by Satyajit Ray
Since it was still raining, Ratan Babu stayed for a cup of tea. Around seven-thirty the rain stopped and he went directly to the New Mahamaya. He found it almost funny the way he had blundered into the wrong hotel.
At dinner, he ate well and with relish; then he slipped into bed with a magazine, read an article on the aborigines of Australia, turned off the bedlamp and closed his eyes with not a worry in his mind. Once again he was on his own; and unique. He didn’t have a friend, and didn’t need one. He would spend the rest of his days in exactly the same way he had done so far. What could be better?
It had started to rain again. There were flashes of lightning and claps of thunder. But none of it mattered. Ratan Babu had already started to snore.
‘Did you buy that stick from the haat, sir?’ asked Pancha when he brought Ratan Babu his morning tea.
‘Yes,’ said Ratan Babu.
‘How much did you pay for it?’
Ratan Babu mentioned the price. Then he asked casually, ‘Were you at the haat too?’
Pancha broke into a broad smile. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, ‘and I saw you. Didn’t you see me?’
‘Why, no.’
That ended the conversation.
After his tea, Ratan Babu made his way to the Kalika hotel. The curly-haired man was talking to a group of people outside the hotel. He heard Manilal Babu’s name and the word ‘suicide’ mentioned several times. He edged closer to hear better. Not only that, he was bold enough to put a question.
‘Who has died?’
The curly-haired man said, ‘It was the same man I had mistaken you for yesterday.’
‘Suicide, was it?’
‘It looks like that. The dead body was found by the railway tracks below the bridge. It seems he threw himself from it. An odd character, he was. Hardly spoke to anyone. We used to talk about him.’
‘I suppose the dead body . . .?’
‘In police custody. He came here for a change of air from Calcutta. Didn’t know anyone here. Nothing more has been found out.’
Ratan Babu shook his head, made a few clucking noises and went off.
Suicide! So nobody had thought of murder at all. Luck was on his side. How simple it was, this business of murder! He wondered what made people quail at the thought.
Ratan Babu felt quite light-hearted. After two days he would now be able to walk alone again. The very thought filled him with pleasure.
It was probably while he pushed Manilal Babu yesterday that a button from his shirt had got ripped and come off. He found a tailor’s shop and had the button replaced. Then he went into a store and bought a tube of Neem toothpaste.
As he walked a few steps from the store, he heard the sound of keertan coming from a house. He stood for a while listening to the song, then made for the open terrain outside the town. He walked a mile or so along a new path, came back to the hotel at about eleven, had his bath and lunch, and took his afternoon nap.
As usual he woke up around three, and realized almost immediately that he had to pay another visit to the bridge that evening. For obvious reasons he had not been able to enjoy the sight of the train yesterday. The sky was still cloudy but it didn’t seem that it would rain. Today he would be able to watch the train from the moment it appeared till it vanished into the horizon.
He had his afternoon tea at five and went down to the lobby. The manager Shambhu Babu sat at his desk by the front door. He saw Ratan Babu and said, ‘Did you know the man who was killed yesterday?’
Ratan Babu looked at Shambhu Babu, feigning surprise. Then he said, ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Well, it’s only that Pancha mentioned he had seen you two together in the haat.’
Ratan Babu smiled. ‘I haven’t really got to know anyone here,’ he said calmly. ‘I did speak to a few people in the haat, but the fact is, I don’t even know which person was killed.’
‘I see,’ said Shambhu Babu, laughing. He was jovial by nature and prone to laughter. ‘He too had come for a change,’ he added. ‘He had put up at the Kalika.’
‘I see.’
Ratan Babu went out. It was a two-mile walk to the bridge. If he didn’t hurry he might miss the train.
Nobody cast suspicious glances at him in the street. Yesterday’s youngsters were not in their usual place. That remark about Tweedledum and Tweedledee had nettled him. He wondered where the boys were. The sound of drums could be heard from somewhere close by. There was a puja on in the neighbourhood. That’s where the boys must have gone. Good.
At last he was all by himself on the path in the open field. Until he met Manilal Babu, he had been well content with his lot; but today he felt more relaxed than ever before.
There it was—the babla tree. The bridge was only a short distance away. The sky was still overcast, but not with thick black clouds like yesterday. These were grey clouds, and there was no breeze; the sky stood ashen and still.
Ratan Babu’s heart leaped with joy at the sight of the bridge. He quickened his pace. Who knows, the train might turn up even earlier than yesterday. A flock of cranes passed overhead. Migratory cranes? He couldn’t tell.
As he stood on the bridge, Ratan Babu became aware of the stillness of the evening. Straining his ears, he could hear faint drumbeats from the direction of the town. Otherwise all was quiet.
He moved over to the railing. He could see the signal, and beyond that, the station. What was that now? Lower down the railing, in a crack in the wood was lodged a shiny object. Ratan Babu bent down and prised it out. A small round tin box with betel nuts in it. Ratan Babu smiled and tossed it over the railing. There was a metallic clink as it hit the ground. Who knows how long it would lie there?
What was that light?
Ah, the train. No sound yet, just an advancing point of light. Ratan Babu stood and stared fascinated at the headlight. A sudden gust of wind whipped the shawl off his shoulder. He wrapped it properly around him once more.
Now he could hear the sound. It was like the low rumble of an approaching storm.
Ratan Babu suddenly had the feeling that somebody was standing behind him. It was difficult to take his eyes off the train, but even so he cast a quick glance around. Not a soul anywhere. It was not as dark as the day before, hence the visibility was much better. No, except for himself and that approaching train, there was no one for miles around.
The train was now within a hundred yards.
Ratan Babu edged further towards the railing. Had the train been an old-fashioned one with a steam engine, he couldn’t have gone so close to the edge as the smoke would have got into his eyes. This was a smokeless diesel engine. There was only a deep, earth-shaking rumble and the blinding glare of the headlight.
Now the train was about to go under the bridge.
Ratan Babu placed his elbows on the railing and leaned forward to watch.
At that very moment a pair of hands came up from behind and gave him a savage push. Ratan Babu went clean over the four-foot-high railing.
As usual, the train made the bridge shudder as it passed under it and sped towards the west where the sky had just begun to turn purple.
Ratan Babu no longer stands on the bridge, but as a token of his presence a small shining object is stuck in a crack in the wooden railing.
It is an aluminium box with betel nuts in it.
Translated by Satyajit Ray
First published in Bengali in 1970
Fritz
After having stared at Jayanto for a whole minute, I could not help asking him, ‘Are you well? You seem to be in low spirits today.’
Jayanto quickly lost his slightly preoccupied air, gave me a boyish smile and said, ‘No. On the contrary, I am feeling a lot better. This place is truly wonderful.’
‘You’ve been here before. Didn’t you know how good it was?’
‘I had nearly forgotten,’ Jayanto sighed. ‘Now some of my memories are coming back slowly. The bungalow certainly appears unchanged. I can even recognize some of the old furniture, such
as these cane chairs and tables.’
The bearer came in with tea and biscuits on a tray. I poured.
‘When did you come here last?’
‘Thirty-one years ago. I was six then.’
We were sitting in the garden of the circuit house in Bundi. We had arrived only that morning. Jayanto and I were old friends. We had gone to the same school and college. He now worked in the editorial division of a newspaper and I taught in a school. Although we had different kinds of jobs, it had not made any difference to our friendship. We had been planning a trip to Rajasthan for quite some time. The main difficulty lay in both of us being able to get away together. That had, at last, been made possible.
Most people go to Jaipur, Udaipur or Chittor when they go to Rajasthan; but Jayanto kept talking about going to Bundi. I had no objection for, having read Tagore’s poem ‘The Fort of Bundi’, I was certainly familiar with the name of the place and felt a pleasurable excitement at the prospect of actually seeing the fort. Not many people came to Bundi. But that did not mean that there was not much to see there. It could be that, from the point of view of a historian, Udaipur, Jodhpur and Chittor had a lot more to offer; but simply as a beautiful place, Bundi was perfect.
However, Jayanto’s insistence on Bundi did puzzle me somewhat. I learnt the reason on the train when we were coming down. Jayanto’s father, Animesh Das Gupta, had worked in the Archaeological Department. His work sometimes took him to historical places, and Jayanto had as a child come to Bundi. He had always wanted to return after growing up, just to see how much the modern Bundi compared to the image he had in his mind.
The circuit house was really rather splendid. Built during the time of the British, it must have been at least a hundred years old. It was a single-storeyed building with a sloping tiled roof. The rooms had high ceilings and the skylights had long, dangling ropes which could be pulled to open and shut them. The veranda faced the east. Right opposite it was a huge garden with a large number of roses in full bloom. Behind these were a lot of trees which obviously housed a vast section of local birds. Parrots could be seen everywhere; and peacocks could be heard, but only outside the compound.
We had already been on a sightseeing tour of the town. The famous fort of Bundi was placed amidst the hills. We had seen it from a distance that day but decided to go back to take a closer look. The only reminders of modern times were the electric poles. Otherwise it seemed as though we were back in old Rajputana. The streets were cobbled, the houses had balconies jutting out from the first floor. The carvings done on these and the wooden doors bore evidence of the work of master craftsmen. It was difficult to believe we were living in the age of machines.
I noticed Jayanto had turned rather quiet after arriving in Bundi. Perhaps some of his memories had returned. It is easy enough to feel a little depressed when visiting a place one may have seen as a child. Besides, Jayanto was certainly more emotional than most people. Everyone knew that.
He put his cup down on the table and said, ‘You know, Shankar, it is really quite strange. The first time I came here I used to sit cross-legged on these chairs. It seemed as though I was sitting on a throne. Now the chairs seem both small in size and very ordinary. The drawing-room here used to seem absolutely enormous. If I hadn’t returned, those memories would have remained stuck in my mind for ever.’
I said, ‘Yes, that’s perfectly natural. As a child, one is small in size, so everything else seems large. One grows bigger with age, but the size of all the other things remains the same, doesn’t it?’
We went for a stroll in the garden after tea. Jayanto suddenly stopped walking and said, ‘Deodar.’
I stared at him.
‘A deodar tree. It ought to be here somewhere,’ he said and began striding towards the far end of the compound. Why did he suddenly think of a deodar tree?
A few seconds later I heard his voice exclaiming jubilantly, ‘Yes, it’s here! Exactly where it was before!’
‘Of course it’s where it was before,’ I said. ‘Would a tree go roaming about?’
Jayanto shook his head impatiently. ‘No, that is not what I meant. All I meant was that the tree is where I thought it might be.’
‘But why did you suddenly think of a tree?’
Jayanto stared at the trunk of the tree, frowning. Then he shook his head slowly and said, ‘I can’t remember that now. Something had brought me near the tree. I had done something here. A European . . .’
‘European?’
‘No, I can’t recall anything at all. Memory is a strange business . . .’
They had a good cook in the circuit house. Later in the evening, while we sat at the oval dining table having dinner, Jayanto said, ‘The cook they had in those days was called Dilawar. He had a scar on his left cheek and his eyes were always red. But he was an excellent cook.’
Jayanto’s memories began returning one by one soon after dinner when we went back to the drawing-room. He could recall where his father used to sit and smoke a cheroot, where his mother used to knit, and what magazines lay on the table.
And, slowly, in bits and pieces, he recalled the whole business about his doll.
It was not the usual kind of doll little girls play with. One of Jayanto’s uncles had brought for him from Switzerland a twelve-inch-long figure of an old man, dressed in traditional Swiss style. Apparently, it was very lifelike. Although it was not mechanized it was possible to bend and twist its limbs. Its face had a smile on it and, on its head, it wore a Swiss cap with a little yellow feather sticking out from it. Its clothes, especially in their little details, were perfect—belt, buttons, pockets, collars, socks. There were even little buckles on the shoes.
His uncle had returned from Europe shortly before Jayanto left for Bundi with his parents. The little old man had been bought in a village in Switzerland. The man who sold him had jokingly said to Jayanto’s uncle, ‘He’s called Fritz. You must call him by this name. He won’t respond to any other.’
Jayanto said, ‘I had a lot of toys when I was small. My parents gave me practically everything I wanted, perhaps because I was their only child. But once I had Fritz, I forgot all my other toys. I played only with him. A time came when I began to spend hours just talking to him. Our conversation had to be one-sided, of course, but Fritz had such a funny smile on his lips and such a look in his eyes, that it seemed to me as though he could understand every word. Sometimes I wondered if he would actually converse with me if I could speak to him in German. Now it seems like a childish fantasy, but at that time the whole thing was very real to me. My parents did warn me not to overdo things, but I listened to no one. I had not yet been put in a school, so I had all the time in the world for Fritz.’
Jayanto fell silent. I looked at my watch and realized it was 9.30 p.m. It was very quiet outside. We were sitting in the drawing-room of the circuit house. An oil lamp burnt in the room.
I asked, ‘What happened to the doll?’
Jayanto was still deep in thought. His answer to my question came so late that, by that time, I had started to think that he had not heard me at all.
‘I had brought it to Bundi. It was destroyed here.’
‘Destroyed? How?’
Jayanto sighed.
‘We were sitting out on the lawn having tea. I had kept the doll by my side on the grass. I was not really old enough to have tea, but I insisted and, in the process, the cup tilted and some of the hot tea fell on my pants. I ran inside to change and came back to find that Fritz had disappeared. I looked around and found quite soon that a couple of stray dogs were having a nice tug-of-war with Fritz. Although he didn’t actually come apart, his face was battered beyond recognition and his clothes were torn. In other words, Fritz did not exist for me any more. He was dead.’
‘And then?’ Jayanto’s story intrigued me.
‘What could possibly happen after that? I arranged his funeral, that’s all.’
‘Meaning?’
‘I buried him under that deodar
tree. I had wanted to make a coffin. Fritz was, after all, a European. But I could find nothing, not even a little box. So, in the end, I buried him just like that.’
At last, the mystery of the deodar tree was solved.
We went to bed at around ten. Our room was a large one and our beds had been neatly made. Not being used to doing a lot of walking, I was feeling rather tired after the day’s activities. Besides, the bed was very comfortable. I fell asleep barely ten minutes after hitting the pillow.
A slight noise woke me a little later. I turned on my side and found Jayanto sitting up on his bed. The table lamp by his bed was switched on and, in its light, it was easy to see the look of anxiety on his face.
I asked, ‘What is it? Are you not feeling well?’
Instead of answering my question, Jayanto asked me one himself.
‘Do you think this circuit house has got small animals? I mean, things like cats or mice?’
‘I shouldn’t be surprised if it does. Why?’
‘Something walked over my chest. That’s what woke me.’
‘Rats and mice usually come in through drains. But I’ve never known them to climb on the bed.’
‘This is the second time I’ve woken up, actually. The first time I had heard a shuffling noise near the window.’
‘Oh, if it was near the window, it is more likely to be a cat.’
‘Yes, but . . .’
Jayanto still sounded doubtful. I said, ‘Didn’t you see anything after you switched the light on?’
‘Nothing. But then, I didn’t switch it on immediately after opening my eyes. To tell you the truth, I felt rather scared at first. But when I did switch it on, there was nothing to be seen.’
‘That means whatever came in must still be in the room.’ ‘Well . . . since both the doors are bolted from inside . . .’ I rose quickly and searched under the bed, behind our suitcases and everywhere else in the room. I could not find anything. The door to the bathroom was closed. I opened it and was about to start another search when Jayanto called out to me softly, ‘Shankar!’