The Ravi Lancers (58 page)

Krishna raised his head and put his palms flat on the ground in front of his knees. He said, ‘You know the situation. What are we to do? Let the Brahmin speak first, concerning how the holy books and ancient custom might guide us.’

The woordie-major stuck his head round the gas curtain at the top of the steps. ‘Prince, a German officer came into A Squadron under a white flag. They have sent him here. He refuses to speak to anyone but the commander.’

‘Bring him in.’

The German officer who came down the steps was young and blond and held his head arrogantly. He said in clipped English,

‘Who is the commander here?’

‘I am. Major Krishna Ram.’

The German clicked his heels and bowed. He said, ‘I am authorized by Colonel von Stalwitz, commanding the Imperial German troops in the immediate vicinity, to accept your surrender. You will be permitted the honours of war.’

Krishna found a smile. ‘You mean, we can keep our sabres and rifles?’

‘The honours of war means that you may march to the rear carrying your arms. In a safe area you will pass before a saluting guard of honour of not less than one full platoon commanded by an officer, with guidon. Once you have marched past, you will surrender your arms, of course.’

‘That is the correct way, is it?’

‘Yes, major.’

Krishna said, ‘We have not yet decided what to do. I was just about to discuss it with these gentlemen.’

The German’s wondering eyes took in Sohan Singh’s flabby jowels, the Brahmin looking like a beggar on a cold day, Krishna’s own unkemptness. He said insolently, ‘I thought you were the commanding officer. Is it a Workers’ Council that I am negotiating with?’

Krishna said patiently, ‘No. Now you may go.’

‘But what answer ... ?’

‘None, yet.’

‘Never surrender,’ Warren Bateman’s voice was a croak from the corner. ‘Tell him to go to hell.’

The German said, ‘Colonel von Stalwitz will feel free to begin action against you immediately after my return.’

Krishna said, ‘Very well, though, as I said, we have not yet decided. Until we do, we shall defend ourselves, and you will lose many men ... That is all,’ he added peremptorily.

The German, after another hesitation, again bowed, clicked his heels and went up the steps and out.

Krishna turned to the Brahmin. ‘Now,
pandit-ji
.’

The Brahmin said, ‘Prince ... the Rawal of Basohli told me, when he selected me as the pandit to accompany you over the Black Water, of the talk that you and he and your august grandfather had had in the temple the night you proposed that the regiment be offered to the British Sirkar. He told me that the sending of the regiment was like the sending of Lord Krishna, your namesake, to Hastina as an ambassador to find out whether it was to be peace or war between the two kingdoms. The new things we have learned, the battles we have taken part in, the defeats we have suffered, the victories we have achieved through such as Himat Singh--all these are as nothing. They are no more than the playing of light and shadow upon the question, and the question was--peace or war, between them and us. We have seen much that is good and noble. More, far more, that is ignoble, debasing of man and god alike. I say therefore that the answer we take back to Ravi is ... war. We shall not surrender any more to their ideas. They shall force nothing more on us. There shall be no union or accommodation between us.’

Krishna Ram said gently, ‘I understand,
pandit-ji
. But how shall that decision be interpreted in the matter before us now?’

The Brahmin said, ‘It is of no consequence. Fight. Surrender. It does not matter. Our embassy is ended. Soon or late we shall return to Bharat-desh, and inform our sovereign of our thoughts.’ The doctor said slowly, in the halting Hindi he had acquired during his fourteen months with the regiment, ‘You mean ... total rejection of the west? Their medicine and science, too?’

‘Yes,’ the Brahmin said.

‘Government? Engineering? Farming? All that the sowars have been studying, hoping to adapt to conditions in Ravi?’

‘Yes,’ the Brahmin said firmly. ‘There can be no compromise. Either we follow the light of the Lord Vishnu or we follow these foreign gods. We cannot do both.’

The doctor said, ‘I cannot go quite that far...’ A whistling shriek presaged the burst of a shell somewhere close by. One of the candles went out in the shiver of air from the explosion. Sohan Singh relit it. The doctor continued almost without a break, ‘I am a Christian, you know ... I think that we who have seen so much here, and learned so much, have a duty to tell the rest of our people about what we have learned, to enable them to separate what is good from what is bad about the European way of life. They--our people--are so uneducated that, if not advised, they must take all or nothing. It is our privilege to be able to show them how to make distinctions ... It is therefore imperative that we survive in order to carry this knowledge back to India. I am for surrender.’

Krishna glanced at Sohan Singh, who spread his fat hands. ‘Yuvraj ... as for this embassy, I agree with the pandit-ji. I have learned nothing from the merchants I have dealt with. I came ready for the honesty the Christians talk of, and I was prepared to be honest myself in turn ... but they act no differently from the greediest Basohli bazaar thief. Nor are they very intelligent. I have amassed over two lakhs of rupees for the regiment with no exertion and no risk, not from my acumen but from their stupidity, and greed.’

‘And half a lakh for yourself, I don’t doubt,’ Krishna said dryly. ‘What do you advise here?’

‘Surrender,’ the quartermaster said. ‘Thinking that this might happen at some time, I long ago prepared ways of transferring some money into Germany. Wherever they imprison us, we and the sowars will be well looked after.’

From the gloom Warren Bateman muttered hoarsely, ‘Treason! There must be no surrender.’

Krishna said, ‘Rissaldar-sahib?’

Rissaldar Ram Lall leaned forward where he squatted with the rest of them. ‘We are fighting men,’ he said. ‘We cannot return to our homes and say we gave up before we had to. Who knows what may happen tomorrow? We must hold on here.’

Krishna looked at Warren Bateman and said, ‘I presume you would continue to fight, sir?’

‘Of course I would,’ Warren said. ‘And when you are court martialled, as you certainly will be, it will be for cowardice as well as for mutiny if you order a surrender now.’

‘Rissaldar-major-sahib ? ‘

‘As I said, lord, I do not think it is proper for me to take part in this panchayat since it is being held against the orders of the true commanding officer.’

Bateman broke in, ‘Speak, sahib. You may be able to save them from a greater disgrace.’

The rissaldar-major said, ‘As the presence orders ... My lord, sahibs assembled--as to this talk of an embassy, I understand only dimly what is meant. I was a servant of the Sirkar while this was being discussed in Basohli. But I understand enough to say that unless there is a mighty change of heart in all India, it will serve nothing to try to reject what the English and the others have brought. Does anyone here know a peasant who, being offered a ride in a motor car, will walk? Or, being shown a tap with running water, will insist on carrying water half a mile from the well? He who preaches keeping to all our old ways must act upon the minds and hearts of Indians, not against the inventions of Europeans. It is in my mind that our first task is neither to accept all nor to reject all that the Europeans have brought, but to decide each case on its merits. But, as men, we must prove that we can stand level with them. I, who have eaten the Sirkar’s salt, cannot stand level with anyone if I fail now in my duty. Our clear duty is to fight. If help comes, so much the better for our wives and children. If not, we shall go to join the army of the Sun.’

‘Not today,’ the Brahmin said gloomily. ‘Indra has hidden his face from us for the past seven days.’

‘Which was the duration of the war in heaven,’ Krishna said. Another shell burst in No Man’s Land, but closer. He continued, ‘My friends ... subjects of my grandfather ... citizens of Bharat-desh ... as you have all agreed, our embassy to the west is ended. We have tried all the methods which the wisdom of our ancestors laid down ...
Sam
--we have spent thirteen months asking, seeing, observing, discussing ...
Dan
--we have given our blood, our money, our labour, our very lives to Europe ...
Bhed
--we have created a rift among them, for some think one thing about us and some another. Perhaps the rift would have become deeper if we--I am particularly to blame--had not turned at last to
dand
, physical force. As my grandfather warned, we came here young and will return old, having learned much that we would prefer to have remained innocent of ... It is time we went back to our own earth, our own sun. As to what we do when we get there, I stand like a cow on four legs--one is the word of the Brahmin--utter rejection; and one is the word of the doctor; and one the word of Sohan Singh; and one the word of the rissaldar-major. Where then is my heart? My head? It is my opinion that we must get back to Bharat-desh and there decide, as we face each problem, which is the proper leg to stand on for that moment, that problem ... As to what we do now, I think we shall not surrender here, because we are decided that we shall no longer surrender there, in Bharat-desh. Shall we then simply hold on here, hoping that the British will rescue us? No, because that is what we must not do in Bharat-desh. We must rescue ourselves in order to be free. We will fight our way out.’

‘Lord,’ Rissaldar Ram Lall said doubtfully, ‘there will be no artillery support.’

‘We have seen many attacks,’ Krishna said. ‘Did the artillery ever destroy the wire, the machine guns? No, we must rely on our own ways, of speed, and stealth. We will carry no weapons but the bayonets. We will move by dark.
Pandit-ji
, look to your astrological tables and tell me when the gods will that we move.’

‘I do not have them with me, lord,’ the Brahmin said, ‘but your highness is surely aware that tomorrow is your birthday. You were born at ten minutes before noon. Of a certainty, that will be an auspicious moment.’

‘But,
pandit-ji
,’ Krishna said jovially, ‘that’s broad daylight. And the Germans won’t wait that long ... Hold! I was born in India, was I not?’

‘Of course, lord,’ the Brahmin said wonderingly. ‘In Basohli.’

‘Don’t you remember how they kept changing the clocks on the ship?’ Krishna said. ‘Five and a half hours altogether ... take five and a half hours off 11.50 and you get 6.20. I was born at 6.20 a.m., French time.’

‘As the presence pleases,’ the Brahmin said dubiously.

Krishna said, ‘Which is half an hour before first light. We shall move at that hour. And the men certainly need some sleep. So be it. What is the strength of the regiment here, now?’

‘Three hundred,’ Sohan Singh said.

Krishna said, ‘Let every man be asked personally whether he wishes to come with us, or stay here to surrender to the Germans after we have gone. Let every man who comes with me tie the handkerchief round his right wrist... I will give orders to squadron commanders here in half an hour.’

The quartermaster said hesitantly, ‘Prince ... I have a thought ... I may be out of my proper senses, but...’

‘Speak up, man,’ Krishna said testily, ‘what is it?’

‘It is the second day of Dussehra. I had brought up some sets of nautch clothes, with the extra ammunition. I was going to get some of the best dancers dressed, and let them dance, to a little music, in the Aid Post, in the reserve trenches, in the dugouts, so that the men would have a little something of Dussehra, and...’

‘By the eyes of Vishnu, you are right! ‘ Krishna exclaimed. ‘You were going to suggest that some of us wear the costumes! Yes! Distribute them, as many as you have, to the men who will be around me--my bodyguards, Hanuman, the rissaldar-major-sahib.’

‘It will make you more conspicuous,’ Rissaldar Ram Lall said doubtfully.

‘I hope so,’ Krishna said. ‘Now, let us pray in silence.’

He bent over, palms joined, and prayed, then rose to his feet. The members of the panchayat filed out, making
namasti
. Warren Bateman said, ‘You’re mad.’

Krishna replied, ‘No, I am just coming to my senses.’

At five o’clock in the morning Krishna arose and went out. He waited till his eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, but after five minutes still could not make out the shape of the sentry at the end of the bay. The air was thick, wet and motionless. He realized that a dense fog had settled on to the land. He stripped to the Indian testicle bag he had taken to wearing instead of European underpants, and ceremonially washed from head to toe in water which Hanuman poured into his hand from a big German container. The Brahmin watched, praying.

When he finished, Krishna returned inside the dugout, where Hanuman and the two bodyguards dressed him in the white ceremonial costume worn by the character dancing the part of his namesake the demi-god Krishna in the epics. A huge tinsel sunburst decorated the front of his red turban, and a smaller one, representing the Sun of Ravi, shone on the left breast of his yellow silk tunic. The sword stuck through his sash was an ancient Rajput blade, heavily curved, that was much used in the dance. Krishna felt the edge, and gave it to his orderly. ‘Sharpen it, Hanuman. We are not going to dance with it today.’

He turned to the watching Brahmin. ‘Are you staying here,
pandit-ji
?’

The Brahmin fell on his knees. ‘Lord, is there permission?’ His voice quavered. ‘I am not a man of war, but I would a thousand times rather come with you, reciting prayers at your side as we Brahmins did in olden times at the side of the Kings of Ravi, than that you should turn your face from me afterwards, because I did not come.’

‘No,
pandit-ji
,’ Krishna said, pulling the man gently to his feet, ‘your prayers will be heard from here, as well as from my side, if the Lord Vishnu wishes to hear them at all. Put on my
tilak
--red today.’

That done, he walked on down the trench. Outside the Aid Post he found Sohan Singh also in white, and said, ‘Are you coming with us, Sohan, or will you stay here with the wounded?’