Khushwant Singh Best Indian Short Stories Volume 2

by Khushwant Singh

  It was a picturesque loghouse on wooden stilts with red tiles and large glass windows. Kailas surveyed it with satisfaction.

  A man appeared from somewhere and carried the luggage in. ‘He will cook, wash, sweep, dust…. This is the sitting room – that is the bedroom…bathroom…’

  Naidu went on talking. ‘Milk, vegetables come from a village nearby. No problem…’

  Kailas liked his work: he spent the whole day in the open in the shade of trees. His job was to get the cut logs numbered with white paint, enter the number in a book and send them on to Naidu through a driver at the end of the day. He also had to guard against theft and illegal transactions.

  By sundown, all the lorries would be gone, leaving him alone with the silent jungle. He would go in, have a bath, fix a drink and sit and read by the light of a kerosene lamp the papers and magazines that Naidu regularly sent. When there was no work, he would sometimes pay a visit to Nehru Lodge, meet his old friends and shop around to replenish his stock of soap, toothpaste and liquor.

  Kailas found it hard to believe that this idyllic life of his was real and not some dream. The forest became his constant companion and, with enchantment, he would observe its varying moods from dawn to the brooding starlit hours of the night. Each season held a different thrill for him, but the fury of the monsoon he liked best of all when the roaring tropical storm lashed and held the jungle in its grip and shook it to the roots.

  Fear of Gunny Daga softly faded as time passed and settled in the back of his mind as a mere comic episode. Even some of Daga’s crooked ways began to strike him as funny and, at the thought of them, Kailas used to chuckle sometimes. Daga and all that he stood for felt like someone else’s experience.

  One evening, when the last truck had left groaning under the weight of the logs, Kailas saw at the far end of the rugged track leading out of the forest a black car coming bobbing up and down, glorifying the sunset with the brilliance of the golden dust it kicked up.

  Nobody had ever visited him at that hour: even at that distance, he sensed something ominous about the vehicle nosing its way towards him.

  He dashed into the cottage quickly. In an instant, he had slipped back in time into the grip of tormenting fear. His heart pounded viciously, as if it had a pair of hands to do so. Sweating and gasping, he stood behind the door. He heard the car come to a stop, the engine die, the door bang.

  Then the man shouted: ‘Hey, Kailas come and say hello to your guest!’

  The guttural voice conveyed that there were already enough drinks inside him.

  Kailas came out and went through a series of predetermined acts: he pretended to disbelieve his eyes at first. Surprise and joy followed on recognizing who the stranger was and then came the ecstatic cry: ‘Daga! Oh Daga!’

  With arms spread out in a melodramatic gesture of welcome, he moved towards him.

  ‘Shut up and get back into the house,’ Daga shouted, dodging Kailas’s embrace.

  Kailas at once sprinted back into the sitting room, dragged the chairs around, cleared the table of all the accumulated papers, lit the lamps and was still fussing about and cackling like an old aunt when Daga thundered: ‘Enough, you idiot! Sit down!’

  ‘No, not before I fix you a drink,’ Kailas said coyly.

  Daga finished the drink in one swig. ‘You have done yourself very well for a renegade,’ he said, looking around with cynical appreciation.

  ‘How is the drink – okay?’ Kailas asked, filling his glass and ignoring the remark.

  ‘How much money have you made? I want the truth. I am not making a social call, you know. I am here on business.’

  ‘Money? No money in this business, Daga. Only peace of mind,’ Kailas replied smiling tranquilly.

  It was total darkness outside by now. The lamp in the room was attracting a stream of insects of all colours, sizes and shapes. Kailas got up and closed the wire-mesh windows and doors, muttering all the while about the difficult life he was leading, as if it was a punishment.

  He knew Daga was not listening. Daga was staring fixedly at Kailas. He looked like a double-barrelled gun with a pair of eyes, Kailas thought.

  ‘Where have you tucked your lovey-dovey Dorine? Under your cot?’ he gestured coarsely and roared with laughter.

  Kailas’s hand shook as he poured the drinks.

  ‘You cowardly bastard. Never mind about the bitch. Tell me what happened to all the money. Donated it to an orphanage?’

  ‘I did not have any money…’ Kailas began, hopelessly trying an explanation.

  ‘Liar!’ Daga shouted. He pounded the table so hard that the oil lamp nearly toppled over and both of them shot out their hands to save their glasses.

  Daga was steadily losing control over himself. He demanded one drink after another in rapid succession. He shouted obscenities and abuses at the top of his voice. ‘You son of a bitch! You give me my share! Fifty thousand cash – now! You think I did not know that you disposed of that consignment…’

  ‘Fifty thousand!’ Kailas gasped. ‘Where am I to go?’

  ‘Go and steal it, if your life is that precious. But get it. If you run again, I will kill you, no matter which gutter you hide in. Tomorrow this time. Fifty thousand.’

  Kailas sat paralysed. Daga was a killer and the hunting lodge was ideally suited for his operation. He could kill and walk away without a soul knowing it.

  ‘Give me some more time,’ Kailas mumbled to fill the menacing silence.

  ‘No. You wish to live or die – that is up to you to decide, I have no time to waste. I have a business deal to finish tonight. The party is waiting. I have a hundred bloody kilometres to go.’

  ‘Have one for the road,’ Kailas pleaded, desperately trying to keep him back and finding a perverted sense of safety in the company of his own murderer-to-be.

  Daga stood up unsteadily and asked: ‘Where is it?’

  Kailas took a lamp and conducted him to the toilet. Kailas busied himself, clearing away the glasses, pushing the chair out of the way, picking up the scattered magazines and papers.

  The newspaper sheets lying on the floor reminded him sharply of another day when they proved nearly fatal, flying about like evil spirits inside his speeding car.

  He quickly gathered half a dozen of them and rushed out. Luckily, Daga’s car doors were unlocked.

  ‘It is only a chance in a million,’ he told himself as, with trembling hands, he neatly spread out the sheets of paper all over the rear seat at various strategic points and angles.

  Then, taking care to lower the windows a little, he returned to the sitting room at lightning speed.

  Daga had not come out of the toilet and was still making loud noises, clearing his throat and nose.

  Finally he came out, wiping his face with a kerchief and cursing. ‘Bloody darkness,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Tomorrow you will be dead if you don’t have the money on you. Remember that and don’t try to run…I will get you wherever you go…’ he said with chilling casualness and stepped out into the dark.

  Kailas heard the car start and briefly saw the trees standing bleached in the car’s ghostly headlights, as if woken up from an ancient slumber. Then they vanished as it swung round and pulled away.

  Kailas staggered to a chair as the significance of Daga’s visit slowly lowered itself on his mind like a load. The lamps fluttered and went out one by one and he sat crushed, staring into the darkness.

  He had no idea when he had fallen asleep. He woke up with a start when the milkman called through the window: ‘Sir, sir!’

  The room was bathed in daylight and his watch showed eight o’clock.

  ‘Why are you so late? Have the lorries come?’

  ‘There was an accident on the highway. So I was delayed…. A lot of crowds and police…’

  ‘Where?’

  The milkman flung his hand out and showed a vague distance.

  ‘A car had smashed against a tree. Luckily, there was no one in it except the driver. He
was dead.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘Don’t know. I could not see the face. The police had covered it with a newspaper.’

  EIGHT

  The Gold Frame

  R.K. LAXMAN

  The Modern Frame Work was actually an extra-large wooden packing case mounted on wobbly legs tucked in a gap between a drug store and a radio repair shop. Its owner, Datta, with his concave figure, silver-rimmed glasses and a complexion of seasoned timber fitted into his shop with the harmony of a fixture.

  He was a silent, hard-working man. He gave only laconic answers to the questions his customers asked and strongly discouraged casual friends who tried to intrude on his zone of silence with their idle gossip. He was always seen sitting hunched up, surrounded by a confusion of cardboard pieces, bits of wood, glass sheets, boxes of nails, glue bottles, paint tins and other odds and ends that went into putting a picture in a frame. In this medley a glass cutter or a pencil stub was often lost and that was when he would uncoil from his posture and grope impatiently for it. Many times he had to stand up and shake his dhoti vigorously to dislodge the lost object. This operation rocked the whole shop, setting the pictures on the walls gently swinging.

  There was not an inch of space that was not covered by a picture: gods, saints, hockey players, children, cheap prints of Mona Lisa, national leaders, wedding couples, Urdu calligraphy, the snow-clad Fujiyama and many others coexisted with a cheerful incongruity like some fabulous world awaiting order and arrangement.

  A customer standing outside the shop on the pavement, obstructing the stream of jostling pedestrians, announced, ‘I want this picture framed.’ Datta, with his habitual indifference, ignored him and continued to be engaged in driving screws into the sides of a frame. ‘I want a really good job done no matter how much it costs.’ The customer volunteered the information, unwrapping a faded newspaper and exposing a sepia-brown photograph of an old man. It was sharp and highly glazed in spite of its antiquity.

  ‘What sort of a frame would you like?’ Datta asked, still bent over his work.

  ‘The best, of course. Do you expect I would stint where this great soul is concerned?’

  Datta gave a side glance and caught a glimpse of the photograph: just another elderly person of those days, he told himself: standard portrait of a grandfather, a philanthropist, a social worker, with the inevitable whiskers and top-heavy cascading turban – it could be any one of these. At least half a dozen people came to him every month bearing similar portraits wanting to demonstrate their homage to the person in the picture in the shape of a glittering frame.

  The customer was describing the greatness of the old man: extravagant qualities of nobility, compassion and charity were being generously attributed to him in a voice that came close to the chanting of a holy scripture. ‘…If this world had just a few more like him, believe me, it would certainly have been a different place. Of course, there are demons who may not agree with me. They are out to disgrace his name and destroy his memory. But he is God in my home!’

  ‘What sort of a frame do you want?’ Datta interrupted. ‘Plain, wooden, lacquer, gold, plastic or just enamel painted?’ He waved a casual hand towards the pictures on the wall.

  The customer silently surveyed the various frames. After some time Datta heard him mumble, ‘I want the best…’

  ‘I don’t have any second-rate stuff in my shop,’ Datta said.

  ‘How much will that gold frame cost?’ the customer enquired.

  He was shown a number of samples: plain, decorative, floral, geometrical, thin, hefty and so forth. The customer was baffled by the variety. He examined the selection before him for a long time as if he was unsure of his judgement and was afraid of enshrining his saviour forever in some ugly cheap frame.

  Datta came to his rescue and recommended one with a profusion of gold leaves and winding creepers and, in order to clear any lingering doubt he might still be harbouring in regard to its quality, added: ‘It is German! Imported!’

  The customer at once seemed impressed and satisfied. Datta next asked, ‘You want a plain mount or a cut mount?’ and watched the puzzled look in return. Again he helped the man out by showing him various mounts and suggested that a cut mount looked more elegant.

  ‘All right, let me have a cut mount then. Is that a cut mount?’ he asked, pointing to a framed picture on the wall of a soulful-looking lady in an oval cut mount. ‘I like that shape. Will it cost much?’

  ‘No. Frame, mount, glass – all will cost seventeen rupees.’

  The customer had expected it would be more. He pretended to be shocked all the same and tried to bargain. Datta withdrew to his corner without replying and began to cut a piece of plywood. The customer hung about uncertainly for some time and finally asked, ‘When will you have it ready?’ and barely heard the reply over the vibrating noise of the saw on the plywood: ‘Two weeks from today.’

  Datta had learnt by long experience that his customers never came punctually. They came days in advance and went away disappointed or came months later, and some never turned up at all and their pictures lay unclaimed in a box gathering dust and feeding cockroaches and silverfish. Therefore, he only framed for those who visited him at least twice before he actually executed their orders.

  Ten days later, the tall, rustic-looking man appeared and enquired, ‘Has the picture been framed? I was passing by and thought I could collect it if it was ready.’

  Datta cast a side look at him and continued with his work.

  ‘I know I have come four days early,’ the customer grinned nervously. ‘Will it be ready by Tuesday?’

  Datta merely nodded without shifting attention from a tiny nail which he, with precise rhythmic strokes, was driving into a frame but sensed the man’s obsessive attachment to the photograph. He told himself there would be trouble if he did not deliver the order on the promised date.

  Next morning he made that his first job, keeping aside all the others.

  The photograph was lying in a shelf among many others. He took it and carefully kept it on a wooden plank on the floor. Then he looked for the pencil stub for marking the measurements. As usual, it was missing. He swept his hand all round him impatiently, scattering fragments of glass and wood.

  False shapes that he mistook for the pencil harassed him no end and stoked his anger. Frustrated in all his attempts to find it, he finally stood up to shake the folds of his dhoti – an ultimate move which generally yielded results. But he shook the folds so violently that he upset a tin containing white enamel paint and it fell right on the sacred photograph of the old man, emptying its thick, slimy contents on it.

  Datta stood transfixed and stared at the disaster at his feet as if he had suddenly lost all faculty of movement. He could not bring himself even to avert his eyes from the horror which he seemed to be cruelly forced to view. Then his spectacles clouded with perspiration and helpfully screened his vision.

  When at last he fully recovered his senses he set about rescuing the picture in such desperate hurry that he made a worse mess of it. He rubbed the picture so hard with a cloth that he peeled off thin stripes of filmy coating from its surface. Before he realized what he had done half the old man’s face and nearly all of his turban were gone. Datta looked helplessly at the venerable elder transformed into thick black specks sticking to the enamel smeared on the rag in his hand. He sat with both hands clutching his head: every nerve in his head throbbed as if it would tear itself apart if he did not hold it down. What answer was he going to offer to the customer who had a fanatic devotion to the photograph he had just mutilated beyond recovery? His imagination ran wild, suggesting nightmarish consequences to his own dear self and to the fragile inflammable shop.

  He racked his brain for a long while till sheer exhaustion calmed his agitated nerves and made him accept the situation with hopeless resignation. Meanwhile, the plethora of gods, saints and sages gazed down at him from the walls with transcendental smiles and seemed to offer themselve
s to him to pray to. With a fervent appeal in his heart he stared at them.

  In his state of mind it did not register for quite a while that a particular photograph of a person on the wall had held his attention rather more than it was qualified to do. It was an ordinary portrait of a middle-aged man in a dark suit and striped tie, resting his right arm jauntily on a studio prop made to look like a fluted Roman pillar. Datta was amazed to see that he had a faint likeness to the late lamented old man. The more he gazed at the face the more convincing it appeared to him. But he dismissed the odd resemblance he saw as one of those tricks of a thoroughly fagged-out mind. All the same at the back of his mind an idea began to take shape: he saw the possibility of finding an acceptable substitute!

  He brought down the old wooden box in which he had kept all the photographs unclaimed over the years. As he rummaged in it, panicked cockroaches and spiders scurried helter-skelter all over the floor. Unmindful of them Datta anxiously searched for the brownish photograph of the old man’s vintage. Soon there was a pile before him: he was surprised he could pick up so many which qualified to take the old man’s place. But he had to reject a lot of them. In most of the portraits the subjects sported a very conspicuous flower vase next to them, or overdressed grandchildren sat on their laps and therefore had to be rejected. Luckily, there was one with which Datta felt he could take a fair risk: the print had yellowed a bit noticeably but he calculated that the total effect when put in a dazzling gold frame would render it safe.

  After a couple of hours of concentrated work he sat back and proudly surveyed the old man’s double, looking resplendent in his gold frame. He was so pleased with his achievement that he forgot he was taking perhaps one of the greatest risks any framemaker ever took! He even became bold enough to challenge the customer if his faking was discovered. ‘Look, my dear man,’ he would say, ‘I don’t know who has been fooling you! That’s the picture you brought here for framing. Take it or throw it away!’

  The days that followed were filled with suspense and anxiety. Datta feared that the customer would surprise him at an unguarded moment making him bungle the entire carefully thought-out plot. But the man turned up promptly a couple of days later. At that moment Datta was bent over a piece of work and stiffened slightly as he heard the voice, shrill with expectation, ask, ‘Is it ready?’