Death to the Landlords

The Swami denied nothing of all this. He contemplated the road ahead, and looked a little tired, but not at all discomposed. ‘And why have you said no word of this in front of everyone?’

‘I suppose,’ said Dominic gently, ‘my reasons must be much the same as yours. I said justice hadn’t been done – I didn’t say I necessarily wanted it done.’

‘And how long,’ asked the Swami, after another considering silence, ‘have you known?’

‘Not long. Not even after we went to identify Romesh Iyar’s body. I only began to understand,’ he said, ‘when you evaded Priya’s question about how and why Patti died. It was because of her recognition or non- recognition of the sadhu’s face, you said, that Patti died. So it was. It was because she didn’t recognise him again in Romesh, not because she did. If she’d known him when she met him again, she might have been alive today. Not,’ he added honestly, ‘that it would necessarily have been much better for her. But it was after you said that, that I began to put things together, and to remember everything that seemed insignificant at the time, and yet made absolute sense once I had the clue. Such as, for instance, that if only we’d taken the girls with us when we went to look over the estate and the old irrigation channels, again, Patti might have been alive today.’

They were out on the main road, turning left towards Koilpatti.

‘As Purushottam said, at a moment when his every word merited attention,’ the Swami remarked, ‘we should not and must not turn to saying: “If only…” We do what we must, what seems right to us at the time, and none of us can do more.’ He added with reserve, but with respect and resignation, too: ‘Tell me, then, since you know so much—’

‘Only because, in the first place, you told me! To see you confronted with the absolute necessity for telling a lie, and still managing not to tell one, is a revelation.’

‘I see that you begin to know me too well, and to be as irreverent as a real son, my son,’ lamented the Swami, with a sigh and a smile of detached affection. ‘Tell me, then, if Romesh Iyar did not put the bomb in Purushottam’s office – who did?’

‘Patti did,’ said Dominic. ‘Of course!’

‘Go on,’ said the Swami, his face neither consenting nor denying.

‘She came from England, already in rebellion against everything that represented her parents and the establishment. She came innocent, romantic, idealistic, silly if you like, a sucker for left-wing causes, and kidded into hoping to find the wonderful, easy, metaphysical way here in India. And India kicked her in the teeth, the way it does – in the belly, too, sometimes – showing her, as it shows to all silly idealists, its most deprived and venomous and ugly and venal side. She was absolutely ripe to be a fall guy. The obvious ills of India made her a sitting target for the Naxalite contacts I don’t doubt she made in Calcutta – through the most vocal and articulate section of her society. It isn’t any chore to sell the slogan of: “Death to the landlords!” to a girl like that, who’d never even seen anyone kick a kitten until she came here. To her violence was all abstract, until she had to see it with her own eyes, all the blood and mess that you can imagine away as long as it’s still only in the mind. I don’t know who got hold of her, there among the Bengali teachers and students, but someone did. And when she came on leave south, they got her to bring the two bombs from Calcutta. She had her orders about handing them over, and she knew the names of the parties for whom they were intended…’

‘You are sure of that?’ asked the Swami, pricking up his ears.

‘Quite sure. In the boat she got the shock of her life when Romesh mentioned the name of Mahendralal Bakhle. Seeing him hadn’t meant a thing to her, she hadn’t known what he looked like; but she knew the name, all right. She passed it off by saying she’d read about his labour riots in the papers, but from then on she was dead quiet that day. Until then, I think, she’d sort of felt that she’d washed her hands of the first bomb, and nothing would really happen, nothing she would ever have to know about – and suddenly there was the man who was condemned to death, on the same lake with her, and she knew it was real. And again later, when we had to tell Inspector Raju where we could be contacted, and we said we were going to Purushottam Narayanan’s house at Malaikuppam, she at once changed her plans and asked if she and Priya could travel with us. Oh, yes, Patti knew who the victims were. But the rest – her contact here – everything to do with the Naxalite organisation itself – no, they took good care she should know as little as possible about all that.’

‘So the deliveries of those two bombs she carried, you think, were clearly laid down for her, in such a way as to prevent her from identifying the receiver?’

‘It looks that way. The first – of course you know it – was dropped into the sadhu’s begging bowl by the lingam shrine, along with her few naye paise…’

‘Yes… the face only she saw, and by twilight, behind its ash and paint, and failed to know again in Romesh Iyar.’

‘And the second, I think, was to have been delivered in exactly the same way to the sadhu at Tenkasi Junction, when she and Priya de-trained there for Kuttalam. Why else should he set off for there the next day, and wait there three days? He thought she knew him, and had understood everything – or perhaps he merely thought that she would obey instructions, and use no initiative herself. Let’s say, at least, that it never entered his head that she would accept the set-up at its face value, and believe absolutely that Ajit Ghose was her contact, and that he’d sacrificed his own life to fulfil his mission.’

‘And therefore,’ said the Swami sadly, ‘that she was now orphaned – bereft of her partner, and challenged to be as selfless and as ruthless as he. That she was on her own – with a bomb, and a known victim.’

‘When we found that boat it hit her like a thunderbolt,’ said Dominic, sweating as he remembered the leaking hull swaying sluggishly with its wash of water and blood among the tall reeds. ‘She’d never seen violence before – damn it, I don’t suppose she’d ever seen death before. You contemplate it with heroic calm, yes – as long as it stays a thousand miles away from you. When you see it, smell it, touch it, that’s another matter. Priya has never thought of violent injury but with compassion and the urge to jump right in and help. She’s never willed it, and it doesn’t frighten her. Patti had willed it, and then she saw it, and it was sickening. She collapsed, she was out of the reckoning all that night. And in the morning, Priya said, she was very calm, and talked of having to see Inspector Raju. Priya thought that was only because she hadn’t been fit the night before, and felt a statement would be required from her. I think it was more. I think she had slept on it, then, and made up her mind to confess, and hand over the second bomb. Not because of Bakhle, so much as because she thought that her heroes, the activists, the Naxalites, had turned out to be nothing but callous murderers, to whom an innocent, incidental boat-boy was of no account, and could be wiped out like swatting a fly. In a country, my God, where the Jains won’t even risk inhaling a fly! And she was right then. But afterwards, when she did see Inspector Raju, it was only to have it confirmed that so far from being an innocent victim, Ajit Ghose was the assassin, and a martyr for his cause, willing to die to carry out his assignment. And it was then she changed course again. She didn’t confess, she didn’t hand over the second bomb. On the contrary, when she heard we were to be Purushottam’s guests she hitched a ride along with us. Poor Priya was shocked. One doesn’t do such things, in a land where hospitality is in any case so instant, and so lavish. But Patti had risen to the occasion then, she was