by Ruskin Bond
What he didn’t know was that a bigger scourge than war had swept the Garhwal Himalayas that year. And that was the Bubonic Plague. Village after village had been totally destroyed of all living things, and the green and yellow mustard fields he saw around him were there because they had been planted before the plague. They were now ready for harvesting but there was no one to do the work. Those who had survived had abandoned their mountain homes and fled to the plains. As night fell, he stood in the courtyard wondering what he should do. His own village was just beyond the ridge and he set off for it, hoping all would be well there. As he rounded the path on the ridge he looked down at his village and it seemed as empty and forlorn as his uncle’s. There were no lights and no activity. As he remembered it, there should be the sounds of children laughing or crying, people calling in their cows to be locked up for the night, and the occasional barking of dogs as they settled down for their nightly vigil against marauding leopards.
Yet, there was no sound and no light. The wind had picked up a bit and as it raced down the mountainside it sighed and moaned. It was still early for the moon to come up and so it was totally dark as Bhawan Singh felt his way home. It was a path he had known ever since he could walk but even then it seemed a bit unfamiliar to him. On the outskirts was the home of Bethalu, the outcast. As was the custom in those days, all outcasts had to live a little distance away from the main village.
The main path passed above Bethalu’s broken-down shack. In the rains the roof leaked because Bethalu never had any money for new slate tiles. In the winter the snow went right down and through the roof. And in the summers you couldn’t sleep inside because of the flies and the heat. Looking down at it, Bhawan Singh saw a narrow crack of light. Aha, he said to himself, somebody is around. So he turned back and took the lower path leading to Bethalu’s house.
The light was a beacon of hope, a sign of some kind of life.
As he stood before the low, narrow door leading to the shack, Bhawan Singh wondered who could be inside. He called out for Bethalu and a voice from inside asked him to enter. He had to take off his knapsack because the doorway was too narrow, and he left it outside. As he stooped and walked in, he could just make out the figure of a man sitting near a wick lamp. It gave out a faint, yellow light but after the darkness outside, it had a welcome warmth of its own.
There was a peculiar smell about the room but he didn’t pay much attention to it. He wanted to know where his family and the other villagers had gone.
‘Where have the people gone?’ the soldier asked.
There was no reply from the figure crouched in the darkness. Bhawan Singh repeated himself, but again there was no reply.
‘Who are you?’ he pressed on.
The figure stirred slightly and then, like someone who has not spoken for a long time and is not used to speaking much, said, ‘What! Is that you?’
It was a hacksaw of a voice and it set Bhawan Singh’s teeth on edge. He felt a shiver run down his spine and the hair on his back stand up. And then he recognized the smell in the room. It was the smell of death and putrefaction.
‘Speak up, man,’ he shouted, less in anger than in panic.
‘Don’t be frightened,’ the figure said.
‘I’m not frightened,’ retorted the soldier.
‘Ah, yes, but you are,’ the figure replied.
At this Bhawan Singh lunged at him. But all he grabbed was thin air. The figure had moved away. And suddenly from behind him he heard wild laughter that filled the room and the countryside. He spun around but there was nothing to see. The young soldier had known fear, but that was of a different kind. Now he went cold all over.
Then the lamp went out and the shack was plunged in darkness. The soldier felt rooted to the spot. He wanted to get out of the shack but his limbs wouldn’t move. What finally got him out of his paralysis was the growing stench of death and decay. It filled the room and he could hardly breathe.
On leaden limbs he rose to his feet and, head bent low, moved to the door. He only had a few feet to go but it seemed as though he was running for miles. His breathing was laboured and hard, his chest felt as though it was going to burst.
A little later he found himself flat on his back. Above him the moon was rising over the ridge. He struggled to his feet and looked around. The shack stood there in silent testimony. His knapsack was leaning against the wall where he had left it. He went to it and took out his canteen of water. But there was not a drop in it. Strange, he thought. He had filled it at a spring just before reaching the village, and hadn’t touched it after that.
‘Thirsty, are you?’ boomed a voice. His throat was so dry he couldn’t say a word. Then suddenly from out of the darkness a hand reached out with a pitcher full of water. The moonlight bounced off the brass vessel and the soldier grabbed it greedily. He drank his fill. Then, he started to feel hungry.
‘Hungry, are you?’ boomed the voice again. And this time the soldier didn’t say a word. He had got over the initial shock and fright. He was now wondering what was happening to him. He looked into the gloom and saw nothing. All he could hear was the sound of somebody breathing heavily.
Then the voice came again: ‘Want your mother’s cooking?’
Getting braver and bolder the soldier said: ‘Who are you? And can you give me any food?’
And the voice said: ‘Wait and see.
In what seemed like a few minutes there were piping hot mustard leaves cooked in dollops of home-made butter, hot brown rotis of millet and halwa. And to wash it down, fresh buttermilk. The soldier looked at the feast spread before him and could not resist reaching out for it.
The voice said: ‘Eat heartily, my boy, eat heartily ….
The soldier sensed a kind of menace behind the offer. By then he had realized that something terrible, something wrong, was going on. He was no longer hungry. All he wanted was to get away from that frightening spot.
He was wondering what to do next when he felt a cold, clammy hand on the nape of his neck. And the voice was urging him to eat before the food got cold. That was more than he could bear, and he bolted like a runaway horse. Into the fields he ran, jumping from terrace to terrace, cutting a wild furrow through the knee-high mustard. And at his heels came the laboured breathing of a man in pursuit. Then the voice: ‘You won’t get far, my boy. I haven’t eaten for days and I don’t like my dinner running away from me.’
That spurred the soldier to run as fast as he could. Chest heaving, legs pumping madly he ran through the mustard fields and from time to time leapt from one terrace to another. And all the time the voice followed him. The soldier was now running out of steam and as he ran he looked around for some place to hide. Then he remembered something his father had told him when he was a child.
‘Remember, my son,’ the old man had said, ‘when you are being chased by an evil spirit, a ghost or a witch, run into the nearest cowshed and grab a cow round its neck. These foul things are mortally afraid of the holy cow. They can never harm you then.’
The soldier recollected that there was a cowshed not too far from where he was. He changed direction and charged towards the shed. As he dived into it he felt a steely grip on one ankle. With his last ounce of energy, and driven by a great fear, he jerked his foot free and fell on the neck of a cow. He hugged her with all his strength and prayed for deliverance from the evil outside.
He was at bay and he knew it. The cow was his only lifeline. Outside, he could hear the deep breathing of a man who has run far and hard. His own breathing was slowly returning to normal but his heart was in his mouth. He also remembered his father telling him that these evil spirits ruled only at night and that by dawn they were gone. He knew he had to hold on till daybreak.
Outside, the voice said: ‘That cow won’t live long, my son. And when it dies I’ll come and eat you.’
The soldier felt for the thick vein running under the cow’s neck. The pulse was irregular and faint. Come on, mother cow, he prayed. Don’t let me do
wn now. And he began massaging the animal in the hope that it might last out the night. Outside he could hear his pursuer pacing up and down like a soldier on sentry duty.
Bhawan Singh did not know what the time was. All he knew was that he had to keep the cow alive till dawn. If it died, then it was his turn to go. So he worked hard at keeping the cow warm. He rubbed her with wads of straw till his arms ached and he felt he couldn’t go on any longer.
And then, in the faint light of dawn, he saw the gradually brightening outline of the door to the cowshed. Outside a howling arose that echoed from hill-top to hill-top. It was a chilling sound, piercing through the soldier’s very soul. He clapped his hands to his ears to shut off the sound but he could feel it in his bones. Just like the times when he used to be under an artillery bombardment!
Quiet returned, so suddenly that it was almost painful. A crow cawed somewhere and the cow fell limp in his arms. She had died. He disentangled himself and crawled out into the open. Taking large gulps of the sweet mountain morning air, Bhawan Singh started to get his nerves and mind together. Was it a dream? A nightmare? No, it couldn’t be. He looked at his puttees. They were stained yellow from running through the mustard fields.
To further confirm his experience he set off for Bethalu’s shack. He stood by the doorway and saw that his pack was still leaning against the wall. He mustered all his courage and entered the dingy hut. Sunbeams streamed through the cracks in the roof. In one corner he saw something laid out, covered in a white sheet.
With the toe of his boot he lifted one corner of the sheet. It was a man. A dead man, and from the smell it seemed he had been dead for some time. He lifted the sheet further until he had uncovered the whole body.
It was totally naked. And the legs were stained yellow from running through the mustard fields.
Topaz
Ruskin Bond
It seemed strange to be listening to the strains of “The Blue Danube” while gazing out at the pine-clad slopes of the Himalayas, worlds apart. And yet the music of the waltz seemed singularly appropriate. A light breeze hummed through the pines, and the branches seemed to move in time to the music. The record-player was new, but the records were old, picked up in a junk-shop behind the Mall.
Below the pines there were oaks, and one oak tree in particular caught my eye. It was the biggest of the lot and stood by itself on a little knoll below the cottage. The breeze was not strong enough to lift its heavy old branches, but something was moving, swinging gently from the tree, keeping time to the music of the waltz, dancing ….
It was someone hanging from the tree.
A rope oscillated in the breeze, the body turned slowly, turned this way and that, and I saw the face of a girl, her hair hanging loose, her eyes sightless, hands and feet limp; just turning, turning, while the waltz played on.
I turned off the player and ran downstairs.
Down the path through the trees, and on to the grassy knoll where the big oak stood.
A long-tailed magpie took fright and flew out from the branches, swooping low across the ravine. In the tree there was no one, nothing. A great branch extended half-way across the knoll, and it was possible for me to reach up and touch it. A girl could not have reached it without climbing the tree.
As I stood there, gazing up into the branches, someone spoke behind me.
‘What are you looking at?’
I swung round. A girl stood in the clearing, facing me. A girl of seventeen or eighteen; alive, healthy, with bright eyes and a tantalizing smile. She was lovely to look at. I hadn’t seen such a pretty girl in years.
‘You startled me,’ I said. ‘You came up so unexpectedly.’
‘Did you see anything—in the tree?’ she asked.
‘I thought I saw someone from my window. That’s why I came down. Did you see anything?’
‘No.’ She shook her head, the smile leaving her face for a moment. ‘I don’t see anything. But other people do—sometimes.’
‘What do they see?’
‘My sister.’
‘Your sister?’
‘Yes. She hanged herself from this tree. It was many years ago. But sometimes you can see her hanging there.’
She spoke matter-of-factly: whatever had happened seemed very remote to her.
We both moved some distance away from the tree. Above the knoll, on a disused private tennis-court (a relic from the hill-station’s colonial past) was a small stone bench. She sat down on it: and, after a moment’s hesitation, I sat down beside her.
‘Do you live close by?’ I asked.
‘Further up the hill. My father has a small bakery.’
She told me her name—Hameeda. She had two younger brothers.
‘You must have been quite small when your sister died.’
‘Yes. But I remember her. She was pretty.’
‘Like you.’
She laughed in disbelief. ‘Oh, I am nothing to her. You should have seen my sister.’
‘Why did she kill herself?’
‘Because she did not want to live. That’s the only reason, no? She was to have been married but she loved someone else, someone who was not of her own community. It’s an old story and the end is always sad, isn’t it?’
‘Not always. But what happened to the boy—the one she loved? Did he kill himself too?’
‘No, he took a job in some other place. Jobs are not easy to get, are they?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never tried for one.’
‘Then what do you do?’
‘I write stories.’
‘Do people buy stories?’
‘Why not? If your father can sell bread, I can sell stories.’
‘People must have bread. They can live without stories.’
‘No, Hameeda, you’re wrong. People can’t live without stories.’
Hameeda! I couldn’t help loving her. Just loving her. No fierce desire or passion had taken hold of me. It wasn’t like that. I was happy just to look at her, watch her while she sat on the grass outside my cottage, her lips stained with the juice of wild bilberries. She chatted away—about her friends, her clothes, her favourite things.
‘Won’t your parents mind if you come here every day?’ I asked.
‘I have told them you are teaching me.’
‘Teaching you what?’
‘They, did not ask. You can tell me stories.’
So I told her stories.
It was midsummer.
The sun glinted on the ring she wore on her third finger: a translucent golden topaz, set in silver.
‘That’s a pretty ring,’ I remarked.
‘You wear it,’ she said, impulsively removing it from her hand. ‘It will give you good thoughts. It will help you to write better stories.’
She slipped it on to my little finger.
‘I’ll wear it for a few days,’ I said. ‘Then you must let me give it back to you.’
On a day that promised rain I took the path down to the stream at the bottom of the hill. There I found Hameeda gathering ferns from the shady places along the rocky ledges above the water.
‘What will you do with them?’ I asked.
‘This is a special kind of fern. You can cook it as a vegetable.’
‘It is tasty?’
‘No, but it is good for rheumatism.’
‘Do you suffer from rheumatism?’
‘Of course not. They are for my grandmother, she is very old.’
‘There are more ferns further upstream,’ I said.’ But we’ll have to get into the water.’
We removed our shoes and began paddling upstream. The ravine became shadier and narrower, until the sun was almost completely shut out. The ferns grew right down to the water’s edge. We bent to pick them but instead found ourselves in each other’s arms; and sank slowly, as in a dream, into the soft bed of ferns, while overhead a whistling thrush burst out in dark sweet song.
‘It isn’t time that’s passing by,’ it seemed to say. ‘It is you and I.
It is you and I ….’
I waited for her the following day, but she did not come.
Several days passed without my seeing her.
Was she sick? Had she been kept at home? Had she been sent away? I did not even know where she lived, so I could not ask. And if I had been able to ask, what would I have said?
Then one day I saw a boy delivering bread and pastries at the little tea-shop about a mile down the road. From the upward slant of his eyes, I caught a slight resemblance to Hameeda. As he left the shop, I followed him up the hill. When I came abreast of him, I asked: ‘Do you have your own bakery?’
He nodded cheerfully, ‘Yes. Do you want anything—bread, biscuits, cakes? I can bring them to your house.’
‘Of course. But don’t you have a sister? A girl called Hameeda?’
His expression changed. He was no longer friendly. He looked puzzled and slightly apprehensive.
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I haven’t seen her for some time.’
‘We have not seen her either.’
‘Do you mean she has gone away?’
‘Didn’t you know? You must have been away a long time. It is many years since she died. She killed herself. You did not hear about it?’
‘But wasn’t that her sister—your other sister?’
‘I had only one sister—Hameeda—and she died, when I was very young. It’s an old story, ask someone else about it.’
He turned away and quickened his pace, and I was left standing in the middle of the road, my head full of questions that couldn’t be answered.
That night there was a thunderstorm. My bedroom window kept banging in the wind. I got up to close it and, as I looked out, there was a flash of lightning and I saw that frail body again, swinging from the oak tree.
I tried a make out the features, but the head hung down and the hair was blowing in the wind.
Was it all a dream?
It was impossible to say. But the topaz on my hand glowed softly in the darkness. And a whisper from the forest seemed to say, ‘It isn’t time that’s passing by, my friend. It is you and I ….’