Whispers in the Dark

by Ruskin Bond

  EYES OF THE CAT

  Her eyes seemed flecked with gold when the sun was on them. And as the sun set over the mountains, drawing a deep, red wound across the sky, there was more than gold in Kiran’s eyes. There was anger; for she had been cut to the quick by some remarks her teacher had made—the culmination of weeks of insults and taunts.

  Kiran was poorer than most of the girls in her class and could not afford the tuitions that had become almost obligatory if one was to pass and be promoted. ‘You’ll have to spend another year in the ninth,’ said Madam. ‘And if you don’t like that, you can find another school—a school where it won’t matter if your blouse is torn and your tunic is old and your shoes are falling apart.’ Madam had shown her large teeth in what was supposed to be a good-natured smile, and all the girls had tittered dutifully. Sycophancy had become part of the curriculum in Madam’s private academy for girls.

  On the way home in the gathering gloom, Kiran’s two companions commiserated with her.

  ‘She’s a mean old thing,’ said Aarti. ‘She doesn’t care for anyone but herself.’

  ‘Her laugh reminds me of a donkey braying,’ said Sunita, who was more forthright.

  But Kiran wasn’t really listening. Her eyes were fixed on some point in the far distance, where the pines stood in silhouette against a night sky that was growing brighter every moment. The moon was rising, a full moon, a moon that meant something very special to Kiran, that made her blood tingle and her skin prickle and her hair glow and send out sparks. Her steps seemed to grow lighter, her limbs more sinewy, as she moved gracefully, softly over the mountain path.

  Abruptly she left her companions at a fork in the road.

  ‘I’m taking the shortcut through the forest,’ she said.

  Her friends were used to her sudden whims. They knew she was not afraid of being alone in the dark. But Kiran’s moods made them feel a little nervous, and now, holding hands, they hurried home along the open road.

  The shortcut took Kiran through the dark oak forest. The crooked, tormented branches of the oaks threw twisted shadows across the path. A jackal howled at the moon; a nightjar called from the bushes. Kiran walked fast, not out of fear but from urgency, and her breath came in short, sharp gasps. Bright moonlight bathed the hillside when she reached her home on the outskirts of the village.

  Refusing her dinner, she went straight to her small room and flung the window open. Moonbeams crept over the windowsill and over her arms, which were already covered with golden hair. Her strong nails had shredded the rotten wood of the windowsill.

  * * *

  Tail swishing and ears pricked, the tawny leopard came swiftly out of the window, crossed the open field behind the house and melted into the shadows.

  A little later, it padded silently through the forest.

  Although the moon shone brightly on the tin-roofed town, the leopard knew where the shadows were deepest and merged beautifully with them. An occasional intake of breath, which resulted in a short, rasping cough, was the only sound it made.

  Madam was returning from dinner at a ladies’ club, called the Kitten Club—a sort of foil to the husbands’ club affiliations. There were still a few people in the street, and while no one could help noticing Madam, who had the contours of a steamroller, none saw or heard the predator who had slipped down a side alley and reached the steps of the teacher’s house. It sat there silently, waiting with all the patience of an obedient schoolgirl.

  When Madam saw the leopard on her steps, she dropped her handbag and opened her mouth to scream; but her voice would not materialize. Nor would her tongue ever be used again, either to savour chicken biryani or to pour scorn upon her pupils, for the leopard had sprung at her throat, broken her neck and dragged her into the bushes.

  In the morning, when Aarti and Sunita set out for school, they stopped, as usual, at Kiran’s cottage and called out to her.

  Kiran was sitting in the sun, combing her long, black hair.

  ‘Aren’t you coming to school today, Kiran?’ asked the girls.

  ‘No, I won’t bother to go today,’ said Kiran. She felt lazy, but pleased with herself, like a contented cat.

  ‘Madam won’t be pleased,’ said Aarti. ‘Shall we tell her you’re sick?’

  ‘It won’t be necessary,’ said Kiran, and gave them one of her mysterious smiles. ‘I’m sure it’s going to be a holiday.’

  Her gentle mouth and slender hands were still smeared with blood.

  THE TROUBLE WITH JINNS

  My friend Jimmy has only one arm. He lost the other when he was a young man of twenty-five. The story of how he lost his good right arm is a little difficult to believe, but I swear that it is absolutely true.

  To begin with, Jimmy was (and presumably still is) a jinn. Now, a jinn isn’t really a human like us. A jinn is a spirit creature from another world who has assumed, for a lifetime, the physical aspect of a human being. Jimmy was a true jinn and he had the jinn’s gift of being able to elongate his arm at will. Most jinns can stretch their arms to a distance of twenty or thirty feet. Jimmy could attain forty feet. His arm would move through space or up walls or along the ground like a beautiful gliding serpent. I have seen him stretched out beneath a mango tree, helping himself to ripe mangoes from the top of the tree. He loved mangoes. He was a natural glutton and it was probably his gluttony that first led him to misuse his peculiar gifts.

  We were at school together at a hill station in northern India. Jimmy was particularly good at basketball. He was clever enough not to lengthen his arm too much because he did not want anyone to know that he was a jinn. In the boxing ring, he generally won his fights. His opponents never seemed to get past his amazing reach. He just kept tapping them on the nose until they retired from the ring, bloody and bewildered.

  It was during the half-term examinations that I stumbled on Jimmy’s secret. We had been set a particularly difficult algebra paper, but I had managed to cover couple of sheets with correct answers and was about to forge ahead on another sheet, when I noticed someone’s hand on my desk. At first I thought it was the invigilator’s. But when I looked up, there was no one beside me. Could it be the boy sitting directly behind? No, he was engrossed in his question paper and had his hands to himself. Meanwhile, the hand on my desk had grasped my answer sheets and was cautiously moving off. Following its descent, I found that it was attached to an arm of amazing length and pliability. This moved stealthily down the desk and slithered across the floor, shrinking all the while, until it was restored to its normal length. Its owner was, of course, one who had never been any good at algebra.

  I had to write out my answers a second time, but after the exam, I went straight up to Jimmy, told him I didn’t like his game and threatened to expose him. He begged me not to let anyone know, assured me that he couldn’t really help himself, and offered to be of service to me whenever I wished. It was tempting to have Jimmy as my friend, for with his long reach, he would obviously be useful. I agreed to overlook the matter of the pilfered papers and we became the best of pals.

  It did not take me long to discover that Jimmy’s gift was more of a nuisance than a constructive aid. That was because Jimmy had a second-rate mind and did not know how to make proper use of his powers. He seldom rose above the trivial. He used his long arm in the tuck shop, in the classroom, in the dormitory. And when we were allowed out to the cinema, he used it in the dark of the hall.

  Now, the trouble with all jinns is that they have a weakness for women with long, black hair. The longer and blacker the hair, the better for jinns. And should a jinn manage to take possession of the woman he desires, she goes into a decline and her beauty decays. Everything about her is destroyed, except for the beautiful long, black hair.

  Jimmy was still too young to be able to take possession in this way, but he couldn’t resist touching and stroking long, black hair. The cinema was the best place for the indulgence of his whims. His arm would start stretching, his fingers would feel their way along
the rows of seats, and his lengthening limb would slowly work its way along the aisle, until it reached the back of the seat in which sat the object of his admiration. His hand would stroke the long, black hair with great tenderness, and if the girl felt anything and looked around, Jimmy’s hand would disappear behind the seat and lie there, poised like the hood of a snake, ready to strike again.

  At college two or three years later, Jimmy’s first real victim succumbed to his attentions. She was a lecturer in Economics, not very good-looking, but her hair, black and lustrous, reached almost to her knees. She usually kept it in plaits, but Jimmy saw her one morning, just after she had taken a head bath, and her hair lay spread out on the cot on which she was reclining. Jimmy could no longer control himself. His spirit, the very essence of his personality, entered the woman’s body, and the next day she was distraught, feverish and excited. She would not eat, went into a coma, and in a few days, dwindled to a mere skeleton. When she died, she was nothing but skin and bone, but her hair had lost none of its loveliness.

  I took pains to avoid Jimmy after this tragic event. I could not prove that he was the cause of the lady’s sad demise, but in my own heart I was quite certain of it. For, since meeting Jimmy, I had read a good deal about jinns and knew their ways.

  We did not see each other for a few years. And then, holidaying in the hills last year, I found we were staying at the same hotel. I could not very well ignore him, and after we had drunk a few beers together, I began to feel that I had perhaps misjudged Jimmy and that he was not the irresponsible jinn I had taken him for. Perhaps the college lecturer had died of some mysterious malady that attacks only college lecturers, and Jimmy had nothing at all to do with it.

  We had decided to take our lunch and a few bottles of beer to a grassy knoll just below the main motor-road. It was late afternoon and I had been sleeping off the effects of the beer, when I woke to find Jimmy looking rather agitated.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘Up there, under the pine trees,’ he said.

  ‘Just above the road. Don’t you see them?’

  ‘I see two girls,’ I said. ‘So what?’

  ‘The one on the left. Haven’t you noticed her hair?’

  ‘Yes, it is very long and beautiful and—now look, Jimmy, you’d better get a grip on yourself.’ But already his hand was out of sight, his arm snaking up the hillside and across the road.

  Presently I saw the hand emerge from some bushes near the girls and then cautiously make its way to the girl with the black tresses. So absorbed was Jimmy in the pursuit of his favourite pastime that he failed to hear the blowing of a horn. Around the bend of the road, came a speeding Mercedes-Benz truck.

  Jimmy saw the truck but there wasn’t time for him to shrink his arm back to normal. It lay right across the entire width of the road, and when the truck had passed over it, it writhed and twisted like a mortally wounded python.

  By the time the truck driver and I could fetch a doctor, the arm (or what was left of it) had shrunk to its ordinary size. We took Jimmy to hospital, where the doctors found it necessary to amputate. The truck driver, who kept insisting that the arm he had run over was at least thirty feet long, was arrested on a charge of drunken driving.

  Some weeks later I asked Jimmy, ‘Why are you so depressed? You still have one arm. Isn’t it gifted in the same way?’

  ‘I never tried to find out,’ he said, ‘and I’m not going to try now.’

  He is, of course, still a jinn at heart, and whenever he sees a girl with long, black hair, he must be terribly tempted to try out his one good arm and stroke her beautiful tresses. But he has learnt his lesson. It is better to be a human without any gifts than a jinn or a genius with one too many.

  WILSON’S BRIDGE

  The old wooden bridge has gone, and today an iron suspension bridge straddles the Bhagirathi as it rushes down the gorge below Gangotri. But villagers will tell you that you can still hear the hoofs of Wilson’s horse as he gallops across the bridge he had built a hundred and fifty years ago. At the time, people were sceptical of its safety, and so, to prove its sturdiness, he rode across it again and again. Parts of the old bridge can still be seen on the far bank of the river. And the legend of Wilson and his pretty hill bride, Gulabi, is still well known in this region.

  I had joined some friends in the old forest rest house near the river. There were the Rays, recently married, and the Duttas, married many years. The younger Rays quarrelled frequently; the older Duttas looked on with more amusement than concern. I was a part of their group and yet something of an outsider. As a single man, I was a person of no importance. And as a marriage counsellor, I wouldn’t have been of any use to them.

  I spent most of my time wandering along the riverbanks or exploring the thick deodar and oak forests that covered the slopes. It was these trees that had made a fortune for Wilson and his patron, the Raja of Tehri. They had exploited the great forests to the full, floating huge logs downstream to the timber yards in the plains.

  Returning to the rest house late one evening, I was halfway across the bridge, when I saw a figure at the other end, emerging from the mist. Presently I made out a woman, wearing the plain dhoti of the hills; her hair fell loose over her shoulders. She appeared not to see me, and reclined against the railing of the bridge, looking down at the rushing waters far below. And then, to my amazement and horror, she climbed over the railing and threw herself into the river.

  I ran forward, calling out, but I reached the railing only to see her fall into the foaming waters below, where she was carried swiftly downstream.

  The watchman’s cabin stood a little way off. The door was open. The watchman, Ram Singh, fifteen, was reclining on his bed, smoking a hookah.

  ‘Someone just jumped off the bridge,’ I said breathlessly. ‘She’s been swept down the river!’

  The watchman was unperturbed. ‘Gulabi again,’ he said, almost to himself; and then to me, ‘Did you see her clearly?’

  ‘Yes, a woman with long, loose hair—but I didn’t see her face very clearly.’

  ‘It must have been Gulabi. Only a ghost, my dear sir. Nothing to be alarmed about. Every now and then someone sees her throw herself into the river. Sit down,’ he said, gesturing towards a battered old armchair, ‘be comfortable and I’ll tell you all about it.’

  I was far from comfortable, but I listened to Ram Singh tell me the tale of Gulabi’s suicide. After making me a glass of hot, sweet tea, he launched into a long, rambling account of how Wilson, a British adventurer seeking his fortune, had been hunting musk deer when he encountered Gulabi on the path from her village. The girl’s grey-green eyes and peach-blossom complexion enchanted him, and he went out of his way to get to know her people. Was he in love with her, or did he simply find her beautiful and desirable? We shall never really know. In the course of his travels and adventures, he had known many women, but Gulabi was different—childlike and ingenuous—and he decided he would marry her. The humble family to which she belonged had no objection. Hunting had its limitations, and Wilson found it more profitable to trap the region’s great forest wealth. In a few years, he had made a fortune. He built a large timbered house at Harsil, another in Dehradun and a third at Mussoorie. Gulabi had all she could have wanted, including two robust little sons. When he was away on work, she looked after their children and their large apple orchard at Harsil.

  And then came the evil day when Wilson met the Englishwoman, Ruth, on the Mussoorie Mall, and decided that she should have a share of his affections and his wealth. A fine house was provided for her too. The time he spent at Harsil with Gulabi and his children dwindled. ‘Business affairs’—he was now one of the owners of a bank—kept him in the fashionable hill resort. He was a popular host and took his friends and associates on shikar parties in the Doon.

  Gulabi brought up her children in village style. She heard stories of Wilson’s dalliance with the Mussoorie woman and, on one of his rare visits, she confronted him and voic
ed her resentment, demanding that he leave the other woman. He brushed her aside and told her not to listen to idle gossip. When he turned away from her, she picked up the flintlock pistol that lay on the gun table, and fired one shot at him. The bullet missed him and shattered her looking glass. Gulabi ran out of the house, through the orchard and into the forest, then down the steep path to the bridge built by Wilson only two or three years before. When he had recovered his composure, he mounted his horse and came looking for her. It was too late. She had already thrown herself off the bridge into the swirling waters far below. Her body was found a mile or two downstream, caught between some rocks.

  This was the tale that Ram Singh told me, with various flourishes and interpolations of his own. I thought it would make a good story to tell my friends that evening, before the fireside in the rest house. They found the story fascinating, but when I told them I had seen Gulabi’s ghost, they thought I was doing a little embroidering of my own. Mrs Dutta thought it was a tragic tale. Young Mrs Ray thought Gulabi had been very silly. ‘She was a simple girl,’ opined Mr Dutta. ‘She responded in the only way she knew . . .’ ‘Money can’t buy happiness,’ said Mr Ray. ‘No,’ said Mrs Dutta, ‘but it can buy you a great many comforts.’ Mrs Ray wanted to talk of other things, so I changed the subject. It can get a little confusing for a bachelor who must spend the evening with two married couples. There are undercurrents which he is aware of but not equipped to deal with.

  I would walk across the bridge quite often after that. It was busy with traffic during the day, but after dusk there were only a few vehicles on the road and seldom any pedestrians. A mist rose from the gorge below and obscured the far end of the bridge. I preferred walking there in the evening, half-expecting, half-hoping to see Gulabi’s ghost again. It was her face that I really wanted to see. Would she still be as beautiful as she was fabled to be?