The Crow Eaters (22 page)

Tanya realised guiltily that she was absolved of any part in the crime. It was all the boy’s fault. And fortunately the nanny never repeated the incident to Rodabai. This, until tonight, was the sum total of Tanya’s carnal knowledge.

Billy was entitled to a lot more pre-marital experience. As a male it was incumbent on him to be knowledgeable in matters of sex.

Billy had visited the Hira Mandi girls three times, read the Kama Sutra and discussed sex with his friends in a sombre and illuminating exchange of detail.

If Faredoon was meticulous, Billy was systematic. His mind worked in bracketed numericals. Tabulating the collective wisdom of the Kama Sutra, his own experiences and those of his friends, he had tenderly resolved on a phased plan of action for the marriage night. Phase one was to arouse and stimulate Tanya, phase two to consummate the marriage, and
phase three, the details of which were still vague, to establish an idyllic relationship with his wife. He did not expect too much, but convinced of his superior and gentle wisdom, she was to become his loving and obedient slave.

Tanya had unnerved him by her disconcerting reaction at the start of phase one, titled ‘erotic kiss’. Fortunately this was offset by her subsequent response to his unscheduled leap on her person.

Billy spent enough time in the bathroom to resuscitate his initial resolves concerning the possession of his bride.

By the time he emerged, Tanya was impatient for a repeat performance.

‘Why did you change your pyjamas?’ she demanded, surprised.

‘Felt like,’ replied Billy lightly, concealing his dismay at her naïvety.

Tanya made room for him on her bunk. Billy lay alongside and commenced stroking her; he was still on phase one. Tanya’s breathing became heavy, her eyes drowsy. Scrupulously avoiding the ‘erotic kiss’ and anxiously alive to her responses, he planted chaste little kisses on her hair and face. He delicately stroked her bosom and stomach and emboldened, inched his trembling fingers beneath the rayon panties.

But this Tanya did not allow.

Billy was aware of the vulnerability of the clitoris. His friend had gravely pronounced it the ‘key to the door of paradise’. Gradually, stroking her, shifting this way and that, he wedged his left shank between her thighs. He noticed the difference at once. Tanya’s breath came short and soft, her eyes became searching, intent, as if listening for a faint, faraway sound.

Tanya felt an astonishing surge of excitement in her body. She knew nothing but the wondrous haze of desire, and the instinctive compulsion that the momentum must continue and take her, she knew not where, to some mysterious summit. She felt excitement prickle in her fingertips, and beneath the skin of her forehead.

Now, thought Billy. He removed his leg.

But this was unbearable to Tanya. Twisting, throwing Billy back, she turned to grip his shank to her thighs and Billy thinking all her exertion was directed to bite him again shielded himself with his hand and tried to retract his legs. He could not go far on the narrow bunk and Tim gripped his bone-hard shank between her thighs and holding him in a moaning, palpitating vice, moved against him. She moaned and Billy was frightened and elated. He obligingly held his thigh at the awkward, hurtful angle she wanted, gazing at her face and at the wondrous abandon of her body. ‘Oh,’ she moaned, ‘Oh? Oh?’ questioning the reality of her marvellous experience and growing rigid again, and whimpering, and slowly going limp on him.

Tanya lay exhausted, her head on his chest. Gently extricating his leg, Billy caressed her back and felt her skin quiver slightly, involuntarily, beneath her thin nightdress.

Tanya raised her face, still heavy with the wonder of it, flushed and damp. ‘Billy,’ she whispered, ‘Billy, I love you.’ Creeping her five feet two inch length up over him she kissed his lids, his moustache, and running her fingers through the tangle of his hair, his mouth.

Billy felt the scented weight of her bosom brush his face – and he knew that the consummation could wait.

THE train squealed to a halt, awakening Billy. It was cold, the beginning of autumn in the plains of Northern India, and he judged from the change in temperature that they were already half way to Delhi. He switched on a small reading light at his head. It was three o’clock. An odd lavatory stench pervaded the compartment. The bathroom door must have opened while they slept.

Deciding to get a blanket he climbed down quietly. He crouched by the holdall, rummaging in the dark. The stench was overpowering. Billy reached to shut the bathroom door and was surprised to find it closed. He stepped up to Tanya’s bunk and switched on the dim overhead light.

Incredibly, the bedsheet covering Tanya looked faintly blotched and damp: she had wet her bed! Tanya stirred in her sleep and Billy hastily turned off the light. He stood stunned and still in the dark. When the train moved again he closeted himself in the bathroom.

Billy sat on the closed toilet seat pondering the phenomenon. No wonder there was so much linen in the holdall! He remembered the expression on Tanya’s face when he had remarked on this as they made the beds. It had not struck him then that she was embarrassed. She had averted her face, ignoring his comment, and had asked him to fetch her a drink of water.

Billy would not risk covering her with a blanket. Let her keep her secret as long as she wished. He was filled with compassion. There was a big aching hollow of tenderness in his heart and a devouring mist of love.

Leaving a blanket on top of the holdall within Tanya’s reach, he stole up to his bunk.

When he woke up again, slivers of glare cut the darkness where the shutters did not exactly fit.

Tanya heard him stir. ‘You up?’ she inquired.

‘Ya,’ he mumbled. At once alert, he sniffed. There was no smell. He looked over the edge of the bunk. The sheets were innocently white where they showed beneath the blanket. Tanya was propped up against the pillows. He noticed she had changed her nightdress.

‘Slept well?’ he asked.

Tanya nodded. ‘You?’

‘Like a dead donkey.’

Tanya laughed. Abruptly she drew her legs from the coverings and swinging them up pushed his bunk with both feet. ‘Get up! Get up you lazy lump!’

Billy’s bed almost collapsed. He jumped off it to wrestle with her. He spanked her bottom and she automatically attached herself to his ears. They were less self-conscious with each other than the night before.

When Billy went to the bathroom he saw a large, neatly wrapped brown paper parcel in one corner. He knew it contained the soiled sheet and nightdress, and he wondered when she had wrapped it.

IN Simla, at an altitude of 8,000 feet, autumn was well advanced by the end of October. They saw flaming chinar and walnut trees, dark green Himalayan mountains thick with fir, and a towering tumult of hills and precipitous valley gorges.

The forest earth was coated comfortingly with russet mattresses of decaying pine needles. In the amber twilight of autumnal trees, the dank, sweet fragrant air was kissed with the promise of coming snow. The tortuous Mall ran greyly down the spine of Simla into slushy, monkey-infested bazaar lanes. Cheap hotels and wayside tea-stalls beckoned, and away from the bazaars stood the high-walled government buildings.

Simla is a retreat of the wealthy, but already most shops were shuttered and barred for winter. The bulk of frolicking visitors had descended to the cooling plains, putting an end to the short, lively season. The hill station had a secluded atmosphere; just right for those who wished for a more private holiday. Soon these too would be gone, and mountains, bazaars, and buildings would be wrapped in thick sheets of snow, preserving the city like a house in which chairs and sofas are covered during the absence of its owners.

They unpacked in the luxurious suite of rooms reserved for them at the Cecil Hotel. Billy was awed by the sumptuousness of the furnishings and by the salaaming attendants. Since his visit to Bombay, and his association with the Easymoneys, Billy had not ceased to wonder at the extravagance natural to them. He never lost his dismay at the flaunting of wealth and possessions, not even when he became one of the richest men in the country.

Tanya, accustomed to luxury, took the hotel in her stride. Prodigality was her birthright. When she made a caustic comment about the bathroom fittings, Billy was shocked and disquieted.

Billy’s desultory attempts at the resuscitation of his carefully phased plan of action were continuously dashed by the unpredictability of the girl he had married. Their intimacies advanced, but the longed for consummation did not take place until their third day in Simla.

That fateful, darkly overcast morning, they decided on an excursion to Jacco Hill, a famous monkey sanctuary, sacred to the Hindus. They had been told in Bombay they must visit it; the spectacle of thousands of swinging, scampering and chattering monkeys would entrance them.

Arming themselves with a packet each of peanuts, and timidly approaching strangers for directions, they located the track that led to the top of Jacco Hill.

The path, twisting through the underbrush of a pine forest, was deserted. Heady with a sense of adventure they enjoyed their solitude, shouting and caterwauling to make their voices echo in the gloomy, overhung stillness.

Not a leaf stirred. Not a sound from the town that all at once appeared to have been left miles behind. Tim grew apprehensive.

‘Billy, let’s go back. There is no one here. I don’t like it.’

‘What’s to be scared of, silly? Don’t you want to see the monkeys?’

‘I don’t like it all alone. They might attack us – like that big brute who snatched the banana from my hand at the station. And it’s going to rain. Let’s go back.’

‘Scared puss. Scared puss,’ taunted Billy. But noticing the outrage on Tanya’s face, he sobered his grin. ‘There’ll be plenty of people once we get there. It can’t be dangerous – or they wouldn’t have allowed us to go.’

Still, despite the brave inflection and reasonableness of his words, Billy was infected by Tanya’s trepidation.

They trekked for more than an hour. The underbrush grew
thicker beneath larger trees, and the path narrowed until they felt as though they were in a subterranean tunnel. The brooding stillness was accentuated by the gritty crunch and slip of their nervously hastening feet.

Then they came to a yellow board with an arrow pointing the direction. Beneath the arrow was written: Jacco Hill.

‘There we are!’ exclaimed Billy, and lugging his panting bride by the hand, he helped her up the last steep bit of incline to the top.

They were at the edge of an undulating plateau. After the confined horizon of mountain-sides and forest, the vista spread refreshingly open before their eyes. Even the pines stood further apart. But there was no one in sight. No man, bird or monkey. Only the towering, brooding pines and a threatening emptiness. The sky was slaty, showing a turbulence in the upper reaches, a frantic scudding of chimney-smoke clouds.

‘No monkeys,’ said Tanya, disappointed and at the same time relieved. She cast a quick, searching eye over the trees, hoping to spy a baboon, and fearing she really might. The atmosphere was threatening enough without their brutal, wizened faces. And yet they knew the monkeys were there, hidden in tree tops, following their every move – a thousand inquisitive eyes. Billy and Tanya felt like intruders in an unintelligible realm, wild and alien.

But having come so far they had to go ahead. With faintly fluttering hearts, hand in hand, they took timorous steps to explore the plateau.

They came upon small stone structures, little make-believe temples, as if masons, halfway between constructing dolls’ houses, had become serious, and turned them into
Mandirs
with spiralling cones and sacred decorations. There were offerings of fresh flowers and sugar at the mouths of these dolls’ house
Mandirs
. Some had small, darkly sinister interiors that could not be deciphered and Tim half expected to see a monkey or two lurking in the shadows in worship of the monkey-god, Hanuman. Some, like shallow concrete
caves, were permeated with light. Before these lay enormous foot imprints cast in cement. They were eerie – just a pair of bodyless feet to remind one of the presence and passage of mysterious deities.

A breeze rustled through the pine tops. There was a distant thunder, approaching fast – a zig-zag of lightning. Then the wind lashed the pines and moaned down the mountains. The storm broke. They were soaked instantly by a solid press of rain. Lightning electrified the green gloom of the swaying forest, and the deafening crash of thunder reverberated among the trees.

Fighting the wind and rain the honeymooners ran to the edge of the plateau, seeking the track they had come by. Billy spotted the yellow board. Tanya, her Cashmere cardigan and blue silk sari darkened by the wet, was barely able to see through her rain-splattered glases. She attempted a diagonal short cut behind a crop of boulders. Unused to the uncertain terrain, her legs skidded and she splashed down in the mud. She heard Billy’s anxious, ‘Are you hurt?’

Billy caught her from behind, trying to lift her, and the weight of her flesh pressed on his thin, hairy arms. He was seized by a sudden langour, a debilitating passion. All at once he was unable to support her. In an entwined, slush-soaked tangle they fell on the gritty ground.

There was a renewed peal of thunder. Billy was kissing her, impatiently fumbling with the buttons of her blouse and feverishly pulling the sari up over her thighs with the other hand. Tanya’s legs, exposed to the elements, trembled. And all this in thunder, lightning, and torrential rain!

Forgotten were the thousand pine-veiled monkey eyes; forgotten their fear of solitude. Tanya was panting. Billy was on her, nuzzling her large, firm, rainwashed breasts. Tanya squirmed, instinctively widening her legs, her child-like eyes ecstatic. There was a change in his caress. Billy adjusted his body over hers in a new way. Holding himself with one hand, stroking her hair with the other and kissing her, he groped and struggled to enter. Tanya clung to him, arching her body
to his. Struggling and groping, Billy feared he might push too hard or too awkwardly, and Tanya, wriggling with artless enthusiasm, was no help. Then the forest resounded with a spectacular explosion of thunder and Billy, startled out of his wits, banged in as if lightning had struck his buttocks.

The marriage at last was consummated!

The month in Simla was over. Billy leaned an elbow on the counter, raised his spectacles over his forehead, and holding the sheets close to his denuded eyes scrutinised the bill item by item.

‘We sent for coffee only twice. I remember. You are charging three times.’

The counter clerk dragged his eyes from Tanya’s chest and focused them dreamily on Billy.

Billy repeated, ‘We had coffee only twice. You have charged three times. Why?’

‘I will correct it, sir,’ said the clerk, extending a delicately apathetic hand towards the bill.

‘Wait,’ said Billy, ‘better do all the corrections together.’

He added the figures. ‘There is something wrong with the total!’

The clerk withdrew his eyes from Tanya’s bare midriff and reluctantly turned them to Billy. His gaze was blank.

‘Your total is wrong,’ repeated Billy and losing his temper he almost shouted, ‘I am talking to you. Look at me! You have no shame?’

The clerk lowered his lids with a mildly penitent lassitude.

‘Let me have the bill, sir.’

He glanced over the numerals, adjusted the coffee payment, the total, and presented the new figure to Billy. ‘You are right, sir. The accountant made one mistake of twenty rupees in the total.’

Billy eyed him reproachfully and with a bleak, ‘don’t you dare look at my wife’ glower, he drew two hundred-rupee notes from his wallet. The clerk took the money and sauntered towards a safe to fetch the change.

‘Button up your cardigan!’ said Billy in a fierce whisper.

Tanya obediently buttoned herself up. The fluffy mohair covering her bosom and waist, if anything, accentuated her voluptuous curves. Billy was getting more and more put off by this unforseen concomitant of his wife’s beauty. He wished for the tenth time he were a Mohammedan and could cover her up in a
burqa
. Sensible people, the Muslims, he thought.