Autumn, 1766 AD

The first time he broke their hearts was at Bhagero, the seat of the Bunga Dya:.

The sequestered little town, an hour’s walk from the church, had seemed pregnant with expectation. A white man was walking its cobbled streets for the very first time.

That day, as if an occasion for one of their many superstitious rituals, the natives had come out in force, beaming. They peered from the many windows, clamoured on their balconies; some had even climbed onto branches of the trees along the way.

A spectacle. Like an ape-man paraded at a human menagerie in Florence.

His congregation had often talked of the red god that was housed in a large courtyard at the heart of the town. Earlier that year, just before the monsoons, he had marvelled at the bizarre month-long procession where the natives had drawn the red idol in a large, ornamented car through the streets of Lelit Pattan.

What inconceivable noises they had made with their many instruments. The horror. He could still hear the crashing cymbals some restless nights.

Ever since, he’d been meaning to see for himself this red god that inspired such fervent piety. But now that he was there at the courtyard with beaming natives looking on from every eager window, they were asking him to take off his shoes.

Unthinkable. Take off his shoes? Blasphemy! How could he? What if the other friars found out? The natives could keep their many gods, he would not, could not, forsake his own.  

They, after all, had not travelled over land and sea to this strange valley to pay obeisance to false idols. They had come to bring them into the one true light.  

So he flushed a colour red, like the pagan god in the temple he would not enter, and turned, and left.

The crowd parted like a biblical sea.

A spell was broken.

“Walla, Walla, Pulu Kisi,” someone yelled to a thousand sniggers. His feet suddenly felt heavy and he began to waddle.

A pale white figure lost amid a sea of oily, brown faces—the white elephant, the Pulu Kisi. 

***

Winter, 1767 AD

They don’t lie when they say that bad news travels like the wind.

The second time he broke their hearts was under the roof of his own church.

The citadel of Cirtipur had fallen, betrayed by one of its own. That year, time after time, the Gorc’hian king had sent his probes, and time after time they had been swatted like flies. 

But after seven months of siege—with rotting bodies hanging like strange fruit on the branches of the trees along the way—their will had wavered. The fortress had been built to withstand any attack from the outside; it could not withstand a betrayal from within.

By nightfall, word was afoot that something terrible had transpired. The invading king, who had promised mercy, had rolled back on his words. An example would be made of Cirtipur so that all the three kingdoms of Nepal would cower for generations.

 When the first wailing man arrived at his doorstep, he had already heard of the horror, but had refused to believe it. Barbarity like this had to be seen to be believed, and what a wretched sight it was.

Poor souls had their noses and lips cleanly lobbed off! Dozens of natives, from haggardly, wheezing old men to wild-eyed, terrified children, looked akin to dead skeletons—their blood-soaked teeth bare, abyss-like cavities where the nose stills once were, jaws hanging, faces contorted in terrible pain.  

Sat beneath the altar, on their knees, hands clenched in postulation, “Syaata, Syaata,” they kept repeating in an unholy chorus. Like a million crashing cymbals.

The horror. 

Yet, what was there to be done? Neither faith nor medicine could cure treachery; what could three white men do?

Yet, how could you even begin to turn them away?

Unable to take it, he rushed out into the courtyard, retching. What god would allow such a thing to pass? Even if all is divine providence.

A silent moon stood witness to a breaking red dawn.

By his door, taken off and lined neatly in obeisance, were a host of blood-stained shoes.

***

The accompanying artwork is a detail of a larger work, Remember History, by Supriya Manandhar.