Tikkipala (5 page)

Paul woke and scrambled out from under Sangita's sari.

‘This is entirely my fault, sir. Please do not blame your wife. The car ran out of petrol. I missed the road.'

The Raja said, hardly looking at the boy, ‘Please do not concern yourself,' and to Sangita, ‘Please cover yourself and come to my car.'

Terror began to seep from Sangita's system because of the mildness of his tone. He was not going to be angry. Everything was going to be alright. But all the same her whole body was shaking as she followed him to the waiting Buick, hauling her trail of sari back round her blouse and petticoat. As she got in, she pressed the cloth against her face for a moment, because she needed comfort. It smelled of Paul and of lavender aftershave.

‘Good bye Sangita,' called Paul. ‘I'll see you tomorrow.'

Sangita got into the Raja's car without looking round or answering. Her legs felt weak, as though she was about to faint. Her husband got into the front and sat with the driver.

He was completely silent for ten minutes. Then he started shouting.

During the long dark months in her parents' house, Sangita would sometimes rage with anger against her husband, because he had been unfair.

Once she stood before her gold and ivory image of Ganesh, and prayed, ‘Punish my husband for taking away my child. Let him suffer like I have. Oh Lord Ganesh, please take Anwar from my husband and then he will know what I am suffering.'

Sometimes Sangita would think of killing herself. The thing that stopped her was the memory of Paul.

After Sita, wife of Lord Rama, was kidnapped she was kept in the palace of the demon, Ravana. She too must have felt despair. But it was worse for Sangita. Her child had been taken away from her as well as her life.

She would day dream that Anwar longed for her so much, and wept for her so hard that in the end the Raja decided to bring Sangita back to him.

Sometimes she would feel sure this is what would happen. It never did. After a time she knew that Anwar must have forgotten her, or that his father had made the little boy hate her.

Then she would determine to kill herself. She did not need to stay alive for her child, for he no longer needed her and when she saw his again, if she ever did, he would have grown up and forgotten her. Other people would have brought him up. She would be nothing to him, when she found him again, though even in her most despairing moments she did not expect it to be two years.

She had thought, at first, that Paul would try to contact her – even to rescue her.

‘Goodbye Sangita. I'll see you tomorrow,' was the last thing he had said to her.

She would sometimes spend long minutes at a time, trying to recall the exact memory of what his tone had been when he called it. Full of love, she felt certain, because, during that night under her sari, Paul had kissed Sangita and the kiss had been so sincere and slow that her mouth had tingled with it for days after.

And a boy would never kiss a girl like that, thought Sangita, unless the girl was very special to him for it had not seemed at all like the kisses Daisy had described on the ship from England, but more like those in the romance books Daisy and she used to read together.

‘When you are grown up you must never shout,' Sangita told Anwar. ‘Because the sound of grownup men shouting angrily is horrible and scares everything away. Even the birds fly off when they hear angry shouting.'

‘I know. Papa told me that I must never shout at my pony because that's not the right way for riders to act and Papa knows about everything.'

The pony arrived in the middle of the following day. Anwar, who had been waiting at the front gates since early morning, and whose eyes stung with so much peering into the distance, began to scream with joy when he saw the dust cloud sent up by the arriving lorry.

It was half an hour before the lorry came into sight. A tiny labouring beetle of a vehicle, straining almost silently up the steepness of the winding mountain road. Round bend after bend went the dust cloud, while the little boy shook with anticipation.

Then suddenly, it was there and the malis came and directed the driver to the earth bank they had cut to the height of the back of the lorry, so that the pony could be unloaded.

The back of the lorry was opened.

There followed long, exciting moments during which it seemed that someone inside was trying to persuade the pony to come out. Then a bustling white body came hurtling out in a toss of flaring tail and mane.

The Raja had to hold Anwar tightly, to prevent him from rushing up the bank and greeting his new pony.

‘Wait a moment, my boy. Although I have checked its nature as far as possible, we still do not know everything about this animal. I can see a wild look in its eyes which concerns me somewhat.'

‘Ruby isn't wild, she's just happy about getting here,' said Anwar later, as he and his father stood at the stable door watching the syce rub the pony down.

‘This is a male pony, Anwar,' said the Raja. ‘And Ruby is a female name.'

‘He's happy about getting here,' corrected the boy.

‘Also a ruby is red, and your pony is white.'

‘Ever since you showed me the ruby in your collection, I have decided that I am going to call my horse after it, because it is the reddest and beautifullest thing.'

‘Most red and most beautiful,' corrected the Raja. He smiled proudly and added, ‘I can see you are going to be a geologist when you are grown up. Already you have the enthusiasm.'

‘I am going to be a soldier,' cried Anwar. ‘And I'm going to gallop round the country with a spear in my hand, killing people and doing angry shouting.'

‘When can I ride him, when can I ride him?' the little boy kept asking at ten minute intervals for the rest of the day.

‘Let him have a rest and settle down first,' said the Raja. Then to the groom, ‘Are you sure this is the animal we purchased last week, Hari? It seems larger and a little wilder than I remembered. I sincerely hope we have not been tricked.'

‘It is the very same, Sahib. He is just a little nervous after his long journey and because of being in the new place. I will take him for a long walk this evening and talk Urdu to him, which is the language of horses. By tomorrow he will be soothed.'

‘Me too, me too,' cried Anwar. ‘I want to talk Urdu to Ruby.'

That evening, with the Raja walking ahead to make sure the way was clear, Anwar ran alongside the led pony, pleading and begging. ‘Just let me sit on her back for a moment, Hari. I can't wait till morning.'

‘She hasn't got a saddle on, baby sahib.'

‘I don't mind,' cried the boy. ‘I can ride bare back if you give me a leg up.'

‘Is this alright, Raja sahib?' asked the syce.

‘So long as you don't leave go of him,' said the Raja. ‘Keep a tight hand on his mouth, and you, Anwar, grip well with your legs, and hold onto the mane so you don't fall off.'

Half an hour later they returned to the palace, the little boy astride his pony, smiling as though he had just conquered the world.

‘How did it go?' Sangita asked her husband. ‘Was the pony good? Did Anwar ride well?'

‘Tell your mother that the pony behaved properly,' said the Raja without looking at Sangita. He only communicated with her through other people. He never spoke to her directly. At the dining table, he would tell the bearer, ‘Inform the Ranee that we will be leaving at six o'clock this evening,' or say to the ayah, ‘Tell the Ranee to return my son to my office immediately.'

Sangita did not know how much longer she could bear it. She was too afraid of losing her child again to say anything, though. This time he might send her away, and never let her come back.

After finding her in the car with Paul, he had driven her straight to her parents' house. When they reached it, the driver went round and opened the door for her, while the Raja sat looking straight ahead through the windscreen. He was panting a little, Sangita noticed, as though he was still breathless from so much shouting.

As she got out, he told the driver, ‘Tell the Ranee that I will have her things sent here.'

That was when she had understood what might be going to happen. That was when she had rushed back to the car, and tearing open the door on the Raja's side, ignoring the fact that the driver was there and listening, began to beg and weep.

That was when he had said, ‘I will let you know when I have made up my mind.' Then he had told the driver to drive on, and she had stood there, watching as her husband's car vanished from sight along the road.

She turned back to the house, feeling so filled with despair and shame that she would have liked to die.

Her parents watched from an upper window.

‘Tomorrow they are going to put her saddle and bridle on and let me ride her properly,' Anwar told his mother.

‘How lovely,' said Sangita and shook her head so as to shake away the memory of those miserable moments, which had turned into two painful years.

At first she had stayed in her parents' house, silent and waiting, enduring their scorn because she felt sure that her husband would only leave her here for a short time. That her punishment would be brief. She imagined her baby crying for her, screaming till the Raja could no longer stand it.

Every hour, Sangita thought he would come back, saying, ‘After all you can come home because your baby needs you, and I understand that the whole thing was not your fault so you are forgiven.' But no one came.

After a week she had called her father's driver and instructed him to take her to the palace.

Her father was in bed again, in a darkened room, with pains in his chest that might have been a heart attack, and did not know that she was going, otherwise he would have stopped her.

The palace watchmen rose from their stools and looked anxiously from one to another, as Sangita drove in. For a moment it seemed as though they were about to shut the gates on her. But because they were unsure of their orders and she was the Ranee, they could not bring themselves to do it.

She found the Raja in the garden supervising the cracking open of his new found geodes. He stood by a brazier accompanied by a servant, waiting for one of the irons in it to grow hot enough to plunge into the water bucket of the stones and burst the geodes open. In a cradle in the grass beside the Raja lay the baby Anwar.

Although the Raja must have seen her coming he gave no sign of it, but continued ordering the servant, ‘No, that iron is not sufficiently heated for the immersion. Try this one. No, wait a little longer.' This method of opening the stones was his own invention and could only be done with the odd shaped local geodes.

‘I have come to see my child,' said Sangita.

As though she was not there, the Raja told the servant, ‘Now you can put it in.' Wrapping a piece of thick hessian round the end of the iron bar, the bearer pulled it from the fire and plunged it into the water. There came a loud hissing then the dull explosion of stone.

‘Quickly bring them out before they shatter,' cried the Raja. ‘And make sure the next iron rod is well inside the fire for you must follow up at top speed.'

‘I have come to see my child,' said Sangita again, her voice coming out shrill and shaky. Her arms tingled with their craving to hold the baby after three long weeks. But before she could reach the cradle, the Raja sprang before her and blocked the way. He stood between her and the cradle and would not let her touch the child. ‘Leave my house,' he said.

‘I want to hold my child.'

‘Call the watchmen,' the Raja said to the servants, who were standing with their hands filled with crystals, staring with fascination at the disgraced Ranee. ‘Tell them there is an intruder in our grounds.'

‘What must I do for you to let me stay?' cried Sangita.

‘There is nothing you can do. So please leave my house before the watchmen drag you out,' said the Raja.

‘I am innocent,' cried Sangita. ‘There was nothing I could have done.'

He turned to the brazier in which several irons were glowing scarlet.

‘Look, look,' screamed Sangita. ‘If I am innocent, one of those hot irons will not burn me. If it burns me it will show I am guilty but if it does not then you will see that I am innocent.' She tried to push past him and get to the brazier.

He put his arms out and stopped her. ‘You are not Sita, and also the story of Sita walking, unscathed through a fire, to prove her innocence to King Rama after she was kidnapped by the demon Ravana, is only a fable. There is no truth in it and if you touch that rod, you will certainly be badly burnt.'

‘Will you believe me, though, if I am not,' screamed Sangita.

When he said nothing, she persisted, ‘Will you?'

He laughed. ‘You are showing off. You are being ridiculous. It is clear that you will not have the courage to hold one of those irons with your naked hand.'

‘But if I do and the iron does not burn me, will you believe me then? Will you take me back because the gods have shown you that I am innocent?'

He bowed his head a little, then said, ‘But this is impossible, as you surely know.'

‘See, see, I will show you how innocent I am,' cried Sangita and before the Raja and the servant had time to react, she had reached past him pulled out one of the red hot irons and pressed her palms around it.

It seemed to her that forever went by while she stood with a red hot iron clasped in her bare hands.

The servant and Raja stared at her.

Her husband was looking at her at last. He had talked to her. Everything was going to be alright.

She had a faint recollection of the baby waking, starting to cry, but no one noticed. All the attention was fixed on her hands round the burning iron.

‘It is not burning me. My innocence is proved,' cried Sangita. ‘Now you must take me back as you have promised.'