Small Towns, Big Stories

by Ruskin Bond

  ‘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 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 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?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  That made me silent. I took her hand, and my feet churned up the mud at the bottom of the stream. As the mud subsided, I saw Sushila’s face reflected in the water, and looking up at her again, into her dark eyes, the old yearning returned and I wanted to care for her and protect her. I wanted to take her away from this place, from sorrowful Shamli. I wanted her to live again.

  Of course, I had forgotten all about my poor finances, Sushila’s family, and the shoes I wore, which were my last pair. The uplift I was experiencing in this meeting with Sushila, who had always, throughout her childhood and youth, bewitched me as no other had ever bewitched me, made me reckless and impulsive.

  I lifted her hand to my lips and kissed her on the soft of her palm.

  ‘Can I kiss you?’ I said.

  ‘You have just done so.’

  ‘Can I kiss you?’ I repeated.

  ‘It is not necessary.’

  I leaned over and kissed her slender neck. I knew she would like this, because that was where I had kissed her often before. I kissed her on the soft of the throat, where it tickled.

  ‘It is not necessary,’ she said, but she ran her fingers through my hair and let them rest there. I kissed her behind the ear then, and kept my mouth to her ear and whispered, ‘Can I kiss you?’

  She turned her face to me so that we looked deep into each other’s eyes, and I kissed her again. And we put our arms around each other and lay together on the grass with the water running over our feet. We said nothing at all, simply lay there for what seemed like several years, or until the first drop of rain.

  It was a big wet drop, and it splashed on Sushila’s cheek just next to mine, and ran down to her lips so that I had to kiss her again. The next big drop splattered on the tip of my nose, and Sushila laughed and sat up. Little ringlets were forming on the stream where the raindrops hit the water, and above us there was a pattering on the banana leaves.

  ‘We must go,’ said Sushila.

  We started homewards, but had not gone far before it was raining steadily, and Sushila’s hair came loose and streamed down her body. The rain fell harder, and we had to hop over pools and avoid the soft mud. Sushila’s sari was plastered to her body, accentuating her ripe, thrusting breasts, and I was excited to passion. I pulled her beneath a big tree, crushed her in my arms and kissed her rain-kissed mouth. And then I thought she was crying, but I wasn’t sure, because it might have been the raindrops on her cheeks.

  ‘Come away with me,’ I said. ‘Leave this place. Come away with me tomorrow morning. We will go somewhere where nobody will know us or come between us.’

  She smiled at me and said, ‘You are still a dreamer, aren’t you?’

  ‘Why can’t you come?’

  ‘I am married. It is as simple as that.’

  ‘If it is that simple you can come.’

  ‘I have to think of my parents, too. It would break my father’s heart if I were to do what you are proposing. And you are proposing it without a thought for the consequences.’

  ‘You are too practical,’ I said.

  ‘If women were not practical, most marriages would be failures.’

  ‘So your marriage is a success?’

  ‘Of course it is, as a marriage. I am not happy and I do not love him, but neither am I so unhappy that I should hate him. Sometimes, for our own sakes, we have to think of the happiness of others. What happiness would we have living in hiding from everyone we once knew and cared for. Don’t be a fool. I am always here and you can come to see me, and nobody will be made unhappy by it. But take me away and we will only have regrets.’

  ‘You don’t love me,’ I said foolishly.

  ‘That sad word love,’ she said, and became pensive and silent.

  I could say no more. I was angry again and rebellious, and there was no one and nothing to rebel against. I could not understand someone who was afraid to break away from an unhappy existence lest that existence should become unhappier. I had always considered it an admirable thing to break away from security and respectability. Of course, it is easier for a man to do this. A man can look after himself, he can do without neighbours and the approval of the local society. A woman, I reasoned, would do anything for love provided it was not at the price of security; for a woman loves security as much as a man loves independence.

  ‘I must go back now,’ said Sushila. ‘You follow a little later.’

  ‘All you wanted to do was talk,’ I complained.

  She laughed at that and pulled me playfully by the hair. Then she ran out from under the tree, springing across the grass, and the wet mud flew up and flecked her legs. I watched her through the thin curtain of rain until she reached the veranda. She turned to wave to me, and then skipped into the hotel.

  The rain had lessened, but I didn’t know what to do with myself. The hotel was uninviting, and it was too late to leave Shamli. If the grass hadn’t been wet I would have preferred to sleep under a tree rather than return to the hotel to sit at that alarming dining table.

  I came out from under the trees and crossed the garden. But instead of making for the veranda I went around to the back of the hotel. Smoke issuing from the barred window of a back room told me I had probably found the kitchen. Daya Ram was inside, squatting in front of a stove, stirring a pot of stew. The stew smelt appetizing. Daya Ram looked up and smiled at me.

  ‘I thought you had gone,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll go in the morning,’ I said, pulling myself up on an empty table. Then I had one of my sudden ideas and said, ‘Why don’t you come with me? I can find you a good job in Mussoorie. How much do you get paid here?’

  ‘Fifty rupees a month. But I haven’t been paid for three months.’

  ‘Could you get your pay before tomorrow morning?’

  ‘No, I won’t get anything until one of the guests pays a bill. Miss Deeds owes about fifty rupees on whisky alone. She will pay up, she says, when the school pays her salary. And the school can’t pay her until they collect the children’s fees. That is how bankrupt everyone is in Sham
li.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, though I didn’t see. ‘But Mr Dayal can’t hold back your pay just because his guests haven’t paid their bills.’

  ‘He can if he hasn’t got any money.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I will give you my address. You can come when you are free.’

  ‘I will take it from the register,’ he said.

  I edged over to the stove and leaning over, sniffed at the stew.

  ‘I’ll eat mine now,’ I said. And without giving Daya Ram a chance to object, I lifted a plate off the shelf, took hold of the stirring spoon and helped myself from the pot.

  ‘There’s rice too,’ said Daya Ram.

  I filled another plate with rice and then got busy with my fingers. After ten minutes I had finished. I sat back comfortably, in a ruminative mood. With my stomach full I could take a more tolerant view of life and people. I could understand Sushila’s apprehensions, Lin’s delicate lying and Miss Deeds’s aggressiveness. Daya Ram went out to sound the dinner gong, and I trailed back to my room.

  From the window of my room I saw Kiran running across the lawn and I called to her, but she didn’t hear me. She ran down the path and out of the gate, her pigtails beating against the wind.

  The clouds were breaking and coming together again, twisting and spiralling their way across a violet sky. The sun was going down behind the Shivaliks. The sky there was bloodshot. The tall slim trunks of the eucalyptus trees were tinged with an orange glow; the rain had stopped, and the wind was a soft, sullen puff, drifting sadly through the trees. There was a steady drip of water from the eaves of the roof on to the window sill. Then the sun went down behind the old, old hills, and I remembered my own hills, far beyond these.

  The room was dark but I did not turn on the light. I stood near the window, listening to the garden. There was a frog warbling somewhere and there was a sudden flap of wings overhead. Tomorrow morning I would go, and perhaps I would come back to Shamli one day, and perhaps not. I could always come here looking for Major Roberts, and who knows, one day I might find him. What should he be like, this lost man? A romantic, a man with a dream, a man with brown skin and blue eyes, living in a hut on a snowy mountain top, chopping wood and catching fish and swimming in cold mountain streams; a rough, free man with a kind heart and a shaggy beard, a man who owed allegiance to no one, who gave a damn for money and politics, and cities and civilizations, who was his own master, who lived at one with nature knowing no fear. But that was not Major Roberts—that was the man I wanted to be. He was not a Frenchman or an Englishman, he was me, a dream of myself. If only I could find Major Roberts.

  When Daya Ram knocked on the door and told me the others had finished dinner, I left my room and made for the lounge. It was quite lively in the lounge. Satish Dayal was at the bar, Lin at the piano, and Miss Deeds in the middle of the room executing a tango on her own. It was obvious she had been drinking heavily.

  ‘All on credit,’ complained Mr Dayal to me. ‘I don’t know when I’ll be paid, but I don’t dare refuse her anything for fear she starts breaking up the hotel.’

  ‘She could do that, too,’ I said. ‘It would come down without much encouragement.’

  Lin began to play a waltz (I think it was a waltz), and then I found Miss Deeds in front of me, saying, ‘Wouldn’t you like to dance, old boy?’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, somewhat alarmed. ‘I hardly know how to.’

  ‘Oh, come on, be a sport,’ she said, pulling me away from the bar. I was glad Sushila wasn’t present. She wouldn’t have minded, but she’d have laughed as she always laughed when I made a fool of myself.

  We went around the floor in what I suppose was waltz time, though all I did was mark time to Miss Deeds’s motions. We were not very steady—this because I was trying to keep her at arm’s length, while she was determined to have me crushed to her bosom. At length Lin finished the waltz. Giving him a grateful look, I pulled myself free. Miss Deeds went over to the piano, leaned right across it, and said, ‘Play something lively, dear Mr Lin, play some hot stuff.’

  To my surprise, Mr Lin without so much as an expression of distaste or amusement, began to execute what I suppose was the frug or the jitterbug. I was glad she hadn’t asked me to dance that one with her.

  It all appeared very incongruous to me—Miss Deeds letting herself go in crazy abandonment, Lin playing the piano with great seriousness, and Mr Dayal watching from the bar with an anxious frown. I wondered what Sushila would have thought of them now.

  Eventually, Miss Deeds collapsed on the couch breathing heavily.

  ‘Give me a drink,’ she cried.

  With the noblest of intentions I took her a glass of water. Miss Deeds took a sip and made a face. ‘What’s this stuff?’ she asked. ‘It is different.’

  ‘Water,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘now don’t joke, tell me what it is.’

  ‘It’s water, I assure you,’ I said.

  When she saw that I was serious, her face coloured up and I thought she would throw the water at me. But she was too tired to do this and contented herself with throwing the glass over her shoulder. Mr Dayal made a dive for the flying glass, but he wasn’t in time to rescue it and it hit the wall and fell to pieces on the floor.

  Mr Dayal wrung his hands. ‘You’d better take her to her room,’ he said, as though I were personally responsible for her behaviour just because I’d danced with her.

  ‘I can’t carry her alone,’ I said, making an unsuccessful attempt at helping Miss Deeds up from the couch.

  Mr Dayal called for Daya Ram, and the big amiable youth came lumbering into the lounge. We took an arm each and helped Miss Deeds, feet dragging, across the room. We got her to her room and on to her bed. When we were about to withdraw she said, ‘Don’t go, my dear, stay with me a little while.’

  Daya Ram had discreetly slipped outside. With my hand on the doorknob I said, ‘Which of us?’

  ‘Oh, are there two of you?’ said Miss Deeds, without a trace of disappointment.

  ‘Yes, Daya Ram helped me carry you here.’

  ‘Oh, and who are you?’

  ‘I’m the writer. You danced with me, remember?’

  ‘Of course. You dance divinely, Mr Writer. Do stay with me. Daya Ram can stay too if he likes.’

  I hesitated, my hand on the doorknob. She hadn’t opened her eyes all the time I’d been in the room, her arms hung loose, and one bare leg hung over the side of the bed. She was fascinating somehow, and desirable, but I was afraid of her. I went out of the room and quietly closed the door.

  As I lay awake in bed I heard the jackal’s ‘pheau’, the cry of fear which it communicates to all the jungle when there is danger about, a leopard or a tiger. It was a weird howl, and between each note there was a kind of low gurgling. I switched off the light and peered through the closed window. I saw the jackal at the edge of the lawn. It sat almost vertically on its haunches, holding its head straight up to the sky, making the neighbourhood vibrate with the eerie violence of its cries. Then suddenly it started up and ran off into the trees.

  Before getting back into bed I made sure the window was shut. The bullfrog was singing again, ‘ing-ong, ing-ong’, in some foreign language. I wondered if Sushila was awake too, thinking about me. It must have been almost eleven o’clock. I thought of Miss Deeds with her leg hanging over the edge of the bed. I tossed restlessly and then sat up. I hadn’t slept for two nights but I was not sleepy. I got out of bed without turning on the light and slowly opening my door, crept down the passageway. I stopped at the door of Miss Deeds’s room. I stood there listening, but I heard only the ticking of the big clock that might have been in the room or somewhere in the passage. I put my hand on the doorknob but the door was bolted. That settled the matter.

  I would definitely leave Shamli the next morning. Another day in the company of these people and I would be behaving like them. Perhaps I was already doing so! I remembered the tonga driver’s words: ‘Don’t stay t
oo long in Shamli or you will never leave!’

  When the rain came, it was not with a preliminary patter or shower, but all at once, sweeping across the forest like a massive wall, and I could hear it in the trees long before it reached the house. Then it came crashing down on the corrugated roof, and the hailstones hit the windowpanes with a hard metallic sound so that I thought the glass would break. The sound of thunder was like the booming of big guns and the lightning kept playing over the garden. At every flash of lightning I sighted the swing under the tree, rocking and leaping in the air as though some invisible, agitated being was sitting on it. I wondered about Kiran. Was she sleeping through all this, blissfully unconcerned, or was she lying awake in bed, starting at every clash of thunder as I was? Or was she up and about, exulting in the storm? I half expected to see her come running through the trees, through the rain, to stand on the swing with her hair blowing wild in the wind, laughing at the thunder and the angry skies. Perhaps I did see her, perhaps she was there. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she were some forest nymph living in the hole of a tree, coming out sometimes to play in the garden.

  A crash, nearer and louder than any thunder so far, made me sit up in bed with a start. Perhaps lightning had struck the house. I turned on the switch but the light didn’t come on. A tree must have fallen across the line.

  I heard voices in the passage—the voices of several people. I stepped outside to find out what had happened, and started at the appearance of a ghostly apparition right in front of me. It was Mr Dayal standing on the threshold in an oversized pyjama suit, a candle in his hand.

  ‘I came to wake you,’ he said. ‘This storm…’

  He had the irritating habit of stating the obvious.

  ‘Yes, the storm,’ I said. ‘Why is everybody up?’

  ‘The back wall has collapsed and part of the roof has fallen in. We’d better spend the night in the lounge—it is the safest room. This is a very old building,’ he added apologetically.