Sick with disgust and pity and stung by fear, he capered aside only to be greeted by the hoarse moan of a sleeping beggar, who protected her little child as she lay close to it, resting her head on her elbow and looking out into the dark with a tiger’s steel glance in her eyes.
Munoo came towards Hari abashed, and looked at the old man with a nervous smile on his jaws.
‘Walk carefully, my son,’ said Hari. ‘Let us not disturb other people’s rest. I will show you the way.’
Munoo made room for the old man to lead and he followed cautiously, adjusting the weight of the sleeping children. He wondered how Hari’s wife could see in the dark with her head apron drawn over her eyes, and he wished he could ask her to uncover her face. If she were as old as Hari he felt he could ask her quite openly, as she would be in the position of a mother to him, who was only fourteen years of age.
He looked around with a view to seeing if he could address her. Suddenly a heart-rending shriek fell on his ears. He saw that ten yards ahead a coolie had fallen with a thud and was rolling down, kicked from behind by the caretaker of a house, who presumably wanted to close the iron door that secured his master’s mansion against thieves.
There were hoarse whispers, groans and half-subdued sighs. Then a number of coolies rose from the nooks and corners where they had taken shelter for the night, apprehensive that the same fate might befall them.
The bodies which lay sprawled all over the pavements heaved to and fro, flung off their torn white sheets, surprised, and stretched their glistening black bodies in the darkness, or cast off the weariness from their sagging limbs and sat up speaking kind, soft words and incantations, as if their magic formulas would charm away all misfortunes.
Munoo felt comforted as he heard Hari turn back with a reassuring message: ‘Come, I see a place across the road.’
The boy followed, thinking how different seemed the bodies of the coolies here from those of the labourers in the grain market at Daulatpur on that night after Prabha had been beaten up by the police. The hillmen and the Kashmiris in the North were hard, thick, big-boned and raw, while these coolies seemed weak-kneed, spineless and thin. But then, he felt, there was really little difference between them. The up-country coolies were as afraid of the caretakers as were these Southerners. And he recalled the feeling of grim fear that had possessed him during the moment when he had clambered up to the top of the grain sacks—the fear of the long stave of the chowkidar.
There was, indeed, a clearing on the other side of the road by the doorsteps of a shop, a kind of gallery with a three-foot square of board, evidently used to put shoes on by the shop-keepers during the day. But why it was empty they could not make out as they stood dubiously contemplating its advantages.
A half-naked woman who sat nursing her head in her hands, as if she were struggling to control the most excruciating pain, looked up at them and said in a voice which was smothered by sobs, ‘My husband died there last night!’
‘He has attained the release,’ said Hari. ‘We will rest in his place.’
Munoo felt the dread of death facing him. The picture of the large, ugly, demoniac form of the god of death which he had seen in a lithograph in a shop at Daulatpur, standing guard over the souls of the wicked, who strained to swim across the ocean of blood, formed itself before his eyes. The blood in his body seemed to dry up. But he felt the warmth of the child’s breath on his cheek, and found comfort in Hari’s assurance.
‘We are not afraid of ghosts.’
Fortunately his wife had not heard the woman’s warning, as she had lagged behind, weighted down by the load she was bearing.
‘Come and rest your limbs here, Lakshmi,’ said Hari, as she approached. And he unrolled the baggage he carried. She obeyed her lord and master.
‘We will rest out on the pavement,’ Hari said, putting his hand affectionately on Munoo’s back. ‘The children can sleep there with their mother.’
Munoo laid the boy on the unrolled bedding in the gallery. Then he came back and sat down on the pavement next to the concrete wall.
The slab of stone under him exuded the warmth which the scorching sun of the day had left in it. But he saw that there were sheeted figures sprawled all over the pavement. ‘One gets accustomed to it,’ he thought. ‘I shall soon get used to it. Only I am new here.’
As he cast his eyes along the street, this side and that, he saw why it felt strange here. The swarming houses in Daulatpur were comparatively low and the coolies huddling about them seemed like ants on a heap, while the very gigantic proportions of these colossal stone buildings which shadowed the narrow bazaars made the dark bodies of coolies seem out of place. And there was something oppressive in the low Southern sky overhead and in the dense, dark, stifling atmosphere which it enclosed. And everything seemed so still, so dead.
Munoo felt very lonely.
Then he became aware of a hot blast of air which came loaded with the sickly, fetid odour of ghee, sandalwood, urine, sour milk, fish and decaying fruit. He looked in the direction from which the smell oozed. A soft breath, half moan, half sigh, was all he could hear, and the movement of a body flinging off its blanket. He looked the other way. There was another coolie turning on his side restlessly and muttering something. He withdrew his glance. Presently he became conscious of a bare body rolling in anguish and slapping itself on the knees to the accompaniment of foul curses.
Munoo looked beyond this man, across the road, then beyond Hari, who had lain down on his left, and beyond the widow, who still sat holding her head in her hand. There were bodies and bodies all along the pavement. If the half-dead are company he was not alone. But he felt a dread steal through him, the dread of sleep, the uncanny fear of bodies in abeyance whose souls might suddenly do anything, begin to snore, open their bloodshot eyes for a second, grunt, groan, moan, or lie still in a ghastly, absolute stillness.
Silently and quickly he extended his legs and dragged his body into the attitude of sleep, closed his eyes, and tried to assure himself that all these people were just like him, not ghosts, but men. ‘They have probably all come down from the North to find work like me,’ he reflected. ‘I wonder if they stole rides on trains or had to pay fares. That elephant-driver! He will be on the black waters soon. He was kind. And Prabha! I wish they knew that I have made friends and am going to get a job tomorrow. They both said I was a brave lad. Yes, I can do things. But what could I do if all men were like Ganpat or the policeman, or the man in the food shop today? I wonder what Hari thinks. His black face always remains the same. I shall ask him to tell me his story tomorrow. His wife keeps her face covered. I would like to know what she looks like—’ A ripple of warmth passed through him at the thought. He felt feverish. ‘Sleep, sleep—come, sleep,’ he said to himself. A queer agitation possessed him, unsettling him, exciting him, working him up into a panic. ‘O sleep! sleep!’ he cried out in his soul. And he closed his eyes deliberately tight. But though his eyes were tired and his bones weary, they were too weary for sleep. His body quivered and perspired. He gasped for breath, turned on his side and saw Hari fast asleep. He tried to simulate the appearance of Hari’s body, thinking that by copying the right posture on the pavement he could sleep. For a moment he rested thus, histrionically. The image of Hari’s wife stood before him, veiled. He opened his eyes. It was no use. He felt he must get up and rush away, away, away, somewhere beyond the confines of the street, somewhere where there was a whiff of air to breathe. But he was afraid he would stumble on the bodies which lay along the pavement and then there would be a scene. He tossed about on his stone bed, flinging his haunches from side to side till he felt his bones ache. Then he plunged his head on to his hands and lay face downwards. The suffocating darkness descended on him.
A cool breeze blew through the street at dawn.
It penetrated into the bodies of the coolies, lepers, beggars and paupers, through the rents and holes in the flimsy sheets that covered them.
They shivered and stirr
ed uncomfortably, or huddled against each other, or shrank into knots, or merely turned on their sides.
Another gust.
The naked lepers moaned. The others clutched their garments closer or awakened suddenly from the intoxication of the sweet early morning’s sleep, thankful to God even in their discomfort as they murmured, ‘Ram, Ram, Sri, Sri.’
The breeze which came from the sea soon became a windy draught.
The names of God multiplied on the lips of the wretches, because, ritually, every spasm of cough, every mouthful of stale spittle, every blow of the nose, is an occasion for the invocation of the Almighty.
Those who were not awakened by the noise of an asthmatic or consumptive cough, by the sharp, thunderous spurts of spitting, or by the loud and vehement blowing of noses, or by the multifarious names of God, were awakened by the arm of the law, which, baton in hand, came to clear the pavements.
Munoo was one of them, Hari having got up already.
‘Ram, Ram, brother,’ greeted Hari. ‘We should be on the way to the factory.’
‘Are the children awake?’ asked Munoo, with enthusiasm and alacrity. ‘If not I will carry them.’
‘We will arouse the affliction of God,’ said Hari. ‘They must learn to wake up early. They will have to go to work at the factory before sunrise every morning. Why did I go away from Bombay, four months ago, if not to fetch them, so that, like the children of other men, they should begin to earn their living? Thus only can we make both ends meet.’ Then he looked towards the passage-way, where his wife had kept watch while the children slept all night. ‘Why, Lakshmi, are the children awake?’
The woman began to shake the children gently. But the little ones only moaned and stiffened.
Hari walked towards the gully menacingly.
‘I will pick them up, don’t disturb their sleep,’ said Lakshmi, leaning to protect them against her husband.
‘You can’t lift brats of eight and nine,’ snapped Hari.
And he leapt at the little ones, picked them up by the arms and shook them. Their hands dangled limply. They only sobbed without opening their eyes, and without relaxing the dead weight of sleep that made their bodies sag.
‘I will lift one as I did last night, brother Hari,’ said Munoo, feeling uncomfortable at what seemed likely to develop into a domestic wrangle.
Hari picked up the tin trunk, while Munoo came and lifted the boy, a firm-featured creature with an indigo shade of skin. Lakshmi lifted the girl. Hari rolled the bedding. And the cavalcade moved on.
The town was coming to life in the streets. White men, brown men, chocolate men, black men, in loincloths, or short trousers, were jostling along. Some opulent merchants were being carried in motor-cars. Troops of schoolboys and girls in uniforms were strolling along, now leisurely and unwillingly, now eagerly. The ostentatious splendour of jumbled buildings was realizing the significance of its garish stupidity under the flood of sunlight that spread from the heavens.
Munoo did not attend to the hubbub consciously. He was beginning to take the city of Bombay for granted, though the deep recesses of dark rooms behind the doors and windows in the heart of the houses seemed to arouse his curiosity. They seemed peopled by swarms of men and women, layer upon layer, in a sort of vertical overcrowding, literally on top of each other. They did not greet each other as they walked in and out of the buildings. ‘Strange,’ he reflected, ‘the Southerners are strange people’—not realizing why they were aloof from each other.
They walked slowly, listlessly, as if they had not quite awakened from their sleep.
Munoo hurried into a quick pace once or twice, urged by the eager impulses that ebbed and flowed in him. But his head seemed dizzy in this atmosphere, his muscles loose and unstrung.
He looked at Hari. The old man’s movements were mechanical. The energy in Hari’s legs seemed to have been sapped completely, as the strongest effort at quickening his pace that the old man made seemed to result merely in the flashing of his bare black legs without any conspicuous hastening.
His wife seemed hampered by the weight of her daughter, by her heavy accordion-pleated skirt and by the natural weakness of her sex.
‘I wish I could relieve her of the burden of her child,’ Munoo said to himself as he felt a blast of steaming, bubbling heat descend on his back with a furious impact.
The sun had risen behind him, over the roofs of the Bombay houses, and spread on to an uprise, drying up Munoo’s liver in the process, sucking up all the energy out of him and giving a parched taste to his mouth.
His veins swelled as he struggled towards the incline. He willed a kind of nervous energy into his bones and strode on.
The morning mist was lifting. The surface of the uprise was broken by deep pits on the sides and little mounds topped by scattered palm trees, whose green was tinted an unearthly pallor by the glowing gold of the sun.
But distance lent enchantment to this view. For the ascent to the plateau disclosed on the left a sewage farm, beside which thousands of hides were tanned and dried by the colony of leather-workers, who lived in a cluster of mud huts; and on the right were rows of vast, grey tenements, with thousands of low straw huts at their feet, hiding the rents and the holes in their sides with ragged, jute cloth hangings—all enveloped by the clouds of smoke which spurted from the tall chimneys of countless mills.
‘Not far now, only a mile,’ said Hari, panting for breath and rolling his eyeballs, over which the perspiration flowed.
‘But your mile in the South seems longer than our Northern mile,’ said Munoo, flushing light-heartedly.
‘Shall we live in one of those big houses, or in a straw hut?’ asked Hari’s wife, swinging her hips slowly with each stride.
‘Be patient, you will be lucky if we can get jobs,’ said Hari, peevish and irascible with the fatigue of the journey and the fear of the impending interview with the foreman Sahib.
They walked up a roadstead of broken stones and dust, past small hovels, straw huts which spread for a hundred to two hundred yards from the rubbish-heaps at their near ends to the masses of tall tenements. The high, four-storied buildings were plain enough and devoid of the city styles, but crumbling on the sides and seamed with mortar that looked a leprous white against the sooty black of the main structure of brick. And then they were in full view of their objective.
‘That is the Sirjabite Factory to which we are going,’ said Hari, raising a finger towards a chimney taller than the rest which stood rolling out volumes of smoke across the sky eastwards into the vast unknown.
Munoo followed the direction of Hari’s finger, but his glance lost itself among the factory roofs which undulated like low hilltops to the peak points of conic chimneys.
A swarm of crows was screaming around the choking alleyways of the straw huts, by which sat a few semi-naked men and women, praying, it seemed, after their ablutions. There was not a well or a pump near, and Munoo wondered where they had bathed. He looked deeper into space and saw, behind a small hillock, a sunken pool of murky, green water over which a thick, slimy cream had settled. The crows wheeled over the pond in greater profusion, pecking at the sores of the cows and bullocks, who either sat in the water or grazed on the grass by the festering marshes around the water. Munoo was fascinated by the diving antics of the little urchins in the water. He recalled the days when he himself had bathed in the low water of the Beas in his village. He felt an irresistible impulse to strip naked and jump into the water.
‘Shall we have a bath here?’ he said to Hari impetuously, standing by the pool and overcoming the stink that oozed from it with his naïve enthusiasm.
‘No, brother, now we are in a hurry. We can bathe here every day if we get a cottage near the pond,’ said Hari.
Munoo accepted the wise suggestion more easily as he advanced a few steps and saw a huge rubbish-heap piled with bricks and paper. The coloured glass shone in all the rottenness in the slime.
‘Only another mile,’ said Hari, consoli
ng his followers.
This mile, however, was only a bare five hundred yards from the half-finished thoroughfare, on which they had walked, by a rutted pathway that ended under the shadow of a high wall, topped by pieces of broken glass which reflected the rays of the sun by day and kept the thieves off at night. But it was a long five hundred yards.
On the plain, cut in two by the parallel lines of a narrow-gauge railway, were scattered rusty rails, heaps of dead coal, and all the refuse which the factory emitted. Under cover of these, and of the deep pits and puddles of mud into which the feet sank and stuck, at little distances, sat men relieving themselves. And on the even surfaces, fuel cakes of cow dung dried and festered with a stink that was unbearable.
Munoo’s heart contracted as if some inner instinct had gathered him in a knot, so that he might remain safe against the disintegration of filth and dung outside.
The inscription ‘Sir George White Cotton Mills’ cut in big, broad letters, hung on the arch of a closed iron gateway.
‘Halt!’ shouted a tall Pathan, striking the ground with the butt end of a double-barrelled gun, as he stood, belts of cartridges slung crosswise from his shoulders to his waist over his gold-braided, red velvet waistcoat, his baggy trousers rustling in the breeze under the long tunic, over the turned-up solid puthwar shoes, the loose ends of his blue silk turban tied round the embroidered Kulah, which imparted to his ferocious face a colour darker than the North Indian’s.
Lakshmi flew into a panic.
Munoo became aware of the authority, not of the Sarkar, because the man was not wearing a uniform, but of the mill, especially as he could see that behind the iron gates everything seemed orderly and well organized, from the clean cut of the factory building to the even shadows it cast on the compound.
Hari seemed to know the warden of the marches.
‘Salaam, Khan Sahib,’ he said, exalting the dignity of the guard with a little more respect than that which is implicit in conventional flattery. ‘I am Hari, the coolie who worked here four months ago and went away to fetch his family. I want to see the Chimta Sahib.’
Classic Mulk Raj Anand Page 38