by Rumer Godden
He walked steadily up to the stable door, snapping his fingers at the Pekingese to announce his presence. The Pekingese burst into short affronted barks. ‘Mrs Pool?’ said Narayan above the din. He stepped over the netting and came in; he saw Don, and came at once to him and bent down. ‘Is this the patient?’ he asked jauntily.
‘Don’t touch him!’ cried Louise.
‘But what is the matter?’ said Narayan, ruffled. ‘Please. You must have confidence in me. I am a qualified veterinary surgeon and will not hurt your dog.’ His dignity was touched. Don had made no movement and he bent down again.
‘I shouldn’t be so hasty, Maharaj,’ said Kokil sarcastically over the stall front. ‘Don’t be in such a hurry. He is mad.’
‘Mad!’ Narayan stayed where he was for a moment, his hand out, stiff, where it had been ready to touch Don, his eyes suddenly, intensely fixed on the panting black heap below him; he could not have moved, half for pride and half for fear; the inside of his collar was suddenly wet but his mouth and his throat were horribly dry.
‘You needn’t be afraid.’ He felt scorn in Louise’s voice. ‘I don’t want you to do anything for him. I want you simply to give him an injection and put him to sleep. I will muzzle him and hold him myself. You need not touch him.’ She spoke as if she were not sure he understood English and the effect of that was slightly insulting, but in his new-found understanding Narayan did not take umbrage. ‘You have only to put him to sleep,’ said Louise.
‘Without examination? I could not do that.’
She was surprised. ‘I have been watching him all morning; so has my – husband. It is quite obvious what is wrong.’
‘All the same I prefer to make an examination. I must do so, in fact.’
‘I tell you it isn’t necessary. There can be no doubt.’
He found the courage to be obdurate, though it was hard. ‘Madam, you may be wrong,’ and he said without meaning any offence: ‘You are not qualified, I think, to know exactly what the matter is.’
She answered curtly, ‘Mr Das, if you are rude to me I shall report you to my husband.’
She could. She could also give to her report any complexion she chose; he was helpless to stop her and his confidence in Charles did not go as far as thinking that Charles would believe him, Narayan, against his own wife; but still he held firm. He put his bag down on the shelf and opened it with a click. Don started up, but Narayan compelled himself to stay still though the backs of his knees were damp against his trousers and the finger trembled. ‘I do not intend any rudeness,’ he said, ‘but Madam, you must kindly allow me to examine the dog.’
That succeeded; she swept aside and he went up to Don, pulling on a pair of gloves. Don sprang up to bark but before a sound came he gave a silent choke; he stood on all fours but his tail and hind-quarters were down, his head was strained and his eyes rolled back showing the whites. He seemed to be fighting to swallow something, he panted and saliva frothed on his jaw; he made a dragging movement and collapsed back on the floor. Narayan stood there looking.
‘Well?’ asked Louise. ‘Do you have to see any more?’ He did not answer and she asked, ‘What else is that but rabies?’
‘The symptoms are of rabies, but – I am not sure.’
‘What else could it be?’
‘He should be kept a day or so for observation,’ said Narayan. ‘In these cases we can never be sure until death approaches. It may be that it is not rabies—’
‘Nonsense.’ Don was up again staggering round. ‘Isn’t that enough?’ cried Louise. ‘Must you torture him any more? Damn you. Can’t you be quick?’
That was as real as a shaft – it quivered through him; it hurt like fire. He turned his back and went to the table setting out his things from his bag. He could see nothing, only a confused silvered shine of instruments and the glass shine of his bottles, and his hands were shaking so that the things chinked against each other as he took them out. In his ears were other sounds, the dry rustling of the banana leaves outside the stable, the whispering rustle of the little dogs behind the netting, the sound of water dripping gently, gently into the trough; and then, across them all, the hooting of the morning mail steamer and answering it, close beside him, a pigeon, and nearer than all of these the sound of the dog panting and the low sound of sobbing. The doctor in him told him that she did not know what she had said, she was hysterical and overwrought; he should treat her firmly and resolutely, but still he smarted and stung. He had only one thought now; he longed to end it and get away … Anything – anything to be away. ‘Damn you. Can’t you be quick?’
The words seemed to creep down through him; through his heart into his blood, into every fibre, and he gave up. He went on quietly working but the whole of him felt cursed, and Louise looked at him surprised by his sudden quietness. ‘Please, please – hurry,’ she said.
He did not answer. His hands were doing their work; here was cotton-wool, here the phials; this was the metal case of the syringe; with care his fingers opened it, unpacking it, unrolling the barrel from its protecting gauze, fitting in the needle. Presently he turned. ‘Stand aside, please,’ he said.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I have something here which is instantaneous,’ he said, and once he had spoken he could not stop. ‘It was used in the last war; it cannot last but a second, one prick and it is over. Please do not cry. It shall not be so very terrible. It is not terrible at all, it is most humane, I promise you he shall not suffer at all.’
Louise only bowed her head and said, ‘Be quick,’ as if her teeth were clenched.
He was instantly silent again, running the drops off the syringe. Then he repeated curtly, ‘Please stand aside. I have to bandage his jaws.’
‘No!’
‘I do not wish to risk a snap.’
‘You needn’t. I shall hold him.’
‘I mean that he may snap at you even, whom he knows so well.’
‘I have on gloves.’ There was a fanatical determination in her voice.
‘When he feels the needle he may reach your arm.’
Louise went down on both her knees on the ground and lifted Don across her and twisted her handkerchief tightly round his muzzle. ‘Get on,’ she said. Narayan shrugged and then he knelt beside her with the syringe; he took a loose fold of Don’s loose skin and ran the needle in and pressed the plunger, a hideous long prick. Don gave a sudden surprised groan and died.
There was a moment to wait. Narayan kept his finger on the plunger looking down past the white of Louise’s sleeve to the dog; it was all out of perspective and for a moment the dog looked bigger than them both, and he was seized with terror at what he had done – as if this prick were an unwarrantable presumption; the moment went on and on, blasted by his usurpation, filling him with fear. He put his fingers on Don’s side and, pressing, pulled out the needle; and under his fingers he felt the heartbeats lessen – lessen. They died while his own were sounding loudly in his ears. Then the heart under his fingers was still; he had done something he had no right to do; he would have given anything to start that heart again.
He stood up with the syringe dangling in his hand. ‘I shall go now,’ he said. ‘I shall wait for you in the house.’
When he had gone the stable was quiet. The Pekingese, who had decided there was nothing more to wait for, were tumbling on the lawn with their balls; the grass shone under the sun, the sky was perfectly serenely blue; nothing had changed or moved an iota. Nothing had changed; only Don had died. He was gone though he was here in the stable. A calm cloud, glossily white, sailed across the sky and its shadow passed over the lawn and over the Pekingese and left them in the sun again.
Don was heavy on her lap and she knelt up and lifted him on to his bed, where he lay most naturally, his legs still curled from the way she had held him in her arms, his ears fallen forward, his face in heavy sleepy lines; but his eyes were open. She sat back to look at him. He looked perfectly alive, but his eyes were more surpr
ised than she had ever seen them. With a rise of horror she tried to close them and at last he lay peacefully, his eyes shut, laid down on his bed. She knelt beside him, absently stroking him, chiefly because she was too tired to get up and leave him. She was terribly tired, and soon, when Emily came in, there would be so much – so much to wrestle with, and fight … Emily is getting too much for me. How absurd. She is only a child; but I am so tired …
Kokil stole out to look at her and stole away to report; all the servants waited, not daring to interrupt, longing for Charles to come in, and order the dog to be taken away.
After a time he began to stiffen, but he still stayed remarkably warm.
Narayan pedalled furiously all the way home. Dust whizzed from his wheels and hens ran shrieking to the shelter of the house steps; babies rolled over and sat up in surprise and small naked children shouted ‘Wah!’ and pelted him with little stones and flew away in terror. For all these signs of his power, the feeling persisted. Why? He had done nothing wrong, but he felt that he had done something unforgivable, infinitely in the wrong. The sound of Louise’s crying was in his ears and as he came nearer his own house the crying seemed to be Shila’s. Why must he listen to this perpetual crying? He had had it all the way there, now he must have it all the way back. Why must this feeling stab him and nag him and threaten to rise from nagging into a pain that filled his soul? He rode faster and faster as if he could outride the crying and the wrong and the pain.
When he reached home he left his bicycle by the gate and no one heard him come in. The house was empty, even the kitchen was empty; on a slab were a row of little rice flour cakes, his favourites, pressed into shapes, a pannikin of chopped vegetables and a little curry powder ground on a stone. They were for his morning meal. He went into the study. The first thing that met his eye was the telephone, scrupulously dusted and silent on his desk; and he looked gloomily at it, for it increased his sense of wrong, and he thought suddenly and inexplicably of Anil’s father.
Why should Anil’s father come to his mind, of all people? He saw him as clearly as if he were in a little mirror inset into the room, quite quiet and still in the mirror, prisoned into quietness on his wooden bed on the terrace above the fields, sitting in that posture for hours, while only the light changed on the fields and the folds of his shawl lost the gleaming whiteness of midday and took the deeper colours of the sunset. On the wall of Narayan’s study was a real mirror with oil flowers painted on the glass and now he saw that someone had stuck a flower that was real too in the corner of the frame; it was a small rosy spray of oleander, the kind that is deep dark rose, and looking at it a tinge of peace crept into his mind.
He had now only a soft reflection of his trouble and he was filled with tenderness for all of them: himself, Louise, Anil, and Shila. He sat down at his desk and wrote a note to Anil on the paper put clean and ready for him, with a blotter from the Asiatic Gas Company, with which he had no connection. He wrote it and finding Tarala in the kitchen told her to send it off.
‘Where is your mistress?’
She pointed to the window, and he saw that Shila was in the little court outside; thinking he was away she had gone there where the sun was very hot, to dry her hair. She was sitting on a low stool, not moving, a book in her hands; but she was not reading, she was dreaming, looking at the river, her posture stupid and soft with dreams. Immediately the old irritation rose in him and he put his head out of the window and called energetically, ‘Shila! Shila! What are you doing?’
Her voice answered him from far away, ‘Nothing.’
It was lazily indifferent and it felt to him almost impolite. She always sprang up at his voice and came to him, or waited, standing silently to hear what he would say; but for the first time he was near her and felt that she was not thinking of him and he was startled and a little shocked.
He immediately went out to her. The sun had baked the walls of the little court to a flaky whiteness and the house tree, a pipal, made leaf patterns on it; sharply they fell over the light muslin that Shila wore, damp and clinging, nothing else but its thinness to hide her body. Her hair lay in wet strands, so black that they had a blue polished gleam. As soon as he touched her she started and the face she turned up to him was damp too, the temples exposed from the weight of her hair dragging back; her eyes were ringed and looked up at him wide and startled, the whole of her face seemed suddenly alive, brittle with life, vulnerable.
‘Shila—’ he began. She gathered up her things to go.
‘Wait. Don’t go. Why do you run away?’ She did not answer and he looked at her book. ‘What is it?’
‘Ramayana.’ Her answer was a whisper.
‘And you don’t read it. You sit with it and dream.’
She looked down so that he could not see her face and shook her head. He asked gently, ‘Do you want our son to grow up a woolly head? Couldn’t you read a little every day for him?’
She looked up at him and her eyes glowed with delight.
‘Did you put the flowers in the mirror?’
Her lips parted in apprehension. ‘I am sorry.’
‘Why should you be sorry? They were very nice.’ And the little court and the house, the field where his cow was tethered, the garden and the jetty above the water seemed to him very nice as well. He forgot the sense of wrong that had filled him; he had left it with the outside world, away from this intimate and suddenly precious one of kitchen cakes and drying blue-black hair and oleander flowers and whispered confidence. He stood there with Shila, watching the patterns of the leaf-shadows, warmed by the sun, and he was soothed by the gentleness that was the core of the house, that the running of the river seemed to tell, and wondered why he had missed feeling it before … I was too busy, said Narayan … How often had he himself violated it? And how often had Shila said nothing and patiently put it together again?… I must grow more thoughtful … And he had again, more strongly, that sense of promise for himself … I shall begin again and differently, said Narayan … ‘Shila!’
He did not know he had spoken until she looked up again questioning. Now he could not remember what it was that he wanted to say. He asked, ‘If Anil Banerjee comes tonight, have you something good for us?’
Her eyes fell and the happiness was wiped out of her face.
Anil came. The house was waiting clean and fresh for him; Tarala had swept even the paths and courtyard and, while Narayan was not looking, sprinkled them with cow-dung. About Shila was an air of implicit obedience without a tinge of welcome in it; she had cooked the dinner herself, platters of crisp, light luchis that were a kind of puffed biscuit used instead of bread, a lentil curry, and sweets; sugar balls and sweet dumplings and diamond-shaped cream toffee, glittering with gold and silver sugar paper; she had even cut up mutton to make a second curry when Narayan stopped her. ‘Don’t give him flesh. He will not eat it.’ She looked at him, in surprise. ‘Yes, yes. I know. It amused me to try to make him eat it, but I don’t wish to force him any more.’ She dressed herself, putting a fine gauze sari over a petticoat and bodice of red, edged with lace, and pinned a line of jasmine flower heads round the knot of her hair, and went into the study to meet Anil as Narayan liked her to do, quite resolved that she would neither smile nor speak all evening.
As Anil came in she lifted her hands, pressed together palm to palm and finger-tips to finger-tips, in front of her face in salutation, bending her head without a smile but he did not notice that. He said perfunctorily, ‘Good evening. I hope you are well. Where is Indro?’ He thought it strange of Narayan to try to make a companion of his wife – strange and rather embarrassing and, anyhow, useless; and without waiting for her answer he passed her, filling the room with his young lordliness, and called, ‘Indro, are you there? Or are you out?’
‘I am out,’ called Narayan gaily. ‘You are at any rate early. Shila, don’t you ask our friend to sit down?’ But Anil waited standing, calling out remarks at his ease.
‘Where have you been all day, Ani
l?’
‘I have been fishing.’
‘Fishing? And it is three weeks only to the Examination?’
‘Three weeks – three years – what does it matter?’
Anil had always seemed laconic about the Finals, but Narayan knew how he had seethed and fussed and worried with the rest of them; now in his voice there was a genuine lightness as if he truly did not care.
‘What made you go fishing?’
‘I don’t know.’
Like Binnie he had walked and thought he would go fishing, even though his tutor was coming to coach him that day. He thought he would go fishing, not for pearls but for the rui that breed in tanks, and taste a little of tank mud when they are caught.
He knew Professor Dutt was waiting in his room, but once he had started to fish the hours were lost to him; he had to borrow a rod and line from the headman of the village that he knew outside of Amorra. The tank was quite deserted. It was in leafy green shade, the water a sleepy sunlit green, and dragonflies hovered still in one place above it. With his rod out he sat in a dream and a kingfisher sat opposite him on a post. It had beautiful feathers, but what he liked better was its knowing head and its eye that it kept all the time on him; it had a cheeky, gypsy knowing look for all its beauty.
They spent the day together. Anil did not catch a fish but the kingfisher caught three and swallowed them immediately and whole.
Anil thought of nothing all day, but as he stood up to go he said to the kingfisher almost mechanically, ‘Your feathers are as bright as my dreams,’ and as soon as he said it, it flew away. Was that an omen? ‘Perhaps I shall not pass after all,’ he said, and he said it again now to Narayan as Narayan came out of his room.