Kimi

Despite the invective, which would have been offensive in more equanimous times, a smile lit Kimi's face as she thanked me warmly and wished us both goodnight. Clifton made me run up to the post, and ordered an elaborate security for me before returning to his job.

A worn out Clifton told me during breakfast the next morning that in spite of a few hundred rounds of ammunition that had been used, Lalruata had escaped unhurt, as there were no blood marks in the miles they had combed early in the morning. He did not comment when I said that such fiascos had been common in the history of counter-insurgency operations.

"Do you believe in ramhuai," he asked me instead, and left the room before I could answer.

Kimi came to see me later in the day. Clifton was within an earshot of our confabulations, and I saw him recoil in disgust when she told me that her husband had managed to hoodwink the soldiers and had spent the night with her after the sound and fury was over.

Two months later, I received a wireless message from Captain Clifton, which read: Lalruara shot dead 0200 hours today inside cave hideout. Companions escaped with injuries. Four weapons recovered. Self escorting family and dead body to Serkawn where family desire church service and burial. Grateful you meet at roadhead 1500 hours today and arrange post-mortem and other legal and police formalities.

I stood dazed as Kimi and children passed by, with impassive eloquence of sorrow on their faces, followed by villagers carrying the coffin along the hillside where the track joined the road. Captain Clifton was the last, marching at the head of his troops. He looked dishevelled and untidy, and I noticed dried blood on his combat jacket when he came forward to shake hands with me. It must have been a close range shootout, I reckoned, and wished that he had appreciated the irony of the situation and stayed away. After all it was the funeral of a man he had shot dead the very same morning. Cliftons's own thoughts were impenetrable, and I must admit that, in that haze of confused emotions, I was unable to see the ambiguity of his own position, the conflict between the man and the soldier, between personal and professional obligations, culminating in an upshot which perhaps one didn't wish for and the other didn't choose.

I held Kimi’s little daughter’s hand during the burial service, and wondered why nobody cried and why nobody betrayed a resentment of any kind, not even against the presence of Captain Clifton. It was difficult to know if such restraint came forth from a simple acceptance of the inevitability of death, or an emotion so indeterminate that it couldn't find expression.

Kimi turned her head away and gazed into the emptiness of the valley when the coffin was lowered. Then she said to me, "Kapu, the Captain's jacket. Shouldn't all that blood be buried where it belongs?" I don't know if she meant the hatchet.

Clifton overheard her and, handing over the jacket to me, said, "We've come straight from the raid, and it's been cold. I realise now that I should have taken it off. It's awful, and I am terribly sorry."

As Kimi took the jacket from my hands and clutched it to her bosom, I saw a tear-burst from her eyes darken some spots on the dried blood.