Whispers in the Dark

by Ruskin Bond

A few weeks later, the ghost took possession of the moneylender’s daughter, with whom he was deeply in love. Seeing his daughter go out of her right senses, the moneylender sent for the highly esteemed idiot and offered him a great sum of money if he would cure his daughter. But remembering the ghost’s warning, the idiot refused to go. The moneylender was enraged and sent his henchmen to bring the idiot to him by force; and the idiot, having no means of resisting, was dragged along to the rich man’s house.

  As soon as the ghost saw his old companion, he cried out in a rage, ‘Idiot, why have you broken our agreement and come here? Now I will have to break your neck!’

  But the idiot, whose reputation for wisdom had actually served to make him wiser, said, ‘Brother ghost, I have not come to trouble you, but to tell you a terrible piece of news. Old friend and protector, we must leave this city soon. You see, SHE has come here—my dreaded wife, the shrew!—to torment us both, and to drag us back to the village. She is on the road to this house and will be here in a few minutes!’

  When the ghost heard this, he cried out, ‘Oh no, oh no! If she has come, then we must go! Bhum bho, bhum bho, we go, we go!’

  And breaking down the walls and doors of the house, the ghost gathered himself up into a little whirlwind and went scurrying out of the city, to look for a vacant peepul tree.

  The moneylender, delighted that his daughter had been freed of the evil influence, embraced the idiot and showered presents on him.

  And in due course, concluded Bibiji, the idiot married the moneylender’s beautiful daughter, inherited his father-in-law’s wealth and became the richest and most successful moneylender in the city.

  THE BAR THAT TIME FORGOT

  ‘Cockroaches!’ exclaimed Her Highness, the maharani. ‘Cockroaches everywhere! Can’t put down my glass without finding a cockroach beneath it!’

  ‘Cockroaches have a special liking for this room,’ observed Colonel Wilkie from his corner by the disused fireplace. ‘For one thing, our Melaram there—’and he indicated the bartender with a tilt of his double chin—‘never washes the glasses properly. And there are sandwich remains all over the place. Last week’s sandwiches, I might add. From that party of yours, Vijay.’

  Vijay, former Test cricketer, now forty and with a forty-three waist, turned to the colonel. ‘You should see the kitchen. A pigsty. The cook is seldom sober.’

  ‘We are seldom sober,’ said Suresh Mathur, income-tax lawyer, from his favourite bar stool.

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ snapped H.H. ‘Simon, fetch me another whisky.’

  Simon Lee, secretary-companion to Her Highness, rose dutifully from his chair and took her glass over to the bar counter.

  ‘Indian whisky or Scotch, sir?’ asked the bartender in a loud voice, knowing the maharani was too mean to buy Scotch.

  ‘Whisky will do,’ said Simon. ‘And a beer for me.’ Just then he felt like spiking the maharani’s whisky with something really lethal and be free of her for the rest of his days. Years of loyalty and companionship had given way to abject slavery, and there was nothing he could do about it. Nearing seventy, unqualified and unworldly, he could hardly set about creating any sort of career for himself.

  ‘And what are you having?’ he asked Suresh Mathur, who had just put away his first drink.

  ‘I’m never vague, I ask for Haig!’ Suresh replied, chuckling at his clever rhyme. None of the others thought it amusing, but this was usual. ‘When they stop giving me credit, I’ll try the local stuff.’

  ‘Good on you!’ called Colonel Wilkie from his corner. ‘But there’s nothing to beat Solan No. 1. Don’t trust these single malts—they always give me gout!’

  ‘I’ve never seen you move from that chair,’ said Vijay. ‘No wonder you suffer from gout.’

  ‘Played cricket once, like you,’ said the colonel. ‘Made a few runs. But they always made me twelfth man. Got fed up carrying out the drinks, or fielding when the star batsman felt indisposed. Gave up cricket. Indoor games are better. Why don’t we have a dartboard in here? In England, every respectable pub has a dartboard.’

  I’d been listening to the conversation from a small table behind a potted palm. I was sixteen, just out of school, and I wasn’t supposed to be in the bar, even if I wasn’t drinking. The large potted palm separated the barroom from the outer lounge; it was neutral territory.

  ‘I have a dartboard!’ I piped up, and every head turned towards me. Most of them had been unaware of my presence. They knew, of course, that I was the son of the lady who managed the hotel.

  Suresh Mathur, the most literary-inclined of the lot, said, ‘Young Copperfield has a dartboard!’

  ‘I’ll go and fetch it,’ I said, only too ready to justify my presence in the bar.

  I dashed down the corridor to my room and collided with my mother, who was doing her nightly round of the hotel.

  ‘What are you doing here? You mustn’t hang around the bar,’ she said sharply. ‘You have a radio in your room, apart from all your books.’

  The radio had been given to me the previous year by a guest who was now wanted by the police (on suspicion of being a serial killer), but I did not feel in any way guilty about possessing it; the guest had been very friendly and generous.

  ‘Darts,’ I told my mother. ‘They want to play darts. That’s what a pub is for, isn’t it?’ And I charged into my room, picked up my old dartboard and set of darts, and returned breathless to the barroom.

  My arrival was greeted by cheers, and Vijay helped me find a place for the dartboard, just below a framed picture of winged cherubs sporting about on some unlikely clouds.

  ‘Whoever gets the highest score has a free drink,’ announced Vijay.

  ‘Who pays for it?’ asked Suresh Mathur.

  ‘We all do—income-tax lawyers included.’

  ‘He never saved anyone a rupee of tax,’ declared the maharani. ‘But come on, let’s have a game.’

  ‘Would you like to start the proceedings, H.H.?’

  ‘No, I’ll wait till everyone’s finished. You can start with Colonel Wilkie.’

  ‘Age before beauty,’ said Vijay. ‘Come on, Colonel, we know you have a steady hand.’

  Colonel Wilkie’s hand was far from steady. His hands were always trembling. But he struggled out of his chair and took up his position at a point indicated by Vijay. Only one of his darts struck the board, earning him fifteen points. The others were near misses. Two darts bounced off the picture on the wall.

  ‘The old fool’s aiming at those naked cherubs,’ crowed H.H. ‘Go on, Simon, see if you can win a free drink for me.’

  Simon did his best, but scored a meagre thirty points.

  ‘Idiot!’ cried H.H. ‘And you always said you were a good darts player.’

  ‘Out of practice,’ Simon mumbled.

  Meanwhile, someone had opened up the old radiogram and placed a record on the turntable. The cheeky voice of Maurice Chevalier filled the room:

  All I want is just one girl,

  But I’ve got to have one girl,

  Yes, all I want is one—

  All I want is one—

  For a start!

  The evening was livening up. Suresh Mathur scored a few points, but it was Vijay who hit the bullseye and claimed a drink on the house.

  ‘Not until I’ve had my turn,’ shouted H.H., and made a grab for the darts.

  She flung them at the board at random, missing wildly—so much so that one dart lodged itself in Colonel Wilkie’s old felt hat, which was hanging from a peg, while another streaked across the room and narrowly missed the Roman nose of Reggie Bhowmik, ex-actor, who had just entered the room, accompanied by his demure little wife.

  Between ex-actor Reggie and former cricketer Vijay, there was no love lost. Both middle-aged and no longer in demand, they were rivals in failure. One spoke of the prejudice and incompetence of the cricket selectors, the other of jealousy in the film industry and his subsequent neglect. Both lived in the past—Vijay recalling the on
e outstanding innings he had played for the country (before being dropped after a series of failures), Reggie living on memories of his one great romantic role before a sagging waistline and alcohol-coarsened features had led to a rapid decline in his popularity. Somehow they had drifted into the backwater that was Dehra in 1950.

  There are some places, no matter how dull or lacking in opportunity, which nevertheless take a grip on the individual—especially the more easy-going types—and hold him in thrall, rendering him unfit for life in a larger, more competitive milieu. Dehra was one such place.

  The bar at Green’s Hotel was their refuge and their strength. Here they could reminisce, hark back to glory days, even speak optimistically of the future. Colonel Wilkie, Suresh Mathur, Vijay Kapoor, Reggie Bhowmik, H.H.—the maharani—and Simon Lee, were all dropouts, failures in their own way. Had they been busy and successful, they would not have found their way to Green’s every evening.

  Reggie Bhowmik liked making dramatic entrances, but the maharani was just as fond of being the centre of attention, and wasn’t about to give up centre stage to a fading actor.

  ‘A double whisky for Vijay!’ she declared. ‘He’s the only one here who still has a steady hand.’

  ‘You haven’t felt my hand,’ said Reggie, bearing down on her. ‘You missed my nose by a whisker.’

  ‘You’d look better with a scar running down your face,’ said H.H. ‘Then you might get a role as Frankenstein or the phantom of the opera.’

  This touched a raw nerve, as Reggie had been having some difficulty in getting a decent role in recent months. But he snapped back: ‘I’ll play the phantom on condition you’re cast as the fat soprano—then I shall take great pleasure in strangling you.’

  ‘Let’s change the subject,’ said his wife, Ruby, always ready to pour oil on troubled waters. She moved over to Colonel Wilkie’s table and asked, ‘How have you been, Colonel?’

  ‘Like an old bus—just about moving, and badly in need of spare parts.’

  ‘Well, have a beer with us—and some French fries if we can get any.’

  ‘Cook’s on strike,’ said Vijay. ‘Only liquid diet today.’

  I saw my opportunity and piped up again from behind the potted palm. ‘I can boil some eggs for you, if you like!’

  There was a stunned silence, broken by Suresh Mathur, who said, sounding a little incredulous, ‘Young Master Copperfield can boil an egg!’

  Everyone clapped, and Vijay said, ‘Copperfield has certainly saved the day for us. First he produces a dartboard, and now he’s about to save us from starvation. Go to it, Copperfield!’

  Off I went, then, not to boil eggs—there weren’t any in the kitchen—but to find Sitaram, the room boy, who was the only person of my age in the hotel. I found him in my room, listening to ‘Binaca Geet Mala’, the popular musical request programme, on my radio.

  ‘We need some eggs,’ I told him. ‘Boiled.’

  ‘Egg-man comes tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Cook finished the rest. Made himself an omelette, got drunk and took off!’

  ‘Well, let’s go down to the bazaar and buy some eggs. I’ve got enough money on me.’

  So off we went and, near the clock tower, found a street vendor selling boiled eggs. We bought a dozen and hurried back to the barroom, where Vijay and Reggie were having a heated argument on the relative merits of cricket and football. Reggie didn’t think much of cricket, and Vijay didn’t think much of football.

  ‘And what’s your favourite game?’ asked Ruby of Suresh Mathur.

  ‘Snakes and ladders,’ he said, chuckling, and returned to his drink.

  ‘Boiled eggs!’ I announced. ‘On the house!’

  Sitaram produced saucers, and distributed the eggs among the guests—two each, exactly.

  ‘Do I have to peel my own egg?’ asked the maharani querulously, staring down at the two eggs rolling about on her plate. ‘Peel them for me, Simon!’

  Simon dutifully cracked one of the eggs and began peeling it for her. ‘Not that way, you fool. You’re leaving all the skin on it.’ And seizing the half-peeled egg from her companion, she flung it across the room, narrowly missing the bartender.

  ‘Good throw!’ exclaimed Vijay. ‘You’d be great fielding on the boundary.’

  ‘Better at baseball,’ said Reggie.

  ‘Snakes and ladders,’ said Suresh again, now quite drunk.

  Colonel Wilkie, equally drunk, gave a loud belch.

  The maharani got up to leave. ‘Well, I’m not going to sit here to be insulted by everyone. Come on, Simon, drive me home!’ And she marched out of the room with an attempt at majesty, but tripped over the hotel cat, an ugly, striped creature who had sensed that there was food around and had come looking for it. The cat caterwauled, H.H. screamed and cursed, Reggie cheered and Suresh Mathur pronounced, ‘When two cats are fighting, they make a hideous sound.’

  Not to be outdone in nastiness, the maharani went up to Suresh, looked him up and down, and said, ‘It’s easy to tell you’re a single man.’

  ‘I’m not homosexual,’ said Suresh defensively. (The word ‘gay’ had yet to be used in any sense other than ‘happy’ in those days.)

  ‘No.’ The maharani smiled wickedly. ‘You’re single because you are so damn ugly!’

  And on that triumphant note she left the room, followed by the obedient Simon.

  ‘Pay no attention to her, Suresh,’ said Vijay generously. ‘You’re better-looking than that old lapdog who follows her around.’

  ‘I understand she’s leaving him her fortunes,’ said Reggie. ‘I could do with some of it myself. Perhaps I could interest her in producing a film.’

  ‘She’s tight-fisted,’ said Vijay. ‘If you look closely at Simon, you’ll notice he’s wearing the late maharaja’s smoking jacket and deer-stalker cap. The old maharaja loved dressing up like Sherlock Holmes.’

  Colonel Wilkie came out of his reverie. ‘When I was in Jamnagar—’ he began.

  ‘We’ve heard that a hundred times,’ said Vijay.

  ‘I haven’t,’ said Ruby.

  ‘When I was in Jamnagar,’ continued Colonel Wilkie, ‘I saw Duleepsinhji made a hundred. That was against Lord Tennyson’s team.’

  ‘Yesterday you said Ranjitsinhji,’ remarked Vijay.

  ‘I’m not that old,’ said Colonel Wilkie, struggling to his feet. ‘But old enough to want to go to bed. I’ll toddle off now.’ Locating his walking stick, he found his way to the door, wishing everyone goodnight as he passed them. They heard the tap of his walking stick as he walked away, down the corridor.

  ‘Shouldn’t someone go with him?’ asked Ruby. ‘It’s very late and he isn’t too steady on his feet.’

  ‘Oh, he’ll find his way home,’ said Suresh nonchalantly. ‘Lives just around the corner, in rented rooms near the Club.’

  ‘Why doesn’t he join the Club?’

  ‘Can’t afford it. Neither can I.’

  ‘Neither can I,’ said Vijay.

  ‘Neither can we,’ added Ruby, sadly. ‘And anyway, it’s more homely here. Even when the maharani is around.’

  ‘She can afford the Club,’ said Suresh. ‘But they won’t let her in. Created a disturbance once too often. Insulted the secretary and emptied a dish of chicken biryani on his head.’

  ‘Not done,’ said Vijay. ‘Not cricket.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Reggie. ‘Can’t be true.’

  ‘Calling me a liar?’ asked Suresh, bristling.

  Ruby poured oil on troubled waters again. ‘Interesting if true,’ she said. ‘And if not true, still interesting.’

  ‘Mark Twain.’

  My mother came along the corridor just as Vijay had shown off his knowledge of literature and found me behind the palms, listening to all this fascinating talk.

  ‘Time you went to your room, young man,’ she said.

  ‘I’m waiting for everyone to go home,’ I said. ‘Then I’ll help Sitaram tidy up. There’s no cook, as you know.’

 
‘Let him stay,’ called Suresh from his bar stool. ‘It’s all part of his education. And he’s old enough for a glass of beer. How old are you, sonny?’

  ‘Sixteen,’ I said.

  ‘Well, enjoy yourself. It’s later than you think.’

  But I wasn’t thinking of beer just then. I knew there were sausages in the fridge, and I had every intention of polishing them off as soon as all the guests had gone. I wanted to be a writer, but I had no intention of starving in a garret. However, all thoughts of food vanished when I looked across the room and saw Colonel Wilkie framed in the opposite doorway. He was staring at us through the glass. The glass door then opened of its own volition, and Colonel Wilkie stepped into the room. We all looked up, and Reggie said, ‘Back again, Colonel? Still feeling thirsty?’ But Colonel Wilkie ignored the jibe and walked slowly across the room to the table where he had been sitting. This was close to where I was standing. He bent down and picked up his pipe from the table. He’d forgotten it when he’d left the barroom. Shoving the pipe into his pocket, he turned and retraced his steps, leaving the room by the door from which he had entered.

  ‘Well, I’m blowed,’ said Vijay. ‘I thought he was sleep-walking.’

  ‘Never goes anywhere without his pipe,’ said Suresh. ‘A perfect example of single-mindedness.’

  ‘Didn’t say a word.’

  ‘The pipe was all that mattered.’

  ‘Like a favourite cricket bat,’ said Vijay.

  ‘Maybe I’ll come back for mine when I’m dead.’

  A silence fell upon the room. The mention of death had a sobering effect upon the small group. And come to think of it, Colonel Wilkie, on his return to the barroom, had something of the zombie about him—the walking dead.

  There was a commotion in the passageway, and my mother burst into the room, followed by the nightwatchman.

  ‘Colonel Wilkie’s dead,’ said my mother. ‘He collapsed on his steps about half an hour ago.’

  ‘But he was here five minutes ago,’ said Vijay.

  ‘No, sir,’ said Gopal the watchman. ‘I went home with him when he left here some time back. Madam said to keep an eye on him. When we got to his place, he began climbing his steps with some difficulty. I helped him to the top step, and then he collapsed. I dragged him into his room and then ran for Dr Bhist. He is there now.’