Death to the Landlords

Fourteen

Cape Comorin: Saturday Morning, Continued

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For the man peering through the sights of the rifle, the world dissolved suddenly into a blur of saffron cloth only a few feet away from the barrel of the gun. The lonely, advancing figure at whose heart he had been aiming had vanished in yellow light at the very moment when his trigger finger was tightening to squeeze gently home and put an end to it. The marksman uttered a curious, wailing cry of alarm and dread, and there was one instant when everything hung in the balance, when the finger almost completed its pressure and emptied the first round into that saffron cloud. It was superstitious shock that turned his hands feeble; the barrel of the gun lurched, and was lowered. He raised his cheek from the stock, to gaze with his own eyes, instead of with the automatic eye of the gun. And the cloud that blotted out the world condensed into the apparition – for what else could it be, here where he had deliberately created an empty solitude all round him? – of an elderly, venerable, composed personage in a yellow robe and a brown woollen shawl, standing perfectly still before him, almost within touch, though he saw it only through the slit he had made for firing.

Whether this was a god, a demon or a man, he had to stare it in the face and find a way past it, and instantly, or everything was lost. It stood so still that he dreaded it might not be human, after all. What man would take his stand there and wait, saying not a word? Ah, but the interloper was looking only at a blank wall! Did he even know that there was an armed man within? He could not know. No one who knew that would dare!

The man with the rifle flung out a long left arm, and swept aside the shutter of fibre matting, gleefully expecting an ordinary man’s predictable reactions of fright and retreat when suddenly confronted at short range with a loaded gun. The image remained undisturbed, serene and immovable, its mild eyes observing everything without alarm.

At the back of the hut Priya started up out of her nest of ropes and nets, stunned by the sudden burst of light from the window, and half-crazed with terror and exhaustion. Beyond her captor’s shoulder she caught one glimpse of the Swami’s composed, half-smiling face, but she could not believe in what she was seeing. A hand reached through the mat wall, plucking urgently and insistently at her arm.

‘Come, come, please come…!’

‘Get out of my way!’ screamed the swathed head in its shroud of saffron cloth, choking with rage and hatred. ‘Stand out of my way, or I’ll kill you!’

The Swami, so impotent, so feeble a presence, merely moved a step or two nearer to the window-opening, to ensure that whatever was behind him should remain invisible. He did not say: ‘Kill me, then!’, but he did not move aside. Some way behind him he heard Purushottam’s wildly running feet sliding and labouring in the sand. He could not hear Dominic, though Dominic was running, too, at his fastest, and straight for this spot. The Swami folded his hands before him, just out of reach from within the window, but so near that he eclipsed the world and covered his friends from harm.

‘Come, quickly, come…’ begged the voice outside the rear wall, and the timid, agitated hand tugged at Priya’s wrist. She yielded to the pressure, drawn back towards the wall that gaped to let her through. And suddenly, above the Swami’s golden shoulder, she saw Purushottam, running, stumbling, wild with anguish and hope; and then she could not move.

‘Get out of my way!’ howled the muffled head, almost inarticulate with fury. ‘Now, or I will kill this girl!’ He had remembered in time that he had at his disposal this more powerful persuasion, and at the recollection he swung upon her, levelling the rifle from his hip at point-blank range.

What he saw brought another thin shriek of rage out of him, for the wall at her back gaped, and a hand was holding it wide for her and urging her through the gap. He took one long, deliberate pace towards her, the rule steadying with deadly intent on her breast. And Priya, tearing herself loose from the hand that held her for one inspired and desperate instant, scooped up in her arms the topmost coils of the pile of nets, and hurled them in his face.

She saw the closely-wound meshes open like a fantastic flower in mid-air, filling the lances of sunlight with dancing dust, and her nostrils with particles of fibre like musty pollen. Rifle and man lost their clarity of line, disintegrating into a tangled jigsaw-puzzle, as the flying lengths of net descended over both, and were carried by their weighted edges round elbows and hands, and the barrel and stock of the gun. The impact drove the man’s body backwards, off-balance, and the shot went into the beaten earth at the foot of the wall, spattering Priya’s feet with flecks of soil.

She turned, blindly and desperately, and clawed her way through the torn matting, the cut edges rasping her arms and her cheek. Hands reached out eagerly to help her, daylight flowed over her, clean sand filtered into her sandals. Her rescuer folded an arm protectively about her and hurried her away, across the narrow neck of land and into the first rocky defile of the path that led down into the second cove. In that maze of rocks they could hope to find safe cover even from a rifle.

The Swami stirred slowly, like a man coming out of a trance, and for once his face wore a look of immense surprise, though there was no one to witness the phenomenon. He was undoubtedly alive, and that was matter for profound surprise. He looked round, blinking at the sun. Purushottam was toiling through the last undulations of sand towards the hut, and some way behind him Dominic followed.

The Swami took the necessary three steps to the door of the hut, and pushed it open, letting in the sunlight over the heaving, trammelled form on the floor. The man had almost freed himself, slashing furiously at the folds of net with the knife he had kept in his loincloth. As the door flew open he dragged himself clear, snatched up the rifle as he rose, and charged head-down for the doorway and freedom. He had heard the pursuers drawing nearer; perhaps he thought they were more and better-armed than they were. This game, in any event, was already lost, for his hostage was gone, and if he stayed to fight he might be captured, and must be identified. He chose to run. And the Swami, to whom violence was impossible, stood courteously out of his path and gave him free passage.

It was the rifle that cheated him. A filament of the net had trapped the bolt, and as he rose and flung himself forward, grasping the stock, the net followed like a snake as far as the doorway, uncoiling until its weight became too great to be towed any further, and there ripped the rifle out of his hand. He checked for a fraction of a second, and then abandoned it and ran on, headlong for his life. He made for the nearer and smaller cove, plunged down the first steep drop into the stones of the pathway, and continued in a series of strong, passionate deer-leaps halfway down to the beach.

Not until then had he raised his head or paused even for an instant to look beyond the next step. But there he did pause, and glanced down towards the sea, and uttered a sudden enraged and desolate cry. He looked from headland to headland, but the cove was empty, sunlit and serene. He turned wildly to look back, and Purushottam was already at the Swami’s side, and Dominic not a hundred yards behind. There was no going back. He turned to the ocean again, and ran, plunged, glissaded onwards, across the yellow sand above the tide, into the fringes of the black sand now almost hidden, through the shallows that flashed at his heels as he ran, and still outwards until the surge lifted him from his feet, and he swam strongly and valiantly out to sea.

‘I am afraid he was looking for his boat,’ the Swami said in gentle, almost regretful explanation. ‘That was where he left it, you see. We moved it in the night.’

‘It is all right now, Miss Madhavan,’ said an anxious, coaxing voice in Priya’s ear, and the hand that held hers, and had been urging her along among the rocks, now checked her stumbling walk and quieted her into stillness. ‘Quite all right now, we need not run any more. He has gone. Look, there are your friends, there on the headland. All quite safe. Everything is all right now.’

Her eyes had been open all the while, but so dazzled by daylight and blanketed by terror and tiredness that she had not truly seen even the stones among which her sandalled feet slipped and bruised themselves. Now she raised her head, and for the first time looked up, her vision and her mind clearing, into the roused, solicitous, almost unrecognisable face of Sushil Dastur.

There was no point in pursuit, no hope of overtaking him. They stood watching in helpless fascination as the swimmer sheered his way towards the headland between the coves, apparently bent on rounding it and reaching some point up-coast where he could come ashore unseen, and vanish once again into the landscape or the seascape of the south.

‘He might get to one of the fishing boats,’ said Dominic, looking down into the larger cove, where they lay high and dry in the sand under their thatched covers.

‘He won’t try,’ Purushottam said, still panting from that frantic race. ‘He couldn’t possibly get one of those into the water alone.’

‘I fear,’ said the Swami apologetically, ‘that he may succeed in reaching his own.’ He pointed into the lee of the headland, where they could just see the high prow of a smaller boat, almost hidden under the jutting rocks where Priya stood with Sushil Dastur, and by its slight, rhythmic motion riding to anchor. ‘I could not beach it alone, either, I had to leave it afloat. Though of course,’ he added reasonably, ‘it may not be his own, it may very well be stolen.’

‘Where is he now?’ The swimmer was out of sight, concealed by the rocks. When he appeared again, it was off the point, in quieter water, and well clear of the saw-edged reefs.

‘He’s seen the boat,’ cried Purushottam. ‘He’s coming in for it!’ He turned to run across the narrow, grassy crest of the headland, with the intention of setting off down the path and reaching the shore first, but he halted before he had gone many yards, and Dominic checked with him. ‘Not a chance! He’ll be there long before we shall.’

Sushil Dastur had also marked the fugitive’s change of course. He looked down into the blue, bright water beneath him, and saw the long, vigorous strokes carrying the swimmer steadily nearer; he saw a long arm stretched up to get a hold on the gunwale, and a brown shoulder heaving up out of the water. He had discarded the wrapping from round his head, or the surf had taken it, and streaming black hair half-covered his face. His hands gripped strongly; he rested for a moment, and then heaved himself steadily up to climb aboard.

It was too much for Sushil Dastur. He saw the enemy escaping, after all the evil he had done, after all they had risked in this one night to render him ineffective for ever.

His sense of justice was outraged. He stooped to prise loose and hoist in his arms the largest stone he could lift, and hurled it down at the boat below. It seemed an endless while falling, before they saw it strike near the stern in a flurry of splinters and spray, causing the boat to plunge wildly and ship water; but it was a glancing blow, and the stone rebounded into the sea, though it took a length of shattered planking with it. The swimmer had clung tenaciously to his hold through the shock, and as soon as the boat righted, he hauled himself dripping over the side.

Silently they watched as he stooped to slash the riding line free, and leaned with all his weight on the heavy bamboo pole, thrusting off into deeper water. Slow though his progress upcoast might be, it would serve to get him out of sight, and ashore in some safer place, before they could do anything to prevent.

Sushil Dastur came clambering back to the headland, leading Priya with anxious solicitude. She came to Purushottam’s side, and took her place there, but without a word as yet, her face drained and exhausted; and Purushottam, without a word, took her hand and held it. They watched the wake of the little boat stagger its way out to sea, and dwindle drunkenly up-coast; and already it seemed to them that it was settling a little in the water, and listing to one side like a limping man.

‘I do not think,’ said the Swami, between reassurance and concern, ‘that he will get very far.’

The wreckage of the foundered boat did not begin to drift ashore for several days, and then most of it made its way to the Keralese beaches further to the north-west. But the boatman was brought in by the next tide, less than a mile up-coast.

The police took Dominic and Purushottam out by jeep to identify the body. Alone upon a brilliant expanse of dark crimson and jet-black sands, like an imperial pall, stripped of his last length of saffron cloth and naked as the day he was born, lay the muscular body and once agreeable and obliging face of Romesh Iyar, the boat-boy of Thekady.