converted his people from animism to Catholicism. In return for saying their Hail Marys they now had a school, electricity and new houses. They were the lucky ones, according to Kumar. Their land was safe from the mining. For the moment.
It was the hottest time of the day, and Kumar suggested they stay overnight with his family. The next day he would take Mabbut to the hills. They would visit the villages of the remotest tribes, the ones most threatened by the mining. Kumar explained it would involve a long walk, so they would start early.
The rest of the day was spent meeting relatives, a steady trickle of whom passed by to see the foreigner. In the late afternoon they
walked round the village. Mabbut was shown a freshly painted, tinroofed building that doubled as a school and church. He met the man who owned the only television set in the village, which he generously set up in the middle of the main street every night. He inspected the new concrete buildings and had his shirts washed for him in the pond at the back of the houses. The people couldn’t have been more friendly, but there was something sad about Kumar’s village, Mabbut thought. Some spirit seemed to have gone out of it. The embarrassed giggling of the young when his father sang traditional songs, the T-shirts and jeans that the children wore, all gave the impression that an old way of life had lost its relevance. But Kumar clearly regarded what had happened to his village as a good thing, the perfect third way between assimilation and extinction. To him, contact with the outside world was acceptable as long as religion, rather than commerce, was the driver. In one generation it had enabled him to realise opportunities he’d never have dreamt of.
