Uncles, Aunts and Elephants

by Ruskin Bond

  In the confusion and uproar that followed, the bear entered Mr Oliver’s tent (he was already outside, fortunately) and came out entangled in Mr Oliver’s dressing gown. It then made off in the direction of the forest.

  A bear in a dressing gown? It was a comical sight. And though we were a troop of brave little Scouts, we thought it better to let the bear keep the gown.

  Bitter Gooseberries

  As a young man, Grandfather had spent a few years in Burma, and this was one of the stories he liked to tell us . . .

  This is the story of the snake and the gooseberries and much else besides, so be still, don’t interrupt, and don’t ask questions. Are you listening? Well, then. There was once a snake and he lived in a gooseberry bush, and every night he turned into a handsome prince. Now there is nothing extraordinary about this; it happens all the time, especially in Burma where everyone is handsome anyway . . . But a story can’t succeed unless there’s a woman in it, so there was also a woman who lived in a little bamboo house with orchids hanging in the veranda, and she had three daughters called Ma Gyi, Ma Lat and Ma Nge. And Ma Nge was the youngest and the nicest and the most beautiful, because a story can’t succeed unless she is all these things.

  Well, one day the mother of Ma Nge had to go out to fetch gooseberries from the forest. They were bitter gooseberries: Burmese ladies call them zi-byu-thi, and prefer them to sweet gooseberries. The woman took her basket along, and just as she was starting to pick gooseberries, the snake who lived in the gooseberry bush hissed at her, as much as to say: ‘Be off.’ This was the snake who was a prince by night, but now of course it was broad daylight, and anyway Burmese women aren’t afraid of snakes. Moreover, the snake recalled that this was the mother of three daughters, and he had a fondness for daughters, so he changed his mind about sending the woman away, and waited for her to speak first, because she was a woman, and women are remarkable for their business capacity.

  The woman said, ‘Please give me a gooseberry.’ Women are always wanting something; it’s a part of their business philosophy.

  But the snake said no. He had remembered that he was a prince and that princes aren’t supposed to say yes to anything; not at first, anyway. It was a matter of principle.

  Then the woman said, ‘If you like my eldest daughter, Ma Gyi, give me a gooseberry.’ The snake didn’t care for Ma Gyi, because he knew she had a terrible temper (or perhaps it was a distemper), but he gave the woman a gooseberry as a matter of policy. ‘One gooseberry is about all that Ma Gyi is worth,’ he said to himself.

  But women all over the world, from Burma to Bermuda and beyond, are never satisfied with only one of anything, and so she said, ‘If you like my second daughter, Ma Lat, give me another gooseberry.’

  The prince knew that Ma Lat had a squint, but he didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, so he gave the woman another gooseberry; and thus encouraged, she continued, ‘And if you like my youngest daughter, Ma Nge, give me another gooseberry.’

  At that, the snake trembled so violently from tip to tail that every gooseberry fell off the bush; for the snake prince knew that Ma Nge was the youngest and nicest and most beautiful of them all. And the woman gathered up all the gooseberries, put them in her basket, and took them home because they were bitter (zi-byu-thi), and because she was a woman of remarkable business capacity.

  On the way she met a signpost and gave it a gooseberry, saying, ‘If a snake comes enquiring which way I have gone, don’t tell him, but point in the opposite direction.’ She said this because she knew the signpost would do just the opposite.

  Then she went on and said the same thing to two more signposts (everything has to be done three times in the best stories), and the posts all did the same thing, which was to show the snake the proper road, because that is what signposts are supposed to do.

  The snake had little difficulty in following the woman to her house. He hid in a large jar, and when she came to get something, he slid out and coiled round her arm in the manner of a prospective son in-law.

  ‘If you love my daughter Ma Gyi, let go,’ cried the woman, pretending to be frightened. (She knew quite well that the snake was a prince.)

  But the snake hung on, because he didn’t love Ma Gyi, who had a bad temper and probably distemper, too.

  ‘If you love Ma Lat, let go!’

  But the snake hung on. Although he personally had nothing against squinty-eyed women, he did not relish the prospect of being stared at by one all his life.

  And then (because everything must be done three times) the woman cried, ‘If you love my daughter Ma Nge, let go!’

  The snake fell swooning to the ground. And as night had come on quite suddenly, in the snake’s place the mother found the supplicant prince, smitten with love for her youngest daughter. And she wasted no time in getting him married to Ma Nge.

  That ought to be the end of the story. But in Burma stories don’t end, they just go on and on forever, so that sometimes it is difficult to print them. But the prince had to do something to break the spell, because after some time Ma Nge found it rather irritating being married to a prince who was her husband by night and a snake by day. She said she preferred a man about the place even during the day. It was she who managed to break the spell because, like her mother, she too had this remarkable business capacity. All she did was to find her husband a job, and the shock was so great that it broke the spell. It was the first time in his life that the prince had been expected to do any work, and he was so shaken that he completely forgot how to turn himself back into a snake.

  But the prince stuck to his job, and worked so hard that sometimes his wife felt quite lonely; she didn’t know that his employers had provided him with a beautiful secretary, and that this was encouraging him to work overtime. And so, when he came home late and went straight to bed after dinner, she began to scold him and complain of his indifference. One morning he became so disgusted with her constant nagging that he found he could remember the magic spell and immediately turned himself into an enormous snake.

  He started by trying to swallow his wife’s feet. Ma Nge called out to her mother, but her mother said that was quite all right.

  ‘He has swallowed my knees,’ wailed poor Ma Nge.

  ‘Never mind, dear,’ replied her mother, who was cooking in the next room. ‘You never can tell what an amorous husband will do.’

  ‘He has swallowed my neck.’

  The mother thought this was going too far; and when no further calls came from her daughter, she burst into the room and remonstrated with the snake, who had entirely swallowed Ma Nge.

  ‘Give her up at once,’ cried the indignant mother.

  ‘Not unless you agree to my terms,’ said the snake. ‘First, I’m to be a snake whenever I feel like it. Second, I’m to be a real prince and go to work only when I feel like it. How can your daughter love me if I come home tired from the office like any other man? You wanted a prince for a son-in-law. You got one. Now you must let me live like a prince.’

  The mother agreed to his terms, and he un-swallowed his wife, and from that day onwards the two women did all the work while the prince sat in the veranda under the hanging orchids and drank a wonderful beer made from bitter gooseberries.

  *

  ‘Can you make gooseberry beer?’ I asked Grandfather when he had finished his story.

  ‘Certainly,’ said Grandfather. ‘The day your grandmother allows it, I’ll make gooseberry beer and plum wine and apple cider and a gin tonic, too!’

  But Grandmother did not allow it. Strong drink had been banned ever since Uncle Ken had taken too much and fallen into a ditch.

  Uncle Ken’s Feathered Foes

  Uncle Ken looked smug and pleased with life. He had just taken a large bite out of a currant bun (well-buttered inside, with strawberry jam as a stuffing) and was about to take a second bite when, out of a clear blue sky, a hawk swooped down, snatched the bun out of Uncle Ken’s hands and flew away with its trophy.

  I
t was a bad time for Uncle Ken. He was being persecuted — not by his sisters or the world at large, but by the birds in our compound.

  It all began when he fired his airgun at a noisy bunch of crows, and one of them fell dead on the veranda steps.

  The crows never forgave him.

  He had only to emerge from the house for a few minutes, and they would fling themselves at him, a noisy gang of ten to fifteen crows, swooping down with flapping wings and extended beaks, knocking off his hat and clawing at his flailing arms. If Uncle Ken wanted to leave the compound, he would have to sneak out of the back veranda, make a dash for his bicycle, and pedal furiously down the driveway until he was out of the gate and on the main road. Even then, he would be pursued by two or three outraged crows until he was well outside their territory.

  This persecution continued for two or three weeks, until, in desperation, Uncle Ken adopted a disguise. He put on a false beard, a deer-stalker cap (in the manner of Sherlock Holmes), a long, black cloak (in the manner of Count Dracula) and a pair of Grandfather’s old riding boots. And so attired, he marched up and down the driveway, frightening away two elderly ladies who had come to see Grandmother. The crows were suitably baffled and kept at a distance. But Grandmother’s pet mongrel, Crazy, began barking furiously, caught hold of Uncle Ken’s cloak and wouldn’t let go until I came to his rescue.

  *

  The mango season was approaching, and we were all looking forward to feasting on our mangoes that summer.

  There were three or four mango trees in our compound, and Uncle Ken was particularly anxious to protect them from monkeys, parrots, flying foxes and other fruit-eating creatures. He had his own favourite mango tree, and every afternoon he would place a cot beneath it, and whenever he spotted winged or furred intruders in the tree, he would put a small bugle to his lips and produce a shrill bugle call — loud enough to startle everyone in the house as well as the denizens of the trees.

  However, after a few shattering bugle calls Uncle Ken would doze off, only to wake up an hour later bespattered with the droppings of parrots, pigeons, squirrels and other inhabitants of the mango tree. After two or three days of blessings from the birds, Uncle Ken came out with a large garden umbrella which protected him from aerial bombardment.

  While he was fast asleep one afternoon (after spoiling Grandfather’s siesta with his horn blowing), Grandmother caught me by the hand and said, ‘Be a good boy; go out and fetch that bugle.’

  I did as I was told, slipping the bugle out of Uncle Ken’s hands as he snored, and handing it over to Grandmother. I’m not sure what she did with it, but a few weeks later, as a wedding band came down the road, drums beating and trumpets blaring, I thought I recognized Uncle Ken’s old bugle. A dark, good-looking youth blew vigorously upon it, quite out of tune with everyone else. It looked and sounded like Uncle Ken’s bugle.

  *

  Summer came and went, and so did the mangoes. And then the monsoon arrived, and the pond behind the house overflowed, and there were frogs hopping about all over the veranda.

  One morning Grandfather called me over to the back garden and led me down to the pond where he pointed to a couple of new arrivals — a pair of colourful storks who were wading about on their long legs and using their huge bills to snap up fish, frogs, or anything else they fancied. They paid no attention to us, and we were quite content to watch them going about their business.

  Uncle Ken, of course, had to go and make a nuisance of himself. Armed with his Kodak ‘Baby Brownie’ camera (all the rage at the time), he waded into the pond (wearing Grandfather’s boots) and proceeded to take pictures of the visiting birds.

  Now, certain storks and cranes — especially those who move about in pairs — grow very attached to each other, and generally resent any overtures of friendship from clumsy humans.

  Mr Stork, seeing Uncle Ken approaching through the lily-covered waters, assumed that my uncle’s intentions were of an amorous nature. Uncle Ken in hat and cloak might well have been mistaken for a huge bird of prey — or a member of the ostrich family.

  Mr Stork wasn’t going to stand for any rivals, and leaving Mrs Stork to do the fishing, advanced upon Uncle Ken with surprising speed, lunged at him, and knocked the camera from his hands.

  Leaving his camera to the tadpoles, Uncle Ken fled from the lily pond, hotly pursued by an irate stork, who even got in a couple of kung fu kicks before Uncle Ken reached the safety of the veranda.

  Mourning the loss of his dignity and his camera, Uncle Ken sulked for a couple of days, and then announced that he was going to far-off Pondicherry to stay with an aunt who had settled there.

  Everyone heaved a sigh of relief, and Grandfather and I saw Uncle Ken off at the station, just to make sure he didn’t change his mind and return home in time for dinner.

  Later, we heard that Uncle Ken’s holiday in Pondicherry went smoothly for a couple of days, there being no trees around his aunt’s seafront flat. On the beach he consumed innumerable ice creams and platters full of French fries, without being bothered by crows, parrots, monkeys or small boys.

  And then, one morning, he decided to treat himself to breakfast at on open-air café near the beach, and ordered bacon and eggs, sausages, three toasts, cheese and marmalade.

  He had barely taken a bite out of his buttered toast when, out of a blind blue sky, a seagull swooped down and carried off a sausage.

  Uncle Ken was still in shock when another seagull shot past him, taking with it a rasher of bacon.

  Seconds later a third gull descended and removed the remaining sausage, splattering toast and fried egg all over Uncle Ken’s trousers.

  He was left with half a toast and a small pot of marmalade.

  When he got back to the flat and told his aunt what had happened, she felt sorry for him and gave him a glass of milk and a peanut butter sandwich.

  Uncle Ken hated milk. And he detested peanut butter. But when hungry he would eat almost anything.

  ‘Can’t trust those seagulls,’ said his aunt. ‘They are all non-veg. Stick to spinach and lettuce, and they’ll leave you alone.’

  ‘Ugh,’ said Uncle Ken in disgust. ‘I’d rather be a seagull.’

  Escape from Java

  It all happened within the space of a few days. The cassia tree had barely come into flower when the first bombs fell on Batavia (now called Jakarta) and the bright pink blossoms lay scattered over the wreckage in the streets.

  News had reached us that Singapore had fallen to the Japanese. My father said, ‘I expect it won’t be long before they take Java. With the British defeated, how can the Dutch be expected to win!’ He did not mean to be critical of the Dutch; he knew they did not have the backing of the Empire that Britain had. Singapore had been called the Gibraltar of the East. After its surrender there could only be retreat, a vast exodus of Europeans from South-East Asia.

  It was the Second World War. What the Javanese thought about the war is now hard for me to say, because I was only nine at the time and knew very little of worldly matters. Most people knew they would be exchanging their Dutch rulers for Japanese rulers; but there were also many who spoke in terms of freedom for Java when the war was over.

  Our neighbour, Mr Hartono, was one of those who looked ahead to a time when Java, Sumatra and the other islands would make up one independent nation. He was a college professor and spoke Dutch, Chinese, Javanese and a little English. His son, Sono, was about my age. He was the only boy I knew who could talk to me in English, and as a result we spent a lot of time together. Our favourite pastime was flying kites in the park.

  The bombing soon put an end to kite flying. Air raid alerts sounded at all hours of the day and night, and although in the beginning most of the bombs fell near the docks, a couple of miles from where we lived, we had to stay indoors. If the planes sounded very near, we dived under beds or tables. I don’t remember if there were any trenches. Probably there hadn’t been time for trench digging, and now there was time only for digging grave
s. Events had moved all too swiftly, and everyone (except, of course, the Javanese) was anxious to get away from Java.

  ‘When are you going?’ asked Sono, as we sat on the veranda steps in a pause between air raids.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It all depends on my father.’

  ‘My father says the Japs will be here in a week. And if you’re still here then, they’ll put you to work building a railway.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind building a railway,’ I protested.

  ‘But they won’t give you enough to eat. Just rice with worms in it. And if you don’t work properly, they’ll shoot you.’

  ‘They do that to soldiers,’ I said. ‘We’re civilians.’

  ‘They do it to civilians, too,’ said Sono.

  What were my father and I doing in Batavia, when our home had been first in India and then in Singapore? He worked for a firm dealing in rubber, and six months earlier he had been sent to Batavia to open a new office in partnership with a Dutch business house. Although I was so young, I accompanied my father almost everywhere. My mother left when I was very small, and my father had always looked after me. After the war was over he was going to take me to England.

  ‘Are we going to win the war?’ I asked.

  ‘It doesn’t look it from here,’ he said.

  No, it didn’t look as though we were winning. Standing at the docks with my father, I watched the ships arrive from Singapore crowded with refugees — men, women and children, all living on the decks in the hot tropical sun; they looked pale and worn out and worried. They were on their way to Colombo or Bombay. No one came ashore at Batavia. It wasn’t British territory; it was Dutch, and everyone knew it wouldn’t be Dutch for long.

  ‘Aren’t we going too?’ I asked. ‘Sono’s father says the Japs will be here any day.’

  ‘We’ve still got a few days,’ said my father. He was a short, stocky man who seldom got excited. If he was worried, he didn’t show it. ‘I’ve got to wind up a few business matters, and then we’ll be off.’