Pran Nath

One afternoon, three years after the beginning of the new century, red dust thatwas once rich mountain soil quivers in the air. It falls on a rider who ismaking slow progress through the ravines that score the plains south of themountains, drying his throat, filming his clothes, clogging the pores of hispink perspiring English face.

His name is Ronald Forrester, and dust is his specialty. Or rather, hisspecialty is fighting dust. In the European club at Simla they never tire of thejoke: Forrester the forester. Once or twice he tried to explain it tohis Indian subordinates in the Department, but they failed to see the humor.They assumed the name came with the job. Forester Sahib. Like Engineer Sahib, orMr. Judge.

Forrester Sahib fights the dust with trees. He has spent seven years up in themountains, riding around eroded hillsides, planting sheltering belts ofsaplings, educating his peasants about soil conservation, and enforcingordinances banning logging and unlicensed grazing. Thus he is the first toappreciate the irony of his current situation. Even now, on leave, his work isfollowing him around.

He takes a gulp from a flask of brackish water and strains in the saddle as hishorse slips and rights itself, sending stones bouncing down a steep, dry slope.It is late afternoon, so at least the heat is easing off. Above him the sky issmudged by blue-black clouds, pregnant with the monsoon that will break any day.He wills it to come soon.

Forrester came down to this country precisely because it has no trees. Back athis station, sitting on the veranda of the Government Bungalow, he had theperverse idea that treelessness might make for a restful tour. Now he is here hedoes not like it. This is desolate country. Even the shooting is desultory. Savefor the villagers' sparse crops, painstakingly watered by a network of dykes andcanals, the only plants are tufts of sharp yellow grass and stunted thornbushes. Amid all this desiccation he feels uncomfortable, dislocated.

As the sun heats up his tent in the mornings, Forrester has acceleratedmilitary-march-time dreams. Dreams of trees. Regiments of deodars, striding uphill and down dale like coniferous redcoats. Neem, sal, and rosewood. Banyansthat spawn roots like tentacles, black foliage blotting out the blue of the sky.Even English trees make an appearance, trees he has not seen for years. Oddlyshaped oaks and drooping willows mutate in lockstep as he tosses and turns. Thedreams eject him sweating and unrested, irritated that his forests have beentwisted into something agitated, silly. A sideshow. A musical comedy of trees.Even before he has had time to shave, red rivulets of sweat and dust will berunning off his forehead. He has, he knows, only himself to blame. Everyone saidit was a stupid time of year to come south.

If asked, Forrester would find it difficult to explain what he is doing here.Perhaps he came out of perversity, because it is the season when everyone elsetravels north to the cool of the hills. He has spent three weeks just ridingaround, looking for something. He is not sure what. Something to fill a gap.Until recently his life in the hills had seemed enough. Lonely, certainly.Unlike some, Forrester talks to his staff, and is genuinely interested in thedetails of their lives. But differences of race are hard to overcome, and evenat the university he was never the social type. There was always a distance.

More conventional men would have identified the gap as woman shaped, and spenttheir leave wife hunting at tea parties and polo matches in Simla. InsteadForrester, difficult, taciturn, decided to see what life was like without trees.He has found he does not care for it. This is progress, of a sort. To Forrester,the trick of living lies principally in sorting out what one likes from what onedoes not. His difficulty is that he has always found so little to put on theplus side of the balance sheet. And so he rides through the ravines, akhaki-clad vacancy, dreaming of trees and waiting for something, anything, tofill him up.

That something is no more than a mile off as the crow flies, though with theundulations of the dirt track, the distance is probably doubled. As the sunsinks lower, Forrester makes out a glint of light on metal and a flash of pinkagainst the dun-colored earth. He halts and watches, feeling his jaw becomeinexplicably tight, stiffening in the saddle like a cavalryman on parade. He hasseen no one for the last day and a half. Gradually he discerns a party of men,Rajput villagers by the looks of them, leading camels and escorting a curtainedpalanquin, bumpily carried at shoulder height by four of their number.

By the time the party is within hailing distance, the sun has dipped almost tothe horizon. Bands of angry red show against a wall of thick gray cloud.Forrester waits, his horse stamping its hooves on one bank of a dried-up streambed. The palanquin bearers stop a little way off and put down their load. Headsswathed in enormous pink turbans, mustaches teased out to extravagant length,they appraise the sweating Englishman like buyers eyeing up a bullock. Eightsets of black eyes, curious and impassive. Forrester's hand fluttersinvoluntarily up to his neck.

From the rear pops up a lean middle-aged man, clad in a dhoti and a grubby whiteshirt, a black umbrella under his arm. He looks like a railway clerk, or apersonal tutor, his appearance strange and jarring against the wasteland. He isclearly in charge, and just as clearly irked that his servants have not waitedfor instructions to halt. Shouldering his way forward he salaams Forrester, whotouches the brim of his topi in response. Forrester is about to speak to him inHindi, when the man salutes him in English.

"Looks like rain, what?"

They both peer up at the sky. As if in response a fat drop of water lands onForrester's face.

Fire and water. Earth and air. Meditate on these oppositions and reconcile them.Collapse them in on themselves, send them spiraling down a tunnel of blacknessto reemerge whole, one with the all, mere aspects of the great unity of thingswhose name is God. Thought can travel on in this manner, from part to whole,smooth as the touch of the masseur's oiled hands in the hammam. Amrita wishesshe could carry on thinking forever. That would be true sweetness! But she isonly a woman, and forever will not be granted her. In the absence of infinityshe will settle for spinning out what time she has, teasing it into a finethread.

Inside the palanquin it is hot and close, the smells of food and stale sweat androsewater mingling with another smell, sharp and bitter. Once again Amrita'shand reaches out for the little sandalwood box of pills. She watches the hand asshe would a snake sliding across a flagstone floor, with detachment and an edgeof revulsion. Yes, it is her hand, but only for now, only for a while. Amritaknows that she is not her body. This crablike object, fiddling with box and keyand pellets of sticky black resin, belongs to her only as does a shawl, or apiece of jewelry.

A bump. They have stopped. Outside there are voices. Amrita rejoices. Atnineteen years old, this is will be her last journey, and any delay is cause forcelebration. She swallows another opium pellet, tasting the bitter resin on hertongue.

Just as it does every year, the wind has blown steadily out of the southwest,rolling its cargo of doughy air across the plain to slap hard against themountains. For days, weeks, the air has funneled upward, cooling as it rises,spinning vast towers of condensation over the peaks. Now these hanging gardensof cloud have ripened to the point where they can no longer maintain themselves.

So, the rain.

It falls first over the mountains, an unimaginable shock of water. Caught in theopen, herdsmen and woodcutters pull their shawls over their heads and run forshelter. Then in a chain reaction, cloud speaking to cloud, the rain rolls overthe foothills, dousing fires, battering on roofs, bringing smiles to the facesof the people who run outside to greet it, the water for which they have beenwaiting so long.

Finally it comes to the desert. As it starts to fall, Forrester listens to thegrubby Brahmin's chit-chat, and hears himself tetchily agreeing that now wouldbe a good time and here a good place to camp. Perhaps this Moti Lal is offendedby his brusqueness, but Forrester can't worry about that. His eyes are fixed onthe palanquin, the grumpy maid fussing around its embroidered curtain. Itsoccupant has not even ventured a peek outside. He wonders if she is ill, or veryold.

Soon the rain is falling steadily, swollen droplets splashing into the dust likelittle bombs. Camels fidget and grumble as they are hobbled. Servants run aroundunpacking bags. Moti Lal keeps up a steady stream of conversation as Forresterdismounts and unsaddles his horse. Moti Lal is not the master here, oh no, justa trusted family retainer. It has fallen to him, the duty of escorting the youngmistress to her uncle's house in Agra. Most unusual, of course, but there areextenuating circumstances.

Extenuating circumstances? What is the bloody fool on about? Forrester askswhere they have come from, and the man names a small town at least two hundredmiles west of where they stand.

"And you have walked all the way?"

"Yes, sir. The young mistress says walk only."

"Why on earth didn't you go by rail? Agra is hundreds of miles from here."

"Unfortunately train is out of the question. Such are extenuating circumstances,you see."

Forrester does not see, but at the moment he is far more concerned with erectinghis tent before the rain worsens. It seems to be getting stronger by the second.Moti Lal puts up his umbrella and stands over the Englishman as he bashes inpegs, just close enough to get in his way without actually offering any shelter.Forrester curses under his breath, while all the time the thought circulates inhis head; so she is a young woman.

Rain drips through the ceiling and lands in her lap, darkening red silk withcircles of black. Amrita turns her face upward and sticks out her tongue. Therain sounds heavy. Outside it is dark and perhaps, though she is not sure, shefeels cold. To ward off the feeling she imagines heat, calling up memories ofwalking on the roof of her father's haveli in summertime. Vividly she senses theburning air on her arms and face. She hears the thud of carpets being beaten andthe swish of brooms as the maids sweep sand from the floors. But heat leads onto thoughts of her father, of walking around the pyre as the priest throws onghee to make it flame, and she recoils back to the dark and cold. Drops of waterland on her forehead, on one cheek, on her tongue. Soon the rain is pouringthrough in a constant stream. The soaked curtains start to flap limply againsther side. The wind is rising, and still no one has come for her. No one has eventold her what is happening. With no mother or father she is mistress now. Ifonly she could gather the energy to assert herself.

Amrita unlocks her box, shielding it from the water. She is to be delivered toher uncle, and that will be an end. He writes that he has already found her ahusband. At least, said the old women, she will arrive with a good dowry. Somuch better off than other girls. She should thank God.

Within half an hour the dust has turned to mud. Despite his tent Forrester isdrenched. He clambers to the top of a hill and looks out over the desert, scoredby a fingerprint whorl of valleys and ridges. There is no shelter. As the windtugs at his topi and forked lightning divides the sky into fleeting segments, heis struck by the thought that perhaps he has been a fool. His red-brown worldhas turned gray, solid curtains of water obscuring the horizon. Here he is, outin the middle of it, not a tree in sight. He is the tallest thing in this barrenlandscape, and he feels exposed. Looking back down at his tent, set at thebottom of a deep gully, he wonders how long the storm will last. The Indians arestill struggling to put up their own shelters, fumbling with rope and pegs.Amazingly, the palanquin is still where they discarded it. If he had not beentold otherwise, he would have sworn the thing must be empty.

Before long, a trickle of muddy water is flowing through the gully, separatingForrester's army tent from the Indians' contraptions of tarpaulin and bamboo. Afire is out of the question and so the bearers are huddled together forlornly,squatting on their haunches like a gaggle of bidi-smoking birds. Moti Lal climbsthe ridge to engage Forrester in another pointless conversation, then followshim back down the hill and crouches at the door of the tent. Finally Forresteris forced to give in and talk.

"So who exactly is your mistress?"

Moti Lal's face darkens.

She was always ungovernable, even before her mother died. Her father took nonotice of her, whether she was good or bad, too busy weighing out coin to botherabout the world outside his cloth-bound ledgers. The servants would come andreport to him in the countinghouse, saying that the girl had thrown a cup at theporter, that she refused food, that she had been seen speaking to Bikaneritribeswomen by the Cremation Gate. In the mornings her maid would find sand whenshe was combing her hair, as if she had spent the night out in the desert.

She was bringing shame on the family, and if the master chose to ignore it, thejob of curbing her fell to his head clerk. At first Moti Lal used words. Then,when he found a cake of sticky black resin in her jewelry box, he dragged herinto the courtyard and beat her with a carved stick kept for scaring awaymonkeys. She was locked in her room for three days. Distracted as he wasfinalizing a land deal, the master asked who was weeping in his house. Told itwas Amrita, he seemed surprised. Does she want for something? he asked.

As soon as the bolt was drawn, she disappeared, returning with a wild look inher eye and garbled talk of trees and rushing water. Moti Lal could never findwho brought the drug to her, and gradually she lost interest in everything else.She took to her bed, and stopped speaking. It was as if she had withdrawn toanother world. He had to shake her and slap her face before she understood thenews about her father.

His killer had left a length of wire wrapped tightly around his neck. The bodyhad been found lying on a rubbish heap outside the town walls, the soles of itsfeet turned up at the sky like two pale fish. No one seemed surprised.Moneylenders are not popular people. Do you understand, Moti Lal shouted at her.Now you are completely alone.

Now the flood is coming. The earth will be drowned but like Manu the first man,Amrita will float on the ocean and be saved. She cups her hands and sees alittle fish flip and curl in the rainwater. She will show it compassion becauseit is the Lord come to her as a sign, and though she is cold to the bone, thelittle horned fish means that she will survive.

They do not come to get her. The water saturates the palanquin, soaking thecurtains and the cushions, running over the wooden frame in a constant stream.Amrita has no shawl, and the thin sari plastered over her skin offers noprotection. She does not expect them to come. Moti Lal hates her and wants herdead. Why should he help her? She should move, but it will make no difference.The flood is imminent, and when it comes it will lift her up and sweep all ofthem away.

When it was time for the journey, Moti Lal had the haveli closed, and thevaluables packed into trunks, which went on ahead with one of the servants. Inthe street, carts waited outside to take them to the railhead, three daysjourney by road. Shopkeepers sat by their scales and spat betel juice into thegutter, pointing out to each other the possessions of the murdered Kashmiribroker; his carpets, his scales. The bullocks swished their tails and thedrivers scratched themselves. Everything was ready. And the girl would not go.

Moti Lal beat her and she lay on the floor and said she would kill herself. MotiLal beat her again, and told her he did not care if she lived or died, but hehad given his word to her uncle that he would bring her to Agra to be married.She said she had no uncle in Agra and marriage meant nothing to her because soonshe would be dead. Moti Lal beat her until his arm was sore. When her face hadpuffed up and a tooth had loosened in her jaw she said she would go, but not bytrain. Finally, he gave in.

Moti Lal gave in and now he has walked for weeks across country, the sweatrunning off his balding pate, while inside her palanquin Amrita lay still andhad visions. Every day as he slips his feet into his dusty chappals, he finds itmore absurd. He is a trusted man, a man with a position and a certificate, andhe is trudging across country like a beggar. Every day as he squats for hismorning evacuation, a thought bubbles up in his mind—that her will is strongerthan his. The girl does not care if she dies. It is as if she is taunting him.

So maybe she deserves to be left there, in the rain and the cold. If she dies ofexposure, it will be God's work. Then he can board the train and read a pamphletand drink station chai out of a glass, knowing all this is behind him. Hemarvels that the slut, for all her stubbornness, will not even drag her carcassundercover where it is dry. For the water is pouring down with a strength he hasnot seen before, tearing out of the sky like blood from an open wound.

All the world is in the past. Now there is nothing but a torrent of white waterrushing down a mountain, and the future is contained in that water, suspended init like the tree trunks and thick red mud it has swept off the hillside. Thewater moves at an extraordinary pace, propelled downward as if by a great hand,and it rushes over the desert like an army, forced through narrow clefts in theearth until it arrives in the gully where Forrester kneels, wrestling a loosetent peg back into the slack wet ground. He looks up, and it appears in front ofhim, a huge white wall.

"Oh, God—" he begins, giving it a name. Then he is engulfed.

The palanquin smashes like a child's toy, and Amrita smiles as the nightexplodes into a vast rush, the force she has longed for since she can firstremember. Camels bray and strain at their hobbles, turning end over end in thewater as they try desperately to free themselves. Men and bags are sucked down,barreling along in the flood. For an instant Moti Lal keeps hold of hisumbrella, standing bolt upright in roiling foam with a looks-like-rainexpression on his face. Then he is swept under, and the umbrella goes skatingoff across the swell. As his lungs fill with water, he thinks with irritationabout the expense of replacing it. Then, one more bead flicked across theabacus, one more column of figures completed with a stroke of the pen, hedrowns. All the world is in the past.

This should be everything. Yet small miracles are woven into the pattern ofevery large event. Forrester finds himself snagged on something. White waterscreams around his chest but leaves his head clear, his mouth and nose free tobreathe. When small hands clasp his wrists and help him up out of the flood, heceases to understand what is happening to him. His consciousness is entirelyadrift.

He scrambles up a slope and falls to his hands and knees, still reflexivelygulping for breath. Gradually he realizes that he is somewhere dry and dark, andstands up. The mouth of a cave. Again, the touch of fingers. He recoils, thencollects himself and allows his wrist to be grasped. The hand guides him fartherin. He kneels down a second time, not entirely trusting his legs to followorders. He tries to breathe more slowly. It is no good. When a fire flickersinto existence, he is convinced that he has died.

The native mother goddess stands before him in the firelight, elemental andferocious. Her body is smeared with mud. A wild tangle of hair hangs over herface. She is entirely naked. Kneeling, he flushes and averts his eyes, awed bythe black-tipped breasts, the curve of the belly, the small tight mat of pubichair. So much more real than the girls who populate his wakeful nights in themountains. Those are picture postcard girls, flimsy as lace. They peep back overparasols, milk-white and rosy cheeked, asking, Oh will you not come into thegarden my dear.

Forrester realizes he is in the presence of a spirit. He died in the flood andthis is some kind of phenomenon, the sort of thing one tries to conjure up withtable rapping and Ouija boards. But she seems real, this goddess. Shaped out ofthe raw clay by the flood. He wonders if he has created her, sculpted her withhis sleepless nights and his meanderings through the desert. Perhaps, hereasons, if you lack something enough you can force it into being.

Then she steps toward him and starts to unbutton his shirt, and as she does sohe feels the tug of fingers on button and feels her wet hair against his cheekand smells her clean rich smell of woman and mud and hair oil. His hands brushover her skin and they touch real skin cut and scratched by stones and branchesand he knows he has not created her at all. She clears her hair out of her eyesand looks directly at him, and with a start Forrester realizes that it is theother way around. He has not created her. She has created him. He has not, neverwill have, any other purpose than the one she gives him.

As the fire crackles and dries his skin, she strips him of his clothing and hedoes not even wonder that he is in a warm dusty place with brass water pots anda stack of brushwood piled neatly against one wall. Outside the storm is ragingand inside the cave her small hands are curling round his penis and tugging himdown in a tumble of limbs onto the floor.

The flood comes and the whole world is swept away except Amrita. The watershakes and paws her, unwrapping her from her sari, batting her around like ahuge rough dog. Then it sets her down and she slips out of it, shivering at thesear of the wind on her bare skin. Objects stream past her in the dim light, menand beasts and valuables, the things of the defunct world being swept off intooblivion.

That is the old world and she is the mother of the new. She peers into thewatery darkness and pulls a pearl-skinned man out of the flood. He is pantinglike a baby. The raw heavy sound of his breathing excites her.

Amrita drags the pearl man backward and a roof closes over them. He falls on thefloor. She looks around. Everything is there, everything they could need. So themother of the world squats with flint and tinder and lights a fire and looks ather find. He has no color at all, face and hair washed clean and pure as milk.He is wearing wet feringhi clothes, which she takes off. He seems very helpless,lifting up his arms to assist her with his shirt, putting a hand on her shoulderas he steps out of his khaki shorts.

Then he is naked and although he is helpless he is very beautiful. Amrita tracesthe line of his hip, the arrow of hair leading down from his navel. In smallextraordinary stages, his hands start to return her touch, and soon she doessomething she has only imagined, and pulls him downward.

Their sex is inexpert and violent, more fight than sex as they roll and clawacross the packed earth floor. It happens quickly and then for a long time theylie tangled together and breathing hard. The unprecedented sensations of eachothers' bodies make them start again and they do this twice more, roll and claw,then lie exquisitely, drunkenly still. By the last time the fire has gutteredand sweat and dust has turned their skins to an identical red-brown color. Thecolor of the earth.

They lie until the fire has died out completely. Then, in an instant, somethingtiny sparks in Forrester's brain. This small thing cascades into somethinglarger and potentially threatening and he takes a shot at giving it a name andfails, though he thinks it may be something to do with duty and India Officeordinances, and this thing that now seems enormous and important and panicinducing makes him leap to his feet and stagger backward, turning around to tryand confront it or at least have some idea of its shape and meaning. Perhaps itis unnameable, the unnameable thing which strikes a lost man whose sole shortpurpose has just been achieved, but whether or not it can be named, it makesForrester look at the girl wildly and understand nothing about where he is andwhy, except to know that he has just changed everything about his life andcannot see where it will lead. So Forrester wheels around and steps out of thecave and down to the edge of the water, which has formed itself into afast-flowing red river. As he rubs his eyes and straightens his back and triesto control his panic, he sees, with a surge of joy, something coming toward himthat he knows. A young deodar tree, snapped off at the trunk, is sailing towardhim down the flooded gully, its branches quivering like the beginning of speech.The tree seems so freighted with wisdom and routine that it might as well beplaying the National Anthem and Forrester lets out an incoherent cry and hailsit like a cab and jumps on and is swept away. The last Amrita sees of him is amud-streaked torso heading downstream, continuing the journey she interrupted afew hours before.

In 1918 Agra is a city of three hundred thousand people clenched fist-tightaround a bend in the River Jumna. Wide and lazy, the river flows to the southand east, where eventually it will join with the Ganges and spill out into theBay of Bengal. This, just one of countless towns fastened to its banks, is ananthill of traders and craftsmen that rose out of obscurity around five hundredyears before, when the Mughals, arriving from the north, settled on it as aplace to build tombs, paint miniatures, and dream up new and bloody modes ofwar.

If, like the flying ace Indra Lal Roy, you could break free of gravity and viewthe world from up above, you would see Agra as a dense, whirling movement ofearth, a vortex of mud bricks and sandstone. To the south this tumble of mazystreets slams into the military grid of the British cantonment. The Cantonment(gruffly contracted to Cantt. in all official correspondence) is made up ofgeometric elements like a child's wooden blocks; rational avenues and paradegrounds, barracks for the soldiers who enforce the law of His Britannic MajestyGeorge. To the north this military space has a mirror in the Civil Lines, rowsof whitewashed bungalows inhabited by administrators and their wives. Thehardness of this second grid has faded and softened with time, past planningwilting gently in the Indian heat.

Agra's navel is the fort, a mile-long circuit of brutal red sandstone wallsenclosing a confusion of palaces, mosques, water tanks, and meeting halls. Arailway bridge runs beside it, carrying passengers into the city from every partof India. The bustling crowd at Fort Station never thins, even in the smallhours of the morning. The crowd is part of the grand project of the railway, thedream of unification its imperial designers have engineered into reality. Thetrails of boiler smoke that rise over heat-hazy fields and converge on thestation's packed platforms are part of a continent-wide piece of theater. Likethe one hundred and three tunnels blasted through the mountains up to Simla, thetwo-mile span of the Ganges bridge in Bihar, and the one-hundred-and-forty-footpiles driven into the mud of Surat, the press of people at the station proclaimsthe power of the British, the technologists who have all India under theircontrol.

For such a lively city, Agra is heavily marked by death. This is largely thefault of the Mughals, who, in contrast to the current mechanically minded set ofmasters, thought hard about the next life and the things that get lost in thetransition from this one. Everywhere they have left cavernous mosques, chillymonuments to absence. Around the curve of the river from the fort is the TajMahal. For all its massive marble beauty, for all the relief its cold floor anddark interior affords on a scorching day, it is a melancholy place, fortymillion rupees' and who knows how many lives' worth of autocratic mourning. TheEmperor Shah Jahan loved Mumtaz-i-Mahal. Now the pain of his loss rises up atthe edge of town, clothed in the work of countless hands, surrounded by a formalgarden still used as a meeting place by steam-age lovers. Despite all thiseffort love still refuses to conquer, and the trysting couples have a subdued,pensive look about them.

Now, as it does every so often, death has come to hang over the city. This timethe killer is not siege or famine, but the influenza epidemic, making its wayeastward across the world from its mystical birth in a pile of dung behind anAmerican army camp. By the time it leaves it will have taken with it a third ofAgra's people; a third of all the shoemakers, potters, silk weavers, andmetalworkers in the bazaars; a third of the women pounding their washing againstflat stones by the riverbank; a third of the six hundred hands at John's ginningmill; a third of the convicts making rugs in the city jail; a third of all thefarmers bringing produce in to market; a third of the porters sleeping on thestation platform between shifts; a third of the little boys playingshin-shattering games of cricket, bowling yorkers off the baked mud of theirtenement courtyards. Rajputs, Brahmins, Chamars, Jats, Banias, Muslims,Catholics, members of the Arya Samaj, and communicants of the Church of Englandwill all succumb to the same sequence of fatigue, sweating, fever, and darkness.

Across the world, the scale of this killing is even greater than the slaughterthat is finally playing itself out in Europe. Here, it hangs like a miasma overthe knot of streets near Drummond Road, the quarter of the city called JohriBazaar where the jewelers have their shops. Now, like the pilot Roy, trailingblack smoke over faraway London, plummet down into the middle of all this death,to a large, impressive house cut off from the street noise by high brick walls.Swoop down over the parapet topped with shards of broken glass to a low flatroof, a place where a boy reclines on a charpai, one hand working steadilyinside his pajamas.

Pran Nath Razdan is not thinking about death. Quite the opposite. The bazaarsmay be empty and the corridors of the Thomason hospital clogged with corpses,but none of it has anything to do with him. At the age of fifteen, his world iscomfortably circumscribed by the walls of his family house. The only son of thedistinguished court pleader Pandit Amar Nath Razdan, he is heir to a fortune ofmany lakhs of rupees and future owner of the roof he lies on, along with all thecourtyards and gardens, the cool high-ceilinged rooms, the servants' quarters,and the innovative European-style toilet block. Farther afield there are otherhouses, a brace of villages, a boot-blacking business in Lucknow, and a share ina silk-weaving concern. When he glimpses his future, it seems full of promise.

With a sigh he looks down at the tent in his raw-silk pajamas. Full of promise.Money is the least of it. Clearly he is loved by everyone. His father will nothear a word spoken against him. The servants smile as they struggle upstairswith his bath water. When his aunties come to visit, they pinch his cheeks andcoo like excited doves. Pran Nath, so beautiful! So pale! Such a perfectKashmiri!

Pran Nath is undeniably good looking. His hair has a hint of copper to it, whichcatches in the sunlight and reminds people of the hills. His eyes contain just atouch of green. His cheekbones are high and prominent, and across them, like anexpensive drumhead, is stretched a covering of skin that is not brown, or evenwheaten colored, but white. Pran Nath's skin is a source of pride to everyone.Its whiteness is not the nasty blue-blotched color of a fresh-off-the-boatAngrezi or the grayish pallor of a dying person, but a perfect milky hue, likethat of the marble the craftsmen chip into ornate screens down by the Tajganj.Kashmiris come from the mountains and are always fair, but Pran Nath's color isexceptional. It is proof, cluck the aunties, of the family's superior blood.

Blood is important. As Kashmiri pandits, the Razdans belong to one of thehighest and most exclusive castes in all Hindustan. Across the land (as any ofthem will be happy to remind you) the pandits are known for their intelligenceand culture. Princes often call on them to serve as ministers of state, and itis said that a Kashmiri pandit was the first to write down the Vedas. The Razdanfamily guru can recite their lineage back hundreds of years, back to the timebefore the valley was overrun by Muslims, and they had to leave to make a newlife on the plains. The blood stiffening the bulge in Pran Nath's pajamas is ofthe highest quality, guaranteed.

Pran Nath is not alone on the roof. The servant girl's choli has ridden up herback, exposing a swath of smooth dark flesh and a ridge of spine. She issweating, this girl, her skin glistening in the sunshine, her broom held looselyin one hand as she sniffs the air, catching the strong smell of raw onionswafting up from the master's bedchamber. Beneath her many-times-washed cottonsari he can just make out the curve of her buttocks, which was the originalstimulus for unlacing his pajamas. Somehow looking is no longer enough. She isnot far away. He could grab her, and pull her down on the bolsters. There wouldbe a fuss, of course, but his father could smooth it over. She is only aservant, after all.

Gita the servant girl has no idea of her peril. Her eye has been caught by amonkey, and she is thinking how nice it would be if it spoke. Perhaps the monkeyhas been sent by her prince to watch over her, and perhaps it will grow to anenormous size and put her on its furry shoulder and carry her off to a palacewhere there will be a wedding with singers and dancing—or if not a prince thenat least the monkey could turn into the pretty boy who cleans for the fat baniadruggist, or if not a shape-changing monkey then a talking monkey who could tellher fortune, and if not a fortune-telling monkey then one which would dosomething more to distract her from her aching back than just sitting there,scratching its lurid red bottom and rolling its lips backward and forward overits nasty teeth. She straightens up and wipes a hand over her forehead. As usualthere is more work to do.

For its part, the monkey has no intention of changing shape. Lacking royalconnections or powers of augury, its primary interest is the strong onion smellwafting under its nostrils. Onions are edible. It sits on a crumbling section ofwall and cocks its head at a shape it has spotted moving about in an opendoorway, unable to decide whether it, too, is edible, or perhaps dangerous.

The shape is Anjali the maid, and she is trying to stay out of sight. It islucky she came. Something told her, a creaking in her bones, that she shouldkeep a close eye on her daughter today. Look at the filthy boy! If he touches somuch as a hair on little Gita's head, he will pay for it. This is not an idlethreat. Anjali the maid knows things about Pran Nath Razdan. In fact she knowsrather more than he does himself. Just one touch, and she will tell.

Anjali was brought up in the moneylender's house at the edge of the desert. Someyears older than the moneylender's daughter, she had been placed with the familyas a maid as soon as she was old enough to plait hair and wield a flatiron. Shewatched her young mistress withdraw from the world, and tended to her as she layinert on her bed, transfixed by the invisible objects of her imagination. Amongthe servants Amrita's madness was said to be of that very holy type that revealsthe illusory nature of the world. Some of the women would even contrive to touchher clothing when they brought her tea. Anjali was not one of them. She foundthe girl frightening. Trying to get her to take a sip of water or a mouthful ofdhal, she would stretch her arm out straight, keeping herself as far from thebed as she could, on guard against evil spirits that might jump from theafflicted body to hers. When she was told she would be accompanying her on thejourney to Agra, the first thing she did was consult a palmist, who told her tobeware of water.

Perhaps it was this advice that saved her. After the flash flood she and two ofthe porters were the only ones still left alive, or so they thought. Searchingfor other survivors, they waded down a gulley until they found a dacoits' cave,with Amrita sitting outside it, dressed in a khaki shirt and a pair of shorts.They pulled the Englishman's naked body out of the mud a few miles farthersouth. It was not hard to imagine what had happened.

Amrita mumbled poetry words about trees, and about the water. Anjali dressed herin a sari and made her decent, repeating charms to ward off the evil eye. Insidethe shirt pocket was an illegible document, with a photograph of the deadEnglishman. She slipped the picture discreetly into her skirts. Once theyfinally reached Agra, pulling into Fort Station on the third-class carriage ofthe train, she lost no time in breaking the shocking news to the servants of hernew household. The girl had polluted herself. Surely she would have to be sentaway.

In the uncle's house the girl was locked in an upstairs room, while the uncleheld meetings with brothers and cousins. Then one of them summoned Anjali andgave her a silver bangle, a nose stud, and a pair of heavy earrings. Sheunderstood that she was to keep her mouth shut. They had found a husband forAmrita, a Razdan, and they would not tolerate any impediment to the marriage.Had anyone asked her opinion, Anjali would have said she thought it was anill-fated match. She had often seen the girl naked. She had examined herclosely, and she had a mole on her stomach, right at the very center just underher breasts. The meaning, as she whispered to the mali, was clear. The new bridewould die young.

The unlucky bridegroom was a very serious young man by the name of Amar Nath,who had recently started practicing Law and was a member of societies for thepromotion of hygiene, tradition, cultural purity, cow protection, and correctreligious observance. He had recently published an article in ThePioneer on the question of loss of caste through foreign travel, coming downfirmly against the notion of leaving Indian soil.

Amar Nath's studies had left him little time to acquire social graces. On firstmeeting his betrothed he stuttered a few words, then stared at his shoes untilthe chaperones got bored and called the tea party to a halt. Amrita, of course,said nothing at all, a ghost of a smile playing over her face. She wasbeautiful, which helped. She gave no immediate sign of insanity. Amar Nath was adutiful son, and his elderly parents were worried that he showed no interest inanything except books and moral rectitude. So they accepted her uncle'sassurances, and pressed their son to do their bidding. The wedding went ahead.

It passed off smoothly. An auspicious hour was determined, and the ceremony dulyperformed. The priest spoke the mantras correctly and the bride's smile was coyand demure as she was decked with jewelry by the young women of her new family.Sweets were distributed to an improbable number of relatives, and the groomlooked more or less dashing as he arrived at the head of the wedding procession.There was, however, one thing of which Anjali strongly disapproved: the sapphireset into the bride's necklace. Sapphires are tricky gems, and though they candeflect Saturn's harmful rays, they can also focus them.

Amar Nath was obviously taken aback by his wife's eagerness in the marriage bed.Anjali, who had joined the household with her mistress, sat up late and listenedto his gasps of surprise, little kittenish sounds that carried out of the windowand up to the roof where she lay. As she would later remark to the paan vendor,it was a fair bet that this serious boy was not expecting his silent bride totake charge in such a manner. Lucky for her he was so unworldly. Anyone elsewould have become suspicious. But although rumors of the bride's adventures hadalready reached as far as the hijras who came to mock the wedding guests, AmarNath and his family were too lofty to listen to the prattle of eunuchs orservants. With his new wife installed safely in his house, the bridegroomreturned to his ruminations about disputed land boundaries and the value ofPersian in the education of young gentlemen. So nine months passed, or perhaps alittle less, while the young husband attended public meetings, the young wifegrew big, and Anjali surrounded herself with a delicious web of speculation andrumor. Then one afternoon, a shriek echoed around the courtyard. Amrita had goneinto labor. The baneful influences of the sapphire and the mole started to takeeffect.

The astrologer was called well before Pran Nath made his entry into the world.The family installed him under a fan on a shady verandah, where he sat drinkingsweet tea and clutching his case of charts.

He waited for a very long time.

He finished his tea. He put his case neatly on the table in front of him. He atesome fruit, peeling it carefully with a sharp knife. He declined more tea. Hestood up and stretched, feeling his vertebrae click satisfyingly into place. Hedeclined lime soda. The screams of the laboring mother echoed around the garden.

Later the astrologer took a short walk, smelling the jasmine and enjoying theshade of the trees. The gardener was watering a bed of delicate white lilies,and the astrologer stopped to praise him for his work. The mali beamed withpride. Then the two of them fell silent, listening as the gasps and sobs fromthe mother's apartment became more anguished.

As the sun dipped low over the roofs he was offered a bed on which to relax. Heaccepted, but found it difficult to doze. Though his business was birth and itsmeanings, he always found the actual event distressing. The blood and pain. Itwas a woman's thing, beyond the fathoming of a man, even one educated in thescience of Jyotish, to which most common mysteries are transparent. He preferredto think of birth as a mathematical event, the stately progression of planetsand constellations through clearly defined houses, gridded sections of airlessspace. This agony, the scurrying of maids, the scene of mess and horror that wasno doubt unfolding in the upstairs room, all of it was most unpleasant. It wasnot nice to think of the planets tugging so hard at this unfortunate woman'swomb. The astrologer always imagined stellar influence as something ethereal,light to the touch.

Then everything fell ominously silent. He strained his ears into the gatheringdarkness, hearing the immense noise of insects, the rasp of parrots arguing inthe trees. Nothing else. Nothing human. Soon a maid came, carrying an oil lamp,which she set on the table in front of him. At once moths started beatingagainst its glass sides.

"The baby is born," said the maid, with an odd, triumphant expression on herface. "It is a boy. The mother is dead."

He nodded resignedly. Then he looked at his watch, opened his case, took out penand paper, and set to work.

The chart was strange and frightening. The stars had contorted themselves, wrungthemselves into a frightening shape. Their pattern of influences had noequilibrium. It was skewed toward passion and change. To the astrologer thisdistribution looked impossible. Forces tugged in all directions, the maleficqualities of the moon and Saturn auguring transmutations of every kind. It was ashapeshifting chart. A chart full of lies. He kept going back to the almanac tocheck his results, covering his brown-flecked paper in calculations.

The boy's future was obscure. The astrologer could predict none of the usualthings—length of life, marital prospects, wealth. Patterns emerged, only to fadewhen another aspect of the conjunction was considered. Planets seemed to flitthrough houses, hovering between benign and malevolent positions. Clusters ofpossibilities formed, then fell apart. He had never been so confused by areading.

Perhaps (though he would not have liked to bet on it) there was a route throughthe chaos. If so, then it was certainly a bizarre one. How could so manydelusions lead to their opposite, to the dissolution of delusion? He glanced upat the square of light in the upstairs window. The child would have to enduresuffering and loss. Could he really tell the father this? The man was grievingfor his wife. On the table a mandala of crisped moth corpses lay around thelamp. The astrologer thought of the dead woman, and shuddered.

When the maid came back, she found him sitting in front of a fresh, neat chartdepicting a bland future of long life, many sons, and business success. Thetorn-up pieces of the first attempt had been stuffed, out of sight, into hiscase.

When the astrologer brought the master his new son's chart, Pandit Razdan seemedsatisfied, but everyone knows that astrologers say what their clients want tohear. If a man's beard is on fire there is always someone who will warm theirhands on it, but then again who gives a tip to the bearer of bad news? As soonas Anjali saw the white-skinned baby, she knew it was ill starred.

The baby cooed and gurgled, and a boy ran down to the cremation ghats for apriest, and the midwives burned bloody sheets in the garden. No one, it seemed,had a thought for the dead mother beyond disposing of her body as quickly aspossible. The girl had been an anomaly, an irritant against the skin of asmooth-running household. Now there was a silent agreement to treat her as avision, a temporary phenomenon that had simply evaporated.

Anjali, too, thought it was for the best that Amrita had died. It was a wondershe had lasted so long. The family seemed overjoyed by their son. So big! Sohealthy! Yet she could not look at the child without thinking of his trueparentage, of a Brahmin woman defiled by the pale man in the photograph. Still,she might have been able to hold her tongue—if the child had not become such amonster.

Excerpted from The Impressionist by Hari Kunzru. Copyright © 2002 by Hari Kunzru. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Copyright © 2002 Hari Kunzru.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-525-94642-X