by Ruskin Bond
‘Don’t you need any money?’ I asked him uneasily, on the third day of his Thoreau-like activities.
‘What for, Uncle? Fresh air costs nothing. And besides, I don’t owe money to anyone in Simla. We haven’t been here long enough.’
‘Then perhaps we should be going,’ I said.
‘Shahganj is a miserable little dump.’
‘I know, but it’s your home. And for the time being, it’s mine.’
‘Listen, Uncle,’ he said, after a moment of reflection, ‘yesterday, on one of my walks, I met a schoolteacher. She’s over thirty, so don’t get nervous. She doesn’t have any brothers or relatives who will come chasing after me. And she’s much fairer than you, Uncle. Is it all right if I’m friendly with her?’
‘I suppose so,’ I said uncertainly. Schoolteachers can usually take care of themselves (if they want to), and, besides, an older woman might have a sobering influence on Sunil.
He brought her over to see me that same evening, and seemed quite proud of his new acquisition. She was indeed fair, perhaps insipidly so, with blonde hair and light blue eyes. She had a young face and a healthy body, but her voice was peculiarly toneless and flat, giving an impression of boredom, of lassitude. I wondered what she found attractive in Sunil apart from his obvious animal charm. They had hardly anything in common, but perhaps the absence of similar interests was an attraction in itself. In six or seven years of teaching, Maureen must have been tired of the usual scholastic types. Sunil was refreshingly free from all classroom associations.
Maureen let her hair down at the first opportunity. She switched on the bedroom radio and found Ceylon. Soon she was teaching Sunil to dance. This was amusing, because Sunil, with his long legs, had great difficulty in taking small steps; nor could Maureen cope with his great strides. But he was very earnest about it all, and inserting an unlighted cigarette between his lips, did his best to move rhythmically around the bedroom. I think he was convinced that by learning to dance he would reach the high watermark of Western culture. Maureen stood for all that was remote and romantic, and for all the films that he had seen, to conquer her would, for Sunil, be a voyage of discovery, not a mere gratification of his senses. And for Maureen, this new unconventional friendship must have been a refreshing diversion from the dreariness of her school routine. She was old enough to realize that it was only a diversion. The intensity of emotional attachments had faded with her early youth and love could wound her heart no more. But for Sunil, it was only the beginning of something that stirred him deeply, moved him inexorably towards manhood.
It was unfortunate that I did not then notice this subtle change in my friend. I had known him only as a shallow creature, and was certain that this new infatuation would disappear as soon as the novelty of it wore off. As Maureen had no encumbrances, no relations that she would speak of, I saw no harm in encouraging the friendship and seeing how it would develop.
‘I think we’d better have something to drink,’ I said, and ringing the bell for the room bearer, ordered several bottles of beer.
Sunil gave me an odd, whimsical look. I had never before encouraged him to drink. But he did not hesitate to open the bottles, and, before long, Maureen and he were drinking from the same glass.
‘Let’s make love,’ said Sunil, putting his arm around Maureen’s shoulders and gazing adoringly into her dreamy blue eyes.
They seemed unconcerned by my presence; but I was embarrassed, and, getting up, said I would be going for a walk.
‘Enjoy yourself,’ said Sunil, winking at me over Maureen’s shoulder.
‘You ought to get yourself a girlfriend,’ said the young woman in a conciliatory tone.
‘True,’ I said, and moved guiltily out of the room I was paying for.
Our stay in Simla lasted several days longer than we had planned. I saw little of Sunil and Maureen during this time. As Sunil had no desire to return to Shahganj any earlier than was absolutely necessary, he avoided me during the day but I managed to stay awake late enough one night to confront him when he crept quietly into the room.
‘Dear friend and familiar,’ I said. ‘I hate to spoil your beautiful romance, but I have absolutely no money left, and unless you have resources of your own—or if Maureen can support you—I suggest that you accompany me back to Shahganj the day after tomorrow.’
‘How mean you are, Chachaji. This is something serious. I mean Maureen and me. Do you think we should get married?’
‘No.’
‘But why not?’
‘Because she cannot support you on a teacher’s salary. And she probably isn’t interested in a permanent relationship—like ours.’
‘Very funny. And you think I’d let my wife slave for me?’
‘I do. And besides …’
‘And besides,’ he interrupted, grinning, ‘she’s old enough to be my mother.’
‘Are you really in love with her?’ I asked him. ‘I’ve never known you to be serious about anything.’
‘Honestly, Uncle.’
‘And what about her?’
‘Oh, she loves me terribly, really she does. She’s ready to come down with us if it’s possible. Only I’ve told her that I’ll first have to break the news to my father, otherwise he might kick me out of the house.’
‘Well, then,’ I said shrewdly, ‘the sooner we return to Shahganj and get your father’s blessings, the sooner you and Maureen can get married, if that’s what both of you really want.’
Early next morning Sunil disappeared, and I knew he would be gone all day. My foot was better, and I decided to take a walk on my own to the waterfall I had liked so much. It was almost noon when I reached the spot and began descending the steep path to the ravine. The stream was hidden by dense foliage, giant ferns and dahlias, but the water made a tremendous noise as it tumbled over the rocks. When I reached a sharp promontory, I was able to look down on the pool. Two people were lying on the grass.
I did not recognize them at first. They looked very beautiful together, and I had not expected Sunil and Maureen to look so beautiful. Sunil, on whom no surplus flesh had as yet gathered, possessed all the sinuous grace and power of a young god; and the woman, her white flesh pressed against young grass, reminded me of a painting by Titian that I had seen in a gallery in Florence. Her full, mature body was touched with a tranquil intoxication, her breasts rose and fell slowly, and waves of muscle merged into the shadows of her broad thighs. It was as though I had stumbled into another age, and had found two lovers in a forest glade. Only a fool would have wished to disturb them. Sunil had for once in his life risen above mediocrity, and I hurried away before the magic was lost.
The human voice often shatters the beauty of the most tender passions; and when we left Simla the next day, and Maureen and Sunil used all the stock clichés to express their love, I was a little disappointed. But the poetry of life was in their bodies, not in their tongues.
Back in Shahganj, Sunil actually plucked up the courage to speak to his father. This, to me, was a sign that he took the affair very seriously, for he seldom approached his father for anything. But all the sympathy that he received was a box on the ears. I received a curt note suggesting that I was having a corrupting influence on the boy and that I should stop seeing him. There was little I could do in the matter, because it had always been Sunil who had insisted on seeing me.
He continued to visit me, bring me Maureen’s letters (strange, how lovers cannot bear that the world should not know their love), and his own to her, so that I could correct his English!
It was at about this time that Sunil began speaking to me about his uncle’s paper factory and the possibility of working in it. Once he was getting a salary, he pointed out, Maureen would be able to leave her job and join him.
Unfortunately, Sunil’s decision to join the paper factory took months to crystallize into a definite course of action, and in the meantime he was finding a panacea for lovesickness in rum and sometimes cheap country spirit. The money that
he now borrowed was used not to pay his debts, or to incur new ones, but to drink himself silly. I regretted having been the first person to have offered him a drink. I should have known that Sunil was a person who could do nothing in moderation.
He pestered me less often now, but the purpose of his occasional visits became all too obvious. I was having a little success, and thoughtlessly gave Sunil the few rupees he usually demanded. At the same time I was beginning to find other friends, and I no longer found myself worrying about Sunil, as I had so often done in the past. Perhaps this was treachery on my part …
When finally I decided to leave Shahganj for Delhi, I went in search of Sunil to say goodbye. I found him in a small bar, alone at a table with a bottle of rum. Though barely twenty, he no longer looked a boy. He was a completely different person from the handsome, cocksure youth I had met at the wrestling pit a year previously. His cheeks were hollow and he had not shaved for days. I knew that when I first met him he had been without scruples, a shallow youth, the product of many circumstances. He was no longer so shallow and he had stumbled upon love, but his character was too weak to sustain the weight of disillusionment. Perhaps I should have left him severely alone from the beginning. Before me sat a ruin, and I had helped to undermine the foundations. None of us can really avoid seeing the outcome of our smallest actions …
‘I’m off to Delhi, Sunil.’
He did not look up from the table.
‘Have a good time,’ he said.
‘Have you heard from Maureen?’ I asked, certain that he had not.
He nodded, but for once did not offer to show me the letter.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
‘Oh, nothing,’ he said, looking up and forcing a smile. ‘These dames are all the same, Uncle. We shouldn’t take them too seriously, you know.’
‘Why, what has she done, got married to someone else?’
‘Yes,’ he said scornfully. ‘To a bloody teacher.’
‘Well, she wasn’t young,’ I said. ‘She couldn’t wait for you for ever, I suppose.’
‘She could if she had really loved me. But there’s no such thing as love, is there, Uncle?’
I made no reply. Had he really broken his heart over a woman? Were there, within him, unsuspected depths of feeling and passion? You find love when you least expect to and lose it when you are sure that it is in your grasp.
‘You’re a lucky beggar,’ he said. ‘You’re a philosopher. You find a reason for every stupid thing and so you are able to ignore all stupidity.’
I laughed. ‘You’re becoming a philosopher yourself. But don’t think too hard, Sunil, you might find it painful.’
‘Not I, Chachaji,’ he said, emptying his glass. ‘I’m not going to think. I’m going to work in a paper factory. I shall become respectable. What an adventure that will be!’
And that was the last time I saw Sunil.
He did not become respectable. He was still searching like a great discoverer for something new, someone different, when he met his pitiful end in the cold rain of a December night.
Though murder cases usually get reported in the papers, Sunil was a person of such little importance that his violent end was not considered newsworthy. It went unnoticed, and Maureen could not have known about it. The case has already been forgotten, for in the great human mass that is India, hundreds of people disappear every day and are never heard of again. Sunil will be quickly forgotten by all except those to whom he owed money.
Dead Man’s Gift
‘Adead man is no good to anyone,’ said Nathu, the old shikari, as he stared into the glowing embers of the campfire and wrapped a thin blanket around his thin shoulders.
We had spent a rewarding but tiring day in the Terai forests near Haldwani, where I had been photographing swamp deer. On our return to the forest resthouse, Nathu had made a log fire near the front veranda, and we had gathered round it—Nathu, myself and Ghanshyam Singh, the chowkidar—discussing a suicide that had taken place in a neighbouring village. I forget the details of the suicide—it was connected with a disappointed bridegroom—but the discussion led to some interesting reminiscences on the part of Ghanshyam Singh.
We had all agreed with Nathu’s sentiments about dead men, when Ghanshyam interrupted to say, ‘I don’t know about that, brother. At least one dead man brought considerable good fortune to a friend of mine.’
‘How was that?’ I asked.
‘Well, about twenty years ago,’ said Ghanshyam Singh, ‘I was a policeman, one of the six constables at a small police post in the village of Ahirpur near the hills. A small stream ran past the village. Fed by springs, it contained a few feet of water even during the hottest of seasons, while after heavy rain it became a roaring torrent. The head constable in charge of our post was Dilawar Singh, who came from a good family which had fallen on evil days. He was a handsome fellow, very well-dressed, always spending his money before he received it. He was passionately fond of good horseflesh, and the mare he rode was a beautiful creature named Leila. He had obtained the mare by paying two hundred and fifty rupees down and promising to pay the remaining two hundred and fifty in six months’ time. If he failed to do so, he would have to return the mare and forfeit the deposit. But Dilawar Singh expected to be able to borrow the balance from Lala Ram Das, the wealthy bania of Ahirpur.
‘The bania of Ahirpur was one of the meanest alive. You know the sort, fat and flabby from overeating and sitting all day in his shop, but very wealthy. His house was a large one, situated near the stream, at some distance from the village.’
‘But why did he live outside the village, away from his customers?’ I asked.
‘It made no difference to him,’ said Ghanshyam. ‘Everyone was in his debt and, whether they liked it or not, were compelled to deal with him. His father had lived inside the village but had been looted by dacoits, whose ill-treatment had left him a cripple for life. Not a single villager had come to his assistance on that occasion. He had never forgotten it. He built himself another house outside the village, with a high wall and only one entrance. Inside the wall was a courtyard with a stable for a pony and a byre for two cows, the house itself forming one side of the enclosure. When the heavy door of the courtyard was closed, the bania’s money bags were safe within his little fort. It was only after the old man’s death that a police post was established at Ahirpur.’
‘So Ram Das had a police post as well as a fort?’
‘The police offered him no protection. He was so mean that not a litre of oil or pinch of salt ever came from him to the police post. Naturally, we wasted no love on him. The people of Ahirpur hated and feared him, for most of them were in his debt and practically his slaves.
‘Now when the time came for Dilawar Singh to pay the remaining two hundred and fifty rupees for his mare Leila, he went to Ram Das for a loan. He expected to be well squeezed in the way of interest, but to his great surprise and anger the bania refused to let him have the money on any terms. It looked as though Dilawar would have to return the mare and be content with some knock-kneed ekka-pony.
‘A few days before the date of payment, Dilawar Singh had to visit a village some five miles downstream to investigate a case. He took me with him. On our return journey that night a terrific thunderstorm compelled us to take shelter in a small hut in the forest. When at last the storm was over, we continued on our way, I on foot, and Dilawar Singh riding Leila. All the way he cursed his ill luck at having to part with Leila, and called down curses on Ram Das. We were not far from the bania’s house when the full moon, high in the sky, came out from behind the passing storm clouds, and suddenly Leila shied violently at something white on the bank of the stream.
‘It was the naked body of a dead man. It had either been pushed into the stream without burning or swept off the pyre by the swollen torrent. I was about to push it off into the stream when Dilawar stopped me, saying that the corpse which had frightened Leila might yet be able to save her.
‘Toge
ther we pulled the body a little way up the bank. Then, after tying the mare to a tree, we carried the corpse up to the bania’s house and propped it against the main doorway. Returning to the stream, Dilawar remounted Leila, and we concealed ourselves in the forest. Like everyone else in the village, we knew the bania was an early riser, always the first to leave his house and complete his morning ablutions.
‘We sat and waited. The faint light of dawn was just beginning to make things visible when we heard the bania’s courtyard door open. There was a thud, an exclamation, and then a long silence.’
‘What had happened?’
‘Ram Das had opened the door, and the corpse had fallen upon him! He was frightened almost out of his wits. That some enemy was responsible for the presence of the corpse he quickly realized, but how to rid himself of it? The stream! Even to touch the corpse was defilement, but, as the saying goes, “Where there are no eyes, there is no caste”—and he began to drag the body along the river bank, panting and perspiring, yet cold with terror. He had almost reached the stream when we emerged casually from our shelter.
‘“Ah, baniaji, you are up early this morning!” called Dilawar Singh. “Hallo, what’s this? Is this one of your unfortunate debtors? Have you taken his life as well as his clothes?”
‘Ram Das fell on his knees. His voice failed, and he went as pale as the corpse he still held by the feet. Dilawar Singh dismounted, caught him roughly by the arm and dragged him to his feet.
‘“Thanedar Sahib, I will let you have the money,” gasped Ram Das.
