by Satyajit Ray
It was past seven in the evening when Ashamanja Babu got back home. He asked Bipin if anyone had called. So when Bipin said he had to open the door to callers at least forty times, Ashamanja Babu obviously could not help congratulating himself on his foresight. He had just taken off his shoes and asked Bipin for a cup of tea when there was another knock on the front door. ‘Oh, hell!’ swore Ashamanja Babu. He went to the door and opened it, and found himself staring at a foreigner. ‘Wrong number,’ he was at the point of saying, when he caught sight of a young Bengali man standing behind the foreigner. ‘Whom do you want?’
‘You,’ said Shyamol Nandy of the Indian Tourist Bureau. ‘That is to say, if the dog standing behind you is yours. He certainly looks like the one described in the papers today. May we come in?’
Ashamanja Babu was obliged to ask them into his bedroom. The foreigner sat on the chair, Mr Nandy on the wicker stool, and Ashamanja Babu on his bed. Brownie, who seemed a bit ill at ease, chose to stay outside the threshold; probably because he had never seen two strangers in the room before.
‘Brownie! Brownie! Brownie!’ The foreigner leaned towards the dog and called him repeatedly. Brownie, with his eyes fixed on the stranger, was unmoved.
Who were these people, Ashamanja Babu was wondering to himself, when Mr Nandy provided the answer. The foreigner was a wealthy and distinguished citizen of the United States whose main purpose in coming to India was to look for old Rolls-Royce cars.
The American had now got off the chair and, sitting on his haunches, was making faces at the dog.
After three minutes of abortive clowning, the man gave up, turned to Ashamanja Babu and asked, ‘Is he sick?’
Ashamanja Babu shook his head.
‘Does he really laugh?’ asked the American.
In case Ashamanja Babu was unable to follow the American’s speech, Mr Nandy translated it for him.
‘Brownie laughs,’ said Ashamanja Babu, ‘but only when he feels amused.’
A tinge of red spread over the American’s face when Nandy translated Ashamanja Babu’s answer to him. In no uncertain terms he let it be known that he wasn’t willing to squander any money on the dog unless he had proof that it really laughed. He refused to be saddled with something which might later prove useless. He further let it be known that in his house he had precious objects from China to Peru, and that he had a parrot which spoke only Latin. ‘I have brought my cheque book with me to pay for the laughing dog, but only if I have proof that it actually does so.’
He then proceeded to pull out a blue cheque book from his pocket to prove his statement. Ashamanja Babu glanced at it out of the corner of his eyes. Citibank of New York, it said on the cover.
‘You would be walking on air,’ said Mr Nandy temptingly. ‘If you know a way to make the dog laugh, then out with it. This gentleman is ready to pay up to 20,000 dollars. That’s two lakhs of rupees.’
The Bible says that God created the universe in six days. A human being, with his imagination, can do the same thing in six seconds. An image floated into Ashamanja Babu’s mind at Mr Nandy’s words. It was of himself in a spacious air-conditioned office, sitting in a swivel chair with his legs up on the table, the heady smell of hasuno-hana wafting in through the window. But the image vanished like a pricked balloon at a sudden sound.
Brownie was laughing.
He had never laughed like this before.
‘But he is laughing!’
Mr Moody was down on his knees, tense with excitement, watching the extraordinary spectacle. The cheque book came out again and, along with that, his gold Parker pen.
Brownie was still laughing. Ashamanja Babu was puzzled because he couldn’t make out the reason for the laughter. Nobody had stammered, nobody had stumbled, nobody’s umbrella had turned inside out, and no mirror on the wall had been hit with a slipper. Why then was Brownie laughing?
‘You’re very lucky,’ commented Mr Nandy. ‘I think I ought to get a percentage of the sale—wouldn’t you say so?’
Mr Moody rose from the floor and sat down on the chair. He said, ‘Ask him how he spells his name.’
Although Mr Nandy relayed the question in Bengali, Ashamanja Babu didn’t answer, because he had just seen the light, and the light filled his heart with a great sense of wonder. Instead of spelling his name, he said, ‘Please tell the foreign gentleman that if he only knew why the dog was laughing, he wouldn’t have opened his cheque book.’
‘Why don’t you tell me?’ Mr Nandy snapped in a dry voice. He certainly didn’t like the way events were shaping up. If the mission failed, he knew the American’s wrath would fall on him.
Brownie had at last stopped laughing. Ashamanja Babu lifted him up on his lap, wiped his tears and said, ‘My dog’s laughing because the gentleman thinks money can buy everything.’
‘I see,’ said Mr Nandy. ‘So your dog’s a philosopher, is he?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘That means you won’t sell him?’
‘No, sir.’
To Mr Moody, Shyamol Nandy only said that the owner had no intention of selling the dog. Mr Moody put the cheque book back in his pocket, slapped the dust off his knees and, on his way out of the room, said with a shake of his head, ‘The guy must be crazy!’
When the sound of the American’s car had faded away, Ashamanja Babu looked into Brownie’s eyes and said, ‘I was right about why you laughed, wasn’t I?’
Brownie chuckled in assent.
Translated by Satyajit Ray
First published in Bengali in 1978
Load Shedding
Phoni Babu realized shortly before reaching his bus stop that the entire area was plunged in darkness. Another power cut. More load shedding. By the time he had left his office this evening, having worked over-time, it was already a quarter past eight. It had taken him about thirty-five minutes to get to his area from Dalhousie Square. There was no way of telling how long ago the power cut had started, but he knew that it normally took about four hours for the supply to be restored.
Phoni Babu got off the bus and made his way to the lane where he lived. Not a glimmer of light anywhere. Ironically, things appeared to have improved lately. Why, wasn’t it only yesterday that his servant, Nabeen, had asked, ‘Should I buy a dozen candles today?’ And Phoni Babu had replied, ‘No, no. I bet the power cuts will start again the minute you get the candles. Don’t buy any now.’
This meant that there were no candles in the house. It was sometimes possible to move about in his room on the second floor, aided by the streetlight. But even the streetlights were out today. Phoni Babu did not smoke, and so did not bother to keep a matchbox in his pocket. He had been toying with the idea of buying a torch for some time, but had not got round to doing so.
A three-minute walk down the lane took him to the house where he lived—number 17/2. Carefully stepping over the three pups that lay near the front door, Phoni Babu went through.
He and Nabeen had moved into this block of apartments only a month ago. Each floor of the house had two flats. Phoni Babu noticed while moving towards the staircase that the flickering yellow light of a candle was falling across the veranda from the window of one of the ground floor flats where Gyan Datta lived. The other flat was in total darkness. No one seemed to be around. It was only two days before the Pujas. Perhaps the occupant, Ramanath Babu, had already left for Madhupur—or was it Ghatshila—to spend his holidays.
‘Nabeen!’ yelled Phoni Babu as he reached the bottom of the stairs. There was no reply. Clearly, Nabeen was not at home. He often left the house as soon as a power cut began.
Phoni Babu began climbing the stairs without waiting for Nabeen. It was possible to see the first few steps in the candlelight, but beyond that it was pitch dark. Not that it bothered him. He knew there were exactly seventy-two steps to be climbed. He had counted them one day for just such an eventuality.
It was strange, how easy it was to go up a flight of stairs if the lights were on. In the darkness, Phoni
Babu shivered as his hand fell on something soft, something very different from the wooden banister. Then he forced himself to put his hand back on the railing and realized it was only a towel someone had carelessly hung on it.
The first floor, too, was completely dark, which meant that both flats were empty. In one of them lived Bijan Babu with his wife and two boys. The younger one was very naughty and a remarkable chatterbox. The other flat was occupied by Mahadev Mandal, who owned a shoe shop in College Street. He might have gone to play cards with his friends. And Bijan Babu must have taken his family to a Hindi film, as he occasionally did.
Phoni Babu continued going up the stairs. As he turned right after the sixtieth step, his foot suddenly knocked against what must have been a metal container. The racket it made caused him to halt in his tracks and wait until his heartbeat returned to normal. The remaining twelve steps had to be negotiated with extreme caution.
Now he had to turn left. An empty cage hung where the stairs ended. It had once contained a mynah. Phoni Babu had often asked his next door neighbour, Naresh Biswas, to have the cage removed. There seemed little point in hanging on to the cage when the mynah had died, but Mr Biswas had paid not the slightest attention to him.
Phoni Babu bent his body like a hunchback in order to avoid banging into the cage and groped his way to the door of his own flat.
From somewhere, not very far away, came the strains of a Tagore song.
Perhaps someone in the house next door was playing a transistor. At a moment like this, in this somewhat spooky, all-engulfing darkness, the sound of music brought a little courage to his mind, though Phoni Babu was certainly not afraid of ghosts.
As his fingers fell on the door, he stopped and took the keys out of his pocket. There were two sets of keys. He kept one and Nabeen had the other. It was easy enough to reach for the padlock but to Phoni Babu’s surprise, he discovered there was no padlock at all. This was distinctly peculiar since he could remember quite clearly having locked the house as usual, placing the key in his pocket. Was Nabeen responsible for this? Could he have bolted the door from inside and gone to sleep?
Phoni Babu tried knocking on the door and then stood foolishly as it opened at his touch.
‘Nabeen!’
Still no answer. Surely he was not sleeping in the dark? Phoni Babu crossed the threshold and entered his living room. But perhaps it would be wrong to put it like that for what lay beyond the door was impossible to see. Phoni Babu shut his eyes and opened them again. He could feel no difference. Now he could do what he liked with his eyes closed. The darkness seemed as though it were a solid obstruction that must be physically pushed aside.
The wall to the left had a switchboard. The door to the next room was behind this, and a clothes rack stood near the door. Phoni Babu was carrying an umbrella. This would have to be hung from the rack. And he was feeling hot. So he would need to take his shirt off and place it on the rack as well. But, before he did that, he had to take out his wallet from his pocket and put it in the drawer of the table that stood to the left of the rack.
Phoni Babu reached for the switchboard. Although there was no point now in turning the switches on, he did not want to miss the joy of seeing the whole house light up silently when the power came back.
One of the two switches on the board had a loose head. Nabeen had been groping in the dark recently and had felt an electric shock even during a power cut. Phoni Babu’s finger nimbly skipped this particular switch and pressed the second one. It was quite pleasant to hear the switch faintly click into place.
Then he passed the switchboard and slipped through the open door to the next room. The rack was fixed on the wall at about the same height as his own . . .
But no.
His groping hand could find no rack. What it did fall upon was something quite different. Not only that, a miscalculated jab made it slip from the wall and crash to the ground.
A picture? Or was it a mirror? Shards lay all around his feet. He was not worried about his feet as they were protected by the slippers he wore, but where had the rack gone? He stood still, trying to think. There was, of course, a picture of Paramahansa in his room but it should have been hanging on the opposite wall. His mirror usually stood on the table.
Nabeen must have moved the furniture around, as was his habit. Phoni Babu did have to tell him off a number of times for moving his slippers from under the table, where he liked to keep them, and putting them elsewhere.
Still puzzled, Phoni Babu placed his old and worn out umbrella on the floor, carefully balancing it against the wall. Then he took the wallet out of his pocket and began walking towards the invisible table. Pieces of broken glass crunched beneath his feet.
Now all he had to do was find a corner of the table, and then finding the drawer would not be difficult.
But he could not find the table. He took another step forward. It was still impossibly dark. Perhaps if he opened the window that faced the street, it might help.
This time his hand struck against something solid. Furniture of some kind. Yes, it was wooden. But no, not a table. Was it a cupboard?
Yes, here was the handle. A long, vertical one, made of cut glass. Many old cupboards had handles like that. Phoni Babu did have an old cupboard, but what was its handle made of? He failed to remember.
But this cupboard wasn’t locked!
He released the handle. The cupboard gently swung open.
It just didn’t make any sense. He never left his cupboard unlocked. God knew he possessed no valuables, but his cupboard did contain all his clothes, some old documents and whatever little cash he had.
Had he forgotten to lock the cupboard this morning? But where was the table? Could it be—?
Yes, that must be it. Phoni Babu suddenly hit upon an explanation. The day before had been a Sunday. It had rained heavily in the afternoon and a small portion of the ceiling had started to leak. Water had dripped on to his table, which was why Nabeen had spread a few newspapers on it. The building was quite old. He would have to tell the landlord to have the roof repaired. Judging by the puddles he had found on the way, it had rained again during the day. If Nabeen had moved the table near the window and shifted the rack to the opposite wall, one must say he had acted with considerable thoughtfulness.
Phoni Babu returned the wallet to his pocket and moved towards the window. Again he collided with an object.
A chair. Nabeen had obviously moved the chair as well. Phoni Babu gave up. There was no point in trying to find his way in the dark. He might as well sit in the chair and wait until the lights came back.
He sat down. The chair had arms and the seat was made of cane. Wasn’t the chair in his room an armless one? No, he must be mistaken. He had realized today how little one noticed or remembered the details of one’s own furniture.
He sat facing the door and could see a small square piece of the sky just over the terrace on the other side. It was reflecting faintly the light from the neighbouring areas as yet unaffected by a power cut.
There were no stars for it was still cloudy but at least it gave him something to look at.
Something was ticking in the room. An alarm clock? There was definitely no alarm clock in his room. So how come—? But before he could think any further, an earsplitting noise made him nearly fall off his chair.
A telephone.
Just behind his head was a table, and on it a telephone, ringing insistently. It pierced through the silent darkness and stopped finally, after a whole minute of complete cacophony.
Phoni Babu did not have a telephone.
One thing had now become clear to him. This was not his room at all. He had walked into someone else’s. And with this realization, everything fell into place.
17/2 and 17/3 were two similar blocks of apartments. Both had three storeys, and both were owned by the same man. Phoni Babu had never been inside 17/3, but obviously its design and plan was identical to that of his house. He was now sitting in a room in one of the t
wo flats on the second floor of 17/3. There was no electricity, the front door was open, the cupboard unlocked.
What could it mean? But whatever the implication of these things, Phoni Babu was not going to let that worry him. He had realized his mistake and must leave at once. He started to rise, but another noise made him fall back into the chair.
It had come from the left, quite close to where he was sitting. It sounded like a box—a tin suitcase, perhaps—being dragged across the floor.
Phoni Babu’s throat began to feel dry and his heart was thudding.
A thief!
There was possibly a bed right next to the chair and, under it, a thief. In his haste to get out, he had clearly banged into a tin suitcase kept under the bed.
It was now easy enough to guess why the door and the cupboard were open.
If the thief was armed, Phoni Babu might be in some danger. His only weapon, his umbrella, was now lying beyond his reach. And, in any case, it was so old that if he hit the thief with it, the umbrella was likely to sustain more injuries.
But the thief was now quiet, possibly as a result of having unwittingly revealed his presence.
Phoni Babu felt like kicking himself. What a stupid mistake to have made and what an impossible situation to be in!
A petty thief was unlikely to carry a revolver, but could well have a knife. But, of course, not all thieves were armed. If it was a question of unarmed combat Phoni Babu was not afraid for he had once been a sportsman. But the biggest problem was this power cut. Even the strongest might feel helpless in such utter darkness.
What on earth was he to do? Should he simply get up and walk away? But what if the lights came back just as he reached the stairs? And what if in that instant, the thief tried to get away from one side and the real owner of the flat turned up from the other? If the owner saw he had been burgled, wouldn’t he—
Phoni Babu’s thoughts came to an abrupt halt.