The Venus of Konpara Read online

  The Venus of Konpara

  John Masters

  Originally published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph Ltd.

  Copyright © 1960 by Bengal-Rockland Inc.

  THE SUVALA-GITA

  Couplet for the year A.D. 1890

  Mohan Singh Suvala, Lord of the Cave, entered his heritage,

  Saw the dam built,

  And led his Queen to her place under the spread hood.

  Chapter 1

  Coming up out of the south on the wings of a hawk, we see the land rising below. A long rocky slope runs away to the right. Here it is split by a narrow chasm, the only exit from a vast, irregular pit. Cliffs of reddish rock ring the pit on all sides, and beyond them the land is folded into a long ridge, and another, and so up to the rolling highlands in the north.

  There is jungle everywhere but the trees are not tall, nor are they densely spaced, for it is a dry country and a rocky soil. Some water there is - small lakes on the upland, and from them a river winding among the rock and the bamboo, here brilliant under the sun, here dim and green under trees. Before it reaches the pit the river plunges over a steep place and seems to vanish, for the forested ridges hide it

  The heat of the sun, burning away the thin vapours of the night, creates a steady south wind. The wind blows over the jungle, up the ridges, and up the steep, against the filling water. The river curves over the red stone lip in a full sensuous curve, and meets the wind. Immediately it begins to waver, to lose shape and substance, to evanesce, almost to vanish behind a wide curtain of mist. The sun shines on the mist and from it creates the second of the two signs that mark this place as immediately different from any others that pass under the hawk’s wings: a vivid rainbow spans the sky above the fall as long as the wind blows and the sun shines. The rainbow and the pit, and a barren rock upstanding on the edge of the pit, define this place, more than any name.

  There are men on the land. One collection of their dwelling-places crouches on a ridge below the fall, near the rainbow’s end; another on the upland, around a reed-rimmed lake. The men know whether the lower village has yet been named Konpara, but the hawk does not, nor does the pair of sarus cranes dancing among the reeds. Here, what is not known to all creation is not of importance; nor does time have any real existence or definition, and five thousand years are not to be understood as different from the rainbow. Like it, they come and go; but remain.

  In other parts of the earth, even in other parts of this subcontinent called India, one element is clearly the master, the others its servants. There are deserts where rock and sand luxuriate without effort, but plants and animals use their whole force merely to exist. There are plains where the animals have taken possession and roam free in huge herds; but no vegetation lives except that which the animals need, and man is an intruder whose planted fields the elephants destroy and the bison trample upon. There are valleys where it is man, and man alone, who belongs; all is his, the stocked corn, the channelled stream, and the pollarded willows; the beaten paths and the tamed beasts that follow them, uncalled, to the milking byre.

  Here, by the pit and the rock, and the rainbow, there is no master and no servant but a unique harmony where man, animal, plant, and rock are parts of a single entity. The relationships between them overlap and intertwine, so that there is a closer bond between the tiger and the man than between the man and another man from another place. There are carvings on rock here. They show man and woman, and the curved neck and soft eyes of the bull between them, a garland round his neck and the woman’s hand resting on his horns; the monkey watching from the twisted bough above and the leopard watching from the denser forest behind. No house exists, or was made, as a device to separate man from rock, air, and tree, but rather to fuse them closer to his needs. The creepers twine alike up the rock wall that man builds and the rock wall that was standing there when he came.

  It is a harmony of change, of creation, preservation, and destruction - not of peace. A child lies dead outside the ruined shrine, and the cobra watches from a crevice while the mother mourns. The rock falls from the cliff, split by the sun and rain of a million years, and the bull (Is he yet sacred? He does not know) dies under it. Fear is an element of the harmony of this place; but not fear of the unknown, for everything is known - the mark of cholera, the way of a falling rock, the nature of a tiger, and the exact appearance of evil (sometimes in animal shape, sometimes human, but well known, and feared).

  This is Konpara, seen out of time.

  Chapter 2

  Near five o’clock in the afternoon of March 31,1890, a young man walked slowly along a path near the rim of me pit He was tall, slender, and large of eye, the mouth voluptuous but not weak, the hair shiny black and long, the skin a golden-brown wheat colour. He wore white flannel trousers and a striped red and white blazer and carried, rolled up in his hand, a towel and a small ‘triangle’, such as young Englishmen wore to go swimming when no ladies would be present He walked slowly, head down, with a vaguely oppressed hunch to his shoulders, swinging the rolled towel like a club.

  Something caught his eye ahead among the trees. He saw an easel, a folding canvas stool beside it. He made out, also, the pale lilac of a woman’s skirt arranged in the shade, beside the easel.

  Barbara Kendrick. She had not been here when he went to the pool an hour and a half ago. He began to creep away to the left, meaning to pass her before she became aware of his presence.

  He stopped. Perhaps she was hurt. Perhaps the sun had affected her. In any case, he could not avoid her for ever. He walked directly towards her, the dried teak leaves crackling under his shoes.

  The skirt moved, and the woman rose quickly to her feet She was about thirty, tall and boyish in figure, the lips surprisingly full and generous in the long face. Her eyes were pale blue, her hair thick and brown - usually in disarray, as now. Her complexion had been good, but the Indian sun had affected it. The hands she raised to adjust her hair were strong and square.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘Mohan. It’s you. How nice to see you again.’

  ‘It’s only a week,’ he said, attempting a light tone. He looked at the painting on the easel A water-colour of the pit which yawned below them. Quite pretty, though she had somehow managed to turn the lowering red cliffs of the opposite wall into a gentler slope, and soften the rolling jungle into a sweep of English woodland.

  She said, ‘I spent all morning getting Southdown ready for the hot weather. I’m always glad to get out of Deori, Aren’t you? Mr Kendrick went over into the Betwa Hills; Something to do with a deer the Gonds have reported.’ She began to unpin the painting from the easel, ‘But he’s back now... We must continue the sittings for your portrait . You look even more handsome out here than you do in Deori. You must give me plenty of your time.’

  She kept her eyes on the easel and the slow business of unpinning the water-colour. The forwardness of English women had astonished and at first shocked Mohan, especially when he reached Sandhurst after the monastic atmosphere of his public school. But those tall girls in the great London drawing-rooms, those youngish married ladies in the salons of Belgravia, had spoken such sentences with an insolent assurance that left you to guess whether or not their words had any ulterior motive. Barbara Kendrick’s manner was not insolent. It was pleading, and carried a message of availability that no one but a fool could miss.

  It had begun as soon as he returned from England, just before Christmas, after seven years in England. And this was Mr Kendrick’s wife. The wife of the man who had been more a father to him than his own father. Mr Kendrick was more than a father. He was a friend.

  To change the subject he said, ‘Whatever happened to that portrait of Mr Kendrick you were doing when I came back from Sand
hurst? That was... well, it was so different from anything else you’ve ever done.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said in a flat voice, ‘that got lost’ She went on quickly, ‘Tomorrow, about ten o’clock, at Southdown? Good!’

  She was gone, without giving him an opportunity to speak. He walked slowly on along the edge of the pit towards Cheltondale. The portrait he had mentioned was both terrible and wonderful, and he had an idea that if Mr Kendrick knew about it he would hate it. It did not look at all like him, yet it did; or, it looked like a nightmare someone might have had about him. Once seen, you could never forget it. How could it have got lost?

  The path rose gradually now towards the foursquare bungalow. Mr Kendrick had had it built last year for him - for the Rajah of Deori, he corrected himself quickly. He himself had named it ‘Cheltondale’ on his return from England. The name seemed wrong now, and strangely defiant, like Mr Kendrick’s own ‘Southdown’. But after all Mr Kendrick was English.

  On his left here, fifty yards from the bungalow, the earth was raw and all the trees and bushes had been cut down over a space of about forty yards by twenty. The contours were in the process of being flattened by digging into the upper slope and filling in the lower. The labourers had finished work for the day and returned to Konpara, leaving the usual mess of earth-carrying baskets, frayed rope, broken tools, betel-juice stains, and the rank smell of bidi cigarettes. This was going to be his cricket pitch - not a complete field, just the length of a pitch, round which there would be a net Here he could practise his bowling. No one ever became good at anything except by hard practice, as Mr Kendrick had often told him, not to mention the masters at Cheltenham and the instructors at Sandhurst He went on up the path, crossed the lawn and entered the bungalow.

  A little after five. He felt restless. Nothing to do. ..yes, there was. Mr Kendrick had asked him to prepare a paper on the reorganisation of the Deori army. All thirty men. He had worked two hours on that last night, and then it became ridiculous. Thirty men for the army of the Suvala, who could trace his line back to the God Indra... Thirty men, for a potty little Indian principality which not more than five of his Sandhurst fellow cadets had ever heard of.

  He might send for the dishwasher, whom he’d been teaching cricket, and spend half an hour at the slip-catching cradle. But it wasn’t, here. One of the lathes was broken and had not yet been repaired. That was India, everywhere the same, ramshackle, nothing ever finished, nothing maintained or looked after when it was! The great dam down there, across the narrow mouth of the pit, now near completion, would suffer the same fate. So Mr Kendrick believed, in his heart of hearts.

  Standing in the window of the big drawing-room Mohan saw a portly old gentleman in traditional Rajput costume riding eastward along the path below the unfinished cricket pitch. It was the City Warden of Deori, a distant connection of his family’s. He must have been reporting to Mr Kendrick, and was now starting on the ten-mile ride back to Deori. Yes, there were a couple of liveried servants riding a respectful distance behind him.

  Mohan hurried across the room, ran down the verandah steps, and then slowed to a stroll. Now the old man could hardly pass without speaking.

  The City Warden came past, saw Mohan, and at once began to slide off his horse. One of the servants trotted forward to take the reins. The old man stooped to touch Mohan’s knee with his tight hand. ‘My lord,’ he said submissively, ‘are you well?’

  ‘I am well,’ Mohan said. The Hindi came more easily now, as easily as when he was a child. For the first two months after his return from England he had spoken as badly as a memsahib; and the language itself had seemed barbarous and awkward to his tongue.

  ‘I have been making a routine report to the Honourable. Resident and Administrator,’ the old man said,

  Mohan waited. The other knew well that he wanted to know the substance of the report.

  The City Warden said, ‘Your uncle, the noble Prithwi Narain Suvala, returned yesterday from Calcutta, where he had the honour of seeing the Viceroy.’

  Mohan waited. Eastern diplomacy, oriental deviousness...Before he went to England the obliqueness of the old man’s method would have seemed quite natural. Prithwi was ayounger brother of his father.

  The City Warden said, ‘It is known from another source that the Viceroy told your noble uncle that he would decide the case here on its merits, as reported to him by his Agent. Who will decide as reported to him by Mr Kendrick.’

  ‘Prithwi’s finished then,’ Mohan said slowly. ‘That was his last card’

  The old man nodded. ‘The last he held... but the sun rises each day, my lord, and each day the Almighty deals a new hand. Your noble uncle will search the more desperately for an opportunity to prove that you are unfitted to rule. If he does not find one, he will try to create one. You are young...’

  Twenty,’ Mohan snapped. ‘And don’t keep saying that. Mr Kendrick does; everybody does. I’m tired of it’

  The old man was contrite. ‘I apologise most humbly... I mean only that your uncle will hope that some impetuousness, some violence in your lordship’s hot-blooded nature, can be used to create the situation he seeks. But I think he will fail. You are up here. He is down there. The city and the state are calm. Mr Kendrick has, I am sure, made up his own mind in your lordship’s favour.’

  ‘If Prithwi succeeds,’ Mohan said, ‘he will not appoint Mr Kendrick as Prime Minister.’

  The old man said smoothly, ‘Nor, in that case, would Mr Kendrick resign from the Indian Civil Service. He would remain here - as Resident... I do not think your lordship needs to worry, merely preserve watchfulness and - ah -decorum ... The invitation to the Deputy Commissioner of Saugor was sent off by registered post today.’

  ‘Good,’ Mohan said absently. He had determined to make Deori famous as a cricket centre. When he succeeded to the gaddi, the cushion which was the Indian symbol of rule, Deori would have three or four cricket festivals a season. Club teams would come, regimental teams, pick-up teams such as the one he was inviting now, from the Gentlemen of Saugor.

  The City Warden was humbly begging his permission to proceed on his way. ‘Go, in peace,’ Mohan said.

  Soon he was alone. The land sloped down from the limit of the rough lawn to the edge of the pit The low sun slanted a yellow and pink light across the farmer cliffs, but the new dam was out of sight to the left To the right, Indra’s Rock stood bleak on the cliff edge. Farther right again, the Deori River fell down the Konpara Cliffs but the wind had died with the sinking sun and there was no rainbow. The bats were coming out and the men going home, the villagers from their little fields, the aboriginal Gonds from their hunting of snakes and lizards. The wild animals would be stretching and yawning, ready to step out into the evening.

  All settled, then. On his twenty-first birthday her Majesty, the Queen-Empress would announce her assent Mr Kendrick, with permission, would resign from the Indian Civil Service and become his Prime Minister. Deori would prosper. There would be better roads, new schools, the dam down there finished, another one started the other side of the state. The cricket festivals would begin. Deori would look and feel like Cheltenham.

  And that was what he wanted?

  Yes, of course! The sanitation in the state was appalling, the poverty terrible. Mr Kendrick was the best man for the job. But he must have failed in Gwalior, or he wouldn’t have been sent to finish his service in a little place like Deori.

  It was a lie! In Gwalior, Mr Kendrick had been betrayed. Then why did he himself not repel Barbara Kendrick’s advances? It could only lead to one end. A terrible scandal, and Kendrick leaving. He thought of her long legs. The flatness of her stomach. The hidden mysteries. Her white skin.

  He jumped up and went to me desk in the comer, unlocked a drawer, and drew out a packet of postcards. A man had sold them to him outside the Gate de Lyon in Paris on his way back to India. He studied them. A fat woman wearing corsets, high-buttoned boots, and nothing else lounged over a high-backed chair. A man
in long underwear, with a walrus moustache, approached her. The series showed the two in poses of lust, and finally coupling. It was all grotesquely ugly - the people, the costumes, the attitudes. But these were the attitudes of the temple carvings. As a boy he had thought nothing, of them. He had been to the temple only a week ago. There the stone lovers moved gracefully, their nakedness of desire expressed joy, there was beauty in the expansive generosity of the bodies.

  He put the postcards away and strode rapidly up and down the room. He would have to get married. He was years late already, according to the ideas of his own religion. The City Warden had an idea that might be sound - to marry his Uncle Prithwi’s daughter. His first cousin. A dynastic marriage. Why not?

  But love, the Western love, the romantic love he had come to understand though not yet to experience - he must have that. And the Indian love, the totality of the carvings, where spiritual and physical love became one, he must know that, too.

  The major-domo knocked on the door and entered, carrying a lighted lamp which he placed carefully on a table in the corner. Other servants moved with other lamps and soon the big room glowed. The major-domo drew the curtains. At the door he turned. ‘Lord, the headman of Konpara is here.’

  Mohan asked, ‘What does he want? Why doesn’t he go to Mr Kendrick? What can I do for him?’ The major-domo said nothing, and Mohan grunted, ‘Let him approach.’

  He sat down and picked up a book. An hour to dinner and then nothing. Nothing, until his twenty-first birthday. If then.

  The major-domo came back. ‘The headman of Konpara.’

  The man bowing low in the doorway was slight, dark, and grizzled, the skin of his face lightly pitted with the scars of a childhood smallpox. (Vaccination, Mohan thought; Mr Kendrick will have everyone vaccinated.) As he raised his palm to his forehead Mohan noted again that the man had no thumb on his left hand - a hereditary defect, he said.