Glorious Boy, page 10
The banyans form their own citadel. Aerial roots had dangled like Shiva’s arms, while the base roots snaked into the earth. She pressed on. Forward. This way. That. The grass rose above her head. She was well out of sight of the white house when she spotted the grove. Dozens of trunks, each as big around as five men. They pressed so close against each other that it seemed there was no way in, but her father had shown her the hidden passage, behind one trunk and between two others. When she located the swirling root with the knot like a raised fist, she felt him urging her on.
Gripping a stick to fend off snakes, she inched inside the maze. The air stiffened with heat, dusky as dreamlight. The soles of her chappals caught, slapping her heel each time she pulled free, but the passage widened gradually until she could stretch her arms and brace herself. Lizards skittered into crevices. Butterflies darted high above her, bright as little kites. A mongoose giggled from a middle branch. Better, daughter?
Better, she answered, silent as Ty and clutching the truth of the word.
Her foot found the clay floor before she could see it, buried under fallen leaves but still solid and level. When she came with her father, they’d used nets to collect the leaves and a broom to sweep the hidden platform. Above and around them, the branches reached for the sky, and the sun had shimmered among the leaves as through bottle glass.
The branches reached higher today. The sun trembled more darkly. She used her stick to clear a path, and dust whirled like smoke. She sneezed and covered her nose until it settled. No rush. The sanctuary still was a secret, hers alone to reclaim.
She examined the trunks that surrounded the floor until she came to the flat expanse, smaller than she remembered. The marks lined up in rows so carefully contained that it seemed as if the gods had designated this and only this small tablet for the record of hope, and even a single mark outside its borders would be a desecration.
Silence is a form of strength, her father had insisted when he brought her to this place. So many years ago. He called this labyrinth of trunks the Freedom Tree. The firenghi have their churches, the Hindus their temples and the Mohammedans their mosques, but I have never known a shrine more sacred than this one.
In the trunk’s flat expanse, smooth as a man’s back, a series of letters and dates had been carved. The faintest still read R.M. Dass 1872, beside ten cuts that numbered the convict’s days in hiding. A.J. Prakash stayed here five days in 1899, B.R. Agarwhal almost one month in 1900. The last was V.H. Choudhry, here just three days in 1911. It was to him that Naila’s father as a boy had brought food and water to sustain the freedom fighter until he fled into the forest.
She looked to the right of the markings for a cleft between two trunks. Make a wish, he had said. Write it down. He handed her a slip of white paper and a pencil, and in her childish hand she had scribbled the wish, which he wouldn’t let her tell him. Fold it and give it to the tree, and the gods will kiss it for you.
The cleft had filled in, grown together. Ants streamed from a bore hole. There was nothing now left of her wish, which she couldn’t recall.
She became dimly aware of her elbow, a scratchy sensation against the skin. But they have given you another. She glanced down at the wood beneath her arm and drew a quick breath, yanked back.
The black scorpion raised its tail, glaring at her, pincers snapping like a crab’s. It was almost the size of her palm. Her father had told her these black ones were poisonous when young, but they gentled with age.
“Are you young or old?” she asked.
The scorpion skittered sideways. She took another step back and rubbed her arm.
Wilkerson had turned his reception hall into a war room. He wore his whites starched and pressed, mosquito boots spit and polished. This morning even his muttonchops seemed crisp. His wife had left, the war was raging on three continents, his empire under attack, and his colonial outpost had been shaken to its foundations, but by God, Wilkerson would show that he was still in charge of Port Blair.
Police superintendent Denis Ward and his sub-inspector Rao; Tom Lutty; Small of the transport division; Reverend Crisp; and the superintendent of schools Dr. Dirwan Singh joined Shep and Baird around a massive dining table spread with a wall map of the Andaman archipelago. The Commissioner had armed Baird with an array of colored crayons. When Chief Forest Officer Mukerjee arrived to report damage in the western coastal areas, Baird marked said zones on the map with small green circles. The schools most in need of repair were noted in red, Small’s list of impassable roads in blue, Shep’s survey of compromised hospitals and dispensaries in orange.
The whole exercise reminded Shep of the map his father had stretched across his library wall during the Chinese Civil War, with colored pins to track the winning and losing “teams.”
“Casualty report, Durant?” The Commissioner swung his pallid gaze, and Shep handed him a list compiled from interviews with the injured, Ward’s records, and Lieutenant Reynold’s list of vessels and crews that remained unaccounted for.
“We’ve been able to confirm only ten deaths, sir, but treated one hundred fifty-four injuries. Several dozen individuals have been reported missing. Considering the magnitude, I suppose we’re lucky, but that’s little comfort to the families of the disappeared.”
“Agreed.” Reverend Crisp raised one desiccated palm. “Only the Lord can supply true comfort.”
Denis Ward talked over the piety. “I heard you’re missing a couple of servants, Durant.” The young police chief’s reptilian eyes flickered under the ledge of his brow. After the business with the Jarawa captives, Shep and Claire had steered clear of Ward, but resentment on both sides still simmered. Ward looked as if he meant to turn Jina and Som’s death into some kind of sinister joke.
“Ah yes,” piped up Dr. Singh. “One of my faculty asked me to convey his concern to you regarding their daughter. I gather the girl was his student. He was wondering, what’s to be done with her?” Despite his avuncular manner and wire-rimmed glasses, Singh seemed to Shep to be shading his meaning.
“How old is she now?” Ward asked, and the chain of twitching brows around the table tipped Shep at last. The local gender imbalance being what it was, every male in Port Blair had noticed Naila growing up as she marched to and from the ferry.
Only Lloyd Crisp appeared to have any interest in praying for this poor child’s soul, much less protecting her body—only Crisp and Alfred Baird, who cast Shep a look of genuine compassion.
Shep said a bit too emphatically, “She’s still a child. And grieving.”
“Is she registered?”
“Sir?”
Wilkerson thumbed the table. “Registered as an orphan for the census. Which reminds me, are there others orphaned by the quake?”
Shep felt run over. “Doubtless, Commissioner, but I can’t very well declare a child an orphan without verifying the parents are dead. Why on earth do you ask?”
The Commissioner’s erect white hair gave him the look of a cockatoo. “I am ultimately responsible for those who abide in this settlement. Including your little brown girl.”
We are their mothers and their fathers. The colonial lament.
Ward stifled a guffaw as Lutty and the Indians fixed their collective attention on a point at the center of the map in front of them.
Shep snapped to. “Well, sir, in the case of this particular little girl, you needn’t trouble yourself. Claire and I are her guardians.”
“Are you?” Wilkerson sounded genuinely appalled.
“That’s the Christian spirit!” Reverend Crisp exclaimed. “I’m surprised I don’t see you and Claire in church more often.”
Baird looked up from his disaster checklist and said quietly, “You might want to formalize that arrangement, Doctor.”
“I intend to.” The thought hadn’t crossed his mind. “We’ve been trying to locate her relatives. If we can’t, we’re prepared to adopt her.”
Wilkerson snorted his disapproval, but all he said was “Better declare her parents dead first,” and returned to more important business.
Shep had caught himself off guard with his semi-public declaration of custody. The chaos, the move, the work, the uncertainty that hovered over all future plans left him little energy for his wife and son, let alone for Naila. Of course, he pitied the girl and intended to safeguard her until other provisions could be made, but the true gravity of her plight only now dawned on him. Men in the Andamans were like hyenas poised to pounce. Before he broached the subject with Claire, however, he solicited Leyo’s advice.
Leyo, too, had been watching Naila grow up, and his fondness for her was transparent, but Leyo hadn’t a predatory nerve in his body. “Naila is excellent girl,” he assured Shep. “Most intelligent.”
It was late afternoon. They stood together in the new greenhouse surrounded by orchids that Leyo had transported from the Ross garden. On his way down, Shep had paused to watch Naila and Ty on the lower ter race. VANDA, VANILLA, ELEPHANT, SPIDER. Ty drew on the pavement with chalk while Naila watched, absently rubbing her earlobe. The words blossomed over crude sketches of the flowers they named, the children so engrossed they barely noticed Shep passing. Som had taught them well.
“But you don’t think she might be a bit too attached to Ty?”
The affection in Leyo’s smile made Shep instantly regret the question. And when he broached the subject with Claire that night, after the children were in bed, he wondered if he’d only imagined her original jealousy of Naila’s closeness with Ty. Certainly, it had since been replaced by deep sympathy for the girl.
They sat in the dark, on the loveseat in the breezeway. Claire said she’d tried every way she could think of to identify other family members, but Naila truly seemed to have no one. “Jina’s parents came from somewhere in Bengal, but she has no idea where, no names or even a town.”
“What about Som?” Shep asked.
She shook her head.
Across the water, heat lightning danced off North Point. Incense filled the air, but the mosquitoes still sounded as if they were doing a mating dance overhead.
“We’re all she has,” Claire said, but her reading of this line missed its mark. It came out more question than statement.
Shep slapped a biter that had found his elbow and began filling his pipe. Latakia tobacco worked better than bugspray.
“That teacher at school,” he said. “Singh said he asked after her.” It was an exploratory gambit, but Claire went on as if he hadn’t spoken.
“She needs Ty. He’s become her . . . her security blanket.” Her voice had a troublingly sacrificial quaver.
Shep lit the pipe and wreathed them in the strong smoke. Normally Claire hated this smell as much as the bugs did. Tonight, she said nothing.
Perhaps the guilt was eating her. They should at least have an answer for Naila—what had happened to Jina and Som? They had an educated guess, but that wouldn’t satisfy the child, and for her the not knowing might almost be the worst of all. It surely didn’t help that he, as Civil Surgeon, was the one responsible for knowing.
He’d been about to test the notion of adopting the girl but was stopped by the undercurrent of ambivalence in Claire’s tone—as well as his own misgivings. It was still too soon for any of them. Until they had some proof of death, or more time had passed, it would be a mistake even to raise the possibility.
And then there was Ty. Relying on Naila as a servant was one thing but bringing her into the family forever was quite another. Shep believed Ty would soon start to speak. He did not think the exclusivity of the children’s bond was anything to worry about. But what if he was wrong? What if Naila’s continued presence drove a permanent wedge between them and their son? He wasn’t only concerned about the potential effect of this on Claire, but also on their marriage.
“What about you?” he asked Claire.
“Me?”
“What’s your security blanket?”
Shep wanted her to say, You, or maybe, You and Ty, but she merely put her arms around his neck and pressed her face to his chest. He stroked her hair, though the erotic charge of this gesture was missing. The strands felt chopped and stringy, like a child’s, and this sensation fired a mixture of sadness and paternalism. He countermanded it by nibbling the lip of her ear.
When she didn’t react, he released her. “I stopped in at the Browning Club this afternoon. A new batch of papers have come in. The Japs have bloody well overrun China.”
“You think we should leave too.” Neither statement nor question, the words seemed to float in the darkness.
“Sometimes I think we’re living in a dream world, Claire. Maybe the quake was God’s wake-up call.”
But he could see she didn’t want to wake up, didn’t even want to lift her head, much less return to reality. “We’ve been interrupted,” she said at last. “That’s all. Bad as the quake was, the war is surely worse. At least here we’re safely out of it.”
“Accha.” Relieved in spite of his tough talk, he rose to pour them two good stiff drinks. “That’s my girl, then. We carry on.”
And so a new routine established itself, with the notion of adoption eclipsed by Claire’s decision to “promote” Naila to “official” ayah. This formalized the girl’s right to sleep in Ty’s bedroom while freezing her status at arm’s length. Meanwhile, the failure of the schools to reopen allowed them all to sidestep other pressing concerns about her future.
Narinder and his cousin Abraham occupied the servant quarters, along with Leyo, and gradually the household found a new, awkward rhythm and tentative balance. Unfortunately, Shep wasn’t doing much to help right the balance, since his new routine left him less free time than he’d ever had on Ross.
Gupta used to handle the bulk of his mainland cases. Now Shep split each day between the hospitals at Haddo and Atlanta Point, and despite an increased patient load after the disaster, when Gupta left at the end of September no replacement was even mentioned. As expected, this secured Shep’s non-combat status, but it also left him strapped. So, while Leyo had transplanted most of his orchids here at the house, Shep hadn’t even begun to resurrect his lab, and Ty was often sound asleep before his father kissed him goodnight.
Claire was right. It could be much, much worse. Yet a persistent disquiet continued to dog Shep, and he couldn’t figure out why. Then one cloudy morning when he was up early and alone on the terrace, as Abraham deposited a boiled egg, a couple of slices of toast, and a cup of tea in front of him, Shep was struck by the surliness of the cook’s attitude. It was not uncommon in Port Blair, this air of a former convict, resentful subject and rebellious soul, and intellectually Shep couldn’t blame him. Narinder had told him that he and Abraham both had been swept up by the British when they were hot-headed students in their teens and shipped into exile before they were men. They were released from the Cellular Jail within months of their arrival, and because of their low caste, their prospects were actually better here than they’d been at home. But still their treatment smarted.
Left alone to eat, Shep watched the eastern clouds turn yellow. Narinder had a quiet cheer about him. Shep liked and trusted his driver almost as much as he did Leyo—as he had Jina and Som. Because of this, he’d accepted Narinder’s recommendation and brought his cousin into the household without a qualm. A little older than Narinder and bonier than Som, Abraham wore a thick broom of a mustache and his graying hair oiled and parted to one side. His eyes were large and dark-rimmed, smoldering. There was never a mark on his white serving jacket or trousers, but he radiated the garlicky smell of neem oil, which Shep suspected he used on his eczema. He also had a limp, which worsened in the course of most days until he was forced to use a stick by evening. Probably arthritis, though the man refused his offers of treatment. Abraham lacked Narinder’s strength and vigor, but that was no cause for concern.
What, then? It was so subtle, this new edge of defiance, that Shep would have dismissed it outright, were it not for the new wave of Indian nationalism unleashed across the port by the latest rumors of war. Among the nationalists it was an article of faith—and underground propaganda—that the Japanese were fighting the British on behalf of all Asians for their “greater prosperity.” Many here not so secretly hailed the recent enemy advances in Indochina and would welcome Japanese occupation. No Asian could be worse at the helm than the British—such was the thinking among the firebrands. Well, the Chinese could tell the Indians a thing or two; try asking the survivors of Nanking about the yellow brotherhood. Or his childhood classmates, now men in their thirties who, staking everything on Shanghai, had wound up trapped behind the wall of war.
That said, he could hardly blame men like Abraham for wanting a taste of freedom. And Narinder wasn’t the only one who’d vouched for him. Wilkerson said he’d cooked for a French plantation owner, as well as for the family of a dreaded guard at the Cellular Jail. No harm had come to any of them.
He wiped his mouth. Abraham likely was the least of their worries. They were living in a penal colony after an earthquake in the middle of a world war with their household spiraling around one child who refused to speak and another who’d just lost her parents. No wonder things seemed bleak.
November 1941
“Was anyone hurt?” Claire asked.
Leyo had just come from Behalla, his first visit since gumul, the end of the rainy season, when the Biya returned from monsoon camp. Though the quake had been stronger up north, it seemed that Kuli warned everyone in time.
“He can feel the spirit dance,” Leyo said.
“As you did,” Claire said, though in several discussions about this, Leyo had never been able to articulate how he’d sensed this “dancing” before the quake even began.
She longed to return to Behalla to have this conversation with Kuli directly, but the loss of Jina made it impossible to leave Ty now. Abraham had demonstrated neither the aptitude nor the inclination for child-care, and Naila was still too young for such responsibility. At the same time, the girl was so possessive of Ty that it would be risky to bring in a proper ayah—even if such a woman could be found here. When they first arrived in Port Blair, Claire hadn’t appreciated what a rarity Jina was, given the gender imbalance of the convict population. She told herself that once the port recovered and Naila was back in school, Shep’s duties would subside again and they’d find a way, but for now her field work remained on hiatus.
