Rusty Comes Home

by Ruskin Bond

  ‘Neither of them were married?’

  ‘No—I suppose that’s why they lived together. Though I’d rather live alone myself than put up with someone disagreeable. Still they were sisters. Charlotte had been a gay young thing once, very popular with the soldiers at the convalescent home. She refused several offers of marriage and then when she thought it time to accept someone there were no more offers. She was almost thirty by then. That’s when she started drinking—heavily, I mean. Gin and brandy, mostly. It was cheap in those days. Gin, I think, was two rupees a bottle.’

  ‘What fun! I was born a generation too late.’

  ‘And a good thing, too. Or you’d probably have ended up as Charlotte did.’

  ‘Did she get delirium tremens?’

  ‘She did nothing of the sort. Charlotte had a strong constitution.’

  ‘And so have you, Miss Pettibone, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

  ‘I take a drop when I can afford it—’ She gave me a meaningful look. ‘Or when I’m offered . . .’

  ‘Did you sometimes have a drink with Miss Taylor?’ ‘I did not! I wouldn’t have been seen in her company. All over the place she was when she was drunk. Lost her powers of discrimination. She even took up with a barber! And then she fell down a khud one evening, and broke her ankle!’

  ‘Lucky it wasn’t her head.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t her own head she broke, more’s the pity, but her sister May’s—the poor sweet thing.’

  ‘She broke her sister’s head, did she?’ I was intrigued. ‘Why, did May find out about the barber?’

  ‘Nobody knows what it was, but it may well have been something like that. Anyway, they had a terrible quarrel one night. Charlotte was drunk, and May, as usual, was admonishing her.’

  ‘Fatal,’ I said. ‘Never admonish a drunk.’

  Miss Pettibone ignored me and carried on.

  ‘She said something about the vengeance of God falling on Charlotte’s head. But it was May’s head that was rent asunder. Charlotte flew into a sudden rage—she was given to these outbursts even when sober—and brought something heavy down on May’s skull. Charlotte never said what it was. It couldn’t have been a bottle, unless she swept up the broken pieces afterwards. It may have been a heavy—what writers sometimes call a blunt instrument.

  ‘When Charlotte saw what she had done, she went out of her mind. They found her two days later wandering about near some ruins, babbling a lot of nonsense about how she might have been married long ago if May hadn’t clung to her.’

  ‘Was she charged with murder?’

  ‘No, it was all hushed up. Charlotte was sent to the asylum at Ranchi. We never heard of her again. May was buried here. If you visit the old cemetery you’ll find her grave on the second tier, third from the left.’

  ‘I’ll look it up some time. It must have been an awful shock for those of you who knew the sisters.’

  ‘Yes, I was quite upset about it. I was very fond of May. And then, of course, the chickens were sold and I had to buy my eggs elsewhere and they were never so good. Still, those were the days, the good old days—when eggs were six annas a dozen and gin only two rupees a bottle!’

  The Trouble With Jinns

  ONE-ARMED JIMMY finally got married that winter. Jimmy was a friend of mine. He had lost his right arm when he was a young man of twenty-five. The story of how he lost his good right arm is a little difficult to believe, but I swear that it is absolutely true. For, I was in Delhi those days, and it had happened right before my eyes.

  To begin with, Jimmy was (and presumably still is) a jinn. Now a jinn isn’t really a human like us. A jinn is a spirit creature from another world who has assumed, for a lifetime, the physical aspect of a human being. Jimmy was a true jinn and he had the jinn’s gift of being able to elongate his arm at will. Most jinns (I am told) can stretch their arms to a distance of twenty or thirty feet. Jimmy could attain forty feet. His arm would move through space or up walls or along the ground like a beautiful gliding serpent. I have seen him stretched out beneath a mango tree, helping himself to ripe mangoes from the top of the tree. He loved mangoes. He was a natural glutton and it was probably his gluttony that first led him to misuse his peculiar gifts.

  Jimmy always told me how he had been particularly good at basketball in school. He was always clever enough not to lengthen his arm too much because he did not want anyone to know that he was a jinn. In the boxing ring too he generally won his fights. His opponents never seemed to get past his amazing reach. He just kept tapping them on the nose until they retired from the ring, bloody and bewildered.

  But during the half-term examinations one of his classmates stumbled on Jimmy’s secret. The class had been set a particularly difficult algebra paper but Jimmy’s friend had managed to cover a couple of sheets with correct answers and was about to forge ahead on another sheet when he noticed someone’s hand on his desk. When he looked up there was no one beside him. He looked at the boy sitting directly behind. No, he was engrossed in his question paper and had his hands to himself. Meanwhile, the hand on his desk had grasped his answer sheets and was cautiously moving off. Following its descent, this boy found that it was attached to an arm of amazing length and pliability. This moved stealthily down the desk and slithered across the floor, shrinking all the while, until it was restored to its normal length. Its owner was of course one who had never been any good at algebra. And that was Jimmy, of course.

  The poor chap had to write out his answers a second time but after the exam he went straight up to Jimmy, told him that he didn’t like his game and threatened to expose him. Jimmy begged him not to let anyone know, assured him that he couldn’t really help himself, and offered to be of service to that fellow whenever he wished. To have Jimmy as a friend must have been quite tempting, for, with his long reach, he would obviously be useful. The classmate agreed to overlook the matter of the pilfered papers and they became the best of pals.

  But Jimmy’s gift was more of a nuisance than a constructive aid. That was because Jimmy had a second-rate mind and did not know how to make proper use of his powers. He seldom rose above the trivial. He used his long arm in the tuck-shop, in the classroom, in the dormitory. And when the class were allowed out to the cinema, he used it in the dark of the hall.

  Now the trouble with all jinns is that they have a weakness for women with long black hair. The longer and blacker the hair, the better for jinns. And should a jinn manage to take possession of the woman he desires, she goes into a decline and her beauty decays. Everything about her is destroyed except for the beautiful long black hair.

  Jimmy was still too young to be able to take possession in this way, but he couldn’t resist touching and stroking long black hair. The cinema was the best place for the indulgence of his whims. His arm would start stretching, his fingers would feel their way along the rows of seats, and his lengthening limb would slowly work its way along the aisle until it reached the back of the seat in which sat the object of his admiration. His hand would stroke the long black hair with great tenderness and if the girl felt anything and looked round, Jimmy’s hand would disappear behind the seat and lie there poised like the hood of a snake, ready to strike again.

  At college two or three years later, Jimmy’s first real victim succumbed to his attentions. She was a lecturer in Economics, not very good-looking, but her hair, black and lustrous, reached almost to her knees. She usually kept it in plaits but Jimmy saw her one morning, just after she had taken a head-bath, and her hair lay spread out on the cot on which she was reclining. Jimmy could no longer control himself. His spirit, the very essence of his personality, entered the woman’s body and the next day she was distraught, feverish and excited. She would not eat, went into a coma, and in a few days dwindled to a mere skeleton. When she died, she was nothing but skin and bones but her hair had lost none of its loveliness.

  I’d got acquainted with Jimmy by that time, and had heard from various friends about his negative powers. Afte
r that tragic event I took pains to avoid Jimmy. I could not prove that he was the cause of the lady’s sad demise but in my own heart I was quite certain of it. For since meeting Jimmy, I had read a good deal about jinns and knew of their ways.

  We did not see each other for a few years. And then, while I was in Delhi once I found we were staying at the same hotel. I could not very well ignore him and after we had drunk a few beers together I began to feel that I had perhaps misjudged Jimmy and that he was not the irresponsible jinn I had taken him for. Perhaps the college lecturer had died of some mysterious malady that attacks only college lecturers and Jimmy had nothing at all to do with it.

  We had decided to take our lunch and a few bottles of beer to a grassy knoll just below the main motor-road. It was late afternoon and I had been sleeping off the effects of the beer when I woke to find Jimmy looking rather agitated.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘Up there, under the gulmohar trees,’ he said. ‘Just above the road. Don’t you see them?’

  ‘I see two girls,’ I said. ‘So what?’

  ‘The one on the left. Haven’t you noticed her hair?’

  ‘Yes, it is very long and beautiful and—now look, Jimmy, you’d better get a grip on yourself!’ But his hand was already out of sight, his arm snaking up across the road.

  Presently I saw the hand emerge from some bushes near the girls and then cautiously make its way to the girl with the black tresses. So absorbed was Jimmy in the pursuit of his favourite pastime that he failed to hear the blowing of a horn. Around the bend of the road came a speeding Mercedes-Benz truck.

  Jimmy saw the truck but there wasn’t time for him to shrink his arm back to normal. It lay right across the entire width of the road and when the truck had passed over it, it writhed and twisted like a mortally wounded python.

  By the time the truck driver and I could fetch a doctor, the arm (or what was left of it) had shrunk to its ordinary size. We took Jimmy to hospital where the doctors found it necessary to amputate. The truck driver, who kept insisting that the arm he ran over was at least thirty feet long, was arrested on a charge of drunken driving.

  Some weeks later I asked Jimmy, ‘Why are you so depressed? You still have one arm. Isn’t it gifted in the same way?’

  ‘I never tried to find out,’ he said, ‘and I’m not going to try now.’

  Of course, being a jinn at heart he must be terribly tempted to try out his only good arm whenever he sees a girl with long black hair and to stroke her beautiful tresses. But he has learnt his lesson. It is better to be a human without any gifts than a jinn or a genius with one too many.

  Now that he’s married, I can’t help wondering about the length of his wife’s hair . . .

  Listen to the Wind

  MARCH IS PROBABLY the most uncomfortable month in the hills. The rain is cold, often accompanied by sleet and hail, and the wind from the north comes tearing down the mountain passes with tremendous force. Those few people who pass the winter in the hill station remain close to their fires. If they can’t afford fires they get into bed.

  On one of my visits to old Miss Pettibone’s cottage I found her tucked up in bed with three hot-water bottles for company. I took the bedroom’s single easy chair, and for some time Miss Pettibone and I listened to the thunder and watched the play of lightning. The rain made a tremendous noise on the corrugated tin roof, and we had to raise our voices in order to be heard. The hills looked blurred and smudgy when seen through the rain-spattered windows. The wind battered at the doors and rushed round the cottage, determined to make an entry; it slipped down the chimney, but stuck there choking and gurgling and protesting helplessly.

  ‘There’s a ghost in your chimney and he can’t get out,’ I said.

  ‘Then let him stay there,’ said Miss Pettibone.

  A vivid flash of lightning lit up the opposite hill, showing me for a moment a pile of ruins which I’d always wanted to see.

  ‘Pari Tibba . . . also called Burnt Hill,’ said Miss Pettibone. ‘Have you been there? It always gets the lightning when there’s a storm.’

  ‘No, I haven’t been there. I plan to go some day, though. As for always being struck by lightning—that’s possibly because there are iron deposits in the rocks,’ I said.

  ‘I wouldn’t know. But it’s the reason why no one ever lived there for long. Almost every dwelling that was put up was struck by lightning and burnt down.’

  ‘I thought I saw some ruins just now.’

  ‘Nothing but rubble. When they were first settling in the hills they chose that spot. Later they moved to the site where the town now stands. Burnt Hill was left to the deer and the leopards and the monkeys—and to its ghosts, of course . . .’

  ‘Oh yes, I’ve heard that it’s haunted.’

  ‘They say so, on evenings such as these. But you don’t believe in ghosts, do you?’

  ‘No. Do you?’

  ‘No. But you’ll understand why they say the hill is haunted when you hear its story. Listen.’

  I listened, but at first I could hear nothing but the wind and the rain. Then Miss Pettibone’s clear voice rose above the sound of the elements, and I heard her saying:

  ‘. . . It’s really the old story of ill-starred lovers, only it’s true. I’d met Robert at his parents’ house some weeks before the tragedy took place. He was eighteen, tall and fresh-looking, and full of manhood. He’d been born out here, but his parents were hoping to return to England when Robert’s father retired. His father was a magistrate, I think—but that hasn’t any bearing on the story.

  ‘Their plans didn’t work out the way they expected. You see, Robert fell in love. Not with an English girl, mind you, but with a hill girl, the daughter of a landholder from the village behind Burnt Hill. Even today it would be unconventional. Twenty-five years ago, it was almost unheard of! Robert liked walking, and he was hiking through the forest when he saw or rather heard her. It was said later that he fell in love with her voice. She was singing, and the song—low and sweet and strange to his ears—struck him to the heart. When he caught sight of the girl’s face, he was not disappointed. She was young and beautiful. She saw him and returned his awestruck gaze with a brief, fleeting smile.’

  I said nothing. I felt suffocated for a few moments. It was as if Miss Pettibone was narrating an account of my own love story, relating to me details of my first meeting with Binya.

  ‘In his impetuousness,’ continued Miss Pettibone, oblivious of my discomfort, ‘Robert made enquiries at the village, located the girl’s father, and without much ado asked for her hand in marriage. He probably thought that a sahib would not be refused such a request. At the same time, it was really quite gallant on his part, because any other young man might simply have ravished the girl in the forest. But Robert was in love and, therefore, completely irrational in his behaviour.

  ‘Of course the girl’s father would have nothing to do with the proposal. He was a Brahmin, and he wasn’t going to have the good name of his family ruined by marrying off his only daughter to a foreigner. Robert did not argue with the father; nor did he say anything to his own parents, because he knew their reaction would be one of shock and dismay. They would do everything in their power to put an end to his madness.

  ‘But Robert continued to visit the forest—you see it there, that heavy patch of oak and pine—and he often came across the girl, for she would be gathering fodder or fuel. She did not seem to resent his attentions, and, as Robert knew something of the language, he was soon able to convey his feelings to her. The girl must at first have been rather alarmed, but the boy’s sincerity broke down her reserve. After all, she was young too—young enough to fall in love with a devoted swain, without thinking too much of his background. She knew her father would never agree to a marriage—and he knew his parents would prevent anything like that happening. So they planned to run away together. Romantic, isn’t it? But it did happen. Only they did not live happily ever after.’

  ‘D
id their parents come after them?’

  ‘No. They had agreed to meet one night in the ruined building on Burnt Hill—the ruin you saw just now; it hasn’t changed much, except that there was a bit of roof to it then. They left their homes and made their way to the hill without any difficulty. After meeting, they probably planned to take the little path that followed the course of a stream until it reached the plains. After that—but who knows what they had planned, what dreams of the future they had conjured up? The storm broke soon after they’d reached the ruins. They took shelter under the dripping ceiling. It was a storm just like this one—a high wind and great torrents of rain and hail, and the lightning flitting about and crashing down almost every minute. They must have been soaked, huddled together in a corner of that crumbling building, when lightning struck. No one knows at what time it happened. But next morning their charred bodies were found on the worn yellow stones of the old building.’

  Miss Pettibone stopped speaking, and I roused myself from memories of Binya. The thunder had grown distant and the rain had lessened; but the chimney was still coughing and clearing its throat.

  ‘That’s true, every word of it,’ said Miss Pettibone. ‘But as to Burnt Hill being haunted, that’s another matter. I’ve no experience of ghosts.’

  ‘Anyway, you need a fire to keep them out of the chimney,’ I said, getting up to go. I had my raincoat and umbrella, and my own cottage was not far away.

  Next morning, when I took the steep path up to Burnt Hill, the sky was clear, and though there was still a stiff wind, it was no longer menacing. An hour’s climb brought me to the old ruin—now nothing but a heap of stones, as Miss Pettibone had said. Part of a wall was left, and the corner of a fireplace. Grass and weeds had grown up through the floor, and primroses and wild saxifrage flowered amongst the rubble.