Varma tiptoed up behind him and struck at him with the log of wood. Munoo turned round and warded off the blow by lifting his biceps over his shoulders. Varma struck again, and this time the blow fell aslant on Munoo’s forehead. Munoo sought to catch hold of the log in his hands. But Varma began to wave the wood aimlessly. Each time it fell on Munoo’s palm it slipped out. He made a sudden dart at Varma’s neck, caught hold of the tuft of hair that ritualistically swayed on top of the Brahmin’s head and tugged at it to make him relax his hold of the log. Then he wrested it out of Varma’s hand and threw it away into the ditch.
He could hear his pitcher overflowing with water now. He disengaged himself from Varma and rushed towards the veranda of the house, his face covered with blood.
‘Go and hide yourself in your mistress’s—,’ Varma was shouting behind him.
‘You eater of your masters!’ greeted Bibiji when she saw him rushing in through the kitchen door. ‘What have you done? Whom have you been quarrelling with?’
‘With no one,’ Munoo said as he deposited the brass pitcher in the kitchen. He went past her to the oven. He picked up a handful of ashes and applied it to his forehead, from which the blood was spurting.
‘Vay! vay! show me where you have been hurt!’ she shouted, very moved. ‘Look at all that blood trickling down your face! Is it that lecher Varma who has beaten you? Haven’t I asked you not to associate with him? He talks bad things and you like listening to him. Now enjoy the fruits of your friendship with such as he!’
‘It is nothing. It is nothing. It is only a small bruise,’ Munoo said, capering away.
‘Look at him! Look at him!’ said Bibiji, going into the sitting-room, where her brother-in-law, the chota Babu, was ironing his collars. ‘Look!’ she cried. ‘He has been quarrelling and is wounded on the head!’
‘Come here, ohe Mundu,’ shouted the chota Babu.
‘Han, Babuji,’ answered Munoo, pale and rather dazed, but completely unconcerned about his wound.
‘Come and show me your head,’ said the Doctor.
‘It is all right, Babuji,’ replied Munoo casually. ‘I have treated it with ashes. It will be all right.’
He was convinced that the treatment of wounds with earth or ashes which the village barber recommended was perfect.
‘Come here, you fool,’ shouted the Doctor, laughing. ‘The wound will become septic with those filthy ashes. Come and show it to me.’
Munoo submitted to the diagnosis.
The Doctor found that it was a dangerous cut, reaching almost to the skull. He lit a primus stove to get some hot water ready. Then he washed the wound and dressed it.
Munoo had been exerting his imagination a little too intently over the stove which smelt of paraffin and the cloth which smelt of medicine. So he felt dizzy.
The Doctor laid him to rest in his corner of the kitchen.
As the forgetfulness of sleep crept up to his eyes and the pain weighed down his eyelids Munoo heard Bibiji shouting, not at him this time, but at Varma and his employers:
‘Eaters of their masters! They have raised their heads to the skies! They think that just because they have prestige in this world they can do anything. We may not be getting as much pay as they do, but we are as good as they are, any day! If they are big people they must be big in their own house, we are in ours. . . .’
The Judge’s wife had come out and was abusing Bibiji: ‘These low babus are getting so uppish. Let my husband come and we will show you what it is to insult your superiors! They are getting so proud just because they have an uncouth boy from the hills come to be their servant!’
The words of his mistress’s abuse now fell weak and distant in the troubled sleep to which Munoo had succumbed. There was only the soundless speech of a rippling breath as it travelled gently, like a heartbeat, through his dilating nostrils, and which flowed back with the answer that there was life in his body yet.
During the days of his confinement to his corner in the kitchen Munoo got scant attention from Bibiji, but the chota Babu regularly dressed his wound in the morning while Sheila looked on silently in her curious child’s way and sympathized.
Munoo had suffered acute pain when the first flush of wild heat had left his body and the bruise called up all the blood in his veins. A fever had possessed him and he wept bitterly and moaned, his moans rising to a screaming crescendo of pain. Then he was in a delirium. Everything seemed to go dark as the sky at night, except a few bright stars of thought which glittered in the walled-in darkness. And, all the time, there was the roaring of space in his ear-drums. He quivered as he lay huddled in the corner. His body was numb.
He had sweated profusely with some medicine that the Doctor gave him. After that, in the depths of his chest, behind the emptiness, he was conscious of the flow of his sub-human emotions of fear and hatred. Later his brain grappled with the things around him as it had done before his illness.
But as he became aware he felt as if he had emerged from centuries of forgetfulness, like a wave which comes rippling against the tide, shivering against contending waves, fading backwards, breaking, reforming and thrusting its steel-grey head onwards.
His uncle, he faintly remembered, had come to see him recently. But he hated his uncle. He hated everyone except the chota Babu and, perhaps, Sheila. She was nice, though elusive. The way she mocked at him! ‘Come, ohe monkey, come and eat your food.’ That was nice and familiar. He liked her for that. He also liked to look at her. The picture of her as she came out of the bath after her mother had subjected her to forcible ablutions came before his mind: a tracing of the outline of her figure behind the poor concealment of her wet muslin dhoti, which stuck to her limbs, a silhouette of pale bronze, with a delicate light on her regular, mobile features, a light which seemed to burst into a merry laugh and to cast a halo around her sometimes active, sometimes somnolent, body. He had been told in his childhood to regard every woman as a mother or sister. He called the apparition of Sheila in his mind ‘sister’. But as it recurred again and again and made him want to play with her he forgot to label it ‘sister’. Only he bent his head with shame every time he saw her, either really or in imagination, in the same way in which he had bent his head in early spring at the ripening fruit in someone else’s garden in his village, with the faint tinge of a hungry smile on his dark lips. The half-conscious sigh of tenderness that trembled upon his lips was smothered by another thought, another desire, arising from the anticipation of the hopelessness of his love. If only he had money, if only the Babu did not give the pay which was due to him to his uncle, Daya Ram, he would have saved the money and run away to become a hawker of sweetmeats, like the boy who sat outside Sheila’s school and earned a rupee a day. ‘Money is everything,’ his uncle had said on the day of his journey to town. ‘Money is, indeed, everything,’ Munoo thought. And his mind dwelt for the first time on the difference between himself, the poor boy, and his masters, the rich people, between all the poor people in his village and Jay Singh’s father, the landlord.
He saw the shrivelled-up skeleton of old Gangu, the seventy-year-old grandfather of his school friend, little Bishan, who worked as a labourer on the fields of anyone who could employ him. He recalled the lean face of Bishambar’s mother, who went charring in the house of the landlord. He remembered, vaguely, the hollow eyes of his own father looking down at him tenderly before he ‘fell asleep for the last time’. He could, even now, feel the warmth of his mother’s lap as he had lain in it while she moved the millstone, round and round, round and round, till she had languished and expired. How empty he felt without that warmth now, as if that warmth were a necessary clothing for his body. But there were so many people, so many poor people, and only one or two rich people in his village. He wondered whether all those poor people would die like his parents and leave a gap in his belly as the death of his father and mother had done. In the town, of course, there seemed many more rich people than poor people. But then he had been told in school, ther
e were hundreds of villages for one town, and if there were as many poor people in all the villages as there were in his, surely there were many more poor people in the world than rich.
Whether there were more rich or more poor people, there seemed to be only two kinds of people in the world. Caste did not matter. ‘I am a Kshatriya and I am poor, and Varma, a Brahmin, is a servant boy, a menial, because he is poor. No, caste does not matter. The babus are like the sahiblogs, and all servants look alike: there must only be two kinds of people in the world: the rich and the poor.’
The necessity of the moment put an end to this naïve wonderment.
He was now lighting a fire in the oven by blowing at the smoke where the wood fuel was arranged between two bricks. And the wistful light in his eyes was dimmed by the spurts of fume that rose from the stubborn sticks. His eyes began to smart. He screwed them up and pressed the water out of them. His brooding soul became full of a vague and sullen resentment. He could have cried. His will seemed to have been shattered by his illness.
But though his will was broken, with the gathering of strength in his body Munoo again entered the busy round of scrubbing utensils, peeling vegetables, sweeping floors, making beds, serving food and generally doing everything that the caprice of his mistress imposed on him. And, with this return to activity, his physical body exuded the continual warmth, the living vitality that reached out in a wild frenzy of movement to any and every feeling and object. He laughed, sang, danced, shouted, leaped, somersaulted, with the irrepressible impetuosity of life itself, sweeping aside the barriers that separated him from his superiors, by the utter humanness of his impulses, by the sheer wantonness of his unconscious life-force.
It was this natural impishness of his which, unschooled by all the rigours of moralizing and abuse to which he had been subjected, unchecked even by the physical hurt he had suffered, was always bringing him into trouble.
It brought him into immediate disgrace.
He heard Sheila and her girl friends come into the sitting-room from school one afternoon, as he sat peeling potatoes in the kitchen. His mistress was away from home, gossiping with the wives of the babus in the neighbourhood. He hurried through his task, thinking he would go and play with them.
As he was washing his hands he heard the voice from the box trailing out. Here was his opportunity, he thought. He could go and perform his monkey dance and amuse the children into allowing him to play with them, as, of late, under Bibiji’s advice, they had refused to do.
He burst into the sitting-room and falling on all fours began to caper round, frightening the girls and dispersing them as they were in the midst of a classical ballet, which they had learnt at school.
‘Oh, go away,’ cried Kausalya timidly.
‘We don’t want you to play with us,’ said Sheila. ‘Mother said we are not to play with you.’
She really liked him and was amused by his funny dance. She wanted him to play with her, but her mother’s advice had sunk into her and set up a barrier. She liked to touch him. She came towards him and, catching him by the ear, dragged him about.
He let her pull his ear like that.
All the little girls screamed with laughter.
Sheila pulled hard at his ear and he turned round and sprang upon her, snarling and gnashing his teeth as if he were a real monkey.
Before he knew what he had done he had bitten her on the cheek.
‘Mother! Oh, Mother!’ Sheila cried. Her mother did not hear.
Kausalya went and called her.
‘Ni, Mother of Sheila! Ni, Mother of Sheila! Come and look what that brute of a hill-boy has done to your daughter.’
Bibiji came rushing.
At the sight of her daughter caressing her cheek her face went livid with anger.
‘Show me,’ she cried. ‘Show me your face, my child.’
The ivory flesh was blue where Munoo had bitten it.
‘I was only playing, Bibiji,’ said Munoo, anticipating a storm and seeking in vain to avert it.
‘Vay! May you die! May the vessel of your life never float in the sea of existence!’ the tornado of abuse burst. ‘May you never rest in peace, neither you nor your antecedents! That you should attack the honour of my child! Only a little child, too! Lustful young bull from the hills. How did we know we were taking on a rogue and a scoundrel. Let the Babuji come home! You ought to be handed over to the police. Look! Look at my child! Had you no shame! No respect! Spoiler of my salt! Didn’t I ask you to leave my children alone and not to play with them! What is your status that you should mix with the children of your superiors? How did we know we were taking in a snake in our house, who would turn treacherous after we had fed him with milk? Let that uncle of yours, Daya Ram, come! Disobedient wretch. Didn’t I tell you that my children are not your class! You, you were born I don’t know on what rubbish-heap! Think of our reputation! Our prestige! We looked after you when you broke your skull playing with that Brahmin boy. I was sorry for you. Now we’ll have to hand you over to the police. . . .’
‘What has happened? What is the matter?’ said Babu Nathoo Ram, coming in, with his head bent, his chest stooping, his face contorted into a mixed expression of fatigue and humility.
‘What has happened? What is the matter?’ cried Bibiji. ‘Everything is the matter! This eater of his masters, may he die, may he burn in hell, may—’
‘Oh, but what is the matter? What is it?’ said the Babu, irritated and indignant.
‘I am telling you, my heart is burning. This spoiler of our salt has bitten Sheila on the cheek. Has not the wicked age come! This boy! He is hardly yet born! And he attacks the honour of his master’s child! Heavens!’
‘Why, ohe!’ screamed the Babu, twisting his eyebrows in line with the furrows on his forehead and showing his teeth up to the gums. ‘What have you got to say to this?’
Munoo stood, his head bent, his face flushed, his heart throbbing. He did not answer.
‘Look, people, the darkness has enveloped the world! Look!’ Bibiji was beginning again.
Babu Nathoo Ram advanced with a flourish of his hand to still his wife and to slap the boy.
‘Why, oh swine! Why don’t you answer me?’
‘Babuji, I was only playing,’ Munoo said, looking up at his master furtively, nervously.
‘Playing, oh you were playing!’ the Babu ground the words in his mouth. ‘Dog!’
And he slapped Munoo on the cheek with his thin, bony hand and kicked him with his shiny black boots, the boots which had been the dream of Munoo’s life.
‘Forgive me, Babuji, forgive me!’ shrilled Munoo, tottering to the floor.
‘Forgive you!’ said Nathoo Ram. ‘Yes, I will forgive you properly!’
And kicking the boy again, ferociously, he made towards the corner where a thick stick lay.
The boy’s soul surged up in rebellion and hate, in a hate of which he had not thought himself capable. He was startled. But he dared not revolt.
‘Oh Babuji, forgive me, forgive, forgive!’ he screamed and squirmed, grovelling on the ground.
‘I will forgive you!’ the Babu hissed as he came sweating and struck him blow after blow.
Munoo writhed with pain and groaned.
‘Oh, Babuji, forgive, forgive, only forgive!’ he called.
‘Son of a dog!’ said the Babu, raising his stick again with a hard glint in his eyes.
‘Leave him now, the ungrateful wretch!’ said Bibiji.
‘Oh forgive, oh forgive, only forgive!’ Munoo moaned in the gathering darkness.
A whipped dog hides in a corner; a whipped human seeks escape.
Munoo slipped out of the Babu’s house, in the twilight, immediately after the family had withdrawn into the kitchen and left him in disgrace. He ran down the hill through the avenue of kikar trees, past the Bank, past the big houses whose ornamentation indicated wealth, into the large and well-frequented bazaar. The huddled confusion of big shops and small shops was illuminated into grotesque
shapes by the electric lamps and oil lamps and by the jets of small cotton wicks in earthen pots. The glare of the lamps disturbed his tear-filled eyes. He sought relief in occasional peeps down intersecting lanes. But there were much more disturbing lights in the eyes of the crowds that sauntered to and fro. He avoided looking them straight in the face. So he diverted his attention to their bodies, as they tossed their arms aloft, talked loudly, moved their heads wildly and jerked about in a frenzy of extravagant gestures. He longed for silence, he longed for darkness to conceal him. He wanted to get away from this riot of human beings with their vermilion turbans, white and black caps, rustling red silks and fawn-coloured muslins which jostled against each other. He wanted to drown in some pit of oblivion where he could forget, forget the humiliating memory of the beating he had suffered. He did not want anyone to recognize him. He hurried through the street, taking long steps and short capers, and then actually ran. The sweat poured down his body.
He emerged into a highway flanked by small booths, shadowed by ragged jute cloth awnings with big rents, and a few closed shops lost in the blackest shadows.
Beyond, a dense darkness masked an arched entry to a courtyard in which, at odd spaces, little piles of wood fuel burnt the bodies of the dead. Here all was quiet, all motionless. Munoo whispered in the terror of the silence to reassure himself.
A couple of prowling dogs rooted amid the garbage in a gutter, making him jump. The shrill whistle of an engine in the railway yard pulled at his heart.
He had reached the rear end of the railway godown.
He ran like mad by the wall of the cremation ground which bordered the yard. He scraped through the iron railings in a positive horror of being pursued either by a ghost or by one of the night watchmen. He was soaked in sweat, but he did not care. He was now in the station compound.
He threaded his way through the network of railway lines, which seemed to carry the message of swift death under the monstrous black engines. He panted for breath.
Classic Mulk Raj Anand Page 25