by Ruskin Bond
I must have slept for about half an hour because when I awoke, I found that Daya Ram had come back and was vigorously threshing about in the narrow confines of the pool. I sat up and asked him the time.
‘Twelve o’clock,’ he shouted, coming out of the water, his dripping body all gold and silver in sunlight. ‘They will be waiting for lunch.’
‘Let them wait,’ I said.
It was a relief to talk to Daya Ram, after the uneasy conversations in the lounge and dining room.
‘Dayal sahib will be angry with me.’
‘I’ll tell him we found the trail of the leopard, and that we went so far into the jungle that we lost our way. As Miss Deeds is so critical of the food, let her cook the meal.’
‘Oh, she only talks like that,’ said Daya Ram. ‘Inside she is very soft. She is too soft in some ways.’
‘She should be married.’
‘Well, she would like to be. Only there is no one to marry her. When she came here she was engaged to be married to an English army captain. I think she loved him, but she is the sort of person who cannot help loving many men all at once, and the captain could not understand that—it is just the way she is made, I suppose. She is always ready to fall in love.’
‘You seem to know,’ I said.
‘Oh, yes.’
We dressed and walked back to the hotel. In a few hours, I thought, the tonga will come for me and I will be back at the station. The mysterious charm of Shamli will be no more, but whenever I pass this way I will wonder about these people, about Miss Deeds and Lin and Mrs Dayal.
Mrs Dayal … She was the one person I had yet to meet. It was with some excitement and curiosity that I looked forward to meeting her; she was about the only mystery left in Shamli now, and perhaps she would be no mystery when I met her. And yet … I felt that perhaps she would justify the impulse that made me get down from the train.
I could have asked Daya Ram about Mrs Dayal, and so satisfied my curiosity; but I wanted to discover her for myself. Half the day was left to me, and I didn’t want my game to finish too early.
I walked towards the veranda, and the sound of the piano came through the open door.
‘I wish Mr Lin would play something cheerful,’ said Miss Deeds. ‘He’s obsessed with the Funeral March. Do you dance?’
‘Oh, no,’ I said.
She looked disappointed. But when Lin left the piano, she went into the lounge and sat down on the stool. I stood at the door watching her, wondering what she would do. Lin left the room somewhat resentfully.
She began to play an old song which I remembered having heard in a film or on a gramophone record. She sang while she played, in a slightly harsh but pleasant voice:
Rolling round the world
Looking for the sunshine
I know I’m going to find some day … .
Then she played Am I Blue? and Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup. She sat there singing in a deep, husky voice, her eyes a little misty, her hard face suddenly kind and sloppy. When the dinner gong rang, she broke off playing and shook off her sentimental mood, and laughed derisively at herself.
I don’t remember that lunch. I hadn’t slept much since the previous night and I was beginning to feel the strain of my journey. The swim had refreshed me, but it had also made me drowsy. I ate quite well, though, of rice and kofta curry, and then, feeling sleepy, made for the garden to find a shady tree.
There were some books on the shelf in the lounge, and I ran my eye over them in search of one that might condition sleep. But they were too dull to do even that. So I went into the garden, and there was Kiran on the swing, and I went to her tree and sat down on the grass.
‘Did you find the leopard?’ she asked.
‘No,’ I said, with a yawn.
‘Tell me a story.’
‘You tell me one,’ I said.
‘All right. Once there was a lazy man with long legs, who was always yawning and wanting to fall asleep …’
I watched the swaying motions of the swing and the movements of the girl’s bare legs, and a tiny insect kept buzzing about in front of my nose …
‘… And fall asleep, and the reason for this was that he liked to dream …’
I blew the insect away, and the swing became hazy and distant, and Kiran was a blurred figure in the trees …
‘… Liked to dream, and what do you think he dreamt about …’
Dreamt about, dreamt about …
When I awoke there was that cool rain-scented breeze blowing across the garden. I remember lying on the grass with my eyes closed, listening to the swishing of the swing. Either I had not slept long, or Kiran had been a long time on the swing; it was moving slowly now, in a more leisurely fashion, without much sound. I opened my eyes and saw that my arm was stained with the juice of the grass beneath me. Looking up, I expected to see Kiran’s legs waving above me. But instead I saw dark, slim feet and above them the folds of a sari. I straightened up against the trunk of the tree to look closer at Kiran, but Kiran wasn’t there. It was someone else in the swing, a young woman in a pink sari, with a red rose in her hair.
She had stopped the swing with her foot on the ground, and she was smiling at me.
It wasn’t a smile you could see, it was a tender fleeting movement that came suddenly and was gone at the same time, and its going was sad. I thought of the others’ smiles, just as I had thought of their skins: the tonga-driver’s friendly, deceptive smile; Daya Ram’s wide sincere smile; Miss Deeds’s cynical, derisive smile. And looking at Koki, I knew a smile could never change. She had always smiled that way.
Yes, that was who it was—Koki, the girl I had met one summer in Dehra long, long back. She was a grownup woman now but I had no difficulty recognizing her.
‘You haven’t changed,’ she said.
I was standing up now, though still leaning against the tree for support. Though I had never thought much about the sound of her voice, it seemed as familiar as the sounds of yesterday.
‘You haven’t changed either,’ I said. ‘But where did you come from?’ I wasn’t sure yet if I was awake or dreaming.
She laughed as she had always laughed at me.
‘I came from behind the tree. The little girl has gone.’
‘Yes, I’m dreaming,’ I said helplessly.
‘But what brings you here?’
‘I don’t know. At least I didn’t know when I came. But it must have been you. The train stopped at Shamli and I don’t know why, but I decided I would spend the day here, behind the station walls. You must be married now, Koki.’
‘Yes, I am married to Mr Dayal, the manager of the hotel. And what has been happening to you?’
‘I am a writer now, and I’m poor, and I still live in Dehra.’
‘Is Dehra still the same?’ she asked.
‘More or less,’ I replied. ‘Tell me, how have you been?’
‘Oh, my friend,’ she said, getting up suddenly and coming to me, ‘I have been here two years, and I am already feeling old. But now you are here! It was a bit of magic. I came through the trees after Kiran had gone, and there you were, fast asleep under the tree. I didn’t wake you then, because I wanted to see you wake up.’
She was near me and I could look at her more closely. Her cheeks did not have the same freshness— they were a little pale—and she was thinner now, but her eyes were the same, smiling the same way. Her fingers, when she took my hand, were the same warm delicate fingers.
‘Talk to me,’ she said. ‘Tell me about yourself.’
‘You tell me,’ I said.
‘I am here,’ she said. ‘That is all there is to say about myself.’
‘Then let us sit down and I’ll talk.’
‘Not here.’ She took my hand and led me through the trees. ‘Come with me.’
I heard the jingle of a tonga bell and a faint shout. I stopped and laughed.
‘My tonga,’ I said. ‘It has come to take me back to the station.’
‘But you
are not going,’ said Koki, immediately downcast.
‘I will tell him to come in the morning,’ I said. ‘I will spend the night in your Shamli.’
I walked to the front of the hotel where the tonga was waiting. I was glad no one else was in sight. The youth was smiling at me in his most appealing manner.
‘I’m not going today,’ I said. ‘Will you come tomorrow morning?’
‘I can come whenever you like, friend. But you will have to pay for every trip, because it is a long way from the station even if my tonga is empty. Usual fare, friend, one rupee.’
I didn’t try to argue but resignedly gave him the rupee. He cracked his whip and pulled on the reins, and the carriage moved off.
‘If you don’t leave tomorrow,’ the youth called out after me, ‘you’ll never leave Shamli!’
I walked back through the trees, but I couldn’t find Koki.
‘Koki, where are you?’ I called, but I might have been speaking to the trees, for I had no reply. There was a small path going through the orchard, and on the path I saw a rose petal. I walked a little further and saw another petal. They were from Koki’s red rose. I walked on down the path until I had skirted the orchard, and then the path went along the fringe of the jungle, past a clump of bamboos, and here the grass was a lush green as though it had been constantly watered. I was still finding rose petals. I heard the chatter of seven-sisters, and the call of a hoopoe. The path bent to meet a stream, there was a willow coming down to the water’s edge, and Koki was sitting there.
‘Why didn’t you wait?’ I said.
‘I wanted to see if you were as good at finding your way as you used to be.’
‘Well, I am,’ I said, sitting down beside her on the grassy bank of the stream. ‘Even if I’m a little out of practice.’
‘Yes, I remember the time you climbed up an apple tree to pick some fruit for me. You got up all right but then you couldn’t come down again. I had to climb up myself and help you.’
‘I don’t remember that,’ I said.
‘Of course you do.’
‘It must have been some other friend of yours.’
‘I never climbed trees with anyone else.’
‘Well, I don’t remember.’
I looked at the little stream that ran past us. The water was no more than ankle-deep, cold and clear and sparkling, like the mountain stream near my home. I took off my shoes, rolled up my trousers, and put my feet in the water. Koki’s feet joined mine.
At first I had wanted to ask about her marriage, whether she was happy or not, what she thought of her husband; but now I couldn’t ask her these things. They seemed far away and of little importance. I could think of nothing she had in common with Mr Dayal. I felt that her charm and attractiveness and warmth could not have been appreciated, or even noticed, by that curiously distracted man. He was much older than her, of course. He was obviously not her choice but her parents’, and so far they were childless. Had there been children, I don’t think Koki would have minded Mr Dayal as her husband. Children would have made up for the absence of passion—or was there passion in Satish Dayal? I remembered having heard from someone in Dehra that Koki had been married to a man she didn’t like. I remembered having shrugged off the news, because it meant she would never come my way again, and I have never yearned after something that has been irredeemably lost. But she had come my way again. And was she still lost? That was what I wanted to know …
‘What do you do with yourself all day?’ I asked.
‘Oh, I visit the school and help with the classes. It is the only interest I have in this place. The hotel is terrible. I try to keep away from it as much as I can.’
‘And what about the guests?’
‘Oh, don’t let us talk about them. Let us talk about ourselves. Do you have to go tomorrow?’
‘Yes, I suppose so. Will you always be in this place?’
‘I suppose so.’
That made me silent. I took her hand and my feet churned up the mud at the bottom of the stream. As the mud subsided, I saw Koki’s face reflected in the water. Suddenly, I wanted to care for her and protect her. I wanted to take her away from that place, from sorrowful Shamli. Of course, I had forgotten all about my poor finances, Koki’s family, and the shoes I wore, which were my last pair. The uplift I was experiencing in this meeting with Koki, who had been one of the best friends I had made in all my childhood years, made me reckless and impulsive.
I lifted her hand to my lips and kissed her on the soft of her palm.
She turned her face to me so that we looked deep into each other’s eyes, and I kissed her again. And we put our arms around each other and lay together on the grass with the water running over our feet. We said nothing at all, simply lay there for what seemed like several years, or until the first drop of rain.
It was a big wet drop, and it splashed on Koki’s cheek just next to mine, and ran down to her lips. The next big drop splattered on the tip of my nose, and Koki laughed and sat up. Little ringlets were forming on the stream where the raindrops hit the water, and above us there was a pattering on the banana leaves.
‘We must go,’ said Koki.
We started homewards, but had not gone far before it was raining steadily, and Koki’s hair came loose and streamed down her body. The rain fell harder, and we had to hop over pools and avoid the soft mud. I pulled her beneath a big tree and held her close, trying to shield her from the rain. I thought she was crying, but I wasn’t sure, because it might have been the raindrops on her cheeks.
‘Come away with me,’ I said impulsively. ‘Leave this place. Come away with me tomorrow morning. We will go somewhere far away and be together always.’
She smiled at me and said, ‘You are still a dreamer, aren’t you?’
‘Why can’t you come?’ I said petulantly.
‘I am married. It is as simple as that.’
I didn’t know what to say. I felt angry and rebellious, and there was no one and nothing to rebel against.
‘I must go back now,’ said Koki.
She ran out from under the tree, springing across the grass, and the wet mud flew up and flecked her legs. I watched her through the thin curtain of rain until she reached the veranda. She turned to wave to me, and then skipped into the hotel.
The rain had lessened, but I didn’t know what to do with myself. The hotel was uninviting, and it was too late to leave Shamli. If the grass hadn’t been wet I would have preferred to sleep under a tree rather than return to the hotel to sit at that alarming dining table.
I came out from under the trees and crossed the garden. But instead of making for the veranda I went round to the back of the hotel. Smoke issuing from the barred window of a back room told me I had probably found the kitchen. Daya Ram was inside, squatting in front of a stove, stirring a pot of stew. The stew smelt appetizing. Daya Ram looked up and smiled at me.
‘I thought you had gone,’ he said.
‘I’ll go in the morning,’ I said, pulling myself up on an empty table. Then I had one of my sudden ideas and said, ‘Why don’t you come with me? I can find you a good job in Dehra. How much do you get paid here?’
‘Fifty rupees a month. But I haven’t been paid for three months.’
‘Could you get your pay before tomorrow morning?’
‘No, I won’t get anything until one of the guests pays a bill. Miss Deeds owes about fifty rupees on whisky alone. She will pay up, she says, when the school pays her salary. And the school can’t pay her until they collect the children’s fees. That is how bankrupt everyone is in Shamli.’
‘I see,’ I said, though I didn’t see. ‘But Mr Dayal can’t hold back your pay just because his guests haven’t paid their bills.’
‘He can if he hasn’t got any money.’
‘I see,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I will give you my address. You can come when you are free.’
‘I will take it from the register,’ he said.
I edged over to the stove and leanin
g over, sniffed at the stew. ‘I’ll eat mine now,’ I said. And without giving Daya Ram a chance to object, I lifted a plate off the shelf, took hold of the stirring-spoon and helped myself from the pot.
‘There’s rice too,’ said Daya Ram.
I filled another plate with rice and then got busy with my fingers. After ten minutes I had finished. I sat back comfortably, in a ruminative mood. With my stomach full I could take a more tolerant view of life and people. I could understand Mr Dayal’s apprehensions, Lin’s delicate lying and Miss Deeds’s aggressiveness. Daya Ram went out to sound the dinner gong, and I trailed back to my room.
From the window of my room I saw Kiran running across the lawn and I called to her, but she didn’t hear me. She ran down the path and out of the gate, her pigtails beating against the wind.
The clouds were breaking and coming together again, twisting and spiralling their way across a violet sky. The sun was going down behind the Siwaliks. The sky there was bloodshot. The tall, slim trunks of the eucalyptus tree were tinged with an orange glow; the rain had stopped, and the wind was a soft, sullen puff, drifting sadly through the trees. There was a steady drip of water from the eaves of the roof onto the window-sill. Then the sun went down behind the old, old hills, and I remembered the hills, far beyond these, that I had trekked to in my teens.
The room was dark but I did not turn on the light. I stood near the window, listening to the garden. There was a frog warbling somewhere and there was a sudden flap of wings overhead. Tomorrow morning I would go, and perhaps I would come back to Shamli one day, and perhaps not. I could always come here looking for Major Roberts, and who knows, one day I might find him. What should he be like, this lost man? A romantic, a man with a dream, a man with brown skin and blue eyes, living in a hut on a snowy mountain-top, chopping wood and catching fish and swimming in cold mountain streams; a rough, free man with a kind heart and a shaggy beard, a man who owed allegiance to no one, who gave a damn for money and politics, and cities and civilizations, who was his own master, who lived at one with nature, knowing no fear. But that was not Major Roberts—that was the man I wanted to be. He was not a Frenchman or an Englishman, he was me, a dream of myself. If only I could find Major Roberts.