*

Two missives passed each other that night, neither read until the morning, when it was too late to do anything about the information contained within. By the time Mila, Sam, and Ashok returned home the previous evening, it had been late. Not perhaps late in the calendars of the officers who went to the soiree at the residency and danced away a good portion of the night, but Raman was in bed and well asleep before nine o'clock.

Mils paused outside her father's door for a long while, listening for a sound from within. She heard him sigh in his sleep, turn over in his bed, but then his breathing settled into evenness. She went back to her room and sat down at the lithe teak desk that Papa had bought for her when she was

As and wrote out a short note for Raman that they--Sam, Ashok, and she--were going to Chetak's tomb early the next morning on a pi, Mc, that they would be out the whole day and return perhaps for dinner, perhaps not until much after. She did not ask Raman for permission. He would not have denied it, though he might have hesitated and thought about the propriety of their leaving like this and being away for so long without him as a chaperone. But there was no impropriety really in what Mila was going to do, just a hesitation, a cautiousness. She expected that they might well be out of the house before Papa woke up in the morning, so she wrote him a letter in her own hand without leaving a message with Sayyid.

She stepped out of her room and felt against the wall for the switch to turn off the corridor light. Now light seeped from under the doors near hers--Ashok at the far end, Sam right next to her, only darkness from Kiran's room to her left, and a disapproving peel of light under Pallavi's door, next to Kiran's. Papa's side of the house, opposite her, was dark and silent. He was still asleep. She switched on the light again and went across to slide the note under the door.

When she came back to her room, she unwound her sari, threw it on the chaise longue, stepped out of her petticoat, and unbuttoned her blouse with a great weariness. Then, in just her bra and underpants, Mila sat at the dressing table and dabbed some lotion into a piece of cotton to clean away the lines of kohl under her eyes and wipe away the big red bindi she had painted on the middle of her forehead. She heard Pallavi's soft footsteps in the corridor outside as she walked up and down the length of it in bare feet.

Mila let her hair loose from its plait until it fell around her shoulders to her waist and began to brush it until it shone. Her movements were jerky until the knots had come loose from her hair and then the brush slid in smoothly. Her arm tired, but she would still not ask Pallavi to come in and do this for her. This was the first time Mila could remember that Pallavi had not helped her prepare for bed, combing her hair and plaiting it again, even rubbing her forehead gently until she slept. A tear formed at the corner of her eye and slid down her cheek and she wiped it away, deafening her ears to Pallavi's striding in the corridor. She knew Pallavi would continue this for at least another two hours, until she was able to contain her anger, until fatigue forced her to bed.

The idea of going to Chetak's tomb had come in a moment to Mila, upset as she had been with Lady Pankhurst's machinations to get Sam into her boudoir. But this was not something she could explain to Pallavi. What could she say? That she wanted Sam Hawthorne for herself, and so she had made up an excuse with Lady Pankhurst? It sounded so stupid even in the coolness of the night, Mila thought, even now when she was free from any provocation, that it must be untrue. She was just being solicitous of their visitor. Let him leave Rudrakot after having visited and seen all they had to offer. He was, after all, their guest, not staying at the residency. Why should Lady Pankhurst take up any part of his time here? But none of this would have even remotely mollified Pallavi, who had been on the edge of being scandalized when she heard of their plans. Her reaction had been unnerving, stunning.

"Tell your papa," she had hissed, pulling the pallu of her sari close around her.

"Why?" Mila asked in exasperation. She hoped both Ashok and Sam had gone up to their rooms after they had parted at the front entrance and were not anywhere nearby to listen to this conversation. "I mean, I will tell Papa. What do I do in this house without Papa's knowledge, Pallavi?"

"Tell him now," Pallavi said. "And see if he gives you permission to leave like this tomorrow."

"Sam Hawthorne is our guest, Pallavi."

"He can find his entertainment at the Victoria Club. Why does he not stay there? Would it not suit him better, all the parties, the women who dance and drink and smoke? These women who speak English?"

Now Mila had to grin. "You speak English too."

Pallavi was pleased by the compliment and so her face lightened but was soon replaced with a frown again. "Mila, this is not right. I have not seen you all day long. You were away riding in the morning, at the mela since late afternoon, and now it is so late." She gestured at the grandfather clock in the dining room, which obligingly began to chime out the hour of ten no that Pallavi had to raise her voice to speak over the sound. "When are you ever at home? A woman must find her amusements within the walls of her house. Here you must supervise the servants, tend to the kitchens, embroider and knit in the afternoons, wait for your husband to return in the evenings. Your mother never went to the club, even after she was married and had the right to go. She never stepped out of her house before she was married."

"My mother ," Mila began and then grew quiet. What could she say about a mother she barely remembered? Pallavi knew more about Lakshmi than she did; Mila had been five years old when Lakshmi died.

This much at least was true about her, though. Her mother had been traditional and conservative, and had she been alive, a vast number of Mila's activities would have been confined. Papa might still have had his say in her education, but her mother would have influenced him in some way or the other. Mila's memories of her mother were hazy now; she could remember the scent of sandalwood on her soft skin, the white of her teeth offset by a mouth stained red with paan, an arrangement of jasmine flowers threaded into a garland, bowing down the weight of her slender, fair neck. But when Mila had been sick with a fever, it was Pallavi she recalled as sleeping by her side, and it was Pallavi's hand that had wakened her in the night, brushing softly against her brow as she checked periodically to see if the fever had risen. It was Pallavi who was here now, scolding her with a mother's insistence, but without a mother's authority.

Mila began to yield and then hardened her resolve again. If she had lingered to ask herself why, and if she had been truthful about it, she would have told herself that it was because she wanted to spend some more time with Sam Hawthorne before Jai returned from Meerut. Now, all she felt was a stubbornness, an assertion of her pride and her right.

"My mother did not speak English, Pallavi," she said. "She was a different woman, and I am different now. Why is that so difficult for you to understand?"

Pallavi shook her head. "We are never as different as we would like to be. The changes are little, subtle, but in the end it is all the same. I will say this once more," she said, rising to leave, "you must ask your papa for his permission, talk with him, and tell him what I have said." And so saying, she left the room.

In her bedchamber, Mila put down the brush and plaited her hair. When the length had grown beyond her shoulder, she brought the plait forward and continued until the end. Then, without donning her nighttime sari, Mila climbed into the bed and reached over to switch off the lamp on the bedside table. She thought she saw a piece of paper on the mosaic floor, scrunched under the edge of the door, near the hinge, but that impression was fleeting before the room plummeted into darkness.

It was not until the next morning as she rushed out of her room to the waiting jeeps that she saw the paper again. Mila picked it up and slid it into the pocket of her pants, and did not open it until they were well on their way. Raman had already left that morning, two hours before them, on his way to the village of Nodi for the day and the night. He said that he would return on the morning of the thirtieth of May. There was no mention of their trip to Chetak's tomb; her heart filled with guilt, Mila realized that Raman had not read the note she had slipped under his door.

In a strange series of coincidences, Raman too had missed Mila's letter, but Sayyid had seen it as he went back into the room to bring out his master's bags, and he had nicked it into his turban for Raman to read later that night.

The desert had a music of its own; all sounds did not expire into its vastness. But to listen properly, one had to tarry in an absolute and complete silence, in a void where there were no human voices, no ants clicking and chewing, no flies buzzing, where even the wind was holding its breath. All had to be still as death.

It was in one such instance, for a whole three minutes, that Sam found himself later that morning. They had driven out of Rudrakot in two jeeps on a slim, macadamized road that even that early, 6 A. M., had begun to throb and waver with a black heat. The road left Rudrakot and vanished into the horizon, heading away from Chetak's tomb, which Sam could just discern on his left. At some point, he assumed, it would lead to the tomb or they would have to cut through the scrub and dirt of the Sukh to get to it. And so it had been. After heading south for two hours, the road had curved and swiveled east again, and now as they neared, the tomb began to grow in size and in Sam's imagination. Each time he thought that they had come to the tomb, the heat haze shuddered and reformed itself and pushed the tomb farther away. At times, the tomb would be a blurred edifice of red sandstone, at times as clear as though he were viewing it through a magnifying glass and it was but a palm length away.

Then, incongruously, they had come upon a stand of trees, a jungle, Mila had called it, a sumptuous patch of green. Trees grew here thickly, elbow to elbow, their undersides dense with a murkiness that did not allow even a tiny slice of the sun. A tower rose majestically in the center of this forest. It was a square building of red sandstone blocks, and the mortar that held the blocks together was seamless. It was capped by merlons much like the ones Sam had seen on Jai's fort in Rudrakot. As they approached this forest, Sam thought that he was dreaming, for all the way here all he had seen were the rusts and umbers of the desert stretching endlessly around him, and they were but half a mile from the jungle before the light shifted and revealed the tower and the trees.

They sat down for a break in the shade at the very edge of the forest. Looking inward, Sam saw that it was almost impossible to penetrate the undergrowth of tall grass, and the only way to the tower was by a path carved out of the foliage. A servant unpacked a tray and four glasses, filled the glasses with sugared nimbupani, limeade, spiced the drink with black salt and mint leaves, and offered it to them.

When that first coolness from the nimbupani and the shade of the trees had come to bless them and loosen his tongue, Sam asked, "Is this a mirage of some kind? There's a forest here, in the middle of the Sukh desert?" Just beyond where they sat, the desert stood vigilant guard--the trees ended, and the desert began in dust, dirt, and hard-packed ground where it was difficult to imagine that anything could ever grow.

"This is Jai's hunting forest," Mila said. Her voice was low and strained, more so since she had opened and read a note that she had taken from her pocket. Her thin hands, with just that one little silver pearl ring, rested on her lap. Today, Mila was dressed much as she had been when Sam had first seen her, in pants, a brown snakeskin belt, a white shirt open at her neck, and tiny diamond earrings in the lobes of her ears. The pants were tight, fitted around her little waist and curved over her hips and thighs. She had pockets sewn down the length of her legs and a row of dull brass buttons climbing up the cuffs. The shirt was loose and woven from very thin cotton, so translucent that Sam could see the muted colors of her skin underneath. It was a simple outfit, even with its Russian hussar undertones, but it took Sam's breath away. He wanted to touch the place where her hips arced out, place his hands on the edge of her waist he looked away, fraught with yearning. The palms of his hands tingled as though he still held her hand in his.

"Behind you," Mila continued, "is a magnificent stock of partridges, deer, nilgai, which is a kind of blue bull, and lions."

"You are joking." Sam turned hurriedly to look into the forest and was met with only a cool and thick dimness, and silence.

"They are well fed, Captain Hawthorne. The keepers make sure they are not too hungry."

Something Mila had said stuck in Sam's mind. "There are no lions in this part of India," he said. "There haven't been lions here for a few centuries at least."

Mila raised an eyebrow. "Who told you that?"

"It's an accepted notion."

"The villagers have seen plenty of lions in this jungle; Jai has killed a few, he has the skins hanging in his palace."

Sam shook his head. "But that can't be. Lions do not exist here; perhaps the villagers have confused the lions with tigers?"

Mila laughed. "And Jai did also? He shot an animal thinking it to be another animal? He's not an idiot, Captain Hawthorne. / have seen one myself, only glimpsed his back and tail, but there was no mistaking the plume of golden mane around his head. Your authorities are wrong; before they make such statements, perhaps they should travel and live in India and see this for themselves."

It was incredible, Sam thought, could an entire slew of scholars on this subject be wrong? He leaned back against the trunk of the tree behind him, drew out his tin of cigarettes, and lit one. The smoke traveled out of the shade to linger in the still, hot air and the heat bent in waves in the horizon. In the distance, Sam saw the lion Mila claimed roamed this jungle behind him, in a majestic slouch under the shade of a spiky bey tree. He swiped at the smoke hanging in front of him, and when it cleared, saw the figure of the lion dissolve into the background. Sam flicked ash from his cigarette and closed his eyes.

The air was invigorating and newborn around them. They were all struck by the same lassitude, draining their nimbupanis, setting down their glasses, stilling their hands and legs. Even the servants, farther away from them in the shade of the trees, seemed to have fallen into indolence, and in this sudden quiet, Sam heard the desert's music. It began as a low, keening wail, like a mourning dirge, and the sound then shifted and formed itself into a melody and came across the heated land, surrounding Sam, enveloping him, filling him with a happiness and peace he could not pause to even think about. He saw no one else there but Mila and himself, and though she sat at a little distance from him, he felt her lean into his chest, felt the sleekness of her waist when his hands went around it, inhaled the aroma of her skin. It was for a long time thus that he held Mila in his arms, with no fear of the future, no anticipation of troubles ahead. Somewhere, behind him, he heard a soft purring and a grunt, the sounds of contentment from a big cat. The lion, he thought, the lion that the naturalists around the world considered to have been extinct here for the last two hundred years. Mila's voice finally brought him out of his dreaming and she spoke as though they had been in the middle of a conversation and the break had not happened.

"Jai brings Colonel Pankhurst here on a shikar, a hunt, four times a year. Papa has been here, and so has Kiran, but Ashok," she said, and turned with a smile to her brother, "is yet to hunt with Jai."

"Next year," Ashok said, his eyes bright and feverish. "Jai has promised me that next year, just before the hot season, I can go on my first shikar with him. What do you think, Vimal?"

Sam leaned out from next to Mila to look again at the young man seated next to Ashok. He remembered him, strangely enough, as the boy with the intense gaze whom they had passed on the way to the Victoria Club. Today, Vimal was dressed much as he had been yesterday, the same white kurta and the same loose pajamas. His curly hair was mussed and disorderly, but his skin shone like the inside of a delicate shell, smooth and iridescent, as though lit from within. A thick red thread encircled his leanly muscled wrist, and when Sam's gaze fell upon it, Vimal said, in impeccable English, "From the Kali temple, Captain Hawthorne, I received it as a blessing from the Goddess over all of my future endeavors." His voice slurred over Sam's name, Haw-thorne. It was deliberately done, for Vimal Kumar knew something, and he wanted to let Sam know this.

Mila tensed and scowled. She did not like Vimal, Sam thought. He did not like him very much either, but Ashok seemed to. When they had started out this morning, just before the break of dawn, Vimal had presented himself at the front door, crisp and clean in his clothes, his hair still damp from a bath. He seemed to have come by some prior arrangement with Ashok, for the comedy they had played out had fooled none of them. Mila had been taken aback by his presence, he had himself merely been curious, until Vimal had spoken to him on the way to the jeep. What he had said had astounded Sam.

Pallavi had stood behind them, sniffling as Sam came downstairs. Was she crying, Sam had asked Mila, but Mila had not responded, her attention caught by Vimal.

"Have you come to visit us, Vimal?" Ashok had cried, a little too joyfully, a little too theatrically.

"If I may," Vimal had said, shaking Ashok's hand. "But I see you are on your way somewhere." He stepped back, spread out his arms in a gesture of ruefulness, and raised his voice so that it reached Sam and Mila, near the front door. "I would hate to intrude upon your entertainments. I know you cannot want me here."

"But no," Ashok cried. "We are merely on our way to Chetak's tomb. You must join us. Mustn't he, Mila? We have plenty of place in the jeep, here," he said, pointing to the backseat, "you can sit next to me. We are taking Captain Hawthorne there. Come, meet him, Vimal."

Sam watched Ashok orchestrate the whole invitation with ease, heaving aside Mila's polite suggestions that perhaps Vimal did not have the time to spend the entire day with them, that perhaps he had other engagements. What could Vimal have to do, Ashok had demanded, and Vimal had gracefully shrugged to say that his time was theirs, with such friends as these, no demand on his time was too great. The place problem in the jeep Ashok had solved almost immediately, and the food would, of course, not present any difficulties at all--they always took more than they needed. And at this Ashok smiled a little slyly; Papa would be glad to hear that they went in a larger party than originally planned.

In the end, Mila had agreed, exhausted by Ashok's enthusiasm. Sam had been bemused, wondering how Ashok had managed to send word about their picnic plans to Vimal that late at night.

As they had waited for the bearers and servants to load and pack the jeep they were to travel by and the extra jeep that had been borrowed overnight from the Rudrakot Lancers regiment, Vimal had stopped by Sam and said casually, "It is indeed a great pleasure to meet you, Captain Ridley." A flush, on cue, had darkened his face and neck and he had said, "You must excuse me, you are Captain Hawthorne, of course. Only .. . you have the look of someone I once knew."

April 1942, a Month Earlier

Somewhere in Burma

The rain dulls into a light misting around them; the drip-drip they hear is from its past thunder, as teak leaves slant downward, dropping beads of water toward the forest floor. The early afternoon light is wet with moisture, blurred as though seen through frosted glass panes. Where the tops of the trees break, Sam can see no sky, no blue, just the mutinous gray of clouds. Sam muddles through his tired brain in search of passages from the Burma booklet he had been assigned, but which he has long buried in the forest floor, for even the slim ten pages it contained, bound between thin leaves of cardboard, had become burdensome on his back. January to June are called the hot-dry season; it is April, the monsoons are already here to belie that phrase. They are officially in Burma's hot-wet season. There is another season, with warm days, cooler nights, no rain--the simply lovely season. The trail winds to a hill, and they march up it in silence, their boots sinking into the mud.

They crest the hill early in the afternoon and look down for a brief, surprised moment before flinging themselves down into the mud.

"What is that?" Marianne asks.

"A plantation owner's bungalow," Sam says in a whisper. "I'll be damned if I knew it was here."

"Isn't it on your map?"

"It should be," Sam says, "but I did not notice it."

"You missed an entire plantation on the map, Sam?" Ken lifts his head cautiously over the ridge of the hill. "Says something about your map-reading skills."

"I know."

They crouch behind a tree and peer out, hoping they are not visible from below. The rain has settled into a steady drizzle. At least it is a warm rain, Sam thinks, unlike Seattle rain. He waits for the next drop of water to fall on the sliver of skin on the top of his skull, where his hair parts. Inhaling deeply, his lungs draw in the damp air of the forest, the scent of days-old perspiration. The rain brings some relief from the heat of the relentless sun overhead; the forest provides cover too, but a dense, cloistered cover that gathers the heat and water within it and refuses to let go. The hillside is bare here, sparsely planted with teak, and there is little to give them cover. But they have to get nearer to be able to see anything. Sam's binoculars was shattered when he stumbled in the mud two days ago, and he buried its remains in the ground. He keeps the pieces of glass from the lens in the wrapping of a chocolate bar inside his haversack. Perhaps he might need the glass to create a fire if his matches run out. Below them is the plantation, or what is left of it anyway. A huge bungalow sprawls all over the ridge in sharp right angles. It seems as though room after room has been added on haphazardly over the years, creating courtyards and semienclosed gardens. How has he missed seeing this on the map? Sam wants desperately to reach into his pocket and pull out the map, if for no other reason than to satisfy his academic interest, but this is not the time.

They wait. It is hushed here, quieter still near the bungalow, and the red tiles of its many roofs glisten in the rain. Parts of the bungalow are still smoking, there are gaps in the tiles where the roof has fallen in, and a deathly placidity lies over the whole.

"Let's go and explore," says Ken, pleading in his voice. "I can't stand being wet anymore. We can spend the night there."

He begins to move and Sam shoves him behind the tree again. "Wait. It's too quiet--"

"Because there's no one there, Sam," Marianne says. "I agree with Ken, let's go in. The Japanese are done with the bungalow; they've moved on."

"And they won't come back again?" Sam asks.

"Why would they?"

"For the same reason as us--shelter for the night."

Ken and Marianne groan together and slide down below the hill's crest. They lie on their backs, breathing slowly into the moist air, hands clasped across their bellies. Sam stays where he is and lifts his head cautiously so he can peer over the foliage. He lets his eyes glaze over after a while, but is still alert to the possibility of any movement in the bungalow below him. After half an hour, Sam turns to them. "We can go a little closer if you like."

They fall onto their stomachs along the steep slope and begin to inch forward, slowly, until they are halfway down the hillside. The bungalow is enormous. It has a red-tiled portico in front, a covered teak walkway leading to a driveway, lawns on either side of the walkway fringed by rosebushes. The sloping roof has an embellished fringe with scalloped wooden overhangs all around, painted white. One of the courtyards is actually a swimming pool, with the verandah jutting out onto the translucent pea green water. The edges of the verandah's floor are inlaid with lime green tiles and it gives the effect of the verandah dissolving into the pool.

Sam drops his face into the mud, and digs his toes in to get a grip and not go sliding down the hillside. This is like a dream, a movie set, a scene out of Orwell's Burmese Days--the lush plantation, the gently misting rain disturbing the glassy surface of the pool, the plantation chairs on the verandah, the roof with scalloped edges, for pity's sake. He's waiting for people to stroll out onto the lawns, gimlets in hand, the women's hats wide-brimmed in colors of pale greens, blues, and yellows, skirts swishing about their knees, their Are they all dreaming? Would the Japanese leave this lavish bungalow and go elsewhere?

"It's a trap," he says softly. "Look, the western half of the bungalow has been trashed and burned; the rest is still intact. They are waiting for us."

"They don't know we are here, Sam," Marianne says. "You are just being morbid."

"Let's go." Sam lifts his head to look at each of them. "We are going to skirt around the plantation. No stopping here."

Ken, his shoulders lodged against a vine to give him stability on the slippery mud, shakes his head stubbornly. "I want to get dry. I hate this. I want to get dry, Sam. I feel like moss; things are growing on me."

"Ken "

Marianne reaches out for Sam. "He's right. We deserve this rest; we have been pushing ourselves too hard. How much will one night under a dry roof slow us down? We need to sleep, in any case."

Sam looks down at the bungalow. This is his decision; he is responsible for Marianne and Ken. But a sudden and intense longing fills him too. He wants to be under that roof, to air out his shirt and pants, to take off his boots and let his feet dry. His toes feel turgid and swollen, beyond aching, and surely there are leeches feasting inside on the skin of his ankles. He turns and finds Marianne and Ken watching him, heads raised from the ground. Teak trees slant behind at an unnatural angle; Sam realizes that the trees are not aslant, he is. A big drop of water splashes onto Sam's head, right at the part of his thick hair. It cuts a line through the middle of his forehead and divides into two thin streams of water on either side of his nose. Perhaps he can wash inside the bungalow, Sam thinks, perhaps even swim in the lovely waters of that pool. Hibiscus bushes, with great, green, glistening leaves, throng the path around the pool and drop their brilliant white and yellow flowers into the water. Although it is not raining anymore, merely misting, it is still deadly hot, and damp and sweat are all mingled upon their bodies. They no longer know the smell of clean; they have been filthy for so long, bloodied by leeches, muddied by dirt.

"We wait," he says finally. "Right here. No movement at all, is that understood?"

"How long?" Marianne asks.

"Till nightfall, until I'm sure there is no one inside the bungalow." "Hooray!" Ken says in a whisper.

Sam settles his elbows into the mud and rests his chin on his hands. He tries not to think of the maddening drizzle, of the damp dirt beneath him, of the stench of rotting vines and insects in the mud. He hopes that no one from the bungalow is looking up the hillside, for they have so little cover here. Their skins are cured into a muddied brown, their uniforms and boots covered in slush and filth; they must meld into the hillside. No one will notice them if they do not betray their presence with a movement. A little part of Sam is still suspicious of such a bounty as this below them, and an idea forms in his brain then. The plantation bungalow is not on the map, but Ken must have known of its existence--he is the one who has prodded them from the marked trail and into these lands. How could he have missed this building from the air, if indeed he has flown over this area as he said he had? Sam's belly rumbles; he is ravenously hungry. If they lay siege to the bungalow for the next five hours, perhaps there will be food to be found there, and definitely shelter and dryness. He struggles to keep his eyes open. The sound of the rain lulls, the wet sludge under his stomach is no longer a discomfort, his body aches and now slows into sleep.

Chapter Sixteen.

All kinds of magic are out of date, and done away with except in India where nothing changes in spite of the shiny, top-scum stuff that people call "civilization."

--Rudyard Kipling, Plain Tales from the Hills, 1899

rom half a mile away, the real dimensions of Chetak's tomb took form, almost piece by piece and stone by stone. It was erected on a sandstone platform with a flight of fifteen stairs leading up to the entrances, of which there were four. The four sides of the square structure faced north, south, east, and west and each side mirrored the rest, so they looked the same, no matter where one stood to view the tomb. Built only a hundred years ago by jars great-grandfather, this style of the building, equally symmetrical on every face, was copied from the Mughal emperors who had ruled India until 1898, when Victoria became queen-empress. The Mughals in turn had brought into their architecture elements of Persian and Turkish influences. So Chetak's tomb, in a much-convoluted path from many centuries ago, was built in a Persian style, imitating the Mughal and Muslim emperors, and was constructed by a Hindu king for his much-beloved horse. If a horse could have been said to profess a religion, and during his lifetime the majestic Chetak had been adorned with many a tikka--a red vermillion streak of protection on his forehead--then Chetak had been a Hindu too, like his master.

The black-tar road had given way to wasteland a mile back, and the jeeps now bumped and jolted over the dirt path to the tomb. As they approached, Ashok, the most keen-eyed among them all, pointed forward through the dusty windshield and said, "There's someone there."

They peered in the direction of his finger. Sam was driving, and he reached out with his right hand and rubbed some of the dust from the front of the windshield so that he could see better. It did seem like there were two or three human figures in white in front of the tomb in the shadow of the eastern side, their dhotis and kurtas aglow with ambient sunshine.

"A ghost!" Ashok cried out, and then facetiously, "Chetak's ghost." "Don't be silly, Ashok," Mila said. "Chetak was a horse, not a human being. Are they though," she asked worriedly, "human ghosts?"

Sam began to laugh, gave her a quick glance, and sobered. Fine lines of worry marred her brow. Mila clasped her arms around herself and shuddered. She was afraid of ghosts that walked abroad in the middle of the day? Her anxiety transferred itself to him and a tingling crawled up Sam's spine. Later, many years later, Sam would look back upon this time in Rudrakot as a dream, as something that had happened and had not, a jumble of impressions, ghosts and beloveds, blood and heartbreak so mingled that he could no longer tell where one began and the other found its end. Everything in India acquired a magical quality; nothing was impossible, nothing even improbable.

Through the clouds of dust, Sam saw one of the figures drag a cow to the front of the tomb, or what appeared to be a cow; it could very well have been a horse from this distance. Mila gasped when the man lifted his arm and brought it down upon the animal's neck; he did not seem to be holding a knife or a sword, he merely used the edge of his palm. The cow seemed to move its head about once, and then twice, before its knees crumpled and it collapsed to the ground, its head hitting the dirt first, before the rest of its body.

Sam pressed on the accelerator and the engine began to protest. What was going on? And who were those men? For Sam, of course, did not believe in ghosts or consider that those figures ahead of them were not real men. Mila had a hand over her mouth, and behind them Ashok and Vimal gagged and coughed. If it had been a cow that had been sacrificed, or even slaughtered for meat, the men would have to be Christian or Muslim, for no Hindu would commit such a sacrilegious act. If it had been a horse for some reason, at this thought, Sam felt a sickening in his gut. If it had been a horse, it would have been a foul ritual, some sort of sacrifice offered to that entombed horse that had once been so adored by his master. Had he been driving alone, Sam would have thought that the desert was playing tricks on his eyes as usual, here, because the spaces were so large, the horizon limitless, objects formed and melted without cause, as though to provide the mind with some relief from all that immensity.

They heard a chattering and a pointing of fingers from the jeep behind them that carried the servants and the food. The driver of the second jeep began to honk. Sam waved to him.

"We should stop, Captain Hawthorne," Mila shouted over the scream of the engine. "It doesn't look safe there."

"It's nothing, and there's nowhere to stop, no shade from the sun. It's an illusion, that's all," Sam said with determination, although he did not believe this himself. He had seen something--they all had--that much was true.

They drove on, nearing the tomb, and all the while their hearts crashed against their ribs. Their skins seemed to exhale fear, turgid and fermenting in the air around them. Sam bit his lower lip to taste blood and shake himself out of this strangeness. Ghosts did not bother him, and yet it had all been so real, for all of them had witnessed it. The cow, or the animal, was dragged away by its legs around the tomb and the two men in white finally looked in their direction. One put a hand up to protect his eyes from the sun and stared at them for a long while, unflinching. Sam drew his foot away from the accelerator, almost involuntarily, at that long stare. Then the man moved unhurriedly and they watched his figure and that of his companion disappear around a corner.

There was no approach left to Chetak's tomb; it simply rose out of wasteland, a monolith of red sandstone, its edges buffed and buffeted by the hot winds that yowled through the Sukh desert in May, just before the monsoons. The dirt path ended abruptly just in front of the tomb and here, facing west, the jeeps arrived under the burning rays of the sun. Sam switched off the engine and a thick, heated silence descended upon them. "There was nobody here," Sam said. "There's nothing to fear."

No one moved. The servants in the jeep next to them had fallen silent also, their faces blanched with dread, knuckles intertwined in prayer. Their driver had his fingers wrapped around the key, which was still in the ignition.

"Wait," Sam said. He drew his Colt .45 out of the holster at his belt and swung his legs out of the jeep.

"Would you like me to come with you, Captain Hawthorne?" Vimal asked.

Sam shook his head. He moved slowly toward the tomb, looking into each arch in the verandahs on both stories, but there was no movement, no suggestion of human inhabitation. The ground was smooth dust and strewn with pebbles, small and large, but there were no footprints there, or indeed even hoof prints from the animal. On the rest of the short drive over, Sam had thought that the men they had seen could have been nomads, taking cover in the tomb. This was common all over India. There was no fear among the many poor about sleeping where death had slept and they found shelter where they could, whether it was with the living or the dead. The dirt was crisp around the tomb and Sam's boots crunched as he walked around, the Colt held loosely against his thigh, his forefinger on the trigger. But there was no one around, no sign even of the fantastic tableau they had witnessed, the sacrifice of the cow, the brooding men in white--there was nothing.

Sam climbed the stairs to one of the entrances to Chetak's tomb. From here, he could see through the entire structure, as it was built in an open floor plan. Three steps led down to a sunken rectangle, and the horse's sarcophagus was raised in the center, its white-marble-inlaid cover level with the floor on which Sam stood. The verandah on this story let in shards of light from the outside. Sam froze for a moment when he saw an enormous varan, an iguana-like creature five feet long and barrel thick about its belly, sunning itself in one of the arches. It slept undisturbed, eyes closed against the sunshine, its prehistoric scales glinting with iridescence. A steep set of stairs, its stone banister crumbling, led upstairs, and Sam took these two at a rime. Here he was in another open gallery; in the center the floor opened to the story below and a view of the sarcophagus, and around the outer edges was another verandah with a low wall and cusped arches. Here also light streamed in, shadows leaking in long, black strips from the verandah's pillars, in patterns of champa flowers from the latticework of the outer walls. There was a faint, musty odor, and a smell of rotting bones. But here too there was no one to be seen. Sam ran around the long, outer verandah, looking out into the desert that stretched in an unbroken swath of bleached brown on all sides. Nothing again. No sign of the men, no sign of anything out in the wilderness. If the men had been here with their sacrificial cow, they had disappeared into the rays of the sun.

Sam put the cool, long barrel of his Colt against his forehead. India was strange, he thought, with its ghosts that disappeared, a lazy lizard downstairs large enough to eat them all, buildings that existed on maps and not on the earth. He went back to the jeep. Sam offered his hand to Mila to help her out, as though it was the most natural thing to do. He wanted to tell her of his attraction for her but there was no time. He had to be back in Calcutta and Assam soon, back in Burma. For a moment last night, when he had held her hand at the mela, Sam had almost asked Mila to dance with him to the music the band was playing, but something had stopped him.

Ashok and Vimal scurried away, shouting with delight as their feet pounded over the sandstone floors of the tomb. They came to a halt by the slothful lizard.

"A varan!" Ashok shouted. "A colossal one. Look, Vimal, he's moving."

Mila shuddered and retreated to the other end of the tomb. "Get it out of here," she called over her shoulder. "It's disgusting."

Sam watched as Ashok and Vimal knelt by the varan and stroked its thick hide. It swung its tail about, thwacking at their legs, and then lifted itself on powerful thighs and arms and waddled away. Greens, blues, and reds undulated under its skin as it slid over the edge of the verandah and fell onto the ground on the far side, raising a fine plume of dust.

Then, the two boys climbed on the sarcophagus and lay on their backs on the dusty stone, gazing up to the roof of the second story. Here they had the best view of the ornate, carved ceiling. At the very center was a huge lotus flower, etched into the stone, the petals lush and creamy. Peacocks danced in full form at the four corners of the ceiling, each detail of their feathers cut patiently into the stone. Other flowers--jasmine and hibiscus--abounded; a nilgai nibbled on grass, its blue neck bent as an offering to a hunter's musket. A black buck stared out for all eternity, its ears pricked for a sound it would never hear, its eyes large and liquid. Once he realized what Ashok and Vimal were looking at, now in a complete silence, Sam lifted his neck and bent his head backward.

Despite everything, he was overcome by a sense of awe and peace at the sight of the ceiling. This was the real and hidden beauty in Chetak's tomb. In everything else, it was simple to the point of being austere, straight Persian lines for the shape of the inside and outside verandahs and corridors, smooth, unembellished curves on the pillars. The sarcophagus was like a gleaming jewel in the center of the floor, its top and sides carefully inlaid with the purest of white marble in patterns of hexagons, triangles, and squares. This inlay work, called pietra dura, traced its origins to Italy, but was now ensconced firmly in Indian architecture. The work was as flawless as it must have been when the tomb was constructed more than a hundred years ago. The tiny marble slices had been embedded in the sandstone with glue and mortar and then the whole was polished and smoothed until it looked as though the sandstone was born that way--seamless to the touch. For the rest of the stark tomb, the only adornments were the striations of cool beiges in the sandstone, everywhere the eye lit. The stones had been chosen to match, color for color, slab for slab. The ochers, rust-golds, and browns harmonized perfectly, melding, until the whole tomb looked as though it had been cut out of one mammoth piece of stone.

But Sam had not come to admire the beauties of Chetak's tomb. He looked around. Ashok and Vimal had disappeared from the top of the sarcophagus, and Sam could hear their deep-timbred voices in the upstairs verandah. He caught a little glimpse of Mila's brown arm wrapped around a pillar at the far entrance of the tomb; she was leaning against it, facing north. Sam could see her shoulder, the curve of her cheek, and a wisp of her hair lifting in the gentle, heat-laden breeze that flew through one entrance and out the other. Sam moved to the east-facing verandah, reached into his shoulder bag, and brought out a pair of binoculars. The contours of the desert swam and rippled through the glass. Here and there, a lone khejri tree spread out its irregular, thorn-ridden branches. Its leaves were sparse and it was selfish with shade, proudly lifting its spiky arms into the furious blaze of the sun.

He lowered his glasses and gazed out into the distance, shading his eyes with his hand even though he was not standing in direct sunlight. The map that Sam had glanced at on his way back from the men's washroom at the Victoria Club had upon it a building east of Chetak's tomb. Written in an uneducated hand were the words Field Punishment Center, 0930. Even fainter than that, mixed in around the artist's fanciful rendering of a gallery of trees and shrubs in the barren reaches of the Sukh, was a cheap little rhyme: Beware, all ye who enter here. For once ye do, give up all that ye hold dear.

Sam closed his eyes from the strain of having stared too intensely into the horizon and listened hard. But all he could hear was the raucous chatter of the servants as they prepared the afternoon's lunch, the clatter of the vessels, the tinkling cooling down of the jeeps' engines. Where was the field punishment center? According to the Victoria Club map, it was somewhere close by, and yet he had seen nothing through the binoculars. Mike, Sam thought, suddenly overcome with a terrible fear that threatened to break his heart, are you there? He listened more intently, sifting out the sounds near him, yearning for the miraculous sound of Mike's voice calling out to him, knowing it was stupid to wish for something so strange, so unreal. But everything had been unreal to Sam for the last few days, even Mike's disappearance. For people did not simply vanish from the middle of a regiment without any reason, without a trace. Sam rubbed the weariness out of his temples and lifted his gaze to the horizon. Nothing. Nothing but a slow swirl of sand, a waver of radiance. He began to raise the glasses up again and saw, without the aid of the binoculars, that the light had altered, cleared, magnified in the distance. And in that shifting a low building of red sandstone crystallized into being.

The field punishment center was less than two miles from Chetak's tomb.

Chapter Seventeen.

I had begun to understand and sympathise with the problems of the white man in India soon afier my arrival, when I reached the phase that everyone goes through of thinking of the Indians as Wogs. When this happens, al I your preconceived ideas seem to go sour on you and then melt away in the hot sun; you see the Indians as a lot of hopeless degenerates and the Soul of India as backsheesh."

--Louis Hagen, Indian Route March, 1946