Tiger Hills (54 page)

“Bravo,” he roared, along with the rest of the crowd, “BRAVO!” The girls came back twice to take a bow, and when they finally left the stage Appu fell back into his chair with a guffaw. Clicking his fingers at the waitress, he ordered another drink.

“Do you speak English?”

The woman who spoke into his ear had chosen the brief lull in between acts to address him. Appu turned merrily toward her.

“I do indeed.”

She was an aspiring actress. “Motion pictures, darling,” she explained, blowing smoke rings into his face. “Lots of money to be made. I need one big break and then … ”

He laughed and ordered another round of drinks. “Motion pictures! Well, when you make it big,
darling,
I shall certainly come to watch.”

Ellen Antonia Hicks she said her name was,
Lady
Ellen Antonia Hicks, looking puckishly at him, as if daring him to question her
statement. Appu bowed solemnly before her. “My lady Hicks. A pleasure.”

“From London,” she said to him. “Five years ago.” She gestured about her. “Can you blame me for staying on?”

Appu looked at the elaborately dressed crowd, drinking, smoking, laughing, petting, as if without a care in the world. He grinned. “
In der Luft,
isn't that what they say?”

He raised his glass to his lips, scanning the crowds again. A particularly comely face caught his eye, the oval cast of it reminding him, with a sudden pang, of Baby.

“Oh, I wouldn't bother,” Ellen shouted in his ear. “That is no lady, my friend, but Baron Ludwig. Fond of pretty boys and silk lingerie.”

Appu blinked in shock as he realized she was right; the comely lass was no lass at all. “Everywhere.” Ellen pointed helpfully. “Him. Head of one of the largest banks in Berlin. And him. Officer of the Reichstag. Yes, all men.” She tapped a long, painted nail to her throat. “The Adam's apple, darling, you have got to look for the Adam's apple. No amount of makeup can mask that on a man. There, you see that gentleman? Now,
he
is actually a she.”

She took a drag on her cigarette. “Who is the cock, who is the hen? Where are the women, which are the men? What is taboo, what is a sin? Nobody cares, welcome to Berlin!”

“Sex.” The word gusted from her mouth on a cushion of air. Appu glanced at her lips, at the fire-red stain of them, then looked away. “Anita Berber used to dance not far from here you know, completely starkers, darling, to the strains of Debussy, Strauss, and Delibes. Snorting cocaine and morphine, having all sorts of very public affairs with men and women alike. Sex,” she repeated, pursing those soft, engorged lips. “Neither money nor social standing required, given freely and for gain. It is the great leveler in Berlin. Look.” She gestured about them. “The richest and most influential, rubbing shoulders with artists, homosexuals, and transvestites. Women dressed in men's clothing, men haunting clubs and boxing matches in women's garb, their makeup so perfect that if it weren't for the Adam's apple … ”

Appu began to feel light-headed, whether from the alcohol, the effects of his journey, or the newness of it all, he wasn't sure. Struck by a sudden notion, he looked doubtfully at Ellen's throat but no, she was unmistakably female. She leaned closer, and Appu started as the necklaces wound about her throat brushed against his shoulder.

There was an acrid stink to the air. Someone had lit up a reefer. In der Luft,
for sure,
Appu thought,
the smell of sex, and ganja fumes, that's what floats in Berlin's air.

Suddenly he felt very alone, cut adrift in this shape-shifting city. Coorg, Avvaiah, Baby … they all seemed so distant. This was a different world. Downing his glass, he turned to Ellen.

“I leave for Amsterdam in two days,” he said simply. “The Olympics. Come with me.”

Ellen smoothed the newspapers in her lap, resisting the urge to use them to fan her face and squeeze some little breeze from the morning. The Olympisch Stadion was full to capacity. The stadium had been built especially for the Games with an unprecedented 34,000-seat capacity. For the hockey finals that were about to begin, not a single seat remained unoccupied.

For days on end, the newspapers had been filled with accounts of the startling prowess of the Indian hockey team and its astonishing center forward, Dhyan Chand:

Indians wear celestial blue jumpers with white sleeves, white Byron collars. Seen from above, they are Revue girls, but from below they are men of steel. When they play, their stick is in turn their spoon, their fork and their knife. At times it becomes their waiting tray as well. The Indian ball seems also ignorant of the laws of gravity.

Appu shifted impatiently in his seat, drumming his fingers on his knee. Ellen grinned. He had been like a child all day, bubbling with anticipation over the match.

He had told her the stories over and over, of how the Indian team had struggled to obtain permission to play. The British government had been reluctant at first, but then had realized that it would be a public relations coup of sorts, for a colony to participate in the Games. A testimony to the benevolence of British rule. The team had since played at the London Folkstone Festival the previous year, where they had won all ten matches. “Seventytwo goals they scored,” Appu told her. “And Dhyan Chand!” The slender Chand, it seemed, dripped glue from his hockey stick, so precise was his control over the ball. He had scored no fewer than
thirty-six
of India's seventy-two goals.

The team had continued their impeccable showing at the Olympics. Ellen even knew their score to date, so thorough had been Appu's briefing: Played: 4, Won: 4, Goals For: 26, Goals Against: 0.

“What's taking them so long?” Appu complained, and she shrugged, smiling as she slipped her hand through the crook of his arm. He held his drink to the sun, the light turning the liquid into a dark, gently fizzing red. He took a sip and burped, the bubbles rising up his nose. “Sorry. Strange drink, this,” he mused. “I can't decide if I like it or not. Still, the name has rhythm, don't you think? Co-ca-Co-la.” He held the bottle up to the sun again, turning it this way and that, and then jumped to his feet with a sudden roar, nearly spilling the drink into Ellen's lap.

The gates to the ground had opened and the two teams, Netherlands and India, were filing out. “Come ON India!”

A great cheer went through the stadium, followed by a thunderous round of applause. “COME ON INDIA,” Appu roared again. “DHYAN CHAND, Come ON Dhyan Chand.”

Even Ellen could recognize the artistry of Chand's game. He scored two of India's three goals, taking the team to an elegant 3–0 victory. Appu leaped into the air at the end of the match. He jumped, he yelled, and he swept Ellen off her feet, scooping her into a bear hug and crushing her to his chest.

They spent some days carousing in Amsterdam, then made their way back to Berlin. The first thing that Appu did was book them both a room at a hotel on the Dormendstrasse. They stood in the middle of the square, Ellen clutching her hat against the breeze and laughing as they tried to decide which hotel appeared to be the most appealing. “That one.” Appu pointed. “The one with the blue awning. Der … ” He squinted, trying to read its name. “Der Blaue Bast. The Blue … ”

“Velvet,” Ellen chimed in, smoothing the hair back from his forehead. “Der Blaue Bast. The Blue Velvet.”

She proceeded to introduce him to Berlin; they rapidly became a fixture at all the hot spots in the city. She had friends all over: raffish artists, struggling revue girls, officers of the Reichstag, Polish émigrés, and banking fat cats. Any number of them were always available to attend boxing matches and bicycle races, opening nights and petting parties, and spend drunken, raucous hours at the Spiegeltent and the Eldorado.

Appu was welcomed into their circle with open arms. The 1920s had brought about a resurgence of interest in all things Eastern. The daily newspapers were filled with columns penned by expatriates from Calcutta to Penang, offering perspectives on everything from the Kamasutra to the Buddha. Herman Hesse had published his magnum opus,
Siddartha,
to widespread acclaim. Audiences thronged to the Wintergarten for hot dogs and cold beer and to marvel at Indian “holy men” reclining on beds of silver nails. Ellen's friends had looked at Appu with genuine interest, quizzing him about life in India.

“I sleep in a tree house,” Appu informed them gravely, “and my butler sends me my meals by means of a rope swing. When I need to step out, all I have to do is whistle and my pet elephant ambles right up to the tree. Dashed convenient.”

Ellen kicked him under the table, but Appu continued unabashed. “Snakes? Of course there are snakes. I sleep with a knife by my side always. And there is the snake charmer who keeps a nightly vigil at the foot of our tree.”

Tiger Hills Estate, Murnad, Coorg

23 August, 1928

My dear Appu,

Where are you? We have sent you three telegrams and the lawyer tells me that all three have been forwarded to your hotel by the bank. But there is no reply from you.

Avvaiah is wanting to know—when are you headed back? It is now more than four months since you left. Think about Baby. If not for us, you must show her some regard. You must return.

Everything else is well. One of the coconut pickers fell while climbing the trees. Silly fellow broke his collarbone and fractured his ankle, but otherwise there is nothing to worry about.

Really Appu, this is not right. Think of Baby. Every time I see her, she has only one thing on her mind. How is Appu, where is Appu, when is Appu coming back. Show some sense. Come home.

Your loving brother,

Nanju

Ellen read the letter aloud to Appu, who was lying diagonally across the bed, his eyes closed.

“Baby … your fiancée, I assume?”

He said nothing.

“The beetle-wing earrings. Are they for her, then?” They had picked out the earrings together, about a month ago, at a little boutique. They had been making their tipsy way back to the hotel after a champagne lunch, when the shop caught Appu's eye. “A bauble for my lady,” he exclaimed, holding the door open and bowing as she swept in.

They had examined row after row of jewelry and then Ellen's gaze had fallen upon the earrings. “Why, how novel.”

They were made from real beetle wings, the proprietress told them. She leaned forward, the lapels of her blouse falling open
to reveal an impressive cleavage. “For you,” she murmured seductively to Appu, “I give a good price.”

Appu had grinned but Ellen was unamused. “The earrings,” she snapped to the woman. “Pull out a mirror, I would like to try them on.”

They were a cascade of iridescent, blue-green wings, laced together with thin gold wire. “Lovely … Like something from a fairy tale, Dags, don't you think?”

“Ja, ja,”
said the proprietress. “Fairy earrings, for a fairy princess.”

Ellen laughed, mollified by the flattery, then stopped. Dags was staring at the earrings, a distant look on his face. “Dags? Hellooo, Dags?”

He looked at her, the expression already gone from his eyes, so fleeting she thought she might have imagined it. He reached for the price tag and shook his head. “Not nearly expensive enough for someone as priceless as you. Come, darling, we can do better.”

She had hesitated and then tried on the gemstone-encrusted pendant he was holding out to her.

He had bought it for her, the pendant, but he bought the beetle-wing earrings too; when she looked questioningly at him, he had lightly kissed her forehead. “For someone back home,” he had said insouciantly. “For you, however … ” He slipped the pendant and its chain from the box and fastened it about her neck.

“It's beautiful,” Ellen had said, her mind still on the earrings and their faceless recipient. She had looked down, trying to control the tremor in her voice, shocked at how upset she was. “Beautiful, darling, I love it.”

“The earrings, Dags” she said again now, “were they for Baby?”

Appu gently rubbed her leg. “Mmhmm … ”

“Are you … will you be leaving, then?”

He was silent for a while, then rolled over, scratching his stomach. He reached across her for a reefer. “Not just yet.”