Читать книгу: «The Eye of the Horse»

Then they let loose a white horse. And it was decreed that, wheresoever this horse should wander, King Rama would follow, even to the ends of the earth, until he might be led to the only person who could forgive him.

Ramayana

ONE
The Omen

‘Hey, Bublu! I heard something!’

The youngest boy, Sparrow, leaned over and shook the oldest boy.

‘Shut up, will you,’ groaned Bublu. It was hard enough to sleep at the best of times without being woken deliberately, what with the bitter winter cold and the fretful whimperings and nightmares, which racked them all on most nights.

Bublu enshrouded himself more tightly in the thin cotton sheet. He tried to ease the agony of the hard stone floor beneath his body, by rolling himself half over the limbs of the other boys. There was a murmuring of grunts and muttered protests, as everyone readjusted themselves in the knotted huddle they had formed around the ashes of last night’s fire.

But Bublu was awake now, and a few moments later, he too heard a noise. His body tensed automatically.

‘See! Didn’t I tell you?’ hissed Sparrow, his cold face pressed to Bublu’s ear. ‘You heard it, didn’t you! Is it them again? Are they coming to kill us?’ His voice almost broke out loud with panic.

Bublu clamped his hand over the youngest boy’s mouth. ‘Shut up, won’t you!’ He whispered. ‘All that’s over now.’ Even so, he was fully alert and sat up swiftly in the darkness, his mind already assessing the escape routes. He and the boys had gone over them many times, working out all the possible strategies. They had explored every part of the deserted palace; all the rooms, chambers, passageways, stairways; the different levels of terraces and even the wild saplings and creepers, down which they could shin in an emergency.

He listened, not breathing. In the past, the speed of his decision had been the difference between life and death.

They heard it again. It sounded like air being puffed out through nostrils; it was like the soft snort of a beast.

He hadn’t realised that Sparrow had clasped him round the waist, terrified that, should there be an order to flee, he would be left behind. Bublu struggled to his feet with Sparrow still clinging to him and shifted the child to his hip. ‘Hush, kid! Take it easy, it’s just an animal. Let’s go and look.’

‘What if it’s Muslims?’ stammered Sparrow.

‘Arreh!’ breathed Bublu, his sound smiling in the darkness. He was a Muslim.

Although it was pitch black, Bublu’s senses were so finely tuned that he knew in which direction was the doorway out onto the great verandah. Very rapidly, his eyes adjusted and he was able to differentiate between the inner darkness of the room in which they were sleeping, and the paler black of the starry night outside.

Sparrow was shaking uncontrollably with cold and fear as Bublu tiptoed to the entrance. A low half-moon came into view, casting a soft glow over the marble terrace. He stepped over the threshold and at first saw nothing but the great vast canopy of trees and undergrowth, which had grown out of control and turned the palace garden into a wilderness. Then there was a slight scrape of hoof on stone. The animal stood motionless, right there at the top of the verandah steps. At first he thought it was one of the palace statues, gleaming as white as the mist which hung over the lake beyond. But then the creature snorted again, and pawed the ground.

‘It’s a horse!’ exclaimed Bublu incredulously. ‘What the heck is a horse doing round here!’ Before he could utter another word, the animal leapt off the verandah and galloped away into the night.

The horse was seen again just before dawn of the next day.

It was Tuesday, 13 January 1948.

It materialised out of the frosty darkness, its hooves echoing strangely on the long white road. It was a pale horse; white as jasmine; white as the fresh snows on the mountain peaks to the north; white as the road beneath its feet.

Although the bridle had been fitted to a bit in its mouth, it had no saddle, and the reins hung loose. It looked to all intents and purposes like a bridegroom’s horse, for garlands of freshly threaded flowers hung round its neck, and a fringe of miniature pearls swung across its brow.

Sleepy farmers, startled out of their huddled blankets, saw it as they drove their bullock carts one behind the other, on their long trek to market. They called out to each other in the chilly darkness, standing up on the wooden yoke which held their beasts in harness.

‘Did you see that?’ they called.

‘Was it a horse?’

‘Whose is it? Where does it come from?’

One of them leapt from his cart and tried to grab it, but the horse reared in the air, shook him off, and galloped away.

The teacher glimpsed it as he cycled to school. It was mirrored in the dark, stagnant water of a ditch by the side of the road, its head stooped low to drink.

Old Ram Singh who, after his house had been razed to the ground, had made his home in the abandoned shell of All Souls’ Church, saw it grazing among the scarred and desecrated tombstones in the graveyard.

All that day the horse was seen, here and there, trotting along the dykes, meandering among the fields and nuzzling at fruit, which hung from the lower boughs in the guava groves. Sometimes it drifted tantalisingly close to the old men smoking their hookahs outside their homes, or the women filling pitchers with water from the well.

Later, after sundown, in the yellow paraffin light of the tea houses in the town, the gossip was all about the horse. They argued about where it had come from, to whom it belonged and what they should do about it. Some confessed they had tried already to catch it, but without success.

Bublu, who came into town every day to hang about, kept his ears open. This must be the same horse he and Sparrow had seen in the night. If the horse were a runaway and if he caught it, he would have as much right to it as anyone else. He wandered up to Dilip Singh, the tea-shop owner. ‘Here, let me hand out the tea while you fill the kettle again,’ he offered ingratiatingly.

‘Arreh! Everyone comes to me for a soft touch,’ Dilip Singh grumbled, but let Bublu hand out the cups anyway. The old-timers, those who had survived the troubles, knew the boy as Nazakhat Khan, son of the Muslim tailor, but they pretended not to, for his own safety.

‘The horse must have come down out of the mountains,’ said a farmer, as Bublu put a cup of tea before him. They all glanced to the northern horizon, where even in the darkness, the distant peaks of the Himalayas gleamed, everlastingly white.

‘Maybe it belongs to a Kashmiri trader,’ suggested a voice.

‘I say it’s a bridal horse that’s run off,’ declared another. ‘Didn’t you see how decorated it was?’

‘I haven’t heard of any weddings taking place today, have you?’ said the proprietor.

‘No! They say this month will not be auspicious,’ old Sharma, the sadhu, warned with a shake of his head. ‘There won’t be many marriages in the next few weeks.’

Old Sharma, the holy man, was another who spent his days hanging round the tea houses, waiting for the farmers to come with their tales and chatter. One of them was always sure to give him a free cup of tea, and a samosa too, if he was lucky. He shook his head like a grizzled prophet. ‘It’s an omen,’ he warned. ‘You mark my words. There has been too much killing. The gods must come now and take their retribution.’

‘Hey, Sharma, don’t bring talk like that into my tea house. You’ve had your cup, you old scrounger, now get out!’ yelled Dilip Singh. He grabbed the sadhu by the scruff of the neck and pushed him out on to the road.

The farmers looked at each other and shrugged. ‘Dilip Singh’s conscience is getting him ruffled!’ they smirked, though they all knew that no one’s hands were clean.

‘Hey, Babuji,’ cried Bublu, running over to help the old sadhu to his feet. ‘Do you mean it? Is the horse a bad omen?’

‘Ugh! Good, bad! How should I know? An omen is an omen.’

The dusty wireless, connected by a long twisted flex into the light socket and draped in wilting marigolds like a neglected goddess, crackled out news from New Delhi.

‘Shush!’ yelled a voice. ‘Listen! Listen, you chattering oafs!’

The voices quietened. They turned their ears to the smooth, anglicised tones of All India Radio which emanated from the temple of sound, propped on the shelf between the bags of spices.

Bublu didn’t understand English. ‘What is he saying?’ he pleaded.

‘Just be quiet, boy,’ muttered one of them. ‘How can we tell with you chattering on.’

‘This morning at eleven o’clock our respected Gandhiji began a fast. He told us of his profound sorrow that there is still so much communal strife in the country. It is his aim to achieve a reunion of hearts of all communities, with God as his supreme and sole counsellor.’

‘Did you hear that?’ the farmers whispered. ‘Gandhiji is fasting again.’ They gazed at each other, their faces etched with anxiety. The troubles were still all around them, they knew that. Every day there were reports of slayings and revenge. They glanced uneasily at old Sharma who was rubbing his elbows and brushing off the dust from his thin, spindly body.

‘What’s happening?’ begged Bublu, seeing the startled concern on everyone’s faces.

‘It’s the Mahatma, he’s going to fast again.’

‘What will be left of his body,’ exclaimed a voice.

The Mahatma was so small, so frail already. It was inconceivable that his skeletal frame could cope with any more deprivation.

‘How can we see a future for India and Pakistan once the British have left, if everyone is at each other’s throats?’ Gandhi had asked. ‘If this is the only way to make the politicians see sense then so be it.’

And so, once more, the Mahatma offered himself as a sacrifice.

That evening, Bublu got the boys to make a bigger fire than usual. The sadhu’s talk of omens and retribution had made him feel uneasy. Even though he was on home ground; even though he had been born in the village, as had previous generations of his family, ever since the troubles had broken out, Bublu had become a stranger – an alien in his own land. No one looked him in the eye, not even those who had known him all his life. His family had all been killed right here among them, and now, it was as if they had never been.

Somehow surviving, he slunk round the district with a raggle-taggle of other boys, who had also been orphaned or displaced. They stuck together in a band and set up camp in the ruined palace. No one else went there because of the ghosts and evil spirits that were reputed to haunt it.

The boys all had nicknames too, so that they could not be easily identified by race or creed. Bublu was the eldest and a natural leader, after having fought it out with Sandeep, whom they called One Eye – though he still had to watch his old rival.

They usually all straggled back to the ruined palace before sunset, bringing with them whatever gains they had collected through the day. It became the code of the group to pool everything – scraps of clothes, materials, objects – anything that might come in useful as a tool or a receptacle; and of course, each knew he must bring something back to contribute to a meal. The boys had agreed on a law: stealing vegetables and sugar cane from the fields was one thing – or scrumping mangoes, guavas and bananas, strictly for their own consumption – but there was to be no stealing from houses or persons. Any boy breaking the code would be punished by the group and if necessary, thrown out.

They were never sure each evening what, if anything, they would eat. Someone usually managed to break off some sugar cane, scrounge discarded radish tops or old chapattis, and if they were lucky, one or two women in the village left out some rice or lentils which the boys cooked up in an old petrol can.

Gradually, they became as tolerated in the district as the crows and stray dogs, which scavenged round the neighbourhood. But Bublu never dropped his guard – not with anyone.

Tonight, Bublu was ever more alert. Kept awake, not by strange noises or the fretful moanings of his companions, but the feeling that, somewhere out in the darkness, the white horse still roamed like an unquiet spirit.

However, his mind was made up. If he got the chance, he was going to catch it.

TWO
The Sacrifice

The clerk’s wife sighed. Her three fat sons clustered round her with pouting faces. Her husband had insisted that they too must fast. ‘It is our duty to support the Mahatma,’ explained the clerk.

‘Why, Pa?’ protested the eldest fat son. ‘How does it help the cause?’

‘After all, he won’t know,’ said the second fat son. ‘No one will know.’

‘Except us and our empty stomachs,’ moaned the third fat son.

But the clerk mercilessly reduced his family’s diet to a handful of nuts and one piece of fruit per day, saying, ‘At least you won’t starve like Gandhiji. He’s taking nothing, only water.’

It was too bad the way he carried his adoration of the Mahatma to such extreme limits and it wasn’t fair on the boys. The clerk’s wife gazed with anguished adoration at her three beautiful sons, as chubby as the god Ganesh and triumph of her womb.

They were a good Hindu family belonging to the Shatryia caste, who had managed to survive the troubles. They had only left the district temporarily when first Muslim, then Sikh gangs rampaged through. But as things quietened down, they returned to rebuild their home, and re-establish their place in the community.

Surely, they were entitled to some dignity? After all, they had to think of their reputation, and the future wives they would need to find for the boys. Yet since the clerk’s conversion to Gandhism he had stripped their modest home of everything that he called luxuries; their bedsteads, chairs, tables, ornaments, rugs – all had been given away or disposed of. He forbade his wife to wear jewellery and made her give away her best silk saris. From now on, they slept on thin mattresses on rickety charpoys, and all of them wore garments made from khadi, the raw rough cotton which had been spun by hand in the villages. She was sure the tailor had smirked when instructed to make their outfits.

Their food too had to be the most humble; just dhal, yogurt, fruit and nuts. No spices, no flavourings and no sweets were allowed.

His children were outraged. Three shiny plump boys, with cheeks like golden butter, who had been nourished and pampered from birth, with lashings of rich milk, cream, butter and cheese; who were used to curries cooked in the highest quality ghee, and ate only the freshest vegetables and fruit, and the finest white rice: whose mother adored making sweets and pastries and savoury samosas – they were to be denied all this – anything that smacked of pleasure or frivolity was banned. Food was for survival, because that was the lot of the poor, and it was with the poor that the clerk forced the whole family to identify.

Whenever they travelled by train, he insisted they cram themselves into the overflowing third class, along with malodorous peasants with their bundles and baskets.

But quite the worst indignity of all, was that the clerk made his wife clean out the latrines – the job of an Untouchable. She had begged and pleaded and screamed, and even threatened to leave home, but to no avail. The clerk told her that Gandhi had declared caste to be evil and must be done away with; that there was no longer any such thing as an ‘Untouchable’. People, who until now had been the lowest of the low – so low that they were outside caste itself, fit only to do the most menial of jobs, they were now to be called ‘Harijans’ – ‘children of God’. Everyone is equal in the eyes of God, Gandhi said, and he made his own wife clean out the latrines.

‘If Gandhi’s wife can clean out the latrines, then so can you,’ intoned the clerk without sympathy. ‘It is God’s work the same as everything else.’

‘Then why don’t you do it,’ hissed his wife under her breath.

‘What did you say?’ asked the clerk looking up from The Times of India he was reading.

‘I didn’t speak,’ murmured his wife, hurrying away with furious tears streaming down her face. What did he care that none of her women friends would come to take tea with her any more? And she was sure that her own children flinched from her when she kissed them.

Luckily for the three fat boys, the fast only lasted five days, but they made up for it by secretly buying sweets and gelabees from the sweet-seller, whom they passed each day on their way to school. Their mother always made sure they had enough annas in their pockets for whatever extra food they wanted to buy in the bazaar.

During that time, the horse was still to be seen in the district, though only fleetingly.

Gandhi ended his fast on Sunday, 18 January 1948.

THREE
The Gardens of Treachery

At early evening, just before the chill of night, the schoolteacher had taken to walking in the neglected, overgrown gardens of the abandoned palace. He sometimes took a small volume of poetry to read, relishing the loneliness which enabled him to declame it out loud.

‘There is a looker-on who sits behind my eyes.

It seems he has seen things in ages and worlds beyond memory’s shore,

And those forgotten sights glisten on the grass and shiver on the leaves.’

At the end of an avenue, just where it ran down to the lake shore, was a stone plaque, now quite hidden by tangled creepers. He found it by accident, when a loose page from his book blew into the undergrowth, and he was forced to leave the grassy track to retrieve it. Earth had already crept halfway up the hard, grey granite, almost obliterating the letters carved deeply into its surface. But he had scraped away the soil to reveal words. They were in English. First were two names: ‘Ralph and Grace’. These were the English children, the Chadwicks’ children, who had drowned in the lake some years ago. Many would go nowhere near the place now, for there had been talk of their ghosts walking on the water and the sound of childish laughter on the island in the middle of the lake. Beneath the names, chiselled deep and in a fine hand, were the words of a poem, also in English but dedicated to Lord Shiva:

I searched for your light

Everywhere:

And saw a dawn made from ten million million suns,

A cosmic brightness for my wonder.

O Destroyer of Darkness

If you are light

I need look no more.

That evening he walked in the cool, fragrant gardens. Just as he passed the plaque, and repeated the now well-remembered words, the schoolteacher had a sudden feeling that he was not alone.

Turning slowly, with a sharp chill running up his spine, he saw by the lake shore, some hundred metres away, the white horse. It was still bridled, and the garlands of flowers which hung round its neck looked as fresh as ever.

But there was something else now. Crouched nearby, as though it were its keeper, squatted a child all naked and wild, with hair that fell around it in a matted, tangled mass. Whether it was a girl or a boy, he could not tell, or perhaps, after all, it wasn’t human. Perhaps it was some animal, a monkey or even a young hyena, for when it suddenly looked up at him, it seemed to catch his eye with a glittering stare, and even from that distance, the look was so savage that he shuddered.

After a while, the horse moved on around the shore. The creature followed, sometimes on all fours, sometimes bounding about on two. The teacher watched them till they disappeared round a promontory. They did not reappear, although he waited until the sun had almost set.

It was Thursday, 29 January 1948.

‘Well, my daughter Marvi, and what are you doing today?’

Jhoti asked the same question almost every morning, just at the point of waking, before Marvinder had even opened her eyes.

‘I like Wednesdays, Ma,’ whispered Marvi into the cold, winter darkness. She could just see her breath puff upwards like a coil of ectoplasm, towards the still invisible ceiling. ‘We have our singing lessons with Mr Pentelow. He’s nice. He lets us choose our favourites.’

‘What is your favourite, Marvi, my dearest?’ sighed her mother. ‘Is it the song of spring which the farmers sing on their way to the fields? Is it the song about Krishna, stealing milk from the milkmaids? They were my favourites too.’

‘No, Ma. We don’t sing those songs here in England. We sing “The Ash Grove” and “Men of Harlech” and songs about Scotland. My favourite song is “Speed Bonnie Boat like a Bird on the Wing.” ’

Marvinder began to sing it quietly, sliding down under the bedclothes, so that she wouldn’t waken Kathleen and Beryl.

‘You’re going to be a musician, aren’t you, Marvi?’ Her mother sounded proud. ‘A violinist like Mr Chadwick, aren’t you, my daughter, aren’t you, my precious?’

‘Dr Silbermann teaches me well, Ma. I wish you could hear me.’

‘Do you remember, how we sat on the verandah in Deri, and listened, while Jaspal suckled at my breast? Do you remember, Marvinder, my child? Every evening, before dinner, the Chadwicks made music?’

‘Yes, Ma,’ cried Marvinder, and the tears slid down her cheeks. How could she forget? The music rose through the scented air of a Punjab evening, lifting out of the boughs of the mission garden like spirit birds, soaring and dipping and disappearing on and on into space. Even though they now lived in England, how could she forget? Especially not now that her mother, Jhoti, had taken up residence in her brain.

Marvinder had been dreaming about a horse. Sitting astride a white horse, she had been galloping . . . galloping . . . along twisting mountain trails; jumping gulleys and ditches and bubbling streams; ducking her head beneath the low branches of pine and spruce; then breaking out onto an open plain, where a silver horizon ran unimpeded from end to end; where the wind caught the horse’s tail and made it fan out behind it like a silver cataract; and her heart beat with the drumming of its hooves, as they sped along so fast, that any minute now, she felt they would leap up into the skies and gallop away among the stars.

But the sounds which awoke her were slow and heavy. Marvinder heard the early morning clip clop of the milkman’s cart coming down to Whitworth Road, and the faint tinkle of bottles as he unloaded the quota destined for No. 30.

She eased herself silently out of bed and sped, barefoot, down the freezing lino-covered stairs, to the front door. She opened it in time to see the milkman climbing the front steps with cheery face beaming out at her from beneath his peaked cap.

‘Hello, my little early bird,’ he whispered, as with practised silence, he set down the various groups of milk bottles in their proper places. ‘Looking for worms?’

She grinned back, remembered how it was he who taught her the saying, ‘it’s the early bird that catches the worm’.

Then, suddenly, his face became grave, and he bent forward confidentially. ‘There was news on the wireless this morning that’ll interest you,’ he murmured.

‘Oh?’ Marvinder was puzzled.

‘Mahatma Gandhi.’ The milkman said the name with reverence. ‘He’s been shot.’

It was Friday, 30th January 1948.

So, Marvinder in England heard the news before the clerk in India. The clerk didn’t hear till almost evening. He had been accounting all day, sitting in front of large dusty ledger books, with his specs balanced on his nose, pencil in hand, roaming up and down columns of figures, calculating, adding and subtracting and dividing, his brain revolving and clicking like the beads on an abacus.

‘What do you want?’ he demanded of the gangly youth who lingered somewhat insolently in the doorway.

The clerk knew he was something of a laughingstock with his colleagues, who liked to tease him for being such a faithful disciple of the Mahatma – especially as he came to work wearing a coarse khadi dhoti, instead of refined white cotton trousers and shirts or even western-style suits. What’s more, he had insisted on removing the top of his desk from its frame, placing it on the floor and working cross-legged. ‘We Indians should do things the Indian way, not ape the Britishers,’ he had declared with an air of moral superiority. However, it irked him no end, to think that he was being smirked at behind his back, by the cocky young messengers who hung about the office.

‘You haven’t heard the news, then?’ asked the youth with mock concern.

‘What news?’ The clerk frowned. He straightened his back from his cross-legged position, and adjusted his spectacles which had slipped down his nose. As he did so, he was aware of the sound of women wailing in the background and agitated voices, rising and falling in repeating sequences of distress. Anxiously, he gathered up his dhoti and got to his feet.

‘It’s your beloved leader; the Father of the People . . . Bapu . . .’ The youth drawled out the words slowly and sarcastically, relishing the puzzled anxiety he could see beginning to furrow the clerk’s face.

‘Gandhiji? Gandhiji?’

‘He’s been shot!’

‘Is he dead?’

‘Oh yes.’ The youth tittered, then fled.

Slipping . . . slipping . . . the ground was slipping away from beneath his feet. The clerk clutched his heart and then his head. The whole world became dark and began to spin around him as if out of control . . . it was a past betrayed . . . a future lost . . . what would happen . . . what would become of them? All that slaughter . . . destruction . . . and a terrible sickness of the soul . . . who could heal the wounds? Who could save them now? What revenge would God take for the death of a saint? Slipping . . . slipping . . . there was nothing solid for his feet to stand on.

The clerk crumpled to the ground, his arms clutched around his head as if waiting to be sucked away into oblivion.

In his distraught mind, he wandered through beautiful gardens of ornamental lakes and perfumed fountains; down shaded avenues of cypresses; into fruit groves and walled gardens, where flowering bushes were bursting with colour and profusion. They were gardens of order and peace created out of a jungle of danger and chaos. Yet a voice whispered in his brain. Beware! Beware the beast that lurks; the enemy disguised as a friend; the serpent coiled among the boughs of the tree in the garden of Eden, waiting for Eve; beware the Judas seeking out Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane to embrace him with the kiss of betrayal; Ravana, king of the demons disguised as a holy man; the devil who has gained access into the inner sanctuary.

But it was too late for warnings. In a garden in Delhi, an assassin lurked among the shrubberies of Birla House. A man, pretending to be a disciple, waited for Gandhi.

The Mahatma was still frail and impossibly thin after his long fast. Flanked by his faithful women followers, on whose shoulders he rested a hand for support, he walked trustingly to a prayer meeting. The assassin stepped forward. So close. As close as friends. He faced him, looked him in the eye, then shot him three times.