The Best of Ruskin Bond (33 page)

‘Your gun is not up-to-date,’ I said. ‘It’s not at all suitable for hunting leopards. A stout stick would be more effective. Why don’t we arm ourselves with lathis and make a general assault?’

I said this banteringly, but Mr Dayal took the idea quite seriously. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said with alacrity, ‘Daya Ram has got one or two lathis in the godown. The three of us could make an expedition. I have asked Mr Lin but he says he doesn’t want to have anything to do with leopards.’

‘What about our Jungle Princess?’ I said. ‘Miss Deeds should be pretty good with a lathi.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Mr Dayal humourlessly ‘but we’d better not ask her.’

Collecting Daya Ram and two lathis, we set off for the orchard and began following the pug marks through the trees. It took us ten minutes to reach the river-bed, a dry hot rocky place; then we went into the jungle, Mr Dayal keeping well to the rear. The atmosphere was heavy and humid, and there was not a breath of air amongst the trees. When a parrot squawked suddenly, shattering the silence, Mr Dayal let out a startled exclamation and started for home.

‘What was that?’ he asked nervously.

‘A bird,’ I explained.

‘I think we should go back now,’ he said. ‘I don’t think the leopard’s here.’

‘You never know with leopards,’ I said, ‘they could be anywhere.

Mr Dayal stepped away from the bushes. ‘I’ll have to go,’ he said. ‘I have a lot of work. You keep a lathi with you, and I’ll send Daya Ram back later.’

‘That’s very thoughtful of you,’ I said.

Daya Ram scratched his head and reluctantly followed his employer back through the trees. I moved on slowly, down the little-used path, wondering if I should also return. I saw two monkeys playing on the branch of a tree, and decided that there could be no danger in the immediate vicinity.

Presently I came to a clearing where there was a pool of fresh clear water. It was fed by a small stream that came suddenly, like a snake, out of the long grass. The water looked cool and inviting; laying down the lathi and taking off my clothes, I ran down the bank until I was waist-deep in the middle of the pool. I splashed about for some time, before emerging; then I lay on the soft grass and allowed the sun to dry my body. I closed my eyes and gave myself up to beautiful thoughts. I had forgotten all about leopards.

I must have slept for about half-an-hour because when I awoke, I found that Daya Ram had come back and was vigorously threshing about in the narrow confines of the pool. I sat up and asked him the time.

Twelve o’clock,’ he shouted, coming out of water, his dripping body all gold and silver in sunlight. ‘They will be waiting for dinner.’

‘Let them wait,’ I said.

It was a relief to talk to Daya Ram, after the uneasy conversations in the lounge and dining-room.

‘Dayal sahib will be angry with me.’

‘I’ll tell him we found the trail of the leopard, and that we went so far into the jungle that we lost our way. As Miss Deeds is so critical of the food, let her cook the meal.’

‘Oh, she only talks like that,’ said Daya Ram. ‘Inside she is very soft. She is too soft in some ways.’

‘She should be married.’

‘Well, she would like to be. Only there is no one to marry her. When she came here she was engaged to be married to an English army captain; I think she loved him, but she is the sort of person who cannot help loving many men all at once, and the captain could not understand that—it is just the way she is made, I suppose. She is always ready to fall in love.’

‘You seem to know,’ I said.

‘Oh, yes.’

We dressed and walked back to the hotel. In a few hours, I thought, the tonga will come for me and I will be back at the station; the mysterious charm of Shamli will be no more, but whenever I pass this way I will wonder about these people, about Miss Deeds and Lin and Mrs. Dayal.

Mrs Dayal. . . . She was the one person I had yet to meet; it was with some excitement and curiosity that I looked forward to meeting her; she was about the only mystery left to Shamli, now, and perhaps she would be no mystery when I met her. And yet. . . I felt that perhaps she would justify the impulse that made me get down from the train.

I could have asked Daya Ram about Mrs Dayal, and so satisfied my curiosity; but I wanted to discover her for myself. Half the day was left to me, and I didn’t want my game to finish too early.

I walked towards the veranda, and the sound of the piano came through the open door.

‘I wish Mr Lin would play something cheerful,’ said Miss Deeds. ‘He’s obsessed with the Funeral March. Do you dance?’

‘Oh no,’ I said.

She looked disappointed. But when Lin left the piano, she went into the lounge and sat down on the stool. I stood at the door watching her, wondering what she would do. Lin left the room, somewhat resentfully.

She began to play an old song, which I remembered having heard in a film or on a gramophone record. She sang while she played, in a slightly harsh but pleasant voice:

Rolling round the world
Looking for the sunshine
I know I’m going to find some day. . . .

Then she played ‘Am I blue?’ and ‘Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup.’ She sat there singing in a deep husky voice, her eyes a little misty, her hard face suddenly kind and sloppy. When the dinner gong rang, she broke off playing, and shook off her sentimental mood, and laughed derisively at herself.

I don’t remember that lunch. I hadn’t slept much since the previous night and I was beginning to feel the strain of my journey. The swim had refreshed me, but it had also made me drowsy. I ate quite well, though, of rice and kofta curry, and then, feeling sleepy, made for the garden to find a shady tree.

There were some books on the shelf in the lounge, and I ran my eye over them in search of one that might condition sleep. But they were too dull to do even that. So I went into the garden, and there was Kiran on the swing, and I went to her tree and sat down on the grass.

‘Did you find the leopard?’ she asked.

‘No,’ I said, with a yawn.

‘Tell me a story.’

‘You tell me one,’ I said.

‘All right. Once there was a lazy man with long legs, who was always yawning and wanting to fall asleep. . . .’

I watched the swaying motions of the swing and the movements of the girl’s bare legs, and a tiny insect kept buzzing about in front of my nose. . . . ‘and fall asleep, and the reason for this was that he liked to dream.’ I blew the insect away, and the swing became hazy and distant, and Kiran was a blurred figure in the trees. . . . ‘liked to dream, and what do you think he dreamt about. . . .’ dreamt about, dreamt about. . . .

*

When I awoke there was that cool rain-scented breeze blowing across the garden. I remember lying on the grass with my eyes closed, listening to the swishing of the swing. Either I had not slept long, or Kiran had been a long time on the swing; it was moving slowly now, in a more leisurely fashion, without much sound. I opened my eyes and saw that my arm was stained with the juice of the grass beneath me. Looking up, I expected to see Kiran’s legs waving above me. But instead I saw dark slim feet and above them the folds of a sari. I straightened up against the trunk of the tree to look closer at Kiran, but Kiran wasn’t there, it was someone else in the swing, a young woman in a pink sari and with a red rose in her hair.

She had stopped the swing with her foot on the ground, and she was smiling at me.

It wasn’t a smile you could see, it was a tender fleeting movement that came suddenly and was gone at the same time, and its going was sad. I thought of the others’ smiles, just as I had thought of their skins: the tonga-driver’s friendly, deceptive; Daya Ram’s wide sincere smile; Miss Deed’s cynical, derisive-smile. And looking at Sushila, I knew a smile could never change. She had always smiled that way.

‘You haven’t changed,’ she said.

I was standing up now, though still leaning against the tree for support. Though I had never thought much about the
sound
of her voice, it seemed as familiar as the sounds of yesterday.

‘You haven’t changed either,’ I said. ‘But where did you come from?’ I wasn’t sure yet if I was awake or dreaming.

She laughed, as she had always laughed at me.

‘I came from behind the tree. The little girl has gone.’

‘Yes, I’m dreaming,’ I said helplessly.

‘But what brings you here?’

‘I don’t know. At least I didn’t know when I came. But it must have been you. The train stopped at Shamli, and I don’t know why, but I decided I would spend the day here, behind the station walls. You must be married now, Sushila.’

‘Yes, I am married to Mr Dayal, the manager of the hotel. And what has been happening to you?’

‘I am still a writer, still poor, and still living in Mussoorie.’

‘When were you last in Delhi?’ she asked. ‘I don’t mean Delhi, I mean at home.’

‘I have not been to your home since you were there.’

‘Oh, my friend,’ she said, getting up suddenly and coming to me, ‘I want to talk about our home and Sunil and our friends and all those things that are so far away now. I have been here two years, and I am already feeling old. I keep remembering our home, how young I was, how happy, and I am all alone with memories. But now you are here! It was a bit of magic, I came through the trees after Kiran had gone, and there you were, fast asleep under the tree. I didn’t wake you then, because I wanted to see you wake up.’

‘As I used to watch you wake up . . .’

She was near me and I could look at her more closely. Her cheeks did not have the same freshness; they were a little pale, and she was thinner now, but her eyes were the same, smiling the same way. Her voice was the same. Her fingers, when she took my hand, were the same warm delicate fingers.

‘Talk to me,’ she said. ‘Tell me about yourself.’

‘You tell me,’ I said.

‘I am here,’ she said. ‘That is all there is about myself.’

‘Then let us sit down and I’ll talk.’

‘Not here,’ she took my hand and led me through the trees. ‘Come with me.’

I heard the jingle of a tonga-bell and a faint shout. I stopped and laughed.

‘My tonga,’ I said, ‘It has come to take me back to the station.’

‘But you are not going,’ said Sushila, immediately downcast.

‘I will tell him to come in the morning,’ I said. ‘I will spend the night in your Shamli.’

I walked to the front of the hotel where the tonga was waiting. I was glad no one else was in sight. The youth was smiling at me in his most appealing manner.

‘I’m not going today,’ I said. ‘Will you come tomorrow morning?’

‘I can come whenever you like, friend. But you will have to pay for every trip, because it is a long way from the station even if my tonga is empty.’

‘All right, how much?’

‘Usual fare, friend, one rupee.’

I didn’t try to argue but resignedly gave him the rupee. He cracked his whip and pulled on the reins, and the carriage moved off.

‘If you don’t leave tomorrow,’ the youth called out after me, ‘you’ll never leave Shamli!’

I walked back to trees, but I couldn’t find Sushila.

‘Sushila, where are you?’ I called, but I might have been speaking to the trees, for I had no reply. There was a small path going through the orchard, and on the path I saw a rose petal. I walked a little further and saw another petal. They were from Sushila’s red rose. I walked on down the path until I had skirted the orchard, and then the path went along the frame of the jungle, past a clump of bamboos, and here the grass was a lush green as though it had been constantly watered. I was still finding rose petals. I heard the chatter of seven-sisters, and the call of a hoopoe. The path bent to meet a stream, there was a willow coming down to the water’s edge, and Sushila was waiting there.

‘Why didn’t you wait?’ I said.

‘I wanted to see if you were as good at following me as you used to be.’

‘Well, I am,’ I said, sitting down beside her on the grassy bank of the stream. ‘Even if I’m out of practice.’

‘Yes, I remember the time you climbed onto an apple tree to pick some fruit for me. You got up all right but then you couldn’t come down again. I had to climb up myself and help you.’

‘I don’t remember that,’ I said.

‘Of course you do.’

‘It must have been your other friend, Pramod.

‘I never climbed trees with Pramod.’

‘Well, I don’t remember.’

I looked at the little stream that ran past us. The water was no more than ankle-deep, cold and clear and a sparkling, like the mountain-stream near my home. I took off my shoes, rolled up my trousers, and put my feet in the water. Sushila’s feet joined mine.

At first I had wanted to ask her about her marriage, whether she was happy or not, what she thought of her husband; but now I couldn’t ask her these things, they seemed far away and of little importance. I could think of nothing she had in common with Mr Dayal; I felt that her charm and attractiveness and warmth could not have been appreciated, or even noticed, by that curiously distracted man. He was much older than her, of course; probably older than me; he was obviously not her choice but her parents’; and so far they were childless. Had there been children, I don’t think Sushila would have minded Mr Dayal as her husband. Children would have made up for the absence of passion—or was there passion in Satish Dayal?. . . . I remembered having heard that Sushila had been married to a man she didn’t like; I remembered having shrugged off the news, because it meant she would never come my way again, and I have never yearned after something that has been irredeemably lost. But she
had
come my way again. And was she still lost? That was what I wanted to know. . . .

‘What do you do with yourself all day?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I visit the school and help with the classes. It is the only interest I have in this place. The hotel is terrible. I try to keep away from it as much as I can.’

‘And what about the guests?’

‘Oh, don’t let us talk about them. Let us talk about ourselves. Do you have to go tomorrow?’

‘Yes, I suppose so. Will you always be in this place?’