The Year of Rice and Salt

'We are trying everything,' he said with a laugh. 'The Kerala believes all habits must be re examined with an eye to changing them, improving them as much as possible. Eating habits, bathing, evacuation – he began as an artillery officer when he was very young, and he learned the value of regular procedure. He proposed that the barrels of cannons be bored out rather than cast, as the casting could never be done with any true smoothness. With uniform bores cannons become more powerful and lighter at once, and ever so much more accurate. He tested all these things, and reduced gunnery to a set of settled motions, like a dance, much the same for cannon of all sizes, making them capable of deployment as quickly as infantry, almost as quick as cavalry. And easily carried on ships. Results have been prodigious, as you see.' Waving around complacently at the party.

'You have been an artillery officer, I suppose.'

The man laughed. 'Yes, I was.'

'So now you enjoy a celebration here.'

'Yes, and there are other reasons for this gathering. The bankers, the shippers. But they all ride on the back of the artillery, if you will.'

'And not the doctors.'

'No. But I wish it were so! Tell me again if you see any part of military life that might be made more healthy.'

'No contact with prostitutes?'

The man laughed again. 'Well, it is a religious duty for many of them, you must understand. The temple dancers are important for many ceremonies.'

'Ah. Well. Cleanliness, then. The animalcules move from body to body in dirt, by touch, in food or water, and breath. Boiled surgical instruments reduce infections. Masks on doctors and nurses and patients, to reduce spread of infection.'

The officer looked pleased. 'Cleanliness is a virtue of caste purity. The Kerala does not approve of caste, but it should be possible to make cleanliness more of a priority.'

'Boiling kills the animalcules, it seems. Cooking implements, pots and pans, drinking water – all might be boiled to advantage. Not very practical, I suppose.'

'No, but possible. What other methods could be applied?'

'Certain herbs, perhaps, and things poisonous to the animalcules but not to people. But no one knows whether such things exist.'

'But trials could be made.'

'Possibly.'

'On poisoners, for instance.'

'It's been done.'

'Oh, the Kerala will be pleased. How he loves trials, records, numbers laid out by his mathematicians to show whether the impressions of one doctor are true when applied to the army as a whole body. He will want to speak to you again.'

'I will tell him all I can,' Ismail said.

The officer shook his hand, holding it in both of his. 'I will bring you back to the Kerala presently. For now, the musicians are here, I see. I like to listen to them from up on the terraces.'

Ismail followed him for a while, as if in an eddy, and then one of the abbess's assistants snagged him and brought him back to the party gathered by the Kerala to watch the concert.

The singers were dressed in beautiful saris, the musicians in silk jackets cut from bolts of different colour and weave, mostly of brilliant sky blue and blood orange red. The musicians began to play; the drummers set a pattern on tablas, and others played tall stringed instruments, like long necked ouds, making Ismail recall Konstantiniyye, the whole city called up by these twangy things so like an oud.

A singer stepped forward and sang in some foreign tongue, the notes gliding through tones without a stop anywhere, always curving through tonalities unfamiliar to Ismail, no tones or quartertones that did not bend up or down rapidly, like certain bird calls. The singer's companions danced slowly behind her, coming as close to still positions as she came close to steady tones, but always moving, hands extended palm outwards, speaking in dance languages.

Now the two drummers shifted into a complex but steady rhythm, woven together in a braid with the singing. Ismail closed his eyes; he had never heard such music. Melodies overlapped and went on without end. The audience swayed in time with them, the soldiers dancing in place, all moving around the still centre of the Kerala, and even he shimmied in place, moved by sound. When the drummers went into a final mad flurry to mark the end of the piece, the soldiers cheered and shouted and leapt in the air. The singers and musicians bowed deeply, smiling, and came forward to receive the Kerala's congratulations. He conferred for a time with the lead singer, talking to her as to an old friend. Ismail found himself in something like a reception line gathered by the abbess, and he nodded to the sweaty performers one by one as they passed. They were young. Many different perfumes filled Ismail's nostrils, jasmine, orange, sea spray, and his breathing swelled his chest. The sea smell came in stronger on a breeze, from the sea itself this time, though there had been a perfume like it. The sea lay green and blue out there, like the road to everywhere.