The Ambush

I had already exhausted my year's casual leave. It was immediately after the course at Haflong was over, and I rented a cottage about a mile out on the way to the railway station. Rini and I worked on the two rooms to make the place habitable. We measured the wild garden for its flowers and brought everyday some wild yellow cosmos like beauty rationed into our bedroom. And we were ecstatic in our happiness during the two weeks we spent together.

But one day, about the end of the two week holiday, a fear nagged at the back of my mind. Was she genuine and honest? Was she a spy trying to establish contacts? Why hadn't she talked about the operations like all educated Mizos do when they find a friendly officer? I sat on the grass and thought about it, not without a certain unease. The soldier with suspicion at his shoulder had come back into my holiday.

I went in to Rini with my hands full of flowers. It was a bit uncanny, but soon after the onset of my suspicion she told me about her childhood at Champhai, her schooling at Halflong and Shillong. She also told me that she had come to visit some relatives in Halflong and had stayed on because of me. She told me she had scant regard for soldiers, although she had known only two: I was one and the other, in a fashion, was her husband. I had not known that she was married. Such mundane considerations had not yet cropped up in our ethereal relationship.

"He went underground when the hostilities began," she said. "I have notes from him, two messages this year. Like all those who have gone underground, he is driven by hatred of the Indians, particularly the army. Do you not wonder how I dare tell you all this?"

I suppose the thought should have occurred to me as an official hunter of those who went underground.

"I do not love him," she said. "Who can love a man five years in the jungle?"

Waking at dawn with her by my side... Flowers made sensitive by her touch in a bowl near our bed..... The China silk housecoat of large gold flowers on white that she wore last night puts my prosaic shirt to shame where they lie together on the chair. When she woke, her hand caressed me and she moved into my arms like they were her last refuge. We went over the edge of the world in a slow glissade of love...

We had two weeks together and then I had to leave. She said, "Tell me where you are going. It is easier to bear absence if I know where you would be."

It would have been professionally incorrect if I had told her. But the thought of leaving her was like dying. It still is.

Our silent waiting on the track was part of the quiet of the earth and forest, a brown green silence. The ambush waited like a halted film. One moment there was nothing but the narrow path; then, in the next, I watched a figure in olive green come round the bend, brushing the screen of bamboo leaves with care, putting foot before foot in a cat tread of caution.

I felt the faster race of my heart and the sudden tension of the riflemen near me. I moved the lever of the stengun from safe to automatic. I squeezed with my right hand, tightening my hold on the pistol grip, taking up the trigger's first pressure so that the gun would fire when I closed my forefinger. I looked through the backsight and laid the gun accurately on the center of the figure's chest. The fellow carried a rifle. He stopped, well within the range of our rifles. Two others came in sight behind him. My left hand clenched at the small of the butt, holding the gun rigid, the butt plate right in the cushion of my shoulder.