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descended on the spectators: these soldiers were not English—they were Indians. The people around Rajkumar stirred, as though moved to curiosity by the sight of an Indian in their midst.
    â€˜Who are these soldiers?’ someone said.
    â€˜I don’t know.’
    It struck Rajkumar suddenly that he hadn’t seen any of the usual Indian faces in the bazaar all day: none of the coolies and cobblers and shopkeepers who always came there every day. For a moment this seemed odd, but then he forgot about it and was once again absorbed in the spectacle of the marching sepoys.
    People began to ask Rajkumar questions. ‘What are these soldiers doing here?’
    Rajkumar shrugged. How was he to know? He had no more connection with the soldiers than did they. A group of men gathered around him, crowding in, so that he had to take a few backward steps. ‘Where do the soldiers come from? Why are they here?’
    â€˜I don’t know where they come from. I don’t know who they are.’
    Glancing over his shoulder, Rajkumar saw that he had backed himself into a blind alley. There were some seven or eight men around him. They had pulled up their longyis, tucking them purposefully up at the waist. The sepoys were just a short distance away, hundreds, perhaps thousands of them. But he was alone in the alley—the only Indian—out of earshot, surrounded by these men who were clearly intent on making him answer for the soldiers’ presence.
    A hand flashed out of the shadows. Taking a grip on his hair, a man pulled him off the ground. Rajkumar swung upa leg and dug it back, aiming his heel at his assailant’s groin. The man saw the kick coming and blocked it with one hand. Twisting Rajkumar’s head around, he struck him across the face with the back of his fist. A spurt of blood shot out of Rajkumar’s nose. The shock of the blow slowed the moment to a standstill. The arc of blood seemed to stop in its trajectory, hanging suspended in the air, brilliantly translucent, like a string of garnets. Then the crook of an elbow took Rajkumar in the stomach, pumping the breath out of him and throwing him against a wall. He slid down, clutching his stomach, as though he were trying to push his insides back in.
    Then, suddenly, help arrived. A voice rang through the lane. ‘Stop.’ The men turned round, startled.
    â€˜Let him be.’
    It was Saya John, advancing towards them with one arm in the air, looking oddly authoritative in a hat and coat. Tucked snugly into the palm of his upraised hand was a small, blunt-nosed pistol. The men backed away slowly and once they’d gone, Saya John slipped the pistol into his coat pocket. ‘You’re lucky I saw you,’ he said to Rajkumar. ‘Didn’t you know better than to be put on the streets today? The other Indians have all barricaded themselves into Hajji Ismail’s compound, at the foot of Mandalay hill.’
    He held out a hand and helped Rajkumar to his feet. Rajkumar stood up and wiped the blood off his throbbing face. They walked out of the alley together. On the main road soldiers were still marching past. Rajkumar and Saya John stood side by side and watched the triumphal parade.
    Presently Saya John said: ‘I used to know soldiers like these.’
    â€˜Saya?’
    â€˜In Singapore, as a young man I worked for a time as a hospital orderly. The patients were mainly sepoys like these— Indians, back from fighting wars for their English masters. I still remember the smell of gangrenous bandages on amputated limbs; the night-time screams of twenty-year-old boys, sitting upright in their beds. They were peasants, those men, from small countryside villages: their clothes and turbans still smeltof woodsmoke and dung fires. “What makes you fight,” I would ask them, “when you should be planting your fields at home?” “Money,” they’d say, and yet all they earned was a few annas