by Ruskin Bond
‘Well, I’m not exactly an old man. I’m thirty.’
‘And she’s a schoolgirl.’
‘She isn’t a girl any more, she’s too responsive.’
‘Oh, you’ve found that out, have you?’
‘Well …’ I said, covered in confusion. ‘Well, she has shown that she cares a little. You know that it’s years since I took any interest in a girl. You called it unnatural on my part, remember? Well, they simply did not exist for me, that’s true.’
‘Delayed adolescence,’ muttered Dinesh.
‘But Sushila is different. She puts me at ease. She doesn’t turn away from me. I love her and I want to look after her. I can only do that by marrying her.’
‘All right, but take it easy. Don’t get carried away. And don’t, for God’s sake, give her a baby. Not while she’s still at school! I will do what I can to help you. But you will have to be patient. And no one else must know of this or I will be blamed for everything. As it is Sunil knows too much, and he’s too small to know so much.’
‘Oh, he won’t tell anyone.’
‘I wish you had fallen in love with her two years from now. You will have to wait that long, anyway. Getting married isn’t a simple matter. People will wonder why we are in such a hurry, marrying her off as soon as she leaves school. They’ll think the worst!’
‘Well, people do marry for love you know, even in India. It’s happening all the time.’
‘But it doesn’t happen in our family. You know how orthodox most of them are. They wouldn’t appreciate your outlook. You may marry Sushila for love but it will have to look like an arranged marriage!’
Little things went wrong that evening.
First, a youth on the road passed a remark which you resented; and you, most unladylike, but most Punjabi-like, picked up a stone and threw it at him. It struck him on the leg. He was too surprised to say anything and limped off. I remonstrated with you, told you that throwing stones at people often resulted in a fight, then realized that you had probably wanted to see me fighting on your behalf.
Later you were annoyed because I said you were a little absentminded. Then Sunil sulked because I spoke roughly to him (I can’t remember why), and refused to talk to me for three hours, which was a record. I kept apologizing but neither of you would listen. It was all part of a game. When I gave up trying and turned instead to my typewriter and my unfinished story, you came and sat beside me and started playing with my hair. You were jealous of my story, of the fact that it was possible for me to withdraw into my work. And I reflected that a woman had to be jealous of something. If there wasn’t another woman, then it was a man’s work, or his hobby, or his best friend, or his favourite sweater, or his pet mongoose that made her resentful. There is a story in Kipling about a woman who grew insanely jealous of a horse’s saddle because her husband spent an hour every day polishing it with great care and loving kindness.
Would it be like that in marriage, I wondered—an eternal triangle: you, me and the typewriter?
But there were only a few days left before you returned to the plains, so I gladly pushed away the typewriter and took you in my arms instead. After all, once you had gone away, it would be a long, long time before I could hold you in my arms again. I might visit you in Delhi but we would not be able to enjoy the same freedom and intimacy. And while I savoured the salt kiss of your lips, I wondered how long I would have to wait until I could really call you my own.
Dinesh was at college and Sunil had gone roller skating and we were alone all morning. At first you avoided me, so I picked up a book and pretended to read. But barely five minutes had passed before you stole up from behind and snapped the book shut.
‘It is a warm day,’ you said. ‘Let us go down to the stream.’
Alone together for the first time, we took the steep path down to the stream, and there, hand in hand, scrambled over the rocks until we reached the pool and the waterfall.
‘I will bathe today,’ you said; and in a few moments you stood beside me, naked, caressed by sunlight and a soft breeze coming down the valley. I put my hand out to share in the sun’s caress, but you darted away, laughing, and ran to the waterfall as though you would hide behind a curtain of gushing water. I was soon beside you. I took you in my arms and kissed you, while the water crashed down upon our heads. Who yielded—you or I? All I remember is that you had entwined yourself about me like a clinging vine, and that a little later we lay together on the grass, on bruised and broken clover, while a whistling thrush released its deep sweet secret on the trembling air.
Blackbird on the wing, bird of the forest shadows, black rose in the long ago of summer, this was your song. It isn’t time that’s passing by, it is you and I.
It was your last night under my roof. We were not alone but when I woke in the middle of the night and stretched my hand out, across the space between our beds, you took my hand, for you were awake too. Then I pressed the ends of your fingers, one by one, as I had done so often before, and you dug your nails into my flesh. And our hands made love, much as our bodies might have done. They clung together, warmed and caressed each other, each finger taking on an identity of its own and seeking its opposite. Sometimes the tips of our fingers merely brushed against each other, teasingly, and sometimes our palms met with a rush, would tremble and embrace, separate, and then passionately seek each other out. And when sleep finally overcame you, your hand fell listlessly between our beds, touching the ground. And I lifted it up, and after putting it once to my lips, returned it gently to your softly rising bosom.
And so you went away, all three of you, and I was left alone with the brooding mountain. If I could not pass a few weeks without you how was I to pass a year, two years? This was the question I kept asking myself. Would I have to leave the hills and take a flat in Delhi? And what use would it be—looking at you and speaking to you but never able to touch you? Not to be able to touch that which I had already possessed would have been the subtlest form of torture.
The house was empty but I kept finding little things to remind me that you had been there—a handkerchief, a bangle, a length of ribbon—and these remnants made me feel as though you had gone for ever. No sound at night, except the rats scurrying about on the rafters.
The rain had brought out the ferns, which were springing up from tree and rock. The murmur of the stream had become an angry rumble. The honeysuckle creeper winding over the front windows was thick with scented blossom. I wish it had flowered a little earlier, before you left. Then you could have put the flowers in your hair.
At night I drank brandy, wrote listlessly, listened to the wind in the chimney, and read poetry in bed. There was no one to tell stories to and no hand to hold.
I kept remembering little things—the soft hair hiding your ears, the movement of your hands, the cool touch of your feet, the tender look in your eyes and the sudden stab of mischief that sometimes replaced it.
Mrs Kapoor remarked on the softness of your expression. I was glad that someone had noticed it. In my diary I wrote: ‘I have looked at Sushila so often and so much that perhaps I have overlooked her most compelling qualities—her kindness (or is it just her easy-goingness?), her refusal to hurt anyone’s feelings (or is it just her indifference to everything?), her wide tolerance (or is it just her laziness?) … Oh, how absolutely ignorant I am of women!’
Well, there was a letter from Dinesh and it held out a lifeline, one that I knew I must seize without any hesitation. He said he might be joining an art school in Delhi and asked me if I would like to return to Delhi and share a flat with him. I had always dreaded the possibility of leaving the hills and living again in a city as depressing as Delhi but love, I considered, ought to make any place habitable …
And then I was on a bus on the road to Delhi.
The first monsoon showers had freshened the fields and everything looked much greener than usual. The maize was just shooting up and the mangoes were ripening fast. Near the larger villages, camels and b
ullock carts cluttered up the road, and the driver cursed, banging his fist on the horn.
Passing through small towns, the bus driver had to contend with cycle rickshaws, tonga ponies, trucks, pedestrians, and other buses. Coming down from the hills for the first time in over a year, I found the noise, chaos, dust and dirt a little unsettling.
As my taxi drew up at the gate of Dinesh’s home, Sunil saw me and came running to open the car door. Other children were soon swarming around me. Then I saw you standing near the front door. You raised your hand to your forehead in a typical Muslim form of greeting—a gesture you had picked up, I suppose, from a film.
For two days Dinesh and I went house hunting, for I had decided to take a flat if it was at all practicable. Either it was very hot, and we were sweating, or it was raining and we were drenched. (It is difficult to find a flat in Delhi, even if one is in a position to pay an exorbitant rent, which I was not. It is especially difficult for bachelors. No one trusts bachelors, especially if there are grown-up daughters in the house. Is this because bachelors are wolves or because girls are so easily seduced these days?)
Finally, after several refusals, we were offered a flat in one of those new colonies that sprout like mushrooms around the capital. The rent was two hundred rupees a month and although I knew I couldn’t really afford so much, I was so sick of refusals and already so disheartened and depressed that I took the place and made out a cheque to the landlord, an elderly gentleman with his daughters all safely married in other parts of the country.
There was no furniture in the flat except for a couple of beds, but we decided we would fill the place up gradually. Everyone at Dinesh’s home—brothers, sister-in-law, aunts, nephews and nieces—helped us to move in. Sunil and his younger brother were the first arrivals. Later the other children, some ten of them, arrived. You, Sushila, came only in the afternoon, but I had gone out for something and only saw you when I returned at tea time. You were sitting on the first-floor balcony and smiled down at me as I walked up the road.
I think you were pleased with the flat; or at any rate, with my courage in taking one. I took you up to the roof, and there, in a corner under the stairs, kissed you very quickly. It had to be quick, because the other children were close on our heels. There wouldn’t be much opportunity for kissing you again. The mountains were far and in a place like Delhi, and with a family like yours, private moments would be few and far between.
Hours later when I sat alone on one of the beds, Sunil came to me, looking rather upset. He must have had a quarrel with you.
‘I want to tell you something,’ he said.
‘Is anything wrong?’
To my amazement he burst into tears.
‘Now you must not love me any more,’ he said.
‘Why not?’
‘Because you are going to marry Sushila, and if you love me too much it will not be good for you.’
I could think of nothing to say. It was all too funny and all too sad.
But a little later he was in high spirits, having apparently forgotten the reasons for his earlier dejection. His need for affection stemmed perhaps from his father’s long and unnecessary absence from the country.
Dinesh and I had no sleep during our first night in the new flat. We were near the main road and traffic roared past all night. I thought of the hills, so silent that the call of a nightjar startled one in the stillness of the night.
I was out most of the next day and when I got back in the evening it was to find that Dinesh had had a rumpus with the landlord. Apparently the landlord had really wanted bachelors, and couldn’t understand or appreciate a large number of children moving in and out of the house all day.
‘I thought landlords preferred having families,’ I said.
‘He wants to know how a bachelor came to have such a large family!’
‘Didn’t you tell him that the children were only temporary, and wouldn’t be living here?’
‘I did, but he doesn’t believe me.’
‘Well, anyway, we’re not going to stop the children from coming to see us,’ I said indignantly. (No children, no Sushila!) ‘If he doesn’t see reason, he can have his flat back.’
‘Did he cash my cheque?’
‘No, he’s given it back.’
‘That means he really wants us out. To hell with his flat! It’s too noisy here anyway. Let’s go back to your place.’
We packed our bedding, trunks and kitchen utensils once more; hired a bullock cart and arrived at Dinesh’s home (three miles distant) late at night, hungry and upset.
Everything seemed to be going wrong.
Living in the same house as you, but unable to have any real contact with you (except for the odd, rare moment when we were left alone in the same room and were able to exchange a word or a glance) was an exquisite form of self-inflicted torture: self-inflicted, because no one was forcing me to stay in Delhi. Sometimes you had to avoid me and I could not stand that. Only Dinesh (and, of course, Sunil and some of the children) knew anything about the affair—adults are much slower than children at sensing the truth—and it was still too soon to reveal the true state of affairs and my own feelings to anyone else in the family. If I came out with the declaration that I was in love with you, it would immediately become obvious that something had happened during your holiday in the hill station. It would be said that I had taken advantage of the situation (which I had), and that I had seduced you—even though I was beginning to wonder if it was you who had seduced me! And if a marriage was suddenly arranged, people would say: ‘It’s been arranged so quickly. And she’s so young. He must have got her into trouble.’ Even though there were no signs of your having got into that sort of trouble.
And yet I could not help hoping that you would become my wife sooner than could be foreseen. I wanted to look after you. I did not want others to be doing it for me. Was that very selfish? Or was it a true state of being in love?
There were times—times when you kept at a distance and did not even look at me—when I grew desperate. I knew you could not show your familiarity with me in front of others and yet, knowing this, I still tried to catch your eye, to sit near you, to touch you fleetingly. I could not hold myself back. I became morose, I wallowed in self-pity. And self-pity, I realized, is a sign of failure, especially of failure in love.
It was time to return to the hills.
Sushila, when I got up in the morning to leave, you were still asleep and I did not wake you. I watched you stretched out on your bed, your dark face tranquil and untouched by care, your black hair spread over the white pillow, your long thin hands and feet in repose. You were so beautiful when you were asleep.
And as I watched, I felt a tightening around my heart, a sudden panic that I might somehow lose you.
The others were up and there was no time to steal a kiss. A taxi was at the gate. A baby was bawling. Your grandmother was giving me advice. The taxi driver kept blowing his horn.
Goodbye, Sushila!
We were in the middle of the rains. There was a constant drip and drizzle and drumming on the corrugated tin roof. The walls were damp and there was mildew on my books and even on the pickle that Dinesh had made.
Everything was green, the foliage almost tropical, especially near the stream. Great stag ferns grew from the trunks of tree fresh moss covered the rocks, and the maidenhair fern was at its loveliest. The water was a torrent, rushing through the ravine and taking with it bushes and small trees. I could not remain out for long, for at any moment it might start raining. And there were also the leeches who lost no time in fastening themselves on to my legs and feasting on my blood.
Once, standing on some rocks, I saw a slim brown snake swimming with the current. It looked beautiful and lonely.
I dreamt a dream, very disturbing dream, which troubled me for days.
In the dream, Sunil suggested that we go down to the stream.
We put some bread and butter into an airbag, along with a long bread knife, an
d set off down the hill. Sushila was barefoot, wearing the old cotton tunic which she had worn as a child, Sunil had on a bright yellow T-shirt and black jeans. He looked very dashing. As we took the forest path down to the stream, we saw two young men following us. One of them, a dark, slim youth, seemed familiar. I said ‘Isn’t that Sushila’s boyfriend?’ But they denied it. The other youth wasn’t anyone I knew.
When we reached the stream, Sunil and I plunged into the pool, while Sushila sat on the rock just above us. We had been bathing for a few minutes when the two young men came down the slope and began fondling Sushila. She did not resist but Sunil climbed out of the pool and began scrambling up the slope. One of the youths, the less familiar one, had a long knife in his hand. Sunil picked up a stone and flung it at the youth, striking him on the shoulder. I rushed up and grabbed the hand that held the knife. The youth kicked me on the shins and thrust me away and I fell beneath him. The arm with the knife was raised over me, but I still held the wrist. And then I saw Sushila behind him, her face framed by a passing cloud. She had the bread knife in her hand, and her arm swung up and down, and the knife cut through my adversary’s neck as though it were passing through a ripe melon.
I scrambled to my feet to find Sushila gazing at the headless corpse with the detachment and mild curiosity of a child who has just removed the wings from a butterfly.
The other youth, who looked like Sushila’s boyfriend, began running away. He was chased by the three of us. When he slipped and fell, I found myself beside him, the blade of the knife poised beneath his left shoulder blade. I couldn’t push the knife in. Then Sunil put his hand over mine and the blade slipped smoothly into the flesh.
At all times of the day and night I could hear the murmur of the stream at the bottom of the hill. Even if I didn’t listen, the sound was there. I had grown used to it. But whenever I went away, I was conscious of something missing and I was lonely without the sound of running water.