Kimi

Kimi offered me a glass of zu, which she said she had brewed specially for me and, though she did not drink, she celebrated my visit by having a glassful herself. While we ate smoked venison and drank, and everybody laughed as I practised my newly acquired Mizo language on the children, Kimi turned to me and whispered, "My husband is here tonight. He has come to meet my very special friend, as he calls you."

Being fancied a friend of relatively unknown persons for the second time in an evening should have been highly gratifying in normal circumstances. But there wasn't much to be pleased with the situation as it presented itself now. Fortunately, a long habit of smug complacency in hair-raising situations helped me to tide over the crisis with a smile and a nod, which was meant to convey in a feigned show of unconcern that I had nothing against meeting him. I did not see a point in retreat at this stage, any way.

She, however, seemed to be in no great hurry. Looking intensely into the fire growing restless under the draught from the chimney, she settled down into a calm contemplation of her state of mind.

"Kapu", she said, "I'm young, and I often meet my husband secretly in the jungle to get over this unbearable loneliness. I also take food for him. The Captain calls it a crime against the government. Why do you have such laws against the laws of nature? I have friends who have gone to other men in desperation. Some say who would love a man two years in the jungle, and may be these men have women to comfort them elsewhere. But I look at it differently. I tell Ruata to settle down quietly as a family man because I do not like his political views or his desire to kill Indian soldiers. I want this war to end, but will it end without taking away those who mean so much to me? Kapu, I'm unable to analyse these two men. My husband says he has a cause to fight for and thinks he can stay alive only if Clifton is put out of the way. But why should Clifton want to kill Ruata is not very clear to me. I know one is paid to kill in the army and they get promotions and medals if they kill a lot of people, ye t I do not understand. Is it that bravery medal he wants to win, or perhaps me? I often wonder."

I would have liked her to tell me more about this last apprehension, but I decided that any questions would be indelicate in that moment of communion. She was silent for a while, and listened anxiously to footsteps outside the house until a few specks of sweat appeared on her brow. I reckoned she heard something more than what was audible to me when she suddenly held my hand and said in a whisper, "Your meeting with my husband has to be brief, Kapu." I trusted her, but couldn’t help wondering if the brevity she implied was the time taken for a bullet to travel from the barrel to the brain.

As she led me towards the darkness of her bedroom, out sprang a man like a ghost, with a carbine slung on his shoulder and waist pouches holding grenades. We shook hands with overwrought gestures, like two actors rehearsing a play, and then we came out and sat on the cane settee, in the shadow cast by the base of the lantern directly above our heads, where Kimi and I had been sitting and chatting a little while before. A wiry man in his mid-thirties, he was a handsome predator.

The silence was so stifling that I endeavoured to lessen it by offering him a glass of zu.

"I don't drink, Kapu," he said. And he added somewhat unctuously, "Very few of us in the jungle drink. We have vowed to drink by the drums on the day of our freedom."