Chapter 11-

HAVING BEEN FOUND GUILTY

THE evening sun flooded the corridor of barrack seven, making a pattern of bars on the cobbled floor. Debi-dayal marched ahead of the Gurkha sentry who carried his studded lathi. They went down the stairs and into the yard and out of the gate, heading for the administrative office, halfway up the hill.

Remember to salaam when you go in,' Balbahadur warned. "Otherwise, you will have to reckon with me.'

Debi-dayal wondered whether his old sentry had been changed as a matter of prison routine or because of some quirk of Mulli- gan's. It was just his luck to draw Balbahadur from the hundred or so prison sentries; this man with his sadistic urges and the atrophied, twisted mind.

In the office, Mulligan sat at his desk. The assistant jailor, Joseph, stood by his side, stooping slightly almost from habit, the picture of abject servility. Joseph held a sheaf of papers in his hands. On the table, lay the blue envelope. Debi-dayal was marched in. The sentry came to a halt with a crash of his ammunition boots. 'Salaam karo!" he ordered.

Debi-dayal did not salaam. He stared at Mulligan's face in silence. For a moment, Mulligan stared back at him, red-faced and champing his jaws. His face sweated. He nodded to the chief supervisor. The ritual of prison justice began.

You, Debi-dayal Kerwad, son of Tekchand Kerwad, prisoner number 436 of 1939,' Joseph began to read out, 'are hereby charged with having committed multiple breaches of prison rules in that you, having come into possession of unauthorized sums of money, on or about the 20th day of August, 1940, broke bounds and deposited the said money in a hollow in a jack-fruit tree, approximately three hundred yards away from the confines of the 

Cellular Jail and which, as an unparoled D-ticket prisoner, is out of bounds to you. And that, on or about the same day, you also wrote a seditious slogan on the culvert near the said jack-fruit tree.

'Do you understand the charges?" Mulligan asked.

"Yes, Debi-dayal told him.

'Do you admit them?"

'No.'

'None of the three charges?"

None of the three charges."

Mulligan held out the envelope. As it happens, I myself saw this letter before it was delivered to you. I have ascertained that it was, in fact, delivered to you by convict Gian Talwar, who has testified that he did so."

"Yes, it is my letter, all right,' Debi-dayal said. "At least it was addressed to me. It was delivered to me.' Mulligan took out the three currency notes. Then the first charge is conclusively proved,' he said. "Are these not yours?"

Debi-dayal shook his head. A wave of anger broke through his indifference. 'Is this a frame-up or something?" he asked. T received that letter, all right, but I never opened it. I never open any letters. I threw it into the dust-bin.' His voice quivered, rose a pitch. "If it did contain money, I know nothing about it. What is it that you want to pin on me? And if you do, why all this farce?

Why not just pronounce the punishment and be done with it!" "Khamosh ! Balbahadur yelled, and prodded Debi-dayal with his lathi. 'Don't shout at the sahib!"

'But you were seen,' Mulligan told him. 'A man in a D-ticket uniform was seen climbing down the jack-fruit tree where your letter, with the money in it, was found quite close to the culvert on which the treasonable slogan was written.' So that was it; not just the money. They were trying to charge him with something much more serious, so that they could give him the sort of punishment they revelled in and still keep to the book of prison reform. Flogging!-he shuddered, in spite of himself.

"Is that what you are trying to frame me for?" he asked, and his voice shook with indignation. 'No, I did not write the slogan.

Neither that one, nor the one next day. For one thing, I don't want the Germans; they are just as bad as the British. I had no opportunity; any number of people will tell you that I was with them, doing my work. It is all a crooked frame-up. Whoever says he saw me is a liar, perjuring himself for the sake of reward. No, I did not do it!"

Your record says that in India, one of your group's main activities was writing up anti-British slogans,' Mulligan pointed out.

I am merely saying that I did not write the slogan on the culvert, which is what you are charging me with unless you are also combining the charge with what I did more than a year ago in India.

For a long time, there was silence in the room. 'Have you anything to add? Mulligan asked. No,' Debi-dayal told him.

You still deny all the charges?'

'I do.'

That's all,' Mulligan said. "Take him away."

"Salaam karol' Balbahadur ordered.

Debi-dayal did not do his salaam. "About turn, quick march!" the sentry barked, and marched him out of the office.

'Arrogant swine, Mulligan murmured under his breath.

"What do you think, Joseph?" "The evidence is incontrovertible,' Joseph assured him.

Mulligan opened the red, padua-wood box on his desk and took out a cigar. He rolled it lovingly in his fingers and put it back and snapped the lid shut. 'I don't know,' he said, shaking his head. 'He is an arrogant man, but I don't think he's a liar. He is not like the others-like that big Ramoshi for instance-an inveterate liar!

He admits to having received the letter,' Joseph persisted. "The other charges follow."

Mulligan shook his head slowly and looked longingly at the cigar box. 'It may be that he did receive the money and hid it, though we have no conclusive evidence. Anyway, most of them have some such secret cache of money, as you know. Perhaps not as much as three hundred rupees, and ordinarily not in currency notes. They usually keep gold-sovereigns.' He was quiet for a while, his jaws champing, and then he banged his fist down on the table with force. But I don't like this business about the slogans!" he exclaimed with sudden vehemence. 'Bloody treason! It deserves a flogging. That will teach them to spread their sedition here. Sedition must be put down absolutely ruthlessly, here, above all. But first I must be convinced. The evidence against this man is far from conclusive. The Ramoshi's word certainly isn't enough. For all we know, he may have been keeping the money up there himself. No, we shall have to wait. If Debi-dayal is our man, let's prove it; it shouldn't be difficult to catch him red-handed. I'm not going to put him back in solitary, or in handcuffs. Let him work with the others; he is bound to give himself away some day. Just as your honour says,' Joseph said, inclining his head. I am having all these suspects trailed, every minute of their time outside barracks; we shall find out, soon enough.'

'Yes, sir."

Mulligan took out a cigar and rolled it in his fingers, close to his ear, listening to the soft crackle. Then he bit off the end and

lit it.

For a moment, the sun lay poised on Saddle Mount, a slightly flattened ball on the nose of a seal, and then toppled down the other side. As they started marching back to the barracks, the quick darkness of the tropics was just a few minutes away.

Jaldi-karo, you bud-tamiz. Balbahadur barked as soon as they were out of carshot of the office. If I were the Super-sahib, I would have put you on the oil mill for not salaaming,' and he shoved his prisoner forward with his staff.

At first it began as a tingling sensation in the small of the back where the point of the lathi had dug, but it was not strong enough to break through the overall feeling of injustice at the charge they were trying to bring against him. And then another prod of the lathi in the same place had brought it out in one quick explosion. The opportunity he had always dreamed of was here, his for the taking, screaming at him. All he had to do was to silence the sentry and make a dash for the jungle. It was like a mechanical puzzle which suddenly works out right when you are not trying, all the pieces fitting neatly into place. And then just as suddenly, came the thought of the jungles; the dark Andaman jungles which are like no other jungles in the world. They had beaten back three successive British attempts to colonise the islands. No prisoner had ever succeeded in making good his escape; not only were the jungles themselves impene- trably hostile, but the Jaoras with their poisoned arrows were forever on the prowl. These little naked men shot at sight; they had made even the British fight for every inch of the ground they had gained. They were there now, in the darkening forest, just out of range of the guards' shotguns. To be sure, the judicious use of bribes and bullets had enabled the British to pacify some of the Jaoras near the coast. But these half-civilized men were perhaps the most dangerous of all. They were required to bring back any escaped convict they encountered, dead or alive, and got a standard reward of a hundred silver rupees and a bag of salt. Over the years, they had brought back many prisoners who had escaped, but not a single one had been alive. Further inland, were other Jaora tribes, human beings without even a spoken language of their own, who attacked all outsiders as a matter of principle. No prisoner falling into their hands was returned either dead or alive. They were said to be cannibals. "Hurry up, you!" Balbahadur shouted. 'Do you think your mother's lover is going to do my chores?' and Balbahadur held him by the shoulder and began to march him faster.

The touch of the hand was like a flame; his body shrank away from it, rebelling. And yet it was important to keep calm, Debi-dayal reminded himself; to think things out in advance. It was not as dark as he would have wished, but the opportunity was too good to miss. If he had planned it, this was just the time he would have selected, the busy hour for both prisoners and officials as the working day was ending. The prisoners would be doing their evening chores, washing up their plates, surreptitiously trying to wash some of their own clothes, lining up for the latrines which they were forbidden to use after dark, and trying to bargain with the cigarette and tobacco peddlers among the sentries. Meanwhile the sentries and the warders would be hustling them about, getting all their charges safely locked up in time for the 'all-clear' report of the day. He looked at the Gurkha with new interest: the hard, animal features, the skin tightly stretched over the cheeks, the flat, gorilla nostrils, the overdeveloped, bow-shaped legs. It was a special bit of luck to have Balbahadur alone, at his mercy, he realized. He would never get another chance like this-not the Gurkha and escape both at the same time.

It had to be faced. Now was the moment. A hundred yards more, and they would be in sight of the guard at the main gate. "Oh, come on, pubic hair! Balbahadur ordered, and raised his stick to goad him on.

He acted without conscious intent, almost through reflex action. He swung into him like a panther closing in on a clumsy buffalo-calf. It was almost too simple, putting this elementary judo hold into practice. When an assailant raised his hand to attack you with a weapon, he is at his most vulnerable. The thing to do is to jump in closer, not away, almost under the upraised hand, and then hit at his windpipe with an upward clip of the edge of the right palm. A more severe, more deadly defence was the scrotum kick.

He chose the scrotum kick, and it was so easy to forget the oft-repeated warnings of Tomonaga: 'No-evah use folce for da sclotum kick-no-evah!"

He used all the force he could muster. The Gurkha folded up like a jack-knife, without a groan, too stunned by the sudden explosion of pain in his groin; it was like a little bomb exploding within him, blinding him with searing pain. He fell where he stood, his legs doubling under him. For a moment be writhed on the ground, like a snake whose head has been crushed but is still alive, and then he lay still..

That was the scene that met Gian's eyes as he came trailing behind Debi-dayal and Balbahadur. For a moment, he stood stock-still as though paralysed. It took another moment for him. to realize what was happening, and yet another for his reflexes to take over. He took out his whistle and blew on it, harder and harder, until the great alarm bell on the central tower began to clang. From hardly twenty yards away, he and Debi-dayal stared at each other with the startled disbelief of animals caught up in a game drive. The clop-clop of the footsteps of the prison police squad was already in their ears, becoming more and more. distinct.

And only then the full horror of what he had done came to him. 'Oh, my God!' Gian gasped. 'Oh, please forgive me, Debi, please... I am sorry, sorry... oh, what have I done!' but the guards were already converging on their quarry, yelling their warnings.

All the prisoners were drawn up in three rows as on a parade, making a half-circle around the triangular scaffolding. The sentries marched the culprit into the yard and made him stand against the wooden frame. He was made to undress and then to stand facing away from the onlookers. His wrists were secured in steel rings fixed on the horizontal strut of the frame, and his ankles were caught up in similar rings at the foot of the step. A leather collar, suspended by a chain hanging from the central bar was fastened round his neck.

Debi-dayal was now ready, straddled against the flogging frame.

The medical-room assistant was already there, carrying a bowl of disinfectant and bandages. The great alarm bell in the tower clanged for a full minute. Even before its sound died out, Mulligan, wearing his Sam Browne belt and a crisp, starched uniform, its brass buttons shining, marched into the courtyard, flanked on one side by the prison doctor and on the other by the cane-man, a short, squat, gorilla of a man with a negroid face, carrying his special flogging cane. Joseph ordered the assembly to attention, marched up to the Superintendent and saluted. He was given the order to 'carry on'. Standing midway between the flogging frame and the ranks of the convicts, Joseph began to read out the charges:

"The convict, number 436 of 1939, Debi-dayal Kerwad, son of Tekchand Kerwad, having been found guilty of, A: assaulting a prison official who was entrusted with guarding him and of causing him serious injury, and, B: attempting to escape, is, by order of the Superintendent, awarded twenty-five lashes of the cane to be administered by the official lathial of the CellularJail.
The sentence will now be executed, with the permission of the Superintendent.' "Carry on,' Mulligan ordered. he cane wielder swung his cane high and brought it down with a whup, making a neat pink line across the naked buttocks of the man on the flogging frame. 

'One!' Joseph began to count.

Swish-slap! Swish-slap! Swish-slap!-the strokes went on in a precise rhythm of their own. "Two! Three! Four!' Joseph went on counting.

At the fifth stroke, Debi-dayal let out a scream, and then for the next minute or so, he bellowed and howled like an animal in pain, his whole frame twitching as the cane came switching down. The lines on his bare body were criss-crossed in a neat pattern, and then the blood began to trickle from the welts, and blurred the precise lines, opening them wider and wider, exposing more and more flesh. Then the screams stopped, almost abruptly, choked off as though by a switch. 'Seventeen! Eighteen! Nineteen!' Joseph's voice went on.

Swish-slap! Swish-slap! the cane came curving down with a hiss, landing with a thick, wet, report, and with each stroke, the victim's body twitched, almost without volition now, more with the force of the stroke than with the victim's reaction.

"Twenty-four! Twenty-five!'

It was over. Even the lathial was bathed in sweat, his coal- black limbs glistening as though rubbed with oil.

The medical officer stepped forward. The warders unhooked the offender from the frame and laid him down on the ground, his back and buttocks an expanse of raw flesh, blue and white and pink, and curiously free of blood.

The doctor bent down, examined the man's pulse and pronounced it to be satisfactory. He rejoined Mulligan who, now that the ceremonial part of the morning was over, had lit a cigar. The medical jemadar daubed the wounds with disinfectant and covered their surface with a piece of gauze dipped in some sort of solution. Then the culprit was carried away on a stretcher.

Mulligan told Joseph to dismiss the parade and walked away, talking animatedly to the doctor. Joseph called the parade to attention, and then dismissed it. The convicts marched off to their interrupted chores.