by Ruskin Bond
What on earth could the Risaldar mean, the mystery was growing deeper and deeper for me, besides I was feeling impatient at all this cheap melodrama and its talk of sworn enemies and last visits.
"Have done," cried I angrily, "Have done! What talk is this between men who have been as father and son. Speak your mind my son, and tell me what troubles you, that I may show you a road to travel by."
And then, I drew the story from him bit by bit. It was sorry enough as a tale goes but the awful horror of the affair as the reason for his visit took possession of me slowly. I, (Yes, I!) was accused of having connived at the old man's death to enable me to gain the much coveted stone I was known to be after. It was generally known that I was on the point of retirement so that the time left for me to negotiate with Shah Wali was daily growing shorter, it was also known that I had said (though in jest) that I would gladly sell my soul for five minutes' ownership of the gem, for had not the women of the house, moving mysteriously behind the partitions while their lord and master sat and discoursed with me on the topics of the day over a glass of sherbet, heard me say this very thing to the owner!
Merciful Heaven, was all this to be held against me now?
"Boy," said I sternly, "Such talk is the talk of fools, I admit I wanted the bauble but I valued your father's friendship above all things. Tell me what you intend doing."
"Sahib, we are as men that are related by blood, such talk is as you say the talk of fools, it is the women who have bound this load to your back and though they are as cattle and have the minds of cattle it is through them and by them that a man preserves the honour of his homestead. You, with your many years in this country know that I speak truth when I speak thus. Sahib, I have a plan, but first take this…."
And, he handed me the opal!
To say that I was dumbfounded is to put it mildly, very mildly indeed: everything faded into complete insignificance as I gazed upon the darling in my hand. The reverent awe I felt for this perfectly priceless gem that now lay in my hand and which the son of my dead friend said I could have, was overwhelming.
The cunning little lights that winked comprehendingly up at me from between my fingers as I hollowed my hands and allowed it to nestle in closer, and ever closer, touched my very soul with a mysterious power that seemed to gain energy, and more energy, from a Divine source.
I was enraptured, I was transported with delight, and seized and wrung his hand in my frenzy, "Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you," I cried, and then once again, "Thank you!"
The ominous frown that was darkening his face recalled me to myself and the reaction that set in now bit deep into me. I begged his pardon as humbly as I could at forgetting his sorrow in the far less (to him) important matter touching the acquisition to my collection of the opal.
"Yes, perhaps it would be as well to listen to me, for time is fleeting and once I leave your gates we cannot meet again. "Keep the gem," he said with a slightly contemptuous note to his voice, "since you appreciate it so highly, and anyway my father (Peace be on his soul!) always intended you should have it and charged me to deliver it to none but you, for he knew you love these things for their own sake and not for their money's worth; yes, keep it. Now listen to my plan."
He proceeded to explain that though he personally did not believe the accusation against me, and when he had come to think of it away from his own home where it seems everyone was obsessed with the idea that I alone was the culprit, he was nevertheless, bound by custom to make some attempt at retaliation to wipe out the stain on his honour. He considered it his bounded duty to hound me from place to place and at an appointed time to assassinate me. BUT, since old associations were strong, and he desired to keep faith with his father's friend, he would see to it that the "familiar" or "shadow" detailed to be my ultimate undoing should be a man, who the Risaldar personally knew to be so craven-hearted a fool that he would always come up to fighting pitch and would then fade away like the frightened cur he was at heart.
The Risaldar would be following his movements closely and to make assurance doubly sure that I would not come to grief he would warn me by means of telegrams, letters, codes, Oh! by a hundred different means so that I should be prepared. He advised me strongly not to shoot in self-defence or have the man locked up because then the women of the house might send another assassin who would perhaps be bolder than the first.
It was early morning by the time our discussion came to an end, the evening and night had slipped by unnoticed and our plans were complete. I had agreed to pay a contribution of five hundred rupees each year towards the expenses of my "familiar" since the Risaldar's Army pay was not large enough to bear this imposition and he could hardly arrange this from the funds running with his father's business since there were younger sons and shareholders to be considered.
I appreciated his frankness and even at his request agreed to reside somewhere on the frontier within reach so that the task or protecting me should not be made any harder…!
I would have agreed to anything just then; for, consider my position, everyone in the district knew that the Risaldar had called on me with an ultimatum, I was a marked man from the moment he left my threshold. Out of respect to the Risaldar, the feud would not begin at once as the Sarkar might think it funny that I had been murdered so soon after he had visited me and while he was still in the district. So, he was to spend his leave to the fullest possible extent in the village and give me time to send in my papers and arrange for my pension.
We shook hands on it and then he left the house; I gazed after him and saw him ride slowly down to the gate with his head bowed in sorrow. "A good fellow," thought I, "Oh, a very good fellow, indeed," and then I fell to considering my opal and forgot my troubles as I schemed the hundred and one delights that I was to draw from the possession of this most priceless of gems.
"Five hundred rupees a year? You dear little thing, you are worth ten times that amount every year…" and so I maundered on.
I sent in my papers that day and packed up. Urgent private affairs was the reason I pleaded for the sudden haste of the application and I am sure none of the many departments concerned with my documents ever guessed the real reasons that led me to write "for urgent private affairs".
Was ever a stranger pact entered into between two men?
Here was I, on the one hand, to pay a man for Heaven knows how many years to come, a sum of money to help him in making abortive attempts on my life. This was to save the honour of his house!
He, on the other hand, still to preserve the honour of his house, was to persist in failure after failure in attempts on my life!
Who would tire of it first? I could not say.
I know I was tired of it in the first six weeks. It began with the poisoning of my two dogs. I hurried off to Nowshera; a month later I received a telegram from Peshawar concerning a basket of fruit which I might expect on a certain Wednesday night; I am not quite a fool so I read the message again and Wednesday night found me clinging like a leech to some friends of mine in Rawalpindi. They must have wondered at the sudden enthusiasm I had developed for their society! And so, it goes painfully on.
One day, the messages will miscarry; I know they will for I feel it in my very bones. And then, I shall die a ghastly death, split from ear to ear or carved in slices with the care and precision of a master chef. I am tired of it all, dead tired, and I wish I could end it once and for all.
Of course, I could get the police in but my friend's honour is at stake, and if the police wanted to exhume the corpse… I shudder to think of the awful consequences to the Risaldar on his next visit to his home, it would be too awful for words.
I am comparatively safe as it is but there are times when the familiarity I have complained of makes me slow to act on the warnings with the desired alacrity I evinced years ago when I was fresh to this cat and mouse game. I know I shall wake up one night to find him poised over me for the final stroke.
There are times when I feel compelled to
write my friend to get it over quickly. To hurry, hurry, hurry, for the love of God, hurry. But when the desperation reaches its worst I slip my hand into a little chamois leather bag concealed in my vest pocket, and I extract a splendid globule of radiant, startled sunshine….
Why, it is then that I say, "To HELL with my familiar."
The Werewolf
By C.A. Kincaid
It was a terribly hot afternoon in July some fifty years ago in Upper Sind. In the Deccan cooling showers had turned the hard earth, baked by the summer winds, into a perfect paradise. The soil there was bright with long green grass. The hills rose emerald to the sky, although their summits were often veiled by the monsoon mists; and delightful breezes, swept over the glad earth to the great joy of foreign sojourners in the Indian plateau. Even in the Punjab and the Gangetic valley heavy rain had fallen and if the air seemed stuffy to the traveller from southern India, his eyes rejoiced in the rich foliage and endless maize fields, while his ears listened joyfully to the murmuring sound of new-born streams, as they tinkled and splashed on their way to join the brimming rivers.
In Upper Sind the landscape was quite different. Rain hardly ever falls there except in the cold weather and while more favoured parts of India revel in the monsoon, none of it reaches that strange land. Irrigated by canals from the Indus, the fields are in winter gay with young wheat and he who visits Upper Sind in January may well think that he has reached some heavenly spot. But let him go there in July or August and he will soon change his opinion. All day long the hot wind roars driving the mercury up to 120° in the shade; nor is there much relief at night. The hot wind drops, but the thermometer still marks over a hundred; the sandflies and mosquitoes buzz all night and moonbeams like the rays of a powerful electric headlight pour down on the would-be sleeper's face making slumbering exceedingly difficult.
In the middle of this sunsplashed region is Sehwan, formerly an important town, but now greatly sunk in importance. One thing it still claims with justice that it is one of the hottest places on earth. A Persian poet once in the bitterness of his heart asked the Almighty why, after making Sehwan and Sibi, he thought it worth while to make Hell. The afternoon on which this story opens was well worthy of Sehwan's ancient reputation. The train steamed slowly into Sehwan station from Sukkur. The railway on the left bank of the Indus had not then been built, so the railtrack passed through Sehwan on its way to Karachi and the seacoast. The last carriage on the train was the saloon of the Traffic Superintendent. It was far roomier than the ordinary first class carriages, as befitted the quarters of a senior railway official; but nothing could keep out the heat or make the interior cool. The shutters were closed. A railway coolie pulled a diminutive punka fixed on the roof, but he merely stirred into motion the heavy, hot air. There were two occupants of the saloon; one was the Traffic Superintendent, Frank Bollinger; the other was a Major Sinclair, whom he had known for some years. He had invited his friend to share the saloon instead of sweltering in the first class compartment and sharing it with two missionaries, their wives and baby.
"I shall be devoutly thankful," said Bollinger, "when we get out of this Hell into the monsoon area."
"When will that be?"
"Once we pass the Lakhi gorge it will be better. They say the monsoon dies there and so they call the gorge the gate of Hell. It is true that once past that frightful mass of heated limestone, one does begin to feel a breath of cooler air. It gradually grows in strength; so we ought to get a good night on our way to Karachi."
"I am very glad to hear that. I could not sleep a wink in this part of the world, could you?"
"Oh! I have had such a long experience of hot nights that I might; but thank God! there will be no need to make the experiment."
Just then, the train drew up in Sehwan station. The station master, Isarmal, who had known Bollinger in earlier days, came running up to pay his respects. His face beamed all over with the pleasure that an Indian almost always feels at meeting a former English friend. Bollinger remembered well the little station master and was also very glad to see him and have a chat over old times.
To let the two old acquaintances have their talk out, Major Sinclair got out of the carriage and strolled about on the platform. After Bollinger and Isarmal had been gossiping together for about a quarter of an hour, the former said suddenly:
"I say, Mr Isarmal, why are we staying here so long? I never remember waiting more than five minutes at Sehwan before."
"I am afraid, Sir—I am very sorry, Sir—the river has breached the line some four miles down and the train cannot go on until tomorrow morning."
"Do you mean to say that we shall have to stay all night in this inferno? I am afraid, the Major Sahib will not like that at all. He was grumbling at the heat when the train was moving; what he'll say when he hears that we will have to pass the night in a stationary train, I can't think. He will swear horribly."
"Yes indeed, Sir," said Mr Isarmal, anxious to agree to everything his English friend said, "the Major Sahib will swear horribly."
Just then all doubts were settled by the arrival of Sinclair in a frightful temper. After so varied an outburst of blasphemy that it filled Bollinger with respectful awe, he shouted:
"Damn it all, Bollinger, have you heard that we have to spend the night in this hellhole?"
"Yes; I'm awfully sorry, old chap; but it cannot be helped. The Indus is in flood and it is just as capricious as a spoilt harlot. Still, it will only be for one night and you'll be able to wipe out your arrears of sleep, when we near Karachi."
"My dear chap, I'm not going to sleep in your saloon. I have just been talking to the khansama of the rest-house. He says it is up on the top of a hill and all night one gets a cool breeze from the river. He'll give us dinner and he'll call us at six a.m. so that we shan't miss the train. He'll put our beds out in the open and he swears that we'll be able to sleep like tops."
Just then the khansama himself came up. He was a powerfully built Panjabi Musulman with a long black beard and very strange yellow eyes. His face in repose had a villainous expression. He had a smile that rarely came off, but it was a very unpleasant one; it was rather like the smile of a savage Alsatian fawning on its master. He could speak a little broken English, which in the case of poor linguists like Major Sinclair was a great attraction. On reaching the saloon he stood at the door and addressing Bollinger very deferentially, said:
"The Major Sahib, he coming to resthouse. Sahib, please come, too, and have good night in cool breeze. I give good dinner and you get good sleep and I wake you six a.m. Madras time. Down here too dammed hot, you get no sleep at all, Sahib."
Bollinger could not help thinking of the old nursery rhyme "Won't you walk into my parlour said the spider to the fly" and anyway he had no wish to leave his comfortable saloon and a dinner served by his own servants for a hard bed and a doubtful meal at a rest-house half a mile away. He politely thanked the khansama.
"No, Khansama; I shall be quite all right here. It may be hot, but I doubt whether it will be any cooler on the top of your Himalayan peak. After all, I have been there and it is only about thirty feet high and my dinner will be better than any you can give me."
The khansama's yellow eyes flashed disagreeably, but he continued as before to smile in his canine way and to repeat mechanically:
"Sahib, I give you very good dinner. A cool breeze will blow all night. You get good sleep and to-morrow I call you at six a.m. Madras time."
At last, Bollinger said impatiently: "It's no use going on jabbering like that. I'm just not going to your rest-house. I'm going to stay here and there's an end of it."
Suddenly, Sinclair broke in: "Well, I'm not. I'm damned if I'm going to spend the night in your sardine box." Turning to his butler, he said: "Here, boy, get my luggage out of the saloon and put it in a tonga and tell the man to drive to the rest-house. You can come with the khansama in another."
Bollinger, taken aback, replied with stiff courtesy: "My dear Sinclair, you
must, of course, please yourself. I shall stay in the old sardine box and you'll have a good dinner and a capital night. Goodnight!"
The Major, without troubling to answer, walked off with the khansama and Bollinger resumed his talk with Mr Isarmal the station master.
When the khansama and Sinclair had passed out of sight Isarmal suddenly said in a low earnest voice: "Thank God, you did not go, Sahib, with that terrible man. If you had you would be as good as dead already. The Major Sahib will not be alive tomorrow."
"What on earth are you talking about, Isarmal?"
"It is that khansama, sir. He is not really a man, but a—a—a—I have forgotten the English word; we call it in Sindi a lakhibaghar."
"A hyena, you mean," said Bollinger, who knew some Sindi.
"Yes, Sahib, he turns himself every night into a hyena and eats anyone whom he finds sleeping alone on a cot in the open. We say that he is the reincarnation of a horrible man called Anu Kasai."
"Oh, you mean that fellow who ate up Bodlo Bahar?"
"Yes, I see the Sahib knows the story. Bodlo Bahar was the disciple of our great Sehwan saint Lal Shabaz. One day he disappeared. The following morning one of the saint's disciples saw that the bits of mutton that he was cooking for his dinner were jumping about strangely in his pot. Other disciples had the same tale to tell. So, Lal Shahbaz said: 'It must be our Bodlo Bahar,' and went to the Governor of Sehwan. He asked from whom they had bought the mutton. They all said 'From the butcher Anu Kasai.' Now, this wicked man had once been very prosperous, but he had fallen on evil days; and having no money to buy sheep he used to murder strangers and sell their flesh as mutton. The Governor arrested Anu Kasai and searched his shop and house. They were full of human bones. He had for months escaped punishment, but he was caught when he killed a saint like Bodlo Bahar."
"How did the Governor punish him?"