Patti stepped delicately into the dry, bleached grass, and the rustle of her footsteps should have reached the sadhu’s ears even in a trance, but he gave no sign. She stooped towards his wooden bowl, and he did not raise his eyes or rear his head. She stared intently, but all she could distinguish now was the faintly luminous shadow of a man encased in deeper shadow, as motionless and impervious as the Siva beside him.
‘Namaste!’ she said, touching her hands momentarily together over her offering; and she laid it in his bowl, and drew back. She thought the head moved a little, in distant acknowledgement, but that was all. She turned away with a sense of disappointment, and ran to rejoin Priya and relieve her of her load.
‘Not exactly effusive, are they? Still – just for luck! Who knows! He may remember me in his prayers at the right moment.’
They walked on together quickly, and the next curve of the road carried them away out of the sadhu’s sight, and cut off the fresh, intrusive voices that rippled the silence.
He still had not moved or uttered a sound.
The night came down like curtains of black silk, filling the trough of the roadway between the trees with fold on fold of darkness.
One
Thekady: Saturday Evening
« ^ »
There were two cars already parked in front of the long, low, ochre-yellow bungalow when the Land-Rover wheeled into line beside the porch; and at sight of the first of them, the ancient, sky-blue Ford with the grazed door and the retouched wing, they all three uttered a hoot of recognition, at once derisive and appreciative.
‘Here we go again!’ said Larry Preisinger, switching off the engine. ‘Didn’t I say we would be running into the whole circus again before we reached the Cape? It’s always the same. I drove this thing round Gujarat State, and the same folks I saw at the first halt haunted me all the way. Might skip an overnight stop here and there, but give ’em a few days and they’d show up again. An Indian couple from South Africa with three kids, visiting the home country, a middle-aged pair from New Zealand doing the world by easy stages and two young Czechs draped with about four cameras each. Now we’ve got the French for a change.’
‘We might do worse, ’ said Dominic Felse thoughtfully.
‘Yeah, we might, at that!’ On the whole, in a wary fashion, they had approved of the Bessancourts. He looked doubtfully at the second car, a big black saloon, battered but imposing, but it told him nothing about its incumbents. A tourist car, probably, hired out for the weekend with driver, from Madurai. ‘Looks like we’ll be camping tonight. With two car-loads they must be full up inside. ’ Not that he minded; they were well equipped, with light sleeping bags, and a mosquito net that rolled up into the roof when not in use. Three can manage without too much discomfort in a Land-Rover, given a little ingenuity, and he had provided the ingenuity before he ever set out on this marathon drive round India, picking up co-drivers for sections of the route wherever he could, for company and to share the expenses. Dominic, acquired in Madras and on leave from some farming job, was one of the luckiest breaks he’d had so far, around his own age, a congenial enough companion, a good driver, and prepared to stick with him as far as Cape Comorin, and probably all the way back to Madras, too.
Lakshman unfolded his slender length from among the baggage, and slid out of the Land-Rover. ‘I will go and talk to the khanasama. ’ He paused to look back and inquire, in his gentle, dutiful voice that balanced always so delicately between the intonations of friend and servant: ‘If there are no beds, you would like at least food? It would be a change from my cooking.’
‘It might be a change for the worse, but sure, let’s risk it.’
Larry had been travelling with Lakshman Ray for nearly six weeks now, and had given up trying to get on to closer terms with him. Lakshman, whether he knew his place or not, certainly knew his employer’s place, and firmly kept him there. With the greatest of deference, amiability and consideration, but implacably. He had done this sort of courier-interpreter job before, with other lone tourists, and had encountered, or so Larry judged, patrons with very different views on this relationship from those Larry himself held. Give him time, and he’d make any necessary adjustments himself; no sense in trying to rush him. Lakshman was the youngest of the three of them, barely twenty and still a student, until want of funds had driven him out to earn money for further study by such journeys as this. He had to get everything right, and he was taking no risks. Perhaps he didn’t even want to slide unsuspectingly into a friendship for which he hadn’t bargained. A cool young person, shy, soft-voiced, self-possessed and efficient, he spoke both Tamil and Malayalam in addition to his own Hindi, so he was equally effective in the north or the south. Sometimes, Larry suspected, Lakshman had difficulty in remembering to keep Dominic at the same distance as Larry himself; Dominic wasn’t paying his wages.
The bungalow, seen by the glow from its own windows and the Land-Rover’s side-lights, was a pleasant, solid building of brick and plaster, with a deep, arcaded porch, and looked big enough to house quite a number of travellers, if the usual tourist bedroom-cum-livingroom in India had not been about as big as a barn, and with its own bathroom or shower attached. Three such suites, say, plus the kitchen quarters, and there would be no room left. No matter, the Land-Rover was good enough.
Lakshman came back gesturing mildly from a distance, and shaking his head; and behind his back the khansama stuck out a bearded head in a loose cotton turban from the kitchen door to take a look at his latest guests.
‘The place is quite full, but he will feed us. And there is a chowkidar.’ The security of the bungalow’s grounds and the protection of its watchman were not to be despised.
‘Good, then how about borrowing a shower, before the proper tenants get to that stage?’
‘It can be arranged. ’ He was looking from them to the anonymous black car, and his smile was less demure than usual. ‘Do you know who is also here?’
His look and his tone said that they were hardly likely to thank him for the information, though it might enliven their stay in its own fashion. It was not often that Lakshman looked mischievous, and even now he had his features well in hand.
‘Sure we know, ’ said Larry obtusely, his mind on his shower, ‘madame la patronne and her mari.’
Prompt on the close of his sentence, as if responding to a clue, a high, clacking voice screeched: ‘Sushil Dastur! Sushil Dastur!’ from an open window, in a rising shriek that could have been heard a mile into the forest; and light, obsequious footsteps slapped hurriedly along the hallway inside the open door to answer the summons.
‘Oh, no!’ groaned Larry. ‘Not the Manis! So that’s the chauffeur-driven party, is it? We might have known! What did I tell you? Start touring anywhere you like, and within a hundred miles radius you keep seeing the same faces.’
‘And hearing the same voices, ’ Dominic remarked ruefully. ‘Poor little Sushil, he certainly hears plenty of that one. I wonder he stands it. And Bengali women don’t usually squawk – they have soft, pleasant voices.’
‘Not this one!’ It was scolding volubly now in Bengali, somewhere within the house, punctuated by placating monosyllables from a man’s voice, anxious, inured and resigned. ‘Maybe he doesn’t even listen, really, just makes the right sounds and shuts up his mind. Otherwise he’d go up the wall. And his boss is worse, if anything, even if he doesn’t split the eardrums quite like his missus. Jobs must be hard to come by, or Sushil would have quit long ago.’