by Ruskin Bond
As I stepped back, clinging to a thorn bush for support, the boy vanished. I stumbled back to the community centre and spent the night on a chair in the library.
* * *
I did not see him again.
But weeks later, when I was down with a severe bout of flu, I heard him from my sickbed, whistling beneath my window. Was he calling to me to join him, I wondered, or was he just trying to reassure me that all was well? I got out of bed and looked out, but I saw no one. From time to time I heard his whistling; but as I got better, it grew fainter, until it ceased altogether.
Fully recovered, I renewed my old walks to the top of the hill. But although I lingered near the cemetery until it grew dark, and paced up and down the deserted road, I did not see or hear the whistler again. I felt lonely, in need of a friend, even if it was only a phantom bicycle-rider. But there were only the trees.
And so every evening, I walk home in the darkness, singing the old refrain:
We three,
We’re not alone;
We’re not even company—
My echo,
My shadow,
And me . . .
WHEN THE CLOCK STRIKES THIRTEEN
Tick-tock,
Tick-tock,
One day the clock will strike thirteen, and I’ll be liberated forever, thought Rani-ma, as the clock struck twelve and she poured herself another generous peg from the vodka bottle. Recently she had changed from gin to vodka, the latter seemed a little more suited to her mid-morning depression. The bottle was half-empty but it would take her through to the late afternoon, when her ancient manservant, Bahadur, would arrive with another bottle and some vegetables for the evening meal. She did not bother with breakfast or lunch, and yet she was fat, fifty, and oh so forlorn.
Living alone on the seventh floor of a new apartment building—Ranipur’s only skyscraper—had only emphasized Rani-ma’s loneliness and isolation. Friends had drifted away over the years. Her selfish nature and acerbic tongue had destroyed many relationships. There were no children, for marriage had passed her by. Occasionally a nephew or cousin turned up, hoping for a loan, but going away disappointed.
Rani-ma had nothing to live for, and almost every day, after the third vodka, she contemplated suicide. If only that clock would strike thirteen, Time, for her, would stop, and she would take that fatal leap into oblivion. Because it had to be a leap—something dramatic, something final. No sleeping tablets for her, no overdose of alprax, no hyoscine in her vodka. And she was far too clumsy to try slitting her own wrists; she’d only make a mess of it, and Bahadur would find her bleeding on the carpet and run for a doctor.
There was an old shotgun in the bottom drawer of a cupboard and a case full of cartridges, but the gun hadn’t been used for years and the cartridges looked damp and mouldy; of no use, except to frighten off an intruder. No, there was only one thing to do: leap off her seventh-floor balcony, stay airborne for a few seconds, and then—oblivion!
Why wait for that clock to strike thirteen?
Time would never stop—not for her, not for all those thousands below, hurrying about in a heat of hope, striving to find some meaning in their lives, some sustenance for their hordes of children; some happy, some miserable but alive . . .
She opened the door to her balcony and stood there, unsteady, supporting herself against the low railing. Down below on the busy street, cars, scooters, cyclists, pedestrians, went about their business, unaware of the woman looking down upon them from her balcony. Once the queen of Ranipur, she had always looked down upon them. Now her rule extended no further than her apartment, and the world went by, unheeding.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, why keep listening to that wretched clock? Time must have a stop.
* * *
Walking along the pavement with a jaunty air, hat at an angle, humming an old tune, came Colonel Jolly, recently retired. He was on his way to the bank to collect his pension, and he enjoyed walking into town, nodding or waving to acquaintances, stopping occasionally to buy a paper or an ice cream, for he was still a boy as far as ice creams went. He was enjoying his retirement, his sons were settled abroad, his wife was at home, baking a cake for his evening tea. She was in love with life and he hadn’t a care in the world.
As he passed below the tall apartment building, something came between him and the sun, blocking out his vision. He had no idea what it was that struck him, bringing about a total eclipse. One moment, he was striding along, at peace with the world; the next, he was flat on the pavement, buried beneath a mountain of flesh that had struck him like a comet.
Both the colonel and Rani-ma were rushed to the nearest hospital. The colonel’s neck and spine had been shattered and he died without recovering consciousness. Rani-ma took some time to recover; but thanks to her fall having been cushioned by the poor colonel, recover she did, retiring to a farmhouse on the outskirts of the town.
Colonel Jolly, lover of life, had lost his to a cruel blow of fate. Rani-ma, who hated living, survived into a grumpy old age.
She is still waiting for the clock to strike thirteen.
THE LONELY GHOST
Mr Lobo wasn’t thrown out. His gift as a pianist must have been appreciated by H.H., because two or three evenings later, as I walked past Hollow Oak, I heard the tinkle of a piano and recognized the immortal strains of ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling’, the only thing Irish about H.H. and Mr Lobo being the whisky they had obviously been drinking. It was Irish disguised as Scotch and bottled in Bijnor. Not from Ricardo’s cellars.
They were duetting in a grand manner a la Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald, and while Mr Lobo had a pleasing tenor voice, Neena’s raucous strains took all the mystery out of ‘Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life’. Tender romance was not her forte.
I continued on my way, stopping at Mrs Montalban’s for a mid-morning coffee. Here I learnt that Mr Montalban would be back in a few days, with the intention of spending some time with his family and, of course, ‘our wonderful friend, the maharani’.
I found Pablo on the front veranda. He was holding Anna’s doll—Anna’s birthday doll, the one that supposedly resembled the maharani—and he was busy sticking drawing pins into various parts of its anatomy.
‘Drawing pins won’t work,’ I said. ‘You need something with greater penetration.’
He wasn’t put out by my intrusion.
‘I’ve got a hammer and nails,’ he said, his eyes lighting up. ‘Or I could take out all the stuffing.’
‘Anna wouldn’t like that. Disemboweling her favourite doll.’
‘It’s not her favourite doll. She doesn’t come near it. Actually, she’s not into dolls. Prefers ghosts.’
‘Ghosts?’
‘She keeps seeing a little girl who wants to play with her.’
‘Yes, she drew a picture of her. I thought it was just a girl she’d imagined. Have you seen her?’
He shook his head; a lock of hair fell across his brow, giving him a tender, innocent look. Not the sort who practises voodoo on dolls.
‘Only Anna has seen her.’
‘Perhaps she’s a real girl, but very shy. And she runs away, like a frightened gazelle.’
‘The old mali says the house is haunted.’
The old mali was an eighty-year-old gardener who did odd jobs at various houses on the hillside. According to him, all the old houses were haunted.
‘And what else does he say? That someone died here in tragic circumstances. Most people die at home, you know. It would be hard to find an old house which hadn’t been witness to a death or two. Why aren’t hospitals haunted? People die in them every day.’
‘My mother says some people like to return to their old homes from time to time. They won’t go back to a hospital.’
‘Don’t blame them. Hospitals are scary places—even for ghosts.’
As the evening wore on, Pablo took out his guitar and began strumming it without actually settling into a tune.
‘Play something simple,’
I said.
And for the first time I heard him singing. It was an old lullaby—something out of Africa, I think. I put it down in words that I remember, for he sang it first in Spanish and then in English:
How can there be a cherry without a stone?
How can there be a chicken without a bone?
How can there be a baby with no crying?
How can there be a story with no ending?
And then the answer to this gentle riddle:
A cherry, when it’s blooming, it has no stone,
A chicken, when it’s hatching, it has no bone,
A baby, when it’s sleeping, has no crying . . .
A story of ‘I love you’ has no ending . . .
‘You sing better than you play,’ I said. ‘You must sing more often.’
He began singing softly in Spanish, and presently we were joined by Anna and Mrs Montalban. She poured me a glass of red wine and placed a currant cake before me. Normally, I wasn’t a wine drinker, but it went well in that house and in that company.
The sun went down with a lot of fuss. First a fiery red, and then in waves of pink and orange as it slid beneath the small clouds that wandered about on the horizon. The brief twilight of northern India passed like a shadow over the hills, and dusk gave way to darkness. I had stepped outside to watch the sunset. Now a lamp came on in the sitting room, followed by the veranda light. An atmosphere of peace and harmony descended on the hillside.
Pablo was calling me. ‘Amigo, come quickly. Pronto, pronto!’ Whenever he was excited, he broke into Spanish.
I stepped back into the room to find him pointing at the far wall.
A faint glow had spread across the whitewashed wall, as though a part of that spectacular sunset had been left behind. And emerging from this suffused light, as though a rent in the clouds, was the face of a girl. Old-fashioned, sad-happy, beautiful.
‘It’s her!’ exclaimed Anna. ‘I’ve seen her at the window sometimes. And now she’s inside!’
‘She means no harm,’ said Mrs Montalban, as composed and unruffled as always. ‘She wants to be back here, she longs to be with us—a happy family!’
And it was a happy family, in Montalban’s prolonged absence.
But the face on the wall soon faded, returned to its own eternal twilight. Who was she, and why had she come back? Perhaps Mrs Montalban was right, and she longed to be of this world again.
We would never know—until and unless we joined her.
A JOB WELL DONE
Dhuki, the gardener, was clearing up the weeds that grew in profusion around the old, disused well. He was an old man, skinny and bent and spindly legged, but he had always been like that. His strength lay in his wrists and in his long, tendril-like fingers. He looked as frail as a petunia but he had the tenacity of a vine.
‘Are you going to cover the well?’ I asked. I was eight, and a great favourite of Dhuki’s. He had been the gardener long before my birth, had worked for my father until my father died and now worked for my mother and stepfather.
‘I must cover it, I suppose,’ said Dhuki. ‘That’s what the Major Sahib wants. He’ll be back any day and if he finds the well still uncovered, he’ll get into one of his raging fits and I’ll be looking for another job!’
The ‘Major Sahib’ was my stepfather, Major Summerskill. A tall, hearty, back-slapping man, who liked polo and pig-sticking. He was quite unlike my father. My father had always given me books to read. The major said I would become a dreamer if I read too much, and took the books away. I hated him and did not think much of my mother for marrying him.
‘The boy’s too soft,’ I heard him tell my mother. ‘I must see that he gets riding lessons.’
But before the riding lessons could be arranged, the major’s regiment was ordered to Peshawar. Trouble was expected from some of the frontier tribes. He was away for about two months. Before leaving, he had left strict instructions for Dhuki to cover up the old well.
‘Too damned dangerous having an open well in the middle of the garden,’ my stepfather had said. ‘Make sure that it’s completely covered by the time I get back.’
Dhuki was loath to cover up the old well. It had been there for over fifty years, long before the house had been built. In its walls lived a colony of pigeons. Their soft cooing filled the garden with a lovely sound. And during the hot, dry summer months, when taps ran dry, the well was always a dependable source of water. The bhisti still used it, filling his goatskin bag with the cool, clear water and sprinkling the paths around the house to keep the dust down.
Dhuki pleaded with my mother to let him leave the well uncovered.
‘What will happen to the pigeons?’ he asked.
‘Oh, surely they can find another well,’ said my mother. ‘Do close it up soon, Dhuki. I don’t want the sahib to come back and find that you haven’t done anything about it.’
My mother seemed just a little bit afraid of the major. How can we be afraid of those we love? It was a question that puzzled me then and puzzles me still.
The major’s absence made life pleasant again. I returned to my books, spent long hours in my favourite banyan tree, ate buckets of mangoes and dawdled in the garden, talking to Dhuki.
Neither he nor I were looking forward to the major’s return. Dhuki had stayed on after my mother’s second marriage only out of loyalty to her and affection for me. He had really been my father’s man. But my mother had always appeared deceptively frail and helpless, and most men, Major Summerskill included, felt protective towards her. She liked people who did things for her.
‘Your father liked this well,’ said Dhuki. ‘He would often sit here in the evenings with a book in which he made drawings of birds and flowers and insects.’
I remembered those drawings and I remembered how they had all been thrown away by the major when he had moved into the house. Dhuki knew about it too. I didn’t keep much from him.
‘It’s a sad business, closing this well,’ said Dhuki again. ‘Only a fool or a drunkard is likely to fall into it.’
But he had made his preparations. Planks of sal wood, bricks and cement were neatly piled up around the well.
‘Tomorrow,’ said Dhuki. ‘Tomorrow I will do it. Not today. Let the birds remain for one more day. In the morning, baba, you can help me drive the birds from the well.’
On the day my stepfather was expected back, my mother hired a tonga and went to the bazaar to do some shopping. Only a few people had cars in those days. Even colonels went about in tongas. Now, a clerk finds it beneath his dignity to sit in one.
As the major was not expected before evening, I decided I would make full use of my last free morning. I took all my favourite books and stored them away in an outhouse, where I could come for them from time to time. Then, my pockets bursting with mangoes, I climbed up the banyan tree. It was the darkest and coolest place on a hot day in June.
From behind the screen of leaves that concealed me, I could see Dhuki moving about near the well. He appeared to be most unwilling to get on with the job of covering it up.
‘Baba!’ he called several times. But I did not feel like stirring from the banyan tree. Dhuki grasped a long plank of wood and placed it across one end of the well. He started hammering. From my vantage point in the banyan tree, he looked very bent and old.
A jingle of tonga bells and the squeak of unoiled wheels told me that a tonga was coming in at the gate. It was too early for my mother to be back. I peered through the thick, waxy leaves of the tree and nearly fell off my branch in surprise. It was my stepfather, the major! He had arrived earlier than expected.
I did not come down from the tree. I had no intention of confronting my stepfather until my mother returned.
The major had climbed down from the tonga and was watching his luggage being carried on to the veranda. He was red in the face and the ends of his handlebar moustache were stiff with brilliantine.
Dhuki approached with a half-hearted salaam.
‘Ah, so
there you are, you old scoundrel!’ exclaimed the major, trying to sound friendly and jocular. ‘More jungle than garden, from what I can see. You’re getting too old for this sort of work, Dhuki. Time to retire! And where’s the memsahib?’
‘Gone to the bazaar,’ said Dhuki.
‘And the boy?’
Dhuki shrugged. ‘I have not seen the boy today, sahib.’
‘Damn!’ said the major. ‘A fine homecoming, this. Well, wake up the cook boy and tell him to get some sodas.’
‘Cook boy’s gone away,’ said Dhuki.
‘Well, I’ll be double damned,’ said the major.
The tonga went away and the major started pacing up and down the garden path. Then he saw Dhuki’s unfinished work at the well. He grew purple in the face, strode across to the well and started ranting at the old gardener.
Dhuki began making excuses. He said something about a shortage of bricks, the sickness of a niece, unsatisfactory cement, unfavourable weather, unfavourable gods. When none of this seemed to satisfy the major, Dhuki began mumbling about something bubbling up from the bottom of the well and pointed down into its depths. The major stepped on to the low parapet and looked down. Dhuki kept pointing. The major leant over a little.
Dhuki’s hand moved swiftly, like a conjurer making a pass. He did not actually push the major. He appeared merely to tap him once on the bottom. I caught a glimpse of my stepfather’s boots as he disappeared into the well. I couldn’t help thinking of Alice in Wonderland, of Alice disappearing down the rabbit hole. There was a tremendous splash and the pigeons flew up, circling the well thrice before settling on the roof of the bungalow.