by Satyajit Ray
I came back to the room. Jayanto was staring hard at the cover of his quilt. Upon seeing me, he pulled a portion of it near the lamp and said, ‘Look at this!’
I bent over the cloth and saw tiny, brown circular marks on it. I said, ‘Well, these could have been made by a cat.’
Jayanto did not say anything. It was obvious that something had deeply disturbed him. But it was two-thirty in the morning. I simply had to get a little more sleep, or I knew I would just keep feeling tired. And we had plans of doing a lot of sightseeing the following day.
So, after murmuring a few soothing words—such as, don’t worry, I am here with you and who knows, those marks may have been on your quilt already when you went to bed—I switched off the light once more and lay down. I had no doubt that Jayanto had only had a bad dream. All those memories of his childhood had upset him, obviously, and that was what had led to his dreaming of a cat walking on his chest.
I slept soundly for the rest of the night. If there were further disturbances, Jayanto did not tell me about them. But I could see in the morning that he had not slept well.
‘Tonight I must give him one of the tranquillizers I brought with me,’ I thought.
We finished our breakfast by nine, as we had planned, and left for the fort. A car had already been arranged. It was almost nine-thirty by the time we reached.
Some of Jayanto’s old forgotten memories began coming back again, though—fortunately—they had nothing to do with his doll. In fact, his youthful exuberance made me think he had forgotten all about it.
‘There—there’s that elephant on top of the gate!’ he exclaimed. ‘And the turrets! And here is the bed made of silver and the throne. Look at that picture on the wall—I saw it the last time!’
But within an hour, his enthusiasm began to wane. I was so engrossed myself that I did not notice it at first. But, while walking through a hall and looking at the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, I suddenly realized Jayanto was no longer walking by my side. Where was he?
We had a guide with us. ‘Babu has gone out on the terrace,’ he told me.
I came out of the hall and found Jayanto standing absent-mindedly near a wall on the other side of the terrace. He did not seem to notice my presence even when I went and stood beside him. He started when I called him by his name.
‘What on earth is the matter with you?’ I asked. ‘Why are you standing here looking morose even in a beautiful place like this? I can’t stand it.’
Jayanto simply said, ‘Have you finished seeing everything? If so, let’s . . .’
Had I been alone, I would definitely have spent a little more time at the fort. But one look at Jayanto made me decide in favour of returning to the circuit house.
A road through the hills took us back to town. Jayanto and I were both sitting in the back of the car. I offered him a cigarette, but he refused. I noticed a veiled excitement in the movement of his hands. One moment he placed them near the window, then on his lap and, immediately afterwards, began biting his nails. Jayanto was quiet by nature. This odd restlessness in him worried me.
After about ten minutes, I could not take it any more. ‘It might help if you told me about your problem,’ I said. Jayanto shook his head.
‘It’s no use telling you, for you’re not going to believe me.’
‘OK, even if I don’t believe you, I can at least discuss the matter with you, can’t I?’
‘Fritz came into our room last night. Those little marks on my quilt were his footprints.’
There was very little I could do at this except catch hold of him by the shoulders and shake him. How could I talk sensibly to someone whose mind was obsessed with such an absurd idea?
‘You didn’t see anything, did you?’ I said finally.
‘No. But I could distinctly feel that whatever was walking on my chest had two feet, not four.’
As we got out of the car at the circuit house, I decided that Jayanto must be given a nerve tonic or some such thing. A tranquillizer might not be good enough. I could not allow a thirty-seven-year-old man to be so upset by a simple memory from his childhood.
I said to Jayanto upon reaching our room, ‘It’s nearly twelve o’clock. Should we not be thinking of having a bath?’
‘You go first,’ said Jayanto and flung himself on the bed. An idea came to my mind in the bath. Perhaps this was the only way to bring Jayanto back to normalcy.
If a doll had been buried somewhere thirty years ago and if one knew the exact spot, it might be possible to dig the ground there. No doubt most of it would have been destroyed, but it was likely that we’d find just a few things, especially if they were made of metal, such as the buckle of a belt or brass buttons on a jacket. If Jayanto could actually be shown that that was all that was left of his precious doll, he might be able to rid himself of his weird notions; otherwise, he would have strange dreams every night and talk of Fritz walking on his chest. If this kind of thing was allowed to continue he might go totally mad.
Jayanto seemed to like my idea at first. But, after a little while, he said, ‘Who will do the digging? Where will you find a spade?’
I laughed, ‘Since there is a garden, there is bound to be a gardener. And that would mean there’s a spade. If we offered him a little tip, I have no doubt that he would have no objection to digging up a bit of the ground near the trunk of a tree at the far end of the lawn.’
Jayanto did not accept the idea immediately, nor did I say anything further. He went and had his bath after a little bit of persuasion. At lunch, he ate nothing except a couple of chapatis with meat curry, although I knew he was quite fond of his food.
After lunch we went and sat in the cane chairs on the veranda that overlooked the garden. There appeared to be no one else in the circuit house. There was something eerie about the silence that afternoon. All we could hear was the noise made by a few monkeys sitting on the gulmohar tree across the cobbled path.
Around 3 p.m., we saw a man come into the garden, carrying a watering can. He was an old man. His hair, moustaches and sideburns all were white.
‘Will you ask him or should I?’
At this question from Jayanto, I raised a reassuring hand and went straight to the gardener. After I had spoken to him, he looked at me rather suspiciously. Clearly, no one had ever made such a request. ‘Why, babu?’ he asked. I laid a friendly hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Don’t worry about the reason. I’ll give you five rupees. Please do as you’re told.’
He relented, going so far as to give me a salute accompanied by a broad grin.
I beckoned to Jayanto, who was still sitting on the veranda. He rose and began walking towards me. As he came closer, I saw the pallor on his face.
I did hope we would find at least some part of the doll.
The gardener, in the meantime, had fetched a spade. The three of us made our way to the deodar tree.
Jayanto pointed at the ground about a yard from the trunk of the tree and said, ‘Here.’
‘Are you sure?’ I asked him.
Jayanto nodded silently.
‘How much did you dig?’
‘At least eight inches.’
The gardener started digging. The man had a sense of humour. As he lifted his spade, he asked if there was hidden treasure under the ground and, if so, whether we would be prepared to share it with him. I had to laugh at this, but Jayanto’s face did not register even the slightest trace of amusement. It was the month of October and not at all warm in Bundi. Yet the collar of his shirt was soaked in sweat. He was staring at the ground unblinkingly. The gardener continued to dig. Why was there no sign of the doll?
The raucous cry of a peacock made me turn my head for a moment and, in that instant, Jayanto made a strange sound. I quickly looked at him. His eyes were bulging. He raised his right hand and pointed at the hole in the ground with a finger that was visibly trembling.
Then he asked in a voice turned hoarse with fear, ‘What . . . what is that?’
&nb
sp; The spade slipped from the gardener’s hand. I, too, gaped at the ground, open-mouthed in horror, amazement and disbelief.
There lay at our feet, covered in dust, lying flat on its back, a twelve- inch-long, pure white, perfect little human skeleton.
Translated by Gopa Majumdar
First published in Bengali in 1971
Mr Brown’s Cottage
I had been looking for an opportunity to go to Bangalore ever since I had found Mr Brown’s diary. It happened rather unexpectedly. At the annual re-union of our Ballygunje school, I happened to run into my old classmate, Anikendra Bhowmik. Anik told me he was now working at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. ‘Why don’t you come and spend your holiday with me?’ he asked. ‘It’s the best place in India! I have a spare room in my house, so you won’t have any problem. Will you come?’
Anik and I had been very close friends in school. Then the inevitable happened. He went on to study science and I took up arts. We began moving in opposite directions. After a few years he went to England, and I lost touch with him. This was our re-union after about twelve years.
I said, ‘I might. When is the best time to come to Bangalore?’
‘Any time. The weather in Bangalore is always pleasant. Why do you think the British were so fond of the place? You can come any time you like. All I need is a week’s notice.’
So here was a chance to go and find the house where Mr Brown had lived. But first I must explain about the diary.
I am what is usually described as a bookworm. Old books, especially, fascinate me. I work in a bank and spend at least half my salary on these. Over the last five years I have managed to acquire quite a collection including travel books, shikar tales, autobiographies and diaries. I love their old, faded, brittle, moth-eaten pages. And their smell! The smell of wet earth after the first shower and the smell of old books—I do not think any other smell on earth can match their charm. Not the scent of attar, kasturi, rose, hasnuhana—or even the best perfume in France.
It was my passion for old books that had led me to chance upon the diary of Mr Brown. It was not printed, but a genuine diary, many pages of which were filled with entries, handwritten with a quill. Bound in red leather, it had three-hundred-and- fifty ruled pages and measured six by four-and-a-half inches. The cover had a golden border and in the middle was embossed in gold letters the owner’s name: John Middleton Brown. The first page had his signature and his address below it—Evergreen Lodge, Fraser Town, Bangalore. This was followed by a date—January 1858, which meant that the diary was a hundred-and-thirteen years old. I found it together with some other books which also bore Mr Brown’s name, and it cost me very little. Maqbool, the bookseller, initially asked for twenty rupees. I offered to pay ten and, in the end, I bought it for twelve. Had Mr Brown been someone famous, this diary would have fetched at least twelve thousand rupees.
I did not expect to find anything other than a description of the life led by a British gentleman in those days. In fact, the first hundred pages offered just that. Mr Brown was a schoolmaster. There was a mention of the school he taught in, descriptions of the city of Bangalore, the trees and flowers he saw, both in his own garden and elsewhere. He mentioned the Viceroy’s wife, Lady Canning’s visit to Bangalore. Sometimes he talked of his home in Sussex and all the friends and relatives he had left behind. There was also mention of his wife, Elizabeth, though she had died a few years ago.
But the most interesting thing in his diary was the frequent reference to someone called Simon. Whether this was his son or brother or nephew or friend was impossible to tell. But it was clear that Mr Brown was very deeply attached to him. His diary was full of instances of Simon’s intelligence, his courage, his anger, his naughtiness and his occasional wayward behaviour. Many of his entries said things like, ‘Simon loves to sit in a particular chair’; or ‘Simon was not feeling very well today’; ‘I feel sad because I have not seen Simon all day’.
Then came the heartbreaking news of Simon’s death. On 22nd September, at around 7.30 p.m., Simon was struck by lightning. His body was found the next morning near a charred eucalyptus tree in Mr Brown’s garden.
For about a month after Simon’s death, he wrote virtually nothing in his diary. Whatever little he did was full of sadness and despair. He thought of going back to Britain, but did not want to leave the place where Simon’s soul rested. His health, too, had probably begun to fail. He wrote, ‘Today, again I did not go to school’, on at least five different occasions. There was mention of a Dr Lucas, who had examined Mr Brown and suggested a course of remedy.
Then, suddenly—on 2nd November—the diary mentioned a strange incident. And it was the description of this incident that made the diary so special.
Mr Brown wrote about the incident in red ink instead of the blue he usually used. ‘The most unexpected and extraordinary thing happened today,’ he wrote. ‘I had gone to Lal Bagh to see if I could find some peace among the trees and the plants. I returned at around 7.30 p.m. As soon as I stepped into the living-room, I saw Simon sitting by the fireside in his favourite high-backed chair! Simon! Was it really Simon? I felt overjoyed. Simon was looking straight at me with such affection in his eyes. But the room was dark. Thomas, that lazy bearer of mine, had forgotten to light a lamp. So I took out my matchbox to see Simon a little better. But—alas!—he vanished the instant I struck a match. This was truly regrettable; but then, I had never hoped to see Simon again. I should be happy if he appears occasionally even as a ghost. What a heavenly day it is today! Simon has not forgotten me even after his death. He even remembers his favourite chair! Please, Simon—do come and visit me sometimes. I don’t want anything else from you. I can live happily for the rest of my life if I can see you again.’
Not much was written after this date. But the few entries that followed were full of joy, for Simon came and met Mr Brown every day. His ghost did not disappoint him.
The last entry read, ‘The knowledge that he who loved me did not lose his love even after death has given me profound peace.’
Here the diary ended. But my curiosity did not. Did this house of Mr Brown—this Evergreen Lodge in Fraser Town—still exist? And did the ghost of Simon still appear every evening? Would it appear before a stranger? If I went and spent an evening there, would I get to see it?
When I arrived in Bangalore, I mentioned nothing about the diary at first. Anik took me sightseeing all over Bangalore in his Ambassador. We even went to Fraser Town. Bangalore was a really beautiful place, so the praise and appreciation I expressed as we moved around were quite sincerely felt. After the hustle and bustle of Calcutta, such a quiet and peaceful place seemed like something out of a dream.
The next day was Sunday. I raised the subject of Mr Brown’s house in the morning as Anik and I sat under a garden umbrella in his house, sipping tea. Anik listened to the whole story without comment. Then he put his cup down on the cane table and said, ‘Look, Ranjan, the house you’re talking about may still exist. After all, a hundred years is not a very long time. But if you wish to go there simply to lie in wait for a ghost, I fear I cannot join you. I have always been extra sensitive about certain things. I think life at the moment is just fine—I have no problems. But to go ghost hunting now, I think, would be asking for trouble. You must count me out.’
This clearly showed Anik had not changed. He had had a reputation of being very timid and something of a coward in school. I remembered one instance when two other boys had covered themselves in a white sheet and pounced upon poor Anik as he was walking alone one evening. He had been so frightened that the next day his father had come and complained to the headmaster.
Before I could say anything, however, Anik remarked, ‘But if you must go, I think I can easily find you company. Hello, Mr Banerjee!’
I turned around and saw a man walking in through the gate and was now coming towards us, smiling a little. He appeared to be around forty-five. Nearly six feet in height, his body seemed both well bu
ilt and well maintained. He was clad in grey trousers and a dark blue bush- shirt. A black-and- white silk scarf with batik prints was casually wound around his neck.
Anik introduced us. ‘This is my friend, Ranjan Sengupta—Mr Hrishikesh Banerjee.’
Mr Banerjee, it turned out, worked in the aircraft factory. He had lived in Bangalore for many years.
Anik offered him a cup of tea and went straight to the subject of the house of Mr Brown. Mr Banerjee broke into such a loud guffaw when he heard the tale that the squirrel that was romping about near our table dashed up the nearest tree and vanished among the leaves.
‘Ghosts? Ghosts? You mean you seriously believe in them? Today? In these times?’
I said hesitantly, ‘Well, what’s wrong with being interested? It may well be that there is a scientific explanation behind the existence of ghosts that has not yet come to light. But who knows—ten years from now someone might hit upon it!’
Mr Banerjee continued to laugh. His teeth, I noticed, were very white and strong.
Finally, Anik said, ‘All right, Mr Banerjee. Ghost or no ghost—all I want to know is whether you’d be prepared to go with Ranjan to such a house, if it can be found, and spend an evening there. He is my guest and I cannot allow him to go alone. To tell you the truth, I myself am rather
. . . er . . . careful about things. If I went with him, I’d be more of a liability than anything else!’
Mr Banerjee took out a pipe from his pocket and began filling it. ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ he said, ‘but I would go only on one condition—both of you must come with me.’
He broke into loud laughter again, causing great panic among the birds that were twittering in the vicinity. Anik went slightly pale, but could not refuse.
‘What did you say the place was called?’ asked Mr Banerjee.
‘Evergreen Lodge.’ ‘In Fraser Town?’
‘That’s what the diary said.’
‘Hmm.’ He began smoking his pipe. ‘Fraser Town does have a few old British cottages. Anyway—if we must go, why don’t we do so this evening? Say I come back here at about four?’
