Rusty Comes Home

by Ruskin Bond

  My hand was shaking and covered with blood. I bound it in my handkerchief, and kept it hidden from Ketan.

  We walked back to the room without talking much. Ketan looked depressed and weak. I kept my hand beneath my shirt, and he was too dejected to notice anything. It was only at night, when he returned from his shop, that he noticed the cuts, and I told him I had slipped in the road, cutting my hand on some broken glass.

  Rain upon Shahganj. And, until the rain stops, Shahganj is fresh and clean and alive. The children run out of their houses, glorying in their nakedness. The gutters choke, and the narrow street becomes a torrent of water, coursing merrily down to the bus stop. It swirls over the trees and the roofs of the town, and the parched earth soaks it up, exuding a fragrance that comes only once in a year, the fragrance of quenched earth, that most exhilarating of smells.

  The rain swept in through the door and soaked the cot. When I had succeeded in closing the door, I found the roof leaking, the water trickling down the walls and forming new pictures on the cracking plaster. The door flew open again, and there was Ketan standing on the threshold, shaking himself like a wet dog. Coming in, he stripped and dried himself, and then sat shivering on the bed while I made frantic efforts to close the door again.

  ‘You need some tea,’ I said.

  He nodded, forgetting to smile for once, and I knew his mind was elsewhere, in one of a hundred possible places from his dreams.

  ‘One day I will write a book,’ I said, as we drank strong tea in the fast-fading twilight. ‘A real book, about real people. Perhaps it will be about you and me and Shahganj. And then we will run away from Shahganj, fly on the wings of Garuda, and all our troubles will be over and fresh troubles will begin. Why should we mind difficulties, as long as they are new difficulties?’

  ‘First I must pass my exams,’ said Ketan. ‘Otherwise, I can do nothing, go nowhere.’

  ‘Don’t take exams too seriously. I know that in India they are the passport to any kind of job, and that you cannot become a clerk unless you have a degree. But do not forget that you are studying for the sake of acquiring knowledge, and not for the sake of becoming a clerk. You don’t want to become a clerk or a bus conductor, do you? You must pass your exams and go to college, but do not feel that if you fail, you will be able to do nothing. Why, you can start making your own buttons instead of selling other people’s clothes!’

  ‘You are right,’ said Ketan. ‘But why not be an educated button manufacturer?’

  ‘Why not, indeed? That’s just what I mean. And, while you are studying for your exams, I will be writing my book. I will start tonight! It is an auspicious night, the beginning of the monsoon.’

  The light did not come on. A tree must have fallen across the wires. I lit a candle and placed it on the window sill and, while the candle spluttered in the steamy air, Ketan opened his books and, with one hand on a book and the other hand playing with his toes—this attitude helped him to concentrate—he devoted his attention to algebra.

  I took an ink bottle down from a shelf and, finding it empty, added a little rainwater to the crusted contents. Then I sat down beside Ketan and began to write; but the pen was useless and made blotches all over the paper, and I had no idea what I should write about, though I was full of writing just then. So I began to look at Ketan instead; at his eyes, hidden in shadow, and his hands, quiet in the candlelight; and I followed his breathing and the slight movement of his lips as he read softly to himself.

  Sometimes Ketan played the flute at night, while I was lying awake; and, even when I was asleep, the flute would play in my dreams. Sometimes he brought it to the crooked tree, and played it for the benefit of the birds; but the parrots only made harsh noises and flew away.

  Once, when Ketan was playing his flute to a group of children, he had a fit. The flute fell from his hands, and he began to roll about in the dust on the roadside. The children were frightened and ran away. But the next time they heard Ketan play his flute, they came to listen as usual.

  That he was gaining in strength I knew from the way Ketan was able to pin me down whenever we wrestled on the grass near the old brick kilns. It was no longer necessary for me to yield deliberately to him. And, though his fits still recurred from time to time—as we knew they would continue to do—he was not so depressed afterwards. The anxiety and the death had gone from his eyes.

  His examinations were nearing and he was working hard. (I had yet to begin the first chapter of my book.) Because the festival season was on, he had to work overtime in the shop, so he did not get much time for studying; but he stuck to his books until past midnight, and it was seldom that I heard his flute. After two weeks it was all over, and we returned to normal life again. In a burst of creativity, I wrote a short story.

  On the morning the results of the examination were due, I rose early, before Ketan, and went down to the news agency. It was five o’clock and the newspapers had just arrived. I went through the columns relating to Shahganj, but I couldn’t find Ketan’s roll number on the list of successful candidates. I had the number written down on a slip of paper, and I looked at it again to make sure that I had compared it correctly with the others; then I went through the newspaper once more.

  When I returned to the room, Ketan was sitting on the doorstep. I didn’t have to tell him he had failed. He knew by the look on my face. I sat down beside him, and we said nothing for some time.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Ketan, eventually. ‘I will pass next year.’

  I realized that I was more depressed than he was, and that he was trying to console me.

  ‘If only you’d had more time,’ I said.

  ‘I have plenty of time now. Another year. And you will have time in which to do lot of good writing; then we can both go away. Another year of Shahganj won’t be so bad. As long as I have your friendship, almost everything else can be tolerated, even my sickness.’

  And then, turning to me with an expression of intense happiness, he said, ‘Yesterday I was sad, and tomorrow I may be sad again, but today I know that I am happy. I want to live on and on. I feel that life isn’t long enough to satisfy me.’

  He stood up. ‘I’m going to the shop now. Got to make some money.’

  At the bottom of the steps he turned and smiled at me, and I knew then that I had written my next story.

  The Haunted Bicycle

  A YEAR PASSED and I acquired a bicycle. I was still living near Shahganj and I could of course have gone into Shahganj on any obliging farmer’s bullock-cart, but in spite of bad roads I found the bicycle a trifle faster. I went into Shahganj almost every day, collected my mail, bought a newspaper, drank innumerable cups of tea, and gossiped with the tradesmen. I cycled back to the village at about six in the evening, along a quiet, unfrequented forest road. During the winter months it was dark by six, and I would have to use a lamp on the bicycle. Ketan would then use the cycle to go to the cloth shop or buy groceries. He had passed his exams this time, but didn’t seem to be too keen to go to college just then. He used to get back quite late, but I preferred to get back before dark.

  One evening, when I had covered about half the distance to the village, I was brought to a halt by a small boy who was standing in the middle of the road. The forest at that late hour was no place for a child: wolves and hyenas were common in the district. I got down from my bicycle and approached the boy, but he didn’t seem to take much notice of me.

  ‘What are you doing here on your own?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m waiting,’ he said, without looking at me. ‘Waiting for whom? Your parents?’

  ‘No, I am waiting for my sister.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t passed her on the road,’ I said. ‘She may be further ahead. You had better come along with me, we’ll soon find her.’

  The boy nodded and climbed silently on to the crossbar of my cycle. I have never been able to recall his features. Already it was dark and besides, he kept his face turned away from me.

  The wind was again
st us, and as I cycled on, I shivered with the cold, but the boy did not seem to feel it. We had not gone far when the light from my lamp fell on the figure of another child who was standing by the side of the road. This time it was a girl. She was a little older than the boy, and her hair was long and windswept, hiding most of her face.

  ‘Here’s your sister,’ I said. ‘Let’s take her along with us.’

  The girl did not respond to my smile, and she did no more than nod seriously to the boy. But she climbed up on to my back carrier, and allowed me to pedal off again. Their replies to my friendly questions were monosyllabic, and I gathered that they were wary of strangers. Well, when I got to the village, I would hand them over to the headman, and he could locate their parents.

  The road was level, but I felt as though I was cycling uphill. And then I noticed that the boy’s head was much closer to my face, that the girl’s breathing was loud and heavy, almost as though she was doing the riding. Despite the cold wind, I began to feel hot and suffocated.

  ‘I think we’d better take rest,’ I suggested.

  ‘No!’ cried the boy and girl together. ‘No rest!’

  I was so surprised that I rode on without any argument; and then, just as I was thinking of ignoring their demand and stopping, I noticed that the boy’s hands, which were resting on the handle-bar, had grown long and black and hairy.

  My hands shook and the bicycle wobbled about on the road.

  ‘Be careful!’ they shouted in unison. ‘Look where you’re going!’

  Their tone now was menacing and far from childlike. I took a quick glance over my shoulder and had my worst fears confirmed. The girl’s face was huge and bloated. Her legs, black and hairy, were trailing along the ground.

  ‘Stop!’ ordered the terrible children. ‘Stop near the stream!’

  But before I could do anything, my front wheel hit a stone and the bicycle toppled over. As I sprawled in the dust, I felt something hard, like a hoof, hit me on the back of the head, and then there was total darkness.

  When I recovered consciousness, I noticed that the moon had risen and was sparkling on the waters of a stream. The children were not to be seen anywhere. I got up from the ground and began to brush the dust from my clothes. And then, hearing the sound of splashing and churning in the stream, I looked up again.

  Two small black buffaloes gazed at me from the muddy, moonlit water.

  The Story of Madhu

  ONE MORNING, WHILE I sat beneath the mango tree, I saw a young girl of about nine, wearing torn clothes, darting about on the pathway and along the high banks of the tank that stood near my house.

  Now and then she stopped to look at me; and, when I showed that I noticed her, she felt encouraged and gave me a shy, fleeting smile. The next day I discovered her leaning over the garden wall, following my actions as I paced up and down on the grass.

  In a few days an acquaintance had been formed. I began to take the girl’s presence for granted, and even to look for her; and she, in turn, would linger about on the pathway until she saw me come out of the house.

  One day, as she passed the gate, I called her to me.

  ‘What is your name?’ I asked. ‘And where do you live?’

  ‘Madhu,’ she said, brushing back her long, untidy black hair and smiling at me from large black eyes. She pointed across the road: ‘I live with my grandmother.’

  ‘Is she very old?’ I asked.

  Madhu nodded confidingly and whispered: ‘A hundred years . . .’

  ‘I wonder if we will ever be that old,’ I said. She was very slight and frail, like a flower growing in a rock, vulnerable to wind and rain.

  I discovered later that the old lady was not her grandmother but a childless woman who had found the baby girl on the banks of the tank. Madhu’s real parentage was unknown; but the wizened old woman had, out of compassion, brought up the child as her own.

  My gate once entered, Madhu included the garden in her circle of activities. She was there every morning, chasing butterflies, stalking squirrels and mynahs, her voice brimming with laughter, her slight figure flitting about between the trees.

  Sometimes, but not often, I gave her a toy or a new dress; and one day she put aside her shyness and brought me a present of a nosegay, made up of marigolds and wild bluecotton flowers.

  ‘For you,’ she said, and put the flowers in my lap.

  ‘They are very beautiful,’ I said, picking out the brightest marigold and putting it in her hair. ‘But they are not as beautiful as you.’

  More than a year passed before I began to take more than a mildly patronizing interest in Madhu.

  It occurred to me after some time that she should be taught to read and write, and I asked a local teacher to give her lessons in the garden for an hour every day. She clapped her hands with pleasure at the prospect of what was to be for her a fascinating new game.

  In a few weeks Madhu was surprising us with her capacity for absorbing knowledge. She always came to me to repeat the lessons of the day, and pestered me with questions on a variety of subjects. How big was the world? And were the stars really like our world? Or were they the sons and daughters of the sun and the moon?

  My interest in Madhu deepened, and my life became imbued with a new purpose. As she sat on the grass beside me, reading aloud, or listening to me with a look of complete trust and belief, all the love that had been lying dormant in me during my years of self-exile surfaced in a sudden surge of tenderness.

  Three years glided away imperceptibly, and at the age of thirteen Madhu was on the verge of blossoming into a woman. I began to feel a certain responsibility towards her.

  It was dangerous, I knew, to allow a child so pretty to live almost alone and unprotected, and to run unrestrained about the grounds. And in a censorious society she would be made to suffer if she spent too much time in my company.

  She could see no need for any separation but I decided to send her to a mission school in the next district, where I could visit her from time to time.

  ‘But why?’ said Madhu. ‘I can learn more from you, and from the teacher who comes. I am so happy here.’

  ‘You will meet other girls and make many friends,’ I told her. ‘I will come to see you. And, when you come home, we will be even happier. It is good that you should go.’

  It was the middle of June, a hot and oppressive month. Madhu had expressed her readiness to go to school, and when, one evening, I did not see her as usual in the garden, I thought nothing of it; but the next day I was informed that she had fever and could not leave the house.

  Illness was something Madhu had not known before, and for this reason I felt afraid. I hurried down the path which led to the old woman’s cottage. It seemed strange that I had never once entered it during my long friendship with Madhu.

  It was a humble mud hut, the ceiling just high enough to enable me to stand upright, the room dark but clean. Madhu was lying on a string cot, exhausted by fever, her eyes closed, her long hair unkempt, one small hand hanging over the side.

  It struck me then how little, during all this time, I had thought of her physical comforts. There was no chair; I knelt down, and took her hand in mine. I knew, from the fierce heat of her body, that she was seriously ill.

  She recognized my touch, and a smile passed across her face before she opened her eyes. She held on to my hand, then laid it across her cheek.

  I looked round the little room in which she had grown up. It had scarcely an article of furniture apart from two string cots, on one of which the old woman sat and watched us, her white, wizened head nodding like a puppet’s.

  In a corner lay Madhu’s little treasures. I recognized among them the presents which during the past four years I had given her. She had kept everything. On her dark arm she still wore a small piece of ribbon which I had playfully tied there about a year ago. She had given her heart, even before she was conscious of possessing one, to a stranger unworthy of the gift.

  As the evening drew on, a gust of
wind blew open the door of the dark room, and a gleam of sunshine streamed in, lighting up a portion of the wall. It was the time when every evening she would join me under the mango tree. She had been quiet for almost an hour, and now a slight pressure of her hand drew my eyes back to her face.

  ‘What will we do now?’ she said. ‘When will you send me to school?’

  ‘Not for a long time. First you must get well and strong. That is all that matters.’

  She didn’t seem to hear me. I think she knew she was dying, but she did not resent it happening.

  ‘Who will read to you under the tree?’ she went on. ‘Who will look after you?’ she asked, with the solicitude of a mature woman.

  ‘You will, Madhu. You are grown up now. There will be no one else to look after me.’

  The old woman was standing at my shoulder. A hundred years—and little Madhu was slipping away. The woman took Madhu’s hand from mine, and gently laid it down. I sat by the cot a little longer, and then I rose to go, all the loneliness in the world pressing upon my heart.

  Most Beautiful

  ONE DAY I found the children of the bazaar tormenting a deformed, retarded boy.

  About a dozen boys, between the ages of eight and fourteen, were jeering at the retard, who was making things worse for himself by confronting the gang and shouting abuses at them. The boy was twelve or thirteen, judging by his face, but had the height of an eight-or nine-year-old. His legs were thick, short and bowed. He had a small chest but his arms were long, making him rather ape-like in his attitude. His forehead and cheeks were pitted with the scars of smallpox. He was ugly by normal standards, and the gibberish he spoke did nothing to discourage his tormentors. They threw mud and stones at him, while keeping well out of his reach. Few can be more cruel than a gang of schoolboys in high spirits.