A Division Of The Spoils (Raj Quartet 4) (8 page)

Perron glanced down. One-handed, the major had taken out a tin of cigarettes and a lighter. He opened the tin, selected a cigarette, lit it, closed the tin and then with the good hand
reached across to the left arm which hung straight, grasped the wrist of the gloved artificial hand, raised it and placed it on the table. Having taken a draw on the cigarette he inserted it between two of the gloved fingers and left it there: an erect white tube with smoke curling from the tip.

As Perron switched his glance back to the prisoner he caught the burly MP’S eye. The MP winked.

‘Tumara nam kya hai?’ the Punjab officer asked suddenly in a low voice. The prisoner put his head on one side as a man might who recognized a language but could not identify it beyond doubt.
What is your name
?

Without waiting longer for an answer the officer continued; again in Urdu –

It says in this paper that your name is Karim Muzzafir Khan. Havildar Karim Muzzafir Khan, 1st Pankot Rifles, captured in North Africa with the other survivors of his battalion. With his comrades. With his leaders. Colonel Sahib himself also being captured. Is this so? It says so in this paper. You recognize the emblem on the paper? Does the Sircar make mistakes?

The man seemed bewildered. He looked at Perron, as if for help. Perron stared at the bridge of the man’s nose. The man looked down again at the officer.

Well?

Yes, Sahib.

Yes, Sahib? Yes? What is the meaning of this answer?

Karim Muzzafir Khan, Sahib.

Karim Muzzafir Khan, Havildar, 1st Pankot Rifles?

Yes, Sahib.

Karim Muzzafir Khan, Havildar? Captured with his battalion in North Africa?

Sahib.

Karim Muzzafir Khan, Havildar. Son of the late Subedar Muzzafir Khan Bahadur, also of the 1st Pankot Rifles?

Sahib.

Subedar Muzzafir Khan Bahadur?
VC
?

Perron was aware of his own officer looking up, alerted.

Well?

Sahib.

The Punjab officer removed the smoking cigarette, drew on
it, tapped the ash into a tray, slowly exhaled and replaced it between the rigid gloved fingers. He turned a page of the file. The prisoner’s head was lowered. He was staring at the cigarette and the artificial hand as though they exerted for him the special fascination of an object or arrangement of objects which, properly interpreted, might help him to understand precisely what it was that was happening to him. Perhaps this was what the Punjab officer intended. He continued to study the new page in the file. He was in no hurry. Perron kept glancing at the cigarette. If left to burn right down would the artificial fingers react? Unexpectedly the officer removed his cap and sat back. The prisoner stared at the scarred face, then looked away at the other officer’s busy pencil and then at Perron and after a moment shut his eyes.

Are you fatigued?

The prisoner opened his eyes.

Sahib.

You are not getting good sleep?

No answer.

Why? Why are you not getting good sleep?

No answer.

Something troubles you? What? What will happen? This troubles you? What will happen to you? What will happen to your wife and children? You have a wife and children?

The man nodded.

What they will say? That this is a matter of great shame? Is that what troubles you? What your wife and children will say? What the people in your village will say to your wife and children? Is that what you are thinking? That your wife will not hold up her head? That this will be so because of all the men in the battalion who were not killed but captured only Havildar Karim Muzzafir Khan was not true to the salt? Only Havildar Karim Muzzafir Khan listened to the lies of his captors and of the enemies of the King-Emperor whose father rewarded his father with the most coveted decoration of all? Only Havildar Karim Muzzafir Khan brought shame to his regiment and sorrow to the heart of Colonel Sahib?

A pause.

How long is it since you saw Colonel Sahib?

No answer.

Where do you think he is? At home in comfort? You think perhaps on the day he and the other officers were released from prison-camp in Germany that he got into an aeroplane and flew home to his family in India? This is not so. It is you who are in India first, ahead of him, ahead of all your comrades of the 1st Pankots. Like you they had not seen Colonel Sahib since the day of their capture when the officer sahibs were taken to one camp and the men to another. But on the day Colonel Sahib was released he said, now let me go to my men. I shall not go back to India without them. Come, let us find the men, let us go to the prison-camp where the men are. Let us go to the camp and collect all the men together. Let us wait in Germany until every man who was still alive after the battle and was taken prisoner has been accounted for and then let us sail back to our families in India, as a regiment. And so it has been. And only one man of the 1st Pankots has not been accounted for, one man who was not killed but who was not in any prison-camp. He had deserted his comrades to fight alongside the enemy. We do not know why. We shall find out why. Where you are going you will be asked many questions. You will be asked many questions by many officers. You will see me again also. I also shall ask you many more questions. Tonight I am not asking questions of this kind. I speak to you only of the shame and sorrow you have brought to Colonel Sahib. I do not know Colonel Sahib but I know Colonel Memsahib and I know the two young memsahibs. Susan Mem and Sarah Mem. I was in Pankot four weeks ago. They had a letter from Colonel Sahib. Be patient, he wrote. I am making arrangements about the men. So, they are patient. All Pankot is patient, awaiting the regiment’s return from across the black water. In Pankot they do not yet know the story of Havildar Karim Muzzafir Khan who let himself believe in the lies of Subhas Chandra Bose. But soon they will know. And they will be dumb with shame and sorrow. The wild dogs in the hills will be silent and your wife will not raise her head.

The Punjab officer spoke a resonant classic Urdu. It was a language that lent itself to poetic imagery but Perron had heard few Englishmen use it so flexibly, so effectively, or to such a purpose. Throughout the speech the prisoner’s eyes
had grown brighter, moister. Perron thought he might break down. He believed this was the officer’s intention and he was appalled. He would have understood better if the officer and the prisoner were of the same regiment because by tradition a regiment was a family and the harshest rebuke might then be ameliorated by the context of purely family concern in which it could be delivered and received. Then, if the man wept, it would be with regret and shame. If he wept now it would be from humiliation at the hands of a stranger.

But he managed not to weep. Perhaps the years in Europe had eroded his capacity to be moved – as Indians could be – by rhetoric. Perhaps he suddenly realized that nothing except full bellies would keep the wild dogs of the hills silent, and was astonished that a British officer should use such high-flown language. Perron thought that for a second or two a flash of contempt was discernible in the moist eyes. Certainly, they dried, and were directed again at the burning cigarette.

There was silence for perhaps as long as a minute. ‘I have finished with this man,’ the officer said suddenly. Karim Muzzafir Khan understood English. He drew in a deep breath and glanced round, awaiting the
MPS
who, put off their stroke by the abruptness with which the interview had ended, made a somewhat patchy job of coming forward, saluting and leading the prisoner out.

When the door shut, the officer picked the cigarette out of the artificial hand and sat smoking and making notes on the file. The episode, to Perron, seemed pointless. His own officer obviously thought the same because he pushed away the file he’d pretended to work on, leant forward, rested his forehead on his right hand and watched the other man’s note-taking; clearly inviting comment.

At last the Punjab officer spoke.

‘I wonder whether your sergeant would ask the corporal next door to get hold of my driver and tell him I’ll be ready in about five minutes? The corporal will know where to find him.’

‘Oh, I’ll do that myself. I need to take a leak.’

Perron’s officer got up and went into the other room. He left the door ajar. Perron collected the notebook and folder and
took them back to the other table. The Punjab officer stubbed the cigarette and began to repack his briefcase.

‘Were you able to follow every word?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What did you make of him?’

‘He looked fairly harmless, sir.’

The officer closed the briefcase. He leant back and looked at Perron. ‘His name has cropped up several times in depositions made in Germany in connection with the coercion of sepoy prisoners-of-war who were unwilling to join the Frei Hind force. In fact it has been linked with that of an Indian lieutenant suspected of causing the death of a sepoy in Königsberg.’ A pause. ‘But I grant you the harmless look, and, of course, he may be innocent of anything like that because a lot of these fellows are going to be only too ready to accuse each other to save their own skins.’

He put his cap on.

‘Incidentally, your officer was singing your praises before you arrived. I gather you have a degree in history and are particularly interested in the history of this country. Have you studied Oriental languages too? I mean, systematically?’

‘Not awfully systematically, sir. Naturally I became interested in Urdu and learned some during vacations and had some practice in conversation with a fellow-student during term.’

‘An Indian fellow-student, at university?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘If you followed every word you’ve become very proficient. Have you taken Higher Standard out here?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘It’s not much use, of course, except in the army. It’s nice to be able to speak it. In my old job I generally had to use a mixture of bazaar Hindi and the local dialect of whatever district I happened to be in.’

‘What job was that, sir?’

‘The Indian Police.’

Perron was surprised. Neither the
ICS
nor the police had been in the least co-operative over pleas from their officers to join the armed forces. Recruiting to these services had lapsed at the beginning of the war and the men had been needed
where they were, administering the law, collecting the revenues, keeping order, preserving the civil peace. Perron judged the officer to be in his middle thirties. At that age he would normally have held a senior post in the police, which would have made a wartime transfer to the army even more difficult to arrange.

The officer got up. He tucked the briefcase under the left arm which he then adjusted until it was clamped to his waist. The arm must have been amputated above the elbow. He took the spare glove and swagger cane in his right hand.

‘By the way, sergeant. I gather from your officer that you were at school at Chillingborough. When, exactly?’

Perron told him and after a moment added, ‘Were you there as well, sir?’

The officer paused before replying. ‘Hardly. I had quite other grounds for asking. Presumably you would know an Indian boy there, who called himself Harry Coomer. Actually Hari Kumar.’

‘Harry Coomer? Yes, I remember him, sir.’

‘He would have been a year or two your junior, I suppose? Did you know him closely? Closely enough to have learned much about his attitudes and interests?’

Perron was thinking back, attempting an image of the young Indian. The way Coomer came into focus was in white flannels making one of those sweeps to leg which even Perron who had been bored by cricket and played it badly recognized as elegant. The boy’s actual presence was otherwise misty. Only an ambiance remained; and a detail or two.

‘Actually,’ Perron said, ‘I don’t remember him being interested in anything much except cricket.’

He was about to add, Why, sir? Do you know him? But the answer was self-evident.

Perron had not thought of Coomer for years. He realized he had not even thought of him when he came out to India, perhaps because at school he had never really thought of Coomer in connection with any place but Chillingborough. Only a brown skin had distinguished him from the several hundred other boys undergoing the Chillingborough experience. Everything else, manners, behaviour, had so far as Perron could remember been utterly commonplace. Perron
could not even recall Coomer speaking English with an Indian accent. What he did recall was asking Coomer a question about the difference between karma and dharma and being told politely that Coomer was afraid he didn’t know because although born in India he had grown up in England and couldn’t remember a thing about it and didn’t know anything about its peculiar customs and odd ideas.

‘Cricket,’ the officer said, smiling at last. ‘I’m afraid that his range of interests began to extend beyond cricket once he got back to this country. That expensive education turned out to be pretty much a waste. As so often happens in such cases. Did you know anything of his background?’

‘Nothing at all, sir. Nothing I can remember.’

‘No, well, I suppose you wouldn’t. Not being a close friend of his.’

Perron’s officer came back.

‘We’ve unearthed your driver,’ he said. ‘He’s waiting outside. I’m trying to whistle up some char. Would you like a mug before you tootle off?’

‘No, thank you. And thank you for your help this evening. I’m sorry the havildar was so unforthcoming. It would have been more interesting for you if he’d been one of the talkative ones. But the object of the exercise was achieved from my point of view.’ He seemed about to say goodnight and go but then stood his ground, as if thinking something out.

‘It’s interesting,’ he began, and turned to Perron. ‘There you have the havildar, whose father got a posthumous
VC
in the last war, and who I dare say was brought up to have his father’s example rammed down his throat day after day. One thing it will be worth finding out is how he behaved in action, when it came to it. My guess is he showed up badly and couldn’t face being shut in behind barbed wire for the rest of the war with men who’d seen how frightened he was. What do you think, sergeant? Psychologically, could it work that way?’