Maya (15 page)

We hadn't been walking long when I heard the sound of a vehicle approaching. Both of us turned just in time to catch a glimpse of a car as it rounded a bend in the road and disappeared momentarily behind a clump of bushes. I positioned myself behind Penny, relying on the old hitchhiker's ploy of stationing the female out front where she can catch the driver's attention. I hadn't waved my hand more than once or twice when an old Land Rover chugged up next to us and abruptly stopped, stirring up a small cloud of dust.

Two men sat inside. The driver, with his thin moustache, was distinguished in a military sort of way. He was dressed in a khaki chauffeur's uniform and wore a red felt beret tipped jauntily over his forehead. His high cheekbones and almond eyes made it clear that he had been born somewhere in the mountains. The Sikh in the passenger seat, nearest to us, was obviously the boss. He was slightly older, in his mid fifties I would guess, a big man on the verge of becoming too heavy. When the jeep stopped, the passenger leaned out the window and saluted with a leather crop, greeting us in fluent English with just a touch of a British accent.

“Good morning!”

“Good morning,” I said. Penny smiled demurely.

He returned her smile. “Going to the park?”

I nodded my head. “That's the plan.”

“Come along, then. We're headed that way ourselves.”

Before we could grab our bags, the driver was out from behind the wheel and around to our side of the jeep, where he stood at attention, holding the door. We tossed our things in back and climbed in after them. The next moment, we were bouncing up the narrow, winding dirt road that led to Corbett.

Our host turned halfway around in his seat, talking to us over his shoulder while we bumped along. As he spoke he toyed with the crop, holding it in his right hand and lazily slapping the palm of his left. He had about
him the robust aura of health and strength of someone who had lived an active, outdoor life. He too had on a khaki uniform, but in place of the driver's beret, an imposing, jet-black turban was meticulously wrapped over his hair. Behind the tightly groomed beard his face was tanned and handsome. His eyes were hidden by a pair of dark aviator glasses. Once or twice he rapped lightly on the dash to emphasize a word or phrase. I concluded that this business of the swagger stick was a military affectation, a pompous vestige of the British Raj. I had to admit that he managed to pull it off with considerable aplomb. He commanded the sort of easy authority that makes for an ideal officer, a strong man who would claim the natural respect and genuine friendship of his soldiers.

“Quite a nice morning, wouldn't you agree?” He glanced up at the clear sky, then back at us.

“Couldn't be better,” I answered. “We've just come from Delhi. It's hard to believe the difference.”

“Hot down there, is it?”

“Oh yes, it's hot all right,” Penny said. “Somewhere around thirty-seven yesterday afternoon.”

“But we've escaped for a while,” I added.

Once again he looked back and studied me for a minute. “You are from Germany, no?”

“No,” I said.

“No?” He looked again.

“United States.”

“Ah. USA. I see. And you?” He glanced over his shoulder at Penny.

She had both hands above her head adjusting the clip that held her hair in place, the thin cotton of her kameez pulled snugly up under her breasts. “British.”

He seemed to find this amusing. “Ah ha! I would never have guessed. Both of you could easily pass for German, you know.”

“Really?” She fastened the clip with a snap and lowered her arms.

“Or Russian, for that matter.” He smiled and lightly tapped the nails of his left hand with the stick. “So you're on holiday in India. Arrived recently?”

“Not really. I've been here about eight months now,” I said. “Since last June.” This plainly caught him by surprise, but before he could respond I continued. “We're here to do research. This is Penelope Ainsworth, from Oxford University.”

She nodded. “How do you do.”

“My name's Stanley Harrington. From University of Chicago.”

“Chicago?” He sounded puzzled. “But isn't that . . .? Why yes, of course. The place where you Americans kill pigs!” I was about to respond, but he raised the stick, motioning for me to wait. “How does it go? ‘Hog butcher for the world . . .'”

Penny repressed a smile.

“Excellent!” I exclaimed. “Hog butcher for the world. That's wonderful. You know American poetry?”

“Only a bit,” he replied. I could tell he was pleased with himself. “Mostly it was British poets, but there were one or two of your countrymen. Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost. We were required to memorize them. In school, you know.”

“I'm impressed. But just for the record, that city has a university as well. Sandburg didn't mention it, but it's there.”

“How interesting . . .”

“Just down the street from the slaughterhouse,” I added drolly. “That's where they send faculty who don't get tenure.”

Singh gave me a puzzled look. Penny jabbed me with her elbow.

“I'm joking.” It occurred to me how delighted Margaret would have been by this exchange.

He turned around and looked out the windshield at the road ahead, clearly uncertain what to make of my humor. After a second, though, he pushed himself around again. “Excuse me, please. I neglected to introduce myself. Colonel Ravindar Singh. Director of Corbett. This is my driver, Suresh.” The chauffeur nodded in our direction.

“Very well,” he continued, “so you are both scholars out for a bit of a trek, is it?” He ruminated on this. “But is your research somehow connected with Corbett?”

“Oh, no,” Penny laughed. “We're here—in the park, that is—on holiday. Just for fun.”

“Bravo.” He rolled the crop back and forth over his palm. “For
fun
.” He seemed to take some pleasure in the word. “And have either of you picked up any of our Indian languages during your stay?”

“
Nishchit rup say
.” I switched into Hindi and, anticipating his reaction, stuck with it. “It would be a shame to spend so much time here without knowing how to carry on a conversation or read the papers.”

This positively blew him away. Nine times out of ten, people in India
are elated with any foreigner who even makes a stab at a few phrases of their language. Coming out of my mouth, such high brow, Sanskritized vocabulary must have shocked him. He cranked around in his seat and checked to see if we really were the same people he had picked up a few minutes back. “And you, Miss,” he addressed Penny in his own rather formal Hindi.

She hoisted a pack of Dunhills out of her bag, flipped back the red and gold lid and proffered it to him. “Do you mind if I smoke?” The Hindi words slid effortlessly from her lips. That did it. He was overjoyed. He and the chauffeur both joined her for a cigarette. Everyone was happy. Even Suresh, who had been left out of things so far, was quite cheery now as we veered along the unpaved road, smoking and conversing in a language he could understand.

We had traveled some distance from Ramnagar by this time, and the terrain now contracted around us in a frenzy of rank vegetation. Teak, oak, and other hardwoods mixed with conifers and stocky palms. The shadows between them crawled with serpentine vines and surreal tropical plants and flowers. We were being swallowed by a primeval jungle. A band of silver langur monkeys romped in the trees near the road. Each black face turned to watch us as the car wheeled by. Rounding a sharp bend we suddenly came upon a luxuriously plumed parrot perched on a branch that jutted over our path. The bird cocked its head, scolding us with a depraved, strangely human cry as the jeep passed below.

While we drove, Colonel Singh narrated the story of the Patlidun Valley, telling us a bit of its checkered history under the Raj and its eventual association with the British naturalist Jim Corbett, who died in 1955. For most of his life Corbett had been known locally for his bravery in hunting down several man-eating tigers that had roamed these hills during the almost eighty years he lived here. In his later years he had earned a small international reputation as the author of a series of adventure stories based on his exploits. It was clear that Singh looked on him as a hero of sorts, which may have accounted for our host's own British affectations.

We had been riding through the jungle for half an hour or so, listening to his stories, when the Land Rover arrived at a juncture in the road, one way leading to the park and the other to a small town nearby. The colonel signaled our driver to stop. He took a last puff on his cigarette, poked out the butt in an ashtray on the dash, and turned around to face us.

“What are your plans, then? Where shall we drop you?”

Penny and I looked at each other and realized that we had not the slightest idea where we would go from here. Our plans had not extended beyond the border of the park.

Finally Penny spoke up. “We hoped to find a government tourist bungalow in the park. Perhaps you could direct us to one?”

He looked at us quizzically. “Tourist bungalow? In Corbett?”

“It needn't be luxurious. Anything at all will do. There must be
something
nearby.”

“No, I'm afraid not.”

“Nothing at all?” I'm sure I sounded both surprised and incredulous.

He shook his head. “The park isn't designed for overnight visitors. There are no accommodations.
Kuch nahin
.”

Wonderful. This explained why people in Delhi had never been here. For a minute it seemed that no one knew what to say. At last, the colonel spoke up.

“I'll tell you what,” he said, shifting back into English. “I have a forest bungalow not far from here. My own place, you understand. Would you be interested in putting up with me for a night or two? It's small, but I could give you a room if you like.”

“Are you certain we won't interfere with your work?” said Penny, looking concerned.

“No, no! On the contrary. It will be my pleasure. One grows lonely out here in the bush. It will be an excellent diversion for me. You must understand, however, that I'm not really equipped to deal with guests. But I'm sure my cook can produce something suitable for dinner. And I keep the bar stocked. We can tour on one of the elephants after breakfast tomorrow, as well. Perhaps spot a tiger. A bit rustic, to be sure, but it could be, well,
fun
.” He looked at me, then over at Penny. “What do you say?”

I turned to Penny, who shrugged her shoulders.

“All right,” I laughed. “We accept your invitation. With pleasure.”

12

S
INGH HAD BUSINESS
to complete prior to heading home, which presented us with an opportunity to visit some of the outlying areas of the park. Suresh threw the Land Rover into four-wheel drive and took the left fork, abandoning the main road for a path barely wide enough to accommodate a vehicle this size. We hadn't gone more than a hundred yards before we entered a clearing, scattering a group of spotted deer that had been drinking from the brackish waters of a lagoon. They bounded away on agile legs, plunging into the underbrush. I could see them peering out at us from the shadows, turning their ears and sniffing at the air. Remnants of brush dangled from the sprawling horns.

We turned back into the jungle, plying our way along a trail—nothing more than two parallel ruts—that led eventually to the periphery of a wide meadow. It was dotted with compact trees and wiry shrubs that squatted in the grass like petulant dwarfs, their twisted limbs held close under leafy cloaks. On the meadow's far side a small herd of elephants grazed in the sun. They were occupied in gathering lunch, delicately uprooting the dwarfs and dislocating their limbs, but at the sound of the Land Rover, all activity ceased and every head turned in our direction. Nurslings, small and wrinkled with gray sails for ears, stared out at us wide-eyed from under the bellies of the gigantic adults, each miniature trunk coiled around the nearest available leg. As we approached, the larger calves pulled close to their mothers. Singh had the driver stop so we could step outside and get a better look, but it soon became evident that the big females were not pleased by the unexpected guests at their midday meal. Several began pawing and stamping at the dirt. It wasn't long before the closest trumpeted aggressively, which persuaded us to move along.

From there, our path wound up over a ridge and along the rim of an immense gorge that had been cut into the earth by the Kosi River as it poured down out of the mountains on its way to meet the Ganges. We pursued a dramatic, treacherous route, the gorge growing ever wider
and deeper. By now the Land Rover was a good forty meters above the meandering water, chugging along the edge of a striated rock wall that plummeted nearly straight down to the boulders below. I had my eye on Suresh, who seemed focused, but totally at ease, when Singh motioned again for him to stop.

While Suresh waited, the rest of us climbed out and walked to the edge of the precipice. Far below, dozens of crocodiles sprawled on the river's bank, scattered in a jumble of dull, mossy scales, dozing and sunning themselves. Now and then one of the giant lizards would yawn, flaunting ragged strings of teeth inside its long, pink mouth.

“We better go,” Singh announced, his voice pulling us back. “We have an errand to run, and we need to be home before the sun goes down.”

I could not begin to imagine how dark it would be in the jungle at night.

Once in the car he informed us that we were to pay a call on an old anchorite, Kalidas, who lived nearby. According to Colonel Singh the man “watched over things in the backwoods,” though it was not altogether evident what this meant. He had been living alone in the bush some fifty years, surviving Singh's two predecessors, who had also known him and tolerated his presence within the park. In India, saints and holy men are allowed to violate not only social conventions but often legal ones as well. His peculiar history had once been a legend among the people who lived in the hills around Almora, but with time Kalidas had gradually been forgotten by the outside world. He came here as a young man hoping to escape society, and though it had taken him nearly half a century, he seemed largely to have succeeded in his effort. For the past fifteen years Colonel Singh and his driver were the only visitors to his isolated sanctuary. They may have been the only two people left who remembered the story of how it was that he came here so many years ago.