The Best of Ruskin Bond

by Bond, Ruskin

  *

  The rain had lessened, but I didn’t know what to do with myself. The hotel was uninviting, and it was too late to leave Shamli. If the grass hadn’t been wet I would have preferred to sleep under a tree rather than return to the hotel to sit at that alarming dining-table.

  I came out from under the trees and crossed the garden. But instead of making for the veranda I went round to the back of the hotel. Smoke issuing from the barred window of a back room told me I had probably found the kitchen. Daya Ram was inside, squatting in front of a stove, stirring a pot of stew. The stew smelt appetizing. Daya Ram looked up and smiled at me.

  ‘I thought you must have gone,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll go in the morning,’ I said pulling myself up on an empty table. Then I had one of my sudden ideas and said, ‘Why don’t you come with me? I can find you a good job in Mussoorie. How much do you get paid here?’

  ‘Fifty rupees a month. But I haven’t been paid for three months.’

  ‘Could you get your pay before tomorrow morning?’

  ‘No, I won’t get anything until one of the guests pays a bill. Miss Deeds owes about fifty rupees on whisky alone. She will pay up, she says, when the school pays her salary. And the school can’t pay her until they collect the children’s fees. That is how bankrupt everyone is in Shamli.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, though I didn’t see. ‘But Mr Dayal can’t hold back your pay just because his guests haven’t paid their bills.’

  ‘He can, if he hasn’t got any money.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I will give you my address. You can come when you are free.’

  ‘I will take it from the register,’ he said.

  I edged over to the stove and, leaning over, sniffed at the stew. ‘I’ll eat mine now,’ I said; and without giving Daya Ram a chance to object, I lifted a plate off the shelf, took hold of the stirring-spoon and helped myself from the pot.

  ‘There’s rice too,’ said Daya Ram.

  I filled another plate with rice and then got busy with my fingers. After ten minutes I had finished. I sat back comfortably in the hotel, in a ruminative mood. With my stomach full I could take a more tolerant view of life and people. I could understand Sushila’s apprehensions, Lin’s delicate lying, and Miss Deeds’ aggressiveness. Daya Ram went out to sound the dinner-gong, and I trailed back to my room.

  From the window of my room I saw Kiran running across the lawn, and I called to her, but she didn’t hear me. She ran down the path and out of the gate, her pigtails beating against the wind.

  The clouds were breaking and coming together again, twisting and spiralling their way across a violet sky. The sun was going down behind the Siwaliks. The sky there was blood-shot. The tall slim trunks of the eucalyptus tree were tinged with an orange glow; the rain had stopped, and the wind was a soft, sullen puff, drifting sadly through the trees. There was a steady drip of water from the eaves of the roof onto the window-sill. Then the sun went down behind the old, old hills, and I remembered my own hills, far beyond these.

  The room was dark but I did not turn on the light. I stood near the window, listening to the garden. There was a frog warbling somewhere, and there was a sudden flap of wings overhead. Tomorrow morning I would go, and perhaps I would come back to Shamli one day, and perhaps not; I could always come here looking for Major Roberts, and, who knows, one day I might find him. What should he be like, this lost man? A romantic, a man with a dream, a man with brown skin and blue eyes, living in a hut on a snowy mountain-top, chopping wood and catching fish and swimming in cold mountain streams; a rough, free man with a kind heart and a shaggy beard, a man who owed allegiance to no one, who gave a. damn for money and politics and cities, and civilizations, who was his own master, who lived at one with nature knowing no fear. But that was not Major Roberts—that was the man I wanted to be. He was not a Frenchman or an Englishman, he was me, a dream of myself. If only I could find Major Roberts.

  *

  When Daya Ram knocked on the door and told me the others had finished dinner, I left my room and made for the lounge. It was quite lively in the lounge. Satish Dayal was at the bar, Lin at the piano, and Miss Deeds in the centre of the room, executing a tango on her own. It was obvious she had been drinking heavily.

  ‘All on credit,’ complained Mr Dayal to me. ‘I don’t know when I’ll be paid, but I don’t dare to refuse her anything for fear she’ll start breaking up the hotel.’

  ‘She could do that, too,’ I said. ‘It comes down without much encouragement.’

  Lin began to play a waltz (I think it was a waltz), and then I found Miss Deeds in front of me, saying, ‘Wouldn’t you like to dance, old boy?’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, somewhat alarmed. ‘I hardly know how to.’

  ‘Oh, come on, be a sport,’ she said, pulling me away from the bar. I was glad Sushila wasn’t present; she wouldn’t have minded, but she’d have laughed as she always laughed when I made a fool of myself.

  We went round the floor in what I suppose was waltz-time, though all I did was mark time to Miss Deeds’motions; we were not very steady—this because I as trying to keep her at arm’s length, whilst she was determined to have me crushed to her bosom. At length Lin finished the waltz. Giving him a grateful look, I pulled myself free. Miss Deeds went over to the piano, leant right across it, and said, ‘Play something lively, dear Mr Lin, play some hot stuff.’

  To my surprise Mr Lin without so much as an expression of distaste or amusement, began to execute what I suppose was the frug or the jitterbug. I was glad she hadn’t asked me to dance that one with her.

  It all appeared very incongruous to me. Miss Deeds letting herself go in crazy abandonment, Lin playing the piano with great seriousness, and Mr Dayal watching from the bar with an anxious frown. I wondered what Sushila would have thought of them now.

  Eventually Miss Deeds collapsed on the couch breathing heavily. ‘Give me a drink,’ she cried.

  With the noblest of intentions I took her a glass of water. Miss Deeds took a sip and made a face. ‘What’s this stuff?’ she asked. ‘It is different.’

  ‘Water,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘now don’t joke, tell me what it is.’

  ‘It’s water, I assure you,’ I said.

  When she saw that I was serious, her face coloured up, and I thought she would throw the water at me; but she was too tired to do this, and contented herself by throwing the glass over her shoulder. Mr Dayal made a dive for the flying glass, but he wasn’t in time to rescue it, and it hit the wall and fell to pieces on the floor.

  Mr Dayal wrung his hands. ‘You’d better take her to her room,’ he said, as though I were personally responsible for her behaviour just because I’d danced with her.

  ‘I can’t carry her alone,’ I said, making an unsuccessful attempt at helping Miss Deeds up from the couch.

  Mr Dayal called for Daya Ram, and the big amiable youth came lumbering into the lounge. We took an arm each and helped Miss Deeds, feet dragging, across the room. We got her to her room and onto her bed. When we were about to withdraw she said, ‘Don’t go, my dear, stay with me a little while.’

  Daya Ram had discreetly slipped outside. With my hand on the door-knob I said, ‘Which of us?’

  ‘Oh, are there two of you,’ said Miss Deeds, without a trace of disappointment.

  ‘Yes, Daya Ram helped me carry you here.’

  ‘Oh, and who are you?’

  ‘I’m the writer. You danced with me, remember?’

  ‘Of course. You dance divinely, Mr Writer. Do stay with me. Daya Ram can stay too if he likes.’

  I hesitated, my hand on the door-knob. She hadn’t opened her eyes all the time I’d been in the room, her arms hung loose, and one bare leg hung over the side of the bed. She was fascinating somehow, and desirable, but I was afraid of her. I went out of the room and quietly closed the door.

  *

  As I lay awake in bed I heard the jackal’s ‘pheau’, the cry of f
ear, which it communicates to all the jungle when there is danger about, a leopard or a tiger. It was a weird howl, and between each note there was a kind of low gurgling. I switched off the light and peered through the closed window. I saw the jackal at the edge of the lawn. It sat almost vertically on its haunches, holding its head straight up to the sky, making the neighbourhood vibrate with the eerie violence of its cries. Then suddenly it started up and ran off into the trees.

  Before getting back into bed I made sure the window was fast. The bull-frog was singing again, ‘ing-ong, ing-ong’, in some foreign language. I wondered if Sushila was awake too, thinking about me. It must have been almost eleven o’clock. I thought of Miss Deeds, with her leg hanging over the edge of the bed. I tossed restlessly, and then sat up. I hadn’t slept for two nights but I was not sleepy. I got out of bed without turning on the light and, slowly opening my door, crept down the passage-way. I stopped at the door of Miss Deed’s room. I stood there listening, but I heard only the ticking of the big clock that might have been in the room or somewhere in the passage, I put my hand on the door-knob, but the door was bolted. That settled the matter.

  I would definitely leave Shamli the next morning. Another day in the company of these people and I would be behaving like them. Perhaps I was already doing so! I remembered the tonga-driver’s words, ‘Don’t stay too long in Shamli or you will never leave!’

  When the rain came, it was not with a preliminary patter or shower, but all at once, sweeping across the forest like a massive wall, and I could hear it in the trees long before it reached the house. Then it came crashing down on the corrugated roofing, and the hailstones hit the window panes with a hard metallic sound, so that I thought the glass would break. The sound of thunder was like the booming of big guns, and the lightning kept playing over the garden, at every flash of lightning I sighted the swing under the tree, rocking and leaping in the air as though some invisible, agitated being was sitting on it. I wondered about Kiran. Was she sleeping through all this, blissfully unconcerned, or was she lying awake in bed, starting at every clash of thunder, as I was; or was she up and about, exulting in the storm? I half expected to see her come running through the trees, through the rain, to stand on the swing with her hair blowing wild in the wind, laughing at the thunder and the angry skies. Perhaps I did see her, perhaps she was there. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she were some forest nymph, living in the bole of a tree, coming out sometimes to play in the garden.

  A crash, nearer and louder than any thunder so far, made me sit up in the bed with a start. Perhaps lightning had struck the house. I turned on the switch, but the light didn’t come on. A tree must have fallen across the line.

  I heard voices in the passage, the voices of several people. I stepped outside to find out what had happened, and started at the appearance of a ghostly apparition right in front of me; it was Mr Dayal standing on the threshold in an oversized pyjama suit, a candle in his hand.

  ‘I came to wake you,’ he said. ‘This storm.’

  He had the irritating habit of stating the obvious.

  ‘Yes, the storm,’ I said. ‘Why is everybody up?’

  ‘The back wall has collapsed and part of the roof has fallen in. We’d better spend the night in the lounge, it is the safest room. This is a very old building,’ he added apologetically.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I am coming.’

  The lounge was lit by two candles; one stood over the piano, the other on a small table near the couch. Miss Deeds was on the couch, Lin was at the piano-stool, looking as though he would start playing Stravinsky any moment, and Dayal was fussing about the room. Sushila was standing at a window, looking out at the stormy night. I went to the window and touched her, she didn’t took round or say anything. The lightning flashed and her dark eyes were pools of smouldering fire.

  ‘What time will you be leaving?’ she said.

  ‘The tonga will come for me at seven.’

  ‘If I come,’ she said. ‘If I come with you, I will be at the station before the train leaves.’

  ‘How will you get there?’ I asked, and hope and excitement rushed over me again.

  ‘I will get there,’ she said. ‘I will get there before you. But if I am not there, then do not wait, do not come back for me. Go on your way. It will mean I do not want to come. Or I will be there.’

  ‘But are you sure?’

  ‘Don’t stand near me now. Don’t speak to me unless you have to.’ She squeezed my fingers, then drew her hand away. I sauntered over to the next window, then back into the centre of the room. A gust of wind blew through a cracked window-pane and put out the candle near the couch.

  ‘Damn the wind,’ said Miss Deeds.

  The window in my room had burst open during the night, and there were leaves and branches strewn about the floor. I sat down on the damp bed, and smelt eucalyptus. The earth was red, as though the storm had bled it all night.

  After a little while I went into the veranda with my suitcase, to wait for the tonga. It was then that I saw Kiran under the trees. Kiran’s long black pigtails were tied up in a red ribbon, and she looked fresh and clean like the rain and the red earth. She stood looking seriously at me.

  ‘Did you like the storm?’ she asked.

  ‘Some of the time,’ I said. ‘I’m going soon. Can I do anything for you?’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m going to the end of the world. I’m looking for Major Roberts, have you seen him anywhere?’

  ‘There is no Major Roberts,’ she said perceptively. ‘Can I come with you to the end of the world?’

  ‘What about your parents?’

  ‘Oh, we won’t take them.’

  ‘They might be annoyed if you go off on your own.’

  ‘I can stay on my own. I can go anywhere.’

  ‘Well, one day I’ll come back here and I’ll take you everywhere and no one will stop us. Now is there anything else I can do for you?’

  ‘I want some flowers, but I can’t reach them,’ she pointed to a hibiscus tree that grew against the wall. It meant climbing the wall to reach the flowers. Some of the red flowers had fallen during the night and were floating in a pool of water.

  ‘All right,’ I said and pulled myself up on to the wall. I smiled down into Kiran’s serious upturned face. ‘I’ll throw them to you and you can catch them.’

  I bent a branch, but the wood was young and green, and I had to twist it several times before it snapped.

  ‘I hope nobody minds,’ I said, as I dropped the flowering branch to Kiran.

  ‘It’s nobody’s tree,’ she said.

  ‘Sure?’

  She nodded vigorously. ‘Sure, don’t worry.’

  I was working for her and she felt immensely capable of protecting me. Talking and being with Kiran, I felt a nostalgic longing for the childhood emotions that had been beautiful because they were never completely understood.

  ‘Who is your best friend?’ I said.

  ‘Daya Ram,’ she replied. ‘I told you so before.’

  She was certainly faithful to her friends.

  ‘And who is the second best?’

  She put her finger in her mouth to consider the question; her head dropped sideways in connection.

  ‘I’ll make you the second best,’ she said.

  I dropped the flowers over her head. ‘That is so kind of you. I’m proud to be your second best.’

  I heard the tonga bell, and from my perch on the wall saw the carriage coming down the driveway. ‘That’s for me,’ I said. ‘I must go now.’

  I jumped down the wall. And the sole of my shoe came off at last.

  ‘I knew that would happen,’ I said.

  ‘Who cares for shoes?’ said Kiran.

  ‘Who cares?’ I said.

  I walked back to the veranda, and Kiran walked beside me, and stood in front of the hotel while I put my suitcase in the tonga.

  ‘You nearly stayed one day too late,’ said the tonga-drive
r. ‘Half the hotel has come down, and tonight the other half will come down.’

  I climbed into the back seat. Kiran stood on the path, gazing intently at me.

  ‘I’ll see you again,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll see you in Iceland or Japan,’ she said. ‘I’m going everywhere.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘maybe you will.’

  We smiled, knowing and understanding each other’s importance. In her bright eyes I saw something old and wise. The tonga-driver cracked his whip, the wheels creaked, the carriage rattled down the path. We kept waving to each other. In Kiran’s hand was a sprig of hibiscus. As she waved, the blossoms fell apart and danced a little in the breeze.

  *

  Shamli station looked the same as it had the day before. The same train stood at the same platform, and the same dogs prowled beside the fence. I waited on the platform until the bell clanged for the train to leave, but Sushila did not come.

  Somehow, I was not disappointed. I had never really expected her to come. Unattainable, Sushila would always be more bewitching and beautiful than if she were mine.

  Shamli would always be there. And I could always come back, looking for Major Roberts.

  DELHI IS NOT FAR

  ‘Oh yes, I have known love, and again love, and many other kinds of love; but of that tenderness I felt then, is there nothing I can say?’

  Andre Gide, Fruits of the Earth

  ‘If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

  And if I am not for others, what am I?

  And if not now, when?’

  Hillel (Ancient Hebrew sage)

  One

  My balcony is my window on the world.

  The room has one window, a square hole in the wall crossed by three iron bars.

  The view from it is a restricted one. If I crane my neck sideways, and put my nose to the bars, I can see the extremities of the building; below, a narrow courtyard where children—the children of all classes of people—play together. It is only when they are older that they become conscious of the barriers of class and caste.