“Yes, yes. No clocks and watches here. True, times have changed a little. There is the bus now. It can take you into Ramkhed whenever you are wishing. There is even a girl from the outcaste quarter here who goes on it every day to work as a steno for a lawyer. She went to school, you know. We are that much of forward-looking here. But you will not find any watch on Sitabai’s little wrist. Bangles only, my friend. Bangles such as they have always been, if nowadays they are coming from Bombay or somewhere instead of being made here itself.”
“A forward-looking place?” Ghote asked, recovering enough to try to steer the talk again in the direction he wanted it to go. “Tell me, is the Patil, despite that clock he has forgotten to start up, is he then a forward-looking man?”
“No, no,” the barber answered, plainly delighted to have the chance of laying out a character study he must have worked on over the years. “No, Bhagwantrao Pendke, Patil of Dharbani, believes that things were well long ago when he was a boy, and as much as is in his power, he means them to stay that way here forever.”
“And a great deal is in his power?” Ghote asked, glimpsing his way ahead.
“Oh, yes, yes. Government in Delhi may rule India. But, as they say, Delhi is far away. The ruler in all District Ramkhed is the Patil here. He is the one who says what is the law. Not any chief minister in Bombay, not the collector in Ramkhed, not those swines of police there.”
Ghote swallowed the “swines of police” without a catch. He was getting nearer, surely.
“So if I myself lived in Dharbani,” he said cautiously, “and was a good friend of the Patil, I could commit as many crimes as I was liking? Is that the way of it?”
“No, no. Once more wrong.”
They had come out of the village now and were walking through the fields. Evidently the barber was on his way to some neighboring smaller place.
“No,” he went on, “you could do what is against government law only if Patilji thought it was not wrong. He is a just man. But it is his own justice.”
So would the Patil, Ghote thought, protect his grandson Ganpatrao if he was convinced he had committed murder? He had, according to S.P. Verma, committed a good many lesser offenses, things that at least ought to have got his name on to the police Bad Character Roll, and the Patil had arranged to have them all ignored. But murder? Would the Patil consider murder as something against government law but not against his own? Perhaps it would depend on what his feelings were for each of his grandsons. If, for some reason, he had nothing good to say of the sickly Ramrao and delighted in the nefarious exploits of Ganpatrao . . .
He decided to explore the barber’s opinions of the Patil a little further, a little nearer dangerous ground.
“I was saying, if I was just only a good friend of the Patil,” he ventured. “But if it was a matter, for example, of a relative? Does the Patil have sons who might commit serious crimes?”
“Ah, no. Patilji has lost his sons. Lord Yama has taken each and every one. But grandsons he—but one grandson he has remaining. His first grandson, Ramrao, was murdered, you know. Yes, just two days ago. In Bombay. Where such things happen.”
“Murdered? Does anybody know why? Do they know who did it?”
“Yes, yes. It was some shop owner there. In Bombay such people will beat you to death for rupees ten only.”
Ghote dutifully shook his head over the wickedness of the big city.
“Terrible, terrible. But you were saying, the Patil has one more grandson at least.”
“Yes, yes. One only now. After that just only a daughter. And what a grandson.”
“He is a good man, this one remaining?”
“No, no, no, no. Ganpatrao is the greatest rogue in all District Ramkhed. He is drinking. And the girls he has seduced . . . the people he has ridden down on that motorbike of his also . . . chee, chee.”
Ghote, walking steadily along the narrow, dust-powdery path between the fields beside his splendidly useful source of information, wondered if he dared push the talk yet nearer his objective.
“The greatest rogue in District Ramkhed?” he said. “And does he, this Ganpatrao—it is Ganpatrao?—does he go so far as to do these wicked things beyond Ramkhed? Does he go to Nagpur? To Bombay, even?”
Had he risked too much? Would the barber feel he was being asked unnecessary questions? Wonder then whether this too-hopeful watchmaker really was what he had said he was? Would he go and talk to the Patil about him?
But it seemed not.
“Oh, Ganpatrao has been in Bombay,” the barber answered, clearly happy to be able to relay so much juicy gossip to someone who had heard none of it before. “Yes, that is where he was learning such bad habits. The Patil sent him to college there. He sent both his grandsons. But while Ramrao did well and learned much about getting rich, Ganpatrao learned just only about drinking and whoring. Oh, if he could have got more of money out of his grandfather he would have stayed and stayed in Bombay. Often he is saying it.”
“So does he go there still when he can? Was he . . . was he perhaps there just only three-four days ago?”
It was not a very clever question. It risked, if anything did, alerting the barber. But he had been able on the spur of the moment to think of no more cunning way of obtaining that one vital piece of information.
However, the barber simply wagged his head ambiguously. “Perhaps yes. Perhaps no. Who can say? With that motorbike where can he not go? To Nagpur it is easy. And then all places are there for him on the train.”
Ghote sadly admitted to himself that he had failed to have had the tremendous piece of luck he might have done. For a little he walked in silence along the dust-soft path scarcely wide enough for the two of them.
“The Sarpanch was away three-four days ago,” the barber suddenly said, turning with happy crudeness to an as yet untouched subject for gossip-mongering.
“The Sarpanch?”
Ghote’s mind was at once awhirl with questions, hopes. Surely that memory-dazed old soldier had said that the Sarpanch of the village was the Patil’s son-in-law. Indeed, that must be why the barber had abruptly mentioned him. And had he himself not just learned that after Ganpatrao the Patil had no other male heir? Just his one daughter? So this Sarpanch would have almost as much to gain from Ramrao’s death as Ganpatrao. And the Sarpanch had definitely been away from the village at the time Ramrao had been beaten to death in the Tick Tock Watchworks. So could it be ... ?
“Yes, our sarpanch, Jambuvant Dhoble by name. He is the husband of Patilji’s daughter, you know. Patilji said he was to be voted sarpanch when Bapurao, the father of Ganpatrao, was no more.”
Yes, so he was right. Here, surely, was another suspect. And, if what that muzzy idiot of an old soldier had told him was true, that the Sarpanch took bribes from both sides, then he was probably as much of a bad hat as Ganpatrao himself.
But how to obtain some hard evidence against him? Or against Ganpatrao? How to get hold of something more definite to set against A.I. Lobo’s case than the mere fact that someone with a motive had been away from his home at the time of the victim’s death? Something that would make his own name with the D.G.P.?
Till now all he had learned had been rumor and guesswork, better though it was than the state of total ignorance he had been in when he had first set foot in the village. But very likely the D.G.P. would dismiss mere hearsay out of hand. And the barber, plainly, had little more to tell, if anything.
Then it came to him.
If what the old soldier at the chaikhana had said, though muddled, was more reliable than he had believed, as the barber’s gossip tended to confirm, then perhaps one other thing the old man had spoken of was more than the mere confusion of a mind that had lost all sense of time.
The boy brahmin. The old soldier had said that a boy brahmin, presumably the son of the regular village priest who had perhaps died early, was accustomed to visit the Patil’s house every day to perform the necessary rituals. Surely that boy would know, if anybody
, whether Ganpatrao had been absent from the family home.
So how to find the boy? Not easy without asking direct questions that, in a village like Dharbani, would at once provoke questions in return, questions it might be difficult to answer. He thought.
“Tell me,” he said at last, “does the Patil keep to all old customs? Are prayers said in his house each day?”
“Oh, yes, yes. Patilji is a good man, I was saying it. He would not think any day had begun unless the brahmin had visited his house.”
“And the brahmin ... I expect he has been going to that house for year after year?”
Once more the barber was delighted to put this ignorant stranger right.
“No, no, no. The brahmin we had for some years was expiring. So now it is his son who goes to the Patil’s house.”
“Ah, yes. And if your brahmin was a man of many years, I suppose this son of his is well used to the work?”
“No, no, no, no. No, the brahmin now is a boy only. Luckily he was old enough to take up the task when his father was dying. He was just past twelve. He had received his sacred thread.”
“So he is twelve-thirteen only now? You know, I would like to see that boy. To do a brahmin’s work at that age, it is something Dharbani can be proud of.”
“Yes, yes. You are right for once. That boy is very, very good.”
“So where is it I could see?”
Was his inquiry too sudden? Apparently not.
“Oh, that is easy. The boy goes each day after he has visited the Patil’s house to the old temple on the hill. No one else is going there these days, but the boy goes. He is saying the god has called him. He is a boy in a thousand. In two thousand.”
“Yes, that I can believe. So, I think, if you will forgive—” But, just as Ghote was happily turning to go, the barber seized him by the elbow.
“Look,” he said. “Look.”
Ghote turned in the direction the barber indicated. Coming round a bend in the path where at the corner of a field a straggly bush had obscured the way ahead there was a tall man, young, wearing not a dhoti but Western dress, a brightly colored check shirt and blue jeans. Even at a distance he could be seen to walk with a tremendous swagger, and his face could be seen to be decorated with a pair of thick curling moustaches.
Ghote turned to the barber.
“Who . . . ?” he asked.
But he already knew the answer before the barber spoke.
“It is Ganpatrao, Ganpatrao himself.”
FIVE
For a few moments Ghote stood where he was, rooted to the ground in a tangle of emotions. To be suddenly confronted with the man he now believed, despite the existence of a confessed killer, was most likely to be the actual murderer of the watch-shop attack back in Bombay, that was bad enough. But Ganpatrao Pendke was also the man he had been ordered not to investigate directly, the man he had spent all the long morning in Dharbani trying to find out about without drawing attention to his inquiries. And here the fellow was, coming strolling toward the place where he himself stood on the narrow field path, looking as if he already owned every square inch of the wide, sun-bleached countryside around.
At his side the barber hastily stepped back in among the low-growing thorn bushes that lined the path.
For an instant Ghote contemplated refusing to do likewise. What if he stood his ground, let Ganpatrao Pendke come face-to-face with him and then, defying his strict instructions, announced that he was a police officer, come from Bombay for the purpose of investigating the murder of Ramrao Pendke? Would the shock rattle from the man strolling toward him an immediate admission of guilt? Or at least some sign that would confirm he was indeed the watch-shop murderer?
But wiser thoughts at once prevailed. The trick might not work. And the D.G.P.’s anger would be terrible. It could result in his promotions being blocked forever. Or he could end up being transferred to the Armed Police in some remote, dacoit-ridden, corruption-thick area to eat away his days till the end of his service.
He stepped back beside the barber. A thorn dug painfully into his left ankle above the shoe.
“Ram, Ram, Ganpatraoji,” the barber said with loud obsequiousness.
The murder suspect was upon them.
And, without a word to acknowledge the greeting, with scarcely a glance, he simply walked straight past.
Ghote stood there till the fellow was almost out of sight. The barber, plainly thinking there was nothing that could be said, stepped back onto the path and scuffled a foot in its yellow powderiness.
Eventually Ghote repeated his excuses about wanting to go at once to admire the boy brahmin, and taking care not to walk too quickly and risk overtaking the swaggering Ganpatrao, he set off back to Dharbani.
It took him a full hour before he neared the top of the low hill on the other side of the village where the old temple the barber had spoken of stood. It had been a long, hot climb with the sun now high in the sky. He was wet with sweat from shoulders to calves, and cursing himself for not having taken time to visit the chaikhana again and drink some tea or even risk another couple of gritty chapattis.
But then he saw the boy.
A slight figure in purest white dhoti and upper garment, he was sitting cross-legged, an image of stillness in front of the years-erased image of the god. If only from that very stillness, he seemed to Ghote to be years older than his own son, always snatching at life’s opportunities like a darting gecko snapping up flies.
In the scanty shade of a scrubby tree, Ghote waited and watched. At last the boy brahmin showed signs of ending his silent prayer.
Ghote stepped forward, taking care to plank down his shoes on the rough-hewn paving-stones of the temple’s forecourt to draw attention to his presence. At the sound the boy rose to his feet and turned to see who had taken the long climb up the hill.
Ghote, not for years feeling particular respect for priest or religion, nerved himself up to stoop and touch the young brahmin’s feet.
But the boy, with unassuming simplicity, stopped him.
“You have come to worship the god?” he asked.
Ghote hesitated. Should he lie to ingratiate himself with this youthful pujari who might have information he badly needed? But some subconscious instinct warned him not to use the least trickle of deceit.
“No,” he said. “No, I have not come to worship. I have come because I want you to tell me something.”
Still, however, he hesitated to put his request directly. He had thought, as he had toiled up the hill in the sun, that there would be no difficulty in using his adult authority simply to demand from a boy what he needed to know. But now, confronted with the young brahmin’s plain serenity, he wondered whether he could ask his questions at all.
Yet he must.
He swallowed, dry-mouthed.
“I have come to—” he began. “No. No, it is that I want to trust you with a secret.”
“Yes?” the boy asked, with a lack of either eagerness or reluctance that belied all the more his actual age.
Ghote gathered his thoughts.
“I have to tell you,” he said, “that I have been sent here to Dharbani all the way from Bombay to—to learn something about—” His good intentions faltered. “To learn about the people who live here,” he finished on a lame lie.
“It is social study?”
Damn, Ghote thought. Damn, damn, damn. Why had he let himself be fooled by the boy’s air of withdrawnness into thinking he was not as other boys? Of course the son of a village brahmin would have gone to school besides learning from his father his religious duties. And, of course, even in remote Dharbani nowadays such ideas as social studies might be spoken of in the classroom, even if no more than that.
But he had let himself be betrayed by doubting that instinct that had told him the boy was not a person to fob off with half truths. Someone like him deserved better than weak evasions.
He took a breath.
“No, not a social study,” he said. “And I t
hink after all I cannot tell you why exactly I have come here. But I want you to answer some questions.”
“If I know the answers.”
Well, perhaps after all he had got to where he wanted.
He cleared his throat.
“You go each day to the house of the Patil?”
The boy considered the question for a long moment. Then apparently he decided it was something he could answer.
“Yes, I go there each day.”
“And where do you see the Patil’s grandson, Ganpatrao? He stays in the house?”
“Yes. He is staying there. With his wife. But they are not having any children.”
Ghote felt a little jump of delight. Another nugget of information. If Ganpatrao Pendke had no children, and from the tone of the boy’s voice was not likely to have them, then his uncle by marriage, Jambuvant Dhoble, Sarpanch of the village, must be the next heir after Ganpatrao to the Patil’s lands and influence. Could it be that, for this reason, it was he rather than Ganpatrao who had got rid of Ramrao at the Tick Tock Watch works?
But Ganpatrao was to the fore now.
Ghote licked his lips.
“Please tell me,” he said to the upright, white-clad figure standing still and composed in front of him, “tell me, was Ganpatrao away from the Patil’s house two-three days ago? Was he away long enough to have gone to Bombay?”
This time the boy considered his reply at greater length.
Ghote realized, clearly as if it were written out for him on the time-eroded stones at his feet, that the youngster had realized from the way he had put the question that a great deal lay behind it. He was weighing whether answering would be to break a trust.
At last the boy spoke.
“Four days past in the morning, when I was going to that house, I saw a water pot with mango leaves in it by the doorway, and I knew that I must go back and take care to come again later.”
“I see,” said Ghote, who did not. “But perhaps you did not understand what I was asking. I want to know if Ganpatrao was away from his home three days ago.”
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