At the End of the Century

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  During all this time only my wife knew the true story. She kept quiet – even with her own family, her own brothers. She told them only what I had instructed her to say: first, that he had gone to Ludhiana, then that he had probably run away to Bombay, where the film studios are. Her arm healed slowly; she was often in pain, but no one knew what had happened except me. Up to this time we had enjoyed frequent marital intercourse; now we only lay silently side by side. I thought not of her but of him – not of his turning around from the safe with his arm raised but of his travelling alone with the money and of what could have happened to him. She knew what I was thinking, and to calm me she made those sweet noises at me she makes at our children when they are sick or crying.

  So two years passed, and in that time our new house was built. The house was also intended for Sohan Lal and his family, but because his wife does not get on with mine – it is the usual story with sisters-in-law – they all stayed behind in Kabir Galli. Of course, I was sad to see our joint family split in this way, but secretly I hoped that Bablu would come back one day and then I would find a wife for him and they would live with us in our precious new home. And then he did come back, and he did live with us – not with a wife but with that one, the other one, Sachu, he called himself.

  Although the things Sachu had done and the way he lived only came out afterwards in court, he seemed to carry them around with him, so that wherever he was the air became foul. He was small and thin, like Bablu, and except for his colourless eyes there was nothing to notice. He wore a dirty, torn pajama, and a dirty, torn shirt over it. Bablu, too, was in rags. All the money must have gone long ago and they were destitute. They were hungry, too. When I saw my brother fall like a starving dog on the food we gave him, I said, ‘If you had written one word, I would have sent whatever you needed.’ Sachu said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ve brought him home now.’ Neither of them ever said much, but when there was an answer to be given it was Sachu who spoke. And it was he who said, ‘Don’t forget the reward – two thousand rupees.’ He laughed, so I thought he was joking. It was always difficult to know what he meant, because his eyes were always blank like glass.

  Our new house was built in such a way that the room where visitors are received is separate from where the family lives. This room is at the front of the house and is much larger than the rooms crowded together at the back, where we keep our cots and cooking vessels and other very simple furniture. For the front room we have bought a sofa and matching chairs and a table with a glass top, and there is a glass cabinet in which my wife keeps pretty dolls and other ornaments. Here we also have a television set and a radio. This room was now given over to Bablu and his friend, and they made themselves comfortable there. It was hard to see Sachu putting his dirty feet on the blue velvet sofa, but it was better than to have him in the back of the house with the family. So I kept quiet, and my wife also kept quiet. She had to – the same way she had to about the wound in her arm. We didn’t even speak out our fear to each other.

  When Sachu asked me again for the two-thousand-rupee reward, I gave it to him. After all, it was his right. And when he asked me, ‘Aren’t you grateful I brought him home to you?’ I said yes. It was true. Now at least I knew where Bablu was – in the front of my own house – and I did not have to imagine what his fate might be. He was alive and well! – and now that he ate good food and slept comfortably, he was very well! I had never seen him so happy before. I have mentioned how rarely he smiled and looked glad, but now he did it all the time, showing his little pointed teeth and his gums stained red with betel. For the first time, he had a friend whom he loved. They were together all the time. They sat side by side on the low wall around our house, swinging their feet and holding hands, the way friends do. They both liked playing the radio and watching television. Once I saw them dancing together, holding each other the way English people dance. I had to smile then, because it was a strange sight and also nice for me to see Bablu enjoying himself. I began to think that my fears were foolish and that it was good for him to have Sachu as a friend. I can’t say they were any trouble to us. My wife also had no complaints on that score. They were never disrespectful, and they behaved decently. They didn’t mix very much with us but kept themselves apart in the front room. They even ate their meals there, brought to them by the servant boy we kept in the house.

  Although he has nothing to do with what happened later, I must say something about this servant boy. Before he came to us he was working in a tea stall, serving customers and washing cups and plates in a bucket in the back. He also slept there at night. He had no other home and no family; no one knew where he came from. He was about twelve or thirteen years old. He couldn’t read or write, but he was a willing worker. When Sachu and Bablu came, this boy changed completely. Now all he wanted was to be near them. He would sit in the doorway of the front room, waiting for them to send him out for betel or cool drinks, or to take their clothes to the washerman. They had good clothes now and were very careful to have them always nicely washed and pressed. I have seen this boy arranging their clothes and touching the fine cloth as if he were touching a woman. When my wife called him he pretended not to hear; perhaps he really didn’t hear her, because all his attention was focused on those two. He tried to comb his hair up in a wave like theirs, and he begged my wife to buy him bell-bottom pants instead of the khaki shorts she had given him. Later, after the two were no longer with us, this boy became worse and worse. He mixed with bad characters and hung around the bazaar and cinema with them. He stayed out all night and could never be found for work, until at last my wife dismissed him. He got a job as a servant in another house but soon disappeared from there with money and valuables. A report was lodged with the police, but he was never found. Probably he got on a train and went to some other town. There are millions like him, and no one can tell one from the other. They eat where they can, sleep where they can, and if they get into trouble in one place they move on to another. They may end up in jail on some case that never comes up for trial, they may die of some disease, or they may live a few years longer. No one cares where they are or what happens to them. There are too many of them.

  That was Sachu’s defence for his crime: no one cared for him, so he cared for no one. The time of the trial and afterward, after the sentence, was Sachu’s great hour. He became a big man and gave interviews to journalists and made them listen to his philosophy. He boasted of all the crimes he’d committed before he came to our town. He had been in jail many times, he said, but he had never been convicted of any of the other murders to which he now admitted. He said he would kill anyone if he wanted something they had, even if it was only a ring that he liked. He said that human beings were not born to be poor, otherwise why should the earth be so full of riches, with mines full of gold and precious gems, and with pearls scattered in the ocean? His father had pulled a handcart for a living and had had nine children. Probably those who had survived were all pulling handcarts now – all except him, Sachu. He had wanted something else, and if it had brought him death on the gallows, all right, he was ready. He had always been different from his family; he had run away from them at the age of ten, when he had overheard his father and elder brothers planning to break his leg in order to make him change his bad ways. Since that day he had been on his own.

  My prayer to be relieved of their crime has been answered, so that it is no longer before my eyes day and night. Now it is as if it were locked away in a heavy steel trunk; this weight may be taken from me at my last hour, but until then I carry it inside myself, where only God and I know of its constant presence. After a while there is nothing more you can do or suffer. I have also prayed on behalf of the father of the victim – that the man’s suffering may be made bearable for him, if such a thing were possible. Day after day I was with this man in the courtroom, but I can say nothing of his appearance, because not once in all that time did I dare to raise my eyes and look at him.

  The famous Parsi lawyer I enga
ged for Bablu’s defence believed that they never intended to kill the boy but meant to release him, after collecting the ransom money. Very likely this is true. It is certainly true that while they were living in my house they made their plan to kidnap him. At that time there was a popular film playing about a dacoit who kidnapped a high-born girl for money, but then he fell in love with her and she reformed his ways. It was one of those stupid Bombay films that people like, including my wife, who made me take her to see it because her favourite actor was in it. A mother with three children, but still she has a favourite actor! Sachu and Bablu went four or five times, and they knew all the songs and dialogue by heart. So the idea of kidnap must have got into their heads. There were enough rich people in our town – many of them like myself, who a few years ago were only humble shopkeepers and were caught up in the big boom in cotton cloth. Such people spent a lot of money on themselves and their children and lived like millionaires; some of them already were millionaires. However, it was not one of their children who was chosen.

  P—— is a cantonment town, and we have always had a regiment stationed here. The cantonment area is quite separate. It has wide roads and brick barracks, and the officers live in bungalows with gardens. Everything is very clean and very well kept up. The soldiers are healthy and sturdy and look quite different from the townspeople. The officers and their families are like higher beings; they are well built, with light complexions, and they are educated gentry, speaking English with each other. Some of them even speak Hindi with an English accent, like foreigners – like sahibs. They also live like sahibs in their big bungalows, and drink whisky and soda, and their cooks prepare English-style food for them, with roast meat. The boy’s father was the commanding officer – he had the rank of colonel – and his memsahib, the boy’s mother, was from one of the princely families who have lost their title but still have houses and land. (She has since passed away.) The boy was their only child, and they had sent him to a boarding school in the hills to get a good education. The reason he was in the cantonment at that time was that there had been a measles epidemic in the school; all the unaffected children had been sent home as a precaution, to safeguard their health.

  Everyone knows what the boy looked like. His photograph has been in the newspapers as often as Bablu’s and Sachu’s. Sometimes all three photos were on the same page, and even though they were not clear in the newsprint it was evident that the boy was of a different type from the other two – as if he came from some different stock or species of human being. In Sachu’s interviews with the newspaper reporters, he sounded as if he hated the boy, because the boy was plump, with big eyes and a light complexion, and wore a very good blue coat, with the badge of his school on the pocket. And because he had roller skates. No one had heard of roller skates in our town till the boy was seen with them. His parents had brought them as a present for him from abroad, and the boy loved them so much that he went on them everywhere, as with wings under his feet.

  It was because of these roller skates that Bablu and Sachu were discovered very quickly. It was also all they got from their crime, for although the father had put the ransom money in the place they had indicated, they did not dare collect it after killing the boy. They had so little cash that they had to sneak on to a train as ticketless travellers. When an inspector came, they had to jump off. This was in a town less than two hundred miles from ours. They took a room in a hotel in a bad part of town, and they never came out except at night, when one of them went to buy gram, which was all the food they could afford. Their room was very small, with only one bed and an old fan, but here Sachu tried to learn to roller-skate. This made the whole house shake, as if it were in an earthquake, and everyone in the hotel wondered what was happening. They also heard the noise of someone falling, and then the two young men laughing in enjoyment, so they tapped on the door of their room to inquire. Sachu let them come in and look, because he was so proud of learning to roller-skate. Everyone smiled and enjoyed his feat, but when there was news everywhere of a boy killed and of his missing roller skates the police were informed at once.

  Up to that time, the two of them had been lucky, even though their crime had not been well planned. They had stolen a car from outside the interstate bus depot, and had waited near the cantonment for the boy to pass on his roller skates. They had no difficulty getting into conversation with him; he was frank and open in his manner – everyone said so later – and was always glad to talk to people and to make friends. They got him into the car and drove him to the place they had chosen for their hideout. Here they tied him up with chains, and Sachu – Bablu couldn’t drive – took the car to the other side of town and abandoned it there. It was found by the police the same day, though they found the boy only when he was dead.

  There are many places where a person can hide around our town. Important battles have been fought here, and it has been destroyed and built up again many times. Ruins are all around – the foundations of beautiful cities, with the remains of tombs, mosques and bathing tanks. Since it is a very dry area, very little vegetation has grown, and there are only mounds of rubble and dust, where jackals live and can be heard howling at night. The two took the boy down into a bathing tank, which had been dug so deep into the earth that there were forty steps descending into it. All round the tank were arched niches like rooms. In olden days, it must have been a beautiful, cool place for royal people to bathe and rest and take enjoyment. Now the tank is empty and dry. They kept the boy in one of the niches and stayed with him there for four days, all of them living on milk sweets.

  After they were arrested, Sachu talked freely. It was as if he had waited all his life for people to listen to what he had to say. He was a person of no education, and could not express himself, yet words and thoughts always seemed to boil up in him and come gushing out freely. One thing he could never bear was to be contradicted or interrupted; he wanted to be the only one to talk, and others were there to listen. After his arrest, if any journalist challenged him or talked back to him, he went into a rage. Sometimes he seemed to fly into the same rage when talking about the boy; he spoke as if the boy were still alive and challenging what he was saying. Then anger filled his empty eyes.

  The Parsi lawyer wanted to present the case in such a way as to show that Sachu had stabbed the boy with his knife during an argument between them. It was soon established that the boy didn’t sit quietly and whine for mercy while he was being kept prisoner. He was a fearless boy and also a first-class debater who had competed for an inter-school trophy. He liked talking and arguing as much as Sachu did, and although he was seven years younger (he was thirteen), he was much better educated. When Sachu spoke to the boy about society and astrology and what is man’s fate – the same way he later talked to the reporters – the boy could answer him and argue with him, and he could even quote from books he had read at school. The Parsi lawyer said that when Sachu was defeated by the boy over and over again in argument he became so enraged that he killed him. Sachu alone did it, and Bablu was innocent. And Sachu said yes, that was the way it happened, and then he boasted of the other murders he had committed, which no one had ever discovered.

  But Bablu said no to the Parsi lawyer, that was not the way it happened. Bablu said, ‘I did it – not Sachu.’ Then the lawyer appointed to defend Sachu wanted to make a case that Bablu had killed the boy out of jealousy, because he saw that his friend was paying a lot of attention to the boy and spent many hours talking and arguing with him. The lawyer said that the boy was not only educated and cultured but also very handsome – soft-skinned and wheat-complexioned. (The medical report had established the fact that sodomy had taken place.) Bablu was ready to confirm what the lawyer said and to admit that he had killed the boy because he could not bear to watch what Sachu did with him. He confessed this in a very quiet voice and without raising his eyes – not out of shame, it seemed, but because he felt shy about talking of this matter.

  All this time, Bablu never changed
. Unlike Sachu, he hardly spoke to anyone but appeared so sunk in his own thoughts that one didn’t like to disturb him. As before, his face was very serious, and his expression altered only when he read the newspaper reports of the interviews that Sachu had given. Bablu eagerly waited for me to bring him these newspapers, and when he read them he smiled – that smile, with his little pointed teeth and betel-red gums, which always gave me a shock to see. It didn’t seem to belong on his face – any more than that other expression my wife had once described to me, when he had turned from the safe and raised his hand with the knife.

  Since each of them was ready to plead guilty to save the other, their lawyers got together and tried to prove that they had never met the boy – that someone else had killed him and they had only stolen the roller skates. It was a very weak case, and no one believed it. In the end, both were found guilty, and both were hanged. The burden of what was done has remained with us who are living. My brother Sohan Lal and his family have emigrated to Canada, and at first I, too, intended to leave this place where our name is known. But in the end I stayed. We are still living in the same house, though at first I had intended to sell it. For a long time we kept the front room locked and lived only in the back – no one even went in there to clean – but slowly we have got used to going in there again. At first, only the children went, to look at TV if there was a good programme on, but now my wife and I also sit there sometimes, and it is becoming like an ordinary room where nothing has happened.