The Confusion

“Surendranath is my zamindar. His agents hover over the markets in my two cities-Bhalupoor in the hills, where we stayed last night, and Dalicot on the coast, where we are going now. For those are the places where the produce of the earth or sea is exchanged for silver. And since I must pay my taxes to the Great Mogul in silver, that is the only place to collect it. The tax rate is fixed. Nothing ever changes. The jagir produces a certain meager income, and there is no way to increase it.”

“So what’ve you been doin’ all these years, Dad?” Jimmy demanded.

“My first move was to lose some battles-or, at the very least, fail to win them-against the Marathas.”

“Why? Y’know how t’make phosphorus. You could’ve scared those Marathas shitless and driven ’em into the sea.”

“This was tactical losing, Danny boy. The other omerah s-I mean the intriguing types in Shahjahanabad-had heard tales of that phosphorus. It was in their nature to look on me as a dangerous rival. If I’d gone out and started winning battles, they’d’ve begun sending assassins my way. And I already have my hands full with French, Spanish, German, and Ottoman assassins.”

“But by makin’ yerself out to be a feckless Vagabond shite-for-brayans, you assured yourself of some security,” said Jimmy.

“Moguls and Marathas alike want me to stay alive-for another one hundred and sixteen days, anyway. Otherwise I never would’ve lasted long enough for you boys to journey out and beat me up.”

“But what then, Dad? Have you done anything here besides losin’ battles and mulctin’ wretches for pin-money?”

“Ssh! Listen!” Jack said.

They listened, and mostly heard their own stomachs growling, and a breeze in the trees. But after a few moments they were able to make out a distant chop, chop, chop.

“Woodcutters?” Danny guessed.

“Not just any wood, and not just any cutters,” said Jack, spurring his donkey down off the hilltop and riding toward the sound. “Mark this tree over here-no, the big one on the right! That is teak.”

“Tea?”

“Teak. Teak. It grows all over Hind.”

“What’s it good for?”

“It grows all over Hind, I said. Think about what that means.”

“What’s it mean? Just give it to us straight, Dad. We’re no good at riddles,” Jimmy said; at which Danny took offense.

“Speak for yourself, ninny-hammer. He’s tryin’ to tell us that nothin’ succeeds in eatin’ this type o’ wood.”

“Danny’s got it,” Jack said. “None of the diverse worms, ants, moths, beetles, and grubs that, sooner or later, eat everything here, can make any headway against teak-wood.”

SEVERAL TALL TEAKS HAD BEEN felled in the clearing, but even so, Danny and Jimmy had to peer around for a quarter of an hour to realize what the place was. In Christendom there would have been a pit full of wood-shavings, and a couple of sawyers playing tug-of-war with a saw-frame the size of a bed-stead, slicing the logs into squarish beams, and looking forward to the end of the day when they could go home to a village some distance down the road. But here, a whole town had sprung up around these fallen trees. It had been a wild place before, and would be wild again in a year, but today, hundreds dwelt here. Most of them were gathering food, cooking, or tending children. Perhaps two score adult males were actually cutting wood, and the largest tool that any of them had was a sort of hand-adze. This trophy was being wielded by an impressive man of perhaps forty, who was being closely supervised-some would say nagged-by a pair of village elders who had an opinion to offer about every stroke of the blade.

The village’s approach to cutting up these great teak-logs had much in common, overall, with how freemasons chipped rough blocks of stone one tiny chisel-blow at a time. At the other end of the village, some of them were scraping away at almost-finished timbers with potshards or fragments of chipped rock. Some of these timbers were square and straight, but others had been carved into very specific curves.

“That there would be a knee brace,” Danny said, looking at a five-hundred-pound V of solid teak.

“Do not fail to marvel at how the grain of the wood follows the bend of the knee,” Jack said.

“It’s as if God formed the tree for this purpose!” said Jimmy, crossing himself.

“Aye, but then the Devil planted it in the middle of a million others.”

“That might’ve been part of God’s plan,” Danny demurred, “as a trial and a test for the faithful.”

“I think I have made it abundantly clear that I am no good at tests of that sort,” Jack said, “but these kolis are another matter. They will wander the hills for weeks and look at every single tree. They’ll send a child scampering up a promising teak to inspect the place where a bough branches off from the trunk, for that is where the grain-lines of the wood curve just so-and, too, it’s where the wood is strongest and heaviest. When they’ve found the right tree, down it comes! And they move the whole village there until the wood has been shaped and the timbers delivered.”