A Division Of The Spoils (Raj Quartet 4) (49 page)

I waited.

‘On the other hand, if he’d spent his time in prison making up fantasies about Merrick’s treatment of him I felt he could have made up a plausible story to cover that ominous gap. But he hadn’t. And whatever he said
sounded
like the truth. I didn’t know what to think. But I felt like a defending lawyer who knows he can get his client off so long as he sticks to the point – the minor legal issue – and avoids anything controversial. I think I could have stuck to that and overridden Gopal if Kumar had co-operated. But he kept on saying that the real situation couldn’t be avoided. He didn’t mean the rape, he said he meant the situation between Merrick and himself. So when he came back after the recess I let everyone pull out the stops. I felt I’d exchanged briefs and was now prosecuting. If I let him talk about what he called the situation I thought he’d inadvertently give something away. It wasn’t what I wanted. It was what I felt I couldn’t resist any more. Do you see that? Or do I sound like someone covering up a prejudice and pretending the prejudice was never there?’

It was a difficult question. I couldn’t answer it. I didn’t try. What worried Rowan was the thought that after all his suspicion of Hari’s complicity in the rape was not based so much on the evidence in the file as on the fact that Hari was an Indian and the colour of his skin coloured one’s attitude to
him, and that in fact it was a relief to exchange his brief, throw off the mask and let Hari condemn himself while he was trying to condemn Merrick.

And I think it was then, with Rowan sitting opposite me, showing not a trace of anxiety (carve him in stone and nothing would have emerged so clearly as his rigid pro-consular self-assurance, remoteness and dignity), that I understood the comic dilemma of the
raj
– the dilemma of men who hoped to inspire trust but couldn’t even trust themselves. The air around us and in the grounds of the summer residence was soft, pungent with aromatic gums, but melancholy – charged with this self-mistrust and the odour of an unreality which only exile made seem real. I had an almost irrepressible urge to burst out laughing. I fought it because he would have misinterpreted it. But I would have been laughing
for
him. I suppose that to laugh for people, to see the comic side of their lives when they can’t see it for themselves, is a way of expressing affection for them; and even admiration – of a kind – for the lives they try so seriously to lead.

*

It was Gopal’s theory that the cuts and abrasions Kumar was said to have been bathing when the police turned up at his house hadn’t been there until after the police turned up, or until he arrived at police headquarters, or even until later; that is, not there until they started getting rough with him and needed a report on the file that would explain the state of his face and at the same time harden the evidence against him. When the examination got under way again Rowan read out to him Merrick’s statement about his arrival at Kumar’s house and his discovery of Kumar, bathing his face, which was cut and bruised, and of the discarded muddy clothes.

Was that an accurate report? Rowan asked.

Yes, Kumar replied. It was.

*

Gopal was deflated but bided his time. There was another report on Kumar’s file, quite a brief one, a copy of a statement
by a magistrate who’d been asked by the Deputy Commissioner to question Kumar on two rather unpleasant aspects of the handling of the case. Word had got round in Mayapore that to try to make them confess the arrested boys, all Hindus, had been forced to eat beef. Also that they’d been whipped. The magistrate’s name was Iyenagar. Rowan hadn’t seen the files on the five other boys; he’d only been shown Kumar’s. According to this file Kumar told Iyenagar that he had no complaint to make about his treatment, a simple enough refutation of the rumours and one that seemed to be borne out by the report from the medical officer at the Kandipat jail who examined Kumar physically the day he was sent there as a detenu – more than two weeks later. The only mark of physical violence noted down by the prison doctor was a contusion on his cheek. But that had been there when Merrick found him bathing his face.

The bruise, however, gave Mr Gopal an argument which he tried to turn to Kumar’s advantage. He said that the marks on Hari’s face, which Hari himself refused to explain, had been interpreted by the police as marks got from Miss Manners in the struggle with her attackers. He said that in a court of law a lawyer might reasonably have asked whether a woman could hit a man hard enough for a bruise to stay on his cheek for as long as two weeks. He was still trying to get Hari to say that the police had beaten him up. But Hari wouldn’t say this. He said it was a good point but that in a court a prosecuting counsel might well have turned it against him by suggesting that the men who attacked Miss Manners also fought with each other.

‘I saw an opening there,’ Rowan told me. ‘I asked him casually if that was what had happened. I remember how he looked at me. He said he’d no idea what happened among the men who attacked her. But he realized I’d exchanged briefs. I tried again to get him to say what had happened to him that night, gave him the chance to go back over the ground, back to the question of Colin, back to his relationship with Miss Manners, but all I got out of him was the information that sometimes he and Miss Manners had helped Sister Ludmila at the Sanctuary, occasionally visited one another’s homes, and
sometimes on a Sunday morning met in the Bibighar Gardens, the kind of places where they could go without attracting what he called abusive attention, but that all this ended on the night they visited the temple, when they had some sort of tiff.

‘I saw another opening. I said, “But you made the quarrel up later.” He didn’t fall for that. He pointed out that I was forgetting he and Miss Manners hadn’t seen each other since that night – the night they visited the temple. So I let Gopal take over, which meant letting Gopal get Hari to say what happened after Merrick arrested him.’

Almost at once they were in what Rowan called very murky waters. While they’d concentrated on the political evidence it had been possible to show that the conflict was not a conflict of evidence so much as of interpretation. Directly Hari began to describe what happened after he’d passed through the room in which the five other boys were being held behind bars, euphoric with liquor, and down into the air-conditioned basement of Merrick’s headquarters, it became a question of setting Merrick’s official statements about the interrogation against Hari’s recollections of it. Recollections, or fantasies?

For example, from the police file: this – ‘At 2245 hours the prisoner Kumar having continually refused to answer questions relating to his activities that evening asked for what reason he had been taken into custody. Upon being told it was believed he could help the police with inquiries they were making into the criminal assault in the Bibighar Gardens earlier that evening he said: I have not seen Miss Manners since the night we visited the temple. On being asked why he named Miss Manners he refused to answer and showed signs of distress.’

When Hari was asked to say whether this was accurate he said it wasn’t. He had refused to answer questions but the statement left out the fact that he’d said he would refuse to do so while he was left in ignorance of why he’d been arrested. It may have been 2245 hours before Merrick finally said he was making an inquiry, but he described it first as an inquiry about an Englishwoman who was missing, then added, ‘You know which one,’ and then made what Hari called an obscene
remark. He didn’t know what was meant by a distressed condition unless this was a reference to the fact that he was shivering as a result of being kept standing for a long time, naked, in an air-conditioned room, after Merrick had inspected his genitals. After that inspection Merrick had said, ‘So you’ve been clever enough to wash?’ and later, ‘But she wasn’t a virgin, was she, and you were the first fellow to ram her’. After that, according to Hari, Merrick had sat on his desk, drinking whisky, and talked to him about the history of the British in India, every so often interjecting remarks about the boys in the cell upstairs, suggesting that they looked on him as a leader, that they’d do anything he said, and again making the comment that ‘she hadn’t been a virgin’ and that Hari had ‘been the first to ram her’. From this sequence of events, Hari claimed, he gathered that he and the others were suspected of rape. He claimed that he didn’t mention Miss Manners until Merrick finally told him, at 2245 hours – a time he didn’t dispute – that an Englishwoman had been criminally assaulted, and added, ‘you know which one’ and then made an obscene remark. He refused to say what the remark was but admitted that he now told Merrick he hadn’t seen Miss Manners since the night of the visit to the temple.

Gopal pointed out to him that unless he repeated the obscene remark his explanation for naming her remained unsatisfactory. But he would not repeat it.

*

It annoyed Gopal that he wouldn’t. He went on pressing. Hari went on refusing. Gopal became heated, as if he were suddenly on
Merrick’s
side and intended to show that if Kumar wouldn’t repeat the remark that was because he couldn’t; it had never been made; everything he had said about Merrick’s behaviour was a pack of lies.

Hari remained unmoved. Rowan joined in again. He went over Merrick’s statement point by point, forcing Hari to agree that in a number of details it was correct. Hari
had
named Miss Manners. The time was not in dispute. And he
had
been showing signs of distress if only because he was shivering.

The rhythm of question and answer quickened. How long
had Hari been kept standing naked? He couldn’t remember. Why? He lost track of things like time. One hour? Two hours? Perhaps. Was he alone with Merrick? Not all the time, other people came in. Who? Two constables. Anyone else? Yes, there may have been others. Couldn’t he remember? Why couldn’t he remember? Was he saying he was confused, giddy and cold from standing all that time? He wasn’t standing all the time. He was allowed to sit then? No, he wasn’t allowed to sit.

Gopal said he didn’t understand. If Kumar wasn’t standing and wasn’t sitting, what was he doing, lying down?

Hari said, ‘I was bent over a trestle, tied to it. For the persuasive phase of interrogation. A cane was used.’

*

Rowan said, ‘I read out Iyenagar’s report and asked him whether that was an accurate record of his interview with the magistrate. He said it was. In a way I was prepared for that answer because when I began reading Iyenagar’s report
aloud
it struck me for the first time how very carefully the questions had been framed. They were the kind of questions a cautious authority would ask if it was suspected that a man would be too frightened to say he’d been ill-treated and if it was felt that a denial would be better for everybody’s sake. “Have you any complaint to make about your treatment in custody?” was the first question. Hari said “No.” Most of the questions were like that. And if Hari couldn’t actually reply “no” he just said he had nothing to add to his first answer. Before I began reading it I thought I’d make it impossible for him to explain why he now accused the police of physical violence when he’d had the opportunity to do that at the time. He’d agreed that the Iyenagar report was accurate. I intended to show that he was being inconsistent. But he wasn’t. I knew the answer to this before he gave it. He’d told Iyenagar the truth. He had no
complaint
to make. Just that. No complaint.

‘The question wasn’t so much why he didn’t complain then as why he was complaining now. And was he telling the truth? I read out the prison doctor’s report, the one that didn’t note any visible marks of physical violence apart from the
bruise on his face. But I couldn’t shake him. He implied that the doctor had seen other marks but hadn’t recorded them. We asked how many times he’d been hit. He said he couldn’t remember. Whenever they stopped hitting him Merrick talked to him to encourage him to confess. He said Merrick told him Miss Manners had already named him but that he didn’t believe her story. He believed she’d egged Hari and the others on and then got more than she bargained for and wanted them punished. Hari said that every time Merrick felt he was getting nowhere he told the constables to start again. I asked how long they had gone on. I still didn’t really believe him. He said he didn’t remember. Gopal asked if he was implying he lost consciousness. He said he never lost consciousness. He simply couldn’t remember how long he was on the trestle.’

Rowan paused. ‘Then he explained why he couldn’t remember. He said it was difficult to breathe in that position and that breathing was all you thought about. I believed him then. It’s not the sort of thing a man could easily make up, is it? And the trouble was that believing him made the next bit that much more difficult to write off as pure invention. He said Merrick sent the constables out of the room and spoke and acted even more obscenely. I asked him what he meant. I rather wish I hadn’t. He said Merrick – fondled him.’

‘Fondled him.’

‘I told the shorthand writer to strike that out, leave his note-book on my desk and wait outside until I called him back. Then I really started on Hari. I put it to him that he was lying, taking advantage of the examination of his case as a political detenu to make baseless accusations in the mistaken belief that these would protect him if a charge of rape were made even as late in the day as this. I really pitched into him. I told him he had the chance to retract and advised him to think very carefully before passing the chance up.’

‘Did he retract?’

‘No. He apologized.’

‘What for?’

‘For what he called misunderstanding the reason why he was being examined.’

‘What had he thought was the reason?’

‘He thought Miss Manners had managed to persuade someone at last that he’d done nothing to deserve being locked up and that this had been his chance to prove it.’

‘He wasn’t far out, was he?’

‘No, but I should have stuck to the political evidence. As soon as we went into the business of the rape I couldn’t hide my suspicions and so he thought no one had really been persuaded of anything except that it was time to interrogate him again. Either that or that we were trying to salve bad consciences. He asked outright if something had happened to her. He’d had no news of her of any kind. I told him what had happened, that she’d died of peritonitis a year before, after a Caesarean operation. He asked whether she had married. She hadn’t of course. He didn’t ask if the child survived. At first I thought he was quite unmoved. Then I saw he wasn’t. I asked if he wanted time to compose himself. He said he didn’t but that we should have told him. It was very odd. His voice was quite unaffected. Physically he was composed. But he was crying. I asked him whether what he meant when he said we should have told him was that he would have answered the questions differently if he’d known she was dead. He said he only answered them because he thought she must have wanted us to ask them. If he’d known she was dead he wouldn’t have answered them at all. I reminded him there was one important question he still hadn’t answered. He knew I meant the question about where he was when she was being attacked. He said he’d never answer it. I was ready to bring things to an end but Gopal began again about the situation between Hari and Merrick. The clerk was no longer in the room. Officially the examination was over. He realized that. He seemed willing to talk – about that situation – even anxious. I didn’t stop him. I believed he’d told the truth about the caning. I accepted that. I think you have to. I don’t condone it. I’m not sure I can condemn it. It would be unfair to single Merrick out. Caning’s a normal judicial punishment in this country. There were a lot of such sentences dished out in 1942 and I don’t doubt a fair number of beatings-up in cells to get confessions. What I didn’t accept, don’t accept, without question, is – well the other thing. He could have imagined it.
By his own admission he wasn’t in full possession of his senses. I see you don’t agree.’