The House of Blue Mangoes (55 page)

‘Come on, Cannon, you’ve got to do this. If for nothing else, do it for Helen.’

Ah, Helen, Kannan thought. Yes. He should think of Helen if he wanted to lose the match. Or then again, it might make him so angry that it would propel him into a different zone of court craft and skill. Kannan had done his best, but his efforts weren’t enough. Helen had grown more and more unhappy. They squabbled daily, and it had become an effort to be civil to each other. She blamed him for everything that had gone wrong at Pulimed, kept at him to take her back to Madras. Finally, even though it tore at him to think that the marriage he had invested so much in was disintegrating so swiftly, he said they’d go to Madras at Christmas. That had brought a lull for a few days, but soon the squabbling had begun again. He hoped, of course, that over time she would stop being so bitter and frustrated. There was nothing else he could do. He had simply run out of ideas. But, come to think of it, a victory over an Englishman might taste sweet to Helen, redeem him partially in her eyes. Except it wasn’t going to happen.

‘I don’t stand a chance, Freddie,’ he said disconsolately.

‘Wrong attitude, my dear fellow, absolutely wrong. Can’t have this sort of thing, you know. Would a stiff brandy and soda help?’

‘Probably fall asleep on court. Look at the pummelling Court’s getting.’

A flurry of strokes descended on the hapless Court like a fleeting monsoon shower and the second set was over six-one.

It was his turn now. He stepped on to the court with Hemming. The tall planter’s face betrayed no emotion as he called the toss. Hemming won and elected to serve. ‘Good luck,’ he said to Kannan, and they went to their respective positions and began practising. Hemming’s clean, compact strokes, the way he moved on court, his unfussy service action – Kannan knew that he was a better player than he could ever hope to be. All he had on his side was youth, quickness around the court, and resolve. It was not enough. Hemming easily held serve, and broke Kannan just as easily. The games went with serve thereafter, and before he knew it the set was over six-four.

‘Excellent, excellent,’ crowed Freddie, ‘you lost just one service game. You can take him. The next set is yours, he’s tiring, mark my words.’

‘Freddie, easy now, let me get my breath back.’ He was so tired from trying to run down every last one of his opponent’s expertly placed shots that he could hardly breathe. Gradually, the world came back into focus, his breathing eased. He sipped at the glass of lemonade Freddie brought him, and looked over at Hemming, who was talking to a friend.

‘You have to break him, at least once, Cannon, you mustn’t think he’s invincible. He’s an old man. He’s tiring, now is when you should go for the kill. Get focused, run down every ball, show some daring.’

Freddie’s exhortations had a positive effect. Kannan battled for every point when play resumed, and slowly the set began to swing his way. He was nowhere near as good as Hemming, but he compensated for his deficiencies by grimly refusing to yield no matter what his opponent threw at him. In the crucial seventh game, with the honours even, Hemming served an excellent kick serve to his backhand, but luckily Kannan had guessed which direction to go in, and was well placed to return it. He tried a sliced backhand, the only backhand stroke he could play with any measure of confidence. Hemming returned the ball, Kannan hit it back and then Hemming tried to lob him as he stood in mid-court. This was Kannan’s moment. He was in motion as soon as he saw Hemming’s intention, tired legs pumping the earth, raising him way above the court, racquet back, ready to bludgeon the ball. The racquet fell, the ball skidded past a stunned Hemming and all at once, the outcome of the set was wide open.

Having astonished Hemming with his effrontery, Kannan took the set. Unfortunately for him, he couldn’t sustain that level of play. And it is axiomatic in tennis, as it is in life, that when you have an opponent cornered, you must put him down. Give him a second chance and he will come on stronger.

Which is what happened in the third set. With craft, guile and experience, Hemming took the game away from his younger, less skilled opponent. Forceful drives were returned with the power that had driven them, smashes were met with dink and slice. The brute arrogance and strength of youth were cleverly turned to the older man’s advantage. He found the angles, tried Kannan’s patience, and held his nerve when Kannan stormed the net or tried to find the level he had played at in the second set. After he had lost four games in a row, Kannan tried an ambitious passing shot and saw the ball balloon yards wide of the sideline. Suddenly, the enormity of what he was trying to do engulfed him, and he felt very alone. What was he trying to do: take on the white race all by himself, far from family and friends, isolated by an embittered wife, his brownness, his lack of skill? As he disconsolately paused to collect himself, a favourite story from childhood eased into his mind – wouldn’t it be just marvellous if he could be a God in disguise, like the infant Krishna, just a nondescript cowherd until, confronted by the terrifying rakshasa, he’d opened his mouth and deep within it stretched worlds, planets, universes, life itself? Wouldn’t it be fabulous if he were to be suddenly transformed into a combination of Lacoste, Borotra, Budge and Perry, and storm his way to an improbable victory? He committed a double fault instead. Distracted now, and already beaten in his mind, fourteen minutes later he had lost the last set six-two.

‘Well played,’ Hemming said simply as they shook hands. ‘That smash in the second set was perfection itself.’

The praise did little to lift Kannan’s spirits. He morosely accepted Freddie’s offer of a beer and they wandered up to the bar. ‘You tried everything and you almost got him,’ Freddie said. His cheeriness seemed forced.

‘He won, and that’s what matters. All that rot about it’s not winning or losing that counts, take it from me, it’s all bosh.’

‘Got to be something in it, old boy. I’ve never won a game in my life.’

‘Yes, but it’s different for you. I can just imagine Mrs Stevenson’s face when she hears about today’s results. I know exactly what she’ll say: “You can’t expect better from an Indian.” It’s all so depressing.’

‘It’s all right, Cannon. It’s only a tennis match . . . say, game for some jugged hare?’

‘Why not, this bloody racquet needs to be good for something.’

‘No, not your playing racquet, I’ve got an old one.’

‘Yes, but you drive. I’m hunting. I’m in the mood to crack a few heads.’

They finished their drinks, signed chits and made their way to where the motorcycle was parked. Freddie took an old racquet with a cracked frame and sagging guts from his saddlebag, and handed it to Kannan who took a few experimental swishes with it.

Hare hunting with tennis racquets was great sport among the young planters on the estates. The hunters would roar along the narrow tracks at dusk, their headlamps rooting the unfortunate creatures to the spot until they were dispatched.

Soon after they left the club, they startled a tiny owl from its perch on the stump of a pruned tea bush. It swooped ahead of them, a dirty white rag in the wind, and finally managed to escape the magnetism of the headlamp. Three hares were not so lucky. The first jumped straight into the light, a few yards beyond Dhobi’s Leap, and the old racquet swept down on it with crushing power, instantly extinguishing the light in its eyes. Kannan misdirected his blow at the second, and broke a leg. It limped out of the light, but they soon found it again and it was swatted to the ground. The third hare inexplicably leapt high in the air, and Kannan caught it a perfect forehand drive, hit with all his strength. The shock travelled all the way up his arm. By now they were within a kilometre of Freddie’s bungalow, and decided they had enough food for supper.

‘Stay for a drink,’ Freddie said. ‘I’ll get my butler to skin the hares.’

About three hours later, a very drunk Kannan motored unsteadily home. As he was slowing down to turn into the road that led to his own bungalow, a gigantic hare lolloped into the glare of his headlight. Calmly it paused, then looked straight at him, its eyes gleaming red in the light. For a moment, Kannan was terrified. In these haunted hills, could the hare be the ghost of all its fellows, come to wreak vengeance on their killer? Kannan shouted and waved his arms at the animal. For what seemed a long time, although it was only a matter of seconds, it did nothing, and then it slowly came towards him. He almost fell off the motorcycle in panic. Nearer and nearer it came, then turned and slipped into the tea bushes.

88

Lily had little time to brood over her blighted holiday or the difficulty Helen would pose to the reunion of her husband and her son. For, within days of her return, Daniel’s brief resurgence faltered. He suffered a second stroke that left him completely bedridden. This put an end to whatever little contact he’d had with the other residents of Doraipuram. He wanted only two people around him now – the devoted Ramdoss, and Lily, both of whom he failed to recognize from time to time. His wife had minded very much when it had first happened but when she realized that her husband wasn’t doing it out of any desire to hurt her, but was only acting according to the dictates of his increasingly unreliable mind, she was quick to forgive him.

Her grandson Daniel was the only other member of the family permitted into the sick-room. Daniel barely recognized him. For a while, the boy drifted disconsolately in and out of the makeshift laboratory where he had spent so many happy hours with his grandfather, trying out various experiments on his own. Ramdoss put an end to that when an unanticipated chemical reaction flooded the lab and the adjoining rooms with the smell of dead lizards.

In the last month of his life, Daniel’s world shrank to the room in which he lay. Without much expectation that it would ever be needed, Ramdoss had installed a fully equipped worktable along one wall in case Daniel should take an interest in pharmaceuticals again, but besides this, the room was very sparsely furnished. A shelf of siddha and religious texts, a couple of wooden chairs, a table for Daniel’s medicines. On one of the walls was a picture of Charity, a garland of sandalwood shavings around it, and another of Daniel, Lily, and the children, taken when Kannan was born. There were no other decorations.

In his bedroom, Daniel would lie motionless and mute, day after day. Occasionally, he would immerse himself in one of the siddha texts that Dr Pillai had bequeathed to him, although it wasn’t clear to Ramdoss or to Lily whether his infrequent expositions on siddha medicine had any basis in scientific reality or were simply deluded ravings.

In addition to Lily and Ramdoss, the people he communed with were Charity, Solomon, Aaron, Dr Pillai and Father Ashworth. It didn’t surprise Lily or Ramdoss any more when they came into the room to find him locked in conversation with a dead person. Dr Dorai would solemnly introduce the visitor and would sometimes even invite Lily or Ramdoss to participate in the chat; this was always a trifle disconcerting, especially when they were expected to reply to some arcane question of metaphysics or medicine that had been posed by the dead person and had been diverted to them. At moments like these, a benign madness stared out from Dr Dorai’s eyes. But at other times he was perfectly sane. On a couple of occasions, he spent long hours in happy reminiscence with his wife when he inquired especially after Kannan (he had no recollection of his marriage) and his namesake, Shanthi’s son Daniel.

There were other times when he was full of anger. He would rage against an ungrateful world. Sometimes he would summon Ramdoss and dictate a letter to whoever had offended him, living or dead:

Dear Priscilla, [he would write to a second cousin, deceased five years ago]

I am duly in receipt of your letter dated 5 April 1938 which is just a tissue of poisonous lies and falsehoods and a series of malicious insinuations and suggestions, interspersed with a lot of half-truths . . .

Ramdoss would patiently take all this down, along with pages of accusations and allegations. He would have the letters typed up and sometimes Daniel would ask for them and sign them. More often, dictation done, the letter would be forgotten, and he would grapple with some other demon or delight.

As the days grew hotter, his condition deteriorated. Bedsores developed. He became weaker and his eyesight and hearing grew worse. The various specialists summoned by Ramdoss and Lily could do little more than prescribe new kinds of medication. The more honest among them corroborated with the family physician’s diagnosis: after two strokes, at his age, every day was a miracle.

One day Daniel had an unusual request. Not once had he shown the slightest interest in leaving his room, but now he asked Ramdoss to arrange a car for him that evening. He wanted to go for a drive. The old Chevrolet was hastily taken to the workshop, and polished and waxed until it shone. Ramdoss had no idea where Daniel wanted to go but this was the first encouraging sign in a long time and he wasn’t about to let it pass.

It was still very hot, although the sun had almost gone down when they carried Daniel to the car and eased him into the front seat. Ramdoss took the wheel. The sick man’s favourite grandson Daniel and a couple of older cousins were rounded up, and they were all piled into the capacious rear seat along with a brace of shotguns.

Ramdoss drove slowly, and Daniel, more animated than usual, directed him with sure, precise directions. About an hour later they were parked in a thick stand of casuarina trees on a bluff overlooking the Chevathar. As night fell, the flying foxes began to float over them, wavering and slow. Guns popped and a couple dropped. Another wave, more fire and noise . . .

From where he sat, Daniel’s eyes filled with the clamour and joy of the past. He saw his father resting his arms on the cart, and firing carefully and steadily into the sky, the servants racing the enormous white Rajapalaiyams to the furry black bodies amid the sound and smell of gunfire. It was one of his few clear memories of his father. He hadn’t retrieved it in a long time but now that it played behind his eyes, and was renewed in front of him, he felt a great calm descend.