*

A little after six o'clock Sam stood on the front doorstep, in full view of the waning westerly sun, and cursed the architect who had thought this was England. In the morning when he had arrived at Raman's home, this part of the house had been a gleaming white, still cool in the shade, with a hint of the moisture in the air that had been birthed during the night. Now the air around him was dry enough to flake into pieces, Sam's mouth parched, and his skin seeming to leach moisture into the seeking heat.

Seeking the relative freshness behind the tamarind tree's trunk, he flung his cigarette to the ground and trod it out with the heel of his shoe. He took out his handkerchief, swabbed his forehead with it, and then raised the sola topi Sayyid had given him and mopped up as much sweat as he could from his hair. The topi was a blessing; it was a round pith helmet of sorts with a wide brim, like a safari hat with a buckram rim, constructed to battle the Indian sun. Sam had brought only his Burma Rangers cap, which left the back of his neck exposed.

The return back to Raman's house earlier in the afternoon had been relatively easy, as Sam had entered the gate at the bottom of the back garden just before the servants had begun to stir from their afternoon's rest. He had cautiously passed by Sayyid sitting on his charpai, a jute-knitted bed, feet on the ground, shoulders hunched, still nodding in the last vestiges of sleep. But Sayyid had not seen him. Looking up at the house, Sam had spied Mila in the balcony and had melted behind a jasmine bush, his heart pounding. But Mila, like Sayyid, seemed asleep on her feet, her back bent at an incongruous angle, her chin and arms resting on the parapet, her eyes closed. Sam waited, and finally she rose to straighten her back, glanced in the direction of his room and then went inside her room. He had run up the outer stairs without pausing, knowing that this was probably his only chance to enter his room undetected. There, he had stripped off his clothes, folded them, and stowed them away at the bottom of his holdall, then padded naked to the bathroom for the relief of sitting in a tub filled with water, tepid and warm as it was. When Sayyid had come in with a tray of tea, to find Sam in the rub, he had said nothing, merely bowed, set the tray down on a table at Sam's elbow, and retreated to start unpacking Sam's holdall. At which, of course, Sam had shouted out through the silk curtains that he could do that himself, thank you very much.

From his vantage point behind the tamarind tree, Sam watched the front door of the house open and shut numerous times as messengers and peons flitted in and out, some carrying cotton bags filled with papers and files. They all looked the same to Sam, nondescript men, young and old, clad in khaki shirts and shorts and Nehru caps, lawyers' briefs tucked under their right arms. In those briefs were the lifeblood of the Indian Civil Service--letters, memos, and documents authenticating the mundane, endless details of the machinery of the mighty Raj.

A chameleon scampered up the tree trunk to one of the lower branches. Fear and surprise sent colors racing under the chameleon's skin in blotches of reds, yellows, and greens. Sam watched it hide from him, slung over a branch, its scaly tail hanging over one side. He settled back into waiting and dreaming. After the bath, and after drinking the hot chat and eating a couple of samosas fried to a flaky perfection with a ginger and coriander chutney, Sam had wandered out into the balcony for a cigarette in his shorts and a shirt that he had not bothered to button. And there Mila had found him.

"Will you join us for a fair, a mela, at the Victoria Club, Captain Hawthorne?" she had asked, somewhat shy, a half smile directed at his bare chest. Sam had buttoned his shirt and said yes, mesmerized by the masses of hair that had come loose from her plait and framed her face, and by the glint of the thin cord of a gold chain around her neck. "In two hours," she had said. "Outside the front door."

It was still too bloody hot for a mela of all things, but the mela was a church fund-raiser for a new music organ, to be purchased by the sweat of all their brows. Now Sam knew why there was even this form of entertainment at Rudrakot at the peak of summer, when normally by this time everyone would have fled to the hills. Because Sims had beaten the cook and almost killed him, and Colonel Pankhurst and the Rifles commander had decreed that the regiment would not get its normal summer leave. And not having this form of escape, they all had to be entertained somehow.

He heard the roar of the jeep in the garage then, and it swept over the gravel drive from the far side of the house to the front. Mila was driving. A pale green chiffon sari floated around her like a cloud in the sky, and in the little seat at the back of the jeep a young man mock-fought with the pallu of the sari, hollering above the din that he was being strangled by fabric. They came to a halt in front of Sam, and Mila wrestled her sari from Ashok.

"Do get in, Captain Hawthorne," she said, jumping out from her seat. Her slippered feet raised a little puff of dust. "I need to fix this or Ashok will keep yanking at my sari and complaining that he can't see." She layered the top half of her pallu over her left shoulder, wound it around her neck and over her head to cover her hair, and then brought the extra around her once more and tucked it into her waist. This she did deftly, as though from long years of practice, and when she finished, the sari swathed her slim figure and concealed all her hair, leaving a rectangle of smooth brown skin above her eyebrows. "There," she said, and put her sunglasses on again. They were large, oval, and a deep black. Ashok was dressed with an open-necked white linen shirt, crisp fawn-colored pants, a white silk ascot blooming at his neck. Sam felt shabby beside all this finery in his Burma Rangers uniform and his boots.

"This is my brother Ashok," Mila said, gesturing with her head.

What an attractive family they were, Sam thought. Mila looked nothing like Raman--perhaps she had more of her mother in her--and Ashok was a leaner, younger version of his father. Yet they looked alike. Perhaps it was the color of their skins, so perfectly matched in their neighboring faces, the bronze of the earth. Perhaps it was their eyes, the outer edges curving upward into their hairlines, thickly lashed. Mila's eyebrows had definition, like the arches of bows; perhaps once, without the aid of artifice, they had looked like the smudges of hair above Ashok's eyes. They both had the same strongly shaped faces, and the same manner of slanting their heads. Mila's nose had a little bump at the bridge and her sunglasses perched precariously on this bump.

A smile split Ashok's young face and he thrust his hand forward eagerly. Sam clasped it and felt the slenderness of his fingers, the smallness of the hand in his. Why, he thought, for all his grown-up clothes, Ashok was still a boy. How old was he?

"Hello," he said, and to his surprise, Ashok replied with, "Seattle must be a wonderful place. I say, do you get a lot of snow there?"

"Mostly in the mountains," Sam said.

"Ah, the Cascade Mountains. But also in the Olympic Mountains, no? West of Seattle?"

"Yes," Sam said. "But that is quite astounding--how do you know all this?"

"Oh, I know more," Ashok said. He rubbed his hands and leaned forward. "Are you getting in?" Then, not waiting for Sam's answer, he went on, "Seattle is a hundred and twenty-five nautical miles from the Pacific Ocean, on the Puget Sound, between Elliott Bay and Lake Washington. It is situated a hundred and ten miles south of the Canadian border and lies in King County. Mount Rainier, the highest peak in the Cascade Mountains, is ninety miles south of Seattle. Have you seen it, Captain Hawthorne?"

"All the time," Sam said. He climbed into the jeep on the passenger side. "That is, all the time when it is not raining. We have a saying in Seattle that when you don't see Mount Rainier, it is raining--"

"And when you do see it, it is going to rain," Ashok finished for him with a tremendous peal of laughter.

"Enough, Ashok," Mila said with a smile. "You will bore our guest." "But no," Sam said. "All this is very interesting; how do you know these facts, Ashok? I've lived in Seattle all of my life, but I haven't memorized how many nautical miles lay between Seattle and the Pacific."

"I just know." Ashok had an air of seriousness and erudition.

"Papa gave Ashok an Encyclopaedia Britannica for his birthday a few years ago, so my brother is now a walking fund of knowledge--most of it useless for life, but useful only to impress our visitors," Mila said, speaking over Ashok's little noises of protest. "Shall we go?"

Sam nodded. He turned back to face the front of the jeep. The windshield was up and locked in place. There was a handle welded onto the side of the windshield pane on the passenger's side. Sam had a few seconds to wonder what it was for before he found out.

Mila jammed the jeep into reverse, spun the tires as she backed up the jeep, thrust the gear into first, and slammed on the accelerator. The gates were shut at the end of the drive. The two watchmen dashed to unlatch the gates and had barely run them open before they sped past, with the watchmen still clinging to the wrought iron on its outward swing. A blast of the horn and, without waiting to see if there was any traffic to worry about, Mila turned onto the road. Sam clung to the handle on the side of the windshield pane.

"Mila's a maniac behind the wheel, Captain Hawthorne," Ashok yelled in his ear. "She taught me to drive."

"Remind me not to get into a vehicle again with either of you, then," Sam yelled back, his voice snatched by the wind and carried away behind them.

"I'm not that terrible," Mila shouted. "Jai taught me to drive; you should see him. It's a wonder he's still alive. It's a wonder anyone in Rudrakot is alive, considering the way he plows through the streets. There," she said, shifting down and slowing, "is this better?"

Sam leaned back on his seat finally and let go of the safety handle. Ashok seemed to have worked out a system for being stable; his hands were clenched around the leather of his seat, his feet were jammed apart against the floor; his ascot, though, was still in its place, snowily resplendent.

"I'm used to Mila, Captain Hawthorne," he said, grinning. "She likes to race out of the driveway usually, but has no courage to continue her mad driving outside."

"This from someone who has no driving privileges."

"And why not?" Ashok demanded, his head between the two of them. "I'm sixteen, not a child. Jai was driving when he was twelve. He taught Kiran when he was fourteen. Why can't I drive?"

"You do drive," Mila pointed out. "Just not when Papa is around."

Sam listened to them banter and quibble, with a soreness in his heart, as they drove along the avenue that sheltered all the houses in the Civil Lines of Rudrakot. Mike and he were perhaps the same number of years apart as Mila and Ashok, and their arguments had once--foolishly--involved knives. This was many years ago--Mike had brandished a kitchen knife and then laid it back on the counter, and Sam had leapt for it and then leapt at Mike. He had chased him all over the house in a murderous rage about something he could no longer remember. Their mother, horrified beyond appeal, had banished them from the kitchen for three months and quarantined them at home for a month. It was the only rime Sam could remember having been so angry with Mike. He had never lost his temper again. It had sobered them both.

He raised his head and breathed in the aroma of the sun-fired flowers of the prakrit trees along the avenue. Mike had been here along this very road at one time. This afternoon's search had led nowhere, but no matter, if Mike was in Rudrakot, Sam would find him.

Ashok and Mila had fallen quiet, voices tired of competing with the jeep's engine roar. They were the only ones on the road, and for Sam this was stunning, this hush, this emptiness, this lack of human presence, so used was he to that other, teeming India where even his thoughts did not seem to belong to him. Wealth and opulence bought open spaces and silence. The houses were all, like Raman's, set well back from the avenue. The trees canted obligingly toward the center of the road, linking their arms on the sides, until it seemed as though they were driving through a wondrous sun-dappled tunnel of greens and golds.

As they passed by the houses, someone stepped out from behind a tree. Sam saw him first and then he thought that Mila saw him too, for her hands wavered on the wheel and the jeep swerved to one side. The man held their gazes until both Sam and Ashok turned their heads to look back at him. The man's kurta and pajama glimmered a serene white in the shade, his skin glistened with sweat, his hair lay built up in thick curls on his well-crafted head. At the kurta's opening at his neck, his collarbones jutted out, sharply defined under his skin. An Indian David, Sam thought, perfection bestowed upon each muscle, each line on the face, the brightness of the eyes. Who was he? And why did he look at them like that? There was no paraphernalia of trade or business surrounding him, no boxes of silks or curios, and no pots of water to indicate that he was within the Civil Lines to sell something. Mila's shoulders had tensed. Ashok turned to the front and dropped his eyes, a flush riding on his young face. And that moment passed in silence.

"Who was that man?" Sam asked.

"That's the vicar's house," Mila said in response, and Sam followed her finger to his right. A watchman drowsed upright on his stool in front of the gate, his brown turban bobbing as his head moved in sleep. There were two glass-plated signs, painted writing on them, embedded into the concrete gateposts. One read 12 ALBERT AVENUE, the other THE SEXTONS.

The gate itself was hung with a black metal letterbox with the words

LAETITIA SEXTON painted on it.

"What an unfortunate name for a vicar," Sam said, allowing himself to be diverted from his question.

Mila laughed. "It bothers Mrs. Sexton quite a bit. The vicar doesn't seem to care; he has lived with this name all of his life. Laetitia acquired it only through marriage."

They had passed the house now, and Sam got a small glimpse of stately white pillars, plush lawns, an empty garage shed, and pink geraniums in pots on the front porch.

"It's a beautiful home," he said. "Vicars live well in India."

"Not all vicars," Mila said. "Only the Rudrakot vicars. There are not enough British here in the civil area, so they'll take anyone they can get, even vicars."

"Why even vicars?"

"Mrs. Sexton's father," Mila said, "was a fishmonger in London; marrying the vicar has brought her up considerably. Under any other circumstances, she would not have been accepted in Rudrakot society. Perhaps she would not be accepted at home, in England, but here the British cannot afford to be choosy."

The road curved out of the trees and into the blazing sun. To their right was the lake, its waters blue bright in the light, mesmerizing in contrast to the brown and red hues of the desert. Sam shaded his eyes with his hand. Another jeep broke out from the trees ahead and onto the road, and as it passed them, the man driving raised his hand. Both Mila and Ashok nodded and Sam waved. Now, in his own clothes, in his own skin, in a jeep, by Mila's side, he was no longer invisible--as he had been when he had walked here in the afternoon.

They drove out of the sun into the cantonment area.

"The home of the Rudrakot Rifles," Sam said, and then wondered if he should have exhibited knowledge of this. But Mila and Ashok did not react.

"On the right," Ashok said. "The Rifles are a British regiment. On the left are the Rudrakot Lancers. An Indian regiment."

Sam looked right first and then left and it was like looking at images in a mirror--the two regimental headquarters looked alike, the same redand-white-painted stones along the pathways, the same whitewashed facade of the barracks, flags hanging limply on the airless, treeless, sun-drenched maidan near the sentry houses. Sam now remembered stories from Mike's letters of the pranks the officers of the Rifles regiment played on those of the Lancers--jackal carcasses strung on the barbed wire in the middle of the night, a cow let loose to deposit dung at the base of the flagpole, the stones along the drive upturned to their muddy sides. With an immense stroke of luck earlier in the afternoon, he had stumbled correctly around the living quarters of the Rifles, Mike's regiment, and not the one right opposite it.

"The Rifles came here once the Lancers were brought into commission." "Why? It must be a great drain on resources."

"Have you heard of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, Captain Hawthorne?" Mila asked.

Sam nodded. "A little. Mostly what I've read."

"Well, since then, since the mutiny, as it was called, was started within--and was largely contained within--the ranks of the army, the British try to maintain a one-to-one ratio of British soldiers to Indian soldiers. It's a show of force, a deterrent to further mutinies. It is called the Cardwell system, after the man who invented it." She paused. "The presence of the army in Rudrakot is relatively new--Jai's father, Raja Bhimsen, first raised the Lancers about twenty years ago; the government brought the Rifles here soon after."

The road stretched before them, metallic black with clean edges, and the two regiments garrisoned on either side balanced each other's might. Mila said, "The Cardwell system is meant to station British soldiers only within India's borders. At the borders, the northwest frontier, for example, there are fewer British soldiers for every Indian soldier. The threat comes from within, you see, not without."

And what do you think of the politics of this prejudice, Sam wanted to ask. Mila had recited the facts like a history lesson, with little change in her demeanor, little expression of disdain. She had shown no rancor. Here is the British regiment, Captain Hawthorne, and here is the Indian regiment. One is meant to keep the other in order. British. Indian. Mila was Indian, living in her own country, ruled by a foreign hand. For the first time, Sam began to think of what this must mean.

"How do you know all of this?"

She gave him a fleeting smile. "We know a lot because of Jai." "Who's Jai?"

Ashok and Mila began to speak together, went silent together, started to laugh together. "Poor Jai," Mila said finally. "Here is someone in his kingdom who does not know who he is. He will be crushed, devastated. We must not tell him."

"Jai is the prince of Rudrakot," Sam said, smiling too when he realized what he had just said. It was akin to blasphemy, to not acknowledge the presence of a sovereign in his own kingdom.

"Jai commands the Rudrakot Lancers, Captain Hawthorne," Ashok said from behind. "So he is the only one who can go into the Rifles' mess halls and their club. The main club, the Victoria Club, is another matter, though. A whole other bomb just begging to be detonated."

"Why?" Sam asked. Mila had stopped talking, but she was angry; he could sense that. She listened, driving slowly now.

"The Rifles, before they came here, were not used to sharing their club with an Indian regiment. They insisted on separate tables at first, separate sections of the club for their use ... but they forgot that they were the secand occupants of the club. This is why Jai goes over to the Rifles regiment to dine with the officers and the men. He wants them to see him often, to realize that Rudrakot is the Rudrakot Lancers."

"Jai is Indian too, isn't he?"

"So he is," Ashok said with a grin. "The men don't forget this. Jai is dark as the heavens in a thunderstorm, Captain Hawthorne. But he is royalty. Every drop of his blood has more value than the whole of the Rifles put together. It is an undeniable fact. It is an unpleasant conundrum for the noncommissioned British army man, the Tommy. He will not take orders from a blackie, but damn if that blackie could not buy him and his county out from under his feet."

It was an astonishingly lucid thought for a sixteen-year-old, and Sam felt an admiration for Ashok. In Seattle, Sam had heard on the radio of the conditions in India and of the freedom struggle. But it was not until he had come to the Indian subcontinent and seen this discrimination at work that he had begun to fathom the real cause of the ferment. The British had so long held themselves aloof from Indians, built up so much animosity, that there was no middle ground for compromise for the Indian nationalists. The British were not welcome in India anymore--there were no circumstances under which they could stay on or share India.

Ashok said, "Did you see the washrooms at the railway station?" Damn, Sam thought, knowing what was coming. It was something he had heard for the last few months from almost every Englishman and woman in India the moment he had opened his mouth and his accent had placed him as an American. And he had heard this in some form or another everywhere--at clubs, in shops, on railway station platforms, within the barracks in Assam. You talk of equality and civil rights, Captain Hawthorne; tell me, are all people equal in America?

The Indians he had spoken with had only made it a little easier. To them, he had been representative of FDR and openness and generosity, swung and placed at the other end of the pendulum, much, in some senses, as Raman had seen him earlier this morning. Sam was uncomfortable in both roles, of being from a dominating race in his own country and of being considered so impartial--neither was true.

Ashok repeated his question. "Did you happen to notice the washrooms at the railway stations, Captain Hawthorne?"

Sam nodded.

"They must have been marked 'Europeans Only' and 'Indians Only.' " Ashok paused and leaned forward. "Tell me, Captain Hawthorne, was that distinction not much like home to you?"

"The land of the free," Mila sang, "and the not-quite free."

Chapter Ten.

My father was among the few black members of the Delhi Gymkhana Club. This was only for show; Indians who had been knighted were regarded as wogs acceptable to the British. But the Gymkhana Club and other dubs which started taking Indians made conditions very difficult. You had to be interviewed. Your wife had to be there with you. Now my mother couldn't speak a word of English, Whites-only places like the Delhi Club remained a symbolic reminder of the alien and humiliating side of foreign rule. The last of them, the Breach Candy Swimming Pool in Bombay, excluded Indians till the 1960s and continues to operate discriminatory entry rules for visitors.

--Zareer Masani, Indian Tales of the Raj, 1987