Khushwant Singh Best Indian Short Stories Volume 1

by Khushwant Singh

  At night, after I had switched off the light and gone to my bed on the floor, I had heard small, whimpering sounds.

  ‘What is it?’ I had asked her, a kind of terror gripping me. I had put my hand on her face, but she had jerked it away and said, ‘It was dark.’ The words had been said matter-of-factly, I could almost hear a shrug in them. It was like someone speaking of faraway fears, an experience outdistanced and left so far behind that it had ceased to matter. After that, there had been only silence.

  ‘Shall I get you some breakfast?’ I asked her now. She nodded. I went out and found him talking to a police officer.

  ‘We’ve got him,’ the man said.

  ‘Him?’

  ‘The man who...who kidnapped your daughter.’

  I could not connect the man who had been arrested by the police with my daughter who lay still and silent on her bed.

  The picture that dogged me was that of a frightened child lying alone in the dark. There was no enemy but the dark, no fear but the fear of being alone. What had the man to do with it?

  ‘It seems he asked her whether she wanted a lift and she agreed.’

  He looked at us, not reproachfully, nor in surprise – nothing could surprise him – but in pity.

  ‘Why didn’t you warn her?’ my husband had asked me angrily.

  ‘Against what?’

  He had not replied. And I had asked myself – why hadn’t I warned her? I had been warned enough as a girl. ‘Don’t – don’t – don’t – you’re a female.’ They had taught me to build a wall around myself with negatives from childhood. And then suddenly, when I got married, they had told me to break the wall down. To behave as if it had never been. And my husband too – how complete his disregard of that wall had been! I had felt totally vulnerable, wholly defenceless. I won’t let my daughter live behind walls, I had thought.

  I had tried to tell her a few things when she grew up. ‘Oh that!’ she had said, as if pitying me, ‘we learnt about that in our biology.’

  ‘This man isn’t a known offender – this seems to be his first offence...’

  I went in hastily. I didn’t want to hear any more. I heard the police officer leave. My husband came in. ‘How is she?’

  ‘The same.’

  ‘I have to go to the police station.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘She’ll have to come too,’ he said, a trace of irritation in his voice.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why?’ All the suppressed anger in him came out with the word. ‘To identify him – he’s got to be...’

  He clenched his fists like an angry hero in a movie. I could sense the violent anger in him and I wondered – why is he angry? As for me, there was no anger. Do you rage against the inevitable? Since the day I, a girl of eleven, had met a man exhibiting himself, I had feared this. I was going to school and he, on a bike, was trying to approach me. His face was blank and expressionless; but there was something in his eyes which forced mine lower down. And I saw what he willed me to see. After that, it was always there, the fear of such violence.

  ‘She’s got to come,’ he said. ‘Not today, maybe, but soon. You had better prepare her for it.’

  I stared at the door through which he walked out, noting that he now walked with the stiff gait of a much older person. And, for some reason, I remembered my own wedding night.

  ‘Why are you crying?’ he had asked me in exasperation. ‘You’ve got to help me. Hasn’t your mother told you anything?’

  ‘You must submit,’ my mother had whispered, her face turned away in embarrassment.

  I had submitted and miraculously it had made things easier. Submission, I had thought then – it’s the answer.

  In a sudden panic I went in to my child. She lay motionless, staring at the ceiling. I called out her name. She didn’t respond. There wasn’t even a flicker of movement. I dropped down by the bed.

  ‘Why don’t you talk?’

  The eyes moved to my face. They were blank and unseeing. If you see a solar eclipse with the naked eye, they had told us as children, you will soon have spots before your eyes, like clouds. Then more spots, more clouds, and finally darkness.

  ‘Say something,’ I said fiercely.

  The eyes moved away, back to their place. I clutched her hand tightly in both mine. ‘Talk to me. Tell me what happened. That man...’

  All at once he was real. The enemy was not the dark, it was not being alone, it was the man.

  ‘Tell me about him. What did he do?’ My voice was shrill. She moved her head violently, as if warding off something. Her two thick plaits quivered into wavering curves.

  ‘Tell me. Please. Say something.’

  I was begging now. Her eyes deserted me, went back to the ceiling. Her body relaxed. The plaits lay still, heavy, inert.

  ‘What are you staring at? What are you thinking of? Tell me. Say something. Talk.’

  As if my frenzy could not but evoke a response, now she spoke.

  ‘It was dark,’ she said.

  ‘And then?... ’

  ‘It was dark,’ she said again.

  I stared at her for a moment. Then suddenly, I walked to the window. With a savage movement I pulled back the curtains. The rings danced and jerked over the rod in metallic tings. Sunlight poured into the room, mote upon mote, invading it, filling it with brightness. It showed up the neglected slovenliness of the room, the dust piled on the furniture. But I was looking at her. And now, at last, her eyes moved from her spot to a glimmering, moving circle of light on another part of the ceiling. They rested on that shining circle for a moment, then moved to me. She saw me.

  S I X T E E N

  One More Dead Body

  KARTAR SINGH DUGGAL

  Ever since Mr Malkani fled from Sind as a refugee, he had yearned for a flat in the Rawal Building. Years had passed and he had not succeeded. Rawal Building was a fifteen-minute bus ride from the government office in which he worked. On a bicycle the distance could be covered in three minutes. He procured recommendations, bribed officials and even sent his wife to them with fresh lipstick on – because he had heard that women could get things done more quickly. But to no avail.

  Mr Malkani lived ten miles away. In the government-owned office where he worked, his duty hours were sometimes by day, sometimes by night. When he reached home at odd hours after being crushed in buses, he was shattered. He had no energy left to enjoy his food or his wife. He hardly overcame his exhaustion from the previous day when he had to rush back for duty. At times he felt that ever since he had left his home in Pakistan, he had been constantly exhausted – always on the move.

  He dreamed that if he were allotted a government flat in Rawal Building, all his problems would be solved. He could run home to his wife on the sly even while on duty. He would not have to wait for hours in bus queues. If he could arrive home in time, he could enjoy a million little household pleasures. Burdened under his present routine, he was almost forgetting the face of his wife. His mother constantly wrote that she was longing for the birth of a grandson. But in this bastardly service, in such a damnable city, who could have time to produce a child?

  At last God seemed to have heard his prayer. Mr Malkani was allotted a two-room flat in Rawal Building. He was delirious with joy – as if he had been given a kingdom. Immediately after the allotment orders, he occupied the flat.

  Mrs Malkani said: Now you should come home much earlier. Don’t start working overtime!’

  Mr Malkani promised, but his wife’s words had planted an idea in his mind. He reflected: ‘The time I spent being suffocated in long bus rides I could now utilize in the office and earn a lot more money. A refugee who saves a little money can always get a government loan at nominal interest to buy a piece of land and build his own house. Colonies of land-owning refugees are mushrooming all around the city.’

  He started working overtime from that very day and developed such a taste for it that he returned home even later than before. He had no concern f
or eating or sleeping.

  His flat was near his office, the bazaar and a children’s school. He felt secure that when a child arrived, there would be no school problem. He did not like sending children in public buses. Especially young girls. Somehow he was sure that first a daughter would be born to them. But he had no time to relax with his wife. Morning, evening...always the office.

  A flat in Rawal Building was an acquisition. People who got one never left it. Their children were born there, grew up there, married there and started breeding there. Even when someone got promoted and became eligible for a better place, he would not leave. Clerks, under-secretaries, deputy secretaries – all held fast to their flats. Everyone declared: ‘Only my dead body will leave this building!’

  For several months the building was gripped by an ominous calamity – every week somebody would die. Sometimes on this, sometimes on that floor there would be wailing. Rawal Building was not an ordinary building but an eight-storey fortress housing 200 families. A complete neighbourhood.

  Yet each family was a stranger to the other. Nobody knew who lived next door. Everyone was busy with his job and his own little world. But if some calamity befell anyone, all the inmates came out of their shells to chatter sympathetically, and then disappeared again. Their children played together all day but their parents never mixed.

  Last week a dead body had been removed from one of the lower floors and, a week before that, from an upper floor. Mr Malkani had wanted to make a condolence call to both flats but could not find time. Three days he was on the night shift. All night he worked, came home for breakfast and slept through the day. In the evening he woke up, gobbled food and rushed back to his job.

  And then one night...

  That night while working he felt suddenly unwell. Shooting pains in his head and a temperature. Reluctantly, he decided to leave his work and go home. His colleagues were surprised to see him taking leave. For years he had never done so.

  He took a scooter and reached home in the middle of the night. The building was dark and hushed with sleep. The liftman was sleeping in the foyer. The night watchman had dozed off, leaning against the wall. Hearing Mr Malkani’s footsteps, a rat shot out of a flat and scampered into another. Mr Malkani did not want to disturb anyone. He got into the lift, pushed the button and reached the fourth floor.

  The lift stopped in front of his flat. So far he had avoided making any noise but now he would have to knock on the door. The neighbours might be disturbed but he would have to knock on the door. His wife would be in deep slumber but he would have to knock on the door.

  No. He touched the door and it swung open. How could it be? He stood back and checked the number of the flat. It was his own. He strode into the bedroom. He pushed the curtain aside and saw his wife indeed sleeping – with another man!

  What was he seeing? His head whirled and darkness engulfed him. Then suddenly he snatched off his shoe and whacked the intruder on the head. The sleeping lover leaped up, flabbergasted. He collected his clothes, ran through the bathroom and clattered down the backstairs. Mr Malkani then started beating his wife with the same shoe. Screaming and shouting! The neighbours rushed out of their doors. The watchman and liftman also ran up. Someone shrieked, ‘Thief! Thief!’, another something else.

  Mr Malkani was beating his wife in non-stop fury. The crowd streamed in and released the poor victim.

  Mr Malkani gnashed his teeth and again assaulted his wife with his shoe. The neighbours struggled to hold him back. Then everyone came to know what had been going on in the bedroom. They whispered and nodded and hung around.

  Mr Malkani thundered: ‘I’ll kill this whore!’ The people around thought if they went away, he might indeed. Mrs Malkani covered her face and wished that the earth would split open to devour her.

  In this hullabaloo it became morning.

  What a commotion! The neighbours could not sleep the rest of the night. A few days ago, when a young Punjabi had died on the top floor, they had been assailed by the same wailing and screaming. Again, when a Marwari lady had expired on the lowest floor, the all-night howling had kept everyone awake. And this night the Sindhis had staged a strange noisy drama. The neighbours could not decide with whom to sympathize – with Mr Malkani who had caught his wife red-handed in bed with another man or with Mrs Malkani who was dying of shame and suffering slaps from her infuriated husband.

  Meanwhile, the caretaker of the building appeared. He was a hefty tribal Pathan brandishing a leather-covered stick and he was followed by a ferocious Alsatian. He roared: ‘Is this a brothel? It’s a government building, not a whorehouse! God knows from where these pimps and scoundrels come! Malkani Sahib, take all your junk and leave this building! I have procured orders for this on the telephone. You must vacate within an hour, otherwise the police will throw you out! What evil days! Nobody could sleep a wink all night! Such bad characters cannot be allowed to live in a government building!’

  He went on and on, foaming at the mouth. Men and women stared at him but he continued: ‘I say, Malkani Sahib, why are you gaping at me? This is a neighbourhood of decent people, not a place for prostitutes!’

  The bristly moustached caretaker dragged a chair out of Mr Malkani’s flat as a preamble to pushing him out.

  ‘Stop, Khan Sahib!’ exclaimed Mr Malkani, mustering up courage. ‘Why are you boiling? What is the inside story?’

  ‘The inside story? Your wife has been found sleeping with another man and you have raised hell. The entire building is in an uproar!’

  ‘Lies! Lies! Who says so? Lies! My wife and I only quarrelled over a point. Is there any married couple that doesn’t quarrel? Two utensils in a cupboard will certainly knock and clatter. Nothing unusual! My neighbours are burning with jealousy. They want to throw us out so that they can get our flat allotted to their relatives. Nothing happened here. To defame a decent woman like my wife is crazy. Haven’t these people their own wives and daughters?’

  Mr Malkani said all this in one breath, his eyes red with anger. The crowd started slowly melting away. The hefty caretaker looked around and found that everyone had gone, leaving him alone.

  When Mr Malkani finished his tirade, the caretaker was standing alone opposite him. The neighbourhood was quiet like a mortuary. Everything dead quiet. The caretaker hung his head and went away with his dog, puzzled.

  He was going up to his flat on the eighth floor when he heard some residents talking among themselves.

  ‘Life in this building is good. But when someone dies, one cannot sleep all night.’

  ‘Last night somebody died on the fourth floor. Today one more dead body...’

  (Translated from the Punjabi by Balwant Gargi)

  S E V E N T E E N

  Midnight

  WENDY FERNANDES

  Midnight was a large, black, three-year-old tomcat of haughty demeanour and aristocratic traits. His countenance bore the unmistakable stamp of a Great Thinker. He enjoyed baiting beings of lesser intelligence, particularly a retired army dog called Oscar, late of the lst/3rd Barkers.

  This still rigid disciplinarian objected to unauthorized entry into his territory and had frequently to nose out the infiltrating tomcat and chase him back across the border. The skirmishes usually took place at night so that Midnight had the advantage of camouflage as well as superior sighting power. When Oscar barked the attack, he simply made a smooth retreat over the wall between their respective gardens. Stout-hearted Oscar was all for carrying the war over the boundary, but was forced by the gate between them to call a halt.

  Perched safely on the wall, his green eyes flashing hatred, Midnight would spit insults at his wheezing and frustrated pursuer. ‘You stinking tin soldier!’ suggested his wrinkled nose. You and which regiment is going to get me?’ implied his flattened ears. ‘Send for the batman who polishes your collar and dog licence!’ snarled his bared teeth. Oscar, whose honest visage could not manage half as much subtlety of expression, merely kept barking his demand for immediate
and unconditional surrender.

  At this stage, the civilian superiority of numbers would prevail. Miss Victoria, Midnight’s owner, invariably rushed into the fray unnecessarily, beseeching Oscar not to frighten Midnight. ‘He has to go somewhere,’ she would mediate with Oscar. ‘He’s only a human being.’ To which piece of logic Midnight would react with an embarrassed twitch of his tail. Caught between enemy crossfire, Oscar would be forced to retreat. Diplomatic relations between the two gardens remained strained.

  Miss Victoria’s house was like herself, old and squat, with a forbidding exterior, and a warm, slightly tipsy interior. It had a high wall surrounding it with a solid wooden gate in front and another gate at the back made of a wooden framework and wire netting. It was through the latter that Midnight and Oscar frequently exchanged hostilities.

  Although the black tomcat was recognized as the scourge of the district in feline, canine and human circles, he was Miss Victoria’s ewe lamb. She bought him a wooden chair on which to sharpen his claws. He had carefully prepared meals and a cradle in every room. He had his own set of brushes and a suitcase full of realistic snakes, lizards, frogs, rats, birds and insects.

  Louie the Lifter only stole things that other people couldn’t possibly need. That made him, in his own estimation, an honest burglar. He was only helping other people to be charitable. At a tender age he had been informed that ‘Charity covereth a multitude of sins’, and the people he called on professionally had at least that number of sins to cover. He was a believer in non-violence (to himself), prohibition (it had once afforded him a livelihood as a ‘bootlegger’), and free speech (lifting pockets, while a crowd listened to a roadside agitator, was quite profitable).

  Fifi was a pretty young thing with soft brown eyes and long silky fur. She was very well bred. She had lately crossed Oscar’s path and he pursued her with all the gallantry due to a pretty young lady dog. On Monday evening Fifi accepted Oscar’s invitation to dinner. She was suspicious at first but, when he intimated that there would be other company, she capitulated.