by Ruskin Bond
‘Listen, then:
When my heavens were turned to blood,
When the dark had filled my day,
Furthest, but most faithful, stood
That lone star I cast away.
I had loved myself, and I
Have not lived and dare not die.
‘Once,’ he said, gripping me by the arm and looking me straight in the eye, ‘once in life I watched a star but I whistled her to go.’
‘Your star hasn’t fallen yet,’ I said, suddenly moved, suddenly quite certain that I sat beside Kipling. ‘One day, when there is a new spirit of adventure abroad, we will discover you again.’
‘Why have they heaped scorn on me for so long?’
‘You were too militant, I suppose—too much of an Empire man. You were too patriotic for your own good.’
He looked a little hurt. ‘I was never very political,’ he said. ‘I wrote over six hundred poems. And you could only call a dozen of them political. I have been abused for harping on the theme of the white man’s burden but my only aim was to show off the Empire to my audience—and I believed the Empire was a fine and noble thing. Is it wrong to believe in something? I never went deeply into political issues, that’s true. You must remember, my seven years in India were very youthful years. I was in my twenties, a little immature if you like, and my interest in India was a boy’s interest. Action appealed to me more than anything else. You must understand that.’
‘No one has described action more vividly, or India so well. I feel at one with Kim wherever he goes along the Grand Trunk Road, in the temples of Banaras, amongst the Saharanpur fruit gardens, on the snow-covered Himalayas. Kim has colour and movement and poetry.’
He sighed and a wistful look came into his eyes.
‘I’m prejudiced, of course,’ I continued. ‘I’ve spent most of my life in India—not your India, but an India that does still have much of the colour and atmosphere that you captured. You know, Mr Kipling, you can still sit in a third-class railway carriage and meet the most wonderful assortment of people. In any village you will still find the same courtesy, dignity and courage that the Lama and Kim found on their travels.’
‘And the Grand Trunk Road? Is it still a long, winding procession of humanity?’
‘Well, not exactly,’ I said a little ruefully. ‘It’s just a procession of motor vehicles now. The poor Lama would be run down by a truck if he became too dreamy on the Grand Trunk Road. Times have changed. There are no more Mrs Hawksbees in Simla, for instance.’
There was a faraway look in Kipling’s eyes. Perhaps he was imagining himself a boy again. Perhaps he could see the hills or the red dust of Rajputana. Perhaps he was having a private conversation with Privates Mulvaney and Ortheris, or perhaps he was out hunting with the Seonce wolf pack. The sound of London’s traffic came to us through the glass doors but we heard only the creaking of bullock-cart wheels and the distant music of a flute.
He was talking to himself, repeating a passage from one of his stories. ‘And the last puff of the day-wind brought from the unseen villages, the scent of damp wood-smoke, hot cakes, dripping undergrowth, and rotting pine-cones. That is the true smell of the Himalayas and if once it creeps into the blood of a man, that man will at the last, forgetting all else, return to the hills to die.’
A mist seemed to have risen between us—or had it come in from the streets?—and when it cleared, Kipling had gone away.
I asked the gatekeeper if he had seen a tall man with a slight stoop, wearing spectacles.
‘Nope,’ said the gatekeeper. ‘Nobody been by for the last ten minutes.’
‘Did someone like that come into the gallery a little while ago?’
‘No one that I recall. What did you say the bloke’s name was?’
‘Kipling,’ I said.
‘Don’t know him.’
‘Didn’t you ever read The Jungle Books?’
‘Sounds familiar. Tarzan stuff, wasn’t it?’
I left the museum and wandered about the streets for a long time but I couldn’t find Kipling anywhere. Was it the boom of London’s traffic that I heard or the boom of the Sutlej river racing through the valleys?
The Girl from Copenhagen
This is not a love story but it is a story about love. You will know what I mean.
When I was living and working in London I knew a Vietnamese girl called Phuong. She studied at the Polytechnic. During the summer vacations she joined a group of students—some of them English, most of them French, German, Indian and African—picking raspberries for a few pounds a week and drinking in some real English country air. Late one summer, on her return from a farm, she introduced me to Ulla, a sixteen-year-old Danish girl who had come over to England for a similar holiday.
‘Please look after Ulla for a few days,’ said Phuong. ‘She doesn’t know anyone in London.’
‘But I want to look after you,’ I protested. I had been infatuated with Phuong for some time, but though she was rather fond of me, she did not reciprocate my advances and it was possible that she had conceived of Ulla as a device to get rid of me for a little while.
‘This is Ulla,’ said Phuong, thrusting a blonde child into my arms. ‘Bye and don’t get up to any mischief!’
Phuong disappeared, and I was left alone with Ulla at the entrance to the Charing Cross underground station. She grinned at me and I smiled back rather nervously. She had blue eyes and smooth, tanned skin. She was small for a Scandinavian girl, reaching only to my shoulders, and her figure was slim and boyish. She was carrying a small travel bag. It gave me an excuse to do something.
‘We’d better leave your bag somewhere,’ I said taking it from her.
And after depositing it in the left-luggage office, we were back on the pavement, grinning at each other.
‘Well, Ulla,’ I said, ‘how many days do you have in London?’
‘Only two. Then I go back to Copenhagen.’
‘Good. Well, what would you like to do?’
‘Eat. I’m hungry.’
I wasn’t hungry but there’s nothing like a meal to help two strangers grow acquainted. We went to a small and not very expensive Indian restaurant off Fitzroy Square and burnt our tongues on an orange-coloured Hyderabad chicken curry. We had to cool off with a Tamil koykotay before we could talk.
‘What do you do in Copenhagen?’ I asked.
‘I go to school. I’m joining the university next year.’
‘And your parents?’
‘They have a bookshop.’
‘Then you must have done a lot of reading.’
‘Oh, no, I don’t read much. I can’t sit in one place for long. I like swimming and tennis and going to the theatre.’
‘But you have to sit in a theatre.’
‘Yes, but that’s different.’
‘It’s not sitting that you mind but sitting and reading.’
‘Yes, you are right. But most Danish girls like reading—they read more books than English girls.’
‘You are probably right,’ I said.
As I was out of a job just then and had time on my hands, we were able to feed the pigeons in Trafalgar Square and while away the afternoon in a coffee bar before going on to a theatre. Ulla was wearing tight jeans and an abbreviated duffle coat and as she had brought little else with her, she wore this outfit to the theatre. It created quite a stir in the foyer but Ulla was completely unconscious of the stares she received. She enjoyed the play, laughed loudly in all the wrong places, and clapped her hands when no one else did.
The lunch and the theatre had lightened my wallet and dinner consisted of baked beans on toast in a small snack bar. After picking up Ulla’s bag, I offered to take her back to Phuong’s place.
‘Why there?’ she said. ‘Phuong must have gone to bed.’
‘Yes, but aren’t you staying with her?’
‘Oh, no. She did not ask me.’
‘Then where are you staying? Where have you kept the rest of your things?’
‘Nowhere. This is all I brought with me,’ she said, indicating the travel bag.
‘Well, you can’t sleep on a park bench,’ I said. ‘Shall I get you a room in a hotel?’
‘I don’t think so. I have only the money to return to Copenhagen.’ She looked crestfallen for a few moments. Then she brightened and slipped her arm through mine. ‘I know, I’ll stay with you. Do you mind?’
‘No, but my landlady—’ I began, then stopped. It would have been a lie. My landlady, a generous, broad-minded soul, would not have minded in the least.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘I don’t mind.’
When we reached my room in Swiss Cottage Ulla threw off her coat and opened the window wide. It was a warm summer’s night and the scent of honeysuckle came through the open window. She kicked her shoes off and walked about the room barefoot. Her toenails were painted a bright pink. She slipped out of her blouse and jeans and stood before the mirror in her lace pants. A lot of sunbathing had made her quite brown but her small breasts were white.
She slipped into bed and said, ‘Aren’t you coming?’
I crept in beside her and lay very still while she chattered on about the play and the friends she had made in the country. I switched off the bed lamp and she fell silent. Then she said, ‘Well, I’m sleepy. Goodnight!’ And turning over, she immediately fell asleep.
I lay awake beside her, conscious of the growing warmth of her body. She was breathing easily and quietly. Her long, golden hair touched my cheek. I kissed her gently on the lobe of the ear but she was fast asleep. So I counted eight hundred and sixty-two Scandinavian sheep and managed to fall asleep.
Ulla woke fresh and frolicsome. The sun streamed in through the window and she stood naked in its warmth, performing calisthenics. I busied myself with the breakfast. Ulla ate three eggs and a lot of bacon and drank two cups of coffee. I couldn’t help admiring her appetite.
‘And what shall we do today?’ she asked, her blue eyes shining. They were the bright blue eyes of a Siamese kitten.
‘I’m supposed to visit the employment exchange,’ I said.
‘But that is bad. Can’t you go tomorrow—after I have left?’
‘If you like.’
‘I like.’
And she gave me a swift, unsettling kiss on the lips.
We climbed Primrose Hill and watched boys flying kites. We lay in the sun and chewed blades of grass and then we visited the zoo where Ulla fed the monkeys. She consumed innumerable ices. We lunched at a small Greek restaurant and I forgot to phone Phuong and in the evening we walked all the way home through scruffy Camden Town, drank beer, ate a fine, greasy dinner of fish and chips and went to bed early—Ulla had to catch the boat train the next morning.
‘It has been a good day,’ she said.
‘I’d like to do it again tomorrow.’
‘But I must go tomorrow.’
‘But you must go.’
She turned her head on the pillow and looked wanderingly into my eyes, as though she were searching for something. I don’t know if she found what she was looking for but she smiled and kissed me softly on the lips.
‘Thanks for everything,’ she said.
She was fresh and clean, like the earth after spring rain. I took her fingers and kissed them, one by one. I kissed her breasts, her throat, her forehead. And, making her close her eyes, I kissed her eyelids.
We lay in each other’s arms for a long time, savouring the warmth and texture of each other’s bodies. Though we were both very young and inexperienced, we found ourselves imbued with a tender patience, as though there lay before us not just this one passing night but all the nights of a lifetime, all eternity.
There was a great joy in our loving and afterwards we fell asleep in each other’s arms like two children who have been playing in the open all day.
The sun woke me the next morning. I opened my eyes to see Ulla’s slim, bare leg dangling over the side of the bed. I smiled at her painted toes. Her hair pressed against my face and the sunshine fell on it making each hair a strand of burnished gold.
The station and the train were crowded and we held hands and grinned at each other, too shy to kiss.
‘Give my love to Phuong,’ she said.
‘I will.’
We made no promises—of writing, or of meeting again. Somehow our relationship seemed complete and whole, as though it had been destined to blossom for those two days. A courting and a marriage and a living together had been compressed, perfectly, into one summer night …
I passed the day in a glow of happiness. I thought Ulla was still with me and it was only at night, when I put my hand out for hers, and did not find it, that I knew she had gone.
But I kept the window open all through the summer and the scent of the honeysuckle was with me every night.
Hanging at the Mango Tope
The two captive policemen, Inspector Hukam Singh and Sub-Inspector Guler Singh, were being pushed unceremoniously along the dusty, deserted, sun-drenched road. The people of the village had made themselves scarce. They would reappear only when the dacoits went away.
The leader of the dacoit gang was Mangal Singh Bundela, great-grandson of a Pindari adventurer who had been a thorn in the side of the British. Mangal was doing his best to be a thorn in the flesh of his own government. The local police force had been strengthened recently but it was still inadequate for dealing with the dacoits who knew the ravines better than any surveyor. The dacoit Mangal had made a fortune out of ransom. His chief victims were the sons of wealthy industrialists, moneylenders and landowners. But today he had captured two police officials; of no value as far as ransom went, but prestigious prisoners who could be put to other uses …
Mangal Singh wanted to show off in front of the police. He would kill at least one of them—his reputation demanded it but he would let the other go, in order that his legendary power and ruthlessness be given maximum publicity. A legend is always a help!
His red-and-green turban was tied rakishly to one side. His dhoti extended right down to his ankles. His slippers were embroidered with gold and silver thread. His weapon was not ancient matchlock but a well-greased .303 rifle. Two of his men had similar rifles. Some had revolvers. Only the smaller fry carried swords or country-made pistols. Mangal Singh’s gang, though traditional in many ways, was up-to-date in the matter of weapons. Right now they had the policemen’s guns too.
‘Come along, Inspector Sahib,’ said Mangal Singh, in tones of police barbarity, tugging at the rope that encircled the stout inspector’s midriff. ‘Had you captured me today, you would have been a hero. You would have taken all the credit even though you could not keep up with your men in the ravines. Too bad you chose to remain sitting in your jeep with the sub-inspector. The jeep will be useful to us. You will not. But I would like you to be a hero all the same and there is none better than a dead hero!’
Mangal Singh’s followers doubled up with laughter. They loved their leader’s cruel sense of humour.
‘As for you, Guler Singh,’ he continued, giving his attention to the sub-inspector, ‘you are a man from my own village. You should have joined me long ago. But you were never to be trusted. You thought there would be better pickings in the police, didn’t you?’
Guler Singh said nothing, simply hung his head and wondered what his fate would be. He felt certain that Mangal Singh would devise some diabolical and fiendish method of dealing with his captives. Guler Singh’s only hope was Constable Ghanshyam, who hadn’t been caught by the dacoits because, at the time of the ambush, he had been in the bushes relieving himself.
‘To the mango tope,’ said Mangal Singh, prodding the policemen forward.
‘Listen to me, Mangal,’ said the perspiring inspector, who was ready to try anything to get out of his predicament. ‘Let me go and I give you my word there’ll be no trouble for you in this area as long as I am posted here. What could be more convenient than that?’
‘Nothing,’ said Mangal Sing
h. ‘But your word isn’t good. My word is different. I have told my men that I will hang you at the mango tope and I mean to keep my word. But I believe in fair play—I like a little sport! You may yet go free if your friend here, Sub-Inspector Guler Singh, has his wits about him.’
The inspector and his subordinate exchanged doubtful puzzled looks. They were not to remain puzzled for long. On reaching the mango tope, the dacoits produced a good strong hempen rope, one end looped into a slip knot. Many a garland of marigolds had the inspector received during his mediocre career. Now, for the first time, he was being garlanded with a hangman’s noose. He had seen hangings, he had rather enjoyed them, but he had no stomach for his own. The inspector begged for mercy. Who wouldn’t have in his position?
‘Be quiet,’ commanded Mangal Singh. ‘I do not want to know about your wife and your children and the manner in which they will starve. You shot my son last year.’
‘Not I!’ cried the inspector. ‘It was some other.’
‘You led the party. But now, just to show you that I’m a sporting fellow, I am going to have you strung up from this tree and then I am going to give Guler Singh six shots with a rifle, and if he can sever the rope that suspends you before you are dead, well then, you can remain alive and I will let you go! For your sake I hope the sub-inspector’s aim is good. He will have to shoot fast. My man Phambiri, who has made this noose, was once the executioner in a city jail. He guarantees that you won’t last more than fifteen seconds at the end of his rope.’
Guler Singh was taken to a spot about forty yards away. A rifle was thrust into his hands. Two dacoits clambered into the branches of the mango tree. The inspector, his hands tied behind, could only gaze at them in horror. His mouth opened and shut as though he already had need of more air. And then, suddenly, the rope went taut, up went the inspector, his throat caught in a vice, while the branch of the tree shook and mango blossoms fluttered to the ground. The inspector dangled from the rope, his feet about three feet above the ground.
‘You can shoot,’ said Mangal Singh, nodding to the sub-inspector.