The Lily Hand and Other Stories Read Online Free Page B

Krishna was there before her, in all his youth and beauty and antique innocence.
    She was changing after her bathe, on the fifth afternoon of her stay, when she heard Andrew come trampling heavily up the steps to the verandah, half an hour ahead of his usual time. Sudha was still snoring delicately under her mosquito-net, for to Sudha the afternoons were made for sleeping rather than swimming. If Andrew called out, he would wake her. Rachel opened the door an inch or two and said softly: ‘I’ll be out in a moment. There’s a fresh lime soda in that covered jug in the cooler. Get one for me, too, will you?’
    He was stretched out in one of the cane chairs when she came out to him a few minutes later, still towelling her wet hair. He looked up at her with a brief, preoccupied smile that faded quickly into a grimace of discouragement; and yet she had a strange impression that somewhere at the heart of his unexplained mood there was an odd little glow of satisfaction.
    â€˜What’s the matter? Has something happened?’
    â€˜Oh, nothing I shouldn’t have been prepared for, I suppose. It’s only too ordinary. I finished early,’ he said, ‘and thought I’d get the car out and run you over to the south beach or somewhere. I looked in at the village, thinking I might find you there. I didn’t, but I found something else.’ He was groping deep into his bush-jacket pocket. ‘You won’t believe it,’ he said, sour enjoyment unmistakable in his voice now.
    After more than a month in India there was not much she would have had difficulty in believing. She said so, but the serenity in her tone did not seem to be what he expected of her.
    â€˜I thought Subramanya’s people might know where you’d be, so I called in there. This will show you what these people are really like – unreliable, two-faced, born without sincerity. You think you’ve got them, and it’s like holding water in your hands. You’ll understand now what I’m up against. For three generations these people have been professing Christians. And look what they had pinned up on the kitchen wall! Right beside a picture of Christ!’
    He whipped it out on to the table and unfolded it before her eyes with a gesture of bitter triumph. She let the towel fall into her lap, and sat for a long moment with her eyes fixed upon the garishly-coloured flamboyantly-printed page, its glossy surface seamed now with sharp white folds like scars. Lord Krishna’s flute was bent, his round, girlish arm broken. The delicate, effeminate, blue-tinted countenance with its fawn’s eyes was deformed by a slashed cross.
    She sat looking at it, and her face was thoughtful, mild and still. She said nothing at all.
    â€˜I’m sorry!’ said Andrew, stretching and relaxing with a sigh. ‘I don’t know why I had to take it out on you, it isn’t your fault. But you see how devious they are. You can’t trust them an inch.’
    No, from his point of view perhaps not, and certainly one could argue, she thought reasonably, that knowing what they know, they ought not to profess conversion from one creed to another. What isn’t worth keeping, isn’t worth giving up, and why change one illusion, one voluntary mutilation, for another? But probably the grandfather had never really understood that his own universality was coming into a head-on clash with something smaller, less enlightened, and as exclusive as it was militant. One more aspect of divinity came graciously enough to him; how could he possibly realize that he was expected to make it, from then on, the only one? Like sealing up against the sun all the windows of your house but for one small casement. Like voluntarily walling yourself into a dark tower with one narrow loophole, when you could be outside lying in the grass.
    â€˜You made them take it down?’ she asked, smoothing the edge of the spoiled picture with