Collected Short Stories

by Ruskin Bond

  I did not recognize them at first. They looked very beautiful together, and I had not expected Sunil and Maureen to look so beautiful. Sunil, on whom no surplus flesh had as yet gathered, possessed all the sinuous grace and power of a young god; and the woman, her white flesh pressed against young grass, reminded me of a painting by Titian that I had seen in a gallery in Florence. Her full, mature body was touched with a tranquil intoxication, her breasts rose and fell slowly, and waves of muscle merged into the shadows of her broad thighs. It was as though I had stumbled into another age, and had found two lovers in a forest glade. Only a fool would have wished to disturb them. Sunil had for once in his life risen above mediocrity, and I hurried away before the magic was lost.

  The human voice often shatters the beauty of the most tender passions; and when we left Simla the next day, and Maureen and Sunil used all the stock clichés to express their love, I was a little disappointed. But the poetry of life was in their bodies, not in their tongues.

  Back in Shahganj, Sunil actually plucked up the courage to speak to his father. This, to me, was a sign that he took the affair very seriously, for he seldom approached his father for anything. But all the sympathy that he received was a box on the ears. I received a curt note suggesting that I was having a corrupting influence on the boy and that I should stop seeing him. There was little I could do in the matter, because it had always been Sunil who had insisted on seeing me.

  He continued to visit me, bring me Maureen’s letters (strange, how lovers cannot bear that the world should not know their love), and his own to her, so that I could correct his English!

  It was at about this time that Sunil began speaking to me about his uncle’s paper factory and the possibility of working in it. Once he was getting a salary, he pointed out, Maureen would be able to leave her job and join him.

  Unfortunately, Sunil’s decision to join the paper factory took months to crystallize into a definite course of action, and in the meantime he was finding a panacea for lovesickness in rum and sometimes cheap country spirit. The money that he now borrowed was used not to pay his debts, or to incur new ones, but to drink himself silly. I regretted having been the first person to have offered him a drink. I should have known that Sunil was a person who could do nothing in moderation.

  He pestered me less often now, but the purpose of his occasional visits became all too obvious. I was having a little success, and thoughtlessly gave Sunil the few rupees he usually demanded. At the same time I was beginning to find other friends, and I no longer found myself worrying about Sunil, as I had so often done in the past. Perhaps this was treachery on my part . . .

  When finally I decided to leave Shahganj for Delhi, I went in search of Sunil to say goodbye. I found him in a small bar, alone at a table with a bottle of rum. Though barely twenty, he no longer looked a boy. He was a completely different person from the handsome, cocksure youth I had met at the wrestling pit a year previously. His cheeks were hollow and he had not shaved for days. I knew that when I first met him he had been without scruples, a shallow youth, the product of many circumstances. He was no longer so shallow and he had stumbled upon love, but his character was too weak to sustain the weight of disillusionment. Perhaps I should have left him severely alone from the beginning. Before me sat a ruin, and I had helped to undermine the foundations. None of us can really avoid seeing the outcome of our smallest actions . . .

  ‘I’m off to Delhi, Sunil.’

  He did not look up from the table.

  ‘Have a good time,’ he said.

  ‘Have you heard from Maureen?’ I asked, certain that he had not.

  He nodded, but for once did not offer to show me the letter. ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ he said, looking up and forcing a smile. ‘These dames are all the same, Uncle. We shouldn’t take them too seriously, you know.’

  ‘Why, what has she done, got married to someone else?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said scornfully. ‘To a bloody teacher.’

  ‘Well, she wasn’t young,’ I said. ‘She couldn’t wait for you for ever, I suppose.’

  ‘She could if she had really loved me. But there’s no such thing as love, is there, Uncle?’

  I made no reply. Had he really broken his heart over a woman? Were there, within him, unsuspected depths of feeling and passion? You find love when you least expect to and lose it when you are sure that it is in your grasp.

  ‘You’re a lucky beggar,’ he said. ‘You’re a philosopher. You find a reason for every stupid thing and so you are able to ignore all stupidity.’

  I laughed. ‘You’re becoming a philosopher yourself. But don’t think too hard, Sunil, you might find it painful.’

  ‘Not I, Chachaji,’ he said, emptying his glass. ‘I’m not going to think. I’m going to work in a paper factory. I shall become respectable. What an adventure that will be!’

  And that was the last time I saw Sunil.

  He did not become respectable. He was still searching like a great discoverer for something new, someone different, when he met his pitiful end in the cold rain of a December night.

  Though murder cases usually get reported in the papers, Sunil was a person of such little importance that his violent end was not considered newsworthy. It went unnoticed, and Maureen could not have known about it. The case has already been forgotten, for in the great human mass that is India, hundreds of people disappear every day and are never heard of again. Sunil will be quickly forgotten by all except those to whom he owed money.

  Dead Man’s Gift

  ‘A dead man is no good to anyone,’ said Nathu, the old shikari, ashe stared intothe glowing embers of the campfire and wrapped a thin blanket around his thin shoulders.

  We had spent a rewarding but tiring day in the Terai forests near Haldwani, where I had been photographing swamp deer. On our return to the forest resthouse, Nathu had made a log fire near the front veranda, and we had gathered round it—Nathu, myself and Ghanshyam Singh, the chowkidar—discussing a suicide that had taken place in a neighbouring village. I forget the details of the suicide—it was connected with a disappointed bridegroom—but the discussion led to some interesting reminiscences on the part of Ghanshyam Singh.

  We had all agreed with Nathu’s sentiments about dead men, when Ghanshyam interrupted to say, ‘I don’t know about that, brother. At least one dead man brought considerable good fortune to a friend of mine.’

  ‘How was that?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, about twenty years ago,’ said Ghanshyam Singh, ‘I was a policeman, one of the six constables at a small police post in the village of Ahirpur near the hills. A small stream ran past the village. Fed by springs, it contained a few feet of water even during the hottest of seasons, while after heavy rain it became a roaring torrent. The head constable in charge of our post was Dilawar Singh, who came from a good family which had fallen on evil days. He was a handsome fellow, very well-dressed, always spending his money before he received it. He was passionately fond of good horseflesh, and the mare he rode was a beautiful creature named Leila. He had obtained the mare by paying two hundred and fifty rupees down and promising to pay the remaining two hundred and fifty in six months’ time. If he failed to do so, he would have to return the mare and forfeit the deposit. But Dilawar Singh expected to be able to borrow the balance from Lala Ram Das, the wealthy bania of Ahirpur.

  ‘The bania of Ahirpur was one of the meanest alive. You know the sort, fat and flabby from overeating and sitting all day in his shop, but very wealthy. His house was a large one, situated near the stream, at some distance from the village.’

  ‘But why did he live outside the village, away from his customers?’ I asked.

  ‘It made no difference to him,’ said Ghanshyam. ‘Everyone was in his debt and, whether they liked it or not, were compelled to deal with him. His father had lived inside the village but had been looted by dacoits, whose ill-treatment had left him a cripple for life. Not a single villager had come to
his assistance on that occasion. He had never forgotten it. He built himself another house outside the village, with a high wall and only one entrance. Inside the wall was a courtyard with a stable for a pony and a byre for two cows, the house itself forming one side of the enclosure. When the heavy door of the courtyard was closed, the bania’s money bags were safe within his little fort. It was only after the old man’s death that a police post was established at Ahirpur.’

  ‘So Ram Das had a police post as well as a fort?’

  ‘The police offered him no protection. He was so mean that not a litre of oil or pinch of salt ever came from him to the police post. Naturally, we wasted no love on him. The people of Ahirpur hated and feared him, for most of them were in his debt and practically his slaves.

  ‘Now when the time came for Dilawar Singh to pay the remaining two hundred and fifty rupees for his mare Leila, he went to Ram Das for a loan. He expected to be well squeezed in the way of interest, but to his great surprise and anger the bania refused to let him have the money on any terms. It looked as though Dilawar would have to return the mare and be content with some knock-kneed ekka-pony.

  ‘A few days before the date of payment, Dilawar Singh had to visit a village some five miles downstream to investigate a case. He took me with him. On our return journey that night a terrific thunderstorm compelled us to take shelter in a small hut in the forest. When at last the storm was over, we continued on our way, I on foot, and Dilawar Singh riding Leila. All the way he cursed his ill luck at having to part with Leila, and called down curses on Ram Das. We were not far from the bania’s house when the full moon, high in the sky, came out from behind the passing storm clouds, and suddenly Leila shied violently at something white on the bank of the stream.

  ‘It was the naked body of a dead man. It had either been pushed into the stream without burning or swept off the pyre by the swollen torrent. I was about to push it off into the stream when Dilawar stopped me, saying that the corpse which had frightened Leila might yet be able to save her.

  ‘Together we pulled the body a little way up the bank. Then, after tying the mare to a tree, we carried the corpse up to the bania’s house and propped it against the main doorway. Returning to the stream, Dilawar remounted Leila, and we concealed ourselves in the forest. Like everyone else in the village, we knew the bania was an early riser, always the first to leave his house and complete his morning ablutions.

  ‘We sat and waited. The faint light of dawn was just beginning to make things visible when we heard the bania’s courtyard door open. There was a thud, an exclamation, and then a long silence.’

  ‘What had happened?’

  ‘Ram Das had opened the door, and the corpse had fallen upon him! He was frightened almost out of his wits. That some enemy was responsible for the presence of the corpse he quickly realized, but how to rid himself of it? The stream! Even to touch the corpse was defilement, but, as the saying goes, “Where there are no eyes, there is no caste”—and he began to drag the body along the river bank, panting and perspiring, yet cold with terror. He had almost reached the stream when we emerged casually from our shelter.

  ‘“Ah, baniaji, you are up early this morning!” called Dilawar Singh. “Hallo, what’s this? Is this one of your unfortunate debtors? Have you taken his life as well as his clothes?”

  ‘Ram Das fell on his knees. His voice failed, and he went as pale as the corpse he still held by the feet. Dilawar Singh dismounted, caught him roughly by the arm and dragged him to his feet.

  ‘“Thanedar Sahib, I will let you have the money,” gasped Ram Das.

  ‘“What money?”

  ‘“The two hundred and fifty rupees you wanted last week.” ‘“Then hurry up,” said Dilawar Singh, “or someone will come, and I shall be compelled to arrest you. Run!”

  ‘The unfortunate Ram Das realized that he was in an evil predicament. True, he was innocent, but before he could prove this he would be arrested by the police whom he had scorned and flouted. Lawyers would devour his savings. He would be torn from his family and deprived of his comforts. And worst of all, his clients would delay repayments! After only a little hesitation, he ran to his house and returned with two hundred and fifty rupees, which he handed over to Dilawar Singh. And, as far as I know— for I was transferred from Ahirpur a few weeks later—he never asked Dilawar Singh for its return.’

  ‘And what of the body?’ I asked.

  ‘We pushed it back into the stream,’ said Ghanshyam. ‘It had served its purpose well. So, Nathu, do you still insist that a dead man is no good to anyone?’

  ‘No good at all,’ said Nathu, spitting into the fire’s fast-fading glow. ‘For I came to Ahirpur not long after you were transferred. I had the pleasure of meeting Thanedar Dilawar Singh, and seeing his fine mare. It is true that he had the bania under his thumb, for Ram Das provided all the feed for the mare, at no charge. But one day the mare had a fit while Dilawar Singh was riding her, and plunging about in the street she flung her master to the ground. Dilawar Singh broke his neck, and died. She was indeed a dead man’s gift!’

  ‘The bania must have been quite pleased at the turn of events,’ I said.

  ‘Some say he poisoned the mare’s feed. Anyway, he kept the police happy by providing the oil to light poor Dilawar Singh’s funeral pyre, and generously refused to accept any payment for it!’

  The Most Potent Medicine of All

  Like most men, Wang Chei was fond of being his own doctor. He studied the book of the ancient physician Lu Fei whenever he felt slightly indisposed. Had he really been familiar with the peculiarities of his digestion, he would have avoided eating too many pickled prawns. But he ate pickled prawns first, and studied Lu Fei afterwards.

  Lu Fei, a physician of renown in Yunnan during the twelfth century, had devoted eight chapters to disorders of the belly, and there are many in western China who still swear by his methods— just as there are many in England who still swear by Culpepper’s Herbal.

  The great physician was a firm believer in the potency of otters’ tails, and had Wang Chei taken a dose of otters’ tails the morning after the prawns, his pain and cramps might soon have disappeared.

  But otters’ tails are both rare and expensive. In order to obtain a tail, one must catch an otter; in order to catch an otter, one must find a river; and there were no rivers in the region where Wang Chei lived.

  Wang grew potatoes to sell in the market twelve miles away, and sometimes he traded in opium. But what interested him most was the practice of medicine, and he had some reputation as a doctor among those villagers who regarded the distant hospital with suspicion.

  And so, in the absence of otters’ tails, he fell back upon the gall of bear, the fat of python, the whiskers of tiger, the blood of rhino, and the horn of sambhar in velvet. He tried all these (he had them in stock), mixing them—as directed by the book of Lu Fei—in the water of melted hailstones.

  Wang took all these remedies in turn, anxiously noting the reactions that took place in his system. Unfortunately, neither he nor his mentor, Lu Fei, had given much thought to diagnosis, and he did not associate his trouble with the pickled prawns.

  Life would hardly have been worth living without a few indulgences, especially as Wang’s wife excelled at making pickles. This was his misfortune. Her pickles were such that no man could refuse them.

  She was devoted to Wang Chei and indulged his tastes and his enormous appetite. Like him, she occasionally dipped into the pages of Lu Fei. From them she had learned that mutton fat was good for the eyebrows and that raspberry-leaf tea was just the thing for expectant mothers.

  Her faith in this physician of an earlier century was as strong as her husband’s. And now, with Wang Chei groaning and tossing on his bed, she studied the chapters on abdominal complaints.

  It appeared to her that Wang was very ill indeed, and she did not connect his woeful condition with overindulgence. He had been in bed for two days. Had he not dosed himself so liberally with python
’s fat and rhino’s blood, it is possible that he might have recovered on the morning following his repast. Now he was too ill to mix himself any further concoctions. Fortunately—as he supposed—his wife was there to continue the treatment.

  She was a small pale woman who moved silently about the house on little feet. It was difficult to believe that this frail creature had brought eleven healthy children into the world. Her husband had once been a strong, handsome man; but now the skin under his eyes was crinkling, his cheeks were hollow, his once well-proportioned body was sagging with loose flesh.

  Nevertheless, Wang’s wife loved him with the same intensity as on the day they first fell in love, twenty years ago. Anxiously, she turned the pages of Lu Fei.

  Wang was not as critically ill as she imagined; but she was frightened by his distorted features, his sweating body, his groans of distress. Watching him lying there, helpless and in agony, she could not help remembering the slim, virile husband of her youth; she was overcome with pity and compassion.

  And then she discovered, in the book of Lu Fei, a remedy for his disorder that could be resorted to when all else had failed.

  It was around midnight when she prepared the vital potion—a potion prepared with selfless love and compassion. And it was almost dawn when, weak and exhausted, she brought him the potion mixed in a soup.

  Wang felt no inclination for a bowl of soup at 5 a.m. He had with difficulty snatched a few hours of sleep, and his wife’s interruption made him irritable.

  ‘Must I drink this filth?’ he complained. ‘What is it anyway?’

  ‘Never mind what it is,’ she coaxed. ‘It will give you strength and remove your pain.’