Golden Afternoon

by M. M. Kaye

  We would always stop, if Kashmera could manage it, within walking distance of a village, because the old shikari and his boatmen enjoyed company and liked to have a bazaar, however small, within reasonable reach; as did Mahdoo, who preferred to shop daily for items that did not keep well in the heat, such as milk and butter and fresh eggs, vegetables and fruit. So there was generally a good deal of coming and going between the camp and the nearest village after dark when the campfires were lit. There were always tulakdars and grey-headed village elders who remembered Tacklow and Mother from those yearly trips down the Ganges during the war years and the early twenties, and who asked for news of people like Sir Charles and Buckie and the others who used to pass that way in the old days. They were sad to learn that Sir Charles was dead and sent their respects and messages to Buck-Sahib and ‘Soppy’-Sahib and Bunting-Sahib and their congratulations to those younger sahibs who had now become the fathers of sons who, undoubtedly, would one day in the future come drifting down-river to talk to the sons and grandsons of the men who had known their fathers.

  Sometimes they would bring gifts with them: a handful of walnuts, or a stick or two of sugar-cane or a slab of halwa made from buffalo’s milk sweetened with gur, which is raw sugar, and boiled and boiled until only the solids remain, when a few chopped pistachio nuts and a drop or two of attar of roses are added before the sweetmeat is flattened and shaped into bars, and — on very special occasions — wrapped in skin-thin pieces of pure, beaten silver. Sometimes a tulakdar would proffer a nuzzer consisting of a few rupees in a small handkerchief, and this Tacklow would touch and return, as is — or was — the immemorial custom of the land. I have heard that nowadays too many ex-rulers of princely states have taken to accepting the money instead of merely touching it. In which case I imagine the custom will not last much longer!

  These old gentlemen, the village elders, would squat down on their heels (an art that Bets and I had once been able to emulate without thinking, but by now, alas, had lost) and chat in the firelight with Tacklow, filling him in with the news and gossip of their village, and asking for information about the doings of the wide world beyond. For this was well before the coming of radio and the TV which now blaze the news into every hamlet, however small and obscure. It was rare for a newspaper to reach these small groups of farming folk, and rarer still for one of their number to be able to read and explain it to their neighbours.

  They would also as a matter of course lay their problems before Tacklow, and ask him to adjudicate on such vexed questions as the rightful ownership of crops grown on a disputed field, or what damages should be paid by a villager whose cow had broken into someone else’s vegetable patch and eaten or otherwise destroyed at least half of the crop with which it had been planted. And once we were visited by the wailing and distraught family of a small girl who had been taken by their long-time enemy, the local mugger, while she had been filling her lotah (brass water-pot) at the water’s edge, only the previous evening. Tacklow promised that we would do our best, and handed the problem over to Kashmera, who was taken off to be shown the exact spot where the tragedy had occurred, and regaled with endless stories of this particular mugger’s victims and the failure of all the attempts by the local shikaris to put an end to its depredations.

  It seemed that that particular murderer had been around for a good many years and, though wounded on several occasions, had always managed to get back into deep water and recuperate. Traps had been laid for it in the form of pieces of rotten meat loaded with poison, and though the bait had been taken and there had been no sign of the mugger for the next week or so (as was its habit when wounded by a rifle bullet), no sooner had the village decided that it must be dead and that it was safe to relax their guard, than some unwary human, or his cow or goat, was snatched as they waded into the river to fill a water-pot, or to drink.

  Kashmera studied the marks on the wet sand where the child had been taken and learned all he could of the creature’s habits, and announced that the camp ought to stay where it was for a day or two. I don’t mind telling you that all of us took the greatest possible pains to watch our step whenever we went too near the water. It wasn’t all that comfortable knowing that there was one of those revolting, scaly horrors somewhere near at hand, watching us to see if there was a chance of making a sudden rush, or just a single sweep of that powerful tail that could hit us into the river where we could be snatched and dragged down into the deceptively peaceful Ganges.

  Kashmera knew a lot about muggers; he had studied them and their behaviour for years. He also knew a great deal about this particular stretch of the Ganges, its quirks and its currents, from having accompanied Sir Charles and his friends on countless shooting trips on the river since the days when Charles and Buckie were young men and he himself was only a boy learning his trade from an older and more experienced shikari. He had taught Bets and me, when we were still in short socks, how to tell the size of a mugger by the marks it left upon the wet sands as it crawled out of the river and turned to face the water at the angle of a stranded log, and — when it slithered back into the water again — to tell whether it had been startled into leaving, or merely decided that it was time to go home. Best of all he taught us the best places in which to lie up and watch for one to leave the water, and how to reach that vantage point by crawling to it across open sand — a trick we found useful when attempting to catch sun-bathing river-turtles.

  It was fascinating now to see him studying the sands at the water’s edge for a good mile up-stream and down, and (using Tacklow as interpreter) telling Mike that the creature would not be likely to show himself near the spot where he had taken the child for at least a week, and probably longer. ‘For the mugger knows well,’ said Kashmera, ‘that always, after a killing, the folk of his village throw rocks and unpleasant things into that spot and are careful to avoid that part of the bank, both for their own safety and for their animals. Or, if they use it, they only do so with great caution, and carrying arms. Therefore he will not show himself near the place until they forget and become careless again. So tomorrow we will look for him either on the far side of the river, or well up- or down-stream.’

  We had done so, and Kashmera had thought right: the mugger showed himself towards noon on the following day, about a mile up-stream of our camp and on the same side of the river, at a spot where it was almost impossible for anyone to take a shot at him, for here the banks were high and overhung by thickets of lantana and elephant-grass, and the current ran fast and deep, undercutting the land and scouring out the earth from around the roots of kikar-trees and casuarinas. Besides, the creature was so beautifully camouflaged that left to myself I would never have spotted it. Not even with the help of binoculars, for it lay along a narrow mud ledge barely wide enough to accommodate its armour-plated body, and only just clear of the water, a foot at most.

  Lying there, parallel with the clay bank, the sludge at the bottom of the Ganges already baked on it to a patchy silver-grey by the sun, it blended so perfectly with the tangle of roots and the stripy shadows of the overhanging vegetation that it was very nearly invisible. It certainly would have been to me if Kashmera hadn’t whispered to me and directed my binoculars to the exact spot. And even then it looked more like part of the bank than a living creature.

  Mike had suggested risking a shot at it, but Kashmera advised against it, on the grounds that unless one can hit a mugger in one of only two of his vital spots — neither of which at this date, I can be sure of, though I think one is in the neck, just behind the eyes and the other in the spine (Kashmera’s ghost, if it is still around, must be disgusted with me) — the creature’s reflex action when it is hit is a violent, jack-knife jerk that flips it back into deep water in the space of a split-second, where, however badly it may be wounded, it is likely to recover in due course.

  Lying out in the sun on a narrow ledge at the foot of that long, high stretch of bank, its blunt nose towards us, it presented the smallest possible target;
there was no hope of being able to get a shot at it from the opposite side of the river, for that distant shore had already withdrawn from view behind the dancing, shimmering curtain of heat-haze. In the end, after a lot more argument between Mike and Kashmera (inadequately translated by me) and the fact that there was no other way of approaching that scaly old murderer on the ledge, I was firmly told to stay where I was, while Kashmera and Mike set off to see how close they could get to the creature before risking a shot. Fortunately there were several trees among the scrub on the bank which enabled them to fix the spot they were aiming for, and they set off to make a wide detour that was planned to end a short, hopefully silent, stalk that would bring them out about 100 yards up-stream of the mugger.

  It didn’t work, of course, though in the circumstances I suppose it was worth trying. I lay and watched the mugger through Tacklow’s binoculars, in the intervals of keeping a lookout for any sign of movement among the scrub and the tall grasses which would tell me where the stalkers were. I didn’t see any, but there are always lookouts who warn the wild creatures of the approach of man. In this case, I gather, a king-crow that had been snoozing in the shade of a peepul tree had woken up and given the alarm. I was too far away to hear it, but I happened to be looking at the mugger and I saw it slide noiselessly off its ledge into the water. And that was that. Some time later, Mike and Kashmera appeared pushing their way through the vegetation at the edge of their overlying bank, and waved to me to stay where I was, while they scrambled down to the water’s edge and walked back to examine the marks that the enemy had made, before clawing up the bank and rejoining me.

  Kashmera confirmed that it had been the village mugger, and that they would have to hope that it would come out again in some more easily accessible spot. It did so in the late afternoon, a good two miles down-stream of where we had seen it that morning, on the far side of the village. A panting villager arrived at the double to bring us the news, but by the time Mike and Kashmera got there, a horde of small children, vengeful friends and playmates of the little girl who had fallen victim to the mugger, had driven it off by throwing stones at it. And the next day it was back again on that inaccessible ledge at the foot of that long stretch of high bank. This time Mike and Kashmera and a couple of the boatmen took one of the boats across the river and, having hauled it up-stream and out of sight, let it float down again on the current. For it seemed that the wildlife on the river was as familiar with boats floating silently down it as they were with those being noisily towed up it, since this was something that had been happening for 1,000 years or more.

  Kashmera was of the opinion that if Mike were to try by land again, a bird or monkey would be certain to cry the alarm, for the thickets were full of both. But if we came down silently on the water, not a bird would squeak. It was our best bet — though he owned that it was not easy to fire from the deck of a moving boat and he did not know if the young Sahib had ever attempted such a shot before. Mike said of course he had; when he was shooting a duck or goose from a punt, and that anyway, if we kept the boat as near as we could to the right bank it ought to be a gift.

  Chapter 27

  As far as the boat was concerned, the whole exercise went as planned. Mike seems to have knelt on the floorboards and, resting the rifle barrel on the edge, fired at a range of, at a guess, no more than fifty or sixty yards as the boat came level with the mugger.

  The crash of the shot appeared to coincide exactly with a violent jack-knife leap on the part of the sleeping mugger, which whipped round and in the same flash of a second disappeared into the river. ‘Damn!’ lamented Mike. ‘Oh, damn, damn, damn! I missed it! How could I have missed it?’ But he hadn’t; for when we stopped the boat at the campsite, and he and Kashmera walked back along the top of the bank and climbed down at the point where it had been lying, there was a gout of blood on the ledge and Kashmera, examining it, said that he had certainly not missed it, though he had not hit it at either of the vital spots that would have paralysed it and prevented that automatic jerk that had catapulted it into the river in one leap. ‘But I think the Sahib may well have killed it,’ said the old shikari. I asked him why he thought so when there was such a very little blood, but he said that it was the kind of blood that mattered, not the amount.

  We spent one more day at that campsite, and though there was no sign of the mugger, the village shikari told Kashmera that there was a large garial whose favourite basking spot was on the sandbank on the far side of the river, and that the village would be greatly obliged if one of the sahibs would shoot it, for its depredations had led to a marked shortage of fish on that particular stretch of river. Indian villages hate the garial even more than they dislike the mugger, for the mugger only kills an occasional human — who will soon be replaced, if female — and a few goats or a calf, whereas a big garial needs many seers weight in fish to fill its stomach, and deprives the fishermen of their livelihood and the public of a valuable source of protein. Colonel Henslow was ferried across the river in a boat belonging to one of the fishermen in the village and, after a prolonged stalk, bagged a large garial. We all went across to photograph it, and I think it was the same day that Mike caught a baby garial in an unorthodox manner, though I can’t be sure …

  Its mother can’t have told it everything, because it had crawled much too far away from the water, and since Mike had left his rifle in the boat he snatched a fish-spear from one of the boatmen, ran after it as it scuttled away towards the water, and speared it in the shallows. He had been looking out for baby muggers or, preferably, garials (whose skins are much finer) because he wanted to have the skins made into an attaché case or possibly a pair of shoes, and the grown mugger or garial has too coarse a skin for fine work — the divisions between its plates are too deep and after being cured and tanned may crack.

  On the following day, after a careful recce by Kashmera and the village shikari on both sides of the river, both up-stream and down, had showed no trace of the mugger, we struck camp and moved down-stream. But we can’t have gone much further than a mile when a panting, wildly waving figure appeared on the river-bank beside us, trotting along in our wake and pausing occasionally to make a megaphone of his hands to shout unintelligible words. ‘It is the mugger,’ translated Kashmera. ‘They have seen the mugger,’ and he steered our boat into the bank.

  Well, they hadn’t actually. And if it had just been a case of spotting it lying out on the bank as before, we would not, I think, have gone back for it. But that was not the case, as the panting messenger explained when he finally caught up with us. One of the villagers who had seen us off that morning had walked back up-stream in pursuit of a cow that had strayed from the herd, and having turned back had sat down to rest at the edge of the bank and become aware of an odd noise that was, he explained, like someone groaning, and seemed to come from below ground.

  Leaning over to see what it could be, he had become aware that directly below him, and almost at water-level, there was a cave in the bank, or rather the entrance to a cave, and though scared out of his wits by the peculiar subterranean sound, curiosity got the better of him and he climbed cautiously down to discover what was making it. The entrance to the cave was partially under water, but it sloped back and up into the earth, and the strong stench of musk and decayed carrion told him that he had found something that I believe is rarely discovered: the home-cave of a mugger.

  Keeping well to one side of it, and greatly daring, he had peered inside. But all he could see was the darkness and the glint of the water — and the unmistakable gleam of the creature’s eyes. It was enough; and scrambling hastily back up the steep side of the bank, he tore back to the village, shouting the news, and returned with a small crowd of people at his back, including the village shikari who said this was a sahib’s work, and sent off a runner in pursuit. The boats pulled into the shore and Mike and I and Kashmera, plus the excited messenger, walked back up the sands to our most recent camping ground, and a further mile up-stream to the c
ave, now surrounded by villagers armed with sticks and lathis, prepared to prevent the mugger from emerging, though this was something I don’t think anyone could possibly have prevented if the creature had had the strength to do so, because the entrance was obviously somewhere well below the water-level and this was merely the top end, in which he could breathe, and keep his larder until it was sufficiently rotten to suit his taste.

  He was breathing now, but with appalling difficulty and in great pain. Though I never thought I could possibly feel sorry for a mugger, I was sorry for this one as it lay in the dark, emitting agonizing groans with every breath it was struggling to draw.

  Mike had brought a small pocket torch with him which we strapped on to the barrel of his rifle with that sticky elasticated bandage material from Mother’s first aid box. Watching him climb down to the lowest edge of that overhanging bank, I was scared stiff that the mugger would rush forward to attack him and that if he stepped back he would go straight down into deep water with the creature on top of him, for he had little or no room in which to take avoiding action, and only two options. He could either leap to one side — providing he didn’t slip in doing so — or go straight back into the river. I didn’t like the idea of either.

  Nor did the other spectators, Kashmera least of all. He kept on exhorting me to tell the Sahib that he must be careful. ‘Tell him that a mugger is always very dangerous until it’s dead, and this one is not dead yet! Tell him that he must be ready to move sideways very quickly. Not back.’ Mike moved cautiously to face the cave mouth and, bending down to peer inside, flicked on the torch for a brief moment and stepped aside hastily. It was a whopper, and right back in the cave, and he would have to shoot him there and could only hope to goodness that the bullet didn’t ricochet off a rock or something solid in the back of the cave, and get him — Mike — on its way out. An observation that did nothing towards soothing my nerves! But there was nothing else for it and, crouching down again, he got his rifle up to his shoulder, switched on the little torch again, fired, and almost in the same second, jumped sideways to the left of the cave mouth.