The Ravi Lancers (34 page)

By God yes, Krishna thought, that’s what I need! Hanuman thrust the bottle into his hand, he put the neck to his lips, and drank. He choked and coughed for it was pure brandy; and wiped his eyes and drank again. For the moment he was Commanding Officer of the Ravi Lancers. They had cut through the Germans like Arjun through the ranks of the Kurus. They had overcome machine guns, barbed wire, mud, artillery. They had overcome everything that he, Yuvraj Krishna Ram, had said they could not overcome. They had perfectly upheld Warren Bateman’s faith in them; and shown that he, their prince and future lord, Son of the Sun, knew nothing and had no stomach for a fight into the bargain.

‘Brigadier-general sahib a-raha,’
Hanuman said quietly, taking the brandy bottle from Krishna’s hand and slipping it into his pack.

Rainbow Rogers here? Krishna thought. No one had ever seen him even as far forward as a reserve trench, but here he was in an unconsolidated position taken from the enemy at bayonet point barely an hour since!

‘Major Krishna Ram? Ah, there you are ...’ The general’s long face was pale but determined. His monocle dangled loose on the end of its cord. ‘You have done magnificently. I shall see that your action is properly recognized ... General Glover directs that this ridge be held at all costs ...at all costs, do you understand? ... now that it has been captured.’

‘Yes, sir ... We need barbed wire and more machine guns. And more artillery on the tasks.’

‘I’ll see that you get them, never fear ... Poor Bateman’s in a good deal of pain, I passed him on my way up.’ The general was perspiring with fear, Krishna noticed. But he was here. Well, different bullocks needed different goads.

‘We must hold it,’ General Rogers repeated. ‘General Glover told me that if we did, I ... well, for all our sakes, we must.’

‘We will,’ Krishna said. Not for the general’s CMG, he thought, but for Bateman-sahib, and this new god Mars, the European god of war, whom they were just learning to worship with the proper human sacrifices.

The chestnut tree over Krishna’s head dropped blossoms on him in a white shower, filling the air with a heavy almond-flavoured smell of human seed. Along the edge of the wood wild cherries in full blossom dripped red and white petals on the khaki turbans of the sowars gathered close around the place where he stood. The afternoon sun slanting low over the river painted the brick houses of Longmont an antique red, dulled and gentle, touched with golden spots where windows reflected the sun.

The officers and VCOs stood to his right and left, and immediately behind him those who by the custom of his kingdom had the right to stand closest--Hanuman, his orderly, his trumpeter, and--reappeared, with no word spoken, from the anonymous depths of the squadrons where they had been posted--his two bodyguards. Also by custom, the rissaldar-major stood closest at his right hand and the latest joined recruit at his left.

He said, ‘Be seated.’ After the briefest of hesitations the six hundred men lowered themselves to squat on their hunkers. Krishna thought, they know I am disobeying the wishes of the commanding-sahib--but a durbar was a very personal thing, and for this moment it was he, not Warren Bateman, who was the centre of it. There would be longer speeches, longer questions, more discussions--but he welcomed it. And, like any Indian prince, when his patience ran out there was nothing to stop him saying, Enough, and stalking out. No one would think any the worse of him for it. They would not expect him to act like an Englishman because they did not expect him to think like one, in spite of his peaked cap.

‘Durbar is open,’ he said. ‘Let who will, speak.’

A dafadar asked if anything could be done to lessen the number of fatigues. The men were not getting the rest they were surely entitled to when out of the line. One particular fatigue, of carrying heavy water cans up to the reserve trenches, was
bhisti’s
work, and took up scores of men’s time every night.

Krishna said, ‘The colonel-sahib spoke to the general some time ago about this. Then, nothing could be done. I will look into it again.’

Privately he thought, at least part of the heavy work load was due to stupidity on the part of the higher command. The ground sloped generally downward for a mile or two from the rear towards the trenches, and only three days ago he had suggested that semi-permanent piping might be installed to carry water forward ... to be told that when the army wanted the advice of a plumber they would ask one.

‘Next--you,’ he said.

A young sowar wanted to go home.

‘But you have only just come, with the latest draft,’ an older man spoke up from the middle of the crowd.

‘I had a letter from my village,’ the young man said. ‘My brother was killed by a leopard, at the well.’

‘What village is that?’ a lance-dafadar asked from under the cherry trees.

‘Budhgaon, Tehsil Kangra.’

‘I know it,’ a rissaldar said. ‘There was a leopard there when I was a boy--a shaitan that killed many cows and took a baby.’

‘It’s son or grandson is there now,’ the young man said. ‘My brother is dead, and the fields will lie untilled.’

‘I have seen the letter,’ the head clerk said. ‘The postmark is of Jogindar Nagar, veritably.’

Krishna Ram said, ‘You may go. The head clerk will make out the proper papers ... You! ‘

A man asked whether they could not revert to the customary method of washing their whole bodies, as he was feeling unclean.

A chorus of voices spoke out on the subject. A jemadar of C Squadron recited a hundred lines of the Ramayana in support of cleanliness, listened to with rapt attention by the gathered men. The Brahmin capped him with a hundred and fifty lines from an obscure Tantric hymn pouring curses on uncleanness of body. A pockmarked sowar from the Signal Section pointed out that though no one could call the weather hot, it was certainly much less cold than it had been two months ago when the order was made. A lance-dafadar said that no one in his squadron--B--had had influenza or feverish cold or pneumonia for over a month.

Krishna Ram said, ‘Let all wash as they wish, whether piece by piece, or stripped to the loin cloth at the well or tap or bucket, as customary. But let any man who goes to hospital of a cold, beware.’ A lance-dafadar of the Machine Gun Section said, ‘Lord, when we came out of the battle of St. Rambert, bringing with us as many of our dead as we could find, they were buried in a common grave behind the trenches. It is our right and custom that the dead shall be burned. It is understood that the ashes cannot be scattered on a stream that will take them to Holy Ganga, but certainly the bodies should be burned, not buried, to hold the spirit under this foreign soil instead of releasing it to the air, that circles the whole earth, and might perhaps carry our dust to fall on Holy Ganga’s waters.’

The quartermaster said, ‘Lord, I indented for wood, but was refused. The DAQMG sahib said there was a grave shortage of wood, and what he had was needed for revetting the trenches.’

‘I know,’ Krishna said. ‘I have written to the brigadier-general about this matter, and will speak also when I see him tomorrow. Meantime, the quartermaster, who can collect and hide many things in his store without the knowledge of anyone--even his commanding officer--may perhaps collect some wood.’

‘Yes, lord,’ Sohan Singh said, ‘I can do that. But it is not easy to transport, if we are moved to another part of the front.’

‘Do what you can ... Next.’

A grizzled sowar said, ‘We have talked of death. I talk of life ... We are men far from our homes. It is proper that we should have the service of women from time to time. There are none, except some of the public sort even here in this village, as anyone can see who watches the
gora log
going to the houses at the end of the street in the afternoons and evenings. But it is forbidden to us of the
rissalas
and
paltans
to enter those places. What is to be done, before perchance some man deprived too long of what is his right, shall commit a crime against an honourable and proper woman of this country, while she is working in the fields perhaps, or taking a child home at night? Who then will be guilty of the crime, for surely it will not be he who assaults the woman, needing what a woman gives?’

A man said, ‘Surely the public women of this place should be opened to such as us, for...’

Krishna recognized him as a clerk from RHQ, a slight middle-aged man who had come to Ravi from British India a dozen years ago, and had been heard to talk of Swaraj and other dangerous subjects. The previous RM had threatened to have his ears cut off if he fomented any sedition in the regiment, and, as far as was known he had not. It was thought that he, like the wrestler, was in flight from the British, and did not dare to make trouble, for fear he would be handed back to them.

Krishna cut in, saying, ‘Enough! This will be considered by me. Let there be no more discussion until I have spoken ... Next.’

The regiment talked, comfortably squatted. A young sowar asked how to cure homesickness and an old one asked what he should do with some money he had taken off a German corpse.

Sunset was the customary time to end durbar, and a man spoke hurriedly: ‘It is in my mind that after our time in the front line, and after the great victory of your highness at St. Rambert Ridge, it would be meet to hold a
tamasha
... We have eaten what was given us, for we are soldiers, but it was not our food and many are always hungry. Can we not fill great tuns of rice, and make mountains of
pakka
chupattis, full of
ghi
, and goats let there be...

‘Ai, ai, yes! ‘ the men murmured.

‘And music, and dance, and a play that we may watch...’

Krishna Ram said, ‘It shall be so. As soon as it can be arranged.’ The men clapped and a loud shout of approval rose. Krishna said, ‘Durbar is ended.’

Major Bholanath barked, ‘Attention! ‘ His palms joined, Krishna bowed to the men and they to him. He walked quickly away across the field, through the dusk to his billet, his suite following respectfully ten paces behind him.

An hour later he was sitting in the one comfortable armchair in his billet room, drinking, two hurricane lanterns burning, one on the table and one on the window. Hanuman announced the adjutant and quartermaster, Dayal Ram and Sohan Singh. Dayal Ram saluted as he came in, Sohan Singh made a low obeisance, touching his hands quickly to Krishna Ram’s feet and then to his own forehead. Krishna said, ‘Wait a minute.’ He was sitting in his stockinged feet, riding breeches and shirt, a British warm thrown loosely over his shoulders. Now he stepped up on to the bed and squatted there, his feet tucked under him. ‘Be seated,’ he said. Sohan Singh squatted on the floor, and Dayal Ram took the armchair. Going back to type, Warren Bateman would say, if he could see them now, Krishna mused; but he was really more comfortable this way; he had only told himself the chairs were more comfortable under the influence of Mr. Fleming, and his desire to become English.

Hanuman brought titbits on a metal
tali
and set the bottle of brandy close to Krishna’s hand on the bedside table. Krishna poured a glass for Dayal Ram, but Sohan Singh refused, making a
namasti
and shaking his head. Business began, all conducted in Hindi.

‘Highness,’ Sohan Singh said, ‘if I may take a thousand rupees out of the imprest account, I can arrange a place where public women can be made available to our men. There are enough women here who need the money ... or the men.’

‘That is beyond doubt,’ Dayal Ram said with a lazy, half-satisfied smile. ‘Plenty would give money.’

‘Ah, to a young bull like you, perhaps,’ the quartermaster said, ‘but, on demand, our men will have to pay.’

‘What do you need the thousand rupees for?’ Krishna asked.

‘To prepare a house or two--or perhaps a barn or cowshed. To buy some medicines ... your highness knows that some of these Fransezi women suffer from the sickness ... To pay any Military Policeman who might come across what we are doing.’

‘And there will be nothing in your accounts?’

‘Nothing, lord. In a month or two there will be a profit, perhaps five hundred rupees a month.’

‘What would you do with that?’

‘Buy necessities that are not in the ration ... More money for
tamashas
when we are out of the line. There will be more bribes.’ Dayal Ram said, ‘Have you spoken to the doctor? These whores will have to be inspected, or we will start getting a number of venereal cases, and the general will ask questions.’

Sohan Singh popped a sweetmeat into his mouth and chewed appreciatively. ‘Ai, your highness will make me fatter than ever. The Doctor-sahib will inspect the women as often as necessary--twice a week, he said--and he will see that no case of venereal disease is reported in the sick states. He will treat them in the RAP.’

Krishna Ram considered a moment, while the two staff officers talked of other matters in low voices. This was all against rules and regulations. It would involve several officers in lying, and the falsification of books and accounts, for he’d have to invent some reason for drawing the thousand rupees out of the imprest. It was indefensible ... but it seemed to be necessary. The men--not all, but many--badly needed women. The army was doing nothing, because of British puritanism and because of their feelings against allowing Indian troops to couple with white women. But why should Indians suffer for the guilts and fears of Europe? Why should they not seek solace from the bloody battlefield in European yonis?

Dayal Ram said, ‘The men need it ... It’s only been their discipline that’s kept them out of trouble so far. And a lot of these women throw themselves at your head. Not as much as the English ladies, though.’ He drank and smacked his lips. Krishna took another drink of his brandy. ‘Tell me,’ he said on an impulse, ‘what happened on that leave of yours?’

Dayal’s handsome face lit up eagerly. He leaned forward. ‘Highness, the English are different from what they pretend to be. The women certainly ... and, I think, the men, too. The women present a front so cold, so stiff, and formal ... but only approach them and they are as hot under their skirts as the loosest women in Basohli. As soon as I reached London, I found out how to work the telephone and then rang Lady Harriet Symonds. I asked her if she would do me the honour of dining with me ... at the Savoy. You know my father is giving me a very big allowance and I can afford it. She suggested instead that I go to her house, to see what I looked like, I suppose. After two drinks she became, well, affectionate ... you know, sitting close to me on the sofa, looking at me with her eyes big and her eyelashes fluttering. We were in the drawing-room, with butlers and servants about. Then she suggested we go for a drive. I can’t drive, of course, but she did. It was a Rolls Royce. She drove me up to a park, Hampstead or something, and stopped. It was dark. She just turned, lay on my shoulder and put her hand ... right on my prick! ‘